Radical Community

(2023)

In February 2023 I guest preached at Atonement Lutheran Church in Boulder, CO.

Good morning.

Keen eyed congregants may have noticed I’m not pastor Stephanie. My name is Anna Lugthart and I’m a grad student at CU Boulder. I’m also a regular at Lutheran Campus Ministry CU, or as we call it, Bread & Belonging, or B&B. Because we’re all broke college students, our group is funded by local churches, including yours. I’d like to thank you, first of all, for making B&B possible, but I’d also like to thank you for inviting me into your church this Sunday to share my story and my perspective. I think this kind of cross-pollination is vital to forming community that extends beyond our church walls. Which incidentally feels very in line with today’s reading. Alright. We may not all be there yet.

Matthew 5:21-37 falls into a category I’ve heard called “difficult passages.” You’ve got your feel good passages, like 1 Corinthians 13:4 “Love is patient, love is kind…” and John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son…” Preaching those is like going down the bunny hill. The sermons practically write themselves. Then you’ve got ones that require a little more thinking. Blue hill passages if you will. And then you’ve got these. I mean there’s dismemberment, jail, and some interesting takes on divorce. This is like a double black diamond level text to preach on. I hear pastors talking about these and it sounds like a celebrity’s PR person after they say something controversial. They get into historical context and alternate translations and go through all kinds of acrobatics to find something worth gleaning from it.

In all honesty, I genuinely struggled with this text, too. Scripture has the power to make you feel incredible clarity but after reading this I didn’t even know where to start. I just felt so lost.

I like to say that I experience God in much the same way that I experience my gender. People ask, how do you know that God is real? How do you know that you’re a woman? And to be honest I don’t have good answers to either. It’s not really a logical chain of events that lead me there, it’s a feeling. Subtle but undeniable, like a whisper I keep hearing, or an ever-burning candle inside of me that tells me “yes, there is God,” and “yes, this is who I am.” And acknowledging those things just feels so right. But it’s not always that way.

I want to bring you back to summer of 2020. I know, probably not the best year for most of us. It was the same for me, but for more than one reason. I was living in a disintegrating 4 bedroom apartment with 5 other roommates. I shared an 8’ by 8’ room with another person and I was living out of a duffel bag, a backpack, and the things I could fit in my car. We also had no AC and lived 30 feet from a train station. We could actually connect to our wifi from the platform, which was kind of cool but also concerning. I had just graduated with a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering but no one would hire me because there just weren’t any jobs. My friends were letting me stay there for free while I got back on my feet but I was trying to chip in what I could. So I worked retail. I didn’t exactly enjoy it. Needless to say, it wasn’t what I had envisioned my post-graduate life looking like.

Before that, when the pandemic began, I started to wonder, genuinely, if I might die. We didn’t know much about the virus but it was killing more and more people every day and I feared that one day, I may be among them. I think many of us felt that. But more than that I was afraid that I would die and not be remembered for the person that only I knew I was. That engraved across my tomb would forever read my “dead name.” Some of you may have heard that term. It actually comes from that very fear that often becomes reality. That when a trans person dies they will not be remembered by their chosen name but by the old name that friends and family failed to let go of. And that when they no longer have the ability to resist, that name will literally haunt them to the grave.

That Spring, in my last semester of college, I came out to my roommates who wholly embraced me. For several months we lived together in harmony, safe from the outside threats of pandemic and hatred in our little apartment. But then I graduated, virtually, and moved back in with my parents. It was like time turned back and though I’d lived for nearly a decade in the closet, the knowledge of how joyful life could be on the outside made my re-entry that much more painful. I knew I had to tell them the truth. And so, that summer, I came out. But things didn’t go well. They wouldn’t use my pronouns or see me as a woman. They thought it might be a phase, or a disorder. Painful words were exchanged and soon it became clear that I couldn’t stay.

That was when I moved back in with my roommates. For a long time, I didn’t speak to anyone in my family. We’d been a very close, intertwined family and losing them felt like losing a part of myself. I felt empty inside and at times I genuinely wondered if I should have kept my mouth shut and taken my truth with me to the grave. What good is being yourself if you can’t be whole? For the first time in my life it felt like there was nowhere to go. My life was rapidly changing around me and though I’d set off this chain of events I was swept up in them and no longer the one in control. And for the first time since I found my faith, I couldn’t hear that whisper and it felt like the candle had gone out. I just felt so lost.

Why would God lead me to such a dark place? I had no family, no home, no career, and barely enough money to get by. And all the while, I was trying to navigate life as an adult for the first time. It was trial by fire and I felt like I was sinking into the flames. Why, I wondered, would God ask so much of me? How was I expected to make it through?

I think one of the most challenging parts of today’s text is that it, too, asks a lot of us. Too much, it would seem. How can we be reconciled with everyone in our lives? Even the people who’ve hurt us, the people with whom our relationship seems beyond repair.

And how can we be expected to cut off our body parts if they cause us to sin? I mean, raise your hand if you ever sneaked a peek at someone else’s test back in school. Even just once! I mean, I’m not proud of it, but how else was I going to pass that math quiz I forgot to study for back in middle school? I’ve got to tear my right eye out now! And probably my left one, too. And all of you do too! I mean these are just impossible standards, right? Why would Jesus even set the bar that high?

But as I reread this text, over and over, I started to realize that’s not exactly what Jesus is asking us to do. All of these commandments, at their core, are about fostering community. Being reconciled with our neighbors, equating harm done to them with harm done to ourselves. “Do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black.” There’s actually something comforting about that. These things are out of our control because we are not just individuals, but a part of God’s community. And this community is upheld together.

It’s hard to wrap our heads around this, especially living in such an individual-centric society. I think if anything, we’re trending farther and farther away from this. I currently live in a house that’s been partitioned into four separate units and put up for rent, and I think that’s a perfect metaphor for the state of society we live in. Our news sources and social media pit us against each other, we do more and more on our own that we once would have done together. We ask Google or Reddit for advice instead of our family and friends. And all of these things, our data, our conflicts, our isolation, profit a few people at the top of the economic strata. People who, much like my landlords, I never see. And can’t get a hold of when my sink leaks.

Jesus’s message here is radical, and not just because it involves self-inflicted amputation. He’s asking us to tear down these partitions to live in community and solidarity. And the amazing thing about that is that for everything you give, you receive, in turn, your fair portion.

That was the single greatest lesson I learned back in the Summer of 2020. I mean I was far from alone, there were 6 of us crammed into a 500 square foot apartment! But when I started to fall and the safety nets I had always counted on were gone, my friends were there to catch me. Some of them are here by Zoom today and for the rest, I’m recording this sermon so they can hear it later. I want to tell Morgan Lee-Barton, Michelle Lee-Barton, Louis Ingram, Mady Corrigan, and Lisa Mende that I am eternally grateful to them for their support when I needed it most.

That September, I found my footing, and the next month I moved into my own room in a 10 person co-op. I don’t think any of those people are going to hear this sermon, but they, too, offered me friendship and community.

After that, I moved out East to live with my godmother, who’s also joining us by Zoom! She opened her home to me for a whole year. While I was there I would start my career, get vaccinated, and life would finally start to feel normal again.

And that’s not to mention the community I’ve found here in Colorado. B&B, St. Aiden’s Episcopal church. Pastor Ashley and my partner Tori who came today to see me preach. All of these people have supported me at different times in my life and the community we share feels like a warm, secure hug.

But community isn’t just made up of new friends. There’s also room for those we’ve fought and reconciled with. Over Winter break, I flew home, and for the first time since I moved out, everyone in my family was together under one roof. We’re still working to fix our fractured relationship, but things have come a long way from where they were. They’re actually watching this sermon, too.

And I share my story not to garner sympathy, or to slowly reveal that dozens of people from my friends and family have infiltrated your church this Sunday. I share my story because it tells a tale of radical community, of working together in hard times to get through. I like to think that along the way I’ve given something back to all those people. And I hope that the relationships we formed don’t vanish just because things have gotten easier now. It’s a beautiful thing to touch another person’s life and to let them touch yours.

One thing I really appreciate in a sermon is a call to action. Well meaning words are good but if you have nothing to do with them they stagnate and become useless. So I want to give you all a little homework. I know what you’re thinking. This lady we’ve never seen before waltzes into our church, talks at us for 15 minutes, and then has the nerve to give us homework? Bear with me. And don’t worry. It doesn’t include any dismemberment. I’ve talked about this wonderful thing, this “radical community,” but I think that can feel a bit abstract. So what I want you to do is think of someone who has something against you. Or perhaps someone that you have something against. It could be something very big or very little. Maybe it’s just someone you haven’t really spoken to in a while. Just one person. Or more if you want. And if it’s safe for you and for them, reach out. If you came up for the children’s message, you’re already one step ahead. But I’m giving this to the rest of you too because we all need to work on reconciliation. Community is built on many small actions like this.

Before I wrap up I want to touch on one of the grislier parts of this text that I’ve kind of ignored up to now. Specifically the part on divorce. “I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, makes her the victim of adultery, and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.” I’m going to throw some context at you. I made fun of other people doing it at the beginning of this sermon, but I’m about to do it myself. The world that Jesus lived in was very different from our own. Women were not allowed to be free agents in their lives and divorce could leave them stranded, at risk of poverty or even death. And in that sense, Jesus’s command to men to not divorce their wives is rather progressive for his time, despite the way it sounds to our modern ears.

I often wonder, being so far from this context, what Jesus thinks of me. I must be so different from any woman he ever encountered during his time on Earth, 2,000 years ago in the Middle East. I work, I’m pursuing higher education, I’m trans. I’ve dated men, women, and non-binary folks. Perhaps most egregiously I’m 24 and not married. Put me in first century Israel and I’m sure I’d be stoned in a matter of minutes.

But I know in my heart that Jesus loves me, just as much as everyone in this church, and everyone outside of this church, because we are all part of one whole. We are all God’s children.

Thank you so much for having me this Sunday.