Sermon on Mark 4:26-34

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

As I said at the beginning of the service, today the ELCA commemorates the Emanuel Nine.

After sitting through the entirety of a Bible study on June 17, 2015 at Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, a twenty-one-year-old white man shot and killed nine Black people and injured another. He said he hoped to start a “race war.”

We condemn the violence committed by that young white man.

We grieve the nine lives of Black people of faith lost on that day and the many more lives affected by the trauma and loss.

We lament the perpetuation of white supremacy as an ideology and a systemic force in our denomination and our country.

It is daunting to face the vastness of white supremacy.

It’s powerful, it’s old, it’s often the status quo, which is hard to change. Influential people benefit from it. All of us who are white benefit from it to some extent.

It’s way easier to insist that I as an individual am not a racist than to recognize that I as a white person benefit from the effects of white supremacy, whether I want to or not.

That’s why it’s important for us to not only do our best not to do or say racist things but to live our lives in a stance that is anti-racist. It involves going against the grain. It requires active resistance to the status quo.

John Stuart Mill wrote, “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.”

We could rewrite that as, “White supremacy needs nothing more to continue and flourish than that good, law-abiding people look on and do nothing.”

But as much as Martin Luther is remembered and honored for being a transformer of society, the Lutheran tradition in the US is often set in its ways, finding identity in Midwestern white cultural artifacts like jello molds and being “Minnesota nice,” instead of finding our identity in being justified by grace and freed to live in service to our neighbors.

When acts of racial violence come from our pews, it’s important to reflect on what’s really important to us as Lutherans. What do we hold onto as our identity? Bach and lefsa andpotlucks?Or grace and truth and facing evil forces like white supremacy knowing we are all beloved children of God and nothing can change that?

There are Lutherans all over the world. The Lutheran World Federation represents over 77 million Christians in the Lutheran tradition in 99 countries. So, even though the ELCA is the whitest denomination in the US, Lutheranism is much bigger and more diverse than we sometimes remember.

But when faced with the vastness of white supremacy, it's easy to feel small and decide that as individuals, we can’t make much of a difference.

There’s a theme of insignificance in our Gospel reading today, too.

The person in the first parable seems rather detached: he scatteredseeds without seeming to tend to the ground. He goes to sleep without having done much beyondhaphazardly throwing a handful of seeds.And when the seeds sprout, “he does not know how.” The character in this story is passive and has hardly a role in the farming process.

Then, the next parable doesn’t even have a human in it. The tiniest of seeds is our main character. Who would guess that anything would come of it?

These—the passive farmer and the miniscule seed—are how Jesus decided to describe the Beloved Community.

And, indeed, they’re apt images for a ragtag group offishermen, tax collectors, women(!), and other unsavory folks following a wandering rabbi who challenges the status quo and upsets people in power.

That is not the group I would put my money on to spread around the world and through the centuries.

And yet, here we are.

We Christians often look more similar to the people in power Jesus upset than to his early followers, but his message lives on.

We Christians throughout the centuries have perpetrated violence, oppression, and genocide in God’s name. And we Christians have shown incredible mercy, stood up for justice, and loved one another as God’s hands and feet in the world.

Both/and. We are simultaneously saints and sinners.

And somehow, through the Holy Spirit, the seeds of the Beloved Community grow.

God’s creative power lives in us, God’s creations.

Peace and justice seem like tiny seeds that could never amount to anything against the powers of violence and white supremacy that dominate our world, but God can help tiny seeds grow far beyond our imaginations.

Violence is easy. It doesn’t require much imagination.

Peace is much harder. It needs imagination. And the Holy Spirit inspires it.

For instance, the German town of Wunsiedel had a problem. It had been the burial site of Rudolf Hess, Deputy Fuhrer to Hitler, and because of that, itwas the location of an annual neo-Nazi march.

Now there are some basic steps the town could have taken, like counterprotests or trying to get the marches banned, but ten years ago, they decided on a much more imaginative and effective approach.

They got people and businesses to donate 10 euros for every meter the 200 neo-Nazi marchers walked.[1] The donations went to the organization EXIT Germany, which helps people break from right-wing extremism and start a new life.[2]

So, the townspeople effectively turned the march into a walkathon for an organization against neo-Nazism. The marchers decided to proceed anyway, and so they raised nearly $12,000 against their own cause.

The townspeople used their imaginations to find a peaceful way to disempower the hateful behavior gathering in their town.

With what can we compare the Beloved Community, or what parable will we use for it?The Beloved Community is like the tiniest seed of hope for a better world that is sown in people’s hearts. It seems insignificant, but when it is sown, it grows up and becomes a great imaginative force for peace and safety and well-being for all life.

Imagination requires rest. A creative solution like a walkathon fundraiser to thwart a hateful ideology requires space for the Holy Spirit to work. It’s hard to think inventively when we’re exhausted and bogged down with the everyday hustle.

We need time to walk, shower, nap—those restful activities where inspiration most often strikes. That’s not a coincidence. Imagination needs rest.

Our world needs all of our imaginations. White supremacy and violence will fail if people refuse to look on and do nothing.

Counterintuitively, refusing to do nothing will require rest, especially rest for Black, Indigenous, and other people of color whose labor has gone unpaid and underpaid for generations. When the humanity of all people is honored and people are allowed to rest, creativity and peace will flourish.

The Holy Spirit cultivating Beloved Community in all our hearts will let it spread until it’s big enough to shelter all in its branches.

Rest, dream, and create peace, Beloved.

[1]https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/21/german-town-tricks-neo-nazis-into-fundraising-for-anti-extremist-org.html

[2]https://www.exit-deutschland.de/english/