HDS students Mary Balkon, Aric Flemming, and Jade Sylvan deliver sermons for the Billings Preaching Prize Competition during Noon Service on April 10, 2019.
The competition winner was Jade Sylvan. In addition, Isaac Martinez, the Massachusetts Bible Society scripture reading winner, read his scripture passage.
LAURA TUACH: Good afternoon and welcome. It's so good to see you all here today. A very warm welcome to you all on behalf of the Office of Ministry Studies. Students, staff, faculty, guests, the dean, and Louanne, thank you for being here. You're in for a treat. But before we begin, by way of a little context and history, I thought I'd tell you a little bit about the Billings Preaching Competition.
This tradition, this annual tradition, this contest, dates back to 1904 when the president and Fellows of Harvard College were given a check for $2,500 to constitute a permanent fund to be used by the Harvard Divinity School. And the income from that fund has been used ever since as prize money for outstanding preaching in the Billings Preaching Competition. So we're grateful for Mr. Billings. This year, over the course of a day and a half last week, the judges heard 13 exceptional sermons. And really what a gift it was for us to listen and to be present to be the recipients of such wisdom and insights from our students who, as we all know, are so gifted. And today, you'll hear from three of them-- Mary Balkon, Aric Flemming, and Jade Sylvan. So we offer your support and blessings.
And in addition today, the Massachusetts Bible Society each year generously presents a prize to the HDS student who demonstrates excellence in liturgical reading of the scriptures. And this year's winner is Isaac Martinez, who will be reading from Genesis later in today's service. We are glad you're here. And we are grateful for this time together. Welcome.
MARY BALKON: “If you don't know the kind of person I am, and I don't know the kind of person you are, a pattern that others made may prevail in the world. And following the wrong god home, we may miss our star. For there is many a small betrayal in the mind, a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break, sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood storming out to play through the broken dike. And as elephants parade, holding each elephant's tail, but if one wanders the circus won't find the park, I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty to know what occurs but not to recognize the fact.
And so I appeal to a voice to something shadowy, a remote important region in all who talk. Though we could fool each other, we should consider less the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark. For it is important that awake people be awake or breaking line may discourage them back to sleep. The signals we give, yes, or no, or maybe, should be clear. The darkness around us is deep.”
--A Ritual to Read to Each Other by William Stafford.
I hear echoes of this poem in the vision statement of a Harvard Divinity School. To provide an intellectual home where scholars and professionals from around the globe research and teach the varieties of religion in service of a just world at peace across religious and cultural divides. Everyone has religion, whether we call it that or not. Whether we find it in a scripture, a laboratory, a forest, or a human community, we all have fundamental questions and certainties about the world and about our own nature by which we live our lives. To dismiss or invalidate our beliefs is to deny the very ground of our being.
People fight wars about religion because religion matters. It can't not matter if we're human. And here, at the Divinity School, we converse about what matters. We confront the fact that our existential truths are not the same. That what is deeply moral and utterly obvious to me may be nonsensical, sacrilegious, and even obscene to you. We take the differences that are worth waging wars over and we talk about them. And if there is any hope for a just world at peace, this conversation that we're having right here is it.
I find that hope in a Black man who heard me rage about the cultural suppression of female emotions and returned to me the horrifying history of the phrase white woman's tears. And we sat together in that unresolved space hurt and angry. And I find it in a Greek Orthodox woman who explained to me why the Saints of Star Wars exhibit was a violation of something sacred and also recognized that it was healing and holy for the man who painted it. I find it in my generous queer friend who offered to clicker train me in pronoun usage and in the kind Jewish professor who asked about my beliefs and listened and said, so you're an idol worshipper? And we laugh, but these were difficult conversations. All over the world people are hating and killing each other over these very differences.
Since the death of the oak tree, many kind people have asked me how I am, and I haven't been able to answer them. But I think that I can now. If you don't know the kind of person I am, and I don't know the kind of person you are, a pattern that others made may prevail in the world. If we can't look each other in the eye and tell each other who we are at the foundational level of religion, if we can't hold our unresolved differences honestly and respectfully, then hate and violence and political lies are what will prevail in the world.
This is our vision. And I think that the world can see its value. Because at a time when other schools are closing across the country, Harvard Divinity School has been able to raise the money to renovate a century-old building to make a space for us to live our vision. Henry David Thoreau said of architectural beauty that it grows from within outward, from the character and necessities of the inner dweller. And whatever beauty may be in our renovation will be a result of who we are in building it, shaped by our vision, by our conversation.
When the oak tree entered this conversation, it revealed profound differences between religions-- deep and painful conflicts in our beliefs about the nature of the world, about what is sacred, what is moral. And when we were told that the tree was decayed and hollow inside, that it was dying, this opened up a further divide. And it was harder to talk with each other across it.
To some, people's safety was an overriding concern. And barriers were erected to protect us. But ministry often calls people into danger. It calls us into prisons and hospitals, slums and war zones, not to mention all the broken and dangerous places in the human heart. So others climbed over the fences and scaffolding to offer the tree a ministry of presence. And we spent days planning ritual, talking about what the tree was to us in our various religions, and how we could honor it without disrespecting each other. It's always hardest to talk about difference when it comes to actual practice.
And some of us felt called to witness to extend our ministry to the actual death of the tree. And we sat across the green in the cold and watched as it was dismembered. In my religion, it was a person that we killed last week. And it was very hard to respect that other people truly believed that this was the right thing to do. But that's the vision. That is what a just world at peace requires of us. It requires that we find a way to live together even when my sacred is your blasphemy and your truth is my violation. In the midst of these open wounds, it requires us to trust each other enough to keep talking.
I thought about this when I saw that the entire body of the tree was solid and healthy. And I thought about it the next day when I heard, we had to take it down, it was decayed, it was hollow. And I knew that if I hadn't been there, if I hadn't seen and touched that rich redwood, I would have believed this. I would have chosen to believe because we can't have this conversation if we don't trust each other, as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail. But if one wonders, the circus won't find the park.
Stafford calls it cruel, and maybe the root of all cruelty, to know what occurs but not recognized the fact. Because this is how the fragile sequence breaks. Because if we tell this lie, what else is the lie? In all our difficult conversations about history and politics, about social justice, about truth, and how we ought to live in the world, what else is a lie? How can we trust each other in any of it?
This is the broken line that discourages us back to sleep. And it often prevails in the world. It prevails every time that we use correct language and say the things that we're supposed to say but lie about the hard differences that don't have easy answers. It prevails all the time. But if we allow this brokenness to prevail here, if we turn away from the difficult discussions, if we shrug and accept the small betrayal of a lie to make the hard conversations easier, then those will become the necessities and character out of which our building and our community grow. If what we're building to hold our vision doesn't hold our vision, then our new renovation will just be another pile of mortar with a bad foundation. And what hope will we have then for a just world at peace?
We have a choice in this conversation. I think we always have a choice in every hard conversation. The tree wasn't rotten. It wasn't hollow. But it's up to us to choose whether we are. Thank you.
ARIC FLEMMING: Good afternoon. My reading is from the Gospel of Mark, chapter 2, verse 9 through 12. And it reads this way. Then Jesus says to the religious leaders that question him, which is easier to say to the paralytic, your sins are forgiven, what you say stand up, take up your mat and walk. But so that I have the power to do both as the son of man, he looked at the man in the urgency of this text and said, I say to you, stand up, take up your mat, and go home. And then the man stood up, immediately got off of his stretcher, picked it up, and walked out of the door.
For a brief moment of our time together, I want to speak on a topic pertaining this small passage making radical provision against the powers that be. As we continue through the Lenten season, the season of struggle toward victory, we are situated in a time when Jesus sowed unrelentingly for proof of God's power, not just for the notice of religious leadership, but for everyone. The contextual analysis of this texts suggests that Jesus had returned from his house and Capernaum after traveling a long distance. And many had heard he was in town and were determined to call virtue out of his body for the benefit of their own healing, their own well-being, their own victory over their imminent struggles. And so they came to him in need of breakthrough and relief as word spread around that Jesus had returned to Capernaum. Needless to say, they saw his presence as an object of comfort and relief for their troubles.
Just being around Jesus wasn't enough. I want to parenthetically pause here and tell you something. May this Lenten season reveal to us the power of being present with the compulsory inescapable struggles of other people even as we struggle with the enemies that lurk within us everyday. And just as we would expect, as we would see, as we would collectively observe, Jesus begins ministering to them, regardless of their exigencies to sacrifice more of himself and his virtue even before he took one step on the Viya Dolorosa to an inevitable crucifixion. And while knowing this, Jesus began to teach them anyway.
But he taught so well until the house was completely full that no additional people were able to get in. I'd like to drop another nutritious nugget in your spirit and tell you that whatever you do, do it so well until you feel the house. Not long after Jesus began teaching them, the narrative tells us that an ambulance of four brothers were carrying a paralyzed brother come rolling in on a stretcher to the nearest Capernaum house medical center to see Dr. Jesus. They were just as determined to get to Jesus as everyone else crowded around him. But when they got there, they found out there was no more room made for them. I imagine, brothers and sisters, that Jesus found solidarity with their experience because at his birth, the Bible says, the gospel suggests to us that there was no room made for them when he was born out of his mother's womb in the end.
So these brothers traveled to the roof of the house. They traveled to the roof of the house and began stripping away the roof of the house in order to lay their friend down right at the feet of Jesus. And of course, there were Pharisees. There are always Pharisees, those who marveled at the failure of Jesus seeking an opportunity to catch him slipping up in the words of Childish Gambino. They were quick to criticize and lacks a day's recall in their hearing, always anticipating a slip up until they slipped into exposure. And by this, they questioned his desire to heal a man in need.
The text tells us before verse 9 that first they interrogated his forgiving power and had not considered the fact that Jesus had not even healed the man just yet, but all he did was forgive the man's sins because the religious leaders believe that if you were paralyzed, your paralysis-- if you were paralyzed, it was like into this man it came as a result of a sin you committed or the sin of your parents. But Jesus responded to them and to say, which is easier to say to this man, I forgive you or stand up and take up your bed. Then he says, but just so you know that I can do both. Just so you know, that I can forgive sins and heal. I'll prove it to you.
And so often we fail to see the opportunities we possess as children of life-- thank you Dr. Niebuhr to begin with forgiving the sins of those who wrongfully despise us and then continue by extending a hand of healing and hope for a world rocked with self-righteous capitalism, bondage of the oppressed, no prescription for the broken in Ukraine, no solace for our indigenous brothers and sisters in Haiti, no valuable victories, and an oppressive Trump era for women and people of color, and no willingness to even imagine the lived experiences of someone other than ourselves.
And yet in the midst of this Jesus, regardless of what everyone else thinks about him extending a hand to the man, he says, to you who are oppressed. He says, I say to you who are burdened and heavy laid, and I say to you who are mistreated by the ills of an unjust society, I say to you who are homeless without a clue of what your next meal may appear, I say to you who are grieving the loss of loved ones, I say to you who were rejected from the schools that did not deserve to have you in the first place, I say to you who struggle with mental illness, and even to you who are so alone that you don't have friends to carry you to Dr. Jesus, I say to you stand up, take up your match and go home. But one must wonder, why this man's healing was such an issue for the Pharisees that were watching him?
This one had nothing to do with the time of day or reverence of a holy custom. No. However, there was a social system in place at this time according to our text to scholars of antiquity, a replica of any rites of passage that separates and segregates people by social class. I'll just let you in on a little secret of this text in this rites of passage. In order for one to move into a higher social status, they had to pay a little something through the back door with the priest. What a shame when the mission of the church becomes co-opted by the corrupted state.
Why are they so mad, you ask. Well, I'll tell you what's really going on. What's really happening in this texts that Jesus is breaking the law, giving medical assistance and granting citizenship access to someone who was not qualified for health insurance or immediate health care of any kind. Oh, yes, brothers and sisters, the laws of antiquity said that if you were sick, lame, or broken, you were made an outcast from society, therefore, disqualified, not adequately fit to eat, live, breathe, or step foot on the grounds of the city. And the only way for you to come back into the city was to pay top dollar to the priests and the religious leaders of the synagogue, so they could pray a blessing over you, give you a new ID, and grant you access back into the city. And after you read the text, you see the Jewish leaders possessed all the laws about qualification. But Jesus healed this man and gave him a new identity and did not charge him a dime.
That is indeed the mission of the church. And all of this happens at once because there was not room made for them in the beginning. I just want to ask you this afternoon that even while we are all hurting, while we are all in need of some degree of healing, wanting to put pool virtue from Jesus, my question is, who will you make room for even as you go after what you need for yourself? Who will you carry with you on your way toward wholeness? Toward happiness? Toward freedom? Toward liberation? But not just those, but who will you carry with you on your way to forgiveness? To prayer? To justice? To righteousness? And to peace?
Jesus's radical empathy exemplified in the cosmological essence of the supernatural manifested on Earth through the divine gifting that rests in each and every one of us would suggest that even though I may be in need of a miracle myself, it will always be my responsibility to care for someone else. Because if I were in their shoes, I could not get Dr. Jesus to Dr. Jesus, or get him on the phone, or lay myself in front of his feet. I would want someone to make room for me and carry me to Jesus to get what I need even as they make their way to get what they need.
Let us learn to make radical provisions against the powers that be for those that need them even as we co-exist in an inescapable web of mutual struggle, hoping someone will live to fight another day on our behalf. Amen.
JADE SYLVAN: So Joseph went after his brothers and found them at Dothan. They saw him from a distance. And before he came near to them, they conspired to kill him. They said to one another, here comes this dreamer. Come now. Let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits. Then we shall say that a wild animal has devoured him. And we shall see what becomes of his dreams. But when Reuben heard it, he delivered him out of their hands saying, let us not take his life. Shed no blood. Throw him into this pit here. But lay no hands on him. So that he could rescue him out of their hands and restore him to their father.
So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of the princess dress that he wore and took him and threw him into the pit. Then they took Joseph's princess dress, slaughtered a goat, and dipped the dress in blood. They had the princess dress taken to their father. And they said, this we have found. See whether or not it is your son's dress. He recognized it and said, it is my son's dress. A wild animal has devoured him. Joseph is without a doubt torn to pieces. Then Jacob tore his garments and put sack cloth on his loins and mourned his son for many days.
You may have heard the story of Joseph before. He has a musical, usually in English. His distinctive outfit is translated as a coat of many colors or a technicolor dreamcoat. But if you looked closer, Joseph's clothing is a little more interesting than some rainbow-colored duster. The Hebrew term for the garment is ketonet passim, which literally means robe of wrists and ankles, or I guess, a robe with long skirts and sleeves. This robe with long skirts and sleeves is only mentioned in two places in the entire Tanakh.
First, here, Joseph wears the ketonet passim. It sets him apart from his brothers. It fuels their resentment of him. And it is ripped when he's shoved into the pit. The other time, the only other time ketonet passim is mentioned, is in 2 Samuel. Here, the ketonet passim is worn by King David's daughter Tamar. The author of Samuel tells us that the ketonet passim is the traditional clothing of a princess. After her own brother rapes her, Tamar rips her ketonet passim in anger and despair.
I don't think it's useful to try to apply modern identity constructs like queerness or transness or straightness or cisness to ancient scriptural characters. We have very little idea of what the gender and sexuality systems were like when the story was written. However, I do think it's significant that Joseph is wearing a feminine garment. And it's one that ties him to another feminine character. Tamar is also abused by her family. And this abuse causes the family to crumble.
Queers, trans people and women might feel a sad resonance in these characters and these connections. Often, we are the ones without power in a family or social system. And oftentimes, those in power, even those who are supposed to love us, attempt to abuse, disguard, silence or erase us. Joseph is wearing the ketonet passim when his brothers attack him and nearly kill him. They tear off his princess dress in spite before they try to remove him from their lives altogether. It's not incidental that the brothers throw him into a pit.
Pits are referenced repeatedly in the Hebrew Bible. Generally, being in a pit is on par with being in shiel or the underworld. Pits represent non-existence, disenfranchisement, and social death. To be in a pit is to be unable to participate in society, family, and the world. So by throwing him into this void of social death, his brothers are trying to erase Joseph. When they lie to their father showing him the dress covered in goat's blood, they're trying to rewrite reality to block their young sibling from the family.
But each of us has the ability to oppose these bullies every time we get a chance. In the story, we see Reuben temper the worst inclinations of his brothers. He does this by using his privilege as one of in-group. He interrupts the flow of hate and convinces the group not to kill Joseph. It's important that he steps in while the hate is still only plans, only words. By interrupting the flow of hate at its beginning, he's able to divert it before it becomes action. Even though he's not able to return Joseph to their father himself, like he wanted, he saved his brother's life.
How many times per day does each of us have the opportunity to be Reuben in this story? How often are we in the in-group where we're able to witness hate growing in words before it moves into actions? Do you risk social backlash like Reuben did? Or do you bite your tongue so you don't interrupt the flow?
We can all be Reubens. We can correct a family member who believes harmful stereotypes about queer people. If someone at work makes a transphobic joke, we can tell them it isn't funny. These interruptions add up. And they will keep some of the worst inclinations of hate from manifesting into violence. It's also important to note that one Reuben won't stop violence completely. The brothers still throw Joseph into the pit after all. But every interruption of hate adds up. Therefore, we must choose again and again to interrupt and to encourage others to interrupt as well.
Joseph escapes the pit. But like many queer kids, his life does not get better immediately. He winds up being sold to Egyptians as a slave. He's sexually assaulted by one of his owners and blamed and punished with imprisonment when he manages to escape being raped. Then finally, we get to a happy-ish ending. Joseph with his magical queer dreamer powers becomes de facto king or maybe queen of Egypt except-- oh, and he is reunited with his family-- except now things are inverted. Joseph is the one with the power. And he shows his brothers the mercy that they denied to him.
Oftentimes, the Joseph story is told like Cinderella, like a rags-to-riches thing. And there are some parallels between Joseph and Cinderella. For instance, they both get the pretty princess dress. But Joseph's story doesn't end happily ever after. I mean, true, he does end up as queen of Egypt. And he probably has the prettiest princess dresses in all the land. And he gets reunited with his family. And his brothers apologize to him. And every single queer kid should get to sit on a throne while jock bro Judah kneels in front of them and begs forgiveness for being such a jerk to them when they're kids. So all in all, it's a pretty happy ending, at least, as far as the Hebrew Bible goes.
However, you can still follow the line of violence that Reuben wasn't able to stop. Joseph's people are in Egypt, not their homeland. This fact sets the stage for much of the conflict, pain, and suffering that befalls the Israelites in the rest of the book. When you zoom out, you can almost trace the traveling and evolution of pain throughout the stories of the Tanakh. You can see the fractal webs of suffering that branch out from each lone act of violence.
I fear sometimes for the webs of suffering that branch out from the lives around me. When people who are supposed to love you try repeatedly to erase you. It hurts. And that hurt has to go somewhere. Sometimes this truth can make me feel helpless. I love so many Josephs. And it's impossible for me to protect them from the cruelty of the world.
We each have the ability to stand up to the mob of hate even when it seems overwhelming. We can be vigilant in the spaces where we're in the in-group. And we can not tolerate hate and bigotry towards Joseph's whether we know them or not. This may feel scary. It may bring the energy down. It may bring attention to you in a way that feels uncomfortable. But it also interrupts the flow of hate. And if enough interruptions add up, it will save lives.
This week, notice when you're in the in-group. When you see hate begin to gain momentum in words, be they plans, or jokes, or assumptions, interrupted. Let the Judas know that what they're saying, what they're doing, isn't OK, even if no one else is around to hear it, especially if no one else is around to hear it speak up. Joseph may not be there now but he'll be there later. And that's when those words will become actions. It's up to us to interrupt the flow of hate.
May we all act as witness and support for our Josephs as we move forward into this often terrifying world. May each and every one of us feel seen and loved in the fullness of our beings. May we reject efforts to erase our sacred beauty to cast us down into the pit. May we continue every day to lift one another up. Amen.
ISAAC MARTINEZ: A reading from the book of Genesis chapter 15. The word of the Lord came to Abraham in a vision, do not be afraid, Abraham, I am your shield. Your reward shall be very great. But Abraham said, oh, Lord God, what will you give me? For I continue childless. And the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus. And Abraham said, you have given me no offspring. And so a slave born in my house is to be my heir. But the word of the Lord came to him. This man shall not be your heir. No one but your very own issue shall be your heir. The Lord brought Abraham outside and said, look toward heaven and count the stars if you are able to count them. Then he said to Abraham, so shall your descendants be. And Abraham believed the Lord. And the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.
Then the Lord said to Abraham, I am the Lord who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess. But Abrams said, oh, Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it? The Lord said to Abraham, bring me a heifer, three years old, a female goat, three years old, a ram, three years old, a turtle dove, and a young pigeon. Abraham brought him all these and cut them in two, laying each half over against the other. But he did not cut the birds in two. And when the birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abraham drove them away.
As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abraham and a deep and terrifying darkness descended upon him. When the sun had gone down and it was dark, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. On that day, the Lord made a covenant with Abraham saying, to your descendants, I give this land from the River of Egypt to the Great River, the River Euphrates. The word of the Lord.