August 18, 2024
Jesus’ Revolutionary Geography: Don’t Look Up! – Look Down in the Dirt Indianola Presbyterian Church, Columbus
Sermon by Rev. Tim Conder
August 18, 2024
Greetings and Introduction
What a privilege to step in for Trip this morning. Meredith and I are relatively new here at IPC, but are enjoying getting to know you and look forward to many opportunities to get to know you better and partner in the work of building God’s beloved community here in Columbus.
This sermon today is going to be an intentional “a preaching to the choir” (which seems appropriate at IPC given the size and giftedness of the choir!). My goal today is to offer a rationale for what this congregation appears to do very well!
But, let’s begin with the bad news. If this were a thriller movie, this would be the moment when they realize that the asteroid is coming right at earth. And if it were a Hallmark movie, this would be when the single adult child of the owner of a failing inn meets an attractive guest — only to find out that this new love interest is a lawyer representing a development company that plans on buying the inn and turning it into a strip mall! We’re starting today in the crisis moment of the story. Here goes…
We live in a frightening world. There is a land war in Europe and another land war in Gaza. The gap between working class incomes and the incomes of the wealthiest classes has been radically increasing since the 1970s. When translated to present dollar values, the income of minimum wage workers topped out in -- 1968! It’s shamefully true, minimum wages workers have not gotten an effective raise in 56 years, since milk was 45 cents a gallon and a gallon of gas was 34 cents. Schooling in the U.S. is more segregated now than in 1971 when the Supreme Court allowed for interventions like busing to fight segregation. The American Association of University Women (AAUW) reminds us that women still make only 84% of the wages of men doing the same work. The bodies of black women remain the most common sites of violence in our society - except for trans youth of color.
I’ll stop there.
Those realities prompt a really fair set of questions…
“God, where are you?”
“Jesus, where can we find your power and your grace?”
“Where is the gracious power of God’s Spirit?”
Point: These questions regarding the location or geography of God’s work in our society are critical — not only because such knowledge would be a source of hope, but knowing the geography of the Spirit allows us to join that work.
In 40 years of ministry, community organizing, and now academics, I’ve heard lots of meaningful answers about the locations of our hope.
· My social justice students at the University of North Carolina, mainly white, elite academic types, 25% identified as “not straight in some manner”, most deeply involved in justice work, and most secular or religiously skeptical - would say, “If there is a god - he, she, or they is not in human heroes, but can be found in social movements. Black Lives Matter, the Parkland students’ “March for our Lives”, The Poor People’s campaign. Those students are right! (And they heard the course content well!)
· My students at Shaw University Divinity School, one of the U.S.’ six historically black divinity schools have a radically different perspective. Typically 45 to 80 years old and all identifying as Black, they would say, “In all due respect Dr. Conder – I can’t get them to call me Tim — there’s nothing new happening now, it’s more of the same, and God’s mighty Spirit is the only thing that is holding back the worst. To them, God’s restraining Spirit is paving a way to Jesus through his church. They are right too — and, as an aside, the witness of the historical Black Church might just save us all.
· But, for this morning, I want to look at a third valid answer to this question of the geography of God’s work. This is the response that I see as a community organizer and the founding pastor of what remains a youthful activist congregation. In those settings, the presence of God is typically witnessed in discrete actions, the small spaces, and in the mundane. As organizers, we are often focused on increments. One win that leads to another win. And in our small congregation of folx in their 20s and 30s, this often meant discrete but radical acts of inclusion, growing food that can be shared, standing vigil for every person murdered in the city, or organizing with many others, often unlike ourselves, to secure living wages or affordable housing in our city.
· Looking for the spirit in the mundane and discrete has been very helpful to the thirty-five congregations we are working with in the Black Mountain School of Theology. These congregations, rural and urban, small and large, have done listening campaigns to find that their congregants are deeply worried about their future. They are aging rapidly and carrying the burden of often large, expensive properties, weighty programs with fewer volunteers, and are facing diminished community respect and even interest. Over the last decades, the harder they have worked, the less people have seemed to care. Some of them feel like relics of a lost past. But they are learning now great meaning can be found when their vision is close to the ground rather than on a glorious past, when they become intimately connected to the histories and needs of their communities.
Transition: As we’ll see this morning, this advice to “look close to the ground” aligns tightly with the lesson of Acts 1. At one of the most decisive, and also perplexing moments of Jesus’ ministry, his ascension, his disciples were told not to look up, even at the moment that Jesus was lifted up, but look down into the moment and space they occupied.
Acts 1
Acts 1:1-8 is organized by three utterances, two from Jesus and a third from God’s holy witnesses. Taken together, they are an escalating description of the geography of God’s work and the geography of our hopes.
The First Utterance is a Command that begins to address “WHERE does it begin”: For 40 days, the resurrection is demonstrated by Jesus to his disciples apparently by regular appearances in the flesh. It is fair to assume that these leaders understand that they sitting on a fulcrum, from one era to the next, and that something big is on it’s way. The first command is simply to “STAY!” in Jerusalem. Theologian Willie Jennings reminds us that here we see once again that geography and places matter to God. Indigenous people have long tried to explain this to us, that identities are inextricably linked to places. We are…where we came from…where we are located…and how we live in that location. The baptism of God’s Spirit will craft a new identity for God’s people and that identity will be initially forged in the sand, grass, and stones of Jerusalem.
The Second Utterance is a Rebuke that begins to tell us where the Spirit will take them: They ask: “Lord, when will you restore the kingdom of Israel?” This impulse refers to a hope that the work of God will take them toward a lost past.
· God, when will we go back to the good ‘ol days?
· When can we go back to the great seasons of the Kings when the Canaanites feared our God and our swords and when our great temple mocked their pagan cultures?
· Dare I say it? When will the nation of Israel… be great again?
Jesus answers this misguided question with a geographical lesson. You are thinking of Israel, and this is where it begins and has begun, but that which is happening will spread from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria — yes, Samaria, — to every nation on the earth! The geography of expansion from their home to every supposedly pagan and unclean nation not only expands, but redefines the work of God’s spirit.
As theologian Willie Jennings has written:
[T]hey have asked a nationalist question. “Nationalist desire has tempted Israel from the beginning and in fact tempts all peoples…Nationalist fantasy [is rooted in] in the deeply human desire of every people to control their destiny and shape the world into their hoped-for eternal image. Nationalist desire easily creates a fantasy of resurrection and the fantasy of resurrection appeals to peoples, calling forth a triumphal vision of a nation that rises from death and is filled with conquerors and the powerful…Such fantas[ies] are…quite compelling because they help us cope with the vulnerability that is creaturely life, and they reflect the power of accumulated wounds. The greater the number of wounds inflicted on a people, the greater the fantas[ies]…of being self-determined and wielding power over others, and power to control our own destiny.
He continues: Jesus [will not serve as] a sign of this [fantasy of] resurrection.
Resurrection will not define him. He will define resurrection’s meaning and its purpose.
That’s a mouthful — I know, that is way of it with Willie.
Illustration: Dr. Jennings in class…
This is an eloquent way of saying that resurrection, ascension, and Pentecost are going to change the geography and substance of God’s work and the direction of Jesus’ resurrection. Jennings refers to that change as a “revolution of the intimate.” God’s work will be about intimate joinings, that had once been culturally and religiously forbidden, now defining our mission. He also reminds us that nationalism, the act of making boundaries depends on inevitable exclusions and segregations. Now God’s work and our work will be about crossing boundaries of nation, race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability. The gospel began in a specific place, but now it will go to every specific space and place. The miracle of Pentecost and the revolution of the intimate is “God breaking us open.” I like to say, our best expressions of faith will be a “together boldness.” We are to join each other, across every boundary, and make communities that are powerful and unshakable in their pursuit of goodness.
This, of course, also defines our peril. It seems that so much of U.S. Christianity is a rebuke to Pentecost – a celebration of nationalism and segregation. Again, Lord help us.
The Third Utterance is another command that tells where to join the work of God’s Spirit.
It’s a crazy, counter-intuitive point. With Jesus, Jesus, ascending into the sky, his followers are told by the holy messengers NOT to look up. The alternative is to look into the ground. The work of the Spirit will be granular, in specific spaces, in specific relationships, in specific communities defined by radical joining. The work of the Spirit will not be mystical or fantastic; it will be mundane and particular. It will be in the dirt or details of our lives and in the soil of every place.
The great agrarian philosopher Wendell Berry names this revolution of joinings as the “good economy.” He even illustrates it with the analogy of top soil. He calls top soil as a miracle in the soil. We cannot make it, but we can assent to preserve it and collaborate in its process of giving life to our soil. We cannot call it dead because it is filled with living creatures. It is busy making life out of death. In another era we would have called it miraculous. He writes, “In a time when death is looked upon with almost universal enmity, it is hard to believe that the land we live on and the lives we live are the gifts of death.” You can almost hear him chuckle as he writes, “when we talk of topsoil, it is hard to avoid the language of religion.”
Our friend Brian Roe could tell us far more about soils. But the point today is that the miracle of God’s presence, that which is saving our world, is often in the lowest of places, the last place we often look. The miracles are in the small, the mundane, the material, the joinings across difference, in specific communities, and in the ground.
Conclusion
As I noted earlier, Meredith and I are new to IPC and don’t know you very well yet. But the revolution of the intimate, the sacredness of the mundane, and living faithfully in a geography of “right here in this place” seems to be a way of life for this congregation.
I sense that deep commitment to place with some of the large commitments you have made recently – the hard work and deep love that has gone into the pocket park and your willingness to transform your property into community, ecumenical, multi-faith housing for OSU. As a trainer and coach working with many congregations making some of the same choices, I know full well these sacrifices are hard to make. Like I said, I knew I would be preaching to the choir today – affirming the risks and commitments of the faithful here, telling you what you already know.
But questions remain for us in this text.
Who should we be joining? What is our called “revolution of the intimate?” That question is easy as an aspiration, less so as a course of action. What prevents us from joining those who we aspire to join?
The congregations I am partnering with now are struggling mightily with variations of that question. They are wondering how they can pass their work on to the next generations. Why do the young, like my social justice students at UNC, not seek them as partners even as they work for many of the same goals? What are they holding onto too dearly that needs to be released? Where do they lack vision or courage? Those questions go far beyond the bounds of a sermon.
END: But even our struggle regarding the future can be a space of joy when we engage the conversations and actions that draw us deeper into the dirt, the very place where God is turning death into life.
The Promise of the Holy Spirit
1 In the first book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and teach 2 until the day when he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. 3 After his suffering[a] he presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God. 4 While staying[b] with them, he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem but to wait there for the promise of the Father. “This,” he said, “is what you have heard from me; 5 for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with[c] the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”
The Ascension of Jesus
6 So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” 7 He replied, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” 9 When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. 10 While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. 11 They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.
WE GATHER IN AWE AND PRAISE
PRELUDE “Breezes Over Avignon” Kevin Olson
WELCOME Rev. Trip Porch
One: This is the day that the Lord has made
All: Let us rejoice and be glad in it
*CALL TO WORSHIP
One: Give thanks to God, and call upon God’s name!
All: For God is great, and God is here!
One: Spread the news of what God has done throughout the world.
All: For God is great, and God is here!
One: Sing praise, and shout for joy:
All: For God is great, and God is here!
One: Let’s worship God together!
*HYMN 411 “God Is Here Today” (Dios Esta Aqui) DIOS ESTA AQUI
*PRAYER OF CONFESSION Trip Porch
All: You are a God whose very being is community, and you call us into
relationship with you and one another. You long to take up residence in our
lives, in our bodies, in our churches. We confess that we simultaneously
want much less than that, and much more. When we confine you to an
intellectual belief, forgive us. When we live as if our relationship with you
affects only the afterlife and not this life, forgive us. When we insist that
your love can be earned and lost, forgive us.
~silence~
One: Come to us again, O God, in the ordinary stuff of life, and remind us to seek your face.
All: We pray in the name of Jesus, bread of life and light of the world. Amen.
*ASSURANCE OF PARDON
*RESPONSE OF PRAISE 205 “Ubi Caritas” UBI CARITAS
*PASSING OF THE PEACE
One: The peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all,
All: And also with you.
WE LISTEN FOR GOD’S WORD
MUSICAL OFFERING Themes from Symphony No. 6 Peter Tchaikovsky
PRAYER OF ILLUMINATION
CHILDREN’S MESSAGE Trip Porch
SCRIPTURE Acts 1:1-11 CEB
Theophilus, the first scroll I wrote concerned everything Jesus did and taught from the beginning, right up to the day when he was taken up into heaven. Before he was taken up, working in the power of the Holy Spirit, Jesus instructed the apostles he had chosen. After his suffering, he showed them that he was alive with many convincing proofs. He appeared to them over a period of forty days, speaking to them about God’s kingdom. While they were eating together, he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem but to wait for what the Father had promised. He said, “This is what you heard from me: John baptized with water, but in only a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”
As a result, those who had gathered together asked Jesus, “Lord, are you going to restore the kingdom to Israel now?”
Jesus replied, “It isn’t for you to know the times or seasons that the Father has set by his own authority. Rather, you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
After Jesus said these things, as they were watching, he was lifted up and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going away and as they were staring toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood next to them. They said, “Galileans, why are you standing here, looking toward heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way that you saw him go into heaven.”
Holy Wisdom, Holy Word
Thanks be to God
SERMON Rev. Tim Conder
WE RESPOND TO GOD’S WORD
*HYMN 658 “God Is So Good” GOD IS SO GOOD
TIME OF OFFERING online giving is available at www. indianolapres.org/give
OFFERTORY “Holy Ground” Geron Davis
arr. Phillip Keveren
*OFFERTORY RESPONSE 697 vs. 6
Take my love; my Lord, I pour
At thy feet its treasure store;
Take myself, and I will be
Ever, only all for thee
Ever, only, all for thee.
*PRAYER OF DEDICATION
O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! We bow before you and thank you for the privilege to participate in your acts of kindness and love here on earth. May these gifts truly become instruments of your purposes here in our church, our community, and around the world. Amen.
PRAYERS OF THE PEOPLE followed by the Lord’s Prayer on screen
*HYMN 405 “Praise God for This Holy Ground” HEYMONYSTRAAT
TIME OF COMMUNITY SHARING
CHARGE AND BENEDICTION
POSTLUDE “This is My Father’s World” Traditional English melody
arr. Lily Topolski
Acknowledgments:Unless otherwise indicated, all texts and music are printed and broadcast under OneLicense.net license #A-702452