Feast of Saint Bartholomew
Saint John 1:43--51'
Saint Matthew 16:13–20
More years ago than I care to remember I was called upon by a funeral director friend to help a family whose loved one died “without the benefit of clergy.” It is always an honor to do this and I take the task very seriously.
Prayers were to be said after dinner and so by the time I arrived it was just the family. I entered the chapel, looked around, and decided to forgo a formal service in favour of asking his wife, his children and grandchildren to reminisce about their loved one after which I would read a scripture and say a prayer.
All was going well. Warm stories about their husband, dad and grand-dad were told. There were a few tears but mostly there was laughter. His wife kept returning to the single theme that her husband was not very religious.
When it became apparent that the family had told their last story I asked if they were ready to hear a word of scripture and pray with me.
No sooner than I had started with the familiar: “Let not your heart be troubled . . . ” the man’s wife interrupted with “Yes, but how do I get that?”
It would have been a great question were it not for the fact that it seemed to be spoken by someone who was about to enter into mortal combat of the verbal variety.
“You say I should have an untroubled heart,” she repeated, “How do I get that?”
I was taken back a little and her children were looking at her with a look of horror that is reserved for full-grown adults who are being embarrassed by their parents. There was the uncomfortable shifting in their seats and the sideways glances that seemed to implore one of their siblings to “please, say something.”
Unfortunately, I am not of the Norman Vincent Peale, Robert Schuller, Joel Osteen school that would have us believe they always had or have just the right word for any occasion to affect immediate conversion. I usually don’t but I tried my best.
I thought back to the “Four Spiritual Laws” of Campus Crusade for Christ. “God loves you and has a plan for your life . . . ” only to be interrupted with another question. I thought maybe Billy Graham’s, “Have you given your heart to Jesus?” might be the solution only to face another interruption. Nothing was working.
Finally, one of the children suggested that they had taken up enough of the good pastor’s time and that their mother should just let me finish, uninterrupted, so that I could be on my way. Never had I heard more gracious words in my life.
I beat myself up all the way home. Why couldn’t I get through to her? Why wouldn’t she at least give a listen to what I had to say? Even one of the daughter’s apologies for her mom on the way out didn’t make me feel better. Her excuse that her mother likes to give everybody a hard time offered little consolation.
I thought about the encounter for days. Obviously, I’m thinking about it still.
The French have a term, l’esprit d’escalier or in English “the wit at the bottom of the stairs.” It is that response that you wish you could have made at the moment but only comes to you much later on the drive home or when you are climbing the stairs to go to bed.
Here, years later, is what I should have said to the widow woman. “What you want is a gift. Ask God and God will give it to you. But, once you have it you’re going to have to use it, learn more about it by reading the bible, going to church, studying and praying to figure out how this gift affects your life. And, I must warn you, that gift may not effect your life the way you want.”
I think that is the theme of the two gospel stories we have before us.
As all of you who regularly consult the Lutheran liturgical calendar know tomorrow is the commemoration of Saint Bartholomew, Apostle so we will let his story go first.
All of the Gospels have stories in them about Jesus calling his disciples. They follow the same pattern. Jesus is walking along somewhere, he sees someone and says, “Follow Me” and they do.
Only in John’s Gospel do we get this account of some of Jesus’ disciples being called by other disciples and I take great comfort in the fact that, at first, things don’t seem to go well for them either.
Jesus’ tried and true formula works with Philip. Jesus says “follow me” and Philip does. But then Philip goes and finds Nathaniel and says to him: “‘We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.’ ‘Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?’ Nathaniel asked.”1
That went almost as poorly as my encounter with the woman in the funeral parlor.
It might have gone worse because Nathaniel is rejecting Jesus out of pure prejudice. He has something against Jesus hometown. In our day it would be even more true because “Nazareth is known as ‘the Arab capital of Israel’. The inhabitants are predominantly Arab citizens of Israel, of whom 69% are Muslim and 30.9% Christian.”2
It is prejudice that keeps these groups apart. Years of distrust have made them wonder if any good can come from the other. Nathaniel was just saying what everybody knew: Nothing good has, can, or ever will come out of that place.
We too reject places and people on the basis of their reputation. We can’t get over who they are, what they look like, where they came from, we don’t want to give them a chance. We may even insult them, call them names.
The disciples challenge Bartholomew’s characterizations with, “‘Just come and see for yourself,’ Philip declared.”3 And he does.
Douglas John Hall, in his book Bound and Free: A Theologians Journey, wrote: “I owe such happiness as I have had to one Source ‑‑ namely, the sheer grace of God as it is mediated through the lives of other people.”4
That is how most of us got here. Somehow, somebody, somewhere in our lives took the time to introduce us to Jesus and we followed.
And like Peter in the gospel appointed for this day, we walked with him, we studied his life, we read his stories over and over until we came to make the same confession: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”5
Dr. William H. Willimon could have been there in the chapel with me that night when he wrote:
Lots of people in our world . . . want a faith that they can put on a bumper sticker, three spiritual laws, six basic fundamentals, and four Christian principals to live by. But . . . God is so more interesting than that. Jesus is so much larger than that, and life is so much more demanding.
To be a Christian means to walk by faith, faith that even when Jesus does not come up with straightforward, simple answers, at least Jesus poses for us the very deepest and most impressive questions.6
While I am not sure that is what the woman in chapel A wanted. I’m am sure that what she wanted after she lost the love of her life were answers, peace, security. But, in order to get that we have to follow Jesus, listen to Jesus, be willing to learn from Jesus.
This Sunday is sandwiched between two great Quadrennial promise festivals otherwise known as political conventions in which the candidates of both parties promise us that they have all the answers to all our questions. They even have answers to questions we never asked.
They promise that they will be able to give us what we need. They promise that they and their party will give us safety, security, prosperity and anything else we desire. They promise us an “untroubled heart.”
That is why I think Jesus would have been such a terrible politician. He was always challenging people to new experiences. He was always asking people to associate with others who were different from them. He didn’t offer a life of ease but a life that was always being challenged to stretch beyond traditional boundaries and enter into a different way of seeing things.
My only hope for that woman out of the dark ages of my past, for all of us who have said of Jesus with Nathaniel and Peter, “You are the Son of God. You are the Messiah!” is that we will get used to the idea that being a Christian does not call us to a life of ease but to a life of adventure.
May this be so in the lives of all who have called upon his name.
Amen.
1. St. John 1:44. (NIV) [NIV=The New International Versiion]
2. “Nazareth,” Wikipedia (Wikimedia Foundation, August 8, 2020), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazareth.
3. St.
John 1:46. (TLB) [TLB= The Living Bible]
4. Douglas John Hall, Bound and Free: a Theologian's Journey (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005), 29‑30.
5. St.
Matthew 16:16. (NRSV) [NRSV= The New Revised Standard Version ]
6. William
H. Willimon, “Daring Impossible Questions,” Pulpit Resource, 2008, pp.
33 ‑36.
No comments:
Post a Comment