Loading...Sermon July 16, 2017
The Rev. Rebecca S. Myers, LSW
The Church of the Nativity and St. Stephen, Newport, PA
Sixth Sunday After Pentecost, Track 1 Year A, Proper 10
//lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Pentecost/AProp10_RCL.html
If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you. Romans 8:11
Please be seated.
Do you ever think of yourself as holy? Do you think of yourself as a saint? I know I think of myself as trying my best to be guided by God through Jesus Christ and I know I fall short so often. Being holy seems like something that is beyond me. How about you?
Yet, Paul is telling us that we are indeed holy. We are holy because Christ dwells in us through the power of the Spirit. We are holy every time we express Christ through our lives. Every time we say a kind word or have compassion or insist on equality for all, we express Christ to the world and we are holy and our actions are holy.
WOW! I am silenced by this understanding. Are you?
And the same is true for our church community. It takes all of us to form the body of Christ. Together we express Christ to our community and to the world. Michael Gorman in his book, Reading Paul, says:
“…we are justified, we are baptized, and we participate in Christ in the context of a community and in relation to a wider world. That is, in justification-participation we are connected not only to God in Christ by the working of the Spirit, but also to other people.” P. 130
We are holy – dedicated and consecrated to God, sacred – as the dictionary defines it. We are holy individuals and we are a holy community.
I was reminded of this earlier in the week when I read an incredible story from The Washington Post about a family and some others being rescued from a riptide in Panama City, Florida. You might have heard about it.
Noah, 11, and Stephen, 8, Usrey had gotten separated from their family while riding waves on their boogie boards. Tabatha and Brittany Monroe heard the boys crying for help. They swam to help, but couldn’t tow the boys back to shore and then they couldn’t break free of the current. Yes, they tried swimming parallel to the shore as you’re told to do if you’re in a riptide, but nothing worked.
Then mom heard her sons crying for help and she got caught in the riptide, followed by her nephew, her mother and her husband. Another couple also tried to help and got caught. In all, ten people were caught in this powerful riptide. (Brittany Monroe had been rescued by some people on surfboards.)
That’s when people on the shore decided to help by forming a human chain. First it was five people, then 15 and finally at least 80 people formed a human chain. Jessica and Derek Simmons went out using surf and boogie boards and started getting each person, beginning with the children, and passing them back through the human chain until everyone was rescued. No one drowned. No one died that day.
The Washington Post, by Katie Mettler, July 11, 2017 (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/07/11/a-riptide-swept-away-a-florida-family-then-beachgoers-formed-a-human-chain/?utm_term=.2fb0eda2216a)
Individual efforts were only able to rescue one person and then only with the help of a surfboard. Even two people could not rescue those pulled in by the riptide. It was the human chain of at least 80 people, total strangers, that was needed to pull the Usreys and their would-be rescuers from the powerful water. It was people on the shore who did not even know each other, who decided to join together to rescue those in tremendous danger.
Please get up and join hands… create a circle around the church… look around.
See, we gather together. We connect with each other. We share this holy meal. Alone, we get lost and caught up in the riptides of life that would destroy us. But together, we form human chains of love, compassion and rescue that save us and save our community from those riptides.
The Spirit of God dwells within us and gives us life. We are holy and do holy, lifesaving work!
Amen
