Isaiah 1:1, 10-20
Psalm 50:1-8, 22-23
Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16
Luke 12:32-40
Grace and peace from God our Creator, Hope in our Redeemer
Jesus the Christ, and the promised gifts of the Holy Spirit are with you,
always.
So here we are on the umpteenth Sunday of “Ordinary
Time”—we’re in that green season of summer between holidays—as a joke, we
sometimes call this the “low holy days”—where we’re just supposed to go week to
week without any particular excitement. Just some ordinary days. But I can
think of 57 people, myself included, who, after last week’s summer trip theme,
just might not ever look at the word “ordinary” the same way again.
Ordinary time offers us a little breathing room from the
rigidity of the other seasons—we’re not lamenting or anticipating or
celebrating anything in particular all summer, so we get a chance to re-center
and rethink just what it is that we’re up to in our “ordinary” lives. We have
the freedom to reconsider our identity in Christ as individuals and as a
community.
Our community here at Bethlehem here in Encinitas is pretty
comfortable. But I’ve been away from y’all for a while, now, and my internship
supervisor taught me a catchphrase I just might have to stick on my car. The
role of the pastor, Pastor Dave says, is to comfort the afflicted and afflict
the comfortable. This week’s lectionary texts make that job easy.
At first glance, this week’s texts are full of a lot of,
umm, Bible-y things. The Isaiah text is full of burnt offerings and the dreaded Sodom and Gommorah; the
Hebrews text offers fancy words about faith and ancestors; and the gospel is about slaves and the end times. Oof.
The kingdom of God that Jesus is always drawing us into is
confusing, because the people he was speaking to thought it was the end of the
world and that it was coming like, next weekend, and we’re pretty sure that
didn’t happen. And so, now, when he admonishes us to look alive, we struggle to
be in as big a hurry as he seems to insist.
The kingdom of God can be beautifully described as the
beloved community. Those of you who have known Bethlehem for a while know that
if I’ve said something good, Pastor Ray probably said it, and therefore Dr.
King probably said it. His words are
where the ideal of the beloved community really fleshed out, at the height of
the Civil Rights Movement. The beloved community, according to Dr. King, is the
end of the struggle—“the end,” he says, “is reconciliation, the end is
redemption, the end is creation.”
Those are also Bible-y things, so let’s talk about those.
A theologian I love named Joyce Hollyday writes about this
and says that we’re “building a new city—one where justice and peace replace
hatred and violence. I may only add the 57th brick in the third row
of the left wall of the garage for the second house from the corner. It may
seem like little. But if we all work together—and keep the faith—a world more
grand than our greatest imaginings will one day appear.” This beloved community
is real and possible and about as hard of work as it sounds.
On our trip to Visalia last week, we participated in the
building of the beloved community. We spent day after day having fun together
and loving each other through some less-than-stellar moments, reminding and
being reminded of the value of laughter and tears and hugs between friends. We
developed relationships we’d never imagined, and we deepened relationships we
thought had no further to go. And, while all of that was happening, we
literally built a community. The 45 kids and their 7 small group leaders worked
alongside the families who will soon live in and own the homes we were all
constructing together. Each of us was able to do our small part, combined with
everyone else’s small part, to make a large difference.
Even if you only nailed one column on one stud on one house
on one street, so did your neighbor, and that wall now stands. Even if you only
installed electrical boxes in one room of one house on one street, so did your
neighbor, and that house will have lights. Even if you only caulked one window
on one wall in one house on one street, so did your neighbor, and that house
will stay weatherproof. Each of these pieces of our work last week may have
seemed small, and random, and occasionally haphazard. But the work that went in
before our arrival and the work that takes place now, after we’re gone—all of
it is part of that neighborhood, and we are part of that community, now.
Imagine if we understood this type of investment and that
type of work as we built the beloved community together. Imagine if we took a
week out of our summer vacation—a week of vacation out of our year of work—and
dedicated those hours to improving the well-being of our world. That sounds
like a significant change in the way we live our lives. But I’d invite you to
take it further than just a week out of the year. I’d like that week to be
unnecessary, because we’re operating on a daily basis with the intention of
building the beloved community. Because each time we walk out the door, we’re
intending to make gentle the life of this world.
It won’t be easy.
“Nothing sends terror through the bones of the American
middle class more quickly than the injunction, ‘Sell your possessions,’” Walter
Wink writes. “We equivocate. We rationalize. We explain. And we do nothing but
heap on guilt. Jesus is not trying to make us feel bad; he reminds us that it
is all divine gift, not effort on our part. ‘Do not be afraid, little flock,
for it is your father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.’”
The reason this call to sell our possessions always sounds
so threatening and so impossible is because it could only work in community. It
could only work if our whole world wasn’t centered on who had what. And our
societies have been that way for a long time. Jesus knows a little bit about
that.
This week’s gospel is wonky and apocalyptic and not even
Jesus’ listeners are super sure what to do with it. There’s a slave owner who
is going to return from his own wedding feast to serve another to his own
servants? That’s backwards. Jesus’ message
turns every social system upside down. No master has ever done this.
Who are we, here? Will we be awake when the master returns?
When the thief comes? Or is it we who are thieves? If we truly are to be the beloved
community, how might the Spirit, alive in us, express this new world order?
As Jonathan asked us all last week, what is the point of any
of this if you’re not going to let it change you?
The world we are called to love is complicated. The people
we are called to love are complicated. There are systems in which we are
entrenched, and there are relationships from which we cannot escape. Cycles of
violence plague us.
But we, builders of the beloved community, have
reconciliation, redemption, and creation in our toolbelts. We may feel like
we’re up against a pretty massive current reality—and we are. Jesus’ message of
radical social change came against the Roman Empire, so he knows what kind of
systems we’re facing. And his message of radical social change is not small.
And because we have been empowered by the holy spirit, neither are we. Because our God is powerful, so too we are
powerful. It is how we use our power that makes all the difference.
Because you are sitting in these pews right now, you have
the power to worship freely in the nation you call home. Because you are
sitting in these pews right now, you have access to reliable transportation,
you are healthy enough to leave your home and do as you please, your employment
situation is such that you have Sunday mornings free or could arrange to have
this morning free in order to be here. Because we are in this church building
in this town in this state in this nation, we are some of the wealthiest people
this world has ever known. If you’re a citizen who’s 18 or older, you can vote
in some of the most important elections this world has ever known. You. Have.
Power.
And there are people sitting beside you who have a little
less or a little more, sure. But there are people sitting beside you everywhere
else you will go today who have a lot less. And there are millions of people
you will never see as you go about your daily life who have a whole lot less. The
beloved community must include them as surely as it must include us.
The beloved community does not have space for systemic and
institutionalized racism, sexism, xenophobia, heterosexism, rape culture,
glorified violence, the war-industrial complex, the prison-industrial complex,
the war on drugs, the war on terror, chronic homelessness, marginalization of
the mentally ill, fear-mongering, gerry-mandering, or any other manifestations
of the sin that so easily entangles.
Martin Luther would tell us that we live in two kingdoms—the
kingdom of God, and the United States of America. We are called to be full
participants in both. As equality in this country falls by the wayside, it is
our job to call for the radical social change that Jesus preaches. We are
called to put an end to the snowballing income inequality that surrounds us. We
are called to bridge the gap in education that leaves poor children with fewer
and fewer options. We are called to require living wages from all employers. We
are called to demand respect of all cultures and religious traditions in this
nation—especially those that are not our own. We are called to live justly,
love mercy, and walk humbly with our God. There is work to be done and we are
called to be the people who do it.
So, you see, Ordinary Time is not free time. It is not time
to skip church and go to the beach. Ordinary time is time to act. It’s the time
we aren’t bogged down by Christmas shopping or spring break planning or finals
week or any of our favorite excuses—it is time.
Thanks be to God. Amen.