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Photo by Edwin Andrade on Unsplash
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Sermon Preached on July
22, 2018
Proper 11B RCL
The Rev. Vicki K. Hesse,
Director of the Whitaker
Institute,
Episcopal Diocese of Michigan
All Saints Episcopal
Church, East Lansing, MI
Good
morning. My name is Rev. Vicki Hesse.
I serve the
Diocese as the Director of the Whitaker Institute.
The
Whitaker Institute is the educational arm of the Diocese.
Ask: Who here has taken a class from the Whitaker
Institute?
Our
overall purpose is (slowly)
to form disciples to carry on the ministry of Jesus Christ.
(that’s
a big mission, but we have a big God!)
We
do this through about a dozen Dio-wide programs that
educate,
equip and empower
members
of our faith community with lifelong formation.
Three
programs you may know include:
Safe
Church courses (now being revised),
“Academy
for Vocational Leadership,” a local school for ordained ministry and
“Exploring
Your Spiritual Journey,” aka EYSJ,
for
anyone (lay or called to ordination) to learn how God is calling them.
These
are only three of several programs.
Perhaps
there will be time at coffee hour
to
learn more about learning and working together
for
mutual transformation.
So thank
you Pastor Kit, who is on vacation this week,
for your
invitation to be here today.
Intro
Some of you
were raised Episcopalian,
others came
to this church from other denominations.
My early
denomination was church of the outdoor sports-
hiking,
biking, riding.
And early
in my conscious adult relationship with God,
before I
was baptized,
my friend
Mary Ann invited me
to a
deserted place to rest awhile.
We both had
busy lives in IT – she in CT and me in CO.
We needed
to rest.
She had
heard about this retreat being offered in Wyoming
by author
Marcus Borg and
she thought
that I might be interested.
The ranch
was sparsely inhabited,
with a
lodge and half a dozen cabins
scattered
throughout the gray, sage-dotted hills
with a barn
and corral where they kept horses for trail rides.
I mostly
went because Mary Ann was a good friend
and I
needed a break.
At the
first evening after dinner,
we gathered
in the living room.
We
introduced ourselves, why we were there and what we hoped for.
I
sheepishly gave my reason as rest and time with my friend.
Others were
there for more profound reasons.
Soon, Borg
began delving into scripture with
a review of
his (then) most recent book,
Reading the
Bible Again for the First Time.
As he told
of the metaphorical and
image-packed
understanding of the bible,
I was drawn
in.
God
captured me through a passion of learning and discovery
that placed
inside me a deep desire to know more
and to feel
God’s love and forgiveness.
During
those seven days,
I could
hardly wait for the evening sessions.
Those
sessions healed my scars
from
bible-thumping-literalists
that I had
previously experienced.
Who knew
that learning could be so healing?
Well,
apparently Jesus did.
Because in
today’s gospel story,
we hear
about how when the disciples had
“come away
to the deserted place,”
they and
Jesus were met at their retreat destination.
So many
people recognized them
and arrived
ahead of them
that the place
seemed to Jesus like they were
in a field of
sheep without a shepherd.
So what did
he do? He taught them.
Jesus
knew that learning could be so healing.
Interestingly,
the term we read here as
“deserted”
or “uninhabited” place
is same
word used in the opening chapter of the gospel,
“describing
both where
Jesus spent
forty days in the desert before his ministry began
and
the place
to which he withdrew to pray after his first healing miracles.”[1]
Jesus must
have sensed their combined fatigue
and
excitement like he had felt
and invited
them to pray together.
And that is
where we, too, can find Jesus.
In
deserted, uninhabited places.
Not only in
comfortable spa-like settings,
where
we feel God’s presence when times are good.
But also in
Those dry
prayer-free parts of our inner lives
where
God seems so distance. There is Jesus.
Those
parched, painful, grieving places we know
when
our best friend dies or
our
when our aunt receives a diagnosis of cancer.
There is Jesus.
Those dehydrated,
isolated places
where
no one seems to know that we are despairing
with
harsh questions about why anything matters.
There is Jesus.
Those wind-swept,
uncivil, political bantering places
that
are so pervasive in our society. There is Jesus.
Do you want
to meet Jesus?
Go so those
deserted, uninhabited places. There is
Jesus.
Just know,
however, that a crowd might be there.
For when
the crowd sees the disciples in the boat
Leaving the
shore, they run ahead and greet them.
So deserted
places remain so for only a short time.
There, the
people are rushing about seeking healing.
Yearning
for God.
Aching in
pain.
Complaining
about the negative society.
Lamenting
oppression and discrimination.
Throughout
the whole region, in villages or cities or farms,
wherever
Jesus goes,
they beg
for healing love. They beg for healing heartache. They beg for forgiveness.
They beg for liberation from debts. They beg for kindness from others.
And that is
where Jesus is, in the midst of them.
(pause)
Earlier
this year,
Whitaker
hosted priest Mike Kinman,
who was Dean
of the Cathedral in St. Louis, MO.
He was
there during that wilderness experience
of the city
during the Ferguson shooting of Michael Brown.
The riots
came near the church, he said,
so he and a
group of clergy spoke on the phone
and agreed
to meet in the next day
for a panel
discussion about the situation.
And there,
he was convicted for not wanting to meet Jesus.
For one of
the Baptist pastors got up from the panel discussion
and went
out into the crowd.
Calling
Kinman to join him.
As he did
so, with some trepidation,
Kinman met
the participants in what is now known
as the
#blacklivesmatter movement.
These
protestors were vulnerable. They were different from him.
Mostly
young, black, women, who spoke truth to power and with passion.
Kinman recalled
something like,
“that is
where I met Jesus that day, in the midst of the crowd,
in the
movement of the spirit, with the chaos and fear
and love
that the crowd shared.
"My pastor
friend said to me,
“If you
want to meet Jesus, you gotta get out on the street.”
He was
right. I felt very vulnerable and very
loved by God.”[2]
Kinman
continued, “How do you know when you have met Jesus?
“You weep
more. You laugh more. You get more confused.
You
struggle more.”
And you
know you are beloved,
made in the
image of God, and nothing can take that away from you.”[3]
So there
was this crowd
And there
was Jesus, in the midst of it.
The people
begged him that they might touch “even the fringe of his cloak.”
They begged
to be in his personal space, where you can feel the healing.
That’s what
Kinman experienced.
That’s what
we experience, too, when we are serving others,
in the
presence of their vulnerability
and in the
sharing of our vulnerability.
That vulnerability
is the fringe of Jesus’ cloak.
The good
news today is that
God in
Jesus loves you and forgives you
whether you
recognize him or not.
You can
seek him out in deserted, uninhabited places of your life.
Or you can
jump into the fray of people
milling
about like sheep without a shepherd.
In these
seemly dissimilar places, Jesus is there.
You will
recognize him.
And, Jesus
already recognizes you.
Jesus is
working in your life already
in more
ways that you can ask or imagine.
So rest
awhile in his love.
Feel that
peace that the world cannot give –
that comes
through the presence of Jesus.
Come close
to the fringe and be healed.
Amen
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