Proper 7A 2020
Genesis 21:8-21
Romans 6:1b-11
Matthew 10:24-39
The Rev. Dr. Kathy Kelly
There is much division in our world today. I’m tired of opening sermons with that phrase. We are all tired of the division in our country. African Americans are especially tired - of violent oppression, of being misunderstood, of screaming to be heard, of teaching us how to treat each other.
We are all tired of these divisions.
When we face these difficulties we turn to the scriptures for comfort. We turn to prayer for comfort. We turn, for comfort, to our tradition and to the scholarship of the theologians and the mystics who wrote about their experiences of the holy.
But it seems today’s lectionary readings are all about division. I am tempted to move away from my commitment to preach the lectionary. It is permissible, you know. I could just talk about what I think about these things.
But what would be the fun in that, hmm?
If we are bold enough to learn then we must lean into these lessons and listen.
Let me repeat that.
If we are bold enough to learn then we must lean into these lessons and listen.
That’s the problem in a nutshell. We don’t really want to learn - or maybe we just don’t really want to change. We’re in our golden years here at Grace, most of us and we’ve done about as much changing as we feel necessary. We don’t want to be bold anymore. We’ve been there and done that. At this point in time we want to be comforted, we want to be encouraged, we want to live out the rest of our days just enjoying the way things are.
Well, my friends. That’s the problem.
On Thursday the rain here suddenly stopped after three straight days of rain and it seemed everyone in the neighborhood around the church rushed outside to enjoy some sunshine and exercise. I certainly did. Prancer was so happy to get a walk in. Then, an hour or so later the rain came back and we retreated to our homes and offices with a bit of sadness.
This reminded me of a 1954 short story by Ray Bradbury called All Summer in a Day. It is a dystopian story about a class of elementary aged students who live in the future on Venus, which, in this story, is a world of constant rainstorms. Venus, in this story, is a place where the Sun is only visible for one hour every seven years.
One of the children, Margot, moved to Venus from Earth five years prior to the time of the story. So she is the only child who remembers sunshine. Because the Sun shines regularly on Earth where she has lived her life so far. All the other children who have been living on Venus are too young to remember the sun from seven years ago.
So Margo describes the Sun to them. She describes the sun as "a penny", or "like a fire in the stove” and she writes a poem about the sun. The other children choose to not believe her. Maybe they’re jealous of the attention she is getting or afraid of the idea that they have been deprived of this wonderful thing she speaks of called sunshine. Led by a boy named William, they bully and antagonize Margo, and just before the sun comes out, William rallies the other children, and they lock Margo in a closet down a tunnel. As the Sun is about to appear, their teacher arrives to take the class outside to enjoy their two hours of sunshine and, in their astonishment and joy, they all forget about Margot. They run, play, skip, jump, and dance in the sun, savoring every second of their newly found freedom. "Oh, it's better than the sunlamps, isn't it?" one of them cries. Suddenly, a girl catches a raindrop in her hands. Thunder sounds, then the lightning comes, and the children run back inside as the sun disappears and it starts to pour again. At this point, one of them remembers Margot, who is still locked in the closet. Ashamed, they let her out of the closet, standing frozen, embarrassed over what they have done and unable to "meet each other's glances.” The precious Sun has come and gone, and because of their despicable act, Margot, who loved the Sun the most, has missed it and will not be able to see it again for another seven years.
This story comes to mind because of our recent struggle with sheltering at home during the pandemic but also because of all the rainy days we have had during that time. I know that we all feel a bit like prisoners in our own homes. And I know that we all miss the freedoms we had back in February to gather on Sundays for church, to see each other, to hug, to laugh, to sing together. These are anxious times and I want to comfort you and reassure you that we will return to these spiritual practices. I don’t know when, but we will pray together again in person.
But this story has a deeper, darker message than our struggles and I hope it will help us to practice some gratitude for what we have - but more importantly, I hope it will help us to do some digging around in our own closets.
I’ve been studying the contemplatives and mystics lately and I’m learning what they have to say about the spiritual benefits of isolation, the spiritual benefits of suffering and even of disease.
One early church mystic I am studying is Julian of Norwich. You might remember her famous quote: All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well. That’s pretty comforting.
But there is another favorite concept of Julian of Norwich I want to raise and that is of a concept in which she speaks of “oneing.”
Let me make sure you heard that right. Oneing. It sounds like she made a verb out of a noun. In our modern dictionary, we would cringe at taking the noun one and turning it into a verb - oneing. But remember, this is from medieval English. Here are some examples of how Julian of Norwich used this word:
Prayer ones the soul to God.
Or this:
In our making God knit us and oned us to himself . . .
Or this:
By the virtue of the same precious oneing, we love our Maker and seek God.
Julian’s oneing would not have sounded as jarring to her audience as it does to us. To one was a Middle English word meaning to unite or to join.
So I really like Julian’s strange little verb. How much lovelier oneing is than uniting! The unfamiliarity of this noun-turned-verb makes me pause, reread, and really grapple with its meaning. Uniting implies a joining of forces, but oneing suggests a knitting together that can never be undone, a union so seamless that you can no longer distinguish its individual parts.
Oneing sounds like Jesus’ prayer in the Gospel of John for us to be as one. It is reminiscent of our longing to be united as followers of Jesus. To be One in the Spirit. One in the Church.
But uniting sounds like tribalism. Uniting is that thing we do when we take sides and put the other side down, or mock them, or oppress them, or try to kill them. Oneing is joining God.
I question Christians who pick and choose their way through the Bible. For example, I do not think it is good practice to act forcefully against LGBTQ persons by using what many have come to call the “clobber passages.” The clobber passages are those few verses in the Bible which seem to condemn homosexuality. You know how that goes. Loudly repeat those 5 or 6 verses and ignore the fact that Jesus never mentioned anything about this or ignore the possibility that something has been lost in translation.
Or focus on Paul’s 1 or 2 statements along the lines of women being told to cover our heads and never speak. Jesus never said that either.
We’ve had this conversation before. For decades. Those who still practice cherry picking the Bible still do not listen.
But we too are cherry picking if we choose to skim over the commandment about loving our enemy or consider that the commandment “Thou Shalt not Kill” means all of war is wrong. Or, as we face in today’s Gospel lesson, the Prince of Peace saying: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.”
If we are not careful, it can be easy to get confused by scripture.
We bring to Church today, heavy hearts in response to these divisions all around us. Not only do we have to go to church through a computer screen, but after doing our best to wade through all this technological, virtual worship, we hear this red letter list of divisions from our Lord:
a man against his father, (happy Fathers Day, by the way!)
and a daughter against her mother,
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;
and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.
What are we to make of this? How can we make sense of this? Well, the explanation from the scholars is, in a nut shell, this:
The call to discipleship renders secondary all other claims on one’s identity and allegiance, even to father or mother, or son or daughter. To “take up the cross” aligns the disciples’ mission and fate with that of Jesus, and that means alignment with the humiliation, suffering, shame, opposition, and death that Jesus persistently speaks about. Taking up the cross means identifying with the marginal people (slaves and rebels) who were subject to Roman crucifixion, because they did not align themselves with or submit themselves to Rome’s authority. But Jesus promises that those who “lose their life” for him will in fact “find it,” while those who “find their lives” in the world will lose them.
The bottom line is that we have committed ourselves to follow Jesus and we have to give up anything that gets in the way of that. That includes all other tribal affiliations. Even family. If uniting is the stuff of division, oneing is the stuff of entering into deep relationship with God. And if we can choose to enter into deep relationship with God we will then be free. And if we are free, in Christ, then we can live freely with all those who are free in Christ.
But in order to join this freedom, in order to follow Jesus in The Way of Love, we must first come out from our hiding places. And I don’t mean coming out from safe places. And I’m not talking about forcing others from their closet if they need to be safe there. I’m talking about freeing people from their prisons - like Margot’s prison in the Venus story - and inviting them to join us in the sunshine. If we are free in Christ then we can join in the work of leading others to freedom. But we can’t do that if we’re only trying to lead some people to our side of the war.
I’m not talking about evangelizing for our tribe. I’m talking about leaving behind the comfort of white privilege. I’m talking about leaving behind that easy place where we don’t have to listen and we don’t have to change. I am calling you to practice some oneing with God and to practice sharing with your neighbor. I am calling you to come out into the sunshine of discipleship and pick up your cross and be changed.
Only then you will be empowered to truly love your neighbor.
Amen.