Making Space

15th Sunday after Pentecost, Yr. B, September 9, 2012

Isaiah 45:4-7a; James 2:1-10,(11-13), 14-17; Mark 7:24-34

Sermon preached at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church

  

Say to those of a fearful heart, "Be strong, do not fear!  Here is your God." (Isaiah).  Here is your God!  Where might that be? That here that Isaiah speaks of?  Is it in the church?  In the city?  In the pew sitting beside you?  Inside you?  Where is here?

We are an incarnational people.  We believe that God is present in all God creats, most especially in Jesus Christ, a man who lived in first century Palestine.  Jesus lived in unique relationship with God, in perfect union.  Jesus was fully human and always here with God.  Jesus had the capacity to funnel God's creative and healing energy into the world.

In our readings from Mark, Jesus healed a man who is deaf and dumb.  He exorcises a demon with a word, without even stepping foot in the house.  Jesus is a conduit for the fulfillment of God's purposes on earth, just as we can be.  James is pretty clear, just like he was in last week's reading, that our calling is to believe and act.  In fact, he says, we are to act without partiality.  No one person is less or more important than another.  Each of us is precious in God's eyes.  That's why we address everyone at Sunday Supper as "sir" and "ma'am".  It's an act of respect.  That's why we don't turn anyone away from that meal or this table.  Our doing in love, is God doing in love.  God's power working in us can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.

"Be strong, do not fear!  Here is your God."  So how do we prepare ourselves for God being HERE with us?  How do we prepare ourselves for God taking up residence within us?

The Word Implanted in Us

14^th Sunday after Pentecost, Yr. B, September 2, 2012

Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-9; Psalm 15; James 1:17-27; Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

Sermon preached at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church

In the August 22^nd issue of The Christian Century, Wallace Bubar, a Presbyterian minister shares a story about his early church life in a Southern Baptist church.  Bubar writes,

It was called the six-point record system.  In the Southern Baptist church of my childhood, the offering envelopes in the pews had the usual line for your name and the amount of your contribution.  But they also had six little boxes underneath where you could put a check mark, and next to the boxes were six actions: worship attended, Bible brought, Bible read daily, Sunday school lesson studied, prayed daily, gave an offering.

Somebody, writes Bubar, at Southern Baptist headquarters in Nashville had decided these were the six things that were worth recording.  Not the commandments, not the fruits of the Spirit, not the eight Beatitudes and not the seven cardinal virtues.  No, there were six essentials of the Christian life, and bringing your Bible to church was one of them.[1] 

Now, I didn’t grow up Baptist.  I was raised in the Roman Catholic church.  No one there brought a Bible to anything when I was young!  I was so far removed from the Bible that I didn’t even really know any Bible stories … even though I’d heard passages of the Bible read in church every Sunday, practically from the moment I took my first breath!  Never missed church … but never read the Bible for myself until I was an adult.