Monday, June 26, 2017
Pentecost 3
Sermon
for Pentecost 3
Year A June 25 , 2017
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Holy
Trinity & St. Anskar
+In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity
We don’t always know what’s best for us. What seems like
catastrophe may be a door to something better. Hagar could only see death for
her child and herself, but what was in store for her was a greater future. From
servitude, God brought her and her son, Ishmael, to prominence. Ishmael became
the father of “a great nation,” the Arabs. But in order to enjoy this reversal
of fortune, poor Hagar had to endure a kind of death. She was sure she was
going to die and — what was worse — her only child would die too.
Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose
their life for my sake will find it.
This saying is a kind of summary of the whole Gospel. St.
Paul expands on it in the passage we just heard from his Letter to the Romans.
Share in Christ’s resurrection because we have also shared in his death. As the
Gospel says if we are really His disciples, we will take up our Cross. This is
anything but “good news”: strife within families, persecution from the
authorities, all kinds of misfortunes and disasters. Everyone experiences them
to some degree, very few get off easy, and no one escapes death.
Abraham’s family is divided, Hagar and Ishmael driven off
into the desert. This is not peace, but division.
Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth;
I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.
That is, an instrument for cutting apart. And
Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of
me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me…
But our responsibilities to our parents are first in line
after our duties to God, as we see in the order of the Ten Commandments. What is
more painful than conflict within the family, conflict with those closest to
us? Where is the good news in this?
These extremely negative pronouncements sound like the
opposite of good news to me! What’s more, if sin is separation it sounds as
though Jesus is promising to bring sin into
the world: the sword of division. This is intentionally provocative. St. Paul
faced the problem head-on by asking the Romans, Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound?
After all, if Jesus is come to bring not peace but division,
then maybe we should wallow in the division! “Of course not!” Says Paul.
How can we who died to sin go on living in it? Do you not
know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into
his death?
In other words, to be a Christian, is to participate in
Christ’s Death. Part of the illumination of Baptism is the consciousness of
sharing His Cross.
… whoever does not take up the Cross and follow Me is not
worthy of Me.
Perhaps the good news in all of this is to be found in the
words “take up.” To accept all of this suffering consciously leads to glory. Embrace the Suck! As the marines say. (Possibly
you thought I would never find anything edifying in military culture!) St.Paul
put it somewhat more loftily:
Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into
death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the
Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.
We don’t know what’s good for us. That should be abundantly
clear on every level, from our personal lives to our social and political and
spiritual lives. If we try to save ourselves on our own terms, we will fail. Hagar
the serving woman is our models in this. She accepted her suffering, even her
death, and what is worse, the death of her only child. But what appeared to her
as ultimate disaster, was really the path to glory.
Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose
their life for my sake will find it.
AMEN
MARANATHA
COME, LORD JESUS!
