Proper 18 A Exodus 12:1-14 Psalm 149 Romans 13:8-14
Proper 18 A Exodus 12:1-14 Psalm 149 Romans 13:8-14 Matthew 18:15-20 A sermon preached by the Rev’d Patricia Snickenberger at St. Lawrence Church, Libertyville, IL in September 7, 2014. In a new study about to be published this month, researchers have found that Millennials—people born between the early 1980’s and the early 2000’s—are less trusting than previous generations were at the same age. Although young people are still optimistic about their own personal prospects, they’re much less so about the country’s institutions than younger generations that preceded them. The author of the study posits that things like the Great Recession, random shootings, and everything from Ponzi schemes and racial strife to the spectacle of shamed politicians, athletes and celebrities account for a trust level that hit an all-time low in 2012, the most recent data available. While this information concerns me, and I imagine it does you, too, I can’t say I’m surprised by it. Many of the institutions we’ve put our trust in for eons have let us down—have let our young people down: consider church sex abuse scandals, rancorous political discourse, Wall Street greed. The adults in charge who are supposed to be the grown ups have often disappointed those who look to them for guidance and inspiration, so maybe it is no wonder this data collected and soon to appear in the online journal Psychological Science, is what it is.1 Along with Millenials, however, Americans of all ages have growing trust issues. Surveys reveal a perceived lack of attention to the little guy on the part of people in power, concern that big business is focused on amassing greater and greater profits at the expense of customer satisfaction, anxiety among retirees that their hard-earned savings will fail to keep them afloat in their elder years, fear that the nation’s checkbook will be balanced on the backs of the young—my goodness there’s enough right there to create a sense of alienation from the very institutions that once were repositories of the public trust. It may be true that restoring trust will take a long time. And frankly, there may not be a lot we can do about what’s “out there”. But that’s not to say we are doomed to helplessness as scandal after scandal, one abuse of power after another continue to erode the trust of the next generation. While we can’t fix everything, we can do something, and that is the subject of today’s Gospel. Here we find Jesus giving his disciples—and us— some good advice about how to be a community where trust and integrity matter. Concerned not so much about threats from outside the fledgling Christian community, Matthew’s Jesus is focused more on how forces from within the Church can erode its 1
Martha Irvine, “Millennials Less Trusting”, The Daily Herald, September 5, 2014.
2 integrity. And so what Jesus has to say about how the church ought to address problems within its ranks—his advice about taking action when someone in the community does something to hurt the community—his advice is at its root about becoming a community that is healthy, where people feel connected to each other, where they can trust one another and be trusted. The specific steps Jesus outlines, like talking directly to someone who has sinned against you, rather than talking behind his or her back, like involving some others in the community to preserve the community if the first approach doesn’t work, and so on are intended to help a community get to that place of cohesion and trust. Doing what Jesus advises isn’t about shunning people, or shutting them out. It’s not about creating barriers between those who are in and those who are out. Not at all. Jesus’ words go deeper. What he’s getting at here is in the final verse of the passage, where he says, “…Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” If this is true, if Jesus is in the community, where two or three, or two hundred or three hundred are gathered in his name, the community must reveal something about who God is and what God is like. If God is here, right in the midst of us, we must really matter to God. We must be really important to God. And how we treat one another matters to God, too. The community in which God dwells with us is just too important to God to let things fester, to let fall apart. We matter to God, and how we care for one another in community matters to God too. That, I believe, is at the heart of today’s Gospel. The questions prompted by Jesus’ advice, then, are these: What kind of community are we? And what kind of community do we want to be? As we begin a “new year”, as we, like schools and sports teams, and clubs and groups we belong to resume activities that slowed down during the summer break, we have a chance to take stock of who we are. We have a chance to give thought to who it is we reveal by the way we care for one another as a community. And we also have a chance to show characteristics of God to the outside world. We have the opportunity not only to look at who we are and who we want to be, but also to make a statement about our God to others by the way we are as a community. If the public trust in institutions, including the church, is flagging, especially among young people, what part do we have in this little corner of Libertyville, Illinois in rebuilding that trust? Well, we begin where we are. As a church that reveals the God in our midst, a church that reveals who God is to those around us, we might pause and consider how we connect with one another and care for one another. One way we connect with one another and care for one another is by taking communion nearly every week to elderly and sick members of our community who can’t make it to church. We train and support a group of parishioners who do this, called Lay Eucharistic Ministers, or LEMs, in their ministry to others, and we look forward to expanding this ministry, beginning this year, to include trained lay chaplains who will help provide ongoing pastoral care. Another way we care for one another is to offer our young members a way to connect to the worship service on their terms, so they can see what’s happening up here at the altar,
3 and observe and learn from your participation in worship too. Coming soon to St. Lawrence is what is known in a growing number of churches, especially Episcopal churches, as a “soft space,” a place just for kids that gives them a chance to experience church without a sea of heads in the way obstructing their view. During our announcements we’ll have more to say about this exciting initiative. We connect and care for one another, here and beyond, in these and many other ways, as you’ll see after the service as you talk with parish leaders, visit the ministry booths in the courtyard and learn about—and I hope volunteer to participate in—the various ministries that will help you connect with one another and the larger community. And if you come to connect you’ll get to eat an ice cream treat at 10:30 in the morning! Over 1800 years ago, when the Church was young, a writer and theologian named Tertullian marveled at what he observed among Christians in how they cared for one another. “See how these Christians love each other”, he wrote. The early Church revealed the God that dwelled within it as it sought to be a community of care, integrity and trustworthiness. The calling of the Church hasn’t changed over the millennia. As David Lose puts it: “Authentic community is hard to come by. It’s work. But it’s worth it. Because when you find it, it’s like discovering a little bit of heaven on earth; that is, it’s like experiencing the reality of God’s communal fellowship and existence in your midst. And, as Jesus promises, when you gather in this way—with honesty and integrity, even when it’s hard—amazing things can happen because Jesus is with you, right there, in your very midst, forming and being formed by your communal sharing.”2 This we can trust: As we live into the kind of community we want to be, God is in the midst of us, guiding, inspiring, challenging and loving us all the way. This is the kind of community I want to be part of. How about you?
2
David Lose, “What Kind of Community Will We Be?”, www.workingpreacher.org, August 28, 2011.
Martha Irvine, “Millennials Less Trusting”, The Daily Herald, September 5, 2014.
2 integrity. And so what Jesus has to say about how the church ought to address problems within its ranks—his advice about taking action when someone in the community does something to hurt the community—his advice is at its root about becoming a community that is healthy, where people feel connected to each other, where they can trust one another and be trusted. The specific steps Jesus outlines, like talking directly to someone who has sinned against you, rather than talking behind his or her back, like involving some others in the community to preserve the community if the first approach doesn’t work, and so on are intended to help a community get to that place of cohesion and trust. Doing what Jesus advises isn’t about shunning people, or shutting them out. It’s not about creating barriers between those who are in and those who are out. Not at all. Jesus’ words go deeper. What he’s getting at here is in the final verse of the passage, where he says, “…Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” If this is true, if Jesus is in the community, where two or three, or two hundred or three hundred are gathered in his name, the community must reveal something about who God is and what God is like. If God is here, right in the midst of us, we must really matter to God. We must be really important to God. And how we treat one another matters to God, too. The community in which God dwells with us is just too important to God to let things fester, to let fall apart. We matter to God, and how we care for one another in community matters to God too. That, I believe, is at the heart of today’s Gospel. The questions prompted by Jesus’ advice, then, are these: What kind of community are we? And what kind of community do we want to be? As we begin a “new year”, as we, like schools and sports teams, and clubs and groups we belong to resume activities that slowed down during the summer break, we have a chance to take stock of who we are. We have a chance to give thought to who it is we reveal by the way we care for one another as a community. And we also have a chance to show characteristics of God to the outside world. We have the opportunity not only to look at who we are and who we want to be, but also to make a statement about our God to others by the way we are as a community. If the public trust in institutions, including the church, is flagging, especially among young people, what part do we have in this little corner of Libertyville, Illinois in rebuilding that trust? Well, we begin where we are. As a church that reveals the God in our midst, a church that reveals who God is to those around us, we might pause and consider how we connect with one another and care for one another. One way we connect with one another and care for one another is by taking communion nearly every week to elderly and sick members of our community who can’t make it to church. We train and support a group of parishioners who do this, called Lay Eucharistic Ministers, or LEMs, in their ministry to others, and we look forward to expanding this ministry, beginning this year, to include trained lay chaplains who will help provide ongoing pastoral care. Another way we care for one another is to offer our young members a way to connect to the worship service on their terms, so they can see what’s happening up here at the altar,
3 and observe and learn from your participation in worship too. Coming soon to St. Lawrence is what is known in a growing number of churches, especially Episcopal churches, as a “soft space,” a place just for kids that gives them a chance to experience church without a sea of heads in the way obstructing their view. During our announcements we’ll have more to say about this exciting initiative. We connect and care for one another, here and beyond, in these and many other ways, as you’ll see after the service as you talk with parish leaders, visit the ministry booths in the courtyard and learn about—and I hope volunteer to participate in—the various ministries that will help you connect with one another and the larger community. And if you come to connect you’ll get to eat an ice cream treat at 10:30 in the morning! Over 1800 years ago, when the Church was young, a writer and theologian named Tertullian marveled at what he observed among Christians in how they cared for one another. “See how these Christians love each other”, he wrote. The early Church revealed the God that dwelled within it as it sought to be a community of care, integrity and trustworthiness. The calling of the Church hasn’t changed over the millennia. As David Lose puts it: “Authentic community is hard to come by. It’s work. But it’s worth it. Because when you find it, it’s like discovering a little bit of heaven on earth; that is, it’s like experiencing the reality of God’s communal fellowship and existence in your midst. And, as Jesus promises, when you gather in this way—with honesty and integrity, even when it’s hard—amazing things can happen because Jesus is with you, right there, in your very midst, forming and being formed by your communal sharing.”2 This we can trust: As we live into the kind of community we want to be, God is in the midst of us, guiding, inspiring, challenging and loving us all the way. This is the kind of community I want to be part of. How about you?
2
David Lose, “What Kind of Community Will We Be?”, www.workingpreacher.org, August 28, 2011.
