4th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 6B

4th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 6B June 17, 2018 I’ve been thinking a lot about families this week, as I’ve been interacting with our kids through Vacation Bible School, and as my own kids have been out of town all week. And so I was struck by our collect for today: “Keep, O Lord, we beseech thee, thy household the Church in thy steadfast faith and love, that by the help of thy grace we may proclaim thy truth with boldness, and minister thy justice with compassion; for the sake of our Savior Jesus Christ…” There’s a lot in there that is striking to me. First, we are acknowledging that the church is God’s household and then we are asking God to keep it in God’s steadfast faith and love so that we may proclaim God’s truth with boldness and minister God’s justice with compassion—not for our own sake or for the sake of the church but for the sake of our savior Jesus Christ. I don’t know about y’all, but that’s not usually how I think about church at all. I think about church as how it helps me be in relationship to God and to God’s people, how it feeds me to go out into the world to proclaim God’s love. But this collect is suggesting there is a much larger purpose at work here in God’s household the church. That we are a family who is to be about doing the work of proclaiming God’s truth with boldness and ministering God’s justice with compassion. In our gospel reading for today, we see Jesus offering a couple of parables, and Mark tells us that Jesus only spoke to the crowds in parables but he would explain everything in private to his disciples. The word parable literally means to throw alongside. So rather than being analogy or morality tales, parables serve the purpose of putting two different realities alongside one another. They are narrative contrasts that throw a vision of God’s kingdom up alongside the world as it is and they often challenge us and even goad us into considering new possibilities in light of God’s promises.i In the parable for today, Jesus says that the kingdom of God “is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.” So the kingdom of God is like something so tiny that grows into something so great that “all the birds of the air can make their homes in it.” Another homey, image for us this week. I don’t know about y’all, but it’s disconcerting for me because, while I like birds, I would have never thought that a place for all birds to make their nests would be such a priority in the kingdom of God. And here’s the other piece of all this for me this week. I can’t stop thinking about the thousands of migrant children in US custody, many of whom have been intentionally separated from their parents. Now, I know this is an extremely political issue, so take a deep breath and hear me out. I’ve been reading a great deal about this (from both “sides”), and both sides have valid arguments. One side says that children shouldn’t be separated from their parents who are coming here to seek a better way of life and even fleeing life-threatening circumstances. The other side says the parents have broken the law by trying to enter our country illegally, and it is our right to imprison them, but since we don’t imprison children, we will house them separately because we don’t have anything else to do with them. So what are we, God’s household the church-God’s family, supposed to do with all this? How do we, with the help of God’s grace, “proclaim God’s truth with boldness, and minister God’s justice with compassion; for the sake of our Savior Jesus Christ…” in this situation where there are no clear answers, no clear solutions? One thing I think that we can all agree on is that not a single one of us wants those children to be separated from their parents or immediate care-givers. We can use our own sense of empathy and imagine what it would be like for us as a parent or a grandparent or even as one of the children, to be kept apart from one another and all alone in a strange country. And I would go so far as to say that our God who is so concerned with whether all the birds of the air have a place to nest in God’s kingdom would also be concerned about these thousands of migrant children, regardless of what their parents had done to get them here. For they, too, are a part of God’s household, God’s family. One of my favorite artists is a man named Brian Andreas. He operates the website storypeople and his art incorporates short stories along with his drawings. One that I saw for this week titled Imaging World reads: “In my dream, the angel shrugged and said if we fail this time it will be a failure of imagination and then she place the world gently in the palm of my hand.”ii I believe that we are seeing a failure of imagination on the part of all of our elected leaders, on both sides, on this particular issue. And one way I suggest that we may “proclaim God’s truth with boldness, and minister God’s justice with compassion; for the sake of our Savior Jesus Christ…” is to demand, as people of faith, that our elected leaders re-engage their imaginations and work together to come up with a better solution than the one we have now. The other thing that we can do is to pray for them—for our elected officials, for the thousands of children, their parents and caregivers and all those who are caring for them right now. Daily. Remember them all before God, whose justice and compassion far outweighs our own understanding. May God give us the grace and the courage to proclaim God’s truth with boldness, and minister God’s justice with compassion; for the sake of our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. iThese ideas were sparked by David Lose’s essay for this week: In the Meantime at http://www.davidlose.net/2018/06/pentecost-4-b-quiet-dynamic-confidence/ iihttp://www.storypeople.com/2013/12/16/imagining-world/