Do you have perpetual love and reverence for His holy Name?

     Some people have enjoyed the “how sermons come about” the last few weeks.  I guess I take it for granted, but for some of you, this has been a bit of pulling back the curtain.  We will see how we all feel this week.  By late Monday afternoon, I found myself wrestling with God.  I had a sermon, quite frankly, a pretty good one.  But I did not want to preach it.  What’s worse, all the confirming signs were there.  The things I was worried about with respect to the sermon, specifically your reactions, were all lived out in other venues.  So, before I get started, understand that I know there will be some spiritual wedgies this morning.  As I speak, though, I do not have any single person or any single event in mind.  I am preaching in general terms and about how you and I are called to minister to the world, more specifically, how you and I are called to glorify God in the world.  We talked last week about how you and I have plots where we tend to the fields.  We water when told to water by God, we weed when told to weed by God, we fertilize when told to be God, and we harvest, every now and again, when given that job by God.  I am speaking this morning about how we are called to that work.  So, if you hear yourself being attacked from the pulpit this morning, it is not me attacking you.  I am here to remind us all that, despite some of the failures we may notice in our callings as a result of this word, all God asks is that we repent and try again.  And remember before I begin, I know I am on that edge.  I worry that I am over that line.  I have wrestled with God all week begging for another sermon, for other signs. 

     The sermon actually began last week, though I did not know it.  There was a particular fight on a site devoted to Episcopalians where participants were conflating immigration and human trafficking.  The name calling was, quite frankly, shameful.  I know it’s part of my ministry within the diocese to stroll into difficult conversations and try to facilitate those, to teach people we can disagree well, that we can disagree and, yet, glorify God in the process.  Nevertheless, I sometimes get tired of the fighting.  Y’all know I wish I had the power of Holy Fire from my WoW priest, where I call down lightning that zaps but leaves a little fire that burns over time.  We are all thankful God does not give that to me.  I know I would have used it last week.

     On this thread, our Episcopal brothers and sisters were arguing about immigration.  Let me first state I understand that there are high passions on the issue right now.  I understand there are tremendous frustrations about this issue right now.  Remember all those times I have told you we are not God’s chosen nation, that we are not the new Israel, that we are not even a Christian nation, if we ever were.  Some of you argued with me  . . . extensively and passionately.  And I reminded all of you who argued that we were that we really did not want to be His new people.  What happens when His people fail to keep the Covenant?  They get punished!  Does anyone here today doubt that we deserve to be punished for how we are treating the children of those trying to sneak across the border?  Does anyone in this sanctuary this morning have any doubts that God’s heart is righteously angered by our leaders claiming to do this with His blessing?

     And, if you are assuming that Here it comes, Brian’s gone all progressive or liberal on us as you sit in your pew this morning, my anger is focused equally on Democrats and on Republicans on this specific issue, as it is on most issues that confront us as a country.  Remember, I am the one who has listened to elected officials of both parties, some men and some women, tell me for years that there just was not enough votes around slavery to justify their paying attention to the problem!  Nobody ever told me slavery was not a moral issue.  Moral issues of right and wrong simply do not inform the actions and votes of our politicians.  We have let the issue of immigration go unaddressed for, what, 30 or 40 years?  We have allowed our legislative and executive leaders to use human beings as pawns in election cycles.  Each side blames the other.  We cast votes according to the way we think.  And nobody addresses the issues.  They avoid the hard work of sausage making, as the legislative process is sometimes called, pocketing money from groups that will run detention camps for money (and who knows what other groups).  And we are left as a country in this position.  And what happens.  Each side blames the other.  The battle lines are drawn.  Hysteria is created by any means possible.  And we gullible sheep go to the polls and pull the buttons or touch the pads just like we always have.  What is the definition of insanity again?

     That effort to tribalize or separate us has conquered our church.  The joke about Episcopalians some years ago was that we were Christian-Lite. Politicians attended our churches because we did not want to offend the rich and powerful in our midst.  We have so marginalized ourselves and God that they do not even bother to come any more.  Even now, some years after the departures of so many of our brothers and sisters for other greener Anglican pastures, still we are allowing ourselves to be divided, to be duped into the belief that we have no obligation to unity, just as the Father and the Son and Holy Spirit are one.  In the Bibles of other churches around here, that prayer that we may be one, just as Jesus and the Father are one, is in red letters!  And still we have chosen the wisdom of the world over the instruction and grace of God.

     Knowing better, I chimed in on this particular thread.  Words were being hurled that did not honor God; worse, statements were bordering again on dehumanizing others – others that are in our church still!  They have had the same opportunities to take the off ramp from our way of doing things and they, like us, have stayed.  The issue that caught my attention was the false claim that the federal government had allowed 1500 children to be sold into slavery.  This was a big story a month or six weeks ago.  Some in the mainstream media read or heard testimony that 1500 children of undocumented immigrants were “lost.”  In their passion to fight against a policy, they tried to frighten the public and stir up emotions by claiming those children had been sold into slavery.  It was only after representatives from all the administrations dating back to the Clinton administration started speaking with the press that the picture really started to come into focus.

     When a family is arrested for illegally crossing our borders, the adults are taken to jail.  The children are deemed innocent because they are being brought by their parents, so we cannot send them to jail.  Instead, they are sent to facilities where they are supposed to be cared for.  Parents are told that, if they accept deportation back to their country of origin, they will be re-united with their children and returned, often within 24 hours.  If they claim asylum, though, a legal process that can take more than a year is begun.  Our system is so freaking broken that we force parents who have fled a native land because of violence or lack or provision or whatever reason to come to a country whose mainstream media teaches them we hate them to choose between getting their kids back and returning to the land they fled or trusting the state to care for their children.  If ever there was a Scylla and Charybidis of parenting, this is it.  And it is, essentially, our law.  A President can try to Executive Order his way around the law, and there are individuals along the way who can make life better or worse for those trapped in its machinations, but, in a country that demands legislative changes to laws, we have allowed this issue to go unaddressed for decades.  Decades.

     But, until we hold our legislators accountable, until we make it clear that this issue really matters to us enough that we are willing to vote them out of office, it will be used by officials to frenzy us up, to divide us.  Think I am crazy?  This week we heard the first stirrings of a possible consideration of maybe making some legislative changes.  Party leaders from both sides responded by telling us that nothing would happen until after the midterm elections.  Only after the election, they claim, will they know the will of the people for sure.  Those tear-inducing stories that you have read?  Our elected officials forget they are about human beings.  If they truly were Christian, if they truly believed themselves to be empowered by the grace and sufferance of God, do you really think they would consider these men and women and children mere votes?  Or would they not remember that these men and women and children, like us, are created in the image of that God they claim to follow?  Would not Christians remember their spiritual ancestor Abraham, a wandering Aramean?  Would not Christians remember Israel sojourn in Egypt, the Exile, and the Dispersion?  Would not those events in our history teach Christians in power about the heart of God and His expectations for those who exert authority?

     Back to the 1500 kids.  If parents claim asylum, they are supposed to be given a chance to have friends or family take the kids in during the asylum process.  The family or friends, if they agree to take the kids, are supposed to be vetted.  Assuming the parents are fine with it and the vetting process suggests everything is fine, the kids are placed in those home of the friends or family.  The federal government is then supposed to check on the well-being of the kids.  We all hate taxes, so this program, like most of the government’s programs, are underfunded.  They resort to e-mails and phone calls rather than physical visits to determine the welfare of the kids involved.  Not unsurprisingly, many of these friends and family of those incarcerated during the asylum process do not look upon our government favorably.  Cooperation can be . . . spotty, to put it delicately.  Understandably so.  When that number of 1500 came out, it meant simply that those responsible for caring for the kids refused to return calls or e-mails to the government.

     Main stream media and politicians helped work us into a frenzy.  Trolls on Facebook tried to paint a picture that our evil government officials, in many cases people just like you and me, were selling children knowingly into slavery.  Such screaming and misinformation unfortunately made it into some of our wider church groups.  As one who is considered by others knowledgeable both about Scripture and about modern slavery, I gave consideration to posting on one of these Episcopal threads.  In truth, I usually hate posting on stuff like that.  I understand the extra work it creates.  Some will engage me as if I’m an idiot, and I have to be gracious toward them, sometimes simply listening silently as they pontificate.  Others will truly engage me, wanting to know what makes me think what I think.  Those conversations, of course, MUST be had.  What kind of a priest, what kind of a reconciler would I be if I passed on those opportunities to get people to see a bigger picture and a God who may have a call on their life regarding the issues about which they are so popular?  And, it’s not like I don’t have enough to do at Advent.  I really don’t need any more work.  But, I was on Facebook and this particular thread popped up on my screen.

     After a bit of wrestling, I started typing.  When finished, I read and re-read and re-read to make sure my language was calm and measured.  And I prayed.  Really, God, do I really need to speak into this and hit the send button?  Will anybody even listen?  I got back that familiar “if not you, who.”  So I hit the send button.  In short form, all I reminded people in our church was that those 1500 children were at less risk of being trafficked in the hands of the government than in the hands of the coyotes who smuggled them into the country.  We know that some coyotes are in the business of trapping undocumented people into slavery.  If we did not take those kids into some kind of custody and left them with the coyotes, they were far more likely to be enslaved.  Can you imagine?  Mostly men who profit by smuggling people.  All they do is guide them into the country, illegally.  They get paid first, and the sums they charge are impressive.  It’s no wonder so many get involved in modern slavery.

     Anyway, the blowback was predictable.  The most creative critique was that I was like Bonhoeffer and other Christian leaders who supported the Nazis.  They claimed to be praying that I would have my spiritual awakening.  Others were far less gracious.  A few engaged in conversations.  Could individuals involved in this on behalf of the government be evil and selling the kids?  Sure.  I’ve no doubt that the for profit prison models and attitudes are guiding us in these camps/warehouses.  Once they are willing to withhold food, water, entertainment, a real bed, it becomes easier and easier to think of those in their care as less than human, more like pets or animals.  If someone with the wrong attitude has financial issues and a slaver discovers it, temptation may win.  But, it still must be done in the shadows.  If other colleagues discover it, or if more and more children find their way into particular slave “rings”, so does law enforcement.  Breaking the law has a legal consequence.  If those same governmental officials find themselves on the inside of a jail accused of child sex trafficking, there are other “penal” consequences.  And let’s just say inmates’ sense of justice is a bit more brutal than our own.

     Not all the conversations that flowed were negative.  In fact, a couple were very positive.  Some admitted to being so blinded by partisan politics that they had not considered how our politicians divide us, stir us up, and then use the frenzy to keep the status quo.  A couple were shocked that I had no easy answer for the immigration issue.  I suppose we live in a society and a church that must have ready-made answers.  I clearly do not on this one.  Since more than half our country does not self-identify as Christians, we certainly have no national Christian duty to move to open borders.  On the other hand, as our support and fomentation of discord in other countries have come to light over the years, some non-Christians argue that we have a moral obligation to those displaced by our activities.  And what of those here already?  Other immigrants are far from one mind!  I’ve been in conversations where they were the most adamant about not rewarding others for breaking the law.  We have fallen into the same pattern so often and so long, that we have a ton of work to do on this issue.  And this is only one issue facing us.  And our church has now been conquered by culture.

     That last statement was driven home Monday afternoon.  A bishop not our own called to chat.  We have a . . . complex relationship.  In some areas, we are in agreement.  In others, we are in disagreement.  Maybe that’s why he’s never been in authority over me; maybe that’s why our relationship flourishes.  God, knows.  But our discussions, while passionate, are always respectful.  We have never stooped to serious name calling in our arguments—we have joked, but we both know we are joking and try to make sure no one overhears us.  He called Monday ostensibly to talk about other issues.  After sharing my opinions and hopes on a couple issues like SSM, Prayer Book Revision, adding administrative salary to the Triennium budget, the unwillingness of Church leaders to move 815, and the recent Supreme Court action with respect to SC at the upcoming General Convention, he asked me what I was thinking when I stepped into that fight last week.  Why make work for yourself?  Later, I had to call and apologize, though he confessed no such apology was needed.  Like me, he does not post on many threads.  When he speaks on any issue, regardless of how well he ties the Gospel or Scripture to it, he always gets flamed.  While there are Adventers who are passionate about specific issues in the wider world, there are way fewer of them than there are in any single diocese.  That’s what this bishop deals with in his ministry.  He hears from members of 60 or 80 or more churches rather than one!

     But I launched into a bit of a frothy diatribe.  If we clergy are not reconciling people to God and each other who will?  If we are afraid to speak what we think is God’s heart into a matter who will?  As a chief pastor in Christ’s One Holy, catholic, and Apostolic Church, he should have had an even greater understanding of that.  You all can imagine that conversation.  You’ve known me for three years now.  I apologized later because Tina grabbed me.  Can you say that to a bishop?  Aren’t you worried about getting fired or de-priested?  When I explained the conversations, she knew what we were talking about, but she also knows human nature.  None of us like to be reminded of what we already know; fewer of us like being told what to do when we have been rebelling against that knowledge for some time.  When I called the bishop back to apologize and to explain myself, he cut me off.  He explained that his skin was thick and that God sometimes needed to use sharper pointed arrows to pierce it from time to time.  In a world so in need of God’s reconciling word, a bishop should encouraging the clergy and laity that are passionate and lovingly about that work, not stoking fears or division or arguing for the easier path of the status quo.  We had a much calmer discussion, at least as far as Tina was concerned, for a few more minutes.  And now you know two big background pieces to this week.

     Look back at our Collect today.  Do you have perpetual love and reverence for God’s holy Name?  More importantly, if you have the guts to ask them, would the people in your daily life and work testify to others that you have perpetual love and reverence for God’s holy Name?  Do they see you reaching out to others in His holy Name that others might be drawn into Christ’s saving embrace?  Do they see you humbling yourself and serving them and others, as your Lord Christ humbled Himself and first served you?  When confronted by difficult issues, are you a measured voice or face to which they turn expecting you to demonstrate how God’s redeeming love in present in whatever mess?  I see the squirms.  I see your faces.  I am not here to condemn you.  I am here to ask you to consider prayerfully the answer to those questions.  If the Holy Spirit is convicting you that you are not the hands, and feet, and voice of His in the world around you, still I am not here to condemn you this morning.  All God asks is that you repent, try again, and trust in His power and love. 

     Let’s dig a bit deeper.  Do we as a congregation evidence a perpetual love and reverence for God’s holy Name?  I’m not talking about there being no disagreements among us.  I am talking about us being able to disagree well.  When we argue with each other in love, do those outside us know that we are seeking to glorify God in our midst, in all that we do, even when we understand we may not be able to discern God’s call or wisdom on any given issue?  Or do they see us as a Sunday morning version of world around us?  Do they see us living our lives as wandering Arameans, confident that our citizenship is not of this country, not of this world, but of someplace far more glorious, somewhere far more inspiring?  Or do they instead, merely think of us as Republicans or Democrats at prayer, listening gullible to men and women in cassocks and albs rather than power ties?

     I would ask those same questions of the Church, but I think we all know the answer to that question.  And while we all know there are many people with the bully pulpits of the world claiming to do things in the name of God, is the Church living into its calling?

     The last couple weeks we have talked a bit about our plots.  I have shared how we are planted in the wilderness as little garden plots.  Our job, to extend the metaphor, is to be those places of Sabbath, those places of shalom, those places where people know and feel they are loved by God.  That’s our job.  It’s out there in the wilderness.  We gather here to be educated, to be trained, to be fed, to be watered, to be encouraged, to be restored to our callings, and then sent back out there again.  To so many of us it seems pointless.  To so many of us it seems impossible.  Who is paying attention anyway?  Who is listening to us?  We claim to serve a God who loves everyone in the world; yet how quickly do we give up serving them in His name?  We claim to serve a God who revels in doing the impossible; yet how often do we quit trying because our calling seems impossible or hard?  We claim to serve a God whose abundant provision is limitless; yet how often do we quit serving in His Name for fear that the “stuff” will run out, be it resources, energy, or time?  We claim to serve a God who is wholly and holy other; yet how often do we fool ourselves and represent to others that we really think He looks and thinks and acts a lot like that person who looks back at us in the mirror?

     As I was trying to wrest the sermon into something more palatable this week, I found myself in wonder in the Gospel.  These guys that were hanging out with Jesus were professional fishermen.  As I was reflecting on the passage I was envisioning ANE versions of those crab fishermen from Deadliest Catch.  With such men there is a certain crustiness, a certain “we’ve seen it all” attitude.  Understandably so.  Death is a constant companion; their own insignificance and vulnerability is thrust upon them by the Bering Sea.  What does it take to frighten such men?  This was that kind of storm.  They wake Jesus and ask rhetorically whether He cares they are going to die.  What does Jesus do?  There are no mumbo jumbo formulaic words.  There’s no wild gesturing.  He simply and maybe even sleepily commands the storm and waves “Peace!  Be still!”  And they obey.  Such is His authority that nature obeys His simple command.

     Place yourself in their shoes for a second. Pretend you are terrified you are about to drown from that storm.  Add to that your cultural understanding that the seas and oceans are the places where Yahweh and Chaos battle.  Place yourself in a region where most think chaos and death reign in those watery places, and that we are truly only safe on land.  You wake Jesus from a good, solid nap.  He tells the storm simply to be quiet, and it quiets!  Should not your fear be greater regarding the one who commands the storm that terrified you?  Should not you recognize that, as powerful as that storm was, He is even more powerful, almost offhandedly so?

     Chances are, you have already had that moment in your life?  What event or series of events caused you to choose to place Jesus Christ as Lord of your life?  What encounter in your life convinced you that He was worthy of worship, worthy of honor and worthy of glory?  Does your reverence today resemble the reverence of that day?  Does your love of Him today and His saving work in your life resemble the love you had when you first made that decision to pick up your cross and follow Him?  Or has, as the sophists taught, familiarity bred contempt in your heart?  My real guess is that our love and reverence get misplaced.  When we first hear the Gospel and internalize it, when we first make that decision to follow Jesus, we are truly thankful, we are truly loving, and we are truly reverent.  The mere idea that the Creator of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen, would stoop down to lift us up is awe-inspiring.  Each of us gathered here has a story or series of stories to tell ourselves and others about what makes us unlovable.  I have heard some of those stories these last three years.  Some of us sought love in a steady of arms of others, using them for our own pain and never once considering how our use of them dehumanized them.  Some of us sought to dull the pains of our life in the bottom of bottles or through the use of illegal drugs.  Some of us worshipped blindly the idols of our society: money, power, reputation, or others.  Some of us grappled uncomfortably with the question of whether “this” was all that there is.

     Until we met Him.

     For some of us, that encounter was like a lightning bolt, more akin to Paul’s encounter on the road to Damascus.  One moment we were going through our day, dealing with our normal cares and concerns and fears, and then, BOOM!, He was there.  And we were blessed to recognize Him as the answer to those questions in our lives.  We were blessed to see Him offering hope in the midst of despair, healing in the midst of our woundedness, and life in the midst of death.  For others, the encounter was less earth-shattering and more a “long, slow play.”  Maybe a sermon or service caught our eye.  Maybe the calm witness of another intrigued us.  Maybe we decided to do our own research and figure out what “this” was all about.  And before we knew it, we were saying the creeds, we were participating actively in the Eucharist, and we were talking (praying, if you like) with Him all the time.  We might not be able to point to the moment like others, but the offer of salvation was no less meaningful.

     Like those in our story today, like those in the stories of Mark yet to come this season after Pentecost, though, we wanted to reject His power, His authority, His claim.  That reverence and love we first had were overcome by our doubt of the encounter.  If we answer honestly, our love and reverence for what He offered was replaced by a fear of what He expects of us.  We despise the unknown; we despise change.  And so we misplaced our love on who we were; we misplaced our reverence for fear that He might not know or might not be able to effect the change, the transformation to use the fancy language of the Church, to which He called us.

     Want to argue with me?  Feel free.  But wrestle, too, with the Scriptures and with God.  How do the disciples and the Apostles respond to His power and authority?  How do the good folks at Gerasenes, when confronted with His authority over supernatural evil?  How do the mourners at Jairus’ house, when confronted with His authority even over death?  The folks in His hometown?  The rabbis and scribes?  Herod?  How did I?  How did you?  Time and time again, when confronted with the authority of Jesus, human beings prove unwilling to love and reverence God’s Christ.  We live that same unwillingness in our own lives.  And the world is a bit darker for our stiff-necked irreverence and hatred.

     Thankfully and mercifully, that is not the end of the story.  Those same apostles and disciples who do not know what to think of their Master in the calming aftermath of the storm will be given the fullest demonstration of His power and authority that wonderful Easter morning.  Similarly, you and I understand, even if we do not know quite what to make of God and His plan, that Jesus’ authority is supreme in our lives because of that empty tomb and glorious ascension!  And so this day, as with every day, we pray that God, in His loving-kindness, His hesed, will give us that perpetual love and reverence for His holy Name, that our witness to His power and His authority might draw others into His saving embrace, might turn our wilderness plots into miniature shadowy copies of Eden, might inspire others to act according to His will on earth as it is in heaven.

In Christ’s Peace,

Brian†