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Sermon Blog
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Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, Virginia
Easter VI, Year C May 22, 2022 The picture on the front of you bulletin today is one by a new artist. He has broken free from all historical or established schools of painting. The labels of classical, baroque, rococo, neo classical, romantic, impressionist, expressionist, cubist, surrealist, and any other defined style cannot be applied to this freer expression. The painting is, really, fascinating. It suggests movement and life without specificity. Perhaps, we see body shapes, parts, trees and animals. The color is rich, but not exaggerated. The painting is eight feet high and twenty feet long. Its painter grew up in Wyoming, and moved to New York, working as a museum janitor. An art loving woman saw some of his work, spotted him 150 dollars a month to paint, and to offset her stipend, she kept or sold the paintings. In 1943, $150.00 a month was decent wage. Such a deal. I said this artist is new, but that is a relative term when it comes to art. The patron was a woman named Guggenheim, and she never sold this painting. She gave it to the University of Iowa, as long as they would pay for shipping. Its current estimated worth is 140 million dollars. The artist is Jackson Pollock. This is such a great story of possibility, precarity, convention bending, rule defying, profligate spending, and potential. If Pollock were alive today, intellectual/creative property lawyers would have a field day, but the rules then were the rules. Pollock never sought further compensation. Once “discovered,” he made plenty of money with Guggenheim’s encouragement. Though valuable and revered, Pollock’s his art does not fall into any particular and defined style. The rule he brought about in his art is that there are no rules. This is all well and good for art, but when it comes to the real world, we like to know the rules. Rules give us guidelines, standards, and structure. Rules tell us what to do, what not to do, and how to behave. Many rules are conventional, implied, and passed along from parents to children. Other rules have to be established, written, communicated, and enforced. Rules range from basic expectations to codified law. Consequences for breaking rules vary from social correction to sanction to specified legal ramifications. Rules are great, except when they are inconsistent. What the younger child can do on weekends tends to be more liberal than the older child was allowed. In one of my schools, we did not have enough parking for all the students who could drive, so it was restricted to seniors only. There was more acrimony about that rule than just about anything. We like for rules to be fair, even though we all know that life is rarely fair. Rules for landowning white people used to be different that they were for others. Rules for men were different than rules for women. Societal and legal changes are dynamic as culture changes. As law and some culture changes, those who benefit from and revere the old rules tend to resist and fight changes. Those in power like to keep it. We could go on about that, and have some really heated argument. The Church is loaded with rules. Sure, we impose them on ourselves, but we band together hard to keep them. We worship with certain words, certain texts, decently, and in order. And hell hath no fury like Episcopalians reacting rule changes, to wit: the old fight over high church liturgy and low church liturgy, Prayer Book revision in 1928 and 1979, the ordination of women, and the ordination of gay people. All of these resulted in breakaway factions, new denominations, complete with a new set of rules in a so-called effort to be more faithful, more pure, more right with God than the apostate folks they left behind. At our worse, we litigate such matters in secular courts, at our best we laugh at ourselves, and accept difference and change as a sign of the Spirit moving us. Rules help keep us together and rules tear us apart. What do we do with that? The last line of the Gospel we read today drops a crucial detail, and one we might miss on our way to settling in for a sermon about healing. It reads: “Now that day was the Sabbath.” The story is that Jesus goes to Jerusalem for a festival, enters at the Sheep Gate, and there is a spring fed pool there that bubbles up fresh water on a regular basis. Because sheep going to market are washed in that water, it is filled with lanolin, a natural balm and salve. People with all kinds of infirmities bathe in the water when it bubbles up, and the natural oils are soothing. There is a man there who is ill and has been there for 38 years. Jesus asks the man if he wants to be made well, which is a whole sermon for another day. Right there and then Jesus says Stand up, take your mat and walk.” The man does and we see this as a miracle. I have to believe there is more to the story. Then, there is that last detail: “Now that day was a sabbath.” The religious rules were clear, fixed, and serious. The Sabbath was a day on which work was forbidden. All work. Picking up a mat would be defined as work. Healing someone would be defined as work. Even today, the strictest of the orthodox in Judaism will not turn dials on the oven to make the roast, or punch an elevator button to go up or down. It is a beautiful practice with some obvious down sides. On the one hand, Jesus follows the rules. He goes up to the Temple for the festival. And on the other, he smashes the Sabbath barrier to heal and help. This is not the first time and it is not the last. He is clear and convincing in his explanation. The law is a human thing. Because we are apt to be selfish, inconsiderate, and wily, we need some order to live in community. The law is good where it brings grace. The law is an idol hinderance when it is wielded to subvert, separate, or prevent God’s blessing for all people, and even, the rest of creation. We do not sit easy in interpreting this event. We like to insert psychological analysis, and theories of change in the man who sat for 38 years playing aggrieved victim. But what about the rules, Jesus, what about the rules? Jesus tells us that he comes to save us, and yet, he goes to the cross, looking more like one needing saving than a Savior. The Easter event, however, blasts us with fresh perspective, new thinking, and a completely broken old idea that death is the end. Rising from death to life defies the rules. We got that wrong. So, what else do we get wrong? Rules are stated with periods and exclamation points. We need that punctuation to be clear. Here, Jesus shows us the absolute value of the question mark. Do we have to break some rules to set things right? Jesus does. As we are not Jesus, we are better off seeing life as free flowing art rather than paint by numbers. Something beautiful can be recreated from old shapes and dynamic color. Jesus does that. God does that. The Spirit does not follow rules. We, my friends, are God’s work of art. Amen. Comments are closed.
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AuthorThe Rev. John Thomas is Rector of Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood Archives
October 2024
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