Draft of Sermon for St. Paul's Lutheran Church, Landsdowne, PA, June 21, 2015

The Events as Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston are continuing to play out in the news over this weekend.  From the standpoint of a pastor, these events carry lots of responsibility for pastors and congregational leaders.  Part of the DNA of African Methodist Episcopal churches is openness to the stranger.  Their history, started right here in Philadelphia, is openness to all who come to worship and pray.  For their beginnings started with a resistance toward black worshippers coming to the main altar rail at St. George’s Methodist Church near the Ben Franklin Bridge.  Richard Allen led the Black congregants out to find a place of worship of their own.

I found it amazing how many new readers proposed the need for security in churches.  What I found seriously troubling was the news programs ability to find pastors who seriously noted a need for ‘armed’ security in houses of worship.  It’s not that I don’t want to be safe.  As the interim pastor at Christ, Upper Darby, we were continuously challenged to be an open and inviting place with our food bank, multiple community programs, neighborhood outreach, afterschool program and beginning next week, Summer Day Camp.  

Churches are known to places of sanctuary.  Even one place is referred to as our sanctuary.  The security we seek may not be come from the forcefulness of armed guard and metal detectors that have been suggested by some this past week.  We cannot live and profess the freedom of the Gospel from the midst of a locked, guarded sanctuary. 

Even in the midst of a community gathering on Thursday night at Mother Bethel AME Church in Philadelphia, the gathered congregation, which represented the multiplicity of faith communities and communities of people of other spiritual contexts did not let the host past host pastor recognize those who were new to the worship space as guests, for they affirmed the reply of one person, that on that night, everyone gathered was AME.  There is to be no fear in the Christ community.

Please re-read the Gospel for this day. 

4:37 A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped.
4:38 But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?"
4:39 He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, "Peace! Be still!" Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm.
4:40 He said to them, "Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?"
4:41 And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, "Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?"

We do not profess a faith of fear.  It is rooted in the Gospel.  The disciples, who were not fishermen, had not availed themselves of swimming lessons from those who were skilled at taming their fears of being at sea.  Sea storms can be fearful, even in the last month we noted the drowning deaths of tourist on the Yangtze River, a river ride I took 3 years ago.  Jesus seem to trust the ability of others, and when called upon, he did have the ability to call upon a higher authority.  Peace be still.

This teaching moment was not lost on Jesus, when he asked them “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith.  Those gathered in that boat rocked, fear inducing boat ride were still stunned to witness Jesus have the wind and the sea obey him.  Do we still join them in our wonder?

Perhaps we need to take our forefathers in the faith a bit more seriously.  As Jesus spoke truth to his detractors, so did Luther, with a simple statement of “Here I stand”.  Richard Allen, founder of the AME Church was limited to leading worship at St. George’s at the 5 AM service.  Daniel Alexander Payne, who as a member at Mother Emanuel, was sent north with letters of introduction from the Pastor at St. John’s Lutheran in Charleston in 1835 to Gettysburg College to enhance the education that he had obtained to form and lead his own school at age 18. Payne was ordained a Franckean Lutheran before returning to his Methodist roots and become a Bishop and President of Wilberforce college.  It is no small wonder that the AME church college and seminary system mimicked the Lutheran system of education of clergy.

Even two of the victims at Mother Emanuel AME church - the Rev. Clementa Pinckney and the Rev. Daniel Simmons - were graduates of the Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary.  These were our brothers in Christ, who had been welcomed without question into seminary classrooms that we support, just as we have done with AME pastors here in Philadelphia.  Our openness to teach and share faith with others is the power of the Gospel lesson for today.

Our prayers need to be expanded beyond just the significant concerns that are raised about racial hatred and its expression in the United States.  Though many have also hinted that this week’s tragedy was an attack on religious liberty, we find that the issues may be much closer to home as an exercise of cultural fear.  It is a question of who is our brother and sister.  How do we teach and encourage spiritual development, which says we are a part of an inclusive body of Christ.

We have been asked to pray by Bishop Herman Yoos, Bishop of the ELCA South Carolina Synod and by Bishop Elizabeth Easton, Presiding Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

We do this not because in this week we are all AME, but we do this because we are all children of God and Sisters and Brothers of Christ, who invites us all to have open doors to share both God’s Word and God’s Love.

AMEN.

My thanks to Brian Stoffregen, the Philadelphia Inquirer, The Southeastern Synod of Pennsylvania, Bishop Yoos and Bishop Eaton and all that I have learned about our joint history.

I dream a world where man
No other man will scorn,
Where love will bless the earth
And peace its paths adorn
I dream a world where all
Will know sweet freedom's way,
Where greed no longer saps the soul
Nor avarice blights our day.
A world I dream where black or white,
Whatever race you be,
Will share the bounties of the earth
And every man is free,
Where wretchedness will hang its head
And joy, like a pearl,
Attends the needs of all mankind-
Of such I dream, my world! 

Langston Hughes