| Note: No sermon is quite the same when you read it. You miss the inflections, the expression that you gain in the hearing. The words below are only a close approximation of the sermon, taken from handwritten notes. Nevertheless, the words (as best as can be deciphered!) are shared with you here. The Webmeister |
Fiftheenth Sunday after Pentecost I was 10 years old when my grandfather in Port Arthur died. In my family we always referred to my Dad's parents and my Mom's by the town they lived in, Port Arthur, Texas and Boerne, Texas respectively. It was not too long after his death that for some reason the 4 oldest kids, myself, my brother John and my 2 sisters Susie and Alice went to Port Arthur for a visit. My grandmother and grandfather had lived in a small bungalow style house. My grandmother also cared for her mother who lived in the front room of the house. We kids slept out on a porch that had been closed in at the back of the house. My grandmother was always fun to visit. She taught us how to go crabbing with a piece of chicken neck on a string. We would carefully lift the string out of the murky tea colored water off some old pier and a crab would be clinging to the chicken. We would then lower them into a burlap bag. She taught us how to clean them and pick out all the crab meat and make crab and okra gumbo. She would drive us over the nearby border of Louisiana and show us wonderful old homes and gardens. But one night I heard an odd noise coming from the part of the small bungalow where my grandmother lived. I walked across the dining room and peeked around the corner of the bathroom and saw my grandmother sitting on the edge of the tub in her night gown with her face in her hands, weeping. I did not know what to do so I tip toed away; yet that moment for some reason has stuck in my heart and in my memory. At the time I assumed she was crying because my brother and sisters and I had been yelling or fighting which we often did. And that may have been part of it, but I did not until later think of what it must have been like to try and deal with us and her mother and indeed all of life without my grandfather. And I now understand that she was weary; she was emotionally and spiritually weary. She had nothing left that night but tears. And now that I am not that much younger than my grandmother was then, I understand what it is to sometimes be weary, to have to carry my own burden and the burdens of others and I know well that I am not alone today. Isaiah of Babylon, to me the greatest of the prophets, speaks today out of the depths of times to all who are weary. He spoke to the shattered, broken, miserable people of Judah who were just muddling along, just barely clinging to their faith and hope in God's word. They had been through terror, death of loved ones, starvation, loss of their very land and they were weary. The adrenaline was all gone; only a vast weariness remained to them in exile far from home. And to them Isaiah spoke God's word. And he spoke it in the voice of the Messiah to come. For me, it is one of the most lonely passages in all the Bible. "The Lord has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word." . . .how to sustain the weary with a word. It was Jesus who said, "Come to me all you who are heavy laden and I will give you rest." Well, we are called to walk down weary roads, sometimes even roads that lead through valleys full of the shadow of death. But somehow it is in that very journey that we find our very souls and we truly find God has walked the same road. In today's Gospel reading, Jesus asks his disciples who people say he is and they give him many answers. When he asks them, "Who do you say that I am." And Peter answers, "You are the Messiah." And Jesus immediately begins to tell them what the world will do to the Messiah: suffering, rejection, crucifixion. But Peter did not want to hear these words. And Jesus told him, "Peter, you are setting your mind not on heavenly things but on earthly things; if you want to be my follower, take up your cross and follow me, for what will it profit you to gain the world but lose your soul?" I think Peter has a lot of company. I think this idea of "bearing your cross" is a hard idea that we do not understand. Our modern kind of culture sees it as especially repugnant. We have an almost epicurean idea that pain is to be avoided at all costs and suffering is seen as an unnecessary evil. This is true in modern manifestations of religion also. Time Magazine has a provocative cover for its September 18 edition. It shows a Rolls Royce on the cover with a gold cross as a hood ornament and the words: "Does God want you to be rich?" And inside there are various mega church pastors (some here in Houston) who espouse the Gospel of prosperity. One is quoted as saying "God wants you to own land." Another says: "Who would want something where you're miserable, broke, and ugly and you have to muddle through until you get to heaven?" Well, I might agree that few people would choose for their lives to be ugly, broke, and miserable, but a lot of people don't get to choose. My grandmother did not choose my grandfather's death. I have spent a lot of my life listening to the hurt of a lot of people whose lives were "ugly" by circumstances beyond their control, "broken" by terrible events and sometimes by terrible choices and you know what-some of the greatest people I know are those who have the simple faith and courage to "muddle through to heaven." Like May Sarton says, "One must think like a hero in order to be a merely decent human being." Are these people not loved by God? Are they not praying the right way? Why doesn't God bless them with a rich and beautiful life? Do they have no place at the table? My wife returned last Monday from a 2½ week Medical Mission Trip to the Dominican Republic to work in a clinic with children who have AIDS. She said she found the poverty to be crushing but people's sense of life to be uplifting. She went to the local Episcopal Church which is entirely Dominican. She said the people in that church praised God as joyfully as we do here. She worked with people every day in whose faces she saw the face of God, a young girl who was blind and so desperately wanted to be able to read. a teenage boy dying in a hospital so delighted to have her try out her limited Spanish on him. I wept inwardly when she told me her stories thinking of the silly and petty arguments within the Episcopal Church over the sexual preference of a Bishop in New Hampshire when the world is so much in need of us with real problems. The Episcopal Church needs to get a life! This call to take up your cross and follow Jesus means to move out into real life, even if the roads lead through dicey neighborhoods. What a privilege it is to follow him even to an AIDS Clinic in the Dominican Republic or to a prison where souls are forgotten or right here around our beloved Church of the Epiphany or when to follow him to Golgotha itself, to follow and discover that if you gain the world but lose your soul, then that is truly living with what is ugly and broke and miserable. You can try and hide in some antiseptic place, safe from the contagion of life with a safe sanitized gospel that preaches only what you want to hear, but it will not give you your soul. Well, the world is full of things that can make you weary, but the world is also full of God who gives us greater and greater strength to know real life. When I was 10 years old I don't remember exactly how the next day went, the day after I saw my grandmother crying alone in the night, but I do remember her unfailing love and joy in life. You know, when you die, you will not be remembered with love because you were rich. You'll be remembered because you were there for people with them on the road. Jesus has gone ahead of you. Amen The Reverend James T. Tucker September 17, 2006 *Past sermons may be found here. |
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