February 23, 2025 – Seventh Sunday after Epiphany
Isaiah 5.20-24
II Timothy 4.1-5
Return of the Jedi
Seventh Sunday after Epiphany
Between my second and third years of seminary, I had the opportunity to take a year off from school and pursue an internship. I had already done two years of field education, one year as a student minister at a local Presbyterian church, and another as a prison chaplain. And I had a summer internship at a UCC church in Trumbull, Connecticut, all of which gave me a taste of the variety of options available for an individual seeking ordination. So I decided to apply for something different: a year-long chaplaincy for a private school, The Blair Academy in Blairstown, New Jersey. At age 23, campus ministry seemed like it might be a good fit. So I submitted my application, toured the campus, interviewed with a handful of faculty, and waited to hear if I got the position or not. In the meantime I learned that a female classmate, a friend of mine, also applied for the position. Well, a few weeks later I got the call from the head of the search committee who told me I did not get the job – it went to my colleague. I replied, “Thanks for letting me know, I’ll look in a different direction.” But then the caller told me the reason they hired my friend. We were equally qualified, he told me, but they decided on her because she was a woman, and they wanted to expose the student body to a female religious authority figure. Friends, in 1978, there were not many female authority figures in the church, in the pulpit, in administration, or in chaplaincy programs. And this was wrong; folks were never going to get used to the idea of female clergy if there were so few role models. So I congratulated my friend – I was glad for her, I was glad for the Blair Academy, I was glad for the church of Jesus Christ that we were moving, step by step, in a more inclusive direction. And fortunately, perhaps even providentially, I found something even more suited to my eventual career path: I spent my internship year at my home church in Meriden as the Associate Minister, which gave me a breadth of experience in parish ministry, and it was an incredibly formative year for me. Losing the chaplaincy position at Blair to my female colleague was what should have happened, and it was a win-win-win: it was a win for me, it was a win for my friend, and it was a win for the students and staff at the Blair Academy – and, as I said, it was a win for the wider church.
This experience is but one of the many many reasons I am puzzled, nearly fifty years later, by the reluctance to welcome into positions of responsibility qualified individuals from historically underrepresented cohorts. In the church, I think of trailblazers like the Connecticut Conference’s own Davida Foy Crabtree and David Hirano, the first female and the first Asian American to lead our state conference. I think of leaders like Donna Schaper and Kenneth Samuel, denominational leaders who write for our Lent and Advent devotionals. I think of the Executive Minister of our Southern New England Conference The Rev. Dr. Darrell Goodwin an LGBTQ person of color. These are individuals who continue to help us understand that God calls into leadership people from every corner of our culture. We continue to learn from people like Kaji Douša, Yael Lachman and Phiwa Langeni – and if you don’t know those names yet, you will come Lent when we begin reading this year’s UCC Lenten devotional Into the Deep, which we will distribute next Sunday. The church is blessed to have such a diverse and inclusive set of leaders.
I’m calling this morning’s sermon The Return of the Jedi, not because it was posted on the church sign two weeks ago, got snowed out and got reposted one week ago, got snowed out again and returned a third time this week. But rather it is because we have spoken about this before. At the heart of the conversation is the biblical principal of justice, of lifting up those who have historically been left behind, of not leaving anyone out of the conversation because of the color of their skin or where they come from or their socio-economic background or who they love or any other perceived differences as though they are not sister and brother to us all. The prophet Isaiah spoke bitterly about the practice of injustice among the people: “Ah, you who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! Ah, you who are wise in your own eyes and shrewd in your own sight… your root will become rotten and your blossom go up like dust!” Replace the word “Ah,” for “Woe,” and you get the picture: “Woe to you who call evil good and good evil…” and so on, much like Jesus’ Woes against the scribes and pharisees of his own day, leaders who perverted justice for their own means. And I call it Jedi for a reason: whether you’re a Star Wars fan or not, Jedi is easy to remember, and it puts Justice first and foremost: Jedi: Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. Every one of them a fundamental biblical value.
And yet people are losing their jobs and their livelihoods for embodying and sustaining these biblical values. The latest casualties, and among the most visible, as you likely read yesterday, are the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Charles Q. Brown, Jr, a black man, and Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead the United States Navy. Do not tell me the color of his skin and the fact of her gender had nothing to do with their removal.
The Rev. Benjamin Cremer is both a pastor and a theologian in Boise, Idaho; he serves in the Church of the Nazarene. Ben was raised in a fundamentalist household and grew up steeped in the teachings of the evangelical church. He jokes about his early engagement in the church; he talks about his time on the Church Council where they spent three hours “arguing about the organ music and the color of the sanctuary carpet.” Lately though, as his faith and theology have matured, Cremer has become engaged in online commentary and has accrued thousands of followers. One of the things that attracts people to him is that he knows the church inside and out, and is not afraid of calling people of faith to put their words into action. “We are living in a time,” he wrote last week, “when [some] Christians see mercy as offensive, empathy as a sin, and inclusion as a threat.” And while he may be painting with a broad brush, in some corners of the church he is not far from the mark. When the church succumbs to the contemporary culture’s lazy habit of regarding people unlike ourselves as the “other,” or what the Old Testament calls the alien, then we have exchanged the truth for a lie. “For the time is coming,” Paul warned Timothy, himself a local church pastor, “the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths.”
The truth is, I believe that people who are unlike us are not unlike us. People who are unlike us are not unlike us. The sisters of Mary Morning Star is a contemplative Catholic order of nuns whose convent is near Waco, Texas. In the most recent New Yorker Magazine, Pulitzer prize winning writer Lawrence Wright tells the story of how the sisters came to minister and bond with seven women who are on death row in the Gatesville, Texas Correctional Facility. Both groups of women approached their first encounter with worry and hesitation. The sisters were so nervous they were shaking visibly, not from fear, but from a feeling of being out of their depth and having absolutely no idea what to expect. For their part, the condemned women were afraid the nuns would be judgmental and authoritarian. As Wright describes their initial encounter, “The nuns, in their gray habits, found the women dressed all in white. When they were introduced, “Something supernatural happened,” in the words of one of the prisoners. “It was just instant. There wasn’t a moment of discomfort. We opened our arms and they opened their arms, and we embraced one another.” Both groups were surprised how much they had in common: each lived in solitude, with little communication with the outside world or among themselves. Each rose early to begin the day, adhered to a strict routine, and in their spare time made small crafts to be sold to the public, the proceeds going to the institution. Each had their own way of marking the passage of time. Their relationships developed beyond prisoner and prioress; the more they learned about one another, the more they learned they had in common, and the emotional walls each had created to sequester themselves began to crumble. I could go on, but the point for this morning is their discovery that those we think are unlike us – those we may believe are diametrically unlike us – think Catholic nuns and convicted murderers – are at the end of the day not all that much unlike us at all. The lessons the convicts and the contemplatives learned, about each other, or more to the point about themselves, are lessons that apply to all of us. Those who are unlike us are not unlike us.
We have responsibilities for one another, and when one falls we pick them up. When one is assaulted we defend. When one is cast out we include. When one is ignored we love. When one is oppressed we liberate. When one is hungry we feed. When one offends, we forgive. We do not turn away, we do not cross to the other side of the road, we do not pretend not to see. We speak, we act, we love. We exchange the darkness for the light; we exchange the bitter for the sweet; we exchange the evil for the good; we exchange the lie for the truth. As The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King said in a speech at Ohio Northern University, “Truth, even crushed to earth, will rise again.” And it will rise again because people of faith will not be silent, and we will not cease to work for justice and equality and diversity and inclusion.
As much as I wish it were not so, it is highly unlikely this is the last time we will need to return to the Jedi. Still, I hope we will continue to hear the words of the prophet, “Woe to you who are wise in your own eyes,” and of the apostle, “who turn away from the truth and wander into myths,” I hope we will continue to hear these words even when they might sting, and I hope we will continue to speak these words, even when they might sting, and I hope we will continue to live these words, even when they might sting, so that none of us believes we are unlike those who are unlike us any more.