Sermon

Equilibrium

By The Rt. Rev. Barry Howe, Bishop of West Missouri

Change—transition—change—transition: a basic phenomenon in all areas of our lives.   Some changes are taking place at warp speed.  Some transitions are long-term realities.  All change —all transition — challenges our equilibrium and often raises our level of anxiety.

The election of Dean White as the Bishop-Elect of the Diocese of Kentucky is now challenging the equilibrium and raising the level of anxiety of this cathedral community.  After six years of his and his family’s presence with you and among you, they will proceed to the new calling in ministry that awaits them.

I extend my sincerest congratulations to Dean White on his very clear and uncontested election, and have shared with him this past week how fortunate he is to enter into a new ministry with such a strong mandate of support from the vast majority of those who were the electors at the electing convention.  Like this community of faith, Dean White and his family will be experiencing change and transition for quite a while, and are naturally having their equilibrium challenged and their anxiety level raised.

It is also a time of joy and anticipation for them — joy and anticipation about a new ministry, a ministry which they will find very different.  There is no question about the fact, however, that Dean White and his family are blessed with the gifts for ministry that will both guide them and sustain them as they enter into the ministry of the episcopacy.

The ordination and consecration service, as most of you know, is scheduled for the last Saturday in September — a brief three months from now.  During these three months, consents for this new ministry must be received from the majority of bishops who have jurisdiction, and from the majority of standing committees in the dioceses of the Church.  The White family will be in our prayers during these months.

And so also will Grace and Holy Trinity be in our prayers.  The search for a new dean as a spiritual leader and as a pastoral care-giver will soon be underway — underway in the planning stages and in the choosing of those leaders among you who will take the lead in the search.  This is not a haphazard process.  It is one guided by canons and by many precedents.  But it is a process that is yours — which is to say that you call the next dean of this community — subject only to the approval of the bishop.  This subject to the approval of the bishop is true of any call of any new clergyperson in the diocese.

And here as your bishop, I simply want to remind you that Grace and Holy Trinity has been through many such changes and transitions, and has maintained a very strong reality of mission and ministry in serving the Lord Jesus — a mission and ministry that will continue through your faithful commitment to the disciplines of worship and study and prayer and stewardship — holding one another accountable for this faithfulness, and responding to the needs of those in the world who cry out for acceptance and love and for a new life in Christ.  And know clearly in your hearts that the empowering grace of the Lord is present with you today and tomorrow and always!

One further comment about change and transition.  The relationship between a bishop and a diocesan cathedral is a special one.  In some dioceses it seems to always be an uneasy relationship.  In our diocese it is, from my standpoint, a very blessed relationship.  It is my hope, therefore, that when a new bishop arrives here, you will welcome him or her with the same wonderful and warm hospitality that you have always welcomed Mary and me.  Thank you for your love and for the sharing together of our common life in Christ.

In the lengthy Pentecost season we have now entered in our worship life, the focus of our gospel lessons is on the teachings and the ministry of our Lord Jesus.  Every teaching of the Lord speaks about a radical way of living — a very different way of living than the powers and forces of the world teach us to live.  And every act of ministry of Jesus is of course a teaching — a modeling of what the Lord is calling the people of God to be and to do.  Because Jesus calls God’s people to a radical way of life (and we must not confuse this descriptive adjective ‘radical’ with the terms ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative,’ terms that are charged in our culture with much misunderstanding and with much pejorative judgment), it requires of those who wish to be faithful to him to have courage and to act with a boldness that makes them stand apart from the acceptable cultural expectations placed upon them.

As children of God, who have become through our baptism inheritors of the kingdom of God, we are not just hypothesizing about some other people.  We are examining the reality of our own way of living as we are empowered by the spirit of our Lord Jesus to respond to his teaching and to carry out ministry as he carried out his ministry.  The espousing of doctrine and the knowledge of law are important.  But these aspects of faith commitment do not hold a candle to the importance of living the way of life we are called to live; the importance of being who we are called to be.

The gospel lesson this morning is filled with the particulars of the radical way of living Jesus exemplified and taught as he journeyed through Palestine with his friends.  The first thing we note the Lord doing is accepting an invitation to dinner in the home of a Pharisee — in the home of someone who opposed him at every turn; someone who wanted to surround him with those who were very much like the host.

Jesus did not need to accept this invitation.  He did not need the hassle that he knew he would get.  But rather than ignore the invitation or turn down the invitation, the Lord readily accepted.  He accepted because he was always willing to break bread with and to share moments with others — respecting them with the dignity afforded them as children of God.

We know that the hospitality offered to him was not warm and friendly.  The usual customs of the washing of the feet of guests who entered homes, and the welcoming kiss given to guests were not granted to him.  He literally entered into a very hostile environment, willing to share with the host and the other guests the new rules of the kingdom of God on Earth; the radical way of living that transforms lives and brings healing and wholeness to them.

Are you — am I — willing to accept such invitations and enter into hostile settings, not carrying a symbolic club to swing at others, but entering with humility and grace, and with a heart that breathes deeply with the living spirit of the Lord?

Are you — am I — willing to be rejected for what we say and do as we seek to share the love that God has for his people?  Do we risk our comfortable way of life, and share the good news of God in Christ in all circumstances?  It is this risk that the Lord calls us to take!

What a bizarre scene then ensues after Jesus enters into this hostile environment.  As the guests of the host sit down around the table, a well-known figure in the community appears among them.  A local prostitute begins to administer to Jesus what the host did not administer, washing the Lord’s feet with her tears and wiping them with her hair, and kissing his feet repeatedly.  The guests — some of whom probably knew this woman most intimately — were appalled by what they were seeing.  And Jesus was letting her minister to him in this way!  Here was a public display that bristled with ritual impurity.  An outcast from the community, a confirmed sinner who never showed any remorse for her ungodly actions was — by her actions in ministering to Jesus — making him ritually impure.

And one who was ritually impure as a result of accepting the ministrations of a sinner was one who was cast out of the community — sent into isolation and oblivion — an unclean person who had no further community life with the people of God.

Talk about a hostile environment!

Here in the home of the host and other guests who considered themselves as righteous and upholding the sacred laws develops this blatant occurrence of desecration and impurity that makes all of them feel tainted and unclean — all of them except Jesus!

Without a word of contrition or apology, the woman gained for herself the attention the host hoped he could receive.  She acted as though she was part penitent and part admirer, and she was ultimately sent on her way reconciled with God not because of her ministry of hospitality and caring love, but because of her confidence in Jesus and in how he shared the love of God with her.

That love of God accepted her not as an unclean wastrel, but as a child of God deeply in need of forgiveness, and deeply in need of transformation to a new life.  This act of ministry of Jesus for her; this way of life he is teaching and living out here is the way God deals with sinners.  And the way God deals with sinners us utterly different — radically different from the way those who might well be considered as religious are tied to a merit system and scornful of those whom they consider their moral inferiors.  Jesus said to those around the table, “…the one to whom little is forgiven loves little.”

Are you — am I — willing to live this radical way of life that transcends the worldly encrustations of ritual purity and impurity, of casting people out of our communities because we do not feel they measure up to our expectations?

Clearly, through the ministry of Jesus — not just in this gospel lesson, but in every act of ministry he did — we learn that it is the nature of God to forgive — not to condemn, to accept — not to dismiss, to reconcile — rather than reject.

The woman who appeared at the dinner party represents the multitude of people to whom Jesus ministered, people for whom in that world and now in our world no healing word could otherwise be found.

Salvation for them — and for us — is found in the ministry of the Lord Jesus, carried out now by us with the empowering spirit that provides us with the gifts that transform them and transform us.

Jesus said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”  May we say, as the apostle Paul said to the people of the church in Galatia, “The life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” 

© Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral