Following through (with our prayers) after the election

On the day after the elections, at Matins and Mass at All Souls, we offered words from the Book of Common Prayer (p. 820):        

O Lord our Governor, whose glory is in all the world: We commend this nation to thy merciful care, that, being guided by thy Providence, we may dwell secure in thy peace. Grant to the President of the United States, the Leaders of our District, and to all in authority, wisdom and strength to know and to do thy will. Fill them with the love of truth and righteousness, and make them ever mindful of their calling to serve this people in thy fear; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.

This is a fine prayer, as far as it goes.  I’m sure that it was prayed in many Episcopal Churches in our country over the past few days.  Some of our leaders themselves may have used this prayer or a similar one.  But saying the prayer once does not necessarily make for peace, wisdom, strength, truth, mindfulness, or any other thing we might hope.  Just as with campaign promises and plans, prayers also need follow-through.         

Though I prayed the prayer with intention on Wednesday, the power of that prayer will continue as I interact with leaders and others in the political process in the days ahead.  Through God’s grace, the intention of that prayer will reverberate as I encounter people who may disagree with my own particular political views.  Can we disagree while hoping for a common good, while calling the best intentions out of one another, and while trying to resist immediately attributing motive to the other?   

Some might suggest that such charity toward another has no place in the cold, hard world of money and power.  But the money and power don’t seem to be getting very close to solving our problems, do they?  I’ll keep praying for our leaders and for the many in our parish and beyond who work to support them, oppose them, and carry out programs and initiatives.  May God guide us all.

Love that reaches up and out

A sermon for the Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost, November 4, 2012.  The lectionary readings are Deuteronomy 6:1-9, Psalm 119:1-8, Hebrews 9:11-14, and Mark 12:28-34.

When I was little, I learned in Sunday school that it was important to remember the two dimensions of the cross. A cross has an upward axis and that reminds us of our relationship with God. But the cross also has a horizontal axis, which reminds us of our relationships with each other. Both need to be in order for us to be right with God.

I learned that incredibly simple (if not simplistic) understanding of the cross maybe 40 years ago. But I’m not sure if I’m any closer at all to reflecting that kind of balance as I try to live my own life in the way of the cross.

The first great commandment: “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength;” and the second, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” are at the center of what it means to walk in the way of the cross. Those two great commandments are at the center of the scripture readings today.

We hear the summary of that first commandment at every Mass at All Souls.  We hear it also today in the reading from Deuteronomy. Moses tells his people that God has promised to watch over them and to love them and to keep them safe. They will pass over from slavery into freedom, from bondage into liberty. They will be free. They will live. And so, he says, give thanks to the God who saves. The Lord is one. Love him with your heart, and your soul and all your might. Moses urges people to love God with their soul, but that word he uses for “soul” is a rich one.

It means to love God with your whole self, with your life, with the creature that you are, with your whole person, with your appetite, with your mind, with your desire, and with your passion.

The Second Commandment, “to love your neighbor as yourself” is sometimes thought by Christians to have originated with Jesus. But it is older. Rabbis long before Jesus had joined the commandment of loving God, with the command of loving neighbor. It’s found in the Book of Leviticus (19:18) and elsewhere. When Jesus links the love of God with the love of neighbor, he is simply following the great prophets of Israel, continuing the witness of Isaiah, and Jeremiah, and Amos.

In today’s Gospel Jesus has a conversation with a man who is called a scribe, a man who is educated in the laws of God and in their interpretation. As the conversation plays out, the scribe and Jesus agree about the commandments. They agree that the mark of faith is to “love God and love neighbor,” and for that agreement, Jesus says to the man, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”

This scribe agrees with the teachings of Jesus, in his head. He can assent to the essential doctrine and can even affirm the interpretations of Jesus. And according to Our Lord, this man is “not far from the kingdom.” But it is that distance, that space between apprehending the kingdom of God and actually reaching the kingdom of God that makes all the difference.

“Almost” doesn’t count, except in a couple of things, and neither of them are Biblical.

The Gospel of Mark has a momentum to it, and this momentum is moving toward the cross. The scribe is lacking something. Like the rich man in an earlier story, the scribe here is lacking the follow-through. It’s not enough just to agree with Jesus. It’s not enough simply to be familiar with his teaching. Faithfulness is shown in one’s willingness to follow the cross—and this means the whole cross, including the love of God and the love of neighbor.

At All Souls we spend a lot of time on the love of God. We worship deeply and lovingly. We love God with our whole heart and soul and mind and strength. We love God “from the gut,” here. But do we do as well with the second commandment?

There’s a church I know in Houston, Texas, that since 1954 has matched, dollar for dollar, the money spent in the operation of the church and its programs with money given to those in need in the community and the world. Can you imagine such a thing for All Souls, or any church? We should imagine it and we should pray for such a day. We’re known all over the district and beyond for our worship and for our openness and hospitality. Those are great things. But let’s say out loud what we all know: The quality of our prayer does not feed a hungry person. It does not put clothes on the back of the poor. Our prayers do not build houses, or provide water, or send children to school.

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one; and we shall love the Lord our God . . . [and] our neighbor as ourself.”

Our prayers can provoke us. They can encourage us, and they can help us to look upward and outward and beyond ourselves. Our prayers can take us into the midst of the other.

There are lots of places to start.  Melissa Barrett is the organizational head of our outreach, but the real outreach happens with individuals, with pairs, with small groups.  Some have done a lot over the years, but they need help.  Our Christ House volunteers need help.  We need someone to take gathered food to the food bank.  Listed in our weekly insert are notices from Transitional Housing, Samaritan Ministries, and many other organizations.  I celebrate a monthly eucharist at St. Mary’s Court, a residence for older adults over in Foggy Bottom.  You could attend and visit with some of our older friends. There are transitional houses of various kinds in our neighborhood, and there are various opportunities to become involved in Adams Morgan and beyond.

There is much that can be done toward loving our neighbor. Loving our neighbor flows into our worship, and flows out of our worship.  I don’t want to worship less, but to explore new ways of moving out of our worship into the world. 
Some of you are familiar with the term, “Anglo-catholic.”  It has to do with a particular movement and a continuing spirit of reminding Anglicans of our Catholic roots, of what we have in common with the whole Christian Church.  An Anglo-catholic perspective takes seriously the sacraments, is careful about worship, doesn’t feel that we have to invent prayer and ritual on the spot according to what may feel relevant in the moment, and a true Anglo-catholic perspective seeks to honor the body of Christ in other people just as much as in the Sacrament. 
Some consider the 1920’s to have been a heyday of the Anglo-Catholic movement. There were strong churches, wise priests and active parishes. At a meeting of the Anglo-Catholic conference of 1923, The Right Reverend Frank Weston, the Bishop of Zanzibar, gave the closing address. He preached that day,

If you say that the Anglo-Catholic has a right to hold his peace while his fellow citizens are living in hovels below the levels of the streets, this I say to you, that you do not yet know the Lord Jesus in his Sacrament . . . Go out and look for Jesus in the ragged, in the naked, in the oppressed and sweated, in those who have lost hope, in those who are struggling to make good. Look for Jesus. And when you see him, gird yourselves with his towel and try to wash their feet.

That dimensional aspect of the Cross still cuts both ways, doesn’t it? It takes us upward and outward. May God show us mercy, and may our Lord Jesus give us the strength to be faithful, that we might walk in the way of the Cross. May we continue to love God with extraordinary beauty, extravagance and unapologetic grandeur, but may we also be motivated to move beyond these walls and participate in the transformation of the world.

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

Listening through All Souls

The Resurrection, Fra Angelico, San Marco Museum, Florence

A sermon for All Souls' Day, November 2, 2012.  The scripture readings are Wisdom 3:1-9, Psalm 130, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, and John 5:24-27.

The psalm sums up this night pretty well.  “Out of the deep have I called unto thee, O Lord.”   Psalm 130, known by its Latin nickname, “de profundis” has been prayed and played through the ages. It’s the same, regardless of the version we use, “de profundis,”  “Out of the depths,” (KJV), “Out of the deep,” (BCP), or with Eugene Peterson’s translation, “Help, O Lord, the bottom has fallen out of my life!”(The Message).

St. Augustine, in his very last days, when he was extremely sick, is said to have written the words of Psalm 130 on his walls.  He wanted to read them, and pray them, and breathe them with his very last breath.   John Wesley heard these words sung as an anthem one day at St. Paul’s Cathedral, and it was later that same day that he felt his heart “strangely warmed,” which began conversion, renewal, and a whole new direction for his ministry.

The depths out of which the psalmist cries are deep, dark waters.  They’re like the depths at the beginning of creation, when chaos ruled.  They’re like the depths into which Jonah fell.  They are just like the deep waters feared, and skirted around, and finally crossed by the people of Israel as they moved toward freedom. 

On this All Souls’ Day, we can only imagine how this psalm must sound to people in New York, New Jersey, and other areas so hard hit by the recent hurricane. The depths are all too real.  All the scriptures about watery chaos, about darkness, and feeling lost—that’s their physical reality.  We pray for God’s closeness and presence with them.

For too many others, and maybe some here, crying to God from the deep, “de profundis” is less a physical experience than an emotional one, or a spiritual one.  The death of a loved one can make us feel like we’re drowning.  An illness can make us feel like we’re swimming in deep water, but losing our strength.  The demands of work and family, and life itself, can even swamp us. 

The prayer of psalm 130 begins, “Out of the deep have I called to you, O Lord,” and then prays that God would hear.  But the other scriptures, and, in fact, our faith itself, suggests that the answer to the prayer comes not so much with God’s hearing us, but more through OUR listening and hearing God.

The reading from Wisdom warns us that our eyes can mislead us.  It will seem like those we have loved have died.  It will look like disaster.  It will appear as though they are far, far away.  But they are with God. They are alive and well.  We shouldn’t believe everything our eyes suggest.

To the Thessalonians, in our second reading, Paul declares. He preaches.  He sounds the word that God’s own trumpet will sound one day.  The archangel calls, and the dead are raised. And we will be raised with them.  And so, listen well.  Open your ears for the wind, for the trumpet sound, for the angel wings, for the raising up of all creation.

Jesus says, “anyone who hears my word and believes ….”   We don’t have to strain our ears to hear.  We don’t have to learn a cryptic language.  We don’t have to learn to listen in some new way.  We are given ears to hear… we just need to listen, to quiet the voices and the noises and the worries and the fears, and the doubts,  and simply listen.

In the poem named, All Souls, May Sarton suggests that we listen through the lives of others, even through the lives of those who have died.   She asks,

"Did someone say that there would be an end,
An end, Oh, an end to love and mourning?
What has been once so interwoven cannot be raveled,
nor the gift ungiven

No, instead, she says,

Now the dead move through all of us still glowing,
Mother and child, lover and lover mated,
are wound and bound together and enflowing.
What has been plaited cannot be unplaited
- only the strands grow richer with each loss
And memory makes kings and queens of us.

And then, Sarton suggests that we grow into a deep place, but no longer the deep that feels overwhelming and scary, but a new deep that is full of life and the ones we have loved. And that’s where the listening comes in:

Dark into light; light into darkness, spin.
When all the birds have flown to some real haven;
We who find shelter in the warmth within,
Listen, and feel new-cherished, new-forgiven,
As the lost human voices speak through us
and blend our complex love,
our mourning without end."

Mourning and grief perhaps never end.  But they change shape.  They change tune.  They change us, as we listen for God, and we begin to hear God’s love for us more deeply.

Listening, actually has to do with obedience.  That word, “obedience,” is often misused in church.  Too often, “obedience” has to do with following rules, fulfilling commandments, conforming to law.  But the word we have in English, “obedient,” comes from the Latin, “ob,” meaning to, or towards, and “oedire,” meaning “to hear.”  To be obedient is to “hear towards,” to “listen into,” even when it’s not clear what we’re listening for, or who we’re listening to.

One of the most beautiful contemporary settings of Psalm 130, De profundis, is by Avro Pärt.  In order to write the music (or the prayer), the composer had to listen.  And Pärt sometimes listens in an unusual way.  It’s a method that uses a primary voice or tune, in this case to sing out mournfully, the words of Psalm 130, while underneath and overtop, there are little sounds, bell-like, building, wrapping around, increasing.  Asked about this idea of little bells ringing around a theme, Pärt explains

Tintinnabulation is an area I sometimes wander into when I am searching for answers - in my life, my music, my work. In my dark hours, I have the certain feeling that everything outside this one thing has no meaning. The complex and many-faceted only confuses me, and I must search for unity. What is it, this one thing, and how do I find my way to it? Traces of this perfect thing appear in many guises - and everything that is unimportant falls away.  (Richard E. Rodda, liner notes for Arvo Pärt Fratres, I Fiamminghi, The Orchestra of Flanders, Rudolf Werthen, (Telarc CD-80387).

When we’re in the depths, stuck out in the deep, with no sight for land or friend or help of any kind, the answer forward is in obedience—true obedience. The answer is in “listening toward” Christ, “listening toward” his love, “listening toward” his promise of eternal life.  We may not hear the words clearly at first.  But through faith, we can live “listening toward” God’s welcome, until the day the words are clear and strong because they’re being whispered in our ear, with God’s eternal embrace.

May we have ears to hear the wisdom of All Souls speaking through us, and may we listen into the Resurrection to Eternal Life.  In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.  Amen.

Which cup?

A sermon for the Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost, October 21, 2012.  The lectionary readings are
Isaiah 53:4-12, Psalm 91:9-16, Hebrews 5:1-10, and Mark 10:35-45.

Back in August, I was in Seattle for Brenda Sol’s ordination.  One morning I went into a coffee shop with every intention of buying a cup of coffee and continuing to walk and explore the city.  The shop was one of a major chain, but was decorated within an inch of its life to reflect the very hip, very green, VERY Seattle neighborhood.  As I stood in line, I noticed that everyone in front of me was ordering coffee just like we might up the street, but when they got their drink, it came in a ceramic cup.  Every single person got a cup “to stay,” and they weren’t saying anything unusual.  I tried to look over the counter to see if, if fact, they even had paper cups for taking away, and finally I saw a few, but it was clear to me that paper cups were just not the “done thing” in this particular shop.  I worried what might happen if I ordered a coffee “to go.”  Would the cool music stop, the lights be turned up full, and everyone stare?  Would they instantly label me as “East Coast,” or would they boo me out of the shop calling me a “tree killer” and the most conspicuous of consumers?  I ordered a coffee, got a ceramic mug, and sat down, as though I had planned to stay, all along. 

That Seattle coffee shop is not the only place where “which cup” takes on additional meaning.  If you go to buy coffee in 7-Eleven, (in a paper cup) you are asked to choose between an Obama blue one or one that is Romney Red.  In that context, the cup I choose makes a statement, if not a vote. 

In today’s gospel Jesus asks James and John if they are sure they’ve chosen the right cup.  They have left their former lives; they’ve begun to follow Jesus.  But he asks them, “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink?”  “Are you able to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?”  These brothers, who Jesus nicknamed “sons of thunder,” thunder forth and respond, “Yes.  We are able.” 

In today’s Gospel and in several other places, Jesus uses the cup as a symbol, as an image that holds within it a number of different things.  The cup from which Jesus drinks holds suffering.  It is layered with service and sacrifice.  But finally, it is a cup that overflows with joy.

In the Garden of Gethsemane we see the cup of suffering.  Jesus prays in agony.  His friends fall asleep.  The authorities are coming.  And he prays to the Father, “if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt.”  Through his acceptance, through his prayer and through the love that he continues to show others, Jesus begins to transform the cup of suffering into a cup of redemption.

We need to say one thing for certain: and that is, that suffering is not always changed into redemption.  Suffering, itself, is not to be glorified.  Children who die of AIDS, women who die from abuse, the elderly who die alone and forgotten—this kind of suffering is pointless.

 There is no redemption in it and we blaspheme if we in any way suggest that it might be a part of God’s will.  Rather, it is the will of God to redeem, to bring to life, to restore and we are most faithful when we do everything we can to lift one another out of such suffering. 

But there is another kind of suffering.  Suffering that is on behalf of others is of a different quality.   It is a different cup altogether.  In today’s first reading Isaiah sings of a Suffering Servant.  In words we also read on Good Friday, we typically see Jesus as the one who has “borne our infirmities and carried our diseases. . .  by whose bruises we are healed.”  But the interpretation of Isaiah by faithful Jews before Jesus (and after) is also relevant.  Israel understood itself as the suffering servant.  As the nation suffered but remained faithful, others would be see and would be brought to God.  Through the suffering of a remnant, the whole world might be saved.  The idea that redemptive suffering is communal rather than individual may sound odd in a culture as self-focused as ours.   But I think about it for a minute, it invites me to worry less about what I, alone, might accomplish.  It encourages me to think and pray about what we might all be called to do together.  In what ways might we be called to suffer so that others might know redemption and life? (Not a popular question, and not a question easily answered.)  

When Jesus asks James and John if they are able, he is asking if they are able to endure suffering.  He is also asking if they are willing to live a life of service.  Jesus makes it clear that the kingdom of God is not built on power or greatness, but on serving one another. 

Ours is a faith of one-anothering.  Jesus uses that term over and over again: “love one another,” “bear one another’s burdens,” “submit to one another,” and “encourage one another.”  Our faith comes alive when we are able to serve one another—not just in volunteering or being busy or performing tasks—but really letting down our guard, allowing the other person closer, and even being open to being changed by the other.  The cup of service is one the disciples drink from.  They share this cup and they pass it on. 

We continue to pass it on.  After every Eucharist we pray that we might be sent into the world to love and serve God.  Well, we accomplish that “loving and serving” not in the abstract, but by loving and serving those made in God’s image.

Jesus drinks and shares a cup of suffering and a cup of service, but the cup he lifts highest and offers to all is, in the end, filled with joy and celebration.  It is, for lack of a better term, a victory cup.  It is beyond any hope of a Holy Grail because as we share this cup of the blood of Christ, we really drink in everlasting life, here, together and everywhere the Mass is celebrated.

In this Gospel where Jesus explains that greatness comes through service, and honor comes through sacrifice, he also asks if the disciples are truly able to undergo a baptism like his.  Just as Moses led people through the water from slavery to freedom, baptism with Jesus submerges us in death.  It is a death to sin.  A death to the power of the world.  A death to the demands of the devil.  It is a death to self and a dying to selfishness.  But we are brought out of death into new life.  Baptism changes us, it changes everything and we are made new.  We are born again and enabled through confession and forgiveness to be born again and again and again.  If we choose it, that is. 

We have many choices, of course.  Too often we begin trying to live a good life, giving occasional attention to God, but gradually drinking more and more of this world.  Before we know it we are satiated with ourselves, with work, with relationships, with success, with our goals and plans and schedules.  We loose our sense of taste for things holy.  And so, to sip of religion can at first seem bitter and strange.

Austin Farrer describes this taste as “God’s goodness” on our palates, a taste with a “new and unthought-of flavor”.  “God’s goodness,” Farrer writes, “which we taste in wine and in bread, in friendship and in every blessed thing, is the love that died in agony for our salvation.  That is where the taste of it comes out; yet it is not a bitter taste; it is the wine of everlasting joy.” (The Brink of Mystery, p. 67)

And so, the suffering, the service, and the sacrifice, are all poured into one cup, one cup that overruns with everlasting joy.  Which cup will we choose?  Strengthened by the risen Christ, may we choose wisely, with faith and with love. 

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.  Amen.

Saved

The All Souls Window, (c) 2010 Ron Ross

A sermon for the Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost, October 14, 2012.  The lectionary readings are
Amos 5:6-7, 10-15,  Psalm 90:12-17, Hebrews 4:12-16, and Mark 10:17-31.

“Who can be saved?” the disciples ask.

Who, indeed, can be saved?

Though we may not always use that kind of language, and though we may even be a little embarrassed by the vocabulary of “the saved,” and the “not saved,” we should be also be honest, I think. We do want to be saved. Salvation is the goal. That’s why we’re here.

Salvation looks like many different things, depending on our perspective.
For some, salvation looks like eternal life;
for others, it looks like healthy children.
For one or two, salvation might be like a day without pain, given a chronic condition that seems not to respond to medicine, or careful living, or even prayer.

For others, salvation has more communal characteristics, it is saving on a more global scale. Salvation may look like equal rights, regardless of race, or gender, or sexual orientation, or income, or physical or intellectual ability, or anything else.

And for still yet others, “being saved” might be as simple as the moment or two that are worry and burden-free—not worried (for the minute) about the aging parent, no longer worried about the child who can’t quite fit in, no longer worried about the spouse who is looking for work, just no longer anxious, or preoccupied, but alive.

We do want salvation. And so, there’s a part of us that perhaps can relate to person in today’s gospel. He runs up to Jesus, excited, asking, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus has him reflect on the commandments, the basics. The man says, “oh yes, well, I’m pretty good with all of those.” “I haven’t killed anyone, I honor my parents, I don’t steal.” But then, Jesus says to the man, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” The man hears this and is shocked. He goes away, grieving.

But that’s not the real point of the story. The story continues.

The disciples see this and they’re confused. Here is this very good guy, who keeps all the commandments. He does exactly what the whole tradition has taught. He keeps the Sabbath day, he doesn’t lie, he certainly doesn’t murder. But then Jesus seems to reinterpret everything. He changes the rules. He broadens the perspective. In some ways he blows apart the whole idea of what it meant to follow God.

It’s almost like another story in scripture, the story of the Prodigal Son. You remember it’s where there’s an older brother who has done all the right things, followed all the rules, stayed at home and worked hard, dedicated his life to the father and the farm, and then there’s this younger brother. The younger brother is the cut-up who goes out, plays hard, and squanders his inheritance. He returns home humble, like a beggar. But it’s for the younger brother that the father throws the big party, gives all the attention, and makes the special feast. The older brother feels like the rules have been changed on him. He’s angry, he’s bitter, and (I bet) he’s more than a little bit jealous.

Both the older brother in the Prodigal Son story and the rich man in today’s story hear what should be good news from Jesus: that one cannot buy or earn the love of God. And they, these characters are so invested (and I use that word on purpose)—they are invested in all that they have imagined they are doing for and giving to God, and so they want their return. Jesus shows that the economics of God’s love work very differently.

The disciples ask Jesus, “Ok, then, who can be saved?” But as someone has pointed out, Jesus doesn’t answer this question. Instead, he poses the real question: Not, “who can be saved,” but “Who can do the saving.” And that’s the question that Jesus DOES answer.

It is God and God alone who does the saving. In God’s own way, in God’s own time, in God’s lavish self-giving, self-offering, overflowing love.

God saves us. God saves us from ourselves. God saves us from becoming too attached to our possessions, to our ideas, to our friends, to our family, even to our own sense of ourselves.

In both our readings from the Prophet Amos and our Gospel, there’s an aspect of the reading that follows an expected pattern, but then there’s some ambiguity at the end. There’s some room within what some might see as a forgone conclusion. There’s room for us to move toward God. There’s room for God’s grace to move in us.

Amos thunders about injustice and oppression. His words often indict the people, and he predicts the culture’s crumbling in, upon itself, because of its greed, because of its selfishness, because it ignores the way of God. But then Amos has these words,

Seek good and not evil, that you may live;
and so the LORD, the God of hosts, will be with you, just as you have said.
Hate evil and love good, and establish justice in the gate;[and] it may be that the LORD, the God of hosts, will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph.

“It may be,” says Amos. In other words, the future of those who seek God is not set in stone. It is open for change, for growth, for repentance, for (dare I say it) salvation.

Likewise, in the Gospel, one reading can have the story of the rich man and Jesus end in a pretty sad way. Jesus says to the man, “You lack one thing, go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven, and follow me.” And we’re told that “when [the man] heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.” It’s not that he was rich, that was the problem. The rich are not better or worse than the poor.  The problem is that this man is reluctant to follow Jesus, to let loose of the things that weigh him down, and to move toward salvation. He goes away grieving. But I don’t think the story really ends.

We don’t know if the man turned around and met up with Jesus the next day. We don’t know if later, after hearing about the amazing events in Jerusalem: Jesus’ crucifixion, his death on the cross, his rising again in glory… that the man may have yet had a change of heart and decided to follow Jesus. The story leaves room for us to imagine. It leaves room for grace, just as our own lives—no matter where we might be in our own calling to follow Jesus, no matter what might currently stand in the way of our being more faithful disciples of Jesus, not matter what might seem to be in our way of living freely--- there is room for us to respond to God. There is room for God’s justice to smash the barriers, God’s mercy to forget all sin, and God’s grace to break through and bring us closer.

The good news of Jesus Christ is that God is eager to take away whatever burdens us, whatever makes us sluggish to follow him, whatever keeps us from love. God offers to empty our hands, to take whatever we cling to, and gently lay it aside, so that our hands may be empty—our hands and our hearts, so that we might receive the love of God for this live and the next.

With God, all things are possible. Who can be saved? Every single one of us.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.