Proper 21
Transcribed from a
sermon given
September 25, 2011
Rev. Valerie A. Hart
St. Barnabas
Episcopal Church, Arroyo Grande CA
Philippians 2:1-13
Exodus 17:1-7
Matthew 21:23-32
There’s an old story from India
about two monks that went up into the Himalayas as hermits to find God and
purify themselves. They found two caves that were next to each other and each
one went into their cave, taking with them nothing but some straw for a bed. They
didn’t see each other for many months as each one worked on their own meditation
and their own purity. Of course when the winter came they couldn’t see each
other. When spring came and with the spring the sunshine each of the monks took
their pile of straw and put it out in the sun because after a winter in the
cave it needed to be freshened up a bit. They saw each other there, and the
older monk greeted the younger monk, “How are you?” Not too many words, but
acknowledging him. The younger monk said, “It was a good winter, I have now
conquered my anger.” The old monk said, “That’s wonderful. That’s fantastic,
that you are now free from anger.” And then the older monk went over and walked
over the straw of the younger monk. At which point the younger monk yelled,
“How could you do that! Don’t do that to my straw!” And the older monk said,
“Ah, I see that you have conquered your anger.
It is very easy to conquer one’s
anger if you are living alone. However, if you have to interact with other
human beings it is much more difficult. It is fine to think about one’s
spiritual journey when you are alone, but when you are in community, when you
are interacting with others, ah, that’s where the real growth happens. That’s
when you are confronted by your own stuff. That’s when you begin to have the
grist for the mill to smooth things out.
Today we have three readings about
community. In the Old Testament we have those delightful people of God that God
has freed them from slavery in Egypt. He has taken them away from all of the
oppression of the Egyptians. He brings them to the edge of the Red Sea at which
point they go, “What? You brought us out here to die? What are you going to do
about it Moses?” To which Moses says, “It’s not me, it’s God and God will find
away.” Then he parts the sea, and they go across the sea, that great miracle.
They get on the other side of the sea and they are free, free to have a new
life.
Last week, we heard about how
after they had been wandering around for a while, suddenly they were hungry.
“Back in Egypt we had plenty of food, and you brought us out here to starve,”
they complain to Moses. Once again Moses says, “Don’t complain to me, it’s God
who is doing this.” And God provides with them meat, of birds that drop from
the sky, and manna they can collect from the ground. Once more God does great
wonderful things for them.
A week later in our lectionary, they
are someplace with no water and they are thirsty and once again they are
complaining. Like most human beings they are looking for someone to blame. So
they go to Moses, “It’s your fault, you are the one that brought us out of
Egypt. It’s your fault that we are thirsty - do something about it.”
Isn’t it amazing how important it
is to have someone to blame. If you have ever been home and your spouse is gone
and your children are gone and you are there by yourself and you can’t find
your keys you discover that you don’t have anybody to blame for the fact that
they are missing. So they blame Moses and Moses says, “Don’t blame me. It’s
God.” And of course once again God provides for them. They had forgotten, they
had so quickly forgotten about God’s provision, about God’s love, about God’s
caring for them.
In the Gospel reading we have a
different kind of community. It’s a family, and here we have the father that
says there is some work to be done. He goes to the first son and says, “Go do
it” and the first son says, “I don’t have time. I’m sorry I can’t do it.” He
goes to the second son who says, “Sure Dad, no problem.” If you have raised
teenagers you have probably experienced this. You go to one and say, “Go clean
your room.” “Dad, I can’t possibly clean my room today, I’ve got all this
homework to do and then a friend is coming over and we’ve got this video game
we have to play and I haven’t checked my Facebook page for days and….” And then
you go to the second son, “Clean your room.” “Oh sure Dad, no problem.” Well
the sure Dad no problem, whether working in the vineyard or cleaning their
room, they are out there and they see their friends. “Oh, hi, let’s go get a
cup of coffee. They go to Starbucks. The friend has a new video game. He goes
over and to play the video game, by the time he gets home there is no time to
clean his room. He meant to clean his room; there were just other more
important things that came up. While the one who had said no goes into his
room, sits down to do his homework, looks around and goes, “Yeah this room is
kind of a mess, I guess I should pick it up.” And cleans it up.
And Jesus asks the question, “Which
one was doing the will of the father?” And of course when Jesus talks about the
Father he is talking about God. We’ve all had times in our lives when we have
said we are going to do something and then for one reason or another we don’t
do it. And we’ve all had times in our lives when we said no I don’t think I’m
going to be able to do that and then we change our minds and we realize we
really should. It is a very human situation. And what Jesus is saying is that
when we are talking to God it is not about our words, and what we say, it is
not about whether we can say it all correctly, it is about whether we do it. Or
as one might say it is not about talking the talk, it’s about walking the walk.
Of living it.
And then we have this wonderful
passage about community from Paul in his second letter to the Philippians. If
you read Paul’s letters you realize that he had a kind of consistent
experience. He would go to some town, he would set up a church, he would then
go on to another town and then he would hear about how the first church he had
set up was quarreling and arguing or changing the theology or doing something
inappropriate. And then he would write to them and say come on guys remember
what I said to you - we all have to get along, etc. This particular letter to
the Philippians was probably written while he was in jail. So imagine, he’s in
jail and trying to encourage his flock. And the challenges that that church had
are greater then even the churches today.
We’ve all had at one time or
another an experience of a church that had some disagreement. Somewhere, at
some time. Imagine the Philippians. Back then there is only one church in town,
so if you disagree and you have a fight there is no other church to go to. If
you don’t like your minister you can’t go to the other one. If you don’t like
the music you can’t go and find a better musicians. You are stuck. If you are
going to stay Christian you are stuck with this community. And this community
is made up of people who would never encounter each other on a day-to-day
basis. They didn’t shop in the same stores, they didn’t walk down the same
streets, because you had people who were Jewish, and you had people who had
been Pagans - worshippers of pagan gods. You had people who spoke Greek, and
people who spoke Latin, and people who spoke Hebrew. You had people who were
wealthy and people who were slaves. And you had men and you had women. None of
these groups would normally interact with each other. Here they are put
together into a community because they have all felt called by Christ. Here Paul
is writing to them, and I can’t say it any better than he did. “If there is any
encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the spirit,
any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having
the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.” In other word, please, if
you care about me, if you care about Christ, if your life has been touched, get
along, get along. He goes on to say, “Do nothing from selfish ambition or
conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.” To me that’s
what it means to love one another as Christ loved us.
I had a lot of time to think about
love when I was asked to be the officiant at my son’s wedding. I wondered what
I was going to say to my son and my daughter-in-law about love, about marriage?
What little hopeful pearl of wisdom that they might remember could I say? As I
reflected on in I concluded that love has to do with caring about the welfare
of the other person.
We have a problem in English
because we use the word love for so many different things. In Greek, which the
New Testament was written in, there are four different words that are translated
as love. But we only have one word for love and we use that same word to say I
love my car, I love my spouse, I love my child, I love my dog, I love
chocolate. We use the same word even thought they are very different meanings.
I love chocolate but not the same way I love my children. And so it is a little
hard for us sometimes to talk about love. The kind of love that a spouse has,
the kind of love that a parent has, is a love in which you care about that
other person’s welfare. That means that you desire for that person to be whole.
You want that person to be physically whole, spiritually whole, emotionally
whole. You want them to take their gifts and thrive. If you are a parent you know
what it feels like when you see your child blossom, when all of a sudden you
see them being generous. Or you see them discovering their gifts and finding a
new thing that they can do that they are good at. You see the joy in their
face. Nothing feels better than that. When you see someone you love growing
into the fullness of who they can be as a human being. To me that is what love
is about. It is wanting that for the other person.
So in a married couple it is a
matter of wanting the partner to be whole. It doesn’t mean always giving them
what they want, because sometimes giving them what they want is not good for
them, but it means wanting them to be whole and to thrive. It means wanting to
give up what you may want in order to have what that other one wants and needs,
that will make them whole. And if in the couple both partners are that way then
each one can be selfless because they know the other is not going to take
advantage of their desire to give. It also means don’t let your partner be
abusive or use you because it hurts the person who is the abuser as much as it
does the person who is abused. It means that you set limits because that helps
that person develop limits.
It is caring about the other. Or
the way Paul puts it in regard to community, “Let each of you look not to your
own interests but to the interests of others.” That is a Christian loving
community where each person focuses less on their own interests and more on the
interests of others. And that is what, I believe, Jesus meant when he said,
“Love one another as I have loved you.” Love one another as I have loved you.
How Christ loved us, loves us, is he wants each one of us to be whole. He wants
each one of us to know love and to know God. He wants each one of us to thrive.
He wants each one of us to have all our gifts be manifested. He wants each one
of us to know how much we are loved. And the way he demonstrated that love was
by his willingness to die on the cross. So when he was on the cross, even with
the pain and the suffering and the humiliation, there was him a sense of joy
because he knew that was the best way for all of us to come to know God’s love
and to be the people he yearned for us to be. That was his gift to us. And he
invites us to love one another as he has loved us.
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