2-24-19 Reading & Sermons

A reading from Genesis.

Joseph said to his brothers, I am Joseph.

Is my father still alive?

But his brothers could not answer him, so dismayed were they at his presence.

Then Joseph said to his brothers, Come closer to me, and they came closer.

He said, I am your brother Joseph, whom you stole into Egypt.

And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you stole me here.

For God sent me before you to preserve life.

For the famine has been in the land these two years, and there are five more years in which there will be neither ploughing nor harvest.

God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors.

So it was not you who sent me here, but God.

He has made me a father to Pharaoh, and Lord of all his house, and ruler over all the land of Egypt.

Hurry and go up to my father and say to him, Thus says your son Joseph, God has made me Lord of all Egypt.

Come down to me, do not delay.

You shall settle in the land of Goshen, and you shall be near me, you and your children and your children's children, as well as your flocks, your herds, and all that you have.

I will provide for you there, since there are five more years of famine to come, so that you and your household and all you have will not come to poverty.

The word of the Lord.

Take delight in the Lord.

Commit your way to the Lord.

Put your trust in the Lord.

The Lord will make your righteousness as clear as the light.

Be still before the Lord.

Do not fret yourself over the one who prospers.

Refrain from anger, leave rage alone.

For evildoers shall be cut off.

In a little while the wicked shall be no more.

But the lowly shall possess the land.

But the deliverance of the righteous comes from the Lord.

The Lord will help them and rescue them.

This is a reading from 1 Corinthians.

Someone will ask, how are the dead raised?

What kind of body do they come from?

Fool.

What you sow does not come to life until it dies.

And as for what you sow, do not sow the body that is to be, but a bare seed, perhaps of wheat or some other grain.

But God gives it a body, and He has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body.

So it is with the resurrection of the dead.

What is sown is perishable.

What is raised is imperishable.

It is sown in dishonor.

It is raised in glory.

It is sown in weakness.

It is raised in power.

It is sown as a physical body, it is raised as a spiritual body.

If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body.

Thus it is written the first man, Adam, became a living being.

The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.

But it is not the spiritual that is first, but the physical and then the spiritual.

The first man was from the earth, a man of dust.

The second man is from heaven.

As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of dust.

And as is the man of heaven, so also are those of heaven.

Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will also bear the image of the man of heaven.

What I am saying, brothers and sisters, is this flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the perishable the imperishable.

The word of the Lord.

Jesus said, I say to you that listen, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.

If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also.

And from any one who takes away your coat, do not withhold even your shirt.

Give to everyone who begs from you, and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again.

Do to others as you would have them do to you.

If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you?

For even sinners love those who love them.

If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you?

For even sinners do the same.

If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you?

Even sinners lend to sinners to receive as much again.

But love your enemies.

Do good and lend, expecting nothing in return.

Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, for God is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.

Be merciful just as your Father is merciful.

Do not judge and you will not be judged.

Do not condemn and you will not be condemned.

Forgive and you will be forgiven.

Give and it will be given to you.

A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap, for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.

The gospel of the Lord.

We get to hear the very end of the Joseph story, and if you didn't mind, I'd like to tell you readers' digest version of the whole bit.

See, once upon a time there were these two twins, and they were fighting in the womb, fighting to see who was going to be born first.

I don't even know if this is real.

Can that happen?

One of them's born, the second one's born grabbing his brother's heel.

I know that cannot happen, but this is how the story goes.

The heel grabber is called heel grabber, his name's Jacob.

Um heel grabber means used car salesman or thief.

And so the rest of his life, he does not win the fight in the womb.

He tries to be the firstborn, which I don't know if you've ever realized you cannot actually succeed at that when you're not born first.

He tries to steal the birthright from his brother Esau with some, well, soup.

And then later he lies to his father, who blatantly favored his brother Esau.

Isaac favors Esau blatantly.

He lies by covering himself with goat skin.

He kills an animal and wears its hide, and his father gives him a blessing, and then he runs away because his brother says he'll kill him.

He goes to where his father came from, and there he falls in love with a woman at a well.

Maybe you know this story.

Her name is Heifer.

She or sorry, her name is you, Rachel.

And uh he decides he's going to marry her, but he has no money.

So his uncle says, You work seven years and then you can marry my daughter.

He works seven years.

He has some muzzle tub of wine on his wedding night.

He marries the wrong woman.

This is why you part the veil from here on out when you get married.

Her name is Heifer.

He wanted to marry the you and he married the Heifer instead.

Her name is Leah.

Seven years later, he marries Rachel.

Then he well, steals his uncle's sheep.

In the meantime, he has twelve kids.

You might remember if you had a sibling asking your parents, which one of us do you love the most?

And hopefully they said, I love you the same.

Jacob said, I love Joseph the most, to heck with the rest of you.

This is not the kind of parenting that we are called to emulate.

Um he shows this by buying Joseph alone a colorful coat, something that really could have only belonged to someone in the equestrian class.

Clothes in the ancient world were sad and pitiful, mostly brown or off-white.

So the fact that Joseph has this colorful coat is this sign, the sign of his father's blatant favoritism, and the rest of the kids have nothing like that.

He's a tattletale.

Dad sends him out to tell and the boys.

He's a dreamer, and his dreams are thinly veiled, dreams of grandeur.

One day all the other stars, eleven, will bow down to him along with the sun and the moon.

One day, have twelve bags of wheat, the other eleven will bag down to his.

It's likely that the brothers don't just dislike Joseph because he's a bragger.

It's possible they start to think that if he weren't there, that maybe their dad would love them more.

Maybe if Joseph weren't there, their dad would actually love them.

They're competing for their father's affection.

So one day they get this idea when he's gone out to tell on them that perhaps they should just well kill him, and then dad, well, maybe dad would give them something.

The older brother talks him out of that, if you know the story.

He says, no, no, no, listen, if we kill him, he's dead, but if we sell him, then we could buy something for ourselves.

And this is what they do.

They sell Joseph into slavery, they rip up his coat, and um, interestingly enough, they trick their dad with a goat skin, who tricked his own father with a goat skin.

You know the story.

Joseph goes to Egypt, he's a slave, he becomes a successful slave, and then Potiphar's wife, there's that whole incident, and then he goes down to the dungeon, he reveals some dreams, and now he's the head of Egypt.

Is this okay?

You know this part of the story?

Thing you might not know is that Egyptians don't grow facial hair.

The Hebrew people did, and the Egyptians were clean-shaved, and in fact, there's a lot of records that say they shaved their head as well.

This is a critical element in the story because Joseph has become second in command.

He wears the signet ring of the Pharaoh himself, which is sort of like, well, being Pharaoh.

Joseph builds up these granaries.

He is sort of like the acting president in the largest, richest nation on earth at that time.

And his brothers come in during a famine to buy food.

And don't you see, because he has no beard and because he has no hair, they don't even recognize him.

He doesn't let on that he understands what they're doing.

He sees them.

And I want to tell you, unlike most reads of the story, I think he decides to carefully plot his revenge and he will serve it ice cold.

There are ten brothers that come.

Jacob won't let Benjamin come because after all, last time he trusted his boys with the kid that he blatantly favored, he lost him.

He keeps Benjamin, he sends the other ten.

Joseph calls them spies.

They say, we're not spies, we're just eleven brothers.

He says, Oh, eleven?

I only count ten.

Where's the other one?

He's with dad.

Don't come back and see me again without that brother, or I'll kill all of you.

He takes his brother Shimon, Simon, throws them in the dungeon.

Listen, dungeons aren't nice.

This is Joseph beginning his gambit.

They go back, they run out of food, they convince their dad, listen, you can keep Benjamin, but if we stall starve to death, he's dead.

Why don't you just let us have him and go back to Joseph?

Am I telling this too fast?

They come back, and now don't you see Joseph has them right where he wants them.

He hides their money in their bags.

He even hides his diviner's cup.

See, Joseph, it turns out red tea leaves or something and a silver cup, and he hides that cup in the bag of Benjamin.

They go to leave.

The guards arrest them.

He says, You stole my cup.

They say, No, we didn't do that.

No.

They say, if you find that cup in anyone's bag, kill that person here and kill their children.

And then, of course, they unzip Benjamin's bag.

And there's the cup.

And now, see, Joseph is poised to ruin his brothers.

Ruin them.

And in this interesting moment, right when he's ready to get revenge, I want to suggest to you that he actually has a change of heart.

And he decides instead of revenge against his brothers, he'd rather have a family instead.

He decides instead of revenge to choose forgiveness and reconciliation.

It's such an absurd twist of the story that the brothers are terrified after this.

Did you notice in the story?

They can't even answer him whether their father's still alive.

Joseph ends up bringing them all down to Egypt.

And this, I think, is the frame for which we get to hear what Jesus has to say.

Joseph would probably be justified in getting revenge against his brothers who had taken everything from him and sold him into slavery.

Through nothing he did.

I mean, it was really his father's favoritism that was to blame, not his response to it.

And he looks at his enemies and he decides that they're his brothers.

And he picks forgiveness over revenge.

And you know, when you read the gospel, it's pretty clear how we could read that literally, isn't it?

Love your enemies.

I don't really need to say much else in the sermon, except it's helpful to hear how it is Jesus invites us to love our enemies.

He does say something about that, something we often misunderstand.

He says, if someone strikes you on the right, turn the other cheek.

If someone asks for your cloak, give them your shirt.

And sometimes we might think that this simply means if somebody shoves an ice cream cone in your face that you just stand there.

Perhaps you've seen this in the movie Witness, starring Harrison Ford, in which someone does this to an Amish person.

They've chosen to read this literally as pacifism.

There's a lot of research, though, that suggests Jesus is not actually advocating strict pacifism here.

What he's doing is something called nonviolent resistance.

I'm going to do the clothes first.

It turns out in the ancient world that taxes were pretty high and that people, you know this if you know anything even about mid-century America.

You had to borrow money to buy seeds, so you were borrowing money against a crop you hadn't sown yet, but if you didn't, you couldn't have anything.

So farmers were buying seed on credit, and essentially they owed their soul to the company store.

I know that's mixing metaphors, but I hope you get it.

At the time of Jesus, you you could not only have your land seized, you could have your outer garments seized in payment of the seed you bought.

So people were doing this.

They would say, Well, Miller, listen, you owe me a hundred dollars and I see you're wearing a jacket, I'll take that.

You weren't allowed to take someone's underwear because that'd leave them naked.

But you could take their coat.

So what Jesus says is, if somebody comes to sue you for your jacket, go ahead and give them your underwear too.

Now that might sound crazy.

It's a little crazy, isn't it?

All this happens in public in court.

So you imagine somebody saying, fine, here's my underwear in court.

Now you're standing there naked.

But the people watching are probably going to look disfavorably on the collector at that point.

You know, I mean, after all, they've well they've made you naked in public.

There you are, they're sending you away naked.

A lot of scholarship suggests that Jesus is advocating actually changing who's in control at this point, right?

Somebody comes to collect your car and you give them your underwear on national TV.

Now, you again, you may look silly, but there they are taking it.

Same business with the striking on the cheek.

I know this is gonna sound far-fetched, but there's a lot of uh evidence to this that the most degrading way to strike somebody, I think we know this, is with the back of our hand.

So if someone strikes you degradingly with the back of their hand and you turn the other cheek, well, they either are gonna walk away, at which point you put your face out to them, or they're gonna strike you with their fists, which is not the way you strike somebody who's beneath you.

It's the way you strike someone that you have to fight.

This may sound nuts, but I want you to know this is exactly how both Gandhi and Martin Luther King chose to read this passage and bear it out.

Whether it was in South Africa with Gandhi or India or on the march to Birmingham, people chose not to do nothing.

They chose to march.

And they got sprayed over with fire hoses and sicked with dogs, and police beat them, and they got up and they walked.

They didn't fight, but they didn't go home.

This is how they read Jesus.

Really, how they read Jesus.

People watched on national television and that was the end of that, in some ways.

I mean, we're still trying to grow into the end of that, aren't we?

But when people realized police brutality, when they watch police beat people who did not fight back, well, it was world-changing.

And here's the key twist.

Jesus doesn't say to fight oppression this way because he's effective.

He says to do it this way and to do it not so you can be in control, but so that you can love your enemy.

And if you read Martin Luther King and you read Gandhi, that's what they say at every turn.

They love those police officers that were beating them because they were convinced that they didn't know what they were doing.

Joseph decides to love his family.

We don't know why.

Maybe it's just based on the decision that some family is better than none.

Maybe Joseph decides that, hey, they got angry and they weren't even thinking about what they were doing.

But these are my brothers, after all.

The only brothers I have.

Maybe not the ones I would have picked.

I might have picked a different one myself, but we don't get to pick, do we?

We get to choose to love who God's given us as our family.

And I think that's the gospel that's before us.

And one slight last word here.

I doubt that you need to go on a march in your home when something's not going right.

A march from your front door to your back.

I doubt you need to do that.

But I do think sometimes we decide to stand up for ourselves or to stand up for somebody else in a way, frankly, that's not loving at all.

We choose to do it in a way that's punitive or humiliating instead of hoping, hoping that resisting that joke that demeaned our wife or our mother or our daughter might actually bring the person who said it into a future with her.

What if our resistance was based not on getting even with our enemy, but on reconciling members of God's family together?

What if we were convinced?

That the people who say or do those things that drive us crazy that could be our enemies are God's family members alongside us and those whom they hurt.

And our goal is to try to do some patchwork, trusting that God is able to do more than we can ask or imagine.

But if we choose to love those people who say those things, love them enough to say, I want a future with you because after all, we're members of God's family.

I think Jesus is asking us to consider a not letting things slide, not being militant, but standing up appropriately for things, but doing it, of course, with love in our hearts and viewing the people to whom we need to stand up to, as we as we would our own parents or our siblings, hoping, hoping that this will turn so that we can be a family as God intends once again.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Good morning, brothers and sisters.

It is good to be gathered here this morning with you at St.

Thomas the Apostle Episcopal Church Nassau Bay to celebrate the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist and the confirmation.

Through confirmation, we respond to God's call to be his disciples, to love and follow him, and to receive the power of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit equip us with particular gifts and skills, flood our hearts with love, so that we use it as the most powerful tool to transform our lives and collaborate in the transformation of the world in which we live.

This morning we will confirm Haley, Kelly, Leighton, Tyson, Evelyn, Thomas, Hal, and Sophia.

You are called to use the skills and gifts God has given you to live a full life, to enjoy all the wonders that God has created, to love and respect your parents and your family, and to follow the Lord's call to build his kingdom.

If you seek and strive to build the kingdom of God, all the things that are necessary to live happily will come into your life.

I'm Hector Monterroso, Bishop Assistant in the Diocese of Texas.

And one of my responsibilities is to visit the parishes and missions of these dioceses.

Every Sunday I visit a different church, and each one, and in each one I can observe and learn about their life and ministry.

I can learn from their spirituality and their way of worship.

Not all the churches in this diocese celebrate in the same way, but they all contribute with something different and important to our form of worship and celebration.

However, we look for the same.

Thank God for all his blessings, celebrate our joys, ask for forgiveness for our faults, and feel strengthened by forgiveness and reconciliation.

This is possible since the Lord knows us and loves us as we are.

In the life of each parish, there are many challenges and responsibilities.

A good percentage of our churches are very concentrated on maintaining the sanctuary and keeping their finances healthy.

Some are trying to test different church models and taking some risks to find new forms of evangelism.

Other churches are trying to reorganize and recreate a vision of work and development for the next few years.

In this process of reorganization, one of the most important steps is to establish a clear vision of where they are led and what steps or actions are needed to achieve this vision.

Is what are we offering to the community in which we are located or where we serve that the world cannot give them?

What are we offering to the community in which we are located or where we serve that the world cannot give them?

I think that is a very important question.

We have a lot of competition in this world.

And the time when the churches and our buildings, we open the doors, and the people are waiting to go in is not anymore.

And we need to change and we need to have a clear vision to invite people to go and to live a different life.

This morning in the Gospel of St.

Luke, Jesus gave us a key to answer, to answer in this question.

I said to you that listen, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you, do to others as you would have them to do you.

Jesus always has something important to say to us, but he does not just say something.

Rather, he challenges us to act in a different way.

He invites us to think and act with values other than the word teaches us.

The right perspective is not revenge or hate.

It is forgiveness that brings us to reconciliation.

Both forgiveness and reconciliation are possible when we trust in God's powerful love.

During my first work in the Episcopal Church in Guatemala, I was invited for the bishop to planting a new mission.

And I used all kinds of techniques to invite people.

We didn't receive any training in the seminary to plant new churches.

We received training to attend or to lead churches already in action.

So I tried different things, but not many of them working well.

So I changed my strategy.

And I could see that in the neighborhood where the new church would be planted, many children lived who didn't have much to do after school.

Many children walking, playing, but in some way in a little risk.

And I decided to stop doing my techniques, and I went to the place they play, and I invited some of them to play a new sport.

And I decided to teach them how to play chess.

And in the provision in the provisional in a living room in the house we use for the Planted Church, we built one table, and I invite the children to play.

And they never had experience playing chess.

And it was a great opportunity to teach them.

I invite some, two of them start to play, and six months later we had 18 tables.

And 36 kids playing.

Very good.

Yeah?

Because you know, the children started inviting their parents to come to the new place where they was teaching, they they were learning something different and new.

And in some way, the beginning of the church, we discover how to offer them that the world was not able to offer them.

They start to build a community, they start to be friends, and their parents start to be involved in the new community.

After every session, we had a short Bible study.

And in one of the Bible studies, we read this passage, Love Your Enemies.

And a kid mentioned something still in my mind and in my heart.

And I asked them, what do you think about love your enemies?

And how you can make a connection with the sport you are learning, chess.

And one of them said, hmm, I have I I want to say something.

And he said, I love this game.

Because it's a lot of strategies and it's all about to kill the king.

I said maybe I am not teaching well, yeah, because that is not the the way I want to you to think.

But he said, but that was not his teaching, his understand.

He said, I love this game because it's about kill the king.

But you know, in the end of the game, it's necessary to count all the pieces.

It's necessary to count all the pieces.

And we need to count the knights, the bishops, the pawns, the rooks, the queen and the king.

We need to count, and after that, we need to put all of them in the same box.

Eighteen whites, eighteen blacks in the same box.

And they need to be together until the next game.

Wow.

That was his his lesson about the connection between the game and the passage.

Love your enemies.

We can fight.

We can have a hard discussion.

But at the end of the day, we need to be in the same place.

And be together until the next session.

I don't know where he got that explanation.

I'm trying to I'm trying to believe came from me.

But I'm not sure.

The only thing I'm sure is in the deep of our hearts, always reconciliation is a word.

It's a value.

It's part of our life.

The church is called to proclaim by word and testimony that the love of God is an endless source of forgiveness and is the most valuable treasure we can offer.

Love is the way to reconciliation and it is the only route to peace.

Our sanctuaries must be places free of hate and discrimination.

If the community where we are located can clearly identify this in our churches, then we are offering something that the world cannot offer them.

Desmond Tutu, Anglican Archbishop and Nobel Peace Prize, declared that hate has no place in the house of God.

No one should be excluded from our love.

Our compassion or our concern for their race or gender, their faith or their ethnic origin or their sexual orientation.

Here is the question again.

What are we offering to the community in which we are located or where we serve that the world cannot give them?

Today we are going to Today we are going to confirm young people and their families, parents, and it's a good opportunity always to feel we are part of the body of Christ.

Sometimes in our congregations we we feel and we think and we work as small congregations, not as a part of body of Christ.

But through confirmation, through the Holy Spirit promises, we are connected with more people doing the same ministry, worshiping together.

And that person said, Bishop, I have a question.

I want to know when we are going to be 25,000 members in my church.

Because we are 65.

He said.

Okay.

Let me explain a little bit.

You know, the average attendance in the Episcopal churches in the United States is 60.

If you are 65, you are not too bad.

Yeah?

It's not to be happy, but you are more than the average.

In all churches in the Episcopal Church in the United States, our average attendance is 60.

And sometimes we think we are 60.

But we are more than 60.

And he asked me that question when we are going to have to be 25,000.

And I said, you know, hmm.

Just in Houston area and Galveston this morning, we are more than 25,000.

But not all are congregated here.

Not all are gathered in the same building, but with the same spirit.

In the diocese of Texas, we finished our diocesan council.

We had 900 delegates attending this weekend, representing 75,000 members in the Episcopal Church, Diocese of Texas.

25,000?

We are more than 25,000.

Yeah?

Just in the diocese of Texas, we are 75,000.

And we are not the largest episcopal diocese in the Episcopal Church.

Do you know what is that diocese?

Haiti.

What do you think?

We are the third in numbers.

The number one is Haiti.

Yeah, you can imagine.

Haiti is part of the Episcopal Church.

And they have 90,000.

90,000 active members.

We have a 75,000 and we are going to get there.

We are going to be more than 90,000, but right now we are 75,000.

But you know, still we are more than 90,000.

If we make a connection with more churches in the Episcopal Church, like the Diocese of West Texas, Dallas, or all the dioceses in the Episcopal Church, we have 113 dioceses.

And we can count almost two million.

That means this morning, if everybody, if everyone get up early and went to the church, we are gathered around two million.

But we have more.

And we can go further, and we can make a connection with people in Nigeria.

Almost 15 million members in Nigeria.

Or the Church of England.

25 million.

Today you are going to receive your number.

You know, when I move here as bishop from a different jurisdiction in Central America, I get a number.

My number in Central America, I was the number two.

In the history, in the history of Central America, I was the number the second.

But moving here, I got my number, and my number is 1105.

It's a big difference.

History and size, you know?

And the people who we are going to confirm this morning, you are going to receive number.

I don't know what number you are going to get.

Yeah?

Maybe you are going to get 85 million one.

Yeah?

Or 85 million two.

I don't know exactly.

Yeah?

But you are going to have number, and with that number, you are going to be part of this church present in 164 countries and member of the body of Christ.

65, say that person.

We are over that number.

But that the numbers are important in some way.

And the numbers are important when we can act together.

When we can act and do something together.

This is the vision you have in this church.

Yeah?

Together we can do more.

Yeah?

This is something like that, right?

I went to your web page to say to watch that.

And but you know, numbers are important.

My father was a professional soccer player.

And I played some.

And when I have time, I play a little bit.

And the most important event for the people who love soccer is the World Cup.

Happened last year in Russia.

And for Latin Americans, the most important moment during that World Cup happened when Mexico scored a goal to Germany.

Yeah?

When that happened, the people in Latin America start to be crazy.

And people from Mexico who don't have the chance to go to Russia to be there and to support their team, they gather together in the Sócalo.

The Sócalo is the most important public park in Mexico City.

85,000 people gather together watching the game in a big screens.

And when the goal was scored, the people start to jump.

Yeah?

Happy about the goal.

And you know what happened?

They create an earthquake.

They move the globe a little bit.

It's possible to measure that earthquake.

Because 85,000 people jump together to celebrate.

You can imagine 85 million members of the Episcopal Church, members of the body of Christ, we can do when we act together, when we pray together, when we with our actions and skills and gifts go to the communities and support them, we can move the globe.

This is your call as a members of this church to use your skills and gifts to serve the community, to move the globe, to transform and to believe that through the love of God, everything is transformable.

God bless you.

Amen.