Proper 12 Year A 2020
July 26, 2020
When I left the Navy one of the things I did was go back to school to finish my bachelor’s degree. For a while, I attended San Diego State University, and while I was a student there, I was a member of the campus and young adult Episcopal ministry of the diocese. Our chaplain became one of my dearest friends and mentors… dealing with young adults was probably not easy; so many of us were going through all sorts of problems related to job searches, family issues, school, and all of those things that we all have to deal with in our 20’s. Some of us were married, some of us were just breaking into careers, a few of us were changing careers… a tough time for many of us, and I have no doubt it was an interesting group of folks to be a chaplain for.
Bill always seemed to know when to say just the right thing, and his years as a veterans administration hospital chaplain formed him to be the kind of chaplain who gets right to the point. There were never any fluffy words with Bill… he was direct, to say the least…
A group such as ours was bound to have some issues with crisis of identity and issues of self esteem. Many of our group were dealing with parents wanting them to make decisions about their future; some were dealing with numerous rejections from prospective employers; some were lonely, dealing with wanting a life partner and a more settled life… we weren’t easy to deal with on the best of days…
One day when we were together, many of us were complaining about the various things in our lives that weren’t going well; self esteem seemed to be at a community low with all the rejections going on around us… Bill, always ready with just the right thing to say, said to us, “you and I don’t get our sense of self, or our self worth from our successes or even from each other; we get our sense of self worth from God who gave everything to be closer to us and to love us more than we could ever imagine…”
I won’t say that the mood in the room lifted immediately, but having Bill tell us that has made all the difference to me. In those times when life wasn’t feeling good, falling back on that knowledge has made rejection less of an issue; it has helped me to know that no matter what happened, God had my back; that no matter what disappointments I might face, I would never truly be alone… Paul’s words in Romans this morning take the idea one step further, “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” The good news there, is that even I can’t separate myself from the love of God. I can choose to not return that love, but the gift of God’s love to us in Jesus is always there, always inviting us to love in return.
“The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.” When I thought about what my friend and chaplain had said to our little community, it seemed to fit along with this little parable. Yeast affects the dough that it touches; and it doesn’t take much for dough to be completely transformed by the yeast… and wonderfully transformed I might add…just a little yeast goes a long way…
Bill’s wonderful words to our ragtag bunch of young adults that day was in it’s own way, yeast from God’s kingdom. Knowledge of God’s love for us as individuals and as a community has an effect on us… it’s hard not to respond, hard not to have our own hearts changed by that knowledge… and I daresay, that like yeast in dough, it changes us and the change spreads to others… the only real response to knowing how pervasive and life changing God’s love is, is to make sure that we let others know how much God loves them with what we say and what we do…
Much of my ministry has been with smaller churches; it’s funny, really; it’s not how I imagined my ministry to look; I used to want to either be a hospital chaplain, or an assisting priest at a Cathedral or large parish. I’m pretty sure that after all these years in small church ministry, that I don’t want to go back to a large church, but I have learned that I should be open to God’s plans; because obviously, I have no talent for plans! One thing I know about smaller churches like ours, is that as a church, we can sometimes have an identity crisis, where we think we are too small to have an effect on our community. I am here to tell you that nothing could be further from the truth; God uses all of us, no matter the size of our church or the skills that each of us brings to the equation. Our sense of self esteem as people and as a church has its origins in the love that God has for us through Jesus. Jesus prays for us; his Holy Spirit prays through us; and as we love God and love our neighbors, the yeast of the kingdom will spread; it doesn’t take much. It only takes believing what some would say is impossible… believing that we cannot be separated from the love of God, and spreading that message to others in word and deed… and perhaps, the ability to use our imaginations and dream… dream big…
As I said last week, I think all that is going on in the world is preparing us, molding us, so that we might be the church God has asked us to be in the world… perhaps as something new and different, shaped by our experience, but rooted in the love that Jesus has for us. I encourage us in this time to pray, to listen to God and to others, and to listen to the Spirit as it prays through us… Just a little love, a little yeast will go a very long way to transforming us and our part of the world into something wonderful. I am looking forward to seeing what that looks like. I hope you are too.