June 3 2018: May God’s words alone be spoken, may God’s words alone be heard. Amen.
Episcopalians, by and large, are a liturgical bunch. How we worship matters to us. That makes a lot of sense too, if you know the history of our church. And, most Episcopalians do not grow up in this church. Many, like me, come from less liturgical denominations, but long for the liturgy found expressed in the Anglican Church. Others come from the Roman Catholic tradition, and find our liturgy comfortably familiar. So, it might make many of you wonder then why I am wearing a bright orange stole on what would normally be a return to that very, very, long ordinary time of the Sundays after Pentecost, in which we see green for weeks on end.
Mother Diana in the Gun Violence Awareness orange stole.
Well, as I generally don’t look good in anything orange, I assure you, there is a reason. This stole was made for me by the vestment artist Colleen Hintz, a friend of mine, and it has a very important symbolism for this time, because it is Wear Orange Weekend. Wear Orange Weekend is part of a national campaign for gun violence awareness, when people all over the country wear orange to send “the powerful message that there is more we can do to end gun violence.”[1] And our bishop, the Rt. Rev. Mark Beckwith, has asked us all to bring this to mind in our services today.
All over the United States, and really, the world, God’s beloved creation is slaughtered by those who have guns. Women are the most frequent victim. Did you know that “A woman in the U.S. is fatally shot by her current or former intimate partner every 16 hours.” And men of color are killed for the crime of being black. But this stole has a special meaning today. Inset into each side are the faces of children – diverse faces of the most vulnerable in our society – the ones being killed in mass shootings in the places they go to learn and grow – our children killed in our schools.
One of the things I love here at Christ Church is the large stained glass window above the narthex – the one lit up so beautifully at night – it is of Jesus with the ones he said were closest to the Kingdom of Heaven – the little ones – the children. Jesus was right too. Children have a knack for getting right to the heart of the matter – right to the truth, and that, my friends does make them closest to God’s heart.
Many of you know I started worship services for our Nursery School children on Wednesdays. There are over 30 kids who attend these “Joyful Noise!” services, and a joyful noise we do make! We process just like we do here, as we sing, and skip, and clap “We are marching in the light of God!” all around the labyrinth. A story from the bible is read, and at the second service, we have Eucharist. I love these services – they delight my heart, truly. When I have them help me set the table, I point to the bread and grape juice, and ask them what it is – and they say “Jesus’ body, Jesus’ blood” and yeah – a few “ewwwwws” happened the first time or two we did this. I love that refreshing honesty and attentiveness to what is happening.
One of my favorite moments in a children’s service happened a few years ago. All the children help set the communion, and were gathered close around the table. When I got to the part of the story when I tell them about Jesus, I said as I do now “but we didn’t listen to God, so God sent Jesus to teach us how to be, and we didn’t listen to him either.” And just then a little boy looked right at me and said, “But WHY?” And I said “I don’t know?”
“But WHY?” Why don’t we listen to Jesus, to God? It’s a good question for us all to ask, especially in light of the scriptures we hear today. Texts that were not selected with Wear Orange Weekend in mind, but are sure perfectly timed.
In the reading from Deuteronomy, we hear the commandment of God to keep the Sabbath. We hear it, but we often don’t process the reason God gives for it. But in the gospel – and Hallelujah! we are finally returning to the gospel of Mark – in the passage read today, Jesus is being accused of breaking this commandment by the religious authorities. But, Why? Because he and his followers traveled, and then they prepared food (if you can call breaking off the grains from a wheat field to eat preparing – and, well actually that would be work in that period). Jesus fires back, reminding them of what the Sabbath was for – and for whom. He says, “Look guys, God didn’t make humans to obey laws. The laws are there for the benefit of humans.” Then, to prove his point, he heals a man’s lame hand – and yes, it’s still the Sabbath.
Jesus wouldn’t listen to the religious authorities and did work on the Sabbath. “But WHY?”
This time, I do know. And, we all need to know this, especially now. The answer lies in the reason God created the Sabbath in the first place. If you listened to the reading today, you heard this about the Sabbath: “Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, or your son or your daughter, or your male or female slave, or your ox or your donkey, or any of your livestock, or the resident alien in your towns, so that your male and female slave may rest as well as you. Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.”
In a time when having any day off was unthinkable for anyone but those with much means, this was a law to protect the vulnerable. Actually, laws, good ones anyway, usually are made to protect the weak from the strong, the vulnerable from the powerful. God’s laws are those types of laws. The Sabbath was declared to ensure that everyone received rest – including all those enslaved, and women, and beasts of burden – all with a reminder that those who now have authority were once the slaves of another. The Sabbath was about justice…and you know what? It still is – or at least it should be.
If we look at Sunday worship as being solely about thanking God for all that She has given us, while being among our brothers and sisters in Christ, then we have allowed the Sabbath to loose its full meaning. The Sabbath is not for our comfort alone, but for our souls, and it isn’t supposed to be something that is contained within this day, within these walls.
As the author and activist Alice Walker once said “Anybody can observe the Sabbath, but making it holy surely takes the rest of the week.”[2] She’s right. That’s the point Jesus was making too. ““The Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath.”
Sadly, so many look at observing the Sabbath as an option – something to do when it doesn’t conflict with other things. The cartoon for June on the church calendar in my office shows an out of shape guy coming into a gym with a back of snacks, and he says to the astounded trainer “Okay. I’m here to get in shape. You’ve got an hour. Then I’ll be back in six weeks.” The caption above the cartoon reads “If people treated the gym the way they treat church.”
Look, here’s the thing… if we really want to make a difference in the world, we can’t hide from who we are – children of God made in God’s image. Let that sink in for a moment – we are made in God’s image. And if we are going to be who we are, we will need to honor God’s Sabbath – our Sabbath. We will need to come here to get restored for the work we are called to do. And, this church needs to be a Sabbath place – a symbol of justice for all the people of the world too – that’s part of honoring the Sabbath. St. Paul put it this way in his epistle to the church in Corinth we heard today “…it is […] God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”
Or put another way, we are to be a light that shines in the darkness – that others may see the face of Jesus in us.
And the world is a very dark place right now for the most vulnerable among us. We cannot claim to love children, if we don’t stand against the assault weapons that are cutting them down in lunch rooms, school yards, and class rooms. We cannot claim to care for the stranger, if we say nothing when children are ripped from their mother’s arms at our borders. We cannot claim to love our neighbor if we turn our backs when our sisters are abused and killed. We cannot claim to follow Jesus if we deny him when he is crucified daily in the brutality inflicted on our sisters and brothers of color, or LGBT.
We cannot claim to love God when we do not honor the Sabbath in the way that God commanded, and Jesus showed us – with justice in our hearts, and love of all of God’s children in our very breath.
You know, we have joyously welcomed into the household of God 19 since I came here in 2014, most of them young children, and there is a reason that I meet with parents to ask them about their reason for having their child baptized. You see, I find the “drive-by baptism” problematic. By that I mean the folks who just want the baptism done, have a party at a restaurant to celebrate, and we never see them or the child again. Baptism into the body of Christ is a commitment – the parents make one – and we do as a community as well – to raise up that child into the full stature of Christ. This is so important to baptism – whether a child or adult – that we participate fully in our common life – but especially so for a child – and especially now.
As I often say to parents about children and Sunday School – as they grow, this will be the one place in their whole week where they will not be judged by what they wear, who they hang out with, or whether they are the quarterback or the chess champion, the musician in the school marching band, or the catcher of the softball team. Here, they will have sacred and safe space to be who they are, and to really come to know just how much they are loved by God just for being themselves – their funky, cool, gay, straight, nerdy selves. They and their parents, will learn what church is, and what it isn’t too.
It is a place for restoration from the world – but it is not a place to hide from it.
It is a place to seek comfort in times of distress and grief – but it is not a magical place where attendees never experience pain or sorrow.
It is a place where we honor and thank God – but it is not where we finish that work. That happens in the world the rest of those 6 other days.
Folks, if we really want something to change, and Lord, I hope you all think we need some changes, we have to live our lives as God commands us – as Jesus teaches us. We need to honor the Sabbath – here on Sundays – and out there the rest of the week.
We must declare for all the world to hear that the stranger who crosses our borders is our brother and our sister.
We must resist anyone who would deny Jesus in the woman, the homeless teen, the gay couple, the black or brown man.
And for God’s sake, we must make it clear in word and deed that we cannot love guns more than we love our children – the ones closest to Jesus’ heart.
It is time to renew our commitment to keeping the Sabbath – the Sabbath of God’s justice.
If we do that, if we become the Sabbath people we are called to be, then we will bring about God’s dream– a world where justice and peace are a reality for all of creation – for all of God’s children.
Amen.
For the audio from the 10:30am service, subscribe to our iTunes Sermon Podcast, or click here (note, in the audio version, Mother Diana speaks about justice being restorative – this is to mean a restoration of justice and our souls, not in the criminal justice context):
[2]https://preachingtip.com/preaching-tip-of-the-week/
The Rev. Diana L. Wilcox
Christ Church in Bloomfield & Glen Ridge
June 3, 2018
The Second Sunday After Pentecost
1stReading –Deuteronomy 5:12-15
Psalm 81:1-10
2nd Reading –2 Corinthians 4:5-12
Gospel – Mark 2:23-3:6
