Showing Up To The Moment: Sermon: St. Simon and St. Jude

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Sermon: St. Simon and St. Jude

Sermon for October 28, 2014 ~ 10:00 Healing Service

Feast Day of St. Simon and St. Jude

The Rev. Vicki K. Hesse

St. Philip’s In The Hills Parish, Tucson, AZ

For online access to the readings click here

I speak to you in the name of One God:

Source of all being, Incarnate Word and Sustaining Spirit. Amen

Today we observe the feast day of St. Simon and St. Jude, who were faithful and zealous in their mission.

Just wondering what you already know of these saints?

Here are some short biography bits:

· Simon

o was one of the disciples

o called “the Zealot” (Zelotes).

o a question if he was a member of this sect of Judaism before his conversion or whether this refers to his zeal for the Jewish law.

· Jude

o may have been a disciple

o mentioned in GJohn as the brother of James the Greater. J

o has been known in contemporary society as the “patron saint of lost causes,” but no one knows for sure where this comes from.

· Accounts vary about how these disciples lived into their calls;

o some say they were in Persia

o some say that they were martyrs

o some say that they died peacefully in either Beirut or Edessa.

As we reflected on the readings for today, we heard from:

Deuteronomy:

“Give ear, O heavens, and I will speak; let the earth hear the words of my mouth.”

And from Psalm 119

“O Lord, your word is everlasting; it stands firm in the heavens.”

And from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, where Paul reports

“…that Jesus might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two…proclaiming peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near…”

In each of these, we have a theme of speaking, of conversation, of healing that comes

through the words of our mouth,

through a heavenly inspiration, and

through the proclamation of peace to ourselves and to others.

So, in this theme,

I invite you to reflect a moment in your life

when you experienced

God’s sacred word speaking to you.

A time when someone proclaimed

that you, too, would have peace and

then you found it.

A time of sacred presence

where thorugh the voice of a friend or family or even stranger,

you realized a sense of peace.

Reflect on a time when that happened to you.

Who was there?

Where were you?

What did you feel in your body, in your emotions, in your spirit?

When you have one moment in time, turn to someone sitting near you and share that experience.

*share*

Now that you have had the experience of listening to

a sacred time shared “to” you, my question is this:

how did that feel to be near someone

who has experienced the divine?

How did you feel, as you listened,

in your body, in your emotions, in your spirit?

*share/listen/dialogue*

In today’s gospel text, Jesus said to his disciples,

“I am giving you these commands

so that you may love one another.”

Today’s good news is that

by your sharing those sacred moments,

you all have been loving each other.

To listen, to feel, to emote, -

with a friend or colleague or stranger – this is to love.

As the last line of our gospel proclaims,

“…you also are to testify because

you have been with me from the beginning.”

Guess what you have been doing this morning? Testifying! And in so doing, you show,

through the disciples such as St. Simon and St. Jude,

that you all have been

with God in Jesus from “the beginning.”

God indeed has been faithful

from one generation to another,

as St. Simon and St. Jude are speaking to us,

even now.

May we rest in the words from the Epistle of Jude,

which concludes with this doxology: