Foundry UMC DC: Sunday Sermons

Foundry UMC DC
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Foundry is an historic, progressive United Methodist Church that welcomes all, worships passionately, challenges the status quo, & seeks to transform the world.

  1. 6h ago

    The Beauty of Goodness

    Pastor Ben: We also give thanks today for our over thirty folks who are gathered out in Rehoboth on the LGBTQ+ retreat this weekend, and we pray for their safe return this afternoon. Friends, I have a little bit of sympathy for Simon in our story today. There’s so much happening in the world and in our minds. It can be really easy to miss a good story. We get this part of scripture because the woman has experienced God’s grace, God’s justifying, forgiving grace, or at least has realized that it’s available. She is resting on the edge of new life, on par with the raising of the dead in the stories that precede this one. Her gratitude is shown in a response of tears and washing and anointing, because she knows she’s not bound by what was. She’s not held there by Simon or anyone else’s thoughts about her or what her previous reputation was. She is free and moving into something new. And Jesus says to Simon, and to the others: pay attention. Be amazed at what is happening here. Tell about it. There are plenty of stories out in our world that we can notice, and there is more than enough in the world to distract us from them. They can give us something to wonder over, or perhaps encourage or re-encourage our lives. We’ve been borrowing these last weeks from the new science of everyday wonder, and one of the chapters is about moral beauty: how others’ kindness, courage, and overcoming inspire awe. Stories of moral beauty land in our brains differently. They activate us in ways that shake us from our normal, self-focused modes of being. They help us to do better. And in the studies, it was shown that receiving or experiencing these acts of moral beauty were far more effective in helping us to do better than any teaching of abstract concepts or theories. Well, friends, we have a story to pay attention to today. Alexa, who is a member of the Foundry family and has been working with our Migrant Solidarity Mutual Aid team over these last months, is going to share with us the story of their work and journey. Alexa: Thank you, Pastor Ben. Good morning, Foundry. At the beginning of February, when the city was frozen over, and I think you all remember those freezing days, I knocked on the door of a basement unit on the edge of DC. The window pane on the door was fogged up, and a little tiny hand wiped away the dew. They looked out at me. The person behind the door quickly ran away, and a few seconds later someone a foot taller opened up. He greeted me warmly, and as I stepped into the space carrying a few bags of clothes and food, he wrapped his arms around me. Then came more arms, and more arms, and more arms. And suddenly we were in a big group hug. I had never met these kids before, but from that moment on I was devoted to them. I didn’t know them, and they certainly did not know me. But we would become connected. We would become indispensable in each other’s lives. My story with these kids started eight months before that February morning, in these very pews. I was invited here by a wonderful friend, Denny Zheng. The sermon I heard during my first Sunday at Foundry spoke directly to me. Guy Cecil, talking about Foundry’s vision, said: we must give people a place not just to do something about the state of the world, but to be something in their own eyes. To sit in prayer, to sing a song, to volunteer, to attend a Bible study. Or, if you were like me for my first eight years at Foundry, to simply sit in a pew and listen to a good sermon and a really good hymn, so that God could speak to me and prepare me for what was next. I listened to Guy’s words that day and felt at ease. I heard in his message that I could rest here, that I could recharge here. And through that resting and through that recharging, I could prepare myself for what was in store next. I stopped asking myself why I was suddenly attending church for the first time in many years, and instead started believing that I was here for a reason, a reason that would become more and more clear to me. I just had to be patient. So I kept coming back, because I trusted this guy Guy. I came here to Foundry to enjoy a good sermon and a really good hymn, and to prepare for what was next. Most of all, I loved how being here made me feel, and how listening to this amazing choir made me feel as I walked out the door on a Sunday morning. In January, Foundry announced that anyone interested could attend a meeting about supporting local immigrant families after service. Maybe this was the moment I had been preparing for. I didn’t think twice about attending. Migrant Solidarity Mutual Aid, also known as MISMA, gave a presentation about their programs, and all throughout I kept thinking, when can we get started? MISMA was inviting us to participate in their Post-Detention Care program, created to support the families of immigrants detained by the U.S. government. A group of Foundry congregants signed up and committed to supporting a family. This takes me back to that February morning. During that massive group hug, I started counting the number of kids I saw and introducing myself to them. Then out came a young woman, a caretaker. What was going on in that basement that very day was nothing short of a miracle. This was most definitely the moment I had been preparing for without knowing it. Going even further back, let me first tell you the story of these children. In 2022, seeking hope and a better life for their children, the family immigrated from Venezuela to the U.S. The parents and their five kids walked through the infamous Darién Gap, losing boots to the mud, finishing the trek barefoot. Over four months, they crossed seven countries to arrive at the Mexico-U.S. border. Once in the U.S., the family sought asylum, work, and education, settling in DC and then later in Baltimore. But one day while at work, the father was taken and detained by ICE. Overnight, the mother became the sole provider for what by then had become a family of six young children. Eight months later, harrowingly, while the mother was taking her kids to school, she was stopped by ICE. Her baby was taken from her and placed in the arms of her eldest daughter, who was eleven at the time. The mother was arrested and taken to a detention center. The kids were simply left. It was November, cold, and the kids were alone in an apartment in Baltimore. These kids were ages one, four, six, eight, eleven, and fourteen. At the detention center, the mother managed to get in contact with family friends. The friends, a young Venezuelan couple with kids of their own, were living in a small space, and they took the kids in without hesitation. They didn’t ask any questions. From one day to the next, their household suddenly doubled. This put a lot of pressure on them. They had to work multiple jobs to keep everyone fed and clothed and safe through the winter. They became the caretakers, and they were completely unwavering in their love and dedication to the kids. But the kids also stepped up as they knew how to. The eldest two fell into roles that they were comfortable with and that they knew well. Between them, they developed systems to make sure everyone was okay, and I often saw these systems at work. It was incredible. The eldest son did the cooking and cleaning. The eldest daughter took care of the diapers, the bathing, the clothing changes. And remember, these were eleven and fourteen year olds. MISMA has a backlog of hundreds of families waiting for the Post-Detention Care program. As soon as we here at Foundry were connected to MISMA and connected to this family, we felt the urgency of the situation. As a team, we took on the kids’ immediate needs. Anna raised money at her office. Ari took the caretakers to Costco every two weeks for a big haul. Deborah scheduled and took the kids to doctor’s appointments. Katherine coordinated donations from you all here at Foundry. Michael helped send the mom items in detention. And I communicated with the caretakers and the mother in detention every day. We also tried to keep it light, so we had a few outings with the kids to playgrounds, parks, the zoo, and even Chuck E. Cheese for the eldest daughter’s twelfth birthday. You also may have seen the kids attend Foundry a few times. They really liked coming. They loved the children’s worship and Rosa’s Cafe after service. On the way to church, the kids often would ask to listen to Christian music, and on the way home they were always asking to listen to Bad Bunny. Every time I saw the kids, I was floored. No matter what we were doing together, they were loving, sweet, and really, really funny. The family deserved the best of us. We knew that, and we started to extend beyond the basic survival needs. The kids had been out of school since their mother was detained in November. They had colds because of the cold. The landlord was pushing them to move out. The eldest daughter has epilepsy that had gone untreated and unmedicated since she last saw her mother. And looming over it all, we had the question: when and how will these kids reunite with their parents? The path forward was uncharted. I reached out to countless immigrant rights groups and mutual aid networks. They had yet to encounter kids left by the government without both parents. We were repeatedly told that much of what the family needed was impossible to achieve. That didn’t stop us here at Foundry. We were told that without insurance, the kids wouldn’t be able to get physicals. All six kids ended up getting comprehensive doctor visits, with blood work and vaccines included. We were told there was no way to send the mother money in detention. We ended up being able to transfer money so that she could video call her kids and see their faces for the first time in months. We were told that without a parent in the country, enrolling the kids in school was impossible. Within three weeks of meeting the fam

  2. 5d ago

    More Than We Can Explain

    When I was in seminary, I participated in a Liberation Theology seminar tour in South India. During those two weeks, we soaked up the beautiful, radical otherness of the culture. We learned from profound teachers who opened our minds and our hearts to new ways of thinking about theology and about Christian witness in a place where only 2% of the population is Christian. We stayed primarily in Dalit communities, communities made up of those who were previously called “untouchables” in the Indian caste system. One night we stayed in a village of Dalit Christians. After a service filled with music and singing, the community poured out of the small church at the center of the village and began gathering. Imagine any given Sunday here at Foundry after worship, with groups gathered here and there outside the sanctuary. It was kind of like that. At a certain moment, we noticed that some kind of ritual seemed to be happening. People were gathered together, and members of the community were going around distributing something. We didn’t know what was happening. Then someone came up to us and put some pea pods in our hands. They reminded me of what you might think of as edamame. We tried to ask what this was, but it was tricky since none of us spoke Tamil. One young man simply said, as best he could, “Peas for the people.” Or maybe he was saying “peace for the people.” We weren’t sure. But we wondered whether this was the way that this poor village celebrated communion. Everyone received the same simple food, and it was for all the people. Food and peace for all. To this day, I don’t know exactly what was happening, and maybe that’s one reason I still remember it so clearly. There are experiences in life that resist being neatly explained. Something happens, and we know there is more going on than we can name. We feel ourselves caught up in something larger than ourselves. Throughout this series, we are exploring those experiences that interrupt our ordinary ways of seeing and remind us that the world is larger, stranger, more beautiful, and more interconnected than we usually remember. Dr. Keltner writes about the way experiences of awe often lie at the heart of spiritual life. That shouldn’t be a surprise. Across cultures and traditions, people encounter what he calls a kind of fundamental “it,” something larger than ourselves that we may experience as God or mystery, spirit, sacred presence, or connection. We don’t always know how to explain it, but intellectual explanation is not the only way human beings know that something is true. And I think there are few places where that becomes clearer than at the table we gather around today. Paul asks the church in Corinth, “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ?” The word translated “sharing” is koinonia: communion, participation, fellowship. Paul is saying that this is more than just remembering Jesus. Somehow, in this meal, we participate in Christ. And because we participate in Christ, Paul says, “we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.” In what United Methodists call this holy mystery, we take a little piece of bread and we receive from the cup, and somehow this ordinary meal reveals something extraordinary about who we are. We belong to Christ, and therefore we belong to one another. Jesus speaks of the same mystery in his prayer in John’s Gospel. He prays not only for the disciples who are with him, but also on behalf of “those who will believe in me through their word.” And that means us: all of those who came before us and all of those who will come after. Jesus prays, “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us.” I in you, you in me, they in us, we in them. Is there a Venn diagram for this? We can try to wrap our minds around this language of eternal, dynamic, life-giving, interdependent, indwelling love, but it’s the language of mystery. It is the attempt to describe a belonging deeper than proximity or agreement, deeper than nationality or culture or language, or even time itself. On this World Communion Sunday, we are invited to pay attention to the vastness of this belonging. Today, Christians are coming to tables all over the world, in cathedrals and storefront churches, in tiny villages and crowded cities. People are receiving wafers and pieces of bread, wine and juice, or whatever is available. Perhaps somewhere, something as simple as peas. Peace for the people. They pray in languages we don’t understand. They sing songs we’ve never heard. Their lives may look nothing like ours. And yet we make the astonishing claim that there is not a “their” table and an “our” table. There is God’s table: one table, one bread, one body. And the table stretches not only around the world, but through time. We share this meal with the generations who received it before us, with the saints whose names we know and the ones whose names we don’t. And one day, others will gather around the table when our own names have joined that great communion. There is more happening at this table than we can explain. But the mystery of the sacrament is not only beautiful or sentimental. If there is one table, if there is truly a sharing in the body and blood of Christ, then here at this table with us is the innocent man suffering in El Salvador’s secret prison, and his mother, still praying to God for him to come home. Here at this table is the four-year-old who has been orphaned by AIDS because funding was cut off. Here is the toddler orphaned because their parents were killed in war. At this table, right here, are all the women around the world carrying the scars of sexual abuse. To say that we are one body gathered at one table means the suffering of another part of the body is never just someone else’s problem. Paul was writing, after all, to a church divided by status and privilege, a community in which some had more than enough and others went hungry. Paul’s teaching here is not just a pretty mystery. It is a call to responsibility. And not just responsibility, by the way, toward those who call themselves Christian. Because we belong to Christ, we are responsible to attend to the suffering world that Christ loves. Jesus shows us how to manifest the love of God: through mending the broken places in human lives and communities, through feeding hungry bodies, through restoring the outcast and setting people free. The small communities of Jesus followers in India showed us how their belonging in Christ called them to advocate for and serve any neighbor who was suffering. Their participation in Christ led them to bear witness to a love that breaks down barriers. I in you, and you in me, and they in us, and we in them. I think about that Dalit village, people whose community had for generations been told that some were pure and others impure, some worthy and others untouchable. And there they were, passing food from hand to hand. Peace for the people. Peace for the people. Something simple for everybody. This is a holy mystery of God’s love made manifest. We will never fully explain what happens here: how bread and cup join us to Christ, how Christ joins us to one another, how a little table here in Washington somehow becomes part of a table that circles the earth and stretches through generations. It’s more than we can explain. But what if we simply receive it? The promise of the table is still food for the people, justice for the people, belonging for the people. Peace for all the people. Our invitation today is simply to pay attention to what this table reveals, to be astonished by the love of God that makes us one, and to tell about it not just with our pretty words and our songs, but with our lives. May it be so. Amen.

  3. Oct 6

    The Sound of Hope

    This is a little different view from the one that I'm used to when I'm here. So welcome and thank you for the opportunity. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it. I love those words from Mary Oliver, and I love being here to talk about the music of our movement. Making music is an act of creation. What draws us to its sound? On this reconciling Sunday, we celebrate what we have learned from our music. You've heard some of it already this morning, and it really preaches. It was really easy to write the sermon because the songs kind of do it for you. I will always be grateful to people like Julie and Rush and Mark Millar and the many others, who have lent their gifts to this movement. We associate music we like with where we were when we first heard the songs. Linda and I frequently talk about snack bar songs. And what we mean is those songs from the 1970s that played on the jukebox in the Wesleyan College snack bar. Every time we hear one, it brings back this image of this small college snack bar with a jukebox over in the corner that served the best bagels in cream cheese you will ever have. And where we made and met some lifelong friends. More recently, my siblings and I have been going through my mom's belongings. We came across some records a few weeks ago that have to have been her mother's, because they weren't people my parents ever listened to. We laughed at Lawrence Welk and Charley Pride and other memories of things that we heard at my grandparents house. The image it brings is of 15 plus relatives in my grandparents five room house, most of us pre-teens, and lots of noise and laughter. We pulled out the Kate Smith Christmas album to play this Christmas. Music accompanies us throughout life. No matter the occasion, it gathers us in and holds us. It feeds our memories, offers solace, and provides great joy. It reminds us that we are not alone in a way that words cannot. It takes us out of ourselves and places us inside something larger, larger, a congregation, a movement, a denomination. A people, and a promise. That feeling of being part of something larger than ourselves is what we call all. And this movement is no stranger to that. Or I don't know what Charles Wesley would have had to say about today's LGBTQ justice movement, but we Methodists should not be surprised that movements have a soundtrack. We inherited a theology that was sung. Charles Wesley didn't simply write songs for people who already knew what God was doing. He gave people language to imagine the freedom that God was calling them toward as Methodists. Justice movement might just be a part of our DNA. So in Ginger sent me the theme and the scriptures for the day. I was kind of excited, but I also wondered how I could fit it all into one sermon. I'm still a little worried about that. There's material for a sermon series in this scripture, so I took a step back. The first thing I did was write down everything that the music of movements, plural, meant to me. And the one thing that stood out from all of that, from all of the words I wrote down, is the word connection. Because the music of a movement helps people, individuals, become a people, a people with a common vision and a common goal. The music of the movement is part of the connection that I was just referencing. It teaches us to hear a future that is not here yet. For the reconciling movement. It was imagining a church where queer folks called the ministry could authentically respond to that call, and where same gender couples could be married in church sanctuaries by their pastors. At foundry, we can celebrate that our own Reverend T.C. Morris or Morrow. Excuse me. Tse is serving her first appointment today. Her path from seminary to appointment was long, and I remember the year that she and Joey Heath Mason were told no. Linda and I were fortunate to be married here ten years ago, as gender just mentioned ten years ago this November. Not everyone in all United Methodist churches was that fortunate. In 2016, after the 2024 General Conference. The knows are happening less frequently and we can be grateful for that. The texts we read this morning, taken together, are powerful, creating a kind of theology. In my words, that theology is remember, our stories, resist structures of oppression, belong and create something new. The Psalm draws us in with its promise of new life. Sometimes we sing because something has changed, and sometimes we sing because we believe something must change. The invitation is to sing a new song. The music of the reconciling movement connects us through the hard work and exhaustion that movements bring, captures our spirits, gives hope, loves us, and has long provided the strength needed to keep going. For some, that road has been over half a century long. We sang. All are welcome. Before we were draw the circle wide. While the welcome was still narrowing. A place at the table while we stood on the other side of locked doors. I am a child of God. While this church was telling us we were less worthy, we sang The Future before the United Methodist Church was ready to hear it. And we weren't always particularly patient. The letter to Ephesus was written to Gentiles, not to Jews. Verse 14 connects Jews and Gentiles in one group under Christ Jesus, breaking down a wall of hatred and hostility. Paul's, or more probably Paul's disciples letter, brings up an image of breaking down walls. But the author doesn't say that Christ convinced the people on one side to be nicer to the people on the other. And it doesn't say that they formed a committee to study the wall, to see if it needed to come down or stay up. It doesn't say that they created a strategy group to refine legislation to get removal of the wall approved. He doesn't say that. They put up a sign that says, all are welcome on this side of the wall. Paul says Christ broke down the wall. And then he says something that's even more notable. He talked about why did it to create one humanity, not a slightly improved version of what was already there, but something that was inclusive of Jew and of Gentile. So if you try to make a corollary to our movement, our wall was doctrine, policy, tradition, fear, being told we were welcome as long as we left part of ourselves at the door. And finally, the all too familiar. Just wait one more quadrant and will help you get the language removed. I think we heard that during my time for two quadrant. Some of those walls came down in 2024. We celebrated. We're healing from the wounds of the last 50 plus years. The rest of the walls are crumbling. The hostility within and between parts of the church is crumbling with them. The denomination has recently launched a new vision with three parts love boldly, serve joyfully, and lead courageously. The invitation from our Scripture today and from this new vision is to come into this place and let your presence change us. The welcome is extended from just. Hello. We're glad you're here to. Hello. We need you. The church needs your gifts, your voice, your experience, your theology, and your questions. No matter who you are and God will delight when we are creators of justice, justice and joy. As we celebrate our reconciling anniversary this morning, our halls are full of LGBTQ plus Christians who have willingly shared their gifts, often within a local church or denomination that was unwilling to acknowledge their humanity, their full humanity. Yet we remain full of hope, joy and love, and willing to serve in other capacities for decades. Our music has its roots and movements that have long been going on much longer. Every time I pick up the African American heritage him in a lot of Sunday, that foundry uses it. I know that the songs we sing will bring as much of a message to the world as the sermon that morning. Movement. New music teaches us. It inspires us to continue showing up through the exhaustion and tears, reminds us that walls will crumble and that freedom will break through. There isn't a reconciling United Methodist, who can't name multiple Mark Millar songs, or who doesn't check to see if all the verses of a place at the table that is being sung that morning has all the verses in it. For gay and for straight a place at the table a covenant shared a welcoming place, a rainbow of race and gender and color. For gay and for straight. The chalice of grace. It is exasperating at times to realize how freely LGBTQ plus Christians gave of their gifts, and how freely the church accepted those they needed or wanted. But withheld the acceptance of others. When Lindy and I were attending a church in Florida. They decided that as lesbians, we could not serve in leadership roles. It couldn't define a leadership role, but they decided we couldn't serve in one. They then decided that Lindy's leadership of the shut in ministry was not a leadership role, so she could continue leading that team. What that really meant was we tried for three weeks to find somebody else and nobody said they would do it. So will you please keep doing this? I wish I could tell you we were the only people who had experiences anything like that. But with the General Conference in 2024, God created in the United Methodist Church a new community in which the old divisions no longer decide who's welcome and who belongs. Congregations are admittedly still adapting and will be for a while. We're an institution, and it takes time to shift institutions. Collectively, though, we are creating a church that cannot imagine itself without all of us. Instead of a church that welcomes all of us but only tolerates some of us, an authentic welcome is intentional, unstated, and stated visible part of the DNA of the congregation, not dependent on budgets or ministry priorities. It doesn't tell the oppressed to wait just one more quadrennial or one more budget cycle, and will do something about it. With th

  4. Sep 29

    Learning to Notice

    A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger Gaines-Cirelli with Foundry UMC September 20, 2026, the seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost. “Be Astonished” series. Texts:  Psalm 19:1-4, Matthew 6:25-33                                  “The heavens are telling the glory of God.” I love that phrase. It’s so poetic and so deeply true. The heavens are telling. Day pours forth speech to day. Night declares knowledge to night. The whole creation, the Psalmist imagines, is engaged in this unceasikng testimony to the glory of God. And then comes this: “There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard.” Creation is telling us something without saying a word. The sky is telling. The trees are telling. The oceans and rivers, birds and flowers, creatures we can see and creatures buried in the soil beneath our feet are telling. The question is whether we notice. Perhaps that is why, centuries later, Jesus says: Look at the birds. Consider the lilies. Pay attention. In fact, the words Jesus uses are stronger than our English translations sometimes make them sound. When Jesus says “look at the birds,” it’s an invitation to really look, to direct your attention toward them. And the word translated “consider” the lilies means something like observe carefully or learn thoroughly. This makes me feel better about becoming one of “those people” who have a collection of bird books and are constantly recording birdsong in the Merlin app to identify what birds are around. Jesus says not just “look” or notice, but study the birds. There is something here for you to learn. And notice who he says this to. Anxious people. People worried about what they will eat and what they will drink and what they will wear. People preoccupied with all the things that might go wrong. Jesus doesn’t respond to anxiety with an argument or a philosophy. He instead gently redirects attention. Look at the birds. Consider the lilies. For Jesus, the birds and lilies aren’t simply beautiful distractions from anxiety. They are witnesses to a creation—including anxious humans!—held in the care of God. Pay attention, Jesus seems to say, and you may begin to notice not only the wonder of the world, but the faithfulness of the God who’s got the whole world in God’s hands. Jesus teaches this way throughout the gospels. Pay attention to seeds and soil. Watch how yeast works its way through dough. Notice vineyards and fig trees and sheep and weather. Jesus moves through the world as though everything is shimmering with the possibility of revelation. Which suggests that paying attention to creation isn’t a side hustle to the spiritual life. Paying attention to creation is part of how we learn to see. It’s a way we come to learn the wisdom, the love, and the care of God. Annie Dillard, who died this past week, once described coming to a place where you say to the woods, the sea, the mountains: “Now I am ready. Now I will stop and be wholly attentive.” What if awe begins there? Not with some extraordinary experience, but with stopping. With noticing. With allowing something other than our own thoughts, fears, schedules, screens, and preoccupations to claim our attention. The psychologist Dacher Keltner identifies nature as one of the great sources of human awe. He calls it “wild awe.” And wild awe can certainly happen in spectacular places. Standing on the rim of a canyon. Looking across an ocean. Walking among trees that were ancient before any of us were born. Looking up on a clear night and suddenly comprehending—or failing to comprehend—how enormous the universe actually is. But one of the things I appreciate about Keltner’s work is his insistence that awe doesn’t require a plane ticket. We can learn to notice astonishing things happening all around us. We live on a planet where bees use dance to give other bees directions to the next flower. Where crows remember human faces and teach their young which humans to avoid. Where ants beneath our feet build whole communities, carrying many times their own weight. Where birds somehow know when it is time to leave and where to go. Where tiny seeds split themselves open underground and reach toward light they have never seen. Where after a devastating fire, the earth grows flowers again. “The heavens are telling the glory of God.” They have been telling us all along. The question is whether we have stopped noticing. And we have some good reasons for that. There is so much competing for our attention. So much designed to steal our attention. News alerts. Emails. Texts. Advertisements. The infinite scroll. Much of what draws our focus is what frightens or angers us. And I want us to be gentle with ourselves on this point—you know, it isn’t a moral failure to get hooked by upsetting things. Human beings are wired to notice threat. It has helped keep us alive. But if threat is all we notice, it begins to look like threat is all there is. If all I take in are the things that are falling apart, then eventually I begin to believe that falling apart is the truest thing about the world. If all I see is what frightens me, fear begins to determine the size and shape of my world. And this, I think, is why the late Wendell Berry’s beloved poem “The Peace of Wild Things” resonates with so many people. He begins, “When despair for the world grows in me...” You know anything about that? When despair for the world grows in me, Berry wrote, he goes out into the presence of the wild things. He lies down near still water. He looks up into the stars. And by the end he can say, “I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.” The problems haven’t gone away. The world hasn’t suddenly gotten sorted. Something has changed in him. His field of vision has widened. He has remembered that the thing causing him despair is real—but it is not everything that is real. This is such an important thread that we will pull through this entire series: paying attention to wonder, learning to notice—these aren’t ways of escaping the world’s pain. They are ways of refusing to let pain become the whole story. Robin Wall Kimmerer says it beautifully in her book Braiding Sweetgrass: “Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the earth gives me daily and I must return the gift.” Awe helps us hold more than one thing at a time. And Keltner’s research suggests that this does something important to us. Experiences of awe can evoke what researchers sometimes call the “small self.” Honestly, I wasn’t a fan of this phrase when I first saw it. Because our faith certainly doesn’t teach that human beings are insignificant. You bear the image of God. You are beloved. Your life matters. But I came to understand that the “small self” is connected to the spiritual practice of humility. There is a difference between knowing that my life matters and believing that I am the center of everything. Wild awe can remind us of the difference. Stand under a sky filled with stars and you remember: I am small. And I belong here. Stand beside the ocean and remember: I do not control all of this. And I am part of it. Watch some tiny creature making its way through the world and remember: There are lives being lived all around me that have nothing to do with my agenda. And researchers are discovering that this change in perspective has consequences. Awe is associated with greater feelings of connection. It can widen the boundaries of our moral concern—not only toward other people, but toward animals, plants, and the environment. It can make us more generous, more cooperative, more aware that we belong to something larger than ourselves. We are earth creatures, given breath we did not create, dependent upon soil and water and sunlight and the labor and lives of innumerable creatures we rarely even notice. We are part of God’s vast, glorious, good creation. And what a strange thing we human beings have done—to begin imagining that creation is simply the scenery behind the main stage, with us at the center and always in the spotlight. Scripture tells the story differently. “The heavens are telling the glory of God.” Creation isn’t scenery. Creation is revelation. Creation is our teacher, our neighbor. Creation is an astonishing gift. And when we begin to receive it that way, perhaps we also begin to live differently within it. Because reverence changes relationship. It is harder to treat as disposable something you’ve come to know as wonder-full. It is harder to think of the earth merely as a collection of resources when you have begun to perceive yourself as part of its beautiful, intricate community of life. And perhaps it becomes harder to treat other human beings as disposable too. If awe teaches me that I am not the center, then that sets me in a different relationship with my neighbor. Perhaps I can hold my certainty a little more lightly. Perhaps I can become curious again. Perhaps I can recognize that my perspective is one perspective within a world vastly bigger than I can see. Perhaps wonder can loosen some of the fear and defensiveness that separate us from one another. Allowing the experience of wild awe to soften the hard boundaries that grow up among and between people doesn’t mean we stop caring about truth or justice. It does mean we remember our place in the vastness of creation and the human family. We are not insignificant nor are we all-important. We are not powerless nor are we all-powerful. We are beloved, responsible, and deeply interconnected with all beings and the whole creation. Jesus says: Look at the birds. Consider the lilies. Maybe those aren’t just lovely illustrations for a sermon about worry. Maybe Jesus is gi

  5. Sep 22

    The Wonder of Being Together

    A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger Gaines-Cirelli with Foundry UMC September 13, 2026, the sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost. “Be Astonished” series. Texts:  Psalm 100, Colossians 3:11-17                               There is something about this Sunday that feels different. Some of it is simply the rhythm of the year. Summer vacations are winding down. School is back in session. Our groups and classes and choirs and ministry teams are coming back to life. Today we kick off another program year at Foundry. And there is an energy that comes with that. You can feel it. There is something that happens when people gather. When we see people we haven’t seen for a while. When a room fills up. When conversation and laughter get louder. When voices join together in song. What is that? Over the next six weeks, we are going to explore that question—and a number of others like it—as we begin a new worship series called “Be Astonished.” The title is inspired by a poem called “Sometimes,” by Mary Oliver, a poet whose work has helped many people pay closer attention to the wonder of this world. Near the end of that poem, Oliver offers what she calls “Instructions for living a life”: “Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.” What a beautiful invitation. And a good reminder in the swirl of life and the distractions that invade our spaces all day every day—so many of which are painful: another act of violence. Another cruelty. Another frightening headline or devastating image. Paying attention to wonder doesn’t ask us to look away from any of that. It asks us to refuse to look only at that. Because every day, even in the midst of all that is heartbreaking and wrong, there is also beauty and goodness and love. There are obvious wonders like a spectacular sunset or the face of a newborn baby. But wonder is also tucked into ordinary places: a song that lifts our spirit, a single flower pressing through pavement, tenderness offered in grief, suddenly seeing something familiar as though for the first time. Pay attention. The pain is real. And so is the beauty. The cruelty and grief are real. But, oh, so are the kindness and the love. We can hold these things together. Perhaps part of what sustains us for faithful life is learning to do exactly that. So for the next several weeks, we’re going to practice paying attention to what inspires awe and ask what it might reveal about God, ourselves, one another, and this beautiful and broken world. And as we begin, there is a beautiful convergence I hadn’t noticed in my initial planning. At sundown this past Friday, our Jewish neighbors began Rosh Hashanah, entering the ten holy days leading to Yom Kippur—days traditionally known as the High Holy Days or the Days of Awe. Days of Awe. Their practice during these days is also about paying attention—to life and relationships, to what has been and what might yet be. They stand in awe before their Creator as they honestly reflect on how they are living, as they seek and offer forgiveness, and turn again toward God and neighbor. What a wonderful reminder: awe isn’t only about fleeting moments of wondrous beauty. Awe can give us perspective, help us see more fully, and remind us that us that even amid pain and brokenness, God’s mercy and love are also part of the story. The social psychologist Dacher Keltner has spent years studying this experience of awe[i] —something poets, artists, and religious traditions have been talking about forever. His research identifies eight common sources of awe, experiences that can pull us out of our preoccupation with ourselves and into deeper connection with others and the wider world. And one of those wonders is, well, look around. It is us. It is other people. More specifically, it’s what can happen when human beings gather together. Keltner uses an old sociological term for this experience: “collective effervescence.” Now, I know. That sounds like something you would order at a fancy bar. But you know the experience. You’ve been at a concert when thousands of people suddenly sing the same words together. (“Sweet Caroline!...) You’ve been at a game and all of a sudden you’re doing the Wave. You’ve been at a vigil when hundreds of people fell silent together. You’ve marched with others for something you believe in. Maybe you’ve been in this sanctuary when we started singing a hymn and somewhere along the way it felt as though you weren’t singing the hymn anymore. The hymn was carrying you. Something happens when human beings gather, when our bodies move together, our voices join together, our attention turns toward the same thing. For a moment, the boundaries of the individual self become a little more porous. The world is not only about me and my concerns and my fears and my little corner of existence. I become part of something larger. Collective effervescence is one, scientific way to describe that. The Psalmist simply says: “Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth! Worship the Lord with gladness; come into God’s presence with singing.” Psalm 100 is not a solitary song. The verbs are plural. The invitation is communal. Make a joyful noise together. Serve together. Know together. Enter the gates together. Give thanks together. And at the heart of the psalm is this: “Know that the Lord is God. It is God who made us, and we are God’s…” We are God’s. There is an alternate ancient reading of that line that says, “God made us, and not we ourselves.” We are not self-created. We are not self-sufficient. We are not self-made people whose lives belong only to ourselves. We are God’s. And God made us for relationship, for connection, for community. Maybe that is part of what we experience in these extraordinary collective moments. Something deep within us remembers. I am not alone. I am part of something larger than myself. Sometimes the person standing beside you is part of how God reminds you that you are not alone. And God knows we need that reminder right now. There is so much anxiety in the air. Many are carrying deep concern about what the coming months will hold for our nation, for our neighbors, for people we love. And this weekend carries other memories and meanings as well. Twenty-five years ago, on September 11, our nation experienced an almost unimaginable act of violence and loss. We remember those who died, those who ran toward danger to help, families whose lives were forever changed. We remember the fear and grief of those days. And we remember something else too. We remember how powerfully human beings can be drawn together. Some of that drawing together produced extraordinary courage and generosity and care for neighbor. Strangers helped strangers. People lined up to give blood. Communities gathered to grieve and pray. And we also know that fear can draw people together. Fear can create a “we.” So can hatred. So can nationalism. So can the conviction that we will only be safe if they are kept out, silenced, defeated, controlled, destroyed. Collective effervescence is powerful, but it is not automatically holy or healing. Human beings have always been capable of becoming a “we.” The deeper question is: What kind of “we” are we becoming? The small Christian community at Colossae was trying to figure out what it meant to follow Jesus in a world filled with competing claims about who they were and where they belonged. Who was the “we” they were becoming? Their world knew how to categorize people just as well as ours does. Those categories carried judgments about who was civilized, who had status and power, who belonged—and who was looked down on, ignored, kicked out. And into that world comes this astonishing claim: “Christ is all and in all.” Differences don’t disappear. But the categories human beings use to separate and assign value to one another cannot diminish God’s creative design. We are part of something bigger—someone bigger—than ourselves. We are the Body of Christ. And if we are paying attention, if we remember we are created by God to be connected one to another as members of the Body, then we begin to understand how we are called to live and move together in ways that nurture and sustain our shared life. The author of the letter to the Colossians describes it poetically saying to the Body: “Clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.” Bear with one another. Forgive one another. And “above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.” Let the peace of Christ be the rule and not the exception among you. Teach, sing, be thankful together. Practice becoming the “we” you are created to be. Practice. Because Christian community doesn’t happen simply by occupying the same sanctuary for an hour on Sunday. It takes practice! Compassion for those we find difficult, humility as we listen to others, forgiveness of those who hurt us, and—Lord have mercy—patience in the midst of all the things…every one of these take practice. And this is why I get excited about a Sunday like this one. Because what we’re beginning today is not simply another year of church programming. All those groups and classes and choirs and ministry teams we are launching again aren’t just things to fill up the calendar. They are places to practice. Places where we learn to pray and serve and forgive and organize and sing and laugh and sometimes disagree and still come back to the table. Places where we practice paying attention, where we experience awe, collective effervescence, the wonder of being together. What kind of “we” will we practice becoming? There will be plenty of forces in the months ahead trying to answer that question for us. There will be voices telling us whom to fear and invitations to construct our “we” by identifying a “th

  6. Sep 15

    Work to Do

    Indeed. Thank you, choir. That was wonderful, what a wonderful way to be prepared to prepare the people for me to come and share a word with you all. And thank you all for being here. My name is Reverend Scott Bostic. I'm a United Methodist pastor, and I'm currently serving beyond the local church as the deputy director of the Washington Interfaith Network, which Foundry is a part of. For those of you who don't know, the Washington Interfaith Network is a broad based, multi-race, multi-faith organization rooted in congregations and associations across Washington, D.C. Together, when members take public action, they organize their communities, hold decision makers accountable, and build power to create change across D.C. It's a joy for me to be back with you again. I say back because this is not my first time here at Foundry. I recognize many familiar faces among you. I first came here many years ago, over a decade ago, when I was serving at Asbury United Methodist Church, down at 11th and K. For a brief time this was my worshiping home, as my family worshiped here. When I was in between appointments many years ago, I've helped with weddings here, I've helped with celebrations of life, I've helped with special services during Holy Week, and other times when I've gotten a phone call from Pastor Ben or Pastor Ginger saying, hey, are you busy? It's a joy to be with you now on this Sunday morning, with an opportunity to share a word with you all from Nehemiah. So here again, beloved, these words from the book of Nehemiah, chapter six, verses eight and nine: "Then I sent to him, saying, no such things as you say have been done. You are inventing them out of your own mind. For they all wanted to frighten us, thinking their hands would drop from the work and it would not be done. But now, strengthen my hands." Will you pray with me? O God of love, speak to me. God of grace and of mercy, speak through me. God of power and of justice, speak in spite of me, that on this day, in these moments, your will would be done. Speak, O Lord, for your people are listening. Amen. I thought it might be good to start off with a confession. I'm not a huge fan of Dolly Parton's music. Country music just isn't really my thing. I do want to be clear, though, that I have deep respect for her talents as a singer, for her talents on and off screen, and for the mighty work that she has done beyond the stage and behind the microphone. So go back with me in time, if you will, to 1980. There's a movie that Dolly starred in called 9 to 5. Some of you probably just thought it was a song, but oh no, it was so much more. There was a spinoff series and a musical too, though maybe we won't talk about the musical. In this movie, Dolly was one of three legendary actresses who told the story of three frustrated, harassed, and mistreated women whose boss is described as the most sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot on the planet. Sounds familiar. Their response to this hateful person was to work behind him and in spite of him to make changes to their workplace. Now, those of you who have seen the movie know there's some other stuff going on, but we're in church, so if you want to know the rest of the story, go watch the movie. Among the changes they make in their workplace are implementing several programs that the workers love, including in-office daycare, equal pay for everyone (one of them had gotten in trouble for asking what one of their male colleagues made), flexible work hours, and a job-sharing program allowing employees to work part time. The boss didn't know they had made these changes, and when he came back he was furious, but his chairman came in and was elated because the productivity of their department had increased by 20 percent because of these changes. That got me thinking about how these changes came to be, not just in movieland but in our world, through the work of organized labor. That, after all, is what this weekend is all about. Not the unofficial end of summer, not one last trip to the beach or a last chance to wear your boat shoes for the season. It's not about the barbecues or the parties or the days off, well, actually, maybe it is about that last one. Labor Day is about celebrating how those who worked for reform in our workplace and labor laws fought to get people a weekend, time off, to end child labor and send kids to school instead of to factories. Coincidentally, my family watched the news this weekend, which is its own great labor story, about things like paid leave and family leave, unemployment benefits, and rules about hiring and firing, so many things that many of us take for granted, and maybe did until the last two years. It got me thinking about how some people said that these proposed changes, each time, were threats to the status quo which benefited them, those in power, and therefore they hurled their own threats and insults at the people who wanted to make these changes. Those in power were afraid of what might happen if people knew their worth and knew that somebody cared about that. Now, our scripture and story for today picks up in the midst of things in the story of Nehemiah. Some of you know that Nehemiah is a book that is part of the Hebrew Scriptures in the section known as the histories. It's different from some of the other books in the history section, like Esther and Ezra and First and Second Chronicles, in that it is told from the first-person perspective. Scholars call it the Nehemiah memoir, because we're hearing the story from Nehemiah's perspective, so he has moments to add his own commentary, his own personal reflections on what was happening. For those who haven't read the book, or haven't read it in a while, it opens in the first chapter with Nehemiah in Susa, the capital of the Persian Empire, serving as cupbearer to the king, who we think was Artaxerxes the First, for the history buffs in the room. Word comes from Jerusalem about the state of the walls and the troubles of his people. In response, Nehemiah prays to God, praying that God will fulfill the promises God made to Moses to uplift and care for God's people. His prayer includes an important confession, because Nehemiah knew that the people were in exile, that the walls had been destroyed for a reason, and it was because of the people's unfaithfulness. It was because of the people's actions that Jerusalem had fallen and that they were in exile in the first place. But he prays that God would receive their prayer and grant restoration to the people if they would repent and return to the Lord. That is where we get to our first lesson, before we even get to the text from Nehemiah: it starts with God and prayer, but please don't stop there. Too often people go to God and pray. We pray for ourselves, we pray for the people around us, we pray for the world, for the problems going on around us, for tragedies that we hear about, and then we stop. We don't follow up on our prayers with the response that God is calling us to take, the response that God has empowered and emboldened us to take. We, as faithful followers, have a responsibility to pray, to seek God first, and to act in response to the needs of the world around us as God is calling and leading, not as social trends would have us do, or social media influencers or politicians or even some pastors, but as God Almighty is calling us and has shown us again and again that we are called to respond through loving our neighbors, not just with warm, fuzzy feelings and sweet, kind thoughts, but with concrete, tangible actions. So Nehemiah, from his position of power at the hand of the king as cupbearer, requests and is granted permission to travel back to Jerusalem to rebuild the walls. He's given written permission so that should anyone question whether it was okay for him to do this, they would know he had the blessing of the king. The king was so moved by and behind this effort that he even provided wood from his own forests and cavalry and troops to escort Nehemiah and their resources back to Jerusalem. Jerusalem, at that point in time, had already had the temple rebuilt, that was the main thrust of the story in the Book of Ezra, and we learn early on in Nehemiah's adventures that in addition to being a faithful servant of God and a loyal servant in his position to the king, he is also wise. That wisdom would serve him well in the ways he would deal with the many challenges ahead. But humbly, Nehemiah recognizes, as he says several times, that his success, the way things were able to work out, was not because of him. It was because of God's faithfulness, because God's gracious hand was upon him. Now, as you might remember or imagine, Nehemiah showing up on the scene to rebuild the walls upset some people, especially the leaders around Jerusalem, because someone was coming to care for the people of Israel. Remember, not everyone went into exile after the fall of Jerusalem. Many remained in the land but were ruled by others. Some had already returned, as I mentioned, to rebuild the temple, as recounted in the Book of Ezra. But they still did not have a Jewish governor who was steadfast and faithful to God. Throughout the chapters leading up to chapter six, Nehemiah had faced opposition from people outside the city and from some people inside the city, not all of whom were faithful followers of God. It took some wisdom for him to navigate these different challenges in this tricky landscape, as people plotted to disrupt the work and even attack the city. Why? Because they knew the practical and symbolic meaning of the walls being rebuilt. Practically, it meant there would be a place of refuge for the people of Israel, should someone in future days come to attack or try to harm them. Now, I'm not advocating for walls in general, but in those days a walled city was a safer city, because when raiders came, people had a place of shelter and knew they would be safe. Sym

  7. Sep 8

    What Do These Stones Mean to You?

    When I was in college, I spent a semester living in London, and I did a lot of solo traveling all over the UK. And one of the things that I loved was when in one of my little wanders, I would stumble across a little ruin. I found some that had clearly been part at one time of a big complex. There was the remains of a tower or stairs, going somewhere that used to be grand. And other times I would just find a few stones, probably the remnants of a simple cottage. What I saw in all of these abandoned little places were simply stones. They were just stones. A sign, however, of life that had once been there, where people had experienced something. And I always wondered, why are these stones here? What stories do they hold? Our story from Joshua today has at its center the building of a stone marker at the Jordan. Many ancient cultures, including our Hebrew ancestors, used stones to signify a meaningful place or a meaningful story. You may have heard of Ebenezer, literally "stones of help," which were stones that our ancestors used to mark a place where God had rescued or helped God's people. And today, Joshua directs the representatives from each of the twelve tribes of Israel to take stones from the River Jordan and create what's called a Gilgal. Have you ever heard of a Gilgal? Some of you might have heard of a Gilgal rune. A Gilgal is a memorial, a reminder not just of a moment, but of the story that gives their lives hope and a sense of identity. The stones are gathered so that in time to come, when children ask, they will see these stones, and as did I in my early travels, they will ask the question, what do these stones mean? What we receive in the text today is the moment when the forty years of wilderness wandering come to their end. Remember that after the people of Israel were brought out of slavery, God gave them a wondrous passage through the Red Sea. From there they were led into the wilderness, where they so journeyed for forty years, guided and sustained by God with a pillar of fire at night, a pillar of smoke by day, and manna from heaven to sustain them. In our story they've now arrived at the Jordan, and just as at the Red Sea, the waters of the Jordan are stopped. This time, as the priests who are carrying the Ark of the Covenant step into the waters and stand in the riverbed, the people cross over to the other side on dry ground and into the land that they understand God has promised them. What happens as Israel takes possession of that land raises difficult questions of violence and displacement, questions that deserve more attention than we can give them today. But here at the river, the story is about a people who have survived the wilderness, and they're remembering the God who brought them through that. That, children, is what the stones mean. They are a reminder for generations to come that God brought the whole people out of bondage, through the wilderness, and to this threshold of new life stretching out before them. God brought all of them through. Every tribe, from the largest to the smallest, is represented. Every tribe carries a stone, and every time they go back to this place, they will see the stones and remember the goodness and the faithfulness of God. Sometimes when I am walking or driving around in this city, or when I'm traveling in other towns and cities, I see beautiful stone buildings with crumbling steeples and their windows boarded up. And I wonder about the stories that those stones could tell. But sadly, just like ancient ruins, the stones no longer have a living community to interpret their meaning. Today we gather in the shelter of the stones that create this sanctuary, the stones that house our mission and study and life together. While the oldest stones in this building are 112 years old, 122, sorry, all my historians were going to check me, even though they are 122 years old, they carry forward the story of this congregation that stretches back 212 years. They are a memorial to the providence of God, who over all those years has brought us out of situations that were unjust or harmful, has brought us through times of struggle and need and pain, and has brought us to this very day. Many of us can tell stories of our recent past. The stories of bold action to end chronic homelessness, and to champion the rights and the dignity of our LGBTQ plus siblings. The times of heartbreak amid bruising general conferences, the moments of transcendent worship, the ways that we persevered through the Covid pandemic. Do you remember how we longed to be in God's dwelling place in those days? "How I long for the courts of the Lord," I remember thinking. Will we ever get to be back in God's dwelling place called Foundry? Do you remember those days, Stanley? There were times when we thought, we'll never get back to the way it was, we'll never have the choir singing the way that we sang. We had those conversations. We did. I'm just telling the truth. We persevered through that, and by God's grace, we emerged, ready to discern how to be the church in a new reality. We can tell those stories, many of us, because we've lived through them. So many more, but there's something in our text today that makes me pause. When you read the text carefully, you'll notice that verses three through eight describe twelve stones being taken out of the Jordan and carried to the place where Israel camps, at Gilgal. But then immediately after that, in verse nine, it suddenly says Joshua has set up twelve stones in the middle of the Jordan, in the place where the feet of the priests bearing the Ark of the Covenant had stood. So where exactly were the stones placed? Inquiring minds want to know. Scholars have long seen this as evidence that different oral stories were woven together when they got written down. Some of those stories remembered the stones in the camp where people lived, and some people remembered the stones out there in the middle of the river. We can wonder about all of that, the textual issue, the historical issue. But what remains in the text as it stands is that there is a memorial where the people live, and there is a memorial where they crossed. One can be viewed, and the other may eventually disappear into or beneath the water. And it makes me think about the stones that tell our story. Some are visible. We can see them. We can remember them. We can tell the stories through our own experience. And some are submerged. There are experiences, people, sacrifices, struggles, prayers, decisions, conflicts, acts of courage and acts of grace, from 212 years of ministry, under the surface, without which the congregation standing here today would not exist. It's poignant to be preaching this message today, as we have shared the news of the death of one of Foundry's faithful ones, Barbara Cambridge. Only God knows all that she gave of herself to provide leadership through moments of difficulty and change in this community of faith. How quietly and effectively she organized so many things. I know how quietly and effectively she organized this little idea I had about having a prayer ministry on Sunday mornings. How she encouraged and taught others through her words and her witness. Barbara is in a long line of saints, many whose names we don't know to say today, whose stories and faithfulness make Foundry who we are. Can we say thanks be to God? Those of us who do make up the Foundry community today will each have our own answer about what these stones mean to you in our own lives. Only you will know the moment when a person prayed with you and it changed everything. Only you will know how you met God in the face of a neighbor as you served. Only you will know that moment in worship when tears cleansed your heart. Only you will know how conversation over coffee saved your sanity. Only you will know the class that blew your mind open to new possibilities about God and about faith. Only you will know how this congregation has given you strength or hope to keep going in this beautiful, broken world. Beloveds, we don't look at the old stones of an old building to look back at the good old days with nostalgia. The stones are not tombstones. These are not tombstones marking lives lost. These stones are a memorial, a reminder of a living God and the living people of God who continue to remember, to testify, to tell the stories of how God has brought Foundry out and how God has brought Foundry through. And we do this not just for ourselves. We do this for those yet to experience the great good news of a God who liberates, sustains, and gives new life. We tell the stories for the children in generations stretching out in front of us, so that they will know what these stones mean, because there are people around to tell them the story so that they can carry the mission forward. And as we gather today for this homecoming service, we come bearing items, prayers, literal or metaphorical stones to mark this moment, to remember how God has been with us over these past months of summer break or summer work, times of travel, and for some times of travail. Wherever we have been so journeying, God has been our sustainer and our guide. And now God has brought us home. But remember this: when the people of Israel crossed the Jordan, they had not reached the end of their journey. They stood at a threshold. Behind them was the wilderness through which God had carried them. Ahead of them was a future they could not yet see. We don't know what's ahead. It was at that point, at that crossing, where they gathered stones and they remembered. Perhaps that's where we are. On this day we gather up the signs of where we've been and what we've been through. We remember those whose faithfulness lies beneath everything we have inherited. We tell the stories of how God has brought Foundry out and brought Foundry through. And then we take up together the journey into the months and years ahead. Lord knows we've got work

  8. Sep 1

    Weightlifting

    I wonder what comes to mind for most people when they think about the Ten Commandments. Studies have shown that most folks are unable to name more than one or two of them. I bet many others would probably have to admit that when they think of the Ten Commandments, and this may just be, you know, thinking about the older generations, but for many of us, I imagine some when they hear about the Ten Commandments, they think of Charlton Heston with a gray bouffant hairdo, wearing a bathrobe, and special effects in the background. Others might have a visceral reaction to a phrase that, for them, conjures up feelings of a threatening, judgmental, angry God. But my guess is that most people probably don't think of the Ten Commandments much at all, which may be what drives some people to make such a fuss about trying to get these things posted in prominent places. Have you noticed the spate of legislation being forwarded in a number of, I will have to say, mostly southern states to place the Ten Commandments in public schools and buildings? Have you been following this? It's a whole situation, friends. It's a whole situation. The youngest among us may think that that sort of thing is a new phenomenon. It is not. A quick search revealed that perhaps the first large scale campaign to mandate public posting was launched in 1950. The first time the Supreme Court took up the matter was 1980. And then there's Roy Moore, the twice elected, twice removed justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, I won't go into all of that, but I can tell you if you're curious, I'm sure. During Moore's first stint on the bench, beginning in 2001, he waged and lost a stubborn fight to keep a Ten Commandments monument in his courthouse. One thing I remember about this episode is the fact that after being removed as Chief Justice, Judge Moore continued this crusade through speaking engagements and would bring along the Ten Commandments monument with him wherever he went to give a talk. Now, I'm all for visuals to help you support your message, but get this: the monument weighs 5,280 pounds, roughly just a little more than 500 pounds a commandment. So Judge Moore would lug this massive thing across the country on the back of a flatbed truck. You cannot make this stuff up. It was reported that even the five-ton crane that was used to move the monument off the truck buckled visibly under its weight. What an amazing mental image, really. I mean, it's so appropriate, since many of us may have a sense that the commandments are heavy and dangerous, that they hang over people like an ominous threat just waiting to crush you with their weight the minute you step out of line. This is the way that some folks use the commandments and the scriptures in general, as a heavy yoke that the masses, regardless of culture or creed, need to have publicly strapped to their backs and nailed to their walls so that they'll get into shape, lift those heavy laws, carry those burdensome commandments, and do three sets of ten repetitions every other day. Weightlifting morality. That's what that is. However, I don't think we have to look too far to find a challenge to this way of thinking. Just look back at the text we read today from Exodus. The recital of the Ten Commandments begins this way: "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery." This is God's reminder to the people of who God is and what God has done. God is no dictator. God doesn't impose the weight of unfair laws upon people. The commandments are not a mandate to enslave God's people. God is the one who has brought the people out of slavery, who has unburdened them from unjust laws. God is the one who has given the people freedom. But I find that many folk focus less on that and more on the "thou shalt not" of the commandments. Why do they have to be so negative? If God cares enough about us to set us free, I imagine some people thinking, then why does it seem like God is trying to control us, to limit our freedom? Now let's think about it for just a minute. Jesus experienced God as Abba, as father. All you mothers and fathers out there, all of us who have spent significant time caring for children, just think about when the children are very young. They're curious about everything. They want to touch everything. They want to put everything in their mouth. They want to get into anything and everything. And as a loving caregiver, you are trying to keep them alive. You want to do everything you can to keep them safe. And so you set boundaries for your children to keep them safe. However, we do know any parent will tell you that children always push against the boundary. Can I get an amen from anyone? Children will always push against the boundary. I will say as a pastor, people push against the boundary. We really do not like to be told no. But really, only the most naive among us will assume that true freedom means total freedom from restraints. I just think of our dog, Daisy. If Daisy were allowed to run completely free with no restraints, she might catch sight of another dog and dash across our busy street in front of the house to chase it, and that would get Daisy killed for sure. Because we love Daisy, we provide restraints that keep her safe, that help her enjoy the world in ways that are good for her and for the other creatures around her. God, who has brought people out of slavery, is setting some boundaries for the people so that they will remain free, so that they may live in peace and safety together, so that they may experience the fullness of life. And this is the thing about God's commandments: every "thou shalt not," every no, is protecting a yes. God says no to the things that enslave us, that diminish us, or destroy life together, so that we can say yes to the things that make life free and whole for everyone. The no is never the point. "Thou shalt not" is not the point. The life God is protecting, the freedom God is protecting, the dignity God is protecting, that is the point. With this framework in mind, we see that the commandments might sound like this: the no to other gods, the no to idols and their empty promises, protects a yes to trusting the God whose word is good, to trusting the God who sets us free, to recognizing what is truly holy. No to using God's name to manipulate or to threaten or to serve our own agenda means yes to honoring God with humility and with reverence. No to endless work, to treating ourselves or anyone else as machines for production, is a yes to Sabbath, to rest, to delight, recreation, and remembering that the world does not stop turning because you take a break. Remember, a pause here, remember who God is speaking to in these commandments: former slaves, people whose lives had been measured by how much they produced. God says, you're free now, you can stop. No to dishonoring those from whom we have received life means yes to honoring those who came before us, while telling the truth about what we've inherited, and choosing what we will bring forward. No to violence and to the destruction of life is a yes to reverence, to life, and for life. No to betrayal and broken promises and the cheapening of intimacy is a yes to faithfulness to the covenants that we make, yes to trust and intimacy cherished. No to taking what belongs to another is a yes to respecting our neighbors and building a community where theft is unnecessary because all have enough. No to lies, slander, and words that destroy another person is a yes to truth spoken in love and words that build one another up. No to coveting, to allowing someone else's life or possessions to make us dissatisfied with our own, is a yes to gratitude, to generosity, and to rejoicing in our neighbors' good. Every no protects a yes. Every boundary opens space for life to be lived well, and a world shaped by all those yeses, what a wonderful world that would be. That world isn't here yet. We still go so far astray. Think again with me about Sabbath. God says to people who have been slaves, whose worth was measured by their productivity, you can stop. And not only you, did you notice? It's a great part of that commandment. Not just you, your children, your workers, the immigrant living among you. Even your animals get to stop. Give them a break. Everybody gets to rest. Now imagine taking that commandment seriously in a culture where people work multiple jobs and still can't make ends meet, where paid leave is a luxury for many, where productivity so easily becomes a measure of our human worth. It's one thing to post the commandment on a classroom wall, but are we willing to build a society in which people can actually live it? And we could ask that question not just about Sabbath, but about the one about idolatry, or truth telling, or violence, or faithfulness, slander, greed, and whether our neighbors have enough. Even after all this time, we continue to misunderstand. We can turn even the commandments themselves into monuments, into idols, things to display and defend, rather than a way of life to practice. Are we hopeless? Sometimes I just wonder, are we hopeless? Is the answer to be found in posting bigger and heavier versions of the Ten Commandments wherever possible? I don't believe we're hopeless. Newsflash: I don't believe we're hopeless. And I don't think, surprise, surprise, I don't think our hope lies in mandated public posting of the commandments. Our hope is found in the public living of the commandments. Of course, to live the ways of God, we need to know them. We need to learn and study what they really mean for us in our time and place. We need to understand the law of God and teach the law of God in appropriate ways and in appropriate contexts. We need to understand that the commandments set us free to live together in such a way that nobody has to be enslaved, exploited, violated, betrayed, robbed, lied about, or consumed by another person's g

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Ratings & Reviews

4.6
out of 5
11 Ratings

About

Foundry is an historic, progressive United Methodist Church that welcomes all, worships passionately, challenges the status quo, & seeks to transform the world.

Information

  • Creator
    Foundry UMC DC
  • Years Active
    2012 - 2026
  • Episodes
    100
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2012 Foundry UMC. All rights reserved.
  • Show Website
    Foundry UMC DC: Sunday Sermons

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