Now we have some work to do
to take in each of these three selections from Holy Scripture,
three rather hard readings
each with challenges
and not easy to hear, understand or receive.
Let me start with this:
A long time ago, in the last century,
when I was the director of a Hospice program in northern Minnesota
one of my favorite duties was the training of volunteers.
Part of the training was educating the volunteers
and all of us working with families
in which a loved one was dying or had just died.
The purpose was to become aware of and sensitive to
the impact on the whole family system
that the terminal illness and death had.
I used the example of a mobile
in which each piece is delicately balanced
so that it keeps its shape.
But if you remove one piece out of the mobile,
the whole thing goes catty-wampus.
Likewise when a death occurs in a family,
the entire family dynamics get shifted radically.
One can expect discord and disharmony among the family members
as they go through the painful process of grieving
and adjusting to loss,
and reconfiguring as a family again.
In this Gospel reading Jesus said,
“Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth?
I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.
For I have come to set a man against his father,
and a daughter against her mother,
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;
and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.”
This is a hard message of the dynamics of the family system
out of kilter.
Jesus coming to bring discord within a family? That’s what he said!
And not just a family system.
The family is the basic unit of all cultures and societies.
There’s the family
and then the tribe
and then the nation
and every level of institution in between.
And that includes the institutional Church even.
The dynamics of equilibrium are at work in the institutional Church.
We might call that equilibrium the status quo,
but, spiritually, that is not necessarily a good thing to maintain.
Consider this: the presence of Jesus
as encountered by one member of the family
can bring transformation, change, and healing for that one.
But as one member of a family changes,
the balance of the family shifts, and the system is upset.
Systems seek equilibrium.
Jesus upsets equilibrium,
in that when one realizes his presence, everything changes.
It would seem that
if there is to be transformation, healing and growth,
this kind of disruption is a necessary step in the whole process.
Before peace in a family, comes discord.
This is risky
because there is uncertainty
about whether others in the family
will also at that time be willing to move toward change.
We all know of situations or relationships in which there is
a delicate balance that often is no more than
maintaining a status quo
precisely in order to avoid the dynamic interplay of relationships.
That story from Genesis gave us a good example of
a very touchy set of relationships
exploding with disastrous results for Hagar and her son,
and for the seemingly eternal rift between Muslim and Jew
in that part of the world.
Yet that story also presents the potential for reparations.
Upsetting the equilibrium can also be seen as opportunity,
the place where the Holy Spirit can work.
The same process applies in the life of a congregation.
When a faith community gathers on Sunday morning,
we engage in a deeply personal and intimate activity
– offering prayer, sharing communion.
Personal prayer is offered by each
within the context of corporate, liturgical prayer.
The personal prayer is so intimate, so close to the heart of our being,
that for many to express what that is out loud
in other than set liturgical forms
is like asking that person to take off their clothes in public.
Our personal prayer prayed from the heart
is an opening of self in great vulnerability.
The Eucharist we share is likewise
tremendously intimate and personal,
as well as a corporate act of coming to the dinner table together.
To eat the flesh of the one we call Lord and God
and to drink his blood
is such a graphic expression of taking into ourselves,
of letting into our bodies the Resurrection Jesus,
that we can hardly talk about it.
Yet here we are, Sunday by Sunday,
eating the flesh and drinking the blood
and opening our hearts to whatever degree we are able
to this awful and awesome Mystery of Life, Truth and Way.
Since the pandemic and the death and threat of death it brought,
the equilibrium of the mobile of every congregation
has been upset and knocked out of balance.
Now here is a truism:
Change is a constant.
But when we have had no say in what changes,
then we are challenged spiritually.
And at that point is when Jesus says these hard words:
“Whoever does not take up the cross and follow me
is not worthy of me.
Those who find their life will lose it,
and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”
So now here is where we turn to that third reading from Romans,
not the easiest of the Epistles to read.
Romans, chapter 6, with its mystical narration
of losing ourselves in the best way possible:
dying in our baptism,
downed to our old self-identity
and emerging from the water with an entirely new identity –
as a life eternally bonded in union with Christ.
Mystical language,
but also what we each can experience
in all the ways we are daily confronted
with what kills life in us
and how the Love of God reaches through that
to our consciousness
to let us know we live in Resurrection.
The Apostle Paul then exhorts us to
“consider yourselves – understand yourselves –
to be dead, dead to sin,
dead to what in your obstinacy will kill you spiritually
and alive – now – to God in Christ Jesus.
But change keeps happening:
A rector retires,
clergy come and go,
the leadership for worship changes,
the leadership for administration changes.
New people come, different from us.
Accepting them challenges us,
and yet they bring new gifts as well.
The mobile of the family system
finds a new configuration and balance.
The equilibrium gets shifted, as it must,
and within the disturbance of change
is the presence of the Resurrection Spirit of Jesus
presenting us with golden opportunities
for transformation, healing and growth
personally and as a faith community.
You know, mobiles are no fun
when they just hang there suspended from the ceiling
without moving.
They are much more interesting
when they dance in the breeze, the wind, the Spirit.
The balance is always changing.
Look where there is disturbance,
where the mobile is dancing wildly about.
Isn’t this just what Jesus was talking about.
Fear not,
be open to the Spirit for new aspects of spiritual growth.
Trust,
and above all love one another for our Lord’s sake.
And our Lord always says to all of us,
“Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?
Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father.
And even the hairs of your head are all counted.
So do not be afraid;
you are of more value than many sparrows.”
And, you know, God values the sparrows also.
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