Covenants and Injustice

    The Rev. Nancy E. Gossling         St. Cyprian's Church, Boston    5 Lent

  

            In case you didn’t know it, I am an island girl. I love islands, especially warm and sunny islands right now. My first visit to an island was on my honeymoon, which was a trip to Bermuda almost 44 years ago. During my sabbatical, Paul and I visited the island of Crete, which is famous for where St. Paul (not to be confused with my husband Paul) stopped on his way to Rome. A few years ago, I spent three months serving at Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin, Ireland, fondly called the Emerald Isle, and famous for this weekend’s St. Paddy’s Day festivities. And then last year, on one of my “special birthdays” Paul and I went to St. Lucia. I think I’ve come down with island fever, because this Saturday, God willing, Paul and I will fly to Turks and Caicos. Someday, perhaps, maybe we’ll even go to Barbados, yes?

I know some of the challenges that come with island living, especially when hurricanes and nor’easters descend. Supplies of food and water are harder to acquire. Relief and rescue help can take much longer. And the destruction and erosion of the land is devastating, not to mention people’s homes. On a trip to Haiti many years ago, I witnessed such losses. And my heart was broken with the reports coming from Puerto Rico as well as some of the other islands this past fall.

 My grandparents, God rest their souls, lived and worked on the island of Nantucket in their later years of life. Occasionally we would visit. I loved the broken shells on their driveway, the small community of Sconset, and the close walk to the beach. It was a peaceful, simple, and beautiful place. When my brother told my grandfather that I was dating a man of color in my senior year of high school, my grandfather didn’t like it. Lovingly, my grandfather accepted me, but he admitted that he had grown up in different times.

            It appears to me that our modern times are sometimes no different. Recently I saw a picture of a barn on Nantucket with the words “Go Back” spray painted on it. Let me be clear: this isn’t an island way of thinking; rather it’s a human way of thinking, and it’s called sin. On FaceBook, there is a page called “Discussing Race in Boston”, which continues the conversation started by the Boston Globe last year. Just this week, National Geographic announced that they will dedicate one special issue in April entitled “Black and White. These twin sisters make us rethink everything we know about race.” (Here is the front cover)

            I have made a lot of covenants in my life. Unlike a contract, with specific rules and legalities, a covenant is understood to be more of an agreement, an understanding, or a bond in which two or more parties are bound together. Sometimes translated as “testament” the Greek word :covenant “basically means to order or to dispose oneself for another.” In other words, we are servants to one another..

I made a covenant with my husband almost 44 years ago. Our covenant was made as two equals, in which we were ready to dispose ourselves for the other. I confess that we have not always been faithful to that covenant. Paul likes to tell the story of a time he was extremely sick with the flu, and I went to work. I remind him of his own equally memorable mistakes.

 In the year 2000, I made a covenant with the Episcopal Church and my bishop in Connecticut. Like your rector, Monrelle, and your deacon, Julian, I too became a servant, ready and willing to serve God and God’s people. While honoring the high priesthood of Jesus, priests and deacons recognize and promise to obey the authority of our bishops and the Church.

As Church, we all share a common covenant as Christians, which we call our baptisms. We are all the beloved children of God, begotten and appointed by God, who stand equally before God as members of the same human family. At baptism, we make some renunciations. We say that we will “renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God.” These evil powers, in which we all participate, are the systemic evils of injustice, like racism, sexism, ageism and every other “ism” you can name.

We have all broken our covenants with God and each other in one way or another. When we consider our long history of infidelity to God, we are all judged guilty. From the moment we entered this fragile earth our island home, we have been unfaithful. We have eaten forbidden fruit, we have treated one another with disrespect, dishonor, and dis-grace and we think of ourselves as little islands unto ourselves. As for this fragile earth, our island home…….we trash it daily. As Jesus said in today’s gospel, “Now is the judgment of the world.”

No wonder God decided to write God’s covenant within us, because as history has revealed, if God’s laws are written on tablets of stone, we will break them. Written on paper, such covenants are easily destroyed, filed away, forgotten, burned, or torn in two like the temple veil at the death of Jesus. With a covenant within our hearts, we are bound forever to the God who created us, loves us, and saves us. We can walk away, and yet God walks with us.

            In Jesus, we see a man who was not afraid to name the sins of his culture, his people, or the religious and civil systems that ordered them. Jesus challenged the laws of the Roman government, as well as his own religious hierarchy, with equal measure. He invited outsiders, that is the blow-ins from other islands like the Greeks, gentiles, and pagans, to join him. Calling out the hypocrisy and injustice of his times, he created Spirit filled windstorms, to break down the dividing walls all around him.

            As part of my continuing education, I have been attending a clergy clinic on the Family Emotional Process, which was designed by leaders in the Lombard Mennonite Peace Center in Illinois. A few weeks ago, we watched a movie about Martin Luther King, Jr.

            As we approach the 50th anniversary of his assassination in April, and as we confront our own complicity in the unjust systems of our times, we can learn from Dr. King. Yes, he had a dream. Yes, he wrote letters from an Alabama prison. Yes, he was unfaithful in his human relationships. And yet, like Jesus, he was faithful to God until the very end of his life. Like Jesus, he was a leader not only for his own people but also for all God’s people. Here are some of the things I learned about Dr. King.

●     King saw his calling as a minister first, over and above his calling as a political activist and civil rights leader. We are all called to be on God’s mission: ministers of restoration and reconciliation as Christ’s servants.

●     As a minister in the Church, King claimed that he wanted to help “save the soul of America by using the ammunition of love.”

●     King’s decision to go to Birmingham was not in response to a crisis but rather it was his way of pointing out human sin, much like Jesus did, when he walked into the temple and overturned the tables of the money changers.

●     After President Kennedy was assassinated, King claimed that “we are a ‘10 day nation’..... that is after 10 days, we just go back to the usual.” King, like Jesus, was unrelenting in his fight for justice, despite warnings for him to stop, not only from the white opposition but also from some of his very own people.

●     When his family and friends encouraged King to go to Easter services instead of joining the protests, knowing that he would be arrested and jailed, King went into his bedroom to pray. Coming out dressed in blue jeans, rather than his Sunday best, King signaled to the others that he had chosen to skip church on that Easter morning. It was no longer a time for “business as usual.”

●     King said that the youth “took the fear” out of protests when they marched to Washington in defense of their civil rights, in their fight for freedom and safety, and for equal pay, education, and job opportunities. This past Wednesday, and next Saturday, many of our youth will march in Washington D.C. to protest gun violence, some of our civil laws, and to advocate for their own safety and security in schools, on the streets, and at home.

●     King claimed that a “victory for Negroes is a victory for our country” and  “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” If only “one person is affected directly, everyone is affected indirectly.” Is this not true of the shooting in Parkland, Florida? Or the tragic losses on so many islands? Or the discrimination that many of us face throughout our world?

            Most of the time in our lives it is important to obey our civil laws, our church laws, and our leaders. Other times, we must disobey. There are consequences either way, however, and we need to be aware of the cost of our decisions, the cost of our discipleship. Obedience means listening to God in prayer, discerning together in community, and following Jesus as our role model, knowing that it might involve suffering.

            Jesus was obedient to God unto death, even death upon a cross. His death was violent and unjust, just like Kennedy’s, just like Dr. King’s. The antidote to our global soul-sickness during these modern times is no different from the historic times of King and Jesus. We are called to prayer and to action. We must pray, not saying “Father, save us from this hour” but rather, “Father, help us glorify your name.” Together, we can use the ammunition of love to do the next right thing.

            Next week, we begin our holy week journey into Jerusalem, a city like Boston, that is built on a hill. We’ll hear how Jesus accomplished His Life’s mission and purpose, which was the reconciliation of all God’s beloved children, black and white, young and old, rich and poor, male and female and every shade of color in between. It was for that reason that Jesus had come to the hour of his death.

            As we near the end of our Lenten journey, our baptismal questions remain. To whom will we listen and obey? What renunciations and promises will we make? Will we remain faithful to our covenant with God until the very end of our lives? And will we serve one another for the common good? May it be so, and to God be the glory. Amen.