Preaching on:
Mark 5:21–43

I think most of you have heard by now that a little more than a week ago I announced that I’ll be stepping down from my position as your senior minister here at the church. And in the interval here the church council and I have set my last day, which will be Sunday, September 8—which gives us 10 good weeks to say goodbye. And we need that time, I think, to say goodbye well—there’s a lot to celebrate that we’ve accomplished together, there’s a lot of gratitude to express for the way we’ve been there for one another, there are lots of fond memories to share, and there’s going to be some real sadness for some of us—certainly for me and for Bonnie. If you haven’t received my letter yet, please let me know and I’ll make sure you get a copy.

Since my announcement I’ve gotten a lot of phone calls and emails and letters from folks and had in-person conversations with some of you, and you’ve all been so gracious and kind and complementary and encouraging even, which actually makes it a lot harder to leave, to be honest. It would be a lot easier if you all just said, “Good riddance! Scram! Don’t let the door hit you!” But instead, your kindness and graciousness highlight for me all the more just how difficult this departure will be for me. It means so, so much to me that I’ve been able to be a positive part of your lives, and your support and your well wishes deepen the bond that we’ve built together over the last five years. And I think that’s the process of a healthy goodbye. It’s not trying to loosen the bond; it’s deepening the bond to the point of completion, so that we can let go with sadness and with joy. Your love and encouragement as I take this next step in my life and career mean more to me than I can adequately express right now. Thank goodness, I’ve got 10 more weeks to hopefully work it out.

As I’ve spoken to colleagues and friends and family about my decision, the first question they have for me when I tell them I’m leaving (after they find out that I’m not taking the expected path of leaving for another position at another church is, “Why are you leaving then? What went wrong?” Lots of ministers drop out because they’re emotionally or financially abused, their congregations are hotbeds of conflict and immaturity, or because they’re simply overworked, and one way or another they just burn out. But nothing like that is the case for me here. We have our moments, of course, everybody does! But that’s just a little spice in the curry here. We wouldn’t want things to get boring! But this is a healthy, stable congregation in a desirable area with amazing people and lots of resources where I’m appreciated and supported. Everything is great. So, what the heck could possibly cause you to want to risk losing all that? Good question!

I’m going to be completely honest with you all and vulnerable to boot and let you know that I don’t know exactly how to answer the question, “What’s next?” yet. All I know is that like Jesus in our scripture reading this morning, I have been interrupted. And for reasons that I can’t fully articulate yet, I know that I need to stop and give that holy interruption an opportunity to reveal and name itself in my life.

Just imagine the scene here for a minute: Jesus is on an important mission. Jairus’ daughter is dying. They’ve got to rush to get there in time to heal her. They’re fighting their way through this thick crowd, their minds must have been totally fixated on their goal֫—get to the house in time to save the little girl. And then Jesus does something totally bizarre. He just stops everything. “Somebody touched me! Who touched me?” And the disciples must have been like, “Look around you, scatterbrain, like everybody is touching you. Remember the dying little girl? Let’s keep moving! Come on!” And Jairus! Can you imagine how he must have felt? He must have been in an absolute panic for his daughter’s life. What could be more important than just continuing to get there? And really—really—did Jesus even need to stop at all? The woman with the hemorrhage was right, she was already healed just by touching Jesus’ cloak. You’d think he'd be grateful she didn’t throw herself at his feet and demand his attention the way that Jairus and so many others did. He could just get on with it. Hemorrhage healed, keep going. But not Jesus. In the middle of this critical, life-or-death mission for this big shot from the synagogue, Jairus, Jesus allows himself to be interrupted by an unnamed unknown. He stops everything simply because of a feeling inside of him that doesn’t really make any sense to anybody else, especially under the circumstances. And Jesus invites that unknown—that holy interruption—to speak and to reveal itself.

30 years ago this summer, at age 16, I heard the call to ministry. It was the same kind of thing—a literal interruption in my life, an abrupt moment where something shifted within me, and I suddenly knew beyond any doubt that I was going to be a minister. I heard a voice and everything. The whole shebang.

The next 10 years were spent simultaneously exploring and running away from that voice, that calling, that interruption in what I had previously thought my life might be. And then for the last 20 years, I fully committed to this inevitable and strange and wondrous calling. I went to seminary and worked my way up through ministry to arrive in this amazing place. And I assumed that the next 20 or 30 years would be much the same. I didn’t think I’d be in Glen Ridge forever, but when I left, I assumed I would be leaving for the next logical step—a bigger church, a bigger platform, a bigger budget, a bigger staff, a bigger salary, etc. etc. Not that those things were necessarily motivating me, just that that was the next logical and acceptable career move laid out for someone in my position. But instead, I’ve been interrupted.

This has been a very slow process. It started for me in earnest last summer. God began to speak to me. Not all in one moment, not with one voice, but in dreams, and synchronicities, and relationships, and books, and longings within me that could not be ignored. And over the last year of struggle and exploration and prayer, God’s intentions for my life have become clear to a degree. God is saying, I’ve got something for you to do that is off the beaten path. For the last 30 years, you have faithfully walked the clear path laid out for you by the church—college, the academic study of religion, resistance to the call, seminary, interfaith dialogue, internships, field education, a thesis, discernment, career counseling, psychological evaluation, search and call, ordination, chaplaincy, community minister, associate minister, interim minister, and senior minister. But now I’m asking you to risk it all, to take a leap of faith, and to step off the path of everybody’s expectations (including your own) and do something different. As Robert Frost famously wrote, “Two paths diverged in a wood, and I—/I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.”

The thing about the road less traveled is that you don’t know exactly where it’s going to take you. What I know for sure is that I’m not leaving ministry, I’m not abandoning my call, I certainly haven’t lost my faith. God is calling to me now to focus my energies and gifts on a new kind of ministry beyond the walls of the established church. I have some ideas about what this might look like and what it might become, but they’re not fully formed. They’re nascent, fetal. They’re still in the process of revealing themselves, and out of respect for them and this process, and in order to protect their integrity, I really can’t lay it out for you—but most of all I can’t do it because I don’t know yet. Vaguely, I can say that I’m going to begin to work as a spiritual director and I’m going to be working on some creative projects like a book, and at least one podcast that’s in the works, and some classes and retreats. And maybe—just maybe—I’m going to build something new and needed—maybe a new kind of church for a changing world. But in order for that to happen, I have to be faithful to this process and I have to allow myself to be interrupted and I need to make room in my life for something new to grow—as hard as that is to accept.

I wonder if you are open to interruptions. I’m not suggesting that everybody leave their jobs and try to make it on their own. This, for me, is a calling. You all have your own callings in life that are different than mine, look different from mine. But it’s worth taking some space to consider if you’ve made enough room in your busy schedules, in your impressive accomplishments, in your noble and worthy goals, on your bucket lists, for a little something new that wants to be known to interrupt you. Interruptions are not often immediately appreciated. If they don’t demand our attention, it’s easy to let them slip away. But paying attention to them might (might!) make all the difference.

Preaching on:
Mark 4:26–34

I’d like to invite you all to come by my yard sometime—take a good look—because right now everything is looking pretty good. I’ve been mowing it regularly (even the hard part, that steep rock-filled drainage ditch between the sidewalk and the road), I got the spring pruning and trimming all done, I cleared out the brush piles behind the garage that had been building up since last spring, I filled in all the old groundhog and chipmunk and rabbit holes, I pulled all the weeds growing out of the cracks in the driveway, we’ve cleaned up the garden beds, and I bagged up all the clippings. It’s pretty impressive! …If you’re going to walk by though to check it out, please do it soon, because in just about a week everything’s probably going to look terrible again.

It makes me anxious when the yard looks bad, especially in a neighborhood like this where most people’s lawns are professionally maintained and look perfect all the time. When I get too busy to mow or weed whack or prune or whatever, I feel like I’m letting everybody down, I feel like I’m letting the “Garden State” down. If someone stops to let their dog relieve itself in my yard, I worry even that the dog is judging me for my long grass. So, I prefer for things to look neat and tidy. I prefer for things to be under control. I prefer my lawn to look like everybody else’s lawn. I really do. But the yard has this mind of its own! It thwarts me! The grass and the shrubs and the weeds and the seeds, they have their own agenda.

Being “in charge” of a couple yards these last five years has taught me that I’m not actually in charge at all. The yards are in charge. I’m just like nature’s janitor, I’m the cleanup crew. I am not the boss, I’m just here to respond. And I take my orders from a higher power. “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle because the harvest has come.” The Kingdom of God is like a lawn: you think you’re in charge of it, you think you control it, you think you own it, you think you’re responsible for it, but the fact is that your influence is very limited. You can plant and you can cut. But the real magic—the life, the growth and transformation, the flowers and the fruit—they belong to God.

This all comes down to our spiritual attitudes, which are very important. In some ways, spirituality or Christianity is just an attitude. It’s an orientation to life. I plant tomatoes in my garden in the spring. I pick tomatoes off my vines all summer. I must be the King of Tomatoes! Tomatoes are here to serve me! But to those of us willing to listen to Jesus’ spiritual wisdom, we must cultivate a different attitude. I have received a gift too wonderful for me. And in response to that gift, I will become a servant to these tomatoes.

In Genesis, God tells Adam and Eve to work and care for the earth. God calls all of us to become stewards. But stewards, over time, often forget themselves and begin to behave like entitled kings and queens. When we elevate ourselves over the magic we are supposed to serve, we lose sight of it. God’s magic is a ground-level, grassroots kind of magic, and we need to stay close to the ground to really appreciate it.

We’re also called to be stewards of the church. We work and take care of it. And it’s critically important that we maintain the attitude that if God is at the heart of the church, just like God is at the heart of nature, then one of our most important jobs is to know when to get the heck out of the way of the magic. Get out of the way of the growth and the change and the transformation that can only ever truly belong to God.

And I’ll go one step further still. How often have you heard someone say, “Take control of your life!” “Become the master of your own destiny!” “Make your own future!” I’m not saying those things don’t work. There is a reason we live in a culture of power and dominance and control—because it produces results! I can’t argue with that. It also produces a lot of problems—war and conflict and pollution and the like at a global scale, but also, at the individual level, anxiety, and depression, and disconnection, and disease. So, being in control “works,” but I’m not sure we’ve really reckoned with everything we get in that bargain.

In my life, my greatest achievements, the biggest growth, the deepest and most meaningful callings have not been my doing. I’m only standing here with you today because God has made some magic in my life, magic that is far beyond my control. I am a steward of that magic, a responder to it. I’m along for the ride. I’m not the boss here. An instrument doesn’t play itself. I cannot understate the difference it makes in our lives to plant tomatoes and pick tomatoes as if you were a child at God’s magic show, as if you were instrument being played by God’s hand, as if (at any moment) a new and unexpected seed might be planted in your life. Because when we take control, all the yards look the same. When we take control, we stick to the well-worn path. When we take control, we think we already know everything we have to look forward to and we miss what God is doing.

The mustard seed is the smallest seed of all. But when it hits good soil, it grows like a weed. It takes over the whole lawn. Soon it’s a bush so big that the birds move in and make it their home. That’s what the Kingdom of God is like, Jesus tells us. It’s the seed you barely notice, that produces the weed you most want to mow down, that if you would only let it grow would transform your whole life. When you’re in control all the time, it’s very hard to go in an unexpected direction. It’s very hard for something new to sprout up in your life.

We so desperately want to believe that the Kingdom of God is the greatest power in the universe! No other kingdom can stand up to its greatness! God is almighty! All powerful! Whatever is happening in the world must be God’s plan! But Jesus’ teachings on the matter couldn’t be more opposite. The Kingdom of God is tiny, low to the ground, quiet, and easily overlooked. It must be searched for like a lost coin, like a lost sheep, like a perfect pearl. That means the Kingdom of God only has power when we pay attention to it in our lives. It only has power when we search for it in our lives, when we allow it to grow, when we humble ourselves to the point of placing ourselves within its power. The Kingdom of God only has power if we let it have power. It only has power if we respond to it.

When was the last time you were genuinely surprised by your relationship with God? When was the last time you let your spiritual yard get messy? When was the last time you allowed a pesky weed a little room to grow in your life? When was the last time you gave up control without giving up attention? When was the last time you got out of the way without turning your back completely on what was taking place?

Beloved, living a spiritual life requires a foundation of faith. Faith is not a series of beliefs that we assent to intellectually and then go about our business being the boss of everything. Faith is an attitude, a humbling orientation to life that enables us to believe in, and by believing respond to, God’s unexpected possibility.

May there be meaning in your messiness; may there be joy in your unexpected twists; and may there be magic whenever we get close enough to the ground to touch the Kingdom of Heaven. Amen.

Preaching on:
James 1:19–20
Romans 14:1–3

Most of us here, as Americans, have this deep inner sense that the freedom of speech is both a sacred right and a necessary evil. And whichever way you happen to be thinking of it at any given time has a lot to do with whether or not you’re in agreement with the last opinion you just heard. I’m feeling compelled to talk about freedom of speech this morning for just this reason. Because we all know we would never want to live in one of the many places where people aren’t free to speak up, speak out, speak the truth. And none of us—no person—is a true free-speech absolutist. We all feel like the line must be drawn somewhere, and we struggle with where, when, and how to draw that line.

This is all especially relevant to us right now because we just experienced a historic, controversial, and divisive antiwar, pro-Palestinian campus protest movement that’s left many of us with big questions about freedom of speech and expression, about the tactics and rhetoric of protesters and counter protesters, and about the response of the educational institutions and the police. And many of us are wondering: Where do we go from here?

So, I think I need to try to cover, briefly, three things this morning. I’m going to talk about the actual content of what the protesters have been saying. I’m going to talk about why I think freedom of speech is so important. And I’m going to talk about what our response should be to expression or opinion like the recent protests.

One of the biggest reasons that the campus protests have been so controversial and divisive is because they’ve been accused of being antisemitic. And there are a lot of competing opinions about whether or not that’s true. For example, there are pro-Palestinian Jewish protesters who say that they haven’t experienced any antisemitism at all in the encampments and protests. And there are Jewish students, students who believe that Israel’s war in Gaza is unjust and should be stopped, who have reported being targeted on campus because of their Jewish identity. We’ve seen reports of things like Nazi flags being flown at the protests. And we’ve heard from protest organizers that these things are isolated incidents from fringe individuals. We’ve heard chants like “Globalize the Intifada” which many Jews hear as a call for globalized violence against Jews, but which protesters claim is a non-violent call to action. We’ve heard “From the River to the Sea” which many Jews hear as a call for the total genocide and displacement of Jews in Israel, but which protesters claim is just a call for Palestinian freedom in the place they live. We’ve heard from protesters that Zionists are people who believe that Palestinians should never have a state of their own. We’ve heard from many Jews that Zionists are people who believe the Jews should always have a state of their own. Zionists have been particularly targeted by the protesters in terms of speech and action (“Zionists” have been harassed on campus and blocked from moving through campus, for example). Many Jews claim this is just a way to target Jews. Some protesters claim that they’re not targeting Jews, that they’re targeting Israel, its rightwing government, and its policies. Some Jews have claimed that any criticism of Israel, especially in this moment, is antisemitic.

I admire the protester’s calls to action for the Palestinian cause. I abhor war and violence. I hate the devastating toll this war has had on innocent people. There should be a ceasefire in Gaza now. And there needs to be a better, self-determining future for the Palestinians, ideally with their own state. That won’t be easy, especially with a group as absolutely detestable and dangerous as Hamas in charge of Gaza. But we need to figure this out or it’s only going to get worse for everybody. Israel cannot wipe out Hamas. I wish they could, but it’s just impossible without wiping out all of Gaza, and we can’t let that happen. I think the people in charge in Israel are smart enough to know they can’t wipe out Hamas, and they’re probably actually being motivated by other factors—from politics to revenge and even hatred. And it has to stop. So, to that point, I’m in accord with the protesters.

But what I—especially as a Christian, who recognizes the shameful part the Christian Church has had to play in the framing and perpetuation of antisemitism, and the key role the Church has had in establishing genocidal violence and persecution against Jews—what I cannot stand by or give a pass to under any circumstances is antisemitism.

Have the campus protests been antisemitic? Well, anecdotally there’s a lot of evidence that they have been. It’s really hard, in my opinion, to fly a swastika and then claim you don’t have a problem. But were these just isolated incidents? Or were the protests themselves systemically founded upon principles or narratives that are inherently antisemitic? That’s a harder question to answer. Where I’m at right now is that I am absolutely sure that the protests and the protesters, by and large, were not trying to be careful about antisemitism. It is not a priority for them.

For me to be truly comfortable with any movement in criticism of Israel or Jews, I would need to make sure that a commitment to anti-antisemitism is a foundational principle. The left has told us that passively not being racist is not enough. We need to be actively antiracist. For me, an outspoken commitment to anti-antisemitism has been sorely lacking in the protests and, I believe, it’s what is morally and strategically required by the campus protest movement as it moves forward.

Now should protests which are not anti-antisemitic and which sometimes cross the line in indisputable antisemitism be allowed to continue? Should these protesters be allowed to speak and express themselves freely. I believe, absolutely, yes. There are a lot of reasons to support the general principle of freedom of speech even when you will almost certainly disagree with some of that speech and even when some of it will be problematic and some of it will be vile. I don’t have time to get into them all. So, I’ll talk about one that I think is especially relevant to the recent campus protests.

In the West, especially in the United States, the freedom of speech has become a critical cultural rite of passage for young people (especially) in the process of discovery of who we are, of what we believe, and of what we’re capable of. Every person deserves to be a part of the conversation and deserves to express their deepest ideals to the rest of us. Absolutely no one should be silenced by the government or punished by the government for speech. As for the rest of us, we should do our best, as much as possible, to cultivate a tolerance for diverse opinions.

Many of the campus protesters have been described as naïve or as unaware of the history in Israel and Palestine. I’m sure that’s true of some of them, perhaps it’s even descriptive of the movement as a whole. But that’s a terrible justification for silencing someone. In fact, it’s all the more reason to engage them as productively as possible. It’s not always possible to engage people productively when they’ve barricaded themselves in your administration building, but it should be one of our guiding principles, certainly a long-term guiding principle. Like, we have no choice but to arrest you today, but that doesn’t mean we’re not going to talk to you tomorrow. We should honor the voices of these young people, even when they’re wrong. We should listen to them, even when it’s hard for us to do so. We should call them out, when they need to be called out. But we should engage them, rather than simply trying to make them go away.

Now, I’m talking now about speech—about the expression of ideas and opinions. But these have been protests—protests which (by design) have been extremely disruptive, sometimes destructive, sometimes a threat to safety and perhaps to necessary moral stands against antisemitism. Allowing someone the freedom to speak and to express themselves is not the same as allowing them to burn down the library, right? We all have a line. And every institution had to calculate that line for themselves. Some did better than others. It was extraordinarily difficult and stressful, and some of you were a part of those decisions. As a longtime leftie agitator, I can tell you absolutely that these protests are designed to get you to call the police on them. That’s part of the process here. It’s part of the dance. But when and how the police are called, and what they do when they arrive, is critically important. We cannot let ourselves get to a place where every time we see a bunch of young people getting rowdy and expressing themselves, we just automatically call the police and have them cleared out. That would be a huge mistake.

I saw very peaceful, relatively contained encampments cleared out violently by police under the watchful eyes of sniper rifles. I’m totally against calling the police out to attack peaceful, contained protests. If the response to your speech is a boot and a gun, you’re not likely to change your mind or to grow because you’re not likely to be able to give the opposing viewpoint, which is hidden behind force, any serious consideration. It is a huge tactical mistake, and it doesn't honor the process that these young people are engaged in. We should have some tolerance for disruption in order to allow people the ability to fully express themselves and the ability to fully hear opposing opinions. And that peaceful, contained disruption should be intellectually and morally engaged with and negotiated with. That is, I believe, a process, a ritual, a rite-of-passage in our culture that should be held sacred.

As Christians, especially as Protestant Christians, this right to freedom of speech and expression is central to our identity. The word protest is right there in the name—Pro-test-ant. We should extend this grace to others as much as possible. We should be, as James advised us in our reading this morning, quick to listen and slow to anger. And when speech is so vile as to be irredeemable, we should do everything we can to meet hate speech with loving speech, to meet bad ideas with good ideas. As Paul suggests in his letter to the Romans this morning, freedom of speech is not primarily a way of having arguments with the people you disagree with. It’s not about division. It’s about, as much as possible, offering people who are different from you, and perhaps even wrong, the grace and the space to still have a place at the table. And, I believe, a place at the table, and the right to express oneself, is the process by which we will grow toward greater love and greater justice.