Sermon Archive
Readings for 11 February 2007
The Sixth Sunday After Epiphany
Year C
Jeremiah 17:5-10
Thus says the LORD:
Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals
and make mere flesh their strength,
whose hearts turn away from the LORD.
They shall be like a shrub in the desert,
and shall not see when relief comes.
They shall live in the parched places of the wilderness,
in an uninhabited salt land.
Blessed are those who trust in the LORD,
whose trust is the LORD.
They shall be like a tree planted by water,
sending out its roots by the stream.
It shall not fear when heat comes,
and its leaves shall stay green;
in the year of drought it is not anxious,
and it does not cease to bear fruit.
The heart is devious above all else;
it is perverse--
who can understand it?
I the LORD test the mind
and search the heart,
to give to all according to their ways,
according to the fruit of their doings.
1 Corinthians 15:12-20
Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ--whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died.
Luke 6:17-26
Jesus came down with the twelve apostles, and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon. They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. And all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them. Then he looked up at his disciples and said: "Blessed are you who are poor,for yours is the kingdom of God. "Blessed are you who are hungry now,for you will be filled. "Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. "Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets. "But woe to you who are rich,for you have received your consolation. "Woe to you who are full now,for you will be hungry. "Woe to you who are laughing now,for you will mourn and weep. "Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.
The Rev. Jack Zamboni
Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord.
In Nomine…
Writer Anne Lamott works at trusting God. She’s discovered that trust in God is an absolute necessity precisely because life often makes trust in God a challenge. Among the stuff that makes trust both a challenge and necessity for her are the Bush Administration and the War in Iraq; the legacy of an abusive mother whose ashes are sitting on her closet shelf; a bad back, the need to go grocery shopping and a hormonal 13 year-old son who has decided he wants to find the father who had dropped out of both of their lives before Sam was born.
To live in the midst of such a life, she has learned to ask for help and to trust that such prayers are always answered --- though often not in the ways or time frames we have in mind. “The problem with God --” she writes, ”or at any rate, one of the top five most annoying things about God – is that He or She rarely answers right away. It can take days, weeks. Some people seem to understand this – that life and change take time… I, on the other hand, am an instant message type.”
She gets impatient with God when nothing happens at first when her son prays for help in finding his disappeared dad seem to go unanswered. She gets frustrated when a friend tells her that the way to deal with her helpless anger over the war is to breathe, pray and be kind to others. But she makes herself pray, “Help me” and then goes grocery shopping.
At the market, Anne hears the checker tell her that she has won a ham. “I felt blindsided by the news. I had asked for help, not a ham… I almost suggested that the checker award the ham to the next family who paid with food stamps. But for some reason, I waited [for the bag boy to get the ham.] If God was giving me ham, I’d be crazy not to receive it. Maybe it was the ham of God, who takes away the sins of the world.”
Distracted in the parking lot, she runs her shopping cart into a rusty wreck of a slow-moving car, driven, she discovers, by an old friend who needs money for gas and food for her family. Anne gives her money – and the ham, and is rewarded with grateful tears. God, it seems, has given her the help she asked for by giving her the chance to help someone else in need. In the midst of the usual difficulties of life, she’d trusted God enough to ask for help and found that trust not misplaced.
Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. So says Jeremiah. Those who trust in God, he says, are “like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit” In the dry environment of the Middle East, a reliable source of water, a stream that doesn’t fail, is essential to life. Shrubs planted in the desert are parched and see no relief in hard times. But trees planted by a stream with roots that get underground water even when the stream bed is dry remain green and bear fruit. Even in the desert heat; even in the year of drought they do not fear -- for they have a reliable source of life to depend on.
Trusting in God, Jeremiah says, is like that. Heat will come. Times of drought are inevitable. That’s just how life is: It comes with difficulties and challenges. But those who trust in the Lord are sustained by an ever-present, if surprising, source of life. They’ve learned “that hanging on to [God] is a way of hanging in there” when heat or drought comes at them. They have a “durability, a freshness, [a capacity] to live without fear or anxiety” because they know that in God they have a reliable source of life to sustain them.
Anne Lamott writes movingly and humorously about how she’s seen this happen in her life. But it is not only individuals who are called to experience this kind of trust – the Church is, too. Two weeks ago, I spoke of some of the challenges we face in our life as a congregation, as well as some steps we’ve begun to take to address them. But I neglected to mention the most important step we can all take – and that is to pray for God’s help in fulfilling our mission and in finding the resources, financial and human, that our mission requires. Such prayer is itself an act of trust – trust that in God’s time and in God’s ways, we will be given what we need to live as God desires.
The prayer of trust that asks for help is needed in the wider Church as well. Beginning this Wednesday, the Bishops who head of the 38 Provinces of the world-wide Anglican Communion will be meeting in Tanzania in Africa. Our newly-elected Presiding Bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori, will join her fellow Primates for the first time. There is a certain irony that this meeting will begin on Valentine’s Day – for it may well not be a love-fest. The disagreements over issues of sexuality that have bedeviled the Anglican Communion in recent years will be a major focus of the meeting. No one can predict what will happen, but there will likely be much tension and possible signs of further fracture in the life of the Communion.
So before and after that meeting we need to pray for God’s help for these Bishops and for the life of the Communion, trusting that whatever may happen, God is the stream of water that gives life, hope and sustenance. Even if we see headlines that read, “Anglican Communion Splits,” we need not fear or be anxious. Heat and drought are part of the life of the Church as well as of individuals. They can make for hard times, but they will not kill us if we are planted by the stream.
God is the trustworthy source of life who provides our needs in surprising ways -- like a giveaway supermarket ham. Who knows the ways God will give life to this congregation and to the larger church? I certainly don’t. All I know is that I’m going to pray for help, trusting with Anne Lamott and Jeremiah, that “Help” is a prayer that is always answered.