proper-9-july-8.md

author: The Rev. Dale C. Hathaway
title: Homily: Spartanburg: Proper 9
date: July 8, 2018

lectionary

Welcome: Introduction

Thank you for inviting me to pray with you this morning, to celebrate the Eucharist this morning, and to share with you about the Gospel as I hear it and see it. This is the first time I have supplied in Spartanburg. I’ve come along ways from the little mining town in Arizona where I was born. You can see that my white hair indicates a well-traveled head. Of course you wouldn’t know ahead of time that my hair began turning white in my 20’s.

I am a retired priest, but I’m not retired in the sense of kicking my feet back and not knowing what to do. I am teaching as an adjunct at Winthrop University because my wife is on the faculty there, teaching Math to folks who are going to be teachers. I teach in the Religion Department.

I was raised in the West, went to seminary and graduate school in the midwest, was a rector of congregation in Northern Indiana and one in Honolulu. I have taught at schools in Indiana, Hawai’i, and South Carolina.

I am married to a wonderful woman who, unfortunately can’t be here this morning. She had surgery at the beginning of June. The surgery seems like it ought to be relatively easy to bounce back from. It was bone surgery on her foot. We knew, though, ahead of time that it was a recovery that would take 12 months. Every day is better than the day before, but it’s a long haul.

Between us we have 7 children living all across the country, from Honolulu to Atlanta, 5 grandchildren living in Colorado and Washington State.

We moved here from Hawai’i in 2014. Both of us had fallen in love with Hawai’i during our dozen or so years living there, but we decided that various factors were telling us to move back to the mainland. My wife was hired on the faculty at Winthrop and so Rock Hill was the place.

As I anticipated being here this morning I remembered that the first place I really visited in South Carolina was Spartanburg. Mary Pat had driven here on a Saturday morning to attend a conference involving South Carolina educators. I got a call an hour and a half after she left the house and I heard a panicky and slightly distraught voice. “I locked my keys in the car!” So I drove here and we had lunch together. This morning is now the next time that I am doing anything but driving through on my way somewhere else.

Buechner on Religion

I feel so free since retiring from parish ministry. It’s not about being free from working. I’ve been working pretty hard.

I feel freedom the way I think the Jesus wanted us to feel free. The gospel is intended to set us free. It always has been. “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” (Gal 5:1)

My sense of the gospel which brings us together here is pretty broad. It extends to you and to me. To Spartanburg, South Carolina. To Honolulu which is the place I call home, although I don’t live there any more. And to the moon and to the stars – and beyond.

Let me give you a sense of what I mean.

Frederich Buechner, an author some of you may be familiar with, was often able to put into words what is for me only a gasp of wonder. He wrote about religion in general:

Religion as a word points to that area of human experience where in one way or another man comes upon mystery as a summons to pilgrimage; where he senses meanings no less overwhelming because they can be only hinted at in myth and ritual; where he glimpses a destination that he can never know fully until he reaches it.

We are all of us more mystics than we believe or choose to believe – life is complicated enough as it is, after all. We have seen more than we let on, even to ourselves. Through some moment of beauty or pain, some sudden turning of our lives, we catch glimmers at least of what the saints are blinded by…

On our refrigerator, like lots of refrigerators, there are lots of different kinds of things posted and taped: photos, mementos, that sort of thing. Among them in our kitchen is a little magnet that my wife gave to me. It says: “Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the number of moments that take our breath away.”

The gospel I share with you this morning is that kind of gospel. It is “good news” because it takes your breath away – in a good way … figuratively … so to speak. It is the presence of God, often in a most tangible way that we can touch and feel.

All too often the formal church – the church as institution – is primarily concerned with something less than that.

Guide to upcoming General Convention topics:

Guide
This week is a big week for the institutional church. General Convention is meeting in Texas.

When I was in parish ministry I would look for ways that I could call attention to the way the church is interconnected throughout the world. I experience God in part through the mystery of the Body of Christ, spread throughout the world and by the Communion of the Saints, spread through history. One of the ways I would emphasize that connectedness was to talk about General Convention at appropriate times. Sometimes it was unavoidable. Sometimes it was just to call attention to the fact that it had begun.

I have often said to folks that one of the things that is the very best about being retired is that I don’t have to go to any meetings. I am convinced that God forbids there to be meetings in heaven. Nevertheless, God is at work at meetings as well as other places.

The 79th General Convention will be held at the Austin Convention Center from July 5 to 13,

The Episcopal News Service has a lot of information about General Convention. On the page that lists the main concerns are the following:

Marriage equality

There is continuing work on the liturgies for same-sex marriage. There is continuing concern that everybody isn’t of one mind about same-sex marriage.

Revising the Book of Common Prayer?

10-15 years ago I started laughing at myself every time I referred to the “new prayer book”. I remember the days of struggling with it when it was still new. But it’s not new any more. It’s old. Well that’s the issue there.

The Episcopal Church and the #MeToo movement

The church is sensitive to gender issues. It has made that clear for 50 years or more. It’s still wrestling with it. Like all the rest of the country.

A salary for the president of the House of Deputies

It would be easy for me to be cynical about this one. It’s a holdover from 3 years ago. My cynicism isn’t about whether the president of the House of Deputies ought to be paid a salary. Probably he or she ought to be. But that it occupies so much of our time and energy …

Following up on the church’s three priorities: evangelism, racial reconciliation and justice and care of creation

Well that’s a tall order. Those are big priorities – although I count 4 – and I appreciate the list because in some ways it describes what it means to be the Episcopal Church. These are priorities for us. But none of those is going to be solved. If we’re going to “follow up” on them, it seems to me it needs to be a kind of “examination of conscience.” Maybe a confession is in order and then the acceptance of God’s awesome and unfathomable Grace.

Middle East peace

Really in contrast to the above, this is really, really important. But, again, I wonder about the time and energy spent on the issue. I think of the old Rabbi, living in Jerusalem, speaking on a video that I sometimes show my Bible classes. He says, “You know Jerusalem is known as the city of peace. (Salem might be construed as related to the word Shalom) But really, the rabbi goes on, There has never been peace. Not for 4,000 years there hasn’t been peace.”

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Being retired, I get to think more intentionally about what is important and what isn’t. The gospel of Jesus Christ – in all of its breadth and power and mystery – that’s important. That begs for our time and energy. And too often it gets the scraps thrown under the table.

The agenda at General Convention might point us in the right direction. But for myself the reading from Paul’s 2^nd letter to the Corinthians is a more poignant signpost.

mystic vision as authority … but in practice it is weakness that is strength … paradox

I hear in today’s scripture readings a passion for the kinds of things that are most important. Paul proclaims that his authority, his strength, comes from weakness. It comes from having come up against the very thing that he can’t defeat. He can’t solve. Maybe a little like finding peace in Jerusalem.

Paul suggests in elusive language that he himself has witnessed God’s power and miracle. “I know a person in Christ who 14 years ago was caught up to heaven…” I have known such a person myself. And my guess is that each of you has also. Yourself? Or another? Perhaps your grandmother? You wouldn’t be here today if you hadn’t known someone like that. As Buechner put it, we are all mystics.

And like Paul each of us carries a thorn – a thorn we would gladly not advertise or carry around – but which God in his mercy has let us tote around. It is our undoing as often as not. But in the light of the gospel it is our very strength because it points to God’s very real and awesome power.

Whenever I am weak I am strong. We can proclaim that from the rooftops and the world will not reward us. But it will be the truth and it will set us free.

These are words that resonate for me of God’s work in the world. From before my ordination I have felt called to ministry with small congregations. Where we are weak we are strong. I believe that. I’m generally not at all sure that the institutional church thinks that.

When I as a person have felt most vulnerable, most at my wits end, that has by and large been the time that I was most aware of my dependence on God and God’s strength and mercy.

Perhaps some of you know what I’m talking about.

Paul is using language here that is in some ways out of this world.

I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven (Paul)

At the same time he is speaking a language that you and I know all too well. “A thorn in the flesh” was given to him, as to each one of us.

for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.

Where the Church is really alive, most alive, is in places just like Epiphany, Spartanburg. You are living the priorities of the Gospel – day by day. You know whose you are and that gives you authenticity. As it did to Paul. As it did to the saints in ages past.
Thanks be to God.