Christopher Thomas
Sermon for 18th Sunday after Pentecost, Year B, Proper 21 – 9/26/21
Ester 7:1-6, 9-10; 9:20-22
Psalm 124
James 5:13-20
Mark 9:38-50
“Real power isn’t something anyone gives you.”
“Real power is something you TAKE!”
Pure prophesy? Pearls of wisdom in a world shaped and molded and formed by business, pure and simple greed, lust, survival of the fittest. Divide and conquer, power and control. Isolate the weak.
If you are old enough to have been a fan of the original TV drama “Dallas,” you may recognize the sentiment in Jock Ewing’s iconic words of advice to the “weakling” son Bobby in the face of the power-grabbing JR. Don’t expect anyone to hand you anything; if you want something, by God, you had better go take it!
I wonder if the producers of that show spent much time in 1970’s Dallas?
It seems as though they capture the spirit of “the Dallas Way,” as its known, pretty well.
“The Dallas Way” is the ongoing history of our city being run by the few (elite, white, men), under the strictest of business principles, cloaked in a thin veil of altruism. “A rising tide lifts all boats,” or so the theory goes. If it hasn’t lifted for you yet, just hold on. The tide is eventually coming. Or so I’ve heard.
The reality is the reality of the sickness of the world. The weak are isolated and marginalized (divide and conquer), resources siphoned off for the benefit of those who have power and are willing and able to grab for more. These things are quite often done in the name of “your own good.” That’s how we end up with these racial and socio-economic divides, north versus south, east versus west. You can see the actual physical manifestations as freeways literally and figuratively cut off neighbors and neighborhoods from each other, forming islands of isolation that benefit and privilege others.
But sin and sickness, separation, the breakdown of relationship are in no way exclusive or limited to the larger theater, to Dallas, or to Texas, or the United States, or to a pandemic, or even to my TV screen on a Friday night in 1979. I must confess it is just easier for me to see and to identify and to stomp up and down in righteous holy anger about the “log in someone else’s eye,” than it is to pull the one out of my own that is really the problem.
Because, truth be told, isolation and breakdown, the correlation between sin (separation from God) and sickness (isolation), starts right here, with the pronouns “me|my|mine.” Only I can own my isolation. My estrangement from God is about my estrangement, my isolation from, my lack of relationship with you, and you, and you, and you. (And by extension of that, our collective isolation as a community from other groups and/or communities.)
Confession! It really is good for the soul! It bridges and brings together!
The author of James knows this.
“Therefore, confess your sins (separation) to one another (make yourselves vulnerable to one another); and pray for one another, so that you may be healed!”
These people James is writing to have, by all imagination, what can most likely be classified as an “unhappy” existence, Jewish Christians living in diaspora, sometime after the destruction of their holy space, the temple. They have been driven from their space. Empire shatters their world into a million pieces, building freeways of pandemic through their relationships, driving them into isolation, separation. Connection, to God, and to each other, is severed.
James calls out to all those shattered places, for action! Do not be merely hearers of the word, but do, something! Listen to James’ action verbs! Pray. Sing. Call. Anoint. Confess. Pray again. Action! Be the people of God. Do something!
James doesn’t make much, if any direct theological statements about God and God’s world; James shows us his theology through the practical actions that James beckons from his (or her) audience. James emphasizes care in how we speak to one another, and care in how we attend to the distressed, the isolated. The act of confession culminating in prayer bridges that gap, it brings and it binds people together. Confession binds human and divine activity into one. Confession is holy space!
I heard James’ theology in his epistle summed up this way – “God is compassionate, and God acts powerfully in the world. Sovereignty and compassion.
“Oh God, you declare your almighty power chiefly in showing mercy…”
Doing the things that James calls us to do have the effect of drawing us deeper into relationship with each other. When you pray, and you sing, and you anoint, and you confess, and you pray again, with one another, you make yourself vulnerable. You meet someone, or some others, in their own vulnerability. You use your vulnerability to engage the vulnerability of others. And then, real relationship begins again. Right there, in that naked moment of vulnerability. It’s the doing, doing something, that brings you to that point. It’s that openness to vulnerability that makes true relationship, the healing of sin, possible.
It is everything that is not “Real power is something you take!”
Real power is something you give, when you open your heart, and your mind, and your body, and your soul, and your spirit. Real power is something you obtain when you step into that frighteningly vulnerable space of confession. Real power is something you receive when you look into someone else’s eyes and hear and know the compassion of, “I forgive you.” Real power is the healing of sin, when isolation ceases to be, when boundaries are erased, when we can be in the same space and share Holy Spirit life-giving breath. That is real power.
Recognizing that gift, the gift that we share, as a part of this community of believers that we lovingly refer to as “Doubters of Great Faith” is a privilege and an honor that we confess to share openly with each other, and importantly, with those outside of these walls. This is a space where the vulnerability of confession, mercy, and grace has a long, deep, rich history of dwelling herein. The world knows and recognizes this. (And quite frankly, is afraid of this!)
As we emerge from our own diaspora, finding our ways back to this most sacred, hallowed space, with you, its most sacred, hallowed “Doubters,” I encourage you to be aware of, to remember, and to rejoice in the great gift that God has given us in this particular, unique moment in the life of this faith community. There is no other place like The Episcopal Church of St. Thomas the Apostle, Dallas, Texas, anywhere, that I know of.
As so, as we open our season of Stewardship for 2022, “Every Perfect Gift,” I would encourage you to confess, to yourselves, and to each other, what a unique and beautiful gift it is to which we have been entrusted. We are going to continue in the legacy that many of you have begun, as well as finding new ways to confess to the world our knowledge that “Real power is not something that you take. Real power is something you give, out of the generosity of your heart!”
Amen.
