______________SERMONSA NEW/OLD NORMAL
A Sermon for the Third Sunday of Lent
Almighty God,
you know that we have no power in ourselves to help ourselves:
Keep us both outwardly in our bodies and inwardly in our souls,
that we may be defended from all adversities
which may happen to the body,
and from all evil thoughts
which may assault and hurt the soul;
through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns
with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
AMEN.
~ The Collect for the Third Sunday of Lent
Soon after I began to serve as the rector of an historic downtown church in
another state, the husband of one of the parish matriarchs died. He was a retired
military officer, someone well-known in those parts. The Bishop, whom I had
met during my interview process just a few months earlier, was asked to preside
and preach at his funeral. My only job was to be a pastor to his widow.
As has often been my experience, she was a pastor to me. She had come to
grips fairly quickly with the untimely death of her husband. My sense was that
she was someone from whom I, still relatively new as a priest, might learn some
lessons. Before the funeral she told me she had been considering what life
without her husband might be like. She declared, “This is my new normal.”
On that day, a grieving wife gave me some wisdom for the ages. Since then,
I’ve often heard and used the phrase “new normal.” I don’t know about you, but
I’ve had several seasons in my life during which a new normal began. I’ve also
learned there’s something my new normal moments and seasons have in
common: for me, they always seem to have something to do with grief and loss.
We may be shocked at the arrival and presence of this novel Coronavirus
called COVID-19. We may be looking forward to things getting back to “normal,”
whatever that normal was or is for us. A local columnist recently came to a
different conclusion: “Just because we’re...using sanitizer and bumping elbows
doesn’t mean we won’t be affected in the Mid-South....This is the new normal for
now” (Bruce VanWyngarden, Memphis Flyer, 3/12/20).
Whatever this season of our common life becomes, I believe it is our new
normal, at least for now. It feels hard, if not impossible - borrowing words from
the Serenity Prayer - to accept this thing we cannot change. So many of our old
behaviors have been turned into new warnings (“Don’t touch your face! Keep
your distance!”). At least for now, we have lost the ways we’ve been used to, ways
in which we have lived, moved, and had our being in the world.
I believe that as a church, a nation, a world, we are in grief, and in the days
to come, we do not know what else we may need to grieve. We do know we don’t
have to go it alone. We can and we must care for one another in our grief. (I’ll
have more to say about grief in the April Tract newsletter.)
Throughout the New Testament, people misunderstand Jesus when they
first encounter him. The story of the woman at the well in John’s Gospel (4:5-42)
is not unlike the stories about the disciples when they met Jesus. His friends had
a certain belief, a theological understanding of who their Jewish Messiah would
be and what he would do. The Samaritan woman also thought she knew how this
strange, Jewish man would behave - until he says, “Give me a drink” (4:7).
She replies, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of
Samaria?” By the way, John says that “Jews do not share things in common with
Samaritans” (4:9). But Jesus is not your normal Jew. He explains that he can
give her a new kind of water, living water, that “will become...a spring...gushing
up into eternal life” (4:14). His water is also not “normal.”
The Samaritan woman asks Jesus for that living water, and he does give it to
her. But here’s the catch: First, he tells her everything she’s ever done - including
the fact that she has been married five times. And the fact that the man she’s
with currently is not her husband. No fake news here.
Now, she knows Jesus is a prophet, and yet, once again, Jesus is not offering
normal prophecy. He is also the Christ, the One who heals in God’s name.
Suddenly, the disciples appear, astonished to find him speaking to a woman. She
returns to the city, and exclaims, “Come and see a man who told me everything I
have ever done!” Then she asks, “He cannot be the Messiah, can he?”
Once the woman’s Samaritan friends hear her share this Good News, they
start catching what she caught. “Many Samaritans from that city believed in him
because of the woman’s testimony” (4:39). Jesus is not a virus. But Jesus is
definitely contagious. Fear is also contagious, but God’s highly contagious love
casts out fear. When we encounter Jesus, he invites us to let go of our losses, so
we can catch something liberating and life-giving: a new/old normal called love.
In these trying times, how does Jesus want to be caught now? How is he
inviting us to follow him into a new/old normal? What if this season of Lent is
about those old practices - prayer, fasting, and self-denial - done in a new way?
Poet and minister Lynn Ungar wrote a piece about COVID-19 last week.
Perhaps her words have some answers for us:
PANDEMIC
What if you thought of it
as the Jews consider the Sabbath—
the most sacred of times?
Cease from travel.
Cease from buying and selling.
Give up, just for now,
on trying to make the world
different than it is.
Sing. Pray. Touch only those
to whom you commit your life.
Center down.
And when your body has become still,
reach out with your heart.
Know that we are connected
in ways that are terrifying and beautiful.
(You could hardly deny it now.)
Know that our lives
are in one another’s hands.
(Surely, that has come clear.)
Do not reach out your hands.
Reach out your heart.
Reach out your words.
Reach out all the tendrils
of compassion that move, invisibly,
where we cannot touch.
Promise this world your love--
for better or for worse,
in sickness and in health,
so long as we all shall live.
~ The Rev. Thomas A. Momberg
March 14, 2020
NOVEMBER 22, 2020
Last Sunday after Pentecost
CHRIST THE KING SUNDAY
Preacher - Tommy Sheppard
There is something a little sad in today’s
gospel reading, something so easy to
miss that it most of us miss it.
That’s probably because this is such a
tempting story.
It is one of the most straightforward of
all the New Testament’s accounts of
judgment;
and one of the most fun.
Here, judgment is connected to actively
reaching out to those in need,
specifically to “the least of these,”
to those who are at the bottom,
those who are the most helpless and who
have no other champions –
to those with no one else to care for
them.
These are God’s favorites,
the ones God sees in a special way.
And it’s really clear that those who are
condemned are not condemned for
doing bad things,
or for acting unjustly or cruelly.
Instead, they are condemned for the good
they did not do.
You can’t sit out of the Christian moral
life.
There’s just no way, by avoiding
engagement,
to avoid judgment.
“Well, I never intentionally hurt anybody”
cuts no mustard at the Great Throne
Judgment.
All of which can tempt just about any
preacher to shout,
“So get out there and serve Jesus in your
neighbor.
Do good and save your soul from the
judgment of eternal fire all at the same
time.”
Which can make a heck of a sermon,
and one most church leaders aren’t
opposed to preaching from time to time.
It’s good stuff.
But today let’s talk about what’s so sad
in this story.
Notice that those who have been gathered
up at the right hand of the Lord –
those who are called blessed of the
father,
the ones we want to be –
have only one thing to say to Jesus.
They say,
“Lord, when?”
“When was it that we saw you hungry and
gave you food,
or thirsty and gave you something to
drink?”
“When?”
That’s it; that’s all they have to say.
This is really sad because of all the
loss,
and all the struggle, and all the pain
that question implies.
These folks, the sheep,
the saved, the good guys,
they were right,
they did all of the correct things,
but they missed the greatest joy of it.
They missed seeing the Lord.
They overlooked the hidden presence of
God in the faces of those they
served.
One of the reasons we have this parable
may be to help us avoid that loss,
to remind us what reaching out and caring
and serving can be about at the
level of greatest depth.
Because it’s very clear:
No matter how right you are,
no matter how much you serve the presence
of Christ in others,
if you don’t pay special attention,
if you simply don’t look for the Lord
Jesus in those you serve,
then, like the saved people in the
parable,
you won’t see him.
And most of the joy is lost.
Most of the joy of doing good and being
right and saving your soul from the
judgment of eternal fire all at the same
time,
most of that joy, is lost.
After all, reaching out in love to the
presence of Christ in others,
especially in both “the least of these”
and in those closest to us,
this is quite often a great big pain.
It takes a lot of time, and there’s
almost never any indication that anything of
lasting benefit has happened.
What’s more, “the least of these” are
usually at least partially responsible for
whatever problems and needs make them the
least.
And most of the time they don’t look or
act **or smell** the way we imagine
Jesus should.
Frequently, they aren’t very nice, and
worse yet,
they seldom seem to appreciate whatever
good we do try to do for them.
So, doing good, reaching out to feed,
clothe, visit, heal and otherwise
minister to “the least of these”
tends to frustrate us,
and we tend to get burned,
and to get burned out.
And much the same sort of thing can
happen when the ones we reach out to
are not some distant “them,”
but are, instead,
the people we live with and around,
the people closest to us.
One would think that actually serving
Christ shouldn’t be as hard,
and as disheartening, as it often is.
But there we are.
After all, just because we’re doing
something for religious reasons doesn’t
mean that, all by itself, whatever we’re
doing will look or feel religious
or that it will effect us in a particularly
religious way.
Cleaning the kitchen in the church,
or anywhere else for that matter,
is still cleaning a kitchen.
Being nice to a difficult person because
you are convinced that Jesus wants
you to,
is still being nice to a difficult
person.
Spending time or money or energy out of
Christian conviction still means
that you no longer have that time or that
money or that energy.
The Lord calls us to serve him,
in our neighbors, in our brothers and
sisters,
in the least of these, and – often the
most challenging –
in those closest to us.
That call is real;
there are no excuses.
But the Lord also calls us to see him in
the face of our neighbors,
and of our brother and sister,
and – we can’t forget – in the least of
these.
This is a spiritual call,
a call to discernment as much as it is a
call to action and to service.
There’s not a secret or mysterious way to
do this.
Here are two quick ideas:
First of all, in order to see the Lord,
we have to look.
At the people around us.
Deliberately.
All of the time.
We need to constantly look as we remember
what we are doing,
why we are doing it,
and what we hope to come from it.
We need look on purpose.
Second, if we want Jesus to show himself
to us,
it can really help if we ask him to.
Sometimes we have to ask him a lot.
That’s one reason why reaching out to
others in a way that is not wrapped in
prayer,
any act of ministry that is not
consciously and deliberately offered to God
with the request to be shown how the Lord
is in it,
while certainly not wasted effort,
is absolutely incomplete.
If our prayers during the day and about
the day do not beg the Lord for a look
at his face,
or a glimpse at his Kingdom in all that
is going on around us,
then we are cheating ourselves,
and living barely on the surface of a
much deeper reality.
To try to live the life Christ calls us
to live, without placing all of that in the
middle of some disciplined reflection,
prayer, and study,
this is to risk missing the best part of
it all.
It is to risk missing the presence and
Word of Jesus that can transform a
mundane task into an opportunity for
insight and for joy –
that can make doing the things we are
called to do a path deeper into the
mystery of God’s life, and of our own.
This story of judgment is more than a
call to serve.
It’s more than a call to be good,
and to do the right thing.
Sure, **it’s that**, but it’s much more.
It’s also a call to look, to notice,
to devote our days and our lives in the
search for the face of God
in all that we do.
It’s a call, above all,
to see.
There is something a little sad in today’s gospel reading, something so easy to
miss that it most of us miss it.
That’s probably because this is such a tempting story.
It is one of the most straightforward of all the New Testament’s accounts of
judgment;
and one of the most fun.
Here, judgment is connected to actively reaching out to those in need,
specifically to “the least of these,”
to those who are at the bottom,
those who are the most helpless and who have no other champions –
to those with no one else to care for them.
These are God’s favorites,
the ones God sees in a special way.
And it’s really clear that those who are condemned are not condemned for
doing bad things,
or for acting unjustly or cruelly.
Instead, they are condemned for the good they did not do.
You can’t sit out of the Christian moral life.
There’s just no way, by avoiding engagement,
to avoid judgment.
“Well, I never intentionally hurt anybody”
cuts no mustard at the Great Throne Judgment.
All of which can tempt just about any preacher to shout,
“So get out there and serve Jesus in your neighbor.
Do good and save your soul from the judgment of eternal fire all at the same
time.”
Which can make a heck of a sermon,
and one most church leaders aren’t opposed to preaching from time to time.
It’s good stuff.
But today let’s talk about what’s so sad in this story.
Notice that those who have been gathered up at the right hand of the Lord –
those who are called blessed of the father,
the ones we want to be –
have only one thing to say to Jesus.
They say,
“Lord, when?”
“When was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food,
or thirsty and gave you something to drink?”
“When?”
That’s it; that’s all they have to say.
This is really sad because of all the loss,
and all the struggle, and all the pain that question implies.
These folks, the sheep,
the saved, the good guys,
they were right,
they did all of the correct things,
but they missed the greatest joy of it.
They missed seeing the Lord.
They overlooked the hidden presence of God in the faces of those they
served.
One of the reasons we have this parable may be to help us avoid that loss,
to remind us what reaching out and caring and serving can be about at the
level of greatest depth.
Because it’s very clear:
No matter how right you are,
no matter how much you serve the presence of Christ in others,
if you don’t pay special attention,
if you simply don’t look for the Lord Jesus in those you serve,
then, like the saved people in the parable,
you won’t see him.
And most of the joy is lost.
Most of the joy of doing good and being right and saving your soul from the
judgment of eternal fire all at the same time,
most of that joy, is lost.
After all, reaching out in love to the presence of Christ in others,
especially in both “the least of these”
and in those closest to us,
this is quite often a great big pain.
It takes a lot of time, and there’s almost never any indication that anything of
lasting benefit has happened.
What’s more, “the least of these” are usually at least partially responsible for
whatever problems and needs make them the least.
And most of the time they don’t look or act **or smell** the way we imagine
Jesus should.
Frequently, they aren’t very nice, and worse yet,
they seldom seem to appreciate whatever good we do try to do for them.
So, doing good, reaching out to feed, clothe, visit, heal and otherwise
minister to “the least of these”
tends to frustrate us,
and we tend to get burned,
and to get burned out.
And much the same sort of thing can happen when the ones we reach out to
are not some distant “them,”
but are, instead,
the people we live with and around,
the people closest to us.
One would think that actually serving Christ shouldn’t be as hard,
and as disheartening, as it often is.
But there we are.
After all, just because we’re doing something for religious reasons doesn’t
mean that, all by itself, whatever we’re doing will look or feel religious
or that it will effect us in a particularly religious way.
Cleaning the kitchen in the church,
or anywhere else for that matter,
is still cleaning a kitchen.
Being nice to a difficult person because you are convinced that Jesus wants
you to,
is still being nice to a difficult person.
Spending time or money or energy out of Christian conviction still means
that you no longer have that time or that money or that energy.
The Lord calls us to serve him,
in our neighbors, in our brothers and sisters,
in the least of these, and – often the most challenging –
in those closest to us.
That call is real;
there are no excuses.
But the Lord also calls us to see him in the face of our neighbors,
and of our brother and sister,
and – we can’t forget – in the least of these.
This is a spiritual call,
a call to discernment as much as it is a call to action and to service.
There’s not a secret or mysterious way to do this.
Here are two quick ideas:
First of all, in order to see the Lord, we have to look.
At the people around us.
Deliberately.
All of the time.
We need to constantly look as we remember what we are doing,
why we are doing it,
and what we hope to come from it.
We need look on purpose.
Second, if we want Jesus to show himself to us,
it can really help if we ask him to.
Sometimes we have to ask him a lot.
That’s one reason why reaching out to others in a way that is not wrapped in
prayer,
any act of ministry that is not consciously and deliberately offered to God
with the request to be shown how the Lord is in it,
while certainly not wasted effort,
is absolutely incomplete.
If our prayers during the day and about the day do not beg the Lord for a look
at his face,
or a glimpse at his Kingdom in all that is going on around us,
then we are cheating ourselves,
and living barely on the surface of a much deeper reality.
To try to live the life Christ calls us to live, without placing all of that in the
middle of some disciplined reflection, prayer, and study,
this is to risk missing the best part of it all.
It is to risk missing the presence and Word of Jesus that can transform a
mundane task into an opportunity for insight and for joy –
that can make doing the things we are called to do a path deeper into the
mystery of God’s life, and of our own.
This story of judgment is more than a call to serve.
It’s more than a call to be good,
and to do the right thing.
Sure, **it’s that**, but it’s much more.
It’s also a call to look, to notice,
to devote our days and our lives in the search for the face of God
in all that we do.
It’s a call, above all, to see.
There is something a little sad in today’s gospel reading, something so easy to
miss that it most of us miss it.
That’s probably because this is such a tempting story.
It is one of the most straightforward of all the New Testament’s accounts of
judgment;
and one of the most fun.
Here, judgment is connected to actively reaching out to those in need,
specifically to “the least of these,”
to those who are at the bottom,
those who are the most helpless and who have no other champions –
to those with no one else to care for them.
These are God’s favorites,
the ones God sees in a special way.
And it’s really clear that those who are condemned are not condemned for
doing bad things,
or for acting unjustly or cruelly.
Instead, they are condemned for the good they did not do.
You can’t sit out of the Christian moral life.
There’s just no way, by avoiding engagement,
to avoid judgment.
“Well, I never intentionally hurt anybody”
cuts no mustard at the Great Throne Judgment.
All of which can tempt just about any preacher to shout,
“So get out there and serve Jesus in your neighbor.
Do good and save your soul from the judgment of eternal fire all at the same
time.”
Which can make a heck of a sermon,
and one most church leaders aren’t opposed to preaching from time to time.
It’s good stuff.
But today let’s talk about what’s so sad in this story.
Notice that those who have been gathered up at the right hand of the Lord –
those who are called blessed of the father,
the ones we want to be –
have only one thing to say to Jesus.
They say,
“Lord, when?”
“When was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food,
or thirsty and gave you something to drink?”
“When?”
That’s it; that’s all they have to say.
This is really sad because of all the loss,
and all the struggle, and all the pain that question implies.
These folks, the sheep,
the saved, the good guys,
they were right,
they did all of the correct things,
but they missed the greatest joy of it.
They missed seeing the Lord.
They overlooked the hidden presence of God in the faces of those they
served.
One of the reasons we have this parable may be to help us avoid that loss,
to remind us what reaching out and caring and serving can be about at the
level of greatest depth.
Because it’s very clear:
No matter how right you are,
no matter how much you serve the presence of Christ in others,
if you don’t pay special attention,
if you simply don’t look for the Lord Jesus in those you serve,
then, like the saved people in the parable,
you won’t see him.
And most of the joy is lost.
Most of the joy of doing good and being right and saving your soul from the
judgment of eternal fire all at the same time,
most of that joy, is lost.
After all, reaching out in love to the presence of Christ in others,
especially in both “the least of these”
and in those closest to us,
this is quite often a great big pain.
It takes a lot of time, and there’s almost never any indication that anything of
lasting benefit has happened.
What’s more, “the least of these” are usually at least partially responsible for
whatever problems and needs make them the least.
And most of the time they don’t look or act **or smell** the way we imagine
Jesus should.
Frequently, they aren’t very nice, and worse yet,
they seldom seem to appreciate whatever good we do try to do for them.
So, doing good, reaching out to feed, clothe, visit, heal and otherwise
minister to “the least of these”
tends to frustrate us,
and we tend to get burned,
and to get burned out.
And much the same sort of thing can happen when the ones we reach out to
are not some distant “them,”
but are, instead,
the people we live with and around,
the people closest to us.
One would think that actually serving Christ shouldn’t be as hard,
and as disheartening, as it often is.
But there we are.
After all, just because we’re doing something for religious reasons doesn’t
mean that, all by itself, whatever we’re doing will look or feel religious
or that it will effect us in a particularly religious way.
Cleaning the kitchen in the church,
or anywhere else for that matter,
is still cleaning a kitchen.
Being nice to a difficult person because you are convinced that Jesus wants
you to,
is still being nice to a difficult person.
Spending time or money or energy out of Christian conviction still means
that you no longer have that time or that money or that energy.
The Lord calls us to serve him,
in our neighbors, in our brothers and sisters,
in the least of these, and – often the most challenging –
in those closest to us.
That call is real;
there are no excuses.
But the Lord also calls us to see him in the face of our neighbors,
and of our brother and sister,
and – we can’t forget – in the least of these.
This is a spiritual call,
a call to discernment as much as it is a call to action and to service.
There’s not a secret or mysterious way to do this.
Here are two quick ideas:
First of all, in order to see the Lord, we have to look.
At the people around us.
Deliberately.
All of the time.
We need to constantly look as we remember what we are doing,
why we are doing it,
and what we hope to come from it.
We need look on purpose.
Second, if we want Jesus to show himself to us,
it can really help if we ask him to.
Sometimes we have to ask him a lot.
That’s one reason why reaching out to others in a way that is not wrapped in
prayer,
any act of ministry that is not consciously and deliberately offered to God
with the request to be shown how the Lord is in it,
while certainly not wasted effort,
is absolutely incomplete.
If our prayers during the day and about the day do not beg the Lord for a look
at his face,
or a glimpse at his Kingdom in all that is going on around us,
then we are cheating ourselves,
and living barely on the surface of a much deeper reality.
To try to live the life Christ calls us to live, without placing all of that in the
middle of some disciplined reflection, prayer, and study,
this is to risk missing the best part of it all.
It is to risk missing the presence and Word of Jesus that can transform a
mundane task into an opportunity for insight and for joy –
that can make doing the things we are called to do a path deeper into the
mystery of God’s life, and of our own.
This story of judgment is more than a call to serve.
It’s more than a call to be good,
and to do the right thing.
Sure, **it’s that**, but it’s much more.
It’s also a call to look, to notice,
to devote our days and our lives in the search for the face of God
in all that we do.
It’s a call, above all, to see.
NOVEMBER 15, 2020
24th Sunday after Pentecost
Father Thomas Momberg, Preacher
Numbering Our Days
Psalm 90:1-12
If you were a castaway on a
desert island, what would you want to have with you, to keep you company? This question is asked on a radio program
created by the BBC. More than 3,000
episodes have been broadcast since this program began in 1942. It’s called Desert Island Discs.
Week by week, notable people are
interviewed about their lives. They are
asked to choose recordings - spoken word or music - that they would be sure to
take along with them to that desert island.
The challenge the BBC lays down?
Pick just eight.
I had forgotten about this radio
program until I looked last week for one of my books on the Psalms. It was published twenty years ago by an
English priest named Jim Cotter. Psalms
for a Pilgrim People contains that priest’s own version of all 150 Psalms,
in which he re-writes them to be more “prayable.” He tries to take into account some
contemporary realities and issues, while retaining the poetry and beauty of the
originals.
In the book’s introduction, Jim Cotter describes Desert Island Discs and
invites the reader to do the same kind of exercise with the Psalms. Which are your “desert island Psalms”? Which eight Psalms would you take with you?
Over the years he asked members of a number of church study groups to
choose their desert island Psalms. “Again
and again, the same psalms were chosen,” he says, “from among a group of
thirty-seven....No one person’s list (of eight) ever included more than one
psalm from outside that range of thirty-seven” (p. xiii). Today, we have prayed one of those
thirty-seven: Psalm 91.
I want to take some time with
you this morning to look at the last verse.
Actually, there are five more verses, but our lectionary stops at verse
12. Perhaps that’s because Psalm 90,
verse 12, which was today’s Refrain, is a longtime favorite. It’s the desert island verse in this desert
island Psalm. Here it is again: So teach us to number our days that we
may apply our hearts to wisdom.
As I looked at our other lessons, I saw
several references to the end times, what our Scriptures call “the day of the
Lord.” “The day of the Lord is at hand,”
proclaims the prophet Zephaniah. “The
great day of the Lord is near...a full, terrible end he will make of all the
inhabitants of the earth (1:7, 18).
Today’s Epistle picks up that
end-times theme: “For you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord
will come like a thief in the night (I Thessalonians 5:2). And while our Gospel text doesn’t use the
actual phrase “the day of the Lord,” the story St. Matthew has Jesus tell ends
with: “As for this worthless slave, throw him into the outer darkness, where
there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (25:30).
You don’t need me to tell you
that we live in times that can seem like, feel like, act like the end of the
world, the day of the Lord. It’s hard to
know what seems greater: all those deaths of so many people, or the denial of death
by more than a few. There is darkness
out there, and there is, if we are honest, darkness that wants to creep deep in
here (hand on my heart).
That’s why this verse - Psalm
90, verse 12 - speaks so deeply to me.
With all the places to hear or see something of “the day of the Lord,” I
now know, even more than before, that today is the only day I can count on
being given to me. The words of poet
Mary Oliver come to mind: Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do / with
your one wild and precious life? (“The
Summer Day”).
I want to do what is life-giving, today, this day,
November 15th, 2020. If I am given
another day to live, I want to do the same with the next one: tomorrow,
November 16th. I want, I need to pay
attention to my one wild and precious life.
I need to number my days, and I need help doing that. That’s why the Psalmist, writing centuries
before Jesus or you or I walked this earth, says we need to be taught. The Psalmist prays, Teach us
to number our days. We will, our
Prayer Boom reminds us, with God’s help.
But how? How exactly do we number, count, or take
stock of our days, this day, with God’s help? The second half of verse 12 gives us a clue: that
we may apply our hearts to wisdom.
For each Psalm, Jim Cotter wrote a new refrain. The refrain he wrote for Psalm 90 is: Amidst
the confusions of time, may we hear eternity’s heartbeat.
Friends, in our heart of hearts,
there is wisdom, planted there by God.
We just need to apply our hearts to the wisdom in our hearts, to
listen to eternity’s heartbeat. Still,
we need God’s help and all the other help we can find to get quiet enough to
listen to the heartbeat of God within us.
Ira Progoff was a psychologist who created the Intensive Journal
Method. He once suggested a way that
might help us quietly consider how to number our days by applying the wisdom of
our hearts. Whether or not you keep a
journal, we can write these words: “This is a time in my life when....”. Then,
we can fill in the blanks.
Here are some blank-fillers that
come to mind:
This is a time in my life
when...I need to pay more attention to my diet and to exercise more, so I
can live as many days in as healthy a way as I possibly can.
This is a time in my life
when...I want to spend a little more time on the phone or in other
physically distant ways with my friends and family.
Here’s one of my personal
favorites: This is a time in my life when...I’m just too old and cranky to
put up with this crap! My friend who
came up with this respons didn’t use the word crap, but you get my meaning.
The children of Israel probably felt old
and cranky when they first prayed Psalm 90.
It was nearly a century since they had survived the destruction of their
temple and their exile to Babylon. They
had no ruler, they were short on food, and they worshiped in a makeshift
way. And they had not even wandered yet,
for decades, in the wilderness.
Even their faithful leader, Moses, who may well have written this Psalm,
did not live along enough to see the Promised Land. His life and witness helps us understand that,
no matter how long we wander in our own wilderness, no matter how long we may
feel exiled on some desert island, these songs about God, the Psalms can be of
help.
Psalm 90 tells us, in no
uncertain terms, that the ancient Israelites could not possibly be as old as
God is or as cranky as God sometimes seems to be. God was for them, God still is for us “from
everlasting to everlasting” and for whom a “thousand years...are like a watch
in the night.” God is God, and we are not.
We are “like a dream...(whose) years come to an end like a sigh.”
Indeed, the Psalmist prays, and,
if we are honest, we will join that prayer, “the days of our life are seventy
years, or perhaps eighty” - or even a hundred and three! - “if we are strong.” Our prayer, along with the ancients and
others who lived and died before us, is to admit just how short, compared to
God, our life actually is, and then to count our days, starting with today.
When a clergy friend told me about Ira
Progoff’s sentence starter, the words that filled in the blank for me were
these: This is a time in my life when...I need to remember to say “I love
you” to all the beloveds in my life...and to God. The congregation of Holy Trinity is one
of my beloveds. Today, the wisdom of my
heart tells me I need to say “I love you” to all of you present for this
service of worship and to those who are not with us but who read these words. I want, I need to say”I love you” before
it’s too late.
In Psalms for a Pilgrim People, Jim
Cotter reimagines the word of Psalm 90, along with all the other, one hundred
forty-nine Psalms. He renders the final
verses of this desert island Psalm in these song-like words:
(God), satisfy us in the
morning with your lovingkindness,
So we shall rejoice and be glad
all the days of our life....
(And) fill us with the Spirit of
love.
For in the evening of our days,
when we come to be judged,
we shall be known only by love,
delivered only by love.
~ The Rev. Thomas A. Momberg, Vicar
fathermom1949@gmail.com
Holy Trinity Episcopal Church
3745 Kimball Avenue
Memphis, TN 38111
holytrinityec.org
NOVEMBER 1, 2020
All Saints' Day
Father Thomas Momberg, Preacher
Praying
Our Goodbyes The
Feast of All Saints
Matthew
5:1-12
Every Wednesday at noon, a few of us
gather for our weekly Bible study via Zoom. Bible study was going on long
before I came to be with y’all at Holy Trinity, but now, since March, it looks
and feels different.
We can’t give each other a handshake
or a hug. We can’t pass around treats
or birthday cards to sign, like we used to do.
We can’t greet our friends when they arrive or leave, at least not in
the old, familiar ways.
But we can still see each other and
talk to each other. We can still choose
some part of Holy Scripture and read it out loud and reflect on it. We can still say “hello” and greet one
another when our friends enter our virtual time together. We can still pray with each other before we
go. We can still say our goodbyes.
Jesus was saying “hello” to his
friends and the crowds in our reading today from the fifth chapter of Matthew’s
Gospel. He had just begun his public
ministry, picking up where John the Baptist had left off. The first four disciples - Peter, Andrew,
James, and John - had just left their lives as fishermen to follow him.
Then, as we just heard, Jesus sees the
crowds, goes up on a mountain and begins to preach. According to Matthew his
sermon will take up all of chapters five, six, and seven and will cover all his
most difficult teachings. But before any of that Jesus talks about who God is.
Not just a God who judges, Jesus preaches, but a God who blesses.
On Wednesday I invited my fellow
students of the Bible this question for reflection: Whether because of its
presence or its absence in your life, which one of these blessings speaks most
deeply to you today?
Pick one, I said. I knew it might be hard to choose just one of
those blessings to consider, when all of them can certainly speak to us. Blessed are the poor in spirit...the
merciful...the persecuted. I wonder:
which one would you choose? Honestly, how can you or I possibly choose
just one blessing, one single blessing which we feel is so close to us or so
very far away?
I was asking my fellow students of
the Scriptures to do something people have done for centuries. It’s called lectio divina, which means
divine lesson. In this ancient practice, it is - or can be - the lesson God
wants you to learn more about.
Here’s how it works: choose a word, a
phrase, or something else in the reading that speaks personally to you. That lectio is a lesson for today -
perhaps even a lesson for a lifetime.
That lesson may be one you choose because it’s very present in
your life these days - or so absent, you long for it. Where, oh, where is the mercy I need? That lectio, that lesson may
also be one that, somehow, chooses you, whether you like it or
not.
The day after I was ordained priest,
I did not preach at my first Eucharist. Presiding at the altar, offering God’s
blessing over the bread and wine, was enough for me, and so I asked another
priest, who was my spiritual guide, to preach.
In her sermon Elizabeth mentioned a
popular commercial that had borrowed Carly Simon’s song, “Haven’t Got Time for
the Pain.” When you don’t have time for
pain, the announcer said in that commercial, take Excedrin. “Tom,” Elizabeth proclaimed, “as a priest, you
must make time for the pain.”
Her advice has stayed with me through
the years, so much so that even now, 34 years later, the Beatitude that speaks
to me most deeply, the one I choose because it keeps choosing me, is “Blessed
are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” When it hurts, when there is pain, it almost
always has something to do with a loss or losses, a grief, maybe even a death, whether it be
the literal death of someone you loved, or a symbolic death—like the death of a
cherished dream. When life hurts like
hell, there is some kind of mourning I need to do, some kind of comfort I need.
But these days, who wants to make
time for the pain, the loss, the grief, let alone the death? In the age of COVID-19, with so many dying
from this dread disease; at a time when family and friends cannot be certain
they will be able even to greet their suffering beloved ones in person with
“hello” or “goodbye”; in a global season of what some ancient spiritual guides
named a “dark night of the soul,” a time when we can’t even sing together! -
who can possibly bear to make time for the mourning? Where’s the comfort, the blessing in that?
Of all the spiritual
guides in my life since my ordination, no one has been more helpful than
Catholic nun, Joyce Rupp, known globally for her work as a writer, retreat
leader and speaker. She also served as a
hospice volunteer. Years ago I
discovered her book Praying Our Goodbyes: A Spiritual Companion Through
Life’s Losses and Sorrows. I have
returned to it time and again for insight and wisdom - and for comfort. In that book she helps me remember and
reflect on the life of Jesus, who, as
Isaiah put it, was a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief (53:3).
Joyce Rupp’s own journey with
life’s losses began with the drowning death of her younger brother, Dave. She
was only 25 years old. That was when the painful truth of how hard it is to say
goodbye, she says, “started to take root...and take hold in my (her) heart” (p.
xii). Praying Our Goodbyes is the
book that grew out of that tragedy. For
more than thirty years it has comforted people in grief who are mourning all
kinds of events or experiences in which a deep sense of loss is felt. Instead of running from our goodbyes, instead
of just saying them, says this wise nun, we need to pray them. We need to pray our goodbyes. After all, “goodbye” is short for “God be
with ye.”
In the chapter called “The Ache
of Autumn in Us,” Joyce Rupp writes: “There is an existential loneliness that
permeates every human spirit, a kind of unnamed pain inside, deep within us, a
restlessness, an anxiety, a sense of ‘all aloneness’ that calls out to us....a
persistent (ache, a) longing in us...It happens because we are human. It is as strongly present in us as autumn is
present in the cycle of the seasons.”
She continues:
“I believe this ache is within
us because we are composed of both physical and spiritual dimensions. Our body belongs to the earth but our spirit
does not....No matter how good the ‘good earth’ is, there is always a part of
us that is yearning, longing, quietly crying out for the true homeland where
life is no longer difficult or unfair” (pp. 7-8).
I do not need to tell you this,
but sometimes it helps to state the obvious: Life in this way-too-long season
of coronavirus is difficult, even dangerous and deadly. It is unpredictable, unrelenting, unfair. And exhausting. We are all well acquainted with “pandemic fatigue.” (Not to mention our election fatigue!) No wonder the phrase from the Psalms “How
long, O Lord?” comes to mind. “How long,” the Psalmist prayed, “shall I have
perplexity in my mind, and grief in my heart, day after day?” (13:2)
Today is All Saints’ Day, when
we remember all the saints who now rest from their labors, those who are now in
the eternal care of God, including all those especially dear to us. We claim they are not just reminders of a
faithful life well lived. They, along
with us, are part of a “mystic, sweet communion,” as one hymn puts it. We Christians say we have come to believe
there is, in that mystical body of Christ, an intercommunion of the living and
the dead.
Let us be certain to pray on this
Feast of All Saints for all the saints of our lives, especially those who have
died since last All Saints Day. Let us
also remember those who have gone to God since COVID-19 came upon us. In our prayers for them and for their loved
ones, in our prayers for those we love but see no longer, may we be comforted
in our mourning.
And when we simply cannot pray;
when we just cannot make time for the pain, the grief, the loss; when we cannot
seem to stand to live in a house of sadness or trauma or brokenness, not even
for one more minute - we can be comforted. In the midst of our mourning, we can ask and
allow others to pray for us and on our behalf.
Sometimes we can pray our goodbyes.
Other times, we can ask others to pray them for us, certain that, as
Joyce Rupp puts it, “God never leaves us during our winters of the heart” (p.
64).
On this Feast of All Saints, while we
mourn, let us make time to pray our goodbyes.
And if, and when we cannot pray, let us allow others to pray our
goodbyes for us.
~ The Rev. Thomas A. Momberg, Vicar
Holy Trinity Episcopal Church
3745 Kimball Avenue
Memphis, TN 38111
holytrinityec.org
fathermom1949@gmail.com
OCTOBER 25, 2020
The 21st Sunday after Pentecost
Father Momberg, Preacher
Love Your Neighbor? Mask, then Unmask,
Yourself Matthew 22:34-46
Monday morning I drove downtown, along Union Avenue, on my way to an
in-person follow-up to the “telemedicine” version of my annual physical. It was time for my primary care physician and
her healthcare team to check me out more thoroughly. I was glad to go, because I live with
pre-existing conditions in a time of life and in the life of this world when I
need to pay even more attention to my health, both body and soul.
While driving there, I noticed, as I often do, the grand, old edifice of
a church. Idlewild Presbyterian Church
has long been a beacon of light, love, and life in Memphis, and I have spent
some deeply meaningful time there over the years. So, I looked again fondly at their
buildings. Then , I noticed a new
banner. Idlewild’s banner said: Love
thy neighbor, wear a mask.
Usually I take Monday off. I try
not to do any work on Mondays, including sermon preparation. This Monday, however, I peeked at the lessons
for today. Both our Lesson from
Leviticus and our Gospel text from Matthew have these exact same seven words: You
shall love your neighbor as yourself.
Idlewild’s banner was and is right on time, for this preacher and for
this time we all inhabit.
In the midst of what may be the most challenging season of our
lifetimes, Idlewild dares fly a banner that, for some, will cross the line from
preaching the Gospel to meddling in partisan politics. But I’m with Idlewild. I believe today’s simple, ageless message - “You
shall love your neighbor as yourself” - can take on a brand, new meaning for us
- if we let it. If we are truly paying
attention, “Love thy neighbor, wear a mask” can change our Christian lives.
Let me say more. Perhaps you know
that old expression: “Put your money where your mouth is.” I suggest that, all politics aside, loving
our neighbor as ourself these days includes putting our mask
where our mouth is.
If we love our neighbors as much as we say and try to do, we will cover
both our nose and our mouth when we come anywhere close to someone who is not
in our immediate family or our “pod,” as they say these days. Otherwise, we may expose our neighbors to a deadly virus that
wants to control way too much of our daily lives. We live in the midst of COVID-19, even if we
don’t actually “have” it.
“Mask up, Memphis!” proclaims a
public service announcement. Of course,
wearing a mask is not just a Memphis thing.
Even national politicians need to put their mask where their mouth is. Take Chris Christie, for example. The former governor of New Jersey and
one-time presidential candidate was infected with COVID-19 at a recent
super-spreader event. In an article
titled “I Should Have Worn a Mask,” he writes:
“For seven months I was very careful
about mask wearing, social distancing, and hand washing. As someone with asthma, I knew I faced
heightened risk. Then, at the Rose
Garden nomination event for Judge Amy Coney Barrett, and during debate
preparations with President Trump, I let my guard down and left my mask off. I mistook the bubble of security around the
president for a viral safe zone. I was
wrong. There is no safe zone from this
virus.” Christie ended up in the ICU and
is now recovering. He goes on to say:
“These minor inconveniences (like
wearing masks) can save your life, your neighbors, and the economy. Seldom has so little been asked for so much
benefit. Yet the message will be broadly
heeded only if it is consistently and honestly delivered by the media,
religious leaders, sports figures and public servants. Those in positions of authority have a duty
to get the message out.”
In that near-death experience,
Governor Christie learned something more about freedom. One of the key authors of the Western concept
of freedom is John Stuart Mill. In his
1859 essay “On Liberty,” he wrote that liberty (or freedom)
means ‘doing as we like...as long as what we do does not harm them, even
though they (may) think our conduct foolish...or wrong....” Do no harm. Right, beloved doctors in our midst? To put it more colloquially, my freedom does
not include the freedom to get someone else sick.
Dear friends in Christ, please
forgive me and my rant. I know I really
don’t have to tell you, the good people of Holy Trinity, about freedom. Neither do I need to tell you to mask
up. You already do the appropriate
things to stay healthy and free, in the best sense of those words. You’re already living into what is our new
normal. You’ve already got that new-time
religion, in a day and age when parts or all of us would love to sing, Gimme
that old time religion.
What I do want to talk about, for a
little while longer, is what I think the rest of Jesus’ message - to love your
neighbor as yourself - might be for us, in this time of trial, this season of
terrible suffering and far too much death.
I don’t need to say any more about masking up. I want to talk with you for a few more
minutes about taking off our masks, yours and mine. Allow me to recite once again those timeless
words from today’s Gospel:
A lawyer asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is
the greatest?” He said to him, “’You shall love the Lord your God with all
your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment.
And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law
and the prophets” (Matthew
22:35-40).
As yourself. Love
God, and love your neighbor. But love
your neighbor as yourself.
What does it mean to love yourself?
Last Sunday I shared a story in
my sermon. It was originally told by
Michael Curry, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church. He writes about that story in his new book Walking
the Way of Love. This book is
one of the finest I’ve read in some time.
Now, I’m a company man, a thoroughbred Episcopalian. But I believe Bishop Curry has been
preaching, teaching and truly trying to live the Love Command - Love God, love
your neighbor - for a long, long time.
And I believe what he has to say about love holds something for everyone
on the planet.
At the 79th General Convention of
the Episcopal Church, in July, 2018, Bishop Curry preached a sermon in which he
referenced the life and witness of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor and
theologian who was arrested, imprisoned, and hanged for his association with
the plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. His
most famous book is The Cost of Discipleship.
Two summers ago Bishop Curry
preached at that Convention about another book of Bonhoeffer’s: Letters and
Papers from Prison. In that sermon,
our Presiding Bishop paraphrased something Bonhoeffer wrote in that book. Here it is: Throw yourself completely into
the arms of God. Throw. Yourself.
Completely into the arms of God.
Bishop Curry puts it this way: “Take a deep
breath and leap into intimate relationship with Jesus. Make his Way of Love...your own way of
life...find a community of people who share that commitment. Then you can walk together and not grow so
weary” (Walking the Way of Love, p. xi).
Now, I know some people are just not
ready to do that. I’ve been there! When we throw ourselves completely into God’s
hands, we need to be sure that we have a safe place, a trustworthy community
with whom we can do that, to be that open to love. And we need to feel brave enough to take that
leap. I believe that, when it comes to
love, we need to be ready, willing, and able to receive it and to give it.
And yet, dear friends in Christ,
today, together in our Zoom worship experience, we have an opportunity to do
just that. You see, today, we are
unmasked! Today, we’re a community of
people who seek to share a commitment: to love God and one another. Today, we’re a weary people who walk
together, virtually. And today, we are
people who need the love of Jesus, who need to be in a relationship with Jesus,
who need to take a leap, to throw ourselves into the arms of our living,
loving, and life-giving God.
When we do that, when we take
that leap, we will not need our masks to love our neighbors or our God. When we take that leap, we’ll love
ourselves. And when we love ourselves,
we’ll be loving our neighbors and our God.
May our God give us wisdom, grace, and courage to love like that, today
and always. AMEN.
~ The Rev. Thomas A. Momberg
Vicar, Holy Trinity Episcopal Church
3745 Kimball Ave.
Memphis, TN 38111
holytrinityec.org
fathermom1949@gmail.com
SEPTEMBER 20, 2020
The 16th Sunday after Pentecost
Debbie McCanless, Preacher
Good
morning my friends.
It
has been my honor and privilege to be with you these past several months. Now,
I share my final homily with you.
Two
of our lectionary readings are about fairness. First Jonah. When I think about
Jonah, I automatically go to my childhood Sunday School days and Jonah’s under
sea voyage as he is swallowed into the belly of the whale, (although scripture
say it is a large fish). And truthfully, this is an image of what I feel like
we’re going through today, being in the belly of the whale and I am hoping to
be spit back on the shore someday.
But
there is ‘the rest of the story’ of Jonah. Our lesson is about the conversion
of Nineveh and God’s mercy. In the verses preceding our reading we find that Jonah
finally does what God has been telling him to do. He goes to Nineveh calling on
the people to repent. And they do – the people donned sackcloth and fasted. When
the king heard this, he declared that “all shall turn from their evil ways and
from the violence that is in their hands.” Jonah was not expecting this. When
God saw their penitence, God changed his mind and did not bring disaster to the
city.
And
Jonah was not happy. It wasn’t fair that God just forgave these sinners. Jonah
was furious, filled with self-righteous indignation, “I’m so angry, I’d rather
die than live” he said. Jonah wanted retribution for the people of Nineveh. He
wanted them to get what they deserved for all the sins they’ve committed. God
then asks Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry?
How
many times have I been filled with self-righteous indignation over a wrong
committed against me? I can understand Jonah’s want for retribution. How dare
God offer forgiveness and grace instead? As the writer Debi Thomas says, “Isn’t
it right to be angry that God’s grace is so reckless and wasteful, it
challenges our most cherished assumptions about justice? Theologian Richard
Rohr calls this type of forgiveness “restorative justice” as opposed to
retribution and the penal system that we are so used to today.
The
truth is that even the people of Nineveh are God’s children, they are made in
the image of God just as Jonah. Just as we are, you and me as well as our
enemies. Like Jonah, sometimes it is difficult for me, dare I say us, to see
our sins and that we are living wholly by the mercy of God. Jonah does not
understand the mystery of God’s mercy and if I’m honest, neither do I. Just as
God asked Jonah, I have to ask myself, “Is it right for you, Debbie, to be
angry?”
Speaking
of anger and grumbling, we move to the New Testament reading which offers
another understanding of fairness. The familiar parable of the Laborers in the
Vineyard.
The
landowner goes out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard.
There is an agreement between them for the usual daily wage, a denarius. Later,
about 9:00 he goes out and finds others and tells them to go into the vineyard
and he will pay them what is right, no agreement, no haggling over pay. Several
more times, (about every three hours), he goes out and does the same, sending more
workers into the vineyard. Finely, around 5:00 he went out and found others
standing around. “Why are you standing here idle all day? They said to him,
‘Because no one has hired us.’ He too sent them to the vineyard to work. Mind
you, they did not say they did not want to work, but that no one has hired
them.
At
the end of the workday, the landowner has his manager bring the laborers in to
pay them. Herein lies the rub. Those whom he hired last are brought forward
first and paid the usual daily wage, a denarius; remember they were told they
would be paid what is right, no set amount. Lastly the early laborers are
brought forth and having seen what has gone on with the late comers are
thinking, oh boy, I’m going to get extra, I showed up early and have been here
all day. But they do not. They get the denarius that was agreed upon that
morning. And they were not happy. It was not fair! But the landowner says, “Am
I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious
because I am generous?”
Several
scholars see this parable as the right to work and an economic truth. It was
the custom for the laborer to come into the village looking for work. Notice
the workers who were hired last did not say, ‘we do not want to work’, they said,
“no one has hired us”. Why is that? Maybe they had to walk farther, were not as
skilled, didn’t speak the language and had greater challenges that those who
could arrive early. They did not haggle over the pay, they just wanted to work.
I think landowner knew that. He also knew that a denarius was a just wage for a
day’s work at the time. Obtaining work and earning a fair wage meant the
difference between feeding your family or going home to a hungry family.
Remember,
Jesus, the carpenter, was a working man. I imagine him going into the village
of Nazareth seeking work. He had a mother and younger siblings to support. He
knew the difficulties and realities of making a living.
The
writer, William Barclay, offers another point; it could also be a lesson about
timing. It could be that those who come to God early in their life are no more
loved than those who become a Christian “till the shadows are falling on his
life.” God’s love makes no distinction, whether you come at the beginning of
your life, or the end, or somewhere in between. The unbounding and unmerited
gift of God’s generous love is there.
Unfortunately,
I can see a little of myself in this vineyard story. I follow the rules, show
up on time and do my work. It is fair that I get my full share. But as I have
gotten older, I know there is more to the story and things are not always as
they appear. Not everyone has the same privilege as I have had and continue to
have in order to have make a decent living.
As
Debi Thomas states, “I’ll be blunt: these two stories about fairness and
justice are for us. Stories for right now. Stories for the times we live in.”
and I agree. I am, we are, the beneficiary of God’s abundant justice – of God’s
generous love and grace. Why are some of us, especially those in power and
power comes in many forms, so willing to deny it to others; the “other” that we
want to ostracize, those different from us whether based on skin color,
ethnicity or nationality; to vilify and lock up instead of rehabilitate; to
mock and scorn anyone who is different; unwilling to care for our earth and her
resources; unwilling to care for each other in this pandemic?
We
are on this planet together. We need each other. We are dependent on each
other. But what if what is “fair” for me is not good for you or others? We must
re-examine our narrow notion of fairness and realize everyone - everyone has
worth and is worthy of dignity and has a place at the table. We need to be
building longer tables, not higher walls. How will I, how will we, work to
create a more just and fair society for all. How will we show God’s generosity
to others?
We cannot talk about justice without
remembering Supreme Court Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I leave you with the
Facebook post by Presiding Bishop Michael B. Curry
11 hrs ·
He starts with a quote, “The late John Fitzgerald Kennedy once
said, “while on earth God’s work must truly be our own.”
The he goes on to say “The sacred cause of liberty and justice,
dignity and equality decreed by God and meant for all has been advanced because
while on earth Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg made God’s work her own. Because of
her the ancient words of the prophet Micah to do justice, love mercy and walk
humbly with God have found fulfillment. May we follow in her footprints. May
she rest in the arms of the God who is love and the author of true justice.
Rest In Peace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Shalom.”
I reiterate how will we advance the cause of liberty and
justice, dignity and equality for all?
Amen.
SEPTEMBER 6, 2020
The 14th Sunday after Pentecost
Father Thomas Momberg, Preacher
Church
Sins
Matthew
18:15-20
“If another member of the church
sins against you...” Nearly twenty-five
years ago I spent time with today’s Gospel text from Matthew. This week, while reflecting on this Biblical
process for restoring broken church relationships, I remembered what a New
Testament professor called “joining the conversation.” She invited us to talk with Jesus, asking
questions. So, I invite you to join a
conversation with Jesus and me today.
Let’s begin. My first question: Jesus, did you really say this about your church? It sounds like you, but it’s only found in
Matthew’s version of your Gospel. In
fact, the word “church” is found just twice in the Gospels, both in
Matthew. Did you say this?
Holy Trinity sisters and brothers, let me
bring you into the loop. A large church
I served as Rector had experienced problems for many, many years. Today we’d say they were in “generational
conflict.” When I joined them, I became
a participant in that church’s conflict, simply because of who I am and what I
did. Eventually, we decided to get some
professional help to work through things, and we hired a consultant. In other words, we were a church family that
needed counseling - and went and got it.
At one session, the consultant,
an Episcopal priest trained in conflict resolution, printed something for us to
sign. It was a very large copy of today’s
Gospel text, those six verses from Matthew 18.
He said that, if we were truly serious about resolving our issues and
moving forward together, we could use Matthew 18:15-20, sign that big copy of
it, and post it in the parish hall. He
also suggested we reduce and reprint the signed copy in every Sunday
bulletin. I still have one of those Bulletin
inserts.
Now, as you know, it’s one thing
to agree and sign on to some kind of a pledge, an oath, a covenant of behavior,
whether it’s for Christians or for some other group. It’s another thing to live it out, day by
day. Matthew 18 says the church member
who has been offended or hurt by another church member is the one to take the
first step in resolving things. In other
words, the one who was offended confronts the offender.
But Jesus, in Matthew’s day,
only men were real members of a church.
What was healing supposed to be like back then for women against whom
men sinned?
If someone hurts you, this code
of conduct says, you are to go to them and tell them so, privately. The problem, as you know, is that the one who
hurts may end up hurting the one who hurt them - or someone else. Hurt people hurt people. Jesus, sometimes someone is so hurt, so
victimized, so oppressed, they just can’t see how to confront their oppressor. Sometimes, the one oppressed rises up in
anger against their oppressor. What
should they do then?
My sisters and brothers in Christ, we
say we believe sin hurts people.
“If another member of the church sins against you....” The question
here, if we are willing to answer it, is: What is sin? Sin, our Prayer Book Catechism tells us,
is “the seeking of our own will instead of the will of God” (BCP, p. 848). That means when we sin, we are essentially
saying, “MY will, not Thy will, be done.”
And what are the consequences of
sinful behavior? Our Catechism says it “distort(s)
our relationship with God, with other people, and with all creation.” In other words, when I try to get MY way, to
do MY will, it messes up all my relationships, even those
relationships I’m not even thinking about.
There are many ways to sin, ways
to make a mess with the people, places, and things in our lives, not to mention
with God. But this Gospel text is about
a particular kind of sin. In chapter 18,
Matthew has Jesus talking about the kind of sin that happens in church. If one church member sins against another
church member - actually, it’s “if a church member sins against YOU....” if and when that happens, what do you do?
I’d probably ask myself, “How
well do I know this person who sinned against me, who hurt me?” Then, I might wonder, “What’s really going
on? What happened to this person?” And then, “How big is this sin, really? How much does it hurt?” I wouldn’t automatically go and “point out
that fault” directly to the church member.
I might go and talk to them privately, speaking my truth in love. I might not.
It depends.
Jesus, is “it depends” an
acceptable response? Friends, this
is the first big problem I have with this conflict resolution process. Steps two three, and four - take one or two
others along, then tell the whole church, and then, if nothing else works, let
them go - all those make sense to me.
But I think confronting sin and sinners, including the sin in ourselves,
is a whole lot more complicated than we hear about in this kind of “if this,
then that” process. If it were simple,
why would we be in the messes we’ve been in?
Here’s what I think is
simple. When people get hurt in the
Episcopal Church, when one Episcopalian gets hurt by another one, and then,
gets angry, here’s what usually happens.
They leave. They leave and do one
of two things. One thing Episcopalians
do is: stay home, for months, years, even decades. Of course, in COVID-19 days, staying home is
what we do to stay well. However, it may
be that staying home can become a good excuse for losing contact with sisters
and brothers.
In any event, when a hurt, angry Episcopalian
stays home, they will, hopefully, some day, find their way back to their church
home or a new one. Hopefully, when they
return to church, it’s because enough time has passed for their wounds to heal,
at least heal enough to come home. It
all depends. Right, Jesus?
And yet there will always be folks
who get so hurt and angry with their church - their priest, or their vestry, or
their fellow member - they just stay home and never come back. Until, perhaps,
their own funeral. It is a great sadness
for me when I, the current priest, have never heard of a person or of their
family’s woes, until the word comes of their loved one’s death and a desire to
bury them from their church home. This
is just a reminder: if you know of someone who needs pastoral care, please let
me or one of your Vestry members know, before it’s too late for us to offer it.
There’s another question that
emerges when we consider sins in the church: What is the mission of the
church? It should go without saying
that the church is in the forgiveness business.
We’ll hear what Jesus has to say about forgiveness next Sunday. Churches, like all organizations, spend time
crafting mission statements.
Episcopalians already have one. “The
mission of the church,” our Prayer Book Catechism says, “is to restore all
people to unity with God and each other in Christ” (p. 855).
The word we hear more often in the
church than “restore” or “restoration” is reconciliation. As Episcopal Christians, our mission, should
we wish to accept it, is to be reconciled with those who sin against us. That sounds lovely, doesn’t it,
Jesus? I just love our Prayer Book! What some people now say is that, before
we can have any kind of reconciliation, we need to
start with conciliation.
Especially when there may be no real relationship to begin with. Especially when it comes to things
like...race.
The other problem I now have with this
method in Matthew of resolving church conflicts is far larger than “it depends.” It has to do with a much bigger sin than one
member might commit against another, even if that individual sinner is someone
like a bishop or a priest. The bigger
sin is the sin a church commits. In
other words, what if Jesus took this teaching to the next level? What if the
Gospel text went on to say, “If the church sins against you...”? Jesus, what would you like to say to us
about church sins?
There’s a new book about church sin
that’s getting a lot of positive press lately.
It’s called White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American
Christianity. Robert P. Jones, the
author, who grew up Southern Baptist and now runs the Public Religion Research
Institute (PRRI), uses all kinds of data to suggest that, over time, deeply
racist attitudes have become embedded in the DNA of White Christian
identity.
Jones writes: It is time -
indeed well beyond time - for white Christians in the United States to reckon
with the racism of our past and the willful amnesia of our present....White
Christians churches have not just been complacent; they have not only been
complicit; rather, as the dominant cultural power in America, (White churches)
have been responsible for constructing and sustaining a project to protect
white supremacy and resist black equality....Christian theology and
institutions have been the central tent pole holding up the very idea of white
supremacy (p. 6).
If this is true, and you are an
American Christian who is not White, and a White American Christian sins
against you, what do you do? If the
predominantly White Christian Church sins against you, a Christian of Color,
what do you do? What about if you are a
woman or an LGBTQ Christian, and a mostly straight White male church sins
against you? Might all of this have
something to do with the fact that more and more younger adults who would or
could be Christians say they are done with the Church?
Dear friends in Christ, I’m
not done with the church. I may be
wrong, but I think that today, the church as I know it and love it, the church
where, as a Christian song from the 60’s put it, you’ll know they are Christians
by their love - these days, I think we Episcopal Christians, imperfect as we
are - we are trying to live and love more and more like Jesus would have us do
- together. I’m talking about
that relatively big denomination of American churches called Episcopal,
and our smaller collection of churches called the Diocese of West Tennessee,
and this little church called Holy Trinity, where two or three, or twelve or
thirteen, or even more gather in Jesus’ name.
Whether it’s Presiding Bishop Michael
Curry’s initiative called “Becoming Beloved Community,” or the efforts our own
Bishop Phoebe Roaf is making to create, encourage, and restore healthy
community among us, or our own Wednesday Bible study or Sunday worship - I do
not see church sins happening the way I have in the past. I see us taking steps toward healing hurts,
resolving conflicts, and restoring unity along dividing lines.
Today, my sisters and brothers,
I see the church as I suspect Jesus envisioned it - all things considered, we
are alive, well, and preparing to go where Jesus calls us next. The question on this 2020 Labor Day weekend
is: What does the work of healing, the work of restoration, the work of
reconciliation look like for Holy Trinity, for the Diocese of West Tennessee,
for the Episcopal Church in the days ahead?
So, Jesus, what do you have to
say about all that? What would you have
us do next, in your name? What would you
do - through us?
~ The Rev. Thomas A. Momberg
Vicar, Holy Trinity Episcopal Church
3745 Kimball Ave.
Memphis, TN 38111
holytrinityec.org
fathermom1949@gmail.com
