A Fourth Church Sermon by Susan R. Andrews

May 9, 2004 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Purifying Purity

Susan R. Andrews
Moderator, 215th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A)

Exodus 1:8–22
Acts 11:1–18

I want to introduce you to a good Presbyterian couple I met in February when I was visiting the Synod of Southern California and Hawaii. This couple are members of one of the most conservative congregations in our denomination, and they are joyfully evangelical in their faith. But about a year ago, their lives drastically changed. Their son, their beloved, smart, devoted son, came home to share with them that he is gay. The parents were stunned, and they found their simple, pure worldview turned upside down. But they did the only thing their hearts allowed them to do. They embraced their cherished child, and they welcomed him unconditionally into their lives—partner and all. There is, of course, nobody in their congregation that these parents can talk to, because venom against gays is regularly spewed from their pulpit. And yet they have decided to stay put anyway, because they feel called to figure out how to witness in the midst of such hostile territory. Yes, they want to figure out how to confront a purity defined by law and translate it into a purity defined by love.

For some reason, we Presbyterians tend to be hung up on this concept of purity. At the time of ordination, we ask all our elders, deacons, and Ministers of Word and Sacrament to affirm this question: “Do you promise to further the peace, unity, and purity of the church?” And two-and-a-half years ago, the General Assembly set up a Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity, and Purity to discern our identity in the twenty-first century, particularly as we consider the issues that divide us: biblical authority, ordination, and Christology.

As I have traveled around our beloved denomination during these past eleven months, I have heard lots of talk about purity. And often, purity seems to be elevated above peace and unity. Some voices proclaim loudly and clearly that the purity of the law—the inerrant, literal reading of scripture—demands strict codes of behavior that we must follow in all times and all places. “The Bible says it. That’s the way it is. If you don’t like it, leave!”

But some of us Christians believe that there is a different way to read scripture. It is to look through the lens of Jesus—to read the Bible through the resurrected life of the Living Word. And this framework refines the purity of law with the searing, sacrificial flames of love. Our Exodus text for this morning reminds us that this kind of purity exists throughout the Hebrew scriptures as well as in the New Testament.

These odd-sounding women in the first chapter of Exodus are two of my favorite characters in scripture. Puah and Shiprah. In fact, if I hadn’t cared about her reaction, I would have named my daughter Puah! What courage! What compassion! What fierce mother love! Here we have Pharaoh, the most powerful man in a decidedly patriarchal culture, demanding that all the midwives in Egypt kill all the male Hebrew babies. Why? Because the Israelites are simply becoming too threatening, too numerous, too creative within the Egyptian power structure. But being women, being relational, being committed to life no matter what, these women risk their own lives and defy Pharaoh. They refuse to kill any of the babies, and when they are confronted, they simply lie: “Oh, the Hebrew women are so vigorous, so fertile, that they give birth before we can reach them!”

Oh, how I love these risk-taking, these life-loving women in scripture. On this Mother’s Day, we are celebrating the nurturing and creative gifts of women, whether they be biological mothers or not. And so let me introduce you to two Presbyterian women whom I met as I traveled around the world this year.

Alice Winters has been our Presbyterian mission coworker in Colombia for more than thirty years. In the Colombian church, 85 percent of the pastors are under the age of thirty-five, and in a culture where death and violence is an everyday existence, these pastors have had to risk their lives to stand up for peace and justice every single day. Alice has taught biblical studies in the Presbyterian seminary in Baranquilla to all these pastors. Combining the evangelical joy of the New Testament with the prophetic social justice vision of the Hebrew scriptures, Alice has shaped a transformational vision for the leaders of the small but mighty Eglesia Presbyteriana de Colombia. Alice is single, but she has, with passion and love, given birth to an entire church. And the gospel is being proclaimed in Colombia with passion and energy, day in and day out.

Glenda Hope is a small, wiry prophetess who for thirty-four years has served as the Director of Network Ministries in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco. This ecumenical vision has created Safe House, for women leaving a life of prostitution, low-cost housing for thirty-eight working poor families, a computer training center for homeless men and women, a Listening Place, offering worship, counseling, prayer, and spiritual friendship to street people. And Glenda has conducted most of the memorial services for the homeless folk who die on the streets, celebrating lives that others have ignored. To top it off, Glenda and her gang of volunteers are shameless agitators, annoying the city council by protesting budget cuts for the poor, decrying tax breaks for the rich, demanding that public toilets be placed on the streets of San Francisco.

Oh yes, these fierce, faithful women, embodying the very image of God in the relational richness of their lives. A few years ago, I was delighted to discover that the root word for mercy—the root word for the basic quality of God in the Hebrew scriptures—is the same root for the word womb. Womb love, mercy love, mother love—a wonderful, earthy word to describe God and to describe what all of us are called to embody in the day-in and day-out living of our lives.

But in scripture, the fullest portrait of God’s womb love is Jesus, a man with a mother’s heart, a warrior with antiwar wisdom, a brother who welcomes every man and woman and child as an equal in God’s sight. Yes, limitless love, sometimes breaking the law in order to fulfill the law, purifying purity with the refining fire of grace—this is what God does through Jesus Christ, to turn the world upside down and to re-create the beloved community, a community where every human being is cherished.

Our New Testament scripture for today is one of the most stunning passages in the Bible, shattering our human narrowness, purifying our parsimonious piety. The issues of kosher food and circumcision were every bit as contentious and complicated in the early church as the issues dividing us today. The first Christians were, of course, Jews. And they were good Jews, traditional Jews, law-abiding Jews who knew that the Holiness Code demanded that new believers must be circumcised before they could be baptized. And everybody knew that certain foods were condemned as unclean and forbidden for the faithful.

When we meet him this morning, Peter, more than most, believes these rock bottom truths of his faith. But then he has a provocative dream in which God tells him to go to Cornelius, to eat this Gentile’s unclean food. Yes, Peter is to welcome an uncircumcised pagan into the cherished community of Christ’s people. How can this be? How can Peter do what every traditional, law-abiding bone in his body tells him is an abomination in the heart of God? “Because,” the Spirit says,” what God has made clean, no one can call profane.” Because the purity of God’s love, the purity of God’s grace, does not exclude. Because God’s generosity is always more extravagant than any welcome our human heart can imagine.

And so there we have it. Puah’s purity—protecting life by risking her own. Peter’s purity—shattering preconceived judgments in order to open up the treasure chest of God’s grace. Is this, perhaps, what Presbyterian purity might look like: a passion to honor the law of love, an acknowledgment that all of us are sinners, that all of us fall short of the glory of God, that there is not a hierarchy of sin? Might it be that in accepting community, all of us together will be called to accountability, all of us will learn how to live holy lives that truly honor the kindness, the wholeness, the justice, and the integrity of God?

Let me close with a parable for our times. Two weeks ago I had the privilege of visiting with the migrant workers in Immokale, Florida. As we drove into this hot, crowded barrio, I felt like I was back in the impoverished villages of Colombia and Ethiopia, where I traveled earlier this year. In Immokale, 60,000 tomato pickers live in trailers and houses, sometimes ten young men to a room, crowded together so that they can pay the $1,000-a-month rent charged by greedy landlords. In the midst of this misery is a bright, busy storefront where the Coalition of Immokale Workers has embodied God’s grace for the past twelve years. Started with Presbyterian self-development funds, this band of disciples is a glimpse of the kingdom—half farmworkers, half young Caucasian idealists. And they are working seven days a week to break the repressive power of the consumer giants that control the farmworkers’ lives.

It is in this tiny, disheveled room that the Taco Bell boycott was born, a classic community organizing technique that uses the power of media and consumerism to bring about human rights transformation. The demands being made are simple: to raise the wages of tomato pickers from 41 cents a bucket—the same price that was given in 1978—to 75 cents a bucket. And even this increase will barely reach minimum wage. In addition, the coalition is working with the federal prosecutor’s office in southwest Florida to expose and punish those who are trafficking in human beings, trafficking in sex slaves and field slaves. Unconscionable men are holding dozens of farmworkers in squalid conditions, armed guards keeping them captive when they are not in the fields, until they pay back exorbitant recruitment fees that suddenly quadruple once they cross the border.

In the midst of the creative chaos of the Coalition is a modern-day Puah: Demara Luz. Demara, interestingly enough, is the daughter of a former Catholic priest and nun, faithful believers who left the purity of religious life in order to claim the abundance of married life back in the 60s. The fruit of their love is a daughter who embodies the preference for the poor that the Gospels proclaim with such passion. For four years, Demara has been living among the poorest of the poor, cherishing, teaching, encouraging, giving birth to the courage of powerless people so that they can claim the power of God’s image in their lives. Yes, she has been gently pushing them to protest, to march, to dream, to stand up, to reach for the grace and generosity that God promises for all the children of the world. And Demara has exhibited in her life and her faith the purest purity of all: the lavish love of a God-drenched heart.

My friends, this is what the Easter church looks like: the Resurrected Body of Christ on earth, passionate, powerful, and pure.

May it be so—for you and for me. Amen.