Sermon Blog
|
Sermon Blog
|
Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, Virginia
Proper 11, Year A July 19, 2020 I was taking a college calculus test when the pain really started. At first, I thought I was just anxious, but then I started sweating and having severe stomach pain. It was my last class before Spring Break, so when I finished, I caught up with a friend who was my ride home. It was a miserable journey as the pain got worse and the fever and chills started. When I arrived at home, I greeted my parents, and went straight to bed. My sleep was more than fitful, and by morning we all agreed something was really wrong. We called my doctor and he said to go straight to the emergency room, which we did. There began a medical mystery tour began with blood work, x-rays, and scans. They ruled out stomach flu and food poisoning, and all kinds of scary diseases, but the pain continued to worsen and the fevers kept spiking. I knew that something was really wrong and it was not getting better. Finally, one of the scans revealed excess fluid in my belly so, they decided to do exploratory surgery and find the cause. My parents were worried. I was worried. It became clear that I would not have any kind of quality Spring Break. Fast forward several hours. I came to in the recovery room, and the doctor asked me how I felt. I was in pain from the incision, but I told him that whatever it was, I could tell he got it. You know you must be pretty sick when you wake up from surgery feeling better than you did when you went in. As it turns out, I had a complicated case of appendicitis. There had been a rupture and I was septic. In the days before powerful antibiotics, I would have died. It took a month to recover and I lost a total of 45 pounds. I could not stand up straight or lift anything heavy. I still bear a large scar as a reminder of that harrowing experience. That same general surgeon operated on my father’s neck a few years ago, and he remembered my vexing case some 30 years later. I am still amazed at how I knew and could tell immediately that the surgery had worked. It was a powerful lesson in healing that I have encountered a number of different times in different ways throughout my life. When a broken relationship was mended, my whole being felt better. When I told the truth and took responsibility for my own shortcomings, I was able to forgive more easily. Jesus told his disciples that in naming the splinter in someone else’s eye, we often miss the log in our own. As such, we are all a work in progress, striving at times, and failing miserably at others. In hurting and healing, I have come to believe that we are not the sum of the worst we have been or the worst we have done. This is particularly poignant in the current state of our seemingly ruthless cancel culture. Cancel culture describes a form of boycott in which an individual (usually a celebrity or public figure) who has acted or spoken in a questionable or controversial manner is shamed and shunned. While some who need to be called to account, and telling the truth is important, cancel culture leaves no room for repentance, contrition, forgiveness, and reconciliation. And it seems that just about every corporate or public entity these days is scrambling to make a public statement, declaring what will and will not be tolerated, and offering whatever amends to get ahead of the cancel culture curve. Given the context, this week’s gospel parable of the wheat and the weeds is timely and poignant. This is another of Jesus’s agrarian metaphors in which the wheat field has been infiltrated by one who sows weeds in order to ruin the crop. He calls the perpetrator the evil one and the devil, who is meant to be the personification of divisive sin and destruction. In the story, the workers ask the farmer if they should go out and pluck up all the weeds, but the wise farmer tells them not to do so as in plucking up weeds, they might pluck up the wheat. Instead, he tells them to wait until the harvest when wheat and weeds can be separated. Time and time again, this week’s parable, like last week’s parable, has been leveraged as commentary on the difference between the true believer and those who do not measure up. The history of the Church is littered with groups and sects who claim righteous purity and choose to isolate themselves from those they judge as weeds. The seeds of cancel culture are not new to the scene. Inevitably, those who set themselves up as more righteous fail, finding that human sin follows them wherever they go. Mega pastors, televangelists, and politicians seem to be some of the most vulnerable as they tend to be the most strident in their condemnations. Once again, it is important to remember that the parable of the wheat and the weeds is about God, and not the righteousness of human works. While the description of the end of days and the separation of the wheat and the weeds can sound final and foreboding, perhaps there is more comfort there than we might first expect. In the end, at the time of the harvest, Jesus says the angels will come and collect all causes of sin and evil doing and throw it in the fire. Given the fact that we are all that work in progress, and that we are not either purely great or completely rotten, God knows our flawed raw material. And if a surgeon can remove causes of pain and disease, surely God Almighty can, and will, weed out that which separates us from God and one another. While cancel culture and the short-lived mercy of humanity might lead us to believe that we are in our we are out, we are good or we are bad, that we are wheat or we are weeds, the economy of God is broader and more encompassing. This is the God who lets the whole crop grow together. This is the God who sends Jesus to show us a wide, deep, and forgiving love. This is our God who promises never to leave us or forsake us, even when we are at our worst. The big take away is that we might go a bit easier on ourselves and on one another. We might consider that we are not the judge, jury, or arbiter of who and what is worthy of love. And if we can summon a small measure of the love God has for us and convert that into our own ways of seeing, doing, and being, we will know in that knowing place that we will be healed, and there is hope for all to shine like the sun. Amen. Comments are closed.
|
AuthorThe Rev. John Thomas is Rector of Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood Archives
October 2024
Categories |
Telephone |
|