Matthew 10:24-39 Do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.

O God of grace, may we have the wisdom, the strength, and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth – come when it may and cost what it will.

You know, I would be hard pressed to think of three more difficult readings to preach on for a Sunday service in which we will have a baptism. In Genesis, we hear a story of Abraham’s highly questionable parenting skills, seemingly divinely directed. In Romans we learn that our baptisms are baptisms into the death of Christ Jesus. And if that’s not discouraging enough, Jesus says, in the Gospel of Matthew, “Pay attention, there are wolves out there where I’m sending you – away from here, out there into the world, so be wise – have insight and understanding like the serpent and be innocent, that is, unspoiled by what is harmful and damaging…. There are predators out there who will want to do you in. Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death; and you will be hated by all because of my name.” This does not seem like a winning recruiting strategy.

I bet more than a few of you were thinking when Susanne was reading our Gospel lesson just now, “this is exactly the kind of stuff that keeps people out of church most of the time.” Or perhaps some of you were thinking, thank goodness it’s not like that anymore – at least not here – everyone in my family has always gotten along just fine – in fact, everyone I know gets along just fine. Or maybe, your mind was wandering because it’s too hard to imagine what this reading has to do with your life right now. Maybe what you heard was like the teacher voice in every animated Peanuts movie “wah, wah, wah wahh.”

Have you ever wished, like I do from time to time, that the Good News was just a little bit Better News? I mean in a few moments, Pam Roeker is to be baptized here. Welcome to Christianity. I would rather have a Gospel text that proclaims “they will know we are Christians by our love” (with its subtext, and they will be nice to us). Even as early as Matthew’s Gospel, Christians were making exclusive claims in Jesus’ name like the one at the end of today’s Gospel passage: “Everyone who acknowledges [him] before others, [he] will acknowledge before [his] Father in heaven; (that’s fine) but whoever denies [Jesus] before others, [he] will also deny before [his] Father in heaven.” (shake head no) It reminds me of what Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury, once said: “we have…seen how we Christians are capable of turning our mission (God’s mission) into a travesty by behaving as if we were the proprietors of a system that we alone were licensed to manage or administer.” [1]

In his book, A Ray of Darkness, [2] Williams recalls Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison, especially a passage written for Bonhoeffer’s godson’s baptism. He says, “We have used our religious words as if we had no idea what they meant, used them in a project of self-protection, as if they didn’t judge us or alarm us; and now we must let go, prepare for the silence of “prayer and righteous action among [human beings,]” hoping that words will again be given us that might change the world. [I’m going to read that again] We have used our religious words as if we had no idea what they meant, used them in a project of self-protection, as if they didn’t judge us or alarm us; and now we must let go, prepare for the silence of “prayer and righteous action among [human beings,]” hoping that words will again be given us that might change the world.” [3] Rowan Williams goes on to say “The idiom is of our own day, but the recognition of the possible corruptions of talk about God is common to the Jewish refusal to pronounce or even write the sacred name…. Only by getting away from the language of God’s action can we be properly open to that action. We can talk about the Trinity until the cows come home, but we can only “know” what we are talking about by letting the Word be generated in us – being sufficiently silent to know the simplicity of what sustains our Christian identity, the act of God that generates relation and communion, as it happens in us.” [4]

Now the irony of my standing up here preaching about silence has not escaped me. I was once on retreat – a silent retreat – with a retreat leader who began by talking for so long about silence that I was afraid we were never going to experience it! But today, since we are not on retreat, I do want to say a few things about silence and my prayer that we, as a parish, will practice more of it together.

First, I am not talking about keeping silence in the face of oppression and degradation. I am not talking about keeping silence as a form of self-protection or silence in the name of making or keeping a false peace. And I am not talking about silence that happens when there is coincidentally no one with whom to talk. I am talking about intentional time and space devoted to quietly – silently — remembering that God is God and we are not God. I am talking about regular time and space devoted to remembering just who and whose we are. Silence is very counter-cultural, you know. We live in an environment of far too little silence and a culture where doing is far more important than being. So being intentionally silent can look like “doing nothing” – or, heaven forbid, “wasting time.” Silence – particularly in my beloved Emmanuel Church, seems to sometimes cause discomfort, agitation – concern that someone has forgotten what they were supposed to do or say next, or worry about how long it will last. I sometimes wonder if God wonders how to get a Word in edgewise.

I wonder that if we can’t practice silence here, how on earth we can hope to hear God’s Word outside of here? I wonder if we could build more silence into both our worship and our meetings – if we could stop talking long enough to deeply experience the Holy One in our midst with our other less-developed senses: taste, smell, touch, sight. I wonder if we could risk “wasting” some time feeling our own longing for connection, recognizing our own burdens and weaknesses, and then if we could risk spending some more time imagining that God looks with compassion on us and not only us, but on all those around us. I wonder if we could risk imagining that we are all precious in God’s eyes – and that the differences between us, because of God’s enormity, are barely perceptible.

It’s not hard to look at a newborn who is about to be baptized and know at a very deep level just how precious she is in the eyes of God. I know that I learned more about the love of God from looking into the eyes of my daughters when they were babies, than I’d ever imagined possible. It’s a little harder sometimes to see how precious adults are – no matter what those adults do or fail to do. Think about that a minute. Every one of us is precious in the eyes of God – and I don’t mean every one of us in this chapel. Every one. It’s hard to see preciousness in each other on a regular basis. And let me tell you, it’s very hard to see preciousness in those who seem out to get us (or who are out to get us). But that is exactly what we are called to see and to proclaim in the name of Jesus – with the wisdom of serpents and the innocence of doves. Notice how little talking serpents and doves do (the Garden of Eden story notwithstanding). I believe we are called to proclaim the Gospel using words only if necessary, to paraphrase a quote attributed to St. Francis of Assisi. And I’m here to tell you that words are not necessary nearly as often as we think.

And when we start seeing and proclaiming with our actions the power of God to redeem – to re-value all who have been devalued, the least, the last, and the lost, that’s when the going is going to get tough. That’s when we will need time for intentional silence even more. “Do not worry about what you are to speak or what you are to say,” Matthew’s Jesus tells us. Don’t be anxiously formulating the next thing you will say. When you are quiet, the Spirit will be able to speak through you – the Spirit will make you a living, breathing, full-bodied expression of divine compassion for the needy people of God. We are not to behave as if we are the proprietors of a system that we alone are licensed to manage or deliver. We are to live inspired, courageous and generous lives – inspired, courageous and generous lives – with integrity and commitment to serving others in order to make the world better than when we found it. May it be so.

Back to sermons page