Loading...
Sermon September 27, 2020
The Rev. Rebecca S. Myers,
The Church of the Nativity and St. Stephen’s
Seventeenth Sunday After Pentecost, Proper 21, Year A, Track 2
http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Pentecost/AProp21_RCL.html
Audio: /documents/Eucharist_September_27__2020
Video: https://youtu.be/JV5jpUfr3G0
For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him, but the tax-collectors and the prostitutes believed him; and even after you saw it, you did not change your minds and believe him. Matthew 23:32
This week I came upon this story from the Sufi tradition. It goes like this:
There was a case against Mulla Nasruddin in the court, and the judge asked him, “How old are you, Nasruddin?”
And he said, “Of course, you know and everybody knows I am forty years old.”
The judge was surprised, “But five years ago, you were also in this court. When I asked you then how old you were you said forty. How is this possible? After five years you are still forty.”
Nasruddin said, “I am a consistent man, sir. Once I say I am forty, I will remain forty forever. You can rely on me.” (John Shea, Spiritual Wisdom of Gospels, Year A, location 5599)
We probably all know some people who say they are forty forever, don’t we? Well, at least they are consistent.
Being consistent certainly has its place and importance. Yet, the lesson Jesus is teaching us today is the importance of being able to change our minds when presented with new information about what God asks of us.
In our Gospel reading today, Jesus has returned to the Temple for the second day after arriving in Jerusalem. The city is teeming with people from many places who have come to the city to observe Passover. Jesus arrived on a donkey to the shouts of hosanna and to the waving palm fronds of the people. He had gone into the temple and overturned the tables of the money changers. In one day, he had threatened the governing systems of his time, secular and religious.
Some of you have probably traveled to foreign countries. Isn’t one of the first things you do is change your money to the currency of the nation? Well, the Temple authorities had set up a money changing system, too. People needed to buy animals to sacrifice in the Temple. There were proscribed offerings for various offenses or thanksgivings.
However, Jesus was overturning it all. He was reminding the people once again about what God really required of them. Hear Micah 6:8
‘With what shall I come before the Lord,
and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt-offerings,
with calves a year old?
Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
with tens of thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?’
He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?
The religious system had been set up for ages and ages, yet, Jesus says, “change your mind.” Jesus says, “Listen to the prophets of old. These things don’t matter. What matters is doing justice, loving kindness and walking humbly with God.”
Change your mind.
And so today, thousands of years later, we still need reminders about changing our mind. We don’t like it, do we? Most of the time we are comfortable with the way things have been.
We are truly being challenged right now to change our minds, aren’t we? For instance, we hear the cries to “abolish the police” or “de-fund the police” and we have a strong, visceral reaction, don’t we?
We immediately want to defend what exists now, especially if what exists now works for us personally. But, can we take some time to explore a little more? What are the people advocating for this really saying? Why isn’t the current system working well for everyone? If we needed to build a community public safety system from scratch, what might it look like? Have other places tried different things and how have they worked?
I recently watched a great 1-hour piece about some of these issues, called Policing the Police. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/policing-the-police/transcript/ . I’m going to participate in a training this week hosted by the Harrisburg Abolition Table on restorative justice and what that means.
This isn’t about individual police officers; it is about our community public safety system and how it does or does not provide justice for everyone. I mean, how do we explain the latest lack of prosecution in the murder of Breonna Taylor? It is just the latest. There have been too many.
As hard as it is, we know we can change our minds, don’t we? We come to church online or by phone or in the yard. Now that we’re inside, we are in every other pew and sitting apart from each other. We’re not singing. We wear masks. We take the wine of communion from an individual cup. We are also on Zoom. This happened in a flash, didn’t it? On March 15, we met as “usual” and by the next Sunday, we were all on Zoom! We can change our minds.
Following Jesus requires us to consider new things; to not dismiss them out of hand. God is always revealing God’s self to us. May we be open to the new things God is teaching us.
Amen
