7-7-19 Readings & Sermon

A reading from Second King.

Naaman, the commander of the army of the king of Aram, was a great man and in high favor with his master, because by him the Lord had given victory to Aram.

The man, though a mighty warrior, suffered from leprosy.

Now the Aramaeans on one of their raids had taken a young girl captive from the land of Israel, and she served Naaman's wife.

She said to her mistress, If only my lord were with the people with the prophet who is in Samaria, he would cure him of his leprosy.

So Naaman went in and told his lord just what the girl from the land of Israel had said.

And the king of Aram said, Go then, and I will send along a letter to the king of Israel.

He went, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten sets of garments.

He brought the letter to the king of Israel, which read, When this letter reaches you, know that I have sent to you my servant servant Naaman, that you may cure him of his leprosy.

When the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and said, Am I God to give death or life?

That this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy?

Just look and see how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me.

But when Elisha, the man of God, heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, he sent a message to the king, Why have you torn your clothes?

Let him come to me, that he may learn that there is a prophet in Israel.

So Naaman came with his horses and chariots and halted at the entrance of Elisha's house.

And Elisha sent a message to him, saying, Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored, and you shall be clean.

But Naaman became angry and went away, saying, I thought that for me he would surely come out and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, and would wave his hand over the spot and cure the leprosy.

Are not Abanah and far part of the rivers of the Damascus better than all the waters of Israel?

Could I not wash them and be clean?

He turned and went away in a rage.

But his servants approached and said to him, Father, if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it?

How much more when all he said to you was wash and be clean?

So he went down and immersed himself seven times in the joy, according to the word of the man of God.

And his flesh was restored, like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean.

We will read Psalm thirty responsibly about a half verse.

I will exalt you, O Lord, because you have lifted me up.

Oh Lord my God, I cried out to you.

You brought me up, O Lord, from the dead.

Sing to the Lord, you servants of his For his wrath endures by the twinkling of an eye.

Weeping may spend a night.

While I felt secure, I said I shall never be disturbed.

Then you hid your face.

I cried to you, O Lord.

What profit is there in my blood if I go down to the pit?

Hear, O Lord, and have mercy upon me.

You have turned my wailing into dancing.

Therefore, my heart sings to you without ceasing.

A reading from Galatians.

My friends, if anyone is detected in a transgression, you have received the Spirit should restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness.

Take care that you yourselves are not tempted.

Bear one another's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of the Christ.

For those who are nothing think they are something, and they deceive themselves.

All must test their own work, and then that work, rather than their neighbour's work, will become a cause for pride.

For all must carry their own loads.

Those who are taught the word must share in all good things with their teacher.

If you sow to your own flesh, you will reap corruption from the flesh.

But if you sow to the spirit, you will reap eternal life from the spirit.

So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time if we do not give up.

So then, whatever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all, and especially for those of the family of faith.

See what large letters I make when I am writing in my own hand?

It is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh that try to compel you to be circumcised, only that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ.

Even the circumcised do not themselves obey the law, but they want you to be circumcised, so they may boast they may boast about your flesh.

May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.

For neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything, but a new creation is everything.

As for those who will follow this rule, may peace be upon them, and mercy and upon the Israel of God, the word of the Lord.

The Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go.

He said to them, The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.

Therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into the harvest.

Go on your way, see, I'm sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves.

Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals, and greet no one on the road.

Whatever house you enter, first say peace to this house, and if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person.

But if not it will return to you.

Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the laborer deserves to be paid.

Do not move about from house to house.

Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you.

Cure the sick who are there, and say to them, The kingdom of God has come near to you.

But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off and protest against you.

Yet know this the kingdom of God has come near.

Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.

See, I've given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing will hurt you.

Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.

The gospel of the Lord.

The first is at the literal level, and if you know anything about St.

Francis or St.

Clair, that's exactly what they did.

They sold everything they had, and they went from hospitality to hospitality, and they founded what's called the mendicant orders.

Those are sort of, they're not priests, they're friars, and again, they go around utterly dependent on people's hospitality.

If God is calling you to do that, you do not have a car.

So uh follow that call if that's your call, but that is one way to embody the gospel.

I want to suggest there's a couple other ways.

Uh I'm gonna go backward a little bit.

And say one of the ways that I was taught to hear this particular passage as a young one had to do with conversion of people's souls uh in sort of missionary endeavors.

So the way this worked, it was predicated on the book called Evangelism Explosion by D.

James Kennedy.

I learned this as a high schooler.

We would go out, especially uh to laundromats, because people have to stay with their clothes, otherwise they could be stolen, so they couldn't leave.

Uh they have nothing to do there but watch their clothes, and then we would hit them up for the gospel because as we understood it, the devil owns your soul, and if you can save somebody's soul from the devil, then look, Satan's falling like lightning from heaven.

So, what we would do is we would go up and say, not peace be with you, peace could be with you.

Here's our heart.

We'd say, if you died tonight, on the way home from the laundry mat in a cataclysmic car crash.

I mean, if somebody T-boned you and you died tonight, do you know you would go to heaven?

Well, let's pretend you did die on the way home from the laundry mat.

Emphasis really heavy there.

And God said, Why should I let you into heaven?

What would you say?

Usually people say, I hope so, and whatever.

And then we said, no, no, no, listen, that's the wrong answer.

You're going to hell unless you say the right answer.

And I sometimes people would do this, I think so we'd leave them, so we'd leave.

I don't know.

This is what we did.

So this is what we thought is um Jesus is telling us to go out into all the world and save souls from the devil, because the devil owns everybody's soul, and everyone's going to hell when they die.

So the trick is to convert people intellectually to some proposition so that they can have peace when they die.

I'm going to ask you to do something unepiscopalian.

Has anybody heard that frame of faith before?

Um, I'm not putting it down, but I want to say I don't think it's what the gospel's talking about at all.

Or at least it's just a flattening of what Jesus suggests.

See, what we get to hear today is that he sends people out in the places he intends to go, and he sends 70 people out.

If you know your scriptures, right after the Tower of Babel incident, there's something called the Table of Nations.

Do you know how many nations there are after the Tower of Babel?

Seventy.

So where does Jesus intend to go?

Into all the earth.

And what are you supposed to do when you go into villages throughout the world?

You're supposed to start by saying, this is a head scratcher, isn't it?

Peace be with you.

Not peace be with you if you change your beliefs to mine, not peace be with you if you pray the sinner's prayer, not peace be with you if you dress in Western clothes or follow Western customs.

You're supposed to go into somebody completely new and say, Peace be with you.

And I want you to think about that.

We we say in the Eucharistic prayer every week, the Lord be with you, right?

And you know what we really mean when we say that is every possible tense of the word to be.

The Lord was with you.

The Lord is with you, the Lord will be with you.

That's what we mean.

And so Jesus commissions people to go into all the whole world, everywhere he intends to go, and to start by saying, God's peace was with you.

God's peace is with you.

God's peace will be with you.

Without contingency.

It's a little bit of a head scratcher, right?

God's peace be with people I don't like.

And then Jesus has the audacity to tell us to eat what's put before us.

Now, I don't know if you grew up with Southern hospitality.

Um I did.

I don't know how old I was when my parents taught me this, that whenever you go into somebody's home and they put food out, you you eat it.

Do you all know the Southern rule?

Now, you may not like it.

It could be awful when you have your beverage here to chase it, even if your beverage is water, right?

I remember doing this.

I had the worst hamburger ever.

Oh, it's really good, good, good, good, right?

This is the thing, right?

Um He could be talking about food, but I wonder if Jesus isn't inviting us to think a little bit figuratively about eating what's put before us instead of jumping around looking for what we want.

I wonder if Jesus isn't commissioning us to go into different places where we're not comfortable and to eat what's set before us to listen to the people in whose homes we enter metaphorically, even if we don't want to listen to what they want to share with us.

I don't know what kind of work environment um you have where where you are or home environment, but I was talking at the pool yesterday with somebody who works with a Jewish person and a Muslim person and a Hindu person, right?

And this is Houston.

You you can have 70 languages in Houston.

You can go to a workplace and encounter not only languages but customs and religions.

I mean, this is this is real for us today.

And do we go saying, you're wrong, you can have God's peace when you think like I do?

Or do we go saying God's peace is here?

Peace is with you.

And do we go saying, gosh, she's so annoying?

I don't want to listen to your family problems anymore.

Or do we eat what's put before us?

And are we nourishment literally to the nations?

I think the reason we hear this story about Naaman the Syrian is to really push us.

Really push us.

And if it's okay, I'm gonna give you a Texas example of the story, and it'll be borderline offensive, but that is usually what the Bible is when we take it seriously.

So I want you to imagine it's not Naaman the Syrian, it's General Santa Ana.

And he has just won the uh the War of Mexican independence, and here's little Tejas appear, right?

Natural enemies, Santa Ana and Tejas.

If you know anything about Santa Ana, he dressed like Napoleon, he thought he was Napoleon.

He actually was a brilliant military tactician, except at the Battle of San Jacinto when he wasn't.

Um 12-minute battle.

So he comes in pomp and circumstance up to Little Tejas because he took some slaves.

He did a raid in Tejas, he took some people captive, they're obligated to be his servant, and then he got leprosy.

Well, not Hansen's disease, but some kind of skin disease that was going to kill him.

Now listen, when you've got pomp and circumstance like that guy, you are never gonna show your skin to anybody because your whole facade would crumble.

This is somebody who prides themselves on being stylized in power, and if they've got a life-threatening skin condition, it's gone.

So what has he been doing covering it up?

His slaves know because they watch him, you see.

And interestingly enough, the slaves, whose natural enemy is General Santa Anna.

I mean, it is completely in their best interest for him to die of a horrible plague.

Tell him there's a way you can get healed.

There's a prophet up there in Clear Lake.

Speaks on behalf of the Lord.

Go to the prophet.

The prophet will tell you how you can be healed, so sure enough he goes with gold and pomp and circumstance and a feather in his cap, like Nikki Doodle, and he shows up, and the prophet won't even see him.

I mean, here he is, the most important guy on the continent.

So he believes, and the prophet won't even come out.

He says, Go dip yourself in Clear Creek seven times.

You ever seen Clear Creek?

Pomping circumstances.

I can watch in the Colorado, I can wash in the Rio Grande, but if it's this dirty little trickle thing, I'm not getting into that.

And the servants say, look, if the guy told you to do something hard, if the guy told you to run the tough mudder or the iron man, you'd have done that.

So why won't you do something easy?

Just go hop in the dirty little creek there.

To do it, you see, he has to take his clothes off.

The whole world's gonna see that big, proud General Santa Ana has got this skin condition that's gonna kill him.

I mean, he his vulnerability is gonna be evident to everybody.

This is part of the risk.

Maybe he thinks the prophet's trying to make fun of him.

He does it and he's clean, right?

That's the story.

Now, if you're not from Texas, maybe that isn't hard for you to hear, but I think that's pretty hard stuff to hear.

That we're supposed to approach people with care, especially when it's inconvenient for our interests.

Imagine instead of saying to Anna, it's Irwin Rommel.

Pick any enemy general you want.

I'm not trying to say that this is pure pacifism.

What I'm trying to say is I think the story is undergirding who it is Jesus would send us to.

It is not people who are convenient or easy for us.

It is literally the nations.

Sometimes the nations are on your swim team.

Like your neighborhood swim team.

Does anybody do that?

There's some really difficult people.

I would sometimes rather go to Iraq than deal with the swim team parents.

And Jesus, I think, is saying, you eat in those houses, you eat what's put before you.

Don't go skipping around to where you want only.

If that's what you do, then what are you doing that's different?

What are you doing that's life-giving or healing?

Time-lapse in the gospel.

The 70 people come back and they say, whoa, this was really crazy.

We did what you said.

And even unclean spirits left.

Like real healing happened.

Unclean spirits.

That's the word demon.

It's really important to get to the core of this.

Unclean spirits left.

And Jesus says this really interesting phrase.

He says, I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.

Now, if you go back to the last one I told you, the last option, the devil owns your soul, and you're going to hell with the devil forever.

And anytime you convert somebody to Christianity, see Satan fell from heaven.

You got somebody's soul.

But if you go with me in this other thought here, Satan in Hebrew and Greek means accuser.

It doesn't just mean libel or slander.

It's this power to that divides human beings, frankly, from recognizing any kind of peace and difference.

Kind of unity, any kind of compassion or mercy when we see something different from ourselves.

I know this sounds maybe a little bit liberal, but linguistically it's exactly what Jesus is saying.

When they go out to the other nations and they eat what's before them, and they say, God's peace is with you, the accuser falls like lightning from heaven.

That is the accusation that would divide us.

The accusation that would say, I am better than the Lutherans, I am better than the Catholics, I'm definitely better than the Celts, whoever it is we need to be better than falls.

Like lightning from heaven.

And that's when, don't you see, not only do the nations start to recognize that the peace of the Lord would be with us if we live into it, the 70 get to figure that out too.

Which is why I think Jesus says, don't rejoice that the spirits submit to you.

Rejoice that your names are written in the kingdom of heaven.

That could mean you're going to heaven when you die, but friends, I don't think that's what it means.

See, there's this other bit.

I'm sending you out, and you can tread on top of scorpions and snakes.

Please do not take that literally.

If you do wear very thick leather shoes with steel toes, this is really critical.

It could be literal, but that's Jesus is saying, don't rejoice over that business.

Rejoice that God loves you exactly like you are.

That there is nothing you can do to make God love you more, and there's nothing you can do to make God love you less.

That's what it means to have your name in the book of the kingdom of heaven.

What if instead of having to jockey against other perspectives?

Because after all, no one wants to be last in the religious race, but if I can just finish ahead of somebody else, I'll feel better about my time.

What if instead of rejoicing over that we rejoiced that God loves us just like we are?

What if we were able to say, I don't have to sweat what happens when I die because God's got me?

And out of that place we can say, listen, there is peace that God intends for you to live into right now.

Let's walk there together.

I'll eat what you put before me.

I'll eat what you put before me.

Maybe that sounds a little bit frou-frou, but I'll tell you in my experience, it's harder to do that than to go to laundromats and get people to check religious boxes, which is why I think it has to be right.

Because it is harder, harder to be at peace than it is to be in competition.

Peace.

Peace does not mean quiet.

If it did, none of us would have had children or been born ourselves, right?

I mean, that is not peaceful.

Peace is the opposite of war instead of destruction, it's about creation.

And God would create, I think, especially among the 70 nations, which represents every nation on earth, God would create bridges.

Not walls.

So when does Satan fall like lightning from heaven?

Well, I have this early memory.

I was about nine, and there was this big tank parade in Tiananmen Square.

Has anybody seen that?

And this man stands in front of a tank.

And the tank stopped.

Do you remember this?

The tank very easily could have run that man over.

But the tank driver, I don't know what he was thinking.

Maybe he didn't want to cause an international incident, but I think actually he realized he wasn't going to run over another human being, and Satan fell like lightning from heaven.

And you know, there's this story that Gandhi tells when he was in South Africa arguing for Indian rights.

They had to carry these IDs.

Only the Indians did.

And he had this big rally to burn those IDs.

And there he went to burn his ID, and the policeman knocked him down.

He got up, started going back to burn his ID.

The policeman knocked him down again.

And Gandhi said that second time I knew.

I knew our cause had won because he flinched.

The officer hesitated because I didn't fight back.

The officer hesitated.

So Gandhi got up a third time, walked straight into the fire, burned that ID, and Satan fell like lightning from heaven.

And these are really big things, but I'm gonna tell you because I said the swim team.

I recently got into a conflict with another parent on the swim team.

It had to do with something that is so insubstantial.

The size of my daughter's shirt.

I was really insistent that she should have the proper size.

This led to something cataclysmic, quite honestly.

And I'm glad I wasn't wearing my collar, but unfortunately, people probably know I'm at a jerk priest.

So I had this kind of meltdown over my daughter's swim team shirt that she probably will not wear more than twice.

And uh the volunteer's spouse was there and overheard it and was upset, maybe more upset than they should have been, but dug through the shirts and found the right size and came over and brought the shirt.

And Satan fell like lightning from heaven.

Because when we do small, little, insignificant things on behalf of other people when it's convenient, when it's inconvenient, the accuser falls like lightning from heaven.

And I want to suggest to you the gospel today is about big things.

It's about Gandhis and Tiananmen Squares and Rose of Parks, but it's about those little moments, about doing extra diligence on behalf of some jerk priest that wants the right size shirt for his daughter.

Looking again and saying, here you go, I found it.

Small things to us.

But from Jesus' perspective, those extra efforts, when we eat what set before us, those are the hinge on which the kingdom of God turns.

So imagine, there's more than 70 of us here today.

What if each one of us in the next week turned one little hinge?

Just one in the next week.

Even if I'm completely wrong in my interpretation of the gospel today, God's will in heaven would come to earth.

So your homework, if you're so willing, is to turn one hinge this week, and I'll even give you energy to do it right here at the Lord's table in just a few minutes.