Transcript of a sermon given by Rev. Shawn Coons on February 26, 2023

We're beginning this morning a new sermon and worship series called Big Feelings. And it's about honoring and understanding our emotions, all of them, as gifts from God. Sometimes, maybe too often in our life, as busy Americans, and sometimes especially as mainline Protestant Christians, we don't value our emotions enough, we don't value our inner life enough. We're very much about doing, we're very much about producing, we're very much about working, keeping busy, but we're not always good on slowing down on just sitting, just being introspective and reflecting on what's going on around us, but maybe, more importantly, what's going around and on in inside of us. But that's not how we were created. Brad just read from Psalm 139, where God says we were intricately made, wonderfully made, and we are made as physical and spiritual and mental and emotional beings. All of those parts. We have emotions, we have lots of emotions, and every emotion has a story to tell us. I [inaudible 00:01:39] to think this morning as every emotion, each and every one of your emotions as a storyteller.

We're going to read this morning, in our second lesson, from Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, and that's a familiar passage to many. But I want you to think about it in terms of emotions, and think about in terms of the variety of emotions, and when they come, bidden or not.

Ecclesiastes 3:1, "For everything there is a season, a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance; a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to throw away; a time to tear, and a time to sow; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace." This is the word of the Lord, thanks be to God.

Ecclesiastes is a familiar verse to a lot of people, even outside of the faith from a few kind of key sections. We hear this, "A time to be born, a time to die," we may think of that song Turn! Turn! Turn! by The Byrds. We also get from Ecclesiastes, the phrase, "There's nothing new under the sun." But if you read Ecclesiastes, if you dig deep into it, it is a unique book of the Bible. It is a different book of the Bible. You get this message in the beginning of Ecclesiastes, all is vanity, that nothing really matters, that whatever you do in life, life is going to happen, bidden or not, and there's nothing we can do. We often hear these verses and we think, well, there's certain seasons where God has ordained certain things to happen, and if you just wait long enough, it'll turn around. That's not quite what this is saying. Oftentimes, if you read Ecclesiastes and you look at it, you think it's a depressing message. Well, life just happens and there's, there's nothing you can do about it.

Good things happen and bad things happen, and who knows when they're going to happen. But if we read it alongside the Book of Proverbs, you get a balance between two ways of looking at the world. The Book of Proverbs is all about if you follow God, if you honor wisdom, if you raise your children right, if you do X, Y, and Z, then all of these good things are going to happen to you. If you do certain things, your life is going to be wonderful. Ecclesiastes is kind of no matter what you do, sometimes good things happen and sometimes bad things happen, and who knows when and why. So if we take this balance between the two, we get, I would say, a more holistic view and realistic view of life. So when we read this from Ecclesiastes here, and it says, "There's a time to be born, a time to die, time to love, a time to hate." This is not God has ordained these seasons, that right now is a time to love, and guess what? Pretty soon is the time to hate. It's not like summer follows spring.

It's more descriptive than prescriptive, if you will. If you live long enough, there's going to be a time for love, if you live long enough, there's going to be a time for hate. If you live long enough, if you experience enough things, there's a time to seek and there's a time to lose. We don't know precisely when Ecclesiastes was written, we don't know exactly where it was written, but based on some detective work and looking at the language and its influences, we can say it was after the fall of Israel to the Babylonians, where they took a lot of their folks and removed them into exile, after this time of turmoil and upheaval. And then there was a lot of new influences coming in. So we know it was during a time of change, and good things happened and bad things happened.

And so the writer is basically saying, "I've lived long enough. I've seen that all things happen, and you know what? I can't always make sense. Sometimes I do the right things, and things don't work out. Sometimes I don't, and good things happen." I want to think about this in terms of emotions. Emotions happen. We don't get to control when we're happy and when we're sad, and when we're angry and when we're scared. Certainly there are things we can do that either seek to avoid certain emotions or seek after, but emotions happen to us, they come, and you live long enough, you're going to be sad and you're going to be angry and you're going to be happy and you're going to be fearful, sometimes all in the same day, sometimes all in the same hour. We are created as emotional beings, we have all of these emotions within us.

So the question is, what do we do with them? The question is, do we allow ourselves to feel them? Do we listen to the messages they are giving us? Do we listen to the stories each of our emotions is telling us? I want to start just with a definition of what an emotion is. Dr. Paul Ekman is one of the premier research, made the pioneer and scientific research into emotions. He started with facial expressions. And when you were happy, what facial expression did you make? And when you were sad? And he says that emotions are a process, a particular automatic appraisal influenced by our evolutionary and personal past in which we sense that something important to our welfare is occurring. And a set of psychological changes and emotional behaviors begins to deal with the situation. I want to highlight three important parts of this, and we're going to touch on each one of these. The first one we already kind of touched on, emotions are automatic.

They're not voluntary. We don't say, "Oh, I'm starting to feel angry, I'm going to stop." "I'm starting to feel sad. No, I don't have time to feel sad, I'm going to stop." Actually, I skipped over a part I was going to do earlier, but it ties in here so well. One of my favorite eighties movies is Predator. I don't know if you remember Arnold Schwarzenegger, jungle action movie. Well, Jesse 'The Body' Ventura, former governor of Minnesota, former professional wrestler, is in there, and at one time after a fight, he's bleeding on his arm and one of the guys says next to him, "You're bleeding." And he looks at him, says, "I ain't got time to bleed." Sometimes I feel we say, "I ain't got time to feel." "I don't have time to be sad today, I don't have time to be angry today." Coming back to this, emotions are automatic. We don't get to choose the emotions we feel. Second part of Ekman's definition here, something important to our welfare is occurring. We get emotions because our body senses that something important is happening right now and we need to pay attention.

There's that story the emotion is telling. What is it telling? Something important. It's got an important story to tell us, and then changes happen that begin to deal with the situation. The emotion brings about changes within our body, within our brain, to deal with this something important that the body senses is going on. So we know our emotions are automatic, we know they just happen, but we still say there are good emotions and there are bad emotions. And we know which ones are good and which ones are bad. What are the good emotions? Shout them out. Happy, joy. love, delight. Now, what are the bad emotions? Anger, pain, sadness, jealousy, disgust, embarrassment.

We label our emotions. Some are good, some are bad. We need to stop that. We absolutely need to stop saying these emotions are good, these emotions are bad. Now, we can certainly say some emotions are comfortable and some are uncomfortable, some are more challenging than others, but they are all our emotions, and they all have a story to tell about something important that is happening. There are no bad emotions. But we do that, we say, "I don't like this emotion. I don't want it, and it's a bad one. And so I'm going to bottle up. I'm just not going to feel. I'm not going to not feel sad anymore. I'm tired of feeling sad, I'm just going to put it away. Ain't got time to be sad today." And we bottle that up. How does that work? It doesn't work very well. So when I was, I think it was just out of college 'cause I remember the apartment I was in, so in my early twenties, and I got this kit for making your own root beer. And some of you can see where this is going already, can't you?

This is fun, I like root beer, I've never done this. And so I don't remember the exact process, but you bottle it up and then you let it ferment for a while. I don't know if I followed the directions correctly or not. So I bottled it up and it said keep it out of the light. And I had a little apartment kitchen and it had no windows, so I put them in a box in there, and I'm in the other room a while later, a couple of days later I think, and I'm watching TV and all of a sudden I hear this bang. And I hear glass and I hear liquid dripping. And I go in there and yeah, one of the bottles couldn't be contained. I'd bottled up too much yeast, or however the fermentation worked, and it exploded.

I cleaned it up, I went back in to watch the TV, bang, cleaned that one up. I got wise at this point, I got a big heavy-duty trash bag, put the rest in there and I said, "Surely they're not all going to." Yeah, surely they did. We can't do that with our emotions, else that's what's going to happen. We bottle up or say, "I'm not going to feel you." It doesn't go away, our emotions don't go away. Surely we feel better, maybe temporarily, but if we're taking that sadness and we're just pushing it down, as I say, "I'm not going to feel sadness," it's still sending messages to our body. If we're taking that anger and we're pushing down, "I'm not really going to feel my anger today," it's putting your body in this state, a fight or flight state, sending signals to your body, and that takes its toll, physically takes its toll on us when we don't listen to the story our emotions are telling us.

It would be nice if Ecclesiastes said, "For everything there's a season, a time for every matter under heaven, there's a time to be born, and a time to be born; and a time to love, and a time to love; and a time to laugh, and a time to laugh." But all of our emotions happen, all of our emotions come to us. That is the way we were created, emotional beings. Our bodies send us this message, something important is happening. Every emotion has a story to tell. So once again, let's stop judging our emotions. Some good, some bad. Heidi Goehmann wrote a book called Emotions & the Gospel and she writes, "Is it possible that emotions like sadness and angers are still gifts of the Creator? How would we process a broken world without tears? How would we respond to injustice without anger? How would we keep ourselves safe from harm without fear?" Every emotion has a purpose, every emotion has a story to tell.

Now, it is possible, and it happens more than we would like, that the stories our emotions tell us and their purpose get altered. If there's a significant trauma in our life where the emotions come and something is happening, and it says, "This is dangerous, you need to protect yourself," you need to whatever, and that emotion has that message, if that trauma is not dealt with or if that trauma is significant enough, you know what? That message stays with us. You have to protect yourself, you have to protect yourself, you have to beware, you have to be fearful. And sometimes that message gets altered, but still we need to listen, maybe more in those situations. We need to listen to the story that emotion is telling us, even if it's a story from years ago. One of the most loving things we can do is attend to ourselves. One of the most loving things in this world we can do is attend to our own wellbeing.

In the Book of Job, Job is afflicted with horrible things in his life, and he is grieving, and his friends come to be with Job. And I want to listen here to how Job's friends initially greet him. Now, when Job's three friends heard all of these troubles had come upon him, each of them set out from his home and they met together to go console and confront him, comfort him. And when they saw him from a distance, they did not recognize him, and they raised their voices and they wept aloud and they tore their robes, threw dust in the air upon their heads. They sat with him on the ground for seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him. For they saw that his suffering was very great. They saw that his suffering was great, so they sat with him for seven days in silence and solidarity. We need friends like that, and we need to be a friend like that to ourselves, to sit with ourselves, to sit with our emotions. That's what God calls us to do, to attend to our inner life.

Peter Scazzero wrote a book on a emotional leadership in the church, and he says that John Baptist went away from people and paid attention to his inner life, Jesus spent time in the desert, paid attention to his inner life, Paul took time away before his public ministry and paid attention to his inner life. We can't ignore inner life, it's a vital part of our faith. Loving God with all our soul, with all our heart, with all our mind, all of ourselves, it's the most loving thing we can do, for ourselves, for God, and for others. Pay attention to our inner life, make space and time just for being. This is going to be the theme of our series, listening to our emotions and the stories that they tell us. What does that mean?

Sometimes it just means simply naming the emotion, pausing for a moment and saying, "I'm feeling something. I'm feeling fear right now," "I'm feeling happiness," and if you want to take it a step further, "How does this make my body feel?" "I'm feeling sadness right now and it feels like there's just this rock in my chest," "I'm feeling anger right now, and whoa, my jaw is clenched and my fists are clenched." Naming the emotion, thinking about what it's feeling physically in your body, just doing these two things, science has shown is good for you, is healthy for you, helps us process. Every emotion has a story to tell, every emotion is sending a message to us. I want to close today just by reading a section of the book that we're doing a book discussion on in the next two weeks at 10 o'clock, I'd love to have you join us, This Here flesh. And I just want to read a story just from near the beginning of it. This is by Cole Arthur Riley, a younger African American woman.

When I was eight years old, before I could make sense of why I fled the other children on the playground, my hair began to turn gray. Coarse, white strands shriveled up on the crown of my head without an invitation, politely wrapping themselves around their black peers and strangling them in the night. It was an invasion, and the attention was agonizing. Every day, I'd sit squirming and rocking in my desk, head bowed like a monk, praying for my own invisibility. The gaze of Alex DeMarco at my back, he'd only pointed out a hair once, but the moment stuck to me. I asked my teacher if I could switch to the empty desk in the back row, knowing there I could exhale, she said no. By the time I turned 11, I would spend ages in front of the mirror parting my hair just right, so as little white as possible was visible. One night we were all going out and my family was waiting downstairs for me to finish parting. Eventually, my dad sent everyone to wait in the car, and came to the bottom of the stairs and called for me.

And when he asked how much longer I'd be, all of the shame that had crusted over my muscles from years of parting my hair combusted, and I threw a fit. I don't remember the details surrounding it, apart from a comb thrown against my brother's door. I mainly recall the episode by the memory of my father's face, which had a calm blankness, that only made my own body flailing and loud more of a spectacle. When my crying softened, I finally said, feeling more embarrassed than before, "I can't do this anymore," and then, with certainty, "I have to dye my hair." And my father's response, his face still lives in me, he calmly asked me to come down from the stairs and the low sound waves from his voice slid under my feet and flew me from the top stair to where he stood. And he tucked my head into his chest, he sewed a kiss into my hair, and just said, "Okay, honey, we can dye your hair."

I was so addled that my tears dried up and I didn't say another word, and he summoned my hair into a bun and we walked to the car together. The strange thing is we never did buy the hair dye, and in fact, I never asked about it again. And by the time I was in high school, the white began to go away all on its own.

Her father could have judged her anger as bad, could have said, "That's a bad emotion you are feeling," but he didn't. Could have judged her sadness as bad, "Oh, you don't need to be sad. It's just a little thing." But he didn't, he listened to the story that her emotions were telling, and that made all the difference. He loved her and so he listened. Friends, love yourselves and listen to the stories your emotions are telling you.

Transcript of sermon preached by Rev. Shawn Coons on February 12, 2023

Come with me on a journey here a little bit. I want you to imagine the scene. We are in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, but we're high above. We're looking kind of down on it from a little bit. And you can see it's a calm day. It's a sunny day, can feel the breeze, smells of the ocean. And as you look down, there is something just under the surface of the water, it seems to be breaking the surface of the water.

And it's a pod of whales. And now as we zoom in a little bit on these creatures, we can see they're breaking to the surface to take a breath, and then they dive down deep just a little under the surface. And we're going to zoom in again to see around the whales. And the water looks a little cloudy there.

There's all sorts of small little things in it. And you can see that it's krill, the food that whale eat, small little crustaceans. And they just open their big mouth and take them in by the hundreds, by the thousands to sustain themselves. But as we zoom in on the krill, we can see there are other little particles and little things around.

And what we're seeing is hundreds of thousands, millions of little tiny nano-particles in what they're called of plastic. And so we stick with this view. The whale opens its mouth and inhales, big gulp of water, the krill come in and all these nano-particles of plastic come in. And now our camera goes like Jonah inside the whale.

And what we see in here is the digestive system of a whale, but we also see more plastic. Those garbage bags or those bags we get at the grocery store. Old fishing nets and fishing mines sometimes referred to as ghost gear. The equivalent of a garbage truck of plastic gets put into the ocean each day, eight tons of plastic end up in the oceans each year.

At this rate in another 20 years, it's estimated that there will be more plastic in the ocean than there will be fish in the ocean. So we pull back from our scene in the Atlantic Ocean and we go to the coast, the coast of the United States, eastern coast along South Carolina. And we kind of zoom in there and we see where the ocean meets the coast in this area.

There's a lot of marshes around. And we see an African American woman dressed colorfully, almost regally. Her name is Queen Quet of the Gullah Geechee people, the Gullah Geechee people are descendants of slaves brought to America that have lived on the coasts of North Carolina down to Florida for generations.

This is their land traditionally, but it's being threatened. The waters rise, development happens that takes up some of the marsh land where the flooding used to go and abate so it wouldn't go further inland. There have been offers by the government to buy out these folks, have them go somewhere safe or have them leave the land that they have been on for generations.

Queen Quet asks, why is there no interest in buying out the hotels? Why is there no interest in buying out the resorts, locating them somewhere safer? We're in our final week of embracing progressive Christianity, understanding what it is and what it means to be a progressive Christian. And this morning we're talking about the environment and the focus that progressive Christians and many others have in caring for creation and working for environmental health.

I wanted to begin with these stories this morning because oftentimes we can kind of abstract environmental harm and environmental issues. But really what it comes down two in terms of advocating for our environmental justice is loving and protecting our neighbors.

It's a fulfillment of that great commandment, love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul, and love your neighbors as yourselves, whether they are our human neighbors or whether they are our animal neighbors. And to be fair, this is an area that many Christians, many people and many churches and maybe our own included, have not emphasized as strongly as they should.

Statistically speaking, the older we get, the more right-leaning we get, the less likely we are to be concerned about environmental destruction. At this day and age, almost everyone can agree that there is global warming. We only look at the charts to see that temperature is rising over the years, over the decades. But then we start to differ.

There's a consensus among scientists over 80%, sometimes they'll say over 90% of climate scientists say that this warming is human made, that it's harmful and that we can do something about it. Global temperatures, as I've said, we can see have gone up. Here's a chart showing over since 1880, the steep rise that they've had. And coinciding with this carbon dioxide has spiked up incredibly in the last recent history.

You can see this is a timescale of 400,000 years that have [inaudible 00:06:54] almost all that time it was steady until just recently. And you put these side by side and we can see that the rise in carbon dioxide, the rise in the temperatures, they are together. They're happening at the same time.

But I'm not here this morning to lecture about global warming, I'm not here this morning to go into the science and make the case for it. Instead, I want to shift our focus. What does it mean for us as Christians? What does it mean when progressive Christians make these issues a forefront of their faith?

We talked last week when we talked about politics, that as Christians, we are political. We don't shy away from politics, but our faith doesn't lead us to partisanship. There's no one candidate, there's no one party that represents God. We also said partisan neutrality does not mean moral neutrality.

Environmental destruction is a moral issue. It is about loving our neighbor. It is a faith issue. We heard a moment ago, Stephanie read from Genesis chapter one. And some people have said that in Genesis chapter one, specifically in verse 28, we get the first ethical commandment found in all the Bible where God says, "Be fruitful and multiply.

Fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth." The first ethical commandment we get in scripture. Now on first reading, especially as we hear these words in English, we can say, okay, subdue. Dominion sounds a lot like dominate.

It's like, okay, we're in charge. We're the boss. We have the earth to do with whatever we want. God put us in charge, yeah. But if we look in the Hebrew at these words, there's a different sense of them. There are words, one of them is a word, the dominion word is a word like a shepherd has dominion over their flock. And a shepherd cares for their flock.

A shepherd protects their flock. This isn't have at it. This isn't all right, here's your play things. The earth is yours to do what you will. It is God saying to us, "You are in charge of creation. Care for it as I would care for it. You are my steward," if you will. We talk about stewardship in the church a lot. And usually we mean money. We are stewards of creation.

We are stewards of the earth. We are stewards of the water, of the air, of the animals, of the land. "Care for it as I would," says God. And we haven't. We've failed. We've sinned. So the question is, how can we do better? And as Christians, why should we do better? Why do we emphasize this? So let's turn to our second scripture lesson this morning. Deuteronomy chapter six. And we're going to start with verse one and go through verse nine.

Now this is the commandment, "The statues and statutes and the ordinances that the Lord God your, the Lord your God charged me to teach you, to observe in the land that you are about to cross into and occupy so that you and your children and your children's children may fear the Lord your God all the days of your life and keep all his decrees and his commandments that I'm commanding you, so that your days may be long.

Here therefore, oh, Israel, observe them diligently so that it may go well with you so that you may multiply greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey as the Lord, the God of your ancestors has promised you. Here, O Israel, the Lord is our God. The Lord alone.

And you shall love the Lord your God with all your hearts and with all your soul and with all your might. Keep these words that I'm commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead.

Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates." This is the word of the Lord. [inaudible 00:11:43] So after wandering in the wilderness for 40 years, after coming out of Egypt, the Hebrew people, they're on border of coming into Israel, of coming in to take this land God has given to them. And God says, "Wait. Before you go here, listen to what I've said.

I've given you a lot of guidelines and the rules and the law and the wilderness. Listen to it. Remember it. Remember what I have taught you." And why does God say to do that? God says it several times here in this passage, but also multiple times in other parts of scripture. Why is Israel supposed to do that? So that it may go well with you, but not just for you, for your children and for your children's children.

Just as in Genesis, the people of Israel are not given the land of Israel for themselves. It's not here. This is yours, do with it what you will. It's hold it in trust for me. Hold it as a steward so your children may live here and do well. So your children's children may live here and do well. Once again, we are stewards of what God has given us. We are stewards for our children, we are stewards for our children's children.

There's a saying, and it's been attributed to a number of people said throughout the decades, we do not inherit the earth from our ancestors. We borrow it from our children. From the beginning, literally in the beginning, we have been charged to be stewards of creation, stewards of creation for us, for all people, for our children, for all of creation. And when we see this multiple places in scripture in the 10 Commandments, we're given a day of rest, a Sabbath.

And if you remember, it's a sabbath for you. No one should do work on that seventh day, not you, not your slaves, not your animals are included in that. In Leviticus, every seven years, the Israelites are instructed to let the land go fallow, give the land rest.

It's a sabbath for the land. Taking care of the animals, taking care of the land is good. It's good for the land, it's good for the animals, but it turns out it's good for us as well. You remember that saying, you take care of the people that take care of you? You take care of the land, you take care of the animals that take care of you.

Once again, we have not done this. We have not done this as well as we should. We have sinned in becoming consumers rather than stewards. A consumer sees what they have been given as merely for their own use. A steward sees what they have been given as something in their trust and something in their charge to hold, to care for for somebody else, for the good of others.

And as Christians, we are never called to be merely consumers. This applies to many areas of life. We have embodied this at Fairview, moving from consumers to stewards. I see it in the 10, almost now, 11 years that I've been here in how this church has operated. When I first came here, there was a lot of people doing a lot of good work, but sometimes we kind of leaned back and we relied a little bit too much on others.

And there was a video I used to show a couple times in a sermon and I said, "Are we on a cruise ship or are we on a battleship?" On a cruise ship, you ask, "Oh, what's the activities that are playing for me today?" You pay your fee and you get people to wait on you, and you just kind of kick back and let others do the work. On a battleship, we're all together, we're all the crew, we're all working towards a common mission.

Over the years, I have seen this congregation just embrace that mission of being stewards and not consumers, of everyone pitching in and everyone doing their part. And there is a wonderful spirit and a camaraderie here. And I am just amazed at how everyone serves here. You have become even more than you were before, stewards of this church rather than consumers. And it's incredibly heartening. That's what we need to do as we approach the environment, as we approach all areas of life.

And I think sometimes if you're like me, I will admit, here's my confession this morning. I am not as passionate about environmental issues as I am about other issues. This has never been kind of my area and my cause. And as I reflect on that and as I talk to some others who feel similar, it's such a big issue, and it's complex and it's abstract and it's kind of indirect.

We don't see the direct effects of global warming. It affects this weather system, which it affects this here and goes here. I was thinking about racial justice with the George Floyd video. With the Tyre Nichols video. There is no George Floyd video for environmental destruction, for global harm.

And so sometimes it just may not feel as pressing. Or maybe sometimes it's too big. So what do we do? Well, there are small steps we can do, but frankly, even if you and I, if we all recycle, if we all get solar panels on our house, that's a step. But it's going to take big changes as well. Big changes from government, big changes from corporation, from corporations.

So there's our call to be politically active again, be active with our wallets. But I don't want to skip over doing the small things because I think that's important, especially as we talk about changing kind of our own hearts and changing our own practices. I realize as I was doing the sermon, this is the first time I've ever preached directly on the environment in any church I've served.

20 years of ministry and I've never done this sermon before. And that's too long, that's on me. I have been in my practice as more of a consumer than a steward, and that's on me as well. So what do we do? What do change? Well, I want to challenge you to embrace one small step. And maybe together we can kind of move in this direction.

My small step, I usually have a case of bottled water up in my office and I drink it throughout the week. I drink it on Sunday morning. I'm finishing off my last case that's up there right now. I've got a brand new water bottle that I'm not going to do plastic water bottles. It's a small thing. It's not going to revolutionize things, but it's something for me to do. And so I challenge you.

What is one thing that you can embrace, one thing you can do? And it may not be easy, I forgot my water bottle this morning. Carrie had to bring it to me. But it's a step, it's a small step. I'm trying. If you want some ideas, you'll see here on the screen a few websites. You can go back. I want to say I put these in the bulletin, but I can't remember if I did. Maybe I didn't. I was going to.

But you can go back on the Facebook video and find these links. Snap a picture of it. Now they're just some ideas, just some ways that we can make a difference. So let me leave you with this. What kind of world do we want to leave? What kind of world do we want to leave for our children, for our children's children?

Do we want to leave a world where 50 years from now, 2070 water levels, maybe four to five inches higher? Air temperature, four degrees. Higher barrier reefs, which are already being threatened, half or more of them gone. Plastics, more plastic in the ocean than there are fish. We can do something collectively, we can do something. What kind of world do we want to leave? What kind of stewards will we be? Let us pray.

Transcript of a sermon preached by Rev. Shawn Coons on February 5, 2023

So here we are on week four, almost done with our series, Embracing Progressive Christianity. And we're on to how progressive Christianity is very active and doesn't shy away from the political sphere. Once again, this is not unique to progressive Christianity. Many other Christian traditions also have their faith lead them into the political sphere. But the approach of progressive Christians can be a little bit different.

But the question that we begin with in terms of our faith leading us into the political realms is why? Why don't we keep that separation between church and state? Politics never enter the church, and the church never enters politics. It begins with a simple reality which you are all well aware of, and that's that our world is not as it should be. In our world there is violence, in our world there is poverty and racism and oppression and injustice and sexism and homophobia and transphobia and environmental destruction. And the world shouldn't be like this. I think everyone at some level knows that.

As Christians, we take the position that the answer to that is not simply just pray that God fixes it. Just stay in our home, stay in our churches and pray. God, there's so many ills in the world, please come down and make everything right. That's not a bad prayer, but it doesn't stop there. Sometimes we even take the attitude, some Christians take the attitude as, Well, you know what really matters is heaven. What really matters is the next life. There's this bumper sticker, this saying, This world is not my home. And some Christians will take that so far as to say that we don't really need to be concerned about the problems of the earth because the earth is temporary. And what are any problems that we face here on the earth compared to an eternity in heaven, an eternity with God.

There's a simple logic to that that maybe sounds good and comforting at some point, especially if you're wondering if the problems of the world will ever be solved. Or, the problems of the world will be too much, to take comfort in eternity without those problems sounds really good. The trick is the Bible, and the God witness to in the Bible, and Jesus in the Bible, is full of concern for this world. For the poor, for the hungry, for the oppressed, for the sick, for the grieving. Jesus didn't ignore the problems of this world in favor of heaven, in favor of the next life. So neither should we.

For progressive Christians and other Christians addressing the problems of the world is our responsibility, both as Christians and as citizens. And we acknowledge that there are things that we are called to do as individuals, actions we are called to take. But we also acknowledge that governments and institutions have a role, a big role, an important role, in solving the problems of the world, in taking care of people and addressing the evils that are around. Not that governments are the only solution or sometimes even the best solution, but without government action, without government reform, sometimes these solutions will always be incomplete. And in fact, there are times where governments can be part of the problem. And as Christians and as citizens, we're called to work for reform.

Now we see this in scripture. We heard it just a moment ago in our scripture lesson from Amos. God often in the Old Testament uses the prophet, speaks through the prophets, to address the kings, to address the nation of Israel and say, You're not taking care of [inaudible 00:04:48] people. I don't care how well you worship, God says. I don't care about your solemn assemblies. I don't care about your offerings. If justice isn't flowing to everyone, if righteousness isn't in part, if you're not taking care of the widows and the poor and the orphan, doesn't matter how you worship me, let justice flow like mighty waters, Amos says. God's laws in scripture are given to protect all people, but especially the oppressed; especially the poor, the widows, the orphans, the foreigners.

And so we start this morning by beginning with the premise that God cares about injustice in the world. And God wants to take care of all those who suffer from injustice. God calls us, as Christians, as the body of Christ, to help those people in their circumstances. To work for changes, whether that's political or otherwise, that address these needs. So with this dual call in mind as Christians, as citizens to God, to political action, I want to turn to our scripture lesson this morning. And we're going to read from Mark chapter 12, starting with verse 13. And this is going to help us answer the question, Okay, well we're called to bring our faith into the political world, but how do we do that?

Mark 12, starting with verse 13. Then they sent to him, some Pharisees and some Herodians to trap him. In what, He said. And they came and said to him, Teacher, we know that you are sincere and show deference to no one. For you do not regard people with partiality. But teach the way of God in accordance with truth. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor or not? Should we pay them or should we not? But knowing their hypocrisy, Jesus said to them, Why are you putting me to the test? Bring me a denarius and let me see it. And they brought one. And then he said to them, Whose head is this and whose title? They answered, The emperor's. And Jesus said to them, Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor's and to God, the things that are God's. And they were utterly amazed at him. This is the word of the Lord.

So I like in this story how they butter them up at the beginning. Jesus, you're sincere. You show no harsh reality. You teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. And if you're Jesus at that point you're like, Okay, what's coming? Because something is coming, and it is. They're trying to trap him. Trying to give him that impossible question that has no right answer, because that they can catch him. No matter how he answers it one way or the other, they're going to get him. They ask him the question, Should we pay taxes to the emperor? To Rome, to the Roman Empire? Should we as Jewish people under Roman occupation, should we pay those taxes? If he says no, all right, it's off to the Romans. Jesus is inciting rebellion. He's speaking against Rome. If he says yes, now he is out of favor with the Jewish people. Oh, we're supposed to pay our taxes to the occupiers, to the people who have conquered us. You must not sympathize with your Jewish people.

So Jesus doesn't fall for the trap. Instead, he lays a trap of his own, so to speak, although it's a trap based in the truth of the matter. And he says, Bring me denarius. A denarius is a coin at that time, a Roman coin. It's about the pay for an average day's labor. And he says, Whose image is on it? And it's the emperor, like this coin we have up here. That's the emperor there. And I think if I remember this coin, it says something along the lines of, Son of the divine, Caesar Augustus. He says, Okay, here's this coin. It's got Caesar's picture on it. And then we get this phrase, and many of us know the King James version, Render unto Caesar, what is Caesar render unto God? What is God? Caesar can have everything that is his and God can have everything that is God's.

The trick is, these are good Jewish folks. They know their scripture. And so when Jesus brings this coin, it says, Whose image is on it? Well, Caesars, that's obvious. But these Jewish folks, they know their scripture and they think, Okay, the coin is made in the image of Caesar, but what is made in the image of God? And they're going to go back to Genesis and they're going to say, People, you and I, humanity is made in the image of God. So if we give to Caesar what is in Caesar's image, then we give to God what is in God's image. And that is us, our humanity, all that we say and do.

And so this is going to be our starting point here for how we practice our politics as Christians. There are things that belong to God and there are things that belong to Caesar. As progressive Christians, we embrace the American ideal of the separation of church and state. We don't believe that the state should promote, the government should promote any one religion, should promote Christianity above any religion, should promote any other religion. We are against the Christian nationalism that says, Well, our country was founded to be a Christian country and the government should make sure it stays a Christian country. Should mandate certain Christian practices, or preference certain Christian practices over others. Neither should the state interfere with the church. We feel that we should be free to practice our religion how we see fit and how we choose as long as it's not harming anyone else.

But this isn't to say that our faith doesn't influence our politics. Give to God what is God, give to Caesar what is Caesar's. We do it in such a way that our highest allegiance is to God, and not to the government and not to a particular candidate and not to a particular party. We like to say, as Christians, we are political, but our faith does not make us partisan. There is no one party, there is no one candidate, there is no one platform that is a substitute for God's will and how God would have us act in the world. Our politics should conform to the gospel, not the other way around.

If we read scripture, if we read the Bible, if we practice our faith and we find that Jesus and God supports every one of our political positions, we should wonder about that. I think it's Anne Lamont, I want to say, who said, If it turns out God hates all the same people we hate, that's not right. Bishop Michael Curry says, Partisan neutrality though does not equal moral neutrality. Sometimes we as Christians can say, Well, we don't want to be partisan. And we take that to mean that we shouldn't act, we shouldn't live out our faith. God has values that come through in scripture, and we should be living those and seeking to achieve those politically wherever that leads us.

One of the best examples is we can point to in our history is the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. This was led in large part by churchgoers, by clergy, by their wives. Black clergy, especially. We know of Martin Luther King Jr's religious background. We know the imagery he used to embrace the struggle for racial justice. He talked about the Promised Land. And the Civil Rights Movements they met and they organized in churches. They sang hymns and they sang spirituals at protests and on freedom rides. And as I have learned more about American Christianity and its culpability in white supremacy over the years, it makes sense some way that the only way to ever overcome the racism, the white supremacy, that was part of our land and laws, was through the church. Because the church, the white Christian church, had a hand in supporting and forming that racism in our country.

Our involvement in politics as Christians is complex, but we cannot shy away from it. When we act politically as Christians; when we vote, it's not simply a political act. It is a moral act and it is an expression of our faith. It's an act that expresses love for neighbor and love for the stranger. It's an act that expresses how strongly we believe in God's call to love, to compassion, to justice. Our beliefs are shown oftentimes more strongly in our actions than they are in our words.

So I just want to leave you this morning with this idea that how we act as Christians, whether that's out in the world at work, at school, in the voting booth, in the Capitol, how we act in the world shows what we believe even more than what we say and what we profess. Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, give to God what is God's.

Transcription of the sermon given by Rev. Shawn Coons on January 29, 2023

Week three of embracing progressive Christianity. And we've talked about what is progressive Christianity, how does it differ from maybe some other traditions of Christianity? We've used different kind of metaphors. One word that I want to emphasize today is that progressive Christianity really embraces and acknowledges is “limits,” that we are limited as people in our understanding of God. We are limited in our ability to understand God, and that God's revelation to us, how God is known and the ways God communicates with us and has communicated with God's people is also limited. It's not an open book where every secret of the universe, every secret about who God is and how God operates in the world is out there if we can just find it. We acknowledge there are limits to our understanding and our information we have about God.

If you remember First Corinthians chapter 13, mostly what we remember for the passage is love is patient, love is kind, the beautiful imagery of Paul's chapter on love. But he also says in there, "For now we see in a mirror dimly. Now I only know in part," acknowledging that that limitation we have of our ability to fully know God. The way we've expressed that about embracing progressive Christianity is to use the metaphor of windows where there are certain windows and you can only see so much out of a window, right? And some windows are clear, and some windows are big, and some are distorted, but each view through a window has its limits.

This is important to remember as we go into today's topic. When we as Christians talk about other faiths, especially as progressive Christians, we need to remember this idea of limits and we need to talk about limits. This is kind of our approach to other faiths. It's kind of, well, we know what we know, and we can be confident in that. But we also don't know what we don't know, and we need to acknowledge and have that in front of us as well. This is a very Presbyterian idea to say, "Well, there are certain things we know, and let's be confident in what we know. There are certain things we don't know, and let's hold that loosely and say, okay, there's mystery out there. There's more than we can know. There's new light to be shined."

In 2002, the Presbyterian church put out a study paper about salvation, about other faiths. And it's long. It's a good read, but it's long. It was called Hope in the Lord Jesus Christ. And I want to read one paragraph for you that kind of talks about this we know what we know, we don't know what we don't know, and we hold them together.

"Jesus Christ is the only savior and Lord and all people ever are called to place their faith, hope and love in him. No one is saved by virtue of inherent goodness or admirable living. For by grace, you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God. No one is saved apart from God's gracious redemption in Jesus Christ. That's what we know. Yet we do not presume to limit the sovereign freedom of God our Savior, who desires everyone to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. Thus, we neither restrict the grace of God to those who profess explicit faith in Christ, nor assume that all people are saved regardless of faith. Grace, love and communion belong to God and are not ours to determine."

So what do we as Christians know? We know that Jesus is Lord and Savior. We know that we are saved by grace alone. We heard Kathy read that from Ephesians a moment ago. Grace is a gift from God, not something we earn, not something we work for. It is a gift. It is completely on God's part. Not through works, not through right belief, not through anything of our own doing. All right, so what don't we know? We don't know the extent or how God's grace is given. If it is a gift from God, God can give that grace to anyone regardless of anything that they do or anything that they are. We don't know how the saving acts of Jesus work with people who aren't Christians.

Thus, we neither restrict the grace of God to those who profess explicit faith in Christ, nor assume that all people are saved regardless of faith. Grace, love and communion belong to God and are not ours to determine. I want us to pause here for a moment and notice something. Often, usually, when we as Christians start to talk about other faiths and how do we view other faiths, the conversation quickly goes, as I've led it today, into a question. Who is saved and who is not saved? And I'm not sure that's a great thing that we so quickly go to this idea of salvation, and we go this quickly idea of who's saved, who's not saved when we talk about Christianity, when we talk about other faiths. That being said, we need to address it because that's naturally kind of where we go. So we're going to talk about that this morning.

But first, we're going to read our morning scripture. And this is going to be from Matthew, chapter 15, starting with verse 21. And we're looking at this scripture this morning because Jesus is interacting here with someone of another faith. We have a Canaanite woman. The Canaanites, were a specific people, but at this point in the history of Israel, Canaanite also kind of generally refers to people who lived there but weren't Jewish. So kind of by definition, Canaanite is someone of another faith than Jesus.

Matthew, chapter 15, starting with verse 21. "Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. And just then, a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, 'Have mercy on me Lord, Son of David. My daughter is tormented by a demon.' But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, 'Send her away for she keeps shouting after us.' He answered, 'I was sent only to the lost sheep of the House of Israel.' But she came and knelt before him saying, 'Lord, help me.' And he answered, "It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs.' She said, 'Yes Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table.' And then Jesus answered her, 'Woman, great is your faith. Let it be done for you as you wish.' And her daughter was healed instantly." This is the Word of the Lord God.

There's a lot that happens in this passage. And there's a lot we could talk about, especially as it relates to progressive Christianity. But let's first, let's be clear at what happens here. This Canaanite woman, this non-Jewish woman, has a sick daughter. And as any good mother would do, she wants desperately for her daughter to be healed. She wants her daughter to be helped. And I'm guessing at this point, she's tried many ways and probably failed. And so she makes a scene. She makes a ruckus. She shouts to get Jesus' attention. And Jesus ignores her, just doesn't even acknowledge her. The disciples are annoyed by her. Jesus isn't taking care of this. So the disciples go to Jesus and say, "Hey, can we get rid of her? Can you get rid of her? She's loud, she's annoying, she's causing a scene."

And then Jesus says to the disciples, "I'm only here for the Jewish people. I'm only here for the lost sheep of the House of Israel, not for this Canaanite woman." We don't want to hear that as Christians. That's not our image of Jesus. So he says this not to the woman, says it to his disciples. But nevertheless, she persists. And Jesus, after she goes to him and says, "Lord, help me," she makes him acknowledge her, Jesus then says no, and he calls her a dog, basically. Some people say is a racial slur of the time. It's not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dog, the children being the lost children of Israel. She still persists. She verbally spars with him using that metaphor, not protesting the name he's called her. She says, "Yeah, but even the dogs, they eat the crumbs from the master's table." And then Jesus says, "Great is your faith." And he heals her daughter, just like that.

This is a problematic passage for many people. If you really read it and you really kind of dig into it and understand what's going on, Jesus is not acting very Christlike in this point. We see Jesus making mistakes. We see Jesus making bad mistakes. We see Jesus maybe even learning and being corrected by this woman, this non-Jewish woman. For many Christians, if you understand the passage this way, and I don't see another way to understand it, that's hard to reconcile with a certain image of Jesus. There's this image of Jesus, well, Jesus is fully God. Jesus is fully divine. Jesus didn't make mistakes. Jesus didn't commit sins. Jesus never learned. He was fully God, and God doesn't do any of those things.

But as progressive Christians, we remember Jesus was also fully human. And as human beings, we have limits. We have gaps in our knowledge. We make mistakes, big ones, and we need to learn throughout our lives. So if Jesus is fully human, wouldn't he embrace and be part of those as well? Now, we could go more into that, but let's notice how Jesus interacted with this woman because that's what we're talking about today. We're talking about other faiths. How did Jesus interact with this woman of another faith? Well, at first, he does it poorly, I would say. But then he comes around, right? And he praises her for her faith. Notice what he doesn't do, though. Notice what he doesn't do. There's no talk of being saved. There's no talk of salvation. There is no talk of repentance. There is no talk of conversion.

Jesus seems not to be concerned that she's not Jewish. Jesus doesn't seem to care much that she's of a different faith other than that's not he's here for. He doesn't try to say, "Let me quote you some scripture. Let me tell you about the God of Judaism. Let's see if we can get you away from your Canaanite beliefs." He's not concerned that she's not Jewish. That doesn't stop him from healing her daughter, and then he lets her go on her way with her beliefs intact and unchallenged. I would go on to say in the whole of scripture, certainly in Jesus' ministry, but even in the whole of scripture, there's very little emphasis on converting people of other faiths to Judaism or then Christianity. The harshest judgment in scripture, the talk of hell, the talk of punishment, are all directed at people who are already following God, already following Jesus. Not people of other faiths.

But somewhere in Christian history, somewhere especially in Western Christian history, we developed this notion that God wants us to go out and find people of other faiths and save them, convert them. Say, "Your beliefs are wrong. Our beliefs are right. You need to believe what we need to believe, or horrible things are going to happen to you." But that's not the message of scripture.

There are scriptures that suggest this. Let's not deny that or downplay that. The Great Commission in Matthew, "Go out into all the world baptizing in my name." Yes, that has that sense. But in the whole of scripture, the harshest words, the harshest punishments, are for those who are already following God and don't live up to it. So what about being saved? Let's get back to that. We've talked around it, we've talked about it. Our typical understanding of salvation, the kind of Western Christianity, especially American Western Christianity, is being saved means at some point in your life, you've invited Jesus to be your Lord and Savior. Maybe you've said a prayer at that point, and at that moment you are saved, and your status goes from the not saved column to the saved column. And now you have a ticket to heaven and you won't go to hell.

There are scriptures that support that. But the trick is there's a lot of different scriptures on salvation. There are a lot of different windows on salvation, and they each provide a little bit different view. I can't go into it in its entirety. I did this for a sermon a couple years ago. But I have here this page of probably 15 or so different scriptures, and I've got salvation divided up into categories. Sometimes scripture says, we're saved through repentance. Zacchaeus, if you remember him, the wee little man, he repented. 2 Corinthians 7, "Godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation."

At other parts, faith is the qualifier for being saved. In Romans, in Thessalonians, in Luke, in John, "Everyone who believes in him may not perish." "Sir, what must I do to be saved?" in Acts. They answer, "Believe in the Lord Jesus." So it's that faith, it's that belief in some parts of scripture. Then there is you're saved by works. We know James, first and foremost. "What good is it, my brothers, if you say you have faith, but do not have works? Can faith save you?" Well, according to the earlier scriptures, yes, but now it seems to be more emphasized on works. And then we have our scripture from this morning that says, it's grace. It's not your belief because that's something you do. It's not your works. That's something you do. It's grace. It's purely a gift from God.

Then we have a few other scriptures. One scripture, 1 Timothy says, "Women will be saved through childbearing provided they continue in their faith and love and holiness." So there's a combination of childbirth saving you and faith. And then sometimes you're saved by being baptized. And then there's a few random verses. "How hard it will be, Jesus says, for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God." So if you want to enter the kingdom of God, you can't be a wealthy person. So maybe salvation is dependent on how much money you have. Matthew, chapter 18, "Unless you become like children of God, you won't enter the kingdom of heaven." So maybe entering heaven has to do with how childlike we are.

All of these provide a window onto how God works in the world. All these provide a window into this thing we call salvation. And so if we try and wrap this word salvation with one little simple definition, it just doesn't honor all of scripture. So we hold all these intention and we say, "Well, we know what we know, and there's a lot of things maybe we don't know." And so we cling to that loosely as well. So how do we proceed not being able to kind of discern exactly what salvation is, exactly who was saved, exactly who is not saved? We know what we know. We don't know what we don't know. And here's how I've illustrated this. And I know I've told this story here before and I'm going to tell it again. Eventually if I stay here long enough, you're going to be able to tell it on my behalf.

When I met Carrie, her parents, Richard and Nancy, were living in Ashland, Kentucky. Ashland, Kentucky is where Ohio and West Virginia and Kentucky meet. It's in kind of the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. And it's very curvy, mountainous. There's very few straight roads there. It's a smaller town. And we got married there. And so I needed to know how to get from Carrie's parents' house to the church where Carrie's dad was the pastor, and we were getting married. And I knew about one way to get there. And it was go down here, take a right, wind around here, maybe go past the hospital. It was confusing. But eventually I learned it. And every now and then, Carrie would say, "You know there's a faster way? You know there's a better way?" And I would say, "I'm sure there is, but I don't know it. This is the way I know, so this is the way I'm going to go."

I want to say that is our attitude we should have about our faith. As a Christian, I know that way to God. That is the way that I know, and I'm going to practice it. And if someone wants to ask me, what do you think about spirituality? What do you think about faith? I'm going to tell them the way that I know. But in the same breath, I'm going to say, "You know what? There may be other ways. And heck, there may even be better ways. But I don't know those ways. I'm not going to limit them and say they don't exist. But those are the ways I know. So let me tell you about the way that I do know." So that's what I want to leave you with this morning. Don't be afraid to share about the path that you know, the path that you walk. But respectfully remember that God is God, and God's grace is expansive, and there may be other paths that we don't know of as well.