Grace Episcopal Church, Madison NJ
September 30, 2012
Year B: Proper 21 – The Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Esther 7:1-6, 9-10; 9:20-22
Psalm 124
(James 5:13-20)
Mark 9:38-50
God Wants Our Help
When
I was a teacher one of the hardest things to accept was that my students were
going to forget just about everything we covered in class.
And
what was true in the classroom is also true in church. We preachers have to
accept that people are going to forget most of what we say in our sermons.
And
that includes me, too! I’ve heard and given a lot of sermons and I don’t
remember most of them either. But a few have stuck in my memory.
One
is a sermon I heard given by the famous South African archbishop and Nobel
Prize-winner Desmond Tutu.
He
was visiting General Seminary while I was studying there and preached at one of
the chapel services. No surprise, so many people wanted to be in his presence
and to hear him preach that the seminary had to set up overflow seating and
closed-circuit TV on the lawn outside the chapel.
Unfortunately
I was one of those who didn’t make it inside, but the distance from the pulpit
had no effect on the power of Tutu’s preaching.
His
sermon was deceptively simple.
He
preached that God has a dream for the world – a dream for all of us.
And
he preached that God wants our help to make that dream real.
He
ended his sermon by allowing the voice of God to speak through him. (Now, I
wouldn’t try this myself, but you can get away with it when you’re a living
saint!)
Speaking
as God, Tutu said, “Help me.” And then he repeated that over and over, “Help
me, help me, help me…” His voice grew softer and then finally he stopped and
stepped down from the pulpit.
God’s
call, God’s plea – help me – gave me goose bumps – and I’ve never forgotten it.
God
wants our help.
Considering
how often we fail and fall short, this seems like a misguided decision, but God
wants our help – God asks for our help to build God’s kingdom here and now.
God
wants our help.
Today’s
gospel lesson picks up right where we left off last week. You may remember we
heard Jesus teach his followers about what it means to be a disciple – that
true greatness comes through service and sacrifice, especially service to and
sacrifice for the people the world considers useless unproductive nobodies.
Today,
we pick up with more Jesus sayings on discipleship. If you look carefully,
you’ll see Mark has arranged this little passage based on four keywords – name,
stumble, fire and salt.
I
want to focus on the second keyword, stumble.
Jesus
warns his disciples – warns us – of dreadful consequences if we lead others to
sin.
“If
you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it
would be better if a great millstone were hung around your neck and thrown into
the sea.”
What
does this have to do with us?
Most
of the time we cause others to stumble in subtle yet very destructive ways.
Most
of the time we cause others to stumble when they see us being hypocrites.
We
cause others to stumble when we stand up in church promising to love our
neighbor as our self, to respect the dignity of every human being, to strive
for justice and peace – and then we go out through those doors and live pretty
much like everybody else: quick to judge and condemn, happy to ridicule people
because of their beliefs or their appearance or the kind of car they drive, willing
to ignore people the world considers useless unproductive nobodies.
By
living like everybody else, we cause people to look at us and say our faith is
fake and meaningless.
By
living like everybody else, we cause people to stumble, and fall away from
Christ, to reject Christ.
God
wants our help.
But,
by living like everybody else, we say no to God’s call for help.
And
we choose to live like everybody else because that’s the easier choice. In
fact, it’s so easy to live like everybody else – so easy to have the same
values as the world – that we might even fool ourselves into thinking that it’s
just too hard to say yes when God calls to us. We might even almost fool ourselves
into thinking it’s impossible to say yes when God wants our help.
But,
in our hearts we know it is possible to say yes to God.
The
Bible is full of people who said yes to God.
In
today’s Old Testament lesson we heard a snippet from the Book of Esther. Esther
is an unusual book – it doesn’t say much of anything directly about God.
Instead, it’s really a tragic-comic historical novella set among Jewish exiles
in Persia. It’s the story of a Jewish maiden, Esther, and her cousin and
adopted father, Mordecai.
To
make a complicated story short, the lovely Esther ends up as the wife of the
Persian king, Ahasuerus. As queen, she is able to outwit the evil Persian
official named Haman who wants to kill the Jews.
As
we heard today Queen Esther is able to turn her husband the king against Haman,
leading to his death and much rejoicing – and revenge – among the Jews. It’s
this story that provides the basis for the raucous Jewish holiday of Purim.
At
its heart, the Book of Esther presents a familiar biblical character –someone
who refuses to live like everybody else – someone who says yes to God’s call
for help.
God
wants our help.
And,
if we look around we see that there are still people in our church, in our
community, and around the world who say yes to God’s call for help.
Recently
I read in the newspaper about two people who refused to live like everybody
else, who said yes to God’s call for help.
The
first was Dr. Joseph Dutkowsky, a top orthopedic surgeon who specializes in the
care of children disabled by cerebral palsy, spina bifida, Down syndrome and other
conditions - people the world considers useless unproductive nobodies.
There
are other doctors who do similar work, of course. But Dr. Dutkowsky is also a
committed Christian, bridging the gap between science and faith. Each day as he
drives to the hospital, he prays, asking to know God’s will.
Listen
to how he describes his work:
“This
is my ministry. Some people stand next to the ocean to feel the presence of
God. I get to see the likeness of God every day. I see children with some
amazing deformities. But God doesn’t make mistakes. So they are the image.”
And
then listen to what else he says:
“We
have a culture that’s addicted to perfection. We’re willing to spend thousands
of dollars to achieve it. The people I care for are imperfect. And I can’t make
them perfect. I only hope that they can sense that I actually care they’re more
than skin and bones, that we have a bond.”
God
wants our help. By caring for people the world considers to have little or no
value, Dr. Dutkowsky has said yes to God’s call for help.
And
then there was the article that appeared marking the death at age 83 of a
Catholic priest named John Flynn.
Fr.
Flynn could have moved up the church ranks and taken cushier assignments, but
instead he spent 50 years serving the poorest of the poor in the Bronx – people
the world considers useless unproductive nobodies.
Fr.
Flynn said yes to God, starting a campaign called Save a Generation to help
high school dropouts. He walked the mean streets of the Bronx offering to
exchange guns for crucifixes. He helped people stand up for themselves against
landlords and others who were taking advantage of them. He ministered to the
drug addicts and the drug dealers.
Here’s
how a Fordham professor summed up Fr. Flynn’s life:
“Greatness takes many forms. It is not always associated with
wealth and power and fame. In the Bronx, it may have reached its highest point
in the person of a parish priest who walked the street with the lost boys of
the community while bullets were flying. And who those boys learned to love as
much as everyone else who knew him.”
God
wants our help. By caring for people the world considers to have little or no
value, Fr. Flynn said yes to God’s call for help.
In
today’s gospel lesson, Jesus warns his disciples – warns us – of the
dreadful consequences of leading others to sin, of causing others to stumble.
Most
of the time we cause others to stumble in subtle yet very destructive ways.
We
cause others to stumble when we are hypocrites.
We
cause others to stumble when we stand up in church promising to love our
neighbor as our self, to respect the dignity of every human being, to strive
for justice and peace – and then we go out through those doors and live pretty
much like everybody else, saying no to God’s call for help.
By
living like everybody else, we cause people to look at us and say our faith is
fake and meaningless.
By
living like everybody else, we cause others to stumble.
But,
still, God wants our help.
Throughout
history people both famous and unknown – people like Queen Esther, Dr.
Dutkowsky and Fr. Flynn have said yes to God’s call for help.
How
about us?
God
wants our help.
God
wants our help.
God
wants our help.
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