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Homely Homilies

A collection of sermons and such written for my Homiletics class at School for Deacons. No actual parishioners were harmed in the giving of these sermons.

Sunday, February 20

First. Sermon. Ever.

Remember, kids, first rhymes with worst.
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Midweek Eucharist
Monday, December 26, 2005
Feast of St. Stephen, Deacon and Martyr (why must those words appear together so often?)

Psalm 31 or 31:1-5;
Jeremiah 26:1-9,12-15;
Acts 6:8--7:2a,51c-60;
Matthew 23:34-39

Merry Christmas! Yesterday, as you may remember, we got that baby born - the baby who is called Emmanuel, or God is With Us.

So, where did today's readings come from? Is anyone out there scratching their heads and wondering why we suddenly have an action sequence in which poor Stephen gets stoned to death, so soon after we celebrated the birth of the Christ child? Don't we even get a day to coo over him and play with his widdle toes before, well, before all the blood and martyrdom and general unpleasantness creeps back in?

The thing is, these readings are about the same thing we talked about yesterday - GOD IS WITH US.

Of course, we just don't get it.

Jesus is angry here. His patience is worn thin, and why not? Prophets, sages, and scribes, all run out of town and whipped in the synagogue, just for telling the truth about God. We just don't get it! All this God! With us! And we JUST DON'T GET IT. Look at what happened to poor Jeremiah! Look at how they killed Stephen! We didn't get it before Jesus came, and we didn't get it after he rose from the dead. He rose! From the dead! And we still try to find ways to work around his very clear instructions for us. Pick. Up. Your. Cross. Follow!

There's a great middle part that is left out of today's reading from Acts, in which Stephen recounts the entire relationship between God and his people, from Abraham to Joseph in Egypt to Moses. He does not pull punches, and tells the story of the rebelliousness of the people of Israel, saying

'It was this Moses whom they rejected when they said, "Who made you a ruler and a judge?" and whom God now sent as both ruler and liberator through the angel who appeared to him in the bush. He led them out, having performed wonders and signs in Egypt, at the Red Sea, and in the wilderness for forty years. This is the Moses who said to the Israelites, "God will raise up a prophet for you from your own people as he raised me up." He is the one who was in the congregation in the wilderness with the angel who spoke to him at Mount Sinai, and with our ancestors; and he received living oracles to give to us. Our ancestors were unwilling to obey him; instead, they pushed him aside, and in their hearts they turned back to Egypt, saying to Aaron, "Make gods for us who will lead the way for us; as for this Moses who led us out from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has happened to him." At that time they made a calf, offered a sacrifice to the idol, and revelled in the works of their hands. But God turned away from them and handed them over to worship the host of heaven, as it is written in the book of the prophets:
"Did you offer to me slain victims and sacrifices
for forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel?
No; you took along the tent of Moloch,
and the star of your god Rephan,the images that you made to worship;
so I will remove you beyond Babylon."

Now, this isn't all that threatening to the people listening. They all know the story. Then Stephen dumps it all right back on their laps, saying

'You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you are forever opposing the Holy Spirit, just as your ancestors used to do. Which of the prophets did your ancestors not persecute? They killed those who foretold the coming of the Righteous One, and now you have become his betrayers and murderers. You are the ones that received the law as ordained by angels, and yet you have not kept it.'

The crowd listens, and then they deal with the problem. Stephen is stoned to death.

You know, there's something about a good persecution that really shows you what side of things you're on. We are unlikely to have to deal with that, though, so we have to try to divine the quality of our faith based on smaller things. It's easy to say that you would die for the Gospel when no one is likely to ask you to do so.

Sometimes it seems like the cross we're asked to carry is made of balsa wood and chewing gum, it's so light compared to what others have had to bear.

Since no one is persecuting us, we often turn to persecuting each other. We set up various litmus tests so we can draw the line between who is in and who is out, and the lines of demarcation just get narrower and more petty, so that we can more easily paste labels on each other. God is with us! Except for that guy over there. God's not so much with him.

There's a thing we do in Godly Play classes with children, after we tell the day's story, we ask, "where are you in the story?" Usually, the kid who seemed like he wasn't paying attention is the one who breaks in then with something that is so true it just about stops your heart. But it's too good a technique to just give to the children, so as I read today's gospel, I have to think - where are we in this story?

Well, I know where we want to believe we are. We're up there with Jesus! With Stephen! Saying dangerous things to the people with the stones and the whips! We're part of that little band who DOES get it!

Well, no, at least, probably not. We, too, have received the law as ordained by angels, but are we doing much better than the people at whom Jesus and Stephen directed their well-placed ire?

That's a hard thing to say, especially the day after Christmas, when we're all feeling pretty good about ourselves. I mean, on a day when the rest of the culture is celebrating National Half-Off Everything at the Mall Day, we're here at church! In the middle of the week! Surely WE understand something about doing God's will. Surely WE are among the disciples. Jesus wasn't talking about US!

Stephen got killed for pointing out that the moment when you're feeling pretty smug and holy is probably the moment when you are the farthest away from God. So I'm a little nervous here, because, well, I don't think things have changed much since then. We still hate to hear anyone say that what we're doing right now isn't what is expected of us. Or that we're headed in the wrong direction. Now we're more likely to react with stony silence than with stones, but the basic defensiveness is still there.

So where is the good news in all this? Maybe the good news is in
Stephen's last words, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them." Sounds like a paraphrase of another famous parting line, "Forgive them Father for they know not what they do."

This is what keeps us from sinking into despair when we see ourselves clearly, the knowledge that the grace of God is extended to us even in our ugliest moments. We don't get it, and we never will on this side of death. All we can do is keep trying to figure it out together. Through Jesus we can repent and try to move ourselves another fraction of inch closer to alignment with the will of God.

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