Proper 12A sermon

Here is a sermon I gave back in 1996. The sermon I found on my computer was missing the last page, so I wrote what I think I probably said.
In this sermon I look at Solomon's choice of wisdom in relationship with the merchant who sold everything for the pearl of great price. By looking at the wisdom literature we can see that Jesus was picking up images from Job, Proverbs and Psalms.

Sermon

Proper 12 A

I Kings 3:5-12 & Matthew 13:31-33,44-49a

St Alban’s Episcopal Church, Brentwood CA

By Rev. Valerie Hart

7/28/96

         Remember when there was the big fire in the Oakland and Berkeley hills? On TV they interviewed people who had had to quickly leave their homes. They talked about what they took with them and what they had to leave behind. Some took pets, others pictures, others jewelry, some their financial records, others art work. I can remember thinking about what I would have taken. What in my home is really important to me? What do I value?

         We also seem to enjoy stories about a hero who gets a limited number of wishes, like Aladdin and his lamp. We can’t help but think about what wishes we would make. Would we make better choices than the person in the story? Instead of something immediate like riches, would we think to ask for something long lasting, like the ability to earn money, or a business that would produce income indefinitely. Would we foolishly ask harm to an enemy?  What is it that we truly want? The story of Solomon is similar. In a prophetic dream, Solomon is asked by God what one gift he wants. What would you ask for? How would you respond to God saying I will give you whatever you want? What is it that our hearts really long for? Solomon asked for an understanding mind so that he could be a wise king, able to discern between good and evil. That response pleased God. Would I be so wise as to ask for wisdom?

         In the Gospel reading today, Jesus presents two parables of people discovering and prizing something. In the first one, someone comes accidently upon a treasure in a field, and is so excited to have found this treasure that he sells all that he owns to buy the field. In the second story, a merchant has been actively searching for fine pearls, and when he finds one pearl of great value he sold all that he had and bought it. What could possibly be of enough value to sell everything we own in order to possess it? What is more valuable than any possession? What is it that we truly long for deep in our hearts?

         Jesus begins these parables with the introduction he often uses “the kingdom of heaven is like.” So there is something about the kingdom of heaven that is like finding a treasure of such great value that you give up everything else in order to possess it.

         Now we must remember that Jesus was well versed in the Hebrew Scriptures. He often alluded to material in them, and much of what he says is similar to a type of writing in what we call the Old Testament that is called the Wisdom Literature such as Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and many of the psalms. Does anything sound familiar in this statement from Job (ch28)?

12         "But where shall wisdom be found?

         And where is the place of understanding?

13         Mortals do not know the way to it,

         and it is not found in the land of the living.

14         The deep says, 'It is not in me,'

         and the sea says, 'It is not with me.'

15         It cannot be gotten for gold,

         and silver cannot be weighed out as its price.

16         It cannot be valued in the gold of Ophir,

         in precious onyx or sapphire.

17         Gold and glass cannot equal it,

         nor can it be exchanged for jewels of fine gold.

18         No mention shall be made of coral or of crystal;

         the price of wisdom is above pearls.

“The price of wisdom is above pearls” Could it be that the pearl of great value is wisdom? In Proverbs Ch 3 it states

13         Happy are those who find wisdom,

         and those who get understanding,

14         for her income is better than silver,

         and her revenue better than gold.

15         She is more precious than jewels,

         and nothing you desire can compare with her.

We can also assume that those who listened to Jesus also were familiar with the wisdom literature and probably made the association of the treasure and the pearl with wisdom. So, Jesus may be telling us to be like Solomon and choose Wisdom, to give up everything for Wisdom to value wisdom above all else.

         But what are these writers referring to when they say wisdom. It is not the kind of education and collection of facts that we might call smart or even wise, it has a much deeper and more spiritual meaning. Let me continue from Job

20         "Where then does wisdom come from?

         And where is the place of understanding?

23         "God understands the way to it,

         and he knows its place.

24         For he looks to the ends of the earth,

         and sees everything under the heavens.

25         When he gave to the wind its weight,

         and apportioned out the waters by measure;

26         when he made a decree for the rain,

         and a way for the thunderbolt;

27         then he saw it and declared it;

         he established it, and searched it out.

28         And he said to humankind,

         'Truly, the fear of the LORD, that is wisdom;

         and to depart from evil is understanding.'"

Or from psalm 111

10         The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom;

         all those who practice it* have a good understanding.

         His praise endures forever.

Or

Proverbs 1

7         The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge;

         fools despise wisdom and instruction.

Or Proverbs

Ch 9

10         The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom,

         and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.

Or Proverbs

Ch 15

33         The fear of the LORD is instruction in wisdom,

         and humility goes before honor.

Fear of the Lord, Love of God, Honor to God and to God’s teachings - That is Wisdom, and that is the Pearl of great value and that is the treasure found in a field.

         Let’s take a look again at these two parables of Jesus. In both cases the individual discovers something wonderful, one by accident, the other after a long search. Suppose you were living a normal life, not giving much thought to God, and then something happens quite unexpectedly, like a door opening you have an experience of the presence of the divine. What would you do? What would that experience be worth to you?

         Or suppose that after years of seeking God you have and experience where you have the sense of being asked what you wanted, and that you could choose anything. What would you choose? Would you make a choice you would celebrate or one that you would later regret?

         We have that choice right now. We have that choice each day. How do we spend our time, how do we invest our energy? How much of our time and energy is spent seeking out a deeper relationship with God? How much of our time and energy is spent seeking out material wealth, fame, respect and pleasure? Not that these are necessarily bad in and of themselves, but we need to ask what purpose do they serve? Do we work hard to make money in order to support our families and give to those in need, or are we making money just to hoard it? Rarely are thing purely black and white. Our motives are almost always mixed.

         Yet, we can ask ourselves if we are satisfied with the amount of time and energy we spend on seeking God’s wisdom. We can consider how much we are willing to pay for the pearl of great price. And we can decide to make a change.

Proper 11 A - The wheat and the weeds

What do you do when things are all mixed up together, like the good seed for wheat and the bad seed that produces weeds? This is the dilemma of the parable in this Sunday's reading.
Hope you find this sermon from 2011 helpful.

Proper 11 A

Transcribed from a sermon given at

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

July 17, 2011

By Rev. Valerie Hart

They say there is one sure way to tell the difference between the weeds and results of the good seed. If you go into a garden and you don’t know which are the weeds and which are the plants that are intentional just rip them all out, and the ones that grow back were the weeds.

We have this wonderful parable about the weeds; actually it is about the sower and the Weeds. He sowed the wheat, good seed, but somehow all these weeds grew up around it. It is interesting that the weeds that grew up around it were of a specific kind. It just says weeds in this translation, but the kind of weed is a wild rye that looks exactly like a wheat plant until it comes to the point where it goes to seed, and then you can distinguish between the two. Unfortunately this wild rye plant is also mildly poisonous so usually you don’t want to collect them all together. It is a dilemma, the dilemma of the weeds and the good seed. What do you do? How do you distinguish between them? How do you discern? When do you separate?

Now parable means puzzle. Parables are designed to be something that there is no clear solution to. They lead you to think about things and look at them in different ways. They are like a crystal that you turn and different colors appear as the light strikes it in different ways. They are like a Zen Koan. Something that makes you think but has no clear answer. So there is a real question any time in scripture a parable is followed by Jesus giving the explanation for it. That kind of literal explanation, that this is this and that is that, takes away that sense of wonder, of playing with the imagery and trying to understand it. So most scholars agree that when there is an interpretation of one of Jesus’ parables it is probably not what Jesus literally said. It is rather what the church, or the person that was writing the Gospel, thought it meant. You see, each one of the writers of the Gospels was writing for a particular group at a particular time. For each group there were certain issues that were important. So, the writer of the Gospel would choose stories, or things that happened, or tales of Jesus, or sayings of Jesus that were most appropriate for the audience that he was writing for. It would seem from this interpretation that Matthew was writing for the communities that had specific issues. One of the issues that came up for the earlier Christian communities is what to do when members of the community disagree. What do we do when there is someone who isn’t living by the same standards as everybody else? What do we do when someone - remember it is a time of persecution - goes and burns incense to the emperor in order to keep from being killed or having his family killed? What do we do that? How do we keep a community together?

So whether you believe that Jesus actually said those interpretations, or whether you think the interpretation was inspired by the writer and the church, there basically seems to be two ways of looking at this parable.

One is in terms of how you handle a community. The other is a more, some would say, spiritual interpretation. Looking at it in terms of our own inner lives, of what is happening inside the individual, of our own spiritual growth.

There was an old Mohawk Indian, and he was talking to his grandson. He said, “There is a struggle going on inside me. There are two wolves fighting. One wolf is good and generous and kind and selfless. The other is self centered and angry and hurtful and spiteful. And the two are inside me and they fight with each other.” The little boy thought for a moment and then he said, “Grandpa, which one is going to win?” And the grandpa said, “The one that I feed.”

You see we all have seeds inside of us, and some are wheat and some are weeds. In the parable that we heard last week, it would seem that the seeds were the word of God. We have in us all the good words, all the scripture we’ve heard all the kind words we have been taught all the good things that we have lived with in our lives. All those positive messages, and some of those have taken root and grow within us. And then there is all the negative stuff. There are things that our culture sends out. There are hurtful messages. There are questions. There are desires. There are all kinds of things that may not be of God. These are the weeds. Some you can very clearly know are weeds, and some you can’t be quite sure. Sometimes it is hard to discern what is the good and what is what society thinks we should do. Sometimes it is hard to know, and we struggle inside with these two parts of us. As Paul in one of the readings we had a few weeks ago said, “I do that which I don’t want to do and I don’t do that which I want to do.” We all have that struggle inside, those two wolves, the wheat and the weeds.

But we can also look at this parable in terms of the wheat representing people and the weeds representing people. This perspective is concerned that there are individuals who are trying to live good and holy lives and there are individuals that are not. What do we do with that? I am sure that all of us at some point in our live, whether it has been in a sermon while sitting at church, or listening on the radio and changing the channel to find some preacher on the radio, we’ve heard someone telling us who the weeds are and what we should do about it. They are talking about discerning who belongs as part of the Christian faith and who doesn’t. Who is good and who is bad. Not based on their behaviors, not saying that certain behaviors are bad, rather that certain people are bad, or not good. The early church struggled with this. We have a book called Holy Women, Holy Men that has for almost every day of the year different great Christians to remember, people who were inspiring. Many of them, when they were alive, were persecuted by the very church that honors them today. Some of them were martyred because they stood up for what they believed to be true, which wasn’t consistent with what the community thought was true at the time. But later they were honored for their faith. How do we discern the weeds from the wheat? How do we decide who are the good people, who are the good Christians, and who are the weeds? And what do we do about the weeds? That is the question that the church has struggled with through much of its existence. But I think this parable has an important point to make. It says it is not up to us to figure out who is a good Christian and who is not a good Christian. It is not for us to figure out who are the weeds and who are the wheat. That will be decided at the end. If we get too busy trying to weed out all the people who are not doing it right we are going to be rooting up a lot of people that may actually bear fruit and be wheat. What Jesus may be saying here is “It’s okay, we’ll sort it all out at the end. It is not up to you at this time to decide who is good and who is bad, who is going to go to heaven and who is not. That the angels will do that. They’ll take care of it. It will all be worked out in the end.” After all, how are we to know? It is hard to discern the wheat from weeds. The person who said this best was one of my favorite authors, Alexander Solzhenitsyn. He wrote “If only there were evil people somewhere, insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.”

And so we are called to feed out good wolves, and not try to judge who is good and who is bad, but trust that God will work it out in the end.

Have you ever given your love to someone unable to receive or acknowledge it?
Have you known times when you feel dead and dry inside, and unable to feel the love that you intellectually know is there? God sows love like a foolish farmer that casts seeds on rocks and weeds as well as good soil. 
This sermon, written 18 years ago, includes some reflections on a personal loss and the constancy of God's abundant love.

Proper 10 A

Sermon given 7/13/96

at St. Alban's Epsicopal Church, Brentwood

by the Rev. Valerie Hart

Matthew 13:1-9,18-23

         As I was contemplating these readings this week I got to thinking about my Mother-In-Law. During the last few years of her life she was extremely depressed. She was deeply loved, yet seemed incapable of knowing it. Her husband, my father-in-law, was as devoted as any man could be. He cared for her, took her wherever she wanted to go, gave her whatever she wanted, and made few demands upon her. He made sure she went to the doctors, took her medicine, etc. He even took her to Hawaii, where years ago they had experienced so much love and joy, in the hope that she would cheer up. But nothing seemed to matter; she continued to feel unloved, unlovable. No matter how much love was showered upon her by her husband, she couldn’t feel it. It didn’t matter that her baby grandchild adored her, she felt unloved and useless. Nothing that any of us said or did would matter. No seed of love could take root in the hard soil of her heart. A heart that had kept hidden the hurts of childhood, a heart that had so loved her family, a heart that could not receive, yet still longed to give. In fact, in her suicide note she said that she felt we would be better off without her. How little she understood of the deep love we felt for her and the aching we would all feel with her death. How hard it was to have loved someone so deeply and to know that they were unable to feel it.

         Have you ever given your love to someone unable to receive or acknowledge it? Perhaps there was a time when your spouse was so busy with work or other concerns that he or she didn’t notice your love. Or your children may have gone through a period of time when their need to express and be in touch with their anger made it impossible for them to acknowledge your love. Or you may have found yourself caring for a parent whose illness was so severe that their pain kept them from realizing the love behind your ministrations. Or maybe you are a teacher who has known a student who was so damaged by life that they could not respond to your sincere care. We have all had times when we have felt as if our love was being thrown into a black hole, where the one we loved just didn’t respond.

         Or perhaps we have known times when we feel dead and dry inside, and unable to feel the love that we intellectually know is there. Perhaps we have felt this way because of grief, or stress on the job, or hormonal changes, or chronic illness, or mental disturbances, or we just don’t know why. These are times when we cannot respond to the care expressed by others, when no matter what is said or done we feel unloved, unlovable. When even God’s love can’t get through.

         What does this have to do with today’s readings? God is the abundant sower, perhaps even a foolish farmer, for God sows love on all. The seeds of God’s love are sown on the hard path where there was no hope of them taking root. They were sown on rocky ground that had no depth; they were sown among thorns where there was no chance of growth, in addition to being sown on good ground. What kind of farmer is so wasteful? Doesn’t the farmer choose carefully where the seeds will be planted? Why would a farmer waste all that seed? But the nature of God is abundance. Isaiah speaks of people receiving water and food without money. He describes the word of God to be like rain and snow coming down and watering the land. The rain and snow do not discriminate as to where they will land. The rain falls on the land that has been prepared and absorbs it, it falls on the hard clay that just has it run off, it falls on the streets and towns and lakes and rivers. It is indiscriminate. So it is with God’s love. God’s love is sown upon all - worthy or unworthy, rich or poor, good or bad, happy or depressed, those ready to receive and those closed off. It doesn’t matter to God, the love is just sowed everywhere.

         I remember a time when I felt spiritually dead inside. When I saw my spiritual director I told her how I was unable to feel God’s love in the way I had before, and I grieved that loss. I said that I felt dry inside. Her response surprised me. She said that many of the great mystics trusted the dry, desert times more than the times they felt filled with love, because it was often through the dry times that God’s work of transformation was most powerful. Just as a field must lie fallow sometimes in order to continue to produce healthy crops, sometimes our hearts feel dry inside so that we can fully know our need for God. Often after a period of dryness, the gift of experiencing the fullness of God’s love again is worth the pain of the dry periods. Coming out of that dry period, once again feeling filled with God’s love, I realized how central love is to all that we do. It is really very simple. Our theology does not need be complicated - it is that God loves us, and we are Christians because the way that we came to know how much God loves us is through the incredible love expressed by Christ. And our worship is also an expression of love. We sing songs of love for God, we pray in thanksgiving of God’s love, even our times of confession is an acknowledgment that we have not loved as we could. We express our love for each other at the Peace, and we conclude our worship with the Eucharist, the Holy Communion where we remember God’s expression of love through Christ, and we partake of the loving gift of his body and blood. That’s all that it is about - Love. It is really quite simple - God Loves Us and never stops loving us, whether we can feel it or not.

         God just keeps sowing those seeds of love, whether we are receptive or not, in the confidence that at some point the soil will have been prepared, the thorns removed, the rocks cleared away, the hard ground plowed, so that the seed will take root and grow and bring forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. And what marvelous grain it is, for the fruit of God’s love is our ability to love. When we have so abundantly received we are called to equally abundantly, and selflessly give. And we are called to give our love as God gives, abundantly, without concern of how it is received, with the assurance that sometimes seeds planted in the desert are just waiting for the next rain to sprout and grow.

         So we keep loving, as God keeps loving, and we keep plowing the ground, clearing out weeds, removing the stones, and trusting in the dry times that the abundant rain will return, - trusting in a love that is often not returned from others, trusting in the love from God that we are sometimes unable to feel. And trusting that God will continue to keep sowing love.

         I don’t think that God ever gives up on us. I am sure that even though my mother-in-law was closed to God and human love in this lifetime, that God has not given up on her, but continues to sow the seeds of love into what I hope and believe is now more fertile soil.

         I trust that such an extravagant farmer would never give up on an opportunity for love, that God continues to sow the seeds of love, and will continue to sow them in the hope and confidence that eventually they will fall on fertile ground.

Proper 9A - Come you who are weary

I still remember from the 1928 Episcopal Prayer Book the "comfortable words."
Jesus is with us when we are tired. He will help us carry the load.
I hope you find this post comforting.

Proper 9 A

July 3, 2011

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

Arroyo Grande CA

The Rev. Valerie Hart

I know that there are some of you here that are old enough to have been formed on the 1928 Prayer Book. For those of you who are new to the Episcopal Church, that’s the old prayer book. The “new” prayer book is the 1979 one that we currently use, and it is only 30 years old so it is still call the “new” prayer book. But there are some of us here, and it shows my age, who were formed on the 28 Prayer Book. There was one line that was read whenever we had communion that stuck in my mind and in my soul. I think that those of you who are like me and were formed on the 28 Prayer book will respond to it.

“Hear what comfortable words our savior Christ saith unto all who truly turn to him, ‘Come unto me all that travail and are heavy laden and I will refresh you.’

‘Come to me all that travail and are heavy leaden and I will refresh you.’ That’s how they introduced the Eucharist, communion. The quote from the scripture we read today. “Come you who are weary and I will give you rest.” I remember as a kid that it took me a while to understand what travail meant. Of course you think of traveling, but travail was like labor, and it was the same word that was used to represent a woman in labor. Think of that intense painful, difficult and exhausting process we call labor. Come you who are tired, who are hurting, who are in the process of giving birth, who are really having a tough time. Come to me. All you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens.

One thing about being a parish priest is you have the opportunity to know what the burdens are that some of the members of the congregation are carrying. Some people have burdens that others know about, some have burdens that I know about but no one else does, and some have burdens that no one here knows. They have not chosen to share them. But we all know what those burdens are like. How they can tire us out. Burdens like grief, because there are people in this congregation who have recently lost spouses or parents or children or friends, or brothers or sisters and that is a burden and it is hard. And there are people in this congregation who have recently be diagnosed with cancer or who have been living with cancer for many years, or other chronic illnesses. There are people in this congregation that have lost their jobs and are concerned about whether they will lose their homes. There are people in this congregation who are lonely. There are people who carry many different kinds of burdens.

And those are just the burdens that are the outer burdens, but there are the inner burdens. As Paul so beautifully puts it, “I do what I don’t want to do and don’t do what I want to do.” We all have that struggle within us of knowing what are intentions are and discovering that we are not following through on those intentions. I am going to get my house clean today, and then you go home, and well you’ve got to check Facebook and you’ve got to respond to ……. Oh, gosh, when I was growing up I was NEVER going to talk to my children the way my mother spoke to me.   But sometimes it felt like I was seeing my mother a mirror in front of me.

We all do what we don’t want to do, and it is a burden for us. And of course those who have struggled with addiction of one sort or another know that in worse kind of ways. Over and over again you make the intention that you are going to stop that addictive behavior, and then suddenly you find yourself with a glass in your hand, or a piece of chocolate, or looking at the wrong thing on the internet, or whatever your addiction may be. And it is not your intention, you want to be free of it, but you are doing it anyway.

We carry lots of different kinds of burdens. It is almost as if we are donkeys and we are pulling a cart. We do fine pulling the cart until someone puts something in it. And we can handle it with one thing, and then another thing comes along, and then another and pretty soon we are struggling. We are tired and we are not able to move forward. We become weary, and carrying to many heavy burdens.

For those of us who know what that feels like, which I think that is most of us here. We know what that feels like when we are tired, when we feel like we can’t do one more thing. We wonder how are we going to get through this day when we are feeling like that. To us Jesus says these comfortable words. “Come to me those who are weary and carrying heavy burdens and I will refresh you.”

And the way he will refresh you is, he says, “Take my yoke upon you.” Now think about what a yoke for an animal is. Imagine you are a farmer and you have this cart and you have a donkey pulling it. Then you get another donkey, and you want to put the two donkeys together so you make a yoke that fits them just right. It has to fit the shoulders just right so that it won’t hurt when they push on it. Once you have the two donkeys pulling they can pull much more than one donkey by itself. That’s what Christ offers. To be yoked to us so that all the burdens that we are carrying he is carrying as well. We are doing it together. We are not carrying it alone. And in fact he is much stronger than we are so we don’t have to work so hard. We don’t have to get so tired.

But of course there is a “but.” And that but is that when you put two animals yoked together they can carry much more as long as they are both going in the same direction. But if one of the donkeys is kind of stubborn and want to go off in a different way the shoulders are going to get soar, the cart not’s going to get anywhere, and it is going to be a struggle. So, what our part is when we are yoked to Christ is to try and walk with him, because he really does know where we should be going. And he really does have more wisdom then we do. And if we can give ourselves over to follow where he leads the burden becomes light, we can make wonderful progress and we can deal with whatever comes into our lives. In the twelve step programs they talk about giving it over to a higher power. Or as Paul would say, “I do what I don’t want to do and don’t do what I want to do, but there is hope, thanks be to God in Christ Jesus.” When we open ourselves and yoke ourselves to Christ we find that life is much easier and filled with peace and joy.

Amen

Even small acts of hospitality, like giving someone a cup of cold water, can make all the difference. The readings for this Sunday are very rich. In this sermon I reflect on the generous hospitality I saw at a wedding, and weave together the Gospel, the story of Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son, and Paul's letter to the Romans.

Proper 8 Year A

Transcription of a sermon given on

June 26, 2011

At St. Barnabas Episcopal Church Arroyo Grande

By Rev. Valerie Hart

In the Gospel reading today Jesus talks about hospitality, and that even small acts of hospitality, like giving someone a cup of cold water, can make a great deal of difference. I had a chance to see that at work this past weekend at a wedding. I didn’t know the bride’s family very well. I had met a few them but I didn’t know the whole family. Something happened that told me a lot about this family.  There was a man at the wedding who had never met anyone else who was attending. He was a stranger. He had been invited to the wedding, but he came having never met in person anyone there. You see the bride was adopted. Her birth dad had given permission for her to find him, so when she became an adult she looked him up. She had contacted him over email and they had communicated a little bit on Facebook and through email, but it never worked for them to meet in person. And then she invited him to her wedding.

Now you can try to imagine what it would be like to be a man meeting your biological daughter for the first time at her wedding. What would it be like walking into a wedding where you didn’t know anyone at all? That takes a lot of courage. What impressed me was that he was made 100% welcome. Everyone from her family, the whole wedding, treated him like family. He was seated at a table with other family members. Many people spoke to him and made him feel comfortable and welcome. To me this said a great deal about bride’s family - about her parents, about their love for one another, about their love for their daughter, and about their love for all people. A little bit of hospitality made all the difference.

Of course it can work the other way as well. As I was reading background material and ideas for the sermon today I read the story of a pastor who spoke about a man in his town that he knew well. A respected businessman, a good man who lived a good and generous life, but he never came to church. So this pastor would keep inviting him to come to church and he would say “nope, not comin’.” So finally the pastor asked him why. This time the man was in a place where he was ready to tell him. He said that when he was eleven years old his family had decided that it would be good for he and his brothers and sisters if they had some religious training. So they took him to Sunday School. He got to Sunday School and he loved it. He loved hearing the great stories of the Bible. He loved the music. He loved coloring. He loved everything about Sunday School and he was all ready to come back. But at the end of the Sunday School class the Sunday School teacher pulled him aside and said to him - in a very nice way I suppose - “You know son when we come to church we always dress in our best. I don’t want to see you coming back to church dressed the way you are today.” And he looked down at his handed down overalls with holes in them, which were his best clothes, and he never came back to church dressed that way. Well he never came back to church until he was dressed in a brand new suit and laid out in a box for his funeral.

I’m sure that that Sunday School teacher meant well. But it wasn’t being hospitable. It wasn’t being welcoming. It wasn’t seeing the need of the child.

Little acts of hospitality can make a huge difference. Even giving a cup of cold water. It is interesting when you read the Gospel that Jesus doesn’t give many “Thou Shalt Nots”. Oh, occasionally he does, but usually he is telling us what he wants us to do. He wants us to love one another as he loves us, to be hospitable to one another, to see the poor, to give a cup of water to the thirsty. He doesn’t dwell on rules and regulations, but on compassion and love.

If we look at the reading from Roman’s that Paul wrote we find that Paul teaches that we are free from the Law through grace. Things have changed. With the resurrection of Christ everything has changed. We no longer are slaves to a bunch of rules. We are not controlled by the “Thou Shalt Nots”. But Paul had a dilemma because there were some people that when he told them that they were free from the law said, “Okay good, I can do whatever I want.” And they were doing things that weren’t good for them or weren’t good for the people around them. Things that weren’t even respectful of their own bodies. And Paul said, “No, no, no, you don’t quite get it. We are free from the arbitrary laws, but we are slaves to Christ and therefore we want to serve Christ.” There are places in Paul’s letters where he delineates what that looks like, especially in the letters to the Corinthians, because it appears that the Corinthians didn’t quite understand the concept of freedom. So he had to delineate some “Thou Shalt Nots”. But what is most important about what Paul says is that we are a new creation. We are a new creation in Christ. Everything changed with the resurrection. Our relationship with God and our relationship with one another have changed, just as everything changed with Abraham. Before Abraham, and even after in some places, human sacrifice was common.  At the beginning of this story Abraham believes he needs to sacrifice his son to God. Because that is what you did. You made sacrifices to your God. You sacrificed that which was most valuable to you and often it was your own child because you wanted to appease God. You wanted to appease the anger of God. It was as if human beings could do something to take care of God. And then God would owe you something. But things changed with Abraham. Abraham was willing to offer his son. He loved God that much, but God said that is not what it is about. I will provide the sacrifice. God doesn’t need anything from human beings. God has everything that God needs. God wants relationship with human beings and with Abraham the relationship with God became one of friendship rather than one of duty and fear.

Then God provided the sacrifice in Christ to take another step in the relationship between God and human beings. This was a new creation, a new way of being with God, an opportunity to live in grace.

Every day we say the Lord’s prayer. “Our Father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name.” Then we say, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Right there, central in that prayer, is the coming of God’ reign, the time when God will truly rule the earth. When the earth, all of the earth, all of creation will be as God intended for it to be. God will be in charge, a time when God’s will is how people will respond. The resurrection of Christ opened a window to that new world. That is the new creation, where this earth will become what God intended. Where human beings will treat one another the way we are supposed to - with love and compassion.

We are called to be part of the transformation. We are called to bring on the new kingdom.

If you look at history it is pretty amazing that a small band of followers of Jesus in less then 300 years expanded to cover the entire Roman Empire and become a force to be reckoned with, even though they were illegal. Even though they were persecuted. But Christianity spread like crazy. What was it, what was it that made the church grow so much then? It had to do with how the Christians lived their lives. They lived their lives bringing in the new creation. They lived their lives to be the new kingdom. They treated each other with compassion and love. They brought in and welcomed everyone. Hospitality for everyone - male, female, free, slave, rich, poor, gentile, Jew - anywhere, any language.  This was a community that fed one another; it was not like the rest of the Roman Empire. When plague came people were left because their family didn’t want to catch it. They left people to die alone. The Christians, however, took care of one another, nursed one another back to health. When people were hungry they fed one another. When they were alone they were invited into community. They shared what they had. They had a little taste of what the kingdom of God looks like. Where people love one another as Christ loved us. By the way they lived in their communities they taught people about what love looked like. They didn’t have an army. They didn’t have much money. Most of the early Christians were poor. But they had something more powerful. And when you look at the history of the Christian church that goes into different areas, the missions that were often most successful were ones where it was a doctor who brought healing, or they brought food, or in some other way were being hospitable and caring for people.

We are called, each and every one of us, to help bring on the kingdom of God. When we pray the Lord’s prayer it is our responsibility to do what we can to make this world what God intended - to let the reign of God come through us. It comes through those small acts of hospitality. Those times of charity and love when we feed people, when we welcome people, when we comfort people, when we give them even a cup of cold water.

Welcoming the stranger

During the season of Pentecost year A I have discovered that there are a number of Sundays where I have no record of a sermon I gave, so I am unable to post a sermon every week. When I don't have a sermon to post I am going to share some reflections on my experiences visiting churches around the country during my retirement. 

Since I have retired at the beginning of February I have been traveling a lot in my RV and attending a different Episcopal Church almost every week. All of them have been places where I am not known, so I walk in as a stranger. It has been wonderful to experience the variations in worship, membership and energy in these churches, and I have always left feeling touched by God.

But it has left me thinking once more about how we welcome the stranger in our midst. It is something that I focused on and preached about while I was a rector, but now it has an additional meaning to me. Each week I am the stranger, and I have an opportunity to experience something of what a visitor might feel.

Why is it so important to think about how the church welcomes strangers? Each person who walks through the door of the church on a Sunday morning is there because they have been nudged by God. Each one’s story is different. Some are there because they are lonely and looking for community and friendship. Some are feeling a need to be of service. Some have come because they are hurting and need to experience the healing love of God.

If the church is to be a true expression of God’s love everyone in the church needs to honor and be intentional about welcoming the stranger. Remember, that stranger may not be a stranger for long. Perhaps your new best friend has just walked through the door, all you need to do is say hello. Perhaps he or she is the Sunday School teacher, or alto for the choir, that people have been praying for. Perhaps this new person will revitalize the men’s group or help develop a brand new ministry that will change the church. Each one who walks through the door of the church brings unique gifts from God. If they do not feel welcome in your church, God may lead them to one where they will be welcomed and appreciated.

Pentecost Sermon

Pentecost is one of my favorite Feast Days. I love honoring the power of the Holy Spirit. Here is a sermon I gave in 2011. It included some reflections on a Pentecost Eve several years before when I watched a wild fire growing closer to my home.

Pentecost

Transcribed from a sermon given

June 12, 2011

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

The Rev. Valerie Hart

Pentecost - the coming of the Holy Spirit. I love Pentecost. I love the energy of the Holy Spirit, and the presence, and the power and the surprise. Because one thing about the Holy Spirit is that it tends to surprise us. It is not domesticated. The Holy Spirit does what it will and transforms what it will. The images for Pentecost - fire, wind, breath, red hanging down from the ceiling, flames coming out of people’s heads. All these wonderful, wonderful images of strength and power.

When I was a kid the Holy Spirit was always called the Holy Ghost as it was in the first song that we sang. I know I’m dating myself saying that, but as a little kid my image of the Holy Ghost was Casper the friendly ghost. Anybody remember Casper the friendly ghost? You know the Holy Spirit was sort of this friendly warm fuzzy thing. Well, it can be. The Holy Spirit can be comforting; it can be a breath that heals. Just like on a hot day, a breath of cool wind can be refreshing and healing, or on a cold night a fire can be warming and feel really good.

But if you have been watching the news at all lately, you know that wind and fire are not always comfortable. We’ve had horrible tornados in the middle of this country, where the wind comes into a town and it swirls around and knocks down everything, picks it all up, mixes it all together and throws it all out. And right now there is a fire going on in Arizona that has covered hundreds of square miles burning everything in its path.

Wind and fire. I remember one Pentecost Eve on a Saturday night where I lived in Brentwood East of San Francisco. We lived out in the country on a hill and we noticed early in the evening, looking off of our back patio that there was some smoke in the hills. And then we noticed that the smoke appeared to be getting larger and coming closer. And then we heard and saw the airplanes going over dropping water just behind the last hill. And then we started seeing flames and it started to get a little nerve wracking. And then the sheriff came and knocked on the door and said: “You don’t have to evacuate yet, it’s still on the other side of the road, but you should be ready to evacuate.” I thought, “Wow, this is a Pentecost.” Wind was blowing; it was hot, now this was Pentecost.

When you know you might have to evacuate you find yourself in a very interesting position.  It makes you take stock of what’s really important. The first thing is that we would have to figure out how to get the dogs and cats all in one car. That would be the first thing, the animals. But after that, what do you take with you? Some pictures? The computer? Some important papers? Some things your children made? What do you take? What’s really important? And the more we thought about it we realized that all that was really important was the dogs and the cats and that everybody got out alive because all the rest was just stuff.

Well, fortunately, the fire stayed on the other side of the road and we didn’t have to evacuate. But it made me rethink things. What are the priorities? What’s really important? The next day we got up and the hillside was all charred and black. If you have seen hillsides where there has been a fire, you know and it is not a pretty sight. Everything was destroyed and burned. And hillside looked like that all summer long, reminding us of the power of the fire. And then the rains came. And in the part that was burned the green came up really fast. Because all the left over from the year before was gone. All the weeds, all the stubble was gone and all you saw was the green shoots. Then as spring came the wild flowers were extraordinary. I’ve never seen wildflowers the way they were on that burned hillside. Everything that would interfere with the wildflowers growing had been burned away and the ash was a great fertilizer. It was the most beautiful hillside I’d ever seen.

Wind and fire can be destructive, can be disorienting. The Holy Spirit can be like that sometimes too. The Holy Spirit can come upon you all of a sudden. Everything gets turned around. It is like a tornado, everything that you thought was true gets confused. You don’t know which way to go; you don’t know what’s important. Everything is up in the air because you are being transformed. Of course the Holy Spirit sometimes comes upon you when you need comfort; and when you need comfort it is soothing and helpful. But other times you need purification, other times the Holy Spirit comes upon us and burns, burns away the dross, burns away the stuff left over from our past. Burns away the guilt we still hold onto, burns away the anger we have at others. Burns away memories we may not even know we have. And sometimes that can be hard, and that can be painful. But that’s God’s love.

If you have ever been in love, whether it be with a spouse, or a grandchild, or with Christ, if you have ever been in love and you have felt that passion of love you know at times it burns. It burns good, but it burns. When you are not with the person, it hurts, when you are with the person there is a flame. Everything gets shifted and changed. Nothing looks the same. Colors are not the same. When you read a love poem, suddenly it is “Ah, that’s what this is about!” that you never understood before. Everything has changed.

When the love of God comes upon us as the Holy Spirit everything is changed. Our ears are open to hear in a new way. Have you ever been reading scripture or listening to scripture in church and it might be a passage that you’ve heard many times before, but all of a sudden a word or a phrase just jumps out at you. It’s like if you are reading it on the page it’s in bold and it just stands out and suddenly you understand it in a way you never understood it before. That’s the action of the Holy Spirit. Opening our hearts and minds to hear.

The Holy Spirit came upon the disciples for one purpose - to empower them to be sent out. To empower them to be instruments of God’s love. To empower them to go into the world and say ‘God loves you. God came as Christ. God wants us all to know that He is with us.’ To empower them to tell that good news, to share it in whatever way they could. And it comes to us for the same reason, to empower us to be instruments of God’s love. 

In order to do that we have to be free of things about us that get in the way. If you are kind of shy and you don’t like to talk people, well maybe that’s going to get burned up so you can talk. Or maybe the gift you have is a gift as an artist, but when you were in fifth grade the art teacher said, you don’t have any talent and you made the mistake of believing that. The Holy Spirit needs to come in and say ‘nope, they were wrong. You are an artist.’  There’s that wonderful passage from Corinthians that talks about that we all have gifts and they are all different and they are all empowered by the Holy Spirit. And these gifts are there for one purpose, to strengthen the body of Christ. To empower us to be sent out into the world as Christ was sent into the world. That’s the power of love - to transform us and empower us.

When we gather today we invoke the Holy Spirit.  When you in you life finally say, ‘Okay God, whatever,” God just might take you up on it. And it will be amazing. Maybe it will feel like fire or like a tornado has gone through your life, but it will empower you and strengthen you to be the instrument of love that God intends for you to be.