Eye on the Ball

Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, Virginia
Proper 7, Year A
June 21, 2020
The Rev. John Taliaferro Thomas
 
We got married.  We bought a small house.  We started new jobs.  And then, we got a puppy – our first child.  We named her Grace.  She was a lumpy, chunky Black Labrador Retriever, and we spoiled her rotten.  She climbed into our laps, onto our couches, and she commanded much of our attention and love. 
 
We got all of the stuff: matching collar and leash, sizeable food and water bowls, and a plethora of toys.  We tried to keep her interested in her things, but Grace loved to chew our things too: fringes of rugs, chair legs, and socks left on the floor.  But nothing even came close to her obsession with the tennis ball.  She learned to fetch at ten weeks old.  Soon thereafter, she learned to swim and fetch the ball in the water.  Twice a day we took her for a walk, a swim and a long game of fetch.  We could not wear her out.  She had boundless energy.  I threw until my arm was sore.  She never stopped.
 
When we returned home and left her in the back yard to dry off, she would toss the ball at the door, bark, and beg for more.  When we hid the ball, she found where we hid it, stood near it, and barked.  Once, when throwing the ball in the water, Grace cut the pad of her foot on an oyster shell.  Bleeding profusely all over our friend’s dock, she rolled the ball to us, begging to keep playing.  Her natural retrieving instincts, her persistence, and her commitment to the ball were amazing.  Even in her advanced age with arthritis and all that came with it, Grace never gave up her drive.  You have to admire that spirit, even if it was annoying.
 
When I read the gospel for today, and consider the singlemindedness Jesus commands, I think about Grace’ dogged determination.  In the passage, we find Jesus giving his disciples instruction and warnings about all of the things that will stand in the way of following the Way of Love.  In their context, they faced threats from both the dominant religious establishment and the occupation authorities just trying to keep good order.  In shocking and attention getting imagery, Jesus outlines the potential costs of discipleship.  What he asks for is wholehearted commitment, even when it is uncomfortable, unexpected, or unsettling.  This is his way of telling his followers to keep the main thing the main thing, no matter what.  To stretch the metaphor, we are to keep our eye on the ball at all times.
 
This is not gentle Jesus, meek, and mild.  This not a savior who will make peace at the cost of doing God’s will.  This is not the Jesus we might like to style after our own desires and preferences.  This is the Jesus who comes to comfort the afflicted, yes, but who also comes to afflict the comfortable.  And this begs the question for us would be followers, where do we need to be challenged, confronted, and changed.
 
Not only do I think about my single-minded black lab today, but I consider the deep spiritual reflection of the modern author Annie Dillard from her classic collections of essays called Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.  Though it was written in the 70’s it still stands up well.  In one essay she reflects on our mission saying:
 
    “On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely  invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children  playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.”

So, what are we do?  We are to follow Jesus, with dogged determination.  That sounds simplistic, but if we read into his Word today, this is the way forward.  First, we do not knuckle under to, or make friends with, oppression of coercion.  And while we have international and national concerns, the place where we have the most and most effective influence is local and immediate.  The change Jesus urges in us starts at home in our own hearts and minds.
 
If you are like me, the events of the past several months have had immense impact on our world view, challenging our values and assumptions.  It is not up to me or anyone else to take a moral inventory of everyone else, but I do know that being a person of love, forgiveness, and healing is deeply complicated in considering matters of public safety, racial equity, and living at peace with all people.
 
The real kicker in this challenging passage comes at the end.  “Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”  This draws us into what is most essential and is most assuredly the center of God’s truth: we are in this together.  That has been said about the virus and the challenges it has posed, but it is also true when it comes to matters of justice, equity, and inclusion.
 
There is a toxic nature to what we experience as “cancel culture” is where conversation is overcome by shouting and righteous indignation is overcome by rage.  In living out the truth of togetherness, we are bound to be in conflict.  But that is only a stuck place and not a stopping place.
 
No matter what narrative gets perpetrated from the polar extremes, there are plenty of people of good will who want to find our way forward together, not as one race or another, but as the human race, children of God, and aspiring disciples.  We will not always get it right, but we will always have the embrace of a risen Christ to show us sacrificial love in person.  People of God have the faith and the mandate to stand for better, and wrestle with the complexities of life in communion.
 
If today’s gospel disturbs us, perhaps that is the point.  It stands as a stark challenge the disciples then and for us here and now.  Now, as much as ever, the world needs the Church’s witness.  It needs our language of reconciliation.  It needs our focus on love as the highest and best of all.  It needs our affirmation of God’s steadfastlove that will never move away from pain or struggle.  Never.  Ever.  And that is Good News.  Amen.