Who's Coming to the Cookout?

I invite this beautiful community to join me and a deep breath, and as

you exhale, I invite you to hum. You can join me. We're

going to breathe in one, two, three and hum it out back out

good. Okay, let's do that one more time, breathing and let's hum

it out. Let's go before the throne of grace, eternal Mother and Father,

thank you for bringing us here for a time as this ask that you

anoint our ears and lips afresh and our hearts that we may open and expand

to receive what you have given us on today. Amen. Picture that a

sunny afternoon, no clouds in sight, The wind caresses your cheek. You

are on your way out of the house with the pan of your favorite dish.

You are on your way to the cookout. Can somebody say the cookout?

Now? You gotta say, look cook out? All right? A

cultural gathering, a convening of your beloved community, family, extended family,

friends, friends and friends. A time to reunite to bond, a time

to assess the well being, a place to celebrate joy, A place where

you can rest your hearts, your mind, and your spirit. A place

where your armor of resilience can release to make space for responses to questions like

how is your heart dooing, how's life treating you, what's going on in

your world? Really, it's a moment where the stress conditions of living in

a hyper vigilant survival mode which impacts our nervous system, can have a moment

to reset. But to cultivate such a question, you have to ask two

essential questions. Who is coming to the cookout and what are they bringing?

An inquiry that holds the most controversial debate because who's making the bank mac and

cheese is the center of the dinner plate right. Who is coming to the

cookout invites us to shape community, coalition building, resource sharing, and let

loose, while the guestless affirms who is willing to show up when times get

hard. Cookouts anchor us to the present reality of the restlessness. It anchors

the expansiveness of God's people that isn't just a church or New York City.

It also includes the community that we are in community with on Earth, our

siblings in Canada, in Haiti, in our text, the Israelites. It

breaks open and connects us and locates us to a God that is ever present,

amid disconnection, chaos and fear. And as I sat with our text

on today, amid a human made climate disaster, particles in the air impacting

the least of these orange haze glistening the sky. For somehow I can see

through the muck that to me we us can we say that together? To

me, we us that we know what light looks like in face of destruction.

We know what community gatherings like Our cookouts, our potluck dinners, our

barbecues, our town halls signify we are loved. It signifies we are seen.

It signifies we are still here. And if we're bold enough, we

will ask ourselves who were coming to our cookouts? Who is coming to add

to the delicious sweetness? What coming together and love brings? Who is bringing

the love? Who was bringing the radical transparency, Who was bringing the radical

imagination? Who was bringing us the affirmations we need? Who is bringing us

grace? The prophetic witness of Isaiah, we witness the proclamation of a man

who cares deeply about his community and his relationship with God. For Isaiah,

this is not a game. It is a matter of the heart. That

we are not that we are able to not only show God we can care

about each other, but we can use our lives as a testament to the

breathtaking love that is our almighty God. Beneath our text and as proclaimed in

our last week's sermon, God has to hold the Israelites accountable, and bet

you believe God has to hold us accountable as well. The terror, the

destruction, the displacement, the violence witnessed in our text we also experience in

our own social climate. We got here because of our own human decisions and

as a result of me, we us can we say that together, me,

we us, we have to sit in the discomforts of generational turmoil that

continues to abrupt as a result of us abusing our natural resources, for using

our government funds to build more devices that only breed more deconstruction instead of pouring

back in our community cook out, the increase of political greed, and a

decrease in our community rituals that hold our sacredness of being human is compromised,

And if we are bold enough, we will ask who is bringing the spirit

of justice to our homes, to the streets, to our institutions, Who

is bringing what are we bringing to the history of our state? Sanctioned violence

in our day to day practice, and just maybe we will honor what our

God is bringing to us. God has shown in this text God's righteousness,

ongoing flexibility and collaboration, and God's unwavering love. In between the texts,

we see God still manages to offer the people walking in darkness a great life

and the baby the doom and gloom events acknowledge that hold us accountable to We

are not doing right by our siblings. We are not doing right by our

trans youth. We are not doing right by our older adults, are unhoused

ken. We are not doing right by our home, whose complex web of

ecosystems give us the breath, gives us the water in which we need to

be in our bodies. Saints, we're not doing right. And as I

wrestled with this text, I had a har moment. Of course, a

baby is born, our community babies we are responsible for. God proclaims God's

mercy by insisting that we can, we should, and we are required to

do right by making a new story. However, my thought and this entire

text, it's who who are having babies in the middle of the decentralization of

a systemic structure that plagues our five senses. We are the Israelites are right.

According to United Nations data, three hundred and eighty five thousand babies are

born every day, which means one hundred and forty million are born every year.

There are one hundred and forty million ways are starvedust Babies that are intertwined

with the love of God has every way of making its way onto our earthly

plane. And there are one hundred and forty million ways God can and will

destruct our reality with radical love and radical imagination. I stumbled upon the age

in my life. I say some because it happen really fast, where my

community members and I are having these conversations about giving birth, having honest conversations

about how do we guide new babies into this world? And my reaction every

time is who, how? What do you not see the state of our

affairs? Black folk with uteruses have the highest maternal mortality rate in the United

States, and I imagine in this text there are high mortality rates for our

dear friend its realites as well. Babies are being born in hostile environments.

But as the text transforms, as I spent more time with it, God

offers the baby, the birth of a baby as a reframing of what life

can look like. The spirit of light offers a wonderful counselor a mighty god

with everlasting peace, which means children invite splashes of color into our lives.

Us older beings with longer time on earth, who have been conditioned by experience

that we live in an unkind world with an unkind history, and young people

remind us that light exists and the world can be kind and we can envision

a kinder future. Children have a creative imagination that rips the curt and of

complacency and guides us to remember who we are before we've ever experienced the doom

and gloom. Last week, my precious queer community celebrated the life of our

dear friend with the gathering in the park with a fantastical fiend. Feel your

fantasy dress in your most fantastical outfit, from creatures to elf ears to even

fairies. The magic was for the taking, and our time in the park

included extra guests, children and deep awe of our outfits and deep wonder asked

if they could take a picture with us. We would have thought we were

from Disney Channel. Their deep amazement of a gathering. What fairies remind ain't

to me how important splashes of color means when you do not experience it often?

And they took a juicy strawberry on the toping of the camp. Me

we us can we say that together? Me? We us have been have

been leaning and maneuvering through our deepest understandings of what it means to heal.

Right, and a part of our social political conversation and this inner inner work.

Anybody heard of inner child work that's been coming up? Inner child work,

right, it's been, it's been. It's the hottest thing. Now

you know what we're doing right, And the rootwork of our healing transports us

back to our earliest childhood memories where we truly begin to develop our sense of

personality, our emotional attachment, our relationship building, and so much more.

It is through our bodies we tap into we are able to listen and discover

our own inner life that has not completely been obstructed by our binaries and our

paradigms of how the world should be. The world just is, and as

uncomfortable as it is, it is God's reminder how much we matter as children

and how much we matter as older adults and children's bodies. So yes,

I said a baby is born or a baby is coming to the cookout,

because a child's presence says we can rebuild through the storm. I mean we

have to. We have a spiritual obligation to leave the world better than we

found it for them. And we must be honest and be accountable to our

own wrongdoings, as Isaiah urged, and like our friends, the Iserielites urge

us in this text. But we have to be prepared to receive this love

and the light that God brings us. And instead of pushing children to the

side saying this is grown folks business, Oh this is not for you yet,

how about we listen because they can teach us about flexibility. They can

teach us about what it means to greet strangers on the sidewalk even though you

don't want to. They can teach us what it means to smile at other

people on the subway, even though we want to look at our phones.

That is to say that there's creativity and each and every one of us that

we still got it. It's God's reminder and are not so gloomy text that

we aren't new to the light. We've always known what liberation feels like in

our bodies. We know what dancing is like, we know what coloring is

like, we know what singing and the showers like. And as we move

through Pride months, I just want to say, it will be if I

didn't take the chance to say how beautiful our queer trance youth are. Their

compassion of listening to their deepest knowing says they are not afraid to splash color.

They show us we can create without expectation. We are ordained to create.

And when we deny our queer trans youth the joy of gender affirming healthcare,

we are denying God's beautiful life from entering our lives. A vibrant yes

and the face of the greatness of climate crisis, in the face of color

color blind rhetoric, and the face of bigotry, the light of creation breaks

through with hope at the center, mobilizing each and every one of us.

We are children of God and we can create justice. We can create affordable

healthcare, we can create fee sovereignty, we can create housing for all of

us. And that's just the start of the creation story. Me We us

can build, so we have a community cookout, gathering, grilling our best

corn on the cob, barbecue ribs, grilled chicken, potato salad, even

a green castle. I won't forget about my vegans either. And in order

to enjoy the sweetness, the fulfilling nourishment of our bodies surrounded by relentless laughter,

the electric slide breaking out on the dance floor, we must ask again

who is coming to the cookout? Because God does have the final say and

the joy of our victory, and we must participate in choosing and honoring and

discovering and opening and receiving the people, our emotions, and the creative energy

that will give us a liberatory cookout. But remember, a cookout is not

a cookout unless folk can leave with a to go box, Meaning a cookout

overflowing with God's bountiful love is always on the menu. This is the word

for the people of God. Thanks be to God.