Christopher Thomas
Sermon for Third Sunday after Pentecost, Year A – 6/21/20
Genesis 21:8-21
Psalm 86:1-10, 16-17
Romans 6:1b-11
Matthew 10:24-39
Well…
“Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?”
I’m going to share with you just a little bit of the “Priest’s Playbook” here in the beginning of this. There are three types of sermons that any good priest might offer to you, and they are basically modeled on the psychological implications of the ways that Jesus lived out his earthly ministry, functioning as a pastor, a priest, and a prophet. Sermons take on the characteristics of these different aspects of Jesus’ nature. Sermons tend to be particularly pastoral or prophetic.
It doesn’t take much to figure out that pastoral sermons are the ones we look to for comfort and strengthen, binding up the hearts of the faithful as we sojourn through life. They shore us up for the battles of a Christian life lived out in a very different “worldly” existence, the world we are “in,” but not “of.”
Prophecy, on the other hand, is much more fun! Contrary to popular belief, prophecy isn’t foretelling, but the forth-telling of God’s word, the Great Good News, Gospel, and the ways that Gospel is interacting and speaking into the cultural milieu of the day. It isn’t difficult to see why things end the way they do for true prophets! (They usually end up with horrible deaths!)
As a good homiletics student at Brite (homiletics – that’s the art of writing and preaching sermons), I was told that, if you want to survive, and thrive, in the local congregation, a good ratio of sermons is about 1 to 4. For every prophetic sermon that’s preached, you ought to preach three or so pastoral ones, those that bring that sense of comfort and hope.
Now, in case you didn’t realize it at the time, last week’s homily by Fr. Waller was, in fact, in the prophetic category. All are welcome. If you have an issue with that, it’s time for some self-examination. Re-read your baptismal covenant. When it stings, it’s most likely prophesy! (A side note – Emeritus types can say things that others simply cannot, and still be loved!)
So, on the heels of this prophetic message, “All are welcome, examine yourself,” your Rector knows that a pastoral sermon is in order. It is time for comfort and solace.
And then I see the great humor of our God as I open the lectionary for the day, and read what the RCL serves up in Matthew as some of the toughest “good news” the gospel seems to have to offer, and I should try to do a pastoral dance for you with this gospel song?
“A disciple is not above the teacher, nor a slave above the master. If it was good enough for me to go out and do these things, and risk my life, it is what is expected of you. They call me Beelzebul, Satan; wait ‘til you see what they have in store for you!”
“What I say to you in the dark, tell it in the light! Don’t keep it secret, out of fear. They can kill your body, but there is only one way they can kill your soul; if you keep quiet!”
“If you acknowledge me before others, I will acknowledge you before God! God’s got this!”
“Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.”
Sons turned against fathers, daughters against mothers. Take up the cross, your cross, my cross, the cross of every marginalized person, now, and follow me!
None of this sounds particularly pastoral to me. And so, it’s ironic, to say the least, that I am bringing you this message live from the inside of your beloved Nave, a place, a holy space of comfort, that you haven’t seen for at least 13 weeks. Well, at least there’s something pastoral for you in that, in seeing and being comforted by the familiar. The building that you love is still here!
And I realize that this message is being brought to you today by oh so many more folks than me. There are people who are speaking to you today, by your seeing this, your loved ones, the saints upon whose shoulders I am fortunate enough to stand, who have their own story to tell. They line the walls of this great Church, and they surround the fountain of that beautiful courtyard. They haven’t left because of COVID-19. They too have a story to tell, today. They are here to witness to us, the gift of Matthew 10:24-39. And they are here to give you that word of comfort. And they are here to point us toward our future.
Who are these people, these saints of God, that you know, and I do not? They are the ones whose robes have been washed in the blood of the lamb and made white, and the tears have long since been dried from their eyes. They’ve gone through the great ordeal and emerged from the other side, this great missional ordeal that Jesus describes for us today.
When I read this gospel, I kept going back, over and again, to the fact that you all have done this. I’ve heard enough of the stories of St. Thomas to know that you have done this.
I can only begin to imagine what it was like to have been in this parish, in this diocese, in Dallas, in North Texas, during the 1980’s and 1990’s. But the people in these walls know it, and you know it. Speaking light into darkness is scary-making stuff. Speaking truth to power is frightening. It is the stuff that quite often tears families apart. Biological families. Diocesan families. Families of all different sorts and natures. Therefore, it takes courage to speak truth to power when you know what you are risking, risking your own comfort and your own privilege. And you and these people have a long history of doing just that.
LGBTQ folk and their allies have a long history of speaking truth to power in standing up for justice and peace, and that has often led to ostracism, from families and from others. And so, we became quite adept at what is lovingly known to us as our “families of choice.” I know that St. Thomas the Apostle was (and continues to be) a primary “family of choice,” a safe space for queer folk like you and like me to be who we are, in the very fullest sense of that word.
We used to think “queer” referred only to us LGBTQ folk, because that’s what we were labeled, as a point of marginalization, that we were the only ones outside the usual, or the normal, the unconventional. Come to find out, there are many, many (many!) queer folk out there who do not look anything like us, and yet they do look like us in their “queerness!” There are many folks who are rejecting conventionality and upending societal norms, with the expectation of justice and peace, now! We see it all around us! Just look! We simply stand in a long line of queer folk!
Isn’t that what Jesus beckons the disciples, and all of us who follow them into, a life of radical queer-ness?
What Fr. Waller called us to last week, that message of “All are welcome,” is something that is inherent in the DNA of St. Thomas the Apostle. We just need to be reminded of it as we turn the page to write the next chapter of God’s story in its book.
And all these people, these saints, who line these walls, and stand with us, know and will testify to this very same thing. We are to go out into the world, just as you have done before, and we will now do together, in new and creative ways, shining God’s light into the dark places.
“So have no fear of them; for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known. What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops. Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather awe and revere our God who is the one who gives life eternal.”
AMEN!
