August 24, 2025 - Holy Disruptors - Oscar Romero: Holy Disruptor of Death and Injustice

Scripture:1 Corinthians 15:20-28, Psalms 23:1-4, John 12:23-26 

The Apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:20–28 that Christ’s resurrection is “the first fruits of those who have died” and that “the last enemy to be destroyed is death.” For Saint Óscar Romero, this was not an abstract theological idea reserved for the end of time; it was a living, burning truth for the present moment. He believed the resurrection had already broken into history, dismantling the reign of fear and summoning the Church into God’s reign of justice. As Romero said:

“If they kill me, I will rise again in the Salvadoran people.”

These were not words of bravado. They were the steady confidence of someone who knew that death could not stop the work of God, and that resurrection would take root in the courage and faith of the people he served.

Romero’s ministry was shaped by an unflinching honesty about the world’s brokenness. He refused to let the gospel be domesticated into comfort for the powerful. As he put it:

“A church that does not provoke any crisis, a gospel that does not unsettle, a word of God that does not touch the concrete sin of the society in which it is being proclaimed, what kind of gospel is that?”

This is the voice of a holy disruptor. Romero was one who disturbs false peace so that God’s true peace might come. His words echo Jesus in John 12:23–26, who teaches that the grain of wheat must fall to the earth and die to bear much fruit. For him, the seed of the gospel is meant to crack open injustice and germinate in acts of mercy, courage, and solidarity.

That solidarity always pointed toward the lived experience of the poor and oppressed. Romero would not allow the Church to preach a disembodied spirituality:

“When we preach the gospel, it must be a gospel that speaks to the concrete realities of the poor, that denounces injustice and announces the hope of the kingdom of God.”

In a world where faith is too often privatized, Romero insisted that following Christ is inseparable from confronting systems of death. This is not a distraction from the gospel, rather it is the gospel lived in public.

And yet, for Romero, disruption was never simply destruction. It was animated by love, seeking to build up rather than tear down:

“Peace is not the product of terror or fear. Peace is not the silence of cemeteries. Peace is not the silent result of violent repression. Peace is the generous, tranquil contribution of all to the good of all. Peace is dynamism. Peace is generosity. It is right and it is a duty.”

This peace is the shepherd’s peace of Psalm 23:1–4, the comfort of God’s presence in “the darkest valley,” a presence that walks with the poor and oppressed through danger toward abundant life. Romero’s vision of peace was not passive quiet but active justice.

Romero also knew the work of justice can feel incomplete in our lifetimes. His humility before God’s vast purposes is captured in these words:

“We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work. Nothing we do is complete… We plant seeds that one day will grow.”

Like Paul, Romero trusted that Christ will “hand over the kingdom to God the Father” when all enemies are defeated, including death itself. Our task now is to plant seeds in hope, to disrupt the world’s death-dealing patterns, and to live so fully in God’s love that even the powers of violence cannot silence us.

Romero was assassinated on March 24, 1980, while celebrating Mass, because of his outspoken defense of human rights and denunciation of government violence. He was beatified on May 23, 2015, as a martyr for the faith. and Pope Francis canonized him as a saint on October 14, 2018, in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) remembers him in its calendar on March 24, listed as a renewer of society and martyr.Many Lutheran liturgical resources include prayers and hymn suggestions for his commemoration 

Romero’s life teaches us that holy disruption is not chaos for its own sake; it is the Spirit-led refusal to accept anything less than the justice, peace, and abundant life God desires for all. To follow Christ in this way is to risk everything, but it is also to live in the unshakable confidence that love is stronger than death.

 

August 17, 2025 - Holy Disruptors - Audre Lorde: Speaking to Dismantle Power

“You are not required to save the world. But you are required to save your corner of it.”  

Joan Chittister

"The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house."

Audre Lorde, "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House" (1984)

Sermon
  

 Audre Lorde (1934–1992) was a Black lesbian feminist, poet, essayist, and activist whose life and work powerfully shaped 20th-century movements for civil rights, women’s liberation, queer identity, and anti-racism. She famously called herself a “Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet”, a phrase that captures her refusal to be boxed into a single category and her commitment to living and fighting at the intersections of identity and justice. 

Her famous declaration, “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house,” is not merely a critique of white feminism, patriarchy, or institutional power; it is a spiritual summons to imagine liberation that does not mimic oppression. It is resurrection logic. 

Audre Lorde was a Holy Disruptor, not because she sought conflict for its own sake, but because she refused to let oppressive peace prevail. Lorde’s work shook the ground beneath the comfortable and carved space for those who had long been silenced. Her life and words confront the church today, daring us to ask: Whose pain are we willing to ignore for the sake of harmony? Whose survival are we willing to risk by remaining silent?

Lorde’s haunting yet empowering words ring with both warning and courage:

"And when we speak
we are afraid
our words will not be heard
nor welcomed.
But when we are silent
we are still afraid.
So it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive." 

These lines echo the early trembling of the apostles, standing at the edge of a world not ready to hear their message. 

In Acts 2, Peter stands before a crowd and declares a holy disruption: Jesus of Nazareth, who was executed by the empire, was not abandoned by God. “God raised him up,” Peter proclaims, “because death couldn't hold him.” This is not just a theological claim; it is a cosmic upheaval. The tools of domination, which include crucifixion, shame, and fear, were rendered powerless by the disruptive love of God. Resurrection is not a repair of the old order. It is the birth of something utterly new.

Audre Lorde knew this in her bones. She spoke of the fears that silence us. We have fears of rejection and that our voices won't matter. She insists, “When we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak…” This is not naïve optimism. This is resurrection courage. To speak truth from the margins is to claim life in the face of death, to act as if we believe, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, that Christ died and was raised “following the Scriptures.” That is: following God’s long story of siding with the oppressed, raising up the lowly, and calling forth prophetic voices from unexpected places.

Paul, in this passage, calls the community back to the gospel, not as a static belief but as a living, liberating truth:

“...that Christ died for our sins… was buried, and that he was raised on the third day…”

Lorde’s reflection, “we were never meant to survive,” is not despair. It’s defiance. It names the reality of systems built on erasure, and yet it chooses to live, speak, and love anyway. Her voice, like the risen Christ's, echoes from the tomb: "You tried to kill me. You failed. I am still speaking."

So we must ask: What tools are we using in our struggle for justice? Are they shaped by the logic of domination or the hope of resurrection? Are we perpetuating systems of exclusion even in our work for liberation? Lorde challenges us to unlearn, to imagine new structures, new words, together with new, multiple, empathetic communities

The early church found its voice not by mimicking the Roman Empire, but by proclaiming a crucified and risen Savior. Audre Lorde found her voice not by softening her truth, but by declaring it unflinchingly. Resurrection begins there, not with power, but with the refusal to be silent.

In Acts 2:22–24, Peter stands before the people and proclaims the resurrection of Jesus, boldly naming their complicity in his death and yet offering them a hope that transcends death:

“Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God… this man, handed over to you according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified… But God raised him up…”

This is a holy disruption, naming what has been done, naming who has suffered, and then announcing that God has interrupted death itself. Peter is not gentle in his proclamation, but it is not cruelty; it is liberation through truth. Audre Lorde stood in the same tradition. She told the truth, even when it shook the foundations of polite society, even when it cost her comfort, even when it put her survival at risk. Her words were resurrection words. They were spoken truths into the silence of systems that hoped she would remain quiet.

This is not just theological content. It is a divine pattern: death, burial, resurrection. It is the rhythm of justice. It is what happens when the truth is spoken: things die: false peace, illusions, comfort built on silence, and then something holy is raised.

Audre Lorde lived that pattern. She spoke when it cost her. She dismantled false unity. And she insisted that her Blackness, her queerness, her womanhood were not obstacles to holiness but expressions of it.

In our time, to be a follower of Christ is to remember that resurrection is always disruptive. To be a community of resurrection is to speak. We must speak not because it is safe, but because silence is still dangerous. Audre Lorde reminds us: we were never meant to survive the way things are. We were meant to be raised into something new.

We heard A.J.'s interpretation of Shostakovich’s Cello Sonata in D Minor last Wednesday (see link to Sheku Kanneh-Mason's performance of the piece he highlighted) and A.J..'s introduction to the composer's intense protest against Joseph Stalin’s authoritarian rule. That stayed with me as I was reading Lorde's writing in depth. Like Shostakovich’s cello sonata, her witness moves between grief and joy, lament and dance, silence and eruption. 

In every act of holy disruption, in every truth spoken in love, we taste the bread of new life. At the moment when the body is broken, when silence is shattered, the world is truly remade.

August 10 2025 - Holy Disruptors - Martin Luther King Jr : Letting Justice Roll Down

Readings: 

“I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies... But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”

Amos 5:21, 24

“So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up.” 

Galatians 6:9

Pastor Emillie's Sermon

Martin Luther King Jr. was not merely a civil rights leader; he was a prophet in the tradition of Amos, calling a nation steeped in religious ritual and patriotic ceremony to repent of its injustice. His words and actions unsettled the comfortable and brought comfort to the afflicted. He was a Holy Disruptor, whose faith demanded not passive belief, but active love tethered to justice.

One of Martin Luther King Jr.’s most profound and enduring quotes is:

“True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.” 

Martin Luther King Jr., Stride Toward Freedom (1958)

This quote resonates powerfully with Amos 5:21–24, where God rejects empty religious rituals and demands justice and righteousness:

Amos 5 rings with divine frustration: God is not impressed with worship that is disconnected from justice. Dr. King echoed this prophetic cry in his 1963 “Letter from Birmingham Jail” when he wrote: “Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of people and is not concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them... is a dry-as-dust religion.” Like Amos, King knew that true worship is not just what happens in sanctuaries but what spills into the streets. People need to march, sing, and demand that Black lives matter.

And yet, the journey toward justice is exhausting. Progress is slow. Opposition is fierce. Hate shouts louder than hope. That’s why Galatians 6:9 is so vital: “Do not grow weary in doing what is right.” Dr. King was deeply familiar with weariness: the bomb threats, the jail cells, the betrayals from white moderates, the ever-looming threat of death. And still he pressed on, rooted in the radical belief that love, not hate, is the final word.

“True peace,” he reminds us, "cannot be separated from the active pursuit of justice". In a world eager to “move on” or “keep the peace,” King compels the church and society to stay the course. In line with Galatians 6:9, he urges believers not to grow weary in doing good, especially when that good involves costly truth-telling, public struggle, and long-suffering hope. 

For progressive Christians today, King offers more than inspiration; he offers a roadmap as clear as Gandhi's. His vision of the Beloved Community calls us to dismantle not only racism but all systems that dehumanize: economic injustice, environmental degradation, homophobia, transphobia, and more. He reminds us that peace is not the absence of tension, but the presence of justice. That loving our enemies does not mean silence in the face of evil, but resisting evil with courage, dignity, and nonviolence.

Dr. King was no tame dreamer. He was dangerous to the status quo. We must be, too, at this moment. The church cannot be content with charity while neglecting equity. We cannot bless injustice with silence. We must let justice roll, not trickle, not drip, but roll like mighty waters, with enough force to wash away every barrier to human dignity.

In remembering Martin Luther King Jr., the past is not only honored, but a call is reclaimed. To act. To persevere. To not give up. The struggle for justice is long, but the arc of the moral universe, as King so often said, bends toward justice, especially when we put our hands on it and pull.

King, Amos, and Paul all converge in a single message: God’s peace flows through justice, and justice requires perseverance. 

Let us not grow weary. Rising up, again and again, until justice flows through every church, every street, every system until the Beloved Community is no longer a dream, but our shared reality.

August 3, 2025 - Holy Disruptors - Dorothy Day: Transforming Status Quo Complacency to Honoring the Homeless, Hungry Christ

“Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.” 

Hebrews 13:2

“Just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”

Matthew 25:40

Pastor Emillie's Sermon 

Dorothy Day’s life reads like a quiet revolution, a relentless protest against the lukewarm faith and spiritual apathy both of her time and ours. A journalist, radical activist, and co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, Day didn’t just believe in the Gospel; she embodied it. In an age when religious practice often becomes entangled with comfort, conformity, and nationalism, Dorothy Day stands out as a Holy Disruptor. She was someone who dared to take Jesus at his word.

In Hebrews 13:2, we are reminded of the sacredness of hospitality; of seeing strangers not as threats, but as vessels of divine presence. Dorothy Day opened her home and heart to the homeless, the broken, the unwanted. She created houses of hospitality where those discarded by society could eat, rest, and be treated as beloved children of God. She lived this scripture not as sentiment but as an imperative. In doing so, she reminded the Church that faith is not primarily about dogma. The church is about love in action.

In our Wednesday meeting we moved into a deep meditation on how important it was to understand that serving others is all a part of God's work. You might initially believe that the "entertained angels"  refers to some disguised blessed beings we may encounter. Later, it may come to our minds that this could depend on our recognition of the divine identity that rests in everyone. And, finally, we may see that our act of serving others is what helps us to know that they are the blessed beings. 

Pastor Emillie shared an interesting story about deciding to party with her friends after her family's move from the city they lived in to its outskirts in Africa. She planned to be back before dark, but left the bus at the wrong stop. As she walked in a direction she thought might be towards home she encountered a group of boys in the middle of the road. While she was frightened, she heard one boy say, "That girl looks familiar.". It was enough for her to confess she was lost and needed help because she wasn't certain where her home was.

One of the boys said, "Hey, there was a new Congolese family who fed us recently. That might be her family."  It was, and they walked her home. Emillie's mother had decided to feed a group of neighbors a few days after they moved. Emillie had protested the idea, but one of these boys was part of that group. That one learned what he knew to become the angel Pastor Emillie needed that night to find her way home. 

Matthew 25:31-46 calls us to account: How did we treat the hungry, the sick, the imprisoned, the stranger? Jesus tells us that our answer to this question is our answer to Him. Dorothy Day took this passage seriously and personally. For her, Christ was not only present in the Eucharist but in the faces of the poor. This “preferential option for the poor” was not a theory; it was her daily bread. She saw Jesus in bread lines and soup kitchens, in the bodies of the unwashed and the weary eyes. And she called the Church to do the same.

But Dorothy Day was not a saint of easy piety. Her politics were radical. Her pacifism is uncompromising. She critiqued capitalism, war, and any religion aligned more with the empire than with the Kingdom of God. And because of that, she unsettled many. She disrupted. She offended. She called the Church away from its allegiance to power and back to the suffering Christ.

Even when her paper was challenged by church authorities during the 1949 Calvary Cemetery strike, she supported the workers, sticking to her principles and forcing additional negotiations.

 Like Bonhoeffer, Dorothy Day’s faith was not convenient. It was costly. She invited others to join her not in admiration, but in imitation. “Don’t call me a saint,” she once said. “I don’t want to be dismissed that easily.” What she meant was this: if we see her as exceptional, we exempt ourselves from doing likewise. She believed we are all called to radical love. This showed in many of the documentary interviews.  She was described as both ordinary and extraordinary at once.

Dorothy Day’s last major public appearance was in 1976, at the Eucharistic Congress in Philadelphia, held from August 1–8, during the U.S. Bicentennial year. It was a remarkable moment that brought her, a radical Catholic pacifist and co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, into a highly visible spotlight within the institutional Church.

She shared a panel with Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who was also receiving widespread acclaim for her work with the poor. It was an extraordinary moment: two women, both uncompromising in their devotion to Christ and the least of these, yet so different in tone and approach. 

To follow Dorothy Day’s example today is to refuse religious complacency. She is a Holy Disruptor who wants her disruption to become a new status quo. Chris Heard, others who cook for Veterans Village, and those who walk with the Madres habitually carry a part of her will-do spirit at Creator. We must allow the Gospel to disturb us, to reorient us, to set us on paths that may seem foolish to the world but faithful to Christ. It is to believe that hospitality to the stranger is sacred, that solidarity with the poor is holy, and that true Christianity does not accommodate comfort. It compels our transformation.

In this age of spiritual distraction and shallow belief, Dorothy Day calls us back to what matters most: seeing Christ in the poor, serving without condition, and embodying the disruptive love of God.

Dorothy Day Documentary 

July 27, 2025 - Holy Disruptors - Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Truly Living Faith

Readings:

Old Testament - Isaiah 50:4-9

Gospel - Mark 8:31-36

7/27 Sermon - Pr. Emillie Binja 

Nadia Bolz-Weber, a Lutheran pastor, once said, ‘Cheap grace is what happens when we want to skip the death and get right to the resurrection...’ These words echo Bonhoeffer’s urgent warning and serve as a mirror to our Gospel text today: "following Christ always costs something.” 

Nadia ties Bonhoeffer's powerful insight on grace to a modern setting, particularly for communities like Creator. We seek authenticity rather than settling for a few, easy spiritual platitudes.

There are two writers whose words have been dependable, lifelong Christian companions and teachers of authenticity in my personal life: Søren Kierkegaard and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.   

Reflecting on our Gospel text, Mark 8:31-36, alongside the life of pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, offers a profound understanding of what it truly means to follow Christ, especially when that path leads into conflict with the powers of the world. As discussed last Wednesday, he is the first in our contemporary Holy Disruptor series who died as a result of how he lived as a Christian. He will not be the last.

In Mark 8, Jesus plainly tells his disciples that he must suffer, be rejected, and killed, and then rise again. Peter, scandalized by this, rebukes Jesus, and Jesus, in turn, rebukes Peter: “You are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” Then Jesus continues: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me... For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?”

These words don't comfort; They demand transformation and sacrifice. Bonhoeffer spoke extensively about "cheap grace" and "expensive grace.",  In this week's  Wednesday discussion, Pastor Emillie asked, "What would you do with Hitler if he were standing here now?" Our answers, such as they were, did not come easily.  

Dietrich Bonhoeffer lived Jesus' gospel in real time. He did not merely preach faith in the safety of the pulpit; he took up the cross in the face of one of the most dangerous regimes in history. His was not a hypothetical discipleship; it was costly. He left the safety of the United States to return to Germany, knowing what that might mean. He refused to stay silent when the church was being co-opted by nationalism and racial hatred. He chose, at great risk, to protect the persecuted and resist tyranny, not just with words but with action.

Bonhoeffer’s belief in “faith in action” is the embodiment of Mark 8: faith that does not conform to the world’s desire for comfort, safety, or victory, but is instead willing to suffer for the sake of truth, justice, and love.

Jesus’ question echoes over Bonhoeffer’s life and over ours: What good is it to gain the whole world and forfeit your soul? Bonhoeffer could have chosen comfort, recognition, or professional success. Instead, he chose the way of the cross, and it cost him his life.

Bonhoeffer was a pacifist theologian, shaped by Jesus' Sermon on the Mount and committed to nonviolence. Yet, he eventually joined the German resistance and supported a group's plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler.

He later reflected that this involvement was a sin, albeit a necessary one, and that as a Christian, he had to take responsibility and accept guilt for participating in a moral compromise to prevent massive evil.

He knew, as Jesus said, that losing one’s life for the sake of the gospel is the way to truly find it. 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s final words, “This is for me the end, the beginning of life,”  are a testimony to that. They were spoken on the morning of April 9, 1945, just before Bonhoeffer was executed by hanging at the Flossenbürg concentration camp. Those words were recorded by Captain Payne Best, a British army officer, who provided a firsthand account. Bonhoeffer was 39 years old.

This German pastor often wrote and dreamed about "Religionless Christianity." Richard Rohr observed,  

“Religionless Christianity might just be what Jesus had in mind all along. Not belief systems, but transformed lives.” 

Bonhoeffer’s legacy is a challenge to every Christian: the call of discipleship is not cheap. It is not passive. It demands courage, sacrifice, and solidarity with those who suffer. And in an age when many still face injustice and hate, his life presses the question: Will we speak? Will we act?

Or, as Bonhoeffer put it:

“Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”

To follow Christ, we must set our minds on divine things. We must act from love, justice, and mercy, and be willing to bear the inevitable cost of that action.

That is the cost of discipleship. And that is the way that leads to life. I pray for the courage to accept whatever cost of discipleship that life leads us to.

July 20, 2025 - Holy Disruptors - Harriet Tubman: God Seeing the World's Bent and Bound

 Today's Readugs:

• Exodus 3:7–8 – “I have indeed seen the misery of my people... I have come down to rescue them.”

• Luke 13:10–17 – Jesus heals the bent-over woman and confronts the hypocrisy of those who prefer rules over liberation.

  Sermon: Pastor Emillie Binja

Pastor Emillie was not born in the United States, but she carries within her the spiritual DNA of those who dreamed and fought for freedom here long before her arrival. Today, Harriet Tubman felt like a kindred ancestor for her, not simply in Blackness, but in offering spiritual "Sabbath" to people. 

Our pastor has an immediacy in her preaching that comes from her authenticity. Today's sermon, based on Exodus 3 verses, the bent-over woman in Luke, and the life of Harriet Tubman, illustrates this. Describing what it must have felt like for the healed woman to stand straight for the first time in almost 20 years, she had us imagine the relief of a morning stretch after a long sleep.   

There is a thread that runs from the impossible cruelty of Israelite slaves forced to make bricks in Egypt without straw as a binding agent, to an oppressive slave plantation in Maryland, to the kangaroo court trying Trayvon Martin, to the more recent, disrespectful treatment of Ferguson and #BlackLivesMatter protesters. 

That thread is one of the circumstances that need God’s liberating attention. Where both God and some of God's faithful see troubles that many refuse to look at.

In Exodus 3:7–8, God tells Moses:

“I have seen... I have heard... I am concerned... So I have come down to rescue them.”

Harriet Tubman heard those same words from Exodus in her spirit. Her call didn't come from a burning bush, but from a burning conviction. God heard her people crying under the lash of American slavery. God was concerned. and Harriet answered God’s rescue mission. The response was not filled with plagues or thunder. She answered by becoming, in turn, a nurse, a Civil War spy, and, most famously, an Underground Railroad conductor. She, like others, followed quiet whispers in the night, secret songs, and the North Star.

She didn’t wait for any modern-day Pharaoh’s permission. Nor did she ask the oppressors to set the terms of freedom. Instead, she walked into Egypt herself and led her people out.

Harriet Tubman was born into slavery around 1822 in Maryland. Her birth name was Araminta Ross, and she later took her mother’s name, Harriet, after escaping slavery. As a child, she endured brutal treatment and hard labor. She suffered a traumatic head injury as a teenager when she was struck by a weight thrown by a slave overseer. This caused her lifelong seizures, visions, and intense dreams, which she understood as divine revelations. God used her just as she was. Her disability didn’t disqualify her from any liberation work. It may have deepened it.

In 1844, she married her husband, and in 1849, she fled to Philadelphia through the Underground Railroad. The Underground Railroad was an organized group of free black men, whites, and Christian abolitionists who helped slaves escape the South.

  

She rescued her sister, her kids, and her two brothers. In 1851, she guided 11 fugitives north, earning her the name “Moses of her People”. Symbolically, the North became considered "The Promised Land". She was smart and figured out secret codes and paths to bring people safely to freedom. She lived in Canada because of the Fugitive Slave Act, but made trips twice a year to Maryland to save more slaves. She spoke out on behalf of slaves and women’s rights 

 

In 1858, she assisted abolitionist John Brown in a raid on Harper’s Ferry. In the Civil War, she became a Union army scout, organizing a network of spies amongst Black men in the South. She was also a nurse and led an armed expedition to free more than 700 slaves. She never lost a life in her care.

 

After the war, she dedicated herself to building schools to educate freed men in South Carolina. She worked with Susan B. Anthony to support women’s suffrage in her later life, and in 1908, she established a home for older, impoverished African Americans in New York.

 

Many African American Spirituals include coded references to those fleeing the Underground Railroad that are disguised as worship. For example, the line in Wade in the Water “See that band all dressed in red” primarily draws on biblical imagery (a poetic image recalling the Red Sea). It is also known that people escaping slavery and Underground Railroad conductors layered spirituals with their double meanings. Red also alluded to sacrifice, the perilous journey to freedom, or served as a coded communication. These spirituals contained hidden messages of hope and safety, disguised as worship, to publicly communicate powerful dual meanings.

To continue with today's readings, in Luke 13, Jesus encounters a woman who has been bent over for eighteen years, unable to stand upright. He interrupts the religious service to set her free. To others, she was invisible, a disruption, and a rule-breaker. Jesus sees her fully and calls her a daughter of Abraham. That’s revolutionary. He was saying, “She belongs to the covenant people. Her healing matters now, not after Sabbath. Now.”

So, what does this scripture mean for us today?

This Holy Disruptors series highlights the work of historians: They can see things others have overlooked and identify previously unrecognized problems. They ask new questions of conventional interpretations, and suggest better ways of understanding what has gone before.  

We see Tubman's Spirit of liberation at work in many who are among us today. For instance, there are the women who founded the Black Lives Matter movement: Opal Tometi, Alicia Garza, and Patrisse Cullors; three Black women, two of them queer, all of them prophets in our time. Like Harriet, they heard the cries. They saw a modern-day Egypt in our streets, in the systems, and in the silence of others' reactions to our metaphorical Egypt's indifference. Within that silence, they found a modern call, “We must move. We must speak. We must lead.”

They weren’t content to hope for slow progress or polite justice. After Trayvon Martin's death, they demanded a world where black bodies are not just mourned, but honored. Where black people aren’t only allowed to survive, but free to thrive. Where the bent are lifted and the bound are loosed.

Like Jesus and Harriet Tubman, these women, together with their movement, faced ridicule and dismissal. They were labeled disruptive, disrespectful, radical, and always asking for too much..We must realize that movements that put love into action and threaten a comfortable status quo will be labeled in this same way.

What they promote, however, poses urgent questions for us to answer: Do we align with the systems that prefer people stay bent over, stay bound, and stay unseen? Or will we follow the Spirit of Moses, of Jesus, of Harriet, of Opal, Alicia, and Patrisse? On this, the Gospel is clear: Liberation is not a side project. It is humankind's mission.

Obviously, Pastor Emillie made this a central part of her sermon. She testified to what she felt going through the call process at Creator. She called it "battling her bondage" and detailed how she had to fight the inner voices that whispered before her call to Creator, "You're not good enough," and "You're too young. You're not ready. Wait." At that time Tubman's life reminded her: if you hear the cries, you go. If you see the misery, you speak. If you believe God is still concerned, then you act like it. 

We all face these kind of inner whispers. And living with Tubman's story this week offered another, deeper understanding of what motivates the deliberate cruelty now being seen in the world around us. For example, there is this Florida place called "Alligator Alcatraz" that has captured the nation's attention in the past couple of weeks.

Through Harriet's story, the dynamics of what is happening is obvious. "Hurt" people are tempted to hurt others. Healed people tend to want to heal, and those who have been freed tend to liberate others. To break away from cycles of deliberate cruelty requires a holy disruption of the hurt surrounding us.

Unlike what the Pharisees thought, the Sabbath is not a reason to delay healing and justice; it is a perfect reminder that the Sabbath is a time for that holy disruption of the status quo and to bring it about.

July 13, 2025 - Holy Disruptors - Martin Luther: Shaking the Foundations of Religious Power

Sermon: Pr.Emillie Binja 

This Sunday Pastor Emillie begins a summer series called Holy Disruptors, which examines people who radically shaped and changed Christianity as it was known and experienced in their times.  What better figure to start with for a Lutheran congregation than Martin Luther himself?

Martin Luther stands in history as a major figure of holy disruption. He cracked open the certainties of a broken religious system to let the light of grace shine through. Luther was not perfect, but his life testifies to the strange and often scandalous work of the Holy Spirit: stirring transformation through imperfect vessels.

At the heart of Luther’s disruption was a deep encounter with grace. In Ephesians 2:1–10, Paul proclaims that we “were dead through the trespasses and sins” but were made alive in Christ, not by works, but by grace through faith. Luther clung to this promise, not as an abstraction, but as oxygen to a suffocating soul. In an era when forgiveness was sold through indulgences and mediated by the church hierarchy, Luther saw the cross, raw, unpurchaseable, liberating, as the radical center of Christian life. The grace that Martin preached is not earned; it is a gift. He wasn't the first to articulate this, but given the advent of the Gutenberg press, this moment was alive in history 

While Luther was a central figure after his 95 Theses were published, there were other reformers (e.g., Jan Hus, John Wycliffe, later Zwingli and Calvin) who challenged Church authority and taught similar doctrines. 

This theological earthquake disrupted the church and echoed far beyond it. Luther believed that if the Gospel truly freed people, it must free every part of their lives. This included their relationships, their vocations, and even their marriages. In a bold and controversial move, Luther insisted that clergy need not be celibate. His own marriage to Katharina von Bora, a former nun, was a living protest against a system that separated spiritual authority from embodied love. Their home became a place of reform, theology, table fellowship, and laughter. Luther’s marriage lifted up the priesthood of all believers and grounded faith in the gritty holiness of domestic life.

Pastor Emillie's sermon focused on Luther's Gospel of Grace and how hard it was for her to accept what seems initially like what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called "cheap" versus "expensive grace", and Bonhoeffer's Sunday in this series is upcoming..  

Luther saw in Ezekiel 36:24–28 a vision of what God does when people return to the divine heart. “I will sprinkle clean water upon you… I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” That prophetic promise resonated with Luther’s sense that faith is not about external compliance but inward transformation. Luther's was a call for the Church to receive a new heart. This heart was not hardened by legalism or corruption, but softened by grace, alive in love, and poured out for others.

Pastor Emilllie also preached about a shadow in Luther’s legacy that must not be ignored. The purity mentioned in Ezekiel verses leads to a darker part of our Lutheran legacy.

In his later years, Luther turned to bitter and violent rhetoric against the Jewish people. His anti-Semitic writings were vicious, dehumanizing, and tragically influential. In our time, they stand in direct contradiction to the Gospel he so passionately defended. These writings were used to justify unspeakable violence, especially in Nazi Germany centuries later. For a man who championed the heart of flesh over the heart of stone, this hatred is a grievous and heartbreaking stone lodged in his legacy. 

There were people in our past Wednesday discussion who, unsurprisingly, were unaware of this side of his writings. Pastor Emillie also pointed out how his insistence that everyone follow Christianity over Judaism was salvation based on an individual doing something. In other words, on their works.   

Creator did not attempt to whitewash this part of Luther’s writing. Instead, we held it in tension. We lamented. We repented by letting it sharpen our awareness that even people we view as heroes are capable of harm. Holy disruption does not sanctify everything a person does. Instead, it reveals that God works through us, not because of our righteousness, but often despite our brokenness. 

I must admit it was odd to revisit this history with Epstein and other conspiracies being touted in our national headlines today. Unchecked power (political or religious power) or idolizing an individual tends to lead to abuse. Hopefully, we can resist the temptation to engage in that..

Martin Luther was a disruptor, not for the sake of power or rebellion, but for the sake of renewal. He cracked open the Church so that grace could breathe again. He envisioned clergy who could love and marry, homes where theology could be lived, and people who could trust God’s mercy more than their own merit. Yet he also spoke words that shattered other lives. These are words we must name, reject, and never forget.

To follow Christ is to enter the work of holy disruption with humility. It means confessing where our institutions fall short, where our heroes fail, and where the Spirit still moves, making all things new.

We honor Luther not by emulating everything he said, but by carrying forward what was most true in his witness: that salvation is by grace, that hearts can be remade, and that no system, not even the church itself, is above reform.