Sermons from the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer

While coming down the hill into Hyde Park on Ridge, I noticed a car stopped in the middle of the intersection, and a man standing at the back of his car. Without thinking it through, I pulled off to the side, saying to my sister, hold on, a guy is stuck in the intersection. I'll call you right back. And as I jumped out of my car to see what was going on, I heard her yell through the speakerphone of my car, It's not safe! Don't be a martyr, Melanie! The intersection was filled with honking cars.

One guy flew around us full speed and then only one other man, a guy driving a semi-truck, got out to help me push this other guy's vehicle to the curb so that everyone else could get back to what they were doing before someone's bad luck completely inconvenienced them.

When was it lord that we saw you in need and did not come to your aid? And Jesus answered, just as you did not do it for one of your fellow humans in small things, you did not do it for me. The voice of our shepherd showing up, even in small things.

I got back in the car, and as promised, I called my sister. What happened? I'm glad you're alive. I laughed too. A guy just needed a little push. It wasn't until then that I realized how silly I might have looked pushing a car in my collar, or how annoyed I was that only one other guy got up to help us.

Our hope rests in God. When God shows up and does the

work of transformation, and resurrection in our lives, our part is to recognize

God. And if you're not sure how to recognize God, look for love. And I mean, every time. Look for the love in

your life. And when you look there, you see God and you recognize that God has

been at work in resurrection all around you all the time.

This is when you begin to believe. When you cut someone off in traffic, because

you're thinking about something, you didn't mean to do it, you're a very good

person, we all know, but you cut someone off, and then you realize you do it,

and then that person drives by you, and instead of giving you the finger, waves

at you, and is like, I get it, it's okay. Recognize God's presence, please. That's

God.

When you're at the airport, and you see two people that

you have no idea who they are, and they clearly haven't seen each other in a

while and they grab each other and embrace when they see each other, recognize

God's presence.

When you're coming off the highway, and you see that man

who's standing on the side asking for money, you know, that guy, maybe you give

him a dollar and maybe you don't, but when you see him, you make eye contact

with him and you say, hello. And when he looks at you and you look at him and

you see each other's eyes, friends, that's God at work.

How many of you have been through hell with God by your

side, through the trials of your life, possibly testing you? How about when you get to the other side and

God is still there? You know in your

heart that you've made it through the hard times and hardships because of that

presence that you can always count on.

The presence that always seems to provide, you know that

very well. How many of you know in your

hearts, in your bones, in your body that without God you couldn't, you wouldn't

survive? For us, our belief and trust in

God does not result from merely pondering or meditating on God, but on having a

relationship with God.

It's important to know that if your faith and

relationship doesn't look like Abraham's, that's okay. But what is important is that you pursue a

relationship. And our journeys with God

are going to be different. We're going

to experience God differently. That

doesn't mean your faith is not as strong as someone else's faith.

It just means that they're different. And as long as we're working on our faith and

relationship with God, I don't believe that God is going to look at a gauge and

say whether or not you have enough faith that you pray enough. God knows each and every one of us, and meets

us where we're at.

We experience God, we sense God, and we need God. And we know that we can trust God with our

dreams, with our successes, and our failures.

During our lives at every stage, God has proven to be faithful and

steadfast. Even when we know we haven't always been. We know that we can count on God without full

understanding or complete knowledge of what God is doing.

People were getting healed. There were rumors of a savior. We would overthrow our oppressors and be our true selves again under our true ruler. There were some disagreements among us at first, and some confusion, and some people got pretty belligerent, and they started arguing against us. And then, at the end, it's as if they got carried away with their inflammatory extremist ideas, and here we are.

But it wasn't that sudden. There were signs. We just didn't pick up on the signs, because the signs were warning about us, not about them. So we kept going, and then we crossed the line, and we couldn't go back. We always assumed we were the good guys. We are the good guys. So then how did I end up holding these nails and this hammer in my hand?

How did we get to be the executioners instead of the saviors?

Like I said, it seems so sudden, but it wasn't really. There was a road we went down, an imperceptible slide down the road towards that cross. And at some point, we made a turn down the conventional path that tells us to conform to the empire's moral code.

Hospitality is also an integral part of our story

tonight. And it's the one that surprised

me. I consider myself a pretty great

host. I love when people come to my home

for dinner. I'm Greek, so there's always enough food to feed a small army. And I've crafted my own signature

cocktail. And I've brought brightly

colored linens home from my travels so I can tell the story of the amazing

people I've met along the way.

Hospitality, though, has another side, the surprise

side. It turns out that I'm terrible at

being a guest. I actually had a friend

once grab me by the wrist and bring me back to the dining room so I would stop

washing her dishes.

I rarely allow myself to be the recipient of the service of others

because that level of vulnerability

might remind me that I might actually need someone to take care of me

from time to time.

Jesus shows us this night that if we are going to share hospitality

without condescension, then we first

have to allow ourselves to be the guest

in someone else's home. Jesus begins this

act of service, and only by receiving it

can we know how to share it with others.

Having his last supper with the disciples a troubled

Jesus announces that one of them is his betrayer. And do you know, if you read that carefully,

every one of them is bewildered.

They have no clue. And their uncertainty suggests that it

could be any one of them. A notable

example is Peter, who refutes that he would ever deny Jesus, but then does so

three times, cock a doodle doo. And speaking of Peter, he's the one that

beckons John, the beloved disciple, reclining right next to Jesus to ask for

the name of the traitor.

Well, and Jesus answers, kind of vaguely, It is the one

to whom I give this piece of bread, he says.

Well, Judas may have gotten the first piece of bread, but he didn't get

the last piece of bread. They all share

the very same communal bread and wine.

And then we will do that very shortly together. And I take great comfort in doing that with

you because I confess that I too have betrayed Jesus selling him out to

suffering and death in this time and place by failing to love as I should.

Here's the question before us in this day and age, isn't

Jesus among us even now as the other?

The last, the lost, the least, the lonely, and the left out. Jesus beckons us to love God and to love one

another. And you know, fortunately we all have a community to do that, but many

others do not. Now paradoxically, I

think we can look to Judas for answers.

Jesus is describing his own death, a death he understands as necessary for our salvation. So, there's intimacy, vulnerability, and there's deep commitment born of love. We see all three of these in this Gospel reading.

In our own lives are there moments we want to shy away. We want to turn away. We want to turn inward and avoid intimacy, avoid vulnerability, avoid any soul-deep commitment to love. I certainly know I've been in those places of avoidance. It's part of our human condition. And part of our conditioning.

Intimacy may be interpreted as dependence, as vulnerability, or as weakness, as commitment to love may raise up the strongest sense of vulnerability. And yet we know love needs intimacy, of being willing to be present and close to another. Love requires vulnerability. Being willing to be seen, to be transparent in our moments of fear or struggle.

Love needs steadfastness to endure the challenges and complexities of individuals, families, of communities. Intimacy, vulnerability, and steadfast love are interwoven.

Intimacy is connection. Knowing one another. Care and

vulnerability. And what Mary shows to

this man who is not only her teacher, but her friend, and who we were reminded

in this story is the one who literally raised her brother up from the dead.

She drops to her knees and she pours perfume all over his

feet and she takes her hair and wipes it off.

And you can imagine how uncomfortable everybody else was

in the room. Judas, of course, is the one to say something because of course

it's Judas. And John really makes sure to let us know what a dirtbag Judas is

as if we didn't already remember, right? We know Judas, hot mess, we get it.

But in this moment, we totally, there's something about

Judas is like, oh, she, she shouldn't be doing that.

You know, that money could have gone to the poor. Right? Which is no different than the kid being

like, change the channel, they're kissing. It's the same thing. It's a reaction

to intimacy. He has to change the

subject because the intimacy on display is more than he can handle.

We know that the pain and the suffering is still to come.

Thinking about the disciples more, are, are they walking along Jesus, flanking him? Might that be something we would have done? Or are some of them acting almost as an advance team, drawing the crowds, letting them know about Jesus, letting them know that here is the person they have been waiting for. Here is the Messiah.

Way back when I was in my 20s I was very involved in political campaigns and I can remember being part of an advanced team and our whole job was to arrive early and to get people excited about the candidate who was to come, to get them excited about meeting them and to give a preview of their message. It was a very exciting time. I wonder what it would be like to be an advanced team for Jesus, to be able to tell people who Jesus was, why it was important that they meet him, know him.

And we might ask, what are the disciples telling people to draw them to Jesus? In Matthew's gospel, they talk of how the city was stirred, the whole city was stirred by Jesus's arrival. And people were asking, who is this? And the crowds were responding, this is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth of Galilee.

But what are the disciples telling people? How are they getting the people to turn out? How are they getting this incredible celebration? What would we tell people if we were the disciples? What do we tell people when we seek to introduce them to Jesus? When we want them to meet the Jesus we know?

And often this change that we really want is to

desperately go back to when we remember what we remember as simpler or better

or easier times. We want our churches to be like they were. And of course, they

were wonderful. We want them and our

world to slow down and stop changing.

But unfortunately, staying static or spending all of our energy and

words pining for what was or what could be, really isn't the way of Jesus.

What is it Jesus says after he tells us to lose our

life? He says, if any of you wants to

serve me, then follow me, then you'll be

where I am ready to serve at a moment's

notice. Follow me, be where I am. Be

ready to go where I am going. It's a

challenge for us personally, but also collectively. We have to look for where Jesus is going and

ask if we are willing to go there too.

In January, 2020, just two months before COVID, before we knew what was coming our way, I was sitting in a room a lot like this

with Bishop Michael Curry, and he was talking to young adults in Washington,

DC, and he said something that I had never heard him say before. He said, what

people forget is that the institution of the church exists in order to serve

the movement of Jesus, not the other way around.

The institution exists to serve the movement of Jesus.

The movement of Jesus does not exist to serve the institution. I think that's a lot of what Jesus is talking

about today, especially here in the year 2024.

And I think we're being asked collectively if we are willing to lose the

church we want in order to follow Jesus to go where he is reckless in our love.

A love that has an internal impact. Are we willing to lose the church we want

in order to be the church he's calling us to be? If we were to go where Jesus is, then we have

to ask, so where is Jesus, right?

Guest Preacher: Jerusalem Greer