Gloria Dei Lutheran Church

Texts: Ezekiel 17:22-24; Mark 4:26-34

Dear friends in Christ, God’s grace and peace be with you. Take a moment where you are and make yourself comfortable. Take a deep breath, exhale slowly, and sink down into your seat. Feel the strength of your chair, and the floor, and even the foundation of the building beneath your hips and back. Imagine even the gravity of the earth below us, holding us in place. Maybe you can drop your chin or roll your shoulders back a bit. If you sense a place of stress or pain in your body, perhaps you could place a light touch there, and see if that offers a bit of comfort. Wherever you feel tension, or edginess in your body, see if you can ease that maybe even just 2 or 3%, and allow just a bit of your body to relax. Inhale, exhale, and just feel yourself sit.

I was led through an exercise like this recently, and almost laughed out loud when the leader suggested that maybe I could reduce my tension by 2%. I thought, Okay, I can’t really relax, but I’ll give you 2%. Even I can let that much go.

I was with a group of clergy discussing race and racism, and the leader was reminding us that the tension we feel in discussions of oppression lives not only in our minds or consciousness, but even in our bodies, and it helps to acknowledge that as we begin.

Today we commemorate the Emanuel Nine[i], those killed during Bible study at the Emanuel Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, on June 17, 2015. Their two pastors, killed that day, were graduates of Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary, a school of our denomination, and the gunman was a self-professed white supremacist who had grown up in an ELCA congregation, so it all felt particularly close to home.

Across the church we are encouraged to once again mark this weekend as an opportunity to repent of the sins of racism and white supremacy which continue to plague our church, and to honor the lives of the nine persons who were killed that day.

It’s understandable to feel shame, anger or irritation that we continue to deal with events like this, and maybe even fatigue or a sense of hopelessness about all of it. But perhaps if we allow our bodies to find even a sliver of breath or comfort as we try to honor the lives lost that day and the systemic oppression behind their death, we might begin to heal in ways we could not have dreamed. Perhaps justice and reconciliation are born in something as tiny as a mustard seed.

For the last several weeks, I’ve been saying, about 1000 times a day, Look at the green!  Look at how green everything is! Look at how everything is thriving! Our spring rains have turned back the drought, transforming Minnesota back into the garden of delight we live for. Our yard has not been this green in years. And my horrible experience with last year’s tomato plants has been eclipsed by this season’s strong, healthy plants, already with flowers hinting of harvest.

It’s hard to ignore the lushness of it all. Jesus found it hard to ignore the lessons from nature as he taught, too. If you were listening in last week, you heard descriptions of Jesus under incredible stress – unable to get away from the crowds, thought to perhaps be out of his mind, proposing revolutionary ideas of family and society, and envisioning the undoing of the political landscape[ii].

So today’s story might sound remarkably tranquil and easy[iii]. We might relax and give thanks that Jesus is losing his fierce edge. We might think he’s giving us a respite. Hey, it’s Father’s Day.  Kick back. Have some mustard on that bratwurst. Watch things grow and don’t worry about anything.

But…  hold on. It’s true that Jesus never encourages his friends to be overwhelmed with stress or anxiety, but he also never drops his passion. He never gives up his vision of a world built on justice and compassion and the dreams of God. Rather, he’s encouraging us to realize it’s already happening; it’s always happening. Look at how lush God’s reign is! Look at how green the promises continue to be! And there’s nothing Rome, or institutionalized oppression, or white supremacy, or any evil force, can do to stop it from thriving!

Just like seeds sprout and grow without any effort on our part, so God’s reign takes root and flourishes because it’s the will of God. Just watch it grow! It may take years for a cedar to grow into nobility, offering shade and safety for creatures of every kind, but it grows, surely, and no worrying or fussing will make it grow any faster[iv].

Conversations of racism or violence, or any kind of oppression, may tend to make us feel crushed by anxiety or fear. We can be caught in fight, flight, or freeze mentality, and any of those reactions might make us feel better for a second or two, but they rarely offer any lasting solutions.

What if we paused instead, and looked for ways God’s justice is already taking root? What if we in fact joined those who were scattering seeds of reconciliation and understanding all around us, or began to glimpse signs of harvest transformation? The reign of God looks so small and inconsequential, but it grows without us even noticing, offering hope and repair and healing in the midst of daily life. Before long, birds are nesting in its branches, and singing ancient songs of goodness and hope into the air.

Like many churches, Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston came out of the pandemic realizing their church building was in tough shape. Termite damage had added to the emotional losses of the 2015 massacre, and their pipe organ needed major repairs. (Sound familiar?)

But in the last few years, they’ve begun a massive restoration project[v], renovating the organ and rebuilding the foundations around the church. It’s been hard work to keep the building as a haven for the generations of people who worship there. Pastor Eric Manning says they have learned to be immensely patient[vi], I suppose like watching a cedar grow.

Yet today, a newly restored organ leads the songs of Mother Emanuel again, and flocks of visitors and members sing songs of gospel hope and reconciliation as beautifully as birds in the trees outside our windows. Could the reign of God be as near as a song we have forgotten how to sing?

Poet Joy Harjo tells a story of a Sugpiat tribal community in Alaska who had experienced horrific violence from invading fur traders, stripping them of their cultural ways and languages, and nearly annihilating their population. One of them had been loved by a member of a neighboring Tlingit community, who had learned songs from his beloved in her language and continued to sing them after her death. He taught them to his own people, who continued to sing them for generations.

Recently, after nearly a century since that brutal oppression, the songs were reintroduced to the Sugpiat nation by the Tlingit people who had been singing them all these years. “The songs never died,” Harjo writes. “They were living within Tlingit Nation, because of love, waiting to be gifted back to [their community] to sing again[vii].”

The reign of God is like a mustard seed, that sings of renewal and resurrection, because of love, and teaches it to a new generation. Oppression and violence do not get the last word. Allow yourself even 2% of hope in what God might still be doing. Let your heart feel the rhythm of new life. Look at how green God’s reconciling love is!

 

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[i] https://www.elca.org/emanuelnine

[ii] Mark 3:20-35

[iii] Mark 4:26-34

[iv] Ezekiel 17:22-24

[v] https://www.live5news.com/2023/05/02/historic-mother-emanuel-ame-church-undergoing-27m-renovation/

[vi] https://faithandleadership.com/mother-emanuel-five-years-later

[vii] Harjo, Joy, Poet Warrior: A Memoir, W. W. Norton and Company, New York, 2021, p. 180.