Do you have a junk drawer in your house? A bursting closet, storeroom, basement, or attic? Don’t we all? Depending on how long you’ve lived in your present house, over the months and years, you’ve probably been tossing all kinds of things into your junk drawers, or closets, or storerooms, or basements, or attics. Maybe you’ve finally convinced yourself that you absolutely have to do some clearing out. These days magazines like Woman’s Day, the AARP magazine, and USA Weekend, to mention just a few, harp on our need to declutter – perhaps to make room for what we’ll acquire during the holiday shopping season! These articles also acknowledge that decluttering is difficult. Psychologists tell us that we should begin the clearing out process by asking ourselves what keeps us from getting started. Do we feel overwhelmed by all our stuff, is it difficult to find the time to begin, or do we fear the negative emotions we might dredge up? More pragmatic organization experts suggest a sorting approach, i.e., taking our kitchen implements, clothes, books, mementoes, pictures, whatever, and sorting them into at least three piles: 1) love it, use it, look at it, or wear it all the time; 2) use it, look at it, or wear it occasionally; and 3) haven’t used it, looked at it, or worn it for at least a year. The things in category 1 go back to their places to continue to be used or treasured. The still-usable items in category 3 go into a donate-to-charity box, and the useless items get tossed. The items in category 2 are carefully examined again, and finally are either kept or discarded. Such sorting is not easy, but for most of us it is a needed and ultimately freeing exercise.
How about the rest of your life? Do you have a spiritual junk drawer, or closet? Our Scripture lessons today, especially our Gospel lesson, bid us also to take an honest look at our spiritual lives and consider whether and where spiritual sorting may be called for. In our Gospel lesson, Jesus has triumphantly entered into Jerusalem – an event that we remember on Palm Sunday. Filled with zeal and anger, Jesus then charged into the temple and made all the money changers and animal sellers get out. No wonder the religious leaders wondered where Jesus had gotten the authority to do what he did. Wouldn’t you have, in their shoes? Jesus flung their question back at them with a question of his own about the role of John the Baptist. Of course, Jesus was alluding to John’s identification of him as the Messiah, thus implicitly answering their question. But Jesus also reminded the religious leaders that John had called for all people to repent, to change their way of thinking and the way they lived their lives.
Then Jesus told a little story about two sons. After initially refusing, the first son did what his father had asked. After initially agreeing, the second son did not do what his father had asked. Jesus forced his listeners to choose between the sons. Of course, they gave the right answer: ultimately what matters is what we do in response to God’s call, not the beliefs we profess or the long prayers we intone. Yet I wonder. Isn’t it a little too easy to think that people can be identified and grouped this way? Perhaps Matthew’s community saw the first members of the Kingdom of God as those, both Jews and Gentiles, who had followed Christ, and saw the Jewish religious leadership as lesser members. But again, I wonder. It’s so easy to be judgmental. It’s so easy to see one group as redeemed and another group as unworthy, so easy to think that we are among the redeemed – because we’re of the right gender or ethnicity, or because we have a beautiful liturgy, or we profess the right beliefs, or we give generously to the poor – and to think that others who don’t share our identity, practices, and views are cast out.
Brothers and sisters, the truth is that today’s readings, and especially the story of the two sons, invite us to take a both/and approach. Aren’t we all sometimes and in some ways like both sons? Aren’t there times when we promise what we can’t or won’t, or don’t have the will to deliver? Conversely, aren’t there aspects of our lives that we deeply regret, that we are striving to bring more closely into line with God’s expectations? Our Gospel story suggests that both sons actually need to repent, to change their lives. And the good news is that we can repent. In the words of the prophet Ezekiel, God assured the Israelite exiles that repentance was always open to them: “I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, says the Lord God. Turn, then, and live.” In Jesus’ little story we are reminded and reassured that we are not bound by the past. We are not saved by our past promises, but neither are we determined or condemned by our past deeds. We can all repent, we can all turn around, and we can all change, with God’s help.
And yet we know that repentance is difficult. Just like decluttering, repentance requires of us a deep, self-examination, a true clearing out of spiritual junk drawers and closets. What keeps us from engaging in this kind of honest appraisal of our lives? What keeps us from following through on our best intentions and responding to God’s call to a more honest life? Do we think that our drawers and closets are already spotless? Are we like those who are sure of their own righteousness, certain that they have nothing of which to repent? Or conversely, are our lives, like our overflowing closets, such a mess that we feel overwhelmed by the prospect of even beginning? Are we afraid of the time such self-examination might take? Or are we afraid of what we might find if we do begin the process of self-examination?
Perhaps we need to follow the organization gurus. Perhaps we need to begin by taking baby steps, or breaking the task down into small manageable parts. Perhaps we can look first at our beliefs and prejudices. Perhaps we can engage in a kind of sorting process. What do our social or political beliefs look like? Where did or do we get them? What should we keep, what discard? Do we have positions on issues of which we are still absolutely certain? Are there positions which we’ve inherited perhaps but don’t agree with anymore? Do our views on some issues, capital punishment, abortion, immigration, health insurance, global poverty, or peace need rethinking? What about our spiritual beliefs? When was the last time we truly examined what we believe about God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, evil, salvation, prayer, the sacraments, other religions? Of which of our long-held convictions are we still absolutely certain? Are some of our convictions out of date? Do they need to be discarded? Which beliefs bear closer examination? Should we perhaps engage with others in examining what we think we believe?
Perhaps our practices also need the same kind of sorting approach, both for us as individuals and for us as a parish. Can you take a hard look at your traditions as a family? Are some to be cherished, and others to be changed, now that your life circumstances have changed? Don’t we often find that holiday traditions need to be examined closely as our circumstances change? What about our personal spiritual practices? Can you take a hard look at them? What should be kept, what discarded, what rethought? What about our worship life here? What should we keep, what might we stop doing, what do we need to examine more closely?
Taking a hard look at our spiritual lives is often difficult. We know that, which is why we are often so reluctant to engage seriously with spiritual issues. And yet, God through the prophet Ezekiel and through Jesus in today’s Gospel asks us to think, to ponder, and to reflect. Today’s readings offer us hope that honest self-examination, repentance, and change of life will bring us closer to one another and nearer to God’s kingdom. They also remind us that we must continue to look at our lives carefully, regularly, perhaps even daily. Even ten minutes a day, as we say our last prayers, will help us to begin the process of self-examination. As we let go of unneeded aspects of our lives, as we declutter our spiritual lives, God, who is “slow to guide and swift to bless,” will move in to graciously direct more and more of our lives. As our paths become clearer and freer of unneeded burdens, we become more and more the person that God created us to be, and our feet are ever more firmly fixed on the path that leads us into the Kingdom of God. May Jesus ever give you a clearer vision of the way into the Kingdom.
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Sunday, September 18, 2011
No Arm So Weak
Peter had a question, a legitimate question. Perhaps we have the same question. A rich young man had just asked Jesus what he had to do to obtain eternal life. Jesus told him to sell everything he had, give his money to the poor, and join Jesus’ band of disciples. No surprise, the rich young man wasn’t ready to do that – who is? – and he went away disappointed. Then Peter piped up. “Say, what about us, Lord? We’ve given up everything to follow you. What will there be for us?” Jesus reassured Peter that all who had made sacrifices for him would be rewarded. Then, to drive home his point, Jesus told a provocative story.
“The Kingdom of Heaven is like ...,” Jesus began. Then he went on to tell about a vineyard owner who practiced the most bizarre form of labor relations and economics. Certainly there were day laborers in ancient times hired on an as-needed basis. But hiring people throughout the work day, even as late as an hour before sunset? Paying the last to arrive first? Paying those who worked hard all day the same as those who worked only one hour? What was this vineyard owner thinking? Weren’t those hired first right to complain, “You have made them equal to us”? Treating those hired first this way wasn’t fair and didn’t make sense in Jesus’ or in Matthew’s time. And when we hear it, all we can do is shake our heads and wonder. Treating workers this way is totally contrary to anything we might do.
Jesus didn’t tell his disciples this story, and the writer of Matthew’s gospel didn’t preserve it, in order to instruct us in correct labor relations. Neither Jesus nor Matthew was sitting at the bargaining table advising either labor or management. Jesus told this story, and Matthew recounted it for his community, and by extension for us, in order to remind us of God’s true nature and to give us a vision of the new realm into which we are incorporated through Jesus.
Jesus told this story first of all to remind us of God’s unbelievable, immeasurable generosity. This was not a new theme in Scripture. The Exodus stories, the psalms, and the writings of many of the prophets also stress God’s generous love. Even the story of Jonah, the end of which we heard in our first lesson, emphasizes God’s gracious care and concern for all people, including the Ninevites who would eventually be enemies of Israel. In this provocative story, Jesus reminds his disciples and us that God is still a generous God, freely offering salvation to all who have made sacrifices for Jesus’ sake. We do not need to work to earn God’s free gift of salvation. Indeed there is nothing we can humanly do to earn God’s gift of true life. If we have been fortunate and have accomplished great things, or if we have been unfortunate and have stood idle most of the day, God still offers all of us salvation. Whether we have been an achiever or an idler, whether we were baptized as infants or adults, whether we have worked hard for the church all our lives, or whether we have come late to a life of devotion, God cares for us so much that God still generously offers us the gift of eternal life. And we all receive the same wage – the gift of a generous God, not a reward for hard work. Salvation is for all of us, no matter how long we have spent in the church. God’s gift is ours simply because we have shown up to claim it.
God’s gift of deeper life, Jesus also reminds us, is not just for us as individuals. God also invites us into a community in which all are loved. A few weeks back, our Gospel reading reminded us that the point of confronting someone who had hurt us was to preserve the bonds of community, to “retain that one,” if at all possible. Here we are reminded, or perhaps reassured, that the Kingdom of Heaven, God’s realm, is one where all are needed to bring in the harvest. The Kingdom of Heaven is a community where all, regardless of their skills and abilities, regardless of their time in the saddle, are assured of their worth in God’s eyes. The Kingdom of heaven is a place where all are needed, and where all know that they are valued and beloved by God.
Do our Christian communities look anything like the Kingdom of Heaven? Is this parish a community that appreciates God’s generous gift of new life to all of us? Our liturgy helps us to embody our understanding that all of us share God’s generous love. Following our confession of sin, all receive the same absolution. There are no gradations of absolution. Whether we are repenting of sin for the first time, or whether we have had a lifetime of daily confronting our shortcomings and failures, God offers us the same absolution. When we come up to the altar rail in the Eucharist, we all receive the same piece of bread, and we all drink from the same cup. Jesus offers his Body and Blood to us all, whether we were baptized today, or whether we have been lifelong disciples.
And when our liturgy is over, what then? What does our parish community look like then? Do those who have spent a lifetime in the church wonder about those who have just come in? Do those who have been longtime members look askance at newcomers? Or are all welcome? Are all valued? Are the contributions of all recognized? Make no mistake, no one is superfluous. All of us are valuable and beloved in God’s sight. And all of us are needed for the spread of God’s Realm.
During the summer of 2006 I did a chaplaincy internship at Children’s Hospital in Columbus. I was assigned to a floor that concentrated on respiratory illness. There were always children with cystic fibrosis. There were also a number of severely disabled infants, as well as some severely disabled older children. The severely disabled children always raised questions for me, as I wondered what kind of life they would have, and how their families would care for them. In one or two cases, it seemed as if their families had abandoned them. In others, their families were totally devoted to them, even to older children who could not care for themselves at all. I observed all these families, and like Mary, I “pondered these things” in my heart all that summer. I even befriended the mother of an infant who was born blind and deaf. But I didn’t come to any conclusions.
And then I read an article by Amy Julia Becker entitled “An Hour with Penny.”1 Two medical students on pediatric rotation came to Becker’s house to learn about children with disabilities. They wondered what it would be like to have such a child. They spent their first hour on the floor playing with Becker’s three year old Down syndrome daughter. Later at dinner, they shared with Becker, her husband, and her mother, how encountering Penny had changed them. “They had been humbled by the opportunity to come to value another human being, in this case a human being with Down syndrome,” Becker tells us. A few days later, Becker read the story we just heard of the laborers in the vineyard. And she herself had a revelation. “I could envision Jesus at our kitchen table,” she says, “telling those students that for all their hard work and good grades and accolades, he didn’t consider them any more important than this little girl with an extra 21st chromosome, with glasses, a speech delay, and a hearing loss. I could envision Jesus explaining that they each had something of equal worth to contribute to God’s work in this world. The kingdom of heaven had come among us, for just a moment, when those students saw Penny as a gift.”
We too are invited into that kingdom. We too are invited to be thankful to God for all of God’s gracious and generous gifts to all of us, most especially the gifts of forgiveness of sins and eternal life. We too are invited to see each member of our own families, our parish family, of our surrounding communities, of our diocese, of the whole church, ultimately of all humanity, as valued and beloved. And we too, regardless of who we are, what we possess, how much education we have, how old we are, what the state of our health is, or how long we have been here, we all are valued and invited to work for the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Come, labor on. Away with gloomy doubts and faithless fear!
No arm so weak but may do service here:
by feeblest agents may our God fulfill
his righteous will.
1. Amy Julia Becker, “An Hour with Penny,” Christian Century, January 12, 2010 (Vol. 127, 1)
“The Kingdom of Heaven is like ...,” Jesus began. Then he went on to tell about a vineyard owner who practiced the most bizarre form of labor relations and economics. Certainly there were day laborers in ancient times hired on an as-needed basis. But hiring people throughout the work day, even as late as an hour before sunset? Paying the last to arrive first? Paying those who worked hard all day the same as those who worked only one hour? What was this vineyard owner thinking? Weren’t those hired first right to complain, “You have made them equal to us”? Treating those hired first this way wasn’t fair and didn’t make sense in Jesus’ or in Matthew’s time. And when we hear it, all we can do is shake our heads and wonder. Treating workers this way is totally contrary to anything we might do.
Jesus didn’t tell his disciples this story, and the writer of Matthew’s gospel didn’t preserve it, in order to instruct us in correct labor relations. Neither Jesus nor Matthew was sitting at the bargaining table advising either labor or management. Jesus told this story, and Matthew recounted it for his community, and by extension for us, in order to remind us of God’s true nature and to give us a vision of the new realm into which we are incorporated through Jesus.
Jesus told this story first of all to remind us of God’s unbelievable, immeasurable generosity. This was not a new theme in Scripture. The Exodus stories, the psalms, and the writings of many of the prophets also stress God’s generous love. Even the story of Jonah, the end of which we heard in our first lesson, emphasizes God’s gracious care and concern for all people, including the Ninevites who would eventually be enemies of Israel. In this provocative story, Jesus reminds his disciples and us that God is still a generous God, freely offering salvation to all who have made sacrifices for Jesus’ sake. We do not need to work to earn God’s free gift of salvation. Indeed there is nothing we can humanly do to earn God’s gift of true life. If we have been fortunate and have accomplished great things, or if we have been unfortunate and have stood idle most of the day, God still offers all of us salvation. Whether we have been an achiever or an idler, whether we were baptized as infants or adults, whether we have worked hard for the church all our lives, or whether we have come late to a life of devotion, God cares for us so much that God still generously offers us the gift of eternal life. And we all receive the same wage – the gift of a generous God, not a reward for hard work. Salvation is for all of us, no matter how long we have spent in the church. God’s gift is ours simply because we have shown up to claim it.
God’s gift of deeper life, Jesus also reminds us, is not just for us as individuals. God also invites us into a community in which all are loved. A few weeks back, our Gospel reading reminded us that the point of confronting someone who had hurt us was to preserve the bonds of community, to “retain that one,” if at all possible. Here we are reminded, or perhaps reassured, that the Kingdom of Heaven, God’s realm, is one where all are needed to bring in the harvest. The Kingdom of Heaven is a community where all, regardless of their skills and abilities, regardless of their time in the saddle, are assured of their worth in God’s eyes. The Kingdom of heaven is a place where all are needed, and where all know that they are valued and beloved by God.
Do our Christian communities look anything like the Kingdom of Heaven? Is this parish a community that appreciates God’s generous gift of new life to all of us? Our liturgy helps us to embody our understanding that all of us share God’s generous love. Following our confession of sin, all receive the same absolution. There are no gradations of absolution. Whether we are repenting of sin for the first time, or whether we have had a lifetime of daily confronting our shortcomings and failures, God offers us the same absolution. When we come up to the altar rail in the Eucharist, we all receive the same piece of bread, and we all drink from the same cup. Jesus offers his Body and Blood to us all, whether we were baptized today, or whether we have been lifelong disciples.
And when our liturgy is over, what then? What does our parish community look like then? Do those who have spent a lifetime in the church wonder about those who have just come in? Do those who have been longtime members look askance at newcomers? Or are all welcome? Are all valued? Are the contributions of all recognized? Make no mistake, no one is superfluous. All of us are valuable and beloved in God’s sight. And all of us are needed for the spread of God’s Realm.
During the summer of 2006 I did a chaplaincy internship at Children’s Hospital in Columbus. I was assigned to a floor that concentrated on respiratory illness. There were always children with cystic fibrosis. There were also a number of severely disabled infants, as well as some severely disabled older children. The severely disabled children always raised questions for me, as I wondered what kind of life they would have, and how their families would care for them. In one or two cases, it seemed as if their families had abandoned them. In others, their families were totally devoted to them, even to older children who could not care for themselves at all. I observed all these families, and like Mary, I “pondered these things” in my heart all that summer. I even befriended the mother of an infant who was born blind and deaf. But I didn’t come to any conclusions.
And then I read an article by Amy Julia Becker entitled “An Hour with Penny.”1 Two medical students on pediatric rotation came to Becker’s house to learn about children with disabilities. They wondered what it would be like to have such a child. They spent their first hour on the floor playing with Becker’s three year old Down syndrome daughter. Later at dinner, they shared with Becker, her husband, and her mother, how encountering Penny had changed them. “They had been humbled by the opportunity to come to value another human being, in this case a human being with Down syndrome,” Becker tells us. A few days later, Becker read the story we just heard of the laborers in the vineyard. And she herself had a revelation. “I could envision Jesus at our kitchen table,” she says, “telling those students that for all their hard work and good grades and accolades, he didn’t consider them any more important than this little girl with an extra 21st chromosome, with glasses, a speech delay, and a hearing loss. I could envision Jesus explaining that they each had something of equal worth to contribute to God’s work in this world. The kingdom of heaven had come among us, for just a moment, when those students saw Penny as a gift.”
We too are invited into that kingdom. We too are invited to be thankful to God for all of God’s gracious and generous gifts to all of us, most especially the gifts of forgiveness of sins and eternal life. We too are invited to see each member of our own families, our parish family, of our surrounding communities, of our diocese, of the whole church, ultimately of all humanity, as valued and beloved. And we too, regardless of who we are, what we possess, how much education we have, how old we are, what the state of our health is, or how long we have been here, we all are valued and invited to work for the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Come, labor on. Away with gloomy doubts and faithless fear!
No arm so weak but may do service here:
by feeblest agents may our God fulfill
his righteous will.
1. Amy Julia Becker, “An Hour with Penny,” Christian Century, January 12, 2010 (Vol. 127, 1)
Sunday, September 11, 2011
How Often Should I Forgive?
It was lunch time in London on September 11, 2001, breakfast time in New York. Elizabeth Turner had just finished chatting with her husband Simon, who was heading off to a meeting at the World Trade Center.1 Seven months pregnant with their first child, and heading out for lunch, Elizabeth was wondering what kind of baby carriage to buy. When she returned from lunch, Elizabeth discovered to her horror that the life she had known was now buried with her husband in the rubble of the twin towers. In the chaos and madness of the next days and weeks, Elizabeth endured visits from the press, the police, and social workers. Family and friends kept a twenty-four hour vigil with her, lest she go into premature labor. The birth of her son plunged her into even deeper grief, shock, and fear, as she realized that her husband had died for reasons that had nothing to do with her or her family, and that their son would grow up without his father. To save her son, she knew that she had to get beyond the cycle of violence and hatred, but she also knew that “choosing to stop the cycle is just as difficult as choosing the other path of anger and hatred.” Books, therapists, and pouring out her heart to family and friends gave her little help. Finally, through Reiki, a holistic form of healing, Elizabeth was able to empty herself of all the negative emotions, including the need for bitterness and retaliation, and find peace within. “From then on I was able to reengage with life,” she tells us, “I wasn’t normal again but I was able to laugh and be a whole parent.”
Forgiveness is difficult. Elizabeth Turner is one of several hundred people, of diverse nationalities and ethnicities, who have told their stories to the U.K.-based Forgiveness Project. All of them echo the grief, shock, fear, despair, and soul-searching that Elizabeth Turner experienced. All of them have asked, as have we, Peter’s haunting question: “When a sister or brother wrongs me, how many times must I forgive?” Peter knew he was being generous in offering to forgive seven times. So Jesus’ answer is all the more stunning, “Not seven times; I tell you seventy-seven times.” In Biblical terms, that’s an unlimited number of times. And then Jesus told a story that suggests just how difficult it is for us to forgive. And we know that. We know that we have trouble forgiving even small offenses. I think of academic departments from my former life where faculty members would not speak to each other for years. I think of families where siblings are estranged from each other, of elderly parents dying unforgiven by adult children, of church members still nursing old slights, of people unable to forgive even themselves for sins of the past. For most of us, it is even more difficult to forgive the perpetrators of evils seemingly beyond human endurance. Survivors of the Holocaust, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the events of 9/11, which are ultimately all of us, all testify to how difficult forgiveness is.
Perhaps one reason why we find forgiveness so difficult is that we’re confused about what forgiveness is. Forgiveness is not pardon. We do not have to waive punishment or restitution in order to forgive someone. Forgiveness is not condoning. We do not have to approve of a person’s behavior in order to forgive them. Forgiveness is not forgetting. Even if we forgive someone, some wounds cannot ever be forgotten. And forgiveness is not denial. Especially for grievous assaults and horrendous evil, we must see the assault clearly, name it rightly, and feel all the horror and outrage that it provokes in us. Ultimately, however, forgiveness is akin to reaching the place that Elizabeth Turner finally reached. She tells us, “For me forgiveness is about finding an inner peace and accepting the cards you’ve been handed in life. It’s not that the pain has gone or that things are back to how they were before. Forgiveness is accepting that we are all human beings, and that we are not separate even from those who have hurt us.”
Forgiveness is difficult. And yet we know that as Christians we are obligated to try to reach the place that Elizabeth Turner reached. Why does God ask us to do this? We try to reach a place of forgiveness, first, because, as disciples of Jesus, we strive throughout our lives to imitate him. And he has explicitly commanded us to imitate him by forgiving continually – not just when we feel like it, not just the tiny sins that we can easily brush off, but all sins, all the time. Second, we forgive, turning our back on vengeance, because we have promised to “seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves.” On September 11th, 2001 Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams was in a meeting in Trinity Church in Manhattan, next door to the twin towers. After he and others had rushed out of the building, collecting children from Trinity’s day care center on the way, they breathed in the ash, they saw the rubble, and they ran for their lives. The next day, the archbishop warned the congregation at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine that the pressure to “do something” and the rhetoric in favor of retaliation would intensify. Nevertheless he said, “I wouldn’t want to see another room of preschool children hurried out of a building under threat. I wouldn’t want to see thousands of corpses given over to the justification of some principle. And very simply: I don’t want anyone to feel what others and I were feeling at about 10:30 yesterday morning. I’ve been there.”2
Finally, we forgive in order to cooperate with God in our own salvation. We forgive because we know that we will ultimately perish – or go mad – if we condemn ourselves to living in the hell of continuing anger, hatred, and vengeance. Rabbi Harold Kushner tells the story of a divorced single mother in his congregation. She worked hard to support herself and her children, but she couldn’t forgive her ex-husband for leaving her and her children to scrimp and save while he seemingly lived the high life with his new wife. In his counseling, the rabbi agreed with the wife that what her ex had done was mean and selfish. But he still asked the woman to forgive the ex. “I’m asking you to forgive,” he said, “because he doesn’t deserve the power to turn you into a bitter angry woman. I’d like to see him out of your life emotionally as completely as he is out of it physically, but you keep holding on to him. You’re not hurting him by holding on to that resentment, but you’re hurting yourself.”3
Forgiveness is difficult. It’s been ten years. Are we ready to forgive yet? Courtney Cowart is the regional director of Calling Congregations at The Fund for Theological Education. On the morning of September 11th she too was at Trinity Church in the same meeting with Rowan Williams. Along with everyone else, she grabbed up daycare children as they all ran for their lives. In her own sermon for today, she suggests that, while honoring the memories of those lost, we might have the courage to ask this question of God: “To what would you have us re-commit, given what we saw and learned that day?” As part of her answer, later in the sermon she mentions a delegation of survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, who came to St. Paul’s Chapel as guests of September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows. “What you have done here,” the delegation told their New York hosts, “is the perfect expression of the spirit of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where so many survivors renounced revenge forever. Instead they worked ceaselessly against violence and for the world as a whole.”
Here is how I hear God answering Courtney Cowart’s question: “Your task,” God says to us, “ is first to search your own hearts. Look around you, to your own family, your parish, your community, and then the world. Let go of all those grudges and hurts, small and great, that threaten to destroy your souls and allow for forgiveness to come into your hearts. Take hold of the forgiveness that Jesus modeled for you, even on the Cross, the forgiveness that Rowan Williams and Courtney Cowart model for you, the forgiveness that Elizabeth Turner and the others in the Forgiveness Project model for you. Then recommit yourselves to the renunciation of violence and revenge. Embrace peace and pursue it with all your heart. And remember that all people, including Muslims, are your sisters and brothers.”
Amen, Lord Jesus. With your grace we can do all this and more.
1. Elizabeth Turner’s story is found at the Forgiveness Project, http://theforgivenessproject.com/.
2. Quoted by Courtney Cowart, in “An Exhortation to Forgiveness,” accessed at http://day1.org/3235-an_exhortation_to_forgiveness.print.
3. Harold S. Kushner, “Letting Go of the Role of Victim,” Spirituality and Health, Winter 1999, 34, quoted in Charlotte Dudley Cleghorn, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year A, Volume 4 (Louisville: John Knox, 2011), 72.
Forgiveness is difficult. Elizabeth Turner is one of several hundred people, of diverse nationalities and ethnicities, who have told their stories to the U.K.-based Forgiveness Project. All of them echo the grief, shock, fear, despair, and soul-searching that Elizabeth Turner experienced. All of them have asked, as have we, Peter’s haunting question: “When a sister or brother wrongs me, how many times must I forgive?” Peter knew he was being generous in offering to forgive seven times. So Jesus’ answer is all the more stunning, “Not seven times; I tell you seventy-seven times.” In Biblical terms, that’s an unlimited number of times. And then Jesus told a story that suggests just how difficult it is for us to forgive. And we know that. We know that we have trouble forgiving even small offenses. I think of academic departments from my former life where faculty members would not speak to each other for years. I think of families where siblings are estranged from each other, of elderly parents dying unforgiven by adult children, of church members still nursing old slights, of people unable to forgive even themselves for sins of the past. For most of us, it is even more difficult to forgive the perpetrators of evils seemingly beyond human endurance. Survivors of the Holocaust, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the events of 9/11, which are ultimately all of us, all testify to how difficult forgiveness is.
Perhaps one reason why we find forgiveness so difficult is that we’re confused about what forgiveness is. Forgiveness is not pardon. We do not have to waive punishment or restitution in order to forgive someone. Forgiveness is not condoning. We do not have to approve of a person’s behavior in order to forgive them. Forgiveness is not forgetting. Even if we forgive someone, some wounds cannot ever be forgotten. And forgiveness is not denial. Especially for grievous assaults and horrendous evil, we must see the assault clearly, name it rightly, and feel all the horror and outrage that it provokes in us. Ultimately, however, forgiveness is akin to reaching the place that Elizabeth Turner finally reached. She tells us, “For me forgiveness is about finding an inner peace and accepting the cards you’ve been handed in life. It’s not that the pain has gone or that things are back to how they were before. Forgiveness is accepting that we are all human beings, and that we are not separate even from those who have hurt us.”
Forgiveness is difficult. And yet we know that as Christians we are obligated to try to reach the place that Elizabeth Turner reached. Why does God ask us to do this? We try to reach a place of forgiveness, first, because, as disciples of Jesus, we strive throughout our lives to imitate him. And he has explicitly commanded us to imitate him by forgiving continually – not just when we feel like it, not just the tiny sins that we can easily brush off, but all sins, all the time. Second, we forgive, turning our back on vengeance, because we have promised to “seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves.” On September 11th, 2001 Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams was in a meeting in Trinity Church in Manhattan, next door to the twin towers. After he and others had rushed out of the building, collecting children from Trinity’s day care center on the way, they breathed in the ash, they saw the rubble, and they ran for their lives. The next day, the archbishop warned the congregation at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine that the pressure to “do something” and the rhetoric in favor of retaliation would intensify. Nevertheless he said, “I wouldn’t want to see another room of preschool children hurried out of a building under threat. I wouldn’t want to see thousands of corpses given over to the justification of some principle. And very simply: I don’t want anyone to feel what others and I were feeling at about 10:30 yesterday morning. I’ve been there.”2
Finally, we forgive in order to cooperate with God in our own salvation. We forgive because we know that we will ultimately perish – or go mad – if we condemn ourselves to living in the hell of continuing anger, hatred, and vengeance. Rabbi Harold Kushner tells the story of a divorced single mother in his congregation. She worked hard to support herself and her children, but she couldn’t forgive her ex-husband for leaving her and her children to scrimp and save while he seemingly lived the high life with his new wife. In his counseling, the rabbi agreed with the wife that what her ex had done was mean and selfish. But he still asked the woman to forgive the ex. “I’m asking you to forgive,” he said, “because he doesn’t deserve the power to turn you into a bitter angry woman. I’d like to see him out of your life emotionally as completely as he is out of it physically, but you keep holding on to him. You’re not hurting him by holding on to that resentment, but you’re hurting yourself.”3
Forgiveness is difficult. It’s been ten years. Are we ready to forgive yet? Courtney Cowart is the regional director of Calling Congregations at The Fund for Theological Education. On the morning of September 11th she too was at Trinity Church in the same meeting with Rowan Williams. Along with everyone else, she grabbed up daycare children as they all ran for their lives. In her own sermon for today, she suggests that, while honoring the memories of those lost, we might have the courage to ask this question of God: “To what would you have us re-commit, given what we saw and learned that day?” As part of her answer, later in the sermon she mentions a delegation of survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, who came to St. Paul’s Chapel as guests of September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows. “What you have done here,” the delegation told their New York hosts, “is the perfect expression of the spirit of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where so many survivors renounced revenge forever. Instead they worked ceaselessly against violence and for the world as a whole.”
Here is how I hear God answering Courtney Cowart’s question: “Your task,” God says to us, “ is first to search your own hearts. Look around you, to your own family, your parish, your community, and then the world. Let go of all those grudges and hurts, small and great, that threaten to destroy your souls and allow for forgiveness to come into your hearts. Take hold of the forgiveness that Jesus modeled for you, even on the Cross, the forgiveness that Rowan Williams and Courtney Cowart model for you, the forgiveness that Elizabeth Turner and the others in the Forgiveness Project model for you. Then recommit yourselves to the renunciation of violence and revenge. Embrace peace and pursue it with all your heart. And remember that all people, including Muslims, are your sisters and brothers.”
Amen, Lord Jesus. With your grace we can do all this and more.
1. Elizabeth Turner’s story is found at the Forgiveness Project, http://theforgivenessproject.com/.
2. Quoted by Courtney Cowart, in “An Exhortation to Forgiveness,” accessed at http://day1.org/3235-an_exhortation_to_forgiveness.print.
3. Harold S. Kushner, “Letting Go of the Role of Victim,” Spirituality and Health, Winter 1999, 34, quoted in Charlotte Dudley Cleghorn, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year A, Volume 4 (Louisville: John Knox, 2011), 72.
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Where Two or Three Are Gathered
In 1973 psychiatrist Karl Menninger published a book with an arresting title: Whatever Became of Sin? In it, Menninger argued that, in our rush to identify all wrongdoing as illness, we have almost totally lost our sense of human sinfulness. Today, it almost feels quaint to talk about “sin.” Even our wonderful 1979 Book of Common Prayer, a product of the 1960s and ‘70s, downplays human sinfulness.
The question of whatever became of sin is part of a larger and more provocative question: whatever became of Church discipline? First of all, do we as Christians in the Anglican tradition hold to any clear statements of belief? Has any of you actually ever looked at the Thirty-Nine Articles or the Catechism, both of which are in the back of the Book of Common Prayer? Perhaps the Nicene Creed or the Apostles Creed provide clear statements of belief. Who understands what they really say, and what those ancient statements have to do with life in the twenty-first century? Secondly, do we as Christians strive to keep a holy lifestyle? Do we even care about basic morality and civility? Do we acknowledge and repent of our sins? Do we respect marriage and other sacred vows? Do fasting and feasting have any meaning for us? Has the tithe gone out with buggy whips and high button shoes? Do we feel obligated to worship regularly or keep the Sabbath? And finally do we as Christians care anything about the other members of the Body of Christ in this place or any other place? Or do we feel like disparate cogs who gather for our Sunday fix – when we feel like it – and then run away to our various separate pursuits? Are we all just a voluntary association with no accountability to God or to each other?
When we look back at the history of our churches, it’s not hard to see the shift from church as controlling community to church as a collection of people for whom almost anything goes. In the ancient, medieval, and early Reformation worlds, the church, regardless of denomination, was a core social institution that exercised control over almost every aspect of life. Even as late as the nineteenth century in this country, church communities could enforce on their members rules of doctrinal confession, social behavior, and mutual care and concern. In many places, woe to anyone who didn’t accept Scripture as God’s literal word, or who went dancing on Saturday night, who drank alcoholic beverages, or who didn’t keep the Sabbath, or whose womenfolk cut their hair. Even into the 1950s, many churches exercised decisive and significant control over their members’ lives. In today’s world, perhaps only the Amish and a few other marginal sects embody such all-embracing communities.
The 1960s of course were the turning point in this country. Since then, we’ve replaced our sense of sin with a belief in illness, as Karl Menninger so rightly observed. As church, we’ve succumbed to the extreme individualism of American life. Indeed, most of our Christian communities are as socially fragmented as the rest of American culture, as Christians sort themselves out according to political affiliation, approach to the interpretation of Scripture, musical tastes, age, or social class. More important, I am quite sure that everyone here has a strong sense of personal moral autonomy and privacy. You would not expect the church to maintain the disciplinary standards of even Rotary or Kiwanis. You would surely never expect your clergy person to say anything – and God forbid not in a sermon – about divorce, addiction, workaholism, conspicuous consumption, domestic abuse, or a host of other sins. I suspect you would not even want me to suggest that you had a responsibility to address the sins and shortcomings of any other member of the parish family. Indeed, it’s a great irony that now, in the Episcopal Church at least, only the clergy are subject to church discipline. We have clear canons as to the reasons for which clergy may be deposed or otherwise relieved of their clerical responsibilities, and lay persons are encouraged to bring potential concerns to their bishop. But no such standards exist for lay people.
So are we just another voluntary association? Are we no better than, perhaps not even as good as, Rotary or Kiwanis? God forbid. In this country, we may have lost a clear sense of what we believe, we may have a weak sense of personal sinfulness, and we may have no idea what holy living looks like. Perhaps, like the earliest Christian communities, we too struggle with the question of how much to accede to the demands of the culture around us. Some of us may even wonder whether it isn’t time to again become a counter-cultural community, at odds with the wider culture, like some of our new monastic communities.
My brothers and sisters, despite our ingrained sense of extreme individualism, despite our struggles and questions, we are not another voluntary organization. Regardless of our size, whether we are a mega church or a handful of souls, we are a community devoted to, led by, and embodying Christ. We have been called together, called out of the world, by the Holy Spirit to be a new family, a family not based on blood, but on inclusion in Christ. We are a community, a Body, in which each member is needed and valued. We are not an association of like-minded, discrete individuals, we are a fellowship of believers united with one another in Jesus Christ, under his headship. And we are a community with two governing principles. The first principle is to love God with all our hearts, souls, strength, and minds, in other words to do all that we can, as often as we can, to strengthen our bond with God and with God’s Son. The second principle is to love our neighbors as ourselves – all of our neighbors. For, love is not only the fulfillment of the law, as Paul reminds us in today’s Epistle reading. Love is the means by which we imitate Jesus. Indeed, the world should know that “we are Christians by our love,” And so, we are also a community of mutual interdependence, a community whose members care for and about each other, a community whose members are mutually accountable to each other.
We are also a community of sinful, fallible human beings. Despite our best efforts to love God and our neighbors, inevitably there will be conflicts among us that threaten to destroy our community. These conflicts arise perhaps from grievances of one person against another, or perhaps because one of our members has gone too far down the path of sin. Today’s reading from Matthew’s Gospel gives us a way to address our conflicts and demonstrate our concern for one another.
Certainly, the three-step process outlined in today’s reading could be useful for many communities. I want to highlight just two aspects of that process. The first is that our most important goal is always to preserve community. Our translation obscures the fact that Jesus’ instructions begin with a reminder that a Christian community is a family: the Greek actually says, “If your sister or brother should commit some wrong against you…” Any approach to a fellow member of the community must preserve the dignity of that person and must include an honest expression of the issue at hand. And please note: we are not asked to deny conflict, or grievances, and we are certainly not asked to condone violence or abuse. But our goal is always to “regain that one,” to assure repentance and reconciliation. Secondly, even at the last, where a person is treated as a “Gentile or tax collector,” our goal is to maintain connection. If Jesus is our model, then no one can ever be written off or permanently shunned, for Jesus himself welcomed sinners, Gentiles, and tax collectors. Jesus was always ready to forgive and welcome back. We are not a voluntary organization. We are a community called together, called out, called to care for one another and for the world, and called to care for each others' souls in the bonds of love.
Presbyterian pastor Richard Henderson reminds us that our passing of the peace is a liturgical expression of the bonds of love that tie a Christian community together. Despite what you may think, the Peace is not an empty social ritual or a chummy greeting. Before and after church, in coffee hour especially, is when we can catch up with other socially. The Peace is rather an ancient part of Christian worship. It is a way of praying for each other, of asking Jesus to bless the other person and give that person peace. It is also a way for us to clearly demonstrate that we bear no grudges against each other, that we have been reconciled with each other. God willing, when we greet each other in peace in this place, we will recognize the bonds of Christian love that bind us, despite our sins and conflicts.
We are not a voluntary association. We are a community whose foundation is Jesus, and we are called to live in such a way that we too show forth Christ to the world.
The question of whatever became of sin is part of a larger and more provocative question: whatever became of Church discipline? First of all, do we as Christians in the Anglican tradition hold to any clear statements of belief? Has any of you actually ever looked at the Thirty-Nine Articles or the Catechism, both of which are in the back of the Book of Common Prayer? Perhaps the Nicene Creed or the Apostles Creed provide clear statements of belief. Who understands what they really say, and what those ancient statements have to do with life in the twenty-first century? Secondly, do we as Christians strive to keep a holy lifestyle? Do we even care about basic morality and civility? Do we acknowledge and repent of our sins? Do we respect marriage and other sacred vows? Do fasting and feasting have any meaning for us? Has the tithe gone out with buggy whips and high button shoes? Do we feel obligated to worship regularly or keep the Sabbath? And finally do we as Christians care anything about the other members of the Body of Christ in this place or any other place? Or do we feel like disparate cogs who gather for our Sunday fix – when we feel like it – and then run away to our various separate pursuits? Are we all just a voluntary association with no accountability to God or to each other?
When we look back at the history of our churches, it’s not hard to see the shift from church as controlling community to church as a collection of people for whom almost anything goes. In the ancient, medieval, and early Reformation worlds, the church, regardless of denomination, was a core social institution that exercised control over almost every aspect of life. Even as late as the nineteenth century in this country, church communities could enforce on their members rules of doctrinal confession, social behavior, and mutual care and concern. In many places, woe to anyone who didn’t accept Scripture as God’s literal word, or who went dancing on Saturday night, who drank alcoholic beverages, or who didn’t keep the Sabbath, or whose womenfolk cut their hair. Even into the 1950s, many churches exercised decisive and significant control over their members’ lives. In today’s world, perhaps only the Amish and a few other marginal sects embody such all-embracing communities.
The 1960s of course were the turning point in this country. Since then, we’ve replaced our sense of sin with a belief in illness, as Karl Menninger so rightly observed. As church, we’ve succumbed to the extreme individualism of American life. Indeed, most of our Christian communities are as socially fragmented as the rest of American culture, as Christians sort themselves out according to political affiliation, approach to the interpretation of Scripture, musical tastes, age, or social class. More important, I am quite sure that everyone here has a strong sense of personal moral autonomy and privacy. You would not expect the church to maintain the disciplinary standards of even Rotary or Kiwanis. You would surely never expect your clergy person to say anything – and God forbid not in a sermon – about divorce, addiction, workaholism, conspicuous consumption, domestic abuse, or a host of other sins. I suspect you would not even want me to suggest that you had a responsibility to address the sins and shortcomings of any other member of the parish family. Indeed, it’s a great irony that now, in the Episcopal Church at least, only the clergy are subject to church discipline. We have clear canons as to the reasons for which clergy may be deposed or otherwise relieved of their clerical responsibilities, and lay persons are encouraged to bring potential concerns to their bishop. But no such standards exist for lay people.
So are we just another voluntary association? Are we no better than, perhaps not even as good as, Rotary or Kiwanis? God forbid. In this country, we may have lost a clear sense of what we believe, we may have a weak sense of personal sinfulness, and we may have no idea what holy living looks like. Perhaps, like the earliest Christian communities, we too struggle with the question of how much to accede to the demands of the culture around us. Some of us may even wonder whether it isn’t time to again become a counter-cultural community, at odds with the wider culture, like some of our new monastic communities.
My brothers and sisters, despite our ingrained sense of extreme individualism, despite our struggles and questions, we are not another voluntary organization. Regardless of our size, whether we are a mega church or a handful of souls, we are a community devoted to, led by, and embodying Christ. We have been called together, called out of the world, by the Holy Spirit to be a new family, a family not based on blood, but on inclusion in Christ. We are a community, a Body, in which each member is needed and valued. We are not an association of like-minded, discrete individuals, we are a fellowship of believers united with one another in Jesus Christ, under his headship. And we are a community with two governing principles. The first principle is to love God with all our hearts, souls, strength, and minds, in other words to do all that we can, as often as we can, to strengthen our bond with God and with God’s Son. The second principle is to love our neighbors as ourselves – all of our neighbors. For, love is not only the fulfillment of the law, as Paul reminds us in today’s Epistle reading. Love is the means by which we imitate Jesus. Indeed, the world should know that “we are Christians by our love,” And so, we are also a community of mutual interdependence, a community whose members care for and about each other, a community whose members are mutually accountable to each other.
We are also a community of sinful, fallible human beings. Despite our best efforts to love God and our neighbors, inevitably there will be conflicts among us that threaten to destroy our community. These conflicts arise perhaps from grievances of one person against another, or perhaps because one of our members has gone too far down the path of sin. Today’s reading from Matthew’s Gospel gives us a way to address our conflicts and demonstrate our concern for one another.
Certainly, the three-step process outlined in today’s reading could be useful for many communities. I want to highlight just two aspects of that process. The first is that our most important goal is always to preserve community. Our translation obscures the fact that Jesus’ instructions begin with a reminder that a Christian community is a family: the Greek actually says, “If your sister or brother should commit some wrong against you…” Any approach to a fellow member of the community must preserve the dignity of that person and must include an honest expression of the issue at hand. And please note: we are not asked to deny conflict, or grievances, and we are certainly not asked to condone violence or abuse. But our goal is always to “regain that one,” to assure repentance and reconciliation. Secondly, even at the last, where a person is treated as a “Gentile or tax collector,” our goal is to maintain connection. If Jesus is our model, then no one can ever be written off or permanently shunned, for Jesus himself welcomed sinners, Gentiles, and tax collectors. Jesus was always ready to forgive and welcome back. We are not a voluntary organization. We are a community called together, called out, called to care for one another and for the world, and called to care for each others' souls in the bonds of love.
Presbyterian pastor Richard Henderson reminds us that our passing of the peace is a liturgical expression of the bonds of love that tie a Christian community together. Despite what you may think, the Peace is not an empty social ritual or a chummy greeting. Before and after church, in coffee hour especially, is when we can catch up with other socially. The Peace is rather an ancient part of Christian worship. It is a way of praying for each other, of asking Jesus to bless the other person and give that person peace. It is also a way for us to clearly demonstrate that we bear no grudges against each other, that we have been reconciled with each other. God willing, when we greet each other in peace in this place, we will recognize the bonds of Christian love that bind us, despite our sins and conflicts.
We are not a voluntary association. We are a community whose foundation is Jesus, and we are called to live in such a way that we too show forth Christ to the world.
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Follow Me
“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” Or we might say, “If you want to be on my team, stay close behind me, and be ready to pick up and go wherever I go. If necessary, be ready to move!” Uh oh. Maybe it’s not as easy as it looked last week to confess Jesus as the Messiah and follow God’s call.
The prophet Jeremiah, whose lament we just heard, could certainly relate to those words. He’d been a relatively young man, probably having a young man’s good time, when he first heard God’s call to him. “I’ve known you from even before you were born,” God told him, “and I’ve appointed you as a ‘prophet to the nations.’” “But, Lord,” replied Jeremiah, “I’m too young, I don’t know anything about speaking well.” “Never mind,” God said, “I’ll tell you what to say. You just come along, and I’ll be with you the whole time.”
Did Jeremiah know what he was getting himself into and where he would be expected to go, when he agreed to speak for God? I don’t think so. Of course, in the beginning, God’s words, as he tells us, “became to me a joy, and the delight of my heart.” But then God called Jeremiah to try to persuade the king not to enter into a fruitless alliance with other nations, in an attempt to stave off the Babylonians. The religious and political leadership, the other prophets, and even the king himself, loudly derided and scorned Jeremiah for not supporting the king. He was put under house arrest, and even briefly thrown into a well. Unfortunately, his prophecies were right on the mark. The Babylonians conquered Israel, destroyed the temple and much of Jerusalem, and forced the ruling classes and artisans into exile. Jeremiah himself ended up in Egypt with a portion of the exiles. No wonder he was disillusioned with God! No wonder he complains to God that his pain is “unceasing,” and his wound “incurable.” No wonder he accuses God of being “like a deceitful brook, like waters that fail.” Like Jesus’ disciples, like so many of us, Jeremiah had discovered that, while the joy of following God’s call is initially sweet, God often takes us out of our places of comfort and leads us into hardships beyond our imagining.
Yet God did not leave Jeremiah mired in his bitterness and disillusionment. Did you catch God speaking in the second half of our reading this morning? God calls Jeremiah to repentance and promises Jeremiah that, “If you utter what is precious … you shall serve as my mouth. It is they who will turn to you, not you who will turn to them.” In other words, “Don’t lose heart, Jeremiah. Keep testifying, focus on my mission. And people will believe you. You won’t have an easy time, but I am with you forever.” As part of the exile community, Jeremiah was forced to leave his home. He died in Egypt without ever returning to Jerusalem, but, reassured by God’s promises, he continued to speak God’s word for the rest of his life.
“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” Jesus is on the move again. With this morning’s reading, we are at a transition point in Matthew’s Gospel story. Jesus is ready to leave northern Israel behind. He has set his face towards Jerusalem and the events that are to transpire there. “It’s settled,” he tells his disciples, “this is God’s plan.” Like Jeremiah, Peter protests. He draws Jesus aside and tries to persuade Jesus to turn back. Still perhaps looking for a military messiah, a mighty king who would throw the Romans out of Israel, Peter can scarcely understand what Jesus is talking about. Jesus dying? Jesus, executed like a criminal? Unthinkable! And can’t we sympathize with Peter? He may not have understood what he was saying when he confessed Jesus as the Messiah, but he is rightly terrified at the prospect of his beloved rabbi dying. As are we, when we’re honest with ourselves. The Cross is always scandalous, so much so that many churches, St. Peter’s included, have no crucifix anywhere – not even in an icon!
Jesus, of course, rebukes Peter in the harshest possible terms. Jesus is on the move. He must go to Jerusalem, and he expects his disciples to leave the comforts of Galilee and follow him there. And, just to make sure that all the disciples understand that he meant what he said about dying a criminal’s death, he tells them that they can expect not only to leave their own places of comfort, but also to experience hardship as his followers, as a part of the community devoted to him. In no uncertain terms he reminds them, “If you want to be on my team, stay close behind me, be prepared to move, but don’t expect an easy time.” But just as God reassured Jeremiah that he would eventually be vindicated, Jesus also reassures his disciples of their greater life in him: “For … those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” Following Jesus won’t be easy, following Jesus won’t necessarily bring them what they want or expect, following Jesus may take them out of their comfort zones, but if they follow along behind him and with their fellow disciples, they have Jesus’ promise that wherever he leads them he will be with us.
“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” The sisters of the Community of the Holy Spirit can also relate to Jesus’ command. They know well where following behind Jesus can lead one. The community was founded in the early 1950s in New York City. All of its sisters, including today’s sisters, gave up other lives to join the community. Originally focused on elementary education, the community occupied a comfortable converted brownstone on 113th Street, not too far from the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. However, in 1961, some of the sisters answered Jesus’ call to establish a second school and community in Brewster, NY, about fifty miles from Manhattan. As part of their work in Brewster, in 2004 the sisters were called to establish Bluestone Farm as an example of sustainable living and farming. There the sisters now plant, harvest, and store their own food and weave their own textiles. The farm has attracted resident companions, interns, and volunteers who have expanded its work. Meanwhile, in Manhattan, the sisters felt called to gradually turn the ministry of elementary education over to others, and develop new ministries in education about living sustainably, spiritual direction, retreat leadership, and guest hospitality. In 2009, they heard another call: to leave their comfortable old convent and build a new green convent. Through a land swap with Columbia University, the community received a parcel of land on the edge of Harlem. Despite the reservations of some of their well-wishers about locating in a mixed-ethnic neighborhood, the sisters embarked on building a thoroughly “green” convent near 150th street. Complete with roof-top garden, the new St. Hilda’s house now stands as an urban experiment in living in closer community with the earth. Needless to say, none of these moves and developments have been easy. The move from the old Manhattan convent to the new one in late 2010 was particularly difficult for some of the older sisters. Yet even they know that Jesus is with them and their community, wherever he may lead them. Sr. Élise, who at 90 is the oldest member of the community, described the prospect of leaving the old convent. She said, “I really don’t have my roots set down here in this house – I’ll be happy to live anywhere. I already have a reservation in another place.” Or as Meredith Kadet, a recent Bluestone Farm intern, reminded us in a meditation on her own prospect of moving, Christians are a pilgrim people, always on the move with Jesus, always following where God leads them. “We’re on the move, then, together,” she tell us. “We’re on the move because we’re part of a community, part of a universe, part of a body of God that’s on the move toward a promise.”
We’re on the move with Jesus. We’re a pilgrim people, following behind a leader whom we know will eventually lead us to Jerusalem and to the Cross. We may have hardships, we may have to leave our comfort zone, we may have to go to new and unexpected, perhaps even dangerous places. Yet we have Jesus’ promise to be with us, wherever he takes us. And Jesus’ promise is as true for us as God’s promise was to Jeremiah, as Jesus’ promise was to his disciples, and as Jesus’ promise is for the sisters of the Community of the Holy Spirit. Here at St. Peter’s, to say nothing of the rest of our lives, we too may have to leave behind beloved old structures, beloved ministries, beloved ways of doing things. We may have to begin developing ministries in places where we hadn’t expected to be. But we can do all that and more, because we have heard Jesus’ call: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”
Meredith Kadet closed her reflection with the verse of an old song. Perhaps the song is appropriate for us too.
I open my mouth to the Lord
And I won’t turn back
I will go, I shall go
To see what the end gonna be.
God willing, we will all faithfully follow behind him.
The prophet Jeremiah, whose lament we just heard, could certainly relate to those words. He’d been a relatively young man, probably having a young man’s good time, when he first heard God’s call to him. “I’ve known you from even before you were born,” God told him, “and I’ve appointed you as a ‘prophet to the nations.’” “But, Lord,” replied Jeremiah, “I’m too young, I don’t know anything about speaking well.” “Never mind,” God said, “I’ll tell you what to say. You just come along, and I’ll be with you the whole time.”
Did Jeremiah know what he was getting himself into and where he would be expected to go, when he agreed to speak for God? I don’t think so. Of course, in the beginning, God’s words, as he tells us, “became to me a joy, and the delight of my heart.” But then God called Jeremiah to try to persuade the king not to enter into a fruitless alliance with other nations, in an attempt to stave off the Babylonians. The religious and political leadership, the other prophets, and even the king himself, loudly derided and scorned Jeremiah for not supporting the king. He was put under house arrest, and even briefly thrown into a well. Unfortunately, his prophecies were right on the mark. The Babylonians conquered Israel, destroyed the temple and much of Jerusalem, and forced the ruling classes and artisans into exile. Jeremiah himself ended up in Egypt with a portion of the exiles. No wonder he was disillusioned with God! No wonder he complains to God that his pain is “unceasing,” and his wound “incurable.” No wonder he accuses God of being “like a deceitful brook, like waters that fail.” Like Jesus’ disciples, like so many of us, Jeremiah had discovered that, while the joy of following God’s call is initially sweet, God often takes us out of our places of comfort and leads us into hardships beyond our imagining.
Yet God did not leave Jeremiah mired in his bitterness and disillusionment. Did you catch God speaking in the second half of our reading this morning? God calls Jeremiah to repentance and promises Jeremiah that, “If you utter what is precious … you shall serve as my mouth. It is they who will turn to you, not you who will turn to them.” In other words, “Don’t lose heart, Jeremiah. Keep testifying, focus on my mission. And people will believe you. You won’t have an easy time, but I am with you forever.” As part of the exile community, Jeremiah was forced to leave his home. He died in Egypt without ever returning to Jerusalem, but, reassured by God’s promises, he continued to speak God’s word for the rest of his life.
“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” Jesus is on the move again. With this morning’s reading, we are at a transition point in Matthew’s Gospel story. Jesus is ready to leave northern Israel behind. He has set his face towards Jerusalem and the events that are to transpire there. “It’s settled,” he tells his disciples, “this is God’s plan.” Like Jeremiah, Peter protests. He draws Jesus aside and tries to persuade Jesus to turn back. Still perhaps looking for a military messiah, a mighty king who would throw the Romans out of Israel, Peter can scarcely understand what Jesus is talking about. Jesus dying? Jesus, executed like a criminal? Unthinkable! And can’t we sympathize with Peter? He may not have understood what he was saying when he confessed Jesus as the Messiah, but he is rightly terrified at the prospect of his beloved rabbi dying. As are we, when we’re honest with ourselves. The Cross is always scandalous, so much so that many churches, St. Peter’s included, have no crucifix anywhere – not even in an icon!
Jesus, of course, rebukes Peter in the harshest possible terms. Jesus is on the move. He must go to Jerusalem, and he expects his disciples to leave the comforts of Galilee and follow him there. And, just to make sure that all the disciples understand that he meant what he said about dying a criminal’s death, he tells them that they can expect not only to leave their own places of comfort, but also to experience hardship as his followers, as a part of the community devoted to him. In no uncertain terms he reminds them, “If you want to be on my team, stay close behind me, be prepared to move, but don’t expect an easy time.” But just as God reassured Jeremiah that he would eventually be vindicated, Jesus also reassures his disciples of their greater life in him: “For … those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” Following Jesus won’t be easy, following Jesus won’t necessarily bring them what they want or expect, following Jesus may take them out of their comfort zones, but if they follow along behind him and with their fellow disciples, they have Jesus’ promise that wherever he leads them he will be with us.
“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” The sisters of the Community of the Holy Spirit can also relate to Jesus’ command. They know well where following behind Jesus can lead one. The community was founded in the early 1950s in New York City. All of its sisters, including today’s sisters, gave up other lives to join the community. Originally focused on elementary education, the community occupied a comfortable converted brownstone on 113th Street, not too far from the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. However, in 1961, some of the sisters answered Jesus’ call to establish a second school and community in Brewster, NY, about fifty miles from Manhattan. As part of their work in Brewster, in 2004 the sisters were called to establish Bluestone Farm as an example of sustainable living and farming. There the sisters now plant, harvest, and store their own food and weave their own textiles. The farm has attracted resident companions, interns, and volunteers who have expanded its work. Meanwhile, in Manhattan, the sisters felt called to gradually turn the ministry of elementary education over to others, and develop new ministries in education about living sustainably, spiritual direction, retreat leadership, and guest hospitality. In 2009, they heard another call: to leave their comfortable old convent and build a new green convent. Through a land swap with Columbia University, the community received a parcel of land on the edge of Harlem. Despite the reservations of some of their well-wishers about locating in a mixed-ethnic neighborhood, the sisters embarked on building a thoroughly “green” convent near 150th street. Complete with roof-top garden, the new St. Hilda’s house now stands as an urban experiment in living in closer community with the earth. Needless to say, none of these moves and developments have been easy. The move from the old Manhattan convent to the new one in late 2010 was particularly difficult for some of the older sisters. Yet even they know that Jesus is with them and their community, wherever he may lead them. Sr. Élise, who at 90 is the oldest member of the community, described the prospect of leaving the old convent. She said, “I really don’t have my roots set down here in this house – I’ll be happy to live anywhere. I already have a reservation in another place.” Or as Meredith Kadet, a recent Bluestone Farm intern, reminded us in a meditation on her own prospect of moving, Christians are a pilgrim people, always on the move with Jesus, always following where God leads them. “We’re on the move, then, together,” she tell us. “We’re on the move because we’re part of a community, part of a universe, part of a body of God that’s on the move toward a promise.”
We’re on the move with Jesus. We’re a pilgrim people, following behind a leader whom we know will eventually lead us to Jerusalem and to the Cross. We may have hardships, we may have to leave our comfort zone, we may have to go to new and unexpected, perhaps even dangerous places. Yet we have Jesus’ promise to be with us, wherever he takes us. And Jesus’ promise is as true for us as God’s promise was to Jeremiah, as Jesus’ promise was to his disciples, and as Jesus’ promise is for the sisters of the Community of the Holy Spirit. Here at St. Peter’s, to say nothing of the rest of our lives, we too may have to leave behind beloved old structures, beloved ministries, beloved ways of doing things. We may have to begin developing ministries in places where we hadn’t expected to be. But we can do all that and more, because we have heard Jesus’ call: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”
Meredith Kadet closed her reflection with the verse of an old song. Perhaps the song is appropriate for us too.
I open my mouth to the Lord
And I won’t turn back
I will go, I shall go
To see what the end gonna be.
God willing, we will all faithfully follow behind him.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
You Are the Messiah
How did he know? When Jesus asked his friends, “But who do you say that I am,” how did Peter come up with the right answer, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God?” Even if Peter was speaking for all the disciples, how did he know? Like other Jews of their day, Peter and the other disciples knew their Scriptures. They knew that the prophets, beginning with Isaiah and running right through Malachi, had been promising for centuries that God would deliver the Jews and would inaugurate a reign of peace and justice. Perhaps they also used their reason: they could see, in the way that Jesus healed people, in the way he argued with the religious leaders, and in the way that he taught, that there was something special about him. And too they had had some personal experiences of their own of Jesus’ power. Hadn’t they taken part in Jesus’ feeding of the great crowd? Hadn’t some of them gone out in a boat with Jesus and seen him walk on water? When Peter tried to do the same thing and began to sink, hadn’t they seen Jesus reach out and save him? And when he got back into the boat, hadn’t they said then, “Truly, you are the Son of God?” So when Jesus finally put the question to them, “But who do you say that I am,” perhaps it wasn’t so surprising that impulsive and quick-witted Peter could put Scripture, reason, and experience together and come up with the right answer.
But I still have a question. When Peter blurted out the right answer, did he really understand what he was saying? Did he really know what it meant to say that Jesus was the mashiach, the christos, God’s Anointed one? And did he really understand what kind of a messiah Jesus really was? Most likely not. Almost immediately, he tried to distance himself from Jesus’ warning that he would die on the Cross. As we know so well, on the eve of Jesus’ crucifixion, Peter denied three times that he even knew Jesus. Only after Jesus’ return to life at Easter and Peter’s acceptance of the Holy Spirit did Peter begin to understand what he had said in his confession, and only then could he begin to witness to others of Jesus’ true identity. No wonder Jesus told the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah. Clearly, the disciples had to learn and grow in their understanding a great deal more before they could adequately proclaim that Jesus was the one for whom Israel had been waiting for so long.
Over the centuries since Matthew’s Gospel was written, Christian communities have pondered the meaning and importance of Peter’s confession of faith, and especially of Jesus’ response to it. Roman Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox Christians continue to disagree on their interpretation of Matthew’s rendering of Jesus’ words. Even so, almost all Christian communities agree that Jesus’ initial question, “But who do you say that I am?”, is a question that all of us must answer. “How do you understand who Jesus is?” is the defining question of Christian faith. In the service of Baptism, after the candidates have renounced Satan, the evil powers of this world, and all sinful desires, the very next question is “Do you turn to Jesus and accept him as your Savior?” Even so, the question of Jesus’ identity is one many of us adults shy away from answering – perhaps it’s fortunate that many of you were baptized as infants! For starters, some of us are unsure exactly what a messiah is. Or we may say, “Every Sunday we say the Nicene Creed, and in the daily offices and the Baptismal service we say the Apostles’ Creed.1 It took the creed writers several centuries to work out the creedal statements. Isn’t the question of Jesus’ identity settled for now?” Perhaps so, but do the creedal statements have personal meaning for us? Or perhaps you might think that St. Augustine, or Martin Luther, or the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, have said all there is to say about who Jesus is. Or you might think that the pictures you’ve had of Jesus most of your life, the cute baby in the “ethereally lighted antiseptic manger,” the gentle teacher with his flowing white robes, the brilliant debater, or the dignified martyr, are sufficient. Really, I learned it all in Sunday School. What more do I need? Or you just might not want any more challenges in your life. Between family and work, personal and health issues, there’s enough challenge in your life. Let Jesus’ identity as the messiah at least be something that doesn’t challenge me! Finally, perhaps we’re afraid that, if we look too closely at Jesus, if we really think about who he was and what kind of a messiah he really was, we might need to change some things in our lives. If Jesus asked you, “But who do you say that I am?”, would you answer “I’m not sure,” because you’d be afraid that Jesus would call you to follow him more closely, perhaps even to follow him all the way to your own Cross?
My friends, the truth is that, just like Peter, we can’t duck the question of Jesus’ identity. If we are serious adult followers of our Lord, if we persist in calling ourselves Christians, i.e., followers of the Christos, God’s Messiah, God’s Anointed One, and if we hope to draw others into the Body of Christ, we must be able to give an answer to Jesus’ question that is more than formulaic words. We cannot hold on to our Sunday school images of Jesus, nor can we deny Jesus’ power to change our lives if we let him. And, like, Peter, we must be willing to let our understanding of who Jesus is change and grow as we continue to follow behind him.
As we continue to confront the question of who Jesus is for us, we acknowledge that any deeper understanding of Jesus’ identity, any greater faith in Jesus is a ultimately a gift of God. Nevertheless, we also know that God uses multiple ways to help us grow and mature in our faith. First, we too can study Scripture more closely. We Episcopalians are not Biblical literalists: we do not believe in the inerrancy of Scripture, we understand that not every Bible story is literally, factually true, and we accept that much of Scripture was written in particular social situations for particular communities. We realize that the church’s and our own interpretations of Scripture may change over the years. Even so, as part of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church, we continue to acknowledge that Scripture is the Word of God, and that God continues to teach us through serious study of Scripture. Secondly, we can also use our God-given powers of reason. We can study history and theology and learn how others have thought and are thinking about who Jesus is, and how we can most sincerely and effectively follow him. This does not mean that we believe because of what Paul, or Augustine, or Aquinas, or Julian, or Moltmann, or Marcus Borg, or Rowan Williams have said. We believe because God gives us the freedom and the ability to think through questions of faith and identity with our own minds. And third we can learn from the experiences of the saints and from our own experience of Jesus in daily prayer and contemplation. We can continue to let Jesus nourish us with his Body and Blood. While deeper faith is always a gift of God, for us as for Peter, God uses all three means, Scripture, reason, and experience, to show us who Jesus is, to help us grow in our understanding of Jesus and his work, and to empower us to witness to others that God was in Christ, thereby reconciling the world.
What does this mean for our lives here in this Christian community? If faith and knowledge are both necessary aspects of our life as disciples, if we can deepen our understanding of Jesus through study of Scripture, history, and theology, then we too must commit ourselves to continued study, to continued formation as Christians. We are concerned, and rightly so, to provide Christian formation for the children in our midst. But we must also take seriously our own formation as adults. This year, I challenge this community to commit itself to an adult Christian education program. Use the next two weeks to let me or Carolyn Cogar know the ways in which you would especially hope to deepen your faith this year. Then join us after Labor Day as we inaugurate a new phase in our growth together as Christians.
As we leave this place, we will sing, in the words of that grand hymn, that “the Church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord.” As you sing those words, pray about how you can know Jesus better. Commit yourself to letting your knowledge of Jesus continue to deepen and mature.
1. I depend on David Leininger, “Who do You Say That I Am?”, Tales for the Pulpit, (Lima, OH: CSS Publishing, 2007), 141-3, for much of this section.
But I still have a question. When Peter blurted out the right answer, did he really understand what he was saying? Did he really know what it meant to say that Jesus was the mashiach, the christos, God’s Anointed one? And did he really understand what kind of a messiah Jesus really was? Most likely not. Almost immediately, he tried to distance himself from Jesus’ warning that he would die on the Cross. As we know so well, on the eve of Jesus’ crucifixion, Peter denied three times that he even knew Jesus. Only after Jesus’ return to life at Easter and Peter’s acceptance of the Holy Spirit did Peter begin to understand what he had said in his confession, and only then could he begin to witness to others of Jesus’ true identity. No wonder Jesus told the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah. Clearly, the disciples had to learn and grow in their understanding a great deal more before they could adequately proclaim that Jesus was the one for whom Israel had been waiting for so long.
Over the centuries since Matthew’s Gospel was written, Christian communities have pondered the meaning and importance of Peter’s confession of faith, and especially of Jesus’ response to it. Roman Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox Christians continue to disagree on their interpretation of Matthew’s rendering of Jesus’ words. Even so, almost all Christian communities agree that Jesus’ initial question, “But who do you say that I am?”, is a question that all of us must answer. “How do you understand who Jesus is?” is the defining question of Christian faith. In the service of Baptism, after the candidates have renounced Satan, the evil powers of this world, and all sinful desires, the very next question is “Do you turn to Jesus and accept him as your Savior?” Even so, the question of Jesus’ identity is one many of us adults shy away from answering – perhaps it’s fortunate that many of you were baptized as infants! For starters, some of us are unsure exactly what a messiah is. Or we may say, “Every Sunday we say the Nicene Creed, and in the daily offices and the Baptismal service we say the Apostles’ Creed.1 It took the creed writers several centuries to work out the creedal statements. Isn’t the question of Jesus’ identity settled for now?” Perhaps so, but do the creedal statements have personal meaning for us? Or perhaps you might think that St. Augustine, or Martin Luther, or the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, have said all there is to say about who Jesus is. Or you might think that the pictures you’ve had of Jesus most of your life, the cute baby in the “ethereally lighted antiseptic manger,” the gentle teacher with his flowing white robes, the brilliant debater, or the dignified martyr, are sufficient. Really, I learned it all in Sunday School. What more do I need? Or you just might not want any more challenges in your life. Between family and work, personal and health issues, there’s enough challenge in your life. Let Jesus’ identity as the messiah at least be something that doesn’t challenge me! Finally, perhaps we’re afraid that, if we look too closely at Jesus, if we really think about who he was and what kind of a messiah he really was, we might need to change some things in our lives. If Jesus asked you, “But who do you say that I am?”, would you answer “I’m not sure,” because you’d be afraid that Jesus would call you to follow him more closely, perhaps even to follow him all the way to your own Cross?
My friends, the truth is that, just like Peter, we can’t duck the question of Jesus’ identity. If we are serious adult followers of our Lord, if we persist in calling ourselves Christians, i.e., followers of the Christos, God’s Messiah, God’s Anointed One, and if we hope to draw others into the Body of Christ, we must be able to give an answer to Jesus’ question that is more than formulaic words. We cannot hold on to our Sunday school images of Jesus, nor can we deny Jesus’ power to change our lives if we let him. And, like, Peter, we must be willing to let our understanding of who Jesus is change and grow as we continue to follow behind him.
As we continue to confront the question of who Jesus is for us, we acknowledge that any deeper understanding of Jesus’ identity, any greater faith in Jesus is a ultimately a gift of God. Nevertheless, we also know that God uses multiple ways to help us grow and mature in our faith. First, we too can study Scripture more closely. We Episcopalians are not Biblical literalists: we do not believe in the inerrancy of Scripture, we understand that not every Bible story is literally, factually true, and we accept that much of Scripture was written in particular social situations for particular communities. We realize that the church’s and our own interpretations of Scripture may change over the years. Even so, as part of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church, we continue to acknowledge that Scripture is the Word of God, and that God continues to teach us through serious study of Scripture. Secondly, we can also use our God-given powers of reason. We can study history and theology and learn how others have thought and are thinking about who Jesus is, and how we can most sincerely and effectively follow him. This does not mean that we believe because of what Paul, or Augustine, or Aquinas, or Julian, or Moltmann, or Marcus Borg, or Rowan Williams have said. We believe because God gives us the freedom and the ability to think through questions of faith and identity with our own minds. And third we can learn from the experiences of the saints and from our own experience of Jesus in daily prayer and contemplation. We can continue to let Jesus nourish us with his Body and Blood. While deeper faith is always a gift of God, for us as for Peter, God uses all three means, Scripture, reason, and experience, to show us who Jesus is, to help us grow in our understanding of Jesus and his work, and to empower us to witness to others that God was in Christ, thereby reconciling the world.
What does this mean for our lives here in this Christian community? If faith and knowledge are both necessary aspects of our life as disciples, if we can deepen our understanding of Jesus through study of Scripture, history, and theology, then we too must commit ourselves to continued study, to continued formation as Christians. We are concerned, and rightly so, to provide Christian formation for the children in our midst. But we must also take seriously our own formation as adults. This year, I challenge this community to commit itself to an adult Christian education program. Use the next two weeks to let me or Carolyn Cogar know the ways in which you would especially hope to deepen your faith this year. Then join us after Labor Day as we inaugurate a new phase in our growth together as Christians.
As we leave this place, we will sing, in the words of that grand hymn, that “the Church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord.” As you sing those words, pray about how you can know Jesus better. Commit yourself to letting your knowledge of Jesus continue to deepen and mature.
1. I depend on David Leininger, “Who do You Say That I Am?”, Tales for the Pulpit, (Lima, OH: CSS Publishing, 2007), 141-3, for much of this section.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Great is Your Faith
It hasn’t been a good summer. Personally, of course, I broke my arm and had to postpone the trip to Ireland that I’d been looking forward to for so long. While I was catching up on my reading at home, I could contemplate with even greater dismay Congress’s irresponsibly descending into virtual gridlock over the debt ceiling only to finally act with hours to spare. Unfortunately, the last minute agreement didn’t stop our national bond rating from being downgraded and the stock market from going into a tailspin. On the other side of the pond, the Euro zone is falling apart, as the economies of Greece, Italy, and Portugal weaken to the point of their possibly withdrawing from the European Economic Community. In Norway Anders Bering Breivik went on a shooting rampage, killing seventy-seven people in the name of ethnic purity. Meanwhile, in the last three months 30,000 children have died of starvation in the horn of Africa, as that region suffers its worst drought in sixty years. And in the past two weeks, we’ve watched with horror as thugs and out-of-control youth trashed working class neighborhoods in London and other UK cities. It hasn’t been a good summer.
Ironically, or perhaps providentially, it’s been a wonderful summer in Scripture, and an especially rich summer in our Gospel readings. In these days of personal setbacks and troubling national and international news, we’ve had the chance to see again Matthew’s vision of Jesus as the bearer of Israel’s prophetic promises, and we’ve been able to ponder our own responses to what we’ve seen. Before I left, we looked at the role of prophets generally and our reactions to those who speak prophetic words to us. We pondered what kind of a guide Jesus is, and what kind of a yoke he lays on us. We also discovered that we can follow Jesus in continuing to fling out God’s word without concern about where the seed of the word is landing. As Jesus continued to demonstrate his prophetic powers, we pondered the wheat and weeds, and we heard him compare the Kingdom of Heaven to a mustard seed, a pearl of great price, and a net full of fish. As Jesus bid Peter walk on the water, we perhaps sympathized with his faltering faith. Perhaps we watched with awe as Jesus concretely demonstrated God’s abundant love for us in the feeding of a great crowd.
Now Matthew gives us one more miracle to contemplate, one more chance to consider our own responses to Jesus’ prophetic role. In a way this is a strange story. Following a contentious dispute with the religious leaders, Jesus reminded his disciples that living a just and honest life is more important than following the punctilious details of the Pharisees’ religious observances. After delivering that lesson, he deliberately headed northwest into Gentile territory. One wonders: had he gotten tired of duking it out verbally with the religious leaders, or did he already have a larger purpose in mind? He was approached by a Canaanite woman. Wrong, wrong, wrong on several counts. Women did not approach men in public. They didn’t shout at them -- ever. Jews and Gentiles interacted with each other as little as possible. Worst of all, Jews and Canaanites had been enemies for centuries. No wonder the disciples urged Jesus to get rid of the Canaanite woman. Perhaps too they inwardly agreed with Jesus when he first tried to ignore her and then insulted her by disdainfully claiming to be concerned about the health of only his own ethnic community.
But the woman didn’t give a fig for these social niceties. She would not be put off. She was desperate to save her daughter, and, unlike most of the people around Jesus she was sure that Jesus had the power to relieve her daughter’s torment. So, Gentile though she was, unworthy as she may have felt herself, unwanted as she was, enemy that she was, she recognized Jesus’ messianic identity, and she called out to him loudly. She then swallowed her pride and knelt before him. She deftly replied to his insulting claim by assuring him that whatever shreds or crumbs of his power he gave her would be enough for her. She asked for what she needed, and she persisted until she received it. The Gospel writer doesn’t tell us whether Jesus had a new understanding of his mission in his encounter with this woman, or whether he’d planned all along to demonstrate the breadth of God’s saving love by healing another Gentile – in Gentile territory. But we do know that Jesus granted the Canaanite woman’s request and publicly blessed her: “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.”
“Great is your faith!” “Great is your faith!” Is my faith great? Is yours? Is my faith passionate? Is yours? Or is our faith tepid, conventional, shallow, or even timid? Perhaps we feel unworthy even to approach Jesus, because of who we’ve been, or what we’ve done, or where we’ve been. Or perhaps we think we have no need for Jesus’ help, that our lives are going swimmingly, and we’re fine on our own. Do we care so little about the world around us that we have nothing for which we need to seek Jesus’ healing power? Or perhaps we feel that Jesus couldn’t care less about us. Do we feel silly putting our needs in front of Jesus? Do we think that modern people don’t do that anymore? We may all of us experience all these feelings and more. But, my friends, the good news is that Jesus is there for us, whoever, whatever, and wherever we are. If Matthew’s story demonstrates nothing else to us it is that there is no one who is beyond the reach of Jesus’ healing touch, no one whom Jesus can’t or won’t heal. If, like the Canaanite woman we ask, and persist in asking, God will respond. We can, as one writer has suggested, audaciously claim God’s promises.
Let me give you a more contemporary example to help you hear the good news of God’s willingness to hear us. On August 4th the Roman Catholic calendar remembered John Vianney, a parish priest known as the Curé d’Ars.1 Born in 1786 into a peasant family living near Lyons, John Vianney was the most unlikely candidate for the priesthood. Yet from a very early age, he knew the priesthood to be his vocation. By God’s grace he found a tutor who gave him the education he needed to win a place in seminary. Pulled out of seminary to serve in the army, he went into hiding. When a general amnesty was proclaimed in 1810, he resumed his seminary studies. In all honesty, he was such a weak student that his superiors hesitated to recommend him for ordination. Yet his piety and goodness, his holiness of life, and his persistence in prayer were so great that at last he was ordained at the age of twenty-nine. He became the priest he knew God had called to be. Even so, he was sent as curate to the small, supposedly insignificant village of Ars. There his life as a priest blossomed. As his deep love for his people became known, his fame as a caring confessor and spiritual counselor began to spread. Toward the end of his life, special trains were even sent to Ars to accommodate all those who sought him out. When he died in 1859, he was one of the most beloved figures in France. Yet despite his fame, he remained focused on drawing those who came to him into a deeper relationship with Jesus, into a deeper realization of Jesus’ willingness to hear us when we persistently ask for his help.
So what is it you are passionate about? Which of God’s promises are you asking God to fulfill? For what do you persist in beseeching God? Take some time to reflect on this question. Do you need physical healing? Is there something in your personal life that needs healing? Do you have an unfulfilled vocation? Do you long for authentic community? Is there something in our social or political life that deeply stirs you? Do you long for peace? Would you bring all the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan tomorrow if you could? Would you like to see all people have access to adequate healthcare? Would you like to see us make a real dent in poverty, both in this region and abroad? What is it that so deeply stirs you that you persistently ask God for it? I challenge you to reflect on how you might follow the lead of the Canaanite woman and persistently knock on God’s door.
We wait in weariness, in loneliness.
And we pray: say the word and we will be healed.
say the word and our bodies will move with joy;
say the word and our body politic will function again;
say the word that you fleshed in Jesus;
say the word … we will wait for your healing “yes.”
And while we wait, we will “yes” you with our trusting obedience.
Amen.2
1. Taken from Robert Ellsberg, All Saints (New York: Crossroad, 1997), 334-5.
2. Walter Brueggemann, “Is there a balm … in Gilead anywhere?”, in Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth, Edwin Searcy, ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 127-8.
Ironically, or perhaps providentially, it’s been a wonderful summer in Scripture, and an especially rich summer in our Gospel readings. In these days of personal setbacks and troubling national and international news, we’ve had the chance to see again Matthew’s vision of Jesus as the bearer of Israel’s prophetic promises, and we’ve been able to ponder our own responses to what we’ve seen. Before I left, we looked at the role of prophets generally and our reactions to those who speak prophetic words to us. We pondered what kind of a guide Jesus is, and what kind of a yoke he lays on us. We also discovered that we can follow Jesus in continuing to fling out God’s word without concern about where the seed of the word is landing. As Jesus continued to demonstrate his prophetic powers, we pondered the wheat and weeds, and we heard him compare the Kingdom of Heaven to a mustard seed, a pearl of great price, and a net full of fish. As Jesus bid Peter walk on the water, we perhaps sympathized with his faltering faith. Perhaps we watched with awe as Jesus concretely demonstrated God’s abundant love for us in the feeding of a great crowd.
Now Matthew gives us one more miracle to contemplate, one more chance to consider our own responses to Jesus’ prophetic role. In a way this is a strange story. Following a contentious dispute with the religious leaders, Jesus reminded his disciples that living a just and honest life is more important than following the punctilious details of the Pharisees’ religious observances. After delivering that lesson, he deliberately headed northwest into Gentile territory. One wonders: had he gotten tired of duking it out verbally with the religious leaders, or did he already have a larger purpose in mind? He was approached by a Canaanite woman. Wrong, wrong, wrong on several counts. Women did not approach men in public. They didn’t shout at them -- ever. Jews and Gentiles interacted with each other as little as possible. Worst of all, Jews and Canaanites had been enemies for centuries. No wonder the disciples urged Jesus to get rid of the Canaanite woman. Perhaps too they inwardly agreed with Jesus when he first tried to ignore her and then insulted her by disdainfully claiming to be concerned about the health of only his own ethnic community.
But the woman didn’t give a fig for these social niceties. She would not be put off. She was desperate to save her daughter, and, unlike most of the people around Jesus she was sure that Jesus had the power to relieve her daughter’s torment. So, Gentile though she was, unworthy as she may have felt herself, unwanted as she was, enemy that she was, she recognized Jesus’ messianic identity, and she called out to him loudly. She then swallowed her pride and knelt before him. She deftly replied to his insulting claim by assuring him that whatever shreds or crumbs of his power he gave her would be enough for her. She asked for what she needed, and she persisted until she received it. The Gospel writer doesn’t tell us whether Jesus had a new understanding of his mission in his encounter with this woman, or whether he’d planned all along to demonstrate the breadth of God’s saving love by healing another Gentile – in Gentile territory. But we do know that Jesus granted the Canaanite woman’s request and publicly blessed her: “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.”
“Great is your faith!” “Great is your faith!” Is my faith great? Is yours? Is my faith passionate? Is yours? Or is our faith tepid, conventional, shallow, or even timid? Perhaps we feel unworthy even to approach Jesus, because of who we’ve been, or what we’ve done, or where we’ve been. Or perhaps we think we have no need for Jesus’ help, that our lives are going swimmingly, and we’re fine on our own. Do we care so little about the world around us that we have nothing for which we need to seek Jesus’ healing power? Or perhaps we feel that Jesus couldn’t care less about us. Do we feel silly putting our needs in front of Jesus? Do we think that modern people don’t do that anymore? We may all of us experience all these feelings and more. But, my friends, the good news is that Jesus is there for us, whoever, whatever, and wherever we are. If Matthew’s story demonstrates nothing else to us it is that there is no one who is beyond the reach of Jesus’ healing touch, no one whom Jesus can’t or won’t heal. If, like the Canaanite woman we ask, and persist in asking, God will respond. We can, as one writer has suggested, audaciously claim God’s promises.
Let me give you a more contemporary example to help you hear the good news of God’s willingness to hear us. On August 4th the Roman Catholic calendar remembered John Vianney, a parish priest known as the Curé d’Ars.1 Born in 1786 into a peasant family living near Lyons, John Vianney was the most unlikely candidate for the priesthood. Yet from a very early age, he knew the priesthood to be his vocation. By God’s grace he found a tutor who gave him the education he needed to win a place in seminary. Pulled out of seminary to serve in the army, he went into hiding. When a general amnesty was proclaimed in 1810, he resumed his seminary studies. In all honesty, he was such a weak student that his superiors hesitated to recommend him for ordination. Yet his piety and goodness, his holiness of life, and his persistence in prayer were so great that at last he was ordained at the age of twenty-nine. He became the priest he knew God had called to be. Even so, he was sent as curate to the small, supposedly insignificant village of Ars. There his life as a priest blossomed. As his deep love for his people became known, his fame as a caring confessor and spiritual counselor began to spread. Toward the end of his life, special trains were even sent to Ars to accommodate all those who sought him out. When he died in 1859, he was one of the most beloved figures in France. Yet despite his fame, he remained focused on drawing those who came to him into a deeper relationship with Jesus, into a deeper realization of Jesus’ willingness to hear us when we persistently ask for his help.
So what is it you are passionate about? Which of God’s promises are you asking God to fulfill? For what do you persist in beseeching God? Take some time to reflect on this question. Do you need physical healing? Is there something in your personal life that needs healing? Do you have an unfulfilled vocation? Do you long for authentic community? Is there something in our social or political life that deeply stirs you? Do you long for peace? Would you bring all the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan tomorrow if you could? Would you like to see all people have access to adequate healthcare? Would you like to see us make a real dent in poverty, both in this region and abroad? What is it that so deeply stirs you that you persistently ask God for it? I challenge you to reflect on how you might follow the lead of the Canaanite woman and persistently knock on God’s door.
We wait in weariness, in loneliness.
And we pray: say the word and we will be healed.
say the word and our bodies will move with joy;
say the word and our body politic will function again;
say the word that you fleshed in Jesus;
say the word … we will wait for your healing “yes.”
And while we wait, we will “yes” you with our trusting obedience.
Amen.2
1. Taken from Robert Ellsberg, All Saints (New York: Crossroad, 1997), 334-5.
2. Walter Brueggemann, “Is there a balm … in Gilead anywhere?”, in Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth, Edwin Searcy, ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 127-8.
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