Take Lord, Receive

Proper 18 C RCL, September 4, 2016

St. John’s, Sharon

Rev Adam Trambley

Jer. 18:1-11; Ps 139; Philemon; Luke 14:25-33

The music used as part of this sermon was written by John Foley, SJ, and can be heard on YouTube at the link below.  During the service, we were graced to have it performed by Ron Gracilla and Greg Hansley:

 (Verse 1) Take, Lord, receive all my liberty, 
My memory, understanding, my entire will. 

Give me only Your love and Your grace, that's enough for me.
Your love and Your grace, are enough for me.

Today’s Gospel reading contains pretty difficult words of Jesus that, in effect, ask us to offer him our entire lives.  For me, this song by John Foley is one way that we can pray the desires that Jesus wants from us.  It is our intentions that are most valuable to God here, particularly as we say, “Take, Lord, receive everything.”  God doesn’t actually need our stuff or our relationships or anything else from us.  He pretty much has everything he wants or needs – that one of the benefits of being Creator of the Universe.  But our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving – our desire to give everything back to God – is asked for because it is fundamentally good for us. 

Getting to that kind of willingness to surrender everything to God is not so easy.  So before we go to the Gospel, we want to look at the first reading from Jeremiah and Psalm 139.  These readings say important things about who we are, how we were made, and why our offering back to God is so meet and right, and even good and joyful, if approached in the right way.

In our first reading, God tells Jeremiah to go down to the potter’s house.  Apparently, the closest potter wasn’t very good, because what Jeremiah sees is the clay getting all messed up.  Instead of the lovely dishes or roof tiles or whatever the potter was making, the clay ended up lopsided -- maybe it turned out like my school art projects where one side of the pot was really thick and could barely dry while the other side was so thin it almost immediately cracked.  Jeremiah’s potter had to take his clay and reshape it.  The clay wasn’t working quite right for one item, so he decided to make something else out of it.

God’s message to Jeremiah for God’s people is that he is the potter and we are his clay.  Since he made us (and Genesis says God formed us out of the dust of the earth and breathed life into us), then he gets to shape us as he believes is best.  By offering our entire selves and our relationships and our possessions to God, he can take them and reform them in the most straightforward ways to be used for new purposes.  Being reshaped for God’s renewed plan for us is a good thing.  If we refuse to surrender, however, and try to hang on, we can think about what it is like to try to reform hardened pieces of clay.  The new purpose might be there, but instead of being soft and malleable, there are brittle areas that weaken the vessel in the long run.

So what specifically am I talking about?  Here are a couple examples.  First, we are at the time of year when young people are going back to school, and some are even going away to school.  As our children, or our grandchildren, grow up, we can either offer them to God or try to hold on to the way things have been.  By offering our children, and our relationships with them, to God, we allow God to reform our children’s lives in ways that let them be used for new and deeper purposes.  They can meet new people, minister to people in more mature ways, and share God’s love in places we can’t go. Even our relationships with our children can develop in ways that God will use for our benefit and their benefit and for the world’s benefit.  But if we refuse to take the risk of offering them back to God, the new vessel God is turning them into can be weakened because we are trying to keep a part of their life in a certain shape because we are more comfortable with it.  Our spiritual work is to train our desires to not want what makes us comfortable in our relationships, however, but to want those we love to be re-molded in whatever way the divine potter knows to be best. 

Or maybe we have an image in our mind of what our life is supposed to be; maybe our parents instilled it in us.  A certain type of house, cars, kids, grandkids, whatever.  And maybe we’ve even achieved most of that, but now it’s time for something else.  Maybe a smaller apartment in a living situation where there are other people around – people we will have an opportunity to minister to in some way.  Or maybe we are supposed to go to a simpler car or otherwise downsize so we have more money to give away.  Or maybe we are supposed to use the space we have to take in aging family members or foster children or volunteers for area causes.  Maybe God is just ready to take the clay of our lives and do something new with it.  But unless we are willing to say, “Take, Lord, receive,” we aren’t cooperating, and may even be hindering God’s purpose for us.

(Verse 2) Take, Lord, receive all I have and possess. 
You have given all to me, now I return it. 
Give me only Your love and Your grace, that's enough for me.
Your love and Your grace, are enough for me.

While Jeremiah gives us the metaphor of God as our potter, Psalm 139 depicts ways in which God has known us even in our mother’s womb and paid attention to the smallest details about us.  We are marvelously and wondrously made by him and he is aware of every word we speak, of every step we take, and even every thought we have.  He has plans for us -- plans beyond anything we can even begin to understand.  “How deep I find your thoughts, O God! How great is the sum of them! ...to count them all, my life span would need to be like yours!” the psalmist writes.

So if God has made us with such love, and if really are the miracles that Psalm 139 says we are, we can trust the ongoing work he is going to do with us. We can believe that what God will do for us and through us tomorrow will be even better than what it has been today.  Even if part of God’s will is more difficult for us so that others can benefit, we accept and even rejoice in that suffering to further God’s plan of salvation.  God loves each and every one of us too much to waste the amazing gifts that we are, so if we are willing to cooperate with God, we will never be brushed aside or forgotten.  But we may be challenged.  We may be transformed.  We may die in some ways to receive new life in others.

This surrender to God is what Jesus is talking about in the Gospel.  When he talks about hating family members, he doesn’t want mean some kind of visceral fury when we see our parents or our siblings walk into a room.  He is saying that if there is a choice between what they want and what God wants, we choose what God wants.  If we have the choice between clinging to the relationship we’ve always had with them or having that relationship transformed so the kingdom can be built up in new ways, we choose to let God be a party to our relationship and focus on God together.  Taking up our cross means that we accept whatever struggles or suffering we may face in the future to get to where God wants us to be.  These choices make sense since God is our loving maker and our potter.

But the fact that we continually offer our lives and our relationships back to God does not mean that every day our life is turned upside down.  Most days it isn’t.  Most days, God is happy to use the relationships that we have in the ways that we have them.  Most days, God has us right where he wants us, and by offering our lives and relationships to him, we are allowing him to deepen the love we already share with those around us.

The same principle holds true when Jesus says, “none of you can be my disciples if you do not give up all your possessions.”  What Jesus says is true.  We can’t follow God if we tightly hold on to our stuff.  But the times we are really called to give up everything are fairly few.  I’ve had to do it a couple of times, including when we moved to Sharon and gave up our house and our savings and a variety of other possessions. We took a risk that God would take care of us, and he has.  Even at that time, however, some things moved with us – my guitar, clothes, a bunch of books, some furniture.  I could have given them up, but then God would have had to go get me new ones.  Yet everything we have has been offered to him and is his.  I hope I am always using my possessions for God’s work, even if some of that work is to keep me alive and happy so I can live into my call to be the priest here.  If I gave away my house or my car every day, God would take care of me and somehow get me where I need to be and stop me from freezing to death, but that care might come by a divine voice that says, “I gave you a house already, so use it.” 

I don’t think it is a copout to say that we can give up all our possessions without dragging a moving van of all our stuff to Goodwill.  Instead we can take three steps that demonstrate our intention and desire to give our possessions to God, and that desire to give all to God is crucial.  The first step is tithing our first fruits. We step out in faith by giving the first ten percent of our income back to God and asking God to bless the rest.  Second, we really acknowledge in our hearts that everything we have is God’s, not ours, and be willing to let go of it should the reason arise.  Then, third, we try to use all that we have for God’s glory, as if our possessions, which are now God’s possessions, were items dedicated for service at the altar.  Because in a way they have been.  All of us are God’s children and our lives are meant to be holy.  Anything that we have is meant to help us live and love, and in a very real way is devoted to God’s holy work as much as the altar candles are.

God is our potter.  He made us with love and formed us for his purpose.  We can trust the next steps in his loving purposes for us, even during times of significant change.  We can ask him to take and receive our possessions, our relationships, and our very lives, trusting in his love and grace to continue to provide us what we need.  His love and his grace are always enough for us.

(Verse 3) Take, Lord, receive, all is Yours now. 
Dispose of it, wholly according to Your will
Give me only Your love and Your grace, that's enough for me.
Your love and Your grace, are enough for me.

The Geresenes and Answers to Tragedy that Don't Work

Proper 7, Year C, 2016

1 Kings 19; Ps 42-43; Gal 3:23-29; Luke 8:26-39

Rev. Adam T. Trambley

June 19, 2016, St. John’s Sharon

From Psalm 42:

My tears have been my food day and night, * 
while all day long they say to me, 
"Where now is your God?”

I will say to the God of my strength, 
"Why have you forgotten me? * 

And the answer comes, repeated multiple times throughout Psalm 42 and 43:

Why are you so full of heaviness, O my soul? * 
and why are you so disquieted within me?

Put your trust in God; * 
for I will yet give thanks to him, 
who is the help of my countenance, and my God.

This week has been a tragic one.  Dozens killed in the shooting in Orlando, and then Friday a local teenager killed in a car accident on I-80.  This week a year ago, we were praying for those killed in a Bible Study in an AME Church in Charleston.  Many of us have been hit in many ways by these tragedies, and they have resulted in intense, and not always charitable, discussions about who we are as a nation, as human beings, and even as Christians. 

We may carry great sadness, fierce anger, overwhelming fear, isolating numbness or almost any other emotions in the wake of such events.  We cry out, “Where is God now?” and “Why have you forgotten us?”  We have pain, we have turmoil, we have questions.  

I don’t claim to have answers, at least none that satisfy me. 

Why are you so full of heaviness, O my soul? * 
and why are you so disquieted within me?

Put your trust in God; * 
for I will yet give thanks to him, 
who is the help of my countenance, and my God.

This morning’s gospel reading doesn’t really have any answers, either, but I think it sheds light upon the seductive answers that we too easily try to grab a hold of.  We, like the people of the country of the Geresenes, use any number of false answers to make us feel protected from the evil in our midst, but those efforts only serve to block our way forward.

When Jesus gets out of the boat in this Gentile area, he encounters a man with a legion of unclean spirits.  Given that “Legion” is also the name of a group of Roman soldiers in the area, the evil that has overcome this pour soul could be seen as any number of personal, psychological, military, political, addictive or social kinds of oppression, or maybe some of all of them.  The townspeople had tried to restrain him, and he couldn’t be restrained.  He lives in the tombs, surrounded by death.  As Jesus is casting out the demonic legion, they beg him not to cast them into the abyss, and he complies. I have never understood why Jesus listens to them, unless he knew that they couldn’t help but go to their deaths wherever he sent them or because he is much more merciful even to unclean spirits than we are.  The spirits that sent the man to the tombs enter a bunch of pigs.  Then this deviled ham commits sui-cide in the lake. (Sorry.) The people of the town see the demoniac clothed and in his right mind and talking to Jesus, so they become afraid and beg Jesus to leave.  The man, now healed, asks to go with Jesus, and Jesus says “no”.  So instead he finds a way to praise God right where he is.  Later traditions identify him as the first bishop of that area, but we can’t know for sure. 

Why have you forgotten me?

Where now is your God?

We should first just say that there is no explanation here as to why this man had all of these demons, or how they got to that country in the first place.  We can build any number of scenarios, but the evil is just there.  Just like so much evil is just here, or in Charleston or in Orlando, or on I-80, or in so many other places that are filled with people just trying to live decent, normal, everyday lives as best as they can. 

The first response of the villagers is to try to bind this demoniac, to tie him up, to keep him as far away as possible.  This response is also one of our first ones to tragedy.  We look for ways to build walls between ourselves and the places where disasters are occurring.  We reassure ourselves by saying that we are different somehow so that similar tragedy can’t happen to us, or we yell shrilly to ensure that whatever we see as the tragedy’s cause stays as far away as possible.  If we can convince ourselves that God is punishing people for some sin, and we aren’t sinning that way, then we decide that we won’t be similar victims.  We aren’t gay.  We don’t go to nightclubs.  We don’t associate with the wrong kind of people, maybe because we aren’t the wrong kind of people.  We are careful when we drive, and never go over the speed limit, at least only by a reasonable amount, and never are distracted, unless it is for a good reason.  The dishonesty in all this is usually pretty clear to everyone except to us when they are our rationalizations.  Or, we the villagers sending demoniacs to the tombs, we send away whatever we see as the causes of our suffering and pain.  We can’t let Muslims near us.  We can’t let immigrants near us. We can’t let guns near us, at least not the kinds of guns that we ourselves don’t own.  We can’t let the mentally ill near us.  We need a really big wall, and whenever a mentally ill, immigrant on a terrorist watch list with an automatic weapon and a suspended license drives dangerously around the wall, we should immediately receive an alert on our phone.  Yet none of that is the answer.

Now we should, of course, act together as a community to make good public policy when we see dangers.  The lane divider on the freeway after the last teenage tragedy will hopefully save future lives, and there are some very meaningful steps we should take.  But we can’t eliminate all evil from our lives.  Effective gun control wouldn’t have saved Elyssa Griffin and highway safety measures wouldn’t have made a difference at Pulse. 

Why are you so full of heaviness, o my soul?

Why are you so disquieted within me?

The Geresenes’ other response to tragedy which is not to be commended was their response of banishing Jesus with great fear when they saw what the needed response might cost.  They didn’t want to accept their own culpability for what had happened or the cost of change to overcome the evil in their midst.  Specifically, they weren’t happy with the pigs dying.  They made money off their pigs, and were not interested in losing that income, even if it meant somebody’s healing and freedom.  At the same time, pigs were unclean animals to the Jewish people at the time. They could eat the same food as humans, so when food was scarce and expensive, the more the rich fed food to their pigs to make sausage, the less food was available for poor people who were starving.  We might mourn the loss of a heard of bacon, but those in Jewish and Christian circles hearing this account two thousand years ago wouldn’t have. 

We all bear some responsibility for the fact that the catchphrase of our society could be, “I am not my brother’s keeper.”  We all bear some responsibility for the fact that we want to be able to get from point A to point B on the highway at faster and faster speeds, even for good reasons.  We all bear some responsibility for deciding to drive when we are really too tired, or can’t see well enough in these conditions, or just aren’t so sure of what we are doing, or really need to change the radio or have this snack or check this text since it really is important.  We all bear some responsibility for not investing enough time and money into our communities to ensure that people having issues are both supported by and accountable to people that can help them.  We all bear some responsibility for not being willing to change or give or do what we might know deep in our hearts is needed to make it harder for evil to win.  We all bear some responsibility for not pouring our hearts out in prayer regularly for so many people that need it.

I do not mean to say that if we only did everything right we could eliminate all these tragedies and evils.  We can’t.  Or at least, we are broken and everyone else is broken and we just aren’t able to do the things we would need to do to eliminate evil from our midst.  And if we were perfect, we’d probably end up crucified like Jesus.  But the fact that we can’t actually create the society we need doesn’t mean we don’t bear some responsibility for the society we do have.  In recognizing our own guilt, we also recognize our need to repent and turn to God and work harder in the future, even knowing that we will still fail and that those around us will still fail and that we will face other tragedies and have to repent and try again.

Why are you so full of heaviness, o my soul?

Why are you so disquieted within me?

Another answer to tragedy, that seems like it should be a good one, is also dashed by our gospel reading.  We, like the former demoniac, might beg Jesus to take us out of these tragic situations and just be with him.  Lord knows we have suffered enough, cried enough, struggled enough, prayed enough, and called out to God for help and healing enough.  But Jesus says, “Return home and declare how much God has done for you.”  In the end, that is all we have.  No answers.  No walls.  No reformed society where such things never happen again. No boat ride into the sunset with Jesus.  Nothing that ultimately satisfies us or makes the tragedies we’ve seen “worth it” in some way or grants us the peace that this all won’t come ‘round again.  Just “return home”, “be where you are,” “and declare how much God has done for you.”  

We are here in church to declare how much God has done for us.  To give thanks and praise.  Others lined up for blocks to give blood in Orlando.  Others are undoubtedly preparing meals and otherwise caring for the extended family and friends of those killed in Friday’s accident.  Others are using their gifts in whatever ways they can to “bless the dying, sooth the suffering, pity the afflicted, and shield the joyous” for the sake of the God who loves us all.

An important part of what God has done is to suffer and die for us, so that no matter what happens to us and no matter what we do, we are never separated from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.  No one killed in a car crash, no one shot in a terrorist hate crime, no one numbed by pain or overwhelmed by fear or awash in anger is ever separated from the love of God.  Jesus went through death so that when we go through death, we are still with Jesus.  All these tragedies are still senseless tragedies, but they are tragedies where God is present and making some kind of loving way forward for both the living and especially the dead.  And we can only declare what God has done for us, even in the midst of death and a community of tragedy, in whatever way we are given to declare it.

Why are you so full of heaviness, O my soul? * 
and why are you so disquieted within me?

Put your trust in God; * 
for I will yet give thanks to him, 
who is the help of my countenance, and my God.