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The Weekly Word for July 25: GRACE

If you look for the word “grace” in the dictionary, you will find definitions ranging from references to elegance and ease of movement, to clemency and postponement of a penalty, to divine favor. I am not sure I really like any of these definitions very much.

To me, grace refers to the everlasting love and forgiveness extended to us by our God, and made visible and manifest in our lives each day. We do not have to do anything to earn his grace, but it is given to us freely, often in unexpected ways, or in things we take for granted.

I asked people in my office what evidence they have of God’s grace in their lives this week. Here are some of their responses:

Jonathan’s May 25, 2008 sermon DON’T WORRY, BE HAPPY

Pentecost 2 Year A - Matthew 6:24-34

For years, one of the great pleasures of life was a long-running comic strip called “Bloom County”. It featured squabbling woodland creatures, several precocious children, an n’er-do-well playboy lawyer, a mangy hedonist cat and a neurotic flightless waterfowl named Opus. One of the children, Binkley by name, tended to worry a lot, about many things. Unlike ordinary children, no monsters lurked beneath Binkley’s bed. His monsters lurked in what he liked to call his “anxiety closet”. Whenever Binkley would open the door of this closet, whatever worrisome thing was on his mind at the time would emerge in some monstrous form to play upon his fears and raise his general anxiety.

One drawback of living in Bloom County was the total lack of non-ridiculous religious figures. Bill the Cat became a philandering televangelist, for a time. The local priest was a platitude-spouting milquetoast, completely out of touch with reality. Other characters came and went in various states of zealous bigotry or frenzy. But nowhere in Bloom County was there anyone with a solid faith and a sane mind who could minister to poor Binkley’s incessant worrying. And, Binkley’s was not the only anxiety closet in Bloom County. His father had one, as did the playboy lawyer, and probably others as well. I think that was partly the point. Bloom County was full of anxious, worried people, trying to cope with a crazy, mixed up world.

Jonathan’s June 22, 2008 sermon THE SWORD THAT CLEAVES AND HEALS

Pentecost VI, Year A - Matthew 10:24-39

It was exactly three years ago that we last grappled with this gospel lesson. Three years ago, we struggled together to make sense out of a text where God’s agent of reconciliation, the Prince of Peace, says, “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” If that’s not bad enough, we realized with sinking hearts that by his use of this symbol of conflict and division, Jesus was both predicting and even calling for strife within households, within families, with our spiritual lives the central divisive issue.

I bet this scripture never comes up over on Dr. James Dobson’s’ “Focus on the Family” radio program. This is not the kind of thing the “Family Values” crowd likes to think about, and frankly, neither do we. Of course, we know that Family Values can sometimes become quite distorted in family systems where the hidden core values are authoritarian power and unquestioning obedience, where members resort to emotional manipulation, intimidation and even violence to enforce conformity. In our political discourse, Family Values is a form of code language for maintaining the status quo, promoting and reinforcing hierarchical lines of authority, complying with a certain social program that keeps things neatly in order and under control. In both the nuclear family and society in general, the Family Values model considers the hierarchical authority (be it a parent or a preacher or a politician) to be a stand-in for God. To obey is to find salvation and refuge, to dissent is to invite damnation and exile, as any who have ever been cut out of a will, excommunicated or branded unpatriotic can attest.

Jonathan’s June 15, 2008 sermon WISE AS SERPENTS AND INNOCENT AS DOVES

Pentecost 5, Year A - Matthew 9:35-10:23

“The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. And then Jesus summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority… these twelve Jesus sent out with instructions…”

Ah, the mysterious Lectionary, that fixed, mechanical system that appoints scriptures to be read in a certain sequence on certain calendar dates, a three-year cycle repeating endlessly. And yet, with all the unpredictability of life, it’s uncanny how often the Lectionary speaks directly to our situation. When Van and Coral sat down last year and determined the end of Waycross staff training and the beginning of the camping season, who knew this story would be read on the Sunday that marks the transition, the day we would commission the Staff for this important ministry? And yet, here it is, all about being summoned and trained for ministry and given authority to carry it out. Coincidence? I think not!

Jonathan’s May 11, 2008 sermon OUT OF THE BELIEVER’S HEART

Day of Pentecost, Year A - Acts 2:17-18 - Psalm 104: 25-29, 34-37 - John 7:37-39

My friends in Christ, today we have reached a milestone in our walk together, stepping forward in faith into our capital campaign, “Building For Mission”. We chose that name because we intend to build up the things that support and deepen our common life of our Episcopal mission church. At the same time, along with new facilities, we are committed also to build up our gospel mission to love and serve our neighbors. The disciples, gazing up at the rapidly receding soles of the Master’s feet, heard him say; “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses…to the ends of the earth.” [Acts 1:8 ] Witnesses to love! What an amazing calling!

Jonathan’s July 6, 2008 sermon BURDENS HARD TO BEAR

Pentecost 8, Year A - Matthew 11: 25-30 - Song of Solomon 2:8-13

Some of you know that I served for a time as a Hospice chaplain and during those years I listened to many people who were estranged from the Church. One man hadn’t set foot in a church since he was a boy, when his family was turned away because someone thought their clothes weren’t fine enough. A family was asked to find another church, because it seems they didn’t give enough money.

I bet that some of the people listening to Jesus in this morning’s Gospel had similar stories to tell; about the pressure to make finer, more expensive sacrifices at the Temple; being shamed by the gossipers at the synagogue for each infraction of the Law, each lapse of ritual purity.

Jesus was always calling out the religious leaders of his day, but the one time he really laid into them, it wasn’t because of their hypocrisy, their spiritual blindness, or their malice. It was because, as stewards of God’s presence in Israel, their elaborate holiness codes and ritual practices made it harder (not easier) for ordinary people to have a relationship with God. The spiritual life had become an endless and futile quest for ritual and personal perfection. And so Jesus denounced those religious authorities, “For you load people with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves do not lift a finger to ease them”. (Luke 11:46)

Jonathan Hutchison’s June 1, 2008 sermon SETTING ALL THINGS IN ORDER

Pentecost 3, Year A - Deuteronomy 11:18-21,26-28

We began our service this morning by praying the Collect of the Day: “O God, your never-failing providence sets in order all things both in heaven and earth.” Providence – an amazing concept, really, the notion that in God’s infinite wisdom and generosity, everything needful is provided. But notice…

For the most part, it is not provided like food aid dropped from helicopters or philanthropy flowing through a ballpoint pen. It is provided through an intricate web of interrelationships, as each creature (plant, animal and mineral) finds itself occupying a particular place in the created order of things, giving and taking in order to sustain its own life and the life of the whole.

I was out walking in our fields the other day. This is the time of year when everything suddenly turns very green and very dense. I became aware of the intense profusion of green plants, in infinite variety, covering every square inch of useful soil. I thought about how these plants take nutrients from the soil and then return them, through decay or nitrogen fixing roots. Some plants provide shade for others, which thrive in the cool and dark. Some plants climb and feed upon their neighbors. Certain plants serve as food for insects, birds and animals, which in turn help them propagate through pollination, cropping, and the distribution of their seeds.

The Weekly Word for July 3: SANDALS

Sandals is a word that brings to mind both contemporary and historic visions of light, strappy footwear. In our contemporary world, sandals mean summer, warmer weather, the act of being able to expose our feet to weather and sunshine, maybe in some cheerful bright color. Sandal wearing signifies the retreat of winter and coldness and the joyful embrace of green grass, flowers and soft warm breezes.

The Weekly Word for June 27 is POMEGRANATE

A pomegranate is a lumpy red fruit with hundreds of seeds inside it, each seed enclosed by a bright-red capsule of tangy, sweet juice. Eliot and I always used to buy a pomegranate or two at Thanksgiving to dress up the fruit bowl in the middle of the table, and the children used to like to take them apart and eat the seeds - just as a toddler Jesus is doing in this fifteenth-century painting by Sandro Botticelli. (Another Sandy!)

Pomegranates are part of Middle Eastern cooking. You can juice them just like an orange, and if you’re patient you can boil down the juice into pomegranate syrup or even pomegranate molasses. Given all those hundreds of seeds, the pomegranate has been a symbol for fertility in many cultures.

I had a vague idea that pomegranates appear in the Hebrew scriptures, the Old Testament, so for this Weekly Word I have tracked them down - they were decorations on the robe Aaron wore when he would enter the sanctuary to talk with God. If you think you are Some Big Stuff for finishing a prayer shawl or two,