Martin Luther King Jr. August 28, 1963 for the Washington for Jobs and Freedom March (The "I have a dream" speech)
This Sunday 2025's RIC Sunday (Reconciling in Christ) is observed.
Creator has observed 15 Reconciling In Christ Sundays since becoming certified as an RIC congregation on Sunday. April 5, 2009. Last Monday.Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday was observed and Donald Trump was inaugurated. I add two more RIC Sundays including January 28, 2007, the first year I attended an RIC Sunday service.
The nation, the ELCA (and the Oregon Synod specifically), the Portland metro area, not to mention Creator have all changed significantly since 2007. Today, looking backward and looking forward, fills me with hope and a reaffirmed direction. Today there are strong and ongoing attempts to embrace America's past and push the country forward into "greatness". According to the newly inaugurated president, this is a time to return to a "revolution of common sense". Instead I will reflect on the past and the future with what my five senses now tell me with many of newly-experienced epiphanies.
In 2007 Mary and I hesitantly gathered with strangers for what felt like a controversial RIC worship. Our "common sense" then felt bleak and discouraging. There seemed little chance for an ELCA policy change to either recognize gay marriages or ordain gay clergy. Yet, in the coming years with others, we listened, learned, and finally acted to encourage or change Creator minds and hearts. As a result Creator became an RIC congregation months before the ELCA policy change in 2009.
I am grateful to worship with this community that is embarked on a holy journey. A significant part of that journey are our reflections on Sunday lectionary readings. This year the lectionary readings match the RIC Sunday, 2016 readings. That day one single word Jesus proclaimed, namely "today" shattered my conceptions of Christianity's role in my life and how I viewed Jesus' ministry from that day to this.
Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. It is a rare thing when a bible story is quite so vivid and applicable to current news headlines On Tuesday this week, Bishop Mariann Budde gave a sermon at the Washington National Cathedral prayer service. She addressed the new president directly. She reminded him that mercy is a quality of leadership. She asked him to be merciful on the fearful, the poor, and the marginalized.
What happened next was predictable. Many on cable, social media, and the new president himself complained. A Southern Baptist pastor wrote a piece to urge Trump to seize the Washington National Cathedral from the Episcopal Church and give it to a conservative denomination to run as a national church. Another pastor similarly wrote for another conservative Christian website that “Congress should revoke the charter” from the cathedral. He also pointed to the cathedral’s decision to remove honors to Confederate generals as another reason why Congress should target the cathedral.
For those sympathetic to Christian nationalism this is an affront. On Thursday, twenty-one members of Congress filed House Resolution 59 to publicly condemn the bishop and denounce her “distorted message.” They heard what she spoke as political activism and they claimed was not biblical. With no hint of humility, many wanted to throw Bishop Budde off a proverbial cliff given what they heard her preach. They claim calls for mercy are not biblical.
And that becomes 2025's sad epiphany for me. These Luke 4 verses have inspired other personal and powerful epiphanies. In 2019 I found my initial MLK quote on August 25. I also quote from that day, "Isaiah's words, read by Jesus, challenged common sense and left me, for one, as aghast as those in Jesus' Nazarene synagogue. Jesus' call for me to not be apathetic or complacent
The Isaiah text Jesus quoted from may be understood by some as a one time prophecy. It may also defy common sense. Every year cannot be the year of the Lord's favor. Nor should this year be the Lord's "favored year". I wrote then about how this challenge to common sense, "There is still social inequity, captives, blindness and oppression that appears to be increasing. Does the Lord really favor this year? This year? Come on, God's will being done on earth as it is in heaven hasn't happened yet, right? The year when that is fulfilled will be the year of the Lord's favor.
Yet in another sense, every year can be the year of the Lord's favor and today I hear this as Jesus' call to recognize all the current opportunities for each of us to embody what is the best in us and act from the fierce urgency of now.
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