Sermon Audio 7/21/2013

Lutheran Church of the Savior, Kalamazoo

Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary Year C

Luke 10:38-42

In the story of Jesus' visit to Martha and Mary, how did Mary chose the "better part?" After Jesus sassed her, did Martha fling a frying pan at his head and/or chase him out of her house with a broom? What's the hardest part of offering hospitality to people?

Sermon Audio 7/14/2013

Lutheran Church of the Savior, Kalamazoo

Eighth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary Year C

Luke 10:25-37

Jesus' parable of the Good Samaritan is one of the most famous and instructive stories in all of scripture or Christian history. The lawyer's question, "And who is my neighbor?" really sticks with me, because it mirrors my own impulse for self-justification.

George Zimmerman Found Not Guilty in Death of Trayvon Martin

These are links I found helpful in processing this story tonight.

Legal stuff from Slate and The Atlantic.

A pastoral letter from ELCA Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson, from March 2012, along with a letter he signed along with other denominational leaders from Churches Uniting in Christ (.pdf).

Michael Skolnick has been a must-follow on Twitter on this and other hot-button topics.

Cord Jefferson on what it means to be a young black man in America.

Pastor Steve Jerbi of All Peoples Church in Milwaukee, with a great reflection on privilege, very helpful in my context.

On White Privilege

I’ve been thinking a lot about white privilege lately, and I’ve noticed something I was unable to articulate before. White privilege depends on an assumption of equality. 

See, white people, like everyone else, tend to be good-hearted, well-meaning people. White people do not want to be racially prejudiced, and perhaps even more so do not want to be seen or labeled as racially prejudiced. These days in the US, “racist” seems to be as bad a thing as you can call a white person. Most white people, just like most all people, want to accept people who are different. Nobody (with a few not-worth-mentioning exceptions) wants to be a bigot. 

I can’t talk about white privilege without pointing out some examples of the white privilege that benefits me in my own daily life. One obvious example is that my wife and I are considering buying a house. We have very little money saved up for a down payment, making it difficult to buy a house. We have discussed the possibility that one or another set of our parents may be able to give us the thousands of dollars necessary so we could buy a house. This is an example of white privilege, because centuries of discriminatory housing policy are the reason our white parents might have money to give us. Wealth is not simply income, and white people have a tremendous advantage in accumulating wealth compared to African-Americans. This is white privilege, and usually we don’t even notice it at all. 

Sermon Audio 6/30/2013

Lutheran Church of the Savior, Kalamazoo

Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary Year C

Galatians 5:1, 13-25

Fornication! Circumcision! Castration, even! Keeping it lively this week, that's for sure. This sermon is indebted to the sermon I preached three years ago on this same lectionary date, but that sermon was at the Benson High School All-School Reunion in my hometown in Minnesota. It's far from the same sermon, but they share a spirit and a framework, and a couple of references. And since that sermon three years ago was pretty awesome, I feel good about this one as well.

July 2013 Newsletter Article

July 2013 Newsletter Article

Join hands, disciples of the faith,

whate’er your race may be.

All children of the living God

are surely kin to me.

-          John Oxenham, “In Christ There Is No East or West,” ELW 650

I’ll be honest: I find the hymn verse above to be overly simplistic. Yes, people of every race are children of God, sisters and brothers in Christ. No, race should not be a barrier to our life together as followers of Jesus. In practice, however, building community among people of different cultures is a whole lot more challenging than simply joining hands and acknowledging a common faith.

In the past month, members of Lutheran Church of the Savior have engaged in our annual Book Club, and this year we have been reading Rev. Eric Law’s TheWolf Shall Dwell with the Lamb, subtitled A Spirituality for Leadership in a Multicultural Community. I have found this book to be incredibly helpful in illuminating how cultural differences can affect the way we communicate, especially with people from different cultures.

The title of the book refers to a vision found in the eleventh chapter of Isaiah, where seeming enemies such as the wolf and the lamb live together in peace in God’s holy place. He calls this “The Peaceable Realm,” drawing an analogy to peoples of different cultures. In our lives, people from some cultures are naturally more like wolves, some like lambs, and typically their interactions play out in such a way that one group dominates the other.