“This Is the Way” (sorry, but it fits)

The Rev. Brad Sullivan

St. Mark’s, Bellaire
August 27, 2023
Proper 16, Year A
Psalm 138
Romans 12:1-8
Matthew 16:13-20 

“This Is the Way” (sorry, but it fits)

So, I’ve been a huge Star Wars fan since I was a little kid. 

When I moved into my office at Lord of the Streets, I brought my Mandalorian Naboo Starfighter LEGO set and the rest of my LEGO Star Wars sets first. The Darth Vader helmet looking over me on the wall. Then I eventually brought in the crosses for the walls and my ordination certificate. 

So, right now is a really good time to be a Star Wars nerd. We've got the new Ahsoka show on right now, the Mandalorian before that. Baby Yoda, or as dorks like me know him, Din Grogu is from the Mandalorian show, and a catch phrase of the show is, “This is the Way.” That means the Way of the Mandalorian, a group of warriors and protectors, and the Way they follow is their code, their Way of life.

So, being a huge Star Wars nerd, I’ve been trying not to use “This is the Way” in a sermon or even in everyday conversations, and until today, I’ve been mostly successful.

Today, however, it just fits as Jesus told Peter, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”

Looking at the ideas of the keys and the binding and loosing, Jesus was talking about how we live out God’s kingdom on Earth. For the people of Israel, living out God’s kingdom was and is tied to how they live out and follow God’s laws. Following God’s laws is often referred to as walking in the way of the law.

Over the centuries, Rabbis have determined how the laws will be binding on people, and even which laws are binding on people’s lives and which are not. For Orthodox Jews, there are more laws that are binding on them than for Reform Jews. Their leaders have determined which laws are binding and how the laws are binding.

In Jesus’ day too, the religious leaders determined how the laws were to be lived out, and we know Jesus often disagreed with them, even saying in Luke that some were locking people out of the Kingdom because of how they were enforcing God’s laws. Think of last week, when the Pharisees insisted that Jesus’ disciples were doing things wrong by not washing their hands before eating, and Jesus was having none of it, saying that the point of the laws was not to follow them for the sake of following arbitrary rules, but the point of the laws was to heal us so that we would live in the way of love, the way of mercy, and the way of justice.

Justice, mercy, love…this is the Way of Jesus.

So, disagreeing with the religious leaders of the time over how and which laws were to be binding on people, Jesus told Peter, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” In other words, Peter and the apostles were given the authority to determine which laws were to be binding on the people and how they were to be binding. Peter and the apostles were to determine how people were going to walk in the Way of Jesus.

Very early on, in the book of Acts, we see the apostles determine that for the non-Jewish followers of Jesus, the laws of Israel were mostly not binding. Gentiles didn’t have to become Jewish in order to walk in the Way of Jesus.

Over the centuries, we’ve continued to have leaders determine what ways of life are binding on us in order to walk in the way of Jesus. We have our church councils, our prayer book, our church constitution, and our bishops who determine our Way in the Episcopal Church.

Our way is to walk in justice, mercy, and love. Our way is to spend time daily in prayer, to spend time daily in the scriptures. Our way is sacramental, having ordinary things become ways that God is being encountered in our world in countless ways. Our way is to forgive, to serve, to make do with less so that others may have what they need. Justice, mercy, and love.

 Of course, for any of us to truly walk in the Way of Jesus, the Way becomes something that is internalized by us. Why do we pray and read scripture every day? “Because the priest said I had to.” No, we pray and read scripture every day because that’s our Way. Sometimes we may be doing it simply because it is our Way and we’re walking in that Way, but we keep daily prayer and scripture reading as our Way because that Way of life brings healing.

The way of Jesus is ultimately the way of healing. Why would any of us do with less so that others may have what they need? Because we see our brothers and sisters working and not making enough to pay rent. We see our sisters and our brothers getting sick for two weeks and then being evicted because those two weeks without wages kept them from being able to pay that month’s rent. These are the folks I minister with every day, and once folks end up on the streets, it is frightfully hard to get back.

When you don’t have daily access to a shower and don’t have a place to launder your clothes, getting a job is almost impossible. If you have any mental illness and don’t have a job that pays enough to have good medical insurance, and then enough for co-pays and prescriptions on top of that, then keeping a job can be frightfully difficult. There is a lot of suffering in our world, in our city, and our Way, the Way of Jesus, is to help soothe that suffering.

When we do, we also find that our own suffering is soothed as well. Times when we don’t quite see it, all we can do is trust. Trust in the Way of Jesus, trust in how Jesus’ way has been handed down to us in the Episcopal Church. Then there are times when we recognize the healing that has been brought by walking in the Way, and it becomes internalized by us. The Way of Jesus becomes our Way, the Way of healing, the Way of justice, mercy, and love.

A Woman Made Bread, and Jesus Said, "This Is My Body"

Brad Sullivan

Proper 12, Year A

July 30, 2017

Emmanuel, Houston

Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

A Woman Made Bread, and Jesus Said, “This Is My Body”

Jesus said the Kingdom of Heaven can be compared to “yeast that a woman took and mixed in with tree measures of flower until all of it was leavened.”   Bread.  The kingdom of heaven is like bread, the yeast mixing with the flour, helping it all grow together, the hands of God working to knead the dough and bake it, transforming it from something gooey and inedible, to something delicious and life-giving.  God gives life and forms people in the Kingdom of Heaven, transforming us from one thing into another.  Like God took clay and formed it into Adam’s body and transformed it into a living being, so did a woman knead and shape dough to make bread, which Jesus took, and broke, and gave to his friends and said, “this is my body.”

We are called the Body of Christ live here on earth, as we believe in Jesus, recognize him moving in our lives, and as we seek to live out his Kingdom here on earth.  We’re called to be bread, our separate lives transformed into something greater and life-giving, yeast mixed with flower and water, kneaded, shaped, and leavened into a large loaf of fresh baked bread.   Think for a second about the smell of fresh baked bread; it smells so good, makes you hungry, even if you’re not, you smell that bread, and you want some.  That’s what the Kingdom of God is like.  When we see or hear about the Kingdom of God really being lived out here on earth, we want to go there, we want to be a part of it.

Really living out the kingdom of God here on earth takes time and effort, just like it takes time to and effort to make bread.  It takes time and effort to mix the ingredients together, to knead the dough, and then it takes God’s transformation, the ingredients literally becoming something else as they are baked together.  That’s life in God’s Kingdom:  time, effort, mixing, and God’s transformation.

Life in God’s kingdom, truly living our God’s kingdom takes time.  It takes time for people to form relationships with others, time to get to know our neighbors.  Life in God’s kingdom takes effort.  It takes effort for people to join with others in their communities to serve others, to pray together, to strive together for justice and peace: seeking and serving Christ in all people, respecting the dignity of every human being, and loving our neighbors as ourselves. 

Life in God’s kingdom also takes mixing.  For the kingdom of Heaven to work, the yeast doesn’t just sit on the counter and watch the woman make the bread.   The yeast moves in and  around and interacts with the flour, the yeast and flour joining together with each other, changing each other, becoming something different than the two were separately.  In the kingdom of God, we take time and effort mixing our lives with the lives of others.  We work.  We strive.  We meet people, and we see where Jesus is moving in their lives.  We join with them:  the movement of Jesus in our lives joined with the movement of Jesus in their lives.  When we take this time and effort to mix our lives together, Jesus works to knead the dough, like a woman who kneaded and shaped dough to make bread, which Jesus took, and broke, and gave to his friends and said, “this is my body.”

I read an article last week which was about this kind of Kingdom work, people mixing together and forming bread.  The article from gravityleadership.com, was titled “How to Shift Small Groups to Missional Communities”  For those unfamiliar with the term, mission communities are groups of people within a larger body of the church who “are committed to growing closer to Jesus, doing life together, and joining God’s work in the world.  In other words, missional communities embrace worship, community, and mission as a holistic life of discipleship.” 

The thrust of the article was that missional communities are different from small groups and that in order to live God’s kingdom, we need to shift some of our small groups into missional communities.  The article points out that many churches have done pretty well at gathering their large worshipping communities into smaller groups which pray together, and study scripture, and get to know each other more deeply through their faith.  The small groups take a large community in which some people know hardly anyone, and they give places where people can grow together in deep relationships with one another.  The article went on to say, however, that often these small groups grow stale, continually looking for the next book or next study, and the mission and work of Jesus gets left undone.  Even with a good focus on formation and sharing faith together, reaching out to others beyond themselves is often left out of these small groups.  The yeast remains on the counter, watching the flour from a distance, not mixing and allowing the woman’s hands to form them into bread.

To be fair, the yeast is always ready for the flour to come to it.  We, the church, want people to come here.  We have become a largely attractional community, waiting for folks to come through the doors of the church building and join us in worship.  While we do outreach here and have mission trips which are all good things, those efforts are not usually part of our daily lives and the communities in which we live.  Rather, much of our life in the church is a part of this attractional model:  come to church to be a part of these outreach efforts here. 

With the attractional model of church, we’ve also done Sunday school pretty well for those who are here.  If you come to church on Sunday, you can be formed in the stories of scripture and the faith of Jesus.  If you can’t come to church on Sunday, you’re kinda left on your own.  Folks can watch Joel Osteen on TV, but there’s not actual interaction, actually community with real people, watching something on TV.  We have not been really faithful to Jesus’ calling for us to go out into our communities and form disciples of Jesus there.

Now, that sounds like evangelism, which the Episcopal church has not historically been overly well known for.  We can share our faith within communities within the church, but going out?  That sounds like less than happy street corner people.  Let me be very clear:  a faithful, yet less than happy person on a street corner, threatening strangers to believe in Jesus isn’t yeast mixing with flour; it’s rat poison.  Truly being yeast that gets up off the counter to mix with the flour means mixing with others in our communities, living life together, and thereby allowing Jesus to transform us into bread.  Evangelism is not generally done with strangers.  Evangelism is done with people we know and people we have gotten to know.  Evangelism is done in community, not by ourselves.  Becoming bread, becoming the kingdom of God means we live out our faith in community with others, going out together in our communities to serve others and likely to be served by them as well.  That is what missional communities are, what the church was always intended to be.

The article, “How to Shift Small Groups to Missional Communities”,  gave three steps toward transforming a small group into a missional community which has an outward mission:

• Start a conversation with your existing small group about joining God’s work in your community. If you are not currently part of a small group, prayerfully make a list of people you can invite in on the conversation.
• Discern mission as a group by making a list of areas in the community that God might be inviting you to step into. This could be a place like your neighborhood, [joining with others to regularly and consistently help at a non-profit or community home], or a people group that you feel especially called to serve and love.
• Develop some rhythms to support your life together that includes regularly seeking God, connecting in community with one another, and engaging your shared mission together.

Prayer, Worship, Service.

[Finally], as you step into mission as a community, think presence more than projects. How can you be intentional and consistent in being present among a group of people as a community? Then simply keep noticing where God is at work and join him there!

Now, I’d love to give an exact, step by step process for becoming a missional community with a simple beginning, middle, and end, but the Kingdom of God doesn’t work like that.  What exactly a community is going to look like, what exactly the community mission work will be depends on what needs there are in each of our communities.  What are our passions, and were do the needs of our communities meet the passions of our hearts?  A missional community could join together to serve together, regularly, at a non-profit or a community home/shelter.  A missional community could join together and get to know their neighbors and serve them when in need.  Then that person might join the missional community and serve with them when someone else is in need. 

A missional community, like the Body of Christ, like the Kingdom of God, is not a project that can be easily drawn up, pre-formed, modeled, and packaged for easy assembly.  Missional communities, the way of the kingdom of God, requires work, effort, mixing together, dreaming and praying together with guidance from Jesus.  Missional communities are going to be different everywhere because the needs and the people are different in each community. 

Our part is to be formed as bread, to be yeast, to mix with our communities, to really get to know the communities in which we live, to notice what the needs are, to notice where Jesus is already at work, and then to be willing to be changed by mixing our lives and the work of Jesus with the lives and work of Jesus within others in our communities.  Then we become the Kingdoms of God. 

When we take this time and effort to mix our lives together, Jesus works to knead the dough, like a woman who kneaded and shaped dough to make bread, which Jesus took, and broke, and gave to his friends and said, “this is my body.”

https://gravityleadership.com/small-groups-missional-communities/