Sermon for SMHP, Year B, Epiphany + 4, Jan. 28, 2024
21They went to Capernaum; and when the sabbath came, he entered
the synagogue and taught. 22They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one
having authority, and not as the scribes. 23Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean
spirit, 24and he cried out, “What have
you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who
you are, the Holy One of God.” 25But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be silent, and come out of him!”
26And the unclean spirit,
convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him. 27They were all amazed, and they
kept on asking one another, “What is this? A new teaching—with authority! He
commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” 28At once his fame began to
spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee.
In 1936, a little girl was
born in Chicago and named Judith. Judith
was raised by her grandmother and decided at a young age that she wanted to go
to Africa to serve the poor. Money was
tight, though, so she joined a convent, taking the name Berta in honor of her
grandmother. In 1958, Sister Berta was
sent to serve at Our Lady of Angels School, where a fire had just claimed the
lives of 92 children. There she learned
to work with traumatized children, and
met her partner in life and ministry, Sister Corita Bussanmas. The two of them started an afterschool
program for youth and made a name for themselves by getting inner city gang
kids to play softball and renting them motorcycles.
In 1968, Sister Corita was
assigned a teaching position in Kansas City, and they both came to St. Vincent
de Paul School, at 31st and Flora.
You’ve seen it if you’ve driven down Paseo Blvd. just north of
Linwood. While at St. Vincent’s, they
continued to establish themselves as a force to be reckoned with. They started a daycare center in the convent
living room to support working parents.
When the diocese tried to close St. Vincent’s, because all of its white
families were leaving in droves for the suburbs, Berta and Corita fought for
the school and for their families. Eventually, they created Operation Breakthrough
as a separate nonprofit, and it quickly grew into a treasure of
Kansas City, lifting up hundreds of families every year with childcare, medical
and dental treatment, clothing, food, training, and more.
Things are pretty scary right
now. Wouldn’t you like to see Jesus and
know that he is handling things? Here’s all you need to do: go out the front
door of this church, turn left, and head north eight blocks until you see the
signs for Operation Breakthrough. You can’t miss it [5 slides]. It’s on both sides of the street now, in the
old JC Penney building on the east side, now called Berta’s Place and an old
warehouse that was once a Jones Store on the west side. The
west side space is called Corita’s Place and it’s a Maker Space [3 slides], with a dozen different areas
for kids to explore. Next door is the Ignition
Space, for kids 14 and older to explore.
And actually, you don’t even
have to go that far north. Operation
Breakthrough runs the early childhood center across the street at DeLaSalle
which enables DeLaSalle students to stay in school, and other parents to have
access to quality daycare so that they can work during the day.
If you want to see Jesus, get
to know some of those families. If you
really want to see Jesus doing his best work, find those folks at the moment
when they start to lose hope. When they
just can’t figure out how they’re going to get to their ten dollar an hour job,
and who is going to watch their kids, since ten dollars an hour doesn’t pay for
daycare. Look in their eyes, and you will find Jesus looking back at you. If you step into that moment and find a way
to serve, you will not only see Jesus…you will be Jesus.
I know many of you
have had the privilege of those incarnational moments, in a courtroom, pounding
nails for someone who needs a home, handing food to someone who might otherwise
go hungry that day. Or maybe you’ve been
the hungry one—your body or your spirit desperate to be fed. The moment when the
world is made right again, even if it’s just for one person, that is a holy,
precious moment, an instant when the curtain between this life and the next
becomes thin and we catch the smallest glimpse of God. As Christians we count our lives in those
moments.
Jesus is most reliably found
in the presence of those who hunger after those holy moments. Sister Berta.
Sister Corita. Travis Kelce—yeah, I said it—who built his foundation because he
didn’t want to leave behind the people he met growing up in Cleveland Heights,
Ohio.
Sometimes those holy moments
happen in church. A lot of church people
think they mostly happen in church, but I don’t believe you are those
people. This is where we are nourished
and prepared to meet those holy moments, but holy moments—the times when we get
a peek at God—those usually require us to get out of here and encounter our
neighbors…you know, like Jesus does.
For Sister Berta and Sister
Corita, doing truly incarnational ministry—seeing Jesus and being
Jesus—meant taking a step away from church hierarchy and its bean-counting way
of assessing ministry. Yes, I said that too.
And that said, Operation
Breakthrough is a 100% Jesus-facing ministry. In that complex up at 31st
and Troost, the veil between us and God drops down multiple times a day. The work of Operation Breakthrough is made
possible by dozens of churches and hundreds of church folk, along with mosques
and synagogues, and sangas and others. They just had to take a step away from
the wider religious institutional structure, which is probably where we’re all
headed. Because that structure doesn’t
always make room for the kind of earth-shattering, bow breaking, world flipping
work that Jesus came to do.
And it pretty much never
has. It seems like every time Jesus went
into a synagogue, something surprising or disturbing or cataclysmic
happened. Of course, you probably
remember what happened when he went to his hometown synagogue in Nazareth. If not, quick synopsis: it didn’t go well. He read from the scroll of Isaiah and that
went fine. But when he talked about how
his ministry would be best received by those far away, his neighbors decided he
should get far away right away.
We meet Jesus in the synagogue
this morning, but not his home congregation.
This synagogue is in Capernaum.
Not far away, but not Nazareth. Oh wait, we
have a map. So here is the Galilee,
Time of Jesus. Here is Capernaum.
And here is Nazareth. Just
enough distance to make Jesus not a “home town boy.”
And still,
the people who hear him teach are astounded by him. He taught with authority,
not like the scribes. That is such a
first century burn, it could sneak right by.
“Authority” sounds nice, right?
“I give you ‘authority’ over these things…”
When you live in a time of
intricate hierarchies and systems of power, “speaking with authority” means one
of two things:
1.
Someone in power has
bestowed authority upon you. You “speak
with authority” because those in power have given you authority.
OR
2.
You have not been given authority by those in power, but
you talk like you have. You are
“borrowing your authority from the future,” as my friend Jeff Johnson told the
ELCA Human Sexuality Task Force back in 2003.
Jeff is a bishop now, so he seems to have been right on that.
When you speak with authority from outside the halls of
power, those inside the halls don’t like it.
Abiding Peace spoke with
authority when they ordained a lesbian pastor back in 2000, years before that
Task Force finished their work and the system caught up.
We were “censured and admonished.” That’s fancy church speak for having your
hand slapped.
Last night we saw a wonderful
performance of Bayard Rustin, the Man Behind The Dream. It was all about Bayard Rustin, who “borrowed
authority from the future” as many of us have done, and lived as a proud black,
gay man and organized the 1963 March on Washington at which Martin Luther King,
Jr. gave a rather famous speech.
Bayard Rustin spoke with
authority. It pushed him out of the
spotlight because even the Civil Rights Movement wasn’t ready for a gay
hero.
Dr. King spoke with
authority. It cost him his life,
probably because he strayed into criticism of the Military Industrial Complex.
Sister Berta Sailer and Sister
Corita Bussanmas spoke with authority.
And it did not please those who thought that the crumbs that fell from
their tables were enough for poor families in Kansas City.
There were many, many people
in city and state government, and in the child welfare system, who quietly walked
the other way when they saw Sister Berta and Sister Corita coming. Those folks don’t like nuns who speak with
authority.
Sister
Berta had this saying on little slips of paper, and she would hand them out, just so people knew what
they were in for. In half a century of ministry
with some of the poorest people in greater Kansas City, the Sisters looked the
demonic in the eye often. And the demons
saw them coming.
They always do.
Jesus went to the synagogue in
Capernaum. He taught in surprising
fashion. People weren’t quite sure what
to make of him. But the demons knew
exactly who he was.
23Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean
spirit, 24and he cried out, “What have
you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who
you are, the Holy One of God.”
25But Jesus rebuked him, saying,
“Be silent, and come out of him!”
At the risk of sounding
alarmist, a risk I’m willing to take, we are at a Capernaum Moment. There is a true evil in our nation and across
our world. The demons are at the door. You can’t miss them—they have hats. They seek
the authority to make hate into public policy.
Years from now, our great grandchildren will ask how we responded to
this moment.
And we will tell them—or
someone will tell them, that we looked their hate in the eye and told it to
be silent and go away.
And it didn’t always go well. Sometimes we encountered resistance. Simple statements, like “black lives matter,”
and “me too,” can stir up demons these days.
But we will keep saying
them. We will keep fighting. We will keep standing when others are willing
to sit it out. We stand with Berta, who died this week, leaving this legacy, an
impact that is frankly immeasurable.
We stand with Martin, and
Bayard, and Dorothy Day and all those who looked demons in the eye and told
them to shut up and go away.
We’re that church. The church of Jesus Christ, who brought down
the mighty and cast out the demons.
We’re that church. We borrow our authority from the future, when
hope is restored and peace will reign.
We’re that church. When they see us coming, I hope people say, “Oh crap,
they’re up.”
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