Sermon for October 11, 2020 - The Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost - Proper 23A - The Rev'd Jeffrey W. Mello

Isaiah 25:1-9; Psalm 23; Philippians 4:1–9; Matthew 22:1–14

We are given two very different images of the Kingdom of God in this morning’s scriptures; one from Paul in his letter to the church in Philippi, and one from Matthew’s Gospel.

Matthew gives a stark version of a parable of Jesus that plays up the division and condemnation between the community to which he is writing and their Jewish siblings across the street.  

Matthew’s community is having an identity crisis, and so he offers them this image of the kingdom of God that can be compared to a wedding banquet where invited guests don’t show up and are killed for their refusal while their town burns around them.  And one who does come is expelled for not wearing the right outfit.

I’ve preached on this passage before, and with enough unpacking, there is good news to be heard in this parable.

But right now?  It just seems like an image of God's dream for the world that would only happen in 2020.

The other image of the Kingdom, the one from Paul’s letter, was actually written at a time that might have looked a lot like 2020.

This passage consists of the closing words from Paul to the community that is trying to sustain and grow under difficult circumstances and in the absence of the leader who had been with them.  There are squabbles in the community that Paul hopes will heal, and they seemed to have lost their way, lost their focus.

In his parting words to them, Paul hopes to bring them back to center, to remind them when God’s presence among them felt clearer.

Paul encourages them to:

Rejoice in the Lord always

Let their gentleness be known 

Do not worry about anything

and 

let their requests be made known to God

Do these things, Pauls says, “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

And there’s more.  Paul reminds them to focus their minds and hearts on the mind and heart of God, not on the chaos, fear and uncertainty of the world around them.

He writes, 

“Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.”

Do these things, and the peace of God will guard your hearts and minds.  Think on these things, and the God of peace will be with you.

Do these things.  Think on these things.  

And the promise of the Kingdom will be yours.

Life offering words to those unsettled Philippians.  Life giving words to us today.

I am participating in a six week program offered by the Episcopal Church for clergy health and wellness.  This past week, the nine of us from across the church, from the West Coast to Rome, talked about our earliest sense of being drawn to the priesthood. 

I told my story of my seven year old self that many of you have heard, on the front porch of my house playing church by pressing Wonder Bread under the rim of a glass to make wafers, and gathering my less than excited friends to pray and sing and make community.

After we all shared our stories, the facilitator asked us to consider what core value drew us to that earliest sense and how we might be grieving or understanding that core value today, in the midst of this pandemic.

What came to mind for me was community.  The most important thing for me, playing with my friends, or at camp, or at church, was the community that was created that I didn’t experience anywhere else in my life.

Another colleague said her core value was standing with those who have been marginalized, another said breaking bread, and another said it was the constant act of surrendering to God.

As I listened to my colleagues share what drew them to Christian community, I recognized pieces of my own story in theirs; I, too, felt the unique combination of values that my colleagues were sharing.  And I understood my own relationship to the church in a new way.

Simply put, Christian community is where my heart makes sense.  

Church is where the longings of my heart and my passions for the world meet the longings and passions of others in a way I seldom experience anywhere else.

In a world that deals in provoking fear to sell a product, or an idea or to provoke me to act, God calls me not out of fear, but in hope.  And it is hope, not fear, that makes sense to my heart.

In a world that tries to convince me to stand with the powerful and the popular, my heart draws me to sit with the broken, the beaten-down and the forgotten.  And it is when I stand in those places that I feel God’s presence, and my heart makes sense.

In a world where control is an idol, and perhaps the most attractive of them all to me, I feel God holding me most when I muster the courage to surrender, to let go, and to ask God to fill my cup until it runneth over.

It is a common experience to think on the things of this world, to do the things the world expects of us and then to wonder where God is, and why we feel like strangers in a strange land.

St. Paul was no stranger to that very conundrum.

And he discovered that it was when he set his actions to be inline with God’s, and when he set his thoughts on those things that revealed God’s presence in the world, that the Peace he spent his life seeking after was finally and fully known.

Do these things, think on these things.  And you will know the incredible peace of God.

Do these things, think on these things.  And you’ll know what it feels like when your heart finally makes sense.

AMEN.1

1 While all direct and indirect quotes are always cited, there are sources I read regularly in preparation for sermon writing.  Chances are thoughts have been spurred by these sources and so I list the usual suspects here:  David Lose, In the Meantime, The New Interpreters Bible, Sacra Pagina

© 2020 The Reverend Jeffrey W. Mello