The gospel is always good news and it is always true. It’s not always the truth I want to hear.
I have too much, more than I know what to do with. Preparing our house for the arrival of our son has made that abundantly clear. A quick glance as you’re driving down Highway 71 and you see that others have this issue, too. The personal storage industry is one of the fastest-growing industries in the nation.
I all too often store up more than I need when I could be more generous toward God and neighbor. But I let my desire for just a bit more so I can be sure I’ve got enough and I can give myself rest and peace and salvation get in the way of trusting God to provide the daily bread I need.
I had an entire sermon written about this and then in the last 24 hours, 20 died in El Paso and 9 in Dayton, dozens of others rushed to the hospital. The victims of two more mass shootings. So I spent the early hours of this morning praying that God would speak through these passages with regard to the world at hand.
Jesus warns against all forms of greed. Scarcity is a type of greed. It plagues Pharaoh in Exodus to the extent that he lets his own selfishness, his fear of losing his power, his privilege, his hold over a people group, his xenophobia, that his own people die, his kingdom is left in tatters, plundered of its resources. The fear of not enough, trying to get our souls to rest easy rather than staying bothered and upset by the injustice, violence, death around us.
We close off, hole up, store more and more, not just as individuals in the ever-growing personal storage industry, but as a country while we seek to close off, hoard the abundance we have rather than share with the poor, outcast, immigrant, refugee, asylum seeker.
I’m guilty of wanting so much to have my soul at ease that I’ll tune out, do something to ignore – Netflix, facebook, video games, avoid conversations
When we turn in, store up, close off – we can easily make people into “others” and “them”.
We cast blame rather than take responsibility. We start to believe there’s nothing we can do.
All too easily a thought spoken or unspoken creeps in that is not true of our neighbors, we think they are our enemy, attacking us.
Colossians text about hateful and violent speech connected to Jesus Sermon on Mount violent and hateful speech is murder, leads to murder. Lord, deliver us from violence.
White men with racially motivated murders and mass shootings.
Shooters citing they are fending off a “Hispanic invasion”…
Thanks be to God for a Holy Spirit who comes into the rooms we’ve locked up. The Spirit disrupts us, pushes us into uncomfortable territory, calls for our lives – that we live them for the sake of God and neighbor. Intercedes and helps us understand our neighbors across boundaries and borders (Pentecost, languages).
Today’s gospel text is in a line of them that have been opening us up, expanding our idea of neighborhood, turning us toward others, sending us out, leading us to follow the two great commandments to love God with all that we are and all that we have, and love our neighbor as ourselves.
Christ, in whom we have new life, casts off from us these thoughts of hatred and violence toward our siblings, removes from us again and again our penchant for greed rather than compassion, replaces within us a burning desire for God’s will to be done on earth as in heaven, reignites our vision of God’s dream
· -when weapons of war and of mass shootings are turned into tools for feeding the hungry
· -when racism and white supremacy in people and systems is rooted out as the absurd and harmful lie that it is for the truth that all Bear God’s image
· -when we begin our budgets with how much we intend to give away rather than how much we want to store up; and it isn’t our excess we give to God but our first fruits to God, enough – not less than enough, but not more than either- for ourself and our family, and the rest for the sake of our neighbor
· -when war is no longer taught, nor are the violent and hateful speech and thoughts that lead to war, like the El Paso shooter who said he was responding to the “Hispanic invasion”, friends the honest truth of history is that for many, the border crossed them before they crossed a border, they often have indigenous ties to this land that the vast majority of my family history cannot claim
· -where we are no longer so ready to hand life away: the lives of others who we can forget or grow numb to the loss with so many acts of violence; the life to which God has called us that we let fall to the wayside in favor of pursuing what Paul refers to as a “more earthly life” guided by greed and selfishness
· God’s kingdom where children don’t have to be afraid of a shooting at their school or being placed in cages separated from their family when they’re seeking safety and the ability to live
· God’s Dream where retail stores, concerts, festivals, schools, places of worship, are without violence and fear of shootings
· God’s Dream where we finally live out the reality that all are one in Christ, in whom God is reconciling all of creation
God, when we turn toward others let us see them not with disdain or disgust but with care, compassion, love. Help us to listen deeply to one another, and not avoid the tough conversations or dismiss “the other side”. For there is only one side, the side of humanity, the side of life, the side of love. Love, the perfect love that comes from you and through Christ that is the only cure to the illness that plagues our nation. Love that is a creative and sustaining force acted out daily in ways big and small. Move us to pray and to act now. Your Spirit demands our life this day and each day, that we might live our lives for you. God we are all already giving 100% of who we are and what we have, help us to give all that we and all that we have to you for the sake of our neighbor and the world you love so much. God, everything we are and have comes from you, all our actions rest in you, help us to rest in you, to receive your grace and love freely given to us and to all, make us instruments of your peace, love, and reconciliation.
Amen.
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