Openness is the Way of Jesus

I’m going to try to continue the discussion that Tiina started last week and weave in elements from today’s gospel as well as my trip to Mexico last week.

You’re going to see some slides from my trip that I hope will illustrate my points, but we’ll have to see how that works.

Last week’s gospel dealt with how the Jesus’ followers were feeling after his crucifixion.

They were anxious, uncertain, and confused.

Anxious because they feared that the religious authorities would be coming for them next.

Uncertain because they had a vision about what the coming of the messiah meant and his death called their assumptions into doubt.

And confused because their friend and their teacher promised them the Kin-dom of God was near, yet all they could see around them was Empire.

Today’s gospel continues that theme.

Luke writes that the two disciples walking to Emmaus said, “We were hoping that he was the One who would set Israel free.”

They had hopes—hopes that they were afraid were no longer possible.

And Jesus reminds them that God’s plans don’t always align with our plans.

God’s timing is often different from our expectation.

There is an episode of The Chosen when Jesus talks to Simon Peter about the word “soon”.

Jesus says, “Ah, there’s that word! Soon. It’s the most imprecise thing in the world. What is “soon”? A few hours? A few days? Years? A hundred years? A thousand years? Ask my father in heaven how long a thousand years is. Then talk to me about soon.”

I think there is a lesson in there for us.

We must be careful that we don’t get too wrapped up in our own hopes and dreams.

I’ve no doubt that Emanuel has a future—that we will be continue to be a pillar of this community.

But there are those who believe that our future must involve an Education Building bustling with Sunday school classes.

Or that our future must revolve around our current sanctuary filled with Sunday morning worshippers.

Or that we can survive as a small, majority white, middle class congregation—if only we can find the right renters for all our spaces.

I have my own ideas about what the future holds for Emanuel.

I don’t know if my ideas are right.

I haven’t heard the voice of God, and I haven’t been visited by an angel with a divine message.

My point is that we can’t be too married to a single idea of what the future ought to be.

We must be able to separate nostalgia from reality.

The church has not been constant over the last two millennia.

The church has evolved.

Jesus’ followers throughout the ages have taken the capital-T truth of the gospel and adapted to new knowledge and new cultural realities.

That’s what it means to be open to the will of God—and the work of the Spirit.

In today’s gospel, two disciples walk with Jesus without recognizing him.

I believe that there is an important parallel in there for us.

Just as the disciples fail to recognize their friend and master, there are times when we fail to recognize the image of God in our neighbors.

For most of us, it’s not a malicious thing.

We don’t do it consciously.

We are culturally conditioned to categorize people—by class, by race, by gender, by sexuality, by culture, by the language they speak, and by the clothes that they wear.

Once we put someone in a box that differs from the box where we put ourselves, we risk denying that they are a child of God—equal to us in every way that matters.

Nadia Bolz-Weber says, “Every time we draw a line between us and others, Jesus is always on the other side of it.”

We cannot deny that there is diversity in our human siblings.

It is one of the glorious gifts from our creator.

But we are infinitely more alike than we are different.

We are all beloved of God—called by name and claimed as God’s own.

This is my mission group.

What a diverse group of siblings it was!

There were men and women as well as old and young folks.

There were gay, straight, & bi folks.

There were American-born citizens, naturalized immigrant citizens, and citizens of other countries.

There were ordained folks and lay people.

Each of us came from a different background.

Each of us came with different needs and expectations.

But we all came with a desire to learn—to learn more about AMEXTRA, a small nonprofit that is making an impact in underserved Mexican communities—and to learn more about Mexican culture.

We also came with the hope that we could take what we learned back to our own contexts and make a difference in the communities that we serve.

This was our day at one of AMEXTRA’s transformative education centers in San Isidro.

There were several things about AMEXTRA that I found impressive.

First, they have been around for over 40 years, which is a long time for a small nonprofit.

Second, the children of the founders are involved in the work.

It isn’t a case of nepotism.

The people who work there could make more money in the private, for-profit world.

It is a belief in the work that they do and the impact that they have.

Third, they own their mistakes.

They talk freely about them and they learn from them.

When they first got into microlending, they would start businesses in economically depressed areas and hire local people to manage them.

All the businesses failed because the managers had no stake in the success of the business.

When they changed the model, so people approached them with ideas as owners, the businesses thrived.

One early microloan recipient who runs a chicken egg incubation business went from poverty to having over $30,000 in her savings account.

One of the highlights of the trip was this day with the children.

I am always amazed at how both different and alike children across the world are.

I bonded with a boy named Sebastian immediately.

There was just something very endearing about him.

He only spoke a little English, so I did my best to communicate with him in Spanish.

At one point, I stopped being able to understand him.

I asked him to repeat what he said more slowly but I still had no idea what he was saying.

Then, I called over one of our hosts and asked him to help me understand.

He didn’t understand either.

Then, one of Sebastian’s teachers came over and explained that he was speaking an indigenous language.

The mischievous smirk on Sebastian’s face said it all.

He had played a joke on me—just like one of my nieces or nephews might do.

Kids are kids—no matter where they live or what language they speak.

AMEXTRA’s approach to transformative education is community-focused.

They are currently operating in four locations.

They never go into a community without being invited.

They always work with community leaders and parents to understand what the needs are.

Nutrition and violence prevention are always part of their programming.

Violence prevention is something I was very interested in.

In the past year, two children in our New Brunswick community were lost to gun violence.

Fernando Buezo Diaz was shot and killed in Recreation Park in a dispute over a girl.

Jazzy Del Toro was shot and killed by her boyfriend.

We walked to the sites of their deaths on Good Friday to remember them and offer prayers.

Both lives were cut short because our young people don’t know how to cope with anger.

Both lives were cut short because our young people don’t see the image of God in one another.

Which brings me back to today’s gospel.

What do we have to do to consistently recognize that our neighbors—ALL our neighbors—are our siblings?

What do we have to do to remember that, as children of God, we are loved equally by our creator?

Walking together and listening to one another is a start.

Breaking bread together is a wonderful way for us to cement the bonds of community.

There is a beautiful diversity in this community.

We can learn so much from each other.

In today’s gospel, the two disciples are learning from a stranger they encountered on the road to Emmaus.

They didn’t know that it was Jesus, their rabbi.

The only thing they know is that their hearts burned with passion as he talked.

All pastors are required to do Clinical Pastoral Education as part of their seminary education.

The most important lesson we learn is that there is only one savior and we ain’t it.

We are not supposed to be fixers.

That is God’s job.

We are meant to accompany people on their journeys.

I’m going to say the same thing to you, people of Emanuel.

Our job is not to fix the community that surrounds us.

Our job is to accompany our neighbors—to journey with them.

And they, in turn, will accompany us on our journey—wherever it may lead.

There is much we can learn from each other.

We have a lot we can learn about what it means to be marginalized and oppressed—from our immigrant neighbors, from our LGBTQ+ neighbors, and from our poor and low-income neighbors.

But to do that we have to listen.

We must recognize our own privilege and how that privilege gives us blind spots.

Privilege doesn’t necessarily mean our lives were easy.

But it does mean we had advantages that others did not.

We also need to be open.

Open to new things, new ideas, and new ways of doing things.

Open to mission trips to unfamiliar places.

Open to a version of Jesus’ Prayer that was inspired by Māori spirituality and written by New Zealand Anglicans.

Open to a creed that was written by a Presbyterian minister who immigrated from Cuba.

Open to a creation prayer inspired by Lakota spirituality.

Openness to new things—while it may be uncomfortable—does not detract from our faith.

Openness helps us to grow in faith.

The last slide I’ll show from my trip are pictures from the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

I knew the story before I went.

Very briefly, a young peasant named Juan Diego saw an apparition of the Virgin Mary on a hill in Mexico City.

She appeared as an Aztec princess, speaking Juan Diego’s indigenous language.

She asked that a church be erected on that spot.

Juan Diego went to the local archbishop, who didn’t believe the story and rebuffed him.

Later the same day, the Virgin appeared to Juan Diego again and instructed him to try again.

He went back to the archbishop, who told him to go back and ask for a sign to prove that the apparition was the Virgin Mary.

Juan Diego asked the Virgin for a sign, and she said she would provide one the following day.

In the interim, Juan Diego’s uncle fell ill.

Juan Diego took care of his uncle and, when his condition deteriorated, Juan Diego went to get a priest to administer last rites.

He intentionally avoided the hill where he had seen the virgin three times before because he didn’t want to be delayed.

But she appeared to him anyway and chastised him for avoiding her saying, “¿No estoy yo aquí que soy tu madre?” which means “Am I not here, I who am your mother?”

She told Juan Diego that his uncle had recovered and that he should go to the top of the hill where he first saw her and gather the roses that had bloomed there as the sign for the archbishop.

The Virgin arranged the roses on Juan Diego’s cape and told him to return to the archbishop.

When he did, the roses fell, and an image of the Virgin was on the cape.

I suspect some of you were uncomfortable when the statue appeared in the sanctuary.

Lutherans have a long history of downplaying the importance of Mary, even though Luther himself was devoted to her.

We have called appearances of the Virgin superstition.

We have confused veneration of the Virgin Mary with idol worship.

My advice, my friends, is to let it go.

Let go of your preconceived notions about the “deification” of Mary.

Let us learn from the strangers who walk this road of faith with us.

The truth of the matter is that Mary was chosen by God to give birth to God’s son.

The Greek call her Theotokos or “God bearer”.

Why shouldn’t our hearts burn with passion for the mother of God?

My apologies for rambling on.

I hope I didn’t bore you too much and I hope you get the point.

Regardless of whether we are strangers to one another, we are all children of God—called by name and claimed as God’s own.

In today’s second lesson, we read, “By obedience to the truth you have purified yourselves for a genuine love of your siblings. Therefore love one another constantly, from the heart. Your rebirth has come not from a perishable seed but from an imperishable one—the living and enduring word of God.”

We are called to love one another constantly, from the heart.

And there is always something we can learn from one another—just as the two disciples on the road to Emmaus learned from the stranger that they didn’t realize was Jesus.

Being open to loving and learning is the Way of Jesus.

May our journey in this life always be along that road.

Let us pray: Welcoming and affirming God,

Open the eyes of our hearts to see as you see.

Remove the barriers of suspicion and fear.

Replace them with the openness of curiosity and compassion.

When we encounter strangers, immigrants, and those we find challenging, help us to look past superficial differences and see your holy image within them.

Remove our arrogance, our prejudices, and our narrow-mindedness all the things that restrict our ability to love.

Give us the compassion to honor the dignity of every person, recognizing them as your beloved children.

Remind us that we may unknowingly entertain angels and that you may send wisdom, kindness, and lessons through strangers.

Give us the humility to listen to their stories, the grace to learn from their perspectives, and the courage to serve them.

May every passing encounter be an opportunity to broaden our understanding of your boundless love and the diversity of your creation.

And let us always live into Jesus’ mandate that everyone will know that we are his followers because we truly love one another.

Amen.