2nd Sunday After Pentecost
Exodus 19:2-8a Psalm 100 Romans 5:1-8 Matthew 9:35-10:8 Dear fellow ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ, grace and peace to you from the one who dared to die for us. Amen Welcome to the time after pentecost, often called ordinary time, symbolized by the color green. In this green season our scriptures and prayers will point us in the direction of growth, growth in faith, in discipleship, in understanding, in what it takes to build the kingdom of God. And this season will stretch on and on, for the next few months, it will be fall before we see a color on the altar other than green and that too holds true to the theme of the season because growth takes time. And growth is difficult at times, do you remember growing up, when you hit a growth spurt and literally felt growing pains, aches in your bones as they stretched toward your full height? In his letters Paul writes to a church experiencing growing pains, to many he writes of specific difficulties, the Thessalonians were afraid of church members dying before the return of Christ, the Corinthians had all sorts of conflict and it seems like he just missed the Philippians, in his letter to the Romans, Paul is writing to a church that he has never met but whom he wishes to visit, and because he’s never met them, and realizes that he might never meet them he presents his rationale for the gospel in a more measured tone, Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham and his main point is that God does the work, all Abraham did was trust in the promise, had faith. For us, Jesus does all the work and our role is to trust the promise, have faith. That’s what is leading up to our reading for today where Paul concludes: “Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.” We have peace with God! Paul proclaims, given our sinful and broken relationship with God it would be reasonable (using human logic) for God to want to even the score, punish us, make us hurt in the same way we made God hurt “But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” God settled the score or however you want to put it, and the end result is that God has promised that through Christ we will share in the glory of God. We have been set free in our relationship with God but that freedom does not absolve us of responsibilities, rather it allows us to turn our attention to the broken relationships of the world, relationships that will insist that they are fine the way they are, relationships that will resent and push back against even the suggestion that they need to be examined, which is why Paul says that even as we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God “we also boast in our sufferings” So, what (asking our pentecost question) what does this mean? What does this mean for us today? What it means is that we have work to do, examining the broken relationships in this world, to acknowledge them, understand them and work toward healing them. Sadly there are many candidates for this work, but at the forefront right now is the relationship between the white community and the black community within this country. It is a relationship that is broken and has been broken for hundreds of years, and it is also one that some will insist is fine and will resent even the call to examine the relationship. But this is exactly what Jesus has set us free to do, it is what he did and calls us to do, to go to the places that are hurting and in need of good news. We heard in our gospel that as Jesus went around all the cities and villages proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God he encountered whole crowds of people that needed healing and hope and “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, the harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few” One person teaching and healing is not enough, so Jesus sends the disciples out to do the same things that he has just been doing, and he knows it’s not going to be easy or that everyone will receive their message but that it is important work to be done and he promises that whatever happens they are loved and cared for by God, they are free to take risks because God is their safety net. We are free to take risks since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God, which means that nothing can separate us from the love of God, even if the work we do in working on human relationships is difficult and produces suffering, but we know that “suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” Hope does not disappoint us. It may be hard to look around the world right now and have hope. But that’s only if we confuse hope with optimism. Optimism looks at all the hard and difficult things of the world and says, ‘I don’t know how but it will all turn out okay.’ Hope takes a hard look at the realities, the seemingly insurmountable obstacles, and says ‘nevertheless I trust that there will be new life.’ This week in my reading I came across a passage which speaks directly to this kind of hope, I have returned to a book I read in seminary “The Cross and the Lynching Tree” by James H. Cone, a prominent black theologian, reading it is part of my own work examining the broken relationships in this world and working to acknowledge them, understand them and work toward healing them. I invite you to join me in this work and will in the near future be offering some ideas for how you can join me. In one part Dr.Cone describes hope in the black experience as expressed through the spiritual “Nobody Knows” He says “The first three lines accent despair; Nobody knows de trouble I’ve seen, Nobody knows my sorrow. Nobody knows de trouble I’ve seen, But the last line accents hope with an exclamation: Glory Hallelujah “Nobody Knows” reaches the peak of despair in its repetition of the first line in the third. African Americans did not doubt that their lives were filled with trouble...Trouble followed them everywhere, like a shadow they could not shake. But the ‘Glory Hallelujah’ in the last line speaks of hope that trouble would not sink them down into permanent despair...In another version of ‘Nobody Know,’ the dialectic of doubt and faith is expressed with a focus on Jesus’ solidarity with the one in trouble. “Nobody knows the trouble I see, Nobody knows but Jesus, Nobody knows the trouble I see, Glory Hallelujah.” ...In the second version of “Nobody Know,” the source of the hope is Jesus, for he is a friend who knows about the trouble of the little ones, and he is the reason for their ‘Hallelujah.’ His divine presence is the most important message about black existence.” (pg 20-21) Hope is the belief that the future will triumph over the often seemingly insurmountable hardships of the present. Jesus is the source of hope. He had compassion on the crowds, he pointed out and preached against a broken system and for his trouble he was crucified on a cross and nevertheless he rose from the dead on the third day, he is new life in spite of death. And he did it all for us, his life and death and life again, so that we too could have new life, peace with God. As we look around our world and see the brokenness and suffering, Jesus, who has set us free, calls out to us, “the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few” and sends us out to work for new life grounded in the hope of the resurrection, the hope of Jesus. Hope that does not disappoint. Amen
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AboutPastor Emily Johnson preaches weekly at Christ Lutheran. These are manuscripts of her sermons given at Christ Lutheran. Feel free to engage with them in the comments section of the blog. Archives
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