One year ago, was our first covid service. Some of us watched an online service. Some of us stayed glued to the news, tracking every case around the world. Some of us slept in. If covid had lasted the 3-4 weeks like initially promised, we would have a single historic event that we can look back on and ask, “where were you when that happened?” Instead, we are still in the messy middle, on the brink of a third wave. The end may be in sight, but we still have months to go. We have all been forced to evolved and adapted, even the most change adverse. Not one soul on this planet hasn’t been affected. Jokingly we call it the apocalypse, and in a way it is. Not in the destruction of the world way, but in the true meaning of the word, a revelation. Covid has revealed all the things, some of them beautiful, many of them terrible.
Covid has revealed cracks in relationships and business plans, it has revealed cracks in our public services like education and health care. Covid has exposed our exploitative economic system, and how it intersects with white supremacy, and patriarchy.
These are hard terrible things that we haven’t been able to look away from.
Before we look at the texts, I want to take a moment of silent reflection, maybe a moment of grief. I want us to settle into our body and notice our feelings as I ask these questions.
What has broken your heart this year?
What relationship has been the most difficult?
What ‘normal thing’ do you miss? do you think it will ever be normal again?
What was the most surprising thing that you’ve learned or experienced?
What has been revealed in you?
Covid has felt like a year long lent. A time for us to engage in the deeply uncomfortable work of confronting our own fears and insecurities, and the vulnerable work of seeing the world for what it really is, beautiful and terrible, mundane and fantastical. As we look to the future, remember it is a Holy thing to look those beautiful terrible things in the face and sit with them and learn from them.
This week I have been pretty braggy about my scripture passages. I think I got good ones, often it feels like it requires lots of hoop jumping and digging to connect the verses, but all these scriptures jumped out at me immediately. I’m going to started by pulling some of my observations from each passage and then hopefully tie them together in the end, so stick with me.
Jeremiah 31: 31- 34The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. 32 It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. 33 But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34 No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.
This week I posted a poem by Irish Poet Padraig O’Tuama on my social media feeds, one of the lines was: God Changes.
I got some push back and had a friend ask does God change? and can we trust a God who changes?
Honestly, I don’t know if God does change, but I do know that God changes us.
The first week of lent I was worship leading a read Genesis 9, the story of the covenant made by God to Noah, then we know God makes another covenant with Abraham in Genesis 15. God continues to make covenants with Moses, David and then we get to this Jeremiah passage. Where God talks about makes yet another covenant “No longer shall they teach one another or say to one another “know the LORD” for they shall know me from the least to the greatest,”
Then after this Jeremiah passage we get the life and death of Jesus, the sending of the holy spirit, and so on into history.
Our God is a God of change.
God is in the habit of making new covenants. Maybe this time of covid is be the beginning of a new covenant. New covenants don’t disregard or undo what has been done in the past but creates signpost and an invitation for something new to come forth.
Hebrew 5:5-10: So also Christ did not glorify himself in becoming a high priest, but was appointed by the one who said to him,
“You are my Son,
today I have begotten you”;
6 as he says also in another place,
“You are a priest forever,
according to the order of Melchizedek.”
7 In the days of his flesh, Jesus[a] offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. 8 Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered; 9 and having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him, 10 having been designated by God a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.
Two things stood out to me about this passage in Hebrew.
The first one is the line about how Jesus learned obedience through suffering. What to do about suffering have been a centuries long debate. If God is a good God, why is there suffering in the world? On surface read this verse would suggest that God allows suffering in order for us to learn obedience. But we know that is not true. Suffering does not bring people closer to God or to righteousness, more often than not suffering and trauma produces more suffering and trauma. Hurt people hurt people. What is different about Jesus’ suffering? Why does his suffering produce obedience? Biblical scholar Pete Enns would argue that the only thing that sets Christianity apart from all other religions is that fact that God allowed Jesus to die in the most humiliating way: state sponsored crucifixion. I don’t believe suffering produced obedience, but I wonder if humility and vulnerability does.
The second thing that stood out is the priesthood of Melchizedek. God calls Jesus a high priest in the priesthood of Melchizedek. Who is Melchizedek? Not much is known about this priesthood, but it shows up in the story of Abraham. And Jewish tradition speaks of it as a priesthood outside of human time, without beginning or end.
One of the things that broke my heart this past year was the amount of horrible behaviour that was done by people who carry the name Christian. Whether it was refusing to wear masks or insisting on gathering, or even scarier blind alliance and obedience to Donald Trump. I have questioned if it is possible to follow Jesus without identifying as a Christian.
The Priesthood of Melchizedek helps me reconcile this: Jesus Christ does not belong to white evangelicals, nor to the Catholic church, not even to Mennonites. He belongs to the priesthood of Melchizedek, the priesthood larger than we can imagine, a priesthood with no beginning or end. Jesus Christ is bigger than any denomination or doctrine we can try to contain him in. He is bigger than the covenant God made with Noah or Abraham, or Moses, or David or Jeremiah or Menno Simmons or us.
John 12:20-33:Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. 21 They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” 22 Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. 23 Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24 Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. 25 Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26 Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.
These verses fall after the story Lazarus being raised from the dead and Jesus triumphal entry into Jerusalem. This is his final public teaching, and it is to some Greeks.
One of the things I have learned in recent years about reading the bible is to question and try to understand the social location of the characters and to understand what that meant in ancient times and how that can apply to now.
The Greeks were religious outsiders, most of Jesus’s followers were Jewish. The Greeks were also part of the dominate culture. Jerusalem was occupied/colonized by the Roman Empire and while the Greeks weren’t Roman’s they certainly experience privilege and power that the Jews did not. So often we read ourselves into the roll of the disciples, but our social location is much closer to these Greeks.
This passage is about power, privilege and control, also agriculture.
When I plant my garden, I’m rather haphazard. I don’t plan, I buy what ever seed or bedding plants strike my fancy at the green house, then I hastily make a crooked rows and dump my seeds in. Sometimes stuff doesn’t grow, sometimes things grow that I didn’t expect, but for all my haphazardness, every August I am drowning in produce.
In contrast Ben spends all winter planning and preparing, then he placed each seed with precision at the right depth, and adds the prescribed amount of fertilizer, and for all the Ben’s precision: a storm could wipe it all out in an hour.
Those of us who are gardeners and farmers know that it is not a matter of planning or lack of planning, it is God who cracks that seed open and makes it grow. The image that keeps coming to me over and over in planning for this morning, is the cracking open of a bean seed, like you see in time lapse on shows like planet earth. The shoot cracking open the seed and then making its way though the dirt up to the surface. It’s a process and a struggle, and a lot goes on under ground before it breaks though.
After Jesus gives his agriculture lesson, he goes on to tell the Greeks that to follow him they must hate their lives and go where he goes, serve where he serves.
Shortly after this Jesus is arrested, crucified and buried.
One of the things I read this week questioned if he was planted?
Because we are so familiar with the metaphor of agriculture, it is easy to miss the significance of what Jesus is saying here.
Who were the people Jesus spent time with? Not the Greeks, not the powerful or wealthy. Jesus spent most of his time on the margins, with those on the underbelly of the empire. Who would Jesus be spending time with in 2021?
Jesus would be with the Black teenager who has just been pulled over by the police, as he wonders if he will survive the encounter.
Jesus would be with the LGBTQ teenager, who is terrified that her parents and church will reject her.
Jesus would be with the indigenous child growing up without access to clean water.
Jesus would be with the homeless person whose eyes I avoid every time because of my own shame.
Jesus would be with the climate change scientists desperate to convince people and governments to take climate change seriously.
Last week Jesus was at the intersection of Racism and Misogyny with the six Asian women who were killed by a white Christian man.
Jesus remains on the margins in 2021, and those on the margins continually identify White Christians as the group they receive the most hate and oppression from. Just like the Romans.
Now I know what you are thinking Not All White Christians.
I know because I desperately want to distance myself from that as well.
Jesus said unless a seed falls to the ground and dies.
Unless some Greeks betray the roman empire and follow me, even if it means crucifixion.
Unless a white Christian betrays the systems that provides them with power and privilege.
They will not bear fruit.
In order to produce fruit in our world the seeds of White Supremacy, Patriarchy and an economic system that exploits people and creation must die.
We can risk nothing and die anyway. Or we can die, give up power and control and bear fruit. Doing nothing is just as risky as doing something. Ignoring our privilege, our racism and our misogyny is literally killing those on the margins.
We have an opportunity, maybe even a new covenant. Covid has revealed huge cracks in our society, and we can no longer look away or avoid the consequences. It is easy to believe that because we live in a predominantly white town that anti-racism work isn’t something that we need to worry about, but the reality is we do have a small group of BIPOC (Black Indigenous people of color) in our town and because of the lack of diversity in our town there is a greater risk of harm to them, they are far more exposed.
We must learn to think differently about Race and Gender. We must own and admit our privilege. We must listen to stories from those on the margins. We must learn about micro aggressions and to use correct language. We must learn how to pronounce people names!
We must feel love and compassion and empathy, we must sit with guilt and push though to repentance. Then we must act. Vote for policies that support reconciliation and justice for the poor. Recognize dehumanizing languages and speak out when people make racist or sexist or homophobic jokes or comments. Sit under the leadership of those on the margins and show up for them the way they ask.
A quick aside, we can’t ask the BIPOC people in our lives to teach us, it puts them is a scary place to have the white people they love and care about demand vulnerability. There are plenty of BIPOC people doing racial education work, find a book or website, don’t ask the people in your life to educate you.
As a community we have to give up the idea that we can be right, we just have to. We are resurrection people who worship Jesus Christ of the Priesthood of Melchizedek! It is not our responsibility to decide, nor do we have the capacity to know for certain what is right and wrong. We are covered by His grace; we are safe! And we are Loved! And if we don’t have to be certain instead, we can be loving, we can be vulnerable, we can be humble, we can be curious, we can courageously question everything. We can listen, we can heal from our own shame and woundedness. We can be free and fight for the liberation and flourishing of everybody everywhere always.
Amen
Benediction
Blessed are you Whitewater Mennonite Church.
Blessed are you as you prepare your fields and your gardens, may you remember that, as Rachel Held Evans says “Death is something empires worry about, not something gardeners worry about. It’s certainly not something resurrection people worry about.”
Blessed are you as you wait for a precious vaccine, may you hold fast to the fundamentals, and find creative ways to love from a distance.
Blessed are you who belong to one another, who show up with casserole and pie, hammers and nails, together may you forgive and grieve and celebrate all the beautiful terrible things of this world.
Lord have mercy.
Christ have Mercy
All will be well, all will be well.
Go in peace
Amen