How Do We Confront the Status Quo?

Homily by The Rev. Marcia McRae

St. Francis Episcopal Church, Goldsboro, NC; 13^th Sunday after Pentecost, 14 Aug. 2016

Proper 15 Year C RCL: Isaiah 5:1–7, Psalm 80:1–2, 8–18, Hebrews 11:29–12:2; Luke 12:49–56

How many of you have taken or taught an online class? What was that like? [The idea intimidates me & lures me from my comfort zone. So I am thankful I have not experienced this....yet!]

How many of you have read The Wall Street Journal article about Georgia Tech's Jill Watson, one of 9 teaching assistants – or TAs – working with an online class of 300 graduate students?¹ 
Like the 8 other TAs, Jill helps answer some of the 10,000 routine questions they get during a semester, reminds students [some in other countries] of project due dates, & posts questions to stimulate online conversations.
Sometimes Jill responds to messages with “Yep!” or “We'd love to”.
At least one student wanted to nominate Jill as outstanding TA but didn't. Why? What surprised him to drop that idea?

He learned Jill is a computer programmed to answer routine questions. He & other graduate students in the artificial intelligence course thought they were getting answers from a human!

Today’s Gospel is like this surprise:

We don’t expect Jesus [who says “Blessed are the peacemakers”] to tell us he comes to bring division not peace! This jarring contradiction, spoken by the Prince of Peace, reminds us: Jesus is a realist, who confronts the status quo. Realities can be different from our expectations.

The Prince of Peace sees clearly. Jesus sees the possibilities AND the realities. The Prince of Peace does divide intimate relationships. As one Bible commentator says: today's Gospel “…is a frightening description of the diverse results of Jesus’ ministry…division, not peace will be the result;…families will be split.”²

With our technology, we are blessed with many ways to keep relationships going. When we can’t be physically in the same place, we can phone, text, post on Facebook & Skype to participate in events far away. [A seminary housemate Skyped on computer each evening to be with her husband & their 2 children in another state, including to celebrate their son's 3^rd birthday.]

Beloved Brothers & Sisters, you are wise enough to know we can turn these blessings into curses. We can over-use them, let them withdraw us from personal relationship & face to face interaction.

This dⁱs_to^r_ts their very purpose.

We hear distorted purpose in our scriptures from Isaiah, the Letter to the Hebrews & in Jesus' harsh language in our Gospel, telling us families will be divided, split into factions as we confront the status quo.

Sometimes we ourselves feel “split,” divided by our inner struggle for a deeper trust in God as we hold tightly to our comfort zone. We have to commit. AND we have to live with contradiction. We read this in our Gospel. We read this in Isaiah, who consistently preaches to “trust in God.”³

Today’s reading in Isaiah, which is called “a poem of rebuke,”⁴ God’s “frustrated love song,”⁵ tells us God sees the possibilities AND the realities.

We fall short of God's expectations

& God continues to love us!

As Christians, we embrace the contradiction of [as author Esther de Waal says in Living with Contradiction..., and I paraphrase in parts]

“...God who becomes a man;

a victor who rides on a donkey...;

a savior...executed as a common criminal;

...God who promises

'in losing my life I shall find it.'”⁶

Contradiction shakes our comfort zone. How broad is our comfort zone when we hear the lesson from Hebrews commend the faith of Rahab? – that foreign prostitute!⁷ Hebrews commends Rahab as an example of how to live by faith. You may recall Matthew’s Gospel says Rahab is Jesus’ ancestor!⁸

This foreigner, this prostitute is a member of our family! As God’s adopted children, as Jesus’ brothers & sisters, you & I have Rahab in our family lineage.

If a Rahab of today walks into this holy place to worship, if she comes to our Parish Supper or Christmas in the Forest what kind of welcome will we give her?
If her pimp walks into this holy place what kind of welcome will we give him?

Can we be like the priest & his wife I know who welcomed the pimp to their son Dave's funeral? Dave played guitar in a hard rock band. So when he dies young from a birth defect, all sorts & conditions of people come to his funeral along with the faithful members of the church where his father is rector.

Many who come don’t know the parish rules, don’t know the dress code. The pimp doesn’t know the time & arrives late. The only place to sit is the front row.

He walks down the center aisle [his clothes screaming his profession] and sits with the family, beside the priest’s wife.

This grieving mother is an heiress, a woman of refinement, a woman generous in hospitality, generous in sharing Jesus’ love & welcome. These grieving parents welcome this pimp as a friend of their dead son.

Can we do likewise?

Jesus calls us to live in lively imagination! It takes lively imagination to see a pimp as the beloved child of God that he is. [God wants the pimp to be reconciled to God & be part of God's family just as Rahab the prostitute is part of God's family – our family.]

Jesus calls us to shake off the paralysis we have of staying with the comfortable status quo. Jesus does not bring peace for us at St. Francis to live comfortably with the way things are.
Jesus brings us division between doubt & faith⁹ – between fearful living with the way things are & bold action living in new ways into God’s vision for us.

When we see winds & know they bring rain from one direction & heat from another but fail to see the spiritual crisis around us¹⁰, we fail to live by faith.

Rahab the prostitute lives by faith & works for God’s vision not to keep her world the way it is so that she doesn’t have to change.

Jesus has to change the world on the hard wood of the cross. Jesus – the Son of God – is under stress! This baptism Jesus undergoes purifies God’s creation.

Jesus takes on this stress for you & me, for the pimp & the prostitute.

In this sanctuary we must remember the church as sanctuary, the place where people are safe, where we welcome strangers. That’s hospitality. That’s justice. That’s peace that divides us from people paralyzed by doubt so that we are people running by faith this race we run with Jesus.

Rahab & Dave & now also Dave’s parents are part of the great cloud of witnesses around us: the fans in a stadium cheering us to persevere as we run the race:¹¹

Cheering us to keep the faith,

to persevere through dangers,

to press on &
not stop in the comfort of how things are.

Cheering us to strive for the justice God envisions:

a new creation,
a greater reality.

Cheering us to look out our big doors,
past our alarm system &
beyond this beautiful setting
& our beautiful natural setting outside
to confront the status quo
on streets not far from us.

Please open your Prayer Book to page 833 and join me in praying #62. A Prayer attributed to St. Francis [our Patron Saint]:

Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy.

Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Amen.

Bibliography

The Book of Common Prayer. New York: Church Publishing, Inc. 1986.

Brown, Raymond E. An Introduction to the New Testament. New York: Doubleday. 1997.

De Waal, Esther. Living with Contradiction: An Introduction to Benedictine Spirituality. Harrisburg: Morehouse Publishing. 1997.

Dios Habla Hoy: La Biblia. Nueva York: Sociedad Biblica Americana. 1983.

Harper’s Bible Commentary. Gen. Ed: James L. Mays. San Francisco: Harper & Row Publishers. 1988.

Harper’s Bible Dictionary. Gen. Ed: Paul J. Achtemeier. San Francisco: Harper & Row Publishers. 1985. p. 851

Higgs, Liz Curtis. Bad Girls of the Bible: and What We Can Learn from Them. Chapter 7. Colorado Springs: WaterBrook Press. 1999.

Holy Bible with the Apocrypha. New Revised Standard Version. New York: Oxford University Press. 1989.

Jewish Study Bible: Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation.New York: Oxford University Press. 2004.

Korn, Melissa. “There's a Reason the Teaching Assistant Seems Robotic”. The Wall Street Journal. May 7-8, 2016. Vol CCLXVII No. 107. New York. P. 1A, 8A.

New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha Expanded Edition. New York: Oxford University Press. 1973.

New Revised Standard Version with Apocrypha Holy Bible. New York: Oxford UniversityPress. 1977.

Poitier-Young, Anathea. Old Testaments Prophets class notes. The School of Theology, The University of the South Advanced Degrees Program. Summer 2010.

1 Korn, Melissa. “There's a Reason the Teaching Assistant Seems Robotic”. The Wall Street Journal. May 7-8, 2016.

Pp. 1A, 8A.

2 Brown, Raymond E. An Introduction to the New Testament. P. 247.

3 Note: Poitier-Young, Anathea. Old Testaments Prophets class notes. The School of Theology, The University of the South Advanced Degrees Program. Summer 2010.

4 Jewish Study Bible: Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation. New York: Oxford University Press. P. 792.

5 Ibid. Poitier-Young.

6 De Waal, Esther. Living with Contradiction: An Introduction to Benedictine Spirituality. P.24.

7 Ibid. Jewish Study Bible. P. 466.

8 Ibid.

9 Harper’s Bible Commentary. Gen. Ed.: James L. Mays. P. 1031.

10 New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha Expanded Edition. P. 1030.

11 Ibid. Harper’s Bible Commentary. P. 1270.