What Do We Do with Our Freedom?

 

         

I laughed when I first looked up today's lessons and saw that our Gospel from Luke is all about eating together. "No one's going to want to line up for the food at brunch this morning," I thought with a smile. "After hearing Jesus' words, we're all going to be trying to put ourselves at the end of the line!"

          But it's not Luke's Gospel that I want to talk about with you today. Today is a day to talk about St. Ambrose Episcopal Church. As we celebrate paying off a considerable mortgage, we rejoice today in the love that we have for our parish. This summer, we have shown one another that we can come together to accomplish important work. We have shown that we honor and cherish the beautiful buildings that were created for our use so many years ago. We give thanks for the scores of parishioners old and new who have given so much of themselves and their treasure to this community. And most of all, we recognize that today is the start of a new day at St. Ambrose, a new day free from debt!

          The challenging question for us today is, "Where do we go from here? What do we do with our freedom?" As we all know, this is a difficult time to be followers of Jesus in Christian community. Today, our beautiful education wing is paid for, but it is sitting pretty much empty. We ourselves are older than we were when the vestry first signed those mortgage documents, and our children have grown and gone. There are fewer beloved faces in the pews. To top it off, our secular neighbors are afraid of us, afraid that people who call themselves Christian are all about power, judgment, and control. How will we still be "St. Ambrose" in this new landscape? How do we follow Jesus now?

          These are questions that we're going to have to answer together this year. To start us off, though, let's look closely at our reading from Hebrews.[1] Today's passage is a bit off-putting at first glance, at least it was for me. It sounds like an annoying list of overly-pious rules that I'm supposed to follow. The book of Hebrews is a sermon, though, a sermon for the early church community, not just a bunch of old rules for individuals to take to heart. The wisdom that this ancient preacher has for us still applies to St. Ambrose today.

          The first thing that we're called to do is to "continue in mutual love." "Mutual love," here is the word philadelphia, "sibling love, brotherly love." Did you know that early Christians were mocked for sharing a strange new kind of relationship called "fictive kinship?" Following Jesus' example, they dared to go beyond family bonds to call fellow Christians their brothers and sisters, to redefine family as the children of one "Father who art in heaven." St. Ambrose, too, has especially been known over the years for being this kind of "family." May we then continue as a family—a family in Christ—where strong sibling love supports and strengthens us in our relationships with one another, in good times and in hard times.

We're not only to love within our community, though, are we? The second thing we're called to do is to practice hospitality. Hospitality isn't just having delicious potlucks or wearing nametags, however. The Greek word translated as "hospitality" here is another word about love:  philoxenia, or "love of the strange." When we love "the strange," we love those who are different from us, those with new stories to tell, with strange new ways of doing things. How easy it is for tight-knit communities like ours to become inwardly-focused! Instead, we are asked to be ready to go beyond ourselves, to listen, to change, to grow as Christians.  As Jesus says in our Gospel: When you give a banquet, don't invite all the cool, powerful people. Instead, go out to "invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed." In God’s eyes, there is no group or individual so full of shame, so excluded by society, that they are not welcome at God’s table—or ours.

Similarly, we're reminded next to care for prisoners and for those who are being tortured. Prisoners in the ancient world were dependent on their families and friends for their sustenance. Without a relative to provide food, clothes, and medicine, a prisoner would die.  To "remember" a prisoner, then, is not just to pray for him. It is to actively provide life-support for him. We at St. Ambrose, newly free from our debt, are called actively as a community to provide for those around us who are not free, for those who are suffering.

Next, Hebrews warns us to watch out for desire run amok—desire that exploits others sexually and desire that exploits others economically. In the new day that's dawning for us, can we be content and satisfied with what we have? Can we resist comparing the present with the past? Can we share all that we have, no matter how small? Our world is an acquisitive, money-oriented, exploitative place. True Christian community exists in defiant opposition to such a world.

Finally, there's the bit about remembering our leaders. I'd love to say that this part is all about being nice to the rector, but it's not. Priests and vestries come and go. But you—Christ's Church—remain. We're asked as a community to remember that Great Cloud of Witnesses, those Christians who have gone before us. To remember the early Christians who died courageously for their faith. To remember the millions of faithful followers of Jesus whose prayers fill the nooks and crannies of our churches, whose testimony has led to this congregation being here today. To remember the parents and grandparents and Sunday School teachers who told us about Jesus, about God's Love for all. To remember the St. Ambrosians who dreamed what this parish could be, who built this church building, sometimes with their own two hands. Yes, today we are free from debt to the bank, but we are never free from the debt of love owed to those who have gone before us.

What do we do with our freedom, then? In each decision that we make, we love each of our siblings in this parish as we would our own flesh and blood; we resist looking inward and instead embrace the strange; we lavish love on those who are discounted in any way by society; we lavish care on those who suffer, no matter the reason; we honor the efforts and testimony of our founders. How do we do all these difficult things? We can do them through the power of Jesus Christ, the only one who "is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow." No matter what changes in our world, in the Episcopal Church, or in our parish, the love of God in Jesus Christ never fades. And in that love lies our true freedom from all debt.

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[1] I rely on the exegesis by Amy Peeler (https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-22-3/commentary-on-hebrews-131-8-15-16-2 ); Christopher T. Holmes (https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-22-3/commentary-on-hebrews-131-8-15-16-5); and Erik Heen (https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-22-3/commentary-on-hebrews-131-8-15-16-3)  for today's sermon.

Faith for All Ages

 

When I was a timid teenager, my mother gave me a poster to hang in my room. It was a cartoon drawing of a stout little medieval knight. He was completely covered in armor from head to toe, including a metal helmet that covered his entire face. This knight was standing resolutely, sword drawn, in front of an enormous fire-breathing dragon. While large, the dragon was far from frightening, however. Her long-lashed googly-eyes looked down with affection at the knight. Above the cartoon, in gothic script, were the words, “Have Faith.” My mother thought that putting this poster in my room would help me confront my fears. I remember getting some kind of a boost from it, and I kept it up on my wall, even at college. I’m not sure that I associated the poster with God or Jesus, though. Instead, it simply whispered to me, “See, things aren't as bad as they seem.”

Now that I’m an adult, I know that the world in which we dwell is as bad as it seems. There are lots of dragons out there, and they don’t have cute googly eyes. In our world, then, what does it mean for us Christians to “have faith?” Do we know? People often tell me that they can’t call themselves Christian because they don’t believe everything in the Creed. But faith isn’t intellectual assent to a bunch of doctrines. The TV preachers tell us that if we have enough faith, then God will miraculously answer our prayers. But faith isn’t a formula for getting what we want from God. Neither is it a pair of rose-colored glasses that cover up the real perils that we face.

The Preacher in our lesson from Hebrews tells us that faith is “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” What we translate as “assurance” here really means “the very being” of something. Assurance, then, isn’t bravado. It’s not pretending that we’re not afraid, when we are. Instead, Hebrews is telling us that faith is holding in one’s hand the very being of what God has promised us, the very being of God’s loving presence in all things, however hidden from our view.[1] Clarence Jordan, in his “Cotton Patch Gospel,” translates our verse from Hebrews as follows: “Now faith is the turning of dreams into deeds; it is betting your life on the unseen realities.”[2]

Faith, then, is more than inner confidence that the dragon out there is nicer than it looks and will someday become our friend. It’s us actually trading in our sword for a bouquet of flowers to give to the dragon.  Faith is action. Movement. A destination. Faith isn’t something we end up with, or rest in. It’s a longing, a desire, that pushes us out to do God’s work in the world, even when we’re afraid.[3] Faith sent Harriet Tubman back into the danger of the slave-holding South to rescue God's enslaved people; faith sent Mother Theresa to live among the poor of Calcutta; faith sent the apostles to their deaths as martyrs in order to share the good news of Jesus.

Let me make a confession here: I spent most of my adult life thinking that faith was intellectual assent. I studied theology thinking that if I figured God out, then I would be a good Christian. If I could explain God to other people, then I would be a good witness. If I couldn’t figure God out, then I might as well go home. It wasn’t so long ago that I finally realized that faith is me putting into action God’s love in my daily life. And that the opposite of faith is not doubt, but complacency. And let me make another confession, while I’m at it. It’s hard not to be complacent when you’re over 60 years old. We older folks get tired, don’t we? We want to settle in and bask in the status quo. We shed our rose-colored glasses a long time ago. We know that the dragons are out there, but we’re tired of fighting them. We want to let someone else do that now.

Well, I hate to tell you, but God isn’t going to let us off the hook that easily. God certainly didn’t let Abraham and Sarah off the hook, even though, as our scripture says, “they were as good as dead!” You remember their story, right? They are the childless centenarians who are promised a land flowing with milk and honey and descendants as many as the grains of sand at the seashore. For our Preacher in Hebrews, Abraham and Sarah are examples of faithfulness. Faith is what sends them off on their journey into the unknown. Faith takes these old folks from their settled home to a nomadic life of wandering among strangers. Faith is their willingness to imagine new life, and to act on the things that they long for, even though they never live to eat the honey or count their myriads of descendants.

In the same way, Jesus’ parable of the diligent servants in our Gospel lesson is also about faith as action. The servants in this parable don’t sit around and recite the Creed. They don’t go to a chapel to pray for miracles. No, they get ready for what they long for. They prepare for their master to come home, even though they don’t have the slightest idea when that will be. As preacher Debie Thomas writes, the faith that these servants teach us “is the daily business of living on our tiptoes, our eyes on the door, our hands ready at the knob for the Master’s joy-filled arrival.”[4]

Even our lesson from Isaiah won’t let us alone today. As a priest, I love nothing better than worship. I would love for every day to be Sunday morning. But the prophet Isaiah makes it clear to us that faith is more than worship, more than joining in even the best of liturgies among the best of people. Worship without justice, without caring for "the least of these" in our suffering world, is worthless in God’s eyes. We’re not among the “faithful” if we are not actively living out God’s love in the world. If we long for God, for Jesus, for God’s life-giving Spirit to enter our lives, then we have to put action to our conviction, no matter what our age. If we long for new life for our parish, there’s no sitting on the sidelines, no hiding in a world of Sunday mornings while the world is hungry and in need.

I read a poem this week that speaks to the journey to which we are invited today, to the journey beyond the status quo. By the poet Joy Harjo, part of the poem goes: "Beyond sunrise,/ there is a song we follow/ … Beyond the footpaths we walk every day/ From sunrise to kitchen, to work, to garden, to play/ To sunset, to dark, and back/ Beyond where the baby sleeps, her breath/ A light mist of happiness …./ In the song of beyond, how deep we are —"[5]

Can you hear God's "song of beyond" calling your name? It's a song both beyond what we live and see and touch, and yet within what we live and see and touch. It's a song sung to us by the great cloud of witnesses that surround us, a song that we learn in the stories of our scriptures. It's a song of longing, a song of healing, a song of God's dream for the world. God needs for us each to sing God's song—to sing it in our own voices, and to sing it together as a parish. God needs for us to practice our faith. God is asking us to leave our armor behind, and to head off into the sunrise, hand in hand with the big green dragon. This may not sound like good news for us, but it is. Oh, it is, indeed. For it is the way to life abundant, to the very promises of God, to the joy for which we all long.

        

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[1] Thomas Long, Hebrews, (Interpretation. Louisville: John Knox Press, 1997), 113.

[2] Found in Edgar McKnight and Christopher Church, Hebrews-James (Smyth and Helwys, 2004), 261.

[3] Debie Thomas, "Called to Restlessness," August 2019. Found at https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2295-called-to-restlessness

[4] Ibid.

[5] Joy Harjo, from “Beyond” in An American Sunrise, quoted by Diana Butler Bass and found at https://dianabutlerbass.substack.com/p/august-day?utm_source=email