The Rev. Dr. Pamela Dolan
Do Not Lose Heart: A Sermon for June 9, 2024
Episcopal Church of St. Martin
Mark 3:20-35
My graduation from Harvard Divinity School at the tender age of 26 was one of the happiest days of my life. I was surrounded by family and friends, the weather was gorgeous, and I had accomplished one of my first big academic goals.
Don’t get me wrong; my time at HDS was not perfect. I struggled mightily with vocational issues and I often felt misunderstood by other students, who could be antagonistic to those of us who professed our faith openly. But I made good friends, was gifted with fabulous mentors, and had even been taught by one of my idols, the poet Seamus Heaney. All in all, I soaked up the atmosphere of intellectual rigor and curiosity until I could almost feel it coming out of my pores. The graduation ceremonies were simply splendid, with all the pomp and ceremony a medievalist could desire, and when I look back at pictures from that day I can see that I was ablaze with joy.
Last month, the Harvard Corporation declined to allow 13 seniors to graduate because they had been suspended due to actions they took while participating in pro-Palestinian protests on campus. This decision came after the Faculty of Arts and Letters had voted to reinstate the students to a list of those receiving degrees. Many faculty have strongly criticized both the original disciplinary measures against the students and the Harvard Corporation’s decision to keep them from graduating with their class. There were walkouts during the graduation ceremony and other signs of support for the 13 students at the heart of this case, as well as indications of a counter-protest, such as a banner proclaiming that Jewish Lives Matter.[i]
Just telling this story makes me nervous. I know that there are differences of opinion in this room about the war in Gaza, about the relationship between Israel and the United States, about what counts as antisemitism, and about student protests and the limits of free speech on campus. I know that these issues are far from hypothetical or abstract. Many of us have deep connections to people who are more directly a part of this conflict, or maybe even see ourselves as part of it, for any number of important and legitimate reasons. Our own campus here at UC Davis and the wider Davis community are very much caught up in this same moment in history and the difficult choices people are making are just as real and fraught here as they are anywhere else.
I chose to focus on the situation at Harvard for this sermon because I genuinely wonder what I would have done if my graduation had been last month instead of nearly 30 years ago. Would I have stayed away? Would I have walked out? Would I have found some other means of protesting? I don’t think that I personally would have been on the side of the counter-protestors, but I know and love people who likely would have made that choice.
Talking about something this polarizing is not an easy thing for someone as basically conflict averse as I am. But not talking about it doesn’t make it go away, nor make our communities any more cohesive or even safer. It just leaves us all wondering where other people stand and whether it is okay to share our perspective. Talking about difficult topics with honesty, even being willing to admit that we’re internally conflicted, while continuing to show respect and good will to those with whom we disagree, ought to be a norm in the church. It takes practice, though, and we must be prepared for some inevitable missteps and to be the victims or even perpetrators of unintentional hurt. Impact counts, as well as intent. And with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, we must turn those courageous conversations into just and courageous action.
Jesus was a master of courageous conversations, and his words were always backed up by action and a willingness to suffer for the sake of doing what was right. In today’s Gospel passage we see him in the thick of controversy. It is easy to think of Jesus as a classic nice guy, someone who went around healing people and hanging out with nobodies and eating with anyone who would accept his company. While there’s some truth to this characterization, it misses the more radical side of Jesus and his mission–to free captives, to liberate people from oppression, to undo the systems that kept people hungry and afraid. He was not passive, nor was he under any illusions that his message was not going to be seen as dangerous and even outright seditious.
Biblical scholar Ched Myers claims that it is in this very passage that Mark “comes clean” about his understanding of Jesus. Myers says that Jesus is giving notice that he “intends to overthrow the reign of the strong man” [the religious and political establishment] and to set free anyone who is being kept down or preyed upon by tyrants. He writes, “Jesus has turned the tables completely on his opponents: it is they who are aligned against God’s purposes. To be captive to the way things are, to resist criticism and change, to brutally suppress efforts at humanization”–that, he concludes, is the greatest sin, the sin against the Holy Spirit.[ii]
The Church today, just like the religious authorities in first-century Palestine, can be resistant to change and criticism. Leaders of our nation, too, have a history of suppressing efforts at humanization, and in fact are adept at trying to dehumanize and even demonize people they consider enemies. It takes both courageous speech and courageous, sacrificial action to turn the tide when people are “captive to the way things are.” In my lifetime, perhaps the biggest change I have seen in this regard is in the way we treat members of the LGBTQ+ community.
When I was in high school, a couple of friends “came out” to me, I assume because they considered me a safe person. I’m so grateful to them for showing that kind of courage and trust at a time when the word queer was considered an insult and AIDS was a topic that frightened and divided people. Back then I literally couldn’t imagine a church where we could talk about things like sexual orientation and gender identity, let alone be affirming of anything that varied from what we considered the norm. Fast forward to today, with our expansive welcome, our statement of commitment and action, our brightly-colored rainbow crosswalk out front–and it’s amazing how far we’ve come.
But actually, stop. Don’t fast forward. If we fast forward we might forget or ignore the decades and years and months and days and hours of blood, sweat, and tears that people poured into making change happen, in the church and in the wider society. We might forget or ignore the courage it took, the sacrifices that were made, and the ways that the church actively harmed people and slowed progress. We might forget or ignore the people whose families and faith communities thought they were ill or possessed, rather than seeing them for who they were: people who were struggling, sometimes literally dying, to be seen and accepted, to be recognized as fully human and unconditionally loved by God.
Jesus didn’t ignore or forget any of these people in his lifetime. Jesus very much lived his life as one of those people, misunderstood by his family and misdiagnosed by authorities who were threatened by him and wanted him stopped. Jesus doesn’t ignore or forget these people today–people who resist the status quo, who fight for change, who speak out against injustice, people who are being harmed by the way the world is and who long for things to be different. Jesus loves them. Jesus is one of them.
We live in a time when it is easy to see our church and our world as a house divided. It is so hard not to give in to cynicism or despair. In his letter to the people of the church in Corinth, a people facing persecution and affliction, Paul says simply, “And so we do not lose heart.” To lose heart means to lose our courage, our faith, our hope–to lose the thing that motivates us to keep going. We do not lose heart because we believe in a God who sticks with us no matter what, a God who was willing to go ahead of us into the thick of things, into conflict and division and strife, and stand firm and unafraid. We do not lose heart because we follow a man who blazed a trail for peace and righteousness, freedom and forgiveness.
It happens that the commencement speaker at Harvard the year I graduated was Vaclav Havel, the influential philosopher, writer, and dissident, a man who was imprisoned multiple times for his beliefs and his brilliant expression of them. Havel once said, “Either we have hope within us or we don’t. It is a dimension of the soul, and is not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the World or observation of the situation. Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart.” Let us orient our spirits toward hope. Let us not lose heart. Let us continue to have courageous conversations, to work for justice and peace, following the example of people from all walks of life who have shown us how it is done, not least of them an itinerant rabbi, a carpenter’s son, who took on the strong man and won. Amen.
[i] I looked up several news articles about this, including https://www.wbur.org/news/2024/05/22/harvard-corporation-wont-give-diplomas-to-13-students-despite-faculty-vote
[ii] Myers, Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus (Obis, 2008).
