A Sermon 2nd Sunday after Pentecost
(Proper 4) All Saints’ Church,
Southern Shores, NC June 2, 2013 Thomas
E. Wilson, Rector
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In today’s Gospel lesson a group of Jewish elders
have been asked for a favor by a Centurion of the Roman Occupying Forces - to
ask Jesus to come to the Centurion’s house and heal the Centurion’s slave. The
elders call the Centurion “worthy” for he had been kind to them; he had crossed
the lines between enemies and bridged the two opposing cultures by acts of
mercy, giving money for the building of a synagogue. The Hebrew word for a
worthy deed done to unite people under God is called a “Mitzvah”. Mitzvahs can be the obeying of the 613 rules, laws, and
commandments of the Jewish culture, not grudgingly but with joy. A Mitzvah can
also be any good deed in the spirit of
connecting people together under God. The elders are now obligated to return
the favor by performing a “Mitzvah”, uniting them and the Centurion under God.
The elders cannot go to the Centurion’s house for entering that home would
render them ritually unclean. They ask Jesus to give the gift they cannot give
– they ask Jesus to go across the bridge which divides the cultures for them, an
act of mercy.
On the way to the home, friends of the Centurion
intercept Jesus with a message in which the Centurion denies that he is worthy
enough for Jesus to risk becoming unclean by entering his home. He asks him
just to speak the word of healing and that would be enough.
What we have here is a story that is an Icon of
Luke’s Gospel - God’s gracious gift is given to those of us who do not deserve
it, and it is to be received in humility and used to unite with others under
God. The message is the same in the
Christmas story, the same in the miracle stories, the same in the Crucifixion,
the same in the Resurrection, the same at Pentecost, the same in most of the
rest of the Bible. It is the same story
but with different characters and events.
God gives the gracious gift because that is who God
is, the font of every blessing. If we indeed live into being images of God,
then we would be givers of blessings, gifts of love, even to people who do not
deserve it. Every one of us would be laying hands on people, or just praying at
a distance, for the healing of others. The problem is that we want to put value
judgments on who is worthy to receive a blessing or what is a fair exchange, so
that the gift changes into a contract. Even if they do deserve it we like to
make them grovel about how unworthy they are. If we do put strings on the gift,
then we don’t get around to being united with each other under God. We see
these things sneaking into the story in the Gospel. The Elders want to make the
gift of Jesus’ ministry as part of a contract: “the Party of the First Part (Elders)
is indebted to the Party of the Second Part (Centurion) and be it further
declared that he is worthy and we are worthy. Therefore we ask the Party of the
Third Part (Jesus) to deliver a suitable compensation to the Party of the
Second Part.”
When I was growing up in the Episcopal Church part
of my Confirmation was the memorization of things that Episcopalians were to
know. I was taught that, before I was to receive communion, I needed to “humbly
kneeling” confess or as the words went:
“acknowledge and bewail
our manifold sins and wickedness, Which we, from time to time, most grievously
have committed, By thought, word, and deed, Against thy Divine Majesty,
Provoking most justly thy wrath and indignation against us. We do earnestly
repent, And are heartily sorry for these our misdoings; The remembrance of them
is grievous unto us; The burden of them is intolerable. Have mercy upon us,
Have mercy upon us, most merciful Father; For thy Son our Lord Jesus Christ’s
sake, Forgive us all that is past; And grant that we may ever hereafter Serve
and please thee In newness of life, To the honour and glory of thy Name;
Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”
Now you would have thought that would be enough,
except to drive the point home, there was more groveling to come with the
Priest reminding us in the Eucharistic Prayer, “And although we are unworthy,
through our manifold sins, to offer unto thee any sacrifice; yet we beseech
thee to accept this our bounden duty and service; not weighing our merits, but
pardoning our offences”. Yet there was
more, for after the Lord’s Prayer where we would ask for forgiveness again, we
would say the Prayer of Humble Access – remember, this is after we have been
forgiven:
WE
do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own
righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much
as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table. But thou art the same Lord, whose
property is always to have mercy: Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat
the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that our sinful
bodies may be made clean by his Body, and our souls washed through his most
precious Blood, and that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us. Amen.
But wait - there is more! In acolyte training, I was
taught by my Priest to say a silent prayer before I received the gift of
communion, since I was now on the inside of the Altar rail and had to receive
worthily. It went: “LORD, I am not worthy that thou shouldst come under my
roof; but speak the word only, and my soul shall be healed.”
Add to that the fact that the Priest was required to
read the Exhortation on the First Sunday of Advent, the First Sunday of Lent,
and on Trinity Sunday. On those occasions he would warn us that we needed to
repent before we even show up at church in order to be able to receive worthily
because we were, as the exhortation goes, “miserable sinners who lay in
darkness and the shadow of death”.
When I went to college I left the church because I
was tired of a steady diet of shame. I knew I was guilty of a lot of things,
but there is a difference between shame and guilt. Guilt is for what you do and
shame is for what you are. You can change the things you do; it is harder to
change who you think you are. I was able to return to the church when a
community reminded me that God loved us so much that God gave God’s very self
to us, taking the form of a servant and emptyng himself out for us. I am a beloved of God, and I need to treat
others as fellow beloved. Once during the service I will remind you to have
some humility because you by thought, word, and deed have not lived into the
full stature of Christ, but we do not need to wallow in our sins. There is a
power and love greater than ourselves which calls and empowers us. I know that
I am not the only person in this room who is guilty of many things, but nothing
– nothing- nothing- nothing - repeat nothing separates us from the love of
Christ for he came to us while we were yet sinners.
That is the Gospel.
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