I started thinking about the phenomenon of unbelievable stories, as I was preparing for Christmas services. In the year 2017, when virtually everyone in this church over the age of about 12, has a device in his or her pocket or purse that allows communication of any thought or idea to almost anyone, anywhere, instantly; when the internet allows anyone to do research on any topic, just by typing it into Google™; is the story of the Nativity of our Lord, the story we just read from St. Luke’s Gospel, passé? Have we reached the level of sophistication which makes this story just too hard to swallow?

If we look at the Nativity story from a purely historical perspective, in the “cold, harsh light” as it were, of science and/or history, the story might be more than we can believe. The God who created the entire world, became human, and not just human, but an exceptionally poor human, born in one of the world’s true “nowheres,” in Bethlehem of Judea. And as if that weren’t unbelievable enough, the God of the universe became human, not in a palace, surrounded by servants and caretakers, but in a place where common farm animals live. On its face, when phrased that way, it does seem a bit much.
But God doesn’t ask us to accept this story standing alone, without any context. Instead, God asks us to consider the story as the next chapter of a much older saga, the epic story of God’s loving relationship with all of humanity.

The Jewish philosopher, Martin Buber told this story:
Rabbi Aaron once came to the city where little Mordecai, who later became the Rabbi of Lechovitz, was growing up. His father brought the boy to the visiting rabbi and complained that he did not persevere in his studies. ‘Leave the boy with me for a while,’ said Rabbi Aaron.

When he was alone with little Mordecai, Rabbi Aaron lay down and took the child and held him next to his heart. Silently, he held the boy close to his chest until the father returned. The old rabbi told the father, ‘I gave him a good talking-to. From now on, he will not be lacking in perseverance.’

Throughout his life, whenever Rabbi Mordecai of Lechovitz related this incident, he added, ‘That was the day that I learned how to convert others.’

You see, God made human beings with free will. That means that we have the choice of whether we love and worship God or not. God does not force nor coerce humans into loving God. We have always been offered God’s self as a being worthy of our love and worship, and then God has left it up to us to respond as we ought. But … God has tried to “convert” human beings since the beginning of time – to turn us into the creatures God originally intended us to be. As I said, God did not do this through coercion or force, but by revealing God’s very self to us, so that we would see God for who God is, and then naturally be converted into the humans we should be.

First God tried to make humans into God’s own loving creatures through the magnificence of creation itself. But God disclosing to people what God looked like through creation was not enough. After a while, people stopped seeing the world around them as a miraculous reflection of God. They began to take creation for granted.

Humans did not persevere in their worship of the creator God. In response to this lack of perseverance, God gave them “a good talking to” in the form of a flood that wiped away almost all of creation. Then God sent a rainbow to Noah as proof that this particular way of talking to the children wouldn’t happen again. Still the children were not converted and continued to rebel.

Some thousand years later, God tried to disclose who God was by appearing to Abraham and making him the father of a great nation. The children of Abraham became the chosen children of Israel. Those children rebelled against God, so God gave them a good talking to, by making them slaves in Egypt. Then God again revealed His gracious love to the children by sending Moses to be their liberator.

The children of God rebelled again and God gave them the law, the Commandments, a good talking to, meant to show them that God was constant, and that there must be rules to the relationship. But they were still not converted. And so, again they got a good talking to from God when the prophets came to them to try to convince them that there was a different way to live.

Through all those generations of people, the children were never converted. Every time God’s beloved humans failed to persevere and live up to their potential, God metaphorically gave them another good talking to. But nothing seemed to work.
Then, after millennia of people failing to persevere, God gave up on the old ways and something never-before-experienced happened. On this night, over two thousand years ago, in a barn in Bethlehem, God took all of humanity and held it close to God’s heart. In other times, God had been said to have temporarily inhabited a human form. But the birth of Jesus, was a completely new and different event in the history of the world. Mary of Nazareth, fiancé of Joseph the carpenter, gave birth and laid Jesus in a feeding trough and in that simple act, the God who created all that is, held us next to the very heart of God.

Through this most incredible, and yet completely ordinary of events – the birth of a baby boy, God came into the world in a most amazing and miraculous way. Suddenly we had the ability to see God in this poor and innocent child. Suddenly God’s heartbeat was right there, in a place where we could hold God and feel the rhythm of life.
In his 1984 song, Mary Did You Know, songwriter, Mark Lowry put it very well, “Mary did you know that your baby boy has walked where angels trod? And when you kiss your little baby, you have kissed the face of God.”

That’s the magic of this story. If we were to just look at it as an historic event, standing by itself, virtually all of us would have to say, that this couldn’t have happened. But through the eyes of faith, and with the ability to look back through the entire story of humanity in the Bible, we can see this story for what it really is – the fulfillment of God’s promised love for us. Not only is this story possible, it was an absolute necessity for our conversion.

God has always loved us: enough to give us this rich and self-sustaining world in which to live; enough to endow us with the ability to love and be loved by other people; enough to give us the ability to choose and the desire to excel, so that we never have to be bored by what we do in life. And yet, through it all, humanity has never persevered in its love and worship of God.

A good talking to, over and over. God tried it all, again and again. Then, on this night, a couple thousand years ago, God determined that the only way to reach us, to convert us, was to take us and hold us close to God’s heart. The Incarnation of God brought the Almighty and the ordinary together, forever.

Mary did you know that your baby boy is Lord of all creation?
Mary did you know that your baby boy will one day rule the nations?
Did you know that your baby boy is heaven's perfect Lamb?
This sleeping child you're holding is the great I AM.

Merry Christmas. Amen.

First thing is: most of these paintings show Mary to be a grown woman. We know from our study of ancient Palestine and ancient Jewish custom, that most women – girls really – married at a very young age. The rabbis of the day held the opinion that twelve was an acceptable age for the girl to be engaged – and that thirteen was a good marrying age. Very few of the paintings show Mary to be a pre-teen or even a thirteen-year-old.
Then there is the really odd commonality in many of these paintings, that they show Mary reading – usually something that we can easily imagine to be Scripture. Remember that Mary was in Nazareth – a backwater town in the armpit of the Roman Empire, in the year 30 BC or so. I am willing to bet that only the rabbi in town could read – and perhaps even he couldn’t. And even if several people in town could read, there is very little chance that one of them was a young girl.

Perhaps my biggest issue with Annunciation paintings, is that they generally show Mary with a beatific smile (many looking suspiciously like the Mona Lisa). She is always dressed impeccably, is exceedingly calm, and many times is wearing what looks to be a nun’s wimple (the white head covering that all nuns used to wear and some still do). In still others, Mary has a halo over her head, indicating that she is holy.
My problem with all of these portrayals, is that they lose Mary’s ordinariness – which, I believe, cheapens the story. Fabrizio Boschi almost got it right — at least in my humble opinion. In his painting, Gabriel and the cherubim, are about to bless Mary, and instead of the knowing smile and the total comfort with the situation, Mary is almost recoiling and looking askance at them. This one, as I said, is almost right, but not quite. Again, Mary is too old in the painting, and her expression, although appropriately showing confusion and some level of disbelief, reminds me of Gary Coleman from the early 80’s sitcom, Diff’rent Strokes, just as he would say, “What you talkin’ ‘bout, Willis?”

For my money, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, in his 1850 painting, The Annunciation, other than the halo that Mary wears, came the closest to representing the important things about this story. In his work, Rossetti shows an obviously young girl, cowering as far back into the corner of her bed and the wall, as she can get. She cannot bring herself to look at the angel, and the look on her face says, “I have no idea what all of this means.”
You see … despite the way that painters have painted this scene, and despite the way that some religious writers have written about it, Mary’s visitation from Gabriel was an example of the extraordinary intersecting with the ordinary. It was a completely ordinary girl being confronted with the Archangel who, throughout Scripture, was tasked with taking messages directly from God and transmitting them directly to humans, usually with a corresponding power and understanding – and with a call to perform some function for God. That’s the reason that every time Gabriel appears in Scripture, his entrance is accompanied by the words, “Do not be afraid.” Because, let’s face it, if we saw Gabriel right here, right now, we would be petrified.

Mary being initially frightened and later confused, is important, because it means that Mary was just like us. She was NOT born from a virgin mother herself, as some legend holds. There is nothing in Scripture that indicates even what Mary’s parents’ names were, much less about her conception and childhood. All of that stuff comes from legend and apocryphal accounts. And all of those legends are designed to make us believe that Mary was different from us, even before Gabriel visited. That is nonsense, and I believe that it does damage to her story.

The true power of the story of the Nativity (which was preceded by the story of the Annunciation) is that the God of the entire universe – indeed, the God of all that is – came to be one of us in a completely ordinary place, to a completely ordinary mother; that is, completely ordinary before Gabriel appeared. Because after the Archangel appeared, nothing in Mary’s life was ever ordinary again.

Mary’s story is at its most powerful, not in who she was before that day. It is at its most powerful when this completely ordinary, confused, frightened, and shocked young girl looked at the Archangel of God and said, “Okay. I’ll do what you ask.” That is where heaven and earth intersected for a time, and out of which came the Incarnation of God. Without Mary’s, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” none of the rest would have been possible.

Episcopal priest and extraordinary author, Barbara Brown Taylor, said,

"Mary wins her place in history not for her cleverness, nor for her beauty, nor even for her goodness. She becomes the most important woman in the world simply because she is willing to say yes to an angel’s strange proposal without a clue where it will lead her. Doing so, she becomes the prototype for all of us who are also invited to bear God into the world."

And that is really the point of Mary’s story, isn’t it? She received a call from God that was decidedly more dramatic than most of ours. But make no mistake, we are all called to bear God in the world. And how we answer our own calls dictates whether or not that part of God’s mission in the world will be accomplished.

Leonard Bernstein, the famous orchestra conductor, was once asked what is the most difficult instrument in the orchestra to play. Bernstein replied immediately, “Second fiddle.” He said, “I can always get plenty of first violinists, but to find one who plays second violin with as much enthusiasm––or second French horn––or second flute––now that's a problem. And yet if no one plays second, we have no harmony.”

Sometimes when we get a call from God, it can seem like we are being called to play “second fiddle.” In most cases, we are acutely aware of the ordinariness of what we do, and of the fact that second fiddle is what we do. In many cases, our work for God seems so ordinary – or even pedestrian: handing out bulletins, driving for a youth group event, cooking for a potluck (or even more important, cleaning up afterward). In some cases, our calling seems somewhat higher: teaching a Sunday school class or singing in the choir. But as we all know very well, kids can be unruly and sometimes someone near us sings off key, and in those moments, we wonder why we bother. The point of the story is that everything we are called to do: the high and the low; the ones that bring adulation and the ones no one notices; those that seem irreplaceable and those that feel completely unimportant; all fit into God's scheme of things in ways that we cannot understand, any more than Mary could fully understand what Gabriel told her. And just as it was with the totally ordinary Mary, it matters less whether or not we execute our tasks with skill and gracefulness, than it does that we approach them with devotion. I read recently that, “God desires, not the skill of our hands, but the love of our hearts. The person who has only the ability to love God and neighbor is all important [to] God….”

When God asks, say “yes.” Then dive in and watch what wonders God can work. Amen.

         For more than the first thousand years of its existence, the Church universal commemorated Advent in much the same way that it commemorates Lent.  That is, it was a season of 40 days (not counting weekends) and the season – just like Lent – was marked by fasting and penitence as everyone repented and prepared for the coming of Jesus – both in the Nativity and through the 2nd Coming.  And also like Lent, there was a middle Sunday where everyone could take a break from fasting to celebrate.  In Lent the fourth Sunday is called Laetere Sunday (in England its known as Mothering Sunday, or Pudding Pie Sunday).  Laetere is the Latin word for being glad, so that day was one where everyone could forget that it was Lent for the day and just celebrate.  That is the way that it was in the early centuries of Advent, so we had Gaudete Sunday.

But in the Church where everything was read/said and prayed in Latin, every service, every week, began with the Gaudete; the introit to the service, which took lines from Paul’s letter to the Philippians.  I have no desire to stand up here and completely butcher the Latin pronunciations, so suffice to say that every church service began: 

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.  Let your gentleness be known to everyone.  The Lord is near.  Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. … [1]

That is a truly lovely way to begin worship.  Now don’t get me wrong, I love the Book of Common Prayer and its language.  I really like our Collect for Purity that opens the service.  But I have to say, there is something pretty comforting about the Gaudete.  And today, we get a similar sentiment from Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians, where he says:

Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.  …  May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.[2]

         This week, I could not help but think of St. Paul’s request that we rejoice always, and his call for us to pray without ceasing.  On Friday, I had one of those interesting days that priests (and I’m sure Bishops, for that matter) have sometimes.  At one point during the day, I left the office with Donna, so that we could go to Taylor’s class Christmas party.  Let me tell you that you have never had a Christmas party until you have had one with a special needs high school class, the majority of whom have Down Syndrome.  All I can say is, those folks know how to rejoice.  The laughter and love in her classrooms was an amazing thing indeed.  To tell you how great the party was, we told Taylor that she could leave and come home with us, but she declined.  She wanted to stay at school until the end of the day, because she was rejoicing so much.

         After the party, Donna dropped me at my car and I went to one of the retirement facilities to visit with a parishioner who has recently been put on hospice care.  We had communion together and talked a bit about family and everything that was going on outside of the room.  And I thought, “this is where the praying without ceasing really becomes recognizable.”  I am not praying for this person to get better and walk out of the facility.  I am praying for spiritual healing, peace, and rejoicing.  When the end of life comes near, the greatest gift we can get, is people who visit, support us, listen to us, and bring us what we need as we transition from this life to the next.  And that is where I really made the connection to rejoicing always.

         When our bodies get old and stop working the way we want them to, sometimes they betray us in horrible ways.  Organs stop functioning as they should, and our quality of life can drop off precipitously.  So the rejoicing begins when spiritual healing begins, when the person makes peace with the situation and finally sees the possibility of rejoicing in the Kingdom of Heaven.

         When I left that place, I drove to the hospital – arriving too late to be there for the birth of a Sloane Cecilia to Haley and Mike Wiley.  It was an emergency delivery and pretty scary.  But by the time I got there, the relief and the rejoicing had begun.  So, I prayed – without ceasing – that Haley and Sloane would continue to get better and stronger by the minute, and that the whole Wiley-Fuller clan would be able to embrace their newest member in a very short time.

         Partying with people whose abilities are different from our own; being a supportive presence in a room that is slowly leaking life out; and being part of a celebration of new and healthy life; they are all part of God’s creation – the creation over and through which we should truly rejoice always.

         All of the things I described are part of the human condition.  We were all born.  We all have skills and abilities, and lack others.  We will all pass from this life to the next at some point.  And through it all, we should give thanks to the one who created it all, and we should rejoice!  We are here – today – in this place and at this time, with all of these other people whose presence we should also rejoice. 

         We are here at St. Barnabas because this is where God has placed us at this time.  We have work to do here – work that requires praying without ceasing and work over which we can truly rejoice.  We are called to make a difference, right here in Lafayette and around the world.  We are called to ease suffering, bring comfort, and share joy.  We are called to make our lives a constant prayer (that is, without ceasing) and bring a spirit of rejoicing everywhere we go.

         For the rest of the service today – during our pledge card ingathering, during the prayers of the people, and particularly during communion, rejoice with me.  Lay aside your troubles for a while.  Put a smile in your heart and on your face. 

REJOICE ALWAYS!

Amen.

[1]   Philippians 4:4–6 (NRSV)

[2]  1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, 23 (NRSV)

These readings call us to begin to prepare ourselves for the coming of the Christ child, the Christmas event, and at the same time, they call us to prepare for the second coming of Christ.  In actuality, three things are being thrown at us simultaneously and we are asked to catch them all and to try to juggle them all, as we consider what we will do with them.  So let’s get started.

First there is the Old Testament prophet, Isaiah.  Today’s passage comes from a section of the his writings in which he was bemoaning the perception of the people that God was absent from the world.  He says in the section we just heard,

O that (God) would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at (God’s) presence-- as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil-- to make (God’s) name known to (God’s) adversaries, so that the nations might tremble at (God’s) presence!

You can almost hear the anguish in Isaiah’s voice as he pleads with God to please come down from heaven and make Himself known to the people.  The prophet says that the people have sinned because they don’t know who God is anymore and, to Isaiah’s mind, this must make God angry.  But really, Isaiah is calling on God to come home and be with the family. 

I’m sure that there are more than a few of you who experienced a time like I did when I was a child.  I was probably in kindergarten when my parents took me to a large store and I got separated from them.  When I looked up and discovered that the man I was standing next to was not my father, I was panicked.  My father was gone.  I was alone.  And I had a sudden, desperate need to see him again.   That is exactly where Isaiah finds himself. 

God, the Father of all things, had been gone – at least in the peoples’ perception – for a very long time.  When Isaiah spoke to the people, they were longing for the Father to return home, even if He was angry, just to show the people that the Father loved them enough to come back – although it meant punishment would be meted out when He returned.  And while Isaiah wanted an old-time show of power from God – a show of fire and mountains trembling – he didn’t want these things to come too close to the people.  That is why the prophet said, “Do not be exceedingly angry, O LORD, and do not remember iniquity forever.”  In other words, it is OK for you to be mad enough to shake the earth up a little bit, but please God, don’t be so angry that you get rid of your children.

Now, unlike Isaiah, we 21st Century Christians know the next chapter of the story.  We know that God did, indeed answer the prayers of Isaiah and others, to return to the world in a form in which people could see God.  We know that God came down to inhabit the earth.  This is the second thing we are asked to juggle today; the fact that God did not come back the way Isaiah requested or expected.  Instead of a being God of strength and power, coming back to the earth to shake things up; God had another plan.

We have the benefit of the New Testament and we know that God did, in fact “come home.”  The Latin term, adventus, from which we get Advent, means, “coming,” as in “coming home.”  We are asked today to take this second item and consider that, instead of coming in a blaze of glory and power, God came in the form of a helpless infant.  God came to earth, not as the mighty warrior.  Instead, God came in human form, meek and humble and full of love, so that all the people of the world could see and experience the true power of God – the power of love.

Jesus is the fulfillment of every promise God made to the people of Israel.  God made a covenant (or promissory contract) with the people, in which God gave the people this world in which to live.  God gave them dominion over the earth.  And God gave the children the scariest of all gifts, free will.  God then said, “take care of your selves and take care of each other.  I will be around, but I will not be walking in the garden with you anymore.”  As time went by, God gave the children the law, and the prophets to explain the law.  Then, when the time was right, God came back to earth in human form, to fulfill the promise of a new way of living.

And as we know from the Gospels, Jesus set the standard for living as a human.  He who was completely human, but without sin, lived, died and was resurrected to save us from sin, but also to show us how to live in this world.  Through our exercising of that frightening free will, we had gotten so far off course – in Isaiah’s time and on through Jesus’ time – that we no longer knew how to live as children of God.  We had misbehaved badly while the parent was away.  When Jesus came, He came not as the stern, judging parent, but as the example of what we should have done while we thought we were alone.

That brings us to the third ball we have in the air this morning, the Second Coming.  Again, our modern-day prophets are yelling that we have gotten so far off course, we have stopped living like children of God.  In many ways, our world no longer reflects God’s creative love, and it no longer functions as the product of Jesus’ redeeming power.  So some say, we must look to see what it means that Jesus will come back to earth again.

Mark tells us that when Jesus returns, it will be like the Father, returning in judgment of those who have misbehaved.  Jesus tells His listeners in today’s passage, that there will be suffering and darkness and all the stars will fall from the sky.  Then, those who have misbehaved while the parents were away, will have to answer for the mess.

So what do we take away from our juggling act this morning?  Since we can’t slow the balls down enough to consider each one separately, we will have to look at the blurred images as a whole.  Here we need to look at what St. Paul said to the Corinthians this morning. 

Paul says that if we stay awake and alert, and consistently try to emulate Jesus in our everyday lives, we have already been enriched in Christ enough that we are not lacking in anything we need.  Our Spiritual Gifts are sufficient as we await the day of our Lord’s return.

So the message for us is involved, but basically pretty simple. 

God has been in relationship with God’s people since time began. God’s part of the covenant relationship has always been fulfilled – God has always loved us unconditionally. We have failed to fulfill our part of the covenant throughout history, by not loving God and each other. God came to earth as a human being in order show us, for all time, what it means to be a child of God. At some time in the future, God, in Christ, will return and the final era of judgment will be upon us.

It seems to me we ought to be paying particular attention this year when the baby comes on December 25th, so that we take more intentional note of the fulfilled promises of God.  Christ will return in judgment, but God promised that we would have all we need to be ready.  That promise, like all God’s promises, has been fulfilled.  We’re ready for the return of Christ, if we want to be ready.  Let’s want to be ready.

Amen.

This is the last Sunday of the church year.  Next Sunday begins a brand-new year with the season of Advent — the season of preparation, in which we prepare for the arrival of the Christ child.  So why would we use this week before Advent to celebrate the festival of Christ the King, with all of these odd and worrisome readings?  Quite simply, because of the Alpha and Omega — the circle of life — the beginning and the end.  Next week we will look at the beginning of the story of Jesus, this week, we look at what Jesus tells us about the very end.

In this Gospel reading, Matthew tells us what Jesus has to say about the end of time or the second coming of Christ — in fancy biblical scholar terms, the parousia.  Jesus says that He will return to the earth again.  He will come in glory, with all the angels and will sit on the throne of righteousness.  Notice the differences between what it was like when Jesus came to earth the first time and what it will be like next time.  The first time He came as the poor, helpless child.  He was born in the lowliest of all circumstances in the most unlikely of places.  In other words, he was not only like us, he was born into an even more humble beginning than most of us.  And after he was grown, he was an itinerate preacher, depending upon other people for his very existence. Now contrast that with what Matthew describes today.

Jesus will return in triumph and great glory.  With angels around Him and with all nations of the world gathered before Him, He will sit on the throne of glory, as ruler of the world.  What a difference! 

You see, the first time He came, He wanted to draw us closer to Him and to show us a glimpse of the heavenly kingdom, so that we would know who it was that called us and why it was that we should respond.  Jesus was gentle and humble and healing because that is what humans respond to the most positively.  By his humility, he taught us the power of humility and by his love, taught us the power of love.  But when Jesus returns, it will be too late for all of that.  As Matthew’s Gospel makes clear this morning, Jesus’ return will usher in the judgment.  Sheep will go one way and goats will go the other.  Some will be ushered into the glory of God’s heavenly eternity and others will be cast into the eternal fire where there will undoubtedly be weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth — as Matthew is so fond of saying.

We in the Christian world, and particularly those who have any background in Roman Catholicism, are very familiar with this notion of God’s judgment.  Artists have painted foreboding pictures of flames and fire and demons torturing the unfortunate who end up in hell.  In more modern times, we have had movies to show us hell and its agonies.  2005’s Constantine, had scenes where the hero and heroine each got pulled into hell and then rescued.  The director’s vision was a vast, desert-like wasteland, with scorching heat, howling winds and skeletal demons running wild.  People have spent lifetimes, and great sums of money trying to “make it up” to God so that they can avoid what they believe might await them when Jesus is the judge of all humanity, or upon their death, whichever comes first.  And it was the Roman Catholic clergy’s practice of selling indulgences — a sort of a “get out jail free” pass that could be purchased to keep one from going to purgatory, or worse yet, hell, that was the final straw for Martin Luther, and the catalyst for his founding of the Lutheran church. 

Some of us worry a great deal about God’s judgment and hell and what might befall us at some future date, and Matthew makes it fairly plain that a negative judgment would not be a pleasant thing.  But I’ll let you in on a little secret, if we read this Gospel passage differently, we will get an entirely different picture of Jesus as King, coming in judgment.

True enough, Matthew says Jesus will come in judgment, with power and might like we cannot imagine.  But what happens next in this section of the Gospel?  What follows the discussion of separating the sheep from the goats?  The discourse on doing acts of mercy, charity and kindness for the least of Jesus’ brothers.  Jesus says we will all be counted as the “blessed of the Father,” who “inherit the kingdom prepared” for us from the foundation of the world, if we will give Jesus some food, a drink, some clothing, simple nursing care and a visit in time of need.  Jesus says, when we do this to the least of His brothers, we do these things for Jesus himself and we will inherit the kingdom.  That sounds to me like a choice, not like an arbitrary selection of sheep versus goats.  This sounds to me more like us walking up to two signs and seeing “Sheep this Way” with an arrow, and “Goats this Way” with an arrow pointing the opposite way, rather than like a conveyor belt on which we ride until we get to the point where Jesus looks at us and points up or down, without giving us any explanation.  To me, today’s reading is the text which proves something that one of my seminary professors told us many times.  He said, “the gates of hell are locked from the inside.”  That means that we get to hell, indeed we stay in hell, by our choice, not by God’s choice.

John 3:16 tells us that God so loved the world that He gave His only son to the end that all who believe in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.  That is a great statement of the God that I have read about and experienced in my own life.  The God of all creation, who made a covenant with the children of Israel and said, “you are my children and I am your God, I will never abandon you.”  That same God has always been faithful to that covenant, no matter how many times the children have been unfaithful.  That same God loves us so much that God became incarnate, took on our very humanity in order save us from our sinful selves.  Jesus died once for all.  His death and resurrection broke the bonds of death and threw open the gates of hell.  But there were still people in hell, trapped in a prison of their own making.  The only thing that Jesus could not and cannot save us from is our own choice to ignore His calls to us.

Today’s discussion of caring for the least of Jesus’ brothers and sisters is a call to us to live a Christ-like life; to do those things that Christ would do in every situation.  With this simple choice — simple to make, not so simple to carry out — we can self-select as sheep and rest certain that we will inherit the kingdom prepared for us when Jesus returns.

Now, here comes the rub — the process of selection is never over.  At least not until our lives on earth are over.  Every day, in every encounter of our lives, there are two signs hanging over our path.  We need to keep those signs in mind as we go about our daily business during the week.  Let Jesus’ words and the vision of the signs guide us as we are faced with decisions like, “what do I do when this homeless man gets to me and asks me for money?”  Or, “how should I deal with my child, who has disappointed me so badly?’  Or, “what is the best way to handle my boss whose demands are totally unreasonable?”  Or, “How do I treat this member of the congregation who pushes my buttons and gets on my last nerve?”  It is all of one big piece, you see.  How we treat God’s children is, in every instance, how we treat Jesus. 

So the next time you are faced with a situation in which people have been divided into groups or camps, into “us” and “them,” or otherwise given a label so that you are tempted to treat them as somewhat less than human, remember that the signs hanging over the groups may look like, “us” and “them” when we look at them, but to Jesus, they may just read, “Sheep” and “Goats.”  Self-selection is available all day, every day.  Be careful what you choose.

Amen.

In yesterday’s RenewalWorks group meeting, we were talking about the Bible, and how much – or how little – the congregation of St. Barnabas knows about it. At the risk of getting a little bit ahead of the RenewalWorks project, I will share with you that one of the things that we discovered in our survey is that the majority of the people in the pews every week do not believe that they know very much about the Bible. While on some level I believe that that finding is accurate, I also told the group that I believe that this congregation knows much more Bible than you think that you do.

Please believe me when I say that I am not going to call on anyone nor will I put anyone on the spot at all. But please raise your hand if you have heard the Parable of the Talents (that we just read, from Matthew’s Gospel) before. Now of all of you who raised your hand, raise it again if you feel like you have heard this parable more than once. Now, do you see what I mean? People are saying that they are familiar with this parable. Familiarity means that you “know” this part of the Bible, on some level.

Okay, pop quiz, part 2. How many of you have heard this parable preached on in the context of an annual stewardship campaign? Right! Everyone who feels pretty familiar with this story has doubtless heard a sermon tying it to how we give our time, treasure, and talents, to God, by giving them to God’s Church to use. So let me say right now, this parable can reasonably and accurately be read to say, “If you do not step out in faith and use all that you have – time, treasure, and talents – for the good of the Kingdom of God, then you are acting like the third servant. And your fear will not stand you in good stead with the God who gave you everything that you have.” That is a solid stewardship message, and one that we at St. Barnabas can stand to hear right now.

Keep that message in the back of your mind – because I want to talk to you about something a little different than that. I want to talk with you about the importance of risking everything as you seek to be a Disciple of Jesus Christ.

When Jesus told this parable to the Disciples, it was near the end of a long “Farewell Discourse” or going away speech. Jesus was moving ever closer to his date with crucifixion, and he was making sure that the Disciples had all of the knowledge that they needed, before He left them to carry on His work. From the 23rd Chapter of Matthew, through today’s reading and beyond, Jesus was preparing them for events of the future, particularly His return to the earth, on the last day.

So when He told them this parable, He was obviously telling them something about being prepared for His return, and how they should use their talents wisely as they wait for Him. But Jesus was also passing along a broader message: you cannot thrive and grow as a Christian, if you are not willing to take risks. He was telling the Disciples – and us – that risk is key to growing and moving forward; that being willing to lose everything, was the only way to grow in Christ.

Here now is a different parable about being willing to lose it all in the Kingdom of God.

A long time ago, a monk set out on his travels accompanied by his assistant, a Brother. Night was falling when the monk told the Brother to go on ahead to find lodging. The Brother searched the deserted landscape until he found a humble shack in the middle of nowhere.

A poor family lived in the shack. The mother, father, and children were dressed in rags. The Brother asked if he and the monk could spend the night in their dwelling.

“You are most welcome to spend the night,” said the father of the family. They prepared a simple meal consisting of fresh milk, cheese, and cream for the Brother and the monk. The Brother felt moved by their poverty and even more by their simple generosity.
After they had finished eating, the monk asked them how they managed to survive in such a poor place.

In a resigned voice, he told them, “We have one cow. We sell her milk to our neighbors who do not live too far away. We hold back enough for our needs and to make some cheese and cream—that is primarily what we eat.”

The next morning, the Brother and the monk said their good-byes and set out to continue their journey. After they had walked a few miles, the monk turned to the Brother and said, “Go back and push the family’s cow off the cliff!”

“Father,” the Brother replied, “they live off the cow. Without her, they have nothing.” The monk repeated his order: “Go back and kill the cow.”

With a heavy heart, the Brother returned to the shack. He worried about the future of the family because he knew they depended on their cow to survive. Yet his vow of obedience bound him to follow the orders of the wise monk. So he pushed the cow off the cliff.

Years later, the young Brother became a monk. One day he found himself on the same road where he had been given lodging so many years earlier. Driven by a sense of remorse, he decided to visit the family. He rounded the curve in the road and, to his surprise, came upon a splendid mansion, surrounded by landscaped gardens, in the place where their shack used to stand. The new house exuded a sense of prosperity and happiness. The monk knocked on the door.

A well-dressed man answered. The monk, not recognizing him, asked, “What ever became of the family who used to live here? Did they sell the property to you?”
The man said he and his family had always lived on the property. The monk told him how he had stayed in a humble dwelling on the same spot, along with his master, the old monk. “What happened?” he asked.

The man invited the monk to stay with him as his guest. While they ate, the host explained how the family’s fortune changed. “You know, Father, we used to have a cow. She kept us alive. We didn’t own anything else. One day she fell down over the cliff and died. To survive, we had to start doing other things, and develop skills we did not even know we had. We were forced to come up with new ways of doing things. It was the best thing that ever happened to us! We are now much better off than before.”

If we risk everything that we have, in pursuit of the Kingdom of God on earth, we have no idea what the God of all abundance will do with it. If we have complete trust in the Jesus, who risked His very life for the abundance of the Kingdom, we too can see that trusting and risking it all is the way to God’s abundance, both now and for eternity.

I read this week: “Michelangelo (1475–1564) once said, ‘The great danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high, and we miss it; but that it is too low, and we reach it.’ Whatever we do, we are to make it an offering to God. In the end, that is the only thing that matters, regardless of personal consequences. It is in this way that we may truly enter into the joy of our master.”

We have a great financial challenge facing our congregation this year. If we, as a congregation, have faith enough in God to risk it all — to be fearless in the face of loss — then we can be free to find new ways of doing things, and we can potentially reap blessings beyond measure as the Kingdom of God comes near.

Risk it ALL as we work together to overcome adversity and to grow into faithful and dedicated Disciples of the One who never hesitated to risk all that He had. Amen.

         Before we can figure that out, let me give you a bit context that might help. 

         The story tells us some details about wedding customs in Palestine at the time of Jesus.  Once the groom-to-be and the bride’s father had agreed on the terms of the marriage contract, they would enter into the contract, sometime between a day and seven years after which the groom would gather his friends and relatives and ride – or walk – to the bride’s family’s house.  He would take his bride from her family home and voila, they were married.  Then came the great part.  The return of the groom followed by his bride, which would begin a multi-day wedding party to rival a Kardashian wedding.

         Now here’s where the parable starts to come in.  Young women from the bride’s family would act as the bride’s attendants.  The members of both families, including distant relatives, would wait in the groom’s father’s house until the wedding party arrived.  There was no set time for the groom’s entourage to appear, thus, the arrival could not be predicted.  It did, however, often occur during the night.

         As the parable begins, ten bridesmaids wait with lamps to light the way for the bridegroom, who leads the way for the rest of the group.  The “wise” bridesmaids brought along extra oil for their lamps, while the “foolish” bridesmaids figured that they had enough oil in their lamps to get the job done.  As the time of the arrival was delayed, the bridesmaids became drowsy and slept.

         Finally, at midnight, the arrival of the bridegroom was announced and all went out to greet him.  The five wise bridesmaids were prepared with enough oil to refill their lamps.  But the lamps of the five foolish bridesmaids were empty.  When the foolish asked the wise for some of their oil, they responded that they did not have enough to share.  So, the unprepared bridesmaids had to run down to the oil vendors to replenish their supply.  And when they got back, they had been locked out of the wedding celebration – never to be admitted.  Happy little story, huh?

         Now obviously, if we go back to that allegory theory, we are talking about the 2nd Coming of Christ, and if we are not properly prepared – whenever the day and time may be – we will be in danger of missing out altogether.  But frankly, there are evangelical preachers who are preaching that message every day. 

         I believe that Jesus told the Disciples this story so that he could give them this strong message: If you want to be my Disciples (or Bridesmaids), if you want to be part of the banquet in the Kingdom of Heaven, you have to stay alert at all times; you have no idea when the bridegroom will need something from you, and you have to be alert and ready to respond.

         “A man once approached Mother Teresa and said, ‘Mother, I want to do something great for God, but I don’t know what.  Should I start a school, be a missionary in a foreign land, build up a charitable agency?’  He had great visions.  Mother Teresa looked at him closely, with kindness in her eyes, and responded: ‘What you need to do is make sure that no one in your family goes unloved.’  And by this she doubtless also meant the entire human family.[1]

         Jesus’ final commandment to His Disciples – at least as St. John tells it – was that they should love one another just as He loved them.  And because Jesus is the epitome of God’s love for all of creation, that means that we are to be alert and find those who are in need, we are to care for those needs, and we are to always be alert to find new ways to reflect the love of God in the world.  And our desire to do as Christ does, will hopefully help us learn to be alert and ready in all things.

         “Being alert and ready, like everything else, takes practice though.  Jesus also told a story about a wise man who built his house on a rock and a foolish man who built on sand, Jesus said that that wisdom comes from hearing God’s Word and doing it.  Being alert and ready happens when day by day, week after week, we hear God’s Word and partake of the holy meal, living in a state of being open to the presence of God.  We become more nearly ready each time we open ourselves to the call of God.  Following Jesus in our daily lives keeps us alert.[2]”

         So … being alert and ready is possible for us if we will:  show up here; listen to the Holy Word; eat the Communion meal that will nourish us for our work; give of ourselves in time, talent and treasure, pray for ourselves and others, in a regular fashion; and constantly find new ways to feed the poor, tend the sick, give rest to the weary, visit shut-ins; and care for those who have no one to care for them.  These are the things that we are hopefully already doing.

         As the author Robert Farrar Capon exhorts in The Parables of Judgment (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publ., 1989):

‘Watch therefore,’ Jesus says at the end of the parable, ‘for you know neither the day nor the hour.’ When all is said and done—when we have scared ourselves silly with the now-or-never urgency of faith and the once-and-always finality of judgment—we need to take a deep breath and let it out with a laugh.  Because what we are watching for is a party.  And the party is not just down the street making up its mind when to come to us.  It is already hiding in our basement, banging on our steam pipes, and laughing its way up our cellar stairs.  The unknown day and hour of its finally bursting into the kitchen and roistering its way through the whole house is not dreadful; it is all part of the divine lark of grace.  God is not our mother-in-law, coming to see whether her wedding-present china has been chipped.  He is a funny Old Uncle with a salami under one arm and a bottle of wine under the other.  We do indeed need to watch for him; but only because it would be such a pity to miss all the fun.

So, my brothers and sisters in Christ, be forever ready and alert!

[1]  Synthesis, 12 Nov 17

[2]  Id.

"A young priest who graduated from seminary just before World War I was appointed to a church in a very small town.  He had been there only a couple of weeks when he received the call every new minister dreads: to do his first funeral.

The person who had died was not a member of his church.  She was, in fact, someone with a very bad reputation.  Her husband was a railroad engineer who was away from home much of the time.  She rented rooms in their house to men who worked on the railroad, and “rumor had it” that she (earned a little extra money in the house) when her husband was away.

The young priest, faced with his first real challenge, could find no one with a good word to offer about this woman—until he entered the town’s small, … grocery store on the day before the funeral.

He began talking to the store owner about his sadness that the first person he would bury was to be someone about (whom) nothing good seemed to be said.  The store owner didn’t reply at first— and then, in his silence, he appeared to make a decision.  He took out his store ledger and laid it on the counter between himself and the priest.  He opened the ledger at random and, covering the names listed in the left-hand column, he pointed to grocery bills written in red: orders that people had bought on credit; and then to the column that showed how each bill had been paid.

He said, 'Every month, Gladys would come in and ask me who was behind in their grocery bills.  It was usually some family who had suffered sickness or a death—or some poor woman trying to feed her kids when her husband drank up the money.  Gladys would pay their bill, and she made me swear never to tell.  But I figure, now that she is dead, people ought to know—especially those who benefited from her charity, and who have been most critical of her!'"[1]

We could call today, 'Talk the talk or walk the walk' Sunday.  In Matthew’s Gospel today, we hear Jesus respond to a challenge from the Temple authorities by posing a parable to them, which at its core, posed the question, 'Who does the will of God, the one who talks the talk, or the one who walks the walk?'

The lady from the story, Miss Gladys, walked the walk of Christ.  She was someone whom the people of the town 'knew' very well.  She was someone upon whom they universally felt comfortable looking down.  Gladys was one of 'those people,' you know, the ones who do things that we don’t approve of – or whose way of life we find unpalatable – or as Facebook posts like to put it – 'She was disgusting!!!'  And yet, as the 'good' people of the town – the ones who said 'Yes' to Jesus with their mouths, let their neighbors struggle and potentially go hungry, Gladys stepped in quietly, doing as Jesus asked.  Who did the will of the Father, the good, church-going citizens of the town, or Gladys?

We Christians, and I would venture to say, especially this congregation of St. Barnabas, speak a lot about feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, visiting the shut-ins, and generally doing to others as we would have them do to us.  As a congregation, St. Barnabas has been very good at trying to live out this commandment from our Lord.  But here’s the thing about following Jesus: we can never – and I really mean never – say that we’ve got this one covered and do not have to think about it anymore.  As soon as we figure that we can answer Jesus’ question with an unqualified, “Yes Lord,” we are already on the wrong side of the conversation.

You see, the world is an ever-changing place.  Every day new people and things are born, and every day others die.  As the earth makes its constant rotation around the sun, things on our planet and in our lives, are inevitably changing.  And in 21st Century America, that change has increased in tempo to break-neck speed.  What we have “always,” known to be true may be about to become false, because the world has changed so much and so rapidly.  One of my favorite modern preachers, Dr. Will Willimon put it this way,

In the town in which I grew up there were five downtown, thriving congregations representing a variety of Christian denominations.  Today, only three of those congregations are still in existence.  Why?

Go to the town and ask anybody.  They will tell you.  “Those churches couldn't find a way to reach out to their changing community.  They became more concerned with themselves and less concerned with the world around them.  And they died.”

There is something about Jesus Christ who reaches out all the way to the margins.  He is determined to be Lord not just of me and my friends in the church, but for the whole world.  Before he goes to the cross, he engages his critics and infuriates them by telling them that some of the worst people on earth, those whom they regard as morally and spiritually inferior to themselves, will go into the kingdom before them.

If our congregation ever loses this truth, we are in danger of losing our congregation.  If we get confused into thinking that Jesus Christ is my Lord, and not their Lord, we will lose the gospel (sic).  There does seem to be something about Jesus Christ that makes it impossible to worship him without following him, following him to the margins where he is seeking and saving the lost, finding those we are all too willing to cast aside.

We are beginning a time of self-reflection here.  We are about to embark on an exercise of viewing ourselves: not as the Episcopal Church that grew out of a need for a new parish on the Southwest side of town; not as the church that for years housed the Episcopal School of Acadiana; not as the place that is the alternative for the people who do not feel comfortable at the other churches in the area; but rather, as the place that is a vital part of our community, the place that, if we shuttered our doors tomorrow, would be sorely missed by the people around us who are not our members.

The world, the United States, the state of Louisiana, the community of Lafayette, they all have people who are hurting right now.  There is an incredible amount of suffering going on in 2017, both that which is new, and that which is chronic.  Jesus is calling us to alleviate that suffering.  We need to look at ourselves and see how we can best walk the walk of helping those who are most in need. 

Join in the work.  Start to talk with your fellow members of this congregation – and perhaps more important, talk to those in the community who are hurting – and help us to bring those two groups together.  As a congregation, we need to look for and find new ways of getting to know our community’s needs, and then find the best ways to meet those needs.

Lafayette has a lot of churches.  We don’t need to be another church.  We need walk the walk of Jesus and be Miss Gladys.  Amen.

[1]  Synthesis – October 1, 2017

As a preacher, there are days where I read the slices of Scripture, the lectionary readings, that we get for the day (in case anyone ever asks you, the seminary word for such slices is, pericope) and I am amazed at how the chosen pericope for the day fits just perfectly with what my heart and soul tell me to preach. . . . And then, there’s today.

Now don’t get me wrong. I love this Gospel passage from Matthew. It has a lot to tell us about how Christians should settle disputes. And today, we also get the wonderful Passover story from Exodus. Those are great readings. But today, at St. Barnabas, we are embarking on a spiritual renewal program and a new year of church ministries, and we are about to baptize another wonderful baby boy, James Charles Capdepon. And frankly, those readings don’t really speak to this day, place, and time. So, let’s look at the Epistle to the Romans.

In Paul’s preeminent writing, he introduces himself to the Church in Rome and lays out his understanding of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Most scholars break this letter into several sections, and what we read today comes from the third section, which addresses what it means to live by faith in Jesus. Or stated differently, what it means to be one Jesus’ disciples.

In chapter 12, which immediately precedes what we just heard, Paul says, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God –– what is good and acceptable and perfect.” He was laying out the argument to his first readers, that in order to be good disciples of Jesus, they must discern God’s will and then try to conform their lives to that will.

In today’s reading, Paul tells us that we should owe no one anything except love. Just as God gives us ongoing love, we too should love all of God’s children endlessly. The great biblical scholar, Walter Bruggeman said of this passage, “While some Christians feel that they can fulfill (this) love obligation by ‘a superficial and saccharine profession of love for the entire world, … Paul calls for the difficult task of real love for real people who are met in everyday life, not theoretical love for humanity as a whole.’”

If we want to know what that sort of real love for a real person looks like, all we have to do is go back again to chapter 12 of this epistle, in which Paul says, “If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all” (12:18) –– and “If your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink: ....” (12:20)

Paul told the Romans that loving their neighbors — that is ALL human beings — as they love themselves, is the absolute fulfillment of the law of God. In other words, as Jesus said, all of the law and the prophets, every other part of the Bible, hangs on loving God and loving other humans the same way we love ourselves.

So, this glorious Sunday on which we are kicking off the RenewalWorks program and restarting our ministries, and bringing another new Christian into the family, we are reminded that being disciples of our Lord is all about how much we can show our love for other people. And we are reminded to seek to become better disciples in all that we do.

I was reading quite a bit about discipleship this week. A baptist pastor from Texas had an interesting story about his church members who believe that simply being baptized, as James Charles is about to be, is sufficient to make one a fully formed, instant disciple. He said,

There is no such thing as an instant disciple; like the word, it takes discipline. (The 1980s) Russian comedian, Yakov Smirnoff talk(ed) about when he first moved to America, he was amazed at the variety of instant products he could buy in the store. There’s powdered milk: just add water and you have milk. There’s powdered orange juice: just add water and you have orange juice. Then he saw Baby Powder and thought, “What a great country! If you want a baby, just add water!” Some people think that’s how discipleship works. You take a believer, add a little baptism water, and “poof” you have a fully-devoted follower of Jesus–a real disciple. But it takes more than water to make a disciple. Disciples are made, not born.

Pastor Dykes is really onto something there. While we Episcopalians believe that baptism is truly all that it takes to be a Christian and a full member of the Church, it is NOT all that it takes to be an effective disciple. In order to become a true disciple of Jesus Christ, you must have what modern writers have referred to as the “Marks of Discipleship.” And those marks include:

1. Daily prayer. Meaning that you must have devoted prayer time in your day, every day. And that that prayer time should be systematic — as in praying the Episcopal Daily Office.

2. Weekly worship. This is the height of preaching to the choir, but this means that you need to make the effort to be here every week. Not only because worshipping as a community has power that worshipping alone just doesn’t have. But also because it is here — gathered around this altar, receiving the Body and Blood of our Lord and Savior, that we are spiritually fed and nourished for the continuing work of discipleship.

3. Reading and studying the Bible. I know that this is asking a lot, but the best way for you to do this, is to become a part of an on-going bible study. I pray that this year we will begin new groups through St. Barnabas, in which people can meet with people with whom they share things in common, and study Scripture together. But do you know what? This may be a big shock to some folks … but we do this kind of work EVERY SUNDAY during the Christian Formation hour, and you are ALL invited.

4. Developing and growing spiritual relationships. We must keep expanding our circle of friends and the sphere of our spiritual relationships. Doing the work of Jesus in the world — the real hands and feet kinds of work like feeding the poor and clothing the naked — begins by building relationships with other people and finding out what their needs are, so that we can become part of their solution.

5. Engaging in work in the community. One of the goals of the months of self-study we are about to start, with the RenewalWorks program, is to determine what we should be doing to reach out to the community around us and to be engaged in local works — as a congregation. Feeding the poor and clothing the naked, giving drink to the thirsty and visiting those in need is important and widespread work. We just have to determine where we should plug in to do some good.

6. Sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ with others. I know, that sounds like the four letter word — evangelism (yes, I do know that evangelism is more than four letters). But do you know what evangelism really is? It is sharing something you love with people whom you would like to have what you have. That’s all. Share the story of your Christian journey with people you know, and see what happens.

7. Practicing generosity with your time, talent & treasures. Give of yourself, your time, your money, your skills and abilities, in ways that can make a difference. We will be talking much more about this in weeks to come.
That is it. That is what it takes to become a full, capable disciple of Jesus Christ. You can get a copy of this sermon on-line, staring this afternoon. Just go to saintbarnabas.us and follow the link. Then print out the list and put it on your refrigerator, with everything else you don’t want to forget. And let’s begin working on this list together. Starting today, when you go across to Ramsay Hall and find a new ministry in which to share your gifts.

God bless you all. Have a great day and find new ways to serve.

Jesus said, “It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs.”  Who are the dogs in your life?  Who is it in your world who is so inconsequential that they don’t rate being treated as well as you treat your friends and loved ones?

         When Jesus was confronted by the woman in today’s Gospel story He responded in a way that is most uncharacteristic for the Jesus we’re used to.  He and the disciples left the ever-growing crowds in Galilee and went off into the land of the Gentiles, the land of Canaan. 

Canaan is the land founded by Noah’s son Ham.  He was the one of Noah’s three sons who was shunned by his family after he saw Noah one night, drunk and naked.  Noah cursed Ham, whose name he changed to Canaan, and vowed that Canaan would forever be cursed and that his descendants would always be slaves to the descendants of his brothers.  Canaanites were different.  They were NOT God’s chosen.  Heck, they weren’t even really people.

So the Canaanite woman comes hounding Jesus, yelling at Him incessantly, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon!”  This is a different story than we usually see with Jesus.  Here, the woman yells and pleads for help and Jesus does what?  He ignores her.  Jesus, the compassionate lover of souls; Jesus the Good Shepherd; gentle Jesus, meek and mild; ignores her.  And then, it gets worse.

When she keeps at Him, He doesn’t smile at her and say, “My daughter, your prayers have been answered.  Go in peace.”  No, when she asks for His help, He tells her, “It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs.”  This is one ticked off Jesus.  This is Jesus trying to make a serious point.  He knows what His ministry is, and that ministry does not include this woman or her demon-possessed daughter.  She is not who He came to save – in fact, she’s not even a “who” she is a “what.”  She is an animal, without a name, worthy of nothing from the table of the Children of Israel, the chosen of God.

Who are the dogs in your life?  Make no mistake, we all have them.  The dogs in our lives are the people we prejudge – the people whose worth we believe to be less than our own, simply because of some characteristic about them that we don’t like, don’t approve of, or simply don’t understand.  Have you ever told a joke, or laughed at one, that made fun of someone else’s color, ethnicity, or sexuality, in a cruel or demeaning way?  Of course you have.  Admit it, we’ve likely laughed at them, we’ve perhaps told them, but we’ve absolutely heard them.  How are those jokes different from Jesus calling the Canaanite woman a dog?  Aren’t both dehumanizing?

How about people who are otherwise different than you?  What if they’re dirty or homeless?  Are they any different than the Canaanite woman in the story?  What about Muslims?  Especially those who live in Afghanistan, Iraq, or Syria, what about them?  Are they different than this dog of a woman from Canaan who came to Jesus?

“Dogs” are all around us.  Anyone can be a “dog.”  All we have to do is take away someone’s humanity and we can turn that person into a dog.  Once someone has been reduced to the anonymity of dog status, then it is incredibly easy for us to treat them any way we want, without consequences.  After all, they’re not like us, they’re not as good as we are, so why should we worry about treating them the way we’re treated?

I don’t think Jesus was only trying to give us an object lesson here.  I think what we see in this story is the truly human Jesus learning a lesson of His own from the Father in Heaven.  Jesus’ mission up to this point had been to care for the children of Israel and to try to bring them to the fulfillment of their destiny as God’s chosen people.  But Jesus was fully human as well as fully divine.  For the fully human Jesus, I think His ministry unfolded in front of Him, much as our own lives do.  By that, I mean that for most of His life on earth, I don’t think He necessarily knew what was coming next.  So, when Jesus treated this woman as a dog, as anonymous and sub-human, I can just hear the voice of the Father in His ear, “Whoa.  Hold on just a minute.  I made this one, just the same as I made all the others.  They are all My children.  They are all worth the same to Me.  Get to know her and see what you think.”  So Jesus stops ignoring her and listens with those compassionate ears we’re used to, when she says, “Lord, even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” and He suddenly sees her for what she is, a child of God who is faithfully praying for help.

Jesus told the disciples to love their neighbors as themselves – to love each other even as Jesus loved them.  I think it was that teaching that flooded through Jesus as He answered her, “Woman, great is your faith!  Let it be done for you as you wish.”

My brothers and sisters, we live in an increasingly anonymous and segregated world.  More and more, every day we are being isolated from the rest of humanity.  We travel in large, comfortable metal cocoons we call cars.  No one can hear us when we call them names for cutting us off in traffic.  We live in homes that are separated from other homes by acreage or fences.  We speak to each other by text-message, email, or perhaps by telephone, but rarely face-to-face.  We post comments on webpages or we tweet using anonymous twitter handles.  We don’t look into the eyes of people very often in this isolated world.  Anonymity is the name of the game, and on top of that, we’re constantly being told that we should fear or hate everyone who doesn’t look or think the way we do.  They’re “Islamic fascists” not people.  They’re illegal aliens, not people.  They’re refugees, not people.  They’re people of other colors, not people.

We can most easily start treating people as children of God when we get to know them as children of God.  We can only begin to treat people with the love of neighbor that Jesus called for, when we get to know them as human beings first.  The message I want you all to take home today is simple: it’s all too easy to mistreat people whom we have dehumanized – it’s harder to treat someone as a dog if we know his or her name, if we know about their family and their lives.

Next time you hear someone reduce an entire segment of the world’s population into a stereotype or a punch line, or the next time you’re tempted to do so yourself, remember that every one of those people has a name, a mother and a father, a life story that will almost certainly have similarities to your own.  We are all different.  There are bad Muslims, there are people who sneak across our borders who are evil, there are people of different colors or ethnicity or sexuality who do things that harm their communities.  But those harmful people are the same small percentage of the population as are all “bad” people. 

We are all fundamentally the same.  God made every one of us and loves each of us as we want to be loved; as cherished parts of a wonderful creation.  Those who deserve to be feared and ostracized will prove it over time.  But until you get to know them, you’ll never know which people are more like you and which ones are not.

Don’t make anyone an instant dog.  Assume first that they’re children of God.  Assume that they deserve the same respect you do.  If they don’t, you’ll know it.  But more will than won’t.  We are all God’s children.  We should all act like it’s so.

Amen.

Today’s Gospel reading is sort of the sequel to last week’s Parable of the Sower. Today we hear Jesus teach the Disciples by giving them an allegory, instead of a regular parable. In today’s story there are absolute connections between the things in the story and the real world. You know … the sower is Jesus, the seeds are the children of God, the weeds are the children of the devil, etc. Jesus wanted to make sure that none of the Disciples mistook any of what he was saying for something else, so He made it plain.

An obvious lesson to be learned from this allegory is: we servants of the Lord, do not have the ability to remove the weeds from the garden, without harming the good grain that God has sown. Therefore, we should be patient, appreciate the growth that God provides, and wait for Jesus and God’s reapers to determine who belongs where. Or put in more familiar terms, “judge not, lest ye be judged.”

We should always be patient and tolerant of one another — including those with whom we vehemently disagree, and those of whom we are most afraid. We must guard against thinking that because we are “good Christians” who do our best to follow Jesus, we somehow know how to judge another human on God’s behalf. That is not only arrogant, but Matthew tells us it is also dangerous, because we risk destroying something that is of great value to God when we do so. You see, not only do wheat and weeds look alike to us; but we individually, are also made up of both wheat and weeds. So we should be patient, tolerant, and be ever so thankful that the one who will judge in the end is the one who loves us deeply enough to give His life for ours.

Jesus told the Disciples that we humans have limited vision. We cannot see what God sees. We do not have anything approaching the divine understanding of the world, or its inhabitants. Therefore, when we categorize and separate people, based upon our so-called knowledge of who is in and who is out, we have already gone against what it is that God would have us do, thereby putting ourselves in the “out” category. Ironic, huh?
When we presume to say, for instance that all Muslims are out to destroy our country and all of Christianity, we are judging on behalf of God and therefore have already gone against what Jesus taught. When conservatives judge liberals, or liberals judge conservatives, and believe that we know what is in the other’s heart, thereby knowing who is wheat and who is weed, we have already placed ourselves in the weed category.
Jesus says that the mere fact that we humans dane to do Jesus’ work of judging the hearts of other humans, makes us susceptible to judgment. As Carl Jung, famous psychotherapist, is quoted to have said about those who judged each other, “The brighter the halo, the smellier the feet.” In other words, we cannot ever hope to be able to judge another’s worthiness to be a child of God. The more we do so, the more we show the world how unworthy we really are.

On a local level, when we judge who is “good” and who is “bad,” based upon our own criteria (whatever they may be), we are overstepping our bounds, or as my grandfather said, we are “getting too big for our britches.” And according to Jesus, going agains the express wishes of the One who sows the grain in the field. When we judge each other, we can destroy existing (or soon to bloom) relationships, because we infuse them with suspicion and distrust.

Here is an example that hopefully makes this point clear. Fifteen or so years ago, there was a young boy in this congregation who was a HUGE problem. His parents brought him for Christian Formation every Sunday. And he would run around the classroom, creating havoc everywhere he went. He antagonized other children and was a constant disruption in the class. But, even though the teachers sometimes had to do so through gritted teeth, they refused to judge the child as unworthy of being a part of the community. They kept loving him and trying find ways for him to fit in more fully. And over time, he began to show signs of blossoming. Then he began to flower. Now, this Friday evening, we will have a going away party as Laurent De Prins goes off to seminary, where he will be formed into a priest of the Church. This particularly lovely and loving flower would never have bloomed is the members of this congregation had gotten impatient with God and uprooted that little weed, all those years ago.

Remember: Beware of Sinners Judging Other Sinners, Especially With Finality

If we take this same message to a world stage, the allegory from Jesus translates to a warning that we should be very careful before we wage war on other humans in the name of a “Christian Nation,” because in our limited vision, we may well have taken on a cause that is not God’s at all, but is our cause that we hope to imprint with God’s blessing. As I read this week, “We will never eradicate ‘the tares,’ or ‘tarishness’ from the world. We might unseat a tyrant and bring him to justice; but we will not succeed in eliminating global evil. Only God can heal the fallenness of creation.”

Our own Bishop Jake has a particularly good blogpost this week, entitled, “Whose Side is God On?” In it, he discusses many of the issues that I wrestled with this week, and he does it in the context of one of the most horrific stories in the Bible; the Old Testament story of Jephthah’s daughter. I will not steal his thunder here, so — after the service, please — go to www.jakeowensby.com, and check it out. Anyway, in the post, Bishop Jake says, “when we co-opt God into our own violent agenda, our own cruelty can reach soul-crushing depths. We will consume not only our enemies but also ourselves and those we love with violence.” That is an eloquent statement, which makes clear that we judge others, and act on that judgement, at our own peril.

". And there is very little in the world that is more final than war.

Whether it is within your family, your pew, within your neighborhood, our city or state, or within the nations and peoples of the world, Beware of Sinners Judging Other Sinners, Especially With Finality. Be patient. Be loving. Be willing to let God be God. And stop worrying about anyone else’s worthiness. Love God and love your neighbor. That is enough.

In the name of One God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

When you think of someone sowing seeds, what picture do you get in your mind? In today’s America, it would be a huge machine that precisely places in seeds, equidistance apart, each in its separate hole. Or, if you go back a hundred and fifty years or so, you might see someone poking holes in the ground with a tool and placing seeds that way, or dropping seeds carefully into mule-plowed furrows. But what Jesus was talking about was none of that. He was talking about the kind where a guy with a bag full of seeds walks around taking great handfuls of seeds and throwing them everywhere, willy nilly — as if he just didn’t care where they landed. Like the legend of Johnny Appleseed, who supposedly sowed apple seeds everywhere, just hoping that apple trees would grow all over the American countryside. [That’s not how John Chapman really did it, but for us, the legend works.]

So Jesus tells us that the seed is the Word of God. That would lead us to think that Jesus was the sower. Not so fast! Jesus IS the Word of God — as we know Him to be from John’s Gospel (you know, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.) So, if Jesus is the seed in this parable — who is the sower? Who are we in this parable? Or is it an allegory? Either way, we are the soil — or are we the sowers, who sow the seed (the Word of God) around to others? You can see the problem when we begin to dig deeply into Jesus’ parabolic or allegorical telling of this story.

But for today, please set all of that aside for a few minutes. Here is what I would like for you to take from this parable today. God is the sower and God sows abundantly! Forget everything else. God sows abundantly. And not just abundantly, but extravagantly, recklessly, and even improvidently. You see, this parable is not just about the Word of God being given out to everyone, it is about how God loves us in the same way.

Let’s face it, we are all of the different kinds of soil — as Jesus explained the parable. And we are all of them interchangeably. But we are not just those types of soil when it comes to hearing the Word. We are also those different types of soil when God casts the great, overflowing handfuls of love onto us.

Sometimes, when God throws a heaping handful of love on us, we are like the path. Our hearts have been so trampled down and hardened by everything else life has thrown at us, that we forget how to accept love — human or God-given — so the love just runs off of us, like so much excess rain water. If life has been hard enough, if we have suffered enough at the hands of humans, we can not allow the love to enter in. We cannot allow ourselves to be that vulnerable. And we miss the restorative blessing of God’s abundant love.

In other situations, God’s love just pours over us and we are like the rocky ground. The love hits, but it has no way to sink in deeply. We instantly feel the love, but because we are “rocky,” we cannot really trust that it is love that is meant for us. Instead, we believe that we are not “worthy” of the love. We cannot really believe that God could ever love us, in our broken and sinful state. So we figure that there must be a “catch,” that when we reach for the love, God will just snatch it away and laugh at us for thinking it was ours. And we turn away from the love, leaving it behind.

Many times in our lives, we are like the soil with the thorns. God gives us so much more than simply abundant love. Instead, God showers us with torrential love, and it really sinks in. We stop slumping over, head bowed, fear in our hearts when we are present to God. We truly let God’s love into our hearts and we begin to transform into something more closely resembling what God wants us to be. But the world creeps back in. We get busy with work, or kids, or we become disillusioned with our particular house of worship, and we turn our backs on God — no longer accepting the ever-flowing Godly love. Instead, we spend our days worrying about things we cannot change, and being miserable, because nothing in our lives works the way think it should. And we slowly forget the love that started to change our lives.

But, if we will just be open to it ….

We have the capacity to become fertile soil for God’s profligate sowing of love in the world. If we are the fertile soil, we will receive God’s love and dedicate our lives to reflecting — and returning — that love into the world, by following Jesus Christ into the places where there are thorns and rocky ground and hardened paths. When we truly open ourselves to the abundant gift of God’s love, our lives actually change. The good things get better, because we appreciate where they came from and we give hearty thanks. The bad times even get better, because we are secure in our knowledge of God’s love. So we never doubt for minute that, no matter how things turn out, everything will be good, because the one who loves us perfectly will always be right beside us, showing us that love in myriad ways. And when we can accept God’s love deeply — all the way into the marrow of our bones — the that love will multiply 100 fold, so that WE never run out, no matter how much we give out to those with whom we interact. If we allow it, we can actually become almost as prodigal with our sowing of love as is the God who literally IS love.

I recently read a poem that was attributed to someone about whom I could find no information. So if you know anything about the origins of this poem, please share them with me. The poem is by Kashi Rahman, and it goes like this:

Scatter love as you scatter seeds––
Your store stays undiminished.
For love makes love as seeds makes seeds
In a harvest never finished;
Nor look to see how your gift fares––
It is enough to plant it;
Just sow love with a lavish hand
And take (the) harvest for granted.

Today I would like for you to take this thought with you when you leave. No matter who you are, or where you came from; no matter what you have done, or left undone in your life; whether you have always seen yourself as a good person, or your life has been so far off the straight and narrow that you cannot stand to look in the mirror; no matter how much love you have refused to give or receive up to now; God loves YOU — abundantly, extravagantly, recklessly, and even improvidently. God loves you as if you were the only person in the world. God knows everything you have ever done — and loves you, not in spite of those things, but because those things make you, you. God loves you the most, when you are completely unloveable.

So try to start living like that is true. Grow in God’s love. Drink it in. Luxuriate in it. And then get up and go out into the world — trying your absolute best to sow that same love wherever you look — on the path, on the rocks, in the thorns, or in the lush meadow.

In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

         I know that I am not telling you anything that you don’t know, when I say that the this week, congressman from New Orleans, Steve Scalise, Matt Mika, Zach Barth, Crystal Griner, and David Bailey, were all shot at a Republican legislators’ baseball practice.  And on that same day, just a little while later, there was workplace shooting in San Francisco, in which, Wayne Chan, Benson Louie, and Michael Lefiti were all killed, and two others wounded.  On the day, I sighed, and I knew that I should preach another sermon on gun violence in America today.  But frankly, my brothers and sisters in Christ, I was pretty sure that I didn’t have another such sermon in me.  We have had so very many multiple shooting incidents in this country now, that it’s hard to feel outrage anymore.  It’s even beginning to be difficult to churn up anger about absolutely senseless killing of human beings.  And my inability to become outraged, made me sadder.

         You can count back as far as you want – so that you can blame the people who disagree with you – and you can perhaps identify that time period in which our politicians and public personalities began to say truly vile things to each other.  Like I said, we will all determine what that time was, based upon whom we want to blame.  But be all of that as it may (I am not at all interested in assigning blame), last week just seemed a lot like a watershed moment to me, and by the time I started writing this sermon, it was weighing pretty heavy on me.

         One of the truly thoughtful modern Christian writers, Diana Butler Bass, posted on FaceBook this week that we should resist blaming what happened in Alexandria, VA, on the words which created the “toxic environment,” around modern politics today.  She said that blaming the words themselves was too easy.  She went on,

"[W]ords themselves -- even passionate, angry ones -- are not the problem.  Even angry words can give life.  The Anti-Word is the problem.  When words are used not to express, not to create, not to make space for justice.  Like Anti-Christ, they pretend to be anointed, but they are a pale imitation of the true thing.  The Anti-Word twists reality, undermines love and peace, destroys hope and possibility, colonizes and oppresses.[2]"

So, Diana Bass got me past blaming the ofttimes horrible words that almost all of us are guilty of using (at least sometimes) and which our political leaders are way too often guilty of using in public discourse.  So I started thinking about what else it was that was weighing down my soul.  If it wasn’t just the words – and if I actually could no longer feel the pain of the actions of people – what was it.  And then I found it.

         Matthew tells us,

“Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness.  When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, . . .”

         And it hit me!  Compassion – or at least some level of empathy – is what is missing.  In the world today – and because it is what I experience every day – I will say that especially in America, there is a distinct lack of empathy for other people.  We no longer seem to be bound by even the simple, old-fashioned Southern courtesy of my childhood.  And courtesy, or manners, is what used to cover up for those places where empathy was missing.  Now it is just a stark and constant barrage of people being mean to each other in order to diminish the other.  And it can wear you down.

In The Green Mile, the scene from which the quote I read, came near the end.  John Coffey had his date of execution set, for a double murder that he did not commit.  And over his time on the Green Mile, his jailers had come to know that John was a gift to the world, directly from God.  He was pure goodness, surrounded by a broken world that couldn’t accept him.  In the scene, John is in his cell, talking with Boss Edgecomb, the head jailer.  What John Coffey says is this:

"I'm tired, boss.  Tired of bein' on the road, lonely as a sparrow in the rain.  I'm tired of never having me a buddy to be with, to tell me where we's going to or coming from, or why.  Mostly, I'm tired of people being ugly to each other. I'm tired of all the pain I feel and hear in the world every day.  There's too much of it - it's like pieces of glass in my head, all the time.  Can you understand?"

Yes, John Coffey, I thought to myself, I can understand.  Sometimes those of us in the helping professions can take in a little too much of the misery and it can be like carrying a weight of your own, some little tiny piece of what Jesus must have carried when He stopped ministering to people and took that lonely walk to the cross.  And I have to tell you, it can be exceptionally draining on one’s reserves of Holy Spirit. 

         There is so much ugliness in the world today.  We can no longer go a single day where the news – whether local, national, or international – is not filled with back-to-back stories of people killing, maiming, or simply saying horrible “anti-words,” to each other, incessantly – and then crowing about how they got the advantage over someone else.  And it can drag down the human spirit if we let it.

         But you know a wonderful thing about the Spirit, is that it has infinite reserves – because the Holy Spirit is always creating; always adding more to the world’s ability to reach out to each other.  And so it was that I was asked to go the hospital room of a man who is in the final stages of a particularly painful type of cancer.  Wanting to maintain privacy, I will not mention his name.  But suffice to say that our conversations over the last week have been amazing.

         I met a man who knows much more about how and when his life will end, than any of us would like to.  But he told me a long story about how incredibly lucky he was.  He told me about being lucky to have a hospital full of doctors and nurses who cared for him and tried their best to keep him comfortable.  He wanted to talk about what happened after we die – not because he was afraid, but because he was interested in how our conversation might go.  I got to know him pretty darn well in the time that we have been visiting … and even though he was in the hospital bed, he ministered to me.  He showed me the goodness and the hope that come from the power of the Holy Spirit in the world.  He reminded why I am ordained.  And I give thanks for that.

         So what do we do with all the ugliness in the world today?  We can get involved with it.  We can post and repost ugliness on FaceBook and Twitter and Instagram.  We can let it wash over us until we and those around us begin to drown in it – exactly as the “Anti” part of the world would like.  Or, we can go out in the world and find people to help.  We can share the Good News of God in Christ.  We can revel in the creative and supportive power of the Holy Spirit.  And we can experience the goodness and love of God in the world.  I choose the latter.

         This week, try to show others the love of Christ that lives in you – in every way you can.  Make this corner of the world, the Kingdom of Heaven, regardless of what others say. 

In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

[1]  https://www.facebook.com/E.C.M.churchhumor/

[2]  https://www.facebook.com/Diana.Butler.Bass, posted June 15, 2017

         For about two thousand years now, people of great faith and learning have tried, universally without success, to explain what we mean when we say that we believe in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, three in one and one in three.  Jeremy Taylor, the 17th Century Anglican priest and gifted writer, said it well:

He who goes about to speak of the mystery of the Trinity, and does it by words, and names of man’s invention, talking of essence and existence, hypostases and personalities, priority in co-equality, and unity in pluralities, may amuse himself and build a tabernacle in his head, and talk something—he knows not what; but the renewed man, that feels the power of the Father, to whom the Son is become wisdom, sanctification, and redemption, in whose heart the love of the Spirit of God is shed abroad—this man, tho he understand nothing of what is unintelligible, yet he alone truly understands the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.

         Episcopalians believe that the way we come to know God is through experience.  First we experience who God is, and then we come to believe and understand.  As we heard to the creation story from Genesis, God created the world, and with each new creation, God said, “It is good.”  When we experience the goodness of God’s creation, whether it be: a walk in the woods; a wonderful meal with friends; holding someone we love close to your heart; or even listening to B.B. King play Lucille; we begin to understand that God is good.  Esther de Waal wrote in Every Earthly Blessing[1]: “Creation reveals God. It is as though the world is the teacher who sets forth and preaches God.”

         When we begin to experience the love of God, as exhibited in the Incarnation of God in Christ, then we begin to understand the second person of the Trinity.  The Bishop of Nevada, +Dan Edwards, wrote, “God the Son is the compassion of God who understands our experience and loves us enough to share our affliction.  Thus, our suffering is not diminished, but is transformed.”[2]  When we are in deep misery and someone reaches out to us, not offering us easy answers or platitudes, but rather offers us unconditional love and understanding through listening and empathizing, then we begin to experience the Son of God.

         When we feel the unmistakable and palpable “hand of God,” in our lives – as in those times where we pray for wisdom and suddenly have a certainty about what we should do; or when we are in the midst of turmoil and say a quick prayer, followed by a deep sense of peace; or when we are deeply in need and without warning someone calls or comes by and raises our spirits; then we have begun to experience the third member of the Trinity.  Again, Bishop Dan says, “As the Divine force that gives and restores life, God the Holy Spirit—acting with “gracious serendipity”—is present in every situation to revitalize and empower our hope and courage.”

Thus it is that we first experience the Holy Trinity, and then we begin to seek out ways to express that experience in words.  John Wesley was quoted as saying, “Bring me a worm that can comprehend a man, and the I will show you a man that can comprehend the Trinity.”  Of course he was talking about trying to teach the Trinity, not experiencing it.  To put it another way, one of my favorite modern Christian writers, Anne Lamott, said, “I didn’t need to understand the hypostatic unity of the Trinity; I just needed to turn my life over to whoever came up with redwood trees.”[3]

         When we have experienced and begun to see those experiences as being the power of the Holy Trinity, one God, in our lives, then we can start to search out ways in which God is calling (or pushing) us into action.  Perhaps the best way to look at this is through the life and ministry of Jesus.  As I read recently, “Jesus did not spend a great deal of time discoursing about the Trinity, or original sin or the incarnation which have preoccupied later Christians.  He went around doing good and being compassionate.[4]”

         As a congregation, we at St. Barnabas are about to enter a time of intentional and hopefully deep discernment about who we are and what God is calling us to do.  In September, we will begin a program called RenewalWorks©.  You will soon begin hearing much more about this program, from the lay leaders of the congregation.  But for now, suffice to say that is will be a couple of months of intense self-study and on-going discussions about how God acts in our lives and how we thereafter, act in the world. 

         In the context of today’s celebration of our experience of the Holy Trinity, our coming time of renewal will be focused on making us a truly experiential Trinitarian congregation.  That means that we will hopefully live into God’s call that we begin to see ourselves as, “called and sent by the Holy Spirit to bear witness to the Good News of Jesus Christ in word and deed for the sake of the world God created and loves so much.[5]”

            Let me end today with a benediction.  May we learn to love the blues through listening to the recently deceased Gregg Allman, and  “May God the Father bless us; may Christ take care of us; may the Holy Spirit enlighten us all the days of our lives.”  Amen.

[1]  Harrisburg, Penn.: Morehouse, 1991, p. 57

[2]  God of Our Silent Tears, Los Angeles: Cathedral Center Press, 2013.

[3]  Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith, N.Y.: Riverhead Books, 2005.

[4]  Armstrong, Karen, Atoms and Eden: Conversations on Religion and Science, Steve Paulson; N. Y.: Oxford University Press, 2010.

[5]  Synthesis, June 11, 2017

I read a blog thread online this week. It had a provocative title: “I love Jesus, but hate His church.” I LOVE Jesus, but I HATE His church. The question being pursued in the blog was, in essence, is that possible? Unfortunately, the blog I was reading, didn’t lend itself to a very high level of discussion on either missiology (the study of religious missions and their methods) or Christology (the study of the person, nature, and role of Christ). And the question lingered on in my mind.

This question, or one like it, has existed probably since the Church began. It has been expressed in many ways, like the benign, “I am spiritual, not religious,” and confrontationally, like the famous statement from Mahatma Gandhi, “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” No matter how it is phrased though, the sentiment that Jesus and the Church are separate from one another, and that someone could choose between them, is a popular one among some post-modern thinkers.

To talk about these things, we must first agree upon what we are talking about when we use the word, “Church.” When we say “the Church,” we can mean “our parish,” or the Episcopal Church, or what I believe that most people who are discussing big Christian issues mean – all of Christianity. So, for my purposes, “the Church,” with a big C, means the universal Christian church, while “the church” with a small c would mean St. Barnabas, “our church.”

So, I think that when people say that they love Jesus and hate the (big C) Church, what they are saying is: “I love the idealized Jesus that I’ve created in my mind and I really hate organized religion.” And there seems to be a lot of this kind of thought these days, among many Americans, especially millennials. Here is what I would like to say to all of those people who express sentiments similar to this.

First: Who exactly do you believe that Jesus is, and where did you get that idea? Most of the “spiritual but not religious” people say something along the lines of, “Jesus is love.” That is absolutely correct in one sense, but it does not even begin to scratch the surface of who Jesus is.
Jesus is 100% human, which means that He came to earth and lived for somewhere around 33 years as one of us. He got cold and hot, tired and sweaty, joyful and depressed. He joked with people and chewed some of them out. He ate and drank and burped when He had indigestion. All just like us. BUT … He was also 100% God. That means that He was around from the time before the world began. He was there as the creation came into being. He knew Adam and Eve, and Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He knew King David and all of the prophets. And He understood the mind of God in all things. He understood the creation of life and how humans interacted with God. He could call down miraculous power at will. And He was faithful to God as He lived a completely sinless life.

To say that this Jesus is only love is to sell Him short, and to misunderstand much of His mission on earth. The Creator God – God the Father – sent His only begotten son so that all who believe in Him might have everlasting life. Jesus came into the world so that we might be freed from bondage to sin and death, and so that through His sacrifice on the cross, we could be in a position to accept His gracious, redemptive love and have a personal relationship with the Triune God. And Jesus came into the world to begin the work of repairing and restoring the world, bringing the Kingdom of God into fruition. And through our baptisms, He commissioned us to carry on the work.

Saint Paul told the Church in Rome, “4For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, 5so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another,” (Rom 12) something that he had previously told the Corinthians. We … The Church (big C) ARE the Body of Christ. To explain this to the Corinthians, Paul said,
12 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.13For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. (1 Cor 12)
St. Paul explained well just how the Church functions as the Body of Christ, the hands, feet, eyes and ears of Jesus in the world.

So if someone says that he or she loves Jesus but hates the Church, what they are saying, is: “I love whoever it is that I’ve decided Jesus is, but I hate Jesus’ body in the world.” Which at least matches Gandhi’s sentiments, but still doesn’t deal with the fact that you logically cannot hate Jesus’ body but love Jesus.

No, the people who say things like this are really trying to express another sentiment altogether. What they mean to say is, “I love the ideals of Christianity but I hate the institutions that do not adhere to those ideals.” At this point in the sermon, many people will sit back and sigh and say to themselves, “At least he’s not talking to us, the members of St. Barnabas, because we are good members of the Body of Christ.” To which I would respond, “Not so fast.”

St. Barnabas is a wonderful parish. I am into my seventh year among you and I feel like I have a pretty good handle on who and what this parish is. You are good people and for the most part you work hard at being good Christians. Please do not take offense that I said, “for the most part.” That was not a dig at anyone. It is a recognition that NO ONE, including me, works hard a being a good Christian all of the time. But this parish has a heart for reaching out to others, and that is a building block in bringing the Kingdom of God to perfection. However … that heart for reaching out is not enough. We can and must do more.

As I am often reminded, one of my predecessors, Fr. Ken Cooper used to end services by saying something like: “Feed the hungry, clothe the poor, and love those who have no one but you to love them.” That pithy and well phrased statement is a good call to action. It reminds us that Jesus told us to: feed the hungry, bring drink to the thirsty, welcome strangers, clothe the naked, tend to the sick, visit those who are imprisoned. And that list is a good roadmap for all that we, as the Body of Christ, should be doing to usher in the Kingdom.

In the world around us – actually in the neighborhood around us – there are many strangers whom we need to meet. There are many hungry, thirsty, naked (or nearly naked) people. There are sick and imprisoned people. And all of them could use relationships with authentic Christians. Not people who want to “fix” them. Not people who want to preach to them, or worse yet, condescend to them. They don’t need people who will throw money at them and leave. They need relationships with the Body of Christ, people who will care about them, listen to them, enter into the problems they have and help find solutions. St. Augustine said it well when he said,

"What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like."

The children of God who are not members of St. Barnabas need THAT kind of love. And we have it to give. We, the Body of Christ in the world, can begin today to try to find new ways to reach out to this broken and hurting world, starting right here. And who knows, maybe some of those who “hate the church,” might just take notice that we are the Body of the Jesus they “love,” and come and join us in this work.

In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen

In 1st Samuel, Jesse brings his sons to the prophet, so that the next king of Israel and Judah can be chosen. But God does not see the young men the same way that the prophet Samuel does. The prophet was blind to what God sees in a king. Fortunately, he was not deaf as well as blind. Ultimately he listened as God selected David to be king.

In the Epistle, St. Paul tells the church in Ephesus,
Once you were darkness, (in other words, blind) but now in the Lord you are light (you can see). Live as children (who have sight) -- for the fruit of (having a vision of Christ) is found in all that is good and right and true.

Paul wanted the Ephesians to know that Jesus had delivered them from their spiritual blindness and that slipping back into it was not an option. And then there is the Gospel.

Jesus heals a man born blind. The first thing that we must understand is that this man was – in the minds of the people in 1st Century Palestine – not just born blind, but he was born without eyes. That is why Jesus spat on the ground and made mud that he put on the man’ eyelids. It is a reminder of God creating humans out of the earth, in Genesis. Jesus did not heal the man – he created something out of nothing, just as God did with human beings. But this is not just a Genesis-like creation story, there is a second (unspoken) miracle that takes place here. In this case, Jesus also had to instantly rewire the man’s brain. People who are born blind have no connections that would allow their brains to interpret what their new eyes can see.

So Jesus performs a double miracle of creation and then sends the man to the pool of Siloam to complete the process by washing. In this nod toward the rebirth of baptism, the man does as Jesus instructs and immediately is able to see. “Siloam” means “sent” or “sent one.” In the context of the story, the man is healed not by the waters of Siloam, but by the “Sent One”—Jesus. And the rest of the story deals with who can see and who cannot.
I read something this week that encapsulates this story in a wonderful way.

The author, Dr. Peter Gomes, says:
This passage is full of delicious irony:
• The blind man sees, but those who have eyes choose to close them to the truth.
• The authorities call the man to give glory to God by denouncing Jesus as a sinner, but the man gives glory to God by witnessing to Christ.
• The authorities continue questioning, trying to find a hole in the man's testimony. He responds by asking if they want to become Jesus' disciples.
• The authorities say that Moses' authority comes from God, but they do not know where Jesus comes from––implying that he must not come from God. The man responds by pointing out the obvious truth, “If this man were not from God, he could do nothing!”
• The authorities imply that one cannot be a follower of Moses and Jesus, but must choose one or the other. The message of the Fourth Gospel is that one can be faithful to Moses only through faithfulness to Jesus.
• The authorities repeatedly use the phrase, “we know,” but repeatedly reveal their ignorance (and their blindness).
• The authorities accuse the man of trying to teach them. The reader is aware that he is capable of doing just that, but they refuse to learn (or to see).

This whole story is a wonderful example of St. John’s use of irony. The healing of the blind man is a signpost that points directly to Jesus as the Christ. But the Pharisees, the supposedly all-knowing and visionary leaders of Israel, cannot – or will not – see the truth. And I would submit to you that we – modern Christians – can be every bit as blind as the Pharisees, about whom we love to feel very superior.

Christian Wiman is an American poet and former editor of Poetry magazine. He was raised in a Texas Southern Baptist home and was steeped in faith during his childhood. But during and after college, he says that he would not call himself an atheist, but rather that his faith went “underground,” much the way a hibernating animal might. And it was years before his faith stirred from its slumber.

He says that sometime in 2002, he fell into a deep and unexplainable despair. He could no longer write. He says that he does not know if that was the cause or an effect of his despair. But as it hit its low point, he unexpectedly met and fell in love with the woman whom he would marry. Christian says that he still could not write, but at least the despair was lifted. He says that he and his new wife would occasionally say some small prayer before they ate. That grew into some intentional, if brief prayer time. And then, when they had been married for about eight months, he was diagnosed with an incurable form of cancer. It was then that Christian says the light of Christ – the truth of Jesus – began to shine in a way that was undeniable. In other words, the erudite, well-educated man who wrote poetry that saw the world in ways others could not, had been blind for decades, but now had been given new eyes by Jesus.

In a series of essays, entitled My Bright Abyss, Christian wrote,
Just as some of Jesus’ first-century followers could not credit the presence of the risen Christ, so our own blindness, habit, and fear form a kind of constant fog that keeps us from seeing, and thereby believing in, the forms that grace takes in our everyday lives. We may think that it would be a great deal easier to believe if the world erupted around us, if some savior came down and offered as evidence the bloody scars in his side, but what the Gospels suggest is that this is not only wishful thinking but willful blindness, for in fact the world is erupting around us, Christ is very often offering us the scars in his side. What we call doubt is often simply dullness of mind and spirit, not the absence of faith at all, but faith latent in the lives we are not quite living, God dormant in the world to which we are not quite giving our best selves.

Whether or not we want to admit that our blindness is caused by “dullness” of our spirits – in other words, spiritual laziness, we are all plagued with that blindness from time to time. And when our blindness really comes out is when we believe that we, like the Pharisees, are the only ones who can see.
Look around St. Barnabas. Do you believe that you can see what is wrong with the other people around you? Do you believe (at least occasionally) that you know what would be best for some of the other people here? That is spiritual blindness. To look at it slightly differently, do you believe that you are the one who can see the faults of St. Barnabas and know exactly what it takes to fix them? That too is spiritual blindness.

What we see when we look at people or institutions is a thin slice of the whole. It is like when you look at a sheet of paper from its back or front. It appears to be 8 ½ x 11 inches. But if you look at it from the sides or ends, it is incredibly thin. People are complicated, and so are parishes. We only know what we see. And the rest is hidden from our natural blindness.

As you judge other people or things, remember the limitations of your vision. What you may believe to be 20/20 sight, may turn out to be perfect blindness. Jesus is at work in ways you may know nothing about. So just look to Him and His gracious love for your sight. Then you cannot go wrong.

In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

The second important thing to remember is revelation, or the revealing of who Jesus is and what God's kingdom looks like, and how it functions. Of course these revelations happen in conversation, like the one we read this morning.

I love the Woman at the Well in John’s gospel. I think it is because she reminds me of me. The woman Jesus meets at the well is a little feisty, a little cynical, and quite capable of holding her own. She certainly does not seem to get intimidated, especially when she encounters this strange Jew, at the well.

In this story, we have a contrast to last week’s gospel reading. In the story of Nicodemus last week, we had a wealthy, Jewish leader whose name we know well, a leader, an upstanding Jewish leader. The Samaritan woman is an outcast with no name. She is an outcast in the Jewish tradition because she is a Samaritan, but perhaps an outcast in her own community too, for moral reasons.

 Nicodemus wanted to meet Jesus, while the Samaritan woman had an unexpected encounter with Jesus. She probably had never heard of him.

 Jesus never tells Nicodemus who he is, he leaves the conversation with Nicodemus still wondering, but he tells the Samaritan woman exactly who he is.

 Nicodemus met Jesus in secret, in the dark, while the Samaritan woman meets Jesus in broad daylight at a public place. Even though the meeting between Nicodemus and Jesus would not have broken any taboos, the meeting between Jesus and the woman at the well, however, was taboo on many levels, for both the woman and Jesus.

 It is obvious that John has an important agenda to address in his gospel. From the beginning of this gospel, John wants us to know and understand that God’s kingdom is inclusive and non-judgmental.

 John announces early in his gospel that God’s kingdom is broader, bigger, more far-reaching than anyone had ever imagined. John wants us to know that God loves the world far more than we can ever comprehended.

 The writer wants us to know that Jesus did in fact come to his own people, but the mercy and benevolence of God was always going to spread beyond the Jewish community. From the beginning, God’s kingdom was intended for the whole world according to John; and with the advent of Jesus Christ, God’s grace was breaking into the world.

That point is poignantly illustrated in this dialogue between the Samaritan woman who had experienced shame and ridicule and the Son of God who was tired and thirsty. In this story at the well, a thirsty Messiah and a quick-witted woman find out that they need each other. This is a wonderful metaphor for how God and humanity are intimately connected.

Ironic that the Messiah who feeds five thousand in the wilderness, requests the help of a Samaritan woman, because he is thirsty. The same Messiah who turned water into wine at the wedding at Canna, needed this woman to draw water from the well, so he could drink.

Throughout John’s Gospel conversation seems to be key in discovering who Jesus is and what he has to offer. Conversation is essential for building faith. In John’s Gospel relationship and faith go hand in hand. It matters that the revelation of who Jesus is and the woman’s awareness of who he can be for her happens in conversation. Their conversation is symbolic of what true relationship looks like -- supportive, reciprocal, respectful, and honest.

Without real conversation, we lack intimacy and understanding, connection and empathy. Without real conversation, we risk detachment and distance from one another and from God, or in other words, we risk sin.

The church can be and should be the place that shows society what authentic conversation sounds like. The church is supposed to be the place that demonstrates how dialogue about faith might result in mutual respect and tolerance. Lord knows, we need that today more than ever. But what does real conversation look like? The dialogue between the Samaritan woman at the well and Jesus provides an outline that not only offers a model for real conversation but also points to the very nature of God.

First, the conversation begins with mutual vulnerability. Jesus is thirsty and she needs that living water that only Jesus can provide. That is where truthful conversations must start -- from a place of mutual vulnerability, from a space that recognizes that each party risks being known and being seen. I suspect that very few conversations begin with the expectation of vulnerability, yet theological conversations have to start there because this is a fundamental characteristic of God.

Second, questions are critical to conversation. Not questions in which one party or the other has already determined the right answers, not questions asked only to pretend polite or interest. Questions that communicate curiosity, a genuine interest in the other, a longing for knowing and understanding, those are the kinds of questions I am talking about. The woman at the well is full of questions, thoughtful questions, questions that matter and lead Jesus to reveal to her who he really is.

Jesus affirms questions, even invites them. God wants us to ask questions because it is in the questioning that our relationship with God is strengthened. I have met so many people who have lamented about questioning faith issues. My response is always the same; “Don’t apologize for questioning the faith, or God; that is how we grow closer to God and stronger in faith.”

When it comes to having a conversation with Jesus or about Jesus, expect to be surprised. Expect God to reveal something about God’s self that you have never seen before. In John’s gospel, the woman, at the well, is the first one to whom the true-identity of Jesus is revealed. The first absolute I AM in the Gospel of John was not to the Jewish leader or to the disciples, but to her, a religious, social, political outsider. This is who God is, it is how God works. John reveals early in the gospel that this God loves the whole world.

When we risk those honest conversations about faith and God we have to anticipate being changed in the process. The woman at the well goes from being shunned to being a witness, from dismissed to disciple, from alone to being one of the flock.

When we have honest and open dialogue with others, Jesus is there with us and God’s grace breaks in all around us. That is what the Samaritan woman experienced; she recognized grace breaking in on her life and recognized it in Jesus. It did not matter that she was a Samaritan. It does not matter where we are coming from either. What matters is that we recognize Christ in our conversations with others, with one another and even with strangers.

Jesus says, “The hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and truth.”

That is what the woman at the well did.  She met Jesus by chance in the mundane routine of her daily life.  She was not afraid to be honest or truthful. She was vulnerable and allowed the truth to set her free.  She then took that freedom and shared it with the others in her community. That is what we are supposed to do, share our story, share our experience of God’s grace and our encounters with Christ.

What redeeming or transforming experience have you had because you have met and conversed with Jesus Christ?  Those are the stories that draw others to Christ, our story, our personal encounters, our personal story of faith and vulnerability. No one needs to know how well versed you are in scripture or liturgy. What we need to know is how Christ has touched you or been present in your life.

Yesterday I had an hour-long phone conversation with a senior seminarian at Virginia Theological, who had contacted me because she had heard of our mission work in Navajoland. She was writing her thesis on mission and how mission impacted relationship. I told her relationship was key to all we do when we do mission, here at St. Barnabas. Relationship is what results from honest conversation, mutual respect, and genuine care. Relationship is where we encounter the living Christ. Relationship is the key to what happened between Jesus and the woman at the well.

So anytime you want to share your story with me, or you want to hear mine, please feel free to engage me in conversation, and please know questions are always encouraged. But remember, I am a little feisty, a little cynical, and quite capable of holding my own.

Amen

         Of course there is also the symbolism that is always present in John.  Nicodemus comes in the night because darkness represents those who cannot see Jesus for who He really is, and light represents those who can.  But none of those things speaks to why Nicodemus came.

         Nicodemus was a learned man.  A man of great and abiding knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures (what we call the Old Testament), and from the perspective of a Scribe, Pharisee or Sadducee (in other words, his peers), he did not need to learn anything from a transient rabbi.  But again, I don’t believe that that is how Nicodemus saw things.  I truly think that Nicodemus came to see Jesus that night, simply because he was a seeker.  He had questions.  He was a seeker of knowledge.  A seeker of wisdom.  A seeker of answers about the Kingdom of God.

         There is a lot of talk in church growth circles these days about “seekers,” those people who visit our church because they are looking for something that they haven’t yet found anywhere else.  Maybe they come here because they have had a bad experience in their previous forays into organized religion.  Perhaps the church of their parents no long comports with their political, social or world view.  Perhaps they feel burned by the religion of their childhood.  Maybe they had no religious upbringing at all and are now curious.  Or maybe they have recently married or otherwise gotten into a serious relationship, and the significant other has a strong religious background.  But no matter where they come from or what their agenda might be when they come through the doors … they are coming through the doors.  And we need to meet them where they are.

         Last September, the Washington Post ran an article entitled: To Attract Young People to Your Church, You’ve Got to be Warm.  Not Cool.  The article talked about research in 250 congregations that concentrated on ages 15-29.  Since the majority of today’s “seekers” seem to be of this millennial age cohort, perhaps the article has something to say to us.  The Post article said that today’s millennial seekers are looking for congregations that are: welcoming, accepting, authentic, hospitable, and caring.  The researchers referred to this as the “warmth cluster.”  They discovered that trying to attract these people with things like “Top 40” Christian music and “cool” ministry programs is not the answer; nor is busyness.  They went further and said that a congregation that is nice to each other also doesn’t work with the young people of the survey.  What the survey showed that young people want, is to belong – a sense of intergenerational family.

         It seems to me that the essence of what these young seekers are after is something that Jesus hinted at, when He was talking to Nicodemus, and that is … the Holy Spirit.  Jesus said, “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.”  Here’s a little “inside baseball,” information for you.  When John wrote this Gospel, the word that he used for “wind,” the Hebrew word, “ruach,” could mean “wind,” “breath,” or “spirit.”  So, when Jesus said that the wind blows, He could have been referring to the literal wind, or to the movement of the Holy Spirit – which He references in the next sentence.  I believe that Jesus was trying to lead Nicodemus to an important truth; that we can never get far in our quest for the Kingdom of God, without the power of the Holy Spirit.  And conversely, if we tap into the power of the Spirit, we will always find what we are seeking.

         The generation of millennial seekers – who are the next generation of Church leaders – want an authentic, familial place of worship; a place where people are real people and get along with each other in spite of their warts, their bad breath and their general eccentricities.  And that can only come through the power of the Spirit.

         Do you remember the movie, The Legend of Bagger Vance?  If you don’t, don’t feel bad, thousands of people walked past it in the theaters to see something else.  It was a pretty star-studded film though, with Will Smith, Matt Damon and Charlize Theron leading the cast.  Anyway, Matt Damon is Rannulph Junuh, who had been an almost mythically talented golfer before World War I, but who suffers from what the modern world knows as PTSD, and therefore could, or would no longer play the game.  But in the midst of the Depression, when an exhibition match between the two greatest golfers in the world comes to his former girlfriend’s golf resort.  He reluctantly agrees to be the third player, in part to try to save his Charlize Theron’s character from losing her resort to creditors. 

And into the story comes Will Smith as Bagger – a man with no past, and a penchant for speaking in riddles.  Bagger helps Junuh get ready for the match – and for facing the rest of his life – by helping him to “find his swing,” and “see the field.”  At one point, Bagger says that it doesn’t matter where you want the ball to go, it doesn’t even matter if you are hitting the ball at all.  It only matters that you find the swing you were born with – the one that has gotten away from you because of all of the events of your life.  Bagger says that if Junuh finds his authentic swing, everything will be right, and winning or losing the match won’t really matter.  [Spoiler alert, Matt Damon finds his swing, succeeds in the match and reunites with the love of his life.  Then Bagger disappears.]

         What Bagger Vance (clearly a Jesus character in the film) ultimately taught Junuh was that the Spirit was always there, inside him, and all he had to do was tap into that Spirit, trust it, and be who God intended him to be.  That is the lesson that Jesus was teaching Nicodemus.  And it is a lesson for us.

         St. Barnabas is a place where the Holy Spirit blows through like the wind blows during big scenes in Bagger Vance.  The Spirit is here – alive and active.  And each of you received that same Spirit at your baptisms. 

As this year continues to unfold, we are going to be evaluating how we do what we do here – what we do well and what needs work.  We are going to be finding our swing and seeing again who God intends for us to be.  We are going to try to get as many of you as possible involved in discerning where that powerful Spirit is leading us.  And then we’re going to go out into the world, continuing to serve others as we always have, while we also blaze new paths of caring for the least of God’s children.  And while all of that is going on, we will also appeal to that Spirit to bring us closer to each other – and to seekers who walk through the doors – as we make St. Barnabas the warmth cluster that radiates the Spirit to all who come near.

In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

That is, until we remember that Jesus lived and did ministry in a place and time that was occupied by the Roman Empire. On top of that, we have to recall that the Gospels were written well after the crucifixion in a post-temple, post-Jerusalem, post-destruction reality, the world was chaotic and uncertain. It's when we remember these details that suddenly, Jesus’ world, the author's world does not seem that different from our own. And we realize that at the heart of Jesus’ message in Matthew is a message essential for all time. But  the words we read today, these are not easy words to hear or accept as a way of life.

Loving your enemy? Really, Jesus? Do you mean that or is that some sort of euphemistic expression meant to remind us to be nice to people?

Does Jesus really expect us to turn the other cheek, to give up our cloak, to walk an extra mile, or are those just hypothetical illustrations to stir our emotions? How does it further the kingdom if we allow ourselves to be abused or used like a doormat?

Karl Marx, father of communism, said, “The social principles of Christianity preach cowardice, self-contempt, abasement, submissiveness and humbleness.”

Before dismissing Marx's critique, we should point out that, indeed, turning the other cheek and returning hatred with love is no way to get ahead in this world. It is a dog-eat-dog world where only the strong survive. But that’s just the point. Jesus isn’t trying to modify the rules of this world. He’s not inviting us to figure out how to make the most of this world or have our best life now, contrary to our contemporary prosperity preachers. And he’s not inviting us to find a safe port in the storms of life either. Rather, he’s starting a revolution by calling the rules of this world into question and turning them upside down and inside out, and he invites each of us to follow him into this revolution.

Yes, love your enemies means just that, and it is an important message even today, Maybe even more important today!

Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.” Now we need a little exegesis here: the word we translate “perfect” is actually the Greek word telos and implies less of a moral perfection as opposed to reaching one’s intended outcome or purpose. The telos of an arrow shot from a bow is to reach its intended target. The telos of a pecan tree is to yield pecans. Which means that we might translate this passage more loosely to mean, “Be the person and community God created and intends you to be, just as God is as God is supposed to be.”

You see, God sees more in us than we do. God has plans and a purpose for each of us, all of us. God intends to use us to achieve something spectacular and marvelous. And that something is precisely to be who we were created to be and, in doing so, to help create a different kind of world. Jesus calls this new world the kingdom of God – where violence doesn’t always breed more violence and hate doesn’t always kindle more hate. Martin Luther King, Jr. captured the logic of Jesus’ kingdom well in his "I Have a Dream" speech when he stated, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

Several hundreds of years before Martin Luther King, Jr, Martin Luther said that the "Christian life is not about arriving but always about becoming." And even earlier, St. Augustine, when celebrating the Lord’s Supper, would invite people to “receive who you are” and then dismiss them with “go become what you have received.”  How great is that? That is all great theology and great liturgy!

Jesus calls the powers of the day into question by describing an entirely different way to relate to each other, inviting us into relationships governed not by power but by vulnerability grounded in love. “’An eye for an eye’ makes all people blind,” Gandhi said, almost two thousand years later. Here Jesus invites us to overcome the urge to retaliate and instead respond with loving submission and forbearance.

Jesus isn’t satisfied with merely overturning this world. For the very essence of his critique about the human condition was -- that we were created not merely for justice but also for love and life -- that truth is the only possible hope for those enmeshed in the conditions of this world. Strength eventually fails. Power corrupts. Survival of the fittest leaves so many bodies maimed and lying on the ground. Love alone transforms, redeems, and creates new life. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

Yes, in the words found in today's gospel passage, Jesus lays before us at the end of his Sermon on the Mount, the plans for the kingdom he proclaims and the revolution he starts. And so before we bring others to Church, before we baptize little Clark this morning, or before bringing any one for baptism, we should probably let them know just what it is we’re inviting them into! Because, we invite the to a counter cultural revolution.

The last line of this passage -- “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Rather than commanding something of us, Jesus is really  commending something in us. Maybe, Jesus simply knows that we have more to give, that we can be and do more than we have settled for, and that we can absolutely make a difference in the world if we simply believe in ourselves. And so, I hear in these words the invitation to be the people God has created us to be, so that we might not just persevere through these challenging times and our own personal lives, but actually flourish, making a difference to those around us by sharing the abundant life Jesus has given us. Jesus is not just serious about what he promises, he actually dies -- and rises again! -- to show us that it’s true.

As disciples of Christ, we are to persist toward the goal to which the Beatitudes give witness, to persist in bringing about the Kingdom of Heaven for all people in the face of continued resistance. To persist in a vision that others might not be able to see, but that we see and that we help other people to see, that is our goal. Not through fighting or condemnation, but by an intentional, loving willingness that realizes the full blessings of what God has in mind for all people.

Being a disciple does not require perfection but persistence, a persistence toward bringing the Kingdom of Heaven into view. Jesus suggests that an essential characteristic of what it means to be a disciple is to persist in working toward the goal that Matthew’s Beatitudes proclaim. Anything less, it seems, could very well jeopardize the Great Commission itself. Because God persists in loving us, we too must persist in the revelation of God's love toward the whole world, loving even our enemies as ourselves.

Amen

All I can say, after reading today’s Gospel, is: It’s a good thing that Jesus never had to deal with Facebook and Twitter. I say that because the longer I am on social media platforms, the more I believe that the polarization in this country may be about to become as solid as a giant California redwood tree and as destructive as a category five hurricane.

Let’s do a little experiment right now. Take out your phone. Go ahead. I know that you have them — and occasionally use them during the sermon. I am giving you blanket dispensation — today only. Pull them out and open Facebook or Twitter or Snapchat, or Instagram, or whatever your favorite platform is. Now look at the things that are trending, or at your own feed, and raise your hand as soon as you have found someone saying something bad or snarky about someone on the opposite side of the political spectrum. You know, a Democrat calling a Republican a racist or a misogynist or xenophobe. Or a Republican telling a Democrat that he or she is a snowflake or a socialist, or my least favorite, a “libtard.” Raise your hand when you find a political insult of any kind. See, it doesn’t take long, does it? Now … no fair spending the rest of the sermon liking and reposting things.

Social media platforms have become for Americans, the place where we can — for the most part — exercise the worst of our urges … without much in the way of repercussion. Generally speaking, people in this country do not stand up in public gatherings and call each other vile names. But that happens all day and all night, every day and night, on social media. On social media platforms, people seem to feel totally released from what used to be known as good manners.

When I was a child, my paternal grandmother was the keeper of good manners. While there are not many people who loved to gossip as much as my grandmother Aggie did, she still insisted that her grandchildren know how to behave and how to treat other people. If Aggie had ever read or heard the way that people speak to each other (or about each other) on Facebook or Twitter, her ginger temper would have flared like nothing you have ever seen. For Aggie the issue was simply that you did not say anything to someone that might hurt their feelings — even if you vehemently disagreed with that person. It was just a matter of having good manners and refusing to treat someone else in a way that we would not want to be treated.

Good manners used to dictate that people did not speak hatefully or disrespectfully with one another. But the age of the internet has completely changed how we interact with each other. Now it is perfectly acceptable to label someone else just because he or she took a political position that you don’t agree with. We no longer have to discuss positions on their merits. Instead, if someone disagrees with you today, he or she will simply call you a horrible name, reduce the entirety of your life to a single label, and then move on; looking back from time-to-time to find out how many others “like” or “retweet” their insult.

Let’s look again for a minute at what we read just now from Matthew’s Gospel. Today’s reading is a part of the Sermon on the Mount. In this section, Jesus was laying out a plan for living life in a way that would reach toward the Kingdom of God. He told His hearers:

"You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, `You fool,' you will be liable to the hell of fire."

It seems to me that Jesus was talking about something here that may have been very important to His first listeners, but is absolutely vital for us. As the modern Christian writer, Brian McLaren said,

"Ancient wisdom forbade murder, but Jesus’ message, the message of the kingdom of God, calls people deeper and higher: to transcend the hidden emotion of anger that motivates murder and to stop insulting people. After all, insult is a kind of character assassination, a kind of socially acceptable violence with words. The kingdom of God calls us beyond simply “doing no physical harm” (as big an improvement as that is over doing physical harm!), it calls us to do no harm with words. And even more radical—it calls us to actively seek reconciliation, giving interpersonal reconciliation an even higher priority than religious devotion …."

My grandmother called it good manners. Jesus talked about it as Kingdom of God treatment of others. But what it is really about is making space for someone who thinks or believes or speaks differently than we do. And I firmly believe that it is time that we take up the challenge of living as Jesus commanded, and start changing the world by how we deal with our neighbors — whether it be in the pew, on social media, or (heaven forbid!) behind the wheel.

We at St. Barnabas like to think of ourselves as tolerant and accepting. After all, our motto is “A Place at the Table.” And I think that we really mean that. I believe that it is in our DNA at this church to welcome any and everyone who comes in the doors to gather with us at Christ’s holy table and to share in the mystical meal that is our Eucharist. But if we really follow what Jesus said, it cannot end there.

Jesus said, “if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire….” That is a tough standard, but I believe that Jesus really meant what He said. Scholars still argue about what the “hell of fire” really referred to, but that is not the point. What He is telling us, is that it is not acceptable for us to put down our brothers and sisters, no matter what they say to us. He is calling us to a higher sense of how we treat each other.

If your brother or sister did not vote for the same presidential candidate that you did, find common ground elsewhere and be reconciled to that person. If someone you know believes in political doctrines that you find wholly repugnant, look for other places where you have commonality and meet there. But this idea of Kingdom ideals does not call us to ignore the places where we disagree with others, it calls us to transcend them — to see them as places of disagreement, but to look deeper into our brother or sister and find something in his or her very humanity that makes us care less about where we disagree and more about the simple fact that we are all bound together as the Body of Christ.

My brothers and sisters, we have a wonderful community at St. Barnabas. And we have a wonderful broader community in Lafayette. And we are all surrounded by on-line communities of God’s children, which is a wonderful thing. So what are we going to do with all of that wonder-fullness? We can choose to focus on our disagreements and spend our time searching for the exact words that will put a dagger into another person’s heart, thereby “winning” the argument and making ourselves the ones who are “on top.” And at the same time, further erode the beauty of our lives. OR we can find new ways of transcending our disagreements and concentrate on the spark of Christ that is present in every one of us. Thereby building up the Kingdom of God on earth.

Please believe me when I say that I know how hard this change in attitude will be. You and I live in a society that seems to thrive on conflict. But if we are to give any weight at all to Jesus’ very plain words, we are called (loud and clear), and we must try to make a place for every one and every opinion. And we must always try to love (that is: respect and care for) those with whom we disagree, even when that seems impossible to do.

May the Spirit of God be with each of us as we seek to live out the command to love one another just as Christ loves us. Amen.