Preacher: The Rev Dr Valori Mulvey Sherer, Rector
Although this sermon was preached extemporaneously, a member of the parish has transcribed it. The text is below.
En el nombre del Dios: Padre, Hijo, y Espiritu Santo. Amen.
Jesus said, “Whoever welcomes you, welcomes me. Whoever welcomes me, welcomes the One who sent me.” How’s that for a lectionary today? Hafiz (a 14th century) mystic and poet said it like this. I thought it was beautiful: “God said, ‘I am made whole by your life. Each soul, each soul completes me.”
It’s been a week, hasn’t it? A very interesting week… one that calls us to be prayerful, loving, and mindful of the truth that we profess. I’d like you to turn with me in your prayer books to page 305 so that we can remember what it is that we profess together. This is our Baptismal Covenant. Our baptism is full initiation into the family of God, the Church. The Covenant begins on page 304. It’s a restatement of the Nicene Creed basically. (I’m going to read my part, you can read your part just for a little bit, okay?)
Will you continue in the apostle’s teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?
I will, with God’s help.
Oh, with God’s help. Right! Okay, on we go.
Will you persevere in resisting evil and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?
I will, with God’s help.
Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?
I will, with God’s help.
Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?
I will, with God’s help.
Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?
I will, with God’s help.
That’s where we stand, and that’s where we will stay.
In our Collect today, the prayer that is meant to bring us into the same state of mind as we worship together and share the nourishment of word and sacrament, we ask God to join us together in unity of spirit - this being our time in the big picture of God - we have come from the prophets and martyrs and sages who went before us, and we stand here now and we hand the Church to the future from this point. So we ask that we are made to stand together in unity of spirit. Not unity of doctrine, not unity of thought - unity of spirit. We’re called to be in right relationship with God.
That’s what this story in Genesis is all about. You know the story of Abraham and Sarah, they’re very old, they have no heir, which in that culture was a pretty big deal. Not only did it mean you weren’t blessed by God, it meant that you wouldn’t continue on, you would have no legacy. All property was passed on to the heir, and Abraham had no heir. You remember the story of Hagar, we just read it last week. Hagar the slave woman had a son, because Sarah said we gotta have an heir, and then God said, “Wait, I have this thing in mind.” So there were two (heirs).
This is the story of Abraham and his relationship with God. It isn’t a story about blind obedience. My Old Testament teacher in seminary said that in this story, God is telling us, ‘Do not blindly obey. Be in relationship with me, talk to me.’ The same is true for us. If we are called to go somewhere we aren’t comfortable going, we don’t know how to go, God says, ‘Just come to me. I’ll be there with you.’ Jesus said, “I’ll be with you always. Come to me.” So God tells Abraham, ‘Go up to the mountain (the place where God is), take your son, whom I’ve just given you, and offer him as a sacrifice to me.’ And Abraham does that. But God wasn’t asking Abraham to obey, but to be in relationship, to listen and to see what God has in mind. And so at the moment that Abraham is ready to obey, he notices the real sacrifice over there.
Here’s how we know that his relationship with God was righteous. When God said, “Abraham, Abraham!” what did Abraham say? “Here I am. Here I am.” God said go do this terrible thing. Abraham said. ‘Well okay’ and he goes and he gets ready because he trusts this God he loves. And then he’s delivered that terrible thing, and he learns a lesson, a very valuable lesson: no blind obedience here. Stay in relationship with me. Stay close to me, and I will show you the way to go. Because remember, this is the guy who later had an argument with God saying, “You can’t wipe out this town. What if there are righteous people here? What if there are 50, what if there are 20, what if there are 10.” That’s the relationship that God is seeking from us. Because in his conversation with Abraham, what did God do? He changed his mind, said, ‘Okay, I won’t wipe out this town.’ Right relationship is our call.
Paul talks about sin. We’ve heard a lot of talk about sin this week. So let’s see what Paul says about it. Paul is not talking about sinS. It’s not an avoidance of things, it’s a state of being within that manifests in our lives, and we can look out at the fruits of our lives and see what’s going on on the inside, where God lives in us. So, Paul says, “Sin has no dominion over you.” ‘You are not under the law but under grace.’
A person in right relationship with God is living under the law because God gave us the law as guidance. But we are not focusing on the law, we are focusing on God. Grace. And sometimes the law isn’t quite there. And Paul says, You are now free to operate in grace. Free from sin.
The metaphor of slavery and freedom is not perfect for us because we are a society without slaves. We have developed our theology to the point where s that we know that that’s not right. Paul was not saying that was okay. He was saying, ‘Here’s your reality. I’m talking to you in a way you will hear.’ He says that. He says, “I speak to you in human terms because of your natural limitations.” (in other words) ‘I’m speaking because this is where we are, you’ll hear what I’m saying.’
When we operate out of sin, sin being that state that separates us from God, a choice we make - a choice to be angry, a choice to be hateful, a choice to be hurtful or to harm - those things separate us from the love of God and one another. And when we choose that, it looks like things like murder, and assault, and insults. When we operate out of there, we’re operating out of self, and not out of God. When somebody makes us mad, when somebody hurts us, we have a natural inclination to fight back, but what did Jesus tell us to do? Right, I heard someone say it. “Turn the other cheek.” It’s not easy, but it’s what we’re called to do.
Martin Luther King, Jr. had it right. In the ‘60s when he trained his volunteers in the movement of civil rights, he trained them to be non-violent. No one was allowed to be a part of the movement until they had been trained how to deal with being sprayed with a fire hose by the police, or how to deal with the taunts tossed at them by “good, Christian folk,” or how to respond when someone hit them or beat them. And he called upon them to respond non-violently.
This movement of social transformation is what Jesus did in his own time. Social revolution is about the relationships between people and society. Political revolution is simply a replacement of one kind of power with another kind of power, but the relationships between the people and society aren’t very much affected. So he wasn’t talking about a political revolution, he didn’t live that. If he had wanted to, he could have. I mean, “fully human, fully divine,” Jesus could have said, “’’m now the emperor of the world. Here’s how we’re going to go.’ But he didn’t. What did he do? He climbed up on the cross and let them have their way. ‘Kill me. I trust in God. I know that death is not the end of our story. Resurrection is.’
But like Abraham in our Old Testament story, Jesus held nothing back. Jesus gave everything up, including his life for this. Abraham would have given his son. We are all called to figure out: what is that thing we hold a little more dearly than we hold our call to be people of reconciliation? Are we willing to give that up, are we willing to sacrifice that at the mountain? Are we willing to hang on the cross and let it go for the spiritual revolution that God continues to work? The one started at the resurrection and ascension of Jesus.
A new age was born. Reconciliation of the whole world to God began, and we were made part of that, partners in that, by Jesus. Disciples, persons set apart, sanctified, and sent out to continue the work of this social revolution, this spiritual revolution.
In his time, Jesus turned the world upside down. Well, honestly, he turned it right-side up, didn’t he? Saying things like, “The first shall be last and the last shall be first.” Or “Woe to you who are rich...” ‘How hard it will be to inherit the kingdom.’ In our Gospel, he says, Welcome everyone. Welcome everyone. If you welcome someone, you welcome me. And “if you welcome me, you welcome the one who sent me.”
This is a book called “Jesus Today: A spirituality of radical freedom” by Albert Nolan. I recommend it to you. My spiritual director gave it to me a couple of years ago, and it’s really wonderful. In it, Nolan talks about equal dignity. He’s the one who talked about spiritual and social revolution versus political revolution and power. Here’s what he says: “Jesus was uncompromising in his belief that all human beings were equal in dignity and worth. He treated the blind, the lame, and the crippled, the outcast, and beggars with as much respect as that given to those of high rank and stature. He refused to consider women and children as unimportant and inferior. This turned a carefully ordered society upside down...” (52)
Nolan says, “The spirituality of Jesus’ time was based on the law, the Torah.” This is what Paul is talking about. “Jesus turned that on its head, too,” Millan says, “not by rejecting the law, but by revitalizing it. The Sabbath was made for humankind and not humankind for the Sabbath, he says in Mark. In other words, God’s laws are intended to be of service to us as human beings. We do not exist in order to serve or worship the law. That would be idolatry. Jesus felt perfectly free [Nolan says] therefore, to break the law whenever observing it would do harm to people. .. What mattered to Jesus was people and their needs. Everything else was relative to that.” (53-54) This is the social revolution Jesus began, and it continues today.
The other thing Jesus did keeping in mind Isaiah, and most of the Old Testament, but particularly Isaiah, who talked about raising up the valleys and bringing down the mountains until all was made equal. This is the equal dignity that Millan is referring to. You remember Jesus called God ‘Abba’ (Daddy), ‘Amma’ (Mama). Jesus talked about God in terms of family and talked about us in terms of family - we being brothers and sisters in Christ. And this is in the midst of a culture where everything was about your bloodline. Jesus said, ‘Wait, there’s a bigger picture. That’s the law, this is grace.’
The reign of God is the reign of a family, loving one another as we’re called to love, as Jesus showed us how to love. Isaiah wasn’t talking about actual valleys and mountains, he was talking about people - it’s a metaphor. Any single one who is down, raise them up. Any single one who is up and thinks they have it all, bring them here where they remember God has it all. God has us all. So we all stand together, one family, one spirit, in unity in the love of God, serving the world that way.
We all know that being a family doesn’t mean that we all agree. How many of you have a family that agrees on everything? Never has a fight at the dinner table… or at the ball game. Right?
We’re not called to agree. We’re not called to be uniform in our thinking. We are called to be one people, one loving family. We all gather at the dinner table. This is our dinner table. Every week, we come together and we’re nourished by the word of God, and the sacrament of God. We take into our very bodies, these temples of God’s Holy Spirit, the spirit of Christ. We eat it, we drink it. It is for real for us. We act like family. We don’t have to agree; we just have to love and stay together. We do things families do, like have a picnic, and play, sing songs, and worship.
We ignore societal barriers to relationships that God calls us to have. For instance, do you remember in the ‘60s when it was illegal to be married interracially? Those barriers were brought down.
It’s not unusual, although it still creates a ripple in society, especially online, when somebody like Cheerios puts up a family of an interracial couple and mixed race children talking about love. These are not easy boundaries to let go, but we are called to, because we’re called to love as Christ loved us.
We’re called to welcome all who come. Jesus talks about welcoming a prophet and getting a prophet’s reward. A prophet who is in right relationship with God is given a word for the people to share, a message to give. When you’re in right relationship with God and that prophet speaks, the reward you get is the word. A right word. Heed the prophet. This is our tradition. But understand, that prophet has to be in right relationship with God or what is it you’re getting? The prophet’s own ideas, not God’s.
Jesus says that if you welcome a righteous person, you get the rewards of a righteous person. What is the reward of a righteous person? Right relationship with God.
These are little ones Jesus is talking about. We are all children of God.
So, now I want to talk (again) about sin, because we’ve been hearing an awful lot about sin this week, if you’ve been listening. Paul talks about this dominion of sin, whether sin has authority over you or not, and (now) I want usto discuss sin in the context of what we’ve just talked about, being in right relationship with God, and being willing to sacrifice the one thing that we might hold dearer to us than the will of God.
Sin is anything that puts a barrier between us and God, and between us and one another. Sin blocks the grace, the path of love in our lives. We know we have sinned when we see the fruit of the sin.
I’ll give you an example. Remember, in my former life, I worked with a lot of victims of violence. And I want you to hear the sin and the gift of the righteous person.
Remember I wrote, it wasn’t too long ago, about Lizzie, the little child in one of my shelters, that was having such a hard time, and was hurting herself and anyone who came near her. She would bite and kick and scream at her mother. She was so broken by the abuse that she had suffered. And she was three, so she didn’t have a way to say what happened. She didn’t even know what happened. All she knew was that she was hurting on the inside, and so all she could do was show us on the outside what that looked like by trying to hurt us, by trying to hurt herself. That’s how she could communicate this brokenness she felt on the inside.
That is sin. She did nothing wrong, but there was a barrier between her and love, the path of love that someone else injected into her life.
All the therapists, all the experts that I called in to help this child were helpless to stop this rage. The mother was helpless. She’d fall into a heap on the floor and cry, she didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to do. Until that one day, I came in, and a kid slammed the door behind me because kids slam doors, you know, he was trying to help, and he slammed the door, and that was one of Lizzie’s triggers. That sound triggered her rage, her fear, and she fell apart again, and the mother fell into a heap on the floor because she didn’t know what to do.
Lizzie was biting and screaming and hurting. And I took Lizzie into my arms and I sat on the floor. I was so helpless. And all I said was, “God show me.” And I held her. All the advice of the experts left my head. And all I could do was hold her and love her. It didn’t matter what I said - she couldn’t hear me, so I simply felt the love through my body into hers. And I held her, and I rocked her. And she bit me. And she scratched me, and she punched me, and I held her some more.
Finally, she began to calm. And I began to whisper to her in her ear, “I love you. It’s gonna be okay.” And she looked up at me and said, “Am I a good girl?” And I said, “Yes, Lizzie, you’re a good girl.” And she broke open, and she let love back in.
Whoever had abused her had been the barrier to her and love. She couldn’t trust, she couldn’t understand, and God gave me in that moment a way to help her. Simply to feel the love, and let her know it was there, what it felt like.
Sin isn’t what we do. It’s what happens when love is broken.
We can look in our lives and see where am I doing that? What am I holding on to that keeps a barrier between me and God, or between me and everyone else. And like Abraham, we can sacrifice that. Like Christ, we can climb up on the cross and let that die, and move into resurrection life.
It isn’t about rules. It’s about love - and love grows and grows and grows. That is the whole point of this journey, from the day of resurrection and ascension until this day, and beyond us to the days to come. It is for love to continue to grow, for us pushing our tent posts out, expanding the kingdom of God so that everyone who is hurting like Lizzie was hurting can be in our presence and feel what love feels like.
One other way Jesus taught us to react when we’re assaulted or hurt – it’s our natural inclination to want revenge, to protect ourselves, to want to hurt the other person. But you remember what Jesus said? Let’s say it again: “Turn the other cheek.” We don’t engage in conflict, or in argument.
We stand where we stand: in the truth, in the love of God. We own that our very bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, and that this place created by God with all its problems and imperfections is a temple of the Holy Spirit, and we pray as we did in our Collect that we be made to know a unity of spirit here, so that the love of God can live on the earth in a very real way.
And we come to be strengthened every week at this table because this is not easy work. This has been a particularly rough week. And we all need this nourishment – the nourishment of the word.
How do you like this lectionary for today? We don’t get to choose it. That’s the best part of being an Episcopalian. Well, one of them. We just go where the lectionary leads us, right? Do you think God had something in mind for us… and for the world?
It isn’t about how much money we have, how much power we have, how much good stuff we have; it’s about how much love are we willing to be in our world in the face of every single thing we meet? How much love are we willing to be in our world?
Hafiz said (in his poem which speaks in the voice of God), “I am made whole by your life. Each soul, each soul, completes me.” If each soul is beloved of God, as we believe each soul is, deserving of respect and dignity, then as a family, as a temple of God here, it is our baptismal vow to protect the dignity of every single human being, and to seek justice for them, so that anyone who is down in that valley is raised up by us, and anyone who is up high is brought low by us so that we all stand, one family, one spirit in Christ, in the love of God. As one family.
That is the reign of God. That is our call, the way we participate right now in the reign of God. The beauty of it is: nothing is impossible with God. Little Lizzie who was three is now in her twenties, and I’m still in touch with them, and she is fabulous. She’s healed.
There is no wound out there God can’t heal. And God will use us. And, honestly y’all, we don’t have to know what we’re doing. All we have to do is stay in relationship with God: pray, worship individually and together, be nourished in word and sacrament.
I’m grateful for all of you. I’m grateful for the love that I see working in and through you every day in this parish. God bless you and keep you forever and ever. Amen.
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