Sermon for Year C, the Seventh Sunday of Easter
By The Rev. Torey Lightcap
June 2, 2019
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Clay Center, Kansas
Yesterday, many of us were privileged to witness
The ordination of Carolyn Sue Garwood to the diaconate.
It was an amazing day, the end of one phase of her life’s journey
Ever further into exploring the heart of Christ
And the beginning of a new phase.
God sees, God blesses the effort – God encourages us to gather and celebrate and name it.
That’s important all by itself.
But I won’t blow smoke about it.
Carolyn, my friend and sister in Christ, you promised yesterday to do some really hard things.
And part of the reason you made those hard promises and vows,
Is to show others what it means to follow Jesus.
Sometimes people get tired of following Jesus, or they make excuses to forget about it.
You, too, Carolyn, will be tempted to get tired or forget,
But your ministry will always be there to show people that in any event,
Following Jesus comes at the price of our lives: joyful obedience, transformation.
And this is what’s at stake:
If we are not willing to pay that price,
Then we probably shouldn’t be allowed to call ourselves Christians,
But rather something more harmless, like maybe “religious consumers.”
I don’t think of St. Paul’s as a bunch of religious consumers.
I think of you as laborers in the vineyard for Jesus.
I know a lot of us were there yesterday, but let’s hear the Bishop’s charge to you once more.
The Bishop said to you,
“My sister, every Christian is called to follow Jesus Christ,
Serving God the Father, through the power of the Holy Spirit.
God now calls you to a special ministry of servanthood directly under your bishop.
In the name of Jesus Christ, you are to serve all people,
Particularly the poor, the weak, the sick, and the lonely.”
The Bishop went on to say:
“As a deacon in the Church, you are to study the Holy Scriptures,
To seek nourishment from them, and to model your life upon them.
You are to make Christ and his redemptive love known,
By your word and example,
To those among whom you live, and work, and worship.
You are to interpret to the Church the needs, concerns, and hopes of the world.
You are to assist the bishop and priests in public worship
And in the ministration of God’s Word and Sacraments,
And you are to carry out other duties assigned to you from time to time.
At all times, your life and teaching are to show Christ’s people
That in serving the helpless they are serving Christ himself.”
This is really lovely language, but sometimes it obscures.
Let’s hear it again, but this time, just a few key words so we don’t miss the whole thrust.
Special ministry. Poor. Weak. Sick. Lonely. Redemptive. Public.
Power. Servanthood. All people. Word and example. Interpret. Assist. Ministration.
Serving the helpless. Serving Christ.
We now have the opportunity, as a congregation, to undertake one of those vows –
Not just for Carolyn, but with Carolyn, and to be inspired by the result.
Your preacher is going to invite not just Carolyn, but all of us,
To “study the Holy Scriptures, to seek nourishment from them,
And to model [our lives] upon them.”
Because a part of what Carolyn is given to do is to get us all involved,
To the point where we would all begin to take deep responsibility
For our Christian life and walk – out of consumerism, deeper into Jesus.
The special ministry of The Reverend Carolyn Garwood isn’t all that special
Unless it’s getting us on our feet.
So let’s try it.
In the first reading today, the cohort of Jesus-believers pulls into Macedonia, the city of Phillipi.
There they meet a young girl.
It’s important to know three things about her:
One, she is a slave, and therefore owned by another human being. No control over her own life.
Two, she is possessed of a spirit that allows her to forecast the future.
And three, her owners have seized on this as a way to make money.
With no free will or independent means, she is a walking, talking economic injustice system.
What is the proper way to handle this? Banish the spirit, of course.
This is what Paul does. And the Scripture says that it comes out right away.
She’s free! Thanks be to God for this miracle, right?
So why, then do Paul and Silas get jail?
Because this girl’s owners figure out that their gravy train has just dried up.
It says, they realize that “that their hope of making money [is] gone.”
They make up some esoteric reasons to justify prison for Paul and Silas,
But in the end they are just the more powerful people, crafty too,
And they know how to work the crowd up into a frenzy.
They want what they want and they get what they want.
If they can’t have this slave to fill their pockets, maybe they can at least get revenge.
Paul and Silas – they’re whisked away, humiliated in the public square, stripped, beaten, jailed.
Locked down in heavy chains in the heart of the prison.
In other words, put into untouchable chambers.
The domination system has spoken; they have no power ...
It is important to understand this and to linger upon it ...
It is important to imagine the swing and the clang of the prison door as having finality.
It is important to see that this is supposed to be the end of the story,
A simple illustration of how we deal with troublemakers:
Gin up a few lies and then put them away forever.
Important, because there are many, even in our supposedly free country and time,
Who have no say over themselves.
We still have slaves in 2019. We still build systems based on human slavery in 2019. All kinds.
The particulars may have changed, but the overall problem remains.
We are no better.
And we still see instances of people trying to interrupt and disrupt these systems.
We still see instances of people standing up for those who do not have power.
Indeed, when we consult the Scriptures and look at Jesus and pay enough attention to his life,
We find that this is actually our job because it is precisely how he lived,
And he was very clear that to follow him was to imitate his actions.
As we could easily point to in the Gospels, he had little use for religious consumers and tourists.
In fact, he actively told them at one point to go on home.
It is important to imagine that prison was the last thought the system had for these interrupters.
It is important to hear their oppressors thinking that
This is how you make an example of a troublemaker
And that This is the last we’ll ever hear of them ...
Then, this earthquake.
At midnight, a terrible and troubling upset.
To begin with, Paul and Silas, singing and praying, making noise and praising God.
I imagine those around them wondering,
Will those guys ever shut up so the rest of us can get some sleep?
A quiet prison is the symbol of the domination system at easy rest and at peace with itself.
The earthquake. As if to add to the loudness of the singing and praying.
Did you catch the image? “The foundations of the prison [are] shaken.”
God joins their singing, and the result is that the whole system is put on notice and under threat.
Don’t get me wrong: I think we need a place to put bad guys away,
But Paul and Silas aren’t bad guys.
They’re not there an account of any behavior you could actually justify as punishable –
They’ve only set this girl free from her malady –
And when the doors of the prison swing open and everyone’s chains fall down, miraculously
... Well, to me, that is divine justification that they are indeed in prison on false pretenses.
And that in driving the spirit away from the slave girl,
They have done nothing less than the will of God.
These men follow Jesus, who said that if you go to see someone in prison,
In fact, you go and visit Jesus himself.
They have been met in the bowels of the jail by the Holy Spirit of the Living Lord,
And their actions have been justified in the eyes of God.
They are allowed to walk away from human devices that would keep them from being free
Simply for having done the right thing.
So.
Carolyn, and all my siblings in the faith, I want to encourage you most strongly in the Lord
To be great disruptors and interruptors of unjust systems, economic and otherwise.
It starts with that beautiful question from the Gospel of Luke: “Who is my neighbor?”
When looking at who our neighbors are,
Look also for those who are the slave-girl equivalents: who and what are they?
Whose thumb are they under? Who’s in control? Who has power over them?
What are they being exploited for? What are they missing out on?
How do their captors profit from their lives?
Perhaps this is overt and obvious; perhaps it is subtle and causes sifting of fine distinctions;
But it all requires discernment, prayer, and a clear commitment to action.
How, then, might the lives of the oppressed be redefined?
Aren’t they just as precious as everyone else? What can be done to free them?
What kinds of risks must we assess, and be clear about, and deal with, to make that happen?
What chances exist to free people?
And what price will we have to pay to see it through?
In the final analysis, that’s following Jesus.
And note the effect:
Sometimes, when people (like the jailer in the story) are exposed to the truth,
They in turn want to follow Jesus, too.
Jesus is in the rescuing business, which becomes the doing-the-right-thing business,
Which becomes the telling-people-about-Jesus business,
Which is nothing more or less than people changed and turned to the purposes of Christ.
That’s what we have the opportunity to be about.
That’s what the Episcopal Diocese of Kansas can be.
That’s what St. Paul’s can be.
And I know, as clearly as I’m standing here,
That that’s what The Reverend Carolyn Sue Garwood can be.
The proof is already in her life, and in this congregation, and in the hearts of this people.
So let us give our whole lives to Christ again this morning,
And see things his way,
And go forth under the conviction that the world can be better in Jesus’ name. Amen!
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