sermon preached
at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
by the
Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
The
Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 22B, October 7, 2018
I once
heard a newly ordained priest preach on this passage about divorce. He was a
30-year-old man who had never been married, but he felt it was his duty to
tackle the question, “Is divorce a sin?” No doubt many of the hundreds present had
been through one or more divorces! But this preacher answered the question with
an unqualified YES, divorce is a sin. And then he proceeded masterfully to put
that YES into context, such that the divorcees in the room were able to
understand that their sin was not necessarily any worse than the sins the rest
of us have committed. That didn’t let anyone off the hook, but at least we knew
we’re all in good company.
And it
isn’t meant to whitewash or explain away Jesus’ tough words, either. There’s a
popular concept of Jesus as a softie, as someone who went easy on people. This
passage is one example to the contrary, and there are many others. How about
the passage in which Jesus says that lustful thoughts are also on the same
level as adultery? How about Jesus’ frequent warnings to the rich that their failure
to share is spiritually harming them? How about his insistence that if we’re
not taking care of the poor and needy, we’re not fit to enter God’s Kingdom?
But then, he also says, “Let the one without sin cast the first stone.” We’re
all in the same (sinking) boat.
Meanwhile,
today we begin hearing from the Letter to the Hebrews, and we will do so
throughout October and November. It’s probably not really a letter as much as
it is a sermon, and it begins with a sweeping summary of salvation history. God
tried to reach out to us time and time again, first speaking to us through
prophets. Then God came to be with us in Jesus, and in so doing, God
re-sanctified flesh and blood and bone as “very good.” And then Jesus went through
hell right here on earth.
We know
that hell is on earth. We turn on the news, and we see so much suffering … the
suffering of workers who have jobs but still cannot afford to feed their
families … the suffering of immigrant children living without their parents in
camps all around America … the suffering of those who have experienced trauma,
that condition that causes the worst of past moments to remain forever present.
God has no need to inflict hell on us; we’re perfectly capable of inflicting it
on ourselves and on each other. Such suffering has become so familiar that we
are ever more at risk of making peace with it. Please don’t make peace with it.
Please don’t simply throw up your hands and say, “Nothing will ever change.” We
do have the ability to change things.
Indeed,
the Sermon to the Hebrews tells us that God has left nothing outside our control.
God pursues us with love, but God doesn’t force our hand in any way, because
God doesn’t use force. It is because we actually do have control over
our lives that suffering is possible. But rather than step in and cause our
suffering to cease, Jesus, the exact imprint of God’s very being, allowed himself
to be arrested as a disgraced criminal, leaving his friends and family in
peril. He would not take any violent action at all, even in self-defense … and that’s
the Teacher I follow. Jesus raised the bar of righteousness so high that we
could never clear it, and in so doing, he showed us what we already knew: we
cannot win. Every one of us will fall apart and die one way or another.
If that
were the end of the story, Christianity would be a religion of futility. But then
Jesus came back. He wouldn’t stay dead! Jesus came back to show us what’s
coming next, albeit in very mysterious terms that even his best friends and
eyewitnesses couldn’t agree on how to fully express. Jesus gave us the
blueprint of creation: his very self, poured out for us in love. And then he
said, “Live by this blueprint: give of yourself for the sake of others, and
your life will truly matter—not only for the length of your tiny lifespan, but for
all of eternity.” Or to put to briefly enough to slap on a bumper sticker:
“Since all else fails, love.”
“Since
all else fails, love.” If we can inflict hell on each other, we can also grow
heaven among each other.
Marriage
is a way for two people to show God’s love to everyone … except when it isn’t.
Parents teach their children how to love … except when they teach them how to
fear. Businesses provide good things for society … except when their pursuit of
profit causes more problems than solutions. Politicians act as servants to the
people … except when they act as abusers of the people. Religious communities also
can lose their way and work against God’s love. And these things happen even
while the marriages and parents and businesses and politicians and religions are
doing lots of good things at the same time! We are a morass of successes and
failures, every one of us, every day. We all do our best, except when we don’t,
and we are all complicit in the sin of a sick society. And then we all die, all
of us with our projects and aspirations. We all die.
But did
we love? “Since all else fails, love.”
I knew a
college student a few years ago who, after a couple years spent with our campus
ministry group and our church, said: “It is in our falling short where I (as a
new-ish Episcopalian) have fallen in love with this community. More so than any
other church I’ve experienced, Episcopalians welcome getting called out
for mis-stepping and seek out critiques.”
I hope
this does indeed describe us at our best. It is a proper display of Christian
humility to learn to say, “I’m sorry,” and to ask, “How can I do better?” That
is love working through failure. It isn’t the same as flailing around in a
perfectionistic frenzy and then beating ourselves up when we drop the ball. We
will drop the ball! Instead, it’s about recognizing that no, we’re not worthy,
and we can’t make ourselves worthy, no matter how hard we try. But God treats
us as if we were worthy! We’ll never be perfect, and yet God loves us anyway.
What are human beings, that God is mindful of us? It’s shocking to think, and
yet I firmly believe, that if I were to fail to mature in any way between now and
the day I die, God would still love me infinitely. The same goes for you.
But how
can we benefit from this love? Through humility, gratitude, and service to
others—powerful signs of a healthy Christian.
And so
we come to Jesus’ remarks about children. Two weeks ago I commented that most
children in Jesus’ time didn’t survive to adulthood. Children were bundles of
potential, to be sure, but at first they were not seen as gifts but as useless
nuisances. The youngest among them took and took and gave nothing that the
community needed. This is what Jesus compares us to … and allows and blesses us
to be: useless nuisances who might someday give something back for the sake of the
Kingdom of God—or might not! And these are the people we’re called to love.
There’s
another way to look at it, too. Children make lots of mistakes and then learn from
them. Indeed, I’ve learned almost nothing valuable without mistakes! What we do
naturally as young children—learning from our failures—too many of us unlearn.
We decide that if we can’t be right most of the time, we must not be adults
yet. And so we either become entrenched in views and lifestyles that could
probably benefit from some scrutiny, or else we retreat into comfortable
familiarity and only do things we know we will succeed at. The older we get,
the easier it is to be afraid of failure. But our fear will not save us.
What
indulgence has God allowed you to foster due to your hardness of heart? What
hardness of heart does God now call you to grow out of? Take counsel with me
today from Jesus: failure is an option. We can thank God that there is nothing
we can do to make God love us less—nothing whatsoever. That frees us up to attempt
things. We cannot succeed or fail unless we practice, and this practice can
flow from our gratitude. When we succeed, we will find that God was right there
next to us all along, guiding our childish hands. And when we fail, we will
find that our proper response is simply to let God love us back into
wholeness—through the community around us, fellow citizens of God’s Kingdom.
So I
invite you to practice with me! In a couple weeks we will begin our fall pledge
campaign. We will invite you to make a financial pledge to Good Shepherd, even
if you fail to fulfill it or have to modify it later. We’ll ask you not just to
put money in the plate, but to commit to an actual dollar amount for 2019. You’ll
have a concrete opportunity to practice sharing, so that we may become better
citizens of the Kingdom of God.
In
addition, we’re about to share a Celebration of New Ministry, two Thursdays
from now. We will commit to going forward into new ministry efforts together.
As you learn about them, you can look for specific ways to be a part of them,
to practice something new to support the mission of Good Shepherd. Or you can do
something even gutsier: let something go, especially if it’s not feeding you,
or if you perceive that it might no longer be feeding others. God doesn’t want
us to busy ourselves to death; rather, God invites us to change our priorities.
And God offers us the strength we do not have in ourselves. We’re all selfish
and frightened much of the time, so let’s help each other work against selfishness
and fear.
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