A Gut Feeling

Matthew 9:35-10:4

During the sermon on Holy Trinity Sunday last week, we heard through text and sermon about how God’s activity through the Holy Trinity is God’s living out the divine promise of “I’ve got you covered.” The Trinity’s ongoing presence and work as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit functions to show us who God is and how God operates throughout the universe. We acknowledge that though the Trinity is a mystery, and we don’t fully understand exactly how it is possible, it is through in Trinity that God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, has us uniquely covered – simultaneously creating, redeeming, and making us a holy people.

So, last week’s “I’ve got you covered” text and sermon addressed the how and what of God. This week’s gospel starts out by telling us the why of God. 

Today’s gospel text begins by telling us how Jesus went about the cities and villages – in other words, how he went to every type of people and every kind of community. Then, we come to verse 36 we read: “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”

Here we have it – this is the why of God. God has compassion.

In and through Jesus, God responds to our suffering out of compassion. Jesus brings God’s comforting Word, teaches people who need to hear that Word about the true nature of God, and heals their sicknesses out of compassion. But the thing is, this word as we read it here, compassion, is truly a watered-down version of what the word written in Greek really means.

So, for instance, when you hear the word, “compassion,” what do you think of? What does it mean? <accept responses> To feel for? To take pity on? To want to help?

Good answers. It’s a good start. Yet if you look at the etymology of the English word, compassion, it goes a little further; ‘compassion’ comes from the Latin cum, meaning ‘with’ and passio, meaning ‘suffering’. So, when we have compassion, we are suffering with another person, or feeling their suffering.

To go a step further,  we have the Greek word actually written into this text; splanknizo, or, in this case, splanknizomai, since it is in verb form, means to “feel in the viscera.” In plain English the closest way I can put that is, ‘to feel in the gut’ – to feel to your very core – to have a gut-wrenching reaction to something - to feel it so deeply in your insides, that you literally feel something within you move.

God sees the helplessness of God’s creation and God acts out of compassion. God doesn’t simply feel badly for the people who are suffering, God acts because God feels our pain and is moved to the very core by the plight of humankind. God knows how harassed – how out of sorts, beleaguered, and overwhelmed we are - how much we suffer from depression, oppression, and suppression; that is what affects God, moves God so much that God sends Jesus Christ to us as the Word incarnate, to heal our pain and brokenness, and save us from our sin.

That is the truest meaning of the word translated here, and it reason for God’s action; it is the reason that Jesus reaches out and heals and cures the people he encounters on his journey through the cities and towns and villages; through the city streets and along the country lanes through which he passes. Jesus doesn’t simply feel badly for the people, pity them or judge them as pitiable, rather, Jesus sees their humanity, and he is moved to ease their pain.

But Jesus cannot do this work alone, because he knows that one day, he will leave this earthly plane and will need workers to carry on the work he has begun. He will need apostles who will likewise speak the Word, teach, and heal.

So, in a touch of irony, Jesus summons these early disciples, and instructs them to ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into the harvest.

Now, when I was in seminary, a very wise professor told us, “when you pray, be sure that you do not pray for something, for which you are not willing to be the answer.”

In the very next verse of our text today, Jesus calls twelve of these disciples and gives them the authority – read this as marching orders – to do the same as he has done. So, on the one hand, Jesus says, ‘pray for workers to help with the harvest’ – on the other hand he says, ‘now, you are to be first among those workers.’

Jesus calls his disciples – those who learn from him, not only to pray for the solution but to be part of the solution. And Jesus asks the same of us today, as community together with and for each other, and as harvest workers for the world around us. Jesus calls us to be moved to the very core of our being for the suffering ones – the harassed and helpless ones, the grieving and hurting ones, the hungry and homeless ones - and to respond; to reach out with compassion and heal those we encounter along our journey.

As the disciples go, they will proclaim the good news of the kingdom of heaven, and they will do this not for pay, nor for their own glory or benefit, but only for the sake the other, and the fullness of God’s kingdom.

I recently had a conversation with a woman who told me this story: she, along with her husband, had just joined a new church, but were not yet well known there, when an unbelievable tragedy befell their family. They were devastated, grieving, and suffering great pain and loss.

The incredible tragedy they had suffered was announced to the congregation in several forms of communication that went out, and members felt deeply sorry for anyone who would suffer such a loss, and they dutifully prayed for her family.

But what the woman told me was that not one person from that church called, sent a card, or reached out to her and her husband.

She and her husband had joined that church seeking to be part of a faith community. But perhaps because they weren’t all that well known yet, it seemed like the compassion of the members of the church was only skin-deep.

While prayer is very important, that family needed to know by the actions of their faith community that they were moved to the very core of their being by the pain and loss the family had suffered. Instead, the silence they experienced was deafening and only served to increase their pain; they felt betrayed and isolated by the community they thought would stand by them in their hour of need.

The result? The woman told me that though her faith in God was not shaken, her faith in the community of the church was shattered. They now felt it futile to belong to a church. What was the point? The community had failed them. The lesson for us all: our compassion needs to be more than skin-deep and it needs to be evident in our words and actions.

Whether the need comes from someone within the community itself or comes from one of our neighbors, Jesus calls us to know gut-wrenching compassion for those God places on our path and along our journey.

As a church, we’ve been doing a lot of talking about numbers. We talk about the numbers of people who come to worship. We talk about the numbers of people in the community around Easton whom we would like to bring into the body of Christ at Grace.

Jesus calls us to look past the numbers and see the people who are hurting, harassed and helpless. Jesus calls us to reach out to those in need of hearing the good news of God’s “I’ve got you covered” in a believable way – through our words and our actions. The best way to tell others about God is to show others about God, by modeling the love and compassion of God not only by what we say, but also by what we do.

The compassion of Jesus described in this text is a model for all of Christ’s disciples. Our text names those disciples whom Jesus sent out, even names some who failed him in some ways. Yet even in their failure, they have served the larger purposes of God.

In our baptism, we were each named as well. We were named children of God and workers in the new community to which we were joined, along with all the other laborers needed to serve the harvest of God.

The work is not easy. It is taxing. It is emotionally exhausting, it will not always be successful by our measures of success. But faithful service to God serves the larger purposes of God’s kingdom, to heal the hurts and feed the souls of those who most need to experience the love of God through the care and fellowship of the followers of Jesus.  It matters not whether we are able to discern “success” or not. We may never know the difference we have made in a person’s life – the reward is not ours to enjoy. But showing compassion through action in the name of Jesus Christ is our purpose in life and in this community for the ministry we share in God’s kingdom here on earth.  

Jesus sends us out in mission: to be the heart and guts of Christ for people. Jesus urges us to pray not only for our work but that more workers may join us, for the sake of the mission of God. Jesus models loving, compassionate caring that is more than skin-deep, but is demonstrated as well in faith through action.

Through the Holy Spirit, God grants us gifts of ministry for healing, and blesses us with the apostolic mission of the church. God grants us fellowship with all the workers who are sitting in the pews beside you here today, plus other workers who are sitting in pews in other churches hearing the good news of the compassion of Jesus and our commission to follow in his ways. This fellowship includes those who have yet to join us.

So today we go from “I’ve got you covered” to “Feeling it in the gut: the mission and ministry of Christ”. How does that work as a title for this message? It may not be very catchy, but it’s pointed. Christ’s love and presence are real, and he calls for ours to be, as well. May God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, grant that it may be so.

Amen.

Beloved of God, Sharing a Baptism with Christ

Matthew 3:13-17 Baptism of Jesus

It’s hard to believe it is a new year already. I, for one, am still having trouble writing “2017” on documents and correspondence. I’ve heard the lament from more than one of my friends, from many of you, and reflected in words coming from my own lips – “time really flies” – it goes by so fast. Over and over, there is that repeated refrain - “how can it be….?” – and then we fill in the blank – “how can it be … December,” or … “June,” …“a new year,” …“another birthday,” …“his high school graduation,” …“my baby’s wedding day,”  or, if we are lucky, … “our anniversary – 50 years”! Can anyone here relate?

We feel the astonishing passage of time here in church, too. Just last week, our gospel relayed the story of the naming of Jesus. The gospel gave us the story of the day when Mary and Joseph brought an eight-day-old Jesus to the temple for this naming.

So it is, that with a hiccup of surprise we realize that in our gospel text today, Jesus is now a grown man – some 30 years of his life have flown by. That’s thirty years that we don’t know much about – Jesus has grown up in the blink of an eye, or the turn of a page, leaving all those growing up years and the stories that go with them, a mystery to us.

But that doesn’t much matter, because the important stuff, the stuff that tells us about God, and how God is acting in and for the world through Jesus, is revealed through the public ministry of Jesus, and the scriptures are full of those stories – stories that we will encounter as we make our way through the gospels.

It is that public ministry for which Christ is anointed through this baptism we observe today. Right after his baptism, Jesus would go into the wilderness to prepare himself for that ministry. Even Jesus had to prepare.

Back in this baptismal scene, we read about the voice of God which Jesus hears as he emerges from the water – “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”  As Jesus receives the Holy Spirit “descending like a dove” and alighting on him, Jesus is both revealed and acclaimed as the Son of God.

Reflecting on this passage, we might ask ourselves, did Jesus really need to be baptized? As the Son of God, as the blameless, sinless one, did Jesus really need this washing?

The thing is, as Jesus was baptized at the Jordan River, as God claimed him as his Son and filled him with the Holy Spirit, God provided for us what may be the closest connection between Jesus’ life and ministry and our own, making this a very special day for us, as well. Once again, God enacts mercy and grace for us through Jesus.

For, as Jesus invited John to take part in his baptism, Jesus invites him – and us – into the work on which he himself will embark, proclaiming and embodying the goodness and justice of God.

It is in baptism that we too, are claimed as daughters and sons of God. It is in baptism that we are blessed by the Holy Spirit, and filled with the gifts we need for ministry. It is in baptism that God tells us that we are beloved, and that our inheritance is secured; we are given new life and thereby we each become a new creation of God.

How does it feel to know that this thing that we have experienced in our baptism was once experienced by Jesus himself? For myself, I am simply struck with awe of this reality.

One of the most powerful experiences of our Christian lives is remembering our own baptisms. To hear once again the claim that we are beloved of God, as Jesus was; to remember that we are anointed with the Holy Spirit, as Jesus was; To absorb the reality that we are known and empowered by God, forever, is an experience like no other, and it is an experience that we share with Jesus Christ, himself. To be reminded that this baptism commissions each one of us into ministry in the name of Jesus is a holy experience.

And so, I hope that you got good and soaked as I came down the aisle with water this morning and “sprinkled” you in remembrance of that day when you were washed in the living waters of baptism. I hope that as you felt drops of water from the font fall on you, you felt solidarity with Christ himself in the remembrance of this means of grace we share.

Today we reflect on the sacrament of Baptism, through which each of us has received grace upon grace for the living of our lives and for carrying on the holy work that God entrusts to each one of us.

Although we are reminded of our baptism when we gather together each week, as we gather around the table and nurtured for our work as disciples of Christ, our Holy Baptism is best remembered and most explicitly appreciated when, as a community, we celebrate the baptism of a new sister or brother.

On such occasions, we powerfully recall that in baptism God made each of us a participant in the ministry of Jesus for the sake of the world. The importance and the reality of our baptism should never be far from our minds. For, as Jesus shares life, death and resurrection with us, Jesus shares the work and call of ministry with each of us as well.

Christians often describe baptism as an outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace that God works on our behalf. It is God’s action that is of import here, not our own. It is God who makes us holy, not we ourselves who accomplish this by anything we do. It is for God’s sake, that we are sent to reflect God’s love as we are empowered, through the sacraments, for the work of God’s mission to love, heal, bear compassion for the poor, the marginalized, the unloved, the unaccepted, the disregarded ones who are part of God’s creation.

It is for this reason that there is but one baptism for the forgiveness of sins and the commissioning of our call as children of God and workers together for the kingdom of God. Yet Baptism is not a “one and done” kind of thing. In fact, it is the opposite of an isolated act carried out once in our lives for our own benefit.

As Martin Luther said, each day, in baptism, we die to sin and are renewed in the new life given to us by God.

In Baptism, we received the everlasting, perpetual declaration of love and pleasure that God takes in us, and the grace God repeatedly extends to us for the sake of the kingdom of God.

In baptism, we recognize that God loves us and is well-pleased with us simply because of who we are – his own beloved children. This realization frees us to live into the baptismal promises with gusto.

We are freed to live out the gospel goodness of God; to feed the hungry, to give water to those who thirst, to work for the life of all people. In the next several weeks, through the scriptures we encounter, we will learn how to share the light of Jesus by living as Jesus teaches, in humility, serving our neighbors and giving comfort to those who are hurting. Soon, we will hear from Jesus’ own mouth, the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus’ recipe for living into the grace of God.

There are challenges in this, for sure. It can be risky, sometimes, to offer hope to those in deep despair, to those who look around and see only desolation in the world and in their lives. Through our baptism and the grace of God revealed to us in Christ we are bold to offer comfort to those who live in fear of terror attacks, and shootings, and disease and hunger, and the uncertain and frightening possibilities of what our future world might look like, living today in a world full of division, apathy and anger as we are.  

We live into our baptismal commission when, as the Body of Christ, we continually seek new ways to engage with our community and our neighbors to ease suffering and isolation, homelessness and fear locally and in places far away from here. Our baptism calls us to share in the goodness and justice of God. That means seeing all people, even those with whom we disagree, even those who look, speak and worship differently than we do, as sisters and brothers created by God and beloved of God as well and therefore equal to us in every way.

We are blessed when we remember our baptism, and reflect on the mercy and forgiveness showered upon us in drops or currents of water on that day and we are blessed by the Holy Spirit to live each day as an opportunity to rejoice in the daily death of sin and birth into new life and a new creation of God.

As a congregation, this year we will seek to intentionally and continually remember our baptism by engaging in prayer and bible study reflecting on the history of our faith, and seeking to discern God’s plan and mission for this Body of Christ in this time and place.

We will remember God’s words, spoken of Jesus, “This is my Son, the Beloved, in whom I am well pleased,” and we will recall that as these words shine a light on Jesus, that light is reflected upon all the baptized and all who remain close to him by following him and his holy word.

Please pray with me.

O Most Holy God, who blessed the world through the birth and revelation of Jesus as your own Son, now bless us as we seek to follow him, reveling in the gift of our baptism, and emboldened by your holy word. Grant us the wisdom and grace to live as your daughters and sons, washed in the waters of life for the sake of Jesus Christ, Our Lord. Amen.