Christopher Thomas
Sermon for Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A – 9/20/20
Exodus 16:2-15
Psalm 105:1-6, 37-45
Philippians 1:21-30
Matthew 20:1-16
“…do not be anxious about earthly things, but love things heavenly; and even now, while we are placed among things that are passing away, hold fast to those things that shall endure…”
Episcopalians have the most elegant, eloquent way of stating the seriousness of the situation. For this collect must surely have been written about our very condition today, tossed in this chaotic morass we call the year 2020.
Do not be anxious about earthly things.
Do not be anxious about earthly things?!?
Almost 7 million of our fellow Americans are infected and 200,000 dead from an earthly thing called COVID-19. At the very height of the economic collapse from this earthly thing called COVID-19, 20.5 million folks are forced out of the work force, some out of homes, over the brink of existence. The more fortunate are deemed “essential,” necessary for the things you and I, we, need; they can work, and expose themselves to this scourge known as “Corona,” because, after all, we must have “our daily bread,” the things that we need to survive, and to thrive.
Weeks turn to months, Lent to Easter, our lives seem to equalize and stabilize to what is some new bizarre reality, or at least the reality that we see from inside our points of isolation (I know you saw mine, the view of the kitchen microwave, week after week!). As humans, we are pretty good at adapting to, getting used to things.
And then comes George Floyd. We all watch in abject horror as a human life is extinguished, for a reason unbeknownst, right before our very eyes. Literally. The death penalty is assigned, sealed, and delivered, executed, on the streets of Minneapolis, in about nine minutes. It seems odd that “justice” in some instances can be delivered so swiftly, so succinctly, and so completely, without any mercy or grace.
In response, there are protests, and riots, and yes, even looting. Righteous indignation! Looting! For some of these earthly things just aren’t “right.” They deserve our indignation. They get our attention. They get…
Lock-down!
Downtown Dallasites such as myself are put on curfew. If there is one thing we privileged don’t care for, it is being told what we can and cannot do. Freedom. Imagine! My right to my “daily bread” is being infringed upon!
Never fear. Privilege is the one thing that will not be oppressed. It will emerge, after all, insuring that “daily bread” can be obtained, in all justice and all righteousness.
And so, an uneasy stasis returns, ever so precariously, even as more names join the growing list with Mr. Floyd.
And there is still a whole quarter, three months remaining to this morass we call 2020! Talks of vaccines, and an election, and now a Supreme Court nominee, and the spiraling death toll forebode what else may come!
Oh, if we could only go back! We were so happy, back when, back there, back in…
Egypt!
Or at the very least, 2019…
Well, maybe we weren’t all that happy, but we certainly weren’t this unhappy.
In the face of uncertainty, in the face of fear, in the face of anxiety, it is our human default setting to reach back toward Egypt, to turn back and lament for the “good old days.” When we don’t like what’s in front of us, then the answer must surely be behind us, back in Egypt. Fear and anxiety have this strange way of painting even slavery, the making bricks for Pharaoh, with nostalgia.
But the things of God are never behind us. They are always with us, and in front of us, beckoning us onward, forward, through, never back to Egypt. Going back to Egypt is never part of God’s great plan of salvation, for Israel, or for us. Manna, our daily bread, just what we need, when we need it, our sustenance, that which we must have to survive, shows up, by God, in the wilderness. Not where we’re coming from or where we’re going to, but the wilderness!
Nostalgia in the face of fear is a powerful motivator. There are plenty of slogans surrounding this today, and the upshot is, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could go back to the way things were in the 1950’s, sort of like the way life was portrayed on “Leave it to Beaver,” the cozy upscale home of Ward and June Cleaver, Wally and the Beav.
The problem is, virtually no one had that existence. In fact, for many, it was far worse than that. To say that we want to go back to that way of life is to say that we want to go back to Jim Crow laws, to segregation, to domesticated women, wives obeying their servant leader husbands, to closeted gays and lesbians, in short, to reinforce the caste system that perpetuates the hierarchy of white heteronormative Patriarchy. That’s what Egypt looks like for us. Egypt is not a manna-filled option.
And yet, here we are. I am anxious and fearful about the way forward, and going back isn’t an option. Liminality. The condition of in-between-ness. We’re not where we’re going, but thank God, we’re not where we’ve been. Living between the press of life and death is something St. Paul knows all too well, as do those who live with real oppression on a daily basis. Paul and the Philippians live on the margins of fear of death dealt by the Roman Empire at most any time. Paul knows they are dancing the dialectic of being “in the world but not of the world.”
He encourages them to “…conduct themselves (politeuesthe, a political term) in a manner worthy of the Gospel of Jesus Christ…striving side by side with one mind for the faith of the Gospel, and are in no way intimidated by your opponents.” We are to engage the body politic, in the name of Jesus Christ.
Don’t look back in fear to Egypt for your manna. It isn’t there. For this will be evidence of their destruction, and your salvation. And, as with all true manna, this is God’s doing!
So, you may ask, where is our manna today, nine months in to what seems like the Irwin Allen epic disaster of the year 2020? “Ok, God, is this what you brought us, the Episcopal Church of St. Thomas the Apostle, out into the wilderness for, to kill this whole assembly with hunger?”
Give us this day, our daily bread.
I imagine that if you are as faithful as I try to be, you pray these words most every day. Give us this day, our daily bread.
Most of us lead lives as such that we don’t miss many, if any, meals. So I think we can agree that, for us, this isn’t about literal food, but about the nourishment and feeding of our souls.
The feeding that comes through the Body (Capital B) of Jesus Christ.
At one of our first “Doubter Happy Hours” with our Theologians-in-Residence, I posed the question “Where is God,” in the midst of human suffering? The standard Christian response is, “Jesus is with the suffering.”
True. Legit. Works.
But not enough. That’s not manna. Not yet.
Mark Jordan says, “What if God/Jesus is not just with, but what if God/Jesus IS that person?”
Does it then stand to reason that that person, the radical other, the suffering servant, the homeless, the needy, the oppressed, the George Floyd, the Breonna Taylor, and on, and on, and on…
Does it stand to any reason that their suffering, that injustice, is the daily bread, the manna with which God promises to feed our souls? Alleviating another’s oppression, pain, and suffering (“ally-ship”) may just be our very manna!
If so, how are we engaging the manna that is all around us, in the wilderness of 2020?
“Give us this day, our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
as we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory,
for ever and ever. Amen.”
