FIFTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST – Sermon for St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Madison, WI
LECTIONARY READINGS – Track 1: Exodus 12:1-14; Psalm 149; Romans 13:8-14; Matthew 18:15-20
This week, with the start of the school year, my attention was on the calendar. That was probably true for many of us. And, if not back to school, then possibly Labor Day with its holiday and gateway to fall, the arrival pumpkin spice lattes or the football season, may all be reasons the calendar is on our minds. That could be why, upon hearing today’s readings, our attention may recognize that God’s timing has its own calendar, with instructions that we may tend to consider like the back to school shopping lists instead of God’s intent for us and our relationship with God and one another.
God’s timing is a remarkable thing! And we are here in THIS time, witness to and bearers of God’s abundant love in this incredibly broken world. Each of us created for such a time as this.
In our first reading, God once again lays out the calendar for us. The first time this took place was creation, the seven days with the seventh as a day of sabbath. In the Exodus reading, God declares that the Israelites deliverance from the oppression of Egypt is upon them and that this is to be the beginning of their year to reflect their new life with God instead of Pharoah. And we read the full instructions given to them to mark this new life beginning on the 10th of the month with the Passover.
As with the current calendar, God’s calendar may seem a bit “off” as we read this passage.
Just as with the start of the school year typically occurring AFTER Labor Day, this year feels slightly “off” with school starting before the holiday. In the reading, the part that may have us scratching our heads is when God says, “This month shall mark for you the beginning of months.”
That sounds like a new year. Yet, this coming Friday, our Jewish siblings will begin celebrating Rosh Hashanah which literally translates from Hebrew as the “head of the year.” It is the current celebration of the Jewish New Year marked with apples and honey instead of roasted lamb. God’s calendar can be a bit confusing.
Before we accuse anyone of observing the wrong new year citing Exodus 12, we need only look a few chapters later, in Exodus 34, in which the Feast of Ingathering, of Harvest, is cited as taking place at the “end of the year” and observed through Rosh Hashanah.
Now, you may be sitting in the pew slowly drifting away because “we’re Christian, not Jewish, Mother Bobbi.” I share all of this with you because “it is written” and sometimes that can be confusing if we don’t take the time to consider it, hold it up, and make comparisons.
For instance, our Christian Liturgical calendar begins in December with Advent. Christ the King Sunday is both the end of and the beginning of our calendar. Yet, there are others who would argue that our calendar begins on Easter Sunday thanks to the new life we experience in Christ. Still others would argue that Pentecost Sunday is the beginning of the Church. And, then there’s January 1. New Year’s Day by the world’s standards. Or at least ever since the Gregorian calendar was put into place.
My point is the Passover and Exodus of the people of Israel is just ONE of the celebrations of new years that are part of God’s calendar. And being educated about it means that we can speak against those acts of antisemitism that occasionally rise up over the Jewish calendar.
Because as Jesus instructs and Paul writes to the Romans, the times we are living have less to do with the calendar itself and more importantly are about God’s instructions for our relationships.
Just two weeks ago, we were in Matthew chapter 16 with Peter identifying Jesus as the Messiah. And, from that moment on Jesus’s journey is towards Jerusalem and his crucifixion. That is his calendar. As each day passes and they get closer and closer to Jerusalem, Jesus teaches in word and deed how to focus our attention on our relationships with God and one another.
Today’s gospel focuses on what to do when someone, one of those closest to us, someone within our own communities, “sins against us.” We are to go to them. You and me. Clear the air. Tell the person how what happened was received. How it hurt. The pain or damage it caused.
That can be hard for us to do. It requires us to face the unknown of how they might receive our pain and damage. We can fall into the trap of believing it would be easier to triangulate and tell someone else first and have them deal with it. Or post something to social media and hope they see it, rather than talking to them.
[Fierce conversations. Name it. Why it’s a problem. Naming your part in it. Naming a solution/requesting an apology. Their turn.]
But, as Jesus points out, it is only after we’ve attempted to talk with this person that we bring in others.
So much energy is spent on Jesus’s instructions of the remedy, that we might lose sight of the fact that it is within this passage that we hear Jesus say, “Where two or three are gathered together, I am there among them.”
The point is not the argument, but that it is God’s desire to be in our midst. For us to be together with one another. For us to come to a resolution so that God’s desire for all of us, God’s love widely shared, is possible.
And Paul takes it even further when he writes the church in Rome. He flat out tells them that the one thing we owe to every person is love. That the sum of God’s commandments all point towards God’s love. AND that the instruction of love is more important now than ever BECAUSE we know that NOW IS THE MOMENT, God is near to each of us, just like the dawn brings light into the darkness. It doesn’t matter what the calendar says, this is the moment. New life is ours each day we arise. AND our New Year’s resolution each and every day is to strive to do a better job of loving God, neighbor, and self each day.
This past week, an administration official said that if current US policies brought on the “end times” they’d be okay with that. While I cringe at the comment and desire that our policies showed more care for humanity, I can’t help but recognize that if that is how the world desires to bring about improvement, then it is all the more crucial that we remember that ‘where two are three are gathered,” God is in our midst.
God in our midst. The gift of new life is already ours. God’s desire for us is to be in right relationship with God and one another. God’s desire is for us to share the Good News of God’s abundant love with every person we meet. Jesus has shown us the Way to do so. Each Sunday from now until the end of our liturgical year will include another lesson for how we are to love and care for one another.
This is the Moment. Nothing is lost when it’s God’s economy and everything happens in God’s timing.
I would prefer not hearing officials invoke “end times” language. Yet, we also don’t have to look far to see those who came before us living through times that also involved fear and confusion. We see the reports of ICE rounding up people and recall the rounding up of the Jewish people in Germany or Africans loaded onto slave ships, or Israelites enslaved by Egyptians. Countless times throughout history when our siblings, created in God’s image as well, were mistreated.
Yet, God is in our midst. God calls each of us to love one another.
There are days we may pray or even wish for better times. I know I do. Yet, in those moments lately, I am finding both comfort and empowerment from the Old Testament scripture words of Mordecai to Esther when there is a plot to kill the people, encouraging her to consider the possibility that she was made “for just such a time as this.”
When God is our focus and Jesus’s instructions to love one another are clear, we too, each of us, has God in our midst and are in God’s remarkable timing. May we remember Mordecai’s encouragement to Esther and face each new day with new resolutions to love like Jesus because we too are made for such a time as this.
Amen.
