Year C - Proper 16 - August 25, 2013

The Rev. Kenneth H. Saunders III

Trinity Episcopal Church

Towson, MD

 

RCL Year C - 14 Pentecost (Proper 16) - August 25, 2013

 

Scripture Readings

What bends us out of shape???  Why is it, when we don’t get our way, our first instinct is to act like kindergarten children and get bent all out of shape? Bent out of shape because we don’t want to do something, or we don’t think that we need to do something…  We contort ourselves and grimace at the mere thought of accepting something that we don’t personally like.  Why is it so hard for us to unbend from the old “norms” – the way things have always been done, and bend in ways that help give new life and vitality into our community. We get all bent out of shape at the most unlikely sources… but as we know, it’s not God that twists, it’s us that do the twisting…    it’s not God who destroys, it is us that are self destructive.  Our God saves…  no matter how bent out of shape we get, no matter how shaken we get, when we reach out, God is right there to make it right…   to heal us, to restore us and to give us new life.

 

Last week, we heard the passage of Jesus, longing to bring fire to the earth, and “getting things cooking.” I have often used the idiom that I “shake” the snow globe. If we think about it, that’s one way to keep it going. I had a snow globe as a child, you know, one of those glass balls with a winter scene inside and water and flecks of white that looked like snow.  I would keep it on my night stand, and before I went to bed, I would shake it! And if I woke up in the middle of the night, I would shake it again!  It was a way of keeping it going…  of keeping the snow falling…  So the snow would fall, and then the scene in the globe would be complete.

 

See, we are all part of the scene… The scene that God created for us… And I will admit… I do things in order to “shake” the snow globe sometimes, to keep the things going that Jesus started. To make us feel a bit uncomfortable with the way things are, and make us think about the way things could be. Shaking the snow globe is a wonderful process of examination and reexamination… of shaking up and loosening the insecurities that we hold on to that are of this world and not the next…  After the shaking it up we see the solid eternal things that are of God that remain. What remains is that grounded and steady truth of God… the root of the power of relationships and community… the love of God that binds us all together. The problems is, whoever is doing the shaking… that sometimes folks don’t like the way the snow globe has been shaken, and they get upset for one reason or another.  This can cause us to get all bent out of shape.

 

Jesus is teaching in the synagogue on the Sabbath. The scripture says that a woman with a crippling spirit has been bent over and not able to stand up straight for 18 years… Without her asking, in one word and a laying on of hands, Jesus heals her from her ailment and restores her to perfect health… She immediately stands up straight and begins praising God.  But in doing that one profound act of healing and mercy, Jesus shakes the snow globe of society and disrupts the status quo.

 

The leader of the synagogue gets all bent out of shape and accuses Jesus of breaking the law because he healed on the Sabbath. But, like people so often who get bent out of shape, he doesn’t come to Jesus and confront him directly, he keeps saying to the crowd – accusing Jesus – sort of like going behind Jesus’ back. But Jesus sets it right, comparing his actions to simply giving water to a donkey or ox.

 

Jesus restores dignity and gives new life to the woman, setting her free from her disorder, from the demons that torment her and bend her out of shape. When we get bent out of shape about something, our tendency is to grimace, and contort our faces to show people that we are not happy, we talk behind backs and accuse wrongly, especially if we think that our way of life is being challenged or disrupted…  especially if we think our snow globe is being shaken.

 

When this happens, there is only one answer… to let the eternal love of our Lord Jesus Christ reach out to us and touch us and heal us… and help us loose our grip from whatever demon it is that is tormenting us and so gravely holding onto us… We need to allow Jesus to show us a way of trust in God and the eternal solid things that should be the focus of our attention.

 

It is our only way to keep things going…  Jesus “got things cooking” by bring the consuming fire to the earth last week. Now it’s up to us to keep things going.

 

The way I see it, we have 2 choices: either we act like the crippled woman and let ourselves be healed and restored stand up straight, and praise God…   Or we can be like the Synagogue leader and get all bent out of shape, accuse, and talk behind peoples backs, and complain about others and the way things are… 

 

It is when and only when we surrender ourselves to Christ's Lordship, and completely give ourselves over, and live for Him that we begin to see the things that bend us out of shape are really meaningless.

 

So, will we accept Christ as he attempts to mold us and form us into his image, restoring us and making us whole?  Or will we reject Christ and think we have it all figured out by ourselves and continue to walk around all bent out of shape?

Year C - Proper 15 - August 18, 2013

The Rev. Kenneth H. Saunders III

Trinity Episcopal Church

Towson, MD

 

RCL Year C - 13 Pentecost (Proper 15) - August 18, 2013

 

Scripture Readings

 

I have talked before about us living in a world of paradox.  In the stress and tension of everything, we live in paradox.  Life as we know it is a paradox:  Good and Evil, War and Peace, “Normal” and “Not Normal.”

 

We could even carry it further:  Rich and Poor, the “Haves” and the “Have Nots,” Heretic and Orthodox, Straw and Wheat, Heaven and Earth, Truth and Lies…  Our contemporary culture defines paradox as a riddle without an answer; a problem without a solution; or a tension that cannot be relieved.

 

We all live in this tension of a paradox – and it is extremely difficult.  Within the paradox, we must make decisions to govern our lives; who to follow, how to act, and even what to believe.  We long for everything to be spelled out for us and we wish that someone would just hand us an instruction book that we could follow.

 

Even with all the knowledge, skills, and abilities that we have acquired through social developments, new discoveries, and even technological advances, we often make mistakes living within the paradox…

 

But, we DO need to give ourselves credit sometimes…  because sometimes we make the right choices and get it right.  But we know that sometimes we just fail!  No matter how hard we try, sometimes we just lay a big ole’ egg…

 

When we get into a real mess, we wish that we could prophesy and tell the future, thinking that if we somehow know the outcome, that it will be that much better for us.  But we can’t – so we have to live within the mess that we have made for ourselves.

 

The word paradox even makes us uncomfortable until we realize that even the Holy Scriptures, (the New Testament in particular), is full of paradox.  

 

Jesus has been teaching us a lot these past few weeks, in the season following Pentecost, the time when Jesus is on his journey of ministry, on his way to Jerusalem…  We have learned about how to be a better disciple, we have been sent out into the muck of our lives to try to live the good news of our salvation.  We have been taught to greet others with hospitality and love them – thereby being Christ to them.  We have even been called to show greater commitment to eternal things by giving, sharing and living in our community and growing in our common life in our relationship to one another.

 

This morning, it seems like, all of a sudden, Jesus changes gears on us and throws us into sort of his own paradox.  We go from Jesus calling for intense following, loyal devotion, and urgent mission - to Jesus speaking of fire, division, and prophecy.  These word are scary and hard to hear, especially after last week’s message of “don’t be afraid little flock.”

 

Jesus doesn’t use his normal tone that we have been getting used to over the past few weeks.  It isn’t the faithful following, mission, and hospitality that we have been hearing about.  Where are the comfortable words that Jesus has been giving us in the previous 42 verses of Luke’s Gospel?

 

Therefore we have the paradox that Luke presents us with this morning.  And we need to look for the answers in the tension of the paradox between what we have been learning (about what it means to follow Jesus as Lord and savior) and what we are presented with this morning.

 

Jesus says that he came to bring fire to the earth and he wishes that it were already kindled.  To us today, this seems harsh, like Jesus is wanting to impose some kind of harsh judgment. A judgment like we would expect in the end of times when the whole world is to be judged.

 

However, if we read this passage with the same urgency of mission that Jesus has been presenting to us all along, we can put some of the language that he uses in its proper context.  We can start to understand that Jesus is actually teaching us in the way he has been teaching us all along.

 

In Jesus’ time, the word they used for their outdoor oven was the same word that they used for earth.  So, when he says he came to bring “fire” to the “earth.”  It is an idiom for getting things started or as we would probably say today, “let’s get cooking!”  So, Jesus wanted to “get things started” and Jesus knows that getting things fired up with any kind of urgency is going to cause some real social problems for his followers…

 

This was a REAL problem…  Family and social status was all they had, it was their source of livelihood, and most often the difference between their life and their death.  Back then, you were alienated from your family or clan by associating with what was considered to be an inappropriate social relationship (the folks on the “other side” of the tracks, the wrong crowd that your mamma warned you about)…  in this case, it was Jesus!

 

You are putting everything at risk:  your wealth, inheritance, your social status…  everything that meant anything!  You would move very quickly from being a “have” to being a “have not.”  The consequence of that kind of involvement would be enough to cause so much tension and stress that it would pit family against family, son against father and mother against daughter and divide the household completely.

 

We cannot make a commitment to Jesus Christ as Lord and savior without it affecting the way we relate to each other, the way we relate to our friends or even to our family members. As we have learned over the past weeks, our commitment to Christ shapes our values, our priorities, our goals, and our behaviors.  It causes us to change the old patterns of our lives and makes us face difficult choices in our commitment to the gospel.

 

And our decision to follow Jesus sometimes is faced with opposition from others.  So, we opt to live into the tension of the paradox in the choices we must make.  When we set out to follow Christ, and do what we perceive to be the good, moral, and right, we are doing something counter-cultural…  The theologian, H. Richard Niebuhr, calls this dilemma Christ and Culture in paradox.

 

Jesus himself knew the devastating consequences that the choice to follow Him could have.  So, he warned his followers to be prepared to encounter the same hardships.  As followers of Jesus Christ, we must look at our own lives, through the lens of the paradox.

 

What do we pay close attention to…  and to what do we turn a blind eye?  What claims our closest attention?  Fluctuations in the stock market?  Evidence of our social standing?  Our grade point average?  Opportunities to look good before our superiors at work?  What things do we watch with the same close attention that the Palestinian farmer paid to changes in the weather?  Jesus’ sayings this morning challenge us to examine the paradox and the tension that exists between what gets our attention and what is neglected in our own lives.

 

We should consider whether the inconsistencies in our lives reveal a pattern of prioritizing “insignificant” things while jeopardizing those things that could have the greatest value and importance.

 

We could ask the questions of ourselves…  Have we given as much attention to the health of our church as we have to our retirement plans? or Have we given as much attention to the maintenance of our spiritual disciplines as to the maintenance schedule for our car?  Where in the scale of our attention to detail does our devotion to the teachings of our Lord rank? 

 

Jesus says that we may be able to interpret the weather by looking at the dark clouds in the sky! (channel 14 could probably learn something here…), but why do we remain blind to what really is going on in our lives??

 

As we approach the holy table this morning, and partake of the bread and wine which is the bond of communion that we share with each other…  It is our unity, it is what unites us…  and our belief that Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior…

 

We receive it and are nourished with the spiritual food that is his alone to give…  In our community of faith, we have made the conscience decision to continue the work of our Lord Jesus Christ.  The question for us this morning is what are we doing to “get things cooking?”

 

Are we doing what he commanded as we live through the struggles of discerning our path together?  We live in the paradox, so let us remain focused on why we are here and what we are doing…   That way, and only that way, we can make the effort to move forward in the mission of our Lord together.