Building Better Community
Announcements
Maggie: Well, good morning everybody. Like Ben said, it's so good to be together this morning. I'm Maggie, I'm part of the table team. It is a little bit of a lighter morning. I think that everybody who has someone running on the marathon is down cheering at the marathon. That would be my guess. That would be where I would be. We're so glad to be together this morning. We're shipping together and I would like to share with you some of the exciting things that are coming up in our community in the next couple of weeks. Our theme this morning is how we are engaged in the neighborhood. So the opportunities I wanna share with you can all be found on our website under the events tab and you can learn more about those as they come up here in the next couple weeks.
But the most important one is that we have neighbors that we share this building with. The organization is called The Park Place and they serve Latina families in the Powderhorn neighborhood and we have just had an ongoing partnership with The Park Place and we're so glad to be in community with them. They are throwing us a potluck on Tuesday and everyone is invited and we would love to see you there. I can tell you this, you do not have to worry about the fact that you don't speak Spanish because there's so many people including all the teenagers who would love to help you get to meet the people, especially if you were involved during Metro Surge in grocery delivery or shopping or packing or any of those things.
These families want to meet you. Clara told me this morning that they want to see your face. They want to meet you and know you and so we would love to invite you on Tuesday. So speaking of which, Clara and her whole family are here this morning. And we're so grateful for your ongoing partnership. We are so glad to be in community together and so if you will see Clara after the service, you can RSVP for that potluck so that they know that you're coming and you can RSVP for your whole family. Everybody's welcome. They would just love to see us on Tuesday.
The next thing I want to let you know is that next Sunday we have this really unique opportunity. We're actually joining with congregations all over the country. This is the national Weekend to End Homelessness and we're being led by the National Coalition of Faith Organizations to End Homelessness. I'm looking at Kevin. I'm close enough. Kevin is the director and co-founder and Kevin will actually be preaching here at The Table next Sunday. So we're so excited to kind of join power together and kind of unite together with these other congregations to learn about what does homelessness look like locally, what are the local resources, and how do we work together to end it. I love this so much. Kevin's organization has put together this theme for all these congregations and the idea is that God invites each of us home and so what would it look like if the church did that too. So I would love to invite you to be together with us next weekend as we do that.
I forgot to dismiss the third to fifth graders. My bad. Third to fifth graders. We'll see you for communion. Bye friends. And now I'd like to invite up Justin for the message.
Sermon
Justin: Good morning. Good morning. Well today we are continuing on in our series that we're calling Woven and it centers on this idea that the love of God and the love of neighbor are inseparable realities. We live out our faith by loving our neighbors and we recognize that our own flourishing is woven together with the flourishing of our neighbors. But this morning we are going to shift gears a little bit and we're going to talk about a power that seeks to unravel us and what we can perhaps do about that.
Our scripture passage for this morning comes from Mark chapter 6 verses 17 through 29. And at this point in Mark's gospel, Jesus has become well known. He started his ministry and sent out the disciples to proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God. And King Herod has heard about Jesus and he thinks that Jesus is the resurrected John the Baptist because he had John the Baptist beheaded. And so that is going to play a huge part in the scripture passage for this morning and you're going to hear Mark call Herod King Herod. And he does that in a mocking tone because Herod is not actually a king. He's kind of like the equivalent of like the mayor of Galilee. And he's mocking him because Herod wants to be a king so bad. He even goes to Rome and asks them to give him the title of king and they turn him down, which really upsets him. He's got a chip on his shoulder about this but he's willing to do whatever he can to hold on to the little bit of power that he actually does have. And so our text for this morning says this:
"For Herod himself had sent men who arrested John, bound him, and put him in prison on account of Herodias, his brother Philip's wife, because Herod had married her. For John had been telling Herod, it is not lawful for you to have your brother's wife. And Herodias had a grudge against him and wanted to kill him. But she could not for Herod feared John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man, and he protected him. When he heard him, he was greatly perplexed and yet he liked to listen to him. But an opportunity came when Herod on his birthday gave a banquet for his courtiers and officers and for the leaders of Galilee. When his daughter Herodias came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his guest. And the king said to the girl, "Ask me for whatever you wish and I will give it." And he swore to her, "Whatever you ask me, I will give you even half of my kingdom." She went out and said to her mother, "What should I ask for?" And she replied, "The head of John the Baptizer." Immediately she rushed back to the king and requested, "I want you to give me at once the head of John the Baptist on a platter." The king was deeply grieved, yet out of regard for his oaths and for the guests, he did not want to refuse her. Immediately the king sent a soldier of the guard with orders to bring John's head. He went and beheaded him in the prison, brought his head on a platter and gave it to the girl. Then the girl gave it to her mother. When his disciples heard about it, they came and took his body and laid it in a tomb.
So there's a bit of struggle going on here for Herod, because on one hand, John the Baptist intrigues him. He knows that John is a holy man, and so he wants to hear what he has to say. On the other hand, John is a fiery prophet who is big on justice and he calls out Herod for his corruption and his moral fellings. He knows that John is right, but it's kind of tricky for him because doing the right thing would threaten his power. He wants so badly to be a king and rule, but ironically, he is being ruled by his incessant desire for political and social power. He's trapped because he shares the same ambitions as his wife does. He has the leaders of Galilee to impress and his own reputation to maintain. So if he doesn't do something about John, he could lose all of that and he beheads him.
Now, this story is actually an interruption in Mark's gospel, and I want to show you what that looks like. Obviously, you can't read that, but... (Laughter) Verse 13 talks about the apostles going on mission and healing people. Then you see the chunk that I just read for you, and then it follows up immediately with verse 30, where the disciples go and report to Jesus about their ministry and all that they've done. So if you take out the chunk of John the Baptist there, you see one clean narrative. The apostles go out and do ministry, and then they come back and report it to Jesus.
So what is Mark doing here? Why would he insert this reflection about John the Baptist in the middle of a narrative about the apostles going out on mission? Mark is actually famous for this kind of storytelling, so famous that scholars actually call it a "Mark sandwich." This happens all throughout the gospel of Mark, and a Mark sandwich always has a point. And the point of inserting this reflection is a warning to followers of Jesus. If you allow the grip of political and social power to rule over you, then you will do things to hold on to that power that go against your conscience, that go against what you know is right. So don't fall prey to that way of life. Instead, remain faithful to the way of John and Jesus, the way of justice and mercy and truth, but be aware that even that path is going to come with its own set of consequences.
This gospel was written around 75 AD, almost 2,000 years ago, and while so much in our world has changed over the past two millennia, the choice between the ways of Herod and the ways of Jesus are just as relevant as they ever have been. We wrestle with those realities all the time. It's just that they pop up in different ways at different times. In 1838, Frederick Douglass escaped slavery in Maryland and went to New York, and the people up north could not believe some of the stories that he was telling, so he decided to write an autobiography about his life, and I want you to hear what he says about Christianity.
"Between the Christianity of this land and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference. So wide that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of the one is of necessity to be the enemy of the other. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ. I therefore hate the corrupt, slave-holding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial, and hypocritical Christianity of this land."
Douglass saw a deep divide in the way that Jesus talked about faith and the ways that he saw it being lived out around him. As an enslaved person and later as an abolitionist, it was obvious to him that white men with power were using the language of Christianity to justify a way of life that was radically opposed to the way of Jesus. He couldn't reconcile how the pastor he saw whipping a slave until they bled could turn around and stand in a pulpit on Sunday and preach about the meek and lowly Jesus. The problem for Douglass was not Christian faith. It was a version of Christian faith that was woven together with the interest of people who used their power for violence, dehumanization, and domination. That is the way of Herod. And these slaveholders certainly didn't heed the warning in Mark's gospel.
But this morning, I am encouraging us to heed that warning because that spirit of Herod is still very much alive and well in our world today. But Jesus continues to call us towards justice, continues to call us towards the love of neighbor, and away from the trappings of political and social power. One of the greatest threats to the way of Jesus and to American democracy, if we're being honest, is what's being termed as Christian nationalism. And I know by now you've heard that term thrown around a lot, but I think it's important that we have a definition because we mean different things sometimes when we talk about it. So I really love the Baptist Joint Committee's definition. They say this, "Christian nationalism is a political ideology that seeks to merge Christian and American identities, distorting both the Christian faith and America's constitutional democracy. Christian nationalism demands Christianity be privileged by the state and implies that to be a good American, one must be Christian."
This is an important definition because it calls Christian nationalism what it is, a political ideology. It is not Christian faith. It is not American patriotism. It's an ideology that demands power in the name of Jesus. For those who adhere to Christian nationalism, holding on to power looks like controlling the narrative, creating us versus them, and then reinforcing a particular social order. And if the narrative is that white Christian men founded this nation and inserted Christian values into the Constitution, then what it looks like to thrive is to other anyone who doesn't fit the mold and to reinforce a social order where white Christian men are at the top.
And we can see these objectives unfolding right before our eyes in this country. Texas has just passed law mandating biblical literacy in the public school system with the intended goal of helping students understand the greatness of America. That doesn't make sense to me.
Then we're seeing a particular social order being reinforced. There are so many male and female Christian podcasters right now who embrace Christian nationalism who are talking about how good Christian women will give up their right to vote, to let the man vote as a representative of their household because that is what God has ordained and how God has ordained things to function.
And then, of course, we've experienced firsthand the division of us versus them right here in Minneapolis. When the DHS began to recruit ICE agents, they used Proverbs 28 and other Bible verses to back it up in their ads for recruitment, equating ICE raids with a divine mission from God.
This is a political ideology that has nothing to do with Jesus Christ and has everything to do with political and social power. Dr. King once said, "The church must be reminded that it is neither the master nor the servant of the state, but the conscience of the state." The minute the church decides to climb in bed with politicians and political parties, we lose the ability to be the prophetic voice of John and Jesus. There will always be systems that invite us to hold on to our power in exchange for our faithfulness, and we have to reject that invitation every single time.
So what is the best way for us to maintain that prophetic voice of Jesus and not get trapped by the political and social power that's at work? Well, as I was researching for this sermon, there was one consistent theme that kept rising to the surface in everything that I was reading, and it was simply this, build better community. And what does that look like? Well, it looks like the opposite of Christian nationalism, and it looks a whole lot like the way that Jesus actually lived his life and what he taught. A big part of Christian nationalism's success, like I just said, is the ability to control the narrative. And Jesus does two things that I think are really important. The first is that he's willing to speak the truth to power. Jesus consistently holds the religious elite to account for the ways that they are burdening people with the law. But he's able to speak truth to power because of the community that he's building around him. One time, a Greek woman comes to him, and she wants Jesus to heal her daughter. And he turns to her and says, "I came to feed the children of Israel first."
And she said, "Well, I'll take the crumbs, but I know what you can do, and I'm not leaving here until you heal my daughter." And Jesus is moved by her faith.
And that moment becomes pivotal in the ever-expanding vision of what God's kingdom actually looks like. Building better community looks like building honest and authentic relationships. A healthy community is never an echo chamber. If everyone in your circle has the same experience and the same opinions as you, it's not healthy.
How can you speak truth to power if you don't know how power is impacting people who aren't like you? Justice demands that you not only consider what is just for you, but what is just for your neighbor as well. I had that realization for myself several years ago when I came to terms with my own privilege and the racial bias that was way deeper in my heart than I realized. From the time I was three years old to the time I graduated high school, I went to a private school called Robert E. Lee Academy.
And I was always told by my parents that they wanted to give me a good education, and that this was the best way for me to have that education. And I never questioned that narrative until I picked up a copy of "White Fragility." And I read a section in that book on desegregation and how many private schools popped up during the 60s because white parents were scared and fearful of integration. And I looked up from that book and my entire narrative started to crumble.
And I started to realize why my school was named after a Confederate general, why there were no black kids in my class, why my teachers didn't have the credentials to actually teach the subjects they were teaching like this public school system had.
And that led me down a path of unpacking so much of my life, and I realized how little I had ever wondered about the black experience in this country over my own. I was handed a narrative, I was put in an echo chamber, and I didn't question it because it worked for me. And I can't believe how long it took me to actually consider that my experience, my white experience, wasn't the only one that mattered.
And I knew I had a lot of work to do, so I jumped into a study on Howard Thurman's "Jesus and the Disinherited," which is a great book if you haven't read it. And when George Floyd was murdered, I went to my very first protest, and the pushback was immediate. The time my mom found out where I was, she texted me, and she said, "You are a pastor, and you know better than to go down there and get involved in that mess."
And I texted her back, and I said, "I am a pastor, and I'm downtown holding hands with my black and brown neighbors, and we are literally singing this little light of mine and praying together." So I think I'm exactly where Jesus expects me to be, maybe for the first time in my life.
We will never be able to really speak truth to power until we're building an authentic community where the voices of the marginalized and people who aren't like you or us have space to be heard.
The second tactic of Christian nationalism is to clearly define us versus them. It's like what the Wizard of Oz says in "Wicked." The only way to bring people together is to give them a real good enemy.
And I can't help but think about what Doug said last week, that there are no enemies, there is just us. Jesus spent so much of his time breaking down the walls of division, these us versus them mentalities. We can hear it so clearly in stories like the Good Samaritan. The Jewish people wanted nothing to do with Samaritans. They would even travel out of their way to not have to travel through Samaria. And so what does Jesus do? He tells a story about loving your neighbor, and he makes the Samaritan the hero of the story.
We have enemies for all sorts of different reasons, but we need to remember that Christian nationalism is an ideology, it is not a person.
Your grandma, who told you that Muslim refugees shouldn't enter into our Christian nation, she is not your enemy. Don't turn her into one. Instead, speak the truth first and foremost, and then invite her to experience better community. Help her remember what the kingdom of God actually looks like, every tribe, tongue, and nation.
So as we build better community, who are the enemies that need to experience better community? And then that third crucial component centers on social order. One of the most important parts of controlling the narrative is not the narrative itself, it is who is at the top getting to tell the story.
And what we see Jesus do throughout his life is grow a community that is built on shared stories. He's definitely inviting people with power into his community, tax collectors, centurions, members of the Sanhedrin, but he's also inviting people with absolutely no power into his community. Women that people look down on, Samaritans, poor fishermen who flunked out of rabbinic school, they had a place at Jesus's table, and they got to help shape the story and the narrative just like the people in power did. And the majority of the time, Jesus used a meal to make this happen. If he wasn't at a meal, he was on his way to a meal to eat with people. And at those tables, people sat around, different experiences, different worldviews, and they were loved and they were listened to.
So if we're going to build better community, we have to make sure we're inviting people to the table to help shape the story. I realized that we could probably spend a year talking about this and we wouldn't even be done. So this sermon scratches the surface for the solution today, but it is a start. Building better community is vital to following in the way of Jesus and not getting trapped by political and social power. So stay woven, my friends, and may the Lord Jesus be with us and go with us as we do. Amen. (Applause)
Words of Institution
Debbie: Wow, thank you, Justin. That was awesome. It's a hard topic to talk about, isn't it? But a really important one. Because we have already said that we are committed to practicing the ways of Jesus. And if we're practicing the ways of Jesus, there is no room for us and them. It's just we.
And what we can share across the board with our brothers and sisters in the Muslim faith and the Jewish faith is that we believe that every single person is created in the image of God. That's a "we." I think it's so important and it's important for us. As we try to navigate our lives, our family relationships, our neighborhoods, our country, that we are discerning, that we are thoughtful, that we're realizing that each and every one of us comes with our own narrative. Our own story and the hope is that together we can continue to evolve and learn and see God in bigger, more inclusive, expansive ways.
That's the beauty of, I think, this community. That we might not all be coming from the same places. Certainly our stories are different, but what we do believe is practicing the ways of Jesus.
So when we come to this table every Sunday, I think it's important to remind ourselves of which Jesus are we following. Are we following the Jesus of Scripture? The Jesus who said the most important commandment of all is to love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and to love your neighbor as you love yourself. And again, those two things can't be separated.
So when we come forward during the music to take part in communion, we remember that. Our bread is gluten-free. Our wine is grape juice. And if you're above, oh, I always get the color wrong. The orange line, I like to call it pink. The orange line, you'll come forward this way and you'll weave back out here. If you're sitting behind that, you'll head to the back and do the same thing.
We have Andrea from our prayer team. We'll be standing in the back. If you'd like some prayer, please feel free to stop. We love praying with each other. Such a beautiful thing.
The night before Jesus died, he sat at a table with his friends, his disciples, and he broke bread. And after breaking that bread, he said, "This is my body broken for you. When you eat this, remember me. This is my blood shed for you. When you drink from this cup, remember me." So this is the moment in our busy lives that we get to pause and remember that. Remember the God that we aspire to follow and the way we live our lives. If you're able, please stand as together we pray the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples to pray. Our God, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name…