Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 9A, July 9, 2017; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

O God with us, grant us the wisdom, the strength and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

Some of the earliest Sunday School lessons I remember learning were from a class taught sitting in the weeds when I was about six years old. (When we sat down in a little circle, the weeds were over our heads.) The first scripture verse I learned was Psalm 122: “I was glad when they said unto me, let us go into the house of the Lord,” and my teacher told us that we were sitting in the house of the Lord. My dad was the pastor of a congregation that worshipped outdoors at a farm in the summer, which was a welcome respite from the gritty urban ministry that characterized the rest of the year. I remember the weather being steamy and hot and I remember being struck by how many bugs there were in the house of the Lord. That’s what came to me as I reflected on our Gospel lesson for this morning. It’s summertime and we’re in the weeds, and I’m still struck by how many things bug us in the house of the Lord.

Our portion of the Gospel of Matthew begins mid-conversation. Jesus had finished instructing the disciples that he had sent out (or made into apostles), and he continued going to their cities to teach and preach. John the Baptist had been arrested and was in prison. John’s disciples came to Jesus to ask, on behalf of John, “Are you the one who is going to save us? Or should we keep waiting?” Jesus answered them, “Go tell John what you hear and see: people are being restored to health and to community.” His answer isn’t about doctrine or faith or belief. He says, tell John what you are witnessing. Then Jesus turns to the crowds in a fairly long John the Baptist-like rant: “What were you looking for when you went out to see John the Baptist? He wasn’t a politician flapping in the breeze, moving whichever way the wind blew. He was a prophet. He was the return of Elijah if you’re willing to accept it,” Jesus says. Then Jesus decried the violence causing so much suffering in the realm of God. Matthew calls it the kingdom of heaven, but it’s clear that the realm of God is life on earth, not some far away after-death place). “So much violence,” Jesus says. That’s where our reading for today picks up.

Jesus has a complaint for his generation. There’s no pleasing them. There’s a party and they won’t celebrate. There’s a funeral and they won’t mourn. They are bystanders. There’s a prophet who refrains from eating and drinking and they criticize, there’s a prophet who eats and drinks and they criticize. And yet, Wisdom, the feminine expression of the Divine – Sophia – is proved right by her deeds. Look around at what grace and mercy are accomplishing, Jesus is saying, look at where healing and restoration to community are taking place, get involved!

This is where the lectionary would have us move directly to Jesus’ prayer of thanksgiving and skip over his condemnation of whole cities, including his home city. He is condemning them because deeds of power, that is, deeds of grace and mercy, of healing and restoration to community were taking place and still people wouldn’t repent. The cities Jesus names are not cities that we know, so I took some creative license and inserted names that you’d recognize. In place of Chorazin and Bethsaida, I put Cambridge and Brookline – places that are lovely places, pretty righteous, and generally pleased with themselves. In place of Tyre and Sidon, I put Lynn and Everett – cities generally looked down on by cities like Cambridge and Brookline, for being centers of vice and sin. We even have a local rhyme for Lynn. (You know how I love to read poetry in my sermons.)

Lynn, Lynn, the city of sin — You never come out, the way you came in

You ask for water, but they give you gin — The girls say no, yet they always give in

If you’re not bad, they won’t let you in — It’s the damnedest city I’ve ever lived in

The point Jesus is making is that places like Lynn and Everett understand the need for repenting better than Brookline and Cambridge. Las Vegas understands the need for repenting better than Boston. When people in places like Lynn and Everett and Las Vegas experience mercy and healing and restoration, Jesus is saying, they repent, and people in places like Brookline, Cambridge, and Boston should repent too. Biblical repentance does not mean feeling sad or sorry or ashamed, although those feelings can be a consequence of experiencing love and mercy, healing and restoration to community. Biblical repentance means turning away from evil intentions and actions, and turning or returning toward good intentions and actions.

This past Friday, we hosted about 60 kids (ages 5-18) from the Dorchester B-SAFE site for the day at Emmanuel because the field trip we had planned for them in the Boston Common and Public Garden got rained out. For those of you who don’t know yet about the B-SAFE program, it’s an acronym for Bishop’s Summer Academic, Fun, and Enrichment. It’s a summer day camp started by St. Stephen’s in the South End and developed by the Diocese of Massachusetts for hundreds of kids in and around Boston, who are at very high risk of academic and social failure to thrive because of racism, xenophobia, poverty and other forms of violence. The B-SAFE program works to bridge the gap between low-income kids and their more affluent peers.

So on Thursday when the forecast for rain left little room for doubt, one of the things we did was to scramble to create a scavenger hunt that would hold the kids’ attention for an hour and a half after lunch. Oy. That’s a long time. Our seminarian, Tamra Tucker, who’s back working for us part-time this summer (thanks be to God), came up with the idea of organizing clues from all over the main floor of our building to create a picture of the Emmanuel’s Land window. I wanted to teach the kids something about the four virtues pointing the pilgrim to Emmanuel’s Land. Do you know what the four virtues are? Discretion, Prudence, Piety, and Charity. And I wanted it to be more fun than splashing in Frog Pond on a hot day. No problem right?

The picture in our biggest stained glass window is about as far from the daily experience of these kids as one could get. What is freedom from violence? What’s a pilgrim? What does Emmanuel’s Land mean, and why would a pilgrim want to go there? I knew that was about as far as I could go with teaching vocabulary, so Tamra and I did some work with the thesaurus to find alternative words for discretion, prudence, piety and charity. I think you’ll benefit from hearing them: discretion is thoughtfulness; prudence is carefulness; piety is respectfulness; and charity is kindness. They point the way to someone on a journey toward a beautiful and peaceful place.

Repenting is to turn away from thoughtlessness and turn toward thoughtfulness. Repenting is to turn away from carelessness and turn toward carefulness. Repenting is to turn away from disrespect and turn toward respect. Repenting is to turn away from meanness and turn toward kindness. Repenting will lead to a place of peace and beauty.

Jesus then prays, “I thank you Sovereign of the universe, that you have obscured these things from the intelligent and have revealed them to infants.” I’m not sure I knew what this meant until I thought about what happened when I asked the kids, what does it mean to be thoughtful? What does it mean to be careful? What does it mean to be respectful? What does it mean to be kind? Their hands shot up after each question. They all gave examples of behavior. None of them gave examples of ideas or feelings, none of them cited doctrine or faith or belief. They all know what turning away from evil and turning toward good looks like and sounds like in action. We do too if we can keep our complicated intellectual analysis and erudite justifications in check.

Jesus says to all who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, “Come to me… .Take my yoke upon you and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” To all who are tired and are weighed down by tragedy, hardship and sorrow, Jesus is offering a yoke, which, at its most basic, is a way to redistribute the weight. A yoke is a crossbeam of wood that makes something easier or even possible to carry or to move. A well-made yoke makes carrying heavy buckets of water, for instance, much less work. Jesus, the builder’s son, probably knew something about making a comfortable yoke. Yokes allow two to share a load: two oxen or two people can share a burden that is too heavy for one.

Jesus is not offering to take the heavy burden away, but to make it easier to carry, easier to share. The rest Jesus is offering is not rest that comes from putting the burden down, but from redistributing the weight and sharing the load. The yoke, as it turns out, both restricts and facilitates movement. The yoke both limits and makes possible what is otherwise unlimited and impossible to bear. In Jesus’ tradition, the people of God understood the yoke to have a spiritual figurative meaning. A yoke symbolized discipline, service, and control. To be loyal was to bear the yoke. To rebel was to break off the yoke. The prophet Jeremiah said, “Let me go to the rich and speak to them; surely they know the way of the Lord, the law of their God. But they all alike had broken the yoke, they had burst the bonds.” [1] What bonds? The discipline of love: thoughtfulness, care for others, respect and kindness — the yoke of the Torah which requires loving one’s neighbor as oneself. The yoke of Torah, which is the yoke of love, is perfect freedom and wisdom, in contrast to the yoke of lawlessness, or lovelessness, which is nothing but violence, tragedy, hardship and sorrow.

Perhaps you arrived in this place this morning weary and carrying a heavy load. Perhaps that is not the case but you know others who are tired and weighed down. The yoke that Jesus is offering is the discipline of love in community. For us, exercising the discipline of community is the difference between going to church in the City of Boston and being the church in the City of Boston. We have a call – an invitation – to be the church. It’s about submitting to the practice of supporting one another, of learning how to disagree in love, of developing trust in one another and holding ourselves and one another accountable, of forgiving (and forgiving and endless forgiving), and of celebrating one another’s gifts. It’s about responding when called upon to laugh and dance or to weep or fast. It’s about listening to and honoring other people’s ideas, especially when they’re not what you are expecting, or when they are very different from yours: acts of grace and mercy, healing and restoration to community. It’s about action.

Henri Nouwen wrote about the discipline of community saying, “Community is the place where the person you least want to live with always lives…[and] in the eyes of others, you might be that person.” [2] And yet putting on the yoke of community is about the difference between being a spectator and experiencing the joy, the honor, and the privilege of the deeds of power of making burdens light for other folks and realizing in the process that one’s own burden has been lightened at the same time — that one’s own weariness has somehow eased a little bit. And it’s certainly about pausing to give thanks for the grace and mercy of God, weeds or no weeds, bugs or no bugs.

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