Sin that Marks Our Bodies

Earlier this year, I sat down for lunch with Amey, an African-American first-year student. The goal was to hear each others' stories and to know the pain of growing up as a Black child in the South. In the process of that conversation, I mentioned that a faculty member had marginalized me in a lecture, unintentionally, and broken me once again. Amey's gift to me was her recognition that I was hurt, even though the professor did not mean to hurt me. She refused to differentiate between the pain and oppression she experienced growing up in the South and the pain and oppression I was experiencing as a Divinity student. Even now as I think back on that conversation, I am so blessed by Amey's ability to look beyond the Black-White characterization of the South. Her recognition was that oppression, marginalization, and racism are always wrong.
The problem I am trying to articulate is not that I am oppressed more than others, the problem is that oppression exists in our churches in any form. We are made in the image and likeness of God, all of us, no matter our skin color, social status, economic class, or city of origin. We reveal God to our brothers and sisters as they reveal God to us. Since we are created in God's image, we, all of us, are icons, windows through which we see God. When one person is oppressed by another, when one person is ignored, then we are guilty. We are like the teachers who were guilty because they claimed to see. We do not love our brothers and sisters when we marginalize one of them, and as John tells us, if we do not love our neighbors, we do not love God. We are not competing over oppression at the Divinity School. We are trying to faithfully tell our brothers and sisters that their inability to see us is a refusal to view us as icons of our Lord and as humans redeemed by God.
Last week I wrote that "our bodies bear the scars of the attacks against us." Our bodies are marked. We are one church, and the oppression of one of us marks all of our bodies with the scars. It is not okay to recognize the racism perpetuated against one group without recognizing the racism perpetrated against other groups. It is not okay to discuss the social construction of one race without discussing the social construction of the others. Even as we repent of slavery, segregation, and Jim Crow laws, too often we either allow or perpetrate the oppression and marginalization of others. We, the church, the redeemed of God, still perpetuate the sins of racism.
Almighty God, our creator, redeemer, and sustainer, open our eyes to our sins of not seeing your face in the brothers and sisters around us. Help us bring healing instead of pain to the broken and ignored in our midst.

Abused or Ignored?

I think that my sisters at Altared helped me understand part of my frustration tonight. We were discussing race, reconciliation, mercy, truth-telling, and our own brokenness. These women have consistently provided a place where I can speak, and where my pain and my joy can be heard. This space is refreshing in a Divinity School which tries to be faithful, but like any other institution, fails miserably at times.

Last spring, I sat through the response of one of our Black Church Studies and Theology professors to Bono's speech at the Presidential Breakfast. I remember feeling like I had never been so marginalized by a member of another ethnic minority. The tears I cried that morning were tears of sorrow and pain. Tonight as we talked before the altar, I was able to share briefly that I consistently feel marginalized at Duke, by both professors and students, and I was able to confess my own fear and reticence to speak truth and mercy to those who consciously and unconsciously perpetuate injustice.

As I walked away from those women and that altar, I realized that a portion of my pain comes from being ignored. In some cruel way, it is better to be abused than ignored. The abuse hurts, and it cuts deeply into the very fabric of your being, especially when the abuser attacks the color of your skin. When we are cut, we bleed, and there are many of us who are limping through these hallways. Our bodies bear the scars of the attacks against us, against our people, and against our identity.

But our scarred and bleeding bodies are at least acknowledged. There is a validation of personhood and of power when you are attacked. People attack you because they are threatened by the power you could wield, or they strike because they hate the person you are. Either way, there is an acknowledgment that you exist, albeit a perception that you are unworthy. There is no such validation in being ignored. When you are ignored, you are not even worth the time for someone to attack you. You possess no power to threaten the institutions and structures of society. You are worthless; instead of being the fly who nags and is swatted, you are the concrete people walk on, not tended, not cared for, not noticed.

My experience at Duke has been the latter. There is no desire to include the latino/a community in discussions of reconciliation. There is no acknowledgement that students may come from indigenous American tribes. There is no attempt to recognize my presence. Attempts to bring other ethnic groups into conversations of truth-telling and reconciliation are systematically ignored. Questions are interrupted or avoided altogether. I am neither Black nor White, so I do not matter.

This is a cry for truth, justice, peace, and mercy in Duke Divinity School. Whether you acknowledge it or not, I am a child created by God, redeemed by his blood, and empowered through the Holy Spirit. I will claim that identity for myself, and I will continue to ask you to claim it for me.

Then, I will proclaim the hope I see within these ivory walls as well. There are small groups of students, like these eighteen women before the altar, who create space to acknowledge pain and stand together as the body of Christ. In that space, I am no longer ignored but live as the member of Christ's body I am. In that space reconciliation begins, and we cry together over our sin and injustice, and we rejoice at grace which covers us all. We seek wholeness and healing and God's merciful touch. As we go from that space, may we all cry together the words carved into that altar: "I Thirst."

An Introduction

Through the wisdom of professors at Westmont College and Duke Divinity School, I have been encouraged to begin a blog which will intentionally engage theological issues. Topics may include race, reconciliation, evangelicalism, or any other topic of interest and/or importance. If these posts interest you, I welcome your presence and careful engagement with me in these discussions.

[Update: I have added additional writings from the past couple of years that are theological in nature or have theological implications. They are listed according to the order in which they were originally written.]

May the sanctifying grace of our Savior Jesus Christ cover us all.

Phil 3:4b-14 Sacrifice to Obtain the Resurrection of the Dead

The Christian Church is quite an odd gather of people. Have you ever stopped to think about what it is that we proclaim? 2000 years ago, in an obscure town in a tiny, out of the way province of the Roman Empire, a baby was born in a barn to a teenage mother. He was Jewish. A member of a religion that makes up only ¼ of 1% of the world’s population. After his birth, this baby named Jesus faded into obscurity for thirty years before reappearing at the Jordan River in Israel. He traveled around teaching crowds of people, upset almost every political and religious leader of the day, and three years after he appeared at the Jordan, he was crucified by the Roman government. 2000 years later, the church is still celebrating a failed revolutionary. We wear crosses around our necks; crosses, a sign of execution, much like wearing a golden gallows on a chain. We proclaim that we are brothers and sisters, and we eat the body and blood of Christ. Yes, the church is an odd gathering of people.

But I left something out. Did you catch it? I left out the resurrection. Isaiah proclaims that God is doing something new. Streams of water are springing up in the wilderness. The people God has chosen will proclaim His name. The Pharisee who seeks to destroy the church of God becomes God’s most powerful evangelist. And everything that we thought we understood is thrown into chaos.

Paul had his life figured out. He was the perfect Jew. His family had followed the Torah and had him circumcised when he was 8 days old. He was born of the tribe of Benjamin, an educated man who had become a Pharisee, a teacher of the Jewish law. And when this strange group of people called Christians started proclaiming that Jesus was God, Paul was sure they were committing blasphemy. He traveled around, enforcing the law and persecuting the church. A zealous Paul was stoning Christian leaders in obedience to the law.

Then Paul met Christ. This zealous Jew was caught up by the Holy Spirit and the grace of God into the life of Christ, and he cast aside everything which used to be important. Can you heart the theme reverberating through his letter? He “puts no confidence in the flesh,” whatever were gains, he now considers losses,” and he considers all his former glories as garbage. Paul is now a man whose life seems backwards. What has happened?

Christ took hold of Paul just like he had taken hold of those other crazy Christians. We live in a world tormented by the effects of the Fall. We are captive to sin and death, and our bodies are weak, frail, and decaying. We are in bondage to sin, death, and the devil. From the moment we are born, we are dying. Our time here is short, and we face diseases and wars. There is no guarantee that we will even wake up tomorrow. And lest we think that we are not in bondage to evil, look at the morning paper. Catholics kill Protestants in Ireland. The whole world, including the church, stands by as thousands are killed in Sudan. Two brothers fight over who gets to keep the house they inherited. We are in bondage to other forces.

Paul’s former life was a part of this captivity. He followed the law to try to curb the sinful nature, but the law could not deliver him from bondage. He was from Israel, the people of God, but even Israel needed to be set free from these evil forces. This is why Christ Jesus took hold of Paul. The Holy Spirit brought Paul into the life of Christ. Paul participated in the faithfulness of Christ and is righteous in Christ. He participates in Christ’s sufferings to obtain the resurrection of the dead and the defeat of the powers of sin and death. Paul has given up a lot, but life in Christ set him free.

We seek freedom as well. We want liberation from the decay and death of our bodies. We want victory over the power of sin. We know this desire every time a new request comes across the prayer chain, and every time we celebrate the life and passing of a brother or sister. We groan in anticipation of the perfecting of our bodies, and we celebrate when our brothers and sisters pass on because they have won the prize which they were seeking: the resurrection of their bodies. That liberation and victory came at a price for Paul. He participated in the sufferings of Christ and joined in his crucifixion. He received liberation, but he had to die first. After all, without death, there is no resurrection.

Today is the fifth Sunday of Lent. Next Sunday we will celebrate the entry into Jerusalem and Christ’s proclamation as King. In a week and a half, we will mourn at the foot of the cross as we witness again the crucifixion, and in two weeks, we will rejoice in the resurrection. Today, we prepare for Easter.

What might we need to die to in order to be set free? Paul set aside his status. He had authority as a teacher, even if it was only authority over a small number of Jews. Maybe for us it is the authority of being a boss at work or of being the head of our extended families. | Paul counted as loss the boundary markers of his society. Here, maybe it is being Black or being White, having an education or having none, being a confederate or being a Yankee, having money or being poor. Paul gave up his special status in the people of God. Being a Hebrew was nothing compared to being brought into the life of Christ. For us, does being Methodist compare with Christ? Does being a member of a Christian family take the place of life in Christ?

As we go to God in silent prayer now, remember that Paul gave up persecuting the church and was transformed into a powerful missionary. What you may have to give up to attain the resurrection of the dead? What new thing might God do with you as you are taken hold of by Christ?

I'm ready to give up...

...on life in the South.

I love Dr. Amy Laura Hall. I think that she is doing a wonderful job of calling us to examine the narratives that the world is giving us in order to live as faithful followers of Christ. But today she missed the point. She told us that she has heard from some of us about the Black-White dialogue in the South. She said that she is aware that life here includes more than just those who are Black or White, but that when we start arguing over who is more oppressed, then evil has won. I actually agree with that point. When we compete over our oppression, we give in to Satan and stop living into the church we are. I don't want to convince her that I'm more oppressed. I'm certainly less oppressed than many people in my classes. My problem was that after Dr. Hall told us that she knows there are Asians and latino/as in the area, she proceeded to talk about race and oppression in Black and White terms. It appeared that she was simply subsuming all non-Western European people groups into African-Americans and their oppression.

Dr. J. Kameron Carter was the guest lecturer in Ethics today. You may recognize his name from some of my other posts on race. This is the professor who told us that salvation comes from Africa. I tend to dread all of his lectures because he usually makes me cry. Today, he defined October 12, 1492 as the exact time when theology got off track and started to be a discourse of race and of culture. It was Columbus' landing in the Caribbean which allowed modernity to occur. I'm not sure I'm convinced, but even more, I'm disturbed by his narration which is, again, very American-centric. He brought all stories in the world into the story of the American South and the African-American community here.

I don't want to negate the experiences of those in the South. I know that the history of the American South is incredibly horrible. I know that American slavery was especially oppressive. And I'm not trying to initiate escapism. I know that life in Nevada, California, Oregon, Idaho, Washington, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah is not perfect. Racism certainly still exists in the West, in different forms perhaps, but it is there nonetheless. Don't think I'm avoiding these problems. I have been told by a boyfriend that his parents would never allow him to marry a Mexican woman, while I looked back at him wondering if he realized I was Mexican. I have been told by my friends' parents that they hate Hispanics, and then lived in the fear that they might see me with my dad or grandparents and forbid me from spending time with their children. I've lived in the racism of the West.

No, I'm not trying to escape racism. I'm trying to escape the concept that all minorities are African-American, that all stories are the same. If you want to write a narrative of all humans living under the curse of sin, of all humans being redeemable, of all humans living only by the grace of God, then I will get on board immediately. There are ways that we are all the same. My history is not one of them. When Carter recalls Oct. 12, 1492, I don't hear the inauguration of slavery in the South. I hear echoes of massacres and the removal of peoples from their tribal lands to reservations. I hear the story of the US government forcing the Navajo people to reduce the size of their flocks, resulting in the starvation of the people come winter. My narrative is different, and I want out. I want out of the land where my narrative has to be one of either slavery or slaveowner. I want out of the story where I am forced to fit into a preconceived notion of what it means to be a theologian or a Christian. I want out of the classes where I am told to tell a different narrative than that of the world, and then told that the new narrative is defined by Black and White. I'm ready to give up on life in the South.

Ps 71:1-8, Jer 1:4-10

Psalm 71

1 In you, LORD, I have taken refuge;
let me never be put to shame.

2 In your righteousness, rescue me and deliver me;
turn your ear to me and save me.

3 Be my rock of refuge,
to which I can always go;
give the command to save me,
for you are my rock and my fortress.

4 Deliver me, my God, from the hand of the wicked,
from the grasp of those who are evil and cruel.

5 For you have been my hope, Sovereign LORD,
my confidence since my youth.

6 From birth I have relied on you;
you brought me forth from my mother's womb.
I will ever praise you.

7 I have become like a portent to many,
but you are my strong refuge.

8 My mouth is filled with your praise,
declaring your splendor all day long.

Jeremiah 1:4-10

The Call of Jeremiah

4 The word of the LORD came to me, saying,

5 "Before I formed you in the womb I knew ^[a] you,
before you were born I set you apart;
I appointed you as a prophet to the nations."

6 "Ah, Sovereign LORD," I said, "I do not know how to speak; I am too young."

7 But the LORD said to me, "Do not say, 'I am too young.' You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you. 8 Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you," declares the LORD.

9 Then the LORD reached out his hand and touched my mouth and said to me, "I have put my words in your mouth. 10 See, today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant."

At the beginning of every semester, my college pastor used to stand up in chapel and have us get our bearings. He would say, “We’re in Murchison Gym, Westmont College, Montecito, California, United States of America, Western hemisphere, planet Earth, Solar System, Milky Way Galaxy, Universe, Mind of God.” This morning I want us to situate ourselves according to another set of bearings. Where are we? We are in Glencoe United Methodist Church, in the line of John Wesley, the Church of England, the church catholic, and the first disciples. We are followers of Christ Jesus and the LORD, | the God of Israel, of Adam and Eve, of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, of Job and Nehemiah, and of the psalmists and the prophet Jeremiah. That’s where we are. We are part of a community who knows the true God and worships him and declares his glory in our whole lives.

The writer of Psalm 71 is like us, a part of the community of God who has seen God’s faithfulness and been taught the ways that God has acted in history. That is why he, the writer is probably male, that is why he can write a lament psalm which complains about his problem, rests in God’s promises, and praises God even in his oppression. He knows the LORD to be a God of surprises and miracles. He serves the God who gave Abraham and Sarah a child when Sarah was ninety years old, the God who heard the cries of his people in Egypt and raised up Moses to deliver them from pharaoh, and the God who gave Israel king David and promised that he would always be with his people.

The psalmist knows that god is with him, so he declares his reliance on the LORD, using a series of metaphors which show God’s protection. God is our refuge, our rock, and our fortress, and I can’t help but picture the psalmist’s words. The temple was the refuge for Israel, the place where they could seek safety from those who were attacking them. However, in my mind I picture the storm cellar in the Wizard of Oz. As the tornado approached, the family ran around the yard gathering the things they needed, and they rushed to lift the door to the storm cellar, climb in, and get the door shut tight where they would be protected from the winds that could carry them away. Of course, the storm still struck, but they where sheltered underground. In verse 1, God is our refuge; though the storm may strike, we are given refuge in the presence of Christ.

What about the rock in verse 3? I come from the West Coast where earthquakes are normal. In the early ‘90’s, a massive earthquake occurred in Northridge, near Los Angeles. It turned out that doorways and hallways were not the only place you wanted to be when the earth started moving. After the quake, we learned that part of a nearby town was built on bedrock, and part of it was built on fill. When the ground shook, the buildings that were built on the rock stood firm while the buildings built on fill became split-level houses. Whole neighborhoods had to be condemned. For some reason, we like to put our hope in the fill, in things that will crumble. We grasp for money which collapses with one stock market crash. We build an increasingly powerful military which still cannot protect us from attacks like Pearl Harbor or September 11^th. We put trust in the government which cannot rescue us from joblessness, loneliness, and the increasing cost of health care. Fortunately for us, God is a rock, not fill; when the ground beneath us begins to shake, we can stay standing on the rock that does not crumble.

It is this constant security that the psalmist has found in God which has allowed him to put his hope and trust in the LORD. In verse 5, he writes, “For you have been my hope, Sovereign LORD, my confidence since my youth. From birth I have relied on you; you brought me forth from my mother’s womb.” It is only through the LORD that we exist at all; unless the LORD gives us life and breath, we will not survive today. He has given us the gift of life and then walked with us since our birth. Have you thanked God for your life lately? | Where else can you see God’s hand in your life? |

Has he given you people to encourage you when you thought that your life would never get better? Did he place you in a Christian family where you were raised in the church or give you a friend who told you about God’s love for the first time? What gifts has he given you to help others along the Christian journey? In what ways has God formed you as his unique child? |

Jeremiah was formed to be a prophet to the nations; he was put together with specific gifts which God would use to speak to the world. He was made bold to speak against the kings of Israel. He was given life to serve God as a prophet, as a person who would follow God even when everyone else around him turned away. He was called to live a life of obedience, and most of all to speak for God to Israel. He was told to preach, to tell God’s story.

Jeremiah was not excited about God’s call. He reacted with an excuse. Jeremiah said, “I do not know how to speak, I am too young.” He sounds like Moses who insisted so strongly that he could not speak for God, so God ended up giving him Aaron to speak on his behalf. He sounds like us. “I am too young to have anything worthwhile to say. I’m too busy to help my neighbor change her flat tire. I’m too poor to have anyone listen to me. I’m too old to speak to these younger generations.” We make excuses when God calls. What are your excuses? |

Consider today how God is calling you. It is up to the church to tell the story of Jesus who died on the cross and rose again to save the world from sin, who loves each of the children he has made, and who is the rock we can stand on when our lives start to shake. If we do not go, who will God raise up to go in our place? We are all called to be like Jeremiah, sharing God’s good news with the nations and calling all people to serve God. We are all called to serve our neighbors and to love our neighbors just as Christ served and loved us. Perhaps this is why our passage from Psalm 71 ends the same way Jeremiah ends: with the proclamation of God’s word.

The psalmist ends this section saying, “I will ever praise you. I have become like a portent to many, but you are my strong refuge. My mouth is filled with your praise, declaring your splendor all day long.” Our lives should be a ceaseless expression of our praise. If we have taken time to consider the work of God in our lives and in the beauty of the surrounding creation, we can offer up praise to our LORD who is worthy of our love and service.

But praising God all day long does not have to mean that we stand on the street corner declaring the judgment and wrath of God. It means letting our lives and words glorify Jesus in all of our actions. We praise God at our jobs by doing our best work with the gifts God has given us, by being honest in all of our dealings, in avoiding the latest office gossip. We praise God in our homes by loving our spouses as Christ loves us, by viewing our children as gifts from God, by avoiding unneeded extravagances, and by opening our homes to those around us. We praise God with our time by limiting our commitments, so we have time to hear God, by spending our time serving others, and by making time for unexpected opportunities to help those in need.

And when we live our lives to the glory of God, we are more able to hear how God wants us to declare his splendor. We are ready to hear his voice asking us to work in Mississippi or teach a Sunday school class. We are waiting for him to tell us to start a ministry to children in the neighborhoods around the church or to use our gifts and expertise serving on a church committee. Consider how God is calling you to preach his word, to declare his splendor to the world, and know that you are not alone. Remember where we are. | We are in Glencoe United Methodist Church, in the line of John Wesley, the Church of England, the church catholic, and the first disciples. We are followers of Christ Jesus and the LORD, | the God of Israel, of Adam and Eve, of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, of Job and Nehemiah, and of the psalmists and the prophet Jeremiah. We are part of a community who knows the true God and worships him and declares his glory in our whole lives.

Praise be to God. Amen.

Christ the King Sunday - John 18:33-37

John 18:33-37

³³ Pilate then went back inside the palace, summoned Jesus and asked him, "Are you the king of the Jews?"

³⁴ "Is that your own idea," Jesus asked, "or did others talk to you about me?"

³⁵ "Am I a Jew?" Pilate replied. "Your own people and chief priests handed you over to me. What is it you have done?"

³⁶ Jesus said, "My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place."

³⁷ "You are a king, then!" said Pilate.
Jesus answered, "You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me."

This morning is Christ the King Sunday, the last Sunday after Pentecost and before Advent. It seems to me that this is a particularly perfect time of year for it. We have been living in the memory of Pentecost in the age of the church, the time when the Spirit has descended and the church goes out into the world. But we have not yet arrived at Advent. We are not yet awaiting the birth of the infant king born in a manger. It also seems like an exceptionally perfect Sunday because it challenges us to see Jesus as King before Advent, in a time when we may not normally see him that way. In my experience, we tend to think of Jesus as quite tame. We picture him as the silent baby of Away in a Manger and the gentle peasant wandering around and speaking to groups of people quietly gathered on the hillside eating lunch. We like to forget that Jesus is our King who can give us orders at any time, who can ask us to die for his glory, and who can call us up for service in his army at a moment’s notice. We like to place Jesus in a box on a shelf and pull him out on Sundays, at meal times, and when we need him. Christ the King Sunday refuses to let us brush Christ aside.

If Christ is our king, then it is wise for us to learn about his kingdom by looking at his life. In our passage from John, Jesus said that he came to testify to the truth. There are many messages claiming to be truth in our lives. Movies teach girls that relationships have fairy tale endings where “happily ever after” is the easy result of meeting Prince Charming. Our fascination with sports teaches our boys that athletic ability is more important than honesty, integrity, intelligence, and compassion. Our advertisements proclaim the image that women must be skinny, flawless, and young. Our music teaches that real men are strong, unemotional, and better than women. The world claims to be bringing us the truth every time we open our eyes, but none of its truths were proclaimed by Christ. Instead, he proclaimed a truth and a kingdom that are not of this world.

Jesus showed us his kingdom, and he brought us, the church, into it. In verse 36 Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.” His servants would fight. Servants. People under his authority. His servants were his followers, those who learned from him and obeyed him. Today we, the church, are those servants. As his servants, we learn from the master how to live in his kingdom.

Jesus’ life was constantly engaged with sin and evil in the world. He was reversing the consequences of the Fall by Adam and Eve. He taught that the poor would inherit the kingdom of God, and he traveled with no place to lay his head. He overturned the divisions between Israel and Samaria, Jew and Gentile. Jesus healed the sick, raised the dead, and conquered demons. Throughout his ministry, the battles were for more than earthly possessions and power. From the temptation in the wilderness to the cross, Jesus was engaged in a spiritual war. And as his servants, Jesus has brought us into the battle on his side. We have plenty of demons to fight today, and plenty of the continuing effects of the Fall. This morning, we will look at four contemporary demons and what it might mean to be fighting against them.

At this time of year, the demon of poverty is one we cannot forget. We are surrounded by opportunities for giving, but such a systematic injustice requires more than a few coins dropped in a bucket or a gift purchased for a poor child. This battle requires faithful stewardship of our resources, living modestly so others can survive. It requires us to go against the American dream of constantly accumulating money and possessions and to follow the disciples in sharing the material blessings we have been given. It means following Jesus’ call to give to our brothers and sisters sacrificially instead of out of our abundance. The church has joined our King in this battle in many different ways – the angel trees in our hallways and last week’s food drive for the soup kitchen - and all of them are necessary. But I want to provide a different example this morning. There is a group of people in Durham who live at the Rutba House in Walltown, a poor and neglected neighborhood. Every evening they sit down at a common table and their door is open to all. People from the neighborhood with little to eat arrive next to the homeless, who are given a bed in addition to the meal. The housemates grow a variety of foods in their backyard, so they can have more to offer their guests. This group of people offers hope, compassion, advice, and love to each person who walks through their door, in addition to basic necessities, and through their ministry they are fighting the against the demon of poverty.

The second demon that I want to look at this morning is racism. In Jesus’ day, there was a large barrier between Jews and Gentiles. They could not share meals because the Jews ate different foods and had to remain ritually pure. They could not touch each other because a Jew could become unclean if he only touched a person who had touched something that was unclean. Jesus tore down these barriers. He stopped to talk with the Samaritan at the well. He ate dinner with tax collectors and sinners. And he gave us the parable of the Good Samaritan, showing that caring for a fellow human is more important than remaining ritually pure. For Paul, the church was the one place in Roman society where these barriers were broken down. He tells us that there is no longer Jew or Greek for those who are in Christ Jesus. The racial distinctions were dissolved. Unfortunately we have not learned this lesson very well. Our churches tend to be the most racially segregated part of society. We have White churches and Black churches. Latino, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Greek, and Swiss churches. Instead of breaking down social lines, we have made them worse. Instead of sharing a common table, we can still walk into restaurants where our Black brothers and sisters cannot get service. Instead of loving our neighbors and our brothers and sisters across national boundaries, we ostracize the Hispanics in this country, assuming that all are illegal residents, that none contribute to American society, and that they do not deserve compassion, understanding, and acceptance as fellow Christians. Race is still a big problem in this country, and one of the groups who is fighting this demon is called Ubuntu. They meet once a month and share a table, and they wrestle with racism. They hear each other’s stories, from all sides, and they learn to give compassion to those who are different than themselves. They learn about each others’ traditions, and they celebrate them together. They are engaging in the battle.

The third demon is violence. I don’t have to prove to you that this is a problem. You need only to pick up a newspaper or turn on the TV. The news is of bombings, murders, and attacks. There are wars being fought all over the world, and neighbors are killing each other. But the goal of the church is reconciliation not war. It is to bring people into loving relationship with the Living God and one another. After all, the two greatest commandments are to love God and one another. After all, the two greatest commandments are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love our neighbors as ourselves. But wrestling this demon is hard. Our justice system serves its purpose, but it obviously does not stop violence. Our military does its job, but even it cannot police the world. The church must find a different way. I think that way is love and forgiveness in truth. There is a pastor I know who lives in South-Central Los Angeles. This is an area with high crime and high poverty, but he is the pastor of a South-Central LA church, so he lives in South-Central LA. Two years ago, his high school aged son and the daughter of a fellow pastor were sitting on his front porch talking when a car pulled up and a young man got out. The new gang initiations require you to shoot someone at close range, so this young man pulled out a gun, walked into the porch and shot the young man and young woman. The lady died, and the young man spent quite a bit of time in the hospital. But these pastors are still in South-Central LA. They know that the violence will only increase if the church leaves the city. Instead they need to do God’s work of bringing the message of peace and forgiveness to these lost teenagers who have found belonging in no where but these gangs. These pastors are using the power of conversion to wrestle the demon of violence.

The last demon is death, and it is also fought with conversion, but also with hope. We read many names on our prayer list each week. Sickness and grief surrounds us, but we do have hope. When we were baptized, we died with Christ, and we were also raised with him. So we have entered into his new life which will never end. For us, death is not the end of the story but only another step in the journey of our relationship with God. It is our hope in the resurrection which defeats the demon of death.

I want to close this morning by reading today’s appointed lesson from Revelation because it is in Christ’s return that his kingship will be realized fully and the battles with these demons will be brought to an end. Christ will reign over all of creation when he comes again in all of his glory, and until that day, we will continue to fight in our king’s army. So hear now the hope of the coming kingdom from Revelation, chapter 1, verses 4-8.

“Grace and peace to you from him who is, and who was, and who is to come, and from the seven spirits ^[a] before his throne, 5 and from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.

“To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood, 6 and has made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve his God and Father—to him be glory and power for ever and ever! Amen.

7 "Look, he is coming with the clouds," ^[b]
and "every eye will see him,
even those who pierced him";
and all peoples on earth "will mourn because of him." ^[c] So shall it be! Amen.

8 "I am the Alpha and the Omega," says the Lord God, "who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty."

Our King is coming soon. Amen.