Sermon for July 9, 2017Pentecost 5 Proper 9A – RCL Track 1
Jesus
said to the crowd, “To what will I compare this generation? It is like children
sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another,
For
John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon’; the Son
of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard,
a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.”
At
that time Jesus said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because
you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have
revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All
things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son
except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to
whom the Son chooses to reveal him.
“Come
to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give
you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble
in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my
burden is light.”
How do you picture God? What does your God look like and how does
your God act? The beginning of our
gospel reading is about just that.
Jesus hears the people complaining that John the Baptist can’t be the
messiah – the Son of God because his is too severe. John is calling the people a brood of
vipers. He calls people to repent of their
wrongs. He is too ascetic and dresses
too severely. He does not relate to the
people very well. Surely our God and messiah is not that severe.
So then comes Jesus. Jesus is not at all as severe as John. He eats and drinks – perhaps too much. And he
eats and drinks with all the wrong people.
He does not seem to have very discriminating tastes. He goes from town to town and his disciples
are a bunch of fisherman, tax collectors and women. He freely seems to accept people where they
are at and then challenges them to become bearers of God’s word in our
world. That can’t be our God.
We want a God who is discriminating and
recognizes that some people are bad, that they are indeed a brood of
vipers! And that we should ask them to
repent – like perhaps John the Baptist did.
Not have dinner with them. We
want a God who, like us, knows who to have dinner with. A God with discriminating tastes.
In short we want a God that looks and acts like
us and bears our burdens. We want a God
who says that we should not work so hard and that God will always fix what is
wrong in the world. We put the burdens
of fixing man’s inhumanity on God and
don’t take it on our selves.
David Lose, a preacher I enjoy reading, calls
this the Goldilocks syndrome! David Lose says that leaves us “never being quite satisfied. John
(and the God John represents) is just too severe, while Jesus (and the God he
represents) is just too accepting. We’d like our religious leader to be juuuust
right, which pretty much means just like us.
But here’s the thing: if God were just like us,
who would save us?
Which is perhaps what’s so appealing about our
pictures of God. They don’t threaten us, don’t expect change from us, don’t ask
us to do all that much, and don’t do much more than affirm us. And affirmation
is great, even necessary at times. But it doesn’t save. And so God comes along –
first in John, then even more fully in Jesus – in part to disrupt our pictures
of God, to shake our hands loose from holding those pictures (which all too
often can harden into idols) too tightly.”[1]
It is normal to want to have a picture or an
image of God. We humans have a terrible
time holding on to the indescribable. We have trouble accepting that some
things can be a mystery. And the church
at large has spent thousands of years coming up with explanations about the
nature of God and that can lead to us creating idols. That is what leads to the sappy pictures of
Jesus as the blue eyed blond haired fellow – which given he was born in the Middle
East is totally unrealistic. But European Christians want God to be
recognizable and approachable. Which can
turn God into an idol.
In the story of creation we hear that all people
are created in God’s image. And we have
stories of God showing up to various peoples and God or God’s representative is
seen looking like the people. We have
the Virgin of Guadalupe who shows herself as a native Mexican woman. There are images of black Madonna’s. I have seen depictions of Jesus as various
races. The actual genetic make-up of
Jesus is not important. The Gospel lesson tells us that God shows up. Shows up to people and through people that
will surprise us.
The important part and what is relevant to us is
that God shows up. That is the second
part of the Gospel. God shows us and
bears our burdens. God doesn’t show up
and fix our burdens. And unfortunately some people translate this to a sappy,
and totally unhelpful saying that “God doesn’t present you with anything that
you can’t handle.” And therefore you
should be happy with that cancer because God will make you stronger through
it. That God took that person’s life
because it was God’s will that they join the angel’s chorus in heaven. Which is a bunch of BS.
This passage is not about God taking our burdens
from us it is about being his disciples.
It is about recognizing that God is not promising to fix our problems
but to be with us and help us bear the problems. God promises that his demands are not onerous
and in fact that God invites us to share our burdens with God.
And as his disciples we are called to help each
other bear the burdens of life. David
Lose says “Jesus
isn’t saying, that is, “take care of yourself; if you don’t, who will?” But
rather, “as you embark on the discipleship way, I am with you.” Self-care
matters, of course, but it’s so very easy to confuse the good news with good
advice, and while good advice can be helpful, it also doesn’t save. [2]
We live in a society and at a time when people
appear to take great delight in demonizing the other. And as disciples of Jesus God is calling us
to recognize that God shows up in the most unlikely places and in the most
unlikely people. We are called as
Michael Curry, our Presiding Bishop would say, as the Episcopal Branch of Crazy
Jesus People to open our eyes to God in all people and to work to bring God’s
kingdom to earth now – not in some future time.
And we do that when we help bear the burdens of
those we meet. That doesn’t mean we can
fix or take away their burdens. But we
can help bear the burdens. We do that
when we do simple things. We do that
when we offer a cold drink of water to those who are thirsty. We do that by recognizing the humanity and
the divine in our Muslim, Jewish and Christian brothers and sisters as well as
in those who profess no belief. We do
that when we recognize the divine light in our GLBT sisters and brothers. We do
that when we recognize the divine in the homeless people we meet.
God shows up when we least expect God and in
whom we least expect to be bearers of God’s good news. So as disciples we show up and offer the
bread of life to all people. We invite
people to share their burdens with us and sometimes that takes the form of
recognizing and welcoming people who society rejects. We are called to be God’s representative and
disciple in this crazy world that all to often demonizes rather than
embraces. That all too often sees the
world as being about self fulfillment and about what is good for the individual
rather than what is good for God’s creation.
So keep your eyes open. God is with us always and God shows up in the
most unlikely places and through the most unlikely people. And I give thanks that St. Matthew’s people
genuinely strive to welcome all people and to see the good in God’s creation. Amen
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