Pentecost 18, 2024-B: Open, expectant, and certain

 Proper 20 Lectionary: Jeremiah 11:18-20; Psalm 54 ; James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a; Mark 9:30-37 

En el nombre del Dios: creador, redentor y santificador. Amen. 

In the name of God: Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. Amen.

If God is love and creator of all that is, then who or what in all of creation is not of God? How then, do we understand the ills of the world: pain, sickness, loneliness, hunger, poverty, abuse, oppression, war, betrayal? Are those of God too? The platitude, “everything happens for a reason” is neither helpful nor faithful.

We don’t know why some things happen because we can’t see the plan of God in its fullness. There are times bad things happen - sometimes, but not always - because someone acted outside of the divine plan of love. The consequence of their action has nothing to do with God, at least until God’s redemption has interceded – and we can never see that coming. It almost always happens in a way and at a time we just can’t imagine.

This is what the disciples are struggling to comprehend as Jesus teaches them in our gospel today. The timing of this lesson from Jesus is important. Jesus and the disciples are back in Capernaum, Jesus’s hometown.

Jesus has completed the last of his healing ministry and is now focusing on preparing the disciples for his entry into Jerusalem where he will be betrayed, abused, and ultimately killed. This is the second of three times Jesus tells his disciples about the path that lies ahead of them.

Jesus said, “The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands – a wrong thing - and they will kill him – a terrible thing - and three days after being killed, he will rise again.” Wait – what? Mark tells us they didn’t understand what Jesus was saying and they were afraid to ask him about it.

Jesus is teaching the disciples to wait in faith and keep themselves open, expectant, and certain of God’s loving plan even when terrible or wrong things start to happen. The last time Jesus taught this lesson, you’ll remember that Peter didn’t want to hear it. ‘No Lord. May that never happen.’ Jesus pushed back at Peter saying, “Get behind me Satan.” ‘Don’t distract me, don’t tempt me away from the path of redeeming love being laid by God.

How can this path be of God? The disciples simply can’t see how Jesus’ betrayal and death can be part of God’s plan of love. This question comes from a worldly point of view.

In our lives, as time unfolds in the earthly realm, the heavenly perspective often eludes us. At the same time, we are steeped in the values of the world and they become ours. Despite our best efforts, we are lured into living as if hierarchy is a given, as if arrogance is really confidence, and selfish schemes are just good business, as if hoarding money and possessions is a greatness to celebrate, along with the power and influence they afford the hoarder.

This is what distracted the disciples as they traveled back to their hometown. They were arguing about who among them was the greatest. Being great from a worldly perspective is a human desire, not a heavenly one, so as Jesus’ earthly story begins to draw toward its conclusion, he teaches the disciples one of the most important lessons he has to give them.

When they settled in for the night, Jesus asked them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” They were busted and they knew it. But Jesus, as patient and loving as ever, sat down and called the disciples to him. When a rabbi does that, it means class is in session.

‘Do you want to be great?’ Jesus asked. Then he turned all their expectations upside down – again. Jesus had a way of doing this. The greatest, he said, are not first, but last. The greatest must be servant of all.

To demonstrate his point, Jesus took a little child, and holding that child in a loving embrace, he explained that to the world, this child is helpless, powerless, has little to offer, and no clout whatsoever. But to heaven, this child is the face of redemption because: whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me, welcomes not just me but also the one who sent me.

In other words, when we connect with the helpless, the powerless, the weak, the poor, and the excluded, we connect with God. They are the means by which we are made co-creators of love and partners in the continuing work of redemption. And the consequences of our actions echo through time and place, like a pebble that is dropped into still water. As one of my favorite singer-songwriters, Dar Williams, said: “Every time you opt into kindness/ make one connection/ [that] used to divide us/ it echoes all over the world.” (“Echoes” by Dar Williams, My Better Self album)

The symbolism Jesus employed in this demonstration is powerful. A child is open, trusting, and relies on her parent to know how to take care of what she needs and to be ready to do it. A child offers his love freely. He knows he’s part of a family and isn’t expected to ‘go it alone.’ A child knows they don’t know everything and trusts that their adults know a lot more than they do – important things, things necessary for their survival and contentment. So, they trust their adults to guide them, to keep them safe, and bring them home, even when the path before them looks terrible, dangerous, and impossible to pass.

As followers of Christ, you and I are walking on a path of redeeming love that is laid out for us - moment by moment - by God. This path often takes unexpected turns but, we are in the hands of God who always leads us home. We can’t get lost.

A tell-tale sign that we have taken ourselves off the path of love is that conflicts and disputes arise. When that happens, the only faithful response is to “submit to God” as James says in his letter, to draw near to God who will draw near to us and restore our wisdom, our peace, and our feet on the path of love.

Another sign of being off the path of love is anxiety. As we prayed in our Collect, “Grant us, Lord, not to be anxious about earthly things, but to love and hold fast to those things that are eternal; and what is eternal and eternally true for us is Jesus, who calls us to serve in his name.

What I love about this gospel story is the way Jesus acted so gently with his disciples who didn’t get it, were afraid to ask about it, and were about to have to deal with it without him. I’m sure he knew how hard it was for his followers to shift from their expectation of Messiah to Jesus’ embodiment of it; from their life-long goal of taking the seat of power to Jesus’ command to be last of all.

It’s hard to shift from the habits of our thinking, especially when the world affirms them so strongly. We won’t always get it right or quickly, but Jesus will stick with us, gently showing us the way to go because he trusts us to go forward as faithfully as we can, moment to moment. He trusts us to be his hands and hearts in the world today, serving and healing in his name. It is our privilege and our responsibility to do so.

I close with the prayer written by the founder of Centering Prayer, Trappist monk, Thomas Merton. Let us pray. 

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does, in fact, please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore, I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone. Amen.

16 Pentecost, 2024-B: Super heroes and she-roes for Jesus

Lectionary: Isaiah 35:4-7a; Psalm 146; James 2:1-10, [11-13], 14-17; Mark 7:24-37

En el nombre de Dios, creador, redentor, y santificador. Amen. 

In the name of God, Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. Amen. 

There are times in our lives when we just need a superhero - someone caring enough to notice our need or the injustice we’ve suffered; someone compassionate enough to choose to help us; and someone brave and strong enough to get it done. The prophet Isaiah speaks to this need describing God as one who will swoop in with vengeance and terrible recompense to rescue us from whatever or whoever threatens us.

I had a superhero like that once - a state prosecutor, named Mike, whose arm muscles literally bulged under his suit jacket. Mike fought fiercely for justice for my daughter and me when we were trying to leave my abusive first husband, and he got it done.

But Isaiah also speaks of God as one who springs up unexpectedly like water in the wilderness, who heals us and soothes us like cool streaming water on hot, thirsty ground. I’ve also had this kind of hero… a she-ro, actually: Mary, the Mother of God. Mary first came to me when I was 4 years old and every time I’ve needed her since. Her presence is always comforting and brings me relief and healing of body and soul.

We who believe can trust that God always knows our circumstances and sends us exactly the heroes and she-roes we need, from earth and heaven, to heal and encourage us, and to get us through. The only catch is that we have to be open to receiving the help, which requires humility.

As I preached last week, humility is a vital Christian virtue. We continually cultivate humility by paying attention to the condition of our hearts, the womb within us where God is conceiving and forming not just new life in us, but also a new way for us to live. This new life motivates us to respond in our world in the ways of God rather than the ways the world has taught us.

In his epistle, James, the brother of Jesus, writes about how this looks. We would live without partiality or favoritism, respecting each person just as they come to us. We would be compassionate, acting on our faith, not just spewing it.

The best illustration of this, however, is in today’s gospel. Having just taught his disciples that evil comes not from without, but from within our hearts, Jesus sets off for Gentile country where he embodies this teaching.

A Syrophoenician woman comes up to Jesus, bows down at his feet, and begs Jesus to heal her daughter. This woman is violating all kinds of cultural boundaries: she’s a Gentile, a woman, and she’s speaking to a man who isn’t her family. She could have been punished severely. That’s how desperate she was.

Which is why Jesus’ response to her is so jarring. “Let the children (of Israel) be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Calling a Gentile a “dog” was a common racial slur at that time. Jesus’ use of it challenges our sanitized version of him.

But this is a story about breaking down boundaries that divide us. In order to break down entrenched barriers we must first notice they exist. Jesus’ startling statement worked like a charm – then and now. Everyone noticed.

The Jewish hearers of Jesus’ slur would have been in full agreement. Syrians are dogs; they don’t deserve what belongs to us. The Syrians listening would have heard the same old, familiar discrimination. It was the way of their world.

That’s why Jesus’ words to this suffering woman, followed by his healing of her daughter, obliterated those entrenched, divisive barriers, and everyone there witnessed this new way of living in the world.

The second healing story breaks down even more barriers. In this story, a deaf man is brought to Jesus. Jesus takes this Gentile man apart from the crowd and performs a Jewish healing ritual on him: laying on of hands and healing prayer, a practice we continue today. Immediately, the man’s ears were opened and his speech was clear.

Mark tells us that those who witnessed this healing were overcome with awe and wonder. Who wouldn’t be?

This man was miraculously healed in his body, but the real barrier Jesus brought down was spiritual. In those days, it was believed that if a person were born deaf it was punishment for sin, probably his parents’ sin. Rather than judging him, Jesus set him free from the sin. In fact, he set his whole family free.

Forgiving sin is something only God can do. So yes, this was an astounding moment! Also astounding was that by this healing, Jesus demonstrated a new way of living in the world - a way where sin is forgiven and healing is real.

In each of these healing stories, Jesus not only meets the ones he heals where they are; he meets the communities that surround them where they are - and heals them too. Jewish people, Syrians, Greeks, and Romans, intensely divided by politics and privilege, are made one in Jesus in these two stories. 

The healing love of God obliterates boundaries.

We’re a community that knows healing. It’s the good news we, at Emmanuel, have to share.

We had to learn together that the means of opening a path of healing is the cultivation and practice of humility. We became each other's heroes and she-roes, sometimes fighting fiercely for justice, other times offering tenderness and soothing care.

This is the new way of living in the world Jesus is teaching in today’s lessons. It’s a way that doesn’t care about how much money, power, or influence you have in the world or in this church,

…a way that welcomes all whom God leads to us, just as they are, showing compassion to anyone who needs it

 … a way where we who witness the healing power of Jesus share the wonder of that with others in our various social circles

…a way that practices forgiveness, where healing is made real for the one who sinned and the one who forgives, reconciling them and their communities into the unity of God’s love.

Three years ago, this was my first Sunday here at Emmanuel. As I preached last week, we’re still who we’ve always been, but when we look back over these last three years, we can see that God has been working in us and a lot has changed.

The healing we’ve been given isn’t just for us - it’s for us to share - and what better day to do that than Homecoming? Our Picnic in the Parish Hall and Ministry Fair offer us the opportunity to enjoy our friendships and commit our gifts to service in the name of Jesus.

Today we acknowledge that we are the super heroes and she-roes God is sending to serve those in need in our church and in our corner of God’s kingdom. We already have all we need to obliterate the barriers that divide us because we have seen and lived the reality of God’s healing love.  Amen.

15 Pentecost, 2024-B: Create in us clean hearts

Note: You can watch this being delivered live at Emmanuel Episcopal Church during our Sunday, 10 am service of Holy Eucharist, live-streamed on our YouTube channel.

Lectionary: Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-9; Psalm 15; James 1:17-27; Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23 

En el nombre del Dios: creador, redentor, y santificador. Amen. 

In the wise words of the under-employed theologian: Calvin, from the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, by Bill Waterson, “You know what’s weird? Day by day, nothing changes, but pretty soon, everything is different.”

Calvin is right in that it feels like we are who we’ve always been, but when we look back we realize God has been working in us and actually a lot has changed. It's always been thus and it’s in community where we see this best.

Our Judeo-Christian history shows us that the movement of the Spirit of God within us has led to an ongoing process of change, and we can infer from our history that this will continue beyond us into the future. An example of this is in today’s gospel from Mark.

The topic is ritual handwashing, but that isn’t the point of this story. The point is: how we respond to the difficulty of honoring what is tradition while allowing for the free movement of the Spirit in the world of the moment.

A word about ritual handwashing. It was not about germs but about humility. We must remember that in this moment of history there was no awareness of germs (that wasn’t until 1500 years later). The Torah requires only priests to do the ritual handwashing, but the tradition developed over time to include everyone (male) to do it.

The amount of water used wouldn’t have been enough to clean their hands as it was meant to cleanse their hearts. It was ritual action; one we have kept and still use as part of our Eucharist. You may notice that the acolyte pours water over my hands before the consecration of our bread and wine of Communion.

As my hands are washed, I offer up a prayer taken from Psalm 51: Lord wash away our iniquities and cleanse us from our sins. Create in us clean hearts, O God, and renew a right spirit within us.”

The word “heart” in Hebrew refers to the womb, the interior of a person where new life is conceived and nourished. This is why when the Pharisees ask Jesus why his disciples don’t wash their hands according to the tradition of the elders Jesus calls them hypocrites and fires back with a quote from their tradition, from Isaiah: “This people honors me with their lips but their hearts are far from me.”

Then Jesus turns to address the whole crowd and teaches them about the importance of the condition of their hearts. Evil, he says, doesn’t come from outside us but from within us. Evil is that which causes sorrow, pain, division or unfairly causes harder labor/work for the weak, powerless, or oppressed. Remember what Jesus also said, “My yoke is easy, my burden is light.”

Evil comes from within and it can be thoughts or actions. Then Jesus names a few: 

• lasciviousness – a thought: disrespecting another using sex as the means 
• fornication – an action: disrespecting another’s or one’s own body usually through sex 
• covetousness – a thought: wanting something that doesn’t belong to you
• theft – an action: taking that thing that doesn’t belong to you
• adultery – an action and a thought: taking or emotionally cleaving to someone who doesn’t belong to you
• murder – an action: taking a life that doesn’t belong to you (since all life belongs to God) 
• slander – an action: making false or damaging statements about someone in order to harm them or their reputation • blasphemy – an action: doing the same thing about God and sacred things 
• pride – a thought: giving ‘self’ priority over other, even over God. Pride is the opposite of humility, which characterized Jesus, his ministry. The cultivation of humility is one of the main purposes of our rituals. And pride leads to…
• folly. A thought or an action: When we think unwisely, we tend to act unwisely. 

 These are the things that defile, Jesus says. We disrespect and violate ourselves, others, and God when we do these things so we must cleanse our hearts when any of these arises in us.

Jesus demonstrated by his life and ministry that while tradition has value, and the elders have wisdom to share, God is at work doing a new thing, because God is working out Their plan of redemption for the whole world: all people, all times, all places. Continually examining the condition of our hearts is important if we are to be faithful participants with God in this.

Our whole tradition, the Christian tradition, is a new thing God worked through Jesus and his followers in that time. It’s no wonder the Jewish leadership resisted the changes.

Change is difficult. What if important traditions are lost?

I’m sure the Pharisees worried about that when Jesus’ disciples dropped the handwashing tradition. Yet, here we are, still ritually washing our hands more than two millennia later.

God is the true keeper of tradition. No leader, no historian, no theologian decides which traditions will live and which must be let go for a time or forever. God decides this because only God knows the full plan of redemption.

As for us, Jesus teaches us to notice the condition of our hearts, the deep interior of our beings, where new life is conceived and nourished by God. When we find the presence of those things that defile within us, we are to repent – to ask God to cleanse our hearts and renew a right spirit within us.

Anglican theologian Evelyn Underhill says: 

“The coming of the Kingdom is perpetual. Again and again, freshness, novelty, power from beyond the world break in by unexpected paths bringing unexpected change. Those who cling to tradition and fear all novelty in God's relation to the world deny the creative activity of the Holy Spirit, and forget that what is now tradition was once innovation; that the real Christian is always a revolutionary, belongs to a new race, and has been given a new name and a new song.”

Beloved ones, as followers of Jesus we intentionally open ourselves to the movement of the Holy Spirit within us, trusting that our loving and merciful God is steadily working out a plan of redemption for the whole world – all people, all times, all places. Our only concern is faithfully participating in that plan as it is revealed to us in this moment of our collective history.

The church is supposed to be a place where the condition of our hearts can be examined safely within a community where love is practiced. When we find that we have gone astray, as individuals or as a community, we are supported in our repentance by a community that continually cultivates humility through our ritual practices. In this way, over time, we are able restore the priority of God’s will for us over our own.

Each time we review our parish history, as we do each year at our Annual Parish Meeting in January, we see how God has worked in us day by day, changing us, forming us, redirecting us. Think of where we were just a few years ago, and where God has led us to now. It feels like we are who we’ve always been, but when we look back we can see that God has been working in us and actually a lot has changed. 

I close with a prayer from another of my favorites, Bishop Steven Charleston, retired bishop of Alaska, and a member of the Choctaw nation: 

 “Give your heart to love today, not to old thoughts of who you were, but to the new idea that your kindness could change another life. Give your mind to hope today, not to the usual list of impossibilities, but to a single faith that goodness is the purpose of history. Give your spirit to peace today, not to the anger of the moment, but to the welcoming road of grace that leads to the home for which you have longed. Give your hands to the work of justice today, not in resignation but in certainty, knowing that what you do will make an enormous difference.” 

 Amen.