Ezekiel 2:1-5
2 Corinthians 12:2-10
Mark 6:1-13
As many, if not all of you have
puzzled out, being an Episcopalian means allowing that there are parts of the
Christian experience that remain mysterious, that seemingly contradictory
experiences and understanding can form paths to the same God. Our
Anglican tradition has a comfort with paradox, with accepting that the God who
threatens vengeance also embraces us as a loving parent, that the Church that
Christ instituted is both perfect and flawed. We believe that God speaks to us through science and through
Scripture, through our reason and through the traditions of the historic
Catholic church, through individuals and through communities. We accept among our heroes and saints a
French woman that the English burned as a witch, a bishop who nobody really
liked and so got beheaded, an apostle who vehemently denied knowing Christ in
order to save his own skin.
We also have an appreciation for
paradox in the spiritual life. St Gregory
of Nyssa, on writing on the spiritual life of Christians, explains a bit of the
shape of this paradox, that we are both creatures of a perfect Creator, but
also free to choose for ourselves.
We can accept the will of God in our lives, having faith though we don’t
understand God’s will completely, or we can go our own way. God is our parent, and calls Himself
Father, but as St Gregory of Nyssa wrote in the fourth century:
We are in a sense our own parents,
and we give birth to ourselves by our own free choice.
It should not be a surprise, I
guess, that paradox has such pride of place in the Christian life. Christ repeatedly tells His disciples
that He comes among them as one who serves, that His followers will be hated by
their families, that the powerful will be overthrown, and that the meek will
inherit the earth. Of course,
Christ’s followers assumed He was merely speaking metaphorically, or maybe that
those who are meek on occasion, say, just on Tuesdays and Fridays in Lent would
inherit the earth. And that
service to those in need meant more like talking in polite conversation with
one’s peers about the social policies that should be enacted to ensure that
there is improved access to education for those of lesser means, as long as
their children don’t actually go to school with our children. And when Christ preached that he would
be destroyed so that he would be raised, and that his disciples would follow
after Him? Best not to think of
that.
But today, in the lessons we’ve
heard, any doubt we may have about the role of paradox should be swept
away. From the Old Testament, we
read that God called Ezekiel for a really thankless job. Ezekiel was a member of the priestly
caste, a Kohen, part of the upper class that had been captured and sent into
exile in Babylon. From a position
of privilege, as a hereditary member of the priesthood, tied to the Jerusalem
Temple, Ezekiel was sent to be a prophet among those in exile, to a people whom
God Himself describes as “a nation of rebels.” Terrible job that Ezekiel received. And what did this priest prophesy? The destruction of the Temple, the
harrowing of Jerusalem. He was not
a popular guy. But Ezekiel was
faithful, accepting that, even though it would be difficult, he would step out
in faith, allowing God to be divine, and accepting that though destruction and
violence was being preached, grace and restoration would follow. Ezekiel, against his better judgment,
against the cultural mores and priestly prejudices in which he was raised,
Ezekiel stood up, on his feet, as God had commanded, and spoke in prophecy.
Then, in St Paul’s second epistle to
the Corinthians that we heard read by Michael Bonilla, we move from Ezekiel’s
call to a strange episode in the life of our own patron, the Apostle Paul. He writes that, in a vision, he is
swept up to the third heaven, and was given a message that he was to repeat to
no one. And, upon being lifted
into Heaven itself, upon receiving a secret and intimate message from God Himself,
St Paul’s immediate response is not to boast. He takes no credit, desires no attention, even refuses to
name himself as the visionary. If
I received an invitation to tea with God in heaven, I would tell everyone both
before and after, and ensure that the entire conversation was on Facebook
within three minutes. I was
unbelievably excited when I ran into Senator Schumer in Spot Coffee on Delaware
a few weeks ago, I posted about it immediately, and he’s nowhere near as
important as God Almighty. At
least, in my opinion.
But needless to say, St Paul dwelt
on God’s power and his own weakness, St Paul allowed paradox in his life, he
allowed there to be gaps in his full understanding of how the world
worked. Like Ezekiel, St Paul
allowed God to be God, to be the one who directs the path of our lives through
the cosmos. As one of our
Eucharistic prayers confesses, St Paul, like Ezekiel, witnessed that Christ is
the author of our salvation.
In the passage we heard of St
Mark’s Gospel that recounts the reception Christ received in Nazareth, we
encounter a familiar story. So
familiar, then, that it is easily (and somewhat tritely) summarized with the
paraphrasing from St Luke’s and St Mathew’s gospels: “No prophet is accepted in
his own country.” And in the
portion of St Mark’s Gospel from today, the rejection that Christ encounters in
Nazareth left Christ in disbelief.
And Christ’s response to the rejection? Well, if Nazareth was too good for Him, well, he had
followers! So, Christ sends them
out, two by two, traveling lightly.
He sends them out with a mission: Proclaim repentance, cast out demons,
anoint, and heal. When Christ had
work to do, and when those to whom He came rejected Him, what did He do? He sent out His followers. He sends out flawed, silly men and
women for the most important task, for the very reason He became flesh: to
proclaim the Kingdom, and to heal those who were suffering. That is a potent reminder for us, who
sit around praying, maybe, for God to do something about the poverty we see
around us, or for God to address injustice or violence or apathy. Paradoxically, it is not a perfect
omnipotent Christ who always is the means by which God will confect His will:
sometimes, it is through flawed, tired, often whiney people. Sometimes, God will raise up prophets
and apostles among us. Sometimes,
God calls us to listen, to stand up on our feet, and to take steps forward in
faith, though we do not know where we are being led.
It is not always given to us to
know and understand all the pieces of our lives. It is not always given to us to see that the seeds we plant
will flower in our own time, that the roads we begin will be complete before we
move on. It is our place, however,
to step out in faith, trusting that our works, begun in Christ, will be
completed in Him, as well, though maybe by other hands. The beauty, and the
paradox of our faith enshrined in our Anglican tradition, is that we are called
into the harvest, called to be prophets and to be apostles, though we will
likely never see the final fruits of our work. We harvest the fields that others sowed, and those that
follow will reap what we have laid down.
When the cornerstones of the great Gothic cathedrals were first laid,
the artisans, clergy, and townspeople who witnessed the first beginnings of
construction knew that they would never live to see the building in its
finished form. But that didn’t
make them find a reason never to start, nor to rush, nor to despair. They had faith that others would pick
up after they were gone, that God would continue to provide, that the
completion of the cathedral may not have been as important as their
participation in the construction of it.
Trust in ourselves, and in the Christ who captains us, is what allowed
them, and allows us to live in this way, to step out in faith, and to follow
the path God lays out for us because it is a beautiful thing so to do, not
because it’s something to add to our CV.
And because we will not always see
the pattern of Christ’s hands in our lives, and because we live in paradox, it
is more important than ever to take chances, to step out in faith, to sow seeds
without the expectation that we will be the ones who will benefit from them. It is more important than ever to take
risks, allowing God to fill the gaps of our own inadequacies and flaws. In the fall of this yearwe’ll be
instituting a new alternative service, a different way for those in our
community to experience the divine mystery of our incarnate God, a different
way for Christ to break through into our world in the Eucharist. We may see the fruit that such a move
will bear, but we may not. We may
completely revolutionize the religious landscape of Buffalo, converting tens of
thousands, instituting a new, modern and Episcopal Great Awakening that will
sweep across our nation, lead to millions of new Episcopalians, and forever alter the course
of Anglican history. Or we may
not. But, maybe someone in Spokane
who reads about it online will be inspired to take risks in her own life, and
will begin a ministry to those who are on the outskirts of her community. Maybe a young grad student who attends
the new service at the Cathedral once or twice before graduating will hear
Christ’s call to serve through a life of community action. Maybe a recently married couple will
feel energized by what they hear happening at St. Paul’s and will encourage
their own parish to try something new, to explore a new ministry in their
community. Maybe those who are
faltering will be strengthened, maybe those who are doubting will learn to
believe again, maybe those who have been damaged by the Church will experience
that a new thing is happening.
The point is: it is not our job to
step out so that we can be the planters, so that we can be the tenders, so that
we can be the harvesters, so that we can be the gleaners. It is our job to step out in faith so
that Christ’s glory, not our glory, may shine. Frankly, if we are too concerned with results, then we are
not letting God be God, we are not living in paradox and tension with divine
mystery, we are not being Anglican, and we are not listening to the Gospel: the
Dean has reminded me before that Christ’s call is to feed His sheep, not to
count them.
When the Blessed Virgin Mary said
yes to a wandering angel’s invitation, she had no idea that her acceptance of
God’s work in her life would forever change the path of human history. She did not know that she would be the
New Eve, the first Christian, and it was not even until later in her pregnancy
that she was inspired to finally acknowledge that all generations would call
her blessed. Every single
generation, all peoples, all languages, call this young girl blessed. And why? Because she accepted the invitation to step out in faith,
and because she allowed God to be God through the course of her life and her actions. Our model for Christian perfection, for
peerless grace, power, beauty and vision is the most unlikely and paradoxical
person imaginable: a young pregnant girl in a dusty backwater province of an
ancient empire. How amazing is our
God that such an unlikely, insignificant, and unremarkable person is exalted as
Mother of God, Queen of Heaven, Mother of all Christians?
From the example of the Blessed
Virgin Mary, from the example of the prophet Ezekiel, and from St Paul, we can
learn that God’s work in human lives can be unpredictable, and contain hidden
mysteries even to the most holy and saintly of those who seek to do God’s will. The gap that remains between human
understanding and the will of God in the human story is the realm of
mystery. We participate in that
mystery through the sacraments, most especially the sacrament of Holy
Eucharist. We participate in that
mystery by faithfully accepting that God’s ways and designs are larger than our
understanding, larger than our greatest dreams, and that we cannot possibly
know all the ways that the life of grace intersect and tie together.
During the vestry retreat this
January, the members of vestry each shared their own individual spiritual
heroes. While the stories were all
unique, there were some interesting parallels: in many cases, the persons who
were heroes would never have known that their actions influenced others. We do not ever understand the full
impact of our actions, actions done in union with God’s plan or in
contradiction. We never fully
understand the impact of the love that we give to strangers, to family, to
fellow parishioners. We never fully
witness the ripples that are formed when we act in faith. And if we expect to always see those results,
to always realize the dividends of our efforts, not only will we be sorely
disappointed, but we will wither and shrivel. With such in mind, we ought to consider how we can better
accept the grace that God offers us to step out in faith, and to do so in our
personal lives, in our spiritual lives, in our communal life as a Cathedral
parish. We need to rethink what
success is, we need to embrace the paradox of God’s mystery, we need to remember
that our mission is the same as that given by Christ to His followers when he
sent them out from Nazareth: to proclaim the Gospel, to offer healing, and to
trust with faith in God’s work in the world and in our lives, for the sake of
the world’s salvation, and for God’s greater glory.
