Pent 11, 2019-C: The unshakeable kingdom

Glad to be back after two weekds vacation!

Lectionary: Jeremiah 1:4-10; Psalm 71:1-6; Hebrews 12:18-29; Luke 13:10-17



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In today’s reading from Jeremiah, we witness the prophet’s call from God in those beautiful, loving words from the Creator: "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations."

As usually happens when God calls a prophet, the prophet resists the call at first. You’ll remember, there was Abraham who said he couldn’t lead because he stuttered, and Jonah who didn’t want God to save the people at Nineveh, and Mother Mary who, when the Angel Gabriel informed her she would bear the Messiah into the world asked, “How can this be?”

God calls and the prophet hesitates - but I haven’t known a man… but they’re terrible people…. but I’m only a boy. These aren’t excuses, these are reality – earthly realities that only the divine can overcome. This is the moment the prophet must own the limitations of their humanity and finally, fully acquiesce and trust God.

Through our Scriptures, we are continually reassured that God chooses us and calls us to serve even knowing our limitations and our resistance to inner and outer change. God knows we struggle to allow change to happen within us and that we reasonably wish to avoid the consequences of calling for change in our community – because there are always consequences.

Even Jesus sought to avoid those consequences as the story of his prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane affirms. But as Jesus said, Your will, not mine, be done. As his mother said, Let it be done to me according to your will.

Once the prophet has given their consent to this invitation from God, then God empowers them to fulfill their call.

God says to Jeremiah:
"Now I have put my words in your mouth.
See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms,
to pluck up and to pull down,
to destroy and to overthrow,
to build and to plant."

In every case, there will be the destruction and overthrowing of what is and the building and planting of what God intends there to be. As Fr. Nick preached so wonderfully last week: Jesus “came as a fire starter, a division bringer.” He also came to reconcile the whole world to God. He did both – in that order.

During the painful, fearful time of destroying and overthrowing, we cry out as the psalmist did for God to be our strong rock, to deliver us. And as God always does, God reminds us that God has been tending to us since before we were formed in our mother’s wombs and sustains us still.

The letter to the Hebrew’s reminds us that God’s call to us now may not look like God’s call to those who came before. There may be no burning bush, no sounding trumpet for us but when God calls, the author warns, don’t refuse to answer – because God is shaking things up and is building an unshakeable kingdom. So even in the tumult of the transition between what is and what God intends there to be, we give thanks and worship with awe and reverence.

Then in our gospel, Jesus demonstrates what this unshakable kingdom will be like. It will be a kingdom in which God sees and heals all wounds – a grace offered even before we ask because God knows that some of us harbor deep inner wounds that prevent us from fulfilling God’s purpose for us and for the world. By healing this woman in the presence of her faith family and its leadership, Jesus demonstrates that in this unshakable kingdom, God will seek, call, heal, and empower whom God chooses, when God chooses; and no earthly authority, doctrine, or institution can interfere.

The world saw a woman who had an infirmity which they would have seen as a divine punishment for her unworthiness, but God in Christ saw a beloved one who was wounded within and without. God chose her, touched her, and healed her. By calling her a daughter of Abraham, Jesus elevated her to full membership in Jewish society and called the religious leadership out for being more willing to show compassion to an animal than to a child of God; for holding fast to doctrine rather than prioritizing compassionate reconciliation – which is the hallmark of the unshakable kingdom.

Dividing, destroying, and overthrowing what is are necessary as God builds and plants what God intends for there to be.

There are predictable cycles involved in being prophetic leaders of change. For example, the gospel tells us that “the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things… [Jesus] was doing.” As Jesus is inaugurating the destroying phase, the people of God are rejoicing because they are getting a glimpse of the unshakable kingdom and they love the freedom and inclusion they see. It is vastly different from their experiences as occupied citizens under Roman authority. As the overthrowing phase gets real, however, these same people will demand Jesus’ crucifixion. Later, as the rebuilding-planting phase kicks in, they join the nascent Christian movement in droves.

Knowing this cycle, we, like Jesus, we keep walking the path God is setting before us, destroying and overthrowing what is, and partnering with God as rebuilders and planters of what God intends there to be. We will notice people rejoicing, then doing their best to make us stop, but on we’ll go, as Jesus did… to the cross, then the grave, certain by the assurance of our faith, that the grave is our doorway to new life, resurrection life, in the unshakable kingdom of God; and if there’s a church that knows and can trust in resurrection life, it’s this one.

Today’s Collect is a prayer we can cling to and repeat as a mantra on this leg of the journey. Let’s do a very quick Lectio Divina of the Collect together:

Reading 1: What words or phrases stand out for you as you heard this prayer?
Reading 2: As a church in transition, what gift does this prayer offer?

Let us pray…

Eternal Wisdom, Love Almighty... Amen.

Pentecost 8, 2019-C: A divine hunger

Lectionary: Hosea 11:1-11; Psalm 107:1-9, 43; Colossians 3:1-11; Luke 12:13-21



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En el nombre del Dios: Creador, Redentor, y Santificador. Amen.

I have a confession to make: I’m a sweet-eater. As a sweet-eater, I have found that when I crave something sweet, if I don’t eat it, I will eat, and eat, and eat all kinds of other things seeking satisfaction which will elude me until I finally eat that sweet treat. As C.S. Lewis once said: “What does not satisfy when we find it was not the thing we were desiring.”

Sometimes our desire is a divine hunger, but in our unawareness, we seek to fill that desire with earthly things; things that are immediate, tangible, and may provide us a sense of security or a feeling of aliveness when we feel otherwise numb or dead.

In his letter to the Colossians, St. Paul says, “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.” When we lose sight of what God desires for us, and for the world through us, it’s because we have looked away, and our behaviors will show us that – hence the list in Paul’s epistle.

So the question is, what does God desire for us? (The preacher asks for answers) Do we hear anywhere in our Scripture that God desires great fortunes, lots of land, or power for us?

Our fulfillment, our purpose can’t be found in or measured by earthly things. So when St. Paul speaks of obedience, he’s talking about hearing and responding to God. Our modern experience with the word is being compliant with rules, but Paul is saying that when something earthly has diverted our attention and become the object of our desire, and we are devoting our time, energy, and gifts to that instead of to God, then that thing is an idol.

We have many idols – and they can be tricky. We may not recognize that something has become an idol for us until someone else points it out, or until we realize things have gotten out of control. Addictions to food, substances, self-harm, shopping, or gambling come to mind.

The same can be said of religion and belief. If we create an ideal about God or how to worship God or what language to use about God, then what we have is a relationship with our ideal, not with God, and we have created an idol.

If we project our own beliefs and prejudices onto the divine, we have created an idol, and this is a very dangerous kind of idol. This kind of idol enables us to divide ourselves according to race, class, religion, or country of origin – despite St. Paul’s clarification that since Christ is all in all “there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free.”

This kind of idol motivates and justifies the destruction of people who are judged by the idolater to be different or unworthy. Their freedoms can be taken away. Their children can be taken away. Their lives can be taken away.

I read this morning that the US has suffered 251 mass shootings in 216 days. (Source) In the last 7 days, 2 people were killed at a Walmart store in Southaven, MS; 3 people were killed and 15 injured in Gilroy, CA; 20 were killed and 26 injured in El Paso, TX; and only this morning 9 were killed and 16 injured in Dayton, OH. It seems that our relationship with guns just might be idolatrous. It’s certainly destructive.

In her book Amazing Grace, A Vocabulary of Faith, author and theologian, Kathleen Norris, says: “Idolatry makes love impossible.” (88) That’s because we can’t love an idol – it isn’t real. It’s our own creation. Norris says we create these idols because it’s “…safer to love an idol rather than a real person [or God] who is capable of surprising you, loving you and demanding love in return…” (89-90)

Idols mislead us into believing that we can trust in ourselves, our judgment, our beliefs. And that is just what the rich man in Jesus’ parable has done.

The Parable of the rich man describes a landowner who has many possessions and is being given even more – a windfall crop. In the theology of that time, such a gift would be seen as coming from God, a blessing for the man’s righteousness. But Jesus shows the fallacy of that idea revealing it to be nothing more than vanity.

In the parable, Jesus shows that the rich man first sinned when he asked himself, ‘What should I do?’ You’ll notice that the first part of the parable is not a conversation or a prayer. The man wasn’t asking God, “What should I do?” he was asking himself. In fact, the number of times the rich man considers anyone besides himself in this parable is exactly: zero.

The rich man had devoted his time, energy, and attention to himself and his riches were nothing more than vanity. He was truly poor in the only thing worth having – a right relationship with God. This is important because when we seek and enter a right relationship with God, we have the added benefit of discovering a right relationship with ourselves and with others.

In his book, God Hunger, John Kirvan reminds us that being made in the image of God means that it isn’t just God who is mystery. Kirvan says, “We, too, have at the heart of our beings a core of reality that will forever escape definition or confinement… Our spiritual quest [then] is an exploration of our likeness to God – a case of mystery courting mystery. We are in search of the only reality worthy of our efforts, the only truth large enough to satisfy our deepest needs.” (129)

It can be hard to let God be God. We have a tendency to want to solve the mystery. Thankfully, as Episcopalians, we opt instead to live into it. God, who is more than we can ever imagine, will always surprise us. We, who are temples of God’s Holy Spirit, will surprise ourselves; and others, who are also bearers of the image of God, will surprise us too – because God is mystery and God in Christ is all in all.

We all have idols to shed. As a parish community, we have idols to shed. As a Christian community, we have idols to shed. As a country, we have idols to shed.

The first concrete step we can take today is to open ourselves to the opportunities our Holy Eucharist provides us: to pray and worship as a community that is part of the larger body of Christ; to share the spiritual food of Holy Communion which is a tangible reminder that we are one body, one spirit in Christ; to use the quiet moments in our worship to look within and encounter the divine mystery already present there.

I offer this prayer from John Kirvan as a way to begin to let God be God in us, and through us into the world:

Let us pray.

“It is because
you have made me, Lord,
in your image and likeness
that my soul seeks you
and will not rest until it rests in you.
Even as you are not
the sum of your words and images
neither am I.
Help me, Lord, not to settle
for anything less
than the divine mystery
you have made of me. (Kirvan, 129)

Amen.