03/09/2025 ~ First Sunday in Lent ~ Deuteronomy 26:1-11; Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16; Romans 10:8b-13; Luke 4:1-13 ~ YOUTUBE VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3H-87Go7H5A
VIDEO OF FULL SERVICE: https://vimeo.com/showcase/7960701/video/1064807594

No Distinction

“…there is no distinction between Jew and Greek— all have the same Creator, rich in mercy towards those who call.” — Romans 10:12.

I’ve often mentioned I’m from New York City. Hence, I know a lot about how to survive there. An example: there are codes on the lamp posts in Central Park. Did you know that? If you know the code, it tells you what cross street you’re at, a north/south location, and it also tells you where you are relative to your east/west location.

Now, I grew up in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn in the 1950s. My parents always told me that this neighborhood was a nice neighborhood, a safe place. Even as a youngster knew that was at best an over statement. It was neither.

Well, when I worked on Wall Street one of my co-workers was a retired New York City police lieutenant. And as we talked I found out he had worked in that same Bushwick neighborhood in the 1940s.

So I asked him what it was like in the 40s. Was it a nice neighborhood, safe? His response? “Well,” he said as gently as possible, “I would not have wanted to live there.” So, no— it was neither nice nor safe. But I also need to say this: today Bushwick has become gentrified, upscale. I couldn’t afford to rent an apartment there now.

Despite the gritty reality of my youth in the 50s and into the 60s, the city does provide access to world class music and art. For reasons beyond me I was attuned to these. I preferred Beethoven and van Gogh over Elvis and Superman comics. In short, growing up there, in that atmosphere, is a part of me, a part of who I am today.

The phrase sociologists use to describe one’s origins and also one’s current time and place is social location. We all have a social location, a time and a place of our origins and a current time and place where we are now.

Social location is a very academic idea so here are two concrete examples. How much money someone has influences how a person sees the world. Race is also an obvious factor in social location in how one sees the world. Social location can even have an affect on what gets through to our brain. It can either block or illuminate features of the world which are salient, relevant, forceful, credible.

Whether we are aware of our own social location or not, it has helped us to shape, conceptualize, understand, make sense of the world. Indeed, if we do not recognize the multiple aspects of our social location which make up own life, we have our eyes closed to reality.

Again, that is somewhat academic. This is less academic. If you grew up with or are now familiar with wealth your take on a lot of things is likely to be different than if you grew up with or are now familiar with poverty.

Equally, if you grew up in Santa Fe, New Mexico, your take on a lot of things is likely to be different than if you grew up in San Francisco, California, in London, England, in Tokyo, Japan. And if you grew up in Harpswell…. well, you get the idea, don’t you?

The bottom line: exploring our own social location invites us to ask some basic, even hard questions. Here’s one: because of my social location am I aware of my own prejudices or am I blissfully unaware of them?

Being aware of social location invites us into a process of self examination. How did I become who I am? How does who I am affect those around me? (Slight pause.)

We find these words in the Letter to the Church in Rome, often called Romans: “…there is no distinction between Jew and Greek— all have the same Creator, rich in mercy towards those who call.” (Slight pause.)

Here’s a label which sometimes gets flung around. “Loser!” Most of the time those who used this are attempting to utter a pejorative, an insult, a put down.

However, the real purpose of invectives like “loser” is to set up differences, us/them dichotomies. What’s left unsaid is, ‘If there are losers, there are winners’— winners and losers— the way the real world works, right? But separating people in that way begs the question: ‘Why are these us/them lines, these separations drawn?’ (Slight pause.)

That brings us back to Paul’s proclamation about there being no distinction between Jew and Greek. To reiterate something I said last week, the season of Lent always brings us, brings the church back to basics, to issues which are bedrock, essential.

The texts assigned for Lent tend to ask us to reflect on where we, as communities and as individuals, stand in relation to these basics. One part of those basics is an invitation to self-examination.

And so the text challenges us to ask who is to be included in my community, in our community? Clearly the answer offered in this text is everyone is included. There are no distinctions.

Why do I say that? In a real sense given Paul’s time and place, Paul’s social location, if Jew and Greek are not the only two choices available they are at least the only two Paul is willing to consider here. Hence, Paul insists social location is not a determining factor about who is acceptable and who is not.

To put it in more modern language, Paul is saying there are no winners or losers. There are no outcasts. In the eyes of God categories do not exist. (Slight pause.)

Let’s come back to our own social location for a minute. Compared to Paul who here thought in terms of those two social locations, today we have a vast array of social locations.

But the prime issue for us is the same one Paul addressed. And we, therefore, need to realize our very human tendency is to break people out into tribes, to catagorize people. Too often we break everyone into that aforementioned pair of tribes: winners and losers.

Here’s my take: the call of the Gospel counters that. The call of the Gospel is to live by the grace, in the grace, with the grace God offers. The call of the Gospel, the call of that grace, is to see everyone as gathered into in one tribe— the tribe of God.

To be clear, I don’t think the idea that everyone might belong to one tribe comes naturally to us. Why? I think we humans like to catagorize. The painful fact is too often we don’t just catagorize based on reality. We simply make things up. We make up groups.

I say if we think in terms of all humanity as being one tribe that invites us to explore, to identify, to examine our own shortcomings, our own failings, our own group making, our own tribe-making. I would also suggest through an examination of self, an examination of our social location, we can at least strive to avoid choosing up sides, avoid making up groups, avoid choosing winners and losers. (Slight pause.)

Sociologist Robert Putnam puts it this way. ‘Relentlessly— relentlessly exercising individual freedom at the expense of others can unravel the foundations of society.’ [1] I would add relentlessly exercising individual freedom at the expense of others can unravel the foundations of a church and can unravel the foundations of God’s tribe, humanity.

And yes, it is a challenge to us, for us, to refrain from picking sides, to love as God would have us love. But I am convinced the call of the Gospel is a call to examine and explore the world not as we see the world but as God sees the world. Let us pray for the vision and let us pray for the grace to accomplish that task. Amen.

03/09/2025
Elijah Kellogg Church, Harpswell, Maine

ENDPIECE: It is the practice of the Pastor to speak after the Closing Hymn, but before the Choral Response and Benediction. This is a précis of what was said: “Yes, I was a Catholic altar boy who grew up in Brooklyn. The nuns taught me examining myself— they called it examination of conscience— examining myself was important in exploring a Christian way of life. When I became familiar with classical literature I learned Socrates said, ‘The unexamined life is not worth living.’ And so let me point out one of our thoughts for meditation in today’s bulletin (quote:) ‘Lent is not a “penitential season.” Lent is a “growing season.’” Lent is a time for growth. So, let us pray for the grace to grow in service, grow in friendship, grow in love.”

BENEDICTION: God heals and restores. God grants to us the grace and the talent to witness to the love God has for us. Let us be ready as we go into the world, for we are baptized in the power of the Spirit. And may the peace of Christ, which surpasses understanding, keep our minds and hearts in the companionship and will of the Holy Spirit, this day and forever more. Amen.

[1] This is a paraphrase of the words of Putnam from The Upswing, 2020 Simon & Schuster, pg. 19.