July 8 ,
2001
5th Sunday After Pentecost
Gospel: Luke
10:1-12, 16-20
(This sermon is also available
in audio.)
Who
are your heroes? Who our heroes are is important because they
can shape our choices each time we come to a big
bend in the road. They can be in our mind
and heart when we must decide whether to yield or overrun, whether to win at
any cost or to seek reconciliation.
I
cannot tell you who my heroes were fifty years ago, although
I think Superman was included among them.
But I can tell you who my heroes are today. They include
soldiers who have fallen on a live hand grenade to save others, Lee County
Sheriff Harold Ray Presley who this past Friday morning pushed
a fellow lawman out of
the way and took a fatal bullet, saving the life of his colleague. My heroes
include Martin Luther King, who went to the streets for others knowing that
he was risking his life, and Anwar Sadat, who went to Jerusalem
to attempt to make
peace for many and paid for a pioneering olive branch with his blood and his
life. And all of these are mere shadows of my greatest hero Jesus Christ, who
believed in the power of good and God so much that He allowed others to kill
him, with no protest because he knew that violence would not be the last word.
Our
heroes are who we want to be. We may never get there but we
are aiming in that direction. And that can affect who we
are becoming. Remember always
that
others are watching and when we live according to our ideals based on good
heroes we are helping others to consider taking the same path. When we do
that we make
a difference. Our lives count for something. We may just leave this world
a bit better than it was when we got here.
It
was St. Francis who said, "Preach the Gospel where ever
you go, and if necessary, use words." But in order to
continue throughout our lives as people of hope, we have to
do some real overcoming. We are in fact like
lambs
in the midst of wolves. Lambs in the midst of wolves. Will the lambs become
wolf-like? Will we lambs learn to grow a hairy, wary hide so that the wolves
cannot victimize
and brutalize us? Will life wear us down and take us down to where it is
impossible to tell the difference between a lamb and a wolf? That is one
of the central
questions of our life, your life, my life. God is in our corner, cheering
us on to continue as lambs.
No
matter what anyone else does to us, one of the major purposes
of our lives as Christians is to be steadfast
in our belief in good, in gentleness,
in
loving our neighbor. With some notably traumatic exceptions, what life
dishes out
to us is not in our control, but how we react to life is. Not what happens
to us
but how we react is what determines what our spirit is like when we cash
in our chips. God’s great glory is a human being who has lived
and loved and suffered but who exits to heaven with the purity of hope
in his
or her breast.
In
one of our ancient and enduring prayers we give thanks to God
for making the way of the cross to be the way of life… the
cross, or crucifixion, or pain, we are saying is the way of life. That
is, in order to have life and have it
more abundantly, the way God intends us to have it, to have fullness
of life, we must be willing to suffer. This does not mean that we are
not to enjoy life
and love, enjoy parties and achievement and the richness of family.
It just means that if we choose (and yes, it is a choice for
most of us)
to avoid the pain
of suffering by closing up our hearts to others, we will not live the
fullness of life that God intends. Closing up means giving up on our
heroes as our guiding
lights. If we do that closing up, then we will have ceased to be lambs
and we will have become a wolf, so to speak.
God
sends us out to share the good news of love that requires no
quid pro quo. God sends
us to love our neighbor (even the ones we know real
well!)
even if
our neighbor does not love us. That is the only thing that distinguishes
a Christian (or other people of faith and hope) from those who live
without hope.
Anyone
can love those who love them. It is when we walk our road with wolves
attacking from time to time but come to the end of our road still
trusting, still
reaching out, still believing that people can be good and that even
wolves can change.
It is then that God rejoices, for He has overcome that within us
that puts self first, and He has overcome it with love. And
our life has
had great
purpose because
we have been a witness to the power of that love.
I
close with these comments from the sermon commentary service,
Synthesis, based
on a true story; you may have heard about it in a recent
news account:
"Sent
out as ‘lambs in the midst of wolves?’ The warning
of Jesus to the Seventy hardly sends shivers down the spines
of the
rank and file witness-bearers
of Jesus today. To be a witnessing Christian in modern America
might make you the butt of some jokes, but hardly mutton
for wolves. To
the contrary, being
an avowed, evangelistic Christian can be a maker of good
character or sound citizenship – and
might even help you get elected to a political office.
But
tell that to Jim Bowers, a missionary in Peru. And he will
tell you a different story. He will tell you the cold,
devastating truth about being a Jesus-lamb among worldly
wolves, as he no longer has wife,
Veronica, 35, or their
newly-adopted 7-month-old daughter, Charity, with him.
A Peruvian Air Force A-37 fighter jet gunned them down in
their Cessna 185 float-plane,
mistaking them
for Peruvian drug-traffickers carrying contraband over
the west region of the Amazon.
Kevin
Donaldson, the pilot, could not contact the fighter jet that
popped up on his left
side, as he had no access to military frequencies.
A minute later, the jet opened fire and machine gun bullets tore through his
legs --- and then
through the back of Roni Bowers, and her baby’s
head. The attack, of course, was a tragic error born
of negligence
and machismo, and has made a host of Washington
agencies reassess the whole Air Bridge Denial Program
for drug interdictions. Some comfort.
At
the funeral back in Fruitport, Michigan, Bowers declared
that he had
forgiven the pilots who had attacked his family--
comparing them to the Romans who crucified Jesus. Standing
at the podium a few feet from
the single white
casket that held his wife and daughter, Jim Bowers
released his beloved family members into the hands of God
for the last time. The ‘lambs’ were
then laid to rest in a cemetery nearby."
Yes,
of course we all feel the great sadness of this man’s
loss, what a horror. But look at him. Why is it
that some will go through hell on earth and
come out bitter and brawling, and others will somehow
find haven deep within that allows them to continue
to believe in life and love? I have a friend who
is in Maine right now, and she wrote yesterday
that she was going out to collect pieces of glass. "…got
to go to the beach," she emailed, " -
and look for sea glass, those precious broken bits
that kept being battered and never turned into
rocks, just had their edges smoothed."
It
seems to me that that is the challenge and the
great opportunity in this life – to
find the Kingdom of God within ourselves that enables
us to continue to see light when the world casts
darkness upon us. That enables us to continue to
want so
much to remain a lamb despite the wolves that we
end up with smoothed edges. A life that says to
the world around us that there is something else
going on,
that there is a God, that there is hope no matter
what. Or as Jesus said it in today's Gospel reading
(paraphrased):
All
the same, the great triumph is not in your authority
over evil, but in
God’s authority over you and presence with
you. Not what you do for God but what God does through
you - that’s the agenda for rejoicing.
Amen
Copyright 2001 The Rev. William A. Kolb
A homily preached at St. James' Episcopal Church, Jackson ,
MS
Gospel: Luke
10:1-12, 16-20
After this the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them
on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where
he himself intended to go. He said to
them, "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask
the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. Go on your way.
See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. Carry no purse,
no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road. Whatever house you enter,
first say, "Peace to this house!' And if anyone is there who shares in
peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you.
Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the
laborer deserves to be paid. Do not move about from house to house. Whenever
you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; cure
the sick who are there, and say to them, "The kingdom of God has come
near to you.' But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go
out into its streets and say, "Even the dust of your town that clings
to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom
of God has come near.' I tell you, on that day it will be more tolerable for
Sod'om than for that town. . ."Whoever listens to you listens to me, and
whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who
sent me." The seventy returned with joy, saying, "Lord, in your name
even the demons submit to us!" He said to them, "I watched Satan
fall from heaven like a flash of lightning. See, I have given you authority
to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and
nothing will hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits
submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven."
NRSV (New Revised Standard Version) |
