Wake Forest Baptist Church

All Are Welcome, No Exceptions

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About to Do a New Thing, a sermon

A sermon by Lia Scholl

Every year, on this first Sunday of the new school year, I have massive anxiety. I feel like I need to give all you new students a word of wisdom, that wisdom must be perfect for the rest of the church, too.

And to top it off, the first Sunday of the new school year is also my anniversary. So it should be doubly good—in four years, I should have it down!

But my words often fail me, and I find no better way to approach today than to ask for the wisdom of the poets. The poem today is called Blessing When the World is Ending by Jan Richardson.

Please pray with me.

God of grace, look down on your servant right now and give me the grace to preach this message. Please God, make it a message worthy of the giftedness of this gathered community. Amen.

I have spent the week thinking about apocalypse.

Not THE APOCALYPSE, that thing that people think the Book of Revelation reveals. That apocalypse doesn’t take up very much space in my head. Whenever I hear people threatening about it, I just think, “Well, God’s got this. We’ll be fine.”

But I’m thinking about apocalypses. The ones that aren’t capitalized.

They are the (relatively) small apocalypses. They are those crises that turn everything upside down. We call them disasters. They are the things that happen that change the way you are in the world. They are calamities.

Poet Jan Richardson writes:

Look, the world
is always ending
somewhere.

Somewhere
the sun has come
crashing down.

Somewhere
it has gone
completely dark.

Somewhere
it has ended
with the gun,
the knife,
the fist.

Somewhere
it has ended
with the slammed door,
the shattered hope.

Somewhere
it has ended
with the utter quiet
that follows the news
from the phone,
the television,
the hospital room.

Somewhere
it has ended
with a tenderness
that will break
your heart.

We all know about natural disasters: tornados, floods, earthquakes, big storms.

But these are the personal apocalypses. They run the gamut. Failing a class. Wait. It’s doesn’t have to be a class, it can be failing at a job, failing on a team, failing an exam, or like me as a college freshman: failing to care that you’ve failed out of school.

We can lose lots of things: relationships, health, money, time.

We can fall victim to many things: violence, predatory scams, bullying.

You know, the writer of Isaiah is no stranger to apocalypse. In the chapter prior to today’s, the prophet writes:

This is a people plundered and looted,
all of them hidden away in dungeons,
or forgotten in prisons.

See? The writer knows apocalypse.

So in today’s text, the writer shares his survival guide.

But now, hear the word of Yhw
the One who created you,
the One who fashioned you, Israel:

Do not be afraid, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name; you are mine.

When you pass through the seas, I will be with you;
when you pass over the rivers, you will not drown.
Walk through water, and you will not be singed;
walk through flames and you will not be burned.

You hear it, right? God created us, God saved us, and God will keep us forever. That’s the best survival guide ever.

But maybe you need a couple of other tools.

I have a few suggestions:

First, don’t be so hard on yourself. Perfectionism is over-rated! Mistakes happen, and we can learn and move on from them.

Second, recognize there’s an imposed sense of urgency on your life. For some of you, that urgency is imposed by the illusive idea that there are benchmarks for your life. You go to college at 18. You get married at 22. You begin to have babies before 30. You hit the apex of your career at 40. Don’t buy into the idea of urgency in your life.

Some of you elders, How many of you missed some of those benchmarks? (Three people raised their hands—one of them was 8 years old.)

And were you okay when you didn’t? They all nodded.

Third, be in charge of what you value. Sometimes we can find ourselves doing behaviors because we’re worried about what people think—but when it comes right down to it, we don’t care about the thing they want.

It doesn’t fit in your values, let it go.

Fourth, value quality over quantity. Are you ready to write papers that are 10,000 words long? What if you only come up with 9, 472, and it’s perfect just the way it is? Let it go!

We often define success by bigger and more. For college and graduate school, it’s better grades, for our first jobs, it’s more money. But what if we asked, “how will my actions affect people seven generations from now?”

Bigger and more are not always better.

And there are two more:

Let’s not fall into the trap of either/or thinking. No one, and nothing, is either/or. No one is good or bad, right or wrong, with us or against us. That person on your hall who makes you crazy? She’s not all evil. The amazing beautiful person you just met and made fast friends with? She’s not all good.

We’re all a mix of all of those things. Seriously. Check out Not one single post out there on social media about John McCain gets it just right. He was, like all of us, a mix of good and bad.

And also, don’t get trapped in the idea that there is only one way to do things. There are many paths to the place you want to be. And guess what? You will backtrack, you will go in circles, your life will not be a straight path. You’ll fail. You’ll have setbacks.

And STILL… will turn out okay.

Apocalypses will test us, help us to see what we’re made of, and if done right, will teach us how to live.

Apocalypse doesn’t have to destroy us.

In fact, did you know that after natural disasters, many people report that they feel happier, more connected, and less attached to things?

Out of apocalypse comes newness.

Isaiah 43:19 says:

Look, I am doing something new!
Now it springs forth—can’t you see it?
I’m making a road in the desert
and setting rivers to flow in the wasteland.
Wild beasts will honor me—
the jackals and the ostriches—
for I will put water in the desert
and rivers in the wasteland
for my chosen people to drink,
these people whom I formed for myself
so that they might declare my praise.

And what can church and community offer? We can offer to walk beside you, through your apocalypse. We’re here. We are not scared.

Oh, the poet can say it so much better than me.

But, listen,
this blessing means
to be anything
but morose.
It has not come
to cause despair.

It is simply here
because there is nothing
a blessing
is better suited for
than an ending,
nothing that cries out more
for a blessing
than when a world
is falling apart.

This blessing
will not fix you,
will not mend you,
will not give you
false comfort;
it will not talk to you
about one door opening
when another one closes.

It will simply
sit itself beside you
among the shards
and gently turn your face
toward the direction
from which the light
will come,
gathering itself
about you
as the world begins
again.

Amen? Amen.

 

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The Woman Clothed with the Sun (one year after Charlottesville)

by Amy Jones

A sermon by Lia Scholl

In preparation for this sermon, I read two texts. One helped, called Woman Clothed with the Sun and written by Joyce Hollyday. The other, which I accidentally read, was the Matthew Henry commentary  which describes the woman clothed with the sun like this:

“The weaker part of the world, who only has righteousness in the Lord Jesus Christ.

“Having put on Christ, who is the Sun of righteousness, she, by her relation to Christ, she is invested with honourable rights and privileges, and shines in his rays.

She “only thinks of things that are in heaven, where her head is, with a crown twelve stars, gives glory to the twelve apostles”

To hear Matthew Henry tell it, this is the story of a weak woman, a woman with no value of her own.

If that were true, she wouldn’t be one of the Fierce Women of the Bible.

Instead, our text is a “beautiful portrait of a woman empowered. She is clothed in sun, upheld by the moon, crowned with stars, swathed in the power of Creator and creation. Her womb is brimming with life, vibrant with possibility. The world is hers.” (Hollyday)

She is a woman of power.

And she is fighting a dragon.

One year ago today, I was standing in the parking lot of First United Methodist Church Charlottesville, peering over State Police with riot gear, watching what used to be called Lee Parknow called Emancipation Park EXPLODE.

Midway through the day, my phone died. My charger was in my car, about 5 blocks away from our safety zone.

My dear friend Pastor Robin Bolen Anderson and I decided to brave our way to the car. We were in clergy dress, black shirts and collars. It’s not subtle. We had already been snarled at because of it.

We began walking towards the car, through a densely packed, residential neighborhood, with postage stamps for yards, no driveways, and street parking.

Suddenly, Robin pushed me into a yard. “Get down!” she demanded, and physically pushed my shoulders down. And I found myself crouching low on the ground.

I looked into the street and saw a white pick up truck, bed packed with young men and guns, driving up the street.

Fear gripped me.

And then I noticed that Robin had hidden us behind bushes…

Sparkling new tiny little fairy bushes, no more than 18 inches high.

I’m hiding behind a miniature bush.

And I’m shaking and shaken.

The truckload of white supremacists passed, and we hurried to the car, and on our way back, we found two men to walk with and hurry back to the safety zone.

I am not one of those women of power. But I know we’re fighting a dragon. It’s the dragon of white supremacy.

I learned on that Saturday in August that things are a lot worse than I thought they were. I learned it when I saw a young man in a white polo shirt and khakis toss his backpack into the head of a counter-protester and watched her fall to the ground, bloody. and the police officer standing by did nothing.

I learned it when I watched the Virginia State Police and the Charlottesville Police standing by—not going after men who had discharged their guns.

I learned it when President Trump said, “I think there is blame on both sides.”

I learned it again two weeks ago when Portland police were “heavy-handed” with people protesting a rally by extreme-right demonstrators. The police stood with the alt-right rally, instead of against them.

I learned it again yesterday when President Trump tweeted “I condemn all types of racism and acts of violence.” When we all know that there’s only one type of racism.

Things are a lot worst than I knew. Racism is a dragon.

And it’s a beast.

Just this week, our dear sweet young friend, an 8-year-old girl, had one of those moments that happen at summer camp, a misunderstanding that escalated. A young boy threw a ball and hit another boy, but the second boy thought she threw it at him. The boy yelled at the little girl. And when he did, he used a racial slur.

She came home to ask her mother: why did he do that? It’s the first time someone has used her race against her to her face.

Her mother called me crying. “I had to have ‘that talk’ with my baby. I didn’t think I’d have to have it so early.”

Racism is a dragon.

And in our text, the woman clothed with the sun is attacked by the dragon.

Hollyday tells us that the dragon is a monster so large his tail can take out a third of the stars in one swipe. He stands there, by her side, jaws open and ready to devour the thing she loves most:

Her son, the one who is to rule by the power of justice. But her son is snatched away, by the bearers of children to God. He is safe. The woman is safe, too… but in the wilderness, far from all that is comfortable and known.

But the dragon is not through… He pursues the woman. This time, she is given the wings of an eagle to soar away and back to the wilderness.

She soars in “glorious freedom and creativity” in the end.

You know, the woman clothed with the sun may be Mary.

But the woman clothed with the sun may also be the Church.

And if she is the church, we know her. We know the joyful agony of giving birth to something, whatever it is we are bringing to life, whatever our longing and labor. And we all know that the monsters lurk, threatening to devour our creativity, our confidence, our life.

But in the end the dragon loses.

The woman soars in glorious freedom and creativity.

In the end white supremacy loses.

The church soars in glorious freedom and creativity.

How do we defeat the dragon?

We do it with love.

We do it like Rose says in The Last Jedi, “Not fighting what we hate. Saving what we love.”

We love little girls like our friend, and we create a new world where she doesn’t grow up hate herself because someone has called her a racialized slur, a new world where she grows up knowing that she can be woman clothed with the sun, and defeat the dragons, and fly away to creativity and freedom.

We do it by thinking of our church as a movement for people—not a place with walls, not a gathering that happens on Sunday mornings, not just a community of people, but a people with a mission—to slay the dragon of racism, to be such a strong community that we raise little Black girls into strong Black women, to be such a strong community that we build friendships people different than us, strong friendships, that help people who are lonely, people who are broke and broken, people who are in need of a community around them, people who are longing for connection—and remembering that togetherness fights the fascism that we only got a glimpse of in Charlottesville a year ago.

We do it by loving people so well, that they understand that God loves them like crazy. That God is carrying their baby book around in her pocketbook.

You see, we are the woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under our feet, and on our head a crown of twelve stars. God bears us up on wings. And we soar with God.

Charlottesville tried to break me, y’all. For months after, I had violent dreams. In every one of these dreams there was an expectation that I would fix all of this. That this was my fault, and that fixing everything was my responsibility, too. I woke each day heavy, with a burden in my heart, because I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to fix everything.

And still, a year later, I don’t know how to fix everything.

But I do know how to love, and I can take a little girl into my arms and teach her that she is worthy of every good thing, that she is good and strong and worthy of love, that she is a fierce woman in the making.

I can teach her that racism doesn’t have to change who she is, and that white people have no right and no ability to make her any less than who God has called her to be.

And maybe that will be enough, for now.

Will you join me?

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Beating Back the Wild Beasts, a sermon

A sermon by Lia Scholl

The Story of Rizpah:

Rizpah was the daughter of Aiah, and one of Saul’s concubines.

After the death of Saul, Abner, one of Saul’s lead soldiers, was accused of sleeping with Rizpah, resulting in a quarrel between him and Saul’s son and successor, Ishobeth. The quarrel led to Abner’s defection to David, who was then king of the breakaway Kingdom of Judah. This incident led to the downfall of Ishbosheth and the rise of David as king of a reunited Kingdom of Israel.

A famine lasting three years hit Israel during the earlier half of David’s reign in Jerusalem. This was believed to have happened because of “Saul and for his bloody house, because he slew the Gibeonites.” The Gibeonites were not Israelites, but the remnant of the Amorites, which Saul pursued from within Israel. David inquired of the Gibeonites what satisfaction they demanded, and was answered that nothing would compensate for the wrong Saul had done to them but the death of seven of Saul’s sons.

David accordingly delivered up to them the two sons of Rizpah and five of the sons of Merab, Saul’s eldest daughter, whom she bore to Adriel. These the Gibeonites put to death, and hung up their bodies at the sanctuary at Gibeah.

2 Samuel 21:10-14.

10 Then Rizpah daughter of Aiah, the mother of two of the men, spread burlap on a rock and stayed there the entire harvest season. She prevented the scavenger birds from tearing at their bodies during the day and stopped wild animals from eating them at night. 11 When David learned what Rizpah, Saul’s concubine, had done, 12 he went to the people of Jabesh-gilead and retrieved the bones of Saul and his son Jonathan. …13 So David obtained the bones of Saul and Jonathan, as well as the bones of the men the Gibeonites had executed.

14 Then the king ordered that they bury the bones in the tomb of Kish, Saul’s father, at the town of Zela in the land of Benjamin. After that, God ended the famine in the land.

These are the words of Octavia Butler, an African-American science fiction writer: 

All that you touch
You Change.

All that you Change
Changes you.

The only lasting truth
is Change.

God
is Change.

Rizpah wasn’t someone you would have suspected of being able to change anything at all. A concubine in King Saul’s court, she was, essentially, a slave.

Perhaps as an act of defiance against Saul, Abner laid with Rizpah, and when he was accused by Saul’s son, did not deny that he had been with Rizpah, just acted as if he was owed her.

When King Saul died his violent death, Rizpah should have been moved into his son’s harem, but she wasn’t, because of Abner.

Years pass.

Famine comes into the land, and then-King David asks God why it has happened.

God says that the famine has come because of Saul’s sin of killing Gibeonites. So David summons the Gibeonites and asks how they can be appeased. The Gibeonites say, “Let seven of Saul’s sons be handed over to us, and we will execute them before the Lord at Gibeon, on the mountain of the Lord.”

So King David does as they ask, and two of the sons he hands over are Rizpah’s.

The Gibeonites execute the sons, and toss their remains where the wild beasts and the carrion birds can pick at them.

All that you touch, You Change.

Even as she was, marginalized, powerless, enslaved, Rizpah changed all that she touched. She changed the trajectory between Saul and Abner, which caused Abner to support David, which caused David to be king.

She changed history.

All that you Change, Changes You.

Abner’s abdication of Saul changed Rizpah’s situation. She was no longer protected in Saul’s harem. No longer protected as Saul’s family. She couldn’t trust the people around her to take care of her.

I wonder who she blamed.

But then, I think, at this point, surely Rizpah has to begin telling the story of her life differently. I would think that standing out in a field, fending off wild animals and carrion birds, she would have to have stopped blaming victim of others, begun to see that she changed things. And not just that, but that she had made decisions that helped create the spot she was in now.

There’s an advice column on the web called “Ask Polly.” This week, Heather Havrilesky (Polly) answered a woman whose letter went something like this:

“My life is totally scrambled. My husband left me 17 months ago after 11 years together. At the time we had a 2 year old son, and I was on medication for postnatal depression.

“I owned my own business. My ex was out of work for about 18 months, so I invited him to join my business, where he worked for six months. Four days before he left me, he talked me into signing documents making the business ownership fifty-fifty. In the divorce, he won total rights to the company.

“I feel abandoned. And sad. I still think about my ex all the time and wonder how I can possibly get him to change his mind. Sometimes I think maybe I should try to be friends with him, but I know it’s actually about getting back together, and it will be too devastating when he inevitably meets someone else and moves on.

“Sometimes I feel venomous hatred toward him, but I also really think that’s covering this deep sadness.”

She signed the letter, “Scrambled,” and made her husband sound like the good guy.

Polly responds…

“Your husband… left you when your son was 2 years old and you were struggling with postpartum depression. He worked for your business for all of six months, then manipulated you into making it fifty-fifty with him KNOWING HE WOULD BE LEAVING, then TOOK THE WHOLE gosh darned COMPANY.

This isn’t just abandonment. This is cold, calculated, self-serving thievery.

“No wonder you can’t imagine starting over! No wonder you can’t quit dating! No wonder, no wonder, no wonder!

“The world beat in your kneecaps with a tire iron, then handed you a scented candle and said, “Believe in your dreams!” So this is why you’re stuck. You’re trying to process this pain without looking at the full truth of the pain.

“I’m not asking you to stop feeling sad. I’m asking you to start feeling EVERYTHING. Your fear of your anger is blocking all the joy. Feel it.”

Can’t you imagine that THIS is what Rizpah discovers sitting out in the open air, day and night, running off wild beasts and carrion birds?

That not only had she thought herself a pawn

in someone else’s game,

that maybe she was seeking to forgive,

and maybe she was blaming herself,

and that ultimately, Abner, the secret lover, was a jerk???

That somehow “the world beat in her kneecaps with a tire iron…” and wanted her to accept the whole thing? Can’t you imagine, that beating back the wild beasts and carrion birds, Rizpah felt everything?

The only lasting truth is Change.

Now the truth is, not all change is like the change that Rizpah experienced. She is in the midst of experiencing soul-crushing change.

Change that makes food taste bad in your mouth.

Change that makes you bone weary.

Change that makes you feel physical pain.

Change that breaks relationships.

Change is hard, isn’t it?

I’m always tempted to list out all the changes that have been happening in our lives, but why don’t you do it? Tell me about the changes in your life?

[At this point, I asked the congregation what changes they were going through. Some mentioned changing relationships—between parents and children, children and parents, others mentioned divorce, another mentioned a death that feels both sad and full of relief. Still another mentioned a journey with an alcoholic, and learning that they cannot control others.]

So let me ask you…

How does it make you feel if I say, “God is Change?”

Adrienne Maree Brown believes it makes sense. She believes that the nature of the world is change… when there was nothing, change happened, and then planets and stars appeared. Then some change happened and magic and miracles happened. Change, change, change… Amoebas, tadpoles, whales. And we are not the end of this journey. How could God create that much change in the system and not embody change in God’s self?

And if God is change, what does that mean to Rizpah?

  • It means sitting in the dark…Accepting what has happened and feeling it.
  • It means trusting that other change can come, and that not all change is bad. Rizpah brought about restoration of Saul’s place in the history (and tomb) of his family, along with her sons.
  • It means we’re not alone in the change. God is right here with us.
  • It means that God is not shaken by change.

Oh friends, change is gonna come. Accept it, trust that it is not all bad, believe you are not alone, and believe that God has got this.

All that you touch
You Change.

All that you Change
Changes you.

The only lasting truth
is Change.

God
is Change.

Here’s a little prayer from Michael Leunig, an Australian poet.

God help us to change.

To change ourselves and to change our world.

To know the need for it.

To deal with the pain of it.

To feel the joy of it.

To undertake the journey without understanding the destination.

The art of gentle revolution.

Amen.

 

 

 

Wake Forest Baptist Church

Wake Forest Baptist Church
P O Box 7326
Winston-Salem 27109
Email: admin@wakeforestbaptist.org

Phone (336) 860-0777