"To Finally Decide" - Pentecost 6A

Romans 17:15-25a and Saint Matthew 11:16-19; 25-30 

Way back in the 1960's, in the land before time, there was an American Rock Band called the Loving Spoonful – not plural spoonfuls but singular, spoonful.  They described themselves as having a “good time” sound designed to take some of the edginess of the music in the mid-60's.  

My guess is that they wouldn’t have described their songs as being important but rather fun, foot-taping, and most of all singable.  Their music also had a certain ear-worm quality about it as you will no doubt discover after I suggest that one of their songs made for a perfect introduction to today’s lessons.  

I played it for Thursday’s online Bible study group, and it received a reaction that could only be described as tepid.  But, undaunted, I still contend that the lyrics ask an important question:

Did you ever have to make up your mind?

You pick up on one and leave the other behind

It's not often easy and not often kind

Did you ever have to make up your mind?

Did you ever have to finally decide?

And say yes to one and let the other one ride

There's so many changes and tears you must hide

Did you ever have to finally decide?

Today’s gospel and our little peek into the indecisive mind of Saint Paul in our readings gives us a glimpse in the lives of communities and individuals who are having a hard time “finally deciding.”

Jesus is looking out at a people who are having a hard time deciding what they want. I love the way The Living Bible paraphrases Jesus observation by taking it out of the past and plopping it right down in our present.

“What shall I say about this nation? These people are like children playing, who say to their little friends,  ‘We played a wedding and you weren’t happy, so we played a funeral but you weren’t sad.’ For John the Baptist doesn’t even drink wine and often goes without food, and you say, ‘He’s crazy.’  And I, the Messiah, feast and drink, and you complain that I am ‘a glutton and a drinking man and hang around with the worst sort of sinners!’ But brilliant men like you can justify your every inconsistency!”1

 Isn’t that us sometimes?  We are inconsistent. We can’t make up our mind. 

We say we want strong leaders but not too strong.  We say we want leaders who will protect our rights but not infringe on them.  We say we want leaders who will give us direction but only if that is in the way we think we want to go.  On a national level, the only thing we are certain of is that we don’t want a leader who calls us to sacrifice.

We say we want leaders who bring youthful energy, but they should have loads of experience.  We say we want leaders who should be charismatic but not overbearing.  

Sometimes we want a John the Baptist in our midst, calling people to account, reminding them of their sins and need to repent.  We want that for other’s but for ourselves we want Jesus, we want grace, we want a word about a God who just loves us.  Jesus was right we are absolutely brilliant in justifying our every inconsistency until it comes back to bite us, as it did for Saint Paul in today reading.  

If Jesus is talking about communal inconsistencies Saint Paul is beating himself up over his own, personal inconsistencies. 

“My own behaviour baffles me.”2 he says. “I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don’t result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time.”3

Saint Paul is talking to himself and not in a good way.

The best explanation of what is going on with the poor guy comes not from some great, heavy, deep, theological tome, but from W. Timothy Gallway’s book, The Inner Game of Tennis. 4

He calls it the conflict between Self 1 and Self 2.  Self 1 is the thinker and Self 2 is doer.

So, in tennis Self 1 is saying “Keep eye on the ball.  Hold your racket straight. Be ready to charge the net or stay back. Move your feet.”  The ball comes over the net, looks easy, and you completely flub it.  (Think of either the Cubs or White Sox at any point in almost any game.)

Then if Self 2 fails in what it is trying to do Self 2's judgmental self-talk begins.  “You weren’t watching the ball. You weren’t moving your feet.  You rolled your racket over again. Suddenly, one’s play gets effected. It is the judgmental, self getting into the mind of the doing self. 

Muscles tighten. There is more thinking, less doing. Stokes suffer, points are lost.  It’s “game, set, match” and you come away thinking that you're such a failure that you might as well give up tennis and try something else. Beanbag maybe?

Now if such havoc can be reeked on one’s emotions by a simple game of tennis, golf, or even pickle ball, think of how much more damaging such self-talk is to the life of faith.  One might even conclude with Saint Paul: “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this?”

It is then that Saint Paul answers his own question by reminding himself who he belongs to.  “Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!”5

What he is doing is reminding himself that he has been yoked to Christ.  Paul is reminding , reminding us, that joined Christ and joined to each other we will be able to manage any load that is placed upon us.  More important of all we are being told that Christ wants to share that load with us.  

The wonder of the Gospel for me is not my desire to be yoked to Christ but his desire to be yoked to me. 

 According to William Barclay in one of his famous bible commentaries, "there is a legend that Jesus made the best ox-yokes in all Galilee, and that from all over the country men came to his carpenter's shop to buy the best yokes that skill could make.”6

If that legend isn’t true, it should be.

While we are dancing around trying to figure out what it is that we want Jesus is telling us that joined to him we may not always get what we want but we will get what we need.  

Yoked to him we can be united not divided from one another.

Yoked to Jesus our meagre efforts at unity are redeemed.  

Yoked to Jesus our struggles bring us closer to him and closer to each other.

Yoked to Jesus our smallest efforts become part of God’s new creation.

Yoked to Jesus, we see each other as equals. We see each other as sisters and brothers.

Yoked to Jesus we discover that there is someone by our side, tethered to us to help us bear our burdens and carry our loads.

Yoked to Jesus we will hear no less than Almighty God say, “become my yoke mate, and learn how to pull the load by working beside me and watching how I do it. The heavy labor will seem lighter if you let me help you with it.”7

I can’t guarantee that yoked to Jesus your tennis, game, or golf, or pickle ball game will improve but I can guarantee in those moments of confusion and chaos, when it it hard to make up your mind, you’ll know that through it all, no matter what, God is right next to you, by your side, yoked to you.  

And for now, we have to make up our mind that this is just going to have to be enough.

________________

1.  Saint Matthew 11:16-19. (TLB) [TLB= The Living Bible. Carol Stream, Illinois: Tyndale House Publishers Inc., 1971]

2. Romans 7:15. (PHILLIPS) [PHILLIPS=J. B. Phillips, The New Testament in Modern English  (London, ENG: Bles, 1968).

3.  Romans 7:17-20. (MESSAGE) [MESSAGE=Eugene H. Peterson, in The Message: The New Testament Psalms and Proverbs (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 1998).

4. W. Timothy Gallwey, The Inner Game of Tennis.(New York: Random House, 1974).

5.  Romans 7: 24.  (NIV) [NIV=The New International Version]

6. William Barkley, The Daily Study Bible: The Gospel of Matthew, Vol. 2 (Edinburgh: The Saint Andrew Press, 1957), p. 12.

7. Douglas R. A. Hare, Matthew: Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996)

Sermon preached at the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Saint Luke, 9 July 2023.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMZCxd6T6Yw&t=3428s

"Inclusion" - Pentecost 5A

 

Saint Matthew 10:40-42

This may come as a surprise to you but today, July 2nd, is the day that John Adams, really believed was the date on which colonial independence should have been celebrated.

He firmly believed that formal separation from England took place when “the Second Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia voted to approve a motion for Independence put forth by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia” on July 2nd, 1776.

We will celebrate on Tuesday because it was not until July 4 that the “actual Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Continental Congress.”

Interesting enough the “city of Philadelphia, where the Declaration was signed, waited until July 8 to celebrate, with a parade and the firing of guns. The Continental Army under the leadership of George Washington didn’t learn about it until July 9.”1

Adams not only had strong feelings about when the celebration should take place but how independence should be celebrated. He wanted more than just the firing of a few rounds into the air. 

Writing to his wife Abigail on July 3 he outlined what became the formula for our celebrations.

I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shows, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.2

You can almost hear him singing these words as he did in the play 1776.  

We know that Adams and the other members of the First Continental Congress were not perfect.  A majority of the signers of the Declaration of Independence ... owned slaves.  Four of the first five presidents of the United States were slave owners.3 And while “Thomas Jefferson called slavery a “moral depravity” and a “hideous blot,” he continued to hold human beings as property his entire adult life.”4

Flawed humans can still aspire to high ideals, yet it seems that increasingly we have become “a battleground of ideologies, ignorance in constant combat with ignorance, where the loudest, shrillest rancour wins the day? When did patriotism get whittled down to nothing more than anger, heady feelings about wars and weapons, and an edgy bias against people who are different?”5

In a wonderful Chrstian Century article Lutheran Pastor Diane Roth, gave me an entirely new perspective, when she wrote:

There is something that I skipped right over in this passage. It’s that very first phrase, “whoever welcomes you welcomes me.” Why did I skip over that very first phrase, and what does it mean?

Jesus says these words to his disciples—his particular group of disciples in the first century...I think that I blinked right over the phrase the first time because, truthfully, I don’t think of myself as being welcomed so much as being the one who welcomes.

But Jesus doesn’t imagine it this way. He doesn’t imagine that any of his disciples is in the center of society. They would not be so much extending hospitality as they would be receiving it. Jesus imagines his disciples on the edges of society, holding this great treasure, {of the Gospel} but also needing welcome: a cup of water, a square meal, a roof over their heads.6

 Do you remember his instructions to them when he sent them out on their first missionary excursion?  J. B. Phillips paraphrases Jesus words this way: “Don’t take any gold or silver or even coppers to put in your purse; nor a knapsack for the journey, nor even a change of clothes, or sandals or a staff...”7

Jesus is turning them into a bunch of Blanche DuBois’ and making them “dependent on the kindness of strangers.”

Now, when they offer a cup of cold water to someone in need, they will know what it is like to be on the receiving end.  When they offer help to someone who is hungry, poor, with holes in their shoes they will know what it like to be that person.  

They will know what it is like to be included rather than excluded.

We often forget that.  

Think of moments when you have been included. In a family or a chosen family of friends.  At school when a teacher appreciated your gifts and brought out the best in you.  In a community where, no matter how eccentric you might be, people still love you and care about you.  Think of all those times when you have been dependent on the kindness of strangers.

Yes, there will always be people who exclude you.  There will always be people who say your too old or too young.  There will always be people who look for some flaw and chose to exploit it.  There will always be people who will exclude you because of your race, or creed, or orientation, or ethnic background.  

Jesus had something to say to the disciples about this too: “Any city or home that doesn’t welcome you—shake off the dust of that place from your feet as you leave.”8 “Shrug your shoulders and be on your way. You can be sure that on Judgment Day they’ll be mighty sorry—but it’s no concern of yours now.”9

We have a privilege the early disciple were just learning about. We have power. We have power to welcome others – or to turn our backs. But there is only one right way. It is Jesus' way. It is the way of inclusion.

Dr. Michael Bos is the wonderful Senior Minister of the Marble Collegiate Church in New York City.  

Marble’s most famous preacher was Norman Vincent Peale of The Power of Positive Thinking fame.  While Peale may have advocated seeing the possible in everyone, like the founding fathers of our nation, that positivity did not extend to everybody.

But times change, pastors come and go, some more slowly than others, so when he retired in after a relatively modest 52 years, a new Senior Minister was called who had some radical ideas.  One of those was to open the church up, to extend that cup of cold water to all people.

Peale’s successor, Dr. Arthur Caliandro, started to welcome people who weren’t just “white, bright, and polite” but as Dr. Bos remembered, he led the cause to make Marble a welcoming, and affirming, and inclusive community.  “And, because of that, there were people who left and not a small number. While he was including others those who left were finding a way of excluding him.  But” said Dr. Bos, “he was the embodiment of the words. ‘I’d rather be excluded for who I include, than be included for who I exclude.’”10

I think I just might say that again so we all can drink it in. “I’d rather be excluded for who I include, than be included for who I exclude.”

A cup of cold water, a warm welcome, given in the name of Jesus will bring with it a reward to not only the giver but the receiver as well.  It is a simple act of inclusion, and that water of welcome will be so sweet, and so refreshing, and so renewing that it will bring with it a moment where a real blessing can be enjoyed by all, both receiver and giver. 

“I’d rather be excluded for who I include, than be included for who I exclude.”  Inclusion. It is the way of Jesus and so it must be our way too. 

_______________

1. Valerie Strauss, “Why July 2nd Is Really America's Independence Day,” July 7, 2015, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/john-adams-was-right-2-july-is-really-americas-independence-day-10361356.html.

2. Jessie Kratz, “Pieces of History,” Pieces of History (blog) (The National Archives, July 2, 2014), https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2014/07/02/john-adams-vision-of-july-4-was-july-2/#:~:text=The%20Second%20Day%20of%20July,of%20Devotion%20to%20God%20Almighty.

3. Mark Maloy, “The Founding Fathers Views of Slavery,” American Battlefield Trust, June 20, 2023, https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/founding-fathers-views-slavery#:~:text=A%20majority%20of%20the%20signers,the%20United%20States%20were%20slaveowners.

4. “Thomas Jefferson and Slavery,” Monticello, accessed June 30, 2023, https://www.monticello.org/thomas-jefferson/jefferson-slavery/#:~:text=Thomas%20Jefferson%20called%20slavery%20a,property%20his%20entire%20adult%20life.

5. James C. Howell, “What Can We Say July 5? 5th after Pentecost.” (blog) (Myers Park United Methodist Church, July 3, 2010), http://revjameshowell.blogspot.com/2010/07/jesus-and-july-4.html.

6. Diane Roth, “July 2, 2023: 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time,” The Christian Century, June 17, 2020, https://www.christiancentury.org/article/living-word/june-28-ordinary-time-13a-matthe

7. St. Matthew 10:9-10. (PHILLIPS) [PHILLIPS=J. B. Phillips, in The New Testament in Modern English (London, England: HarperCollins, 2000).

8. St. Matthew 10:14. (TLB) [TLB= The Living Bible. Carol Stream, Illinois: Tyndale House Foundation. 1971]

9. Saint Matthew 10:15. (MESSAGE: Eugene H. Peterson, The Message: The New Testament in Contemporary English (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 1995).'

10. Michael Bos, “Free to Be Me.’ Sermon preached at the Marble Collegiate Church of New York City on June 25, 2023.

Sermon preached at the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Saint Luke

2 July 2023

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k19w4IOAScc

"To Be A Hero" - Pentecost 2023

 

Acts 2:1-21

Charles Dickens began the book David Copperfield with these words: “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.”1

While we are celebrating Pentecost our nation is remembering the brave women and men who went off to war in service of our nation.  We call them heroes but if you ever talked to one or be honoured to spend time in the presence of one, you will quickly discover that, while they became heroes, when they were drafted, they weren’t all what the “stout hearted men” the old World War II song romanticized.

I had the honour of knowing one.  

Dick Miller was a member of my parish in Aurora who in an interview with The Aurora Beacon News recalled his experiences when, his ship the USS Drexler was sunk in the Battle of Okinawa.

“I was a spotter for Japanese kamikaze planes,” Miller said. “We were hit twice, and the second one blew our ship to pieces. It started to roll over and was said to have gone under in 49 seconds. I was in the water, and we couldn't swallow because of all the oil and diesel fuel.

He grabbed an canister with another sailor, and was picked up after a couple of hours, which Miller said, “seemed like an eternity.”

Miller would be the first to tell you he did not set out to be a hero.

He remembered that he was a young man when he was first deployed and was standing by himself on deck looking at the darkened San Francisco Bay with tears in his eyes thinking “Where am I going, and when am I coming back?’ I was missing my sweetheart and family already.”2

A D-day survivor, Corporal John McHugh, when asked about his “big picture considerations back then, such as that they were fighting for freedom.” replied “I was in the Army, and they told me to go that way, and I went that way,” adding “You know, you get drafted. You had to do it, and I did it. Did it pretty good, too."3

That is the way it is with heros, real heros.  They don’t get up at nine o’clock in the morning and say to themselves: “Today I am going to do something heroic.”  Heroism is something that gets thrust upon you and whether you become one or not only the pages of you own life can show.

The disciples didn’t set out to be heroes on the morning of what we now know as Pentecost.  In fact, when day dawned, they were anything but heroes.  

It was nine o’clock in the morning when we find the disciples huddled in their room not knowing what they should do next.  For now, they were doing what Jesus told them.  They were waiting for some kind of gift.  They didn’t know what it would be or how it would be delivered but then it came.

The wind came.  What was first heard was then seen.  Tongues of fire appearing among them and resting on the head of every believer as if they were human candles.

Sufficiently frightened while, at the same time, inspired by the Holy Spirit they began to speak in other languages.  This was not gibberish, this was not babble, they were speaking in other languages each of which could be understood by all the curious onlookers who gathered around.

It was nine o’clock in the morning and God’s Spirit was at work.

It was nine o’clock in the morning and some of the awestruck bystanders concluded that the followers of Jesus were tipsy.  That’s the only kind of conclusion we can make if we focus on the mayhem coming from the disciples at that early morning hour.

Pentecost is more than wind, fire, and a crash course in foreign languages.  It is the announcement that God’s involvement with human life did not end with Jesus’ Ascension.  It is the startling realization that God is going to be involved in your life and mine no matter who we are or, frankly, even what we believe.  God is going to bring out the best in us just as God was doing in Peter.

Here, before the half-inquiring, half-mocking crowd, Peter is the first, the very first, to lift up his voice and proclaim openly the word that only a few weeks before he could not speak to a serving woman at midnight.  The Spirit had breathed new life into a cowardly disciple and created a new man with a gift of bold speech.4

 Peter was becoming a hero at that nine o’clock hour. 

For us, Bible scholar Gail O’Day was right on the mark when she wrote:

There are days, oh so many days, when we are “sore afraid.” Afraid of the decisions we have to make, the risks we have to take.  Afraid of what happens when we do listen to Jesus’ promises, afraid of what happens when we do not.  Afraid that the world ... is the victor and we will live forever without hope and joy.  Afraid we will be crushed before we find the strength to be faithful to God’s promises for our lives and our world.5

 It is then the Spirit comes to write new chapters in the pages of our books.  The Spirit comes to make us heroes in our own way. 

We’re not all going to be a Churchill or an Eisenhower, or even heroes who stormed the beaches of Normandy like Corporal McHugh or float around in the waters of the Pacific for a couple of hours like my friend Richard {Thanks be to God!}  but that doesn’t mean that the Spirit isn’t at work in us and in our lives.

Pentecost was a unique event within the life of the church.  Pentecost was a dramatic sign to show that the Spirit’s work is bringing all people to a unity of understanding in Jesus Christ.

Whenever people come together and community happens in families, churches and neighbourhoods, it’s nine o’clock in the morning and the Spirit is at work making heros.

Whenever fresh winds blow, and you feel like you did the first time you saw Van Gogh’s “Starry Night”.  It’s still the same sky that you’ve seen but everything is different, better, more passionate.  The blues, the yellows, the swirling stars, everything has feeling, movement and even the colours seem alive.  

Whenever life is like lying on one of Monet’s water lilies. Or feeling the warmth of a Georgia O’Keefe flower wrapped around you.  Or you feel, really feel, the power and strength of a Degas dancer. When you feel that, it’s nine o’clock in the morning and God’s Spirit is at work, making heroes.

“Where human life is most human - when athletes and physicians, dancers and attorneys, teachers and politicians and homemakers reach deep inside to give more, and create more, and be more human...”6

“And when our own life is depleted and we are literally and figuratively out of breath and quietly we feel restoration happen and vitality return...”7 it’s nine o’clock in the morning and God’s Spirit is at work, making heroes.

When individuals come together and celebrate their differences and see in those differences unity in the Spirit, God’s Spirit, is at work making heroes.

Hey!  It’s almost 10:15!  God’s Spirit must be at work making heroes.  Let’s go find out where and how we can be one too. 

 ____________

1. Charles Dickens, David Copperfield (Harlow: Penguin, 2008), p.  1

2. Tom Strong, “Memories of World War II Still Strong for Aurora Veteran,” The Aurora Beacon News, May 27, 2019, https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/aurora-beacon-news/opinion/ct-abn-tom-strong-world-war-ii-st-0526-story.html.

3. David Chrisinger, "The Man Who Told America the Truth About D-Day," The New York Times, June 05, 2019, published June 5, 2019 , accessed June 08, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/05/magazine/d-day-normandy-75th-ernie-pyle.html.

4. William H. Willimon, Acts: Interpretation Bible Commentary, vol. 21, 33 vols. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010).  p.  33.

5. Gail R. O'Day, "From Fear to Joy," Pulpit Digest 73, no. 515 (May/June 1992).  p.  11.

6. John M. Buchanan, "Like a Breath of Fresh Air" (Sunday Morning Sermon, The Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago, June 4, 1995).

7.  ibid

Sermon preached at The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Saint Luke

28 May 2023

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeUlaSAk38E

"He Gets Us" - Easter 5A

 Acts 7:55-60

Saint John 14:1-14

I first saw the signs behind the batter’s box where they could be easily captured by the centerfield camera.  They weren’t the cheap, cardboard signs held up by fans that greet their moms, express opinions on the opposing team, or even feature a verse from Scripture. These were strategically placed on-field, commercial, advertising signs which directed the viewer to a website called: "He Gets Us."

I didn’t think anything of them until an unchurched friend of mine said he had seen commercials for the same website during the college football playoffs and asked me about them.  

Selective attention being what it is I began to see them too on sporting events that I was watching – hockey, baseball, basketball, and college football.  The “He Gets Us” group even managed to raise enough revenue to purchase airtime on the Super Bowl.

Both my unchurched friend and his very churched pastor buddy loved the ads and their themes:

“Jesus was wrongly judged. He gets us!”

“Jesus had strained relationships.  He gets us!”

“Jesus had a complex family life. He gets us!”  

“Jesus loved outcasts. He gets us!”

And their more controversial:

“Jesus was a rebel.  He gets us!”

“Jesus was a refugee. He gets us!”

On their website, the group outlined their goals and purposes and quite rightly diagnosed the problems that occur among followers of different faiths and people in different places in their political lives.

Many perceive those who differ with them on issues of justice, dignity, and humanity as not just wrong or misguided but also as evil. As enemies. We often see these “others” as close-minded, selfish, hypocritical - and if we’re honest, many of us respond in kind. 

So, the founders of “He Gets Us” clearly laid out their agenda saying that they wanted “to move beyond the mess of our current cultural moment to a place where all of us are invited to rediscover the love story of Jesus. Christians, non-Christians, and everybody in between. All of us.”1

As you might imagine, just like with everything else in our day, there was blowback. Criticism came from both the left and the right; from church folk and those who would never step foot in a church building.  

No matter what the naysayers may say the ads are right about one thing: Jesus does get us.  Jesus understands that there are times when we have troubled hearts.

For a moment there, while I was reading the Gospel, I bet you thought you were at a funeral. Those words about troubled hearts in troubled times and Jesus going to prepare a place for us where the relationships we have formed now with continue on forever shows that Jesus “gets us” in our grief.

He also shows he “get us” in the image he uses. What better image is there than a house with many rooms?

Jesus was a carpenter’s son who may have even followed in his earthly father’s footsteps, and so he knows how important houses are.  They offer warmth and shelter to be sure, but a house is also a place where relationships are formed, nourished, sustained.  

Think of the house you grew up in.  It may have been a pleasant, “Leave it to Beaver” or “Father Knows Best” kind of place.  Or, it may have been an unpleasant, dysfunctional place like “All In the Family” where disagreements and fighting was the order of the day, every day.  Or, it may have been thought of by neighbours and friends as the house where the Marx Brothers lived, full of zany antics and pure craziness. No matter what kind of a house or family you lived in it formed your world view. How you learned how to relate to others can be traced back to the people in your house.  Jesus gets that.

Jesus wants to make a home with you in your house.  He wants to dwell with you and he wants you to dwell with him.  

Remember, while we may be deep into the Easter Season liturgically, our reading comes from a scene in the Upper Room just hours before Jesus’ crucifixion.

Elisabeth Johnson reminds us what was going on for the disciples and Jesus at that very moment when she wrote:

The setting is Jesus’ farewell address at his last supper with his disciples. Jesus has washed his disciples’ feet and has explained to them what this means. He has foretold his betrayal by Judas, and Judas has slipped out into the night. He has told his disciples that he will be with them only a little while longer, and that where he is going, they cannot come. He has also foretold Peter’s imminent denial.

No wonder the disciples are troubled. Their beloved teacher is leaving them, one of their own has turned against them, and the stalwart leader among the disciples is said to be on the cusp of a great failure of loyalty. It is as though the ground is shifting beneath their feet.

Jesus responds to the anxiety of his disciples by saying, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me”. Jesus calls them back to this fundamental relationship of trust and assures them that he is not abandoning them.2

Jesus not only gets them, but he is claiming to be the way through their troubles.

When Thomas asks how they can know the way?  “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.’”3

How odd that this beautiful verse, meant to comfort, has been turned into a instrument of division and discord.  While Jesus may get us, sometimes we don’t get him. 

We have turned something that was intended to be an invitation into the mystery, awe and wonder of following Jesus into an instrument of judgement and exclusion. 

When we begin to think that our way is the only way we no longer are ambassadors of the Good News but bouncers at the door of club heaven.  

To paraphrase Vicar Tim’s wonderful sermon last week: Jesus may be the gatekeeper, but he has this overwhelming tendency to leave the gate wide open. 

In one of their ads the folks at “He Gets Us” invited viewers to appreciate the way Jesus “gets us” by considering just exactly who it was that Jesus associated with by looking again at his dinner companions.  

As we looked closer, we noticed that his company around the table was a remarkably diverse cast. He shared meals with outcasts. He spent time with the self-righteous religious elite. He cared for people who had broken every rule and were seen as unclean. He dined at the tables of the wealthy men whose riches were won with lies and corruption. Some of those men gave up comfortable lifestyles to follow him. He crossed racial boundaries to the shock of many around him. He invited everyone to the table. 

Strangers eating together and becoming friends. What a simple concept, and yet, we’re pretty sure it would turn our own modern world upside down the same way Jesus turned his around 2,000 years ago.

The name of Jesus has been used to harm and divide, but if you look at how he lived, you see how backward that really is. Jesus was not exclusive. He was radically inclusive.4

 That, I think, is the pure power of the words “let not your hearts be troubled” and the promise attached.  It tells us that Jesus “get us” and that there is a place for us, all of us.

That, I think, is why these words get read at funerals – almost every funeral.  They were read at the funeral of the Queen, they were read at funerals of presidents, they are read over all kinds and conditions of God’s children from the riches to the poorest.  Countless times I have stood over the grave of someone I loved, and some people I didn’t even know, and said those words that promised the relatives and friends that their hearts need not be troubled because Jesus gets them.  He understands their grief, the sorrow, their pain, their loss.

For me, perhaps these words are at their most powerful during a ceremony that few people even know about.

A couple of times every year funeral directors and clergy participate in a burial service for some 100 or so individuals whose bodies have gone unclaimed or unidentified and are therefore abandoned at the medical examiner's office.

The Archdiocese of Chicago provides an earthly resting place for them at Mount Olivet cemetery.  They are picked up and, in a dignified manner, transported with a police escort down Western Avenue to the cemetery. Onlookers stop and seem stunned by such a long parade of hearses.  

Once at the cemetery prayers are said and today’s Gospel is read over those whose lives and hearts became so troubled that they became estranged from family and friends to the point that, even in death, no one claimed them.

Yet it is there, on days dry or damp, sunny or cloudy, in winter’s cold or summer’s blistering heat, we proclaim something. We proclaim that even though we do not know their backgrounds.  We proclaim that even though we may not know who they are or where they came from.  We proclaim that even though we have no idea if they had faith or no faith, in the end, Jesus still “gets them” with a welcome that is more warm and more gracious than they could have ever imagined.  

He gets us too!  That is his promise.  That is our hope.  Jesus “gets us!” 

________________

1. https://hegetsus.com/en

2. Elisabeth Johnson, “Commentary on John 14:1-14,” Working Preacher from Luther Seminary (Luther Seminary, November 11, 2020), https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fifth-sunday-of-easter/commentary-on-john-141-14-4.

3. St. John 14:6. (NKJB) [NKJB=The New King James Version] 

4. https://hegetsus.com/en/jesus-invited-everyone-to-sit-at-his-table

Sermon preached at the Evangelical Lutheran Church of St. Luke

7 May 2023

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MStgdy8S8zU