Year A Proper 17 2023 Living an Authentic Life

 Year A Proper 17, 3 September 2023

St. James the Less Episcopal, Ashland, VA

“Living an Authentic Life”

Collect: Lord of all power and might, the author and giver of all good things: Graft in our hearts the love of your Name; increase in us true religion; nourish us with all goodness; and bring forth in us the fruit of good works; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever. Amen.

Romans 12:9-21

Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers.

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” No, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Matthew 16:21-28

Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.” But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?

“For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done. Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”

As a priest, I am invited into the most precious and often most precarious of the moments of life. Births, deaths, and so much in between. Look at our Sacraments and our Sacramental Rites, and you will see so much of our lives woven into the Church’s most holy moments.

Baptism is welcoming the newly born into the Church, or those older who commit the rest of their lives to being in the Church. So it is birth in one form or another.

Eucharist is a ritual meal. We eat to live; we take communion to live in, and with, and for Christ.

And all the other sacramental rites:

• Confirmation: the adult affirmation of our baptismal vows, the transition from having others make commitments for us to us making those commitments our own. This is recognition of our adulthood and autonomy.

• Reconciliation of a Penitent: private confession recognizes that we have strayed, as we all will do, and God affirms that we are forgiven and welcomed back into the fold.

• Matrimony: Christian marriage, is the combining of two lives, brought together in God and blessed by Christ’s Church. This is the foundational relationship in most of our lives, and the Church has a part to play if we are in Christ.

• Orders: ordination to the diaconate, priesthood, or episcopacy, is the setting apart for those called to serve Christ in their vocational lives as deacons, priests, or bishops. It is a recognition for all of us that God is with us day in and day out, whether ordained or not.

• Unction: anointing those who are sick or dying with holy oil, and unction is when we are at our weakest, whether in sickness or awaiting death. Even here, especially here, the Church is with us.

While all of these moments are so important, what about all the in-between times, those times that are not set apart? The other 99%+? The mundane? The ordinary? Today’s readings are speaking exactly to that. For the living of these days, today’s readings from Romans and Matthew speak to the ordinary more than the extraordinary. (But Exodus with the Burning Bush could not be more extraordinary, and the sacramental calling of Moses, admittedly!)

In Romans, St. Paul gives us a list of commands. He does so lovingly, and clearly, but they are a great summation of how to live a good and godly life.

• Let love be genuine; we cannot fake our sincere devotion to one another.

• hate what is evil, hate the evil. Actively oppose it. It is not enough to not join in, but we must name it, expose it, and take steps to eliminate it.

• hold fast to what is good; We need to embrace what is good, and celebrate it. It is often not flashy or the first thing recognized, but it is what holds this hurting world together. The simple things, holding a door for a stranger. Smiling. Please and Thank You. Hold fast to what is good.

• love one another with mutual affection; Shake hands. Hug back. Take a moment for love, for those moments are so fleeting.

• outdo one another in showing honor. I love this. Make a competition of celebrating the good. What fun that is, and it helps push back the negative voices that we too often hear first and loudest.

• Do not lag in zeal, Give it all.

• be ardent in spirit, Ardent means enthusiastic or passionate. Let your spirit be just that.

• serve the Lord. Have a bad attitude about something? Do it for God then. Forget the thing that is holding up your attitude, do it for the Lord and with love and care.

• Rejoice in hope, In hard and dark times, our hope is one of the first things to let slip and shift into cynicism or despair. Hold onto hope. Share hope. Rejoice in hope.

• be patient in suffering, When we are hurting, time slows down. It is easy for us to lose our hope. But this is when we need patience and not despair. And how can we do this? Luckily, the next command helps.

• persevere in prayer. In another place, St. Paul says to “Pray without ceasing.” Have a running dialogue with God. Never let it down. Pray, and keep praying.

• Contribute to the needs of the saints; Collectively, God has given us all that we need. We need to see things from a prosperous perspective, not a deficit. As we care for our Church family, they will for us when we are in need.

• extend hospitality to strangers. We never know how our graciousness will change someone, how it can or rather will change the world.

• Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. When someone is doing something harsh, bless them. Pray for them. Think of Jesus when he was being crucified. “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.” If Jesus can do that then, think of what we can forgive when someone is just being petty.

• Rejoice with those who rejoice, When things are good, huzzah!

• weep with those who weep. When things are bad, share the burden, if nothing else sit down in the pain and lend an ear. 

• Live in harmony with one another; Notice it is harmony. We are not being asked to sing a single note, but together sing the notes that are ours to sing.

• do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; Find the ones sitting alone. Sit with them.

• do not claim to be wiser than you are. Know and share what you know. Only that and nothing more.

• Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. Break the cycle. As Gandhi says, “An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.” In the grace we have received, we MUST be gracious. We must take the hit, turn the other cheek, and not strike back. Even more, we must forgive and even bless those who struck us. If we do that, then we actually can do the next one…

• If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Choose to be at peace. Peace is a choice. Refuse to rise to the occasion if being egged into a fight.

• Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” If someone needs something done to them, let God do the repayment. It is NOT up to us. It actually relieves us of a huge burden.

• No, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.” In fact, being good to those who are evil to us burns their biscuits. It shows we are bigger people, and hopefully it can be a ramp to grace. 

• Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. The only way for us to conquer evil is with good. Fighting fire with fire only escalates the blaze. We must surround and suffocate the hate with love and goodness. It will take longer, and be more substantive in the long run, but it will change and transform the relationship. Look at history. Look at how we treated our enemies after World War I and World War II. Our first response led to another war. Our second response made deeply devoted allies and friends. Germans and Japanese appreciate the United States and how we helped them revive. 

Depending on how you count them, I got at least 24 commands in there. Some active, some passive. But all of them commands on how to live a good and godly life, and to be at peace in our church and with our community. The simplicity of it makes us suspicious. Do not let it! The simplicity is easy to read about yet so hard to live out. Just try it!

One of the great gifts of being in Christ is one another. The gift of this community, and our ability to do things together and care for one another is not why we come to faith necessarily, but it is the vehicle that gets most of us there.

Tomorrow we take a day off to remember and celebrate the contribution of all those who work, who labor, for our common good. We cannot do it without them as a society. The ones left behind in our lists of the important and powerful, but if it were not for those who keep on keeping on, not a one of us could make it. All our labors put together is our Commonwealth.

The labor of our devotion is much the same. While the sacraments are for those peak moments in our lives, Paul’s simple instructions guide us in the valleys and the day to day. Jesus’s instructions are much the same.

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

The daily task of choosing to deny and even die to self, to take the choice to be bigger and more gracious people, to celebrate and weep and live life in the moment and the authentic life God intended is the harder but significantly better choice. 

“Choose you this day whom you will serve.” Then get out of bed.

Friends, it does not get more clear than that. Amen