A Sermon Preached in
St. James Episcopal Church, Dexter, MI
The Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost
(Proper 27A RCL) November 12, 2017
The Rev. Vicki K. Hesse,
Director of the Whitaker
Institute
Episcopal Diocese of Michigan
Readings found here.
Good morning!
Greetings from the
Diocese of Michigan
in my role as the
Director of the Whitaker Institute.
Who knows about WI or
what WI does?
The Whitaker
Institute is the teaching
and Christian
formation department of the Bishop’s office.
Founded by Priest Bob
Whitaker, we now
provide learning
opportunities in the Dio
beyond what
individual parishes can
developing and
forming disciples
to do God’s work in
the world.
Practically speaking,
this includes three main programs:
First, Safeguarding
courses – (currently under revision)
regular courses
designed to teach church ministers
about protecting the
safety and dignity
of children and
vulnerable adults.
Second, Exploring Your
Spiritual Journey – “EYSJ”
a twice-monthly
circle of people (facilitated)
listening with the
ear of their heart
how God is calling
them to serve in the world.
Third, Academy for
Vocational Leadership –
a monthly seminary
operating collaboratively with
Dio E Mich and Dio W
Mich.
Whitaker offers
several other enrichment courses
that arise through
commonly expressed needs –
such as the
Epiphanies Conferences,
the Saturday series
and Holy Land pilgrimages.
I would like to thank
Priest Carol, in absentia,
for
inviting me here today to be with you.
pause
Rainer Maria Rilke once
said,
“Be
patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart
and try
to love the questions themselves…
Do not
now seek the answers,
which
cannot be given you
because
you would not be able to live them.
And the
point is, to live everything.
Live
the questions now.
Perhaps
you will then gradually,
without
noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
…
…
Today’s gospel text
remains unsolved in my heart-
the message was so subtle, I almost missed it.
The bridesmaids
waited together.
It was what they had
in common.
They waited, they got
bored, they fell asleep.
The action of the
story takes place afterward, after waiting.
The shout of the
groom’s arrival
fueled the “so-called”
wise ones to go immediately
and the “so-called”
foolish ones to realize, only then,
that they could not
light their lamps.
Is this what the
kingdom of heaven is like?
Being shut out
because you are not prepared? I think
NOT.
Let me be clear.
Here is what we
believe –
the Kingdom of heaven,
which we experience, every. Single. Day…
Is full of God’s love
and acceptance, hope and forgiveness.
And sometimes the
Kingdom of Heaven can only be recognized against
the parabolic
rhetoric of Jesus’ parables or extreme events.
In this text there
was a commonality: they waited.
Waiting. We all do it; willingly or not.
How many of you had
to wait for something or someone today?
How many of you are
still waiting for someone or something?
Think about it: what
are you waiting for?
For what is St. James
as a faith community waiting?
For what are we, as a
nation, waiting?
For what, are we, as
a humankind, waiting?
These questions are
that yearning
that is part of the
Kingdom of Heaven,
whether in the
extreme parables of Jesus or
the extreme events of
shooting in Sutherland Springs.
Waiting. We do it together. And it is hard.
…..
Let’s look at the Gospel
in context.
See, the Gospel of
Matthew was written
at least fifty years
after Jesus.
The faith community,
by that time,
had been waiting a
long time for Jesus’ promised return.
Most of the people
who knew the first disciples
were probably
dead.
During those 50 years,
the Temple
(that most holy place
of committed Jews who confessed Jesus and
the Jews who did not)
– well, that temple
had been destroyed.
And the followers
were still waiting.
And it was still
hard.
And they waited, day
by day, together.
So of course Matthew wrote
about the difficulty of waiting.
The letter that Paul
offered to the Thessalonians,
written only 20 or so
years after Jesus’ death,
addressed the anxiety
present from waiting,
so Paul encouraged
one another.
Paul, during his
time, knew a thing or two about waiting.
He waited, often
times in jail,
with the support of
other believers in the community.
So with all that
going on,
Paul emphasized being
prepared,
saying how hard it is
to wait,
and to encourage each
other.
-------
That waiting was not
just hard for the first century people.
Here we are 20 centuries
later and
we post-moderns still
find it hard to wait.
We are particularly
challenged by
delayed gratification
Impulse control
Drive to be busy
Fear of wasting time.
And begrudgingly, we wait.
Waiting. We all do
it. It’s what we have in common.
For some, waiting is
good:
It’s the wait for the
full term birth of a healthy child, or
the wait for
confirmation that we got that promotion, or
the wait for our
retirement party marking the end of a successful career.
But waiting for
something that is hard, that’s different.
When will the
diagnosis be made?
Why have I not heard
back from that job interview?
Has my family arrived
safely in their journey?
When will God be
clear
about
what I am supposed to do with my life?
Veterans of our armed
services
– they waited a lot,
and we do, too:
when will wars be
over?
It is still hard to
wait.
Waiting. We all do
it. It’s what we have in common.
.. .. . . .
And those
bridesmaids – they all waited.
Yet
they did not wait alone
– they
just waited and waiting and waited,
even
through the delay.
They
waited till they all fell asleep.
And
they did it together – the wise and the foolish – together.
And
God was with all of them the whole time.
For
God knew exactly where each person was
And
what they were up to,
whether
wise or foolish, stingy or unprepared – they were not alone.
And God
was with the people in the shooting,
God was
crying, too, in the horror.
And God
showed up in the waiting, after.
God bonded
those people to us, together, forever.
. . .
.. .
Let’s
wonder together –
how can
we prevent isolated waiting?
What kind
of community can St. James be,
and
what can be done to ensure that
no
one is locked out of any banquet, wedding or not?
We
start with God, who calls EVERYONE to this table:
rich,
poor, gay, straight, trans, black, white, saint and sinner.
Everyone
is welcome.
St.
James – where your mission statement is
“to
restore all people to unity with God and with each other in Christ. “
Does
that happen quickly? No, it happens in the waiting.
In the
space between our words,
in the
pause we take before speaking,
in the
interval between “Coffee and Conversation” events,
in the
recess between invitations and acceptance.
A
friend of mine, going through a rough illness,
waits
a lot at that hospital.
His
life is punctuated by IVs and therapists.
He
waits. A Lot.
I
asked how does he do that, what keeps him going?
Well,
he looks for flowers each day.
He
reports his flowers on his blog:
·
The
kind woman who stopped by with a smile.
·
The
grandchild who facetimed with him in the morning.
·
The
added oxygen when he felt ill.
·
The
Spirit-inspired medication that will make him well.
His
practice of waiting
shows the
grace of God’s presence
even
in the midst of hard times.
People of God
gathered at St. James –
you know that it is
hard to wait.
It’s what we have in
common.
You,
as a faith community,
are a
genuine place of welcome
in a
broken, isolated, divided world.
You
celebrate, here, week after week,
the
opportunity to be with God in the waiting,
to encourage
each other for action in the world.
For in
solidarity with each other,
the
Spirit binds us with wisdom
about
which we heard in the first reading.
Think
about how often we have shared
with a
friend only to realize,
yes,
*that’s it!* to a burden we previously could not solve.
“…wisdom
is easily discerned
by
those who seek and love and desire it. “
In the
waiting, wisdom appears on the path
and shines
with the light of Christ.
The
good news? You are not alone in your waiting.
God is
with you and loves you in that midst.
So
today,
think
about something you are waiting for
(other
than for me to finish my sermon).
When
you get to coffee hour, ask each other
what are you waiting
for?
What hopes and dreams do
you anticipate
that make your
heart skip a beat?
In
sharing how you wait,
1. God’s presence will lift
your load
2. God delights in your joy
3. God gives us patience
toward those unsolved questions
For how
we wait and live into the questions is
part
of who we are as a faith community
– a
holy people, with holy dreams and holy hopes.
This
is who we are in holy waiting, living into God’s answers.
Amen
