Sermon – Matthew 11.16-19, 25-30, P9, YA, July 5, 2020

Tags

abdication, comfort, delightful, God, Jesus, light, meaning, pandemic, purpose, reckless, refreshment, rest, satisfying, Sermon, weary, yoke

In Compline, one of the prayers is for “we who are wearied by the changes and chances of this life.”[i]  I have been feeling that prayer these last several weeks – or even months.  The longer we stay in our homes, the longer this pandemic wages illness and death upon us, the longer the spread of virus takes away the everyday privileges we never fully appreciated, and the longer civil unrest forces us to look at our demons and sinfulness, we become more and more weary.  We do not have to ponder too long why cases of the pandemic are soaring this summer.  People who are wearied by the changes and chances of this life are so grief-stricken they are becoming reckless, self-centered, and indignant.

So, you can imagine my full-bodied relief when I heard the last verses of our Gospel lesson today.  “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”  Those words from Jesus are sweet comfort to us, who just want a break, who just want some semblance of normalcy, who just want peace.  Jesus’ words are a warm embrace in a time of touchlessness.  Jesus’ words are a balm to our country who this very weekend honors a liberty that many of our neighbors are reminding us is not felt by all our citizens.

But as scholar Thomas Long says, “What Jesus offers, however, is not a hammock, but a yoke.”[ii]  I know we want to linger on verse 28, but immediately after that comforting embrace, Jesus says, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”  In the shift between these last verses, Jesus does a bit of a bait and switch.  He beckons us into his comforting arms, but also places a burden on our shoulders.

I confess, I have been a bit cranky about that switch.  Can’t we just have one week, one Sunday, one moment, where we abdicate responsibility, where we take a sabbath from all this work, where we binge watch television and eat crappy food?  Isn’t that what Jesus means when he says he will give us rest?!?

Fortunately for all of us, I had my tempter tantrum early in the week, and have had some time to sit with this yoke of Jesus’.  You see, when I am being honest, I know binge watching television or eating junk food is not actually restorative.  I feel stiff and tired after sitting for hours.  And when I eat unhealthily, the lingering stomachache or sluggishness is not actually as comforting as the comfort food implies.

What Jesus is suggesting today is not a restful, self-centered, time of abdication.  What Jesus is suggesting is we find rest in the things of life that matter.  As one scholar suggests, “we will find rest for carrying the burden of the gospel by living out the unique mission to which Jesus calls each of us.”[iii]  That yoke we may be skeptical of this week, is not actually a ploy or a trick by Jesus.  The reason Jesus says his yoke is easy and his burden is light is “because [his yoke] is the way of God, and [his yoke] is profoundly satisfying to the human soul.”[iv]

Jesus uses some strong imperatives today:  come to me, take my yoke, learn from me.  But Jesus is not being bossy.  Jesus is reminding us, in his ever so firm, but pastoral way, that the ways we are seeking rest and relief from weariness are not the ways to life.  The way to life, of true refreshment, of renewed spirits is through the yoke of Christ.  How is that possible?  As one scholar reminds us, “The easy yoke means having something to do:  a purpose that demands your all and summons forth your best.  [The easy yoke] means work that is motivated by a passionate desire to see God’s kingdom realized.  [The easy yoke] means work toward a certain future in which all of God’s dreams will finally come true.  To accept the yoke of the gentle and humble Lord is to embrace the worthy task that puts the soul at ease.”[v]  Jesus reminds us today that the rest we seek is not mind-numbing, emotion-numbing, spirit-numbing relief, but purposeful, meaning-filled, reward-making clarity.  When we harness ourselves to Christ, the burdens no longer feel like burdens, the work no longer feels like work, and the desire to be done turns to a desire for God’s delightful sense of purpose and meaning.  That is the kind of profound satisfaction Jesus offers today.  Thanks be to God!

[i] Book of Common Prayer, 133.

[ii] Thomas G. Long, Matthew (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 1997), 132.

[iii] Emilie M. Townes, “Theological Perspective,”  Feasting on the Word, Year A, Volume 3 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 214.

[iv] Long, 132.

[v] Lance Pape, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year A, Volume 3 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 217.

On Refreshment in a Parched Land…

Tags

care, comfort, communion, Coronavirus, grieve, Holy Eucharist, pandemic, parched, prayer, reassurance, refreshment, salve, wilderness

Photo credit:  Jennifer Andrews-Weckerly; resuse with permission only.

Over three months ago, when we closed our church’s doors because of the Coronavirus pandemic, we had to make some quick, difficult decisions.  We knew we wanted to offer a livestream service, but we also knew we did not feel comfortable consuming the holy meal without the community of faith gathered.  Fortunately, we have a rich traditional of prayers from our Book of Common Prayer, so we switched to Morning Prayer on Sundays.  In seminary, I attended Morning Prayer daily, so in some ways, the last many months has been like visiting an old friend.  As the officiant, I have often worn my seminary cross as a sign of gratitude for the formation I receive at Virginia Theological Seminary to be able to confidently officiate the service.

But as our diocese gave us permission to begin the regathering process, the liturgical team began to realize we had a conundrum.  For the limited number of people who would be able to gather in the space, would we keep offering Morning Prayer, or would we offer communion under the new guidelines?  If we offered communion to some, would those watching online feel left out if the livestream was different from the in-person offering?  So, like we often do at Hickory Neck, we decided to try an experiment.  We still did not want the altar party to consume on screen if no one else could consume with us.  But perhaps we could try an offering of “Spiritual Communion”:  a service identical to the familiar Holy Eucharist we normally celebrate, but with a special shared prayer instead of actual reception of the body and blood of Christ.

This past Sunday, we gave the experiment a go.  Shifting types of services is more complicated than it sounds, especially given the challenges of working with limited technology.  My brain was so jumbled with details that when we hit the livestream button, I had not processed the significance of the morning.  I put on vestments I have not worn in over three months – vestments I used to wear every week.  As the celebrant, I was saying words that I have said countless times in the last ten years.  It was only when I elevated the elements, recognizing the muscle memory of my body, that the power of what we were doing hit me.  Holy Eucharist is just one of the myriad things that have been taken away from us during this time of social distancing – one of the many comforts that I have grieved in these last months.  Despite the fact we were not actually receiving communion, despite the fact the room was still empty minus a camera, despite the fact a hundred little things were different, all of a sudden, I found myself overwhelmed with emotion.

Celebrating Spiritual Communion was not the same as celebrating Holy Eucharist.  But celebrating Spiritual Communion felt like a sip of water in a parched land.  It was not complete refreshment, but it was reassurance, comfort, and care.  It was an unexpected gift from the Holy Spirit in the wilderness of this pandemic.  I do not know what our community will decide to do going forward – whether we will keep Morning Prayer or Spiritual Communion, or some combination of the two.  In fact, I am hoping our parishioners and viewers will let us know their feedback.  This week I am just grateful for a community that is willing to experiment – to try, to fail, to learn, and to grow.  That commitment to playful creativity has always been a joy; during this pandemic it is salve to our open wounds.  Thanks be to God!  And thank you, Hickory Neck!

Sermon – John 9.1-41, I Samuel 16.1-13, L4, YA, March 26, 2017

Tags

blind man, fresh, God, grief, Jesus, Laetare Sunday, Lent, Mothering Sunday, Pharisees, refreshment, renewal, repentance, revelation, Rose Sunday, sabbath, Samuel, Saul, Sermon, spiritual journey, stuck, unstuck

In a lot of ways, Lent is about being stuck.  Many of us sit down before Lent and take stock of our lives, discerning where we are stuck, and commit to working on getting unstuck.  Some of us are not that organized, and only discover how stuck we are as we enter into the penitential season, letting the prayers, scriptural lessons, and liturgies work on us.  And some of us cannot even claim to have done that work.  We only discover when we are stuck when someone metaphorically or literally smacks us against the head and tells us to shake off whatever is getting in our way, and get back in the game.

Two characters in our scripture readings today are similarly stuck.  The first is Samuel.  If you remember, Samuel is the prophet who anoints the first king of Israel – Saul.  But eventually Saul falls out of grace with God, and although Samuel delivers God’s judgment, Samuel grieves.  We are not really sure why Samuel grieves – if Samuel was really rooting for Saul and is disappointed in Saul’s failure[i]; if Samuel is lost in Saul’s failure and is scared of what is to come for Israel; or if Samuel is worried about himself.  After all, Samuel was intimately involved in helping Israel find a king – something God did not want for Israel in the first place.  Regardless of the “Why?” of Samuel’s grief, we do know that God is unhappy with Samuel’s continued grief.  God clearly thinks Samuel is stuck in grief.  “How long will you grieve over Saul?  I have rejected him from being king of Israel.  Fill your horn with oil and set out…”

Samuel is not the only character in our scripture today who is stuck.  In John’s gospel, we find a blind man healed by Jesus on the Sabbath.  But Jesus’ actions are not the center of the story.  Twenty-six verses – or 63% of the text we heard –  is about the Pharisees being stuck in their own understanding of who, how, and when a person can heal another.  For twenty-six verses they try to figure out who Jesus is, confident that he must be a sinner if he is healing on the Sabbath.  They barrage both the formerly-blind man and his parents about the incident – bringing in the healed man twice.  The banter goes on and on and finally, the healed man says exasperatedly, “I do not know whether he is a sinner.  One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.”

In both Samuel and the Pharisees, we see God’s people, God’s leaders even, so stuck in their spiritual journeys that they are unable to see the work of God among them.  In both cases, neither party is doing something wrong – grief is an appropriate response from Samuel.  Samuel has invested a lot in Saul and has tried to mentor him on the right path for years.  And if we are honest, there is probably a bit of self-pity in his grief, as God’s being done with Saul means Samuel is in for a rocky road, seditiously anointing another as king before Saul has abdicated or been removed from his seat of power.[ii]  Likewise, the Pharisees are dutifully following the law of the Lord.  They have been taught for generations to honor the Sabbath and keep it holy.  We even prayed those very words last week, when we prayed the Decalogue together.  The Pharisees’ confusion is about a man acting in contradiction to everything they have ever been taught.

I wonder how often we find ourselves similarly stuck in our journey with God.  I cannot tell you the number of times someone in the midst of grief or discernment has said to me, “But this is not what was supposed to happen!”  We never plan for divorces, unexpected deaths, layoffs, addictions, betrayals, or illness.  We cannot anticipate the ways that tragedy or surprising life-changes will shake us to the core and sometimes paralyze us into inaction.  Sometimes we do not even realize we are stuck.  We get so caught up in our way of coping with life or simply surviving, that we do not realize how we deafen ourselves to the voice of God, speaking new and fresh revelation to us.

The good news for us, and for Samuel and the Pharisees, is that there is room for redemption and repentance.  God finally speaks directly and plainly to Samuel.  When Samuel has wallowed enough in his grief, God basically says, “Enough.  You have had plenty of time to grieve.  You have work to do, so get up and go.”  God even has a plan for Samuel’s safety when he protests about that.  “No more excuses.  I have you covered.  Go.”  The healed man does a similar thing for the Pharisees.  As they barrage him with question after question, he finally slows down and says, “Argue all you want!  Your confusion does not change the fact that I was blind and now I see.  Deal with it!”  Of course, the Pharisees do not accept the invitation to repentance – to change their minds.  But the healed man gives them more than enough direction toward truth and change.

The same is true for us.  There are all kinds of opportunities for us to get unstuck this Lenten season.  Many of you have already told me how the change in our liturgical pattern was just enough of a change to unsettle and reorient your senses in our worship of God.  Our bible studies have offered multiple opportunities to review the saving acts of God in history.  Our ecumenical services have given us ample occasions to see and hear God in fresh ways – whether through a different preaching style, music that touches us in new ways, or liturgical differences that shake up our senses.  I know we had a long conversation at our house about why the wine was so different at the other churches!  And I suspect our Quiet Day this coming Saturday may just be what some of us need help us hear God saying, “Enough.  Get going!”

But even in this season of repentance, of orienting ourselves back to God, the church gives us a Sunday of renewal – what the Episcopal Church calls, “Rose Sunday,” “Mothering Sunday,” or in the Latin, “Laetare Sunday.”  On this fourth Sunday in Lent, we take a break.  Virgil Michel said about this Sunday, “A Christian Lent can never be entirely sad.  With the fourth Sunday the pent up spiritual joy in the true member of Christ bursts forth in anticipation of the Easter joy to come…This was the day when the catechumens were decked with roses and when roses were mutually exchanged.  Thence comes the custom of the rose vestment.”[iii]  Our custom on this Refreshment Sunday is to wear rose-colored clothes and eat simnel cake as a way of honoring this day of refreshment.  We all need those reminders to listen to God, to be more open to revelation, to get ourselves unstuck.  But we also need those days when we say as a community, “Getting unstuck is hard work.  That you are trying is blessing enough today.  Take in a breath of God’s sweet mercy, and fill up that horn of oil tomorrow.  There is time to get up and get going.”

So breathe in the refreshment today.  Take courage that you are in good company in your need for renewal and redirection – both in the person sitting near you today and in our biblical ancestors.  Honor this Sabbath that is meant for rest for your wearied souls.  Do all those things; because tomorrow, you will indeed need to recommit to that work of getting unstuck.  You will need to pick up that horn and go do the work God has given you to do.  You will need to work on your hearing and eyesight, as God sprinkles wisdom all around for you to see and hear.  But today, fully take this Sabbath.  The good news is God will empower you to do all those other things you need to do tomorrow.  Amen.

[i] Carol A. Newsom, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. A, Vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 101.

[ii] Newsom, 101.

[iii] Virgil Michel, The Liturgy of the Church, quoted in A Lent Sourcebook:  The Forty Days, J. Robert Baker, Evelyn Kaehler, and Peter Mazar, ed. (Chicago:  Liturgical Training Publications, 1990), 51.

Sermon – Luke 15.1-3, 11b-32, L4, YC, March 6, 2016

Tags

bad, church, death, family, forgiveness, God, good, grace, honor, layers, Lent, love, parable, prodigal son, refreshment, repentance, respect, Rose Sunday, saints, Sermon

Growing up, my Grandfather was considered a saint.  He was kind and funny.  He was a wiz in the kitchen, and he always made you feel good.  He was beloved by all, and was known as a champion for the underdog.  That narrative was affirmed at his funeral as we told stories of his kindness and generosity.  He was without blemish and probably could have remained so had I not asked questions.  But over coffee one day, I had a conversation about the saintliness of my grandfather with my aunt and uncle.  Over the course of our conversation they slowly opened my eyes about how my grandfather was more nuanced that I realized.  What I interpreted as kindness they helped me see as, at times, avoiding conflict to the detriment of others.  What I saw as peacemaking could be interpreted as not standing up to bullies.  Slowly the one-dimensional man I knew developed layers – layers of goodness and weakness; layers of helpfulness and harm; layers of perfection and flaws.

We regularly do the same thing with those who have died – whether canonized saints or beloved family members.  In death, we honor all the goodness about them and gloss over the bad parts.  A classic example is one of my favorite modern-day saints, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  He spearheaded a movement with grace, insight, and boldness and inspired generations.  But I remember reading later in life how his treatment of women in the Civil Rights Movement was not always as admirable.  Slowly his layers emerged for me.  Although I still admire his work and writings, his life is more nuanced now.

Now some people will argue that we should not speak ill of the dead – that we should show our respect by letting go of the bad and only honoring the good.  In some respects, I understand why people do not want to dishonor the dead.  But I think telling stories that only make others seem perfect without honoring their flaws hurts us more than helps us.  That is why I love the parable of the two sons from our gospel today.  I resists calling the parable the parable of the prodigal son because I think both sons have something to teach us.[i]  In the parable, we can easily see the two brothers in one-dimensional ways.  The older brother is the good and faithful son for loyally supporting his father and the family business.  The younger brother is the bad son who insults his father, squanders his ill-gotten inheritance, and shamefully asks for more than he deserves.  Those one-dimensional stories are stories we know.  We have friends, family members, or maybe some of us even who are those characters – the responsible older sibling, or the troublemaking younger sibling; the child whom the parent always brags about, or the child about whom the parent seems embarrassed; the child who brings the family honor, or the child who brings the family shame.

But like any good parable, these characters are not as one-dimensional as they seem.  I was thinking about the younger brother this week and I realized we never hear about his impression of the party his father throws.  We suspect he is grateful for his father’s forgiveness, and we honor the humble way the younger son repents, but that party must have been hard.  Everyone at the party knows his sin.  Asking for his portion of his father’s inheritance before his father’s death was tantamount to wishing his father were dead.[ii]  In order for his father to give the younger son the money, he would have had to have sold off some land – a fate even worse for a culture who understood their land to be God’s promised gift.[iii]  Though his father’s forgiveness must have been a relief, I cannot imagine the rest of the town being so gracious.  I wonder whether the son stayed humble and repentant during the party; whether he was able to relax into his newfound forgiveness, laughing and joking; or whether he felt uncomfortable, bristling from his neighbors’ judgment and sideways glances.

Of course, we cannot forget the older brother.  The dutiful, obedient, hardworking brother loses all his perfection in his reaction to this party.  The older brother throws a temper tantrum of epic proportions.  He whines about the abundance his father shows his brother – perhaps rightfully so, since the money and fatted calf used for the party comes from what is left of the older son’s inheritance.[iv]  He complains about how he has never experienced such bounty and celebration.  He resents his father’s lack of gratitude for all the older son’s dutiful work.  Some of the son’s indignation is warranted.  He was, in fact, the good son, and his younger brother had behaved badly.  But the rewards of the story are not playing out so simply.  The older brother overreacts.  You see, his response is equally disgraceful to his father.  In the day of this parable, the host of a party was never to leave his guests.  Going to his older son would have been seen as disrespectful to the guests he had invited.[v]  But just like he goes out to meet his younger son, the father goes out to meet the older son, offering him similar generosity and abundance in the face of his son’s sin.

Part of why we love this parable so much is that we can identify with all the characters.  We are a people of nuanced layers too.  We have our younger son moments and our older son moments.  We have moments when we are bastions of forgiveness and grace, and moments when we withhold that forgiveness and grace.  Those among us who are known as having deep wells of patience have our moments when we snap.  And those among us who are known as being judgmental or stern have our moments of insightful kindness.

Our layers are why we have seasons like Lent and days for healing prayers.  In Lent, we shuffle home from our partying, wastefulness, and self-centeredness and return to our forgiving Lord.  In Lent, we bring our resentfulness, jealousy, and self-righteousness to the altar as we long for another way. In Lent, we bring our judgment of others and our judgment of ourselves and exchange them for freedom for humility and compassion.  Having a healing service in Lent allows us to do those things in a tangible way – not just to pray for physical healing of ourselves and others, but to pray for spiritual healing for those layers that are not as beautiful as others.

In order to honor that work of self-reflection and repentance, the church gives us what is called Rose Sunday, Refreshment Sunday, or even Mothering Sunday.  The idea is that being half-way through Lent, we take a day to break our fasting in these forty days.  In many parishes, to reflect the respite from penitence and fasting, the vestments and paraments change from their usual Lenten array to a beautiful rose-colored array.  On this day, we take a break from wallowing in ashes and our sack cloths, and we find refreshment in our Lord’s forgiveness and redemption.  In England, apprentice boys took this day off to visit their mothers, hence the one designation as Mothering Sunday.  We hear that invitation into gladness today in our psalm, “Happy are they whose transgressions are forgiven, and whose sin is put away!  Happy are they to whom the Lord imputes no guilt, and in whose spirit there is no guile!”[vi]  After weeks of repentance, heaviness, and weight, today the church invites us into forgiveness, lightness, and joy.

Rose Sunday is like the father in our parable today – full of forgiveness, grace, and love for us and all our layers – the good and the not-so-good – because we all have the layers.  Today the church runs out to greet us, leaves a good party, and meets us where we are – and loves us.  Today, the church says, “I see your layers, and I love all the parts of you, fully.”  Today the church is a fool for forgiveness, not wisely teaching us a lesson about humility, but senselessly lavishing upon us grace, love, and freedom from our self-centeredness and self-righteousness.  On this refreshment Sunday, the church invites us to remember that we are beloved children of God, a God who knows all our layers and loves us anyway.

I invite you today to take on the fullness of refreshment this day.  Whatever you have been working on this Lent, whatever guilt you have been harboring, or whatever sinfulness you have been examining, know that your sins are forgiven.  Know that you can come forward for healing prayers, not asking for healing and wholeness, but celebrating the healing and wholeness you have already experienced.  Know that you can come to the Eucharistic table not just for solace only but for strength; not just for pardon only, but for renewal.  As we say in our Rite I prayers, Jesus says to us, “Come unto me, all ye that travail and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you.”[vii]  Amen.

[i] Karoline Lewis, “Perspective Matters,” February 28, 2016, http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=4553 as found on March 3, 2016.

[ii] N. T. Wright, Luke for Everyone (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2004),187.

[iii] Leslie J. Hoppe, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year C, Vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 119.

[iv] Barbara Brown Taylor, “The Parable of the Dysfunctional Family,” April 17, 2006, as found at http://www.barbarabrowntaylor.com/newsletter374062.htm on March 3, 2016.

[v] David Lose, “Lent 4 C:  The Prodigal God,” February 28, 2016, as found at http://www.davidlose.net/2016/02/lent-4-c-the-prodigal-god/ on March 3, 2016.

[vi] Psalm 32.1-2.

[vii] Matthew 11.28.  BCP 332.