Don't Do Your Chores, Kids

Brad Sullivan

St. Mark’s, Bay City

July 17, 2016 - Proper 11

Amos 8:1-12

Luke 10:38-42

Don’t Do Your Chores, Kids

I looked through several children’s Bibles on a hunch over the last week looking for the Martha and Mary story we just heard, and my hunch was confirmed.  Not a single one contained this story of Martha doing all the chores, Mary sitting at Jesus’ feet, and Jesus telling Martha that Mary had it right.  No parent wants their children to hear this story.  “Don’t do your chores kids.  Just sit around and listen to Jesus.”

To be fair to both Mary and Martha, both work and rest are required.  We gotta get our chores done.  We gotta get our work done, and we want to strive for excellence in what we do.  Mary is not the patron saint of laziness.  She could be called the saint of setting aside all distractions and serenely receiving the Word of God.

Martha, on the other hand, wanted to receive the Word of God.  Indeed, she had invited Jesus into her home, but then she was too busy being a host that she couldn’t just be with Jesus.  She was like the people described in Amos 8:12, scurrying around searching for the Word of God and not finding it.  Martha has become a symbol for our time and our culture, searching frantically for some peace, for some good news, for some way to keep our heads above water.  Many of us even invite Jesus in, but we’re so busy and distracted, that we never actually find the peace, good news, and salvation for which we’re so frantically searching.  Mary found the Word of God in Jesus and knew her search and scurrying were over.  She could rest, and so can we if we will but choose to.

I’m guessing that for many of us, the thought that it’s actually good not to work for a while and just rest at Jesus’ feet is probably kinda nice.  That’s not what our economy would probably say, not what businesses might encourage; we may even feel bad about taking that time to rest, shamed by all the frantically searching Marthas, but looking at God’s plan from the beginning, rest and intentional time taking rest is such an integral part of what it is to be human, that it is even part of the image of God in which we were made.  God rested on the 7th day, just spent time with creation and with God’s self. 

Kristin encouraged me to rest last Monday, not to do a whole lot, just relax, spend time with the kids.  “I don’t relax very well,” was my reply, but she persisted.  So, I relented and spent time resting and being with the kids.  It was a great, grace-filled day.  Jesus was there in that time spent with family, in the rest, in the Sabbath. 

Looking at our traditional way of resting in the Word of God, we gather in our church for worship and communion for an hour each Sunday.  Let’s be honest that for many folks nowadays, coming to a church service isn’t exactly the first and best idea of rest, or something particularly enjoyable.  There are hard benches, old music, stories from an ancient book, sit, stand, kneel - that’s one way to experience worship. 

Here’s another.

We join in prayers and a way of worship going back over a thousand years…joining with Christians from the earliest days of Christianity.  We gather together with a community of faith, and doubt.  We sit at the feet of Jesus, who is unseen, yet ever-present.  We collect our prayers along with the prayers of others, and we set aside the worries of the day for a short respite; bring those worries here to lay down that heavy burden at the altar and take up the yoke of Jesus, his way and teaching, his life and guidance, and to receive his love. 

Taking up Jesus’ yoke and receiving his love means that we have to let our guard down a bit when coming to church.  For one thing, we have to see the cross.  We have to admit that we don’t have it all together.  We have to admit that as good a person as we each are, we’re also not great people, meaning that we all hurt each other.  We’re all broken people who break others out of our brokenness.  By coming to worship at a church, we have to acknowledge that, and we have to acknowledge our need for God to redeem us with himself.

Then, we also have to accept God’s acceptance of us.  God loves and accepts us not because we are good and not in spite of our flaws.  God loves and accepts us completely irrespective of our flaws because of how good God is.  To accept God’s acceptance of us, we have to let go of our shame which keeps telling us we’re not worthy of God’s love, lay that shame down at the foot of the cross, and accept that we are worthy of God’s love and belonging, simply because God loves us and we belong to him.  Period.  We don’t earn God’s love and belonging; on the one hand we can’t earn it, and on the other hand, we don’t need to.  We belong to God because we are beloved of God, because God chooses to love us no matter what. 

Seeing the cross and then accepting God’s acceptance of us is why we come here for worship and communion. These ideas are expanded on more beautifully in John Newton’s book, Falling Into Grace, and I continue to recommend it to you.

With all of the fear and anger and hatred in our world, we need to know that we belong and that we are loved.  Spending time, like Mary did, resting in the Word of God tells us that we belong and that we are loved.  So, for an hour a week, we get to soak that it.  We get to be lazy.  We get to sit…and kneel and stand, and not work, so that we can see the cross and accept God’s acceptance of us.  Let’s face it, we get to be lazy.  In the Episcopal Church, you don’t even have to work that hard at praying.  It’s all in written down in the Book of Common Prayer; you’ve got a script.    

Now I realize having this worship service is work for some.  Our altar guild prepares our space for worship; our ushers greet and guide us; our music leaders help us to pray through music and song; our lectors, acolytes, and Eucharistic Ministers help us to receive the Word of God in scripture and in sacrament, and our vestry members do just about everything on Sunday morning, especially if not primarily make coffee, the eighth sacrament.  So there is work involved in Sunday morning, but that work is geared toward our rest.  We’re both Martha and Mary. 

So with that work and that rest, what about when we mess up?  We say the prayers wrong, or sing out of tune, or spill the red wine all over someone’s beautiful white silk dress?  As far as I know that last one hasn’t happened, and honestly, I’d just advise against wearing a white silk dress to communion, but if someone messes up…cool.  This is a place of prayer and grace, of mercy, forgiveness, and love.  What if the kids are too loud or rambunctious?  Ok.  They’re kids.  Jesus said let ‘em come.  Out there we’re constantly struggling to keep up our appearances of perfection or of having it all together; it’s exhausting.

In here, when we gather for worship or anytime we gather as a community, we get to be imperfect.  We get to acknowledge the fact that we don’t have it all together, that we mess up, that our kids are loud.  We get to be our true, authentic, flawed selves, and we get to be loved for being those true, authentic, flawed selves. 

That’s what seeing the cross and accepting acceptance is all about.  Getting to be our true, authentic, flawed selves, and getting to be loved for being those true, authentic, flawed selves is  what sitting at the feet of Jesus allows us to do.  Rather than striving for perfection, we can just be.  We strive for excellence in our worship and in our preparation of this space, just like we strive for excellence in our lives.  Then when we inevitably fall short of that excellence, we can laugh and smile, and give thanks both for the striving and for the falling short.  After all, we don’t come here for our excellence.  We come here for Jesus. 

Jesus doesn’t come here because we are excellent or perfect.  Jesus comes here because we are his and we are beloved.  Amen. 

Prejudice & Segregation Have No Place In God's Kingdom

Brad Sullivan

St. Mark’s, Bay City

July 10, 2016 - Proper 10

Luke 10:25-37

Prejudice & Segregation Have No Place In God’ Kingdom

Jesus blew some minds and likely ruffled some feathers with his response to the lawyer’s question, “Who is my neighbor?”  As understood in Leviticus 19, an Israelite’s neighbor was one of his own kin, a fellow Israelite.  Neighbor was therefore narrowly interpreted so that loving others outside of Israel was not required.  Certainly loving a Samaritan was not required.  In fact, Samaritans were so hated and vilified by Israel, that being loving toward one of them may have even been seen as the wrong thing to do, or at least something that brought scandal and gossip. 

“I heard Joe was being friendly with a Samaritan the other day.”   

“Ewe!  Do you think he ate with one of them?  They’re not friends, are they?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t think we should be seen with Joe anymore.”

“No.  Not if he’s going to consort with those types of people.”

Into this insular nature and narrow definition of neighbor, Jesus told the parable of the Samaritan who helped the Israelite.  The people hearing Jesus’ story couldn’t have wanted to identify with the priest or the Levite who saw an Israelite beaten half to death and went on by, leaving the man dying by the side of the road.  They would have had to identify either with the Samaritan or with the beaten man who received help from the Samaritan.  Either way, they were rather uncomfortable, their minds blown, wondering “how could a Samaritan be good?”, and also struggling with the point of Jesus’ parable.  Their narrow definition of neighbor didn’t fit with God’s kingdom.  They were segregated into Israelites and everyone else, and that segregation didn’t fit into God’s kingdom.  Their prejudice and feeling that all Samaritans were bad didn’t fit into God’s kingdom.

Jesus showed them that there were bad Israelites and good Israelites, just like there were bad Samaritans and good Samaritans.  Some were willing to hear and accept Jesus’ teaching, and others were not.  The problems of prejudice and stereotypes still assault us today and often erupt into acts of violence, like the shooting of the police officers in Dallas last week.  Such violence can lead us to double down on prejudice and stereotypes, to double down on fear and mistrust of others.  I think Jesus was pretty clear that such doubling down on fear, mistrust, and stereotypes has no place in God’s kingdom.

Such was the conclusion of one man who attended the rally in Dallas and was leaving just before the sniper’s bullets began to fly.  I read in the Huffington Post about this man, Kellon Nixon who had taken his son to the rally and left towards the end of the rally as some bad actors, not associated with the rally, began shouting negative things.  Mr. Nixon is a 34 year old black man, a pastor at a church in Dallas, a husband and father, and in reflecting on the killing of the police, and running for his life and his son’s life, he said:

You start to think it’s me against the world. And with that type of mentality, we’ll implode as a people…We’re all one race at the end of the day. If we get a ‘me against the world’ mentality ― last night I was thinking, maybe it’s not black lives matter or all lives matter, maybe it’s just my life matters. Maybe it’s just my family’s life matters. I had to recover from that spiritually.

I had to be reminded that love conquers all.

He then talked about showing mercy, and like in our story today, that mercy did not come from where he expected it to come.  He said

At a point in my life, I sold drugs, and the honest truth is that the mercy that was extended to me wasn’t by other drug dealers, it wasn’t by African-American men. But it was by two Anglo-American officers that found me with drugs and they extended me mercy. And from there I was able to be a husband. I was able to be a father. I’m a pastor and a preacher now. And at the same time, when I’m in a three-piece suit, from the police I’m treated worse than when I was a thug.

So it proves to me that everybody’s not bad,” he continued. “That everybody wearing a badge is not bad. That every African-American is not bad. But we have to change our concepts. We have to change our ideology in this country. We’re so segregated in everything. We’re segregated in our schools still. We’re segregated in our religion. We’re segregated in churches. And it destroys us.

Segregation, prejudice, doubling down on fear and insularity does destroy us.  It was destroying Israel in Jesus’ day.  Israel was meant to be a light to the nations, and yet in Jesus’ day they had turned insular, segregated from the rest of the world, and prejudiced against others.  Their insular nature and disdain for others was hiding the light they were meant to share and destroying them as a people.  It is hard to have a heart that is prejudiced and segregated only against a few without that heart eventually turning prejudiced and segregated against many, or even most.  Indeed, there were factions and prejudices within Israel, various groups fighting among themselves for who was following God’s laws the right way and who was anathema. 

Their prejudice and segregation was a cancer, and Jesus said, “No more.  Love one another.  Show mercy.  Stop being so self-righteous than you constantly notice other people’s sins and shortcomings while ignoring your own.  Stop thinking you’re better than anyone else just because you are an Israelite or just because you are this particular brand of Israelite.  Be united in loving one another and showing mercy.  That is the way to eternal life.”

Those same words could be said by Jesus to the church today.  “No more.  Love one another.  Show mercy.  Stop being so self-righteous than you constantly notice other people’s sins and shortcomings while ignoring your own.  Stop thinking you’re better than anyone else just because you are a Christian or just because you are this particular brand of Christian.  Be united in loving one another and showing mercy.  That is the way to eternal life.”

I know that we in the Episcopal Church think that we’ve got the best possible way of being a Christian and following Jesus, and that is true, except of course that it isn’t true.  Being an Episcopalian is absolutely the best way of being a Christian for me, but not for everyone.  There are plenty of ways of being a Christian, plenty of denominations that just wouldn’t work for me, but they work great for other people.  That’s part of the beauty of the Body of Christ.  We get to be very different in many of our practices and ways of life, but we are still united in Jesus.

I like to think that being a Christian is the best way for everyone, and yet there are so many wonderful people out there who aren’t Christian.  They love people and show mercy, and they are therefore our neighbors and brothers and sisters. 

There are bad actors within any group, within any ethnicity, race, religion, etc., and we tend to want to classify whole groups based on those bad actors.  It is a way of self preservation based on fear.  Jesus tells us, however, that doing so does not preserve our lives, it actually destroys them.  In Luke 17:33, Jesus says, “Those who try to make their life secure will lose it, but those who lose their life will keep it.”  Trying to keep our lives secure through fear, segregation, and prejudice ends up destroying our lives.  Embracing others and taking the risk to love those whom we fear brings us eternal life in God’s Kingdom, not only in the next life, but in this life as well.  It’s risky, but that’s life in God’s kingdom, and risking life together is the only way forward, the only way that doesn’t lead to destruction.

We are the Body of Christ, broken on the cross, sealed in the tomb, and resurrected to life everlasting.  We carry the light of Christ, and we have been charged by Jesus to risk our lives for the sake of others.  We have been charged to love others, to show mercy, to call everyone neighbor.  And so I leave us with the words of a rock band called Rush from their song, Everyday Glory.

If the future's looking dark

We're the ones who have to shine

If there's no one in control

We're the ones who draw the line

Though we live in trying times

We're the ones who have to try

Though we know that time has wings

We're the ones who have to fly

We follow Jesus into the uncertainty of love, denying our fear, prejudice, segregation, in order to show mercy to all, living his kingdom of love and light.  Amen.

People Are Being Healed, and Demons Are Being Cast Out

Brad Sullivan

St. Mark’s, Bay City

July 3, 2016

Proper 9, Year C

Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

“People Are Being Healed, and Demons Are Being Cast Out”

“Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven."  These seem curious words to me, curious words for Jesus to leave with his disciples.  He had sent them out to prepare the way for his coming into cities and towns.  Seventy of his disciples, sent two by two, to stay with people, cure the sick, and to let them know that the kingdom of God had come near to them. 

Then, the disciples returned, overjoyed that they were able to cast out demons in Jesus’ name, and who wouldn’t be.  That was pretty awesome work they were doing.  To cast out a demon meant you had some pretty strong Spirit of God working through you, which might boost one’s feelings of importance, not to mention that you’d just been a major help to someone desperately in need.  So, I can guess there might have been some ego inflation going on and Jesus reminding them what was truly important.  He was coming.  Jesus was coming, and the kingdom of God would come not just near, but be fully among them once he arrived.  Jesus’ presence, Jesus’ healing and grace was why they should be rejoicing, and they got to have a part in bringing Jesus’ healing and grace to others.

Boy do we need Jesus’ grace, healing, and love nowadays.  Truth be told, we always do and always have, but there are times when that need is more apparent.  Folks are worried, wondering, and divided over Brexit.  Folks are worried, wondering, and divided over our upcoming presidential election, not to mention being worried and wondering over domestic and international terrorism, mass shootings, economic uncertainty, to name just a few, and people are divided over what to do about all of it. 

We’ve got demons in our world, don’t we?  Fear, anger, and hatred begetting ever more fear, anger, and hatred.  We fear the problems in the world which lead us to anger and hatred, and then that leads to more fear on the part of others and even more anger and hatred.  In the midst of all of this, Jesus reminds us, “I watched Satan fall from Heaven like a flash of lightning.”  Jesus has seen the great enemy fall and be completely conquered, and that fall didn’t occur through fear, anger, and hatred, nor through worry, wonder, and division.  Satan’s fall came through Jesus loving so completely, that he trusted God, put his life into humanity’s hands, allowing us to kill him, so that through his death, life, resurrection, restoration of all creation would come.  Hatred, anger, and rear did not cast down Satan.  Jesus’ love cast down Satan. 

As it is written in Proverbs 10:12 - Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses.  The love of Jesus on the cross covers all offenses.  In the end, the resurrection of Jesus will make all things new, and all of the bad and evil that has been done throughout creation will be redeemed, transformed in the resurrection, and seen and understood forever as the good that was intended.

And in the meantime…?  The restoration of all creation has not happened fully yet, but Jesus’ church is here now to prepare the way.  As Jesus sent the 70 to prepare towns and villages for Jesus; coming, the church is here to let people know of Jesus’ resurrection and the restoration of all creation, and the church is here to heal and cast out demons.  We may think that we don’t see anything so dramatic as healing and casting out demons, but it is happening everyday in the church. 

In this world, our beliefs and our notions of being right divide us so that love that we might feel is often left lying on the side of the road, discarded by our rightness and our perceived righteousness. 

Then we see two men in the church, so deeply divided over the issue of homosexuality that even the words they use to describe their beliefs are abhorrent to each other.  They sit down to talk and listen to each other, continue to disagree, but also understand that they are both seeking what is right and good in Jesus.  They embrace, and leave as brothers who love each other.  People are being healed and demons are being cast out. 

Many people in our world and even in our city are left alone and isolated, not really belonging.  They turn to the places where they think they have found belonging, being lured into drugs, prostitution, murder, enslaved by those whom they thought loved them.

           

Then we see a few people who don’t quite fit in.  Some are new to the community, others desire something more than to wallow in the poor hand they’ve been dealt.  They find embrace in the church, a community that truly loves and welcomes them with no strings attached.  They are taken under the wings of a couple of particularly caring people who shepherd them further into this community built upon the grace and love of Jesus.  They find love, acceptance, belonging, a home.  People are being healed and demons are being cast out.

A man has skin cancer, but he has no insurance.  He knows, rightly or wrongly, that the systems intended to help people who fall through the cracks are broken, and there is no way he can get the seemingly simple operation he needs.

Then he asks help from the church where he eats breakfast every Friday.  He finds someone willing to help shepherd him through the process, be his advocate, pray with him, even help with some of the initial financial costs.  With the church’s help and guidance, he gets through the seemingly broken system and has the surgery.  People are being healed and demons are being cast out.

A long-standing family feud continues to bubble just beneath the surface.  The dance of avoidance and well-practiced politeness begins to grow tired, and then a misstep.  The dancers fall, the walls of politeness crumble, and the anger and resentments boil over, burning all involved.

Some in the family are reminded of the love and forgiveness of Jesus.  They remember that we are all broken and only break each other out of our own brokenness.  They hear the words of Jesus on the cross, “Father forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”  Compassion begins to form.  Tears are shed not only for the self but also for the other.  A first apology is made, not the practiced dance of avoidance and politeness, but the initial faltering steps of descent towards the grace of Jesus and the long road toward to the new dance of reconciliation.  People are being healed and demons are being cast out.

Each of these vignettes are stories of St. Mark’s.  They could also be stories of churches around the world where the presence of Jesus casts out demons and brings healing.  The presence of Jesus among us and within us is what makes us the church.  Like the seventy who were sent by Jesus to minister to people and to bring news of the Kingdom of God through Jesus, we too are commissioned by Jesus to cast out demons and to heal each other.  We’ve been commissioned by Jesus to take his presence with us wherever we go.  We’ve been commissioned by Jesus to bring our faith in him wherever we go, and we’ve been commissioned to talk with others about our faith, to talk with others about Jesus and his kingdom of peace, healing, and love. 

That is the kingdom that will come fully one day, not through any effort of ours, but purely through Jesus.  In the mean time, like the seventy whom Jesus sent, we’ve been sent on ahead to live and share his kingdom, to bring healing to division, to bring faith to fear, to bring peace and reconciliation to anger, and to bring love to hatred.  We’ve been sent on ahead to bring Jesus with us, and to rejoice, in him, in his love, his peace, his faith, and his healing in this world which so needs it.  Rejoice, for the kingdom of heaven has come near, and it is present with us amidst all the toils and dangers of this world, for in all of it, Jesus is here.  Amen.   

The Wild Hunt