Look toward heaven and count the stars

Sermon for Ninth Sunday after Pentecost

Good Samaritan Lutheran Ministry

August 11, 2019

Gen 15:1-6; Heb 11:1-3,8-16; Luke 12:32-40

Good afternoon, Good Samaritan! I am so glad that all of you are here today. I am glad that God has called each one of us to be here in this place, at this time, together. It is no accident. Pamoja sisi ni kanisa. We are church together. And we are family. Welcome home. In my heart, you shine like stars. You are exactly what heaven looks like. Now we might not always feel like stars, but faith tells us that this is true. Our reading from Hebrews tells us, “Faith is the assurance to things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

Let us pray:

Gracious God, you have called us from every tribe, from every nation, and from every language to stand before you, to gather around your throne where your Lamb is seated. Give us today a vision. Give us faith to see your vision. May we see in each other what you see in us. How we are loved, how we are made righteous, how we are beautiful in your sight, O God Most High! So open our eyes, Lord, open our ears, open our hearts to hear what the Spirit would say to us this day. And may the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord our Rock and Redeemer. In your Son’s precious name, Amen.

Now I am not much of a preacher and I don’t tell jokes well. But the first time I preached here I got a good laugh when I asked this question: Before you came to this country, did you think the United States would be a Promised Land? Maybe you hoped that would be the case, maybe you needed that to be true. But I’m sure it did not take long on the ground to come to different conclusions.

Indeed my heart is broken to see how my country has turned it back on asylum seekers and refugees. Indeed devils fill the land stoking fear and hatred of immigrants. At our southern borders, children are being torn away from parents seeking asylum. They are being locking up in cages without enough food, water, blanket, or even space to lie down on the cold hard floor to sleep. It is without mercy. It is degrading and dehumanize by design. ICE raids in Mississippi and other states are dragging parents away for deportation, leaving crying children in the wake with no one to care for them.

This is sick. My country is not morally or spiritually well. And as a citizen, I want to say this is not my country. This is not the America that I love. We are better than this. But indeed, this is who we are. These are manifestations of our American demons, demons of hatred, cruelty and racism that have plagued our republic from the beginning. We now see how very little it take to stir up these demon and drag us headlong into sin as a people. We have submitted to spiritual wickedness in very high places.

This week leaders and delegates of our denomination, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, have been gathering in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for the annual Churchwide Assembly. This body has taken up two important issues. The first is that the African Descent Lutherans Association, of which this congregation is a member, has asked the Church to make formal apology for the sin of racism and the church’s complicity in the historic mistreatment of people of African decent. By the Grace of God, the ELCA has now made this public Apology and will be working on ways to commemorate this and further the work of racial reconciliation. The second is that the ELCA has resolved to be a Sanctuary Church. This means that as a national denomination we are willing to give sanctuary to immigrants, to shield them physically from arrest and deportation if necessary. For example, if ICE were pursuing an undocumented immigrant, that family could take physical shelter within our churches. In defiance of any law, we would not hand them over to government authorities, but would provide for their needs within our church walls. These two resolutions, The Apology to People of African Descent and the Pledge to be Sanctuary Church, may seem unrelated to each other, but in fact they are deeply related to each other. I will try to explain this both with our scripture readings today and with some US history.

First, let’s consider the passage from Hebrews 11. We read:

⁸By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going.
⁹By faith he stayed for a time in the land he had been promised, as in a foreign land, living in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise.
¹⁰For he looked forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.

What was this faith that moved Abraham and Sarah to set out to a new land. They believed that God would give them many heirs, their children would be a mighty nation. But when this promise came to Sarah and Abraham they were childless, and they were really to old ever to have children. The promise, though beautiful, was in practice impossible. In our passage from Genesis, it says that

[The Lord] brought him outside and said,

"Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them."

Then he said to him,

"So shall your descendants be."
⁶And he believed the LORD; and the LORD reckoned it to him as righteousness.

You see, the way things looked on the land, this whole promise way no-go. It can’t happen. It won’t happen. But God commanded Abraham to look up and see the stars. God said this his how your children will be. Not lifeless in the dust, but lifted up and shining in the night sky. God needed Abraham and Sarah to look up, to see their own life and their children’s as God sees them. You are stars! Now one of our children here is even name, Nyota, which means Star. And Nyota is a beautiful star. But look around, sisi sote ni nyota nzuri, we are all beautiful stars, nyota nyingi, many stars. When we look up with faith, we see how God sees us. We see that we are precious children, each and everyone of us. When we look up with faith, God counts us among the righteous.

But when we look on the ground, we see something else play out. We see how greed and fear can lead to hatred and dehumanization. Racism is sin, make no mistake. Hatred of immigrants is sin too. Both are a blatant refusal to see others as heirs of God’s promise to Abraham. But how do we get out of this? How do we get to a place where we can simply share the land as joint heirs of God’s promise? How do we seek asylum to a better country.

Abraham and Sarah obeyed God and set out to find this place. They did not know where they were going, and often neither do we. By faith Abraham and Sarah actually stayed in the land promised to them, but did not know it. We too find ourselves in this land. Is this our Promised Land, do we know it? Abraham and Sarah lived strangers in a foreign land, even their grandchildren were not counted as citizens of this land. And yet this was truly the land promised to these descendants forever.

When Europeans first landed in the Americas, they saw it as a huge opportunity. The land could be exploited, and its produce could be traded with Europe for great profit. Europeans brought with them guns and diseases that killed of most of the native inhabitants. They tried enslaving native peoples, but under such harsh demands the enslaved natives died too quickly. In their greed, the Europeans set their sights on Africa. Over several centuries, some 12 million souls were taken from Africa and sold into slavery in the Americas. Perhaps some European colonists saw themselves as having been given a Promised Land in this New World, rightly enjoying blessings from their Creator. But what of the Native Americans and what of the enslaved Africans? How could they claim this this land as their inheritance? The natives were exiled, driven out of their ancestral homelands, while the Africans became somebodyelse’s property in a land of bondage. Could these stand with Abraham? Seeing the stars in the night sky, could they also hear a voice whisper, “Look at those stars! So too shall your descendants be.”?

Indeed, Jesus tells us, when we have been ripped from our homelands, when we have been separated from our families, when we have been oppressed in strange lands, “Do not be afraid, my little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” He tells us to sell what we have and give to one another. This is like a purse that no thief can take away. Investing love in each other is like laying up unfailing treasure in heaven. We might not know where we are going or how to get there. But look up at those stars. They are the same stars you saw in Africa. They are the same stars you can see anywhere on this planet. Look up and have faith.

Jesus also tells to be dressed for action and have our lamps lit. The ELCA has declared itself to be a sanctuary church. This is timely. We don’t know how we will be tested in the coming years. But we know that we must be a sanctuary for any person who has no place to go in this land.

Have you heard of the underground railroad? In colonial America, there was a network of people African Americans and Abolitionists who worked together to help enslaved Americas escape slavery. Houses and churches became hidden train stations. Fleeing slavery, if you could find your way to one station, the station master would give you food, shelter, and safe hiding. The station master would also tell you how to get to the next station. You’d leave at night and make it to the next stations. There that station master would set you up for the next leg in your journey to freedom. The Fugitive Slave Act made this an illegal operation in all of the United States, not just the slave states in the south. But Abolitionist churches and families were willing to defy national and state laws to give sanctuary. There were also freed African Americans who would serve as spies posing as slaves. They’d gain entry into plantations and tell those who were enslaved how they could escape, how they could travel the underground railroad to Mexico, Canada, Florida before it became a State or the far west.

You see, this was a resistance movement that helped Americans seek asylum outside of the US. About 100,000 enslaved Americans found freedom this way. But why did they have to flee in this way in the first place. Wasn’t the US, the Land of Liberty, a democracy? Slavery was both a political divide and a political compromise from the very beginning of the Union. Even the US Constitution was formulated to preserve that compromise, even counting slaves as 3/5 of a person. So while some heroic abolitionists may have defied laws to help Americans find asylum in other lands, most churches simply accepted the compromise and allowed slavery to persist until the Civil War. Specifically, the ELCA is apologizing for the complicity of Lutheran churches, largely a complicity of silence and inaction in the long history of racism from the time of slavery and Jim Crow and that persists even to this day. It is fitting that our church renounce the sin of racism even as it pledges itself to give sanctuary.

So Jesus indeed calls us to be dressed for action and to have our lamps lit. We need to read the gospel carefully. Jesus tells us to be a slave waiting for their master to return, so that they might open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks. There was a time when churches in the south saw in this some justification for slavery. Indeed, doesn’t Jesus bless slavery when he says, “Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes”? The eyes of racism would easily read it that way, but they would be utterly blind to what follows. Jesus continues to explain how the slave would be blessed. “Truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down, and he will come and serve them.” You see, Jesus turns this whole thing upside down. The master is the one who comes to serve that slave—not the other way around. This master comes to undo the yoke of slavery. This is not a slave master, but master over sin, hell and the grave. This master looks more like a station master or a train master along the underground railroad.

As the church, we should be like the station master who holds out a light for those traveling to freedom. We are ready for action. When we hear a knock on the door, we are prepared to take that soul in, to serve them food, to keep them safe, and to send them on their way to a better country. Are we ready to be that kind of church for one another? If so we might not be far from “the city that has foundations, whose are architect and builder is God.” Indeed, when we become like the master who comes to serve us, God is not ashamed to be our God. He has prepared for us a city. And if we have the faith to see it, we are that city. The master architect and builder is preparing us to be that beautiful city. And we are home. I am so glad you are here. So look up, have faith! You are all stars beautiful, intelligent, spiritual and indeed powerful. Amen.