Subversive

Charlotte Collins Reed

Christ Church Episcopal

July 26, 2020

12 Proper A

If we are lucky, once in a while a great teacher will come into our lives.  Sometimes that person is a professional teacher.  Sometimes the teacher is an informal mentor or even a child. In my experience, a great teacher is someone who can make difficult concepts come alive, help us find gifts we did not know we had, and find different ways to explain a teaching until there is a way for everyone to understand.  My 6th grade teacher was such a person.  Jimmie Nell Johnson brought out the best in each student and worked tirelessly to make sure everyone understood what she was trying to explain.  This was back in the day when penmanship was taught in school and we got graded on our handwriting.  One student in our class, a boy named Chuck, had dreadful handwriting and there was nothing Mrs. Johnson could do to help him learn to write legibly.  So, she taught him how to type-this was before babies were born knowing how to work an iPad- and she made Chuck feel special in the process.  Mrs. Johnson would simply not give up on a student, even when sometimes we wished she would give up on us.

Jesus seems to be that kind of teacher this morning as he teaches about the Kingdom of Heaven. The Kingdom of Heaven is a difficult concept to grasp, especially once we realize that Jesus is not talking about where we go when we die, but how we live here on earth.  Good rabbi that Jesus is, we get 5 parables rather than one to explain the mystery of the Kingdom of Heaven.  If gardening and the parable of the mustard seed make no sense to us, then perhaps a baking metaphor and thinking about the Kingdom of God as yeast will make more sense.  Or if we need something that will appeal to our sense of adventure, perhaps the idea of buried treasure will make the Kingdom of Heaven come alive for us.  Or if going to garage sales or going fishing is our passion, then we have the merchant in search of fine pearls or the net cast into the sea.  Surely one of those parables will bring the Kingdom of heaven alive for us and help us understand the presence of God in our midst.

However, the Good Rabbi is not giving us a buffet of parables from which to choose.  Instead, Jesus gives us a 5 course meal of parables.  The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, and yeast, and buried treasure, and a merchant, and a fish net.  All at the same time.   Jesus calls us to look at all of these parables together to understand something of the kingdom of heaven.  While taking in all five parables at once can feel a bit like trying to sip from a fire hydrant, what these 5 little parables have in common will help us understand the Kingdom of Heaven.

          First, they all involve something small and hidden. The mustard seed is small and hidden in the ground.  Yeast is small and hidden in flour.  The buried treasure is small enough to be buried in the ground.  A pearl is small and hidden among other pearls of lesser value.  The net is not small, but the web pretty much disappears when thrown into the sea to catch fish.

Secondly, each parable involves work.  Someone sowed the mustard seed into the field.  The woman took the yeast and mixed it in with the flour.  Someone had to dig up a field to find the buried treasure.  The merchant had to search for the pearls, and someone had to throw that net into the sea.

        Lastly, in each parable, that which started off small and hidden becomes large and visible.  The mustard seed grows into the greatest of shrubs.  The yeast does it work and creates an enormous amount of dough.  When the treasure is found, the man sells all that he has and buys the whole field so that the treasure is his.  The merchant sells everything he owns to buy the one pearl.  And the net catches fish of every kind.

So, from these parables, we learn that the kingdom of God starts off small, and with work grows into the full stature of the Kingdom of God.

However, the explanation of Jesus' parables is rarely that obvious.  Pretty much anything we undertake starts small and with work matures into full potential. As we have noted before, Jesus rarely dispenses common sense.  When we dig a little deeper, we see that each parable is a bit subversive.  Mustard is actually a weed but in this parable the mustard seed is compared with the greatest of all kingdoms, the kingdom of heaven.  Yeast is a symbol of corruption and impurity in Scripture and is cleaned from homes in preparation for Passover.  Someone who finds buried treasure in someone else's field then buys the field to own the treasure without telling the owner is a thief, and merchants rated right up there with tax collectors and other cheats.  But this cheat sells everything to buy the great pearl, which made it impossible for him to do further business.

From this parable, then, we learn that Jesus can use weeds, thieves and cheats to make the Kingdom of Heaven come alive.  Scripture is full of stories about the way God uses thieves, cheats, and weeds.  Our reading from Genesis this morning is evidence of this as Laban tricks Jacob into marrying Leah before he can marry Rachel.  The tables have been turned on Jacob, since Jacob tricked his father to steal his brother's birth right. This is the family through whom God will bless all the families of the earth!  King David was hardly a paragon of virtue yet God used David to create a great nation, and even Noah had some serious character flaws.

In the reading from Romans this morning, Paul tells us that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor death, nor anything else in all creation can separate us from the love of God. Jesus is saying essentially the same thing with his parables this morning.  When we cannot see the kingdom, when it looks like the powers of evil have done their worst, when no rational person would believe that the kingdom is present, when all we can see is sickness, conflict, and fear, Jesus calls us to believe that we are in the midst of the Kingdom of heaven.  The message of the gospel is that the Kingdom of heaven is present not only when our lives and the world are full of peace and good health.  The gospel message is that even in the hardest of times and the scariest of places, the seeds of the kingdom of heaven are present.  Jesus the great teacher uses five parables to help us engage the gospel promise that the Kingdom of Heaven will be grown by the least likely people and found in the least likely places.  The Kingdom of heaven is like a great surprise waiting to be discovered by those who dare to look in the most unpredictable places.

                                                                                        Amen.

Wilderness

Charlotte Collins Reed

Christ Church Episcopal

July 19, 2020

11 Proper A

          When I was a child, our grandparents spent their summers living in a real log-cabin in the mountains of North Carolina.  We could see daylight between the logs and the house had a damp mildew musty smell even with the doors and windows wide open.  Shabby chic would not even begin to describe the house, which was probably built in the 1930’s and not much had been done since then.  The house had a huge porch off to one side which served as the dining room. The tiny kitchen was barely functional.  In terms of creature comforts, there was nothing much beyond basic indoor plumbing.  And yet, the cabin was holy ground for my brother, sister, and myself when we were growing up and we loved going there.  What made the cabin holy was not the appeal of the house itself, or the furnishings, or anything else about the structure, I assure you.  What made the house holy ground were the experiences we had there, the family gatherings and time with our grandparents, the love we experienced there, and the freedom to explore the woods around the house.  All three of us hold those memories near and dear to our hearts.

          This morning, Jacob is on the run from his brother Esau, having cheated Esau out of his birthright as we heard last week.  Night is falling and Jacob is tired, so he stops for the night in the wilderness, takes a stone for a pillow, and falls asleep.  While he is asleep, he has a powerful dream in which he hears God repeat God’s promise to Abraham except this time God promises Jacob that God will give Jacob the land on which he sleeps and descendants like the dust of the earth.  God then says “Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”  If there was ever any doubt that Jacob would be the heir of the promise to Abraham, that doubt has been removed.  When Jacob wakes up, he realizes that he is in a holy place, a place made holy, I would suggest, by a powerful experience of the presence of God. 

          We also hear the parable of the wheat and the weeds this morning.  In this parable, the servants want to tear the weeds out of the field so the wheat can grow, which makes good sense.  But the householder will not allow them to do so for fear that the servants will tear out the wheat along with the weeds.  Jesus explains that the good seed are the children of the Kingdom, and the weeds are the children of the evil one.  At the end of the age, the wheat and the weeds will be sorted out, and, because this is Matthew’s gospel, the weeds will be thrown into the furnace of fire and there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.   Matthew’s gospel is the gospel most concerned with the separation of the righteous and the unrighteous and is the gospel most taken with the furnace of fire and the weeping and gnashing of teeth.

          In our lectionary readings this summer, we are reading sequentially from Genesis and soon Exodus, and from Matthew’s gospel.  So, in one sense it is utter coincidence that we hear the parable of the wheat and the weeds on the same Sunday we hear God confer the promise to Abraham onto Abraham’s grandson Jacob, who has already proven himself to be more weed than wheat.  Jacob perhaps becomes Exhibit A for not judging for ourselves who is wheat and who is weed, who will shine like the sun and who will experience weeping and gnashing of teeth in the furnace of fire. 

          But here is the question these readings raise for me: Can the wilderness of Covid-19, like Jacob’s wilderness, be made holy?

          These days, we can all too easily slip into labeling people as wheat or weeds in the midst of our disagreements over how to curb the spread of Covid-19, how to strengthen the economy, how to talk about race, and on and on.  The list of ways we are divided only grows by the day.  And we so easily move from “I disagree with you” or even “Your view is wrong” to “off to the furnace of fire with you!” labeling some people wheat and other people weeds.

          Jesus reminds us this morning that we cannot always tell the wheat from the weeds, and that if we seek to eliminate the weeds we may well kill off the wheat.  The reading from Genesis reminds us that 1) what may look for all the world like a weed, in this case Jacob, can actually be transformed by God into wheat and 2) that places are made holy by what happens in them.  If a place can be made holy by what happens there, and if wheat and weeds are to live together because a) they cannot always be told apart and b) if the weeds are uprooted, the wheat may be damaged and the whole crop lost, then perhaps humankind is called to be a community rooted in something other than judgement and division.  Perhaps humankind is being called to be a community rooted in love.  What does this look like?  For us as Episcopalians who renew our baptismal covenant every time we have a baptism, this looks like seeking and serving Christ in all people, respecting the dignity of every human being, working for justice and peace, and loving our neighbor as ourselves.  In other words, being a community rooted in love means treating every human being as precious wheat despite our differences.  Is the easy?  Absolutely not, which is why we answer every question in the baptismal covenant with “I will, with God’s help.”  But if, with God’s help, we can live as people rooted in love, then perhaps, just perhaps this wilderness we find ourselves in can be make holy.  Perhaps this wilderness called Covid-19 can be transformed by love into a place where we experience God’s presence in new ways through our love for each other.  We will still be in the wilderness.  But a wilderness in which we are transformed by the experience of God and practicing God’s abundant and inclusive love loses the power to destroy us.

                                                                             Amen.

Faithful Sowing

Charlotte Collins Reed

Christ Church Episcopal

July 12, 2020

10 Proper A

          For many years while I was in the Diocese of Southern Ohio, I served on the Commission on Congregational Life.  The commission was tasked with nurturing congregations that were struggling either with numbers, budgets, or relationships and helping those congregations become healthy and strong whatever their size.  The other work of the commission was to plant new churches.  We would study demographics, find places where an Episcopal Church was most likely to succeed, recruit a church planter, and do the work of growing a church from the ground up.  Some church plants were spectacularly successful, and some lasted only a few years and were closed.  But in those that succeeded, new people were reached with the good news of Jesus and a gospel difference was made in the communities around them.

          Those church plants that succeeded seem to be exactly what Jesus is talking about this morning when he says that seed planted on good soil would bring forth grain many times over.  Jesus is talking to a great crowd of people that has gathered when he says “A sower went out to sow” and gives us the parable known as the parable of the sower, or the parable of the good soil.  As Jesus told the parable, describing seed that was scattered on a path, on rocky ground, among thorns, and on good soil, I wonder what the crowds were thinking.  Were the people wondering what kind of soil they were? What kind of soil their neighbor might be?  Then Jesus explains the parable.  The seed is the word of the Kingdom of God.  When sown, some will not understand, and some will have an initial burst of enthusiasm which will soon die away for lack of deep root.  Some will receive the Word but that Word will be choked out by the thorns of the cares of the world.  And others will hear the word and understand it, bearing an abundant harvest of fruit.

          This parable probably made a lot of sense to those listening.  Those who were not engaged in the business of fishing were likely engaged in agriculture and knew quite well the need to plant in good soil.  Those listening probably wondered how their lives could be good soil so that Jesus’ message could grow in them and bear fruit.  The parable makes sense.

          The problem is that this understanding of the parable is common sense and Jesus is not a common sense savior.  Whenever Jesus seems to be offering common sense advice, we are called to listen more deeply.  In fact, Jesus himself calls us to listen more deeply when he says “Let anyone with ears listen.”  This is our clue that perhaps the parable does not mean what one might think.

          What farmer is actually going to waste good seed on ground that will obviously produce nothing?  No farmer is going to deliberately sow seed on rocky ground, on packed dirt, or among thorns.  That would be wasteful.  But this sower does.  And Jesus never criticizes the sower for doing so.  In the gospel economy, what looks wasteful is actually God’s extravagance. So, in God’s economy, the Word of the Kingdom, which is the message of God’s extravagant love, is to be sown without regard for where the seed might land, whether the seed will grow there or produce much fruit.  God’s economy is about abundance and there is no need to be picky about where we sow the seeds of gospel love or make assumptions about whether our sowing will do any good or not.  But Jesus is telling us that the seeds of the gospel are not going to grow everywhere.  That is just a fact.  But we don’t get to decide where the good soil is.  The good soil will be revealed by the fruit that is produced.

          In the reading from Genesis, we hear of the birth of twins to Isaac and Rebekah.  Esau and Jacob are as different as they can be.  Esau is a skillful hunter and Jacob is a quiet man living in tents.  Esau is the elder by mere moments and thus holds the birthright of the eldest son.  Jacob is jealous of Esau’s birthright and so he takes advantage of Esau’s hunger when Esau comes in from a day of hunting and is famished.  Jacob buys Esau’s birthright from him then serves him some bread and lentil stew.  Jacob becomes the heir of Isaac, which means not only does Jacob inherit his father’s property, but Jacob is also the heir to the promise to Abraham that his descendants will number the stars of the sky.  So, basically, a jealous brother who is a thief and a cheat is the person God will use to move the story of God’s extravagant love forward.  Is that where one would think to sow the seed that is the story of the salvation of God’s people?  Probably not.  Jacob looks to the naked eye more like thorns or rocky ground.  But in God’s economy, Jacob becomes good soil that bears fruit many times over. 

          The parable of the sower is a parable about extravagantly flinging the abundant seed of gospel love as far and wide and covering as much territory as possible, not worrying about whether the seed falls on good ground or not.  We may be very surprised where the seed takes root and where the seed does not.  We sow the seeds of gospel love in all kinds of ways.   Thanking the weary cashier at the grocery store by name may just give her the energy to be kind and gracious to the grumpy shopper who follows, who may go home  less grumpy.  We know that anonymous acts of kindness and generosity encourage the generosity of others.   Words of encouragement in this stressful time help others give encouragement.  A phone call, email or note to someone who might be feeling isolated may help that person reach out to others. And sharing how our faith and our church matter to us in this difficult time could help another person find faith.  The list of possible ways to sow is endless.  The parable of the sower is about faithful sowing even when we know that not all seeds will bear fruit.  The parable of the sower calls us to spread the abundant seeds of gospel love lavishly and let ourselves be surprised where the fruit grows.

                                                                             Amen.

Freedom

Charlotte Collins Reed

Christ Church Episcopal

July 5, 2020

9 Proper A

When my sister Sarah and I were little girls, our aunt lived in a house with a small apartment in the back.  Every summer, we would go visit our aunt and our grandmother in Headland, Alabama, and if no one was living in the apartment at the time, which was usually the case, my sister and I had a full scale play house. We would spend hours imagining everything we could do if we actually lived there, on our own, at the tender young ages of 8 and 9. We could come and go as we pleased, do what we wanted, when we wanted, and in general live what we considered, at that age, to be a life of perfect freedom.  Never mind that, in Headland, Alabama in the 1960's, everyone knew everyone else and their business, so there was really no such thing as perfect freedom. Never mind that we had no visible means of support or that, short of making the bed, we had no domestic skills beyond opening a package of Oreos.  We just wanted the freedom we thought grown ups had and we were utterly oblivious to any cost or obligation that came with independence.

Independence and freedom are the theme song of the 4th of July.  In the secular world, freedom and independence tend to be primarily individual values, whether those of an individual person or an individual nation.  We value individual freedom to make choices and to live with consequences.  We think of an independent person as someone who has to rely on no one, an independent nation as one that is neither dependent on any other nation nor subject to any foreign power.  We think of freedom as the right to do what we want, when we want, to worship when and where we want, to spend our hard earned money however we want.  We admire the person who has pulled him or herself up by the bootstraps, so to speak, and lived the American dream, rising from poverty to great success.  And rightly so.  These are all admirable qualities.  On the 4th of July, we celebrate our freedom and independence as a nation.  We give thanks for the men and women who have given their lives on behalf of that freedom and independence, and we are called to work on behalf of those for whom the American dream has not yet come true: those on the margins of society in need of nutritious food, safe shelter, meaningful employment, quality education, and guaranteed access to medical care, those who cannot pull themselves us by their bootstraps because they have no boots, metaphorical or real.

Given the emphasis of this holiday weekend on freedom and independence, I find it evidence of God's great sense of humor that our gospel lesson is about a yoke.  A yoke, no matter how easy or light, gentle or humble, is still a yoke that, by definition, binds someone or something to someone or something else.  The most common definition of a yoke is "A crossbar with two U-shaped pieces that encircle the necks of a pair of oxen or other draft animals working together."  According to that definition, a yoke is clearly a symbol of bondage, not freedom, and we recoil from that image when applied in any way to any human being.  So, what kind of yoke could Jesus be talking about?

          When Rebekah left her family and her home to marry Isaac, without ever having met the man, this hardly looks like freedom to our 21st century eyes, even though Rebekah agreed to the marriage.  She is binding herself to an unknown person in an unknown land for an unknown life.  Yet in an odd sort of way, her marriage to Isaac frees her to be a part of God's ancient promise to Abraham that he will be the ancestor of a great nation and his descendants will number the stars in the sky.  In the upside down, inside out world of the gospel, where the outsiders are insiders and the insiders are outsiders, where the last shall be first and the first shall be last, and where the poor shall be rich and the rich will be poor, the binding yoke Jesus offers is actually the yoke of radical freedom.  Jesus' yoke frees us from having to make our way in the world, or into heaven for that matter, all by ourselves.  Jesus' yoke frees us from having to right all the injustices of society single handedly.  Jesus' yoke frees us from having to figure out how to faithfully follow him all by ourselves.   Jesus' yoke is a double yoke, so that we never carry our burdens alone.  Jesus and the whole body of Christ carry those burdens with us.  In Paul's letter to the Galatians, from which we unfortunately do not hear this morning, the apostle tells us to "Bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ" and the first letter to the Corinthians tells us that when one member of the body suffers, all suffer with it.  Likewise when one member of the body is honored, all rejoice.  The paradox of the gospel is that Jesus' yoke offers radical freedom as it binds us both to Jesus and to one another, freeing us from having to save ourselves and freeing us to both bear one another's burdens and to work together for the good of the whole human family.

In this time of pandemic, we are more aware than ever that what we do affects other people as the number of Covid-19 cases soars largely uncontained.  This is a burden we must bear together in order to survive, putting aside some of our own wishes and dreams to help keep others safe.  As we celebrate both the independence of our country and our freedom in Christ, Jesus reminds us that true freedom joins us together rather than separates us.  In this time of civil unrest as we face the ugly truth of systemic racism, we are called to come together as one human family, to listen deeply to our brothers and sisters of color, and to work for justice and peace, respecting the dignity of every human being as we promise to do at every baptism.  True freedom is not just the freedom to come and go as we please and do what we want when we want to as my sister and I longed to do all those years ago.  True freedom is the freedom to be the people God created us to be, to live as people connected to each other and the whole human family, and to do the work God has given us to do ensuring that  no human being is denied a life of justice and peace.  The message of the gospel is that the yoke of Jesus gives us true freedom as there is no burden anyone must carry alone.

                                                                                       Amen.

Laughter

Charlotte Collins Reed

Christ Church Episcopal

June 14, 2020

6 Proper A

          Twice in the last six years, I have gone to England to learn about what the Church of England calls Pioneer Ministry or Fresh Expressions.  As a noun, pioneer means the first to explore or settle a new area.  As a verb, the word means to be the first to use a new method of doing something.  Pioneer ministry in the Church of England seeks to take the church and the gospel to those outside of the church, to engage the culture and find new ways of being church in a creative and intentional way.  This is where I learned about Pub Theology, holding office hours in coffee shops, the importance of the church being present at things like the Memorial Day parade and Ice Cream Social, and hosting events with topics of relevance to the wider community.  This is where I learned about listening to a community to see what the community actually needs rather than making assumptions about those needs.  This is where I learned the importance of the church serving as a place to bring people of all faiths together in times of crisis.  Then, last year, a group of us from Christ Church were part of the Connecting Communities project that our Diocese sponsored which focused on new ways of engaging the community.  We have implemented much of what we have learned from these various opportunities at Christ Church over the last few years.

          But had anyone told me that in 2020 we would need to take all of that learning and adapt to being the church online, working together to create and grow community in a new non-physical space and a new physically distanced way due to a pandemic, I would have laughed a deep, loud, ridiculous belly laugh-the sort where you can’t actually tell if the person is laughing or crying.  I would have laughed the sort of laugh that I imagine Sarah laughing in the reading from Genesis when she is told that, at the age of 90, give or take a couple of years, she will bear a son.  Three strangers show up, out of nowhere for all Abraham and Sarah can tell, and after they eat the meal prepared for them, they tell Abraham that when they return, Sarah will have had a son.  And Sarah laughs.  What the men propose is utterly preposterous, and biologically impossible.  The prospect of having a child at that age was likely terrifying even if it was possible.  Any way Sarah looked at it, the only logical response was laughter.

          Jesus asks something equally outrageous of the 12 brand new disciples this morning.  Jesus has gone about the cities and villages, teaching in the synagogues, proclaiming the good news, and curing every disease and sickness.  Jesus doesn’t heal just a few sick people, but he cures  every disease and sickness.  When he sees the magnitude of the work ahead, he calls his 12 disciples, and gives them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness.  In other words, he gives the 12 disciples the authority to do exactly what he, Jesus, the Messiah, is doing minus the teaching in the synagogue.  These people are fishermen and tax collectors.  I can imagine those 12 people laughing at the audacity of what Jesus is asking them to do.  Cast out demons?  Cure every disease and every sickness?  You have got to be kidding, Jesus!  Us?  Ask us to catch some fish or file your taxes! If we read on past the ending of this morning’s lesson, the task gets even harder as Jesus tells the disciples that he is sending them out as sheep in the midst of wolves, and that they will be hated because of Jesus’ name.  Suddenly having a baby at the age of 90+ actually sounds pretty reasonable!

          If we look through the scriptures, God rarely asks anyone to do something reasonable.  Noah was asked to build an ark to save the earth’s creatures from destruction.   God asked Abraham to pick up and move to an unknown place.  God asked Moses, a man on the run from the law, to lead the Hebrew people out of Egypt.  Jesus asks his followers to pick up their cross and follow him and says that whoever saves his life will lose it and whoever loses their life will save it.  The list of seemingly unreasonable things God asks of God’s people goes on and on.

          But here’s the catch. God doesn’t ask any of us to do anything, no matter how unreasonable, alone.  Whether we read John’s Gospel where Jesus leaves us the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, to teach us and lead us, or Matthews’s gospel where Jesus says “And I am with you always to the end of the age,” we are promised that we are not alone.   And what God asks of us is for the sake of proclaiming the good news, casting out the demons that strangle God’s people, like systemic injustice, poverty, division, unequal access to education and health care, and on and on, healing the sick and proclaiming the Good News, all of which strengthen the trajectory of the story of God and God’s people.  In the midst of a pandemic and civil unrest, God makes the audacious request of us to be the Church, the body of Christ, to make a difference in this broken world, and God tells us that we can make a difference, even when we can’t be together in person.  We are called to take the story of God and God’s people further, just as Sarah did, and the disciples did, and God’s people everywhere through out the ages have done.  In the end, Sarah did have a child, Isaac, and the story of God and God’s people was furthered.  In the end, the disciples did preach, heal, and cast out demons and Jesus’ work was expanded and continues to this day.  In the end, we will continue to learn new ways to be the Church-to heal, to cast out demons, and to proclaim Good News to those who need to hear those words and we will do this pandemic or no pandemic, in-person and online.  We can laugh, and laughter may be the most appropriate response to something this outrageous.  And then we will move forward, trusting that just as God was with Sarah and with the disciples, God will be with us, and  we will be the body of Christ in new and unanticipated ways, and we will make a gospel difference in the world.                                                                

Amen.

Image

Charlotte Collins Reed

Christ Church Episcopal

June 7, 2020

Trinity Sunday

          As a new grandmother with a just turned one-year old granddaughter and a just turned one-month old granddaughter, I confess to spending a ridiculous amount of time trying to figure out who these small humans look like.  As the mother of their fathers, I am also interested to see who they act like, but that will come later.  For now, I study their hair and eye color, the shape of their faces, their little lips and noses…like I said, I spend a ridiculous amount of time looking to see whose image they carry.  Evelyn, the one-year old, has baby pictures that could easily be mistaken for our son Slocomb’s baby pictures.  Sometimes she looks like my mother and other times she looks like my grandmother.  I can hope she has my son’s huge heart, my mother’s great sense of hospitality, and my grandmother’s sense of humor and love of a good time.  Little Collins sometimes resembles her father as an infant but right now she is changing too quickly to tell.  We’ve looked through photo albums and baby books to find images of family members, but she’s just too young.  Mostly she just wants to eat and sleep, which means she definitely takes after my side of the family! 

          Looking for the ways family resemblances and traits are passed down from one generation to another gives us some insight into who we are as members of a family.  This morning, in the reading from Genesis, we hear that we humans are made in the image of God.  “So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”  As God looks at God’s beloved children, made in God’s own image, whose image does God see?

          Today is Trinity Sunday, the one Sunday of the church year dedicated to a doctrine rather than an event.  In today’s gospel reading we hear from one of the few passages that mentions the three persons of the Trinity in one breath.  Jesus says to the disciples “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.”  Today, the readings for Trinity Sunday call us to think about what it means that we humans are made in the image of one God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, or Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer and to think about what image God actually sees when God gazes at us.

          First, as we are made in the image of God who is Father or Creator, we are called to be people who are creative, who see potential, who can work for order in the midst of chaos as God does in the creation story we heard this morning.  God’s people have always been called to be creative, especially in difficult times, whether they were finding their way through the wilderness to the Promised Land, or figuring out how to be a nation, or learning to be God’s people while in exile, or figuring out how to be the church during a pandemic.  We don’t always get that right and sometimes the image God sees back is quite distorted.  But we are called to be God’s creative presence in the world.

          Secondly, being made in the image of God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit means that we bear the image of Jesus who came to redeem the world.  We promise to seek and serve Christ in all people at every baptism, but we also reflect the image of Christ to the world.  The world learns what redemption means by our words and actions.  Redeem means taking something that is broken and making it whole.  Can the world tell that by our words and actions?  There is clearly no lack of brokenness in need of healing.

          Lastly, we are made in the image of God the Holy Spirit, the Sustainer or Comforter.  The work of creativity and making the broken whole is challenging work, and we are in this work for the long haul for the image of God is not something that wears off.  Fortunately, we are not alone.  The Holy Spirit sustains us and holds us together as one human family made in God’s image.  When the work of living as one human family is hard, when the going gets tough and the temptation is to give up, the Holy Spirit sustains us to press on in the work of living as the image of God.

          Friday night, many of us gathered with a large group of people for an Interfaith Vigil for justice and peace.  We started at the Clock Tower, then moved to Christ Church, then First Congregational, then Temple Beth Sholom stopping each time for prayer and reflection.  The crowd grew as we walked the very few blocks and we ended on the Green, gathered in candlelight and silence.  The mood was somber as we were called to realize the deep and dark ways we are broken as a human family, and the changes and hard work ahead in order to create something new, to bring wholeness and healing where there is pain, division, and fear, and to sustain the momentum and passion we feel in this moment. We were gathered as Christians, Jews, and Muslims, people of no faith and other faiths.  We were gathered as the one human family, longing for a world in which the color of one’s skin does not make one exponentially more vulnerable to violence and death.  Trinity Sunday reminds us as Christians of our fundamental call to understand the human family as one, as God is one, and be people of creativity, radical and inclusive healing, and sustained by the Holy Spirit for the long haul.  When God looks at the human family God created in God’s own image, whose image does God see?

                                                                             Amen.

           

         

Birth

Charlotte Collins Reed

Christ Church Episcopal

May 31, 2020

Pentecost

          Last weekend, our Cincinnati granddaughter, Evelyn, celebrated her first birthday.  On Friday night, Don and I gathered via Zoom with Evelyn, her parents, and her other set of grandparents who live in Cincinnati, for the traditional cake smash.  We watched Evelyn’s delight as she sat on a blanket in the yard with only a diaper on and ate the raspberries and whipped cream off the top before grabbing the chocolate cake, eating some, and smearing more on her face and her father’s shirt.  On Saturday morning, there was a larger Zoom birthday party with friends and family from all over the country gathered for the opening of the gifts and the “real” birthday cake, which is the traditional family cake that I made and sent.  Zoom birthday parties are just about the only birthday parties these days, and they will do when Covid-19 keeps us apart.  But Zoom is a far cry from being there in person.

          Today is Pentecost, the birthday of the church, and here we are at another online birthday party.  Rather than being gathered here in this church to celebrate, to baptize, to hear the gospel read in many languages, have birthday cake at coffee hour, and all the other ways we celebrate this day, we’re scattered all over, gathered on Zoom and Facebook Live, being the church that was born on Pentecost in new ways most of us never imagined.

          On Pentecost, the disciples were gathered in Jerusalem for the Jewish festival of Pentecost, or the Feast of Weeks, which celebrates the day God gave the law to Moses on Mt. Sinai.  On the day that the disciples were gathered to celebrate this Jewish festival, we are told that the Holy Spirit descended as wind filled the house and tongues of fire rested on each of them.  The disciples were given the ability to speak in other languages so that everyone around them could hear and understand the gospel in his or her own language.  The fire of Pentecost brought people together in a new way, creating the unity that comes when people can understand each other.    

          When the fires of Pentecost rested on the disciples and gave them the gifts they needed to proclaim the gospel to an unsettled world, the Church was born.  The reading from 1 Corinthians speaks of the gifts of the Spirit directly with a long, but not exhaustive list of those gifts and reminds us that we are one body and that all the members of the body, along with their gifts, are needed for the body to function well.  All of the gifts are needed for the Body of Christ to do her work.  But I do not want to lose the fact that the Holy Spirit came as the disciples were gathered to celebrate the Jewish feast of Pentecost and the giving of the law on Mt. Sinai.  In Matthew’s gospel, when Jesus is asked which of those commandments is the greatest, he replies “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’

          I do not think it is a coincidence that the disciples were baptized with the fire of Holy Spirit and empowered to be the church in the world on the day they gathered to celebrate the giving of the law that taught them how to love God and love their neighbor.  While the apostle Paul writes about many different spiritual gifts in the reading from I Corinthians that we heard this morning, Paul also tells us in the very next chapter that the greatest gift of all is love.    

          Pentecost is a baptismal feast day, although we are not able to baptize this morning.  In the Episcopal Church, at every baptism, we promise to proclaim the gospel of love in specific ways.  We promise to be faithful in worship, to repent and return when we fall into sin.  We promise proclaim the gospel in word and action, to seek and serve Christ in all people, to work for justice and peace, and to respect the dignity of every human being.  In other words, we promise to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love our neighbor as ourselves in very specific ways.  In Luke’s gospel, when Jesus is asked “Who is my neighbor” the response is the story of the Good Samaritan.  In short, the answer is that our neighbors are those who do not look like us, believe like us, have the same background or ethnicity as we do.  Our neighbors are the whole human family.

          Today, on the day that we celebrate the fires of Pentecost, we read about fires around the country as people protest, sometimes peacefully but too often violently, the injustice of racism manifest this week in the murder of George Floyd, a black man, at the hands, or knee, of a white police officer.  Twenty five cities in the US are under curfew and five of those cities are in Ohio, by far the most of any one state.  Living with Covid-19, the over 100, 000 deaths, and all the restrictions to protect our health already had nerves on edge, causing conflict and violence.  Now cities have erupted in angry, fiery protest against the ongoing, systemic injustice manifest in the murder of George Floyd.  Into weeks like this one, Pentecost gives us the gifts we need to do the hard work of being the church as we proclaim the gospel, loving God with our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and loving our neighbor as ourselves by seeking and serving Christ in all people, working for justice and peace, and respecting the dignity of every human being.  Into weeks like this one, Pentecost gives us the courage we need to speak out against racism, injustice, and all that divides the human family from each other and treats some members of the human family as less than others.  Into weeks like this one, Pentecost has given us the gifts we need, as Paul says, to serve the Common Good.  This morning, Jesus says “Peace be with you.  As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”  Jesus is not talking about cheap, superficial peace.  Jesus is talking about deep peace, real peace, that respects the dignity of every human being and requires hard work.  For difficult weeks like these and the hard work ahead, the fire of the Holy Spirit gave birth to the Church on Pentecost.

                                                                             Amen.