Jesus and the Disinherited, Part 4: Hate

 

Service of Worship

Eastern Parkway United Methodist Church

May 23, 2021

Rev. Natalie Bowerman, Pastor

 

Let us pray:

Come, Holy Spirit,
and comfort those who grieve.

Grant them the peace that only you can bring.
Stir within us a trust in life beyond death,
as we ponder the mysteries of Christ’s resurrection
and the hope we have in new and everlasting life.

Come, Holy Spirit,
and bring wholeness to the sick.

Strengthen those who are weak;
heal the wounded and broken;
give rest to the weary.

Come, Holy Spirit,
and inspire our warring world to seek peace,
to love our enemies,
to put away our weapons,
to remember the price paid for our freedom,
to care for those who have served.

Come, Holy Spirit,
and ignite a fire in our bones,
a passion for justice that cannot be quenched
until all of your children are loved,
until no one is marginalized or oppressed,
until everyone has the opportunity to thrive,
until the world is transformed and renewed.

Come, Holy Spirit,
and revive your church.

Liberate us from complacency and apathy;
inspire us with Christ’s vision for a world reborn;
help us to recognize our gifts for ministry
and to use them in service of others;
transform our hearts and our minds;
fill us with love that overflows;
remind us that there is no greater calling
than to love you with all that we are
and to love our neighbors as ourselves.

Gracious God,
give us a glimpse of your kingdom
emerging around us
and drawing us into the new things
you are doing in the world.

It is for your kingdom that we now pray,
filled with your Spirit,
using the words Jesus taught us.

Our Mother, Father, Creator God, who art in heaven, hallowed be they name. Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the Kingdom, and the Power, and the Glory forever, Amen.

 

Acts 2: 1-21

The Holy Spirit Comes at Pentecost

2 When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. ² Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. ³ They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. ⁴ All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues^[a] as the Spirit enabled them.

⁵ Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. ⁶ When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken. ⁷ Utterly amazed, they asked: “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? ⁸ Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? ⁹ Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia,^[b] 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome ¹¹ (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” ¹² Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?”

¹³ Some, however, made fun of them and said, “They have had too much wine.”

Peter Addresses the Crowd

¹⁴ Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd: “Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you; listen carefully to what I say. ¹⁵ These people are not drunk, as you suppose. It’s only nine in the morning! ¹⁶ No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel:

¹⁷ “‘In the last days, God says,
    I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
    your young men will see visions,
    your old men will dream dreams.
¹⁸ Even on my servants, both men and women,
    I will pour out my Spirit in those days,
    and they will prophesy.
¹⁹ I will show wonders in the heavens above
    and signs on the earth below,
    blood and fire and billows of smoke.
²⁰ The sun will be turned to darkness
    and the moon to blood
    before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord.
²¹ And everyone who calls
    on the name of the Lord will be saved.’^[c]

 

A Message

“Jesus and the Disinherited, Part 4: Hate”

 

Friends, we’re now up to part 4 of this 5 part sermon series based on Jesus and the Disinherited by Howard Thurman. We’re learning more each week about the heart of Jesus, the man we follow, and emulate, as we become more and more committed to discipleship. The first week of this series, we learned that Jesus is the vine off of which we grow, the source of all that nourishes us, and the protector from all that would harm us. The second week we learned that Jesus is our protector from the things we fear, and that he prepares us to fight back against the oppressive forces that terrorize our neighbors. Last week, we learned that Jesus is our voice of truth, and that he equips us with strength and bravery to face the oppressor with sincerity. The title of this week’s chapter is “hate”. What is hatred in the world, where does it come from, how does it stir up within us, and what does Jesus do about it?

 

As a devoutly nonviolent theologian Thurman naturally has much to say about this subject, but before I even made my outline for this week’s sermon I had something else stuck in the back of my mind—a prayer penned by Thurman that’s in our hymnal on page 401, titled “For Holiness of Heart.”

 

Lord, I want to be more holy in my heart.

Here is the citadel of all my desiring, where my hopes are born, and all the deep resolutions of my spirit take wings.

In this center, my fears are nourished, and all my hates are nurtured.

Here my loves are cherished, and all the deep hungers of my spirit are honored without quivering and without shock.

In my heart, above all else, let love and integrity envelop me until my love is perfected and the last vestige of my desiring is no longer in conflict with thy Spirit.

Lord, I want to be more holy in my heart.

 

So, first thing: if you were curious what I meant when I said Thurman was a mystic, I meant that. That kind of prayer is what mysticism is all about, the kind of spirituality that invites you to join hearts with the Divine. This mystical liberation theology is one that brings your heart right next to Jesus’, changes its shape, and then gives it back to you so that you, a transformed person, can go soften the hearts of others and create a just world. You hear that quite radiantly in that one prayer, and I’ve used it in worship too many times to count over the last nine years of my ministry because I love the message so much.

 

Still, there’s a few turns in that prayer that always catch me off guard, so much that I often adlib and change it a bit while I’m reciting it. “In this center…my hates are nurtured.” I’ve always liked to think I know what he really means by that, but I’ve often worried that if I say that line as written you might mistakenly think that Thurman is asking God to grow his hatred, and often I soften the language and say “wounds” or “hurt” instead.

 

But this chapter, “Hate”, really highlights what Thurman meant in a line like that.

 

Not a single one of us will want to admit this out loud, and especially not in a church, but we all are inclined to hate things, and even people. We have to significantly undress our public self-representation in order to admit that, so we won’t, and that’s mostly ok. We want to walk around with a visible “live and let live” attitude, it’s a far easier way to make friends. But Thurman breaks down the psychology behind the feeling of hatred, and helps us understand that we get there because it’s a form of self-protection. It doesn’t make you evil to have feelings of hatred. It makes you human, and vulnerable.

 

Thurman also breaks down that it’s not a lack of love that creates hatred, it’s a lack of relationship. Hatred happens when we get put in a situation where we’re facing a person categorically different from us, and we don’t get to establish any kind of bond or human understanding. Our deeper desire to do that for anyone gets disrupted by some outside force interceding. The example that Thurman uses is one that was very timely for him: during World War 2 Americans were taught to hate the Axis Powers. It was the only way we could tolerate the violence of war. When you have to go out with weapons prepared to kill someone, telling yourself they’re the enemy and you hate them protects you. If you dehumanize the person you’re prepared to kill then that hatred preserves your belief that you’re a generally good and altruistic person, you’re just doing what you are because the circumstances require it. Hatred even lets you say that you’re prepared to harm another person because if you didn’t then they would harm you. Hatred works so well because the messages it tells you are half right, so they stick.

 

Thurman helps us see how easy it is to dehumanize someone who’s different from you, even when that person is your neighbor. Classism makes the dehumanization even easier, as do sexism and racism. Our inclinations toward hatred make the oppressors’ job a lot easier. A person who wants to hoard power and wealth will teach us to be distrusting of one another. A person with that goal will walk up to a jar with one hundred cookies in it and will take 99 of them. Then when you take the only cookie left, they’ll convince you to watch your back because that “welfare queen” over there is going to steal your cookie! You learn to stereotype, dehumanize, and hate people of color, poor people, and women. And you justify it because, in your mind, you’re defending your livelihood. People in those groups fear you because of how you look at them and how you treat them, and they start wishing you harm because of it. We all fight with one another, and the person who started it all in the first place is just sitting back and enjoying his cookies.

 

Jesus was fully human, and, in my understanding of him, not immune to this plot. He voiced his woes, he pleaded and cried to be spared of the cross, he flipped over tables in the Temple and chased people with a whip, and he cried out on the cross that his God had abandoned him. Jesus knew the dark side of human nature. He knew what it meant to fear, to dehumanize, and then to hate. But he restrained himself from that path out of an abundance of wisdom that that wasn’t the right way. Hatred wouldn’t help him, it wouldn’t help his friends and neighbors, and it wouldn’t bring about the Kingdom of God. Something much smarter and stronger would do that.

 

In the Gospel of Matthew Jesus teaches us to be wise as serpents but gentle as doves, because we go out into the world like sheep among wolves. Be aware of oppression. Name it, know what you’re up against, and figure out the source. Knowledge is power. In Jesus’ time and place, finding the source of his peoples’ oppression wasn’t that hard. Rome occupied Palestine and made life miserable for Jesus’ neighbors. But I argue that Jesus went much deeper than that in calling out and naming sources of oppression. He was no fan of the Roman Empire, but he also took notice of those around him who found a small foothold of power and ran with it, even supporting Rome and betraying their neighbor for their own self-interest. Tax collectors functioned like this, and Jesus encouraged tax collectors like Zacchaeus to apologize and make amends for their behavior. The Pharisees operated like this, and Jesus confronted them over and over for their self-serving hypocrisy. He never hurt anyone, and he refused to let his followers resort to violence even though a violent overthrow of Rome was precisely what they wanted and expected from Jesus. But violence stems from hate, and Jesus refused to go down that road. When you hate someone who hurts you, even when your thoughts and actions feel very justified, you help them hurt you even more. In the immortal words of Maya Angelou, “Hate: it’s caused a lot of problems but it hasn’t solved a single one yet.”

 

Jesus invites us to reject hatred and help that which we find within us morph into something better. This, I think, is what Thurman meant in that prayer when he said “In this center…all my hates are nurtured.” The way to heal yourself of hatred is to invite God to mend the pain that caused you to start hating in the first place. And then you heal the world after you’ve healed yourself, and that happens through taking accountability and making amends for our actions, and then restoring the humanity of those we once hated by building the relationship that got broken in the first place. Our hearts were meant for love.

 

This is the core message of Pentecost. People from many lands have come to Jerusalem and are gathered around the Temple, but, despite their shared Jewish identity, fear one another, and could become military enemies at any time. They have no fellowship, no relationship, no love. Then the Holy Spirit breaks through those human made walls and suddenly the disciples become bilingual and compelled to start saying new words. But enmity toward someone you don’t know is a hard thing to shake, and the most cynical witnesses accuse the disciples of day drinking. It’s easier for some to believe that getting drunk enables you to start speaking fluent Arabic than to believe that God is capable of bringing us back together.

 

Whose language do you need to learn today? Who have you never dared to share a conversation with? Who has the curtain of hatred veiled you from seeing as a person? Who do you fear? How can God nourish your fear and nurture your hate?

 

And how can we help one another? How can we act to hold one another accountable for what we’ve done wrong so that our neighbors who hide behind fear and resentment can feel safe to come out from behind those walls? What do we need to do to rebuild those relationships so that we can rebuild the Kingdom? Jesus is eager to help.

 

Amen.

 

I invite you to receive the benediction:

Go out into God’s world filled with the spark of the Holy Spirit. Let love guide your actions. Listen for the Spirit of Truth. Spread the peace of Christ and remind everyone you meet that they are a beloved child of God. Amen.