Offering our shoes and boots for peace

At Luther Place January 1, 2012 we came together for worship offering our shoes and boots for peace; this is how we marked a New Years declared end of the war in Iraq. Listen to the full sermon: “New Years Peace: Boots & Shoes for Peace.”

This is a poem/prayer that I wrote for New Years Peace:

We mark the end of war
In Iraq
Not even 6 hours old
A peace cobbled together
years in the making
those of  us that stayed home
hardly familiar with its horror
unless those we love
put on their war boots
and went.
so many of us side liners
are relieved by war’s end
yet do we get
that war dust
still clings to so many boots
lives changed for ever
even in homecoming ?
Can we mark the start of peace
January 1, 2012
a peace brought to life
in our prince of peace
God with us
Emmanuel
Shalom
Can we promise today
Wherever we tread
This new year
That we offer our shoes
And boots for peace?
And if we fail
When We fail
Can we Seek the forgiveness
Of the one whose cross
Marks the reality
Of how difficult peace truly is.
Can we still be bold to pray this day
May peace prevail
May our shoes and boots
Walk for peace
Work for peace
Run for peace
Dance for peace
All ages together
Longing for
Gods promise of peace
In our 2012 days.
Teach us how, holy one.
Bear us up.
Give us the courage
To face the war
in our world
And in our own hearts.
We need your grace
To live into
Your wholeness
Your Shalom.

We offer today
Our shoes and boots
Our prayers and pleas
For peace.

Amen.

PKB

Modern Day Marys: Announcing Love

December 18, the 4th Sunday in Advent, is a day we hear the magnificat of Mary and honor the homeless that have died in DC over the last year.  We started Advent with  the plea: Tear Open the Heavens and Come Down!  God does come down to the Mary of long ago, and God comes down to us in modern Day Marys.  I wrote this sermon poem not knowing that 3 young men from OccupyDC, who were on a hunger strike for justice, would be sitting in the front pews on 12/18.  Mary’s “turn the world upside down” song in the first chapter of Luke does come alive among us in the world today….Where do you see it?

 

 

 

Announcing Love

An angel breaks into the world
of a young woman
announcing God’s presence
God’s peace
love in a new way
the breathe of heaven
will come to be and do
the impossible
flesh from flesh
among an  ordinary
odd shaped family.

Mary, an agent of love
says, Yes, to God’s dream.

Few understand her openness
to an ancient promise,
comfort comes in a cousin
also wrapped up in the impossible.

Elizabeth offers space for Mary
to magnify God out loud,
with the fervor of a revolutionary
Mary sings an upside down world song
where the poor   the lowly
receive abundance
God’s hospitality invites all,
Yet Mary sings that ones
built up
proud
rich
enthroned
go last.
An unnerving message for us,
unless we are
the last
the lost
without homes
unless we long for God’s peace.

We live in a day
where gaps are growing
economic distance between
top and bottom
multiply
There are some who mind the gap
sisters and brothers across the world
who occupy space
and speak truth to mighty power.

We need courage to face the
dissonance of our days,
and if you watch and listen carefully
announcements of love still echo
magnified by modern day Marys,
like Leymah Gbowe
a Nobel Peace Prize winning
Lutheran in Liberia,
her challenge to Liberians’ Warlords
made real in her campaign
against the systematic rape of women.

Leymah Gbowe’s book entitled
Mighty be the Powers –
a memoir of peace,
tells how Gbowe organized power
to turn her Liberian world upside down
The power?
no special ops
or fancy financial instruments
no government negotiated work plan
or complex bailout
The power?
Liberian women no longer victims
energized by holy rage to survive.
Dec 12, 2011, in Oslo, Norway
39 year old Gbowe spoke –
We challenged warlords
who preyed on women despite a peace deal
We used our pains
broken bodies
and scarred emotions
to confront the injustices and terror
of our nation.
She tells how Liberian women occupied
soccer fields
government building entrances
how they fasted and prayed
and drove the devil back to hell.
There are modern day Marys
thousands across the globe -
they magnify God’s love
strong
compassionate
wise
just
fleshy
a love that  comes down
to be with us
among us
in us
a love that occupies Advent
wrapping us in the blue swirl
of ancient promise
teaching us to love out loud for God
by loving others
and ourselves
so every breath of our days
announces to the world
mighty are the powers
of God’s peace.

PKB  12/2011

Reformation…reformation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A big day for Lutherans in the church year is Reformation Sunday.  We celebrate the almost 500 years since an Augustinian monk named Martin Luther broke from the Roman Catholic church over an effort to reform that church.   Through reading, study and a few Martin Luther movies, I have had the sense that Martin Luther was feeling the effects of a church that had gone overboard in using its financial resources, garnered from across the Roman Empire, to build churches in Rome that reflected an extravagant tribute to early church leaders.  One of the modes of fundraising was to sell indulgences to people  – official papers that would assure its owner of entry into heaven when they died.  This practice cut out any sense of God’s love bridging the gap we call sin–and it buried any understanding of God’s grace.

I didn’t fully get the pressure that the Pope and Rome was putting on all its churches for funding to build St. Peter’s Church in the Vatican until I visited Rome this November.  Martin Luther made a pilgrimage to Rome in 1510 , arriving in the city through the North Gate and staying at the Augustinian monastery  there.  He visited St. Peter’s in person — across the river the church structure loomed large.  The financial commitment to a structure so vast must have been astounding to Brother Martin.  It was to Pastor Karen!  In the 16th Century, faith in Jesus Christ had become a money generating business beyond compare — and to the German, Martin Luther, this reality had to change.  In order to make his case public, Luther nailed  a long list of his arguments (95 Thesis) to the front door of  the church  in Wittenberg,  Germany.     It was not Luther’s intention to make a new church, particularly  one named for him, yet through a movement sparked by his protest, the  Lutheran Church was born anyhow.

So, half a century later, are there things about the “church,” that need to be changed?  Funny thing is that now there is no one big church institution to reform — there are dozens and dozens of different kinds of churches, all claiming to be Christian.  And a whole other blog is about how there are some very different takes on what it means to follow Jesus Christ.  So I will take on the institution that rosters me as an ordained leader, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the church body to which Luther Place Church belongs.  We are not worrying about fighting with the Pope these days, in fact the fighting we do is more with ourselves.  One of the notions brought forth by Martin Luther was the “Priesthood of all Believers.”  This has to do with the flattening out of a very high hierarchy so that all the people are part of what it means to be the church.

At Luther Place, in early October, we went to the priesthood of all believers, the congregation,  and asked them to begin listing all the things that need to be reformed according to them in our present day.  We compiled the list on big paper, laminated all of our thesis,  and hung them from the base of the Martin Luther that stands in front of Luther Place church looking out on Thomas Circle.  We blessed our words on Oct 28, 2011, and prayed that God would continue to reform the ELCA so that it would reflect Gods’ desire for a church in our challenging and exciting days.

Here is our list, what do you think priesthood?

Speak out in public
Encourage balance
Manifest peace
Shed violence
Support the unemployed
Spread hope
Delight in diversity
Respond to injustice
Act with Courage
Organize inter-generational connections
Serve regularly
Nurture imagination
Delight in Grace
Utilize social media
Listen to the youth
Explore social entrepreneurship
Honor sacred earth
Pray ceaselessly
Radically welcome
Delight in same sex marriage
Let go of pride
Be more accepting
Channel holy rage
Smile more
Practice joy
Affirm transparency
Seek wisdom
Streamline church meetings
Do justice
Welcome the stranger
Love our neighbors
Receive ancient wisdom
Love, not judge
Face modern society
Challenge systems of injustice
Learn from artists
Reckon with poverty
Face privilege
Be creative
Channel the Spirit
Create analysis
Shift old paradigms
Honor mystery
Have audacious visions
Eat together more
Remove our walls
Include all
Reclaim radical Jesus
Honor varied music
Create new worship
Use soulful music
Experience God
Rejoice in interracial marriage
Build community
Dream what’s possible
What would you add?

Peace, Pastor Karen Brau