Today’s Gospel reading is a long one, but it doesn’t have to be. The lectionary gives us the option to cut it off around the halfway point, right after Jesus says, “You received without payment; give without payment.” In our email exchange planning for this morning’s service, Renee even mentioned that option. But knowing that I would be among such hardy, faithful souls in Greencastle, I rejected it. I knew you would want to hear the whole thing, especially these comforting words: “Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death; and you will be hated by all because of my name.”
It’s not exactly John 3:16, is it?
Now I’m not going to dwell too much on this verse this morning, but I’m also not going to pretend you didn’t hear it. One commentary I consulted described it as “notoriously troublesome.” But I’m not so sure. One of the harder things about being God, I figure, is that when scripture is one of the tools you’re using to communicate your infinite self to the all too finite mortals you love, the words of inspiration you breathe into the minds and fingers and quills and scrolls of scripture’s human authors have to speak to all time, to all sorts and conditions of people. And so as baffling as we might find these words in our historic moment, imagine for a second what they would have meant to those endeavoring to follow Jesus faithfully while living under a twentieth century totalitarian regime that turned families into extensions of the state’s secret police. Or North Korea today. So if this text doesn’t speak to you today, that’s ok – it isn’t for you. But for Christians under threat, these words that are menacing to us are nothing less than balm for the soul, the Good News that their faithfulness under adversity has not gone unnoticed by our savior.
There’s Good News for us here, too, just in a different verse: “When Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” I won’t presume to speak for you, but “harassed and helpless” stirs up something in me.
Helpless? Well, that depends on the day. But, harassed? Most definitely. Between the daily torrent of spam calls and texts, the need to be hypervigilant about fraud All. The. Time., to say nothing of the poison of our politics, which his so saturated our lives that ordinary choices are less a statement of preference than a taking of sides. I think most of us actually opt out of this vitriol ourselves, but the angry miasma of rage and mendacity is all but impossible to escape. It’s exhausting.
Unlike the crowds Matthew describes as “like sheep without a shepherd,” we do have a shepherd, in Jesus. Amid the changes and chances of this mortal life, against the competing claims for our attention and allegiance, and whatever our anxieties and uncertainties, we can look to Jesus in scripture, prayer, community, and communion, and find a savior who shares in our joy and does not shy away from our sorrows.
But I worry about the rest of the harassed and helpless crowd, those who are not among us or any Christian community this morning. It will not have escaped your notice that Christmas as a cultural and commercial phenomenon is bigger than ever, but Christ’s church, not so much.
This past Tuesday’s episode of Jeopardy created a minor stir when, in response to a fill-in-the-blank question about the Lord’s Prayer – “Our father, who art in heaven, [blank] be thy name,” not one contestant could come up with, “What is hallowed?”
The same day, watching a trashy reality show I’ll allow to remain unnamed for my own protection, I observed a group of young women say, to my surprise, “Let’s pray.” And then they sat down, joined hands, and said something along the lines of, “I wish an attractive man would be the next person to walk through the door.” Setting aside the merits of the item being wished for, wishing and praying are not the same thing, but they didn’t seem to know that.
I’m not sure if Twitter took notice of the reality show moment, but it definitely seized on Jeopardy, with a predictably scolding stew of hot takes about prayer in school and the decline of the church. But scolding is precisely the wrong approach: Jesus saw the harassed and helpless crowds, and had compassion.
Neither the Jeopardy contestants nor the reality show cast fit into the narrative of decline the church has fretted about for decades. These are not people who have fallen away from the church. If you don’t know the universal Christian prayer, or even have a basic sense of what prayer is, then chances are you’ve never been part of a church, let alone fallen away from one.
I worry about these people not so much for their fate in the afterlife, but for their fate in this one. For a life devoid of faith creates a vacuum the powers and principalities are all to eager to fill with consumerism disguised as spirituality, or straight up magical thinking and wishing, lent credibility by stretching it to five syllables, and calling it “manifestation.” It can be argued that these are harmless, and – maybe. But these substitutes are wholly inadequate in communicating the inherent self-worth each individual has as beloved, made in the image of God. And they cannot function as shields in the time of trial. The peace of God found in prayer, and the ancient words of scripture, many of which are written on our hearts, can.
This is exactly the reality Jesus speaks into. Jesus was actually working with fewer resources than we have. He had no church to invite people into – just twelve ordinary guys who’d been following him around for a while, and his own divine self. That’s what he had to offer the harassed and helpless, and it was enough.
Jesus also describes the helpless and harassed crowds as the Lord’s harvest, the fruit of the seeds God has planted. That field is set before us today. And if we are serious about sharing the abundant life we have in Christ at St. Andrew’s, it is necessary not just to show people the way to 520 E. Seminary Street at 10:15. You also need to show them the way, the truth, and the life. You need to show them Jesus.
Commissioning the disciples as apostles,
those sent forth to minister in Jesus’s name, Jesus bestows on them his own
powers – to cast out evil spirits and cure every disease. Now the power to
grant miracles may not belong to us, but we can make room for them, by being a
people who reject the dark spirits of this age: addiction, greed, self-righteousness,
and despair; by being a people who meet sickness and adversity with compassion;
a people whose lives are a beacon to those harassed and helpless that the world
tries to tell that they are not enough as they are, that they may know, and that
you may know, the Good News for every place and time: that through the life,
death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we are invited into nothing less than
eternally beloved citizenship in the kingdom of God.
Third Sunday after Pentecost
June 18, 2023
St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, Greencastle, IN
Readings: Ex. 19:2-8a; Ps. 100; Rom. 5:1-8; Matt. 9:35-10:23
