Julie/God said it. I believe it. That settles it. (Favorite Lies series)
Preached on Sunday, July 28, 2024
at Decatur First United Methodist Church
Decatur, Georgia
Psalm 139 NRSVUE
1 O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from far away.
3 You search out my path and my lying down
and are acquainted with all my ways.
4 Even before a word is on my tongue,
O Lord, you know it completely.
5 You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is so high that I cannot attain it.
7 Where can I go from your spirit?
Or where can I flee from your presence?
8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
9 If I take the wings of the morning
and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
10 even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me fast.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and night wraps itself around me,”[a]
12 even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is as bright as the day,
for darkness is as light to you.
13 For it was you who formed my inward parts;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
that I know very well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
In your book were written
all the days that were formed for me,
when none of them as yet existed.
17 How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
18 I try to count them—they are more than the sand;
I come to the end—I am still with you.
19 O that you would kill the wicked, O God,
and that the bloodthirsty would depart from me—
20 those who speak of you maliciously
and lift themselves up against you for evil!
21 Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord?
And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
22 I hate them with perfect hatred;
I count them my enemies.
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my thoughts.
24 See if there is any wicked way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.
This is the final Sunday in our summer sermon series called “Our Favorite Lies”. We’ve been going through sayings that have the scent of truth, they may even sound like a quote from the Bible, but when you think about them they turn out to be, at best, unhelpful, and at worst, they present hurtful theology.
The first Sunday, Daniel Kasbohm preached on “The Lord helps those who help themselves.” Then I preached on “God never gives you more than you can handle.” The third Sunday, Pastor Blair preached on the phrase “Too blessed to be stressed.” And last Sunday we heard from Stewart Voegtlin on the idea of “It is what it is.”
Today we’re rounding it out with something you might have seen on a bumper sticker - God said it. I believe it. That settles it. Alongside that is something that first year seminary students often hear from family and friends, a little piece of advice that goes like this, “I’m so glad you’re going to seminary, but watch out. Don’t let them steal your Jesus.”
Both of these phrases carry with them the assumption that to change is to be unfaithful. Whatever you know right now, whatever you believe right now - you’re done. If you go to seminary, you might learn things in your old testament class that make you question what we taught you about the creation story - don’t let that happen. You might learn things in church history that make you question the institutional church - avoid that. Don’t think too hard. Don’t ask questions. Don’t change.
This is the lie we are tackling today, and we should surely ask for help, so let us pray -
Oh God, from the cowardice that dares not face new truth,
From the laziness that is contented with half truth,
From the arrogance that thinks it knows all truth, good Lord, deliver us.
Amen. (UMH #597)
I wrote this sermon in my head in about 5 minutes, on Friday, June 14. I found out that day that I would miss the memorial service of my friend, Julie Childs, which would be held on Wednesday, June 19, here in our sanctuary. I knew I would miss the service because for months I had been scheduled to spend that day at Disney World chaperoning the youth choir summer tour.
Here’s a photo of me and Pastor Laura at the happiest place on earth -
Me and Rev. Rappold, soaking wet and wearing $12 ponchos, waiting on some adorable youth to ride the Aladdin ride at Walt Disney World on June 19, 2024.
This photo is not an accurate reflection of our experience of the whole trip, which was actually a lot of fun. But, Laura and I were both heartbroken to miss Julie’s service. And, we also knew that of all people, Julie would have told us both to go on the tour.
Julie loved the church, she loved our kids, she loved music. She would have insisted that we go, and that’s what we did.
At almost the same moment that I knew that I would miss Julie’s service, I remembered that, for almost a year, I had been on the preaching schedule to bring the sermon today, and I knew that I would tell the story I’m about to tell, about something that happened almost three years ago, on October 25, 2021.
So buckle up, for my favorite Julie story.
Julie Childs was a force to be reckoned with, but she was so gracious and pleasant and kind that you might not have known you were at a reckoning.
Like a lot of people here at Decatur First, she was accomplished and impressive professionally, but when she was here she was just one of us. She served on the Welcome Team and handed out bulletins, she served on the church council, she loved Bible studies and small groups. She was a faithful, life-long member of the church. She loved the church fiercely and felt very protective of it. As an example, Julie once boldly walked into my office with this painting.
This is the actual painting. That’s my office floor in the background.
She said “Janice, I was just in the chapel and I found this in a closet. I used to see this painting every Sunday as I walked from Sunday School in the Sycamore Building into the chapel for church. It’s so warm and welcoming and everyone should get to see it. They have taken down all the traditional artwork that has been hanging there since I was a child and replaced it with modern art and crosses, which is fine, but this still needs to hang somewhere.”
When this happened, around 2015 I think, I was the part-time Administrative Assistant to the Pastors. It was a 20-hour a week gig and I didn’t have any kind of power to do what Julie was suggesting, but Julie was a force of nature. So I said, “I hear you. Do you want to take the painting home to hang up at your house?”
And she looked at me like I was crazy. “No. No, I don’t want it at my house. I want it here. It belongs here.”
I nodded in both fear and understanding, “Ok. Got it. Well, give it to me and I’ll look after it for now.” So she did. She handed it to me. And I’ve had it ever since. I was never any good at saying “no” to Julie.
She had a way of moving forward, and respectfully going around any obstacle she could not convince to join her. After 20 years of friendship, I had pretty much decided that her sense of direction was sound, and while I didn’t always share it, I didn’t need to fight it. I found her to be trustworthy.
One of the ways that I learned to trust her sense of direction was through the small group Bible studies and book studies that we did together. Julie loved to learn. She was so curious and smart, and the more she learned, the more she wanted to learn. As a teacher and a theologian it was a joy to study alongside her. Her questions always made me work harder and dig deeper. She made me a better teacher, a better preacher, and a better Christian.
After the murder of George Floyd, in May of 2020, Julie was one of the first people to join me in reading books to help us understand how something like that could happen, and to try to better live out our call and our baptismal vow to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves. Not everyone needs to read books to know how to do that, but I did, and I still do. And I’m grateful to have so many companions on that journey.
I approached it with some fear and trembling. But Julie was fearless. She did not hesitate to share stories reflecting on the privilege she didn’t know she had growing up, or the unfair treatment she had witnessed and had knowingly or unknowingly been a part of. Her courage in sharing from her own experiences made the rest of us brave and willing to share as well.
In addition to reading books about racism, we explored injustices related to disability rights, the environment, indigenous people, LGBTQ+ rights, and the underlying causes of mass shootings. And while I know that list doesn’t sound like everyone’s idea of a good time, I found it liberating. With each book I became more and more hopeful because I felt empowered to create change, first in myself, and then moving outward.
By October of 2021, we were reading The Color of Compromise: The Truth About the American Church’s Complicity in Racism, by Jemar Tisby. This book was challenging in a different way.
The Color of Compromise is a history book. And that history is hard. It hurts to think about the church acting intentionally to oppress anyone, and yet we know that it did. We know that the church was painfully slow to come to the realization that all people are created equal, and we know that far from resisting evil, injustice, and oppression, the church has been a willing participant. The Color of Compromise is well written and interesting, and as someone who loves the church, it’s also heartbreaking.
So, on October 25, 2021 the book group was gathered via zoom to discuss chapters 8 and 9 covering the civil rights era and the rise of the religious right. We were getting to the history that some of us had lived through, so now the complicity would be both historical and personal, and my plan was to be gentle with the group. These topics are always tender, and even good hearted and curious people become defensive when they feel attacked.
There’s no way that I can bring you up to speed on all that we learned in this session, so let me focus in on this one point - Chapter eight discusses the ways in which the church had compromised for so long, that it could not see it’s own implicit racism, even when it was framed and hanging like art right in front of them. Specifically, the book names the work of the artist who painted THE painting - Warner Sallman. Warner Sallman was a lifelong devoted member of the Swedish Evangelical Mission Covenant of America, and it’s entirely possible that his intentions in creating religious art were noble and good. And yet, this light skinned, light haired, European-looking Jesus, is not an accurate depiction of what Jesus of Nazareth would have looked like, AND, the timing of this artistic rendering, painted around 1942, made it the poster child for the church discriminating against folks who didn’t look like this image.
It was not until I was in the middle of our zoom meeting on October 25, and up to my eyeballs in my notes and lesson plans, that I realized that we were talking about Julie’s painting - the one that was so important to her, and the one that I was still storing for her - and that Julie was on the call.
And while I wanted to be gentle, I also wanted to know the answer. So I asked the question that I had prepared in advance - What do you understand as the problem with having a Sallman picture hanging in our church? What do we do with them now that we have them?
And I looked up from my notes and waited. And Julie spoke first.
Janice, I think I brought you a painting like that once, didn’t I?
Yes, you did.
Do you still have it?
I do.
Hmmm… I remember thinking that was a really big deal, but it’s not. You can do whatever you want with it, but it doesn’t need to hang in our church.
So, I guess I became the person that people warn first year seminary students about. Did I steal her Jesus? She would say no. Julie didn’t love Jesus any less after reading this book, but I think she knew him a little better. She didn’t love the church any less after reading this book, in fact two years later she would become the champion of our bicentennial celebration.
Julie would say that she had an attachment to an image, a painting, and when she learned the truth about it, the attachment was broken.
She chose to love her neighbor more than a religious tradition, which is something that Jesus did over and over again throughout his ministry. I sat on that zoom call and watched my friend let go of a broken idol and become more like Jesus herself, and I’ll never forget it.
Like so many of us, the writer of Psalm 139 is a complicated person. The Psalm contains praise and gratitude, but it also includes rage and revenge. I’ve had days like that, I might be having one today.
Our psalmist seems so certain -
He is certain about the goodness and nearness of God,
and he is certain about the wickedness of his enemies.
He is certain that God loves him and knows him,
and he is certain that his enemies hate God and deserve God’s wrath.
He prays as one with certainty and confidence, and yet, in the end, he is humble and curious.
He knows what he thinks he knows, but he also knows that he is not God.
So he asks God to check what he knows -
Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my thoughts.
See if there is any wicked way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.
It’s an honor to serve as the Director of Adult Discipleship at Decatur First, but, you should know that I have high expectations for you.
I want you to know a lot.
I want you to ask good questions.
I want you to know that God is still speaking, so even if you’ve read the Bible from cover to cover, and you believe it, so that settles it, God will still have something new to say to you.
I want you to be confident that you cannot lose Jesus, and no one can take him from you, because he’s not yours to lose.
You belong to him, not the other way around,
and Jesus doesn’t lose sheep, not a single one.
The only way I know to lose touch with Jesus, is to stop letting him change you.
Julie and the psalmist both had the confidence and humility to put their knowledge and their ego in check.
Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my thoughts.
See if there is any wicked way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.
May we all be so faithful and brave.
