With our routines and world upended by the Shelter in Place Order that affects all of California, we are looking for ways to stay connected during a mandate to physically stay apart from one another. This is a continuation of our time together, even though we’re in different spaces.
Opening Hymn • Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing • 16, Chalice Hymnal
Opening Prayer
Lay Leader: Barb Colliander
Faithful God,
your love stands firm from generation to generation,
your mercy is always abundant.
Give us open and understanding hearts,
that having heard your word,
we may seek Christ’s presence in all whom we meet. Amen.
Psalm 13 • How Long, Lord? • Mary Jo Renner
Reading from the Hebrew Scriptures • Jeremiah 28:5-9
Lay Leader: Barb Colliander
Epistle Reading • Romans 6:12-23
Lay Leader: Barb Colliander
Tithes and Offerings
Checks can be mailed to:
Grace Community Church
C/O Rene Horton
P.O. Box 368
Auberry, CA 93602
Epistle Reading • Matthew 10:40-42
Lay Leader: Barb Colliander
Children’s Time
Coloring Page Based on Matthew 10:40-42
Church at Prayer and The Lord’s Prayer
All are invited to email me prayer requests for next week’s prayer, or to get in touch any time during the week. We are in the midst of an unprecidented global event, and I am available as a compassionate ear if you find you need to talk through what’s going on.
Hymn • Rock of Ages • 214, Chalice Hymnal
The Message
Sermon Transcript
Last night I was out walking after the sun set, as I often do during these hot summer days. It has the added bonus of being less people-y, which as we’re finding ourselves still in the middle of this pandemic, is always desirable. I’m not sure if you’ve played “walking path chicken” yet with someone coming toward you, also engrossed in their workout playlist, and waited it out to see who would step off the path to allow for 6 feet of space to safely pass one another, but navigating who will step off the sidewalk and onto the grass or the road gets a little hairy when there are lots of people out on the trail. So armed with my little can of pepper spray and a great podcast, I set out last night as usual. I had just finished the podcast (which was on hospitality, of all things) when I noticed a car pulled to the side with it’s hazards flashing. A man was standing outside the car talking to the couple in the car, so I pulled my earbuds out to ask if anyone needed any assistance. The couple in the car had hit a dog, which had caused part of their front bumper to drag directly in front of the driver side wheel. The man who had also stopped on his walk was in the process of trying to convince this out-of-town couple that they needed to at least pull off 11th, which is a fairly busy street, and into a side street. I echoed this, I’ve seen folks rip down the 40 mph speed limit street at 70 or 80 at times. Definitely not the place to be fumbling around for a jack to see what could be done. But then there was the issue of that dangling piece of plastic in front. If they drove over it, they might damage their tire. “Do we have any rope? Bungee cords? Anything? The couple shook their heads, and then I remembered my (don’t laugh) fanny pack I wear as I walk. It’s stretchy, durable, and easy to fasten. So I pulled my phone, and other items out, and we got to work, distanced 6 feet apart, at tying the piece of plastic up to the grill of the car, keeping it from dragging directly in front of the wheel. The couple could move their car to a safer space, and the other man and I carried on with our walks once we knew they were okay, leaving my little pouch with them in case they needed it to keep the piece held up while getting the car to a garage.
Not to forget the other victim of the accident, I crossed the street to look for the dog, and found a man sitting on the grass, petting a beautiful german shepherd. He was waiting for the police to come take it to animal control services, and his calming presence was keeping the injured dog at peace laying there on the grass, panting heavily.
I have wondered a few times what hospitality looks like in this time when we are afraid of disease transmission, and I saw a glimpse of an answer last night. People had stopped, and while still observing as much distancing as possible, jumped in to help where they could. Having just listened to a podcast about the kid of hospitality that was discussed in our Matthew reading, I couldn’t help but see a through-line.
Today’s Gospel is the end piece to last week’s reading. If you remember from last week, we heard about the potential dangers of picking up the cross and following Jesus. Discipleship comes with risk. The man who was caring for the dog in my imperfect illustration from last night, for instance, was risking the dog turning on him in fear and in pain, but caring for a creature in pain overrode the potential danger of the situation. As disciples, we risk alienation, awkward conversations, and even potential violence as we follow Christ’s lead. This week’s reading picks up from there, talking about hospitality. And not just giving hospitality, which we hear in many other places in the Gospels, but also receiving it. I don’t know about you, but it’s a lot easier for me to offer help than it is to receive it. These are two sides of the same coin that we, as followers of Christ, have to do and do well.
Unfortunately, hospitality isn’t something that our culture is great at. America has this ruggedly individualistic mindset that lends itself more to suspicion of others than to openness or interconnection among others. When it comes to doing the hospitable thing, we aren’t always putting our best foot forward. Our doormats may say “welcome” in a cutesy, artsy font, but our Ring doorbells with video monitoring say otherwise. We can see our American individualism play out on a large scale as we hear the indignant statement, “I’m not wearing a mask,” even though studies have shown that mask wearing prevents the spread of airborne transmission of COVID-19. This is not an individual failing on the part of the cranky person without a mask just wanting to shop at Trader Joes without smelling her own coffee breath, but is a symptom of a much larger problem stemming from a culture that values the individual over the collective, that places worth on MY needs over a compassionate sense of hospitality for the others in our immediate breathing space.
Which, ugh, brings me to sin. In our reading from Romans, sin plays a pretty huge part. I’m not sure what your upbringing was, but I’m positive that if you’ve spent much time hanging out in churches, you feel some sort of way about sin. For me, talk of sin makes me anxious. I was not raised with a lot of focus on sin—and I don’t want to speak for all UCC churches, but I think it’s fairly common for those of us in progressive faith circles to downplay sin because it is divisive, has been weaponized against humanity across history, and it is not part of the feel-good story we love to tell about our loving God. I’m so uncomfortable with talking about sin that I’m pretty sure I had panic attacks the entire few weeks we spent on sin in my intro to theology class, which, of course, meant I was incapable of thinking too deeply about sin because I was just trying to get through the class session without having to have an opinion ether way. But to avoid seriously regarding sin is dangerous in it’s own way. If we don’t approach the topic of sin, it is impossible to know how we are participating in it without even knowing. So let’s talk about sin.
I’m just going to say it, rugged American individualism, Horatio Alger mythology, and pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps is a sin. This is counter to everything we’ve ever been taught, indoctrinated into, and believe about how we operate as individuals in a society, but it is also a root of so many of the injustices that we are actively speaking on, marching on, and getting into Facebook arguments in the comments on today.
Our view of sin, as Americans, is equally individualized. Just as we look at a person who is unable to escape poverty and wonder what *they* did wrong to not be able to rise up out of their situation, we also have taken sin and packaged it into individual failings, seeing it as actions that one person does to impact them negatively, without viewing sin as a whole big ball of yuck that we’re all wrapped up in. We have used sin as a way to exclude folks from our dinner tables, or at least make them feel like they’re less than when we espouse “Love the sinner, hate the sin,” making this about them and their morality while lifting our own to a higher, purer, level. But what if, when we think about sin, we don’t just conjure up images of lust, greed, gluttony, or any of the other common individual sins as labels that can be slapped on anyone we feel is a sinner? What if we looked at a bigger, less convenient picture of what it means to truly sin?
Corporate sin does just this. To our American ears, when we hear of Corporate Sin we might immediately waggle our fingers at Wal-mart or Amazon or some big corporation for their sins, but again, that’s still focusing on induvidual sin, moral failing that can be pinned to someone else’s lapel. Corporate sin, instead is looking at sins that are committed in which we are all involved in. These sins are harder for us to pinpoint, and therefore easier to bypass, however, these are the ones that get to the heart of Christ’s teaching in a way that talking about individual sin never will. Corporate sins are the ones that uphold unjust systems of power. They are the ones that seem justified because that’s the way things are. Corporate sin is slavery as an institution, that was then transformed into Jim Crow, and then into mass incarceration and racial profiling by police. Corporate sin is committed, then, when we refuse to acknowledge that this harm has been done, that reparations have never been made, that people die because of lack of access to health care or because implicit bias makes police officers jumpy and ready to use force when dealing with black people and unsuspicious and accommodating in their dealing with white people accused of the same crime. Corporate sin is valuing a health care provider’s right to refuse to serve a person because they are transgender, since this upholds the individual’s right to their religious practice. We commit corporate sin when we are not outraged that basic human rights are being denied to people who are getting sick and requiring medical care because of some out-of-context, cherry-picked scriptural excuse for discrimination. Corporate sin is the destruction of the earth, poverty, homelessness, and child labor. Participating in corporate sin isn’t just on Big Oil, but it falls to all of us for our dependence on it. It isn’t just on our cities to find solutions to homelessness but it is on each of us when we don’t even look the beggar on a corner in the eye and see the human being sitting there. It isn’t on the family that cannot rise out of poverty because of decades of redlining and unfair housing and labor practices, but it is on us for allowing it to happen. It isn’t on the giant clothing companies that use child labor to manufacture their products, but it is on each of us for not looking at the tag to see where it was made and looking into the practices of each company. Corporate sin is failing to see the value in protecting one another during a pandemic, and it is played out in every time we value our own personal diva-tantrum comfort over the health and welfare of people we don’t even know next to us in the produce aisle. Sin goes beyond individual moral failing and the sins we should be going after as followers of Christ who vow to uphold hospitality and justice are the ones we ourselves are deeply complicit in. We don’t get a free pass just because we are “not under law but under grace” as Paul writes to the romans. We must address these deeper, bigger, systemic, in our air-and-water sins. Paul uses the illustration as either slaves to the one whom we obey or slaves to sin, but as we have not had such a great track record with that word here in America where meritocracy and privilege run rampant, instead we need to check where our allegiance lies. Is it to upholding systems that are intended to keep some in poverty while others profit or is it to God? Is our allegiance to guarding our own position of privilege (or ignoring that it even exists?) or is it to understanding and then tearing down white supremacy? As we wrap up, to cycle back to Matthew, are we offering a cup of cold water, extending life-giving, life-affirming hospitality to these little ones, to use Jesus’ words, to these ones created-in-the-image-of God (hint, that’s everybody), or is our allegiance to propping up and perpetuating large-scale systems of sin? This week, I encourage each of us to explore the ways we have ignored, overlooked, or purposely avoided our own complicity in big-picture, corporate sin. Which of these things made you squirm the most or bubble up with indignation and anger? Start there if you felt those feelings. What tugged at your heart? Filled you with sorrow? Guilt? Grief? Start there. Even though we are all part of these gigantic systems, that doesn’t mean we are helpless or actionless in dismantling them. Dig in, pray and read how Jesus responded to similar situations. Find one small thing you can do to loosen your own hold on keeping that sin propped up. Is it donating to your local BLM or NAACP chapter? Is it deciding to stop buying plastic when possible? Is it committing to ride-sharing instead of driving alone? Is it wearing a mask to Tractor Supply, or helping a stranger on the side of the road, even though it’s dark and you’re as vulnerable as they are? Find one thing, and do it with intention, knowing you are doing it for love of neighbor, for love of children and future generations, for love of creation, and most of all, for love of Jesus Christ. God be with you
Closing Hymn • Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus • 613, Chalice Hymnal
Awesome sermon, Kim. Lots to think about. Thank you!