Year B
Exodus 20:1-17
Psalm 19
1 Corinthians 1:18-25
John 2:13-22

May the words of my mouth… O God… speak your Truth…

In the ELCA…  and in the Episcopal church…  when those who can speak for themselves…  are baptized…  or affirm baptismal vows already made…  they profess their faith in Jesus…  reject sin…  and confess the faith of the church…  and when they make these vows…  they may say…  I do and I ask God to help and guide me…  or they may say…  I will with God’s help…  and when the gathered community is asked whether they will support these persons in their life in Christ…  they respond in a similar way…

So whether we’re speaking for ourselves…  or on behalf of others…  we acknowledge that we cannot maintain these promises on our own…  because doing so is very difficult… but when we say we need our community’s help…  which community do we mean…  is it just the Two Churches’ community…  the Kentwood community…  the greater Grand Rapids community…  just where does our community stop…  in other words…  who is NOT our neighbor…  we need God’s help…  and our community’s help…  and when the legal and partisan systems we’ve created…  work against God’s will for us…  it can be that much more difficult… 

In June of 1854…  the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Confederate United States…  prepared a catechism of sorts…  to be taught orally…  to those who could not read…  and since it was against the law to teach slaves to read…  the catechism was actually intended for the instruction of slaves…  remember…  this was just one hundred and sixty-seven years ago…  and it goes like this…

Q. Who gave you a master and a mistress?
A. God gave them to me.
Q. Who says that you must obey them?
A. God says that I must.
Q. What book tells you these things?
A. The Bible.
Q. How does God do all his work?
A. He always does it right.
Q. Does God love to work?
A. Yes, God is always at work.
Q. Do the angels work?
A. Yes, they do what God tells them.
Q. Do they love to work?
A. Yes, they love to please God.
Q. What does God say about your work?
A. He that will not work shall not eat.
Q. Did Adam and Eve have to work?
A. Yes, they had to keep the garden.
Q. Was it hard to keep that garden?
A. No, it was very easy.
Q. What makes the crops so hard to grow now?
A. Sin makes it.
Q. What makes you lazy?
A. My wicked heart.
Q. How do you know your heart is wicked?
A. I feel it every day.
Q. Who teaches you so many wicked things?
A. The Devil.
Q. Must you let the Devil teach you?
A. No, I must not.

In her podcast…  Why Can’t We See?…  Jacqui Lewis shares that…  We are all wired by what we’ve experienced to be in search of a story with an ending…  and the stories to which we gravitate…  are the ones that make sense to us…  the stories that we follow…  are the ones that maintain continuity with our past and that resonate with the trajectory of our lives…  so we’re looking for the story that doesn’t necessarily change our minds…  we’re actually looking for the story that confirms what’s [already] in our minds…  

It’s been almost 3,500 years since the Israelites left Egypt…  but their forty years of aimless wandering…  has become our one hundred and sixty-seven years of aimless wandering…  and some of us have been following different gods in our brief national history…   and instead of trying to find our own Promised Land… instead of deciding to create the Beloved Community…  some of us want to return to the fleshpots of Egypt… want to return to the stories we know…  that support our myopic and discriminatory agenda…  using the slave catechism as our model…  because there are those who…  for many reasons…  believe that they have the right to say who’s in and who’s out…

The slave catechism sought to squelch life…  and keep God’s children subjugated… slavery ripped families apart…  treated human beings as less than human…  expendable…  it’s why increasingly…  the church has not only acknowledged its own culpability in this evil…  but has realized its obligation to provide education which shines a light into the subtle ways that we perpetuate the sin of racism…  and the evil of white supremacy…  the slave catechism is antithetical to the intent of The Ten Commandments…  which seek to set out principles for enhanced relationships with God…  but particularly with each other…

Imagine what it would have been like…  to look back on your ancestry…  and realize that for as far back as four hundred and thirty years…  you and your people had been slaves in a foreign land…  for us in 2021…  that would be 1591…  that was when William Shakespeare wrote Henry VI…  when St. John of the Cross died…  when Queen Elizabeth I founded Trinity College…  

But 3,500 years ago…  God’s message came to a community whose national identity had been one of forced labor…  living in a culture of oppression…  with blatant disregard for human life and power-over moves borne of ethnocentric narcissism…  and then…  the Creator of the universe proscribes a way of life…  that requires not fifty minutes once a week…   but 24/7 action…   that says to liberated slaves…  you’re free…   you’re free to worship me…  the creator-covenanting God who rescued you from oppression says…  I’m faithful to the promise I made to your ancestors…  and you’re mine…  and you don’t need to make an icon of me…  because I’ve already done that…  and it’s you…  that’s what it means to be human… and you don’t have to take on the labels that your captives have given you…  because…  you…  are…   transcripts…  of the Trinity…  and you’re free to rest…  talk about a counter-cultural message  to slaves…  you’re free to rest…  you’re free to take a vacation… take a day off in the same rhythm of the way that I created the Universe…   you bear my image by taking us a regular rest…  and you’re free to honor your ancestors and the traditions they held dear…  your captors are wrong…  your heritage can be kept alive…  you can now witness to your ancestors’ truth about who I AM… and what I promised…

For three days last month…  the Conservative Political Action Conference was held in Orlando…  a California-based artist and attendee…  created a six-foot tall golden statue…  of our former president…  and people lined up to have their photos taken with it…  it’s difficult to know what each person thought or felt about this idol-of-sorts…  how it may have emboldened the trajectory of their stories…  but when so many of those who elected him…  said that God’s hand was in his presidency…  I wonder how they want this story to end…

Isaac S. Villegas…  pastor of the Chapel Hill Mennonite Fellowship…  writes…  Jesus takes a trip to the Temple for Passover…  a holy festival to remember Israel’s salvation from the shackles of Egyptian bondage…  freedom from their forced labor…  and liberation from economic exploitation…  Jesus joins the throngs gathered for prayer and sacrifice…  but when he arrives…  he is filled with anger…  furious at the sight of merchants exploiting the piety of pilgrims…  holy anger courses through his veins as he braids cords into a whip…  Jesus doesn’t call for the end of sacrifices…  of worship practices…   of the holy liturgies and rituals of his people…   instead…  he is enraged at the power brokers of the economy…  and the money-hungry capitalists doing anything for a profit… 

Across this country…  now…  there are elected officials who can’t seem to understand that the demographics of this country have and are changing…  and in the counties and the states where there are increasing numbers of people of color…  they’re using the power they have…  to make it more difficult for some of their constituents to vote…  almost solely…  or solely because…  they fear they’ll be voted out…  in fact…   just since January…  thirty-three state legislatures have introduced one hundred and sixty-five bills…  limiting voting days and hours…  reducing the number of drop-box locations…  eliminating same say registration…  and requiring new forms of voter identification…  all intended to make it harder for some people to vote…

And so we must ask ourselves whether this behavior is more about the Slave Catechism…  or more about the Ten Commandments…  or even the two Great Commandments…  loving God with all our heart and soul and mind…  and loving our neighbor as ourself…  and we must ask whether white nationalism…  and white supremacy…  reflect God’s law…  and if we discern that they do not…  then we must decide what we’re going to do about it…