I preached this sermon in Cathedral Park in Buffalo, on the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost.

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.