Pentecost 6 2023 Bob Flick

Good morning, how are you?

Thank you.

Good morning.

Good morning.

I don't know where she is.

She's usually.

Number five eighteen in the hymnal.

Five eighteen.

Lord is Christianity.

Hallelujah.

Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid.

Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you and worthily magnify your holy name, your Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Welcome.

Although y'all have already welcomed me, I was here at the eight as well.

My name is Bob Flick.

I'm a Franciscan.

I'm a priest of the Diocese of Texas.

I'm a retiree.

My last uh parish was Lord of the Streets in downtown Houston.

I mentioned that only because so many of you, or many of you from this congregation, have been so involved here and so dedicated to the mission of Lord of the Streets, a community of people who find themselves without homes that live on the streets of Houston and particularly in Midtown.

So it's great to be here, and I'm honored to be able to pray with you all this Sunday morning as we gather.

The Lord be with you.

Let us pray.

Oh God, you have taught us to keep all your commandments by loving you and by loving our neighbor and by loving ourselves.

Grant us the grace of your Holy Spirit that we may be devoted to you with our whole heart and united to one another with pure affection.

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

Amen.

The Lord has greatly blessed my master, and he has become wealthy.

He has given him flocks and herds, silver and gold, male and female slaves, camels and donkeys.

And Sarah, my master's wife, bore a son to my master when she was old, and he has given him all that he has.

My master made me swear, saying, You shall not take a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites in whose land I live, but you shall go to my father's house, to my kindred, and get a wife for my son.

I came today to the spring and said, O Lord, the God of my master Abraham, if now you will only make successful the way I am going, I am standing here by the spring of water.

Let the young woman who comes out to draw, to whom I shall say, Please give me a little water from your jar to drink, and who will say to me, Drink, and I will draw for your camels also.

Let her be the woman whom the Lord has appointed for my master's son.

Before I had finished speaking in my heart, there was Rebecca coming out with her water jar on her shoulder, and she went down to the spring and drew.

I said to her, Please let me drink.

She quickly let down her jar from her shoulder and said, Drink, and I will also water your camels.

So I drank, and she also watered the camels.

Then I asked her, Whose daughter are you?

She said, The daughter of Bethuel, Nahor's son, whom Milka bore to him.

So I put the ring on her nose and the bracelets on her arms.

Then I bowed my head and worshiped the Lord and blessed the Lord, the God of my master Abraham, who had led me by the right way to obtain the daughter of my master's kinsman for his son.

Now then, if you will deal loyally and truly with my master, tell me.

If not, tell me, so that I may turn either to the right hand or to the left.

And they called Rebekah and said to her, Will you go with this man?

She said, I will.

So they sent away their sister Rebekah and her nurse along with Abraham's servant and his men.

And they blessed Rebekah and said to her, May you, our sister, become thousands of myriads.

May your offspring gain possession of the gates of their foes.

Then Rebekah and her maids rose up, mounted the camels, and followed the man.

Thus the servant took Rebekah and went his way.

Now Isaac had come from Beer Lahai and was settled in the Neget.

Isaac went out in the evening to walk in the field, and looking up, he saw camels coming.

And Rebekah looked up, and when she saw Isaac, she slipped quickly from the camel and said to the servant, Who is this man over there walking in the field to meet us?

The servant said, It is my master.

So she took her veil and covered herself.

And the servant told Isaac all the things that he had done.

And Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah's tent.

He took Rebecca and she became his wife.

And he loved her.

So Isaac was comforted after his mother's death.

Hear what the Spirit is saying to God's people.

The song appointed for today is from the Song of Solomon.

Please read with me in unison together.

The voice of my beloved, look, he comes, leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills.

My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag.

Look, there he stands behind our wall, gazing in at the windows, looking through the lattice.

My beloved speaks and says to me, Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.

For now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone, the flowers appear on the earth, the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtle dove is heard in our land.

The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom.

They give forth fragrance.

Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.

For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.

Now, if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good.

But in fact, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me.

For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is in my flesh.

I can will what is right, but I cannot do it.

For I do not do the good I want.

But the evil I do, it is no longer that I do it, but sin that dwells within me.

So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand.

For I delight in the law of God in my innermost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.

Wretched man that I am, I who will rescue me from this body of death?

Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Hear what the Spirit is saying to God's people.

This is a reading from the Holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Matthew.

Glory to you, Lord Christ.

And Jesus said, To what will I compare this generation?

It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another.

We played the flute for you and you did not dance.

We wailed and you did not mourn.

For John came, neither eating nor drinking, and they said, He is a demon.

He has a demon.

The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and of sinners.

Yet wisdom is vindicated by your deeds.

At that time, Jesus said, I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and of earth.

Because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent, and have revealed them to enemies.

Yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.

All things have been handed over by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.

Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me.

For I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

The gospel, the good news of the Lord! In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Have a seat.

Unless you want to stand, that's okay.

I must confess that when I read these readings early on in the week, I always print them out early in the week and then spend time with them over the days of the week trying to figure out what's going on to put them together and find some kind of a common theme.

And for me, this was a challenging week.

Some weeks they just kind of flow and they scream out at you, and some weeks they don't.

And this was one of those they didn't weeks.

And so by the time things came together, though, honestly, it was a pretty profound, I had a pretty profound sense that God is kind of uh calling us into uh into something deep as we uh try to unpack and crack open our readings today.

In the first reading, uh we find kind of uh in the middle of sort of a little novella in Genesis where we're hearing the stories of Abraham and Sarah and how they got married and all that stuff.

You if you were here at church, you've heard them over the last couple weeks.

And today we're you know, we're hearing, well, and and then of course uh the birth of their son Isaac, and and today we hear uh how it was that Isaac's uh wife Rebecca came to be a call to be his wife.

And all that could be taken as a kind of a cool little story, and very interesting, sort of uh, you know, the in Genesis in a in a very interesting way sort of build some personality around all these people, and it's interesting, you know, picturing uh Rebecca with a ring in her nose and what that might look like, and all the you know, the stuff of these stories is intriguing.

But what came to me in all of this was that profound sense of the action of God in the life of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, that in and and and uh uh their and Rebecca and and Sarah, and uh, you know, and and how it was that God's hand was engaged in their very life, and in through all these uh initial uh generations in the family of Abraham, and how it was that in this reading of the the servant of Abraham who was involved in finding Rebecca was so thrilled that that God had answered his prayer and that that Rebekah was uh was going to, as it were, sign on to this marriage, and how things were working out because God was part of the story and the sustaining life of this Abraham, founder of faith, uh the first one to commit himself and his life to our God, to one God, uh, was uh so being taken care of by that God, being cared for, being connected to the action, the real action of God in the world.

In the second reading, uh I'm a therapist, and I was kind of thinking, it felt like St.

Paul was a stuff of psychotherapy in this reading, you know, from Romans, where uh Paul just sounds so quite confused, and he goes on about you know, sort of that interior fight that happens when he's trying to make decisions, when he's trying to move forward, when he's trying to please the Lord, when he's trying to do what is right, he's struggling inside himself.

You know, and and Paul, you know, in that in that experience sort of makes explicit in the readings today how painful that was for him.

But in the end, in the last sentence, you know, he but who will rescue me from this body of death?

Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

In the end, all of his interior struggle and pain and making the right decisions in his life is founded in the action of Jesus in his life, is grounded in Jesus' presence in that decision, in those decision-making processes.

And the gospel we get something of the same thing.

In chapters 11 and 12 of Matthew, uh, we hear the frustration of Jesus throughout those uh those chapters.

And we heard it today.

You know, he said, you know, John comes and he he fasts and he gets in trouble for it.

And I come, Jesus says, and I'm, you know, uh, and I, you know, bring all kinds of messages about the Father, and I do this and I do that, and and I get in trouble for it.

And then he's frustrated and says, Well, you know, what is this generation?

What is going on?

I'm, of course, uh wildly ad-libbing, um, but you get the message.

You know, what is going on, Jesus said.

What is happening?

And within chapters 11 and 12, you also get these little interjections.

And we got one here today, the second part of the reading, where uh Jesus kind of falls into a kind of a prayer.

He says, I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent, and you have revealed them to infants.

And he goes on, and in the end he says, Come to me, all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

Twice in that sentence, the word, in those sentences, the word yoke is used.

And typically in the in the scriptures, when we use the word yoke, especially in the New Testament, it's really talking about the Old Testament law.

And so Jesus is contrasting his yoke with the yoke of the Old Testament, the Hebrew law, and how burdensome that was.

And he's saying, but my yoke is easy, my burden is light.

And so it begs the question: what is Jesus' yoke?

What is Jesus' burden that we are called into that is easy?

And St.

Paul, of course, gives us that answer in his last sentence today when he talks about Jesus' love for us, the love of God that permeates our very being, our opening prayer.

Love God, love your labor, and I added, in light of, you know, you good Episcopalians that follow along, love yourself.

And that's the profound message of today.

That God's hand, as it was with Abraham and his descendants, and it is with us, that was the promise given to Rebecca.

God's hand is engaged in our life.

God's hand is engaged in our decisions.

Most of us think of decisions oftentimes as kind of the right thing and the wrong thing, or black and white, or bad and good.

And that's true.

You know, I'm gonna feed this person or I'm gonna shoot them.

Not much of it is how often do we have those kinds of decisions?

Not very often.

Because most of our decisions are really in those very gray areas.

What is the more loving choice?

Becomes our bottom line if we follow Jesus.

What is the more loving choice?

Loving God, loving our neighbor, and loving ourselves.

And so today's readings really are kind of about a process of discernment in choice and decision makings that each of us go through daily in our life.

I was thinking this week about some of the biggies in my life, most of which I wouldn't share publicly, about decisions that I may have to make.

But one that was profound and I will share, I remember when I was in my early 40s.

I had been a Franciscan for 25 years, a priest for 12.

Um, I was a pastor in Galveston at a Roman Catholic church, and I was lonely.

Very lonely.

As you might know, and I'm sure some of you, probably a third or former Catholics.

Um, you know, Catholic priests don't get married at first starters.

And I lived in a community, but the community was not nurturing me.

And I loved being a priest.

I have never not, English teachers, I have never not loved being a priest.

And so I had to make that decision that was really quite important to me about how can I love best?

What is the most my most loving choice moving forward?

And I defaulted to leaving the Catholic priesthood because I felt like I needed really to love myself.

Because if I didn't love myself, I wasn't going to be very good at loving other people, much less loving God.

Which is the yoke that Jesus speaks of today.

And so I made that decision, and, you know, well, the rest is history.

And I believe that all of you have those profound moments in your life.

All of us.

All you have to do is read the paper.

We have those profound moments in our life where we find ourselves making choices about who we are going to be in the face of issues that are part of our life.

Maybe it's a relationship, maybe it's a spouse, maybe it's a child, maybe it's someone standing at our border.

Maybe it's someone with a different orientation or color than you.

And so we're faced with those decisions day in and day out about who we are going to be and how it is that we are going to be as loving as we can be.

The question becomes: if we are to take on Jesus' yoke, we are to trust that Jesus is going to be with us as God was with Abraham and Isaac and Sarah, and as God was with Paul as he struggled with this decision making in his own life, as Jesus' promise was made to him.

We need to make ourselves not just people that call ourselves Christians under that umbrella that is so slapped around these days and has become so meaningless into people who follow Jesus.

As the reading says, it's the actions that matter.

And so we're faced day in and day out with profound questions about how can we make the most loving choices in our lives?

And sometimes, if not all the time, it can call us into the kind of mindset that Paul found himself, kind of scrambled.

And that's fine.

If Saint Paul can do it, I can do it.

We sit today in this church and we praise a God, the same God who guided those choices of those early generations.

And we gather around a table, that same table that Paul gathered around with his friends.

And we are praising that Jesus who promised us today that if we say yes to him and if we live into that yes, we will be fed on our journey.

And that's what we do here.

We live into the promise that when we say yes to the most loving way of living our life, which might bring us into struggle and pain with ourselves or with our friends or with our family, for that matter, with our church, Jesus will never leave us.

And so as we gather around this table, as we continue our prayer as brothers and sisters to each other, and most especially brothers and sisters to Jesus Himself, we are called, I believe, by the readings today, to sort of to a process of making choices in our lives and to the challenge of saying yes to the most loving choices.

Saying yes to the choices that are congruent with Jesus' yoke.

Love God, love your neighbor, and love yourself.

We believe in one God, Father of the Almighty, make the heaven and earth, of all his singing unto me.

We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten and not me, but one being with the Father.

Through him all things were vain.

For us the power of salvation, he came down from heaven, but the power of our must be.

On the third day, he rose again, according to the scriptures.

He ascended heaven, and since the Father and the Father, he will come again in glory to judge the living and dead, and his kingdom.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and Son.

With the Father and the Son, He has worshiped the glorified, and He has spoken to the prophets.

We believe in one Holy God, the church.

We are all the one baptism for the forgiveness of sin.

We are the prayers of the people.

For the holy church of God, that it may be filled with truth and love and be found without fault at the day of your coming.

We pray to you, O Lord.

Lord.

For all the holy people of God, for all bishops and other ministers, for Andy, Hector, Jeff, and Kay, our bishops, for the churches of the diocesan cycle of prayer, for Michael, our presiding bishop, for Mike, Jim, Craig, and the priests in our community.

We pray to you, O Lord.

For all who fear God and believe in you, Lord Christ, that our divisions may cease and that all may be one, as you and the Father are one, we pray to you, O Lord.

For the mission of the church, that in faithful witness it may preach the gospel to the ends of the earth.

We pray to you, O Lord.

For the peace of the world, that a spirit of respect and forbearance may grow among nations and peoples.

We pray to you, O Lord.

For those in positions of public trust, especially Joe, our president, and Greg, our governor, that they may serve justice and promote the dignity and freedom of every person.

We pray to you, O Lord.

For the poor, the persecuted, the sick, and all who suffer.

For refugees, our prisoners, and all who are in danger, that they may be relieved and protected.

We pray to you, O Lord.

For this congregation, that we may be delivered from the hardness of heart and show forth your glory in all that we do, we pray to you, O Lord.

For our enemies and those who wish us harm, and for all whom we have injured or offended, for ourselves, for the forgiveness of our sins, and for the grace of the Holy Spirit to amend our lives, we pray to you, O Lord.

For all who have commended themselves to our prayers.

For our families, friends, and neighbors, especially those on our prayer parish prayer list, and those the congregation wishes to name at this time silently or aloud, we pray to you, O Lord.

For all who have died in the communion of the church, and those whose faith is known to you alone, that with all the saints they may have rest in that place where there is no pain or grief, but life eternal.

We pray to you, O Lord.

Rejoicing in the fellowship of all the saints, let us commend ourselves and one another and all our life to Christ our God.

For yours is the majesty, O Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory now and forever.

May the peace and joy of the risen Lord be with each and every one of you.

Take a moment to offer each other now some sign of the Lord's peace among us.

Peace be with you.

Announcement?

Okay.

I forget to uh introduce my wife.

She actually has more notoriety around here than I do.

She uh did a presentation on her book uh not too long ago.

Sarah, you want to stand up?

You, my wife, yes, you're the one.

If you are offering your gift at the table, and then remember that your brother or sister has something against you, first go be reconciled with your brother or sister, and then come back and offer your gift.

Matthew chapter five, and I think that's a good idea.

Uh, because uh much of it is uh dialogue between me and you all, and it's on page 369 in the prayer book.

I would uh encourage you to uh take the books out and to join along with the initial dialogue.

Please stand as you are able.

The Lord be with you and also with you.

Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.

It is right to give up than praise.

God of all power, ruler of the universe, you are worthy of glory and praise.

Glory to you forever and ever.

At your command all things came to be, the vast expanse of interstellar space, galaxies, suns, the planets in their courses, and this fragile earth, our island home.

By thy will they were created and have their being.

From the primal elements you brought forth the human race, and blessed us with memory, reason, and skill.

You made us the rulers of creation, but we turned against you and betrayed your trust, and we turned against one another.

Have mercy, Lord, for we are sinners in your sight.

Again and again you called us to return.

Through prophets and sages, you revealed your righteous law, and in the fullness of time, you sent your only son, born of a woman, to fulfill your law and to open for us the way of freedom and peace.

By Jesus, you sons of us, by his wounds we reveal.

And therefore we praise you, Father, joining with the heavenly chorus, with prophets, apostles, martyrs, and with all those in every generation who have looked to you in hope to proclaim with them your glory in their unending song.

And so, Father, we who have been redeemed by him and made a new people by water and the Spirit.

Now bring before you these gifts, sanctify them by your Holy Spirit to be the body and blood of Jesus Christ our Lord.

On the night he was betrayed, Jesus took bread, said the blessing, broke the bread, and gave it to his friends and said, Take, eat.

This is my body which is given for you.

Do this for the remembrance of me.

After supper, Jesus took the cup of wine, gave thanks, and said, Drink this, all of you.

This is my blood of the new covenant, which is shed for you and for many, for the forgiveness of sins.

Whenever you drink it, do this for the remembrance of me.

Lord, God of our fathers and mothers, God of Abraham, God of Isaac and Jacob, God of Rebekah, God of Rachel and Sarah.

Open our eyes to see your hand in the work, or your hand at work in the world about us.

Deliver us from the presumption of coming to this table for solace only and not for strength.

For pardon only and not for renewal.

Let the grace of this Holy Communion make us one body and one spirit in Christ that we may worthily serve the world in his name.

Risen Christ.

Accept these prayers and praises, Father, for it is through Jesus and with him and in him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, that all glory and honor is yours, Almighty God, now and forever.

Amen.

And now, as our Savior taught us, we are bold to pray.

Eternal Spirit.

Sacrifice for us.

The body of Christ, the bread of head.

The body of Christ, the bread of head.

The body of Christ, the bread of head.

The body of Christ, the bread of head.

The body of Christ.

The body of Christ.

May the Lord bless you.

May the Lord keep you.

May He turn his face to you.

Bless you.

The Lord keep you.

May He show to you His countenance.

And may the blessing of Almighty God, God, who is for us, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, come upon you and remain with you today and forevermore.

Amen.

I'm done.

And peace and joy.

You want to serve the Lord and Survey.

Thank you, God.

Hallelujah.

Yeah.