“See, I Am Making All Things New - Called to Continual Transformation: The Prophetic Call to Return” was preached at First Presbyterian Church of Allentown, PA on July 12, 2020. You can hear/watch this sermon here, starting at 34:40.
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Isaiah
55:10-13
10
For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven,
and do not return there until they have
watered the earth,
making
it bring forth and sprout,
giving seed to the sower and bread to the
eater,
11
so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
it shall not return to me empty,
but
it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
and succeed in the thing for which I sent
it.
12
For you shall go out in joy,
and be led back in peace;
the
mountains and the hills before you
shall burst into song,
and all the trees of the field shall clap
their hands.
13
Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress;
instead of the brier shall come up the
myrtle;
and
it shall be to the LORD for a memorial,
for an everlasting sign that shall not be
cut off.
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Matthew
13:1-9, 18-23
13
That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. 2 Such great
crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the
whole crowd stood on the beach. 3 And he told them many things in parables, saying:
“Listen! A sower went out to sow. 4 And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the
path, and the birds came and ate them up. 5 Other seeds fell on rocky ground,
where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had
no depth of soil. 6 But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they
had no root, they withered away. 7 Other seeds fell among thorns, and the
thorns grew up and choked them. 8 Other seeds fell on good soil and brought
forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. 9 Let anyone with
ears listen!”
18
“Hear then the parable of the sower. 19 When anyone hears the word of the
kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what
is sown in the heart; this is what was sown on the path. 20 As for what was
sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately
receives it with joy; 21 yet such a person has no root, but endures only for a
while, and when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that
person immediately falls away. 22 As for what was sown among thorns, this is
the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth
choke the word, and it yields nothing. 23 But as for what was sown on good
soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears
fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another
thirty.”
--
I
recently came across a comic strip – yes, a comic strip – I recently came
across a comic strip that started with these words in its first panel: “Reading
about anti-racism doesn’t make you an anti-racist.”
“Reading
about anti-racism doesn’t make you an anti-racist.”
I
stopped. These words had caught my attention. Mostly because I came across the
comic strip on Tuesday of this week, which means that it immediately followed
the end of the 21-Day Race Equity Challenge, where I had literally been reading
as well as watching and listening to anti-racism resources for the last 21
days. And its something our community of faith invited each of you to
participate in as well. Over the course of three weeks we invited you to read,
watch, and listen to anti-racism resources so that we all could be better, more
supportive, more educated advocates to our black, indigenous, and people of
color neighbors. Which basically means something like we invited you to read
anti-racism resources so we could all become anti-racist.
But
this comic strip said otherwise: “Reading about anti-racism doesn’t make you an
anti-racist.”
So
yeah, I stopped. For those of you who did the 21-Day Race Equity Challenge,
would you have stopped to check out this comic if you saw these words? For any
of you, if you saw these words, how would you respond to its claim?
I’m
going to be honest. For a brief second, I was slightly offended because I had
put in the work for 21 days. I was reading anti-racism resources, and this
claim seemed like a direct attack against that.
I
should also tell that this comic strip is one of those virtual, online comics
in which you have to swipe through each panel. So I’m still on the first panel,
the one that started with the claim, “Reading about anti-racism doesn’t make
you an anti-racist” and because those words caught my attention and because I’m
a little offended, of course I’m going to check out the rest of the comic.
I
swipe to see the second panel. It’s the image of a white guy holding his phone
with the caption, “My defensive response was immediate.” And this guy in the comic
is thinking to himself, “Is this putting people down for reading about
anti-racism?” – Okay, the comic was spot on with my own reaction… pretty good,
right?
I
swipe again now onto the third panel, and the white guy is trying to make sense
of it. He decides to replace the word “anti-racism” in the first claim with the
word “mountain-climbing.”
So
on the fourth panel it reads, “Reading about mountain climbing doesn’t make you
a mountain climber.”
Well
dang! If that ain’t true! The rest of the comic, panels five through nine, then
explain the claim that was made in the first panel. In summary, it states that
yes, you can read about something, whether mountain climbing or anti-racism,
but to actually be those things, you must go through a whole series of actions
and experiences that lead you to actually doing that thing. This series of
actions include expert advice, trial and error, humility, setbacks, and regular
practice.
And
while I’m sure all of us would agree that reading about mountain climbing
doesn’t make us mountain climbers, I think some of us would initially argue
against the first claim, like I did for a moment, that reading about
anti-racism doesn’t make us anti-racist. And that’s because racism is nuanced
with over 400 years of social conditioning (at least in our country), which
means for each of us, whether we like to admit it or not, are taught from our
youngest of years to get set off by the word “racism” and our immediate
reaction to claim that we ourselves are not racist. This is especially true for
us white people.
The
comic ends with this point: don’t let your immediate defensive response to
something you don’t want to hear prevent you from even listening to the entire
conversation.
If
it brings you any comfort, we’re not the only ones who build up a wall when we
hear something we don’t want to hear.
Over
the next few weeks, in Sunday worship and in our daily prayer services, we’re
going to be hear from the prophets of the Old Testament and their prophetic
words.
In
the Bible, to be prophetic means to speak words or ideas that God has given
specifically to you. In the Old Testament, especially in the prophetic books,
prophecy is most prominently a way of calling the people of God back to a
righteous religious and ethical life. This was no easy task for the prophets.
Many openly lamented the fact of what was required of them as prophets. It was a difficult, even painful, life
because the prophet would inevitably conflict with a world that does not
acknowledge the identity and demands of the one true God. In other words, to be
prophetic meant preaching to a society that instantly becomes defensive and
angry over and over again because their comfortable status quo is challenged.
Sound familiar to the comic?
There
are prophets throughout all of Scripture, in both the Old and New Testament,
from Elijah to John the Baptist. If you have a Bible near you, I want you to
open it up to the Table of Contents. At the end of the Old Testament, you’ll
see 17 books, starting with Isaiah and ending with Malachi. These books are the
stories of 16 prophets, and the prophetic words they spoke on behalf of God.
You’ll
notice there are 17 books but 16 prophets; that’s because Lamentations, listed
as the third book in the series of 17, is actually a prophetic, poetic text
that accompanies the words of the prophet Jeremiah.
The
first four books, not including Lamentations, are the four major prophets:
Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel. They are the major prophets because
their stories are longer than the other 12 prophets, who, because their stories
are shorter, are known as the minor prophets: Hosea through Malachi.
Today
we heard from one of the major prophets, Isaiah. In the four verses, we heard
Isaiah’s prophetic words to the people of Israel, words that come from the
mouth of God through Isaiah as the prophet.
This
specific text is one of comfort for the people, which is not like all prophetic
texts. This particular text offers the people a poetic vision of restoration.
It tells through ecological imagery that God’s word is refreshing, abundant,
life-giving like the cool dampness of the rain or the greenness of a landscape,
or the taste of bread in our mouths. It’s beautiful, right?
The
difficult message of this passage is actually the context in which the people
of God find themselves. This passage is one of restoration, but it’s the
restoration of the people of God from their exile. And the exile itself is a
painful, difficult brokenness that the people experienced.
But
now, God tells the people, it's time for them to make their return.
I
don’t think exile is a unique experience for the people of scripture. Many
people are experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic as an exile from the usual
structures and necessities of life. For African-Americans, whose first enslaved
ancestors were forced here more than 400 years ago, the persistent realities of
institutionalized racism make the United States an ongoing site of exile. And
literal exiles—refugees who’ve been forced away from their homelands by
violence or lack of opportunity—face continued abuse in today’s xenophobic
climate. And as white people, our exile is our contribution to the exile of
others.
And
now God is telling us to return from exile. Through prophetic words and deeds,
we know it’s our time to return.
This
means providing better resources with more access to our lower-income
neighbors, some of which might be experiencing homelessness, during this time
of global pandemic. It means being adamant about ending institutionalized
racism by first acknowledging that it’s a reality and then using our privilege
to fix a broken system. It means treating our immigrant and refugee neighbors
with love, compassion, and hospitality no matter what a secular law says. And
for us white people, to return from exile means we must stop exiling others out
of fear, anger, and defensiveness due our perceived loss of power, control, and
privilege.
These
are actions we must take. We must act on returning from exile.
To
hear and receive these prophetic words of returning, to hear the restorative Word
of God, we must let our comfortable status quo be challenged without becoming
instantly defensive and shutting down the conversation.
To
be prophetic in the 21st century, especially in our country, means
we must confront our broken system; a system that is made of kind,
compassionate, caring people – people like you and me – and acknowledge the
disconnect between us as kind, compassionate, caring people and our ruthless
power we enact together as a society against people on the margins of society.
To be prophetic today, we must acknowledge that even the best of us –
good-natured people – have let our institution do the sinning for us.
This
is the difficult task of return. This is why the people of God – you and me –
struggle with the prophetic call to action.
What
is our role in the Parable of the Sower, the story we heard in the Gospel of
Matthew. We’re not the sower – that’s God. We’re not the seed – that’s the Word
of God. Our role is the soil. We are the soil.
God
wants to plant the Word of God – including the Prophetic Word of God – into our
hearts. And if we are hardened or defensive, if we have no place for the seed
to take root or for it to grow freely, then the Word of God will die before it
even has a chance to bloom.
Are
you ready to receive the Word of God? Are you ready to return from exile? Are
you ready to put your thoughts into actions?
The
Word of God can grow within each of us. Thanks be to God. Amen.
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