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Letting Go the Extra:

Saint Francis and Living Sustainably

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10/06/2019 Year C, Creationtide 6, Luke 12:22-31

St. Columba’s Episcopal Church, Inverness, CA.

Read (PDF version): 2019.10.06 Creationtide_Letting Go the Extra

Listen (audio): Letting Go The Extra – St. Francis and Living Sustainably

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(Text below):

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about YOUR life, what YOU will eat, or about YOUR body, what YOU  will wear… can any of you, by worrying, add a single hour to YOUR span of life? Instead, strive for (God’s) kingdom – and these things will be given to YOU as well.”

Do not worry about YOUR life.

Today’s gospel is not just a message to “let go and let God” – as helpful as that can be. It’s about taking focus off of ourselves and focusing instead on what we can do for others. What would our world, our nation, our state, this church community look like, if we actually lived what Jesus taught? How much of the news we hear these days might be different, or even non-existent if we each acted for the benefit of others? Our daily flood of partisan politics, impeachment proceedings, dishonest corporations; questionable dealings, insider trading, sex scandals… all of these things, or more accurately, the behaviors behind them, can be traced to people acting in their own self-interest to the detriment of others. What might we change… what might we achieve… if we went to lengths to uplift other people and to make our world habitable and hospitable to ALL life?

“Can any of US, by worrying, add a single hour to the span of our lives?”

No! But by acting, by doing, we may have the opportunity to add days, years, even generations to the life of others – and to the earth herself.

Two weeks ago, on Sept. 20th, some 4 million people from over 160 countries held a global climate strike. According to the Episcopal News Service “(the) demonstration built on the momentum of youth-led school walkouts inspired by 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, who led the strike in New York and addressed the U.N. delegates on Sept. 23.”^[1]

As Thunberg reminded the world, the nations who agreed to the 2015 Paris Accord guidelines of trying to restrict global temperature rise, have all failed to do so… and the climate situation is dire.  Our “island home” is on fire – both literally and figuratively. And while I won’t advocate for wholesale panic, the time for complacency is past.

A group of Episcopal Bishops led by our own Bishop Marc and including Presiding Bishop Michael Curry, left the House of Bishops meeting on Sept 20th in solidarity with the Global Climate Strike. They affirmed, “we will all be called upon in 2020 to “raise our ambition” on climate action, and affirmed that to that end, “The Episcopal Church is already committed to action that will support a 1.5 degree Celsius ceiling on global warming above pre-Industrial Revolution levels… working from the individual and household level – up to regions, and to the level of the whole Church – to make the necessary transition to a sustainable life.^[2]

If all of this is real – if it really IS time for action, time to “make the necessary transition to a sustainable life…”  what does that look like?

“Do not worry about YOUR body, what YOU  will wear…”  maybe that’s a place to start.

Like much of the viewing world, I got caught up in Marie Kondo’s Tidying Up series… I watched, aghast and amused, while she made people empty their closets and drawers into huge piles, to show them how much STUFF they had that they didn’t need: how many kitchen gadgets, unused tools, papers, shoes, CLOTHES. It inspired me to do some clutter clearing of my own, and I enthusiastically got underway… only to realize the sheer amount of STUFF that I also owned. And when I had pulled, unboxed and gathered just the clothing in my house – and only my OWN – I was as embarrassed as any of Marie’s clients at the size of the pile I had in front of me. I go through my closets and stored clothing twice a year to clear my clutter and donate things I no longer want or wear… and was pretty proud of that… until I put in one place all of what I had still kept, and felt overwhelmed by it. So much STUFF. I went through it over several days, and donated garbage bags full of clothing to local thrift stores… and I still have so much more than I need, bins of clothing I’m hanging on to for whatever reason… What do we REALLY NEED? What would it look like to unburden ourselves, to TRULY strip down our possessions to only those things we require… the things that, as Kondo and other clutter-clearing experts like to point out, bring us joy n& uplift us?

What would it look like to let go of all the EXTRA that we accumulate…? To

Strive for God’s kingdom, as our gospel passage reminds us to do, by living more simply and shedding things that encumber us…?

I saw an advertisement a couple of days ago for an online course called, Uncluttered. Participants sign up and make a commitment to themselves, to the classwork and to each other. Each week there are readings and assignments that focus on looking at different aspects of their lives and living spaces, learning how to be more intentional about the way they live and what they surround themselves with, and how these things act upon them. The premise is that by stripping away extraneous clutter, by simplifying our lives and treating ourselves, our surroundings and others with more care, even sacramentally, we can lives better lives, positively impact others, and reduce the footprint we make in the world. Doing this in community, we hold ourselves and each other to our commitments.

Today we honor Saint Francis of Assisi, an Italian friar and deacon.

It can be tempting to see “saints” as “other-than” as more-than-human; but Brother Francis was as human as we are… and that’s the real reason we share his story. Not because he lived such an austere, perfect life far beyond our own ability to achieve… but because he was a real person with real challenges, working with much the same information that we are and he found ways to effect change in a world that was corrupt and falling down around him.

I read somewhere that Francis is the most beloved and least emulated of our saints. He was born in the year 1182, into a life of wealth and privilege. He was the son of a wealthy cloth merchant and spent a lot of his time in fine clothes, spending money and time frivolously, keeping up appearances and dreaming of military glory.  And then he went to battle with the neighboring city… and was captured… and returned a year later to his family, broken and changed. Francis had a deep faith and prayed daily for guidance. At the depth of depression and illness, he had a vision, a moment where he heard God say, “rebuild my Church.” It seems that he took this literally. He sold several bolts of very expensive cloth from his father’s stores and used the money to help rebuild the dilapidated little church he had been praying in. Over a period of two years, he found, hauled and set heavy stones in place to help restore the building and at some point realized that the scope of what God was asking him to do was far larger than he had first imagined. He began to give away everything he had – including money from his family’s business – to those in need, eventually earning his father’s wrath and condemnation.

According to his biography on the National Shrine of St. Francis of Assisi website,

…growing friction between Francis and his father exploded publicly in October of 1206 when (his father) pursued (him) to the central piazza of the city and demanded repayment for all that Francis had squandered in his generosity to the poor—and for the money Francis had spent in his restoration work. Before all the townspeople gathered there, Francis stripped himself naked, renounced his hereditary rights, and gave his fine clothes back to his astonished father… (he) thereafter dressed himself in a simple flaxen tunic tied at the waist with a cord…. (and) he surrendered all worldly goods, honors, and privileges. ^[3] Francis was eventually allowed to found an order of monastics, many of whom came from other wealthy families of note. They took vows of extreme poverty and dedicated their lives to living in prayer, simply and in harmony with the earth; owning nothing, revering everything, and helping those in the most need.

There is far more to the story of St. Francis than I have time to share here. He was born into a life of privilege in a world of excess and corruption… but he found a way to step out of it, to simplify and sanctify his own life, to lift others out of their misery… and he worked to improve his world one stone – and one person – at a time.

Poor, wealthy or in-between, we who are gathered in this church this morning are in a place of privilege, a place of community – a place of safety. We have the luxury to sit back and think about how we will each respond to the stresses, pressures and needs of our modern world. It is time to ask: what is our next, right move?^[4] How do we simplify who we are and what we have… and how might we help others by doing so? Jesus called this idea of life lived in balance with others and the world, the kingdom or reign of God. He said,

“Do not keep striving for what YOU are to eat and what YOU are to drink, and do not keep worrying…Instead, strive for God’s kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.”^[5]

Not all of us – not even many of us – are able to live the austere life that Francis and his followers chose, and that may not be YOUR path. But I invite you to give some time for meditation and consideration, to look at what your own path to a more intentional and simplified life DOES look like; how you might walk with a lighter step and further uplift others you encounter. I invite you to join me in planning the next step on that journey – wherever it may take you and whatever it may be.

 

The Lord be with you (and also with you)

Let us pray:

God of love and abundance,

We cannot do everything, but we can do something.

What we can do, we ought to do,

what we ought to do, by the grace of God we will do…

Lord, what would you have us do?^[6]

__________________________________

Icon of St. Francis of Assisi with Kingfisher written by Aidan Hart

[1] Lynette Wilson, Episcopal News Service, Faith-based organizations ‘raise ambition’ on climate emergency after UN summit, Sept. 25, 2019. https://www.episcopalnewsservice.org/2019/09/25/faith-based-organizations-raise-ambition-on-climate-emergency-after-un-summit/
[2] The Episcopal Church, Episcopal Bishops Participate in Global Climate Strike, Minneapolis, September 20th, 2019. https://www.episcopalchurch.org/posts/publicaffairs/episcopal-bishops-participate-global-climate-strike-minneapolis-september-20th
[3] National Shrine of St. Francis of Assisi, http://www.shrinesf.org/life-of-st-francis.html. Accessed Oct. 4, 2019.
[4] Tripp Hudgins, personal conversation, Oct. 3, 2019.
[5] Luke 12:29, 31 (NRSV)
[6] Daily prayer from The Order of the Daughters of the King

God Gives the Growth

2/16/2020 Year A, Epiphany 6, 1 Corinthians 3:6

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Walnut Creek, CA

Read: 2020.02.16 God Gives the Growth_Transcript (in pdf format)

Watch: God Gives the Growth – video

__________

(Transcript below):

The thing that grabbed me the most from today’s scriptural selections, the one that spoke to me as I meditated on these readings, was a line from Paul’s epistle – his letter – to the Corinthians, where he wrote,  “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.”

We know and read a lot about Paul, I would think especially in this congregation, and it seems evident that what he planted was early church communities and seeds of faith. So what do we know about this other teacher?

Apollos is first mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles, which was written by the author or authors of the Gospel According to Luke. According to that account, Apollos was a Jew from Alexandria, “an eloquent man, well-versed in the scriptures.” He came to Ephesus and in Luke’s words, “spoke with burning enthusiasm and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus, though he knew only the baptism of John…”

Because his information was limited, two women who were followers of Jesus, Priscilla and Aquila, brought Apollos to Corinth and taught him further once he was there. Apollos believed that Jesus was the foretold Messiah, and he publicly defended this position against other Jews, and he stayed in Corinth to teach. But factions had developed in the fledgling church in Corinth. It had started to fracture into polarized groups and some of the new Christ-followers started to identify themselves as Paul’s followers, while others declared for Apollos.

In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul says he cannot speak to the people there as spiritually mature, because they would not understand. What he says is, “even now you are still not ready… for as long as there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving according to human inclinations?”

Paul feels he needs to bring guidance. He points out the schism that has taken place and rebukes them, saying that they cannot say they belong to him – they were not “baptized into Paul” after all, they were baptized into Christ. They – and we – belong to Christ; and through him, to God. Apollos and Paul were messengers, servants and teachers. They planted and watered, nurturing people in their faith.

The next line in Paul’s letter was, “neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, only God who gives the growth…” I took exception to this at first. I felt like Paul was saying that it doesn’t matter what any of us do… but that’s not quite it. What we do is important – it is of utmost importance! But as Paul said, we are human, and in our humanity, we are spiritually like children. Not only in our understanding, but also in our “centered-ness”; and so we forget that it is God who acts through us, not we who act on our own. This is what we call Grace – God taking action in the world.

Saint Teresa of Avila put it this way,

“Christ has no body now but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks… Yours are the feet with which God walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world. Christ has no hands, no feet on earth but yours.”

Paul planted, Apollos watered. And God brings about growth… through us.

Our psalm today proclaims, “Happy are those who keep God’s decrees.” It speaks of walking in the law of the Lord, choosing to use it for guidance, being steadfast and seeking God with our whole hearts. That’s a good place to begin.

Our Hebrew Bible reading from the Book of Deuteronomy points out dualities in the paths available to us…  life/death, prosperity/adversity … and teaches that whichever we choose, that is what we will become. Whatever we plant and water, God gives growth to that.

So it is important to think, to pray, to understand the choices we make and how they might impact others. And it is important to seek community and communion with others who follow those ways. And this is what Paul was trying to teach the early Christ-followers in Corinth. Not that everyone MUST get along, no matter the choices each made; but the importance of being intentional about our choices, grounding them in the Eternal; surrounding ourselves with others who do their best, as Krista said last week, to live humbly and walk with our God.

I would like to say that that’s everybody… but it isn’t. Not everyone means well, acts from a place of love… there is what I WANT to be able to say: that ALL people are Good, there is no real evil in the world, and can’t we  just all get along?)… and what I NEED to say – which is that not everyone treats others as themself; there is evil in the world, and sometimes we need to stand for what we believe in.

Our gospel proclamation also has something to say about this.

For the first week or more of working with the readings for this sermon,  I diligently avoided our Gospel. I did. Even though I knew that I was gonna need to understand it more deeply to be able to truly proclaim it for you, not just read it.

I read and re-read the epistle, I looked a few times at Deuteronomy, I riffled through the psalm, went back to the epistle… and I steered pretty clear of the Gospel for a while. But it wouldn’t leave me alone. I kept hearing words from it, popping up at random moments: adultery, divorce, murder, judge, swear… and ithey made me uncomfortable. So I tried to ignore it; you would too, right? When you heard it today, when you heard me proclaim the Gospel just now, did you catch yourself thinking, “ooh – I wonder what the preacher is going to say about that”? Yeah, me too. It’s not that I don’t have opinions and some really choice words about these topics… because believe me, I do; but y’all don’t know me that well, and it didn’t seem appropriate to get too far into my personal arguments with the Bible. And I really was captivated by what Paul said about God giving the growth. But as I have experienced time and again, Jesus’ words would not let me alone.

So I went back to the Gospel passage. I prayed and pondered… I did some exercises I’ve learned to do, like re-writing and annotating the passages, meditating on them, stream-of-consciousness writing, seeing what words popped out and meant something to me; and I finally realized that not only was the Gospel passage relevant to this idea of planting and growth, but it was all about it. It just took getting beyond some of the words, to the meanings and implications behind them.

At the end of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount,  he gets into the nitty gritty of the human condition. He didn’t just teach about the nature of God and the importance of faith (though he certainly did that)… he wanted his followers to understand who they were, who we are as human beings, and who we can be. He taught that because we are human and imperfect, we need to make conscious decisions about who and how we are, both within ourselves and in our interactions with each other – especially that last bit. Because we are not all of who & what we are individually, independently – we need each other to grow, to change… to plant, to water. Not “so that” God can give growth – God already does that. But because the way that God does that is through each and all of us, imperfect as we are. And we are. We do harm to each other. We lust in our hearts and our minds for things and people we cannot have. Sometimes we do have them anyway, and through that connection, we harm others who love them and us. We hurt each other, accuse and judge each other, cheat, ignore each other’s needs, swear that we will or won’t do something and then do the opposite… this is part of the human condition.

But… and. We each have it within us to do and be different. To be kind and to love, to be compassionate and forgiving, to reach out, to stay through difficult times and put the needs of someone else before our own desires, to make the life of another person even a little bit better. God gives growth through us. Through our “planting,” nurturing, growing, guiding, walking alongside. Maybe we don’t need to know why God gives growth – let’s just focus on how; because that how is all of us. It happens through us, not to us.

What we do, matters. Who we each are, makes a difference. How we live affects others – sometimes in a very big way and sometimes in small ways that we may never learn about. And whatever our beliefs, spiritual, political or otherwise…  I can’t help but think that if we lean on the words, on the richness of our tradition – which today we heard from Deuteronomy, the Psalmist, from Christ and Paul – if we seek to bring God into our hearts, to love and treat our neighbors as we love and treat ourselves… we will be walking together in the right direction. And God will give the growth. In words from an Affirmation in the Daily Prayer book that I use,

 

We are called to be the Church:

To celebrate God’s presence,

To live with respect in creation,

To love and serve others,

To seek justice and resist evil…

In life, in death, in life beyond death, God is with us.

We are not alone. Thanks be to God.

God Gives the Growth

2/16/2020 Year A, Epiphany 6, 1 Corinthians 3:6

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Walnut Creek, CA

Read: 2020.02.16 God Gives the Growth_Transcript (in pdf format)

Watch: God Gives the Growth – video

__________

(Transcript below):

The thing that grabbed me the most from today’s scriptural selections, the one that spoke to me as I meditated on these readings, was a line from Paul’s epistle – his letter – to the Corinthians, where he wrote,  “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.”

We know and read a lot about Paul, I would think especially in this congregation, and it seems evident that what he planted was early church communities and seeds of faith. So what do we know about this other teacher?

Apollos is first mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles, which was written by the author or authors of the Gospel According to Luke. According to that account, Apollos was a Jew from Alexandria, “an eloquent man, well-versed in the scriptures.” He came to Ephesus and in Luke’s words, “spoke with burning enthusiasm and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus, though he knew only the baptism of John…”

Because his information was limited, two women who were followers of Jesus, Priscilla and Aquila, brought Apollos to Corinth and taught him further once he was there. Apollos believed that Jesus was the foretold Messiah, and he publicly defended this position against other Jews, and he stayed in Corinth to teach. But factions had developed in the fledgling church in Corinth. It had started to fracture into polarized groups and some of the new Christ-followers started to identify themselves as Paul’s followers, while others declared for Apollos.

In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul says he cannot speak to the people there as spiritually mature, because they would not understand. What he says is, “even now you are still not ready… for as long as there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving according to human inclinations?”

Paul feels he needs to bring guidance. He points out the schism that has taken place and rebukes them, saying that they cannot say they belong to him – they were not “baptized into Paul” after all, they were baptized into Christ. They – and we – belong to Christ; and through him, to God. Apollos and Paul were messengers, servants and teachers. They planted and watered, nurturing people in their faith.

The next line in Paul’s letter was, “neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, only God who gives the growth…” I took exception to this at first. I felt like Paul was saying that it doesn’t matter what any of us do… but that’s not quite it. What we do is important – it is of utmost importance! But as Paul said, we are human, and in our humanity, we are spiritually like children. Not only in our understanding, but also in our “centered-ness”; and so we forget that it is God who acts through us, not we who act on our own. This is what we call Grace – God taking action in the world.

Saint Teresa of Avila put it this way,

“Christ has no body now but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks… Yours are the feet with which God walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world. Christ has no hands, no feet on earth but yours.”

Paul planted, Apollos watered. And God brings about growth… through us.

Our psalm today proclaims, “Happy are those who keep God’s decrees.” It speaks of walking in the law of the Lord, choosing to use it for guidance, being steadfast and seeking God with our whole hearts. That’s a good place to begin.

Our Hebrew Bible reading from the Book of Deuteronomy points out dualities in the paths available to us…  life/death, prosperity/adversity … and teaches that whichever we choose, that is what we will become. Whatever we plant and water, God gives growth to that.

So it is important to think, to pray, to understand the choices we make and how they might impact others. And it is important to seek community and communion with others who follow those ways. And this is what Paul was trying to teach the early Christ-followers in Corinth. Not that everyone MUST get along, no matter the choices each made; but the importance of being intentional about our choices, grounding them in the Eternal; surrounding ourselves with others who do their best, as Krista said last week, to live humbly and walk with our God.

I would like to say that that’s everybody… but it isn’t. Not everyone means well, acts from a place of love… there is what I WANT to be able to say: that ALL people are Good, there is no real evil in the world, and can’t we  just all get along?)… and what I NEED to say – which is that not everyone treats others as themself; there is evil in the world, and sometimes we need to stand for what we believe in.

Our gospel proclamation also has something to say about this.

For the first week or more of working with the readings for this sermon,  I diligently avoided our Gospel. I did. Even though I knew that I was gonna need to understand it more deeply to be able to truly proclaim it for you, not just read it.

I read and re-read the epistle, I looked a few times at Deuteronomy, I riffled through the psalm, went back to the epistle… and I steered pretty clear of the Gospel for a while. But it wouldn’t leave me alone. I kept hearing words from it, popping up at random moments: adultery, divorce, murder, judge, swear… and ithey made me uncomfortable. So I tried to ignore it; you would too, right? When you heard it today, when you heard me proclaim the Gospel just now, did you catch yourself thinking, “ooh – I wonder what the preacher is going to say about that”? Yeah, me too. It’s not that I don’t have opinions and some really choice words about these topics… because believe me, I do; but y’all don’t know me that well, and it didn’t seem appropriate to get too far into my personal arguments with the Bible. And I really was captivated by what Paul said about God giving the growth. But as I have experienced time and again, Jesus’ words would not let me alone.

So I went back to the Gospel passage. I prayed and pondered… I did some exercises I’ve learned to do, like re-writing and annotating the passages, meditating on them, stream-of-consciousness writing, seeing what words popped out and meant something to me; and I finally realized that not only was the Gospel passage relevant to this idea of planting and growth, but it was all about it. It just took getting beyond some of the words, to the meanings and implications behind them.

At the end of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount,  he gets into the nitty gritty of the human condition. He didn’t just teach about the nature of God and the importance of faith (though he certainly did that)… he wanted his followers to understand who they were, who we are as human beings, and who we can be. He taught that because we are human and imperfect, we need to make conscious decisions about who and how we are, both within ourselves and in our interactions with each other – especially that last bit. Because we are not all of who & what we are individually, independently – we need each other to grow, to change… to plant, to water. Not “so that” God can give growth – God already does that. But because the way that God does that is through each and all of us, imperfect as we are. And we are. We do harm to each other. We lust in our hearts and our minds for things and people we cannot have. Sometimes we do have them anyway, and through that connection, we harm others who love them and us. We hurt each other, accuse and judge each other, cheat, ignore each other’s needs, swear that we will or won’t do something and then do the opposite… this is part of the human condition.

But… and. We each have it within us to do and be different. To be kind and to love, to be compassionate and forgiving, to reach out, to stay through difficult times and put the needs of someone else before our own desires, to make the life of another person even a little bit better. God gives growth through us. Through our “planting,” nurturing, growing, guiding, walking alongside. Maybe we don’t need to know why God gives growth – let’s just focus on how; because that how is all of us. It happens through us, not to us.

What we do, matters. Who we each are, makes a difference. How we live affects others – sometimes in a very big way and sometimes in small ways that we may never learn about. And whatever our beliefs, spiritual, political or otherwise…  I can’t help but think that if we lean on the words, on the richness of our tradition – which today we heard from Deuteronomy, the Psalmist, from Christ and Paul – if we seek to bring God into our hearts, to love and treat our neighbors as we love and treat ourselves… we will be walking together in the right direction. And God will give the growth. In words from an Affirmation in the Daily Prayer book that I use,

 

We are called to be the Church:

To celebrate God’s presence,

To live with respect in creation,

To love and serve others,

To seek justice and resist evil…

In life, in death, in life beyond death, God is with us.

We are not alone. Thanks be to God.

God Gives the Growth

2/16/2020 Year A, Epiphany 6, 1 Corinthians 3:6

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Walnut Creek, CA

Read: 2020.02.16 God Gives the Growth_Transcript (in pdf format)

Watch: God Gives the Growth – video

__________

(Transcript below):

The thing that grabbed me the most from today’s scriptural selections, the one that spoke to me as I meditated on these readings, was a line from Paul’s epistle – his letter – to the Corinthians, where he wrote,  “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.”

God Gives the Growth

2/16/2020 Year A, Epiphany 6, 1 Corinthians 3:6

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Walnut Creek, CA

Read: 2020.02.16 God Gives the Growth_Transcript (in pdf format)

Watch: God Gives the Growth – video

__________

(Transcript below):

The thing that grabbed me the most from today’s scriptural selections, the one that spoke to me as I meditated on these readings, was a line from Paul’s epistle – his letter – to the Corinthians, where he wrote,  “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.”

We know and read a lot about Paul, I would think especially in this congregation, and it seems evident that what he planted was early church communities and seeds of faith. So what do we know about this other teacher?

Apollos is first mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles, which was written by the author or authors of the Gospel According to Luke. According to that account, Apollos was a Jew from Alexandria, “an eloquent man, well-versed in the scriptures.” He came to Ephesus and in Luke’s words, “spoke with burning enthusiasm and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus, though he knew only the baptism of John…”

Because his information was limited, two women who were followers of Jesus, Priscilla and Aquila, brought Apollos to Corinth and taught him further once he was there. Apollos believed that Jesus was the foretold Messiah, and he publicly defended this position against other Jews, and he stayed in Corinth to teach. But factions had developed in the fledgling church in Corinth. It had started to fracture into polarized groups and some of the new Christ-followers started to identify themselves as Paul’s followers, while others declared for Apollos.

In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul says he cannot speak to the people there as spiritually mature, because they would not understand. What he says is, “even now you are still not ready… for as long as there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving according to human inclinations?”

Paul feels he needs to bring guidance. He points out the schism that has taken place and rebukes them, saying that they cannot say they belong to him – they were not “baptized into Paul” after all, they were baptized into Christ. They – and we – belong to Christ; and through him, to God. Apollos and Paul were messengers, servants and teachers. They planted and watered, nurturing people in their faith.

The next line in Paul’s letter was, “neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, only God who gives the growth…” I took exception to this at first. I felt like Paul was saying that it doesn’t matter what any of us do… but that’s not quite it. What we do is important – it is of utmost importance! But as Paul said, we are human, and in our humanity, we are spiritually like children. Not only in our understanding, but also in our “centered-ness”; and so we forget that it is God who acts through us, not we who act on our own. This is what we call Grace – God taking action in the world.

Saint Teresa of Avila put it this way,

“Christ has no body now but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks… Yours are the feet with which God walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world. Christ has no hands, no feet on earth but yours.”

Paul planted, Apollos watered. And God brings about growth… through us.

Our psalm today proclaims, “Happy are those who keep God’s decrees.” It speaks of walking in the law of the Lord, choosing to use it for guidance, being steadfast and seeking God with our whole hearts. That’s a good place to begin.

Our Hebrew Bible reading from the Book of Deuteronomy points out dualities in the paths available to us…  life/death, prosperity/adversity … and teaches that whichever we choose, that is what we will become. Whatever we plant and water, God gives growth to that.

So it is important to think, to pray, to understand the choices we make and how they might impact others. And it is important to seek community and communion with others who follow those ways. And this is what Paul was trying to teach the early Christ-followers in Corinth. Not that everyone MUST get along, no matter the choices each made; but the importance of being intentional about our choices, grounding them in the Eternal; surrounding ourselves with others who do their best, as Krista said last week, to live humbly and walk with our God.

I would like to say that that’s everybody… but it isn’t. Not everyone means well, acts from a place of love… there is what I WANT to be able to say: that ALL people are Good, there is no real evil in the world, and can’t we  just all get along?)… and what I NEED to say – which is that not everyone treats others as themself; there is evil in the world, and sometimes we need to stand for what we believe in.

Our gospel proclamation also has something to say about this.

For the first week or more of working with the readings for this sermon,  I diligently avoided our Gospel. I did. Even though I knew that I was gonna need to understand it more deeply to be able to truly proclaim it for you, not just read it.

I read and re-read the epistle, I looked a few times at Deuteronomy, I riffled through the psalm, went back to the epistle… and I steered pretty clear of the Gospel for a while. But it wouldn’t leave me alone. I kept hearing words from it, popping up at random moments: adultery, divorce, murder, judge, swear… and ithey made me uncomfortable. So I tried to ignore it; you would too, right? When you heard it today, when you heard me proclaim the Gospel just now, did you catch yourself thinking, “ooh – I wonder what the preacher is going to say about that”? Yeah, me too. It’s not that I don’t have opinions and some really choice words about these topics… because believe me, I do; but y’all don’t know me that well, and it didn’t seem appropriate to get too far into my personal arguments with the Bible. And I really was captivated by what Paul said about God giving the growth. But as I have experienced time and again, Jesus’ words would not let me alone.

So I went back to the Gospel passage. I prayed and pondered… I did some exercises I’ve learned to do, like re-writing and annotating the passages, meditating on them, stream-of-consciousness writing, seeing what words popped out and meant something to me; and I finally realized that not only was the Gospel passage relevant to this idea of planting and growth, but it was all about it. It just took getting beyond some of the words, to the meanings and implications behind them.

At the end of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount,  he gets into the nitty gritty of the human condition. He didn’t just teach about the nature of God and the importance of faith (though he certainly did that)… he wanted his followers to understand who they were, who we are as human beings, and who we can be. He taught that because we are human and imperfect, we need to make conscious decisions about who and how we are, both within ourselves and in our interactions with each other – especially that last bit. Because we are not all of who & what we are individually, independently – we need each other to grow, to change… to plant, to water. Not “so that” God can give growth – God already does that. But because the way that God does that is through each and all of us, imperfect as we are. And we are. We do harm to each other. We lust in our hearts and our minds for things and people we cannot have. Sometimes we do have them anyway, and through that connection, we harm others who love them and us. We hurt each other, accuse and judge each other, cheat, ignore each other’s needs, swear that we will or won’t do something and then do the opposite… this is part of the human condition.

But… and. We each have it within us to do and be different. To be kind and to love, to be compassionate and forgiving, to reach out, to stay through difficult times and put the needs of someone else before our own desires, to make the life of another person even a little bit better. God gives growth through us. Through our “planting,” nurturing, growing, guiding, walking alongside. Maybe we don’t need to know why God gives growth – let’s just focus on how; because that how is all of us. It happens through us, not to us.

What we do, matters. Who we each are, makes a difference. How we live affects others – sometimes in a very big way and sometimes in small ways that we may never learn about. And whatever our beliefs, spiritual, political or otherwise…  I can’t help but think that if we lean on the words, on the richness of our tradition – which today we heard from Deuteronomy, the Psalmist, from Christ and Paul – if we seek to bring God into our hearts, to love and treat our neighbors as we love and treat ourselves… we will be walking together in the right direction. And God will give the growth. In words from an Affirmation in the Daily Prayer book that I use,

 

We are called to be the Church:

To celebrate God’s presence,

To live with respect in creation,

To love and serve others,

To seek justice and resist evil…

In life, in death, in life beyond death, God is with us.

We are not alone. Thanks be to God.