Texts: Hebrews 11:8-10,13-16

At the beginning of the 1500’s, St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome was falling apart.  The structure went all the way back to the 300’s, a project of Constantine the Great, the first Christian Emperor of Rome.  After nearly 1200 years, the building needed some work.  What to do?  Renovate and remodel the existing building, or demolish the old and build something new?  Pope Julius II and the popes that followed went with the second option – out with the old, in with the new, a magnificent structure, still intact, that the American Ralph Waldo Emerson once referred to as “an ornament of the earth…the sublime of the beautiful” (Ralph Waldo Emerson, 7 April 1833) .

For about as long as St. Peter’s had been around, the church had granted some form of indulgences.  This is not to be confused with what we did this past Monday when we granted to our children, and ourselves, that we could indulge in as much of our neighbors’ candy we could eat for one night.  A church- issued indulgence was “a way to reduce the amount of punishment one has to undergo for sin.”  Traditionally, one could receive an indulgence through a prescribed good work or prayer.  In the 1500’s, when funds were tight for rebuilding St. Peter’s, several key leaders had the genius idea to market these indulgences for cash.  Your good work was a donation to the building project, and in turn you received an assurance of less punishment for your sins.

It was the “selling of indulgences” that motivated a German priest by the name of Martin Luther to write his 95 Theses against the corruptions of the church.  That was 1517, 499 years ago.  With the recent invention of the moveable type printing press, the 95 Theses document…

Text: Jeremiah 29:1-14

Today’s sermon was an inteview/dialogue with Jes Buller, Peace Education Coordinator for Mennonite Central Committee US.  We discuss the complicated relationship between peace and justice, the biblical concept of Shalom, her experience working alongside congregations in Colombia, and the resources MCC offers for churches in the US.

Audio only

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Text: Jeremiah 31

Speaker: Yvonne Zimmerman

Over the past weeks, in the company of our worship theme of moving beyond an ideology of colorblindness, into racial consciousness, toward posture of antiracism and lives that work for justice, we’ve been journeying with the prophet Jeremiah. Jeremiah’s public witness spanned 40 years before and during the great exile, when Jerusalem and its temple were crushed by the Babylonians.
As we have been learning, this was a time of Israel’s great undoing: The Temple was destroyed; the monarchy was terminated; everyone of social standing was carried away in exile. Only the poor were left behind to work the land.

The theological crux of Jeremiah’s prophetic message is that all of this national devastation is happening because Israel broke the covenant God made with them following their narrow escape from Egypt. In fact, The gist of chapters 1 through 29 is that the events of 587 and the loss of Jerusalem mean that the Sinai covenant is a spent force.  Done. These chapters are brimming with harsh condemnation of Israel’s values and institutions. The monarchy is corrupt. The religious authorities in the Temple are hypocritical. The elite of the city are nonplussed by rampant social injustice. All of this and more is evidence that Israel has refused the commandments, neglected their obligations, and, in so doing, diluted their distinctive identity as God’s chosen people.  Now, God’s judgement is upon them.

And the judgement is pretty horrible. As Joel pointed out several weeks ago, the oracle of Jeremiah 4 presents the destruction and desolation in terms that suggest that what is happening is tantamount to “Genesis 1 in reverse.” An uncreation. The video is playing backwards—people, birds, light—everything is gone. All is ‘formless and void.’

By contrast, chapters 30-33 of Jeremiah are known as the “Book of Comfort” in which the…

Texts: Jeremiah 32:1-15; Matthew 6:21

It’s a long and winding road from Jeremiah, through Jesus, to Jourdan Anderson’s 1865 letter to his old master, to the color coded map on the front of our bulletin, to the Black Manifesto, to Columbus, Ohio in the 21st century.  A long and winding road.  The letter and the map are both pieces that Adam brought in to our Exodus Bible Study class in the spring.  We were trying to make connections between the Hebrew’s exodus from slavery narrative and the African American experience.  These two pieces did that, with the bonus of bringing it home to Ohio soil.

Last Sunday’s sermon included the story of James Forman interrupting worship services at predominantly white churches throughout 1969, beginning with the influential Riverside Church in Manhattan, New York.  He did this to read from the recently written Black Manifesto which called for reparations for black Americans from white Christians and Jews.

One hundred years before this a formerly enslaved man named Jourdon Anderson, living in Dayton Ohio, wrote a private letter to his former master (included at the end of the sermon).  The old master had initiated the correspondence, as Jourdon acknowledges in the opening.  “Sir, I got your letter and was glad you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again.”  Jourdon goes on to highly qualify what he might mean by “glad.”  It seems that the former master still holds a place for Jourdon in his heart.  The feeling, it seems, is not mutual.  The formerly enslaved Jourdon would only be glad for a reunion if the old master has a change of heart.  And Jourdon is careful to outline just what a change of heart would look like.  He essentially asks that his old master…

Jeremiah 7, 26

Temple sermon #1

It was the beginning of the reign of King Jehoiakim of Judah, a little before 600 BCE.  Jeremiah, the priest and prophet, went and stood in the gate of the temple of Yahweh in Jerusalem.  He proceeded to deliver a sermon that did not bring the house down.  It didn’t physically bring the house down.  The invading Babylonians would do that 20 years later.  It didn’t inspirationally bring the house down.  As far as we can tell, nobody was laughing, clapping, or shouting ‘Amen’ at Jeremiah’s words.  On the contrary, the text says when he was finished: “then the priests and the prophets and all the people laid hold of him, saying, ‘You shall die!’”  Wow – not a sermon response most seminaries prepare you for.  I much prefer silence followed by a hymn.

In the sermon, Jeremiah had challenged the mentality that the temple was the ultimate source of security for the people.  He says, “Do not trust in these deceptive words: ‘This is the temple of Yahweh, the temple of Yahweh, the temple of Yahweh.’”  The way Jeremiah talks about it, this must have been a popular sentiment, and even a popular phrase of the time.  One neighbor says to another: ‘Hey, have you heard about those nasty Babylonians trying to take over the world?’  The neighbor replies: ‘Yeah, but we’re all good.  You know, we’ve got the temple of Yahweh.’  ‘Totally, the temple of Yahweh.’  The temple of Yahweh, the temple of Yahweh, the temple of Yahweh.

Jeremiah has a different suggestion.  “If you truly act justly one with another, if you do not oppress the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to you own hurt, then Yahweh will…