Proper 9

God of love and mystery

We come together because we need you,

We need each other,

And we need to hear your word.

And if we hear it here, may we be so possessed by it

That we become servants of it out in your world.

We pray this in Christ, who was and is and is to come.

Amen.

So, what is our faith, as Christians, all about? It's love, of course. But this morning's Scriptures call us to the question of whether the objective of that love is judgement or mercy. A rock and a hard place, with not much in between. We are told on the one hand that mercy is the rule. As a few weeks ago, our Rev. Sarah assured us that "Salvation is not transactional." That idea-- that we are redeemed by Grace, that we are justified

by Faith, that Heaven cannot be bought or earned is, of course, a foundation stone

of our Church, both of the earthly institution and of our own lives as the hands and feet and face of Christ as we inhabit God’s created world. It’s an article of faith, and not just

for common-era Protestants; the Psalms, originating with the people of Israel and

expressing their relationship with God, declare the same non-transactional idea. In

Psalm 130, which we said last Sunday, we have what feels to me like the obvious and necessary fact that our relationship with God depends on mercy. Verse 2:

If you, LORD, were to note what is done amiss, *

    O LORD, who could stand? . . .

Well, yes. The Psalm goes on, My soul waits for the Lord, more than the

watchman for the morning, more than the watchman for the morning/. . .for with

the Lord there is Mercy/ With Him there is plenteous redemption. . . Well, yes. And are

we not taught, when seeing a fellow human suffering, to say that there but for the

Grace of God, go I? We are assured time and again that no matter what we do, we are not beyond the reach of God's love?

So, what are we to make of this morning’s gospel story, in which the disciples are

instructed as follows: Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat

what is set before you; cure the sick who are there, and say to them, `The kingdom

of God has come near to you; But whenever you enter a town and they do not

welcome you, go out into its streets and say, `Even the dust of your town that clings

to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God

has come near? Not much mercy there. And don’t just judge them, make a show

of it, so everyone knows who’s in and who’s out.

In this morning’s Epistle it’s even clearer—Paul tells the Galatians that God is not

mocked, for you reap whatever you sow. If you sow to your own flesh, you will reap

corruption from the flesh; but if you sow to the Spirit, you will reap eternal life

from the Spirit. 

As you sow, so shall you reap. That’s right there with sheep and goats, with

naughty and nice, with the billboard that says “Jesus Christ paid for my sins. Who

will pay for yours?” This blatantly transactional frame for our lives here below is

deeply embedded in our culture--that our choices make us good guys or bad guys,

and that our eternal standing will be a just reward according to what we choose.

And we can’t explain or contextualize our way out of it, because we stand up and

say it every time we worship together. In a few minutes we will declare in our

creed, that Jesus the Christ will come again in glory to judge the living and the

dead. The living and the dead; you don’t get a break even if you’re six feet under. In the

suffrages we say on Wednesday evenings we pray to depart this life in faith and

fear, and not be condemned before the great Judgement seat of Christ. Our worship practices remind us time and again that no matter what we do, no matter whether we’re alive or dead, we are not beyond the reach of God’s inevitable and eternal judgement.

So which is it? Judgement or mercy? Which is the core truth of our relationship

with God and our attitude towards our fellow children of God? I have banged my

head against this wall for a long time and I cannot find a way to reconcile those

two versions of the relationship between Creator and created that the readings

present to us this morning. And the question remains: So which is it?

I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m not sure I am capable of knowing.

If that’s where we find ourselves, in a state of profound uncertainty, of structural

uncertainty if you will, then we must conclude that God’s logic is not our logic,

God’s ways are not our ways, and God’s time is not our time. God is Creator, Judge

and Redeemer, and that somehow Love is the substance of it all. And if that’s

where we find ourselves, the only lesson in it that I can put into words is that we a

called to be humble, and that it’s not just a suggestion. It’s a necessity, a

precondition for union with God and the working out of God’s purposes.

The prophet Micah’s words are well known on this matter:

And what does the Lord require of you?

To do justice, love mercy

    and to walk humbly [a]  with your God.

We’ve all heard these words before and many of us love them, because they seem

to sum up the godly life in a portable, poetic passage. But they do return us to the

tricky part: that in the world we actually inhabit, justice, mercy, and humility are

all in short supply, or there’s too much of one and not enough of the others, and it’s

confusing. And it’s no wonder, because justice, mercy, and humility are like oil,

water, and salt—kind of a nasty combination on their own, but all essential in the

right time and the right place and the right amounts at the right temperature. As in

the kitchen, in life we have to try and fail and adjust over and over again, and our

families and friends have to eat the failures along the way.

And a word here about humility. Humility is not well understood, I think, because

many common uses of the word connote meekness, or lowliness, of a sort that

doesn’t play well with the assertive and acquisitive ambitions that are so central to

individual identity in modern times, especially in the West. The humility to which

we are led by this morning’s readings is more a matter of proportion and

perspective than an assessment of self-worth.

For example, People often ask me why I have chosen to live here in the Keweenaw, which is not on the way to anywhere and where the conditions can be harsh. The best answer I have is that here, I can’t even pretend that I’m in control. If you’ve ever been in a small boat on Lake Superior, or if you’ve actually survived a Keweenaw winter,

you’ve been surrounded by forces incalculably larger than yourself. You’ve been

put in your proper place, and to live on joyfully in that place you must acknowledge and embrace the power of the forces that shape it. You are compelled to the kind of humility that God is asking of us this morning. The uncertainty of the conditions clarifies the certainty of God, and so the snows and the waves and the distances are a tremendous relief really. It’s actually nice to know for sure that you can’t be sure about much at all. It keeps you honest. It keeps you focused. It keeps you humble. So that’s the good news.

The other news is that we still have what feels like a mixed signal from both

Scripture and Culture: Do we reap as we sow and await Judgement? Or do we

breathe in the air of God’s mercy, and express that faith not only with our lips but

in our lives?

Yes. I don’t know. I don’t know. Yes.

Amen.