A sermon preached at St. Francis by the Lake, Canyon Lake, TX.
The lectionary readings for the thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost are here.
Are y’all familiar with the cartoonist Nathan Pyle? He does a cartoon series called Strange Planet in which he views the human world imaginatively through his alien and animal characters. Nathan’s work draws us out of our selves so we can learn to see other perspectives and points of view through humor and art and storytelling.
One of his classics is of two eagles sitting in wingback chairs reading newspapers and drinking coffee. One of them asks the other, “do you think the owl is a predator?” And the other eagle responds, “of course not. He’s never bothered me.” To which the first eagle replies, “exactly!” and after a pause says, “no idea what Mr. Mouse is going on about.”
When we aren’t willing to be curious about each other we get stuck in our own way and believe that everyone experiences life the same way we do. And this being stuck in ourselves lead us to thinking our way is the only way and anyone who doesn’t think and act like us is wrong or even evil. And this way of thinking is what stops us from seeing other people as beloved children of God, made in the image of God.
We like to fool ourselves into thinking that if we lump a big group of people who think differently than we do together and label them as our enemy that excuses us from having to love them and treat them with dignity and respect.
This is not the example of the godly life Jesus shows us. The fruits of Jesus’ redeeming work that we prayed to receive thankfully is a life lived in the Way of Love, proclaiming a gospel message that invites and welcomes others freely, a journey that leads us into the fullness of who and whose we are.
In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul tells us that to be wise is to understand what the will of God is. From the very beginning of time and through all of the stories we have of our faith ancestors the will of God has always been that every human being be in relationship with God, that we choose to love God because God loves us. God’s will, God’s desire for us is that we walk the continuous journey of learning more and more each day how to love God and each other well.
Paul was well versed in the wisdom of our faith ancestors that we get a glimpse of in both the reading from Proverbs and the Psalm for today. The writers tell us to “Lay aside immaturity, and live, and walk in the way of insight” and “turn from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.” Our faith is an active, ongoing journey.
In our gospel reading, the perspective Jesus is giving us with his cannibalistic sounding metaphor is what this godly life is. Jesus is intentionally upsetting our perspective, our way of thinking, to awaken our imagination to so much more than the surface level of life. Jesus wants us to see that our faith isn’t simply a checklist of dos and don’ts. Our belief in God is so much more, it is a way of being, a relationship with our Creator. It is who we are created to be.
This wise, mature, human life that Jesus invites us into isn’t clothes or homes or cars or dominating power, coercive power, or power over in any way. Life as God created us to live is about being with God and with each other in relationship. Jesus wants us to grasp, as much as we can in our humanness, this wonderful mystery that God is not some external entity that we worship but that God is part of our very being. The core of who we are is the image of God in us; the core of every human being is the image of God. The growing awareness of this is the eternal life Jesus speaks of – knowing who and Whose we are.
We all are given the choice to either live life on our own terms, expecting everyone to see things from our perspective and behave accordingly, or to live life on God’s terms in relationship with God, walking with each other in this world both seeing and offering the perspective of God’s Kingdom on earth as in heaven. Offering, not forcing. Our proclamation of the good news of Jesus is always an invitation and never an arrest warrant.
One of my favorite current day theologians is a woman named Barbara Brown Taylor. She says our faith is asking with each step we take in this world “what is this about?” Not “do I like this” or “do I want more or less of this” but “what is this about?” This is a curiosity that expands our perspective so we have the eyes to see and ears to hear the amazing work of God in all people and all situations.
When we hear the challenging words of Jesus, “I am the living bread and whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood will have eternal life,” he wants us to ask, “what’s this about?” What does Jesus mean by saying that he is as much a part of our humanness as the food we eat, that our nourishment is Jesus himself? A checklist of rules doesn’t fit this metaphor. A way of being does. God’s loving wisdom shapes our hearts and minds into who God created us to be just as the food we eat builds our bodies.
When we wear the blinders that keep us thinking we are the only ones who get this life right we will only see what others get wrong. When we put on the blinders that allow us to only see how good our own life is, we can’t see how to contribute to the goodness in the world. We become like the eagles in Nathan Pyle’s cartoon – unable to see the pain of others because it isn’t our pain. We become stuck and unable to grow in compassion or empathy or love. We loose sight of the will of God.
The will of God is that we learn more and more each day what it is to love well, to work for the greater good of all instead of building our own prestige and power. The life that God created us to live fully is life together knowing that we are dependent on God and each other to be fully human, to be who we are created to be. We need each other’s perspective. Being curious about how someone else sees the world isn’t a threat to our own way of being. To be curious about another means we are both confident in and wise about what we believe and who we are and opens our eyes wider to the amazing work of God in this world.
Following Jesus, knowing that the best life we can live is because of Jesus, receiving thankfully the fruits of his redeeming work makes our world bigger and there is always room for others to join us in this godly life journey. Amen.
Mother Nancy's Coffee Thoughts 