Proper 8C - Missional Church - No where to lay his head

Word Cloud from the sermon

What's required to follow according to Luke

The Gospel of Luke is full of stories about what it means to follow Jesus. From the feeding of the 5,000 to sending the disciples out without extra clothing or money, to today’s readings, Luke provides a glimpse of what it means to be a follower of Jesus.  We learn that we will be expected to be radically hospitable at the wrong time and without sufficient resources as did the apostles when charged with feeding the multitudes  When Jesus the apostles out without extra food or clothing, we learn we are expected to travel light in this world possibly without sufficient food or clothing, trusting in God’s providence.   Luke does not portray a cushy easy job, doesn’t inspire confidence in the likelihood of a comfortable and genuine Christian. 

This continues with today’s Gospel reading.  Three people seeking to follow Jesus, and three non-answers. The first offers to follow Jesus “wherever you go”.  Jesus responds that the son of man has nowhere to lay his head. More than referring to his housing status, Jesus is giving a glimpse into what that following might entail. Sure, you can follow me, but I don’t have a home base. I’m not settled.  Come on!  Two more people offer to follow, but with a catch.  The first responds that he needs to first bury his father.  Jesus’ response?  “Let the dead bury the dead”.  Another agrees to follow, but first asks to say goodbye to his family.   Nope.  Follow me now.  Without burying the dead, or without saying goodbye to your family. This sounds like an impossible ask. 

Much will be asked

Indeed, much will be asked of us, both in terms of what we have to give, and perhaps more difficult in what we must give up.   First, we are asked to follow someone who is not tied down to a particular home base, Isn’t worrying about his home, and isn’t ensnared by roots that would keep him from spreading the good news, wherever he was asked to go. He’s travelling light, and in following him, we too need to travel light, and be willing to follow this wanderer wherever he leads. We can worship Jesus from anywhere. From this building, from our homes.  But to follow Jesus, we need to have a healthy detachment from the things we think provide stability and predictability, particularly if those things get in the way of our following Jesus.  The son of man has no where to lay his head.

Without ties to a place or a community, Jesus travels wherever, whenever.  As a result, we don’t know where he’s going to lead us.  We don’t know when. If we are to follow, we need to be willing to follow when he calls, and where he calls.  No, we cannot ask Jesus to wait a minute while we take care of our family, to bid our farewells.  When Jesus calls, we are to respond, without looking back and without hesitation.  To be clear, this is not simple, or easy and it certainly demands more than we’re comfortable. And it puts us at odds with family and cultural expectations and priorities. Let me first say goodbye to my family.  Let me first take my kids wherever.  Let me first..  It happens to all of us. We all struggle to keep Christ at the center. Luckily this isn’t a pass/fail test.  We need to just keep trying.  And as the baptismal covenant says, when we fall into sin, we commit to return to the lord. 

Follow Jesus to do what?

But what does that mean, to follow Jesus?  Without Jesus roaming the earth now, what are we actually to DO? According to the Epistle reading today, there is only one thing we need to do and that is to love your neighbor as yourself. The love they’re talking about isn’t moonlight and affection.  Rather this is a deep empathy for others.  The pastor Frederick Beuchner has a test he uses to assess how he’s doing with loving his neighbor.  He writes “If you have not cried for someone other than yourself in the last year, then the chances are you are already dead.”  I would go further to suggest that after crying for another, we are also called to do something to help the other. Only when we truly love the other, can we begin to remove that distance between us and the other.  When we love each other as our self, there ceases to be an “other” because we’re all in this together.  When we can get to that place where we love our neighbor as our self, we blur the lines between us and them.   Anyone who’s been involved in service with others knows of this blurring, and how alarming it is when you realize we are all in this together.

Individual expectation bundled together into corporate expectation

To be clear, this is following, not worshipping, but following Jesus is fundamental to our faith.  We are each individually called to follow Jesus Christ.  We commit to it when we are baptized, and every time we renew our baptismal covenant. 

Do you turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as your savior?   I do.

 Do you put your whole trust – whole trust – in his grace and love?  I do. 

Do you promise to follow and obey him as your lord?  I do. 

There is no relativity in these statements.  No time limit.  No “let me check my schedule”. Or “yes, but I’ve got something to do” in these statements.  This, and nothing less, is what we’re called to do, and who we are each called to be. 

That’s hard enough.  Even tougher is when those expectations are bundled together into the Church. We, the people in this room are the church.  It’s not the building or the institution.  It’s not the clergy or the diocese.  It’s the people who turn to Jesus, accept him as savior, put our whole trust in him, and promise to follow and obey. We are the church.   

Missional Church

So Christ calls us to follow his risky uncertain lead, and follow when asked.  And from the Epistle we learn that following Jesus is nothing more or less than fully loving your neighbor as yourself. This is where we get into the tricky business of being a missional church. A missional church is a church that corporately and collectively turns to Jesus Christ, accepts him as savior, puts our whole trust in his grace, promises to follow him into the world, and follow when he calls.   

As the church – as a group of people who follow Jesus, we are, as Presiding Bishop Michael Curry says the Episcopal branch of the Jesus movement. From today’s Gospel, we hear that we are asked loose the ties that bind us. We are asked to get rid of the structures and infrastructures that get in the way of us following Jesus. We, the church, are asked to follow a leader who has nowhere to put his head, and we are asked to love our neighbor as our self above all else.     

We the church are not the building, or the diocese, or the parish hall.  We the church are followers of Jesus, who are asked to follow Jesus to love our neighbor, wherever that takes us. We are asked to collectively and actively, pursue God’s vision, not ours. If we, the church, take this seriously, what does that look like? 

I have a friend who’s a deacon in a parish outside of Boston.  Like many urban Episcopal church buildings, it was founded by a population which has since moved out of the city.  The parishioners continue to attend that church, but they drive in from the suburbs or from nicer parts of town.  The neighborhood around the building has changed, and at the same time, the number of parishioners – those driving in from the suburbs, has declined. The community around building had changed to predominantly Brazilian immigrants. The church struggled with attendance and revenues. After much prayer, they decided to return to their commitment to love their neighbor, and to follow Jesus – right out of the building into this now unknown community of neighbors.  The church, the followers of Jesus decided to hold a Brazilian dinner and invited the community.  Hundreds of people from the neighborhood showed up, and the building was full and bustling.  Soon, the church was host to numerous Brazilian services and events. There was a new energy within the people who were members of the church. Some questioned the strategy because few of the Brazilians attended Sunday service or were pledging members.  But the church – the people – who followed Jesus out into the community to love their neighbors just followed Jesus. And a funny thing happened.  Church attendance began to grow.  Not with the Brazilian neighbors, but with other Jesus followers who recognized the love of Christ in the actions of the church. It was growing with people who wanted a faith community to worship Christ, and to follow Jesus out into the world.

We at St. Thomas are in a somewhat similar situation. We have a faith community that is different than when it was founded 60 years ago. And the Eugene/Springfield area has changed since 1956.  We’re not alone. The Episcopal Church throughout the nation is dealing with changing demographics, with declining population and pledging units.  What would it look like, if the we, the Episcopal Branch of the Jesus movement in Eugene and Springfield refocused on being followers of Jesus?

Please do not misunderstand me.  Worship is critical, and I’m partial to the Episcopal way of worship. But if we get to comfortable with the worship -  when we remain in the building to worship, perhaps we’re missing the opportunity to seek and serve Christ in all people. Maybe we aren’t exposed to the opportunity to strive for justice and peace. 

We have lots of St. Thomas members doing lots of amazing outreach and ministry in the world.  What else could we, as a collective community of Jesus followers do, if we banded together? I don’t have the answer, and I’m sure there’s more than one answer.  But I challenge you to think about the question.  And if ever you want to scheme and dream, and want a sounding board, an encouraging word, or a cup of tea, call me. This is an exciting time for the people of St. Thomas. The possibilities are endless, and what an opportunity, as you search for a rector. What possibilities!  Jesus is calling us.  As individuals, and more importantly, as the gathered body of Christ, to follow him.  We need to figure out how we are going to respond.

Amen. 

Pentecost 2016 - World on Fire

Pentecost 2016

Since Easter Sunday, we’ve been hearing bits of Jesus’ final discourse to his apostles. Repeatedly he tells them that he will be leaving them, and that he will be sending another to be with them. In today’s reading, Jesus says he will send the comforter to be with them always.  Another advocate. He really wanted them to understand that, because he said it again and again, and we’ve heard it, week after week. 

Today on Pentecost, we finally hear the ending of that story in the reading from Acts.  Jesus has died, risen and ascended.  His disciples are still smarting, confused and possibly feeling a bit abandoned by the one guy who they believed was going to solve all of their problems. They’ve lived through some roller coaster good news / bad news weeks.  Jesus was crucified and died.  But he rose from the dead and was with them for a good amount of time.  Then the risen Christ leaves them again, with his ascension.  On Pentecost, God returned to be with the people again through the Holy Spirit.  It’s a lot to go through, and none of it is “normal”.

The disciples were gathered, and they heard a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and all of a sudden they began to speak in other languages.  At that time, people from every nation were living in Jerusalem and upon hearing the commotion, the people from every corner of the world, from Asia and Egypt and Libya, and Cappadocia gathered. And to their great surprise, they could each understand the disciples speaking, although they all came together as strangers without a common language. This advocate that Jesus sent unified all of these different people, so they all understood what the disciples were saying. They understood the good news.  With the Holy Spirit in Common, they were unified by God.   

Through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, God unified all people and all tongues that had been divided since the days of the tower of Babel, the story we heard in the first reading. The events of Pentecost unified something that had been divided for thousands of years.  

 We hear of the people of Babel who came together to use bricks and mortar to build an impressive building.  A building where the tower would reach to heaven. Their motivation?  They wanted to make a name for themselves.  Up until this point, the story says,  all of the people on earth spoke one language and could understand each other.  So with that common language and understanding, they gathered together and used their human ingenuity and decided to make an impressive building. An ode to their mastery of human construction. A great thing that will make them look good.  God looks upon their actions, and acknowledges that now, they can accomplish much. They’ve figured out how to come together and work together.  But God sees that they’ve come together to do this thing for such a self-serving motive. At best they were reaching their human efforts towards heaven, to be nearer to God. At worst, they were doing something huge, the Genesis-era version of trying to be in the Guinness Book of World Record.

 In either case, this is not what God would have hoped they would be putting their combined efforts towards, so God confounds their speech. In a flash, the people cannot understand each other.  Their human bodies have been stymied and limited.  Their combined collective human effort and all of the skill they brought to the table, is now not sufficient.  Not that it ever was sufficient for them to reach the heavens. But they must acknowledge they cannot do it alone.  No longer were they going to be able to use their human-ness to get to heaven, or to make a name for themselves. 

 True, they were collectively focused on a mission, to build a tower to heaven out of bricks and mortar.  But it was a mission of human origin, forwarding human values.  On Pentecost, there was also a collectiveness, and a mission. But it was not of human origin.  God had a mission, to gather and unify God’s people. On Pentecost, God changed the focus of humanity’s mission from human-centered, to God-centered through the unifying gift of the Holy Spirit. 

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a 20^th Century French Philospher says it this way, “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”   I would suggest that the people of Babel were squarely human beings, aiming for a spiritual experience.  With the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, we are inarguably spiritual beings.

With the gift of the Holy Spirit, God unifies us, or perhaps more appropriate, God gives us the spirit-filled core that has the potential to unify us.  The rest is up to us. 

So what now?  Now that we’ve been made spiritual, now that we have a common spiritual core, what are we supposed to do with it?  I think this goes back to the story in Acts.  The spirit landed on everyone  in a form described as fire. That fire is what inspires all of this red we see. 

Fire is bright, it smolders a long time, but can be rekindled and can blaze again.  The Holy Spirit in us is bright.  If we ignore our spiritual core, the fire doesn’t go out.  It smolders. But with a little coaxing, the fire can be rekindled and soon, it’s burning fierce, bright and hot.  

The fire of the Holy Spirit connects with the Holy Spirit in others.  Like the people at that first Pentecost, the fire of the Holy Spirit unifies.  God in us recognizes God in others.  It’s the Holy Spirit in us that lets us seek and serve Christ in others, something we all promise to do in our Baptism.   It’s the Holy Spirit in us that compels us to respect the dignity of the Holy in others.  To strive for justice, even when our own interests may not be forwarded by our actions.  It’s that Holy Spirit fire that always draws us towards God, towards God’s mission. 

Maybe you’ve experienced that fire, or seen it in someone else.  The fire of the Holy Spirit is different than good intentions, or dogged determination. Just ask the people of Babel. And here’s the thing.  That Pentecost moment described in Acts?  That wasn’t a one-time event.  We aren’t just celebrating a static event, thousands of years ago.  That gift of the Holy Spirit, of that fire is in us.  When we see it and kindle it and gather it together as the people of God on God’s mission, we have our own modern-day Pentecost moments.  Every time we help another.  Every time we share the good news of Jesus Christ in word or action.  Every time we pass the peace, we are acknowledging the holy in each other, kindling that fire.  

When we gather as God’s people, here or in the kitchen for the family shelter, in our families, at work, at a vestry meeting, or when we’re serving others, if we are focused on God’s mission, and are attentive to God the advocate dwelling inside us, we can do great things, because we remember that we are spiritual beings, having a human experience.   We can also do great things because we are on fire with the Holy Spirit. 

As St. Ignatius Loyola said, “Go forth and set the world on fire”. 

Amen