June 19, 2005 At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

Jeremiah 20:10-13 + Romans 5:12-15 + Matthew 10:17-33

“Life is difficult.” says Scott Peck

in the opening line of his famous book: The Road Less Traveled.”

He claims that there are two kinds of people in the world:

those who know life is difficult and come to terms with it and

those who never understand that life is difficult and are drowned in its waters.

The healthy know that life is difficult.

Jeremiah is healthy, and Jesus would have his disciples be healthy as well.

In these verses from Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus continues his formation program for those he has just called and is sending on mission.

He would have them be healthy.

The story of Jeremiah and the story of the one whose Psalm we have sung today

bear witness not simply to the difficulty of life,

but to the presence of God in the midst of their distress,

and that is the point of Matthew’s instruction.

Those of you who read along or who have looked ahead at the text have noticed that I chose to add several verses and proclaim the entire section of Matthew’s instruction, because in it, the only mention of the work of the Spirit in the life of disciples that occurs in Matthew’s entire Gospel.

Since it is the only time Matthew writes of the Holy Spirit this way, it is extremely significant, and it casts a light on this matter that is essential.

It is this gift that will tell them what to say.

It is this gift that will give them courage.

It is this gift that will take away all fear.

What is truly remarkable and tragic about the persecutions

that both Jeremiah and Jesus’ disciples experienced

is that the persecution did not originate from an outside source.

It came from within the community of faith!

Jeremiah was persecuted by his fellow countrymen of Judah.

The disciples of Jesus were persecuted by their fellow Jews.

These readings offer a look at what happens when a community of faith

turns on itself and refuses to listen to the prophetic voices in their midst.

It is what happens when fear gains control:

fear of change, fear of growth, fear of what is different, unknown, unexpected.

Fearless then is the disciple of Jesus, and because of it, they are free.

In the spirit of that freedom a virtue emerges

that gives a disciple a focus and a future.

When Jesus says to his disciples that he has “Come to set the world on fire.” He knows what he is about. Anyone who speaks that way knows who they are and what their purpose in life may be. I call that: “ZEAL”.

It does not mean becoming a fanatical zealot.

It means that the disciple is one whose life has meaning, purpose, and destiny.

It is a virtue rooted in an expectation that something is asked of us,

that there is purpose to our lives, and a destiny to which we are called.

The zealous are focused on the direction of their lives, their future,

their purpose and their goal.

For a disciple of Jesus Christ, for anyone Baptized into his Life,

that destiny is the Kingdom of God, and nothing else is a substitute.

They are headed that way with a sense of urgency and purpose.

They know how to get there, and they know what gets in the way.

The purpose of their life is not a six figure salary, a particular model of car,

or house in any certain neighborhood.

It is the Kingdom of God, and there is about these people a certain kind of vibrant vitality that is eager and expectant for the Lord’s return.

They are joyful, prayerful, focused people who know what matters and what does not.

What they do is consistent with Jesus Christ, His life, His mission, His teaching, and most of all, His relationship with God.

In short, it the “Godly Life.”

I think it is best learned from the Life of Moses,

who in Matthew’s Gospel is the model for the life of Jesus,

and therefore for his disciples.

The story of Moses in the Old Testament is the story of Discouragement and Depression, of being Misunderstood and Misrepresented, of temptation to Resentment and Revenge, yet he rose over all of that.

What he learned, Jesus learned, and so must we.

The Godly life is never easy. Rewarding, Yes. Fulfilling? Yes, Worthwhile? A thousand times yes, but never easy. Those with thin skin should beware. Those with hard hearts are a danger. A spiritual director once told me that maturity was evident when then skin and a hard heart were replaced by tough skin and a soft heart.

The invitation we have in Matthew’s gospel is an invitation to grow up

and life it up. The life we are promised is a life of excitement and promise.

It is a life of ups and downs, but a life in which the ups gradually and steadily outnumber the downs.

We are invited to lose our lives, but you can’t lose your life if you do not live it.

Finding is losing.

Lose yourself, find God.

That is what a real disciple does who has no fear.

Moses traded all the perks, power, and pleasure of this world for a reward in an invisible realm. He traded it all for a relationship with the living God.

It was the best trade anyone could have made, and Jesus did the same.

What they lost, they could not have kept anyway.

What they gained they could never lose.

Thus it shall always be in the kingdom of the Crucified and Risen One.

June 12, 2005 At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

Exodus 19:2-6 + Romans 5:6-11 + Matthew 9:39-10:8

“Compassion” is the only word we have in English to translate a Greek word that has far more power than we can imagine with the translation. “Empathy” might get closer, and yet that does not quite have the strength and the depth of pity that is there. It describes a kind a movement at the very deepest part of our being. Perhaps the closest we might get to imagining what Matthew is really describing is the depth of emotion and passion that a parent might have at the sight of one of their children in unimaginable pain or agony. The sight of such a terror would wrench the deepest part of a parent in anguish and sorry. There comes with it the strongest of desires to remove the offence, to take away the pain, to heal the wound, and if that were not possible, to take the agony upon themselves and free the child from the terrible experience. That is getting close to the Greek word that Matthew chooses for this experience. The word is used a couple of times in parables, but Matthew, Mark, and Luke use it only of Jesus, and there are five conditions that move Jesus that powerfully.

Jesus was moved to this compassion by the world’s pain. He could not ever see someone suffering and not ease the pain.

Jesus was moved to compassion by the world’s sorrow. The mere sight of the woman who had lost her only son moved his heart to dry her tears and return the son to her living.

Jesus was moved to compassion by the world’s hunger. The sight of a hungry crowd moved him to search for food and feed. No Christian can be content to have too much while others have too little.

Jesus was moved to compassion by the world’s loneliness. The sight of a leper banished from his own people called forth his power every time he saw it.

Jesus was moved to compassion by the world’s bewilderment. Common people longing for God with the scribes and Pharisees everywhere having nothing to offer led him to every synagogue he could find to offer guidance, and comfort, and strength, and the hope of God’s Word.

This “compassion” that we find in Jesus is not a sentiment, but a tool by which Jesus enters into the very experience that moves him so deeply. He knows pain. He knows sorrow. He knows hunger, loneliness and bewilderment, and with God-like compassion his whole life becomes focused on easing the pain, drying the tears, sharing the food, embracing the outcast, and revealing the presence and power of God’s love.  This is what he would have for his apostles.

Take note that while he calls the apostles from among others, the commission they received is not reserved to a select few. Matthew makes the point that there are twelve of them. For those who receive his Gospel, that number twelve evokes a sense of totality because every Israelite belonged to one of the twelve tribes. The whole nation is called to the mission, and as Matthew prefigures the church as the new Israel, it is you and me whose passions must be stirred at the deepest level by the conditions of life that cause pain and sorrow; hunger, loneliness, and bewilderment.

We are not sent on this mission that gives purpose and focus to our lives just as much as it did to the life of Jesus without the gifts that empower us. That reminder closes this Gospel proclamation today. “Without cost you have received, without cost you are to give.” says this translation today. “What you have received as a gift, give as a gift.” says another more clearly. “What you have received as a gift, give as a gift.” I don’t think there is a more powerful, more clear, nor more precise statement in all the New Testament that expresses who we are and why we are here.

But our Christian history is littered with grave and disappointing examples of failure because of our possessiveness and sense of entitlement. Religious people must be reminded of this truth constantly, that what we have, everything, is nothing but a gift; and that gift has been given for one reason only, to be given away in the same spirit with which it was given. This is the grounding of Christian ministry. Everything we do rests upon a rich sense of gratitude.

Grateful here in this church, we are compassionate there, outside these walls where the sorrowful, the suffering, the lonely, the hungry, and the confused wait for divine mercy. We have the gifts. We have the tools. We have the power to do for them everything Jesus did for those he met day in and day out. What is keeping us from great performing the same great signs and wonders that the Kingdom of God is near? Maybe we have hear what He said again in the face of our possessiveness:

“What you have received as gift, give as gift.”

June 5, 2005 At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

Hosea 6:3-6 + Romans 4:18-25 + Matthew 9:9-13

Through the month of June, Matthew’s Gospel will have Jesus assembling and instructing his apostolic church. This week and next we get the Matthew version of his selection process, and then we finish the month with some initial instructions so that we do not get it wrong about what we are called to do and to become as members of the apostolic church.

The Jesus of Matthew’s Gospel invites us into his home. It is a wonderful tiny detail that makes a great difference. Luke has Matthew or “Levi”, as he calls him throw a dinner to which Jesus is invited, but the Jesus of Mark and Matthew’s Gospel is the divine host who invites the sinner into his home. This revelation of divine hospitality, of God as gracious host who invites and includes everyone is the cause for our joy this day as we sit and wonder at this wonderful turn of events. How unlike us is this great God who has no list of those included and those excluded! How wonderful it is to think that for once in our lives, we need not wonder nor worry about whether or not we are wanted or included, for deep inside us all is that lurking doubt that we will not be chosen, invited, or wanted. All that is wiped away by this Jesus who more than once in Matthew’s Gospel invites the unexpected into his home.

It prefigures the church, this assembly where only one thing is asked of us, mercy. That’s all he asks: “It is mercy I desire, not sacrifice.”

Sacrifice is a complex term in religious vocabulary. Authentic sacrifice reflects what is best about humanity, and the paradigm of Christian love is Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. It is crucial though, to discern between a sacrifice freely made out of authentic love which is an act of mercy, and a sacrifice made out of fear or some twisted belief that we have to pay back God for what we’ve been given or make up for our sins. The truth is, nothing can make up for our sins; and if we have to pay back God for what we have been given, then it would never have been a gift.

That kind of sacrifice threatens to make us hard resentful and self-righteous rather than trusting more deeply in the goodness of God as the source of our well-being and salvation. It can also make us very hard on those we love. It is this kind of sacrifice that Jesus would have none of.

It is mercy he desires, and the lived experience of mercy is the generous and loving gift of one’s whole self out of love for another. That is true sacrifice as we see it expressed in the love of Jesus for his Father, and the love of the Father in the sending of his only son to share the totality of the human experience, even helpless, violent death.

The trouble with the Pharisees was that their scrupulous concern to live exactly by the law drew distinctions between people, like the righteous and the sinners. Paul comes along and insists that Abraham was righteous because of his faith in God’s promise rather than by following a Law that had not been give yet. If Abraham could be righteous before there was a law, then the law is not the “be all and end all” of what makes someone righteous.

The graciousness of Jesus is our comfort, our joy, and our challenge today. His call for mercy, his inclusive behavior, and his invitation extended to us is what we celebrate around this altar. Your graciousness to each other, your welcome, your openness, your patience, and the hospitality of this parish is our living of this gospel. The Jesus who looked for people to invite and include lives now in us, and we are unworthy of his presence if we fail to live with that same spirit.

What must make us similar to Jesus is not that we attract people like ourselves, but that we reach across barriers to do so. Jesus reached out to Matthew a tax collector, then to a woman who was bleeding, then to a girl thought to be dead, and all of them bring their friends to meet the one who reached out to them. Out of this process rooted in the ministry of Jesus and practiced in the mission of the church, a new humanity is emerging, and the Lord’s table will be finally filled, for many will come from east and west and north and south to eat at the feast of salvation.