Agents of Liberation

Sermon preached at Holy Spirit Episcopal Church, Vashon

Mark 6:34

They were like sheep without a shepherd.

Our text this morning says: And Jesus had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.

I don’t know if any of you have seen a distraught flock of sheep. I grew up in farm country and, if a flock was not taken care of, if they didn’t have enough food, if they were left to the mercy of predators, sheep or any livestock grew thin, anxious, hungry.

They were like sheep without a shepherd.

Jesus spent almost his entire ministry in the backcountry of Galilee. In farming towns and fishing villages. In the middle of nowhere, far from the halls of power. Jesus built his movement in the middle of nowhere.

Among people who had been robbed of their land, of their wealth, and often of their lives and their children by an oppressive Roman empire.

And he looks out over them and sees: they were scattered as sheep without a shepherd.

Now lets be clear. Often, when we read passages like this, we like to talk about how stupid sheep are. Or how they will follow anyone.

That’s not what Jesus is saying at all. Jesus is indicting the leaders who have left his people scattered. The leaders who have charged staggering taxes on poor peasants. The leaders who own all the land, forcing most people into sharecropping or slavery. The leaders who, like our text in Jeremiah says this morning, the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture. The leaders who value profit over people. Leaders who abuse land and people together.

What Jesus is not saying is that the people of Galilee were poor silly sheep. He comes teaching them and healing them, as one of them. He comes believing in them. He comes telling them their worth in the kingdom of God. He comes to make them leaders of their own liberation.

I think a lot about Jesus’ ministry in the rural backwoods of Galilee. I think about it a lot because I too work in the rural backwoods—of WA state. I work on the streets of Aberdeen, with people experiencing homelessness. And I work in our little community in Westport, a little fishing village, with people experiencing deep poverty.

We live in a world, in a country, where people are increasingly scattered. Where our leaders value profit over people. Where fewer and fewer resources are available to the average person. Where 3.5 million people are on the street any given year, and another 7.5 million do not have stable housing.

And those of us who live in rural areas and small towns and suburbs are feeling this keenly. Far from the halls of power, far from the limelight and the media, rural places in the US are experiencing growing poverty.  Often, our lands have been stripped of resources. Often, we have less and less access to the bounty of the earth. We live in some of the richest land in the world and yet people are hungry and houseless. Aberdeen is within 20 miles of some of the richest farmland I’ve seen and yet its nearly a food desert. Rural areas are often denied access to good health care, good food, or decent housing.

Its in places like this that the gospel comes alive for me. 2000 years ago, Jesus was in the same place, under severe oppression, teaching communities to heal, to become leaders in their own liberation. Together, communities in pain come to seek healing and wisdom. Together, communities under empire learn to find freedom. Everywhere Jesus goes, crowds come out to find their leadership and their dignity and their worth as children of God. People told they are nobodies come together and claim their dignity.

That is what we strive for, that is what we witness in Aberdeen and Westport. People refusing to believe what the world tells them: that they are worthless, that they are to blame for their poverty. Instead they keep standing up to seeking healing and wisdom together. To become leaders in their own liberation.

In Aberdeen, our largest homeless encampment received eviction notices in March. With nowhere to go, they went to city council. They spoke with the mayor and city officials. They organized themselves and spoke up for themselves in public meetings. And, when the local Lutheran church opened up their parking lot as a temporary place to go, they started organizing the first ever tent city in Aberdeen. They are learning, these brave, young men and women, to become leaders in their own liberation.

Our little community in Westport is based out of a closed church building. In February, we opened it up again and asked the community to participate in rebuilding the space. Last week, we had 60 people come in our doors. One young homeless couple stopped me and said; “Wow, we’ve never seen a place like this before. Everyone is welcome.” We have rejected any effort to be a charity, to help people in need. Instead, we have opened up space for people to take care of each other, as each has a need.

In a food desert, we get donated fish from fishermen, whoever wants to brings what food they have, and we have fresh vegetables growing in our community garden. In a town that has no social services, various leaders in our group, all poor themselves, distribute donated hygiene supplies and clothing. In a place where poor people have no place to gather, where they are denied access so often to public space, we have space to sit and talk, to watch movies, to drink coffee and charge cell phones.

We are learning together to be leaders in our own liberation. In this tiny fishing town in the middle of nowhere, we are finding healing and liberation. We are learning to live the gospel together.

And Jesus looked out over the crowd and he had compassion on them, because they were as sheep without a shepherd.

But not helpless. Not in need of expert opinions. Not worthless.

Those men and women of Galilee, so long ago, as they followed Jesus, found healing together, in community, as they learned to be leaders in their own liberation.

And, here and now, the gospel lives on in tiny towns across the country. In places where people who are experiencing all the oppression of our modern day greed, people find healing in community. People find liberation in community. People are agents of their own liberation.

In our work, our leaders have not waited for the experts to finish their studies or the leaders of this country to change their ways. They have stood up—poor, oppressed, tired sometimes—stood up and demanded change, lived change. They join people all over the world, from Chiapas to Appalachia, from Ferguson to Aberdeen, not waiting to stand up for their liberation.

This is the call of the gospel, this is the message we preach:

You are beloved.

You are worthy.

You are a child of God.

You are able.

You are the leaders of your own liberation and healing.

Maybe Its Time for Us All to Stand Together

“I’ve just been made homeless. The president should come visit. Someone needs to see just how bad it is for us here.” Heard on the streets of Aberdeen

It can be hard to imagine, unless you have experienced the underside of American life lately, just how hard life is becoming for millions of Americans. With 48% of Americans now poor and low income, we are rapidly losing our middle class. And with 3.5 million people on the street, more and more places are experiencing intense desperation. Our rural towns and small cities have been hit especially hard, with a shrinking economic base and loss of manufacturing. And Aberdeen is no exception.

There has been a flurry of controversy lately in Aberdeen with the disbandment of our largest homeless camp and the closing of a seedy hotel rented by the month. Dozens of people have been displaced. As the Thunderbird closes, people have very few alternative places to go. I hear, over and over, people saying that they feel like the city just wants to get rid of them.

It’s a common story across America. We talk a lot about “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” but these things are getting harder for a lot of us to hang on to. If every person has a right to life, every person has a right to the things that keep us alive and healthy and whole: housing, decent food, the basic necessities of life.  

As it is now, people who helped build this town—carpenters, loggers, fishermen—have found themselves on the streets, many of them disabled in industrial accidents. I am shocked by the number of young people on the street. And veterans—from Vietnam to our more recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

Those of us who are not on the street are likely struggling. Trying to make ends meet. Trying to take care of our neighbors as best we can, while still putting our own families first. Most of us are only a paycheck or two away from the streets ourselves. We are afraid. There is only so much we can do.

That is why this crisis of poverty, of job loss, of housing belongs to all of us. We are all feeling it. And its not our fault.

It's not our fault that giant timber companies came, made their money, and left. It's not our fault that land is increasingly closed to public access or to any kind of harvesting. It's not our fault that our markets have been opened oversees and it's cheaper to cut trees in Honduras or employ workers in China than employ American workers. It's not our fault that there are fewer and fewer safety nets. It's not our fault that most jobs available don't pay a living wage. It's not our fault that the middle class has all but disappeared. 

This problem is bigger than homelessness or who is using drugs and who is not. It is a crisis that is touching us all. 

Maybe it is time for us all to stand up together—people on the streets and people struggling to pay the mortgage, people getting evicted from an old hotel and people getting foreclosed on, people trying to hang on to what you can and people who have lost everything. In the end, we are all in this together. We live on rich soil around mighty rivers and some of the most spectacular natural resources in the world. We live in one of the wealthiest countries in the world. Its time for things to change. Its time that we stop starving in a land of plenty. Maybe it is possible for us to put our differences behind us, to stop pointing fingers at each other, and to stand together for a better life for all of us. 

The Kingdom of God Comes in a Parking Lot

Its almost summer. And it’s the third week of Pentecost. In the ancient middle east, this would be time of first harvest. For us, with our very short growing season, its really the end of planting time. Our vegetables are still pretty small and we have some lettuce and peas just ready to pick. For the early church, these first few weeks after Pentecost were the very beginning of the Jesus movement, just as followers of Jesus were forming community.

I guess it makes sense to read Jesus’ parables about growing things, this time of year.

I always laugh a little at the parable of the mustard seed. This parable doesn’t make much sense to me. I mean, I’ve seen a mustard plant—maybe not the same kind as Jesus is talking about—and they are kinda small. At the largest, they are a small, spindly shrub. The seeds are small, but the mustard plant is not really the “greatest of all shrubs,” not even by Palestine standards. I always wonder if maybe the writers of the gospel were never farmers themselves and got the plant wrong. In the U.S., mustard is mostly a weed, expect the stuff grown to flavor that yellow stuff on your hot dogs.

But, no matter what plant Jesus was talking about. The point of the parables is that the kingdom of God doesn’t come like other kingdoms. Not like Rome, with pomp and fanfare, with wealth and power, with violence and oppression. Not even like the empires of our day, with bombs and red carpets, private jets and giant estates.

It comes like wheat in a field and vegetables in your garden. Like whatever that mustard plant is—small, ordinary things. It comes to farmers and gardeners, to slaves and peasants and villagers. It comes in ordinary flesh and blood, in the backcountry, in the small towns, in the back streets. It comes small and it comes silently and it comes in ordinary moments. It comes in fragile soil and regular work.

While the world around us tells us to look to the headlines, to look to the political and economic figureheads, to look to the rich and powerful—Jesus tells us to look at the gardens and to look in the forgotten places. God works at the grassroots, where everyone least expects it.

God’s kingdom is being built in the remote mountains of Chiapas in southern Mexico, where the Mayan people are building schools and communities. God’s kingdom is being built by farmers in India who are reclaiming land. God’s kingdom is being built here in Grays Harbor too.

We are building a community garden in Westport, working together and growing food for our little growing community. When I see people coming together, working to build something different, working to build a place where people are valued in a place where so many people are struggling, I see Jesus’ parables come alive.

Its been a crazy two weeks in Aberdeen, as I’m sure you know. In this little town that for most people is on the edge of the world, through incredible odds, a small group of homeless men and women, most of them well under 40, are building a new world. I know that sounds almost fantastical. But its true. The kingdom of God is not coming with great fanfare or at the hands of people with great power. But it is coming in a tiny parking lot,

Its coming in the 22 people who chose to try a completely different kind of community, in a tent city, and its coming in the dozens of volunteers who helped them move in the wet and cold.

Its coming in the messiness and craziness of trying to build community,

Its coming in the faithfulness of new leaders,

Its coming in the courage of people who have lost everything and still demonstrate to the world what new life looks like.

 Its been growing in the dark along rivers and back alleys. Its been growing in the hearts of community members. It is growing, we pray, we hope, into great change in our community.

And its not respectable. It’s downright scandalous—especially if you talk to some folks in Aberdeen. 

Its like that mustard plant, or whatever it is—a shrubby weed. Bringing new life and flocks of crazy birds and messiness. God’s kingdom comes in the weeds.

In our Bible study for Pentecost, we are reading through the stories of Acts, the history of the early Jesus movement. It was pretty scandalous too. A bunch of Galilean fisherfolk build a community that took care of each other. A community where all were fed and no one was hungry. A community that faced terrible odds in a world of terrible poverty. A community that welcomed outcasts.

That is the kind of community that God’s kingdom is all about.

About people that those in power say are nobody leading new community. About a community coming together to honor the dignity of every human being.

God’s kingdom is growing—God’s kingdom is coming, my brothers and sisters, coming in the here and now, coming in the harbor, coming to you, to us all.

 

 

 

Shadows of War

I grew up, like everyone else in my generation in this country, in the shadow of war. As a child, I remember my parents trying to shield me from the images of war flashing across the TV screens during the First Gulf War. As a teenager, the unforgettable events of 9/11 and the subsequent unending wars loom large. Kids, like the kids I grew up with in a small town, went off to war and not all of them came back alive. If I think through the news I’ve seen in my lifetime, most of it is dominated by war, by reports of body counts and returning bodies, reports of torture in military prisons and large scale offensives. Images of tanks and machine guns, sniper rifles and wounded bodies.

In the shadow of these wars, the world has grown more militarized. Sometimes I’ve seen this firsthand. In southern Mexico, in Oaxaca, I walked through squares full of police gripping AK-47s, all too ready to fire on unarmed civilians. I drove down deserted rural roads full of armored trucks with federal police bristling with weapons. I walked across borders with assault rifles trained at my head and witnessed the desert between the U.S. and Mexico transformed into a war zone with barbed wire and giant fences and fully militarized police.  

 

But, the whole time I was away from home, away from the harbor, I held it in my heart. I was never naïve; I remembered the harbor as a place with little for me to do as a teenager and a place I could not wait to leave, I remembered how easy people could be with their fists, and how rough parts of town could be. I always remembered the grind of survival and the palpable sense of despair that could descend on us. But I also remembered a place where neighbors knew each other, a place of peaceful lakes and stunning forests, a place of rough neighborliness and fierce independence.

On Friday, though, I was shocked. I know I should not have been. I knew the Aberdeen police had an armored vehicle and that SWAT teams were more militarized everywhere. But knowing is different than seeing. When I walked down by Cherry Street and I saw a MRAP parked outside a little working class house and I walked past young men carrying assault rifles, something in me froze.

This was Aberdeen. This is where I walked as a kid. And a team of military style fatigued local police were pointing military grade weapons at a house I’d passed a million times.

 Suddenly, I was aware of a terrible fact. The wars that had haunted my TV screens and loomed large over my life had come home. The shadow of war had found a home on the streets of my childhood. Kids who had grown up here, like me, were carrying assault rifles—not only in far distant lands—but at home too and those rifles were pointing at our own people.

 

 

 Its only been a few days but I can’t shake this feeling of dread. Now, I know that police were responding to what seems to have been a shooting. And I know that the woman inside that house was armed. And I am so very glad that no one else was severely hurt or injured.


Its just that I can’t shake this feeling that something has changed terribly in this place where I grew up. That my nieces and nephews are growing up in a world where military sniper rifles are increasingly directed toward civilians. Where the wars I grew up with have come home to roost.