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Sermon September 3, 2023
Canon Robert Schiesler
The Church of the Nativity and St. Stephen’s
Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A, Track 1, Proper 17
http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Pentecost/AProp17_RCL.html
Audio: /documents/Eucharist__September_3__2023
Video: https://youtu.be/VqwY-E6MUCI
In our lectionary readings following the Gospeler Matthew, we heard that pivotal statement of Peter last Sunday, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God!" This astounding confession provides the turning point in both resolution and direction for Jesus as he now moves toward the seat of power in Jerusalem. He begins to teach his disciples what messiahship and in turn, discipleship, really means. However, Peter's confession rapidly turns sour as he denys a discipleship based on a suffering, generosity laden servanthood as predicted by Jesus' passion resolution of even death.
Jesus' followers had made the mistake of associating victory and glory with the Messiah, not suffering, sacrifice or death; for them, Jesus was to be the promised deliverer of the nation against oppression and in turn they would bask in the brilliance of his victory and eminence. All of this captured in Peter's rebuke, "God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you." And Jesus' public response was to turn directly to Peter, staring into his eyes if not his soul, and responding with the harshest words of the Gospel, "Get behind me, you evil one!" Yesterday, Peter is proclaimed the steady, determined, focused "Rock" and now he is declared a stumbling block for setting his mind on human things, not on Divine things. To be on the side of human values that are too often shallow and brittle is to oppose the high values of God in favor of choices based only on self satisfaction and security. And Jesus will have nothing to do with such a person. Either one walks beside the Holy One or chooses to walk away from that path chosen by the Suffering Servant.
True discipleship, says Jesus, is a denial of self to more readily take up the cross and follow. If Jesus takes on the mantle of sacrificial love, can we do any less as a genuine disciple? To cling to the superficial, the mundane, the status quo, the unchallenged is to lose sight of and hope in the life eternal. To renounce such a life is to gain what is enduring and eternal.
Some 150 years ago, a faithful disciple who knew suffering and generosity, addressed this notion of challenge facing us all, as the orator and former slave, Frederick Douglas, said: "Those who profess to favor freedom and yet, depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."
Jesus realized this truth of power, that it is always neutral and benign at its core. However, once utilized, the choices of power become either positive and constructive or corrupting, evil and constraining at any and every cost for the benefit of few and the detriment of many. Jesus' disciples would also realize this as they must choose to walk the path of righteousness and sacrifice or turn to the path of evil grounded in a desire for self aggrandizing power.
Echoing the words of another faithful disciple of our own time, Representative John Lewis of Georgia, whose guiding words were "get in good trouble, necessary trouble", we have the person of Drew Gilpin Faust. She grew up in the fertile, sedate and segregated Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. She became outraged at the unfairness of separating people on the basis of color and by extension, ethnic background, sexual orientation or social standing and at the age of 9 in 1957, she wrote a letter to President Eisenhower entreating him to step up and end segregation on every level. "So what if their skin is black?" She wrote. "They still have feelings but most of all are GOD'S PEOPLE!" From the mouth of a babe. ...and her life continued in good, necessary trouble, addressing poverty, male domination and social expectations, the Vietnam Conflict, becoming a freedom rider to Selma, Alabama, to walk over the Pettus Bridge with Martin Luther King. Ms. Faust knows the truth of sacrifice and good trouble and has steadfastly walked in that truth. ...to becoming the first woman President of Harvard University, advocating for the values of dignity inclusion and equality all the way, all the time.
And here we are this day, gathered as Christ's disciples to hear and respond to the Holy Word and to be nourished at the Holy Table of the Lord. We too are challenged to talk the talk of Jesus, to walk the walk of Christ. We are equally challenged by the powers if not the evils of this life, to simply conform, accept, even engage in the shallowness of life, the engrained values of others, with excuses of busy-ness, too tired, too distracted. But what does it profit us to be successful, to eliminate our problems and prejudices by foisting them off on others, to protect ourselves at often a high price, if in the end we have abandoned the true values of genuine discipleship in following the Lord Christ?
Perhaps it is in the little things that our discipleship can flourish. As we look at our finances, do we direct any of it to causes that address core needs such as shelter, food and safety for the vulnerable? Do we have any concern for migrants fleeing from oppression or Afghani refugees now resettled in our nation? Is the Food Bank of Central Pennsylvania or our own Episcopal Relief and Development fund, in our awareness and generosity? The Office of Government Relations of the Episcopal Church daily addresses the policy priorities of our Church in shaping public discourse of political issues of basic need and hope for each and all in our country. Are we a part of that discussion with our national representatives, raising up our voice with so many others?
May a daily reminder of genuine discipleship grounded in sacrificial love and generosity of spirit and resources be in Paul's words of this morning: "Let our love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good. Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good." In other words. ..."Get in good trouble, necessary trouble!".
