Sermons

Rev. Nancy Rockwell

Ready – Set – Go!

27 June 2010

Galatians 5: 13-16:   only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. ¹⁴For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” ¹⁵If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another. ¹⁶Live by the Spirit

These texts we have read today are about as clear as mud.  Or maybe, about as tasty as mud.  What we have here is Jesus being quoted talking about his own discomfort as a model for us and a lesson to be learned.  But we want a pleasant experience  of Jesus as our comfort, assuring us we are God’s beloved.  There’s an unappealing taste in these words.

Luke says:   As Jesus was traveling to Jerusalem he sent his advance team to a Samaritan village to prepare for a stopover. "But the people there did not welcome him" .   The disciples James and John exploded in rage at the rejection: "Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven to destroy them?" They probably spoke figuratively, not literally, but their desire was for revenge. Instead of rebuking the Samaritans who rejected him, though, Jesus rebukes James and John, who defended him.   They must have hated that.

Scholars, in footnotes in annotated Bibles, having studied the more than 5000 ancient texts of Luke’s gospel, say there is an extra verse that belongs here:

            "And Jesus said to them, 'You do not know what kind of spirit you are of, for the Son of Man did not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them.'"

And this single verse is reflected in Paul’s letter to the Galatians, when Paul says: the heart and whole of the law is this:  Love your neighbor as yourself.

And none of us is an A student at that.  It is so easy for us to dislike and become suspicious of strangers.  Early in this week someone said to me, I worry a lot that there are so many Pakistanis in this country, and they could all be planning car bombs, who knows.

But Jesus says, If we take on his yoke, then we try to love our enemies.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer calls this costly grace, which is different from the kind of grace we love, that falls upon us as a free gift, no matter what.  But costly grace leaves us, as Jesus said, homeless on the earth.  And it even takes us away from the homes we once had. 

Jesus’ baptism (which we have repeated in a rite here today for five people, with great joy) functioned kind of like a portkey in a Harry Potter story.    That water hit his head, and everyone heard the word Beloved being shouted from the sky, and one minute he was standing in the river bathed in love with a laughing, loving crowd all around the shore, and the next Jesus was immediately plunged into the wilderness, alone, and there the Devil tested him, by offering him such wonderful delights, and the power to do all kinds of good things.  It took all Jesus’ strength to remember who he was, God’s Beloved and as such, fully human and no more than that.  And remembering this, he had the courage to say No to the Devil.

Like it or not, we also are plunged into the wilderness of temptation in this life:  and one temptation is to tell the stories upside down, so that we win, and feel good about ourselves.  Like this lovely gem, that someone sent me this week, about parents and teens:

A teenage boy had just passed his driving test and wanted to discuss his use of the family car with his father.  The father said:  'You bring your grades up to a B average, study your Bible, and get your hair cut. Then we'll talk about the car.'  They agreed on it.  After about six weeks his father said, 'Son, you've brought your grades up and I've observed that you have been studying your Bible, but I'm disappointed you haven't had your hair cut.   The boy said, 'You know, Dad, I've been thinking about that, and I've noticed in the Bible that Samson had long hair, John the Baptist had long hair, Moses had long hair...and people think Jesus had long hair.”  His Dad said, 'Did you also notice all of them walked everywhere they went?'

Well, we want it to be this way.  But Jesus doesn’t tell stories like this, ever.  The stories he tells hurt more to live through.  The story Jesus tells about a father and son is about a son who rejected the deal, left home with his long hair, took most of his father’s money and treasures money and wasted them in every regrettable way, and after a few years, in which he never sent a single note, he came home broke and hungry.  And the father loved him, and took him in.   Who knows what happened after that, with such a prodigal son?  But we know the father loved him unconditionally, and embraced him in every way.

So many of the people Jesus embraced were not people you and I would want in our houses.  My own definition of mysticism, writes theologian Suzanne Guthrie,  involves the awareness of interconnectedness, the intuitive knowledge or insight that everything is linked, and that what we tend  to call “the divine” is at the heart of all being.

So, then, the cost of our Belovedness, our baptism, is that we have the hard work of remembering who we are -- not the ones who know the most, or control the most, or are free of the burden of troublesome others, no, we are the ones who love the most, who find the grace of that love in the midst of everything, even in the midst of the hardest things we encounter in this life. 

May God be with us, that we may know in our hearts, in the midst of our pain, that all shall be well.  Amen.