September 15, 2024 - The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
My friends, I speak to you today in the name of one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. Please be seated.
Good morning, Epiphany. Though I was here in service last week, I must admit that I really missed the privilege of preaching last Sunday when I handed the pulpit over to Father Jim for his admittedly very good sermon on listening and on being changed. I also preached that afternoon, as you may know, at the Sandy Mass in St. Joseph, but I have really enjoyed connecting with you all on Sunday mornings, so it’s good to be back up here. Thank you for having me and for engaging these sermons, even throughout the week; it has been an early highlight of being your rector.
We are also presented this week with an abundance of riches in our lectionary readings, so there’s a lot that I want to say! Proverbs, James, Mark, and even our Psalm this morning all have so many sermons tucked into them, so many important points for the church today, for us, that I encourage you to take your bulletin home and give these passages some time, maybe another reading or two throughout your week. Each passage is full of goodness for us at Epiphany, and alas, I can only preach one sermon.
As you know, as your rector, I get to spend time with the scripture throughout the week. I start on Monday by reading these passages through for the first time, then on Tuesday, a group of us meets to discuss which hymns best fit the readings, a detail you might not have known. On Wednesday, our healing service reads and discusses the passages before communion and prayer, and then on Thursday, I find books on my shelves that help enlighten the passages for me, all in hopes of giving you something you can take home on Sunday, something that might change and form your life in the image of Christ. As the Psalmist wrote today, “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in God’s sight, O Lord my strength and my redeemer.”
A story came up in our liturgy meeting on Tuesday that seems appropriate for today, but first, I’m going to start with a brief story of my own; two stories for the price of one. In 2010, the year before I met Abbey, at the ripe old age of 26, I was feeling like life was passing me by. I was living in Seattle at the time, in grad school to be a counseling psychologist, and I figured that since I wasn’t getting any younger, I needed to travel some more before I got too old to do it. I found an old college friend who felt the same way, and so the two of us left that summer to ride bicycles around the entire coast of Ireland. We figured it would take us about three weeks of riding to circle the island, 60-to-70-mile days with tents and clothes and gear on our backs. We would sleep on the side of the road and in people’s yards and on farms and enjoy small-town Irish pubs every night... but what we didn’t realize is that Ireland is beautiful and green because it rains. A lot. All the time. Our three-week ride was not sunny and delightful, we were drenched every single day, but it was certainly memorable.
Our anthem, our motivating creed that we said to ourselves throughout every day of rainy, long-distance riding came from a chance encounter before our first day on the bikes. A childhood friend of my mom’s lived in Northern Ireland, and he let us stay at his house before we set out, and on our one day with him, he and a friend took us out on his friend’s boat on Lough Neagh near Belfast. As we slowly puttered out onto the water before we raised the boat’s sails, the two sixty-year-old men discussed their home internet service, of all things, while my friend and I just admired the view, taking it all in. One of them had just updated to the latest internet service that had come to Belfast, but the other, the captain of the boat, steadfastly refused to do so. He said that he didn’t want his internet to be any faster; it was already too fast for his liking. Instead, in the face of faster, better, cheaper, and more reliable service, he was going to stick with his dial-up connection and the speed he was already living with because, as he said, “I like the slow.” My friend and I made knowing eye contact immediately because it was such a profound phrase: I like... the slow.
Those four words became so important to us cyclists over our three weeks in Ireland that we both considered getting them tattooed on our legs in Irish Gaelic before we came home (which we did not end up doing). The words, to us, came to represent standing in the face of efficiency, of speed, of marketing, of consumerism, of what everyone else was doing or was saying was obviously the right decision. They represented standing firm because of some deeply held conviction, conviction that maybe some progress isn’t progress at all, that maybe we needed to slow down to appreciate what was around us, maybe faster wasn’t always better. After all, it was much easier to appreciate the natural (though wet) beauty of Ireland from a slow-moving bicycle than from the back seat of a high-speed car, just trying to get to the next destination on the itinerary. It was easier to think, easier to hear something from God even, when we were not moving so quickly, when our focus was elsewhere. I like to think that “I like the slow” still shapes my theology, and even my life, in many ways.
I like the slow.
I thought of this story and this phrase during our Tuesday morning group discussion of the Gospel of Mark this week, of Jesus and Peter and the crowds in Caesarea Phillippi. Ellen, who leads that Tuesday meeting as our music minister, had her own story that connected with the text, especially connecting to Jesus’s rebuke of Peter that follows the famous line, “Get behind me, Satan!”
Again across the globe, Ellen’s story came from Epiphany’s pilgrimage this summer to Spain, where several of our members and friends walked the Camino de Santiago, or the Way of St. James. I won’t be able to share the story in the same detail she did, but before our pilgrims left on their journey, they were given a list of things they needed to pack, to bring along on their long, slow walk across the countryside. But as they walked, those heavy bags of “essential” tools and accessories the experts said they needed? Well, they weighed our pilgrims down. As Ellen walked, then, she began to lighten her load by leaving behind some of those extras for others to use, until all she had left in her bag were the actual essentials. Her pack was lighter, her load – both literally and metaphorically – was lighter, after she figured out what was really important. But it took the act of slowing down, of listening to her body and to herself and to God and to truth instead of to the experts or to popular opinion, before she could really figure out what was essential, what the bare necessities really were. (We wanted to play that Jungle Book song for you at this point in the sermon, but I think we’ll leave it out. The bare necessities of life, they’ll come to you.) The rest was getting in the way, of her walk, of her connection with God.
Today, we have so many good readings and lessons, including maybe four solid sermons out of the Mark passage alone. But the sermon that I think the Holy Spirit has for us here at Epiphany today, that I have for us today, that Ellen and our liturgy group has for us today, well it hones in directly, it zeroes in on Jesus’s direct rebuke of Peter in today’s gospel: “You are setting your mind not on divine things, but on human things.”
See, in this passage of the gospel this morning, Peter actually has some of the right answers. Jesus asks his disciples what the latest word on the street is, what are people saying about him? The disciples give him the latest: “some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah, others say he’s another prophet.” But Peter, Peter knows the right answer: “You, Jesus, you are the Messiah.” The long-awaited Messiah was to come and rule and lead the Jews out of Roman oppression, he was to enter Jerusalem on a horse in triumph with a sword and shield, he was to be a new King David leading armies that would overthrow Rome. The Messiah was all that the people were hoping for, and Peter knew that Jesus, Jesus was going to be it.
But Jesus, of course, followed up Peter’s affirmation with a description of what would happen to him: suffering, rejection, death, and resurrection. He would not be the king triumphant in the human way they were expecting, and it would make people really, really mad. He would not rule in the human way they expected, and it would cost him his life, and probably his followers’ lives too. Jesus would flip the entire script, he would turn the whole world upside down, as only the divine could. Jesus would say the first shall be last and the last shall be first, he would say the poor, the meek, the hungry, and the merciful are the blessed. He told us to turn the other cheek, and to give to the one who asks. Jesus had none of the human things on his mind, even if those might have made sense; those ways would simply get in the way of the divine vision for the created world.
This morning then, I wonder what human things you have focused on at the expense of the divine, or that might get in the way of the divine. I wonder what you have been promised will bring happiness – a new internet plan, an expensive raincoat, more money, a new bathroom, another vacation, maybe a different workout, the latest iPhone, or another win for your sports team? Ha. Whatever it may be, you know deep down that the happiness those things generate all inevitably fades, they all inevitably fail to bring any sort of lasting happiness or contentment or joy... and sadly, in a consumer-driven society, that is actually sort of the point! We have to be unhappy with what we have, lest we stop buying new products altogether. We’re encouraged then to want to buy, not to own... once we have it, we need to focus on the next purchase, the next fix for our happiness. It’s a vicious cycle, and it’s one we are invited as Christians to leave behind completely.
Jesus ends this gospel passage then by asking a straightforward question of the crowd that still applies to us today: “What will it profit you to gain the whole world but forfeit your life, but forfeit your soul?” There’s a clear, often-made tie-in here to a verse from the Sermon on the Mount, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, but in heaven, for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also...” but I’ll leave that one for the next giving campaign here at Epiphany. (Ha.)
Instead, today, I think the message we need to hear is similar: that if we say Jesus is the Messiah, if we say he is Lord, then our focus cannot be on gaining the whole world, it cannot be on human things or experiences or priorities. We must place our focus, our efforts, and all our attention on the divine, lest we forfeit the truly good life that God has for us here.
And the only way I know of to keep the divine in constant focus is by emptying our bags of the non-essentials and living a life with a lighter load, by refusing to pursue the faster and the better and the frantic and the new, that which might pull us away from what we know is most important... Instead, this morning and every morning, may we deny ourselves, slow down, take up our crosses, empty our bags of the unnecessary, remember our faith and our call to abundant love, and strive to simply follow Jesus. Amen.
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