Sermon for June 14, 2020 - The Second Sunday after Pentecost - Proper 6 - The Rev'd Elise A. Feyerherm

Exodus 19:2-8a – Romans 5:1-8 – Matthew 9:35-10:23                                                                                           

Over the past week my husband and I have been working on our estate planning – we had gotten this process started back in December, so it wasn’t the coronavirus crisis that prompted us; it was just time. We’ve been reading over draft documents before they are finalized and we sit down to sign them. And when I say “reading,” I really mean “reading” – every word, out loud, both of us pausing at the end of each paragraph to ask each other, “Do you understand that? Is that what we want?” I’ve had to look up more than a few terms to make sure I knew what was being proposed.

This process is somewhat tedious, and we can only do it for a little bit at a time before our eyes glaze over and we have to take a break. Tedious, but so important, and necessary. We are making commitments and taking on responsibilities in these documents, and we need to be sure of what we are promising, before we sign on the not-so-dotted line.

Which is why it jumped off the page at me when I read in the passage from Exodus that the Israelites, having heard God’s call for their loyalty and obedience, immediately answer as one: “Everything that the Lord has spoken we will do.”

You see, they haven’t read the contract yet. Moses has not yet ascended Mount Sinai to receive the Torah. The Ten Commandments and everything that follows them have not yet been revealed. The people of Israel are about to experience a pivotal moment, but they don’t know yet what it is. They are poised at the door God is opening for them, and everything is about to change. They are poised at the door, but they don’t know what is on the other side yet.

This is what makes it so remarkable that they are willing to walk right through that door, willing to commit to whatever the Lord will command them, because they have no idea what will be required of them. What will they be asked to do with their newfound freedom? What responsibilities will they be committing to? What will it mean to hand their life as a people over to God? This is indeed a leap of faith, and I wouldn’t blame them if once the words were out of their mouths, they had some second thoughts. I certainly would have.

So too, I wonder if the disciples were struggling with a few second thoughts of their own when Jesus told them, “See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves.” Or even before that, when he laid out the work orders for the day: “Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons.” Oh, and yeah – you’ll be hated and persecuted because of my name.

Was this what they had bargained for? Remember back when Jesus met Simon and Andrew by the sea of Galilee, and later James and John the sons of Zebedee? Jesus said, “Follow me,” and they left their nets immediately and followed him. No prospectus, no job description, no letter of agreement, no clue of what this following would entail. And they went anyway. One has to wonder why they were willing, like the Israelites, to walk through a door without having any idea what was on the other side.

After the disciples’ early leap of faith, it is only much later that they are learning what their part of this covenant will be. And it’s a doozy. Just as the Israelites learned that their covenant with God would require them to give their entire lives and selves to a way of life as holy people, so the disciples discover that following Jesus is not just about being healed and fed and learning cool stuff. It’s about being and acting in the world as Jesus would be and act. It’s about facing an unknown and often terrifying world full of disease and death and disfigurement and demons, not always knowing what to say and what to do in the face of such suffering, and being called to do it anyway.

The past few months, and especially the past few weeks, have made this daunting call very real to us as the Body of Christ. We too are facing an unknown and terrifying world full of disease and death and disfigurement and demons of oppression, and we’re not sure this is what we signed up for.

Like many of you, I was baptized as an infant, and my parents made promises on my behalf that I would be a faithful follower of Christ. I was not given the contract ahead of time, and I wouldn’t have understood it even if I had. Later in my life I chose to affirm that commitment when I was confirmed, stating publicly before a bishop that I gave my life to Christ and would walk in his ways. Many of you have done the same, if not in a formal liturgy, certainly in your lives and the choices you make every day.

But I suspect that few of us, when we gave ourselves to Christ and his Body on earth, knew exactly what would be required of us in times such as these. At times it has felt very much as if we were being sent out as sheep in the midst of wolves – surrounded by an invisible virus, rampant poverty and hunger ratcheted up because of it, and now the ugly truth of racism is boiling over in ways those of us with privilege can no longer ignore. This is not a world many of us expected Jesus to send us into, although perhaps we should have expected it, given the bible’s clear witness to this effect.

Maybe we signed the contract without reading the fine print. But here it is – I feel as if we are approaching our own Mount Sinai in these days. We have been freed from sin and death, all because the Word became flesh, lived among us, showed God’s power and glory, suffered, died, rose again, and ascended to the right hand of the Eternal Majesty. We’ve crossed the Red Sea, carried by a God who loves us. And now we stand at the foot of the mountain, in the midst of a great wilderness. And we too have a choice to make: will we actually align our lives and actions with God’s covenant? Will we act to demolish the assumptions and structures of racism in our communities and in our nation? Will we look for ways to let go of our own privilege? Will we march, write, donate, seek out relationships, worship, pray, take down symbols of oppression, pressure those who can change the laws and systems so that the hard knee will be lifted from the necks of our beloveds of color?

This is our chance. If we let it go, it will be because we have forgotten how much love God has poured into our hearts, forgotten how we have been sustained with manna in the wilderness, borne on eagles’ wings, made a holy nation. If we let this chance go by, it will be because we have forgotten how Jesus taught the helpless and harassed crowds that the poor and the meek and the hungry and the peacemakers are blessed, and that the only way to gain our lives is to lose them. If we stand now at the foot of the mountain and do nothing, it will be nothing less than a rejection of the grace in which we stand because of Jesus.

We did not sign up for this. We did not, perhaps, read the fine print before we signed. But no covenant is ever predictable, or safe. No pledge we have ever made, whether to spouse or child or friend or colleague, has ever run its course in exactly the way we thought it would. But we are able to stand true to those promises because of one thing, and one thing only: the love of God that has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. Friends, that love will never cease, and will never desert us.

So what will it be? We can do this. We have to do this. The blood of God’s beloved children is crying out from the ground. Are we worrying about what we shall say? I certainly am. It will be given us. Do we feel ourselves alone, and weak? I certainly do. We are not alone – we are the Body of Christ, and we share in Christ’s power, the power of love and self-sacrifice.

This is our chance. We can do this. We can stand at the foot of the holy mountain and we can and must say as one: “Everything that the Lord has spoken we will do.”

Let us pray:

Eternal God, God of just and powerful mercy:

you have brought us in freedom to your holy mountain.

Save us from fear and complacency,

that we may stand with your children who cry out in bondage and oppression;

that we may not let this chance to act for justice pass us by.

Pour your love into our hearts; teach us what to say; empower us to act boldly.

Do not let us shrink from the hard path of following your covenant.

Holy God, Holy and Mighty, Holy Immortal One, have mercy upon us. Amen.