God is Change (2.0)

 

Mark 6: 1-13
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
July 7, 2024

Photo of a climate change protest sign: Black background, Earth painted in blues and whites with gray land masses, and the words "One World" in white letters.

Earlier this week, after the Supreme Court handed down its presidential immunity ruling, some folks took to social media and posted about the dystopian novels that many of us had to read in high school or college. Brave New World. 1984. The Handmaid’s Tale. Fahrenheit 451. Now more than ever people are feeling like these chickens are coming home to roost. We had prophets amongst us and yet rather than heed their warnings and their wisdom, we were chillingly entertained or wrote a book report or a paper on literary criticism of science fiction.



One book that is now particularly disturbing was not mentioned—Octavia Butler’s 1993 bestselling novel The Parable of the Sower. When I first read these words she wrote—God is Change—they troubled me because I have always believed that God is Love. But when Octavia Butler examined the world as it was in 1993, from her perspective as a Black woman, and looked hard at the trajectory we were on, I think she came to the conclusion that God is Love only so far as we embody that love. God will love us unconditionally so far as we allow us to love ourselves and love our neighbors, even love our enemies unconditionally. We need God to be Love that is unlimited, unmerited, unconditional because human love is more often limited, merited, conditional, transactional, and changeable.



Even so, for all kinds of reasons, we human beings have difficulty receiving love, giving ourselves love that is unconditional, allowing it to heal us, heeding it as any kind of wisdom for living, thinking it impractical or wasteful when applied to community. And yet it’s never really been tried. No one has ever really given it a chance to change the world.



In all likelihood, the story of Jesus in the synagogue in Nazareth in the gospel of Mark is the same one that Luke elaborated on in his version. In Luke’s version Jesus is quoting the prophet Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Sounds a lot like applying God’s unlimited love to how we live and govern ourselves. Not coerced, not enforced, but an invitation. Jesus then said to those assembled that today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing and then they proceeded to try to throw him off a cliff. If Mark’s version was to show us that people we know and love are resistant to change, Luke’s version shows us how vehement that resistance can be.



If God is Love, the creative force that is within all living things, the mystery within which we live and move and have our being, then God is most certainly Change. Everything that lives, changes. Everything that life touches, changes. It doesn’t always feel or look like love, though. Sometimes it’s painful or sad or maddening or downright scary. But creation and truth and wisdom aren’t always warm and fuzzy. Sometimes what God is trying to tell us is that we must repent, which means to change direction, to turn toward God— what is good, holy, and true. Because we’re on the path to destruction. Either way, change will happen. And yet throughout human history, there are those who would rather destroy the common good than admit they got it wrong and repair the damage that was done. They would rather burn it down than change.



Most if not all prophetic voices come from the margins, from people who have been pushed there, from exiles returning home to backwater Nazareth to our LGBTQ kindred to our disabled siblings to our impoverished friends to our Asian, brown, Black, and Indigenous neighbors to the land and water and their creatures, all those oppressed by power, the dominant culture and by empire. How ironic that often it has been the dust of the Church that has been brushed off the feet of truth tellers. Prophets we have not only ignored but have actively attempted to destroy and continue to do so, even at our peril. What if being prophetic is about listening to those who have for too long been kept silent and gone unheard and then acting on what they say?



Which is why we need this Table that invites us to disrupt our lives for one another, that teaches us nonviolent resistance, that reminds us to open ourselves to voices, to truth, to wisdom we’d rather not hear, to change we’d rather not have to make. At this Table Jesus prepared those closest to him for one of the biggest, most difficult changes they would ever live through. He welcomed those who would betray and desert him, one who would lie he ever knew Jesus, one who would sell him out with a kiss. And yet he withheld nothing from them. He told them, this is my body, this is my blood, my substance, my love broken and poured out for you, and whenever you do this, remember me. Remember what I said. Remember who I came for, who I ate and drank with, who I forgave, who I called to follow me.



God’s unlimited mercy means it's never too late to heed the prophet’s message. It’s never too late to listen to our heart. It’s never too late to learn. It’s never too late to repent, to turn around. It’s never too late to forgive, to say we’re sorry. It’s never too late to love our neighbor, to love ourselves, or even to love one’s enemy. It’s never too late to be generous. It’s never too late to organize. It’s never too late to take action. It’s never too late to change, because God is Change.

Benediction – enfleshed.com (adapted)

Let us go in the direction of those who are wiser than us
Listening to those whose voices go unheard
For theirs is the cause of liberation
And when we all belong to each other
We all get free