Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Light and Salt or Heat and Red Hot peppers.



A Sermon for V Epiphany                                          All Saints Church, Southern Shores, N.C. February 9, 2014                                                 Thomas E. Wilson, Rector
Isaiah 58:1-12)            1 Corinthians 2:1-12,              Matthew 5:13-20       Psalm 112:1-9, (10)
I was thinking about the kind of sermons that you have heard me give over the last decade plus and I put them into four categories.

1.      Teaching: These are the sermons where I want to show that I learned something in seminary and/or I am continuing in my education. I have an excitement of what I have learned and I want to pass it on. Sometimes these turn into lectures and it is aimed at rational part of the brain of the listener.

2.      Evangelical: This word needs to be rescued back to its original meaning in the Greek eu= good and angel= message, Good News. These sermon are aimed that part of the listeners’ soul that feels the need for hope and assurance of the presence of God in a world that doesn’t always seem to make sense. This is a “comfort the afflicted” type of sermon.

3.      Prophetic: This is aimed at the part of the work of the church which is “to afflict the comfortable”. You can see this in today’s lesson from Isaiah where he speaks to people he loves and reminds them that they are falling short of who they really are. The theme is being a truth-teller, or the good friend who reminds you that you are better than this.  

4.      Reflective: In these sermons, I try not to just talk to you but to go beyond and share with you how God is speaking to me in my spiritual journey, wondering if you are getting the same message and how if I see it might be helpful for you.


Many times the sermons have multiple layers, but today I'll use the fourth style to share t how the messages for today were hitting me this week.


On Mondays mornings I go to the jail and visit a parishioner. It takes about a half hour to get to Manteo, the county seat and a half hour back. I figure that if we visit as long as an hour I can get back in time to stop at the store and buy something to eat for lunch  during the Monday noon Bible Study where I can start the process of beginning the sermon as we look at the lessons for the coming week. That plan worked for the first couple weeks where I only had to wait for about 10 minutes while a guard went and got my parishioner from the cell and brought him to room that lawyers and detectives use for talking with prisoners. The jail's function is to hold prisoners, and while visitors and family are allowed to visit at strictly designated times, the emphasis is not particularly on rehabilitation. One exception is that 12 step groups are allowed to come in so that some inmates can continue working on sobriety one evening a week. As a favor to the community, they make allowances in allowing pastoral visits from an inmate’s pastor at other than the strict visiting times  and I use that opening. Over the last several weeks the waiting times have gotten progressively longer as they say that they profess their "busy- ness. I use that time to read over the lessons and do some notes. This last week the wait was over an hour. 


As you know, I have a pretty good ego system that thinks I am “important” and as I had seen ther people come and go, I was well into feeling sorry for myself and resentful of the too long wait for a man of MY importance. That resentment devolved into paranoia, and I was on my way to throwing a fit of temper as MY precious time was being stolen from me - ME the center of MY universe. What stopped me were the messages I was getting from reflecting on these passages for today. Isaiah was hearing God asking about the purpose of a fast to humble oneself to help make the world a better place where there will not be the “pointing of fingers and the speaking of evil”. I was ready to point fingers and speak evil of my own importance and I had to remind myself that I was there for my parishioner and not for me. I had to empty my own pride out like Christ emptied himself out to enter into the mind of Christ. 


If I am indeed the light of the world as Matthew remembers Jesus saying in the Gospel lesson, then to whom am I being called to be a light? “Yes”, to my parishioner; but am I also to be a light to the jailers, or do I hide it under the bushel basket of my self-importance? If I am indeed to be the salt, which gives savor to life; was I about to turn into a red hot pepper to burn and punish? I turned to the letter from Paul to the Corinthians and asked the “ . . . Spirit that is from God, so that we (I) may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God. (2:12) Can I turn time into a gift from God that I give back to God instead of something stolen from me? Indeed one cannot steal what has already been given away. The Spirit helped me remember a story related by Robert Bellah in Habits of the Heart about Governor John Winthrop of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1630’s: 

when it was reported to him during an especially long and hard winter that a poor man in his neighborhood was stealing from his woodpile, Winthrop called the man into his presence and told him that because of the severity of the winter and his need, he had permission to supply himself from Winthrop's woodpile for the rest of the cold season.  Thus, he said to his friends, did he effectively cure the man from stealing." 


Jesus talked about fulfilling the law which he meant that it is filled full with God's intent to be the loving way to live together in this, the Kingdom of the Heavens. For Jesus the law was not about punishing but about entering into a “righteous” relationship, not about being good or following rules but about being loving, a reciprocal relationship, with God and neighbor. For Jesus, entering into the Kingdom of the Heavens was not going to a new place of geography after one dies but about entering into a new way of being in the here and now which continues through all eternity.


When I was finally allowed to go back to see my parishioner, I thanked the guards. Without the time to look into the shadow of my soul instead of stuffing it down and ignoring it, I would not have been able to live into the Good News of having “faith ... not rest on human wisdom but on the power of God.” 


My parishioner and I did Bible Study together and this teaching, evangelical, prophetic reflection is the result.


At church this Sunday instead of doing the usual post-communion prayer we will do the prayer in the Book of Common Prayer  for:

For Prisons and Correctional Institutions:

Lord Jesus, for our sake you were condemned as a criminal:
Visit our jails and prisons with your pity and judgment.
Remember all prisoners, and bring the guilty to repentance
and amendment of life according to your will, and give them
hope for their future. When any are held unjustly, bring them
release; forgive us, and teach us to improve our justice.
Remember those who work in these institutions; keep them
humane and compassionate; and save them from becoming
brutal or callous. And since what we do for those in prison,
O Lord, we do for you, constrain us to improve their lot. All
this we ask for your mercy's sake. Amen.

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