The Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost

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The Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 21), September 25, 2005
Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32, Philippians 2:1-13, Matthew 21:28-32
St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, West Valley City, UT

There seems to be an overwhelming number of major events that are overtaking our day-to-day lives. We have a second major hurricane in the Gulf Coast, we have the ongoing war in Iraq, we continue to watch our economy struggling from one shock to another, and we have our own lives with our own ups and downs to deal with on a daily basis.

So to some our readings today may not seem particularly applicable to the headlines in the newspapers and the events in our lives. I feel, however, that the Gospel reading strikes at the very core of how we are called to respond to the changes and chances of our lives. We are to respond in faith and with integrity. The two brothers exemplify the contrast between acting faithfully with integrity and seeking only to please another person.

Through this week, hidden by the headlines of other events, the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church has been meeting. They are taking counsel with one another and seeking avenues to reconciliation within their body and within the church. How can we live together with integrity amidst our differences?

It is not an easy task, for the struggles within our church are not unlike the struggles within other churches about how we understand Scripture, appropriate power, and live with each other with integrity in a faith community. We are not alone in looking at how we live into the realities of our Christian faith.

The church must engage the issues of the day openly and directly. The church can no more hide behind her stained glass windows and avoid the issues in our society, than we can stay within the safe confines of this church building and avoid the issues of our life.

So the church must address, talk about and deal with issues of poverty and unemployment, sexism, racism, ageism, sexuality, abusive relationships, prejudice and bigotry, economic disparity and other hard issues in society that have real impacts on real people. We cannot merely sit in church, sing our favorite hymns and feel good about ourselves. It is not enough to worry about the purity of church teaching when members of the Body of Christ are suffering under injustices in our society.

I believe that Jesus calls us to give up our categories of judgment of those who differ from us and live into a life of integrity and love for another that moves us to action to care for one another, seek justice for one another, and serve one another. Our struggles are not about the primacy of justice over purity, but how we live together in the tensions of community.

One writer noted: “The church risks the danger of the same condemnation whenever she becomes more concerned to preserve her own purity, and the guard the deposit of her traditional faith, than to risk her treasure in the dust and turmoil of missionary enterprise.” (Francis Wright Beare)

And that “missionary enterprise” is not knocking on doors. It is engagement in the world, with the world's problems and challenges in the name of Christ. It is seeking and serving all people, loving our neighbor as ourselves. It is justice seeking and peace making. It is reconciliation and healing.

The church must address such issues as poverty, sexism, racism, sexuality and economic disparity, because these affect the members of the Body of Christ. I am grateful and proud that the Episcopal Church continues to press in these areas. Areas that to some may not seem “churchy” or “religious” but which are part of our reality of living in the world but not of the world.

George McCleod, founder of the modern Iona Community phrased it this way: “I am simply arguing that the cross be raised again at the center of the marketplace as well as on the steeple of the church. I am recovering the claim that Jesus was not crucified in a cathedral between two candles, but on a cross between two thieves, on the town garbage heap, on a crossroads so cosmopolitan that they had to write his title in Hebrew, Latin and Greek, at the kind of place where cynics talk smut and thieves curse and soldiers gamble. Because that is where he died and that is what he died about, that is where churchmen [sic] should be and what churchmen [sic] should be about.”

The economic marketplace. The marketplace of ideas. The marketplace of our lives.

I invite you to look at how you live into your Baptismal Covenant with integrity and faith. I invite you to take your faith out of the safe confines of St. Stephen's and into the reality of your world. As we note in our bulletin: “Worship is ended. Ministry is begun.”