Sermon for June 30, 2002 - Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral, Kansas City, MO

For most of us, our faith is a comfort in affliction. At a funeral service earlier this week I walked down the center aisle of this church to the sound of the Dean’s voice reciting those most famous words of Jesus, “I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.” These are hard words, not erasing death but only promising hope, yet somehow they ease the pain of tragedy. In our affliction, they offer comfort.

Paul offers similar hard comfort in today’s reading from Romans. “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” The apostle weaves the metaphor of death and resurrection around his ideas on our sin and redemption until we are convinced that the only thing that keeps us from being truly alive is that we have not yet died.

I can offer my own perspective on comfort in affliction, although my particular affliction was self-inflicted. Two weeks ago at exactly this time I was up to my ears in the San Francisco Bay. Twenty minutes earlier I had jumped voluntarily from a boat parked about one hundred yards off the dock on Alcatraz Island, along with fourteen hundred other brave (or crazy) souls. While some will call this action insane, we called it Triathlon, and had a great time doing it.

It is an affliction though-maybe of the mind, but definitely of the body-to swim for a mile and a half in fifty-seven degree water. And that is to say nothing of the eighteen miles worth of hills to be bicycled immediately following, or the eight miles to be run, climbed, and staggered through after that.

There is something very comforting though about triathletes and the volunteers who support them during races. Twice on the bike ride and every mile on the run, volunteers thronged the road and passed out water, sports drinks, orange wedges and power goo. It wasn’t the refreshments they provided that was comfort in affliction though. It was the encouragement they shouted as we went by. “Lookin’ good!” someone shouted as I passed mile marker three and began to run back down the hill I had just so painfully climbed. She was being nice. I’ve seen the pictures. I was not lookin’ good.

A more appropriate example is perhaps the youth event I spent last week involved with. Missionpalooza, we call it. Its a play on words. Lollapalooza being a rock concert that featured many different bands all in the same place; Missionpalooza offers many different opportunities for mission work, all in the same place. Its something like a mission trip for youth, only without the trip part, because we don’t go any farther than St. Paul’s, KCMO.

During the week, the three other organizers of this event and myself, along with a host of adult volunteers, sent youth in grades eight through twelve out to the community in groups. We sent them out to Bishop Spencer Place, a continuing care facility. We sent them to the Rose Brooks Center, a shelter for battered women and their children. We sent them to The Firehouse, a food pantry and hot meal program; and to the Friendship House, a transition home for women recovering from addiction. And we sent them to the Kansas City Community Kitchen, our own daily hot lunch program. We sent them to feed the hungry, and clothe the naked, to give a drink to the thirsty, and visit the sick. We sent them to bring comfort to the afflicted.

On Saturday morning we all rose early together and traveled to St. Paul’s in Kansas City, Kansas to help a team from St. Michael and All Angels’ Church serve a hot breakfast to locals. On Sunday morning we worshiped with the congregation that had hosted us for the week, St. Paul’s in KCMO, and five of the youth stood before that congregation and offered the sermon. They told us what they had done during the week, and more importantly they told us why they had done it, and what it had meant. And it was very powerful indeed. Those of us who are honored to serve in the clergy are oftentimes expected to say things like “I could see Jesus in the eye of the homeless people we fed.” But when a high school freshman stands up, in front of his peers and some lucky adults, and tells you in all seriousness that he has had an experience of God, people really pay attention.

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth,” Jesus yells at us from the gospel of Matthew. “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” And then the same Jesus who we too often think of as precious and sweet proceeds to list the family members he will turn against each other, and all of those who are unworthy of him. Those whose lives seem the most together; those people who appear to be so successful, those people will lose their lives, he says. Only those willing to lose their lives to me can hope to find true life.

It is true that our faith offers comfort in affliction. And you can find ample evidence in the bible that Jesus wants this for you as well. But there is another side to this coin, as the gospel lesson so stridently proclaims. Jesus came not only to comfort the afflicted, but also to afflict the comfortable.

Last week I had the privilege to serve twenty-seven of the area’s best youth as they sought to serve the community. They sought to bring comfort to people afflicted with hunger, and people afflicted with poverty. They tried to comfort women afflicted with addictions, and people afflicted with loneliness. They made an effort to comfort people afflicted with homelessness, hopelessness, and abuse. And it is my fervent prayer that they succeeded in offering that comfort.

But even more, I pray that they were afflicted in return, and that we, through their example, might share in that affliction. I hope that their well deserved satisfaction with doing the work that Jesus asked us to do is outweighed only by their sense of affliction in their own comfort. This is the two edged sword of the poor that Jesus sought to proclaim. The more we reach forth to offer comfort to the afflicted, the more they will reach back into our lives to afflict us in our comfort. Until, like Jesus, we will want to scream at those around us, to shout out at the injustice of they way our brothers and sisters live in poverty, at the falseness of a peace that fails to include justice. God came to earth not to bring such a false peace, but to bring a sword with which to fight.

In the name of Jesus Christ, our comfort, and our affliction.

AMEN.

Comfort and Affliction