Between and Beyond the Boundaries: Sermon for the Seventh Sunday of Easter, Year B

Early in the first Lord of the Rings movie, there’s a lovely little scene where one of the characters, named Sam, who is about to follow his beloved friend on a most unlikely and dangerous quest, suddenly stops dead in between two corn fields not far from their home.

“This is it,” Sam states with a bit of apprehension.

His friend Frodo, who has continued on a few steps ahead, stops at these words. “This is what?” he asks, confused.

“If I take one more step,” Sam states nervously, “it’ll be the farthest away from home I’ve ever been.” And he’s rooted indecisively to the spot.

His friend Frodo comes back to stand alongside him. “Come on Sam,” he says encouragingly. 

And Sam finds the strength to take that next step, and the two friends go off to face the great unknown-- together.

In this week's readings, there is a similar feeling of being stuck in place by the uncertain future that lies ahead for Jesus’s disciples. We are almost at the end of the Fifty Great Days of Easter, the principal feast in the Christian calendar. Just seven weeks ago we celebrated Easter Day, our alleluias joyfully set free as we welcomed the news of the Resurrected Jesus coming mere days after the devastation of the cross. But no sooner have the alleluias returned but Jesus finished up his final instructions and then ascended into heaven. The highs and the lows come fast and furious. Things are more uncertain than ever.

In the story of the launching of the Church, we see the disciples caught in a transitional time, a time where the memories of the past are still fresh, but the future has become as unpredictable as the dark side of the Moon. The disciples’ hearts are filled with a mixture of wonder and ache because Jesus has ascended, but the Holy Spirit has not poured over them and yet taken hold of them, heart and soul. They are in the time between the promise and the fulfillment.

Their time with Jesus was puzzling, often frustrating and at the end downright scary. Jesus often led those disciples to places they really did not want to go, but now he had come back only to leave again, and in their minds’ eyes they could still see his feet vanishing into a cloud like two tail lights on a 1959 Cadillac DeVille.

 Just like those disciples, we too live in a transitional time, both as a society and as a parish. As a society, we live in a very different context now as Christians than our parents and grandparents experienced. The number of people who profess faith in anything at all is shrinking with a vengeance. No longer can we assume that people we meet know the basics of ANY religious faith, not just Christianity.

The early Church was given the challenge to proclaim Christ as Savior to a world that had never heard of him, or of God. In our time, we still sometimes encounter that same issue, but, increasingly commonly, we actually face an additional challenge. I don’t know about you, but it’s one that I encounter frequently. Often, it’s not that people I meet have NO knowledge of Christianity, but rather that they have a skewed one. I meet many people who were brought up in the church, but who were hurt by it, or made to feel unwelcome, or even condemned by people who clothed that condemnation in the name of Jesus. Having a bad experience with self-proclaimed faithful people is much worse than having no experience of faith. It’s really hard to overcome a bad first impression.

So that’s another liminal space that the Church occupies. Because while it is absolutely to be Christ’s Body on Earth, there are also times when it is all too painfully obvious that the Church is also made up of fragile and even fallible people. The Church is both the communion of the saints and a hospital for the worst parts of our battered little psyches, and we fail to live up at times to the charge we have been given.

These are then also the times when we are called to confession, and to seek reconciliation. To remember that we are ever strengthened in our witness to the world by God’s unfailing grace respond to those the hurts in the world with grace, mercy, and love-- NOT anger and division.

The disciples faced many of those same challenges. In just a few short weeks, they had experienced losing their Messiah to death on a cross, only to learn three days later he had risen. For forty days they were taught further by him, only to watch him appear to leave them again. Through all these changes, their numbers had decreased until it seems there were only a few dozen disciples left perhaps 120 as our account in Acts suggests.

Like Sam, they could have stopped dead in their tracks and refused to move on into the unfamiliar future. But that’s not what they did. Instead, under the awning of Jesus’s continued intercession for them echoing from that prayer he had prayed for them before his crucifixion, they took the first brave step out into the liminal space between what was familiar and what was terrifying. And as Jesus had done on the night he was arrested, they too turned to prayer as the best way to try to discern what they should do next, especially as they considered how to fill their leadership needs.

That’s a powerful reminder for us as we try to discern our way through transitional times as a community, both on the parish level and as the global, capital C-Church. There are many lessons we can draw from their example as we confront times of change in our parish communities, especially in times when we are searching for new leaders. There are attitudes we can emulate from that time of Christian marginalization to our own time of discernment and change, as we try to make sense of this post-Christian landscape we inhabit between the Church we proclaim and the Church we are. And one of those most important, yet easily omitted attitudes, is prayer.

As our gospel reading reminds us, Jesus did not abandon them without a thought. Even on the night before his crucifixion, he stopped all that he was doing and prayed for his beloved disciples. And the central thing he prays for is for his disciples to be unified. Not uniform, but unified. Jesus prays for them to protected from the forces of division and fear that could break them apart.

And this is a precious realization for us today, too. As Christians, we pray to Jesus because he continues to intercede for us and to strengthen us in the work he has given us to do as the risen Son of God who knows all our challenges. As we work together to build up and strengthen the bonds of fellowship and service that bind us together, we are blessed and shielded that prayer of protection Jesus continues to pray for us. Calling us to renewal. Still calling us to do our best to discern God’s will in our lives, and seek unity in faithfulness and love that we may engage in humble listening to God in our responding prayer as we discern how to worship and witness.

Have you ever known you were being prayed for by someone else? It’s a powerful feeling of being tenderly cared for and cherished. Our readings today remind us of how important prayer is to help center and ground us in what really matters: the love of God. Prayer is the heart of our seeking, the first impulse of faith, opening ourselves up to the guidance of God, placing our needs before God who knows us completely and yet loves us completely. This is especially important in times of change, in transitional times. In our gospel reading, Jesus prays for his disciples, that they develop into leaders in their own right as he looks toward his eventual time of leave-taking from them.

Peter too, in our reading from Acts, centers the minds of the gathered disciples through asking God’s guidance in his prayer before making an important decision in a time of preparation and discernment. By doing so as well, we like Peter acknowledge and trust in God’s intimate knowledge of our hearts and minds.

Jesus’s prayer in our gospel, one we could really call "The Lord's Prayer,"  also reminds us that we have to adapt to changes in order to do our work of discipleship—that what worked at one point will not always work in the future.

Evidence of this is buried in the Book of Acts itself. The full title of the book is “The Acts of the Apostles.” Yet, more accurately, the book of Acts is the story of how the Holy Spirit worked through ordinary people to shine her light into the world. With the exception of Peter, most of the people whom Jesus had chosen as his inner circle, those known as the apostles, fade from prominence by the middle of the book.

Even Matthias and Justus, the two candidates to replace Judas, are not mentioned again after this scene in our first reading.

Instead, much of the last half of the Book of Acts is taken up telling the story of the missionary journeys of a guy who first makes his appearance not as a disciple much less as a self-proclaimed apostle, but as a persecutor of the early Church. And along the way, some of the best work accomplished in converting people and caring for the marginalized is actually done by people who were not officially considered to be leaders, but were instead ordinary people, people whose hearts were converted by love that shone in a harsh world like the sun at midday. By ordinary people who placed their trust in God’s guidance and protection, from all we can tell, people like Philip, and Lydia, and unnamed others from around the Mediterranean shore. People just like you and me, who have been saved by the love of God so that we can channel God’s love and grace through the testimony of our everyday lives.

Led by the power of the Holy Spirit, these disciples were able to embrace the liminal, transitional space that they found themselves in. Their joy was a witness to the world, and ours can be too. They were able to develop into mature leaders as they sought their way after the resurrection because they rested upon the power of the Holy Spirit to lead them in faithfulness and hope that shone in the darkest of times.

Instead of stopping dead in that boundary space on the edge of the familiar, these few brave men and women embarked on a great campaign to proclaim Jesus’s gospel everywhere, from the neighborhood to exotic lands. And look around. We share in the same situation they faced. And we can learn from the best things they exemplified, because we are disciples, too.

In a few moments, we will observe Rogation Sunday, a time when the boundaries of the parish were blessed and prayed over just as Jesus prayed over his disciples.

Yet as we walk these grounds, may we also remember that through God’s grace and love, this parish actually has no boundaries at all, because it is called to embody God’s love in the world, and God’s love itself has no boundaries. That, too, is the testimony we are called to proclaim to the world.

As we stand at the edge of what has gone before, we can rest in the assurance that the love and fellowship of Christ and all the saints equip us for the work God has given us to do, and we can find the courage and joy to prayerfully and eagerly step out into the future together, upheld by our mutual love and witness.

Amen.


Preached at the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd, Town and Country, at 10:00 am.

Readings:
Acts 1:15-17, 21-26, Psalm 1, 1 John 5:9-13, John 17:6-19

Images:
(1) and (2) screen shots from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.
(3) Depiction of the Ascension in the Chapel of Our Lady of Walsingham, United Kingdom.
(4) Jesus praying for unity among his disciples.
(5) Peter among the disciples.
(6) The anointing of Matthias.
(7) Rogation procession and blessing of the grounds, Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd, May 13, 2018. Photo by Bill Scoopmire.

Meeting the Stranger, Meeting Jesus: Sermon for the Third Sunday of Easter, Year A

Jesus and the disciples on the Road to Emmaus. Artist unknown.

Readings: Acts 2:14a, 36-41; Psalm 116:1-3, 10-17; 1 Peter 1:17-23; Luke 24:13-35

In our gospel story, two disciples—possibly Cleopas and his wife—are walking on the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus on Resurrection Day. Their hearts are filled with a mixture of heaviness and hope, for they have heard strange tales, this third day after Jesus’s crucifixion, about Jesus being risen from the dead. But they dare not believe it.

Then suddenly, a stranger starts walking alongside them. The stranger asks what they are discussing, and they pass along the story that they have heard about Jesus and the empty tomb. They obviously are completely bewildered if not a whole lot doubtful about the story they have been told. They believe that their hopes in Jesus have been dashed, regardless of the empty tomb. Possibly they heard the rumors spread by the authorities that Jesus’s body had been stolen away.

This stranger, after asking what they are talking about, then does a curious thing: he begins interpreting all that Jesus had done on earth to prove that he was the One whom scripture had foretold. You would think that, as small as the community of followers was, these two would wonder where a stranger would get so much information about Jesus.

Being hospitable and intrigued, they invite the stranger to stay with them as they have their evening meal. It is at the point that the stranger breaks the bread that suddenly, “their eyes are opened” to the truth—the one who has been walking and talking with them is doing what he has done countless times before. Jesus is breaking the bread—which to our Christian understanding echoes with Eucharistic meaning—and suddenly they know who he is. Just when that happens, though, he disappears once more. As the experience they have had begins to sink in, they realize that only Jesus could have made their “hearts burn within them.” It is when Jesus takes, breaks, blesses and gives the bread to them that he is fully known. It can be the same way with us.

Now, some of us respond to this story, and some of the other early resurrection stories, with wondering HOW the disciples could fail to recognize Jesus when they see him, especially given their natural longing as the word begins to get out that his body is no longer in the tomb.

How well do we know any other person, really? We are all mysteries to each other, no matter how much we are bound by common interests or memberships in groups, or language, or socio-economic class, or race, or vows, or birth, or anything else. And with Jesus, this mystery can be intensified—remember all the times throughout scripture that even Jesus’s closest friends fail to understand exactly who he is or what he is doing.

But there a few things we have to remember. The risen Jesus has been changed by the events of his Passion and Resurrection. He has come more fully into unity with God the Father, and his earthly life is changing--coming to an end as he has been known, becoming different. Jesus has been lifted up on the cross as a light for the whole world—not just for his disciples and friends. The scriptures we heard today said that “their eyes were kept from recognizing him.” We have the very same issue, as we were also reminded in the story last week about Thomas. We too hunger to know Jesus, but we are not sure what exactly we are looking for.

There is an important point here: these disciples got to meet Jesus when they welcomed the stranger, and insisted that this stranger stay with them and enter into fellowship with them. THIS is one of the other tangible ways we can meet Jesus. We can meet Jesus in the face not just of our friends, but when we look into the face of the stranger.

Once again this story reminds us that life according to the gospel is one of radical hospitality, and that flies in the face of almost everything we are often told about how we are supposed to react to strangers in our midst. We too easily fall into habits of trying to separate “us” from “them.” Whoever “them” ends up being, we are told to fear “them,” judge “them,” isolate “them.” We certainly are not taught to look for the face of Christ in the stranger. Yet that is where, over and over again throughout the witness of scripture, we end up encountering and finding God.

Each of may have our own Emmaus moment. As many of you may know, I am not a cradle Episcopalian. I was born and christened a United Methodist, then, when our pastor was moved when I was four, my mother began a decade-long journey through the nooks and crannies of Evangelical American Christendom, and we three kids bobbed along and followed in her wake like baby ducks following Mama Duck. It wasn’t until I was 12 that I first entered an Episcopal Church.

My teacher’s husband was being confirmed, and she invited me to come. Now, I had never been to any church like this in my life. Unfamiliar with the liturgical tradition of the Episcopal Church, I sat there in my dress, fake pearls, and hat (my mother mistakenly thought lady’s headgear was required). I fought off her attempt to put me in little lace gloves only with great tomboy vigor, but it was a struggle.

I sat at my friend’s confirmation and tried to take it all in without looking too stunned.
There was a bulletin, and it told you everything that was going to happen.
The people leading the service were dressed in special clothes, not three-piece suits.
There was one guy wearing a piece of pointy headgear that I knew from my chess set meant he was a bishop.

There were candles and a real pipe organ.
The sermon was filled with joy, and the only mention of hell was preceded by a “what the…” at the announcements.
Women were allowed to read the lessons.

In the middle there was a thing called “the peace,” in which I was hugged and kissed on the cheek and complimented on my hat by several older ladies who thought I was being knowingly retro in my garb rather than dressed to match a scene in The Quiet Man.

But the thing that really got me was when we knelt and heard the words that recounted God’s saving deeds throughout history. Invocations were said over the bread and wine, and then they were broken and offered to all of us. Now for the past 8 years, I had been raised in churches that rarely, if ever, celebrated communion. But here, we gathered around the altar, kneeling side by side. Unlike at other churches’ Lord’ Supper” remembrances which I had attended, even as a stranger I was welcomed.

And that’s where I really met Jesus. I met him in the breaking of the bread and the sharing of the cup.  
“Body of Christ; Bread of Heaven.”
“Blood of Christ; Cup of Salvation.”

That’s when my savior was made known to me in the bread, in the cup, in the blessing, in the fellowship of all those gathered together worshipping. This is when I learned what a sacrament truly can be—as Mother Pamela reminded us last week, “an outward and visible sign” – and the most miraculous, transformative part—“of an inward and spiritual grace.”

It was grace that opened the disciples’ hearts to hear Jesus interpret his significance throughout the history and scriptures of Israel. Their hearts had been stirred as he spoke, and we should be familiar with that. Our own worship service every Sunday begins with the liturgy of the Word, and then moves to the liturgy of the table.

It was grace that opened their eyes to who he really was then in the blessing, breaking, and sharing of the Eucharist. Every week we come here, hungry for the living Word, hoping to encounter Christ and to be equipped by that encounter for our own daily ministry as disciples. 

I would argue that we can know Jesus fully in the breaking of the bread. But that’s not all. Jesus seeks to work transformation in us, and the Eucharist is one of the ways that he does it. In the story, the moment Jesus breaks the bread, two things happen simultaneously: the two disciples become aware of who Jesus IS--NOT just who he was. Then he vanishes, so that they may know that he is not what he once was—he is MORE. Like them, we get to know the risen, living Christ in the breaking of the bread, and gain a new understanding that he is our living savior, who has brought us into himself, and by doing so, has united us also with each other, with all creation—and with God.

I am convinced that when we gather around this altar together, that’s when we fully come together, which in itself is a great mystery. Jesus is the bridge that brings us together and helps us to remember that we may not fully know each other, but through the love of God we can love each other and welcome each other—no exceptions.

It’s here that we are all reminded that we are one body, as well, and not just ANY body, but also the Body of Christ. It’s here we are reminded that we can all be signs to each other of God’s grace and mercy. And then we can embody that grace to the entire world, as each of us remembers that by our baptism we are all ministers in a Church that is called to minister to the world, the dark places as well as the light, as Christ’s own.

As a result of meeting the stranger on the road to Emmaus, we are called to live into who we are called to be: Body of Christ; Bread of Heaven. Bread for the World, Bread for ALL the world. As the Body of Christ, we are called to embody the Good News of God’s grace and love to a world that is hungry for it. Come, taste and see that the Lord is good. Let us gather around the table, where none are outcast, and all are fed and led to meet Jesus in both friend and stranger, and then, together, let us carry his love out into the world.

Preached at the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd, Town and Country, MO, on April 30, 2017.

Life Alert- Sermon for 3 Lent C

I am not one of those people who can ignore the doorbell or a ringing telephone. Somewhere along the line, I have been socialized that, even if I am knee-deep in homework, the sound of those chimes will most likely send me scrambling to answer.

I have been working on this, because there are times when I just don’t have time to listen to strange calls coming out of nowhere. Lately, it’s been the representatives of AARP (which my husband signed me up for against my will) calling to get me to buy a Life Alert system. These calls make me nuts. 

For one thing, I’m not really retired. Nor will I probably ever need Life Alert, since I carry my phone around with me constantly. If I’ve fallen onto the floor, the only reason why I will not get up or call for help is either that 

1)I am flat-out unconscious, OR that 

2) I’ve decided that maybe I can steal a nap in peace, since no one would look for me on the floor under the dining room table.

But some calls shouldn’t be ignored.

In today’s reading from Exodus, we hear the story of God’s call to Moses.  And, listen, when God calls, that’s one you should probably take and respond to. Might be important.

The outline of the story is familiar: Moses wanders up on a holy mountain, experiences a “theophany” or appearance of God in the burning bush, and gets told that God has heard the cry of Israel, and has chosen Moses to be the instrument to free them. Moses is scared enough to hide his face, but not scared enough to not start peppering God with questions --and subtle resistance.

Moses, also known as Charlton Heston, in the scene
with the burning bush in the Ten Commandments.
Because I can't help myself.

Specifically, Moses asks two questions after God speaks to him: “Who am I?” and, just as important, “Who are YOU?” These two questions are intimately related. God has already told Moses that he is the God of Moses’s ancestors. Yet, Moses’s first question shows that it is only when Moses understands who he is and why God has chosen him that God’s declaration will make any sense to him.

So who is Moses? An Israelite brought up as an Egyptian, living in exile. Moses is just a shepherd, a person who’s been lost

and found

and lost

and now found again, apparently.

He’s just trying to make a living, too busy surviving to think much about the deep questions of life. Perhaps that’s why he unknowingly wanders onto the holy mountain of God. It’s no wonder, then, that when God first speaks to Moses, the claim of being “the God of your fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” doesn’t really clarify much for Moses. So Moses responds, “Who, exactly, are you again?”

Those two questions—“Who am I?” and “Who are you?” are vital for any communication to take place between any two parties—and they are also the two questions that scripture repeatedly wrestles with. Scripture is about who God is and what God does. But it’s also the story of who WE are, and what we are called to do as God’s people. When Moses asks, “Who am I?” he betrays an uncertainty that many of us share.

It’s a question we may need to ask ourselves, particularly as we try to live lives of discipleship—lives open to the call of God in our own lives. Like Moses, we spend much of our lives engaged in the everyday pursuits of what we call survival—so that sometimes when we DO try to open our hearts to the call of God, we don’t know how to understand or respond.

Like all Biblical stories, this story about Moses is not so much about what God said 5000 years ago, but more about what God says to us today, because the Bible is not only the story of what WAS, but what is, and what can be.  That proof of that is embedded in the answer God gives to Moses when Moses asks God, “Who are you, again?”

God’s answer to Moses’s question is quite interesting. Hebrew scholars suggest a slightly different translation than we just heard—they suggest that God’s name is not just “I am what I am,” but also “I will be what I will be.”

“I will be what I will be.”

No wonder we, including Moses, are still left confused.

God will be? God will be… what, exactly? 

But that’s the point- no matter how much we think we know, God is more. God will be—because God is not finished with us, or creation, yet. We don’t get to decide that we understand once and for all what God will or won’t do, or that he will forgive this person but not that person. God will be.

Throughout scripture, God will be many things: Shepherd. Healer. Even Savior.

God will also be worshiped. Praised, yes. Also betrayed and rebelled against, again and again.

We are given freedom to answer God’s call to each of us, or not. When God calls Moses, Moses isn’t forced to go along with God’s plans. However, God also doesn’t just give up and let Moses go back to those sheep. God ups the ante, so to speak. God increases the pressure to make sure he gets Moses’s attention. God doesn’t give up.

Although some might disagree, the genius of the stories of holy scripture is that they make clear that God did not make us only to order us around, or to chastise and punish us, but to draw us into relationship with God and each other.

God always works harder at this than we do ourselves.

When we get off track, God doesn’t respond with smiting, but with another call—a call for repentance, so that we can be restored to right relationship with God and each other. God’s love for us includes a huge heaping helping of patience, mercy, and grace. God asks us to listen, and God listens back. And God is going to be with Moses and the people of Israel all along the way.

That journey is not always smooth. 

One of my favorite cartoons is one that’s been around for years—you’ve probably seen a version of it. It shows God talking with a person with tear-stained cheeks, looking back on the person’s life as if their journey through life has left behind a series of impressions in the sand.

God looks back at an early part of the person’s life journey and points: “My beloved child—I am always with you. See those two sets of footprints? That’s where you and I walked side-by-side.”

“Yes, God,” says the human, “but what about over there, where there’s only one set of footprints?”

God answers, “My child, there’s only one set of footprints there, because that’s where I carried you.” And the human in the cartoon visibly brightens. Nice, right? But some of you may not have seen the third panel of the cartoon.

In the third panel, God continues, “And that deep pair of grooves over there? THAT’s where I dragged you, my child, kicking and screaming.” 

We are hearing this reading today because Lent is often the part of the year where we are encouraged to examine the “kicking and screaming” part of our lives with God, where we are reminded that sometimes we’ve fallen, and we can’t get up.

If we’re honest, many of us are have also struggled to recognize God’s voice and respond to God’s call.

Sometimes we let God walk beside us.

Sometimes God has to carry us.

Sometimes God drags us back from sin and foolishness.

The story of Moses we hear today is the story of a call, and as Christians we are called too- called to own our heritage of being made in the image of God—of being children of God.

Yes- children of God, all of us, even when we do wrong.

Children of God-- and I say that without my fingers crossed behind my back-- called to embody God’s essential goodness in the world-- to embody the love of God

as has been

and is being

revealed in Christ Jesus.

And when we fall short, we are called to own our sins, to repent, to turn and try again.

In our gospel today, Jesus makes it clear that, when we fail to live up to our call as children of God, we can receive God’s mercy and grace rather than God’s judgment, so that we can respond to the call to repent—to make an adjustment, maybe a big one or maybe just a small one—but often, just a small change is enough. Anyone who has ever tried to sink a long putt in golf will know what I mean. Sometimes avoiding one bent blade of grass that we could have stepped on, or the repair of one divot that we’ve inflicted, can make all the difference. And it’s the same way in our own lives.

In our own wanderings through the wilderness, we need deliverance from outside forces, but also forgiveness for our sins—known and unknown, things done by us and done on our behalf.

In his commentary on the Book of Exodus, Biblical scholar Terence Fretheim notes that exiled Israel faced two issues: of being “first, captive to outside forces and second, suffering under just judgment because of its disloyalty to God.” Fretheim sums up the specific lesson of the Book of Exodus that also applies to our own situation today: “The community of faith stands in need of both deliverance and forgiveness.”  

Once again, the Biblical story illuminates a truth in our own lives, and provides another part of the answer to that question of “Who am I?” We too are people in need of both deliverance and forgiveness—that’s why both of those words are part of the Lord’s Prayer. We are called to ask for both deliverance, but also for forgiveness.

Who among us hasn’t felt as if we too are captive to outside forces beyond our control? 

Who here hasn’t felt or wondered if we aren’t being punished by God for something that we have done? 

But Jesus’s response in our gospel corrects this idea. It’s not the case that any time troubles or even tragedies befall us, it is a punishment from God. Again and again, the Bible witnesses to God NOT giving to people the judgment they so richly deserve—and that’s Jesus’s point, too. Just like the Israelites, just like the people Jesus encountered in his earthly ministry, we can be stung by feelings of powerlessness and dread of punishment that in turn then creates a climate of fear. We’re called to something better- to labor alongside God in the work of redemption.

God is calling us. God is calling us to anchor our lives in Christ. God is calling us to repentance and newness of life.

That’s a call we shouldn’t ignore.

(Preached on February 28, 2016 at the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd, Town and Country, MO.)

Grounded in holiness: sermon for Proper 28, year B

Readings:

1 Samuel 1:4-20

Hebrews 10:11-14 (15-18) 19-25

Mark 13:1-8

Sermon Proper 28B (Ingathering Sunday)

November 15, 2015

Last week in our gospel we heard the story of the “Widow’s Mite.” We were led to contemplate how the Church might actually represent the widow in the story—giving our all to God all for nothing but the sake of Christ—in other words, for the greatest free thing in all the world: love.

This week we hear stories about worship in our readings. The story of Hannah is centered around the shrine at Shiloh that contained the Ark of the Covenant. And our gospel reading from Mark continues the discussion Jesus and his disciples are having about the Temple. Yet I think love is woven into this, as well, since worship is all about love- love for God, and love for each other.

Places of worship come and go, but the ways we worship God are more important. Shiloh was an important place of worship—until it was overrun and looted. Then the First Temple was built at Jerusalem by Solomon. That Temple, in turn, was destroyed, and it was only after a long exile that a new Temple replaced it. That second Temple was then further expanded by King Herod, whose family governed Israel as puppets and collaborators under the Roman Empire during the life of Jesus.

Our gospel story depicts Jesus and his disciples discussing the Temple that Herod had expanded. Allegedly, it was an amazing sight, with marble columns and pavements, and it was so massive that its walls were sixteen feet thick in places. And some of those stones that the disciples remarked about weighed over 100 tons EACH. All of this magnificence was paid for by taxes that Herod and the religious authorities levied upon the people, whether wealthy patrons or poor widows.

This Temple may have been declared to be the center of the worship of God, but the guy whose name was all over it was HEROD’S, and it was a monument to Herod’s claims to power and legitimacy as a ruler. The problem of the Temple for Jesus is that it was NOT dedicated to the humble work of love, the work of building up the community, the work of worshiping God.

In our first reading, Hannah’s entire household—including her husband’s other wife and children-- are on pilgrimage at Shiloh, yet Hannah was restless and troubled. Although beloved by her husband, she is childless. Her husband doesn’t seem to understand the depths of Hannah’s pain—possibly because he has children with his other wife. Yet Hannah knows that if, God forbid, something were to happen to her husband, she would be absolutely destitute-- just like that poor widow in last week’s gospel.

Hannah gets up from the family feast to go and pray alone before the Ark, observed by Eli, the priest. Humbly but fervently, she begs God for a son, even promising to give that child back to God’s service as soon as he is weaned. She begins praying so hard yet so silently that Eli thinks she’s drunk. After defending herself, Eli bids her go in peace. But something shifted during that prayer. Hannah is “remembered” by God, and blessed with a son, who was named Samuel, meaning “God hears me.” Hannah will give birth to that son, only to give him to Eli, to grow up in the sanctuary at Shiloh, and serve God as a prophet and judge of Israel.

Hannah eventually sings a great song of victory after the birth of her son, which will be very similar to another song of victory sung by a young woman named Mary, inspired by her own impending motherhood. I want to mention it so that we understand that Hannah worshiped and praised God as much as she railed at God. Hannah had first approached God with angry pleadings, but eventually she sings a great song of power and rejoicing. Hannah’s marginalized status was overturned through her very great faith.  In a few weeks, Mary will also sing about the greatness of God and all God’s works in overturning the hierarchies of power, to bring restoration of God’s design for peace and justice. Hannah and Mary are linked: they each have a son, and they raise him and love him only to give him away to serve God. They give all they have out of love. Just like the widow in last week’s gospel.

Our sermon last week closed with imagining that the widow had gone home from the Temple, not to impending starvation, but to the loving care of others—perhaps someone who witnessed her act pressed some money into her hands, perhaps she had her own loving daughter-in-law to help her, as Naomi had Ruth. Perhaps she had neighbors who would check on her and take care of her. I love that image. That love and care we show for others IS true worship. It’s true discipleship—one that’s not dependent on buildings but on hearts on fire with the love of God.

I particularly thought of that image during the last few days, as we heard of atrocities in Lui, in Syria, in Baghdad, and in Beirut. On Friday, the terrible attacks all across Paris killed at least 120 persons, and wounded nearly 400 more.

It seems overwhelming. Yet even in the midst of carnage, there were also beautiful stories of good people opening their homes to people displaced by these tragedies; of people airdropping food and supplies to refugees in one place and plucking them from the ocean in others; of people growing and giving away a ton of food even when the weather doesn’t cooperate. All of these actions are holy. All of these actions remind us of the best in us that was planted by God in creation.

Sacrifice doesn’t just mean to give up something—sacrifice means to make something holy. What makes a place holy isn’t its grandeur. What makes a place holy is how it brings us closer to God. The story of Hannah reminds us of that. It reminds us that worship is much more about how our hearts are oriented than being in the midst of resplendent surroundings. Similarly, what makes a people holy isn’t their numbers. What makes a people holy is their dedication to serve and worship God.

And that’s an important message to hear, as we keep being told that Christianity as we know it, and the Episcopal Church as we know it, is in decline. We are a small church. But, if our hearts are filled with worship and wonder at what God has done for us, we can still do great things, if our souls proclaim the greatness of the Lord, and our spirits rejoice in God our Savior, who looks with favor on his lowly servants.

Yet I’m reminded of a beautiful point that Pamela made last week. She said, “Being a member of a church, and giving generously of your time, talent, and treasure, is NOT going to impress people today.” But she reminded us that this is actually good news. Here’s what she said: “If we Christians can embrace our marginalized place in society and stop chasing respectability and status, we will be that much closer to the life of faith that Jesus modeled and wants us to emulate.”

This reminded me of one of my favorite poems, by e. e. cummings (I told you all I was an English major, yes?).  This poem reminded me of the holiness to be found in humility, the kind of humility and steadfast love we see in Hannah, and Mary, and countless others like you and me right here at Good Shepherd who seek to give God our all.

Here’s what e e cummings wrote:

i am a little church(no great cathedral)

far from the splendor and squalor of hurrying cities

-i do not worry if briefer days grow briefest,

i am not sorry when sun and rain make april

my life is the life of the reaper and the sower;

my prayers are prayers of earth's own clumsily striving

(finding and losing and laughing and crying)children

whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness

around me surges a miracle of unceasing

birth and glory and death and resurrection:

over my sleeping self float flaming symbols

of hope,and i wake to a perfect patience of mountains

 i am a little church(far from the frantic

world with its rapture and anguish)at peace with nature

-i do not worry if longer nights grow longest;

i am not sorry when silence becomes singing

 winter by spring, i lift my diminutive spire to

merciful Him Whose only now is forever:

standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence

(welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness)

I thought of that poem, and I thought—that’s us! 

This is a church attuned to the life of the sower and the reaper. 

This is a church that has known birth and glory and death and resurrection. 

We’ve even got the “diminutive spire.”

This is a holy place, and we are holy people. Let us be gathered together, to proclaim with our time, our prayers, our talent, and our treasure, to do great things in love, sacrifice, and humility.

Amen.