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Pentecost 21 Proper 25A October 25, 2020

Posted on October 25, 2020 by Beth Crane

Deuteronomy  34:1-12
Psalm 90:1-6, 13-17
1 Thessalonians 2:1-8
Matthew 22:34-46

In our opening reading today, we have the opportunity to share a special moment in the life of Moses and the life of God’s people. God takes Moses to the summit of Mount Pisgah and shows Moses the promised land— the valley of Jericho, the city of palm trees. The land is beautiful. We can imagine all the feelings rising in the heart of Moses as he looks out on this amazing gift from God. We can imagine that Moses felt enormous gratitude that God had led them all this way and taken care of them, given them food when they were hungry and water when the were thirsty. God has given Moses and Aaron the wisdom, strength and sheer perseverance to stay with the people and lead them when their knees were feeling weak, their hearts were faint, and their courage waning. Moses could think to himself, “We made it, against all odds.” This was a great accomplishment.

God allows Moses the gift of seeing the land that God has given the people, but Moses will not cross into that land. Moses will die in that place. He dies at the height of his powers. His vision is still good and he remains strong. But he will not enter the promised land. Moses is one of the great leaders of God’s people, and God has provided an excellent leader to follow Moses: Joshua, the son of Nun. Moses has laid his hands on this new leader. The Spirit is within Joshua. But the passage clearly states, “Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face. He was unequaled for all the signs and wonders that the Lord sent him to perform in the land of Egypt….and for all the mighty deeds and all the terrifying displays of power that Moses performed in the sight of all Israel.”

Our second reading is from Paul’s letter to his beloved Thessalonians. Thessalonica was a Roman city in Macedonia, a city where the authorities could keep an eye on what was happening with the new faith in Jesus. Paul has come there after being imprisoned in Philippi. There are many competing teachers in Thessalonica, and some of them are wrongly accusing Paul of all  kinds of things Paul is not doing. Paul emphasizes that his ministry is not based on deceit or tricks but on the truth that he has received from God and from knowing our Lord. We remember that he met the risen Lord on the road to Damascus and his life was transformed. He is sharing the power of that transformation with everyone he meets, and it comes from deep in his heart.

Paul tries to make it clear that he is not trying to impress human beings; he is trying to please God. He does not flatter people. He does not want their money. He tells them that he has been gentle among them, as a nurse gently cares for children. He tells the people how much he loves them and how deeply he wants to share himself with them.

Paul is completely sincere. All he wants to do is to share the love of Jesus with these people whom he loves. As he shares his thoughts and feelings, he makes himself vulnerable to the people. And this reminds us of a great truth, that the love God has shared with us, we share with each other. We become vulnerable with each other. We share our stories. We share our challenges. We pray for each other. And as we do that, we come to love each other more and more deeply.

Paul’s ministry is a ministry of honesty, openness, and caring, He is not trying to fool anyone. He has been filled with the love of Christ, and all he wants to do is share that love.

In today’s gospel, Jesus has silenced the Sadducees, and now the Pharisees step up to try to test him. They ask him which commandment is the greatest, He gives the summary of the law found in Deuteronomy and Leviticus. “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

Then Jesus asks them, “What do you think pf the Messiah? Whose son is he?” They cannot see who Jesus is.

Paul was able to see who Jesus is. He met our Lord while he was fuming with anger and going to Damascus to persecute followers of our LordS. And the risen Lord came to him and asked, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” Paul was blinded by the light streaming from our Lord. He had to be led by the hand. 

But he felt the love radiating from our Lord. And that love changed him from someone who was trying to put Jesus’ followers into prison, someone who watched as people stoned Stephen, the first Christian martyr to death, into someone who devoted his life to sharing the love of our Lord with everyone he met. He planted churches the way Johnny Appleseed planted apple trees. And in our reading today, we see his gentleness and his vulnerability. just as we see the gentleness and vulnerability of our Lord on the cross.

Love is what it’s all about. Our Presiding Bishop, Michael Curry, talks about and lives the Way of Love. All of us are called to live that Way. Love is what will heal our world. Love is what will make us one. Love calls us to look at what we have in common and work together. Love is what calls us to free each other from those things that imprison us. As Moses led the people from slavery into freedom and as our Lord frees us from all bonds.

This week, may we meditate on Moses’ leadership which freed the people. May we meditate on Paul’s gentleness and honesty and vulnerability and sheer love for the people he served. What a great model of leadership. And may we meditate on our Lord, who calls us to love God and each other, who washes the feet of his disciples and calls us to serve each other and all our brothers and sisters. Love is the greatest power on earth. Stronger than hate, stronger than fear and division. This week, let us renew our commitment to live the Way of Love.  Amen.

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Pentecost 19 Proper 25, October 23, 2011

Posted on December 2, 2011 by Beth Crane

Pentecost 19  Proper 25A  RCL October 23, 2011

Deuteronomy 34: 1-12
Psalm 90:1-6, 13-17
1 Thessalonians 2: 1-8
Matthew 22:34-46

This morning, we join Moses in a poignant moment. He goes to the top of Mt. Nebo and looks out on the promised land, but he is not going to be able to go there.  He dies, and the people mourn for thirty days. He has laid his hands on Joshua, and Joshua has been filled with the spirit of wisdom. He will lead the people into the land of milk and honey.

Moses is extolled as the greatest prophet who has ever lived. He has met  God face to face and has led the people on their long journey of liberation.

Often we begin a task, especially a large and important task, knowing that we may not be there for its completion. The building of the shalom of God is like that. We make our choices for the shalom of God every day. We try, with God’s help, to be people of compassion. And we know that, little by little, God’s peace will fill the whole wide earth. Or, on a much more immediate and local level, we do our little bits to help the folks who have been so devastated by the destruction of Tropical Storm Irene. Each individual bit seems so tiny, but, when we put them all together, much gets done.

Then we join Paul as he writes to his beloved Thessalonians. Apparently, some people have been trying to discredit Paul and his work by saying that he is operating from false motives and is tricking the people in order to achieve personal gain. Paul says that he is trying to please God, not people, and that he is sincere in everything he says. Then he gives this tender description of himself as a nurse caring for her own children. He says he cares for the people that deeply because they have become very dear to him. Paul shares himself with the people to whom and with whom he ministers. That is a powerful example for us as we carry out our ministries.

In our gospel, once again people are trying to trap Jesus. A lawyer asks Jesus what is the greatest commandment. Jesus responds in the words we know so well,  the summary of the law from Deuteronomy and Leviticus: “  ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ ”

This summary of the law had been formulated years before by the learned rabbis. It was not original with Jesus, who was also considered a rabbi. Fred Craddock translates this summary as, “Love God totally, and the love of God will be expressed as love of neighbor.” Not a new idea. But a principle which is most difficult to put into practice.

It is crucial that we are called to love God totally first, because, if we love God, and, perhaps more importantly, if we accept God’s love for us, amazing things happen. God loves you. God loves me. With all our foibles and flaws and faults and mistakes, all our pet peeves, all our sins of commission and omission, God loves us with a love that we cannot possibly fathom. But we are called to try to fathom that love. Each of us is the apple of God’s eye. God came among us as fully human in order to communicate that love to us.

I’m reading a wonderful book right now, called Made for Goodness. It was written by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and his daughter Mpho, who is an Episcopal priest. In various ways, these deeply faithful people are telling us that we are drawn to goodness. We are drawn irresistibly to God. The more profoundly we realize how much God loves us, the more powerfully we are drawn to be close to God, to return God’s love, and to love other people. This is the kind of love Paul is talking about, I think, when he speaks of how gentle he is with the Thessalonians.   St. Francis de Sales once said, “Nothing is so strong as gentleness, nothing so gentle as real strength.”

Archbishop Tutu is one of my great heroes, and I think probably one of yours as well. From his experience with Apartheid, his work on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and his reconciling ministry all over the world, he calls us to “see with the eyes of God,” that is, to see all other people as fellow humans to be respected and loved, to know that God dwells in every person.

Archbishop Tutu tells of his visit to the Holy Cross School in Belfast, Northern Ireland.  For five months, the girls who attended this Roman Catholic school had had to have an armed escort in order to walk to school. They had to run the gauntlet of a protest staged by Protestant adults who, according to Archbishop Tutu, “used the most vile and abusive language. They swore at the children. They assailed the children by throwing urine-filled balloons at them.” (P. 96.)

Yet, Archbishop Tutu tells us, when these girls arrived at school, they did not act like children of trauma. They acted like normal little girls. Archbishop Tutu writes, “Even after the assaults of the morning, they were in touch with the joy of being little girls. There was much nudging, giggling, and squirming. They had prepared a song for me. They sang ‘Make Me an Instrument of Your Peace.’  The adults suffered from an acute lack of vision They could not see God in the little girls. The girls, on the other hand, were blessed with God-sight. They did not answer hate with hate. They could see beyond the unspeakably ugly behavior they faced to the essential goodness hidden behind the adult fear.” Because of the support and teaching that they received, these girls were able to not only survive, but flourish in the face of this trauma. And, as Archbishop Tutu says, they were able to see these misguided adults as God sees them.

As Archbishop Tutu says, “God dwells in every person.”  That truth is at the heart of following the two great commandments. Years later, he visited  Ireland and saw a great change.  One of the most amazing things he experienced was seeing the leaders of the Roman Catholic and Protestant factions actually sitting at the same negotiating table. Not only that, they actually shared a joke.

Tutu writes, “The image of those two men laughing together reminded me that even a failure of vision is not final. Because God always dwells in us—in all of us—there is always hope. There is always hope that the scales will fall from our eyes and we will see as God sees. Prayer makes the scales fall off faster.

May we love God totally.  May we see God in all people. May we love our neighbors as ourselves.

Amen.

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