A sermon preached at St. Francis by the Lake Episcopal Church, Canyon Lake, Texas.
The lectionary readings for the fourth Sunday after Pentecost are here.
Have you ever walked into the middle of a conversation? Our Sunday readings can be like that sometimes – skipping over some parts so that we don’t have all the information we need to keep our train of thought and understanding on course. Or perhaps it’s more like starting a movie partway through or picking up the fifth novel in a series you’ve been reading and realizing you skipped the fourth one and you have no idea how Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children survived the collapse of the Library of Souls and ended up in a restored Devil’s Acre? I told y’all I was going to work at reading more fiction this year, didn’t I? But, back to our lessons for today … we’ve been stepping in and out of the story that Matthew tells of Jesus and the disciples. To help us get a better handle on what’s going on in the bit we read today, we need to fill in a few gaps with the optional part of last week’s reading.
I’ll summarize as best I can: Jesus is preparing the disciples for their journey into the world and telling them how to live ‘on earth as in heaven.’ You may be familiar with bits and pieces of what Jesus says here – this is the part where Jesus tells them to pack light and to not make a scene if folks don’t welcome them but to shrug it off and move on, leaving the judgement to God. He warns to be attentive to what is happening around them, to be both wise and gentle. And he says that as we participate in building up God’s Kingdom on earth as in heaven we will be like sheep walking through a pack of wolves. The world will be against what we do, and not just strangers but people we know and love.
So where’s the good news in all of that?! Jesus is not blind to the irony that proclaiming the love and justice of God’s Kingdom will stir up hate towards us. He experienced it first hand. The good news, he both shows and tells us, is that life in God’s kingdom is about companionship, not competition. We don’t have to broker our way in, earn God’s love, be the strongest or fastest or the one with the most money, we can’t manipulate our way into the kingdom or even sneak in. We simply have to answer the invitation to live relationally rather than transactionally, with God, our neighbors, and ourselves. This is true freedom, the life we are all created to live – the life that Paul describes in his letter to the Romans as living TO God.
When Jesus sends the disciples out to do what he is preparing them for, he is teaching them – he is teaching us – the relationship wisdom of interdependence. When we answer the invitation, we are all in this together, all equal, all on a level path that keeps us walking together in the kingdom mission of love and justice.
Jesus says a disciple is not above the teacher, that it is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher. This upends both sides of the relationship – it doesn’t just elevate the student but brings the teacher to the same level as the student. When Jesus says the first shall be last and the last shall be first, he isn’t reversing the line, he’s eliminating it. True justice isn’t reversing which group is the dominate group, it is eliminating dominance altogether.
It is enough for everyone to be equal. We don’t like the word ‘enough’ – in our supersize-it-consumeristic world, enough isn’t enough. But in God’s Kingdom ‘enough’ is sufficient for us to all live abundantly. And when we truly take this wisdom to heart, we work together to ensure everyone has enough.
Jesus shows us how to be hospitable – to feed and heal and bring comfort to others and he tells us to let others offer their own gifts of hospitality because this is what levels the path. We can’t always be the one who gives, we have to be willing to let others give to us. If we only give and never receive, if we only serve and never let others serve us, if we only help or only lead and don’t let others help or lead us, we are operating our life as a soup kitchen and not a potluck supper table.
At a soup kitchen, there are two distinct sides – I have something you need and you have nothing for me. At a potluck, we bring our best, our favorite, and share, both giving and receiving, sitting together in fellowship. One of my favorites parts of a typical week around here is being at the table during Deck Time. Whether we are outside or in, as more and more folks arrive, we widen our circle and bring in more chairs and as folks get settled we pass around the food we’ve brought and receive some of what’s just arrived. It is a beautiful, real-life scene in God’s Kingdom, just as sacred and holy as when we circle this table.
Jesus doesn’t sugar coat the good news – he tells us plainly that the journey of building up God’s Kingdom on earth as it is in Heaven isn’t any easy one. There will be trouble and there will be conflict because we will be upending the ways some work to get the upper hand, to elevate themselves above others. The true peace of God’s Kingdom will cause great conflict in this world because we will greatly disturb the status quo of many. True peace isn’t the absence of conflict but the faith and trust that God’s Way of Love is what God created us for and that all conflict in this world is the consequence of us trying to live any other way.
The sword Jesus brings is better understood as a sharp knife, much like a surgeon’s scalpel, used to remove that which is harmful to our souls – obvious things like anger and resentment but also complacency and apathy. Jesus’ sword is to be used on us, to transform us, not to slaughter our perceived enemies.
Sometimes our well meaning families can be our greatest challenge in staying on the Kingdom path. Even Jesus’ own family tried to silence him because people were questioning his mental state. Those who care about us don’t want to see us in conflict any more than we want to see those we care about in trouble. But silencing the Good News of God’s Kingdom isn’t the answer or solution. Following Jesus is. Silencing the Good News isn’t the path to peace, living and proclaiming the Good News is. And sometimes true peace can only be had by facing the challenge in front of us.
In the sixth novel of Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children – I did finally get the order sorted out – Miss P tells the peculiars as they were facing danger, “Now, I won’t ask you not to worry…. But I insist you not surrender to fear. I won’t insult your intelligence by telling you this will be easy, but no good thing ever was.”
To be God’s people, to be fully the people God created us to be means leaving behind how the world tells us relationships should work, that we should only give when we know what we can get, that we should love only those who have something to offer. To be God’s people is to understand that we don’t make ourselves worthy, God does. God’s love for all makes us, everyone, invaluable. Who you are is priceless to God. Jesus shows us in flesh and blood how to live a life worthy of God’s love.
In the economy of God’s kingdom, we all have something to bring to the table – we all have that which is of greatest value in the Kingdom – ourselves. And regardless of when you arrive at the table, there is room, room for you and all that you bring; there is abundance of all that you need because there is always enough love, grace, forgiveness, and compassion for everyone at God’s potluck banquet. Amen.
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