August 7, 2016: May God’s words alone be spoken, may God’s words alone be heard. Amen.
It is so good to be back here with all of you this week. I have enjoyed my vacation and thank David, Bill, and the staff for keeping the light on as they say. As for me, I spent part of the time on Cape Cod. One of the things I experienced on my trip to the Cape was a whale watch. My friend and I were staying in Provincetown on the very end of the Cape, and it is a great place for going on a whale watching trip. Now, I have been on half a dozen of these, and they are always enjoyable, though seeing whales was always a crap shoot. So, on this trip, I warned Jane, my traveling companion who had never been on one, or even been to P’Town, as it is called, that it is fun, and that even if we may not see too much, the boat ride is worth it.
So, out we went…past the tip of the Cape with all the lighthouses and sailboats – absolutely a stunning landscape – out into the ocean to see whales. The first, and far off the starboard side of the boat, was a Minky – you could just see her back arching through the water. Still, at least we saw one, I thought. After awhile, we started to see spouts of water…first from very far off, and then more even closer. Though we couldn’t see the whales, we knew they were there!
Then, all of a sudden, there were several humpbacks right in front of us – I mean, right in front – within a few feet – and one lifted her head out of the water in a feeding movement known as lunging. It was amazing!!! The next thing we know, the boat was surrounded – whales everywhere – below us, on either side, in the distance, everywhere! And then we went to another spot, and there were more there too! Even the operator of the boat seemed surprised by how many were popping up all around. After a few photos, I put my iPhone back in my pocket and just took it all in for the rest of the trip. I kept saying to Jane, “this doesn’t happen every time ya know.” It was amazing.
I thought about this when I heard that old familiar passage from the epistle to the Hebrews we read this morning that said, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen,” because the thing is – I sure was hoping to see whales, but even if I didn’t, I knew they were there. Seeing them was incredible, but going on a whale watch was not the reason I knew they were there. I learned about them in school, and I think if you ask just about anybody if whales exist, they will say yes – well, if really knowledgeable they will say yes, but for our own disgraceful hunting of them in days gone by, they almost ceased to. If you ask them if they have seen them up close in the wild, most will say no.
When I was growing up, we had the Jacques Cousteau specials, that opened us all to the vast dark expanse of oceans, seas, and lakes, that hold so much life that we cannot see (unless they make themselves seen). Not just whales, but all sorts of creatures and plant life. It is all there, we know it is there, but it is all hidden in the depths of the water. It is said that there are still some parts of creation we have never ever seen… creatures living in water too deep, far beyond our reach.
Now, I wasn’t meaning for this sermon to be a big fish story, but it all seems to resonate with what we hear in our scripture readings this morning. In the gospel, Jesus is trying to prepare his followers for the time when their life with him will be changed – he is nearing Jerusalem and the cross. And he tells them to “Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” It seems we have a Sunday filled with the scripture quips most cross stitched into pillows. Anyway… what the heck is he getting at?
Now, I know that this is a great one to preach around stewardship to the church, but that, I think, misses the point. I want to focus here on the usually forgotten part about the purses…”make purses for yourselves that do not wear out.” Consider what Jesus wanted for them – to be able to continue the work he started. What kind of purse could he be talking about when he also adds the part about selling possessions and giving alms – there’d be nothing in it, so what would be the point? I mean, I hope he doesn’t mean a real one ‘cause you will rarely, if ever, find me with a purse.
No, it isn’t a real one, but he does mean something else, and one way to think of it is…us. We are the purses, we are also the house and servants, ourselves, our bodies, our minds, our spirits. He is telling us that we need to prepare ourselves and live the life we are meant to live, and we can’t do that if we run ourselves into the ground, and folks, we are one very worn out society.
Some people are working 2 or 3 jobs to make ends meet, and many are overworking themselves because corporate culture makes it a sin to not arrive early and leave late. Compounding that is the 7×24 nature of smartphones. It seems that if you have a smartphone, people feel it’s okay to call or text no matter if it is during work or off hours, urgent or not. Now, that would be fine because you can (and should) ignore it, except when a text comes in a 2am and wakes you and your spouse up because, well, someone had an idea at 2am, and decided a text would be “less intrusive” (I kid you not, I know people this has happened to). Worse is that we often do this to ourselves by actually responding on our days off – and I am an offender on this one too – essentially making an immediate response expected the next time it happens. I mean, at coffee hour a few weeks ago, a parishioner was sharing that his daughter had gotten a job as a lifeguard at a local pool, but on the firs day, she was nervous about it. I said, “I can understand that, having people’s lives in your hands.” He said, “Well, it really is that they aren’t allowed to have their phones with them when they are in the guard chair, and not having her phone to look at all the time was giving her anxiety.” Jesus talks about slaves in this gospel, and many today have become slaves too – to devices and to jobs.
The result? We are tired and in need of rest. The purse we have become has been robbed by the thief of time lost to our jobs, ridden with holes by the moths of neglect to our loved ones, our bodies, our spirit. We need Sabbath rest, and we can find that here, but not only here, we can find it in the world too. But to do that, we have to set boundaries on our work, put away our phones, and pay attention to those we love, and to the world around us. Because doing all of that will make us better able to do the work in the first place. And just to be clear, I am not talking only about our secular jobs, but our life work – the life work God created us to do, and the prophet was speaking of in Isaiah, when he said,
“cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.”
And the prophet is calling us today to step boldly forward and do our life work – work so very much needed in this world. To stand for the marginalized and the oppressed. To care for the poor, the sick, and the forgotten. We can’t do that if we ourselves are depleted. If our purses are worn too thin.
That is why vacations are so important, and we are in the season of vacations – the summer. And, it is also why coming here is important. We are nurtured here in the Eucharist, and in one another. And I think that is what makes Vacation Bible School so important too – and ours – which we call Day Camp – starts tomorrow. Because in that week, kids learn about Jesus and God in the context of play. Heck, we all should have Day Camp – If you aren’t having fun at this faith stuff, then something is really wrong. I don’t mean that faith is to be taken lightly, but doggone it all, if we can’t feel lightened in worship, if we can’t get some joy and even a laugh or two out of our fellowship together, then we are doing it wrong. There is far too much out in the world for us to be serious about and we need this place to refresh and renew our souls – to make strong our purse – and then bring that joy and love into the world so much in need of it. This should be a place you want to come to all the time!
And here is the kicker folks…when we are refreshed, spiritually and physically, we are better able to step out into the world to do our life work. And when we do, then we will come to see that the author of Hebrews was wrong, or at least partially. See, we believe that there is a world of life under the surface of the ocean, and perhaps in our own lives, we have experienced some of that – as we plunged into the waters, but the rest of that knowledge of marine life is a conviction of things not seen for most of us. When it comes to God, we don’t have to dive very deep into theological discourses, but we need to just jump in, or at least get in the boat. Because when we do, we will see God everywhere, surrounding us like those whales. Why? Because God is in all of creation just waiting to be seen…and in each of us too. Our baptism got us part of the way there, but we have to embrace the water a bit more – we need to break the surface of the water, so that we can live our faith here, and then out in the world beyond.
When we do, when we dive in, when we do our life work, we see Christ – the Christ in the homeless woman, the Christ in the trans-teenager, the Christ in the black man being pulled over, the Christ in the police officer, the Christ in the immigrant & stranger, and the Christ in the person on the other side of the political aisle too. Then, faith in God is not conviction in what is not seen for us.
But for many, still in the deepest depths of our dark world, the depths of despair, grief, loneliness, depression, addiction, and oppression, it is still something hoped for – God is present with them, in no less a way than for us, yet the darkness of the deep has enveloped them to a point where they no longer see, not only God, but themselves as people loved beyond measure – so deep that unless we dive in to look for them, we won’t see them either. For them, the faith that God loves them is something hoped for, not seen. That is why our life work is so very important. That is why we must never forget who we are and what life is about.
“cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.”
That is the life we are meant to live, that is the work we are called to do, that is the reason to build a strong purse. But Jesus is making another point here too, that time is a funny thing. We think we have a lot of it, but we never really know when it will all have run its course. We think we can spend more time with the family or go on that longed for trip, or volunteer at the church or for a local charity, but after this big project or that important deadline…but the truth, and we all know it, is that there is always another project, always another deadline, that follows the ones in front of us. Eventually, we fully understand the words of a favorite philosopher, the great Dr. Suess:
“How did it get so late so soon,
It’s night before it’s afternoon.
December is here before it’s June.
My goodness how the time has flewn.
How did it get so late so soon?”
It has been said that no one ever says at the end of their life, “I wish I had spent more time in the office.” No, if we have regrets, it is quite the opposite. “I wish I had spent more time with my family.” “I wish I had traveled more.” “I wish I had done some good for humanity and the world.”
Summer is a good time for taking stock of our lives, the purse we have built up, the things we hope for, the people & places unseen. It is a time for rest, renewal, and re-purpose, so that we can, in the years we are given, use our lives in a way that enriches others, ourselves, and the world far more than it does the corporations and the banks. So that our treasure and our heart are one and the same. So that our purses are strong, and we can live the life we were meant to live in the time we have, so beautifully inscribed in these words, often now in the news, that are near and dear to the heart of our Methodist brothers and sisters:
“Do all the good you can,
by all the means you can,
in all the ways you can,
in all the places you can,
at all the times you can,
to all the people you can,
as long as ever you can.”[1]
And to that I add…if you do this, then your faith is something hoped for by the world – the conviction of God’s love seen – in you.
Amen.
For the audio from the 10:30am service, click here:
[1] Attributed to John Wesley, but some dispute this attribution.
The Rev. Diana L. Wilcox
Christ Church in Bloomfield & Glen Ridge
August 7, 2016
Pentecost 12 – Year C
1st Reading – Isaiah 1:1, 10-20
Psalm 50:1-8, 23-24
2nd Reading – Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16
Gospel – Luke 12:32-40
