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The Ninth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 11), July 17, 2005
Wisdom 12:13, 16-19, Romans 8:18-25, Mathew 13:24-30, 36-43
St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, West Valley City, UT
The Rev. W. Lee Shaw
Many of us gathered Wednesday night for the first session of âWho do you say that you are?â I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation, especially how we began. I asked the 20+ people gathered to say one thing they liked about the Episcopal Church. It was fascinating to hear what you like, enjoy, value, and cherish about our church. One thing that came through rather clearly was our comprehensiveness and inclusiveness. We see ourselves as open and welcoming to one another and to others. That is reflected as well in our recently approved Parish Mission Statement with terms such as âwelcomingâ and all are seen as âequal in Christ.â
Paul takes this comprehensiveness, inclusiveness to a cosmic level in this portion of Romans. He sees the whole of creation waiting with “eager longing” and as if “groaning in labor pains” for the liberation of all through the redemptive grace of Jesus Christ. I have often pointed to this passage as evidence of not only God’s creative work, but redemptive work in creation, in all of creation. Paul here hearkens back to the creation stories, the creation myths, in Genesis where following each stage of creation, God calls it “good.” But creation is also subjected to the so-called fallen nature of human kind and is subject to death and decay, pain and loss that is to be redeemed in Christ.
This sense of comprehensiveness and inclusion carries over into our Gospel reading as well. I do not read this as a warning of judgment to come. Rather I read it as a warning not to judge others or exclude others, such right belongs to the creator who has set it all in motion. It is clear to me that we are not to judge, to exclude, to pluck out. We wait, as does all creation, “…in the hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” We live in the hope of the “freedom of glory” as part of God’s creation. Or as we pray in the General Thanksgiving in Morning prayer, “for the means of grace and the hope of glory.”
I do believe that we as individuals and as a community, the church, stand under the judgment of God. I believe this judgment is predicated on how we live into the great commandments given to us by our Savior: love God, love one another, love ourselves. But judgment belongs to God. Our commandment is to love, not to judge. Period. That is hard enough for most of us. I will not second guess the Divine Will in granting judgment. But the God who created this wonderful world, including you and me, and called all of it good, seems to have a strong investment in our well-being. The language of the gospel, as much of Jesus’ language, is that of hyperbole and exaggeration to make a point. The story of the camel and the eye of the needle comes immediately to mind as one example.
Our reading from Wisdom reminds us pointedly that God judges with “mildness and with great forbearance” and that it is this very God who gives us the “good hope” because God has given us “repentance for sins.”
At this time of no small amount of controversy and conflict within our beloved church, it behooves us not to judge, but rather to pay attention to one another, to continue to love and forgive one another, as we pray for the church. A friend recently posted on line his dream of the church, I found it very moving. I want to share it with you.
âI want a church that rejoices in Christ our Savior, a church where each of us strives to love those who disagree with us as much as Jesus does, a church that refuses to be worried and anxious about too many things, when only one is really important, spending time with Jesus in those who are the least among us. I want a church that rejoices in the beautiful diversity of all creation, a church that echoes God at the creation of each of our parts and says, "It is good!"  I want a church that is generous to a fault and patient beyond measure. I want a church in which our major struggles are to see how kind we can be.â (Louie Crew)
I found his hope for the church to be greatly encouraging and I echo them in my own thoughts and prayers for our church. I am reminded of the words of the great 16th Century Anglican theologian Richard Hooker, who gave us the wonderful three-legged Anglican stool of Scripture, Tradition and Reason in looking at theology. Hooker writes: “I pray that none will be offended if I seek to make the Christian religion an inn where all are received joyously, rather than a cottage where some few friends of the family are to be received.”
My prayer is that we at St. Stephen’s will continue to strive to be a community “where all are received joyously” as we celebrate the diversity of gifts brought to us by the diversity of people who worship with us.