The Ninth Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 12B

9th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 12B July 25, 2021 Our family of four get along pretty well in most areas. But there is one topic on which we are grievously divided. When we argue, we usually argue about this particular topic, and stark battle lines have been drawn between for and against. The topic of contention is… leftovers. Some of us are often grateful for leftovers because it means that is one less meal that we have to cook. Those in the pro-leftover camp have been known to eat entire pyrex dishes of leftovers, meal after meal after meal, until they have been completely consumed and the eaters are well and thoroughly sick of them, but by golly, they will get eaten. Others of us will not deign to let any leftovers pass their lips. They scorn the lowly leftover and take great offense if it is suggested that they should eat them. One member of the anti-leftover party likes to refer to the lowly leftover as “old food,” which does not win them any points with those in the pro-leftover party. The anti-leftover faction is perfectly happy to let the leftover proponents struggle through their consumption of them, as long as they do not suggest they, too, should join in the consumption. I’ve been thinking about the contrast between leftovers and new food or “first fruits” as they are depicted in our readings, and about our feelings surrounding those, and about how that may impact our relationship with God. Our gospel and our Old Testament readings give us depictions of two miraculous feeding stories. One of the main differences I see is that the Old Testament reading gives particular attention to first fruits, and the Gospel reading gives particular attention to leftovers. In the Old Testament reading, an unnamed man comes to the prophet Elisha bringing an offering of first fruits. First fruits are the first and best of a person’s harvest, and people throughout the years have been encouraged to give the first and the best of what we have to God (and in this case, the prophets who are the servants of God). You may have heard preachers speak about “first fruits” during annual giving season, when we are encouraged to look at all of our resources and to give to God through the church off the top as opposed to giving out of what we have left. In the Old Testament story, the servant questions Elisha on how so many people can be fed by so little; Elisha replies, “Give it to the people and let them eat, for thus says the Lord, ‘They shall eat and have some left.’” And then what happens? They have plenty to eat, so much so that they actually have leftovers! The gospel story mirrors this and other feeding stories from the Old Testament. Jesus and his disciples have gone to a deserted place where the crowds have followed them. Jesus urges his disciples to feed the crowd, and they are initially flummoxed because there is very little food to be found. When a boy offers his five barley loaves and two fish, Jesus “took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, ‘Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.’” So they gathered them up, and then what happened? They filled up 12 baskets with….leftovers. And it strikes me that Jesus is very insistent about how they deal with the leftovers: “gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.” Why does Jesus care so much about the leftovers, especially when we’ve been taught over and over again, that it is the first fruits that are the best? What might be gained by thinking about how Jesus cares not only about the best of each of us, but also that he cares about the leftover pieces of our lives as well? How might if change us if instead of thinking about the leftover and broken pieces of our lives as something to be discarded or a sign of scarcity to see those broken pieces as Jesus sees them, as worthy of being gathered up, tended to, and cherished? How might it change us to reflect on the fact that rather than being a sign of scarcity, the left over broken pieces of our lives, of this last year….are not signs of scarcity but signs of abundance? Your invitation this week is to reflect on what you’d consider to the broken parts and pieces of your life, the leftovers that you are sick of eating. Name those before Jesus. It can be old broken parts; broken parts from this past year and a half of trauma that we have all lived out separately together. Now imagine Jesus gathering up those old, broken parts, those leftover bits of your life that you don’t really want and you don’t really know what to do with. Imagine he gathers them to himself with care. What do you want to ask Jesus to do with those leftover, broken pieces of your life? In what way might Jesus be inviting you to see those leftover, broken pieces of your life through eyes of abundance instead of eyes of scarcity?

Seventh Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 10B

The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 10B July 11, 2021 This week in the life of the church, we’ve been offering Vacation Bible School to children from the church and the neighborhood. Our theme has been “Who is my Neighbor?” and our curriculum has been modeled on the long-running popular children’s t.v. show Mister Roger’s Neighborhood. All week, we’ve been exploring with the children what it means to be a good neighbor. As a part of this experience, I’ve immersed myself in learning more about Fred Rogers, the man who was a formative part of my own childhood. I’ve read a book exploring his theology and how he was formed in it over the course of his life and ministry as a t.v producer and ordained Presbyterian Minister. I watched the documentary about him that showed clips of his shows and interviews with his wife, his sons, his friends, and many people who worked closely with him over the years. And a few things were made clear to me in all of that. Fred Rogers communicated his understanding of the gospel which can be boiled down to “Love your neighbor. Love yourself.” In all of his work with children, he faithfully worked to communicated two truths that he had learned. “I like you just the way you are,” he said to his audience over and over again, which flows from his understanding that God has created each and every one of us good. (Or as Fred often put it: “the bedrock of our being is good stuff.”i ). This was a core affirmation that Mister Rogers repeated over and over again. Mister Rogers was also very intentional in his use of the word “neighbor.” Those of us who are Christian can’t hear that word without harkening back to the question from the lawyer to Jesus that sparked one of Jesus’s most well-known parables which is the parable of the Good Samaritan. The lawyer asks Jesus, “who is my neighbor.” Jesus tells the story and then asks the man “which of these three was a good neighbor?” and the man answers, “the one who demonstrated mercy toward him.” In the book Exactly as You Are: The Life and Faith of Mister Rogers, author Shea Tuttle writes, “When Mister Rogers called his viewers “neighbors,” when he hosted us in his neighborhood for over thirty years, he was playing out his own greatest parable: calling us, gently but firmly, into lives of mercy and care for one another. He knew we wouldn’t always get it right, that we are prone, like the [puppet] king [Friday the 13th] that he so lovingly created, to bow to fear and to serve competition, to privilege our own safety and to neglect others’ real needs. Maybe, in calling us neighbors, he knew he was calling us something better than we actually were…and that maybe we could grow into real neighbors to one another.”ii In a perfect world, our lectionary would have given us the parable of the Good Samaritan for our gospel reading for today, and that would be the end of this sermon. But alas…we have this strange and macabre story of the beheading of John the Baptist. What on earth does that have to do with Mister Rogers? First, it’s important to notice the placement of this horrid story in Mark’s gospel. It’s actually wedged right in the middle of our gospel reading from last week—when Jesus sends out his disciples, telling them to take only what they immediately need, and gives them the power to heal people and cast out demons. This is actually what King Herod hears about, the work of Jesus’s disciples that is going on, that makes him reflect on what he did to his old friend John. And immediately after this story, the disciples return to Jesus completely elated and bursting to tell him of all the good works they accomplished in his name. Mark is setting up the dichotomy between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdoms of this world as presided over by the Herods. What is key to this story of Herod and John the Baptist, I think, is that Herod was sad to kill John but he wouldn’t stand up to those who tricked him into doing it because he was worried it would make him look weak. In talking about his own theology, Mister Rogers spoke about this: “Evil will do anything to make you feel as bad as you possibly can about yourself…because if you feel the worst about who you are, you will undoubtedly look with evil eyes on your neighbor and you will get to believe the worst about him or her.” In other words, evil travels, creating a kind of domino effect: “Accuse yourself. Accuse your neighbor. Get your neighbors to accuse somebody else, and the evil spreads and thrives.” “Jesus would want us to see the best of who we are, so we would have that behind our eyes as we looked at our neighbor, and we would see the best in him or her. You can be an accuser or an advocate. Evil would have you be an accuser in this life. Jesus would have you be an advocate for your neighbor.” Put another way, “if we are lovable and acceptable because we are God’s, then our neighbor, who is equally God’s, is also lovable and acceptable. And we are called into that work of that loving and accepting.”iii This week, as you go out into the neighborhood that is your life, may you be like Mister Rogers: looking at yourself through God’s eyes and seeing yourself as the best of who you are and seeing your neighbor through those eyes as well. May you look for ways to gently show mercy and care to people you encounter over the course of this week and beyond. In the words of Mister Rogers: “You’ve made this day a special day, by just your being you. There’s no person in the whole world like you, and I like you just the way you are.” Tuttle. Shea. Exactly as You Are: The Life and Faith of Mister Rogers. Eerdmans Publishing: Grand Rapids, 2019, p30 Ibid pp101-102 Ibid. pp 59-61.

6th Sunday after Pentecost-July 4, 2021

6th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 9B July 4, 2021 Our readings for today remind me of some advice that a more senior colleague gave to my husband many years ago. “God doesn’t call us to be effective; God calls us to be faithful.” These words have helped shape my understanding of ministry, of discipleship, of parenting, of life, and I often need to return to them as a touchstone to help ground my first-born, over-achieving soul. “God doesn’t call us to be effective; God calls us to be faithful.” In our first lesson, Ezekiel has just had an up close and personal encounter with the Holy One. He is still visibly shaken from this encounter with God, and so God picks him up and tells him that God wants Ezekiel to go to the people of Israel, “a nation of rebels” who have rebelled against God. They’re probably not going to listen to you and you won’t be particularly effective, God tells Ezekiel, but I want you to go anyway, because I want them to know that I care about them enough to send them a prophet to warn them that they are headed for disaster. In our gospel reading, after encountering his own kind of ineffectiveness because of the disbelief of the people of his hometown, Jesus sends out his disciples two by two, and he encourages them to strive for faithfulness over effectiveness when they go out to preach the good news saying, “Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave the place.” Don’t try to move around from house to house to maximize your effectiveness, he tells them, but rather be faithful. Years ago, I read a book titled Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives by Richard A Swenson who is an M.D. This book was such balm to my soul that I used it as a young adult book study and saw those young parents drink it down like people who were dehydrated and didn’t even realize it. Swenson’s premise is that many of the ills that he encounters in his medical practice can be solved by people creating margin in their lives. He says our lives are like pieces of paper that are full up from side to side and top to bottom with writing. We have filled up all the empty space of our lives so that they are no longer able to reveal meaning. We are, as a society, marginless. He writes, “Marginless is being thirty minutes late to the doctor’s office because you were twenty minutes late getting out of the bank because you were ten minutes late dropping the kids off at school because the car ran out of gas two blocks from the gas station—and you forgot your wallet. Margin, on the other hand, is having breath left at the top of the staircase, money left at the end of the month, and sanity left at the end of adolescence… Marginless is fatigue; margin is energy. Marginless is red ink; margin is black ink. Marginless is hurry; margin is calm. Marginless is anxiety; margin is security. Marginless is culture; margin is counterculture. Marginless is the disease of the new millennium; margin is its cure.” i In order to reinstate margin in our lives, Swenson writes that we have to understand what has led us to our current marginless way of life, and that is progress. He writes, “Exactly what is progress? Simply stated, progress means proceeding to a higher stage of development. ‘The idea of progress,’ explains historian Robert Nisbet, ‘holds that mankind has advance in the past…and is now advancing, and will continue to advance through the foreseeable future. From at least the early nineteenth century until a few decades ago, belief in the progress of mankind, with Western civilization in the vanguard, was virtually a universal religion on both sides of the Atlantic.’ Progress was automatic, the inevitable function of chronology, and the flow of progress was assumed to be inherently positive.”ii Progress in and of itself is not an ill. Swenson as an MD writes about all the benefits we have found as a result of progress. But Swenson’s premise in his book is that we must regain control of progress because we have let it run rampant, dictate our priorities, and then we must redirect it. The first step in that is breaking our addiction to progress. The second step is to make progress subservient to our greater goals and needs, especially relationships. The goal of margin, for Swenson, is to nurture relationships because this is where we find meaning and purpose. This has all been especially through provoking for me as we have led up to this day, July 4th, when we mark the founding of our nation. We as a nation have accomplished so many astounding and wonderful things as a part of this drive for progress, and we have also sacrificed relationships and people along the way in pursuit of this goal. (This is echoed in our thanksgiving for the nation from our Book of Common Prayer that we are using today as our prayers of the people.) “God doesn’t call us to be effective; God calls us to be faithful.” Where in your life do you need to hear these words today? What might it look like for you to set aside your drive to be effective, so that you might live more faithfully? Where in your life might you need to examine your addiction to progress and look to tending relationships in new and different ways? i. Swenson. Richard A. Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives. Nav Press: Colorado Springs, 2004, p13. iil Ibid. pp 22-23