On the Edge-
a sermon...
Following below, the text of a sermon I shared on solstice day (Fourth Sunday after Pentecost) at Church of the Transfiguration in Saluda NC during their 10:30 a.m. worship (Rite 2). Preaching is primarily a spoken communication, so if you want to hear it, you can find it here. The sermon begins around the twenty-minute mark.
Jesus was divisive. His words often riled the powerful and entitled of his day. He was so divisive that his teaching eventually got him killed.
The things Jesus said still trouble folks today. His words are especially unsettling sometimes to those of us who claim to be his followers.
At Matthew 10:34 he said,
Don’t be thinking I have come here to make peace between you. I’m not bringing you peace but a sword. I will ignite strife within families, for your enemy is already sitting at the table with you.
Jesus is never silent about the truth, even when it is hard. In the sixth chapter of John, Jesus said some particularly difficult things while he was teaching at the synagogue in Capernaum. We read at verse 66,
At this, many of his disciples went away and no longer walked with him.
Does Jesus walk back his words then, and try to mend this breach with his base? No, he doubles down. He turns to the Twelve who are still with him and says,
What about you, then? Are you going to leave me, too?
And Simon Peter, bless his impetuous heart, responds, “Where would we go? There’s nobody else for us.
Jesus is still divisive. The only people who stick with him are those who have nobody else to follow. They are definitely a minority in this world where so many causes and personalities compete 24/7 for our loyalties and allegiance. When Jesus insists that we cannot serve worldly wealth and power and influence while we follow him, he becomes an embarrassment even to some sitting in the churches, zealously guarding their own privilege.
We want Jesus to behave when he comes to church. We don’t want any of this turning over tables and driving people into the street with whips. Church should be peaceable. We shouldn’t dwell on our disagreements. We want to get along and go ahead. Chill out. Be cool in here, whatever is happening out there in the world where we live all week.
There is a reason our windows here are not made of clear glass. We prefer to see images telling us we are safe and comforted in the arms of Jesus. After all, we come in here to get a respite from a world broken and divided and in flames.
But that broken world, that divided world, that warring world is the world that God sees every day. There is where God’s Spirit is moving and mending and making and resurrecting and transforming, and when we beg for peace, Jesus says in our gospel reading this morning at verse 34-
Don’t think I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.
And if we fail to get his drift, and beg to be spared the flames of conflict, he tells us again, at Luke 12:49
I came to fling fire upon the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled.
And he says one more time, just to be sure we take his point. Verse 51-
Do you think I came to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.
We hear this, but we’d rather sing #529 in our hymnal,
“In Christ there is no East or West, In him no South or North, but one great fellowship of love throughout the whole wide earth.”
That’s what we sing, and on our good days, that’s what we attempt to practice. But our great fellowship of love sees more so-so days and downright bad days than good ones. For after the final amen and hallelujah, when we go out to our homes, or to work, division is our natural element. We have become experts at dividing things.
There’s us, and there’s those Baptists down the hill. There’s those who bring money to church, and there’s those who don’t have enough money to buy groceries. There’s those who voted for our guy and those who voted for the publicans and sinners. There’s those who speak English like real Americans and those who speak languages that busy successful folk like us would never have time to learn. There are those who bought first class airline tickets into this country and there’s those who had to swim for it. There’s winners and there’s losers. We strive to be among the former if we can
We look around us and we assess, classify, and rate for potential benefit, and we define things and souls accordingly. It isn’t divisiveness in itself that troubles us. That’s how we size up our lives.
What really bothers us is that Jesus doesn’t divide his world the way we divide ours. Jesus doesn’t care a fig for most of our precious distinctions. Jesus doesn’t care if you are Episcopal or Methodist or Presbyterian or Baptist or Catholic or Evangelical or Pentecostal or none of the above. Jesus doesn’t care if your skin is black or white or brown or purple. Jesus doesn’t care if you are a registered Republican, Democrat, Green or Libertarian, or unafiliated. Jesus doesn’t care if you are Male, Female or undecided.
Jesus doesn’t care about your stock portfolio or your post-graduate degree, or your club membership, or your age or if you like spinach or not. There’s nothing in the biblical record that indicates he is even particularly concerned about whether or not you have been confirmed. We proudly show him all our social, economic, political and religious credentials and Jesus just shrugs and says, “I don’t care about any of that. What I care about is…”
What? We ask. What does our Lord care about, exactly? Where among us does Jesus cut the dividing line with that sword of his? Whose side is God on, anyway?
We find a clue in our Old Testament reading this morning from Genesis 21. The reading opens with Abraham throwing a big feast in honor of his son Isaac. Isaac is the favorite son, a golden child, the answer to his parent’s prayers.
But Sarah, his mother looks out one day and sees him playing with his half-brother, Abraham’s other son, whose mother is one of the slaves. In Sarah’s mind, that won’t do. A slave is not a wife. Their sons are not equals. So Sarah goes to her husband, and says, the child of a slave cannot share inheritance with our son Isaac. Send them away.”
Abraham loves both his boys. He doesn’t want to banish Hagar and Ishmael from his life and care, but more than that he wants to please his wife. So he gives Hagar some bread and water and off they go out into the desert. As soon as their supplies run out, they will likely die out there but they will be far enough away by then that Abraham won’t have to see it happen.
But they don’t die. When their water runs out God gives them a well in the wilderness. God provides and Ishmael grows up in the Wilderness of Paran and finds a wife among his mother’s people in Egypt and God makes a great nation from him.
This ancient story does not tell us that God will give us a drink every time we get thirsty. It does inform us that God’s sustaining and saving grace is poured out among the unwanted, the rejected, the deported, the vulnerable and oppressed. Those banished and abandoned by the powerful and the comfortable are not abandoned by God.
Indeed, the Lord seems almost to prefer such company. Jesus was criticized because he associated with people on the outer edges of respectability and acceptance. Those who felt secure in their own righteousness hated him for his inclusiveness. And there, sisters and brothers, is the dividing line his sword cleaves among us. Matthew spells it out for us over in Chapter 25 at verse 32:
He will separate them from one another, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, the sheep to his right and the goats to the left.
Then the King will say to those to his right, ‘Come you blessed by my father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of creation. For I was hungry, and you gave me food. I thirsted and you gave me drink. I came as a stranger and you received me with hospitality. I was naked and you gave me clothes. I was sick, and you took care of me. I was in prison and you came to me.
And the just will answer, When did we see you hungry and thirsty and naked and ill and in prison and do something to help you? And the King will say to them,
whatever you did for the least of mine, you did for me.
Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Get away from me, you sorry rascals, go into that fire prepared for the Slanderer and all his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink. I was an alien among you and you turned me out. I had no clothes and you left me naked. When I was sick and in prison you did not look after me.’
And they will ask him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or ill and in prison and did not attend to you?
Then he will answer them, saying, I’m telling you, inasmuch as you did nothing for one of these very least of mine, you did nothing for me.
Jesus did not say we must understand all the theological implications of his incarnation in order to follow him. He did not even mandate that we must be practicing Episcopalians in order to be his disciples.
In our Gospel reading this morning, he said at verse twenty-five,
It is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher.
If you want to be like Jesus, you must be a healer and a liberator. If you want to go with Jesus, you have to go where he goes, among people who are neglected and broken and denied. And when you look around you and see you are surrounded by those we might consider the very least of souls, you have to try your best to do something for them. That’s what Jesus said.
Amen.
Walk in hope-
-henry
Thank you for posting this, Henry. How beautiful.