Sermon at First UMC Corning, NY
Beloved community,
Christ greets us today not with finished answers but with still-unfolding sentences.
He places an ellipsis in the air—an unfinished thought—
and then breathes a promise: “The Spirit of truth will come, and will guide you into all truth.”
This is the signature of God: revelation that travels, wanders, refuses containment.
It is the fugitive breath of the Triune life—ever slipping past the locked doors of Empire.
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II. A Tale from the Checkpoint
In 2022, I stood at Checkpoint 300 outside Bethlehem.
Concrete walls rose like clenched fists; turnstiles clicked like the tick-tock of occupation.
Yet in that gray choke point I heard laughter, the soft barter of spices, a grandmother’s hymn.
Oppression thought it had built a cage,
but the people—Palestinian kin—had mastered an older economy: fugitivity.
They trafficked in un-licensed joy, in border-crossing hope, in stubborn breath.
They taught me that the Spirit still declares Christ—
not from gilded chancels, but from the underside of history.
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III. The Currency of Fugitivity
Throughout Scripture God spends a strange coin:
Empire’s Tender
Domination
Security
Scarcity
God’s Tender
Flight that frees
Risking the road
Runaway abundance
• • Moses*—a river-float refugee raised in Pharaoh’s house, then fleeing to Midian, returns as liberator.
• • Jesus*—a babe carried across borders to Egypt, later a rabbi without a nest, risen yet untombed.
• • Harriet, Marsha, Sylvia*—conductors on railroads of rebellion, saints of runaway possibility.
Fugitivity is not mere escape; it is creative refusal—the Spirit’s art of making a way where there is none.
Fred Moten calls it “the path of the already-elsewhere,” a choreography of freedom that out-paces the powers.
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IV. Contemporary Beacons
• Black Trans Women in every city, shining despite legislative crosshairs, teach us how to live un-licensed and glorious.
• Greta Thunberg, school-strike pilgrim, trespasses upon the complacency of nations.
• Families in Gaza who break Ramadan fast with rubble still falling show us how to taste hope in a war-zone.
Each bears witness that the Spirit has “many things yet to say” and speaks them through fugitive bodies, accents, and ecosystems.
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V. Trinitarian Movement
John 16 displays a holy relay:
Father gives to Son → Son shares with Spirit → Spirit declares to disciples → disciples embody for the world.
Notice: every hand-off happens in motion.
The Trinity is a fugitive dance—love that loops, circulates, refuses arrest.
When we join that dance, we trade in God’s tender; we become walking sermons of runaway grace.
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VI. Invitation to Corning
So, First United Methodist, how might we spend this currency?
1. Stand with Those in Flight
• Partner with trans-led mutual-aid funds; write refugee-welcome letters; learn pronouns as liturgy.
2. Practice Desert Hospitality
• Host a vigil for Gaza; send medical kits; refuse theologies that bless blockades.
3. Risk Prophetic Imagination
• Let climate-striking youth teach our committees; budget for bold experiments in justice.
Remember: fugitivity is not a detour from faith—it is the Way of the Christ who slipped from death’s grasp.
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VII. Benediction — “Take What Is Mine”
May the Spirit take what is Christ’s—
the breath that toppled tombstones,
the laugh that out-echoed Golgotha—
and declare it in your accent,
through your holy fugitivity,
for the liberation of every underside yet unnamed.
Go, spend the currency of fugitivity;
and when Empire claims it’s priceless,
remember: God has already paid in full.
