Matthew 4: 18-24
Becoming
When I was in grade school, I can remember practicing Civil Defense drills. Can any of you remember those days? Our teacher would tell us to get out of our chairs and crawl under our desks. This was how we were being taught to protect ourselves in case of a nuclear attack. To hide under our desks. That was in the early 1950’s. Eisenhower was president. I was probably about 10 or 12 years old.
Fast forward about fifteen years, Sally and I are married, and she is teaching in an inner-city school and the kids are learning “community awareness drills.” Children in inner city schools were being taught to get under their desk if there was an active shooter in the building. Who would have dreamed then that this would become standard practice in our schools forty years later, not because of a nuclear threat but because schools have become targets for people intent on killing teachers and children. We have normalized an absurd level of violence in our everyday lives and in the lives of our children.
Yet, the Supreme Court expands the right to carry concealed weapons, defend the civilian use of military weapons, and hands down decisions that make it incredibly difficult for women to access abortions and other basic health care. The Court’s decisions make it crystal clear that the Court itself is a clear and present danger to the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness for many of us and for millions of our fellow citizens, and the Court’s majority promises that there is more to come. Anita Hill said just the other day that we should expect stronger restrictions on reproductive rights. Justice Sotomayor and two other justices said the majority’s ruling is a “loaded weapon” that “takes aim at the rule of law.”
About a week ago I talked with a friend of mine in the GLBTQA+ plus community. I asked him if it is time for Wichita to establish a Pink Triangle Park. He promised me that he would talk it over with members of that community and get back to me. People know about the Star of David and how the Nazi’s forced Jews to wear the Star of David. Fewer people know that the Nazi’s forced gay, lesbian and, I think, trans-people to wear an inverted pink triangle. This is unbelievable but as late as 1986, William F. Buckley, a leading intellectual on the right, proposed using the Pink Triangle to identify people with AIDS. Through a lot of hard and dangerous work, the GLBTQ+ community has reclaimed this symbol and made it a badge of resistance. There is a Pink Triangle Memorial Park in the Castro District in San Francisco. I asked my friend if perhaps it is time for such a park here. We’ll see what he says. If you have friends in the Queer community ask them for their opinion. Does Wichita need a Pink Triangle Memorial Park? I do not know the answer, but I think it is a question worth asking.
Hanging over all this repression is the shadow of a nuclear war. Putin is the only one who is willing to openly talk about the prospect of nuclear war, but does anyone believe that similar conversations are not being held in the Pentagon and among Nato forces?
My aim this morning is not to send everyone into a deep and everlasting depression. Emma Lazarus’s words still have great meaning for us–” Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free.” That’s the promise of this nation to the world. It is a faith-based promise. She was a Polish Jew and a woman who drew her inspiration for the poem from her work with refugees. Her name for the Statue of Liberty, was the Mother of Exiles, holding a torch aloft to light the way for people seeking shelter. Give me your tired, your poor, your hunger, your huddled masses yearning to be free. The International Refugee Committee says Kansas will receive about 650 Afghan refugees. The last figure I saw reported 950 refugees this year in Wichita. In 2021, the IRC resettled 106 refugees. This morning I am asking our Scattered Community to help us identify our role as a church community working with others to help welcome immigrants and refugees.
I began with a memory from my childhood, let me end the same way. In 1957 a Peace Action group was formed. The name of the group was SANE. One goal of SANE was to prevent the deployment of nuclear weapons in space. Another goal was to promote a US foreign policy based on common security and the peaceful resolution of international conflict. SANE promoted the idea that every person has the right to live without the threat of nuclear war, and that war is not a sustainable response to conflict. They also believed that the United States has both the resources and the tradition to provide global leadership to achieve these aims. One of the challenges for us, and it is a challenge I think we are ready to embrace, is to learn how we can organize ourselves as a community to act in concert with other groups to be that salt and light that Jesus talked about.
Better yet, I want to leave you with this image. Remember, I said last week that the New Testament, especially the gospels, were written as teaching tools. They were written to help followers of the way of Jesus talk with each other so they could figure out together what this meant to them. People are still reading the gospels for this very same reason. So, here’s the passage, Matthew 4:18-20: Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, when he saw two brothers, Simon and Andrew, casting a new into the sea, for they were fishermen. And he said to them, “Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.” Matthew tells us, “immediately they left their nets and followed him.” Here’s what that vignette tells us. Simon and Andrew were catching all kinds of fish in their nets–sunfish and crappies and probably salmon, too, why not. And then they got caught up in the net of Jesus’ love–and it changed their lives. Here’s the homework: reach out to someone you have been talking with over the past few weeks, someone you are getting to know, and talk with them about what it is like to get caught up in the net of Jesus’ love.