Sermons

back to list

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A

    Date:6/28/20

    Category: Ordinary Time

    Passage: Matthew 10:40-42

    Speaker: The Rt. Rev. Steven Miller

    You may view this sermon via YouTube. Bishop Miller begins preaching at 13:51.

    Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
    June 28, 2020
    The Rt. Rev. Steven A. Miller
    Diocesan online worship service sermon

    In nomine…

    The collects appointed early in the season after Pentecost are some of my favorites in the Book of Common Prayer. Two weeks ago we prayed one of my favorites, today we pray another. The collects in our prayer book all have a similar structure. The address always includes either a statement about God’s nature or something that God has done in ages past. The petition asks God to do something for us based on this attribute of God’s nature or the past behavior. I have often mused that if there were a collect for finding a parking place it would go something like this: O God, who gives the foxes their holes and the birds their nest, grant that we may find a parking place so that we might do that which we have set out to do with expediency and a minimum of inconvenience and give thee thanks.

    In our collect for today, we pray these words, “Almighty God, you have built your church upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone. Grant us so to be joined together in unity of sprit by their teaching that we may be made a holy temple acceptable.” I suspect one reason this collect is appointed for this week is that it falls in the week when we celebrate the apostles Peter and Paul and commemorate their martyrdom.

    We, Episcopalians, make a big deal about our church, our Anglican Communion being built on the apostles. At every Sunday celebration of the Eucharist, we confess that we believe in one holy catholic and apostolic church. One of the requirements of any ecumenical full communion agreement is that each Church either possess or agree to accept the historic episcopate. When clergy from other denominations wish to become ordained ministers in this Church, our canons require that clergy ordained in traditions that do not have bishops in a valid and recognized apostolic succession be ordained by a bishop rather than received into the ministry of this Church as is the case with former Roman Catholic clergy, as well as our full communion partners. In the past, it was fashionable in some Episcopal churches to display a chart that traced the succession of our bishops all the way back to the apostles. Being built on the apostles is very important to us. The hymn of my seminary includes this verse, “May what apostles learned of thee be ours from age to age.” We make a big deal of the apostles, we name churches after them, and each of the restored 12 has a feast day dedicated to them.

    We don’t make as much of deal of being built on the prophets. I don’t know of any churches dedicated to Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah, Jeremiah, or one of what are called the minor prophets such as Joel, Hosea, Zechariah or one of the others. The feast this past week of St. John the Baptist, although in scripture Jesus describes him as more than a prophet, may be the exception that proves the rule.

    Nor even though as the collect says, we are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, do we confess our belief in a catholic, apostolic and prophetic church. I wonder why that is.

    It could be because many confuse prophecy with prediction. And our culture is rife with purported prophecies that claim to predict the second coming of Jesus or the end of the world. There was even one this past week that appeared as an advertisement in the newspaper of a major city. Then there those who misread the revelation to John as a prediction of the end times in this light, as in the Left Behind series, rather than for what it is an apocalyptic — a literary genre that describes past events in the future tense to give hope and comfort for the present moment.

    And then there is the fact that, for most of us, our image of a prophet is inextricably linked with the caricature found in cartoons, an unkempt fellow holding a sign that says repent the end is near. We don’t take these people seriously.

    But I suspect the real reason is that prophets make us uncomfortable. They make us uncomfortable because the prophetic task is to proclaim God’s eternal truth to the present time. Prophets in scripture and today remind us that “the right worship of God requires of a person the right treatment of our fellow human beings.”  They remind us of the demands of following God, and the depth of the command to love our neighbor as ourselves. Prophets shake us up. They make us uncomfortable. Here I am brought to mind of people whom I have had the privilege to hear whose words shake me and challenge me to deeper faith, new behaviors and new insights, folks like James Cone, Kelly Brown-Douglas, and my bishop colleague Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows.

    We do well to remember that our Lord Jesus viewed his own ministry as that of prophet. Remember his words after preaching in his hometown of Nazareth — a prophet is not without honor except in his own country and in his own house. We hear an echo of this in the Gospel lesson from last week — I have not come to bring peace but a sword. And if we are the body of Christ, the continuation of Jesus ministry than our call is to be prophets as well.

     Today we hear Jesus tell us,

    “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet's reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous; and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple — truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.”

    I know these are challenging words. What me a prophet? Come on, Bishop, it was bad enough when you used to tell us we had to share our faith and invite people to church. Now you want me to be a prophet.

    The answer is yes. Because each of us has taken a vow to seek and serve Christ in all persons and that service requires the confrontation of unjust structures and the work necessary to dismantle them — the structures that perpetuate systemic racism, child poverty, and voter suppression.

    I believe it is time for the Church, this Church, to reclaim our prophetic vocation to state clearly that the right worship of God requires the right treatment of our fellow human beings. I know this is risky business. I have had friendships strained by my advocacy for sane common sense gun reform. I have been questioned and criticized for the stance I took in support of the teachers and other union members in opposition to the Budget Repair bill in 2011. I have had friendships strained when I point out to them the reality of systemic racism and its pervasiveness.

    And yet, it is at those times that my faith and ministry have felt most alive.

    I have begun to wonder if perhaps, in this pandemic and the enforced fast from public worship due to COVID-19, God is inviting us to reorder our priorities as a Church. I hear the call of the words of the prophet Isaiah:

    I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly.

    Your new moons and your appointed feasts
    my soul hates;
    they have become a burden to me,
    I am weary of bearing them.

    When you spread forth your hands,
    I will hide my eyes from you;
    even though you make many prayers,
    I will not listen;
    your hands are full of blood.

    Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;
    remove the evil of your doings
    from before my eyes;
    cease to do evil,

    learn to do good;
    seek justice,
    correct oppression;
    defend the fatherless,
    plead for the widow. (Isaiah 1:13b-17)

    I dream of a Church that puts as much energy into working for justice as it does in to planning and gathering for worship. And I as I dream, I am called to repentance. I am humbled and frankly a bit embarrassed when I think about all the energy I have put into liturgy during my ministry compared to what I have put in to prophetic witness and advocacy.

    I began to wonder if our re-opening plans should require a prophetic engagement plan as well. Here I am reminded of the admonition of that great Anglican bishop Frank Weston who reminded the Anglo-Catholic Congress of 1923 that you cannot know Jesus in the blessed sacrament unless you have known him among his people on the streets. I believe that in this present moment God is giving us an opportunity to understand who we really are called to be as the Church. What does the prophet say? “I have given you as a light to the nations that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.”

    Our catechism reminds us that the duty of every Christian is to work, pray, and give for the spread of the Kingdom of God. Note that work comes first. Money follows work and prayer it is not a substitute for it. And it is clear that there is much work to do. I am humbled by friends who choose their grocery store by the racial diversity of the neighborhood in which it sits striving to prevent another food desert in their community. Seeking God’s justice must have a bearing on where we shop, where we eat, and in what we invest.

    I invite you this week to pray and ask God to show you where you are being called to prophetic ministry. What concrete act might you undertake to defend the fatherless and plead for the widow. To stand up to white supremacy and privilege. To make childhood poverty a thing of the past. To guarantee the voting rights of every citizen.

    The time is now to give voice to our beliefs by what we do and what we say. Sure, we will offend some. A few may unfriend us. But the Good News is that God will be with us empowering us, sustaining us and consoling us. And who knows we may be the agent God uses for conversion and healing of those who at first may be offended by our witness.

    I know this is hard work, sometimes even painful and painstaking. But you know what they say: NO pain, NO gain. And we are called to gain the reign of God.

    And so may prayer this day is in the words of that hymn, “O Christ may we baptized form sin go forth with you a world to win.”

    May God grant us this grace.