Love Overcomes Hate

Acts 9: 1-22 - April 21, 2024, Covenant Presbyterian Church, Madison 

To see a video of this sermon, click here.

Two days ago, I was standing at the spot of the deadliest attack on any Jewish community in the United States.

I was at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.  

On the morning of Oct. 27, 2018, the killer – a 46-year old man steeped in the hatred of Jews and Muslims and immigrants – entered the synagogue where three services were underway for the three separate congregations that used the building. 

Over the next 20 minutes, using an AR-15 rifle and three Glock .357 semi-automatic pistols, he killed 11 people and wounded seven more. Four of those killed were Holocaust survivors.

That morning, as the news started to come in on my phone, I was standing outside the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, where in 1963 a bomb set by hate-filled people killed four young girls – three 14-year olds and an 11-year old – as they were getting ready for the Sunday services. 

I walked across the street to a park, where there is a memorial to Anne Frank, the young Jewish girl from Germany and then Amsterdam who kept a diary that so many have read. She died in a concentration camp in 1945. 

 

Hatred, all around. Probably a good time to pause and a deep breath.

The story of Paul – then called Saul – that we just heard starts out as a story of hatred. He was “still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord,” the writer of the Acts of the Apostles tells us. 

 

Saul was on his way from Jerusalem to Damascus. 

He was looking for people who “belonged to the Way” – followers of Jesus – so that he could bring them bound back to Jerusalem. 

He was the one who held the coats for those who stoned an early follower of Jesus, a deacon named Stephen, to death.

He was a Pharisee, one of those who held firmly to Jewish law and the place of the Temple in their lives. They saw these Jesus followers as disloyal, as rivals, as troublemakers. A young man, probably in his 20s, Saul wanted to win the favor of his group, so he went after the Jesus followers with what he himself called zeal. 

It would not be too strong to say that Saul hated these followers of the Way. Until something happened. We heard the story of the vision on the road, the temporary blindness, surely the confusion he felt as his companions led him into Damascus. 

 

Here's one way to think about this. Suddenly, hatred encountered love - and love won. 

 

It actually happens sometimes.

 

In November 2008, just a few days after the nation elected Barack Obama to be president, a group of former heads of the Ku Klux Klan and prominent neo-Nazis met secretly in a hotel room in Memphis. One of the stars of the gathering was a 19-year old named Derek Black, a student at the New College of Florida and radio show host. His father, Don Black, had created Stormfront, the Internet’s largest white nationalist site. His godfather was David Duke, the former grand wizard of the KKK, who once had been married to his mother. 

 

Young Derek told the crowd at that hotel, “The great intellectual move to save white people started today.”

 

At college, as other students realized he was an ardent white supremacist, they began to isolate Derek. And he isolated himself. Until he got an invitation from a student name Matthew Stevenson: “What are you doing Friday night?”

 

Matthew was an Orthodox Jew – the only one at the college – so he began hosting small Shabbat dinners at his apartment. His guests were eclectic – Christians, atheists, Blacks, Hispanics. And now he was inviting the rising star of white supremacism to join them.

The Washington Post had a story about Derek and Matthew. It said: “Matthew decided his best chance to affect Derek’s thinking was not to ignore him or confront him, but simply to include him. ‘Maybe he’d never spent time with a Jewish person before,’ Matthew remembered thinking.”

 

Author Eli Saslow wrote that Matthew did this hoping that just by spending more and more time with his group, Derek would be able “to begin seeing past the stereotypes to the people and to the humanity.”

 

Derek went once. Then again. And again. A friendship began to form despite their suspicions of each other. A few other Jewish students from town joined the dinners. Derek’s views began to soften. Slowly…but steadily. 

Remember, he was a very public figure in the white nationalist movement, as was his family, so imagine the shockwaves when he posted a very public statement that included with these words: “The things I have said as well as my actions have been harmful to people of color, people of Jewish descent, activists striving for opportunity and fairness for all. I am sorry for the damage done.”

 

As Rabbi Sharon Brous wrote about the Jewish students in her new book, The Amen Effect: Ancient Wisdom to Mend Our Broken Hearts and World, “What did it take for them to open their homes, week after week, to engage in the painstaking work of stretching open another person’s heart, of humanizing themselves to a neo-Nazi, and even finding humanity in him?”

 

Love had pushed out hate.

 

Closer to home, many of you may remember the awful shooting at the Sikh gurdwara in Oak Creek near Milwaukee in 2012 when a white supremacist entered the worship building on a Sunday morning and fatally shot six members of the congregation and wounding four others before killing himself.

 

One of those killed was Satwant Singh Kaleka, the president of the gurdwara, who died trying to protect the congregation. His son, Pardeep Kaleka – who you see in this picture - wanted to know what could drive someone to that level of hatred. He connected with Arno Michaelis, a former white supremacist who had grown up in Mequon. 

 

Arno had joined the white power movement when he was 16, coming out of a dysfunctional home, living with alcoholism, reveling in violence. He was a founding member of what became the largest racist skinhead organization in the world. He described himself as a reverend in a self-declared Racial Holy War. He played in a white power rock band. He attacked anyone who was Black, Jewish and LGBTQ – anyone who wasn’t white or straight.

 

But then he began to encounter people who shook up his view of the world. He had a swastika tattooed on the middle finger of his right hand. He later wrote: “One time I was greeted by a black lady at a McDonald’s cash register with a smile as warm and unconditional as the sun. When she noticed the swastika tattoo on my finger, she said: ‘You’re a better person than that. I know that’s not who you are.’ Powerless against such compassion, I fled from her steady smile and authentic presence, never to return to that McDonald’s again.”

Other things happened. His boss – who was Jewish – did no fire him despite the swastika on his jacket. A Black coworker offered him half of his sandwich when Arno didn’t bring lunch. A lesbian supervisor treated him with unexpected kindness.

His love of music led him to the rave scene, where he found himself dancing with people of different races. They accepted him. And then he became a father. He watched his little girl at day care play with delight with a diverse group of children.  

It took time, but Arno had rejected white supremacy by the time he met Pardeep. They did not bond right away, of course. But soon they were speaking together to groups, writing a book together called The Gift of Our Wounds: A Sikh and a Former White Supremacist Find Forgiveness After Hate.

Love had once again overcome hate.

Now let’s join Ananias in Damascus. 

You could hear his anxiety about going to visit this zeal-filled persecutor of the followers of Jesus at a home on Straight Street. In his words: “Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem, and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who invoke your name.”

But Ananias took the message from Jesus to heart and went to see Saul, to bless him, to baptize him, to teach him about the Way of Jesus.

God’s love transformed Saul. Ananias willingness to reach out and embrace Saul transformed the life of those early Christians. 

I don’t want to be too simplistic about all of this. Evil does exist in our world. Evil killed people in the synagogue in Pittsburgh, in the gurdwara in Oak Creek, in the 16^th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. Evil killed people in Israel on Oct. 7 and has killed so many in Gaza since then. 

Antisemitism and Islamophobia are surging in our nation right now.

Remember that memorial to Anne Frank in the park in Birmingham? It has these words from 15-year old Anne’s diary on March 16, 1944 – five months before the Nazis would capture her and her family: “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”

You and I may not be able to stop all the evil in our world. But maybe we can help transform one life and then another and then another if we open ourselves to those who seemed troubled and offer them another path. And if we can’t do that, we can at least find ways to stand with those who are suffering.

Let me go back to the people I met in Pittsburgh on Friday, six years after hate blasted its way through their house of worship. 

Peg Durachko’s husband, Rich Gottfried, was murdered at the synagogue. She said, “It was an evil attack on a sacred place, an attack from evil on goodness.”

But part of the healing process for her and the other victim’s families includes creating a new space to try to uproot antisemitism. 

Michael Bernstein – who happens to be a UW-Madison philosophy grad – now chairs the Remember. Rebuild. Renew. campaign to create an international institution dedicated to ending antisemitism through education, engagement and action. It will be on this site next to the sanctuary of the original synagogue.

And others in Pittsburgh talked about the importance of all those who surrounded them with love and care and support in the wake of that day’s tragedy. On the fence along the spot where older buildings of the synagogue once stood are 101 pieces of art submitted by student artists from across the nation in what was called the Hearts Together project.

Take a closer look at this one. “You’re not alone.” This came from a student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida – the site of another mass shooting. The note with it says, “We are here for you.”

So even if we cannot always stop evil and hatred and violence, even if we cannot be Ananias for Paul or Matthew Stevenson for Derek or Pardeep for Arno, we can still reach out to those who suffer from such tragedies. It really matters.

Suzanne Shreiber, a past president of the Tree of Life Synagogue, said that in the days after their tragedy, “the city was leaning in, standing beside us, taking a breath with us.”

 

When Saul was rampaging against the early Christians, they leaned in, stood together, breathed together. When Ananias helped Saul live into his new call of love, that led to new communities where love defined their existence.  

 

So today, the challenge for us remains – how can we help love overcome hate? How can we make God’s love a reality? What can we take out from this sanctuary on this morning?]

 

As Anne Frank wrote, “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”

Amen.

Delighting in Doubt

April 7, 2024, Christ Presbyterian Church - John 20: 24-30 

You can watch a video of the sermon here.

Good morning. My name is Thomas. I’m the one who asks questions.

 

When Matthew, Mark and Luke wrote their gospels, they just gave me a passing reference. They included me in the group Jesus called to be his closest followers. Nice of them to remember me. 

 

You’d think they could have at least told a bit more about me since some people said I was the twin brother of Jesus – or maybe a twin with one of his other brothers. Oh well.

 

But John … the most beloved of Jesus’ followers … John paid attention to me in his Gospel. And you know, the things John wrote about me are probably true of a lot of followers of Jesus. They may even be true of folks sitting in this church this morning.

 

There was the time Jesus’ friend Lazarus had died. Jesus wanted to go to Bethany to visit Lazarus’ family. Little did we know that he was also going to bring Lazarus back to life. All we knew was that Bethany was two miles from Jerusalem and some people there had wanted to stone him the last time he was in the area. When Jesus said he wanted to go to Bethany, I said, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

 

Now those may sound like brave words, but I just felt so committed to Jesus that I could not bear the thought of him going off alone to face people who wanted to kill him.

 

Not that I was ever afraid to ask him questions, you understand. On the night of his Last Supper, all sorts of unusual things happened. Jesus washed our feet and told us to serve others as he has served us.  He told us one of us would betray him. Us his closest followers! I could hardly believe that. 

 

He told us just as he loved us, we should love one another. Now that I understood. 

 

Then he said he was going somewhere to prepare a place for us in his Father’s house. Well, I was getting confused, so I asked Jesus, “Lord, we do not where you are going. How can we know the way.” And he patiently replied, “I am the way, and the truth and the life…If you know me, you will know my Father also.” 

 

I was not the only one who asked him questions that night. Peter and Philip and others asked him questions, too. That’s the way it was with Jesus. He knew he was telling us things that were sometimes difficult to understand, that he was asking us to live in ways that were different from what we were used to.  

 

So you can understand why I didn’t feel any hesitation about asking questions about this amazing story my friends told about Jesus appearing to them after that terrible day when the Roman soldiers nailed him to a cross. I was gone that evening – maybe they asked me to go out to get the groceries, which turned out to be a bad decision on my part. 

 

Jesus’ followers had all been gathered in a room on Sunday night, not sure whether they were also marked for death. They said Jesus came right through the locked door, breathed his spirit onto them and talked with them about forgiveness. I’m not sure what was more amazing … that they saw him after he had been killed or that he was talking about forgiveness so soon after his fellow human beings had treated him so despicably.

In any case, I spent the next week sort of on the outs with my friends. “We have seen the Lord,” they kept telling me. “Yeah, right,” I kept telling them. “Unless I can put my fingers into the nail holes in his hands and my hand into the wound in his side, I’m just going to keep believing that this is all in your imaginations.”

 

So when Jesus showed up again the next Sunday night and invited me to do just that, you can imagine how shocked I was. I guess my friends were feeling a bit smug right about then.  I did feel a little sheepish for being such a skeptic. 

 

But Jesus didn’t spend any energy making me feel bad. He invited me to have a tangible experience of his presence in my life. I needed that, and Jesus was just fine with that.

 

Well, thanks for listening. I think that other guy who’s preaching here today has a few things he wants to say. So I guess I’ll give him a chance.

 

+++++

 

Well, thanks, Thomas.

 

I know a bit about doubt and faith. I suspect many of us here do.

 

As many of you know, my first career was as a journalist. It’s a profession where one of the mantras is “if your mother tells you she loves you, check it out.”

I think that Thomas would have been a good journalist. He was curious, not afraid to ask questions. 

When I added ministry to my career in journalism, people would ask how I handled that change. I said I was straddling skepticism and belief. I thought that was a pretty good place to be. I still do.

We as a church community have said we think that is a good place to be as well. When we adopted our vision statement and articulated our values last year, one of those values is Doubt + Faith. 

Here’s how we explained it: “We humbly approach the mysteries of faith and complexities of life through continual learning. We encourage questions and curiosity.”

When we think about so many of the stories in the Bible, so many of the things we are asked to believe about God and Jesus, even the many things we are asked to believe about how we should live as followers of Jesus, it sometimes can seem a bit overwhelming. 

I think bringing a bit of skepticism to all that is not a bad idea. It forces us to think through the things we say we believe. The danger, of course, is when we allow skepticism to turn into cynicism. 

On the other hand, I find it helpful to remember that belief really means this is not something I can prove. I can believe in an idea; I can believe in a person. The parallel danger to skepticism turning into cynicism is belief turning into just blind faith. 

One of the things I learned from a pastor who was mentor to me is the phrase, “This is what I believe, but I could be wrong.” There is a resonance to that phrase that has allowed me to listen to what others believe with what I hope is an open heart.

The wonderful author – and Presbyterian minister – Frederick Buechner wrote an essay on doubt some 30 years ago and had this memorable line:

“Whether your faith is that there is a God or that there is not a God, if you don't have any doubts, you are either kidding yourself or asleep. Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.”

And as Thomas mentioned, he was not the only one with doubts among Jesus’ followers. Remember when Mary Magdalene and the other women who had been to tomb and learned that Jesus had risen from the dead went back to tell the apostles?

Peter – among others – doubted what they said – ah, idle women’s tales - so Peter ran off to the tomb to see for himself. 

Peter’s doubts propelled him forward.  That’s what our doubts can do for us. We seek to learn more, to hear from others, to see what sense we can make of life.

Of course, sharing our doubts, our uncertainties with others can also cause a bit of tension. Keep in mind what the week must have been like for Thomas. 

His companions say they had seen Jesus and he told them he did not believe them. Yet they all stayed together in the midst of that. 

One of the things that I have come to value about life at Christ Presbyterian is how well we all stay together even though we bring a range of doubts and beliefs, of experience, of worship styles and musical preferences into this space. 

Here’s one example. There has been a movement over the last couple of decades to pay more attention to the reality that God is a being beyond any one gender. While many of us grew up thinking of God as a man and praying to God as a father, the language we use has broadened so much. 

Those of us in leadership here try to be conscious of that in our public prayers, in the lyrics of hymns, in our preaching. Yet we know that there are those among us for whom the more traditional ways of praying has deep meaning. 

We know that in churches less white than ours, the Father God language is central to an understanding of God’s care for them. We know that the fact the Jesus often called God “Father” – like he heard in Thomas’ references to Jesus’ Last Supper speech - helps inform many people’s prayers.

So here we work to hold so many traditions and styles in a place of respect. 

Here we work to make sure that people who continue to figure out what they believe have room for their questions and their doubts.

Here we hope that people who feel more anchored in their faith, in what they believe, can rejoice in that even as they recognize that others are still on a journey.

I feel so at home here because this is a place where I can straddle skepticism and belief with so many others. 

Many of you know that I grew up Catholic and the Catholic Church - and other Christian traditions - have a rich tradition of patron saints – heroes from the past who in some way are connected to a place or a profession or a cause in the present. You know – like St. Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland.

Well, I think if we had such a custom, Thomas would be a good patron saint for us here at Christ Presbyterian. Committed to follow the way of Jesus – even willing to stake his life on that conviction – yet always willing to ask questions, to live with doubts, to stay in community.

So thanks, Thomas, for setting an example. 

And thanks, people of Christ Presbyterian, for embracing Doubt + Faith.

Amen.