Second Sunday after Pentecost (4B), June 3, 2018; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

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

Today Emmanuel Church is celebrating an abundant harvest, the ordinations yesterday of Helen McKinney to the permanent diaconate and Tamra Tucker to the transitional diaconate. Helen and Tamra were both sponsored for ordination by Emmanuel Church and so we are blessed and thrilled that they’re both able to be here today to worship with us in their new roles in the Episcopal Church. Following our service and a bit of refreshment, I invite those of you who are able and interested, to join in a conversation about the ordination process. Helen and her sweetheart, Rebecca are going to have to dash to catch a plane back to Albuquerque, but Tamra will have time to stay and talk – she’s staying in Boston!

In our first reading this morning, we heard the stirring reading of the call of Samuel with the fantastic introduction that back then (“then” being earlier than 1000 BCE), in the really olden days, the word of the Lord was rare, and the ability to see clearly was not widespread! This assessment is from the perspective of hundreds of years later in the 7^th or 6^th century BCE! Three thousand years ago, Israel was going through a time of immense societal change, spiritual desolation, religious corruption, and great political danger.” [1] (Does this sound familiar Emmanuel?) Eli the priest and his sons were responsible for guarding the Ark of the Covenant and its holy oracle. Eli’s sons were violent and Eli was unable to improve their behavior.

This is a story of the subsequent transfer of authority from Eli to Samuel that highlights Eli’s wisdom and integrity, and Samuel’s responsiveness and bravery. The word of God, here, is like a light that is both harsh and bright – exposing what is shameful and shining like a beacon to light the way. The call that Samuel hears is to prophetic work of declaring both judgment and hope, both repentance and return to the way of obedience to Love (which is another word for God and a great non-gendered substitute for the word Lord). It’s a call for a better future, new and unconventional. It’s not the story of a grand religious act, but of an invitation to a fresh, and risky social reality based on freedom and the promise of the Holy One, which is Love. [2] Episcopal priest Lauren Winner writes that the Biblical testimony is that God most often chooses to heal the world by particular intimacy rather than grand, cosmic gestures. [3] This story of Eli and Samuel is a perfect lectionary coincidence for celebrating two newly ordained deacons. Helen and Tamra, thank you for your faithful responses to a vision of a better future. God knows, we need – indeed the whole world needs – the healing you have to offer. We need – the whole world needs – for you to show us how, to lead us to expect to hear from God, and whenever we do, to respond, “Speak, Love, for your servant is listening.”

This intimacy with the Holy One, and the healing and love that are a part of engaging the vision of a better future, don’t inoculate anyone against calamity or illness, [4] but they will sustain our spirits. This intimacy with the Holy One will not save us from death any more that it saved Jesus from the cross, but if we allow it to shine through us like a beacon, ultimately it will set us free. This is a part of the point that the apostle Paul is making in his second letter to the church in Corinth. Our passage from 2^nd Corinthians follows immediately after the portion that was read yesterday at the ordination. Bishop Gates preached on these words of Paul, “therefore, since it is by God’s mercy that we are engaged in this ministry, we do not lose heart.” It is by God’s mercy, by Love’s mercy that we have the opportunity to love one another. We are all carrying treasure in clay pots – in the containers of our mortal bodies. This intimacy with the Holy One will save us from having our spirits crushed, from being driven to despair, from being forsaken, or destroyed. This intimacy with the Holy One will set us free from even the fear of death. I don’t just know this because the Bible tells me so, I know it because I’ve seen it with my own eyes.

You know, one of the ways to maintain intimacy with the Holy One is to have regular dates, otherwise known as Sabbath. I want to say somethings about Sabbath and about our Gospel reading this morning, but I have to start with Mark’s caricature of the Pharisees, and the libelous ways that Christians refer to this movement within Judaism at the time of Jesus. Pharisees were teachers who sought to extend the benefits Jewish religious observance to all areas of Jewish life for people who lived outside of Jerusalem and its immediate vicinity. The first century Roman Jewish historian, Josephus, described them as being precise when it came to Jewish life, teaching and encouraging people to live their daily lives with integrity based on “their values and commitments, not their birth or [geographic] location,” according to Jewish New Testament scholars. [5] They were a fairly centrist, proto-rabbinic movement, within which there was a wide range of interpretations of how best to live faithfully. Our own rabbi-in-residence, Howard Berman, sees plenty of evidence in Jesus’ teachings to suggest that he was at least educated in the Pharisaic movement, if he was not a Pharisee himself. Certainly Jesus had friends who were Pharisees, with whom he traveled and dined. So I implore you to never use the word Pharisee as short-hand for someone who is hard-hearted or legalistic, or petty and mean, or incompetent and unfaithful. When Christians do that, we’re saying move about ourselves than we are about Pharisees.

I think it’s best for us, when we hear the word Pharisee, to substitute the word Episcopalian. It’s not a perfect substitute, but it’s pretty close. If you’re not an Episcopalian, substitute a word that describes whatever movement you are a part of, and realize with some humility that such a label could never do justice to describe all of who you are. When you reflect on our Gospel reading, think, “we are the Pharisees.” We are the ones who point out others who violate the norms, who bend the rules, who disregard the agreements (our baptismal promises, for example), who go to the police or the government when people create disturbances in our places of worship. Just sayin’. So let’s understand that Jesus is arguing with us, reminding us that the commandment to rest is for our benefit, and that gathering food and freeing from harm are reasonable, even faithful, responses to human need on the Sabbath. Responding to human need was and still is a legitimate reason within Judaism to deviate from strict adherence to Sabbath guidelines (and that’s true for responding to animals’ needs too, by the way). But note well, our crabbiness is almost always a sign that we need a rest.

The strange thing is that Jesus gives a rationale for his followers to lawfully gather grain on the Sabbath by citing a story from the scriptures, back to 1 Samuel actually. But in that story David was alone, he wasn’t asking for bread because of his own urgent hunger, he didn’t enter the house of God, and the priest was named Ahimelech, not Abiathar. Other than that…

Anyone who has heard me preach before has likely heard me talk about the central importance of remembering the sabbath day to be holy – that is, set apart, completely “other.” To remember the sabbath day to be “other” means that it is consecrated or set apart or withheld from ordinary use. It is for reverence, for rest, for refreshment. It’s not for anything productive. This is most challenging and counter-cultural and it always has been. It might be the most foolishly extravagant thing ever commanded in the history of the world – and the most necessary. It’s not so much about a long list of dos and don’ts – it’s about what Walter Brueggemann calls “a disciplined and regular disengagement from the systems of productivity whereby the world uses people up to exhaustion.” Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg writes that this is “not just counteractive but prophylactic …time has to be made for time.” [6] The restrictive qualities in Christian tradition and in popular imagination have generally obscured the purpose of cultivating joy of experiencing God’s pleasure in creation. Because we share our home with a Jewish synagogue here at 15 Newbury Street, some of you know that what Christians call “coffee hour” (a terrible name), Jews call oneg Shabbat – Sabbath delight. Doesn’t that sound so much more beautiful and delicious and playful? (It is.) You might try practicing extended sabbath joy all day on a Sunday. If you can’t manage a whole day, start with a portion of a day, regularly set aside for Sabbath delight.

“But I have so much work,” I can hear some of you thinking. It occurs to me that perhaps the only way for everyone to get sabbath rest is for us to take turns – some work while others rest. Sabbath cannot rightly be only for those who are wealthy enough to afford leisure. And I think Jesus was actually arguing that very point – for those who are famished, for those who are suffering, a right response is to take turns attending to their needs.

You know, we are living in a time of immense societal change, spiritual desolation, religious corruption, and great political danger. The call to remember Sabbath, pressing pause, stopping for rest and refreshment, “a disciplined and regular disengagement from the systems of productivity whereby the world uses people up to exhaustion,” is a gift from the Holy One for us – it is a treasure in a clay jar. If we rest and provide for the rest of others, we will find that though we are afflicted in every way, we are not crushed; perplexed but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed, and the light of Christ will surely come shining out of our hearts wherever we go.

← Back to sermons page