pentecost-5-chapel-christ-king.md

Pentecost 5 07/14/2019

Homily:
Chapel of Christ the King
Charlotte, NC

Introductory:

Thank you for inviting me to be with you this morning and to celebrate the Eucharist. I’ve been an Episcopalian for a pretty long time, not quite my whole life. When I was still young, my mother would tell us kids what was great about the Episcopal church. One of the things she often mentioned was that a person could go anywhere in the country and go to church on a Sunday morning at the an Episcopal Church and it would all be pretty much the same. Partly it was the Book of Common Prayer that was the same everywhere. And partly it was the clergy. They were pretty much the same.

Some of the most important things I know about life came from my mother. But that insight of hers is not one of them. I have found in my 37 years of ordained ministry that clergy are not all the same. In fact, one from another, they are wildly different. The same is true of congregations. I have discovered more about that in the last 5 years as I have supplied in North Carolina and Upper South Carolina.

I have not ever been in this congregation and I am honored to meet you.

Let me tell you a little about who I am.

As I’ve said, I’ve been a priest since 1982. I was born in Arizona and raised in Colorado. I’ve served congregations in Wisconsin, Indiana, and Hawai’i. After seminary I did graduate study at Notre Dame University. I’ve taught religion and biblical studies at high school, college, and university level.

I served and taught in Hawai’i for 13 years, beginning in 2001. My wife and I moved to Rock Hill, SC in 2014 when she accepted a position as Assoc. Prof. in the Math Dept. at Winthrop University teaching prospective teachers how to teach math. I have children and grand children scattered from Atlanta to Hawai’i.

Festival

You may or may not be aware of a festival that has been going on the past 4 days up above Asheville. It’s called the Wild Goose Festival.

I heard about it last year. I was delighted to see that many of the people that I pay attention to in the church were in attendance. It reminded me of a renewal conference I attended for many years in Hawai’i that invigorated and inspired my ministry. Some of the same people are in attendance. I said to myself, “You need to go to this next year.”
Well, This is next year. But we have been traveling the whole month of June and just got home in the last few days. We didn’t make it this year either.

Right here in our midst

I was surprised to see the National Catholic Reporter talking about The Wild Goose Festival in its recent issue.

The town of Hot Springs, North Carolina, has a population of 560 people. It sits on the banks of the French Broad River, tucked deep into the Appalachian Mountains along the state’s far west border. Every July, right in the heat of North Carolina’s sweltering summer, upward of 4,000 people from all corners of the country trek to this tiny town for a music festival
…

The Wild Goose Festival is a music festival with a purpose. It began in 2011 … Since then, [it] has used an annual weekend of music and speaking performances, conversations and storytelling, as tools toward a larger goal of inspiring people, from whatever background they may come from, to go out and make the world a better place. National Catholic Reporter

It appears to have gone “mainstream” with its effort to “make the world a better place.” Its inspiration comes from taking the Gospel seriously.

Holy Spirit Geese

The overarching imagery they have for taking seriously the Gospel and making a difference in the world we live in is the wild goose.

The imagery of the wild goose stretches back centuries to the Celtic Christians in the British isles. For them the Holy Spirit was symbolized by a goose as opposed to a dove. The traditional Latin symbol for the Holy Spirit, a dove, usually portrayed unmoving, silent.

  • unpredictable: Geese, on the other hand, are noisy. They are moving constantly, on land and on air.
  • working together, sharing the load: Geese share the task of leading the flock. It’s strenuous flying the point in a flock of geese. One will do it for a while, then another will take their place.
  • relationships count as much or more as the individual: With the flock, the well-being of the community is paramount. “Neighbor” is not a description of 2 individuals in relationship. “Neighbor” is how we live. In relationship with one another. It’s our essential condition.

That’s the church that I have encountered in my ministry.

Who is my neighbor

So, when the lawyer asks in the Gospel, “Who is my neighbor?” He is thinking: Is that my neighbor? That one? Some are and some aren’t – right? Some obviously aren’t my neighbor for purposes of loving them like myself. Right?

Jesus, wild goose that he is, doesn’t see individuals, some to choose and some to leave behind. He sees the community. He sees humanity. No picking and choosing. It’s all of us. No one left behind.

These are the characteristics of the church and the world that I have encountered in my ministry. Perhaps you have too.

The commandment to love is a far-reaching one.

Great Commandment

From an early age I would hear the priest / celebrant of the Eucharist intone the Great Commandment. It’s still retained as an optional part of the opening of Rite I.

Hear what our Lord Jesus Christ saith: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.

The lawyer in today’s gospel knew it too. He heard perfectly well Jesus’ response to his question about how to inherit eternal life. What he was not expecting was Jesus’ unpredictability, his surprising commitment to the whole of humanity, his determination that we are in this together. He was not expecting how much like a wild goose Jesus was.

From Jesus’ time to the present we have been plagued with imagining God to be a small localized God. That we have imagined our neighbors to be the comfortable neighbors we easily socialize with.

Jesus came to call us to be children of a much bigger God, bigger than we could imagine.

Closing

When I was younger, I thought I had some idea of who my neighbors were. Later I came to see a world so wide and wonderful, so vivid in so many languages, that I could not hope to even hear or see them all. Jesus, the wild goose, was into breaking our expectations and our self-imposed limitations.

When my children were little I would sometimes take them by the hand and go out to the front lawn. We would get down on our hands and knees and look at the creatures that were crawling around, up and down the blades of grass. There were ants, and beetles, sometimes grasshoppers. Slithery things. Leggy things. The whole idea was get a taste, a glimpse, of the awesome God who is stranger and more wonderful than we could imagine.

There were other times that I would take their hand at night and look up at the sky. There were ordinary wonders like the moon and the planets. We saw a comet. We looked for lunar eclipses. Again, the idea was to get some sense of how awesome God is.

It’s that kind of opening of our hearts that Jesus was about. “Who is my neighbor?” It’s really about “Who is your God?” “Love the Lord your God?” It’s really about “Love your neighbor as yourself.” On these 2 commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

God is an awesome God. Alleluia.

Notes:

The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
Color: Green Assigned Readings (Proper 10 )
Track One Lesson 1: Amos 7:7-17 Psalm: 82
Track Two Lesson 1: Deuteronomy 30:9-14 Psalm: 25:1-9 Lesson 2: Colossians 1:1-14 Gospel: Luke 10:25-37

lectionary

  • Amos 7: Plumbline … “Jeroboam shall die by the sword,”
  • Opening of Colossians … your faith, prayers
  • Teacher: What must I do to inherit … [Great Commandment] … Good Samaritan

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