Eighteenth Sunday After Pentecost: October 13, 2019
Proper 23

​In our encounter with Jesus today, we once again find him journeying in and through places he was not supposed to be, and meeting with people he was not supposed to know. Galilee was certainly familiar territory, but Samaria, gosh, the people there didn’t worship in the correct way and worst of all, they were foreigners. Then we introduce lepers, ten of those poor souls in the Gospel reading and the infliction of Naaman, the mighty warrior in 2 Kings. Lepers, of all people, were social outcasts and seen often as less than human.
 
During my own life I have discovered that I have been most changed by two things: Being in places this middle class white boy would not ordinarily find himself, and meeting with people with whom I was not to be associated. I am thinking about when I spent some time working with Mother Teresa in Calcutta, going to minister with her and others in a leper colony a few miles north of the city.
 
Not unlike the culture found in 2 Kings and in Jesus’ day, lepers in Calcutta are shunned, marked as unclean. They are the untouchables. If one goes to Leviticus 13 and 14, you will find verse upon verse about how to deal with leprous people as well as their clothing. I hopped on a packed Calcutta train headed out of the city to the north, in itself quite an experience.  Disembarking and then walking up the railroad tracks to where I was told the leper colony was, I came upon women and children kneeling between the tracks making patties out of cow dung which after drying all day in the sun would be burned as fuel for cooking purposes. Then, after walking another couple hundred yards as I got closer to the leper’s housing, I heard a strange repeating clacking sound that got louder and louder as I drew near.
 
Coming upon the entrance to the first building, I saw two rows of residents operating looms. What I was hearing was the shuttle on the loom going back and forth. Many of the people had partial arms and legs, many missing parts of their noses and/or lips, the results of ravages of leprosy. It was later that I found out that this work producing cloth, some of it the familiar blue and white worn by the nuns of Mother Teresa’s Order, gave the people dignity. Before then there was a constant issue of fighting between families over territory and commodities. The meaningful work brought mutual respect and dignity. A sense of self-worth followed, clearly important, even essential, to people who had been told they had no worth.
 
Then I went down another hall and heard some men singing. They too had bodies that had been deeply scarred by leprosy. I asked one of the nuns what was being sung and I was told the rough translation was, “Jesus, we who have no hands, you are our hands. Jesus, we who have no feet, you are our feet. Jesus, we who have no eyes, you are our eyes. Jesus, you are our everything.” I was stunned. Yes, they had found their worth and dignity when given meaningful work by the Christians who ministered among them, but even more, they found that there is a God who loves them. Contrary to what many had told them, it is God who defines their worth.
 
This is what is happening in today’s Gospel and it comes up over and over again throughout the Scriptures. This is the great reversal of Jesus’ ministry, giving honor and love to the least, the last, the untouchable, the outcast. Because it was his ministry it is our ministry as well, as we are the Body of Christ on this earth. We mark and sacramentalize this truth in those receiving the laying on of hands today.
 
Look how it plays out in 2 Kings. Naaman, a great warrior, has contracted a leprous skin disease. Who is the one who opens the possibility of cleansing, healing, and hope to this Gentile enemy? A little girl, from, here again, the margins, calling forth the prophet in Samaria of all places! Nothing good could come out of Samaria the religious teachers of the day would have thought. Without her as an instrument there would have been no healing. This was an intervention from below, from the minimized, the little ones, the less valued, and it moves to God’s great healing. Even Naaman’s misconception on how God works shifts to apprehension when he recognizes the God of Israel as his deliverer.
 
Then in the Gospel we find again what it means to follow Jesus, which is St. Luke’s point. From where does the gratitude for healing come? The one leper. Where is he from? You guessed it. Samaria! Are you catching a theme here? Jesus was traveling to Jerusalem, scriptural code meaning he was going to where he would die. By traveling between Samaria and Galilee, even engaging a person from that territory, he was crossing the high and solid religious and cultural boundaries of separation that had been set up. He was about taking them down. It was only the Samaritan who sees and understands and returns to Jesus. Luke draws his hero from outside the chosen. Its about the continual need for our conversion, always turning back to Jesus as we find that what was promised in 2 Kings is fulfilled in him.
 
We have a Lord who two millennia ago was busy blowing the doors off the constricting, life-draining, dignity denying religious approaches that kept God’s people captive. It got him killed. Sometimes in the life of the Church it appears that we spend a lot of time trying to put the doors back on. Why? What are we afraid of? That someone might get saved who we think doesn’t deserve it?
 
Dear friends—none of us deserves it. But isn’t that the great Good News of Christ? As the Collect for today says so beautifully, it is God’s grace that precedes and follows us. We are surrounded by and immersed in grace! 2 Timothy tells us that when “we are faithless, he remains faithful!” More good news!
 
The wholeness of Naaman was found in the loving God who we discover in Jesus. The leper who returned to Jesus in gratefulness, his wholeness was found in Jesus. Through our baptism we died with him so that we might live, even now, with him. Where do we find our wholeness, our hope? It is found in Jesus. Now let’s celebrate.
 
Bishop Skip

Seventeeth Sunday After Pentecost: October 6, 2019
Proper 22

Click here for a video recording of the Bishop's sermon at St. Catherine's. 

The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” What a heartfelt prayer offered by Jesus’ inner circle of friends as they faced opposition, challenging circumstances and an unknown future. And here we are! They desire an ever-deepening trust in the goodness and grace of God as shown forth in Jesus, a grace that restores and renews in the face of trying times.
 
“Increase our faith” might be our prayer here at St. Catherine’s as well as you continue to face trying circumstances and as yet an unknown future. You’ve continued to hang in and be faithful people representing the Episcopal Church and our diocese in this part of God’s vineyard. But you and others are tired. The way is not always easy. I wonder if you heard Habakkuk’s words as they might apply to your reality? I thought they were quite striking.
 
To give some context, Habakkuk the prophet is writing in a time of the decline of the threat of Assyria and the eventual fall of Jerusalem. Israel is dealing with the breakdown of justice and order (some things just don’t change). Habakkuk’s message is to bring assurance of the power of God in human history, even when it appears God is silent, affirming God’s purpose is being worked out in history despite evidence to the contrary in any given moment. Lord, “Increase our faith!”
 
Listen to Habakkuk’s words again with me and think of our diocesan context as well as yours here at St. Catherine’s:
 
“O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen...Why do you make me see wrongdoing and look at trouble...So the law becomes slack and justice never prevails…Then the Lord answered me and said: …for there is still a vision for the appointed time; it speaks of the end, and does not lie. If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay.”
 
Fascinating yes!? It seems to describe so well parts of our present context. Although Habakkuk is speaking of nations and the survival of Israel and we are talking about parishes and a diocese, we do so for the same reason, which is, in order to be a voice of God’s justice, beauty and hope, the liberating Good News that sets God’s people free—every single one.
 
It was the mission of Jesus and therefore it is our mission to be a people who embody ever more fully and radiate ever more clearly that pure and unbounded love, who is God. Yet we often don’t get it just as the apostles often did not get it. We’re no different than they. We often struggle with what it means to be faithful. We pray for an increase, a deepening of faith and trust in the One who is the ground of our being in order to, among other things, resist the destructive and oppositional forces swirling all around them and us. Jesus uses the image of a mulberry tree that I’m told has an incredibly extensive root system and therefore would be nearly impossible to uproot much less replant in deep water. The point being: genuine faith can bring about quite unexpected things. What we cannot do is presume upon God’s graciousness as if we deserve it. It is all gift. Then out of the pure joy that comes from a grateful heart, we put our faith into action.
 
When you at St. Catherine’s committed yourself to being a faithful remnant of Episcopalians, you did not know fully what lay before you. You and all of us hoped it would be for the relatively short term. It has not turned out that way. It has been costly in all kinds of ways. But isn’t that the way of the Cross? Of course faithfulness is costly. This journey, your journey, is about more than property. It is about the integrity of the Gospel itself as we have received it.
 
Study after study of American religion is telling us that the time for casual Christianity is over. A recent report of The Pew Research Center says: “casual Christianity, the kind that is not lived deeply as a pattern of life, is losing legitimacy among young people because many Christians only speak the truth and fail to DO the truth.” “Increase our faith” can be our cry along with Jesus’ apostles.
 
Perhaps we need to metaphorically be uprooting some mulberry trees as bold ambassadors of Jesus. As a community of faith, we are called by God because we have a mission to celebrate and a love to share. Every Eucharistic celebration reminds us that our life is not primarily about the maintenance of an institution, nor about the management of an organization. It is about the challenging transformation of God’s people into the mystery of divine love in order to change the world. It is to be a part of the “Jesus movement” as our Presiding Bishop calls it.
 
Hear again St. Paul’s admonition in II Timothy today, to “rekindle the gift of God that is within you…for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self discipline.” Paul’s letter reminds that early Christian community of the faith handed down to them from Timothy’s grandmother Lois and mother Eunice. You too are here because of folks who have handed down the faith to you.
 
As tired as we may be, the faith communities in Habakkuk, II Timothy and Luke, are being called to persevere. It is the way of the Cross. It is not easy. Yet we stay rooted in the hope of resurrection to come for again from II Timothy, we “know the one in whom I (we) have put our trust…Guard the good treasure entrusted to you, with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us.” Lord, “Increase our faith.”
 
Bishop Skip