Loading...Sermon September 4, 2016
The Rev. Rebecca S. Myers, LSW
The Church of the Nativity and St. Stephen, Newport, PA
Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost Track 2 Proper 18
Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him and holding fast to him… Deuteronomy 30:19-20
Please be seated
In 2012 I was blessed to participate in the course, The Palestine of Jesus offered by St. George’s College in Jerusalem. I’ll never read or hear the Bible in quite the same way after being in so many of the places where the books of the Bible are set.
One of the places we visited was Banias Springs. These springs are part of the waters that eventually form the Jordan River. It’s a beautiful place with loud, rushing, clear water, leaping from the earth. The place is surrounded with trees and greenery.
On a cliff above these springs, a Roman administrative city was built. In the cliff walls there is a worship site to the Greek God Pan, including a cave, which was used for sacrifices. It is in this beautiful natural space, dedicated to the Greek God, where Jesus in Matthew 16:13-28, asks the disciples:
Who do you say that I am?
Father Kamal, our professor, explained that Jesus asked this in precisely this place where there were temples to other gods, because he was presenting a choice to the disciples. Will you choose these idols with their way of life or will you choose to follow me and to follow God?
In our readings today, we hear a similar choice presented to the people of Israel, the people following Jesus and Paul’s letter. Whom will you choose to follow? Honestly, the past few weeks have presented us with the same question in different ways. Whom will we choose to follow?
Jesus encourages us to take stock of the cost. Following Jesus may mean a total upset of our lives. Jesus must come first, before possessions, family and friends. We need to carry our cross, meaning we may be killed or crucified in the process.
The following of Jesus cannot be taken lightly. To start following and then stop can lead to ridicule. The choice is ours. Jesus wants us to freely choose to follow him. Jesus wants us to make a strong and firm commitment to following him. Jesus does not want to deceive us into believing that followship and discipleship will be easy. Jesus does not want that easy, carefree commitment, which disappears when the going gets tough, because the going will be tough.
I’ve grown up in the faith, so I’m not sure I fully realize and acknowledge how my life is different following Christ than not. I’m not perfect, certainly, in my followship. Yet, Christian teachings guide so much of how I view situations and circumstances in my life.
I deeply value being in Christian community. I know Christian community is not always lifegiving; however, I don’t see how we follow Jesus outside of Christian community. Valuing the dignity and worth of every human being emanates from following Jesus. While it’s also a core value of the social work profession, which was my first professional training, it’s also part of our Baptismal Covenant.
I don’t know about you, but I’m appalled at the conversations, especially on social media, of the name calling when people disagree. There’s no room for disagreement, it seems, without calling people idiots or stupid or worse.
It’s a challenge to respect the dignity and worth of every human being. It’s a challenge to remember that all are created in the image of God. It’s a challenge to love our neighbors. It’s even a challenge to love ourselves.
So the cost of followship is expensive.
In Paul’s letter to Philemon, the shortest book of the Bible, Paul is asking Philemon to not only change his attitude and relationship towards Onesimus, but also to freely allow Onesimus to continue being with Paul in prison in Rome. Paul wants Philemon to freely make this choice and Paul understands that to do so, Philemon must see Onesimus as a brother and fellow Christian… as a God-created human being. Philemon must see the world through Kingdom of God eyes rather than Kingdom of earth eyes.
In Deuteronomy, the choice to follow God is also presented. The book is written to guide the Israelite people in their community life. Tradition held that the book is Moses’ teaching about what God requires. After chapters of this teaching, Moses exhorts the people to choose life. Again it is their choice. They can choose not to follow God. They can choose other idols that separate them from God, and choosing against God denies life and destroys life. Not only your own, but also that of the community.
We are constantly challenged with this choice between followship of God and followship of the world. Some things we think we can never forgive and yet we pray to be forgiven and to forgive others. We don’t know how we’ll live without our possessions and we’re not sure how we can give of our financial resources. We love our families and our friends. We love our individualism and are challenged by being an ongoing part of a community. We judge others, without knowing them. We want to work for our own good, even when it conflicts with the common good. We want the world’s adoration, rather than God’s kingdom.
So we come to this place on a Sunday morning, to be with each other. We come and we plan to do things as a community to bring God’s kingdom here on earth…here to our region. We give of our time and our money to make sure children have new shoes, and people have food, and people are prayed for. We come to nourish ourselves and strengthen ourselves to go into the world and be the Gospel of Jesus wherever we are – work, home, at the mall, in the fields. We come to the altar rail and hold out our hands for the bread and wine that will sustain us like no other food.
We come and we choose life….
