Going Beyone WWJD

Proper 6A; Matthew 9:35-10:8; St. Paul’s, 6/07/2020

Jim Melnyk: “Going Beyond WWJD’”

Do you all remember those “WWJD” bracelets – the “What Would Jesus Do?” bracelets from years ago? For all I know, they may still be all around – I just don’t see any of them around these days – and don’t hear people talking about them much anymore.

           

I’ve thought a lot about those bracelets during the pandemic, and again upon reading today’s Gospel lesson earlier in the week. People on social media post things like “Jesus would be wearing a face mask,” or “I don’t wear a face mask because Jesus never would have worn one.” I’ve seen photos showing statutes of Jesus around the world sporting face masks. I read signs saying, “Throw away your face mask and trust Jesus to protect you,” or “Jesus is our vaccine.” Yet I do recall Jesus telling one person to actually go and bathe in one of Jerusalem’s ritual baths as part of his healing – that is, the person taking some responsibility in their healing process.

The passage from Matthew reminds me of the question, “What would Jesus do?” simply because it starts by telling us what exactly what Jesus was doing. Want to know what Jesus would do? Read Matthew. Read Mark, or Luke, or even John – though John’s a bit more theological and less action oriented than the first three.

What would Jesus do? He would go from town to town teaching and preaching the Good News of God’s reign – healing diseases and sickness, welcoming the outcast and the stranger along with those in the “in” crowd. Jesus would go about caring for those who were feeling lost or scattered, harassed and helpless, beaten down or deprived of their dignity. Matthew tells us Jesus feels compassion for the crowd.

Compassion is a nuanced word in both Hebrew and Greek. It can mean showing pity or mercy, or having painful sympathy for others. It can also mean to suffer with another – that is, to suffer together. Compassion is an emotion felt deeply within one’s gut – a feeling in our very bowels. I suspect Matthew is implying the full range of meaning in this moment. Therefore Jesus would be found touching the untouchable, giving voice to the voiceless, challenging oppressive policies, politics and theologies – turning a few heads, and making a few enemies. I believe with all my heart Jesus would be marching today – standing strong against the continuing sin of institutional racism in America. And Jesus would be transforming more than a few hearts in the process.

What would Jesus do? Just about everything that would make our rational minds wince and our poetic hearts soar. We can easily fall in love with that “gutsy” kind of love Jesus shows in this Gospel lesson – as impractical as it may be – because love just isn’t something we measure in degrees of practicality anyway.

But perhaps the rest of today’s Gospel lesson is the reason the WWJD bracelets were more of a trend than the beginning of a long-time tradition. After all, Jesus tells his disciples not only what he – Jesus – would do, but what he – Jesus – wants them to do as well. It’s the very same kind of stuff he’s been doing! Jesus tells his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into the harvest.” “The twelve disciples may have been surprised that, when they prayed as Jesus suggested for the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers, [that] they themselves would be the answer to [their own] prayer.”[1]

We may be surprised – as many times as we may have read or heard this passage – that we, like the disciples, are an answer to their prayer as well. Followers of Jesus – called to ministries of compassion – ministries of “gutsy love.” Called to ministries of care – feeling with the other, widening the circles of welcome, going beyond pre-subscribed perceptions of the boundaries and limits of God’s love – and smashing the self-protecting, self-selecting limits and fortresses that guard our notions of who can stand with us in the presence and promise of God.

Perhaps…perhaps we should all go retro and pick up a WWJD bracelet – though if one wears one of those bracelets long enough – and asks the question often enough – the answers will come back rather clear. And those answers are not necessarily the kind of answers that allow us to sleep soundly at night if we don’t heed their call, nor comfortably if we do. “What would Jesus Do” begs several additional questions – and they’re the type of questions that should give us pause. In the end, it often seems pretty clear what Jesus would do, and so we’re left with questions like, “What are we going to do about it?” or, “Why aren’t we doing the same thing?” Doing what Jesus would do is hard. It’s impractical. It’s risky. It’s costly.

It’s a modern day play on an old Pontus Puddle comic I recall from too many years ago. Today Puddle might ask God, “Why don’t you do something to help stop the spread of COVID, stop systematic racism in our communities, and do something to control the almost daily violence acted out by those charged with protecting the peace?” God responds to Puddle, “I was just about to ask you the same question!”

It’s been written that “Implicit in the biblical idea of love is the deliberate extension of ourselves to others.[2]” This is the kind of love modeled by Jesus – the kind of love that feels what the other is feeling, the kind of love that touches peoples’ lives and makes a difference. It’s the kind of love that stands in the breach and holds back the seas of condemnation, pain and hatred. It’s the kind of love that recognizes the image of God in every human being – that recognizes our common bond of humanity – and then is willing to take the chance that those whom we love may in the end, as Jesus finds out, betray that love. What would Jesus do? Jesus would – did – does – love in ways that go beyond our self-proclaimed boundaries of the practical, the likeable, or the comfortable. This is the kind of love to which each of us has been called.

The world is still filled to overflowing with people who are harassed and helpless – like sheep without a shepherd. The world is still filled to overflowing with people who are in need of Good News – in need of healing and wholeness in their lives – in need of compassion and the kind of love Jesus made known to us in the washing of feet, the breaking of bread, and the way of the cross. The world is still filled to overflowing with oppressive systems and loveless institutions – including many churches masquerading as communities of love. The world is still filled to overflowing with prisoners of war, prisoners of conscience, and prisoners of political whim – filled with prisoners of poverty, prisoners of bigotry, and prisoners of fear. “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into the harvest.”

The late Don Armentrout, my former professor of Church History at the Sewanee’s School of Theology once said, “What we see in people’s faces, across the world or around us, will often lead us to pray. The needs are urgent: there is no time to waste. ‘Send help, O God!’ Are we surprised when, in answer, God calls upon us?”

“The name that is spoken when we are baptized,” says Armentrout, “is more than a convenient mark of identity. We are added to a list which includes Simon Peter,” James, and John; and before that, Moses and the elders of Israel; and along the way, Miriam and Mary Magdalene and Prisca and Phoebe, Theresa of Avila and Julian of Norwich, Oscar Romero and Martin Luther King, Jr., Desmond Tutu and Michael Curry. In Baptism we join all those God has named and sent as laborers for the harvest. When the company of faith welcomes the newly baptized, it says this, too: ‘We receive you as…workers with us in the [community] of God.’”[3]

We know – or at least have a pretty good sense – what Jesus would do in most instances. Jesus would – did – does – love in ways that go beyond our self-proclaimed boundaries of the practical, the likeable, or the comfortable. This is the kind of love to which each of us has been called. The real question is this, “What are we going to do about it?”

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[1] Don Armentrout, Synthesis Commentary

[2] Dennis MacDonald, Sojourners Online

[3] Don Armentrout, Synthesis Commentary

God the Maker, Lover, and Keeper of Our Souls

Trinity Sunday A; Matthew 28: 16-20; 6/19/2011, St. Paul’s, Smithfield

Jim Melnyk: “God: Maker, Lover, and Keeper”

Nearly six centuries ago God granted to Julian of Norwich, a 31 year-old English woman, a series of 16 visions of the crucified and risen Christ. Through the centuries many Christians have come to know and love the writings of that wonderful mystic. It is in Julian’s writings that I have come to find a simple and beautiful truth about our God who’s Trinity of persons we celebrate and praise this day. I have shared passages from Julian’s writings in the past, including the story about her vision of a hazelnut many years ago – even handing out them out during the sermon. Listen once again to the words of Julian:

           

‘God showed me a little thing, the size of a hazelnut, in the palm of my hand, and it was as round as a ball. I looked at it with my mind’s eye and thought, “What can this be?” An answer came, “It is all that is made.” I marveled that it could last, for I thought it might have crumbled to nothing, it was so small. And the answer came into my mind, “It lasts and ever shall because God loves it. And all things have being through the love of God.”’

           

‘In this little thing I saw three truths,’ writes Julian. ‘The first is that God made it. The second is that God loves it. The third is that God looks after it.’

           

Take a moment, if you will, and consider a hazelnut, which is not bigger across than the width of your thumbnail. Imagine the lightness of it. Imagine the softness of its curves, and ponder how tiny a little object this size would be – it would almost be lost upon the flesh of our hand. Even in its simplicity it is truly all that is made, for within itself is the fullness of God’s creation truth. It’s amazing that something as tiny as these hazelnuts and something as simple as Julian’s brief vision would say so much about our God who is Maker, and Lover, and Keeper of our souls.

And yet – and yet, as Christians, this is how we come to know our God – as One who creates, as One who redeems, and as One who sustains us in love. We call it “The Holy Trinity” and work hard to take something as simple as Julian’s vision and make it more complex. We talk about “one in three and three in one” as if it were some sort of a theological shell game or maybe even a holy riddle – “when is one God three persons, yet three persons only one substance?” Even the words we use nearly 16 hundred years after the Nicene Creed was finally argued out sound more like ancient Greek philosophical drama than images we can readily grasp and appreciate today.

           

Yet, no matter how complex Christian theologians try to make it, Julian reminds us that the very essence of God is the joy and love of being in relationship! God’s very Being cries out relationship – and this God of ours yearns to hear an echoing reply of relationship from us!

After all, if one of the great truths about God spoken to in the Trinity is about a God who is in relationship with Godself, and if we are created in the image and likeness of this God, then shouldn’t being in relationship with God and each other be central to who we are as well?

This in part is the great truth I believe Jesus tries to share with his disciples in the waning moments of his life with them in the upper room, and in the several resurrection appearances we have come to know – such as the one in today’s Gospel. It is foundational to what the Spirit of Truth declares to us – that God is Maker, and Lover, and Keeper of our souls, and that we are created to be at one with God even as God is at one with Godself.

           

Last week I spoke about what it means to be filled with the very breath of God – Ruach – the Holy Spirit – the Spirit of God who hovers over the waters of creation as we just heard this morning. Imagine the Holy Spirit of God being born anew in us with every breath we take. What we are invited to ponder on this special day is our own relationship with the One who creates, redeems and sustains the lives of each of us – One we know through the tradition as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

           

If we, as Christians, ponder the source of our relationship with God – ponder its meaning and its challenge – we are likely to find ourselves waist-deep in the waters of Holy Baptism as we spoke about last Sunday – for it is in these rushing waters as much as the rushing wind that we encounter the Spirit of the Living God. As we ponder the source of our relationship with God, we are likely to find ourselves longing to stand before the Holy Table once again partaking of bread and wine – partaking in the body and blood of Christ – breaking bread with friend and stranger alike – and sometimes meeting Christ in the most unlikely of folks. We wait as patiently as possible for the return of the table to our midst.

At this moment in time, rather than the waters of baptism and the gift of Holy Food, we find ourselves being made one in shared prayers offered online – streamed into our homes and out to our patios. We come to know one another through the sharing of God’s Word, and we come to know the One who draws us to this place. For the full wonder of Holy Trinity is the joy God has in making us one. St. Augustine wrote, “Lest you become discouraged, know that when you love, you know more about who God is than you could ever know with your intellect.”

           

In the relationship of sacred water and holy food – in the promise of God’s Holy Spirit filling us as the very air we breathe fills our lungs – we find ourselves challenged to live out our relationships in this earthly pilgrimage in ways that reflect the love of God made known to us in Jesus the Christ – in the One who reveals to us the mystery of the Triune God.

           

When we take the time and the care to learn how to relate to one another in ways that welcome and enable reconciliation, we are living the relationship modeled by God as Holy Trinity. When the well-being of our fellow human beings outweighs the numbers at the bottom of the line – a such as refusing to sacrifice human lives for a healthy Dow Jones Average – recognizing from the earliest of our faith stories that we are indeed our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers – we are living the relationship modeled by God as Holy Trinity. When we recognize that respecting the dignity of every human being, and standing firm against discrimination is all about honoring the image of God in one another rather than being politically correct, we are beginning to understand the wondrous relationship we call Holy Trinity.

Once again last week we promised to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves, and to strive for justice and peace for all people, respecting the dignity of every human being. Recalling those promises we need to ask ourselves how the decisions we make each day – decisions in our own lives, in our work, in our faith communities, and our social and political structures – how do the decisions we make model those promises – model the relationship made known to us in the life of Jesus the Christ – model the relationship made known to us in the life of the Holy Spirit who lives and moves within us – model the relationship made known to us in the loving mystery of our Triune God? Because there’s no sense in going out to make disciples – baptizing people in the Name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit – unless we’re serious about living out the mystery of God’s love in our own lives each day.

Consider now the many hands and faces of our many communities, with each person holding one of Julian’s hazelnuts in their palms. Imagine the hands of the many people you may have seen in a grocery store, or perhaps the hands of someone with whom you once worked, or went to school. Their hands may be a bit larger than your hands, or perhaps they’re very tiny. The skin may be lighter than yours or darker, older or younger, calloused and hard or soft and smooth. The owner of that hand may be someone you’ve known all your life or maybe someone you’ve never met before – someone you’ve only seen in passing.

In your hand – and in your neighbors’ hands, like the hazelnut in Julian’s vision, we see three truths. The first is that God made us. The second is that God loves us. The third is that God looks after us and lives within us. Blessed be God, and blessed be the fruit of God’s love made manifest in and through us each. Amen.