Gloria Dei Lutheran Church

Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

When my nieces, Maddie and Olivia, were little, it was wonder to observe how their brains were taking in all the data around them and trying to figure out how it all fit together. All the games of sorting or watching Sesame Street’s, “One of these things is not like the other,” was a way of ordering chaos. Sometimes I liked to be playful with them. Pointing to a penguin, I could say,

“This is a fish, right?”

“No,” they say, rather incredulous that this adult doesn’t seem to know the basics.

“Uncle Brad! That’s a bird!”.

“Would you like asparagus for dessert?”

“Yuck, Uncle Brad, that’s NOT a dessert. It’s green!”

“Jello is green,” Uncle Brad might offer.

There would be momentary confusion as the brain grappled with this new frightening information. But then, because they felt loved and safe, they would giggle and probably move on to the next thing, their brains at work creating the map that will, little by little master their environment.

We have his hardwired impulse to define, group things together, categorize experience. From all the chaos and very real dangers around us, our brain allows us to create a world, a place that not only ensures survival but one that creates a place of flourishing. Little by little, my nieces were mastering their environment and joining the long and complicated vocation of building a house inside their head and then in the world, where love can dwell and all can safely live. This power of naming is an awesome, powerful, and dangerous gift.

I wrote an entire sermon last week on Wednesday. I was triumphant. Ask the staff. They heard my self-congratulations at lunch that day. However, something inside of me–no doubt placed there by a Sunday school teacher or by one of my therapists over the years that said, ”You might want to read it again.” When I did, I realized I took wolf and lamb as categories for people, and I made US into lambs and was clear, without being too direct, who were wolves. I don’t think that was the house that Jesus intended me to create with his words.

Audre Lorde was right, “You can’t use the master’s tools to dismantle the master’s house.” My sermon was fueled by the wolf energy of categories that stir the rage, demonizes difference, and uses exclusion as a way of finding belonging.

The people of the lamb are not called to bless the categories that destroy, but to witness to another way, another path where our common need to flourish connects us rather than divides us. I was struck how deeply that wolf energy was within me, within all of us, the kind of categorization and division that will destroy us all.

In today’s gospel Jesus is describing what it means to channel lamb energy. He sends them out to practice being citizens of another world, a people who have alternative sets of categories that open rather than close, free rather than enslave, empower rather than destroy. The church is really a community that’s trying to practice that world as we live in this one, to use our power to create something new. Luther would eventually call this little flock of sent ones little Christs. To practice loving God and loving the neighbor. Those are the primary categories, and we carry them in our body.

At Gloria Dei, we have tried to let this lamb energy lead us. It guides us to:

• Explore being anti-racist contemplative activists with Osheta Moore;
• Sprinkle the word generosity into so many things that it begins to take up residence as one of our primary categories;
• We invest a large part of our resources to teaching our children and youth to pack this lamb energy as a tool in their backpack;
• We pack food and deliver meals;
• sing hymns at hinge of death and life;
• care for wounded hearts and bodies;
• and learn to understand bodies that teach us other categories of beautiful, complex wisdom.

After all, we have DEI in our name, Gloria Dei. I’ve been cautious to make that joke, which I have to credit Kyrstin Schwartz who said it first at a staff lunch. Diversity, equity, and inclusion have become lumped together as a partisan political strategy on both sides, stirring fear and anger in order to win, win, win. For this congregation, long ago it was a way of describing our mission, to be “of God,” dei. And now, in this wolf-inhabited time, it takes on new relevance: hospitality and welcome for all people without condition or cost. To practice this now is, indeed, a way to touch glory and increasingly countercultural. We are being sent into the world to embody something different. Jesus does give wise advice for the road.

Rule #1: Carry no purse or bag, or even a second set of shoes. Be careful not to have so many things that you forget that you are dependent on others for your survival. Self-sufficiency is a demon that can sound quite ideal. Practice dependence.

Rule #2: Greet no one on the road. Translation: put down your phones. Be cautious of the side-tracking conversations that come up almost immediately in every conversation, where we end up only circling the drain, swirling, anxiety that only grows the wolf-energy.

Rule #3: Bring an offering of peace wherever you go. Be open, expect goodness. It will encourage others to come forward. Don’t despair if no one receives you. This work requires a long game. Let it go. Move on. You’ve planted seeds that others will nurture. The kingdom has been near, and that does something mysterious.

Rule #4: Don’t move from house to house to get a better deal. Upward mobility is going to kill us and destroy the planet. The success we’ve all been trained to imagine as success is often a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Of course, everyone should be paid, and it should be fair, but not so much that we have to take from those who have little to give to those who have much.

Rule #5: When you are welcomed, eat what is set before you. It’s all a gift. Give up the idea that the way you’ve always done things is right. It’s just different. Practice embracing it, being curious about it, be open to what is being served up in this strange world with its different customs and religions. Eat local. Be grateful. When feeling judgmental about what’s served up to you, go back to rule #1.

Rule #6: Rejection will be part of it. You will be angry. In fact, it’s probably good to be angry at anything that hurts another or the earth God loves. Let’s find another way than one more dumpster fire. How about a little ritual in the town’s square to make sure you’re shaking off the disappoint or the wound of failure, something that keeps you from turning righteous anger into destructive anger; something that maybe doesn’t fuel the fire.

Rule #7: If all else seems murky and you know you might be caught in all the forces, stick to the basics. Show up. Be an agent of healing. Be grateful. Be present. You don’t have to be the lamb that was slain. He’s already begun his reign. Alleluia, there’s no more need for that job. Just remember that “the kingdom of God has come near.” In every single moment, even when everything is falling apart, God is near. If you train your heart to expect it, you’ll find it everywhere.

I felt despair on the Fourth of July. It didn’t seem like we are coming to a big and beautiful place. Just the opposite. We went to Red, White, and Boom, the downtown Minneapolis firework extravaganza for the very first time on Friday night. As we sat near the river, in a crowd that was more diverse than any I have ever witnessed in the Twin Cities, multiple languages spoken around us. Two Somali boys right behind us wielding red and blue light sabers to join this ever-evolving American experiment. A little protest walked by, a prophetic funeral procession, beating the lid of a pot like a tolling bell, dragging a long black veil with what looked like the results of a paper mâché decapitation, most clearly an expression of free speech in a crowd that was really more interested finding a good place to spread their blankets and unpack the sandwiches.

And, then in a spectacular show, bombs burst in air, proof in the night, that what is underneath this big, messy, and wayward nation,  as it is in every nation on earth, there is a force of life and a liberty that gives birth to justice for all, a way of pursing happiness that redeem us, and it’s already arrived. Every crisis has the potential to bring beauty. There is another way. There is always another way. In fact, likely the death of one thing is giving rise to a new way. It’s beauty and the hope of it all is already there, and so near that we can catch glimpses of it if we take a break, set up our chair in the darkness and trust that our eyes will find it. Of course, fireworks aren’t really a subtle example, but I had been living in this gospel text all week. I was ready for a sign that the plentiful harvest is more certain than I often believe. In the grand finale, my heartbeat seemed louder and pounding faster and faster at the explosions. Tears welled up, and despite everything that is exploding, I saw another power at work. I trusted it. A power that sent Jesus and is now sending us, a power that can enter even our most destructive impulses or violent strategies and literally use them to turn history, saving all of us, returning us to Day One of creation, with its swirling chaos. Not an end, but a beginning.