A new way of being

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Sermon for the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost1 30 August 2015

Emmanuel Church, Greenwood Parish (The Rev.) Christopher Garcia

A new way of being Welcome to God’s house. Welcome to God’s oikos2. Welcome to God’s economy. Welcome to God’s way of being. God’s house, God’s way of being, is as bewildering as it is beautiful. God’s house, God’s way of being, is as bewildering as it is beautiful because it is built on a foundation that is alive and moving. Welcome to a house, to a way of being, that is based on love, a living love, a fierce love, an unending love, an unyielding love. God’s grace, unmerited, unearned, unlimited, gushing up forever, unsettling everything it touches. How is that for a foundation? In this house, in this way of being, the most powerful, important thing that goes on – is love. This love, you see, is a strange thing. This love isn’t a thing at all. This love is itself a way of being. This love is action. This love is energy. This love cannot be contained and it cannot be constrained. As soon as we try to do so, as soon as we try to pin down God’s love, describe God’s love, define God’s love, isolate God’s love, we inevitably limit God’s love, we deny its power, and it seems to die a little. God’s love very nature is to be taken, blessed, broken, and given. Jesus lived this reality, embodied God’s love, incarnated and defined what it means to love - by himself being taken, blessed, broken, and given3. Throughout this year we have been reading from the Gospel according to Mark. Mark’s Gospel opens by telling us how Jesus broke with tradition. Jesus broke with tradition by taking fishermen and tax collectors, and making them his closest disciples. Jesus broke with tradition by eating with sinners and outcasts, 1 Revised

Common Lectionary, Year B, Proper 17. Song of Solomon 2:8-13; Psalm 45:1-2, 7-10; James 1:17-27; Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23. “Lord of all power and might, the author and giver of all good things: Graft in our hearts the love of your Name; increase in us true religion; nourish us with all goodness; and bring forth in us the fruit of good works; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever. Amen.” Oikos is the Greek work meaning house, household, or family. It is the linguistic root for such terms as economy and ecology. 2

This four-part pattern (taking, blessing, breaking, and giving) comes from Jesus’ ministry and forms the basis for our Eucharistic life. Then he took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me” (Lk 22:19). The liturgical scholar and Anglican monk Dom Gregory Dix OSB saw this four-fold action of taking, blessing, breaking, and giving as the shape of the Church’s worship and liturgy. It is increasingly central to my own understanding of our identity and vocation as followers of Jesus. 3

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making them included and holy and part of God’s kingdom, here and now. Jesus broke with tradition by touching the diseased and crippled and crazy, by raising the dead, and inviting them, blessing them, blessing us, into new life. Over the years, Judaism had evolved layers of customs and observations and rules that were all intended to support a way of life centered on God. These rules and customs and practices were well intended, meant to guide the way to God, by emphasizing the distinction between what was holy, and what was common. Things that were holy were set aside for God. Things that were common were, well, common – used for everyday life. The practice was, when something that was holy, sacred, reserved for God, came into contact with something that was every day, something that was common, the uncleanness of the common thing somehow defiled the sacred thing. The holy became impure, and was considered common once again, defiled. These rules and practices and customs were intended to keep the people mindful of God, focused on a Godward life. But you can see how rules and practices that are intended to guide us to God, become obstacles to actually experiencing God’s love, encountering the presence of the living God. Jesus came to be with us so that we could encounter the presence of the living God face to face. Jesus comes to be with us so that we can experience God’s love, alive, unmerited, unearned, unlimited, gushing up forever, unsettling everything it touches. Giving life. Giving us life, now and forever. In today’s Gospel, Jesus explains that we get this flow of clean and unclean, pure and impure, holy and common, backwards. The Pharisees were caught up in keeping the common away from the holy, so that the holy things, the sacred things, would not be polluted and made common. But Jesus cuts through all of this and reminds us, that we are common. All of us. You and me. We all know that we have within our selves things that we are ashamed of, things that we do not want the world to see. These things are there. We all have them, but we put them away, tell no one about them, deny them even to ourselves. Theft. Greed. Envy. Anger, even murderous rage. Sexual desires that we can make into false idols. The desire to make ourselves look good, by making other people look bad. And all the twisted ways we justify these things, telling ourselves and telling others that they aren’t so bad, because, after all, everyone does them. Well yes, everyone does do them. We all do do them. That’s what makes them common. And Jesus said these are the things that want to make us common.

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These are the things that lead us away from God: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. But in Jesus, you see, the economy of cleanness and uncleanness, of purity and defilement, stands on its head, turns upside down. The Pharisees were worried that when something common came into contact with the holy, the holy things, the sacred things, would be polluted and made common. In Jesus, it works the other way. When the common touches Jesus, the common becomes holy. When the everyday tastes God, that which was defiled now becomes sacred. So in God’s eyes we are more than common. God looks at us with the eyes of pure love. God looks at us with the desire we heard about in our first reading, in the Song of Songs. God says, “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.” God’s will for us is something better than any list of vices. God’s will for us is to be defined by love: by the life-giving love of being taken, blessed, broken, and given. James writes, “Welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your soul. Be doers of the word.” The Word has touched you: you are holy, sacred; common no longer. God’s invitation, God’s deepest desire, is for us to live in God and God to live in us. At baptism, we are grafted into the Body of Christ. So you and I, we are the Body of Christ, for this place and time. Fishermen. Retirees. Lawyers. Farmers. Teachers. Students. Moms who stay at home and moms who go to work. Realtors. Sinners, public and private. Jesus calls you and me to follow him. God invites all of us into this new life. Stop settling for common, and become holy, sacred. In God, our way of being, our way of living, our role in life, is to choose love. Each week we come to this place to encounter the Word again and again, the Word proclaimed, the Word made flesh, the Word present in bread and wine, Body and Blood. Jesus comes to be with us so that we can be God’s love, alive, gushing up forever, unsettling everything we touch. This is who we are: a way of being, that is based on love, a living love, a fierce love, an unending love, an unyielding love. Welcome to God’s house. Welcome to God’s oikos. Welcome to God’s economy. Welcome to God’s way of being. Amen!