What do you want to talk about?

October 29, 2017

Twenty First Sunday after Pentecost

 

"Just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the message of the gospel, even so we speak, not to please mortals, but to please God who tests our hearts."

Just about every morning, as we leave the Deanery for the walk up to Abraham Lincoln Elementary School, the excellent CPS neighborhood school which our children attend, Benedict, our elder child, will come up to Alison or me, and say, "So, Dad… so mom, what do you want to talk about?" He knows that it is good to make intelligent and polite conversation – something in which, of course, Alison and I rejoice – but he has yet to work out that, at its best, such conversation should just flow easily, without a subject being demanded in quite such a peremptory manner. That he makes such conversational demands when we’ve not been awake too long and had but one cup of coffee adds to the disconcerting nature of his question, of course – for I am not a morning person – and my response to him is usually to turn the question back on the questioner and say, "So, Benedict – what do you want to talk about?"

Which, I think, is just what God is doing to us this morning. But before we come on to that, I need to tell you how to not buy a carpet.

Alison and I have enjoyed a number of wonderful vacations in countries such as Turkey, Morocco and Tunisia – all fabulous destinations with a mixture of exquisite beaches, and fascinating cities. But in both little villages set by lovely beaches, and, even more, in some of the medieval souks of venerable cities, we have sometimes found ourselves – often in the company of a local guide – being taken to someone’s carpet shop. At which point, as you may imagine, a predictable conversation ensues, led by a charming man with polished English, who has plied us with slightly sweet herbal tea, as a prelude to unrolling and displaying a vast selection of wonderful carpets, the prices of which are veiled in great mystery.

Gradually the conversation will turn to the kind of space in which we live, the size of the rooms, the nature of the furnishings, all done to help him suggest one or two particularly lovely carpets from his stock which, so he hopes, will make the perfect addition to such a space. And then the question will come, gently but clearly – the question that marks the point of no return – the question, which if you answer it incorrectly, will mean that like it or not, you will purchase a carpet.

For, having whittled down the wonderful display of upwards of a hundred carpets down to a simple pair – two carpets which he has either noticed you look at with particular interest, or which he thinks are the ones which might really suit your home – the question comes, "So, which of these do you prefer – this one… or that one…"

It is the question from which there is no return. For if you answer it at honest, face value, and say that on balance… you prefer this one (by which you simply think you are making a comment of what you might call artistic preference, and not remotely that you are contracting a sale)… if you are unwise enough to state an opinion that shows any sense of preference, no matter how mildly… your fate is sealed and you will end up buying the carpet. If you really, truly, have no desire to buy a carpet at all, the only answer you can safely make is, "They are all equally lovely – and I am not going to buy any carpets today."

Jesus knew this, of course. Not that the gospels record such an encounter at any point, but Jesus, I can tell you, would have made it through any number of exotic middle--eastern souks, and emerged without so much as a few postcards and trinkets to take home to the twelve apostles. We know this, because – actually --  we heard it just now:

"When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?"

Now, beware – something worse than a carpet--seller is here. And I say this with the greatest of respect for any attorneys in church this morning, but here we are dealing with a lawyer – and a religious one at that – a canon lawyer! And the issue was that these very religious types whose conversations with Jesus have dominated this late section of Matthew’s gospel – these types could see that Jesus was (to use a modern era kind of phrase) a kind of dangerous liberal.

So this lawyer is hoping he can nudge Jesus to making that choice – that fateful choice that seals your fate in the carpet shop. He wants to nudge Jesus into saying something like, Well, I guess, if you have to say which is the greatest… I guess that thou shalt not kill is probably just a tiny bit more important than, say, not coveting your neighbor’s ox or donkey.

After all, I think we’d probably say something like that, wouldn’t we? And we are good, God--loving people, we’ve done Sunday School and been confirmed, and hey – I’ve even got an MDiv. And, yes -- I am quite prepared to stand in this pulpit and tell you, without any doubt in my mind at all, that I think not killing is way more important than not coveting.

But, as we are told by the evangelist, this is a trap – and in this context, a trap rather graver than a carpet shop in a souk. Because for any good Jew, and certainly to any rabbi, there could be no question of preference about the commandments, and there could certainly be no question of greater or lesser. The Law simply was the Law, and all of its precepts were of equal weight and equal significance. "Which of these do you prefer….?" But Jesus isn’t buying – he isn’t buying a carpet, and he isn’t buying the very premise of this question, the only purpose of which is to find a way to charge him with blasphemy.

And so Jesus rises way past the commandments, to the guiding principle behind and above them, to the guiding principle of the Hebrew Scriptures and the Jewish people, recited by all faithful Jews each morning and evening.

"So, Jesus – what do you want to talk about?" Well, for Jesus, he wants to talk about the two commandments on which hang all the law and the prophets. Jesus wants to talk, properly to talk, about God – and thus Jesus wants to talk about love.

Because talking about love beats buying carpets. Talking about love beats a discussion about what you and I would call canon law or the niceties of religious practice and observance. Because the Pharisees are looking for a way to put Jesus on trial. But guess what? Jesus isn’t playing ball – Jesus is talking a bigger talk, just like Jesus walked a bigger walk. Jesus is talking God, Jesus is talking Love, Jesus is talking of ‘good news’ – which, in church-speak we also call gospel. And he’s not the only one talking it this morning:

"Just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the message of the gospel, even so we speak, not to please mortals, but to please God who tests our hearts."

For, as we see in the passage from the very oldest book in the New Testament, Paul is being clear with the Thessalonians that he has done his utmost not to let anything get in the way of the Good News of the message about God and about love. "We never came with words of flattery or with a pretext for greed; nor did we seek praise from mortals, whether from you or from others, though we might have made demands as apostles of Christ."

Paul is doing his utmost to make sure that when he is asked what he wants to talk about, when he’s walking the kids to school and a conversation springs up -- Paul wants it to be about one thing and about one thing only. He doesn’t want his apostolic status to get in the way (have you ever known a church leader be interested in status, asks the Very Reverend dean of your cathedral church?!); he doesn’t want money to get in the way (let’s not forget we need you to be renewing or making your pledges at this time of year). He doesn’t care what other people think of him or his message (as if there were anyone here this morning who doesn’t like to be liked or highly regarded or spoken of well). Paul just wants to make sure the conversation is about one thing and one thing only -- the love of God manifested in the Good News of Jesus. And that’s the challenge to us, as well.

So let me tell you about two people I know and how they responded to this challenge -- how they demonstrated what they wanted to talk about…

The first is a priest called Ken, Canon Kenith David, who is now in his late 70s. Ken is a South African Indian. He grew up in an Indian family in South Africa in the bad, dark days of that nation, and because of his habit of speaking and proclaiming truth, he was persuaded for the safety of his wife and family that he needed to leave South Africa, and he served as a priest in the Church of England for a good number of years, during which he worked for one of Britain’s major Christian international aid agencies.

That was what he was doing when he was an honorary member of the church staff at the parish where I grew up and discovered God. Ken was the priest at whom I looked and realized that I felt called to ordination. I wanted something of what he had -- which was a rather crazy aspiration for a white teenager in a middle--class London suburb, looking at this distinguished man of color who has spoken out against and fled from an evil regime.

Now Ken was one of the most inspirational preachers I have ever known, and he presided at liturgy in a manner that was self--effacingly beautiful. His voice was exquisite and transported you to the divine truths of which he spoke easily and powerfully. Now, I’ve not seen Ken for decades, not, I think, since Alison and I got married -- but I remember the last conversation I had with him, which was about my plans to attend seminary and seek ordination.

And in that context, I remember alluding to the way in which he presided and preached and read in church -- a conversation brought about by a rather awkward liturgy that he and I had just attended, where the preacher (whose first language was not English) had stumbled over some difficult names in the Old Testament in a way which had been a little embarrassing. And I remember Ken telling me that, as someone who had come from a position where he was excluded and denied status, he had worked and worked at being able to preside and preach without any kind of obvious fault. Because, I remember him saying, if people want to pick a fight with me, I’m only going to let them fight with me about what I say, and not about how I say it. They are only going to get to fight with me about the gospel -- and nothing else.

"So, Ken, what do you want to talk about?" Jesus, and the Good News of his love.

And then there was Eve. She’s a bit younger than Ken, and she isn’t ordained. Eve is 15, but at the time of this story she was just approaching her 5th birthday, and, at the time, her mother was one of two wonderful churchwardens without whom my ministry in my last parish would not have achieved anything.

And we were discussing admitting children to Holy Communion. While it is normative over here in The Episcopal Church for all the baptized to receive communion, in England that isn’t the case, and it is still most common for people to receive communion only after they are confirmed. And the route to a fuller, more inclusive practice, which the English House of Bishops had opened up a year or so prior to this story, the route to admit young children to communion required not only a motion to be passed by the vestry -- but it also required, very unusually, that before such a vestry meeting, there had to be a full meeting of the church membership to discuss the idea and ask any questions they might have.

So I had called just such a meeting after the main Sunday service. I had put together what I thought was a powerful presentation on the subject, complete with quotes from great theologians and the then Archbishop of Canterbury. And after the presentation, there were a whole bunch of questions from worthy church-going adults -- seriously religious folk who went to church every week, and who had all those grown-up concerns which worry us all so much, but which are often so truly unimportant. And so I had thrown at me questions about behavior, and mental capacity, and noise, and reverence, and spilling the consecrated wine, and all the minutiae of grown up, respectable religion.

Young Eve sat through this with remarkable patience, given her tender age, until all fell silent, and every mind-numbing question has been answered by me to the best of my ability, while I struggled to get across in such answers the basic point behind the whole idea -- the basic point that God loved everyone, and nobody should be excluded from the symbol and sacrament of that love. And just as I was about to close the meeting, Eve put her hand up.

I looked down from the pulpit, and invited her to speak, and her question was simple -- the simplest question of a long morning, "Does this mean I can have bread and wine now?" she said. Because, although she did not have a degree in theology, and although she had not read Thomas Aquinas on the Eucharist or anything else learned and worthy, although she was only a small child, she knew that in that bread and wine there was something uniquely special about God, about Jesus, and about love. And the fact that the motion was passed, and she subsequently got to have the bread and wine was probably not unrelated to the fact that she was brave enough and curious enough to ask that question in the first place… "So, Eve, what do you want to talk about today?" Jesus, and the good news of his love.

Last week, the Executive Council of The Episcopal Church met in Maryland, and it acknowledged the membership statistics from 2016, that continue to show a downward trend. And the church’s official news service reported the Presiding Bishop as saying:

While it may be tempting to despair and search for ways to return to a church that Episcopalians believe existed in the past… if the church concentrates on making and forming disciples who truly live the way of Jesus, “we won’t have time to worry about average Sunday attendance; that will take care of itself.”  “If we continue to navel gaze, then we won’t survive, and probably shouldn’t,” he said. “If our concern is being the church of the 1950s, maintaining an institutional reality for the sake of the institution, maybe we don’t need to continue.”

But, if Episcopalians are concerned about keeping Jesus at the center of their lives, then “that’s a church that has a reason to exist and will have a future.”

So next time you are distracted by the carpet salesman, or by the zealots or the naysayers want to hijack the gospel message with rules and regulations, or blasphemy, or false or irrelevant teaching… the next time you are walking my elder son to school in the morning and he asks you, "So, what do you want to talk about?" The next time any of that happens -- don’t stop and buy a carpet -- go talk about the Good News instead. Amen.