Every Wednesday at Christ Church Easton, there is a small healing service. On December 6, using the lectionary readings for the second Sunday of Advent (Mark 1:1-8) I gave this homily, combining the Gospel reading and some of Kate Bowler’s Advent daily devotional we are using this season.
“Prepare the Way”
Does anyone know what the last book in the Old Testament is? Malachi. And does anyone know what thoughts or prophesy Malachi closes out his book with?
“See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me…“
“Lo, I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes… so that he can change the hearts of the parents to their children and children to their parents so that I will not come and strike the land with a curse.”
With no Gospels yet written, Mark picks up the final promise of the Old Testament and its being fulfilled in this new good news he is sharing.
What else does Mark do for us as he starts his account? He kicks it off:
“The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the son of God.”
Where do we famously hear, “the beginning” in the Bible? At the beginning: Genesis, “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth.”
So in his opening lines, Mark connects us to the beginning of Scripture and echoes and continues the most recent thread of Scripture they had.
In doing this, he introduces us to John the Baptist.
In his book, “Mark: The Gospel of Passion,” Michael Card writes:
“When we meet him in Mark, John is standing in the Jordan with his camel-hair coat, preaching repentance. Repentance—it is the only way the people would be prepared to meet the one who was coming to forgive their sins. That is how John ‘prepares the way’ for Jesus.”
“John is all that is old and everything that is new. He stands with one foot in the Old Testament and the other firmly planted in the New. It is impossible to overstate his significance.”
In every Gospel account, Jesus’s ministry begins with and carries on from John the Baptist’s ministry (sometimes in talking New Testament it’s helpful to differentiate John the Baptist from John the apostle/Gospel writer). Mark, the shortest of the Gospels, known for giving us, the readers everything we need and not one thing we don’t, doesn’t even give us a birth narrative—that wasn’t important—Mark starts with John the Baptist.
John became hugely popular; he had a huge following and his own disciples. Mark tells us, “People from the whole Judean countryside and all the people from Jerusalem were going out to him and were baptized by him.”
That would be enough to blow your ego up, make you feel important. And yet, listen to John in just these few short verses:
“The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
The humility of John the Baptist. He is not “The Way” (which is what they would call the early followers of Jesus)—John has come to prepare the way. He understands his job and his purpose, and he doesn’t try to hog the spotlight or make it all about him. He might dress funny and eat strange foods, but John is humble. And John is making a clear, straight path to Jesus. He is preparing the way.
Our first Advent reading, from this past Sunday, is where Jesus told his disciples, and us, to “keep awake.” Anticipation. Our second Advent reading, and the focus is preparation.
Maybe we can understand John’s role in preparing the people for Jesus. But what does it look like for us to prepare as we begin our walk through the season of Advent?
In these first four days of the season, Bowler has reminded us to see:
Hope As Protest – in world where we expect things to go wrong, hope in God, hope in Christ is a protest against the ways of the world (as opposed to the ways of God)
God Is With Us – on the great days and the impossible days, God is with us, that’s why Jesus is called “Emmanuel” and a big part of why he becomes incarnate, to assure us we aren’t alone
Teach Us to Pray – prayer as preparation.
This hit me. Bowler says:
“When we cry out to God just as Jesus did in the Garden of Gethsemane—“God take this cup from me”—our voice joins the chorus of the fellowship of the afflicted… I take comfort in knowing I don’t cry out alone. And my cries don’t fall on unlistening ears. So if today is not your day of wholeness or hope… let’s look around at others and see where God is working in their lives. Maybe see where we can make their loads a little lighter. Together may we become people who look for signs of hope and act in hope while we wait.”
One of the points of Bowler’s devotional is that even as we wait in hope, we have difficult days. And even on those days, when we are low, there is still hope. If we can’t find anything in our lives at a particular moment, we can remember that we are connected to others who are going through things, including Jesus, and when we look around, maybe we can ease our burdens together.
Compressed Hope – is her theme for today (December 6). Can we find those moments, those stories, those friendships, that connect us to hope? What are the ways we can package this expansive hope in God into something we can carry with us in our daily lives?
When I think about John the Baptist, he had seen no huge change in the world when he started his ministry. Israel was enslaved to Rome, the state of the world was bleak, and he trusted God, trusted Jesus who was to come, and powerfully proclaimed the need for people to repent. We know things did not turn out great for John in any worldly sense. But he was a man on a mission, and he was full of hope.
As Bowler was going through cancer treatment, she came to this reminder:
“How easy it is to forget. Forget there is someone turning on and off the stars. Forget that the sun rises and sets without us having to remind it to. Forget there is someone who makes each snowflake unique… These tiny miracles can be reminders that God holds the world together, not us.
Hope is found in knowing that even though it feels like the world is coming undone in my time and maybe in my life situation, the truth is that the sun keeps shining every day and the stars will still shine at night. The whole world shines hope upon us every day.”
God is bigger than we are. The universe is bigger than we are. God takes care of the biggest parts of our world, like the sun rising and setting, the planets in their orbits, and we are a part of that ride. But as small as we might be in the big picture, he has a part for us. Like he did for John, God has a role for us to play, preparing the way, preparing our lives, for something bigger to follow.
This Advent, as we are intentional in our waiting, in our hopefulness, in our preparation, we know that God’s love in the form of the incarnation and coming of Jesus, is what’s coming, is who is coming. And that’s worth the wait. Let’s do our part to prepare the way and prepare our hearts and lives.
Background: On Sunday mornings at Christ Church Easton we have morning prayer and a discussion of the week’s lectionary Gospel reading on Zoom (in addition to three in-person services with Communion). Each Zoom discussion is different, depending on the reading and who is participating–in that way each discussion is organic and in places unscripted. So when I put together notes for a homily, some of it gets used, other parts don’t, and the key is to find the questions that are engaging people. This past Sunday, the Gospel reading was Matthew 20:1-16, in which Jesus tells the Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard, where the landowner sends workers into his vineyard in waves from early morning right up until one hour to go in the evening. He then pays all of them the same usual daily wage. And the workers who had been there all day say it isn’t fair.
This is the homily I put together, though the discussion itself moved in different ways and there were parts that weren’t used and great questions and comments that aren’t written down.
(The image above is “Red Vineyards at Arles” by Vincent Van Gogh, 1888)
“Rethinking Fairness”
How many people are bothered by this parable? And what is it that rubs you the wrong way about it?
Our sense of fairness is disturbed. Even though those who worked from the early morning got exactly what they were promised, what they agreed to, which was a good wage for their work. And it was the landowner who offered them work in the first place.
The context of this reading, what we haven’t heard just before it, was Jesus and the rich young man, who kept all the commandments and was doing everything right, and he asked Jesus what else he had to do. And Jesus tells him to “sell all your possessions, give the money to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” And the young man goes away grieving, because he had many possessions.
Jesus tells his disciples that it’s really hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. This goes against all the thinking of the day, where the rich were looked at is being in God’s good graces. That makes the disciples ask who can be saved? And Jesus tells them, “For mortals it’s impossible, but for God, all things are possible.”
And here is the line we are waiting for. Peter gets worked up and says, “Look, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?”
Jesus reassures them that when the time comes, they will be taken care of. But he can tell they are missing the point of everything. So we get the parable of the laborers in the vineyard.
Let’s look at the story. What can we say about the landowner? What do we notice about him and how he does things?
He is the one out finding the workers. It would have been more likely to see a manager or one of his employees, but it’s the landowner himself out there.
Michael Green in his book “The Message of Matthew” puts it like this—
“…he goes out himself. Indeed, he goes out repeatedly to seek them. They are hungry, unemployed, and as the day wears on, increasingly hopeless. He cares about that. He wants to give them a job to work and a reward.”
Then we get the payment. Everyone who works gets the same thing, a day’s wages. The order in which people are paid is a zinger, paying the last first, so that the early arrivers see what they are given.
“The Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard,” by Rembrandt, oil on panel, 1637.
I love this perspective from Debie Thomas in her book, “Into the Mess & Other Jesus Stories.” She looks through a contemporary lens:
“The landowner in Jesus’s story doesn’t judge his workers by their hours. He doesn’t obsess over why some workers are able to start at dawn and others are not. Perhaps the late starters aren’t as literate, educated, or skilled as their competitors. Perhaps they have learning challenges, or a tough home life, or children to care for at home. Perhaps they’re refugees, or don’t own cars, or don’t speak the language, or can’t get green cards. Perhaps they struggle with chronic depression or anxiety. Perhaps they’ve hit a glass ceiling after years of effort, and they’re stuck. Perhaps employers refuse to hire them because they’re gay or trans or disabled or black or female.”
That’s the thing with Jesus’s parables—he gives us a story with just enough information to get our brain turning, but he doesn’t fill in all the details—that is for us to do. And often his parables disturb us and our sense of how things are.
Back to the parts of our story: we’ve got the landowner sending everyone into the vineyard, we’ve got payment being made, and then we have the reaction.
The last into the field are the first to get paid, and they get a day’s wages. As the first, the earlier workers approach, they are expecting more. And then they get upset.
“These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.”
And the landowner says, didn’t I give you what I promised you, what we agreed to? Am I not allowed to give what belongs to me how I choose? Are you envious because I am generous?
What a question. I wonder, is it his generosity that offends or disturbs us here?
Here’s the thing. Part of why our sense of fairness is put off here is that we instantly identify with the laborers who went out at dawn, who have been out in the vineyard the longest.
Let’s move the parable into what it’s really addressing here: salvation. I have to tell you, when it comes to my life, to my faith—I am not one of the early arrivers. Like most things in life, I got there late.
What do the Gospels and Paul’s letters tell us over and over again: we are not saved by works, we are saved by grace, which is a gift from God. We can’t earn grace and it’s not a competition.
Here is Michael Green again:
“Grace, amazing grace, is the burden of this story. All are equally undeserving of so large a sum. All are given it by the generosity of the employer. All are on the same level. The poor disciples, fisherman and tax collectors as they are, are welcomed by God along with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. There are no rankings in the kingdom of God.”
If we fast forward to after Jesus’s death, resurrection, and ascension, into the Book of Acts, what happens at and after Pentecost—Peter and the disciples bring more and more into the fold, baptizing and teaching thousands. They didn’t have the attitude of, “Hey—where were these guys while Jesus was here—these new disciples have it so much easier.” Instead, Peter and company are thrilled to have more workers in the vineyard.
I wonder if the problem here is us and our small sense of fairness. Maybe God’s sense of fairness is bigger and more expansive than ours is, and that is a good thing.
Grace, like forgiveness which we’ve been talking about for the past couple weeks, depends on our receiving it and paying it forward. God’s plan is to include everyone.
Back to Thomas to bring it home:
“Could it be any more obvious that we are wholly dependent on each other for our survival and well-being? That the future of creation itself depends on human beings recognizing our fundamental interconnectedness and acting in concert for the good of all? That ‘what’s fair’ for me isn’t good enough if it leaves you in the wilderness to die? That my sense of ‘justice’ is not just if it mocks the tender heart of God? That the vineyards of this world thrive only when everyone has a place of dignity and purpose within them? That the time for all selfish and stingy notions of fairness is over?”
A question/thought that came up in our Zoom discussion today was, “How can people learn to be generous if they don’t experience it?” That’s so true. Those that were invited into the vineyard last experienced that kind of generosity. Let’s step into that.
Put yourself in the life of those that arrived at 5:00pm, for whatever reason. Imagine the joy you feel, imagine the gratitude, imagine going home and what you would say to your family. Imagine how you might be inclined to treat other people you encounter?
Maybe this is how we should think of fairness, the same way we think of grace and mercy and love.
Background: Last Saturday evening there was a wedding on Saturday evening at Christ Church Easton, so we moved our Alive @ 5 contemporary music service into the Parish Hall and served dinner at the end of the service. The band was in the style of MTV Unplugged and the Parish Hall was full of good food and fellowship. The Gospel from the lectionary last weekend was Matthew 18:15-20, where Jesus outlines how to deal with conflict/sin between people in the community. With our Rector/Pastor officiating the wedding, I preached at our Saturday evening service.
“Bearing With Each Other”
“Christian conflict resolution” is not a class that would have a waiting list to get into. It comes off a bit like a root canal—necessary, but not something to look forward to.
But when you look around society and how we deal with feeling wronged, we do need some guidance. These days there are a lot of passive-aggressive outlets out there. What are some notable passive-aggressive ways to not actually deal with conflict?
If your neighbor has done something to you, you might go through the neighborhood association, or contact the town. When a friend makes us angry, we might defriend or block them on social media, or write huffy, angry comments under something we disagree with. Politicallythese days, when someone slights or disagrees with someone, the goal is to discredit, belittle, shame, and have others pile on. Nothing is resolved. And resentment becomes more deeply rooted.
When someone wrongs us, when someone sins against us, we want things to be made right, for us. Our self-righteousness demands satisfaction.
That’s not what’s going on in today’s reading. Jesus is looking at this earliest church community, not society at large. And he is giving instructions for the benefit of the sinner, whose actions are pulling him/her/them outside of the community. Jesus is giving the disciples steps to restore that person, to keep the community together.
What an unmodern concept—to care about the sinner, and about the community, more than our own sense of justice.
This is a teaching about reconciliation, and it’s reconciliation based on love and forgiveness.
It’s not easy. It’s counter-cultural. It doesn’t make sense with how our laws are written.
But community can’t be built on the law. Legalism won’t save us. If you look at most laws, including those in Scripture, they’re drawn up around doing no harm. And that’s not bad—those kinds of laws help keep us safe.
When it comes to a faith community, safety isn’t enough.
Jesus doesn’t summarize the commandments by saying, “don’t harm God and don’t harm your neighbors.”
We’re called to love.
God doesn’t want us to coexist (though the sentiment on those blue bumper stickers is better than the alternative of wiping each other completely out of existence).
God wants us to thrive. To help one another. To be there for each other. To love one another.
Both Paul, writing today’s New Testament reading, and Jesus, speaking in today’s Gospel, want to make sure we get the message loud and clear.
When we love, we more than fulfill the law. And Jesus looks at conflict within the church community through love.
When there is conflict, where someone is going astray: deal with it, fix it, work it out. This is where things get hard for us, especially in a church. Historically, churches have publicly fallen on their faces with conflict resolution on big issues. Look at how many scandals and atrocities have been dealt with by the church, by transferring an offending clergyperson somewhere else—out of sight, out of mind, not our problem. That’s conflict, that’s crime, and that’s reconciliation on a different scale, but it’s real and something the church has to deal with in order to be the example it needs to be in the world.
As parishioners, on a much lesser scale, when it comes to having an issue with someone in the congregation, we might find it easier to find another church rather than work through something difficult when someone has wronged us.
Avoidance is an easier path than reconciling. And there is a cost to that.
Best-selling author, theologian and Bishop N.T. Wright says:
“Reconciliation is a huge issue today. We can see the results of not doing it: suicide bombs, campaigns of terror, heavy-handed repression by occupying forces. That’s on the large scale. On the small scale, we see broken marriages, shattered families, feuds between neighbors, divided churches.”
Jesus knows how hard it is going to be for the early church to stick together in community, especially once he is gone. And he goes straight at things, right up front.
He says, first, try to work it out between the two of you. If that doesn’t work, take a couple people with you. Expand that circle slowly. Allow the person to save face as much as possible.
Jesus doesn’t say—talk about that person, gossip, try to get everyone on your side. Instead, deal with it quickly and between the two of you.
Let’s remember the goal: bringing the sinner back into the fold, keeping the community together. All while dealing with what happened.
Here is N.T. Wright again:
“Forgiveness doesn’t mean saying “it didn’t really happen” or “it didn’t really matter.” Forgiveness is when it did happen and it did matter, and you’re going to deal with it and end up loving and accepting one another again anyway.”
We are sinners, all of us. We all mess up. We all fall off the path we are trying to walk. Forgiveness, grace, love—how God deals with us, is how we are to deal with each other.
What does the church need? Reconciliation (that’s our word of the night). The mission of the church is to reconcile the world to God. To do that, we have to model it in our midst. Not in some abstract way, but right down into the details of our lives and how we treat each other.
There’s a part of this reading that is easy to miss. Jesus tells the disciples that when an offender refuses to listen even to the church, “let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”
Let them go, as outsiders.
What do we know about Matthew from the text a few weeks ago? He’s a tax collector. And Jesus still loved and restored him. Even in continued disagreement and going separate ways, the goal is still restoration.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer has a little book called “Life Together,” where he looks at Christian community. He says that when it comes to ministry in a community, listening, active helpfulness, and bearing with others are foundational. He says it is hard to bear the sin of another person because it breaks fellowship with God and with his brother.
“It is only in bearing with him that the great grace of God becomes wholly plain. To cherish no contempt for the sinner but rather to prize the privilege of bearing him means not to have to give him up as lost, to be able to accept him, to preserve fellowship with him through forgiveness… As Christ bore and received us as sinners so we in fellowship may bear and receive sinners into the fellowship of Jesus Christ through the forgiving of sins.”
And Bonhoeffer ties it together saying that “where ministry of listening, active helpfulness, and bearing with others is faithfully performed, the ultimate and highest service can also be rendered, namely, the ministry of the Word of God.”
If as a community, we aren’t oriented towards listening, actively helping, and bearing with others, we are going to have a hard time ministering the Word of God to others. Because where would it be found in our lives and our community?
And then we get to these incredible last lines of the reading: “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”
How many people have heard that line before? How many have used it in the context of gathering together? And how many realized that Matthew includes those words from Jesus, here, when he is talking about sin, disagreement, and reconciliation—not at the Last Supper, or the Sermon on the Mount, or some hopeful healing or miracle. It’s here, where or when we are struggling, maybe even divided, that we need to remember and call on his presence among us.
If we as the church are going to reconcile the world to God, we aren’t going to do it on our own. We need God’s help. Thankfully, God has already done the work, in and through Jesus, who is with us, always.
And if we are going to call on his name, and continue his work, we’ve got to work through the tough stuff, not brush it under the rug and pretend it didn’t happen.
We’ve got to listen, we’ve got to help, we’ve got to bear with each other. That’s what love and forgiveness look like.
Amen.
Bonus quote, which we used in our Zoom discussion about the Gospel reading on Sunday morning. The quote comes from Padraig O’Tuama’s book, “Daily Prayer With the Corrymeela Community”–
“Listening is a sacrament when the topic is important, and when strife divides people in small places, the sacrament of listening is vital. So many people and so many places in the world have difficult relationships with difference. We seek to practice the art of hospitality in the places of hostility, and in so doing practice kindness in places the most in need of kindness.”
Lead in: I just finished my second year of seminary through the Iona Eastern Shore program, which allows our cohort to continue working while we are going to school.July 15 and 16 was a preaching weekend for me at Christ Church Easton. This is the text of the sermon I gave.
Churches/denominations that use the Revised Common Lectionary have prescribed readings for each day and Gospel readings for each Sunday. So we don’t get to pick what Gospel we preach on.
The Gospel reading for July 16 was Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23, “The Parable of the Sower,” where Jesus tells a parable to large crowds gathered by the sea to listen to him, then explains it in private to his disciples.
The image used at the top of the page is “The Sower” by Vincent Van Gogh.
What Will We Do with New Life?
How many people have heard the “Parable of the Sower” before? And how many people have then sat and tried to figure out, “Hhhmmm, which kind of soil am I?”
That’s a fair question to ask. We want to figure out how we relate to the story. At the same time it takes the Gospel message and makes it all about us, the readers or listeners.
I wonder though, if we might hear the Parable of the Sower and wonder what it tells us about the character of God? What can we learn about His kingdom?
Let’s start with the soil. By itself, soil is just soil. And it will go on being soil. But when the Sower adds a seed, that’s when transformation happens; the soil becomes a part of the process of new life springing forth.
Michael Green, in his book, “The Message of Matthew,” tells us:
“It’s not just ‘a farmer’ who went out to sow his field. It is (literally) ‘the farmer’ and he comes bringing the precious seed which can transform the soil. The kingdom comes when the soil and the seed get together. It is a marriage of seed and soil. The seed is the word of God proclaimed by the Sower of God. And the kingdom begins to come to life when the ‘soil’ receives the seed of the word for itself. Then it begins to germinate and shoot.”
In Matthew’s telling of the parable, Jesus is the Sower, and God’s Word, spread generously into the soil, adds what wasn’t there, what we can’t add on our own, what we need God to do. And that changes everything. He changes everything.
Through his sowing of the Word, Jesus is creating his kingdom in and among us. And listen to how He sows: some seeds fell on the path, other seeds fell on rocky ground, other seeds fell among thorns, other seeds fell on good soil. God is not stingy with his seeds, he spreads them everywhere. And that’s good news for us, for sure.
“Starlight Sower,” by Hai Knafo.
Why is that good news? First, we can’t create this transformation, this new life, on our own. We can’t plant the seed, it’s not our seed. We need God to take the initiative. Forgive me a cheesy pun, but in my head I hear a version of Tom Cruise’s voice from the movie Top Gun saying, “We feel the need for SEEDS!” And I apologize if that is the only line you remember from this sermon.
There are more reasons why it is good news that God is not stingy when he sows his seeds. As mentioned, we have a tendency to hear this parable and try to figure out which kind of soil we are.
Am I the path, where the birds come and eat the seed up? Am I the rocky ground, without much soil, no depth and the sun scorches and dries up? Am I full of thorns, choking the seeds? Or am I good soil, bringing forth grain?
I wonder if this is one of those multiple-choice questions where the answer is: “E: All of the above.” What if on any given day, we might be one way and on a different day another?
Catch me on a Monday and I am distracted, maybe I’ve just been in an argument, or I’ve just gotten some bad news, or the washing machine has overflowed just before I have to leave for work. In those moments, I am not fertile soil. Don’t look for grain coming from me then.
But I don’t have to stay that way. Jesus is going to sow the seeds of God’s Word and I might miss it the first time, but I can have better days and better moments, and be more open and be more fertile. And I might not always stay that way either, as much as I want to.
God’s willing to work with us. No matter what soil we are, he’s going to sow the seeds. But he wants us to get it. He wants us to be fruitful.
Matthew’s Gospel is known as the discipleship Gospel. The author wants us to understand what it means to follow Jesus, what the costs are, and what’s expected of us.
At the beginning of today’s reading, Jesus goes and sits beside the sea. That sounds nice, like something we can relate to living on the Eastern Shore. Then such big crowds gather around him that gets into a boat. The thing about being in a boat on the water, sound carries. He’s created his own amplification system.
And he tells the big crowds about the sower and the seed. And as he finishes his teaching he says, “let anyone with ears listen!” Knowing not everyone will understand.
The way today’s reading is put together, we jump from verse 9 to verse 18, where Jesus explains the parable. But the part we jumped over, is the disciples coming up to Jesus after he has been preaching to the crowds and they ask him why he speaks in parables.
So the second part of today’s reading is Jesus speaking directly to his disciples. No big crowds. And now he focuses on the soil. He asks the disciples to look in the mirror. He asks us to look in the mirror.
If through God’s Word, if through sowing these seeds, Jesus is bringing forth new life, if that’s his example to us, if that is what he is showing as the character of God, what does that ask of us?
He’s asking us to be open, to be receptive, to be good soil. And Jesus spells it out for us clearly. This means, “to hear the word and understand it, to bear fruit and yield, whether a hundredfold, sixty, or thirty.”
What does it mean to bear fruit here?
I want to go back to a couple weeks ago, to something Fr. Bill Ortt said: he said that wherever a believer is, wherever a disciple is, there is the kingdom of God.
As believers, as disciples, we bring the kingdom with us. Well, jeez, what does that mean? Here is another from Fr. Bill—and this is so helpful. Fr. Bill told us to think of it as KINGSHIP rather than kingdom. That we are closer to understanding when we think of it as a RELATIONSHIP, not a place.
To bear fruit, to carry that seed, that new life from God, sprouting in us, would be to have a different, deeper, relationship with God. To put God’s love at the center of who we are, how we live, what we do. To live differently than what we see going on in the world today.
This is not a matter of reducing the moral of the story to, we should all be better people. In fact, we might not want to try to reduce Jesus’s parables to simple morals anyway—they have a tendency to expand and confound our thinking and increase our wonder more than they do to clarify things.
Jesus is giving us a story about the Sower, (he calls it the parable of the sower, not the parable of the soil), about the word of God (the seed) creating new life where there was only soil. And maybe we don’t take enough notice in real life, watching seeds crack open, start to sprout, blossom, BLOOM. Have you ever watched that happen over the course of days, weeks, months in your own garden? I am always late getting vegetables in and right now my tomatoes are green and just taking shape on the vines. And I get excited every time I go water them. Do you get giddy and overjoyed at the very simplest things?
What about thinking about yourself that way, and your relationship with God. What if our hearts were full of gratitude for this new life that has been given to us, that has nothing to do with anything we’ve done?
How do we respond? Maybe we want to do our best to cultivate the soil of our hearts, of our lives, so that God’s Word can take root, can crack open, can bloom, and bear fruit? Maybe our thanks to God IS to bear fruit—to carry that seed, that new life, into who and how we are in the world.
No matter what kind of terrain I am at the moment, Jesus is sowing the seeds that offer me new life. What an incredible gift. What am I going to do with it? What are we going to do with it?
I want to leave you with the words of Debie Thomas, from her book “Into the Mess & Other Jesus Stories,” and what she wishes for the church, and what we might take from the Parable of the Sower—
“How I wish we were known for our absurd generosity. How I wish we were famous for being like the Sower, going out in joy, scattering seed before and behind us in the widest arcs our arms can make. How I wish the world could laugh at our lavishness instead of recoiling from our stinginess. How I wish the people in our lives could see a quiet, gentle confidence in us when we tend to the hard, rocky, thorny places in our communities, instead of finding us abrasive, judgmental, exacting, and insular. How I wish seeds of love, mercy, justice, humility, honor, and truthfulness would fall through our fingers in such appalling quantities that even the birds, the rocks, the thorns, and the shallow, sun-scorched corners of the world would burst forth into colorful, riotous life.”
Jesus has sown new life, God’s love, into the soil of our lives. What are we going to do with it?
Lead in: I just finished my second year of seminary through the Iona Eastern Shore program, which allows our cohort to continue working while we are going to school.June 17 and 18 was a preaching weekend for me at Christ Church Easton. This is the text of the sermon I gave.
Churches/denominations that use the Revised Common Lectionary have prescribed readings for each day and Gospel readings for each Sunday. So we don’t get to pick what Gospel we preach on.
The Gospel reading for June 18 wasMatthew 9:25-10:23, where Jesus calls his 12 apostles and sends them out to further the work that he has been doing: curing the sick, raising the dead, cleansing lepers, and casting out demons, with warnings about what will happen to them.
“Send Us Out”
In January 2017, I had just started working at the church and I remember sitting down with Fr. Bill Ortt. It was time to start Bible studies and kick off The Alpha Course and he asked how I felt about everything. I said, “it’s daunting. And exciting.”
I was starting things I hadn’t done before. Anticipation and anxiety were in the water together. And all I could do was jump in.
Saying that, I can’t imagine what was going through the minds of the 12 disciples when Jesus calls them in today’s reading. So far in Matthew’s Gospel, they have seen Jesus teach, heal, and cure diseases; they have heard him give his Sermon on the Mount. They watched Jesus make a leper clean and were afraid for their lives on a boat as he commanded a storm to stop. When they got off the boat, he drove demons out of man everyone was afraid of; and we heard last week how he cured a woman who had been hemorrhaging for 12 years and then he raised a leader from the synagogue’s daughter from the dead.
Now he calls the 12 together and says, okay, your turn. Now you do it. “Proclaim the good news, the kingdom of heaven has come near, cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons.” Wow. No nerves or pressure there.
The disciples have been riding the bus that Jesus was driving, but he was making all the stops and doing all the work. They were just along for the ride. They probably didn’t realize what “Follow me” entailed.
Let’s look at today’s text just before Jesus sends them out to see what prompts him to do this. He’s going about to all the cities and all the villages teaching and proclaiming the good news and curing every disease.
And then Matthew tells us: “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore, ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” And Jesus calls his 12.
The time is now. The harvest is ready. People are lost, hurting, sick. And Jesus needs those he has called to help him, to be the laborers.
This is the first time in Matthew’s Gospel that he refers to them as “apostles,” which means those who are sent out.
What are they sent out to do? Help people. Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. Do what Jesus has been doing. They are to share in and further his calling, his mission, under his authority. Go to where people are hurting. Care for them, give them hope. The things you do when you love someone.
As Matthew was making the point to get these things across to his readers then, they are still intended to speak to us now. Michael Green was an international evangelist, pastor, and author. In his book, “The Message of Matthew,” he gives us a way of thinking about Jesus’s mission charge to the apostles by summarizing it in five words: see, care, pray, receive, go.
SEE: “When Jesus SAW the crowds”—this is first and foremost, the apostles had to SEE the needs of those who were suffering or in trouble. We need to do the same.
CARE: “When Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion on them.” Green points out that the word Matthew used for having compassion means “he was moved in his guts,” he was stirred deep inside. For the first apostles, or for us, when we see people suffering, we are called to care deeply.
PRAY: “Ask the Lord of the harvest to send workers into his harvest.” We are not the Lord of the harvest, that’s God, and we need to ask for his help and guidance. Stay connected to Him.
RECEIVE: And what Green says here is that the apostles, and we, need to receive training from Jesus, which they do both in watching him, in being with him, and in being sent out by him; and that they also need to receive authority. “It will not be you speaking but the Spirit of the Father speaking through you.” We need to allow ourselves to be open to, and filled with God’s Spirit. It’s not about us, it is about what God can do through us.
GO: Jesus commands, “Go,” and “As you go”… that’s the thing about being sent out. They and we actually have to go out. In preparing them for what’s to come, Jesus doesn’t lecture them about weekly church attendance. He sends them out and warns them that it is going to be dangerous.
Jesus and apostles. Fresco in Cappadocia
Jesus spends some time on this warning. He goes over the rough things that are on the horizon for the apostles. It’s going to be difficult, and it is going to be costly. “But the one who endures to the end will be saved.”
Debie Thomas in her book, “Into the Mess,” says when it comes to faith, “Discomfort is what success looks like.”
“If our overriding priority as Christians is to secure our own comfort, then we cannot follow Jesus. The discipleship Jesus describes will disorient and disrupt us. It will make us the neighborhood weirdos. It will shake things up in our families, our friendship circles, our churches, our communities.”
Caring is costly. As a society now, we are flooded with images and stories of worldwide suffering, violence, sickness—and what is the most common response? Change the channel. Close the laptop. Don’t think about it. Or better yet these days, find someone or a group of people who don’t agree with us and blame them. If we make it a point to care for the marginalized and cast out, we risk becoming marginalized or cast out ourselves. Jesus asks us to step out and take that risk.
When we care about those around us, we open ourselves to getting hurt. When we open our heart to love someone, sooner or later, pain is a part of that love. Love in this life also has loss lingering behind it.
The apostle Paul has a sense of that loss, of that cost, when he writes today’s reading from Romans. He finds something in this suffering:
“We boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” (Romans 5:2-5)
Jesus didn’t send the apostles out alone. He was with them. He cared about them. And he doesn’t send us out alone. He cares about us. And when we go through the pain and suffering that loving God and each other can bring, Jesus shows us that suffering can point ultimately to hope, and hope in God does not disappoint us.
If we are doing the work that God has given us to do, loving like Jesus, in a world that pushes back against it, we are going to struggle. I will tell you something that is amazing to me: we have so many people in our church community, who have used the struggles, the suffering, the loss they have experienced as a launching point either for ministries that they have helped start, or who are showing up for people in new and deeper ways because of what they have been through. They don’t want others to go through the same struggles alone.
That’s part of what being sent out looks like. Seeing, Caring, Praying, Receiving, Going.
A number of years go in Fr. Bill’s 30-week Kerygma Class, he drew two circles on a white board, one that had arrows pointing inward, and one with arrows pointing out. He talked about the circles as churches, inward facing and outward facing, and asked which one looked more like Jesus’s idea of love and caring? Barbara Coleman, now the Reverend Barbara, put her hands on top of her head with her fingers facing up to show the arrows facing out. And that has been her apostolic antler reminder ever since. We don’t see Barbara as much here anymore because she discerned a call to become a Deacon. She was ordained here in this church in October 2020, and now serves multiple parishes in Dorchester County, and heads up the food pantry. She calls herself the “Deacon of Dorchester.” She’s been sent out.
“Apostolic Antlers” from Rev. Barbara, Fr. Bill, and our Kerygma Class
Another part of today’s reading that keeps stirring me up is how the apostles learned from Jesus. He didn’t ask them to do anything he wasn’t already doing. Beyond his teaching, I bet they learned as much from watching him, from being around him, and from trying to do what he did.
It’s Father’s Day weekend. Happy Father’s Day to all the dads here. I’m convinced that we learn more from watching our fathers, our parents, and who they are, than from anything they might tell us. At least I hope that is the case, as neither of my daughters seem to listen to anything I say… The story about watching who someone is that that comes to my heart happened leading up to Halloween many years ago. So you get a quick Halloween story in June. Sorry, I’ve got the microphone.
From the late 1970s to the mid-80s, Easton had an annual haunted house that was unparalleled and unrivaled. In terms of scariness, creativity, and ingenuity, Disney World fell short of the haunted houses that the Easton Kiwanis Club put on. My father was a part of the Kiwanis Club and our whole family jumped into helping, for a good chunk of September and all of October each year.
They moved from place to place—from an old house on Dutchman’s Lane, to the old Idlewild Elementary School, when it was left empty in Idlewild Park. There were spot-built hydraulic floors, an illusion where a man changed into a werewolf on stage; swinging rope bridges, chainsaws, and even a flamethrower. The last two years of the haunted house, it was on a property in the woods off Manadier Road, at the end of Dutchman’s Lane. People had to park in front of what is now Auto Zone on Dover Road, and ride buses to the haunted woods.
The last year they held it, my friends and I as teenagers were given our own area along the wooded trail, a rundown old farm building, to create our scene to scare people. It was right next to where the buses pulled in.
One night a crowd got off the buses, a big crowd, most were in their 20s, and after riding the buses out there to this dark, deserted woods, they were scared, freaked out, didn’t want to go in and started screaming and shoving, not listening to anyone—it was the beginning of a riot. No one could calm them down and things were elevating past a boiling point.
From where I was standing, I could see my Dad come out of the woods, walk right up to the guys in the front of the crowd, who no one wanted any part of dealing with, and he stepped right into the mess, right where someone was needed. He diffused the whole situation. The entire crowd calmed down, made peace, and the evening, and the show, went on.
My Dad, 1980s era
That night was more than 35 years ago and I have never forgotten it, watching my dad help restore order out of short-fused chaos. Talking about it later, he said, “I have no idea what I would have done if it turned violent.” He didn’t think, he acted—not just sent out, he seemed shot out, going to where the critical need was. There have been times when I have called on his example in chaotic situations and tried to live into that, diffusing things, and trying to bring peace.
God connects us to people we can learn from; we are always being shaped.
I have to imagine that as Peter, John, and Matthew the tax collector were sent out, and their ministries expanded, that they had their own experiences of watching and learning from Jesus as he healed, cared, loved, and brought peace. They could call on their experiences of watching him. And as we read and discuss the stories of Jesus in the Gospels, we learn how to model ourselves after him. What would Jesus see? What would he care about? How would he love? Who would he send?
How about us? Are we ready to see, care, pray, receive, and go?
Lead in: I am in my second year of seminary through the Iona Eastern Shore program, which allows our cohort to continue working while we are going to school.April 15-16, with a last minute switch, was a preaching weekend for me at Christ Church Easton. This is the text of the sermon I gave.
Churches/denominations that use the Revised Common Lectionary have prescribed readings for each day and Gospel readings for each Sunday. So we don’t get to pick what Gospel we preach on.
The Gospel reading for April 16 was John 20:19-31, which most people know for “Doubting Thomas,” the disciple who won’t believe that Jesus has been resurrected until he touches Jesus’s wounds for himself. We are all a bit like Thomas. The reading is where Jesus appears to the disciples for the first time after his death.
“Do Not Doubt, But Believe”
I’m a big fan of John’s Gospel. On the one hand, he’s a bit like the Rodney Dangerfield of the gospels—not enough respect to get his own lectionary year like the synoptic Gospels; on the other hand, every lectionary year is made better because we have John peppered throughout them.
For John, “believing” is a big deal. He uses the word “believe” 98 times in his Gospel, always as a verb, as something active and dynamic. He tells us at the end of today’s reading that these stories are written that we might believe that Jesus is the Messiah and through believing have life in his name.
Today’s reading is John’s version of Jesus giving the Holy Spirit to the disciples. Remember, John didn’t write Acts, that was Luke, so we don’t get the Pentecost telling of the story here.
There are scholars who say that John’s Gospel is the one most likely to have originated with an eyewitness account. We read the author describing himself as being there at the crucifixion and later, on the beach with Peter and the others. There are details in John that we don’t find in the others.
Let’s look at two stories of the giving of the Holy Spirit. At the beginning of Luke’s Gospel, he says that after investigating everything he wants to write an orderly account of all that went on, talking to everyone he can. Each Gospel sets out its witness to the good news of Jesus Christ, and I love Luke (he gives us the prodigal son, the Road to Emmaus, etc). But when I think humorously about the way stories get passed down over time, there is some part of me that thinks about Luke asking everyone for their recollection of Pentecost:
“And there was FIRE! Fire? Yeah, FIRE! It was intense! And then people were speaking in tongues, remember that? And people thought we were drunk, and Peter was like, noooo waaaayy, it’s only 9:00 in the morning…”
In Luke’s telling of the story in Acts, it is a public event, a spectacle.
In contrast, listen to John’s account:
“Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’”
Maybe it’s because I tend prefer being understated, but I love the simple, straightforward, intimate and understated way John gives us the Holy Spirit. No crowds, no fire, no speaking in tongues. Jesus breathed on them and gave them a new Spirit. A new life in Him. A life that has overcome death.
Does that sound familiar? This is from Genesis, Chapter 2, Verse 7:
“then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.”
I love that John sees what Jesus is doing and connects it back to the beginning (remember he starts his whole Gospel account with “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”) John wants to make sure we don’t miss what’s happening. This is new life, that comes through Jesus, which is giving us a direct connection to God.
I get excited about the Holy Spirit.
But let’s backtrack to where the disciples are in the reading and what’s going on.
Jesus has been arrested, crucified, and was buried in a tomb. The disciples scattered, afraid for their lives. Just before today’s reading, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and found the stone rolled away, she ran and got Peter and the one whom Jesus loved (who we think of as John, the author) and they went in and found the tomb empty. And then the men left and went home. All Peter and John saw was the empty tomb.
Mary Magdalene stuck around, talked to angels, then encountered Jesus, who told her to go and tell the disciples, which she did. But none of them have seen Jesus for themselves yet. They might dismiss her story as being unbelievable story, saying she was overly excited at finding the tomb empty—she could have been hallucinating.
Now, they were hiding out together in a locked room, hoping not to be found or found out. As writer and pastor Frederick Buechner describes it:
“They had bolted the door and were listening for the dreaded sound of footsteps on the stair when suddenly Jesus was among them. He stood in their midst—always in their midst, this man, turning up when they least expected him—and told them to breathe his breath, his holy breath and spirit, so that they could go out into the world again and perform his holy work.”
6th century mosaic in the Church of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna
Knowing that they are going to be scared out of their wits, Jesus’s first words to them are “Peace be with you.”
He reassures them. He shows them his hands and his side, so that they know it’s him and that this is real. And the disciples rejoiced. Of course they did. If there are scenes out of Scripture that you would want to be there for—this has to be one of them! This is massive. It’s transformative. It’s life changing. It’s death conquering.
Jesus gives the disciples what they need to believe. And then he gives them his Spirit and gives them work to do.
But Thomas isn’t there. The other disciples tell him what happened, but he isn’t having it. “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hand and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”
On the one hand, we can say, sure, everyone talks a big game when Jesus isn’t standing there, just you wait… But I think this is true to life. How many of us, when hearing friends tell us an unbelievable story, decide, “I’ll believe it when I see it.” Even if it comes from people we trust, we still want proof. Thomas wants the same experience the others had.
So what does Jesus do? He comes back. He shows up again, just for Thomas. He gives Thomas what he needs to believe. Jesus doesn’t scold him, he is there for him and tells Thomas, “Do not doubt, but believe.”
Notice, Thomas doesn’t get kicked out of the club for doubting. That is one of the wonderful aspects of this reading—there is room in our faith for doubt. It is okay to want to see for ourselves. It’s okay not to believe just because everyone else tells you to. Jesus works with Thomas.
And Thomas believes; seeing is believing as they say. Jesus then delivers the showstopper of lines, a line so important to faith: “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”
That’s us. I don’t know about you—I haven’t encountered the bodily resurrected Jesus in the flesh. But I have come to believe. How?
Think of the work Jesus is asking the disciples to take on. To help people believe, when they haven’t seen him for themselves.
Here is Frederick Buechner again:
“The risen Christ is risen in his glory, but he is also Christ risen in the hearts of those, who although they have never touched the mark of the nails, have been themselves so touched by him, that they believe anyway. However faded and threadbare, what they have seen of him is at least enough to get their bearings by.”
Believe. What does that mean here? Is that an intellectual affirmation? Is it convincing ourselves and never doubting? Is this just a box we have to check off? I don’t think so.
For the disciples, their belief was foundational to the mission Jesus gave them. If they didn’t believe, what kind of witnesses would they be? If they don’t believe, why would anyone they meet want to believe?
Jesus’s life and love and good news are dependent on the disciples to continue to spread it out into the world. He was inviting them into an intimate, dynamic relationship with him.
And the same thing is true of us now. If people are going to come to believe in Jesus, it probably won’t be because they have had a bodily encounter with the resurrected Christ; it will be through the Holy Spirit, which is carried and passed on by the NEW body of Christ, the church, US.
The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, in his book, “Tokens of Trust: An Introduction to Christian Belief,” talks about a young Jewish woman named Etty Hillesum. She was in her 20s when the Germans occupied Holland. She watched her world turn into an utter nightmare. She was sent to a concentration camp at Westerbork before being shipped to the gas chambers at Auschwitz.
She wrote in her diary: “There must be someone to live through it all and bear witness to the fact that God lived, even in these times. And why should I not be that witness?”
Williams describes her attitude and commitment like this:
“She decided to occupy a certain place in the world, a place where others could somehow connect with God through her. She took responsibility for making God credible in the world. She took responsibility for God’s believability.”
What if THAT is what believing in God, believing in Jesus, means. That with and through our lives, we take responsibility for God’s believability. How many of us would say that we believe if that were the standard?
That’s what Jesus is asking of his disciples. But he doesn’t leave them on their own to do it, he doesn’t abandon them. He shows up. He brings them peace. He breathes his Holy Spirit into them.
The fact that we are gathered here in a church worshipping and loving Jesus, trying to understand his life and example, and bearing witness to the good news of his Resurrection says that the early disciples, with God’s help and the Holy Spirit, were up for the task.
I wonder: are we?
Let me give a brief witness. Over the past month, my daughter Ava has been in and out of A.I. DuPont Hospital, three times, first for surgery, then with multiple ambulance rides for seizures she couldn’t come out of. She’s home now and we’re hopeful she’ll be back in school this week and going to her senior prom next weekend. But epilepsy is challenging at times, and it’s been a rough, slow, frustrating go of things.
Not once going through it, have we, or I felt alone. Through so many text messages, phone calls, people checking in before or after classes, the school systems offering help, prayers, hugs, you name it–I have felt the Holy Spirit and God’s love at work through friends, through this congregation, through family, sometimes through strangers–volunteers at the Ronald McDonald House or, nurses, doctors, and people working at the Einstein Brother’s Bagels at the hospital, who can tell you are beyond tired this morning.
My experience is not unique. One of the things that touches my heart the most is to hear how people have shown up, how people have been there, how people have been LOVE in the lives of others. The way we love one another, even as Jesus loves us, can help make God believable for others.
We can see the Holy Spirit being God’s love in the world. We can be the Holy Spirit being God’s love in the world.
In the dark and confusing times that we are in the middle of in the world right now, can our belief, can our lives, can our love, be a witness for God’s believability in the world?
Yes, we can be that witness. Yes, God’s love, moving through us, through our belief, and our lives, can be credible in the world. That’s how the Holy Spirit works. No fire required.
Amen.
Our Iona Eastern Shore seminary class with professor, Fr. Dan Dunlap and guest presenter, Dr. Tom Long, one of the United States foremost preachers. That is how we started Saturday.
“I want to love like Jesus”—that’s a goal that’s thrown around by both fans of Jesus and maybe even doubters. Most people agree that Jesus knew something about love. And that that was and is a good thing.
How many people can tell us more about what that kind of love looks like? Is it just a hopeful thing to say without any real substance behind it? Or are we willing to look closer as to what it might mean to love like Jesus.
Throughout each of the Gospels, Jesus makes a point of reaching across cultural, social, and religious boundaries and barriers to include people who were cast out or left out.
True to that form, the woman at the well, per culture and circumstance, is someone Jesus should not have been talking to.
Going through Samaria, Jesus was in a region and among a people the Jewish people didn’t look kindly on.
It’s the middle of the day, incredibly hot, a time when no one would have been at the well. And here comes a woman to get water.
Bible scholar N.T. Wright spells it out:
“In that culture, many devout Jewish men would not have allowed themselves to be alone with a woman. If it was unavoidable that they should be, they certainly would not have entered into conversation with her. The risk, they would have thought, was too high to risk impurity, risk of gossip, risk ultimately of being drawn into immorality. And yet Jesus is talking to this woman.”
If her being a woman wasn’t bad enough, on top of that she is a Samaritan. The Jewish people and the Samaritans didn’t mix. The Jews wanted nothing to do with the Samaritans. And no way in the world would they have considered sharing food or drink with them, much less sharing a drinking vessel.
Jesus reaches out to the woman by asking for a drink. He puts himself out there. Asks for hospitality. He makes himself vulnerable.
And who does he do this to? A woman who is coming to the well in the middle of the day to avoid having to deal with people, someone who has a stigma on her, a shame.
Debie Thomas in her book, “Into the Mess & Other Jesus Stories” makes the point perfectly:
“The Samaritan woman is the Other, the alien, the outsider, the heretic, the stranger. Jesus breaks all the boundaries he is not supposed to break to reach out to her.
What Jesus does when he enters into conversation with a Samaritan woman is radical and risky; it stuns his own disciples because it asks them to dream of a different kind of social and religious order. A different kind of kingdom.”
Maybe that’s a clue for us. Loving like Jesus asks us to envision a different kind of social order, a different kind of kingdom.
I picture this woman and the gossip about her, the things said to her, the looks, the scorn, the judgment. And here is Jesus, a Jewish teacher, and how does he talk to her? Without judgment, without shaming, without looking down on her, and at the same time fully engaging with her and fully seeing her for who she is.
John, as the writer, packs a lot into this story:
This conversation is the longest conversation Jesus has with anyone in any of the Gospels.
In John’s Gospel, this woman at the well is the first person to whom Jesus reveals his identity as the Messiah.
She is the first believer in any of the Gospels to become an evangelist and bring her entire city to a saving experience of Jesus.
All this for a Samaritan woman. This encounter was a big deal to John for him to give it so much space and meaning, and it was a big deal to Jesus.
So how does Jesus go about revealing his identity to the woman? Does he prove himself by healing the sick? Does he feed 5,000 people? Does he raise anyone from the dead or turn water into wine? No. He has a conversation with her.
He offers her “living water,” which she doesn’t understand. But he sits with her, listens to her, speaks to her, and reveals who he is.
Cynthia Kittredge in her book, “Conversations with Scripture: The Gospel of John points out:
“That Jesus’ revelation and the woman’s realization of him come through dialogue is an important feature to notice… Jesus does no sign here. There is no miracle.” He makes a claim which then takes a dialogue, a back and forth to make sense of.
“This is a type of dialogue in John’s Gospel which reflects a way individuals and people come to faith—through a process of effort and discussion.”
Jesus reveals himself with no miracles or signs, simply with conversation, insight, and presence. He hears her, he sees her, he doesn’t dismiss her—he shares with her.
How did the woman respond? She goes running off to her town and tells absolutely everyone there. And Jesus stuck around and confirmed her testimony for people. She went from scorned outsider to credible witness.
Jesus restores her and transforms her.
Is this what it looks like to love like Jesus? Is this something Jesus still offers us today?
Here’s where Debie Thomas asks questions that we need to ask:
“Just as he does for the Samaritan woman, Jesus invites us to see ourselves and each other through the eyes of love, not judgment. Can we, like Jesus, become soft landing places for people who are alone, carrying stories of humiliation too heavy to bear? Can we see and name the world’s brokenness without shaming? Can we tell the truth and honor each other’s dignity at the same time?”
In the six-plus years I have been at Christ Church Easton, being a part of small groups has been a revelation for me in witnessing what becoming this kind of soft landing place can do.
For several years we ran the Alpha Course after our Saturday evening service, and we had between 90 and 100 people who would meet in the Parish Hall for dinner. Our youth group and leaders were a part of that number as well. Our Parish Hall was packed with food, laughter, and new relationships forming. Everyone sat and ate together before breaking into small groups, and over the course of 11 weeks we also went on a weekend retreat together.
That program became a landing place for people in recovery. In many cases these were people who were getting clean through Narcotics Anonymous. And it was a huge leap of faith for them to walk through the door of a church. Repeatedly we heard, “I didn’t think a church would want someone like me here.” People named and worked through shame they carried. They shared stories of why they started using; of their low points, in some cases being in prison; and they shared hopes and dreams—things like being able to be present, to be a parent in the lives of their children.
They went deep when they shared. And that gave permission for everyone else to go deep with their own struggles and failures. We had a congregation of people come to know by name someone who they might have dismissed, labeled, and judged. Which would have been the congregation’s loss.
Middle schoolers in our youth group would find and sit with—both in church and at dinner—the friends they made, in some cases big dudes covered with tattoos, who came to absolutely love these kids. There were no labels, just love. There were no more outsiders or outcasts, just a community of people, a group of friends. It has a holy thing and a holy time.
It looked a lot like Jesus with the woman at the well.
Fr. Gregory Boyle in his book, “Tattoos on the Heart,” tells a story about a former gang member who lived near their church and who liked to hang out his window to talk to people on their way by. One day Boyle was walking by and the guy yelled out, “Hey G, I love you,” and waved him by like he was blessing him. Boyle thanked him, and the guy’s reply was, “Of course, you’re in my jurisdiction.”
Boyle uses the idea of “jurisdiction” to talk about the area of our love, and he talks about God’s jurisdiction, the area of His love, which is all-inclusive.
When thinking about how to love like Jesus, we need to expand our jurisdiction to be as inclusive, as expansive, as Jesus’s. In the story of the woman at the well, he gives us the example of what it looks like to expand our love and compassion to include someone who had been left out.
We don’t need miracles or signs to accomplish this—it is something any of us can do. And we do it with presence, vulnerability, empathy, dialogue, listening, and seeing.
I want to leave you with some of Fr. Gregory Boyle’s words about expanding the jurisdiction of our love:
“Close both eyes; see with (eyes of your heart). Then, we are no longer saddled by the burden of our persistent judgments, our ceaseless withholding, our constant exclusion. Our sphere has widened, and we find ourselves quite unexpectantly, in a new, expansive location, in a place of endless acceptance and infinite love.
We’ve wandered into God’s own jurisdiction.”
That’s how we love like Jesus.
Amen.
* On Saturday, March 11, I preached at our Iona Eastern Shore seminary class (at Old Trinity Church in Church Creek, MD) on John 4:5-42, the story of the Samaritan woman at the well. The text above is the sermon that I gave.
Lead in: I am in my second year in seminary through the Iona Eastern Shore program, which allows our cohort to continue working while we are going to school. February 11-12 was a preaching weekend for me at Christ Church Easton. This is the text of the sermon I gave.
Churches/denominations that use the Revised Common Lectionary have prescribed readings for each day and Gospel readings for each Sunday. So we don’t get to pick what Gospel we preach on.
The Gospel reading for February 12 was a rough one–Matthew 5:21-37, part of the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus tells his disciples that not committing murder or adultery aren’t enough, you can’t hold onto anger or lust, or you are in the same shape, then moves into divorce and lying.
“Love Over Law”
There is a quote that comes to mind when I read this part of Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount. It’s by Lao Tzu, a Chinese mystic philosopher. He says:
“Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your actions; watch your actions, they become your habits; watch your habits, they become your character; watch your character, it becomes your destiny.”
What begin as our thoughts, form who we become; and inform our destiny.
Our thoughts matter. Our words matter. Our actions matter. From their smallest beginnings, they can become our lives without us realizing it.
Let’s remember what Jesus said in last week’s reading, the passage just before today’s Gospel. Jesus said, “Do not think I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill… not one letter will pass from the law until all is accomplished.”
He continues on to say not to break the least of the commandments or teach others to do the same, and that your righteousness needs to EXCEED that of the scribes and the pharisees.
Your righteousness needs to EXCEED the the letter of the law.
Some of the laws that Jesus cites in today’s reading are about actions: “You shall not murder,” “You shall not commit adultery,” and then he brings in divorce and lying. These are all actions, things that people do.
Jesus is trying to head these things off at the pass before they get anywhere close to being actions. Work with them when they are still thoughts.
Since Jesus has gone there, let’s think about it in a hypothetical situation with vengeance and anger. If someone has wronged you in the worst way, so much so that you decide you are going to take action: you are seething, you get into your car, you drive to where they are, you walk up to the door.
If the law is “thou shalt not commit murder”—where is the easiest place to stop that from happening? It’s not when you get to the house looking for revenge. It’s before you even get into the car. Once you’ve started the process, you are moving down a path that the further you get, the harder it is to turn back.
Jesus is telling his disciples not to go down that path.
Murder is obviously an extreme case. Jesus dials it back to anger: if you are angry with a brother or sister or if they have something against you—and here he says something remarkable for those of us sitting in church—before you go to church, reconcile yourself with your brother or sister. Then come to church.
Why would he say that? How is that a good church growth strategy?
Jesus is trying to build a community founded on love and caring for each other. If you’ve got a bunch of people worshipping together who have grudges against each other, or who come to have real issues with each other, that’s not a loving community.
Fr. Bill pointed out last week that in relaying this teaching and these stories that Jesus is telling his disciples, Matthew is passing along those instructions to his readers and ultimately intending it for us as disciples today. Jesus’ teaching is also meant for us today.
Let’s think about things in terms of us today. I think we all have friends who aren’t church-goers, some who maybe used to be, and others who simply don’t go to church and when they tell you why, it is because they know people who go to church and then they see how they live their lives outside church, and they want nothing to do with that kind of hypocrisy. They see them out in the community, how they treat people, the masks they wear, the things they do.
Look again at what Jesus is saying: if you have issues with someone, work it out, then come to church. Have your heart in the right place and your lives in the right place when you are here. Our relationships with each other are integral to who the church is. Jesus is holding us to a higher standard.
We have to see our relationships with each other as part of our Christian calling.
Jesus is asking his disciples, and us, to be accountable. Both to God and to each other.
My grandfather, my mom’s father, lived to be 92. He was a recovering alcoholic and spent the last 56 years of his life sober. He was a director of Tuerk House in Baltimore and a program director for the National Council on Alcoholism. He ultimately made his living and his life about helping people who wanted to get sober.
He lived in Baltimore and Towson, before spending the last years of his life in Easton. When he and my grandmother moved here, one of the first things he did was to find out when and where the AA meetings were, so he could connect with people.
William Robert (Bob) Miller
We had a memorial service for him at Londonderry, where they lived, and people who knew him from AA came from Baltimore to be there and to speak. The Baltimore Sun newspaper wrote two stories about him after he passed.
He was extroverted, loved to talk and tell stories, and he was compassionate and an incredible listener. He was considered a rock for those battling alcoholism who were trying to reclaim their lives.
A saying that became his mantra was: “I don’t care whether an alcoholic came from Yale or jail or Park Avenue or park bench, I’m here to help.”
I will also always remember someone asking him if once you were an alcoholic, you could ever not be an alcoholic again, to which he said, “You can turn a cucumber into a pickle, but you can’t turn a pickle back into a cucumber.”
I bring my grandfather up because the 12 steps of AA became a way of life for him. And I want to look for a minute at a few of the steps and think about them in terms of accountability and in terms of how Jesus is asking his disciples to think and live. Here are a few of the steps in the program:
Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
Admit to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
Humbly ask God to remove our shortcomings.
Make a list of all persons we have harmed, and become willing to make amends to them all.
Make direct amends to such people wherever possible.
Continue to take personal inventory and when we are wrong promptly admit it.
Seek through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understand Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
That sounds a lot like what Jesus is asking of his disciples.
There is law and then there is lifestyle. The 12 steps in AA are a way for people to live differently, to be accountable, and to stay humble.
Jesus is asking his disciples, and us, to live differently, to be accountable, and to stay humble.
It’s a way of life, not just about following the law.
We’re getting towards the end of our Bible study of Romans, which started in the fall. I won’t pull you too far into Romans, but one of the points that Paul makes repeatedly is that the law is not sufficient for salvation.
The law is prescriptive: it tells you what to do and what not to do, but by itself, it doesn’t change us.
Jesus Christ is transformative, he takes us from being stuck in the flesh, in sin, to being in Christ, in the Spirit, to becoming new creations.
Paul points out where we are stuck in today’s reading from Corinthians:
“I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food. Even now you still are not ready, for you are still of the flesh. For as long as there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving according to human inclinations?”
The law is the baby food. It’s meant to get us to the next thing. If we are stuck on the law, in jealousy and arguing, we’re not there yet.
Let’s leave the law for a minute. Let’s talk about anger.
For me, road rage is a hang up, it’s a real thing. When I am driving other people can lose their humanity quickly for me and I can lose mine. And I don’t mean in a run- people-off-the-road or get-out-of-the-car-and-start-a-fight way. I mean in a being overtaken by anger-way; a not being the person I should be-way.
I commuted from Easton to Washington, DC, and back for work for more than four years. It was a 70-mile commute, one way, which included Route 295 into DC. I mostly listened to sports radio or loud, obnoxious music, both of which helped. But I frequently felt my blood boil, my heart rate ramp up, and it wasn’t a good thing. And then when I got home in the evening, I wasn’t a horrible person or a terrible father, but I wasn’t fully present.
Some of that anger, some of that stress came in the house with me and kept me from connecting the way I should have. Jesus is warning us against this happening, he is trying to keep us from that kind of disconnect.
My life fell apart while I was making that commute. And in our reading today, Jesus warns us about divorce. He says don’t go there.
The law says, “whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.” No big deal. And that’s where we are in society today. We treat marriage and divorce as if it is no big deal, almost as if divorce were expected.
Going through a divorce tore my heart to pieces. Nicky Gumbel, the pioneer of the Alpha Course, compares marriage to gluing together corrugated cardboard… and he says when you try to pull the cardboard apart, it destroys both pieces in the process.
That’s an accurate metaphor in my book. When I hear that someone is separating or going through a divorce, my heart breaks for them. It’s not something that is casual or that is meant to be casual.
It is not as simple, and shouldn’t be, as divorce papers, and divorce parties to celebrate. It’s something to mourn. It’s a death.
And that is where some of us end up, with the life that we had ending.
Thankfully, God doesn’t leave us at death. Jesus will come to know something about new life, after death. And in my experience, in giving divorce the gravity it can have in our lives, in mourning it and working through it as a death, new and unexpected life can come out of it. We need to walk through that and help others through it. That’s been part of my story and I am grateful for new life.
New life is what Jesus wanted for his disciples. It is what he wants for us. Life to the fullest.
The commandments, the laws, are not meant to make us miserable or keep us from that life. They aren’t meant to be spoilsports to take away the fun stuff. They were put in place to be guidelines for how to live in a community together without hurting each other, intentionally or unintentionally.
Murder, adultery, lying, coveting—none of these things help us love our neighbor better. Quite the opposite. And our thoughts, words, and actions can influence our lives in ways that move us in those directions.
Idols and false gods don’t bring us closer to God, they put things between us and God.
And when you add all these behaviors up and stir them up in a pot, you get what we see when we look around the world today—a world that is lost, people who are suffering from being estranged from God and each other; people who feel alone and confused.
The commandments and laws are already there. They haven’t changed or fixed things by their existence.
So what do we do? How do we fix this? We have to live differently. Righteousness has to let go of the law and point to God’s will and love.
To help us see a different way to live, a better way to live, I am going to borrow from a couple of our small groups—one of which looks ahead in Matthew’s Gospel just a bit.
Matthew Chapter 7, Verses 13 and 14 says:
“Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life and there are few who find it.”
We have a men’s study that just began Fr. Gregory Boyle’s book, “Tattoos on the Heart,” about his experience working with Los Angeles gang members. They have an incredible ministry and they see ex-gang members transformed and leading new lives, by virtue of finding a community that loves and supports them and who are there for them.
“Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel says, ‘How narrow is the gate that leads to life?’ Mistakenly, I think we’ve come to believe that this is about restriction. The way is narrow. But it really wants us to see that narrowness IS the way.
“… Our choice is not to focus on the narrow, but to narrow our focus. The gate that leads to life is not about restriction at all. It is about an entry into the expansive. There is a vastness in knowing you’re a son or daughter worth having. We see our plentitude in God’s own expansive view of us.”
And we take that in, God’s view of us. Boyle says we marinate in it.
God is vast and his love for us is expansive. But we can’t marinate in that, we can’t feel that, if we are scattered. The pharisees and scribes Jesus says we need to be more righteous than were obsessed with the law. Do you know how many laws are listed in the Old Testament? 613. Try to keep all those straight and see how narrow you feel.
We have to narrow our focus onto God’s love. If that’s what we focus on, that we are loved by God; if that’s what we take into our hearts and our lives, that we are beloved sons and daughters, ALL OF US, how does that make us feel and how does that make us want to treat each other?
If we narrow our focus to love, what does that look like?
You know who knows what that looks like? Paul knows. This coming week in our Romans study, we’ll be discussing Romans Chapter 12. Here is what Paul says in verses 9 through 16:
“Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers.
Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly…”
And he finishes chapter 12 saying, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”
THAT’S NOT LAW, IT’S LOVE.
In his Sermon the Mount, which we are working through bit by bit each week, Jesus lays a lot in front of us. We get the blessings of the Beatitudes, we are reminded that we are salt and light, and today we get this over-the-top teaching about being more righteous than the law. Something we can never live up to or fully into.
Paul goes to a similar place in his letters—we need a Venn diagram and flow charts to get through Romans.
It’s a lot to learn and it’s hard to live.
But they both point us to the same place. To the power of God’s love. To the transformative, self-sacrificing love Jesus models for us and gives to us. To the grace that is our gift when we say yes to it.
We are God’s beloved. All of us. He wants us to know that and to live that way, with each other.
We don’t need laws to change us, we need love.
And when we have love, the laws become fulfilled, because our hearts are already far beyond them.
Our hearts are full of God’s love. And we treat each other that way.
Lead in: I am in my second year in seminary through the Iona Eastern Shore program, which allows our cohort to continue working while we are in seminary. December 10-11 was a preaching weekend for me at Christ Church Easton. This is the text of the sermon I gave.
Churches/denominations that use the Revised Common Lectionary have prescribed readings for each day and Gospel readings for each Sunday. So we don’t get to pick what Gospel we preach on.
The Gospel reading for December 11 was Matthew 11:2-11, where John the Baptist sends followers to ask Jesus if he is the one who is to come, or are they to wait for another? And Jesus’s answer.
“Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”
That’s the question we’re going to kick around, the one John has his disciples ask Jesus.
John the Baptist didn’t care what other people thought. He wore strange clothes, ate strange food, blasted the religious people, and attended to business in the wilderness. And he was faithful—he did what he was called to do and he had crowds following him.
And as he was called to do, he pointed to Jesus as the one who was to come—the one he wasn’t fit to carry the sandals of.
John is in the New Testament Hall of Fame—each of the four Gospels has him playing a pivotal role in helping Jesus launch his ministry. And it was John the Baptist’s death that marked the beginning of Jesus’s time teaching and healing and moving toward his death and resurrection.
And this same John, while in prison, sends a question to Jesus: are you the guy or are we supposed to wait for someone else?
Brutal, right? Disheartening. Not exactly a vote of confidence from your friend and mentor.
Let’s think about it from John’s perspective: he’s in prison. He will end up beheaded. The Jewish people’s position hasn’t been improved.
The Jewish people had this idea that the Messiah—the anointed one—will arrive on the scene, hand out justice, military-style, free Israel, put them back on top in power, and they will all be vindicated with a great, big victory to show the world they were right.
That’s what they’re waiting for. Hey Jesus, are you this guy? Or are we waiting for someone else?
Notice how Jesus answers him: he doesn’t say, “Yes, I’m the guy.”
He tells John’s disciples to “Go and tell John what you hear and see:
The blind receive their sight
The lame walk
Those with a skin disease are cleansed
The deaf hear
The dead are raised
The poor have good news brought to them.”
Jesus points to his actions as his answer.
Is Jesus the one who was and is to come? Yes. He was showing it then and we’ve seen the movement that has swept around the world in the 2,000-plus years since. But he wasn’t doing what John, or what the Jewish people, or what the world expected.
I wonder if that is still the case. If we are still largely missing what Jesus was doing and what he came to do.
How many people have heard some form of the expression, “Wait til your father gets home…” Or, “when your father gets home…” That’s not really meant as a good thing, right? It’s more along the lines of—here come the consequences of your actions.
Think about that over the course of Biblical history, especially for those who have been singled out, chosen as examples, held up by God as those to look to. We see a lot of, “Wait til the Messiah gets here. Then you’re gonna get it. Then you’ll be sorry.”
Today it isn’t hard to look around and see people doing a lot of the same posturing: look at how you’re acting; look at what a terrible place the world is becoming. Wait til God gets here. Wait til Jesus comes back. Then you’re going to get it.
Don’t make God angry. You wouldn’t like him when he’s angry.
God is not the Incredible Hulk. He didn’t give us free will and the capacity to love—he didn’t fill us with wonder and awe and compassion, just to smash us when we mess up or get things wrong.
God wants us to change. He wants to help us. He has bigger and better ideas in mind.
If God is Love, what does a big military victory and putting those who were oppressed on top of their oppressors—what does that do to further love in the world? What does that do to further the work that we know Jesus came to do? How does that put things back right?
We have this idea of righteousness, on our terms, not on God’s terms.
Jesus was working out righteousness and salvation in accordance with the will of his Father. Before he gets to his death and resurrection, he is giving us a model for how we can do the same.
ARE YOU THE ONE OR ARE WE TO WAIT FOR SOMEONE ELSE?
“Go and tell John what you hear and see:
The blind receive their sight
The lame walk
Those with a skin disease are cleansed
The deaf hear
The dead are raised
The poor have good news brought to them”
Peru Mission Trip 2019
We are not Jesus. We can’t perform the miracles that we read about him doing throughout the Gospels. But those are things that God is calling righteous, that God is saying are in synch with His will.
If we want to know who God is and how he wants us to act, we need to look at Jesus.
And Jesus doesn’t want us to throw up our hands and say we’re not you, we can’t do it. He makes it clear that he gives us the Holy Spirit so we can continue the work that he began.
How much of our energy, how much of our attention, how much of our creativity, how much of our resources are being put towards this kind of work?
Who are we waiting for? Who will we follow?
I wonder how we would feel if we reframed John’s question for Jesus and pointed the finger at ourselves:
Are WE the ones Jesus has asked to continue his work or is He to wait for someone else?
That question should make us look in the mirror.
Here’s the thing about John: this isn’t a knock on him at all. He did his job well. He lived his life the right way and he spread the message he was given.
When Jesus starts to speak to the crowds he says John is a prophet and more than a prophet.
“To those born of women, no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist… He is the one about whom it is written:
‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, Who will prepare the way before you.’
What was John’s message? REPENT. TURN AROUND.
Don’t get caught up in all the things the world is throwing at us and telling us are important. Playing it forward: don’t make violence the answer. Don’t make hate the way we live.
To a people who have lost their way, to a people who are in a spiritual wilderness, John is saying to stop. Don’t keep doing the same things. Turn around. Be different. The kingdom of heaven is near.
It’s not too late to change.
Earlier in Matthew’s Gospel, in chapter 4, after Jesus is baptized by John and then tested/formed in his own wilderness experience, Jesus hears that John was arrested. And as he begins his ministry, the message that Jesus proclaims is “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.”
They were both telling the people, and us, the same thing. The difference is that Jesus was bringing the kingdom with him. He knew the work he needed to do to help bring it about. And he showed us the work we need to do to keep it going.
John was TELLING us to live differently, Jesus was SHOWING us how to live.
Think about the list of things that Jesus wanted John to know about. What do they all have in common?
Jesus cared for others. He healed, he fed, he taught, he brought good news. That was how he was working to bring the kingdom of heaven near.
When we care for others, we are continuing Jesus’s work.
Marsha Allen, whose been a part of our Tuesday Bible study for years always asks one of the best questions: What am I supposed to do with all this? How am I supposed to live?
So let’s ask ourselves that question: what would that look like to continue Jesus’s work here in our community?
In 2009, what we now know as the Talbot Interfaith Shelter began as a temporary shelter in our Parish Hall. It would be at Christ Church for a period of time and then it would move to another location and this continued until 2014 when they opened their first and current location at Easton’s Promise. Today they have two facilities, and their program for helping their residents’ get back on their feet is called the S4 Program—shelter, stability, support, success. They don’t just give people shelter, they help them get back their lives back—they give them hope.
A number of years ago, volunteering at the shelter one evening at just this time of year, I met a father and son there—the son was in elementary school. Their wife/mother died from cancer, but not before medical expenses they couldn’t keep up with left them homeless.
I can remember everyone had gone upstairs to bed and a few minutes later the boy came back down the stairs and was standing in the living room staring at the Christmas Tree. When we asked if we was okay, if he needed anything, he said, “No, I just like looking at the tree.”
His dad gave an incredible testimonial about how the shelter helped them, how much being there meant to them. Executive Director Julie Lowe and her team BRING GOOD NEWS TO THE POOR.
CarePacks of Talbot County began when Emily Moody, who was a social worker at Easton Elementary, noticed how many kids were going home on the weekends without healthy food to eat. She and Megan Cook began an effort that is now at place in every school in Talbot County, where packages of food are sent home every weekend to make sure the kids who depend on free breakfast and lunch at school can eat on the weekends. And once a month on the fourth Friday, people can go to CarePacks to pick up food for whole families. This kind of program is also in place in Caroline County and it being put in place throughout the Eastern Shore. THE HUNGRY ARE BEING FED.
Global Vision 2020 is an international non-profit organization, founded here in Easton by Kevin White. They go around the world, diagnose sight problems, and are able give glasses, on the spot, to people in the poorest countries. There are people who literally can’t see and that’s how they experience life. And with inexpensive glasses given to them then and there, their lives are changed.
When our Mission Trip goes to Peru next summer, helping give people sight through Global Vision will be among the work that Kelsey Spiker and the team will be doing. THE BLIND ARE RECEIVING SIGHT.
None of these things are miracles in the sense that we see in Scripture. But each of these organizations are very clearly continuing the work that Jesus started and gave us as a model of working toward the kingdom of heaven.
The reason I mention these particular groups is: not only are they all local, they were all begun by people who were parishioners here at Christ Church. And they have all received either outreach funding and/or volunteer support from the church over the years.
There are so many more examples in our community, all around us, which many of you support and volunteer for, and that need your help.
This is a time of year when people get stressed. Heating and electric bills go up, it’s colder outside for those without a place to stay; in many cases, parents just want to give their kids a good Christmas, but they are stretched too far. The Advent Angel gifts around the altar are another example of ways to help people in the community who are in need.
Here’s the thing though. In just the last 20 years at Christ Church, many new ministries have been started and borne fruit, and they have made a difference in people’s lives.
We don’t know what the next ministries are going to be looking out five, 10, 20 years. But recent history says that they will come from YOU—the vision, the work, the love, the hope will be raised up from people sitting right here who are open to the work of the Holy Spirit and who seek to follow and continue the work that Jesus began.
Advent is a season where we wait with hope. Where we listen for how we can help. Where we see and tell people about the work Jesus was doing, the work he gave as an answer to John.
The blind receive their sight
The lame walk
The sick are healed
The deaf hear
The dead are raised
The poor have good news brought to them
Think about those things. Think about caring for others. And at the end of the service when we say together “and now send us out to do the work you have given us to do,” let these words sink in and mean something.
This is the season where we say,
with our hearts and our minds and our actions
that Jesus was and is the one to come, and the one we give our lives to follow.
Lead in: I am in my second year in seminary through the Iona Eastern Shore program, which allows our cohort to continue working while we are in seminary. October 8-9 was a preaching weekend for me at Christ Church Easton. This is the text of the sermon I gave.
Churches/denominations that use the Revised Common Lectionary have prescribed readings for each day and Gospel readings for each Sunday. So we don’t get to pick what Gospel we preach on.
The Gospel reading for October 9 was Luke 17:11-19, where Jesus heals 10 men with a skin disease and only one, a foreigner, comes back in praise and gratitude.
“Faith and Gratitude”
In today’s Gospel, Jesus is on the road to Jerusalem. Over the past few weeks, we have seen him talking to and teaching his disciples. But today there is a bit of shift.
He’s approached by 10 lepers. What do we know about lepers during this time?
They kept distant from non-lepers.
They formed their own colonies.
They positioned themselves near trafficways so that they could make appeals for charity.
To be let back into society they had to be checked out by a priest, in a kind of certification process.
Leprosy was estrangement from both God and other people. It had a stigma.
When writing his novel, “The Name of the Rose,” Umberto Eco put it like this: “In saying ‘lepers’ we would understand ‘outcast, poor, simple, excluded, uprooted from the countryside, humiliated in the city.’”
They were the fringe of the fringe.
The lepers are keeping their distance and following protocol and they call out to Jesus. And he SEES them. Seeing is important here.
He tells them to go and show themselves to the priests, which is how they would be able to get back into everyday life, to no longer be outcast or untouchable.
And “as they went,” they were made clean. Their healing was connected to their obedience—they did what Jesus told them to do.
One of the lepers, a foreigner, a Samaritan, SAW that he was healed, and his response was to turn back, praise God with a loud voice, and to lie on the ground in front of Jesus and thank him.
It’s notable that the leper doesn’t just thank Jesus as some great healer on the street, he knows the healing has come from God and he praises God before he thanks Jesus.
Jesus SAW the lepers and the one Samaritan leper saw that God had healed him through Jesus. And he was grateful.
We see a lot of healing stories in the Gospels, but in this case, the story Luke tells is less about the healing and more about the response of the one leper.
The three questions Jesus then asks are not really addressed to the grateful Samaritan but they underscore the point of the story:
Were not 10 made clean?
Where are they?
Were none of them found to return and give praise except this foreigner?
Why the Foreigner?
This is not a knock on the nine who did what they were instructed. They followed orders. They were healed. We don’t know what happened to them after—they may have gone on to spread their own stories and good news for the rest of their lives.
But the foreigner, the stranger was different. Why is that? What was it that made him turn around while the others went on their way?
I like a thought that Fred Craddock shared in his book, “Interpretations: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching—Luke.” In thinking through the stranger in our time, he said:
“It is often the stranger in the church who sings heartily the hymns we have long left to the choir, who expresses gratitude for blessings we had not noticed, who listens attentively to the sermon we think we have already heard, who gets excited about our old Bible, and who becomes actively involved in acts of service to which we send small donations. Must it always be so?”
Fred Craddock
I wonder, do I get complacent? Do we sometimes go about our business doing what was asked of us, but not stopping to give thanks and praise for both remarkable and everyday things that bring us joy? Or those things that connect us to God and to each other?
Reading Scripture: WWJD?
Studying Scripture has so many layers to it, any of which can give us pause, can make us think, can stop us and meet us where we are.
We need to understand the context in which something was written; we need to think about the audience the writer, in this case Luke, was writing for; and we have both God’s Word in the Bible and any number of great commentaries that have been written to help us understand it.
And then we also want to figure out the relevance of something for our lives. What do we do with what we read? Why does it matter? What is the “so what?” of ten lepers getting healed more than 2,000 years ago? Why should we care?
Fr. Bill Ortt often says to think about Scripture as a prism, where you can turn it around to see different facets of it. And if we do that in this story, we’ve got the grateful leper, we’ve got the other nine who were healed, and we’ve got Jesus. We may have a tendency not to put ourselves in Jesus’s place in the story, because, well, he’s Jesus and we’re not.
But these stories are shared for us to learn from. For us to ponder, to take in. And who is the main character in the New Testament who we want to learn about? Jesus.
And why? Maybe to be more like him. What’s the bumper sticker—what’s the saying that is used over and over again: WHAT WOULD JESUS DO?
And how do you know, how can you consider what Jesus would do if you don’t read Scripture to get to know him better?
So in this story, what does Jesus do?
Seeing and Doing
First, Jesus sees the lepers who call out to him. Really sees them and what their problem is. And what he sees is human beings, not lepers. Luke illustrates this point over and over again in his Gospel:
When we meet the demoniac at Gerasene, Luke calls him, “a man from the city who had demons.”
Here, Luke doesn’t say 10 lepers, he says, “10 men with a skin disease.”
In writing his Gospel, Luke doesn’t define people by their afflictions, by their diseases, by what’s wrong with them. Because Jesus doesn’t define people that way. Jesus sees our humanity. And he sees the humanity of these 10 men.
And what does he do once he sees? He acts, he steps in to help, to heal.
If we want to model our lives after Jesus, where does that leave us?
We need to see. Do we take the time to see what is going on around us? We can look nationally and globally—the devastating damage in Florida from Hurricane Ian; the ongoing war in Ukraine; insert your news of struggle and suffering going on in the world.
We can also look closer to home: our family, our friends, our neighbors, and people in our community. We’ve got a lot of people barely holding on around us. Do we see them?
Then, what do we do when we see them? Do we reach out? Do we pray for people? Do we come alongside them when we can and walk with someone who is having a hard time.
Do we do…what we see Jesus doing time and time again in Scripture, and especially in Luke’s Gospel, and in today’s story? See, help, heal.
What do we see?
Do we see the needs, the struggles of others?
And what do we do?
Let’s take some pressure off of ourselves for a minute. Living like Jesus is certainly the goal, but wow, is that tough. Sometimes getting out of bed in the morning and getting through the day without telling someone off seems more attainable.
Gratitude
Let’s look more closely at the Samaritan who was healed and who came back. Let’s walk in his footsteps.
Back to seeing: what does the Samaritan see? He sees that he has been healed. He recognizes that God was at work. And he praises, he humbles himself, and he gives thanks.
We can do that, right? There are times when being grateful is everything. That’s a big part of my story and what has me standing here in front of you.
I caught up with a childhood friend who I haven’t seen in decades. We grew up playing little league baseball together in Oxford and he went on to fly F-16s in the Air Force for 20 years. We had lunch last week and what we both wanted to talk about was faith and spiritual awakenings. And he asked what prompted this calling in me.
My one-word answer was, and is, gratitude.
A little more than seven years ago my younger daughter had a bad seizure caused by brain swelling. She was visiting family outside Pittsburgh and she had to be intubated and flown by helicopter to Children’s Hospital, where she was in pediatric intensive care for 10 days and in the hospital for the next month.
Faith wasn’t a big part of my life then, but as I sat with her in the hospital, as I listened to doctors, as we tried to figure out what was next, people continually reached out to say they were praying and ask how they could help.
And what I could feel, could palpably feel, was a community of prayers changing me. I wouldn’t say I started out where the Grinch was, but my heart grew in significant ways that I am still trying to wrap my head around. And I felt a peace and calm in the midst of so much worry.
When we came home, I was full of capital “G” Gratitude. I didn’t necessarily know where to put it or what to do with it, but a friend invited me to church. That sounded like a good start. And that was the first step on a path that led here, and with gratitude every day it is a walk that is still going.
I saw healing. I felt a change, a kind of healing in me. And giving praise and thanks is my response.
Salvation
Let’s turn our attention back to the grateful leper. Jesus says to him, “Your faith has made you well.” Fred Craddock who I quoted earlier points out that the verb that was used for “made well” is the same word that is often translated, “to be saved.”
Jesus healed 10 people, but only one, the one who came back and was grateful, received something much bigger than physical healing. His faith, as expressed by his gratitude, saved him.
Alan Culpepper in “The New Interpreter’s Bible,” looks at this and says that the story challenges us to regard gratitude as an expression of faith.
That resonates with me. Gratitude feels like a way to express our faith.
Culpepper says further: “If gratitude reveals humility of spirit and a sensitivity to the grace of God in one’s life, then is there any better measure of faith than wonder and thankfulness before what one perceives as unmerited expressions of love and kindness from God and from others?”
Living with a Grateful Heart
What does gratitude look like in our lives? What do we do when we have a grateful heart?
I have one more quick example. When I started working here at Christ Church they gave me the office at the top of the stairs in the Rectory. I end up talking to just about everyone who comes up and down the steps—which aren’t the easiest steps to navigate.
Well, a few times a week, Bruce Richards would come up the steps and go into the bathroom, and when he came out he would stop in and share this amazing smile, and energy, and joy and gratitude.
It turns out at the time that all the Stephen Ministry books, brochures and pins were kept in the bathroom closet, and he would go in to stock up on whatever he needed.
So I had a running joke with Bruce that he had a Clark Kent/Superman phone booth in the bathroom and he would come out as a superhero for pastoral care. Except it wasn’t a joke at all. That’s who Bruce was.
As the years went on, Bruce was slower getting up and down the steps, but his joy, his smile, and his gratitude didn’t change.
We commended Bruce to God on Saturday and I have so many pictures of him on my heart. Bruce carried printed out prayers in his wallet and in his calendar and he sometimes gave me one if he thought I looked like I needed it, or he would tell me to pass it on to someone who did.
Bruce came with us to give Communion to a parishioner in Oxford who had fallen and couldn’t make it to church for a while. For us, it was a special visit, but Bruce did this all the time, in nursing homes, people’s houses, you name it.
And I have a picture of Bruce coming to his door on his 80th birthday, during the height of the pandemic, when a group of us went to sing happy birthday to him with Brenda Wood playing the accordion.
Bruce was a grateful heart personified. He showed us what it looked like to live with gratitude and for him it looked like caring for others, so much so, that he helped begin a new ministry at the church, specifically to care for people going through tough times… by listening to them, praying with them, and walking beside them. And Bruce’s work of 18 years here continues today with all the Stephen Ministers, the care givers and care receivers, who are grateful and helping us create a church community of compassion.
Bruce saw people hurting. He acted, he did something about it, using gifts that he didn’t know he had, always giving thanks with gratitude.
I wish we didn’t have to lose people like Bruce, people in our lives who show us what it is to live with a grateful heart—people we are grateful for. But it makes me even more thankful for the time that we had together and the example he still is for all of us. What a gift to know people like that and to be able to continue their work in love.
Alan Culpepper has a thought here that I’d like to close with, which gets us to the heart of today’s Gospel:
“Faith, like gratitude, is our response to the grace of God as we have experienced it. For those who have become aware of God’s grace, all of life is infused with a sense of gratitude, and each encounter becomes an opportunity to see and respond in the spirit of the grateful leper.”
