Sermon for Seventh Sunday in Lent - The Rev. Elise A. Feyerherm - February 20, 2022

To view a video of the Rev. Elise A. Feyerherm’s sermon, click HERE.

Two of the most dreaded words in the English language in our day, I think are: transaction declined. Imagine your terror at the cashier in the grocery store, with a line of impatient customers behind you, and the credit card machine flashes angrily: transaction declined! Imagine the humiliation of a first date when the server approaches you sheepishly and asks for another method of payment: transaction declined!

In these circumstances we are confronted with the basic principle of our social and economic order: just about everything is understood as a transaction. What you receive is tied to whether you can pay the price, or do the favor.

The idea of transaction has infiltrated just about everything we experience. What we are worth in a relationship has to do with how much we have to offer, how impressive our dating profile is. Salaries are tied to accomplishments, or at least determine worth; Olympic medals given according to performance. Even the church has succumbed to transaction ideology. It would be almost impossible not to. Size and economic power matter – have mattered ever since the age of Constantine.

In my Anglican Formation group at the BU School of Theology we are almost finished reading a book called The Dream of God by Verna Dozier, an African American lay theologian and teacher who died in 2006. In this book, Dozier reflects on how the church as an institution has bought into the mentality of transaction, of the zero-sum game where my gain is your loss and vice versa. She writes, 

There is little difference between the values of the kingdoms of the world regarding money, prestige, human solidarity, and power, and the values of the church. Acquisition of material wealth, the bid for status, the fracturing of community, and the struggle for control mark the life of the institutional church as they mark any other institution (pp.78-79).

Is this true? I think it’s true of any human institution, including the Church, because we are human. The tendency to want security, to make life something we can control and understand, is part of our creatureliness. As creatures, we are contingent – dependent, vulnerable, limited. Transactions are concrete, tangible, measurable. They give us the illusion of control. It is a tantalizing illusion, to be sure – but is it the dream of God for us? Is this the world Jesus wants for us? Not just in the church, but everywhere?

“Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” What does a life of mercy look like? This part of Jesus’ sermon on the plain lays much of it out for us. “Love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return.” Step away from the transactional life, and look to how God is in the world, showering all alike with abundance regardless of their ability to return the favor. 

Doing good to those who hate you, blessing those who curse you, praying for those who abuse you – 

on their own these things are not good news for the downtrodden. They should not be taken as instructions for those who are abused to just shut up and take it. Remember Jesus’ first sermon in Luke, as he reads from the prophet Isaiah in the synagogue – God has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, to let the oppressed go free. Abuse has no place in the dream of God.

Abuse has no place, and so the flip side of what we hear from Jesus today is that as we do good to those who hate us, we also protect those who are hated and cursed and abused. Without needing recompense for such protection. We do it simply because God is merciful, and as followers of Jesus we seek to become like God.

Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. Mercy is so much more than forgiving when we are hurt, or picking up the check without needing to be reimbursed. Mercy is that good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, put into our lap and into the laps of all who seek God. Not counting the cost, but simply living, giving, and receiving with joy.

The other day my spiritual director asked me what my image of the dream of God was. I imagined a gathering of people around a table, with plenty of food, no expectations to be the life of the party, but a place for everyone, and a place for every stranger. A table without transactions. Like this table here in our midst.

But then another image came to me. It was the Winter Walk for homelessness that took place last week. We gathered on Copley Square – some of us had paid a registration fee, some of us pledged to fundraise, and some couldn’t do either of those things; they were just there to bear witness. We gathered to hear the experience and the prayers of the homeless, to be inspired by civic leaders, and to give voice to hope. And then, as a community, we walked. 

Along the way, those who had planned the walk stood at strategic points to show us the way and – this is so important – to cheer for us. Whether we were at the front of the pack, at the back, or somewhere in the middle, we received the same support and affirmation. We walked as a community.

And when we returned to Copley Square, there were folks with trays of breakfast sandwiches for everyone (except perhaps the gluten-free among us, which is a problem we should address later). It didn’t matter if you had paid your registration fee, or whether you had just joined the walk on a whim, or slipped in just for the breakfast sandwich. We all received the same nourishment, with joy and congratulations. You made it.

A good measure, pressed down, shaken, together, running over, was put into our lap. That’s not only what church should be – what church is. It’s what our world should be. It is the dream of God.

What is your image of the dream of God made manifest in our world? What is your alternative to the grasping after power and status and wealth? What do you imagine is God’s response to the message, “transaction declined”? Instead of a world in which transactions may be declined if you can’t pay, can we imagine a world that declines transaction, period? What in your heart does that look like?

Be merciful, just as God is merciful. How are you – how are we – being called to dream God’s dream, and see that dream come to life in the communities around us?

Glory to God, whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine…