Epiphany 5 2025 Scout Sunday

Blessed be God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires, and from the secrets are hidden.

Lense the thoughts of our hearts, the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, be perfectly of you, and wordily magnify your holy name through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Also let us pray.

Almighty and everlasting God, you govern all things both in heaven and on earth.

Mercifully hear the supplications of your people, and in our time grant us your peace.

Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.

Amen.

Prayer for Scouters.

Dear Lord, from your judgment seat on high.

Look down on scout such as I am.

Search me through and find me whole.

And help me, Lord, to reach my love.

Help me, Lord, to work for thee.

Guard my own land to keep it free.

Help me to work with others and be kind.

Helpful with my hands and mind.

Keep me, Lord, both well and strong, to help growing girls and boys along.

Inspire my thoughts, leave them right, sound, clean tools for life's right.

Protect my morals, keep them high.

Grant this to a scouter such as I.

Does anybody see anything that's like not normal this morning?

Yes.

Yeah, normally Scouts meeting Kristall, and today we're very grateful that our scouting families have chosen to join us for worship in the sanctuary.

So we've got a whole new class of people this morning.

Thanks everybody.

Appreciate that.

Make the things that look different.

Hope, what do you see?

Yeah, the flags are out.

Now, normally we don't process those, but we've done this this morning because a big part of scouting, right, is reminding ourselves who we're in relationship with.

So the flags symbolize we're in relationship with the Episcopal Church, with the state of Texas, with the United States, with our own troops, well, with the parish here at St.

Thomas, and with our Scottish heritage.

So all of those flags are reminding us who we're in relationship with.

Fantastic.

Some low-hanging fruit yol.

I don't normally dress like this on Sundays.

I just have to be honest.

About once a year, I put on the outfit.

And I'm going to tell you a secret.

I wasn't a scout when I was a kid.

We didn't have it for I was running.

We didn't have it.

And I don't think my parents would have wanted to go camping anyway.

I think that would have been a no.

So we didn't have it.

So why am I wearing this uniform?

Because we have scouting here, and I do this thing called I'm the Charter Representative.

So I'm like the one who gets to interact between the church and the scouts.

Does anybody know anything about scouts?

This is really good to ask.

Scouts are supposed to do something every day.

This is like the basic thing.

Have fun is great.

Yes, having fun is good.

And then there's another thing scouts are supposed to do every day, because you're not wrong.

We're supposed to have fun.

Show respect for teachers.

There's a phrase we use in scouting called do a good turn.

Do a good turn.

Now, maybe you haven't heard that phrase in your den.

EJ, what's it mean to do a good turn?

To help others.

Now, here's a great question.

Are you going to solve cancer as a scout?

I mean, you might, but probably not yet, right?

Are you going to eliminate world hunger by doing a good turn for somebody who's hungry?

Not you by yourself.

But what would happen if enough of us did a good turn when we could?

It might take a while, but it might also change the world, right?

So scouting reminds us, nobody can do everything.

And everybody can do something.

Nobody can do everything.

And everybody can do something.

So scouting is this great reminder when you see a problem.

You may not be able to fix that.

But what can you make right?

But what can you make right?

What can you make right today?

Yeah.

What are some things you think you ought to do?

Yeah.

Oh my gosh, you could recruit other people to help.

Maybe you don't know how to solve a problem, but you see it and you know it's a problem, and you're not going to let it slide.

Boy, out of the mouths of children, right?

Talk about wisdom.

How often do we say, I can't do that, so I quit?

I can't do that, but I'll find someone who can help me.

Thank you.

Brilliant.

You know, I saw somebody do, I saw a couple people yesterday.

I saw E.J.

do this, I saw Holt do this, I saw Eleanor do this, and I saw Teddy do this yesterday.

There were some people who have what we call food insecurity.

They don't have enough to eat.

And I saw each of those people help sort food in bags and put it in people's cars so they have a little more security.

Will they be hungry again later?

But they're not hungry today.

Because we chose a particular good turn.

You're going to hear that in different language in the readings this morning.

But I want you to remember doing a good turn, good turn is the basis of scouting.

Do a good turn when you can, because what we remind ourselves is we can do more together.

Thanks for coming.

And she said to Elijah, What is between me and thee, man of God?

You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance and to kill my child.

Then he said to her, Give me your child, and he took the child from her bosom and carried the child up into the room upstairs where he, Elijah, was saved, and laid the child on his own bed.

Then he cried out to the Holy One of old, Holy One, my God, have you actually wrought evil upon the widow with whom I subjourned by kissing her child?

And Elijah stretched himself out upon the child three times and cried out to the Most High, Holy One, my God, let this child's soul come unto him again.

And the Most High God ascended to the voice of Elijah.

And the soul of the child came into him again, and he revived.

Then Elijah took and brought the child down from the house upstairs room and gave the child to the mother and said, Look, your child lives.

So the woman said to Elijah, Now, now this I know.

You are a man of God, and the word of the Holy One holds in your mouth is true.

God encourages the Eagle Scout and Golden War Scout in their upward climb.

Even though the trails may lead through dark valleys with towering mountains, we are courageous because the Lord God leads us on our enemies dislike or distrust us, God blesses us with the gifts of love and forgiveness.

If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching has been in vain, along with your faith.

Whom God did not raise, if the dead are not raised.

And if Christ has not yet been raised, your faith is useless, and you are yet in your sins, and therefore those who have died in Christ have been destroyed.

If for this life we have only hoped in Christ, we are of all people most pitiful.

But now, indeed, Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died.

But now, the Messiah has been raised from the dead, the first fruit of those who have fallen, asleep.

For because though mortal came death, then also through a mortal resurrection of the dead has come.

For this as an Adam all die.

Thus, in the Messiah, all will be made alive.

But each person in their own order.

The first fruit is the Messiah.

Afterward, they that are the Messiahs at his coming.

Then comes the end, where he hands over the sovereignty of a god after the Messiah has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power.

For the Messiah must reign until having put all enemies underfoot.

The last enemy to be destroyed is dead.

The word of the Lord.

Glory to you, Lord Christ.

And his disciples and a large crowd went with him.

He just approached the gate of the town, and suddenly, being carried out, was a man who had died, his mother's only son, and she was a widow.

With her was a large crowd from the town.

When the Messiah saw her, he had compassion on her, and he said to her, Do not weep.

Then Jesus came forward and touched the coffin, and the bearers stood still, and he said, Young man, I say to you, rise.

The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his lips.

Fear seized all of them, and they glorified God, saying, A great prophet has risen among us, and God visited God's people.

And this word about Jesus spread throughout Judea and all the surrounding country.

The gospel of the Lord.

Amen.

Special welcome to our scattering families.

We know that you make choices every week and that many of you have chosen to worship with us today instead of your own church.

So thank you for that.

I do want to let you know one of the things we do here in the Episcopal Church is not pick the readings.

I might have picked different ones.

These are the ones that we were given today, so I better talk about what we read.

But if at any point you've Find yourself more, it's totally okay.

There's a lot to look at in here and just let your mind drift truly.

So I may bore you, disclaimer.

I may even bore myself, we'll find out.

But I do want to talk about these readings because we don't get them combined like this often.

And honestly, this is kind of our annual reminder that we often are not really clear about what the word resurrection means.

We usually think resurrection is like, oh, that's when you die and you come back to life.

And that's kind of right, but it kind of is not right.

When you die and you come back to life, that's a word we have in English called resuscitation.

It happens all over the time.

Some of our military units are trained using the resuscitation method.

Like our SEALs often are purposefully drowned and resuscitated so that they know what drowning is like.

I hope that makes sense as part of their training.

They need to know because they could be in that situation and they need to have dealt with it.

This is what we decided as a military.

We're already clear they will die again.

I hope that makes sense what I'm saying.

When you're resuscitated, you get your life back for a bit.

Contrast that with resurrection.

Jesus, as the only resurrected individual in the Bible, dies, but will never die again.

When you're resuscitated, whatever it is that took you over the drink needs to be dealt with and healed.

Right?

Like if you're deprived of oxygen, you need the oxygen so your lungs can heal.

When you're resuscitated, whatever took you over to the drink never goes away.

I don't know if we think about this often.

The resurrected Jesus isn't a perfect human, he's a disabled one.

He carries these marks around, not just for the rest of his time with the disciples, he brings them into eternity.

And on proofs before, the resurrected Jesus is disabled.

Because when you put a railroad spike here, it disables your tendons.

The resurrected Jesus is not Hulk Hogan.

The resurrected Jesus has a paired function.

Resurrection is not afraid of disability or woundedness.

Resuscitation is.

And this is Paul reminding us that sometimes we hope for resuscitation when the gospel hope is for resurrection.

Sometimes we think we found new life and all our problems are solved instead of our problems are beautified.

With resuscitation, we fear pain.

With resurrection, we understand that pain can be transformed.

Why did I need to say this?

Because we give two stories of resuscitation.

To be clear, both of these women's sons will die again.

To be very clear, Jesus did not come to solve us physically dying.

I don't know if you read this at the end of Corinthians with me.

The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

That really probably should have a capital D.

Because clearly we're all going to die in the room.

I don't want to be morbid, but we're going to.

Jesus didn't come to destroy our physical death.

He came to destroy death with a capital D.

That is isolation.

Fear.

Suffering.

Lack of dignity.

Thinking God hates you.

Jesus came to destroy that death.

The truth is there were a bunch of widows around the time of Jesus that lost their children and they didn't get them back.

There are widows today who will lose their children and they won't get them back.

I'm not saying anything on a turn, am I?

This is the reality we know.

This is the reality we know.

The thing we get that's interesting, I know the root, I don't, I didn't ask her, I didn't interview her, but I'm pretty sure we get this story about Elijah because Jesus echoes it in a different way.

They're both about a widow who's lost her son.

Do you notice what the Bible is so clever?

The Bible knows exactly how we feel.

I want to make sure you read that.

How we feel.

Our feelings are real and they're not always true.

Here's how the widow feels.

God killed my son.

Elijah says, God, you killed your son.

We feel like that, don't we?

How could you do this to me, God?

How could you do this to me God?

As if God is making a naughty and nice list.

And when the naughty column outweighs the nice, you get a thunderbolt.

Actually, that's more about Zeus than it is about God.

But we feel that way.

What did I do to get this speeding ticket to speed it?

I just want to be really clear.

But other people did, and I got it.

Why me?

Because the officer picked you.

I mean, I don't really know what to say.

But God's not a Libra.

I am, but God's not.

So I just want to remind us that our feelings are real and they're not always true.

So what's this deal about Jesus and the widow?

Well, Jesus goes to a town called Maine, which actually means pleasant.

He goes to Pleasantville.

And there's something unpleasant happening in Pleasantville.

There's a funeral procession.

I don't want to offend you, but I want to make sure you understand culturally, this is a different world in some ways from the one we live in.

I wish it were more different.

In the ancient world that Jesus lives in, a widow has two strikes against her.

The first strike she has is that she's a woman.

Because women can't own their own land or property or businesses.

The second strike she has is that her husband who could own that stuff is now dead.

Three strikes, she's out because her son, the one who now gets her husband's stuff, is dead.

Strike one, you're a woman, strike two, you're a widow, strike three, your son's dead.

So what will she do now since she can't own the house she's living in?

Well, she'll move out.

Where will she move?

Perhaps with her father, if he's still alive.

Perhaps under a bridge.

Perhaps in one of those houses of ill repute you find in New Orleans, because those are the options.

One, two, three.

This is a little bit more serious than what we talked about with our scouts up here.

Purposefully so, because this is what we read.

I didn't pick these, this is what we read.

And I want you to hear a couple of things about this.

Number one, Jesus doesn't take care of widows losing their kids.

That's still a problem.

Number two, not even Jesus could change social structures.

Not even Jesus could change social structures.

Sean reminded me of this after 8 o'clock.

Do you remember what Jesus does when he's on the cross?

He looks down and he sees his mother Mary, and he says, Mama, here's your new son.

We think that was John.

John, here's your new mom.

Because in the society we live in, you've got to have a son.

Jesus didn't do what Ruth Vader Ginsburg did.

Allow women to have credit cards in the late 1970s.

I hope you know what I'm talking about.

If you don't, let me tell you, women couldn't have credit cards until the late 1970s because of Justice Ruth Vader-Ginsburg, who has been called many things like a wild dog and not in a peaceful way.

But I hope you hear she was doing a thing that Jesus himself couldn't do.

Change structures of the world.

Because none of us could change a structure by ourselves.

Actually, I think that's what the story's about.

I can't change a structure by myself, so what's before me is to do a good turn.

Which is the motto of Scalp.

So often we look at a structure and we say, I can't change that, so we do nothing.

I can't change that social problem, so I'll complain about it.

I can't change that problem, so I'll ratchet up my anxiety until I physically suffer.

What does Jesus do?

He touches a coffin.

He touches a dead place and he says, stop what you're doing.

It's only effective for all time if we dare do what Jesus himself did, which is say, stop right here.

And I want to remind us all that sometimes the good turn before us is to say, stop the procession.

Now I have recently heard remarks on national news about things I would rather have stopped in procession.

So I want to be really clear that if you find yourself with an amputation, you are dignified and loved by God and fully competent and capable.

If you have an amputation, you are able to serve your country and the world and do it faithfully and well as a genius or a talented individual.

Stop that procession.

I hope you hear, even when we read these sacred stories in church, that it's sweet to have husbands and kids take care of you as a woman, but what would be much sweeter is if you were respected for being a woman as a human being.

Stop the procession.

It's really sweet to have people carry your wheelchair up to communion.

It's a lot sweeter when you can push it yourself.

So let's stop that procession.

If we don't, who will?

Of course we know that an infinite three-dimensional surface, a little 2D slice doesn't quite comprise the volume.

Speaking as a mathematician here, we live across the street from NASA.

But of course, I hope you know if you studied calculus, the way we figured out the power rule is with the Riemann sum.

That is, when you take infinite little pieces and put them together, they make a three-dimensional surface.

So what does it take for us to stop the procession?

It takes us doing our own little slice faithfully.

And maybe not even endlessly.

The scouts don't tell us to do a good turn every second.

Because you've got to sleep.

The scouts ask us to do a good turn a day.

To do a good turn a day.

Sometimes doing a good turn and stopping the procession feels like you're gonna get in the coffin yourself.

I just want to name that.

Sometimes it feels like death to say, you know what, I really don't appreciate that joke.

I mean, I get the humor of it, and it's offensive to me.

You talk about losing friends.

Losing friends feels like getting in the coffin, does it not?

And the Lord wasn't afraid to touch the coffin.

The Lord wasn't afraid to touch the coffin, and sure enough, one day he ends up in it himself.

Mainly because he kept doing it.

That's why we have before us the difference you see between the resurrected life and the resuscitated life.

I don't even know that we have to be public all the time with our good terms.

I don't even know that we have to be public.

But I do know this.

When waves of sound wash over us that say it is just common sense that people who look different can't do their jobs competently.

When that washes over us, we joined the procession, we didn't stop it.

I'm not saying we need to pick it, but I am saying we need to say, I'm not doing that with you.

I'm not doing that with you.

And I want to make sure you hear, I'm not talking about any individual because the truth is we all participate in this procession of death.

The kind that God's interested in getting rid of.

We all participate.

So that if you find yourself critical of a human being because of something they said, you join the procession.

We're critical of what was said, not who said it.

Well, that's what I think.

Because after all, who did Jesus give up on?

Well, nobody.

On the night before he died, our Lord Jesus Christ knew who at the table was going to betray him, and he broke the bread and said, Here it is for you.

That was like getting in the coffin, which is a good thing.

There's a resurrected life in store for us if we choose, if we choose to do well with the dairy bit.

And if all of that washed over you or bored you, or was over technical, or even just sounded a little heretical in here this do a good turn each day, and that's where resurrection is to be found.