JOHN 5:1–9
In the spring of 2018, I was called to my first parish, a predominantly White parish. As I accepted the call, I wondered how I, as an African American priest, would be able to share my truth with my congregation. I wondered how I was going to authentically be who I was and preach the gospel that God had called me to preach. I realized that I could not be afraid of my own truth; to omit pieces of who I was to make others feel comfortable was not what God was calling me to do. I was being called to take all the pieces of me and gather them up so God could do a new thing. Out of that truth I found God calling me to preach the gospel with the stories of my own brokenness weaved into it. God works through scripture, people, and circumstances, and the stories that I have been called to weave into the gospel are filled with the broken pieces of racism, hate, sexism, and more. The ugly truths are countered with the stories that set the Gospels squarely into our laps and calls us to peace in our souls and to the grace that saves our lives. My sermons were birthed out of their ugly truth of hate and racism in this country, but reflected how God moves us all and calls us to be on mission while we “court holy disruption,” while we are disturbed, and as we are called to follow Jesus.
Astonishing God, you give us a vision of the heavenly city, the new Jerusalem, your home among mortals on earth. All people and nations will stream to your city where they will find nourishment, healing, and peace. Even now your blessing shines upon all the earth to help us see a larger vision of your loving care for all creation. And so you call us to move beyond our comfortable circles, and into unfamiliar places, as we seek to share your dream of a world made new in Christ. Amen.
The lectionary provided a choice of Gospel readings. I initially chose John 14; however, as many of you know, this past week I have been on pilgrimage in Alabama as an Ambassador of Healing and Peace in Birmingham, Selma, and Montgomery. Places where many of the events of the civil rights movement occurred. Places that not only carry the history of this nation, but also carry with that history the scars of injustice and pain. And while there is pain, in these sacred places there is a deep sense of faith and hope that this world can actually be the dream God has for it.
I’ve been pulled by the Holy Spirit to preach not just on the selected Gospel but also on the alternate Gospel as well, and it reads like this:
After [Jesus healed the son of the official in Capernaum] there was a festival of the Jews and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-Zatha, which has five porticoes. In these lay many invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be made well?” The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps ahead of me.” Jesus said to him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.” At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk. Now that day was the Sabbath. (John 5:1–9)
While on pilgrimage in Alabama, I took these Gospels with me each day as my devotional. I also began to really think about what it means to be a pilgrim and prayed about what Christine Valters Painter says in The Soul of a Pilgrim: Eight Practices for the Journey Within, “Pilgrim means being willing to court holy disruption, to become profoundly aware of our inner movements, to claim responsibility for our choices about how we respond to this place we find ourselves in and welcome discomfort and strangeness as carrying the possibility of new revelation.”1 I pondered what message God was opening up to me.
As our pilgrimage went on, I continued to pray over these passages as we walked in the footsteps of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Johnathan Daniels, John Lewis, Viola Luzzio, and many others and sat in the pews where foot soldiers sang freedom songs and prayed for change.
I prayed over these passages as we stood on soil where many were sold, lynched, and beaten because they were seen as less than human by their oppressor. I kept asking myself, “God, what are you saying to me and what word am I to bring back to the good people of St. Peters? How can I an African American relate this deep experience with these people who have a skin that automatically gives them ‘privilege’ and sometimes says to me that they represent the oppressor?” Then I recalled a prayer that is attributed to Archbishop Desmond Tutu and said to have been adapted from an original prayer by Sir Francis Drake; this prayer, along with the scriptures, seemed to sum up all that I was praying and feeling.
Disturb us, O Lord
when we are too well-pleased with ourselves
when our dreams have come true because we dreamed too little,
because we sailed too close to the shore.
Disturb us, O Lord
when with the abundance of things we possess,
we have lost our thirst for the water of life
when, having fallen in love with time,
we have ceased to dream of eternity
and in our efforts to build a new earth,
we have allowed our vision of Heaven to grow dim.
Stir us, O Lord
to dare more boldly, to venture into wider seas
where storms show Thy mastery,
where losing sight of land, we shall find the stars.
In the name of Him who pushed back the horizons of our hopes
and invited the brave to follow.
Amen.2
I realized from all these prayers and passages I had been given that God was calling me to urge you to be open to the Holy Spirit, the one who teaches us, the advocate sent in the name of God and who calls us to be like Jesus and to bring peace—a peace that will require us to stir things up and be willing to court holy disruption and to not only be disturbed by the things that we see in the world, but also to disturb. To stand in the gap for those who have no voice. For those who feel that God has forgotten them. For those who after decades of fighting for justice continue to be the subject of bigotry, prejudice, discrimination, and hate. God is calling us to disturb what is the status quo. To disturb those systems that oppress. To disturb those processes that allow us to continue to be separate and unequal. To claim responsibility for our choices about how we respond to this place we find ourselves in and welcome discomfort and strangeness as carrying the possibility of a new revelation. God wants us to be disturbed and shaken by these things so that we can press forward and stir the waters.
We must not continue to be like those who stepped in front of the man who was ill for thirty-eight years and sat by the pool. We must be disturbed by those who step in front of others and proclaim a healing that is not for them. We must not be the people who step in front of others out of our own sense
