St. Andrew's Episcopal Church
New London, New Hampshire
The Feast of the Resurrection- Easter Sunday, 23 March 2008
sermon preached by The Rev. Canon Cricket Cooper, rector
St. Andrew’s Church, New London, NH
There is only one phrase you absolutely should hear this morning, and it’s in the Acts of the Apostles. “God shows no partiality.” IMAGINE! God shows NO partiality??!!! I live in the real world, my friends, and I know that each one of us here this morning has a different reason why he or she came to church. Now, I won’t ask for a show of hands, so you can relax! But I know some of us came willingly this morning, some of us came eagerly, some of us were dragged here by a family member, and others of us aren’t really sure what we are doing here.
This is normal. It’s OK. And however you find yourself here today, whatever the media or your family or the Christian Right may tell you---- GOD shows NO partiality. You are as welcome here whether you come often, rarely, or never- whether you come joyfully, grudgingly or angrily. God loves you just as much as the person next to you, and the person in front or in back of you. And- whether we like it or not- God also loves all the folks who are still in bed, or blissfully chewing the ears off their chocolate bunnies, or who have never even heard about God.
Too often, churches act like they own God, like God has to be managed. God’s love is completely unmanageable; like the wind, the Holy Spirit blows this way and that and everyone is touched. God invites all of us, and each one of us will experience that in a very personal way.
Like today, for example. Three people go to that tomb today- and they have three very different reactions. Mary sees the empty space and thinks, “The body has been stolen!” Peter goes into the space, but we aren’t told what he thinks. And the other disciple- let’s call him John- sees the shroud and believes. One tomb, three people, three experiences.
Jesus may as well ask us this morning the same question he asks Mary: Whom do you seek? Are you looking for a miracle worker? For a social or political revolutionary? For a peacemaker? For a friend? The one thing we all long for is for someone who knows and loves us, just as we are. For someone who sees us on our good days and our bad, and loves us just the same on both.
It may not be our friend or our spouse or our parent or our child, but it is this broken and risen Lord of ours. A man whose friends did not speak up for him, and yet who comes back even from the grave with a heart filled with understanding and with love. Mary, turned away from him in the garden, is fussing about this theft she has discovered--- we don’t know the whole history between her and Jesus, but all he has to do is say her name, and she gets it. She knows immediately who it is. It makes no sense, but she knows that this man is one who has known her for years, and has loved her.
Imagine this happening to you, when you are tired, angry, broken or depressed, when nobody is there for you, when nobody wants to listen to you. Imagine this warm, loving voice that just says your name, says it in such a way that you know- in that moment- that you are known, that you are treasured, that you are loved, that you are just right, just the way you are.
THAT is the Easter message. That WE too can be resurrected, because he was. That our doubt and disbelief do not separate us from that Great Love. That His story is our story, and it never ends in the tomb.
Alleluia. Amen.
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The 14th Sunday after Pentecost, 2 September 2007
sermon preached by The Rev. Cricket Cooper
St. Andrew’s Church, New London, NH
I once went to a wedding reception that had a formal sit-down dinner, with place cards at each seat. Normally, there is a certain hierarchy for this sort of seating, with the wedding party set apart, and then members of their families seated together in amicable groupings, and so forth down through the ranks of friends and associates. At this one, the couple had worked hard to mix folks up so that there was a weird, yet delightful, serendipity about who was seated with whom. The bride and groom, for example, shared a table with the children, which kept them all laughing straight through the meal and the evening.
Today’s gospel is also about seating people at a banquet. Imagine the humiliation of sitting with a group of folks and then being singled out and told to go sit in the folding chairs at the card table by the swinging kitchen door. Jesus talks a lot to us about not thinking more highly of ourselves than we ought, about humility and a life of service to others.
Our lives are a minefield of opportunities to get this wrong- because we crave identity and status. From our earliest years, it really MATTERS if you are selected first or last for a sport, whether your spot in line is at the beginning or the end. I remember teachers trying to tell us that it didn’t matter, we would all get to the same place at the same time… but we knew they had it wrong. It mattered that you were selected, singled out, before others. It meant you were popular, that others wanted you near them.
There is perhaps only one perfect banquet, only one perfectly egalitarian table on this earth--- this altar table. We are being reminded today that our earthly banquets should mirror what happens at this heavenly banquet- a meal where everyone is invited, everyone is served exactly the same food in exactly the same proportion. A meal where rich and poor, brave and frail, bold and shy stand or kneel side by side, sharing a meal together, equal in God’s sight.
We are called, in our homes and in our church, to make sure there is room at the table for people very different from ourselves. Perhaps this holiday weekend, if you find yourself at a gathering of people, seek out the most troubling or challenging person to sit with, to eat with. What might happen if you sat with that person for an hour?
And, if you suddenly find yourself very popular, maybe- just maybe- consider that other people there find YOU to be the most troubling or challenging person around!
Fear not, for at that eternal banquet, God will be waiting for each one of us with a hearty welcome and open arms.
Amen.
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Sermon preached by the Rev. Cricket Cooper
St. Andrew’s Church, New London
I have three words for our readings today: messy, messy, messy! This first reading begins after the juicy part of the story has already taken place—we only hear that the “thing that David had done” displeased the LORD… we don’t hear that what he had done is accidentally seen Uriah’s wife having a bath, that he had fallen madly in lust with her, that he had- as the King- demanded her presence and made her pregnant, and that when his cover-up of the pregnancy fails, he sends her husband- who is a soldier- into the worst fighting of a local war to be darn sure that he won’t come back……
Whoa. The bible is full of these stories of humans doing unthinkable things--- today, we get a whole bucketload of them. The sad analogy of the little ewe lamb, the story of Peter (who in our epistle today called Cephas) who no longer would eat with new Christian converts, and this story of the sinful woman at the dinner party.
What links all these stories together, what calls us to attention?
Judgment.
In all of these stories, people have decided what another person is worth. People treat others badly, because they have judged them to be less worthy, less deserving, less human than they are.
Simon is a terrific example, because he is a Pharisee. He’s a religious leader. An invitation to his house for dinner is an honor- and he thinks Jesus must be pretty darn impressed. One of the most important things always on the mind of a holy man like this was ritual purity--- guarding one’s purity, because an impure person cannot enter the temple until he has been cleansed. To be touched by someone suspected to be impure was to instantly lose one’s own clean status.
Enter this sinful woman who is quite literally oozing on Jesus. Tears, hair, expensive unguents--- it’s appallingly intimate, disturbingly sexual, and just plain icky at the dinner table. Simon is not only personally disgusted, but also his faith in Jesus falls away- because why would anyone let this woman touch him?
And then Jesus does the unthinkable---- he tells a story that makes it clear that when God looks at Simon and at this woman, God sees no difference between them. God loves them both, forgives them both, and blesses them both. It is the woman, who knows that she has a whole lot to be forgiven for, who is overwhelmed with gratitude, with adoration, with thankfulness.
Simon, who perhaps overlooked some niceties of hospitality, is not being condemned for this. But in the instant that he thinks himself better than the woman, he forgets that he is in every way as needy of forgiveness as she. He forgets that his account with God may be just as long, even if it is filled with the white-collar sins of pride, of arrogance, of judgment.
+++
June is a month of gift giving--- weddings, graduations, anniversaries—I’ve had gifts on the mind this past few weeks. And so today, I pray to God for each of us to receive two gifts. The first is self-awareness. A clear sense of who we are, and where our gifts and weaknesses are. The second is the gift of humility. The knowledge that those very gifts have been given to us by God, and are to be used in the service of others.
What if we were so engrossed in serving others that it never crossed our minds to judge them?
Amen.
The Fourth Sunday of Easter 29 April 2007
sermon preached by The Reverend Cricket Cooper, Rector
St. Andrew's Church, New London
The past few months, a group of us have been meeting on Monday mornings to read and study John’s gospel. One of the interesting things we have talked about is that John was not writing his gospel in order to get new converts. So if today’s reading seems a little harsh- that is one of the reasons! John is trying to shore up the faith of those who have already come to believe in Jesus as the Christ… but who, through time or discouragement are starting to waiver. The writer of this gospel has a strong desire- not to bring in new sheep, but rather to tell the sheep who are already in- Don’t worry. Nothing can snatch you away from God. Once you are in, you are safe forever.
This may have been partially in reaction to the painful split at the time, when it was becoming clear that faithful Jews who had heard and believed in Jesus’ message were no longer at home in the synagogues. That choosing to follow Jesus would mean a heartbreaking departure from the faith and tradition of your family and your earlier life.
What strikes me today in this metaphor of the Good Shepherd is not the power of the shepherd, nor the blind faith of the sheep, but rather the tenderness of the relationship between the shepherd and the flock. Jesus says, “I KNOW my sheep.” In the first century CE, shepherds had to know their sheep, had to be able to count them quickly and keep them safe. The good shepherd would give them silly nicknames to tell them apart: "Floppy Ears," or "Curly Tail." This made it easier to identify who had gone missing, or whether every sheep was accounted for.
A truly Good shepherd knows and cares for the sheep not because it’s a job, or because they are worth money, but because that shepherd loves the sheep- just for their slow, sweet, dull-witted sheepiness! Jesus wants us to know that looking at us in our slowwitted wanderings, he loves us- just as we are.
Think of the nicknames he gave some of his dearest friends: Simon, who was forever doing the wrong thing, impetuous, changeable, maddeningly inconsistent—Jesus called him “the Rock”! That MUST have been a funny nickname at the time! James and John- noisy, gruff fishermen, forever scuffling and shoving—he called them the Sons of Thunder! Like a shepherd, Jesus knows us as he knew them, knows our best and our worst moments--- and loves, maybe even teases us with a name that shows how dear we are to him.
I also remember how Jesus addressed his Father, by calling him "Abba." This is not the formal and dignified term for one's parent, "abba" is a baby-talk word, like saying "Daddy." Like with the disciples, there is an intimacy here that both startles and attracts me.
I think it is immensely comforting to think that Jesus knows us and thinks of us in intimate terms. In order to have this close relationship, it seems today that the only requirement from us is to hear his voice and follow. Sounds so simple, so sheeplike- doesn’t it? But in order to hear that voice, we can’t wait to have an earth-shattering moment like Paul had last week, knocked off his horse by the voice of Jesus. Most of us are going to have to listen for it- to sit and wonder what on earth Jesus would say to us if we listened.
Perhaps the single greatest longing we share is that of wanting to be truly known, wanting to be loved and valued for who we are, the way we are. Today, Jesus tells us: we ARE known, we are loved, we are called by the name that touches us most deeply. Our task is to recognize the voice, and accept this friendship that is every bit as strong and as intimate as our longing.
Amen.
* * * * * *
Christmas
Day
sermon
preached by The Rev. Cricket Cooper
St.
Andrew’s Church,
That is the message of this baby in the manger, that God set aside God’s omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience, and chose to become one of the most helpless and most vulnerable creatures on our planet- a human baby.
Treasure your light. Be open to this world, to one another and to our God.
* * * * * * * * *
The
First Sunday of Advent, December 3, 2006
Sermon
preached by The Reverend Cricket Cooper
St.
Andrew’s,
One of the things which most delights me about the church year is its
cyclical nature. One Sunday, we're
buried deeply in the midst of Pentecost, and then suddenly, immediately, we are
thrust into the action and tension of Advent.
In the church year, today is New Year's Day, and we gather together this
Sunday with the sure and certain knowledge that something is different.
Something has changed. The
very air is tense with anticipation.
Jesus' words today call us to order.
Look for signs, watch the trees, the sky, the moon- our redemption is
drawing near! But what are we really
waiting for? Are we waiting only for
a chubby-cheeked baby to appear in the center of an impossibly clean stall?
Are we waiting for an entire week's worth of shopping and cooking for a
meal that may scarcely last an hour? Are
we waiting to see if we'll get what we asked for, as though people's affection
must be made visible in gifts of great value?
NO!
We are told today in no uncertain terms what we are waiting for:
the Son of God coming in power and glory.
It is not just Christmas Day that is drawing near- it is the birth of
someone who will help us to rise to a higher level of life.
It is the coming of our Redemption.
Redemption is actually an easy concept for us today, in one sense.
We are a culture familiar with Redemption Centers.
If you take your bottles and cans back to the Redemption center, they
will buy them back from you. Something
that might just as easily be thrown away, something that we often see discarded
along roadways or cluttering up vacant lots, suddenly becomes valuable because
it is worth something to someone else.
The Greek word for redemption used here is not used again anywhere else
in the Gospels. It is a powerful
word that means literally, "to buy back."
This is what we are waiting for- at any moment, someone will appear who
will tell us how valuable we are, and who will buy us back from the vacant lots
and roadsides of our scattered lives. Any
second now, we will learn anew that God has put a great price on each one of us,
that the child for whom we are waiting will give up his life in order to redeem
us, in order to bring us back to God.
We are priceless to God. Each
and every one of us. If the
And so Jesus' message today announces that the crisis has come.
Now is the time to stand up and take notice.
Now is the time to remember our value.
Now is the time to prepare ourselves for our Redemption.
The signs are everywhere. The
time is now.
Amen.
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The 3rd
Sunday after Pentecost, 25 June 2006
Sermon preached
by The Rev. Cricket Cooper
St Andrew’s
Church,
By the grace of God, many- maybe most- of us can recall a situation in our lives where we feared for our lives and yet were enabled to move through that moment and live. One such moment in my life was when a plane I was on was struck by lightning. There was a blinding flash in every window, accompanied by an ear-splitting BANG, and the sensation that a gigantic foot had just punted the airplane. Without thinking about it, I was in a nanosecond in the crash position, head between my knees, hand grasping my floatation cushion, and my other hand grabbing the cushion of the empty seat next to me!
And so I can clearly imagine the disciples hurt and confusion when Jesus,
in the midst of the today’s gospel storm, turns on them and rebukes them for
having no faith. Faith doesn’t
mean never being afraid, does it? When
you think your boat or plane is going down?
Stress management experts have calculated that- of the things people
worry about- only 2% are actually worth worrying about.
The other 98% include things that will never happen, things that may
happen but over which one has no control, and then meaningless worries- things
which really aren’t important. I
would have said that being hit by lightning in a plane was definitely worth
worrying about, for example, until the pilot came on chuckling and said, “That
one got us! Nothing to worry about,
of course!” I was on a morning
commuter flight between
Well, as I pondered this gospel this week, I thought that the storms that
toss us in our daily lives are often more emotional and psychological, rather
than this literal storm at sea. Early
church builders knew this to be true, because they named this seating part of
the church “the nave”, from the Latin word for boat.
When we meet together for worship, we find ourselves quite literally in
the same boat, reminding ourselves that God is at the wheel, and that the storms
of our lives that loom so large and seem so destructive do not separate us from
God’s love. Because the person
next to us also has concerns and conflicts to wrestle with, and the person next
to him and the person next to her. But
we pile up our personal anxieties and bring them here, so we can sit in the boat
together and ask Jesus to calm the storm. For
this hour every week, Jesus looks each one of us in the eye and asks, “Why are
you afraid?”
Why indeed? Jesus makes it clear that no matter how rough the crossing, how violent the waves, how scary the conditions- we are not alone. There will always be others in the boat with us. He will always be in the boat with us. Let us pray not unrealistically for lives with no storms or challenges, but rather to remember that we have resources of faith and prayer and community, resources that empower us to weather any storm.
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The Feast of Pentecost, 4 June 2006
sermon preached by the Rev. Cricket Cooper
St Andrew's,
This day of Pentecost is known by many different nicknames-
the birthday of the church, the birthday of the holy spirit, or Whitsunday-
because so many were traditionally married or baptized on Pentecost that you saw
countless people dressed in white...
Well,
today we hear Jesus say "Receive the holy spirit"--- what does that
mean to you? What does it mean for
the church?
Well, we
baptise(d) little Jack Diemar this morning- He will receive the holy spirit in
that sacrament, and he will never be the same again.
He will go from being a little boy in a family, to being a member of a
worldwide community, to being an heir of the
But what about
us- those of us who received the holy spirit at our baptisms years and years
ago? What might this feast day say
to us?
I
admit that I love to build fires- campfires, bonfires, woodstoves- I have always
loved that crackle and fizz and hiss and snapping that signals that the wood has
caught fire. I've always loved
blowing on those fires, whether a new one or a dying one, and watching the
embers glow red and hot.
Well,
today I think is the day every year when Jesus blows on those embers within us,
blows on that glowing spark of the spirit that we carry all the time, but maybe
don't tap into. Today, Jesus blows
on that spark and reminds us that we are called to keep that fire burning.
Keep it burning by serving the poor, the disenfranchised and the unloved.
Keep it burning by striving for justice in our communities, by seeing the
face of Jesus in every stranger, every opponent, every family member, every
neighbor.
Jesus today blows on the spark within you--- where are you being called to forgiveness? Where are you being called to serve? Where are you being called to minister?
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The
6th Sunday of Easter, 21 May 2006
sermon
preached by the Rev. Cricket Cooper
St.
Andrew's Church,
I heard it said once: You
can only love God as much as you love the person you like the least.
That really gives me pause.... what could that mean?
It echoes perfectly our epistle today- you can't love a God you've never
seen if you can dislike people that you do see....
I don't know... it's easier to dislike something about people when you
get to know them... some people are mean, or rude, or dishonest, or downright
criminal. God couldn't possibly want
us to like folks who are like that.... so what on earth is this passage saying
to us?
I think it's close to impossible for us to understand how God loves,
because Divine Love is not connected to judgment.
I think God is able to love people, whether we are broken or whole, kind
or mean, evolved or prehistoric. God
loves us as potential, as what we could be at our best.
Our love is all about judgment- we don't love blindly, but we select
lovable characteristics in others: looks, connections, intelligence, kindness.
We grow to love some people more than others, we fall in and out of love
with people, and we learn that there are some people we will never love.
The movement of our hearts is filtered through our brains- we select this
one instead of that one, we choose this but not that.
God on the other hand, just loves. And
whatever God's judgment is, I trust that God's love is never quenched, that God
is prepared to love us all into wholeness, either in this life or the life to
come.
Our epistle today draws a connection between love and fear, and there may
be our work today. What we dislike
often has something to do with what we fear...
I know before I was ordained, I used to hate visiting in hospitals, and
then I realized that I had an irrational fear that once I got inside, they would
keep me.... which as a visitor is a pretty long shot!
This week may be a good time to pick something you really don't like, a
person, a situation, something. And
then take some time to look for the fear there... what might be the block in
that relationship? In that situation? It
might be that we can toss the fear aside if it's silly, or unfounded.
Or, it may be that we can face the fear, and it will lose its power over
us. In any event, we can find
ourselves moving closer to love, by finding the fear.
The truly great lovers of the human race, people like Mother Theresa,
Archbishop Tutu, you could name any number of famous people-, these are people
who were fearless, and through that courage found a depth of love most of us
marvel at.
This one thing I wish for us- the perfect love that casts out fear.
May we face the darkness together, and discover that we are truly
children of light, God's chosen people.
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The Fourth Sunday of Easter, 7 May 2006
sermon preached by The Rev. Cricket Cooper
rector, St.
Andrew's Church,
Imagine facing life with this sort
of confidence! Imagine yourself, in
a crisis, in a dark time, in the silence of a sleepless night- imagine saying to
yourself, "Because God is on my side, I will fear nothing."
Nothing! Is it possible to
put those worries down for just a short stretch of time, and let yourself be a
sheep instead of trying to be the shepherd?
Can you trust that God will lead you
into all goodness?
I think one of the reasons why this psalm says that God will prepare a
banquet for us, in the presence of our enemies, isn't to show our enemies that
God loves us best... but rather, with our cup overflowing with blessings, I
think God trusts that our hearts will also overflow with reconciliation, with
forgiveness, with gratitude, and that maybe, just maybe, we might invite those
troubling people to join us at the table. After
all, it's not much of a banquet if we're eating alone...
It wouldn't be our inclination
to have those same folks over for a meal, but when the banquet is prepared by
God, we find ourselves moved beyond our prickly boundaries, moved to open our
arms even to those we might not think to include.
What would you do if you knew you could not fail?
What would you dream of if you knew you could make your dreams come true?
No, this psalm doesn't make us all-powerful, but we can trust that if
what we want is inspired by God, then we can make it happen.
Maybe not always the way that we envisoned it, maybe not always on our
timeline--- but we can trust that God is urging us on to great things.
If we can quiet the voices in our heads and hearts, the voices of fear that call us to fill up our lives with more things, more noise, more busyness, if we can truly listen for God's still small voice leading us, then goodness and mercy will surround us all the days of our lives, and we will dwell in the house of our Lord, today and forever. Amen.
sermon
preached by the Rev. Cricket Cooper
St.
Andrew’s Church,
The more I read over this passage, the more cases of paralysis I saw. Of course, there is the central figure, a young man who has some form of physical paralysis. In this ancient culture, it was thought that an illness was a sign that a person, or perhaps a person’s parents, had sinned-and the illness was God’s retribution. And so the argument about what Jesus says is somewhat of a moot point: whether he says “Be Healed,” to the man, or “Your sins are forgiven,” the effect will be the same. I am pretty sure that the paralytic himself didn’t care one bit what Jesus said to him, so long as he could be healed.
Let
us pray: Loving
God, help us to trust in your goodness and your love, and free our hearts from
the paralysis of our routines, our schedules and our expectations.
Help us to know that you would work a new thing in us.
Give us wisdom to listen, and courage to follow, so that we too may take
up our pallets and walk in your ways, today and all the days of our lives.
The
17th Sunday after Pentecost- 11 September 2005
sermon
preached by The Rev. Cricket Cooper
Saint
Andrew’s Church, New London, NH
I love this gospel story- this wonderful illustration that the
relationship that Jesus calls us to is something that seems crazy to your
average run-of-the-mill guy. Forgiving
someone 7 times- can that be right? So
when Jesus says we need to forgive 70 times 7… well, we know that whatever
he’s talking about, it’s not the math that’s important!
This story kept reminding me of a phrase from the Lord’s Prayer- but
from the version that I don’t usually say: forgive us our debts AS WE FORGIVE
our debtors. Perhaps when we say
those words, we aren’t actually realizing that what they mean is: we will be
forgiven precisely to the same degree as we are able to forgive others.
Yikes- is that really what we pray for, what we expect of God’s mercy?
Would it be more honest for us to admit that we hope and pray that we
will be forgiven our own trespasses in a way that far exceeds our human ability
to forgive others? That our
entrance into Paradise may well depend more on God’s magnamimity than on our
own?
Forgiveness
is our lifelong task as Christians. Forgiving
life’s inequities and unkindnesses, the smallness or meanness of others, the
countless sharp edges of our days which cut and hurt.
Some things we can forgive if we try- other things are too large for us.
We instead can work on ways for forgiving people for being broken or for
being formed in a way that keeps them outside of our human ability to forgive.
We can hand the worst stuff over to God, and ask for forgiveness where we
cannot, for healing where we see no health, for wholeness where we see no
mending.
On
this September 11th, forgiveness may be the furthest thing from our
minds. But our task as Christians
is to find a way to be People of the Light, people who trust and believe in the
ultimate goodness of our God. It may be too big a task for us to forgive people who mean us
harm in such an inconceivable way, but we can ask God to keep us from hardening
our hearts against others unlike us, ask God to heal some of our own hurt and
anger and fear. One person at a
time, we can learn to forgive people the small stuff, and see if that helps us
hand over to God the bigger stuff. And
if 70 times 7 seems impossible, then start with 7… it may not be the “Big
Picture Goal”, but see if you can find 7 things to forgive in your life… and
then maybe the next 69 sets of 7 won’t be so hard!
Let us pray: God-
you alone can know our hearts and our desires, our hopes, our dreams and our
fears. Take us by the hand and
guide us where you would have us go; keep
our hearts fresh and our hands open, so that we may perfectly serve you by
serving one another. In the name of
Jesus Christ we pray—Amen.
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The
15th Sunday after Pentecost- 28 August 2005
sermon
preached by The Rev. Cricket Cooper, rector
Saint
Andrew’s Episcopal Church, New London
Yesterday,
Tom and I went to the Highland Games in Quechee with some friends.
I’ve always loved those events- the pipes and drums, bizarre sporting
contests like tossing the caber, girls dancing their hearts out, and everywhere
men and women in tartans. But our
favorite every time is watching the sheep herding dogs!
These
dogs run like comets, crawl like panthers, and stalk like lionesses- circling a
group of sheep and- hopefully- moving them in the direction the handlers wish
them to go. As you watch, you can
see how careful the dogs need to be… if they keep too much distance, the sheep
trot off to do their own thing, but if the dog gets too close or approaches too
fast, the sheep panic, and scatter or race away in an uncontrolled fashion.
Clearly, it takes years of work for a shepherd and dog team to learn to
work with one another, and to move the sheep efficiently and consistently.
As
I watched the interplay, I couldn’t help but think of the careful relationship
that Jesus is building with Peter in these few gospels we’ve had lately.
Last week, Peter proclaimed Jesus as Messiah, and Jesus praised him and
called him the Rock. This week,
it’s as if the praise went straight to Peter’s head, because he is suddenly
so confident, he forgets his place entirely and rebukes Jesus for talking about
the future. Jesus, who so recently
thought Peter was “getting it,” throws up his hands in frustration and tells
him to get out of the way. The Rock
that looked so promising last week, this week is just a darned obstacle!
I
think it is easy to lose focus, lose perspective, the way Peter does.
If we are too shy about our faith, it makes no impact on our own lives,
and none on the world around us. If
we are too bold (and certainly it is an Episcopalian idea that yes, you could be
TOO bold!), we run the risk of dishonoring other people, of using Scripture as a
weapon. There are pitfalls, just
like in herding sheep, if you stray too far to the left or the right- we are,
after all, people of the via media- the Middle Way.
When you are off on a tangent, you can lose touch with others, and miss
conversations that remind us that it is creative tension that holds this
communion together.
Like
Peter, I think we sometimes take one step forward and two steps back in our
faith journeys--- we get it right
and we get it wrong, but we need to keep moving.
Sometimes we listen to our shepherd and follow his commands.
Other times we think we know better, and run off to do things our own
way. Like Peter, sometimes we
forget our place in the hierarchy, and snap at the hand that feeds us. Today, we are reminded that where there is love and respect,
there is also a desire to listen and to serve.
Thank goodness our God is able to watch us running our course with utmost
faith in us, a gentle sense of humor, and, at the end of the day, absolutely
unconditional love.
Amen.
*************************************************
The
14th Sunday after Pentecost- 21 August 2005
sermon
preached by The Rev. Cricket Cooper
Saint
Andrew’s Church, New London
I’m always glad to see Simon Peter show up in the readings, because he
is so beautifully inconsistent, and therefore so perfectly human.
A couple of weeks ago, Simon Peter tried walking on water and sank
because he lost his faith and his nerve. Today
he is the only one bold enough to proclaim Jesus as the Messiah.
When Jesus is arrested, he’ll pretend that he’s never even heard of
him.
It is to this confused specimen of humanity that Jesus today hands the
keys to the kingdom of heaven! What
on earth is he thinking? Jesus says
on this faithfulness he will build his kingdom--- a faithfulness that is blown
about like the wind. And frankly,
if you look at the other disciples, you see a pair of belligerent brothers, an
unclean tax collector, a few argumentative and slow-witted fishermen, and a
well-educated traitor who will sell him for a handful of silver. To this odd assortment of people in a constantly battle-torn
land, Jesus gives his message. How
this religion ever formed and survived is perhaps the greatest miracle of all.
I was talking to some clergy friends, and we realized that – as
priests- we are in hot water two different ways.
If we think of ourselves as disciples, then we must be as odd as this
bunch of fellows. On the other
hand, the one group of people that we know Jesus respected the least were
members of the religious establishment. However
you look at it, a religious vocation is counterintuitive.
Looking at the disciples, looking at myself and my colleagues, looking at
Christian examples of faith and frailty through the centuries, what IS God
thinking, entrusting this faith to us? What
from Peter’s example is our take-home lesson?
I think we are being encouraged to speak more from our hearts and less
from our heads. Jesus quizzes the
disciples, but they seem hesitant to commit to who Jesus might be. Peter, in all of his enthusiasm, blurts out what he really
thinks. He will later recant, and
of course later become a great teacher and evangelist- but in this moment, he
teaches us that the truth comes from what we feel and not what we think.
Maybe this is one reason why Jesus doesn’t want them to tell others who
he is- because the truth is more powerful when we discover it for ourselves,
more powerful than when another simply tells us about it.
As a denomination, Episcopalians are not great blurters. Our liturgy
still carries some of the phrases and cadences from the 1500’s! Our task is to take the same risk Peter takes- to speak from
our hearts about what our God is to us, what God means to us.
To speak of our blessings with gratitude and joy. God chose us, just like
Peter, because God only knows that we can be relied on, fragile, fickle, and
faithful.
Amen.
****************************************************
The
13th Sunday after Pentecost, August 14, 2005
sermon preached by the Rev. Cricket Cooper
St.
Andrew’s Church, New London
In the summer of 1987, I had just finished my first year of seminary, and
was asked to spend a week in the Philadelphia suburbs being the chaplain for a
children’s choir camp. This was a
big church with a spectacular music program and music budget, and every summer
they had a week of intensive choir camp, kids of all ages swarmed the church,
learning very difficult music for an end of the week concert.
My main task was to prepare a
worship service for them every morning, before they got down to work.
One year into seminary, you don’t necessarily have much expertise in
anything, but the first morning, I whipped together a brief morning prayer
service and a sermon which I thought particularly child friendly.
I
was about three sentences into the sermon that very first morning, when suddenly
a little voice piped up from the pews, and this 10 year old boy called out, “I
don’t think I agree with you there!” I
stopped and stared. I looked him in
the eye and said, “Excuse me?’’ He
smiled and said, “This isn’t my church- I’m Jewish and my best friend goes
here and I wanted to sing in the choir, so maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t
think I agree with your reading of that passage…” I don’t remember the specific details, except in a flash I
relaxed. What I had incorrectly
assumed was a discipline problem was actually just a cultural difference in
learning styles.
In
Hebrew school, this young fellow was already being taught that one reads the
Scriptures oneself, and interprets them as best one can.
The more one reads and learns and remembers, the better one can interpret
the next passage. But the learning
style is not passive- he was being taught to speak up, to question his teachers,
to argue his own point as a way of better understanding what he was being
taught. And so although it shocked
me to be challenged by this young boy, it was the most natural thing in the
world for him to engage me in this battle of wits.
I
thought of this episode when I was reading and rereading today’s gospel,
because at first glance, it seems so harsh.
Rarely does Jesus deny healing, deny even his attention to another.
More often than not, he gets into trouble for paying too much attention
to outcasts and the shunned. His
mission, as he understood it, was to the lost sheep of Israel. It will be Paul,
after the crucifixion and resurrection, who will take the Gospel message out to
the Gentile world, and baptize people into the Christian faith without their
having been Jews first. But that
will be a radical thing.
Earlier
in Matthew’s gospel, a Roman centurion asks Jesus to heal his servant, but
knows that for Jesus to enter a Gentile house will render him unclean.
So, to show his understanding of Jesus’ tradition, and his respect for
it, he says that he sees no need for Jesus to come to his home, but for him just
to speak the words of healing because he has faith that Jesus’ word is all
that is necessary. And Jesus is powerfully moved by this man’s faith, and uses
him as an example of a faith greater than that found among his own people.
The servant, of course, is instantly healed.
And so when I return again to this interchange between Jesus and the
Canaanite woman, I see many things happening.
We are told that she has “come out” from Gentile land to meet Jesus
on his turf, on Jewish soil. I see
her addressing him, not as a miracle worker of another sect, but calling him
Lord, and acknowledging him as Messiah, as the Son of David.
She speaks to him urgently, but with respect.
And in Jesus’ harsh-sounding retort, I see the unthinkable- I see him
engaging her in conversation, out of curiosity and respect for her courage.
A much more appropriate thing for that culture would have been for him to
continue to ignore her, or at the disciples urging, to order her away, or order
them to drag her off. Much like the
conversation with the woman at the well, Jesus breaks with social custom by
testing this woman to see what she might have to say for herself.
She has not only caught his attention, but also her insistence has caught
his imagination. And so, instead of dismissing her, he throws her an image- of
giving the children’s bread to the dogs- to see how she’ll respond.
Instead of trying to end this embarrassing encounter, he chooses to
lengthen it- Instead of treating
her like a foreigner or a woman, he engages her like a peer.
It is a tense moment- were this a movie, I could just imagine the
silence, as the faces of the disciples swivel from the woman to Jesus, and now
back to the woman, their mouths hanging open.
And she rises to the occasion like the finest student in the class,
reworking his image to her favor, not only playing his game, but raising the
ante. If there is ever a moment in
the Gospels when I can hear Jesus laugh, it is in the moment after her response.
Game,
set, and match. Like with the
centurion, Jesus illustrates in this story that faith is not predictable, that
faith will appear in the most unlikely places, and that we can count on being
surprised by it.
Amen.