East Ohio Annual Conference
MFSA/RMN Open Table Service
Colossians 3: 8-15
June 11-12, 2019
Friends, I am a Black woman. I am a woman who grew up in the South. My husband is an immigrant. My children are bi-racial. When I let my hair down, you can tell that I have dreadlocks. But, I don’t think I am any different than any of you. I just want to be loved.
I want be loved because of the richness of my skin and the coarseness of my hair. I want to be loved because of the lilt in my voice and the rhythm in my step. I want to be loved, because I am a woman and because I am Black. Because of all of the richness and beauty that God invested in me. I just want to be loved.
And I don’t think I am any different from my lesbian sister--from my gay brother--from my transgender cousin--from my bi-sexual aunt--from my queer uncle.
For that matter, I am no different from my Asian husband, from my white friend, from my Native American colleague, from my Hispanic neighbor. I am no different. We are no different. I don’t think any of us are any different. We all just want to be loved. To be embraced. To be valued. To be seen, and heard, and recognized and acknowledged as children of God--precious and honored in God’s sight--and beloved in the sight of God and the church.
For some of us, this desire to be loved is what drew us to the church. I know it did me. At a time in my life when I felt empty and alone, I longed for the love of God--for the presence of God’s Spirit in my life--for the assurance and comfort of knowing that I was made in the image of God, created for relationship with God, and beloved by God. I needed to know that, and the only way that I ever came to know that was through the church. It was the church, as a community called to be love that showed me in concrete ways the love of God.
I know that there are others who need that love just like I did—just like we all do. And we know that our call is to be that love for others—and for the world—to show others and the world the concrete love of God en-fleshed in the real-life people of the church.
But to show that kind of love and to be that kind of love across and despite our differences is, my friends, an act of resistance. It is an act of resistance for us to be God’s love across and despite differences of race, ethnicity, class, culture, and immigration status. It is an act of resistance for us to be God’s love across differences of gender, gender identity, and sexual orientation.
For us to be love across these kinds of differences is an act of resistance—it is, as our baptismal vows remind us, an act that accepts the freedom and power that God gives us to to resist evil, injustice and oppression in all the ways they present themselves. And we know the ways:
A young white man walking into an historically African American church in 2015 in Charleston, South Carolina and killing black parishioners who had gone there to pray.
A man gunning down people in a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida in 2016.
A man, who identified with the violent alt-right, driving a car into peaceful protestors in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017. White supremacists chanting “Jews will not replace us” as they marched with Nazi regalia and salutes.
And then this year, a man stalking mosques in New Zealand in a town ironically called Christchurch.
To stand in the face of that kind of evil, oppression and injustice and to be love is what resistance looks like. It is also what the call to Christian discipleship looks like. It is also what being the church as beloved community looks like.
Or so our passage in Colossians says. This passage comes from a baptismal covenant and liturgy of the early church. In those ancient rites of baptism, people would take off their garments and be baptized and then put on new garments. It was symbolically taking off the old life and putting on a new life in Christ. It was symbolically taking off the sin of the old life and putting on the righteousness of Christ.
“Take off the old human nature with its practices and put on the new nature, which is renewed in knowledge by conforming to the image of the one who created it,” says the writer of Colossians, (Col. 3: 9b-10, CEB).
We are to conform to the image of God, because in God’s image, we were created. We are to conform to the likeness of Christ, because in Christ’s image the church was formed. In this image is our common humanity as beloved children of God and siblings of Christ.
As the scripture reminds us, “ In this image there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all things and in all people,” (Col. 3: 11, CEB).
In taking off the old, we take off that which separates us. We take off the racism and sexism and the homophobia that separate us. We take off the antisemitism, the xenophobia, and the Islamophobia that separate us. We take off the fear of the other that separates us. We take off all that separates us, and we put on Christ.
We put on Christ as compassion, as kindness, as humility, as gentleness and patience. We put on Christ as forgiveness of wrongs. We put on Christ as thanksgiving and as peace. We put on these qualities of Christ and of the Christian life so that we can be the love we want to see in the world. This is what it means to be the beloved community that is the church.
Ray Buckley, a Native American United Methodist pastor tells this story. He says, “ I once asked my father, who was part of a sister Wesleyan denomination, if one could be a Christian and hate others. He said, “Yes.” There was a moment of silence. “But not for long. God will always ask you to love Another.”[1]
God will always ask us to love another. God will always ask us to be love for another. God will always ask us to embody God’s love for the world.
Love, after all, encompass God’s greatest commandments. “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, and with all your mind…you must love your neighbor as you love yourself,” (Mt. 22:37, CEB).
That is called “being love” friends.
Now, you have surely heard about the story of Scott Warren who works with an organization called, “No More Deaths/No Más Muertes.”[2] He is facing federal charges for giving food and water to immigrants making their way across the Arizona desert. Scott was living out his Christian faith and enacting a story of beloved community that we know well. That story is summed up in the Gospel of Luke where Jesus tries to explain what it means to be the beloved community that loves neighbor as self.
The Gospel of Luke tells the story like this:
“A man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho. He encountered thieves, who stripped him naked, beat him up, and left him near death. Now it just so happened that a priest was also going down the same road. When he saw the injured man, he crossed over to the other side of the road and went on his way. Likewise, a Levite came by that spot, saw the injured man, and crossed over to the other side of the road and went on his way. A Samaritan, who was on a journey, came to where the man was. But when he saw him, he was moved with compassion. The Samaritan went to him and bandaged his wounds, tending them with oil and wine. Then he placed the wounded man on his own donkey, took him to an inn, and took care of him, (Lk 10: 30-34, CEB).
This Samaritan cared for this man. He showed this man love. Scott Warren and the church folk who are facing arrest and death threats because they are aiding their immigrant neighbors are showing their neighbors love. They are resisting evil, oppression and injustice in the forms that they are presenting themselves. And their resistance is nothing other than love.
It is love to bind up the wounds of your immigrant neighbor. It is love to give a thirsty person something to drink. It is love to give food and water to families stranded in a desert.
It is also love to engage in ministry with LGBTQIA+ youth. It is love to do anti-racism work. It is love to stick up for a friend who is being bullied because of her gender, or their gender identity. It is love to advocate for a friend who is being discriminated against because of his immigration status or because of her race. These are acts of resistance, and they are acts of love.
Surely you know that this pairing of resistance with love was most effectively articulated by the great prophet Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He once said, “The nonviolent resister must often express his protest through noncooperation or boycotts, but noncooperation and boycotts are not ends themselves; they are merely means to awaken a sense of moral shame in the opponent. The end is redemption and reconciliation. The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community.”[3]
The type of resistance that King imagined was not resistance for resistance’s sake. It had a goal toward which it pointed. Its goal was reconciliation of relationship. Its goal was redemption of humanity. Its goal was the creation and restoration of beloved community.
We do that work of resisting evil and oppression and injustice in all of its forms so that we can restore beloved community. We do the work of reaching across differences of ethnicity and gender and gender identity, sexual orientation, immigration status and class so that we can restore beloved community.
But here comes the really hard part. To restore beloved community, we must also do the work of reaching across differences in ideology and belief and extending love to those who oppose us. We also must seek to restore beloved community by having compassion for those with whom we disagree. That does not mean giving any ground on our convictions or on our determination to live into a more just world. But, it does mean doing the hard work of forgiveness, reconciliation and love.
To extend such love to one with whom I am in opposition is a profound act of humility. It is a profound act of self-emptying. I must find within myself the ability to empty myself and to stay open to others even when doing so means that I risk being wounded by them. I must find within myself the ability to see the woundedness of others even though I reject their positions and behavior.
As King noted: “It is this type of spirit and this type of love that can transform opposers into friends.”[4]
This was the love exemplified by Christ. He loved those who opposed him. He prayed for those who persecuted him. Even as he hung on a cross he prayed, “Father forgive them, for they do not know what they’re doing,” (Luke 23:34, CEB).
This is being love at its hardest. This is being love at its most challenging. And all of it together, from the challenge of keeping the doors of reconciliation open toward those with whom we struggle, to the hard work of resistance to oppression and advocacy and action on behalf of the oppressed—all of it is love. All of it is being the beloved community that is the church. All of it is living out the call to Christian discipleship and the call to be God’s love for the world.
Therefore, Church in East Ohio, be that love!
“As God’s choice, holy and loved, put on compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Be tolerant with each other and, if someone has a complaint against anyone, forgive each other. As the Lord forgave you, so also forgive each other. And over all these things put on love,” (Col. 3: 12-14a).
May it be so!
[1] “Tiospaye, Brothers and Sisters, Listen Carefully,” by Ray Buckley, in A New Dawn in Beloved Community, Linda Lee, General Editor, Abingdon Press, Nashville, 2012, p. 18.
[2] “The Desert Should Not Be a Death Sentence,” by Justine Orlovsky-Schnitzler, New York Times, Opinion, December 18, 2018.
[3] “Nonviolence and Racial Justice,” by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, in A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King Jr., ed. James M. Washington, HarperCollins Publishers, New York, p. 7-8.
[4] “Facing the Challenge of a New Age,” Ibid, p. 140.