Pastor Al Starr Sermon - 3rd Pentecost.

Watch Pastor Al Starr's sermon for the Third Sunday after Pentecost. Raw footage recorded on Sunday, June 26, 2022 at Mt. Olive Lutheran Church in Santa Monica. Transcription: "In our gospel text ( Luke 9:51-62) Jesus is leading his disciples into a Samaritan territory and community that most of his disciples, observant of Jewish law, would have never gone into. The Jewish law, traditions, customs and culture, the religious difference between the Jewish people and Samaritan people was so palpable that the Samaritans would not receive Jesus nor the disciples he had sent ahead of him to make arrangements for his coming. The Samaritans assumed that this Jewish entourage was of no concern or interest to them. As the Samaritan woman at the at the well (John 4) put it “ Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.” There is an air of divisiveness here that is nothing new and has set the stage for condemning judgement and mistrust. When James and John ( disciples of Jesus) saw how the Samaritans responded to Jesus They said, “ Lord do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” “Do you want Us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them? The text says Jesus rebuked them, but I can’t help but imagine that must be the abbreviated response. I can imagine Jesus asking “ When did you get to be so powerful that you can command the resources of heaven? When did you gain authority to use the power of heaven to destroy human life? “ Yet here they were ( here we are ) disciples of Jesus who on the basis of their own judgement, condemnation and destruction was the only possible conclusion they could imagine, The only possible response, the only solution to this Samaritan problem in their minds was to destroy them ……call down fire from heaven. They could not imagine anything Samaritan being of any worth or value Yet Jesus ( John 4) encounters a Samaritan woman and in conversation with her, stirs a testimony so power filled that an entire community comes to know Jesus, not just through her testimony but through their own encounter with the grace, love and word of God made flesh, alive in Jesus. Jesus rebukes his disciples for their proposed misappropriation of authority and misuse of power. John 3:17 makes it clear that Jesus the Word of God, the Love of God made flesh came not to condemn but to save. The disciples just could not imagine Samaritans being of worth or value in God’s kingdom building enterprise. So, Call down consuming fire on them , they have offended Jesus. Unfortunately, the Christian Church has a long and tragic history of leaning into the misguided notion that Jesus needs to be protected, that Jesus needs to be defended by us. Even more tragic is the notion that any of us has the power or the authority to us the name of Jesus to destroy. In 1452 , at the dawn of the so-called Age of Discovery, Pope Nicolas V authorized King Alfonso V of Portugal to “ invade, capture, vanquish and subdue, all Saracens, and pagans….to reduce their person to perpetual slavery and to take away all their possessions and property. “ In essence, if they did not accept Jesus, then Christian explorers had the authority to destroy them, and take their land for the “ Christian nations”. I count this as the genesis of a supremacist mentality and doctrine ( and even corrupt spirit if you will) that has grown & flourished and continues even now Again in 1493 a Papal decree was issued to secure the so-called discoveries of Christopher Columbus in 1492. This doctrine of discovery laid the groundwork for the wholesale enslavement of African peoples and the displacement and near total genocide of indigenous of the so-called America both North and South. Because some could not imagine that the kingdom of God could possibly include people of African ancestry or Native American ancestry or Arab Middle Eastern heritage or people of Asian or Latin descent or non-gender conforming people Jesus teaches a commandment that says we are to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. Self-love, a healthy value of self is a critical component in the economy of the kindom of God. This is Pride Month for the LGBTQIA+ community I can not help but to believe that Brittney Griner the WNBA superstar, now held hostage in Russia for months would not be there if she were not a same gender loving woman. Juneteenth was just last week. Remembering the eradication of a demonic system of enslavement in this country. Last week the Poor People’s March on Washington, bringing visibility to the call to restore equitable access all Americans living in poverty and opportunity to the quality of life all of us desire for ourselves, our children and our children’s children." -Pastor Al Starr Interim Pastor, Mt. Olive Lutheran