July 6, 2008
Rev. Patricia L. Liberty
For the Living of These Days
Fireworks, picnics and parades, family cookouts and flag waving are the stuff of this holiday. My home state of Rhode Island is home to the longest consecutively running Fourth of July parade in the country. It is a grand affair and the streets of Bristol are clogged with bikes and pedestrians. People line up at 5:00 in the morning to stake out their place on the street. Boats arrive from all over RI to anchor in Bristol Harbor for the festivities. And the fireworks are amazing.
The parade is filled with floats that compete in over a dozen divisions for the coveted prize of being number one. School bands from around the country audition for a chance to play and dignitaries from municipal and state government are all a part of festivities.
Only in Rhode Island could Vincent Buddy Cianci, convicted felon and former mayor of the great city of Providence march in the parade and get as big a round of applause as the governor. Like many places around the country, the Fourth of July Parade brings out the best and the quirkiness of places we call home.
Our Annual celebration of our nation’s birthday unfolds in the midst of four dollar a gallon gasoline, ongoing wrangling toward Election Day, concerns about the economy and persistent tensions about war as well as the concerns of our own lives.
This first weekend in July gives me pause, as a person of faith and a citizen, to consider the odd and inevitable tensions between the two and it is spurred by our text from Matthew, a complicated teaching to say the least.
One of the aggravating graces of the lectionary is that it knows nothing of our patriotic holiday. It simply rolls out the gospel out before us and invites us to the conversation from the present moment.
The parallels to our present moment are not hard to find.
Trace Haythorn, president of the Fund for Theological Education writes,
The times were hard. The government, a huge bureaucracy that provided so many important things like roads and military support and the justice system, was hopelessly out of touch with the people. And the religious establishment wasn't much better. It seemed so focused on preserving what was that it had little or no vision for what might yet be.
When a prophet spoke out, they were vilified, punished, especially if they called into question the decisions of the government. Voices of hope arose, but just as quickly they fell as questions arose about the character of the speaker, about their ability to deliver, or about the transgressions of their past. Apathy was the prevailing ethos in the community. It was not hard to imagine the people asking, "Why even bother when nothing seemed to change?"
Kind of hard to figure out the time referenced, isn't it? While this description is meant to refer to Matthew's community, they could be referring to today in any of our towns or cities.
The pervasive apathy of our age, the sense that nothing can improve and to bother trying to make things better is a fool's errand, the despair that makes us resign our hearts to a belief that poverty, hunger and homelessness have no real answers, have no hope.
And while these are not the usual sentiments of a Patriotic Holiday weekend, they do reach to that undercurrent of reality that lurks at the edge of our revelry and will meet us when we return to our usual schedules tomorrow.
And in the midst of it all, Jesus calls us to come with him, to come because of him, to live and serve as we are called, which may not be as the folks in the marketplace expect.
Jesus certainly didn't meet the expectations of those in the market; he didn't dance to their tunes, he didn't cry with their grief. He was and is about something else and calls us to be as well.
Not walking in step with the establishment is hard work, and it can be dangerous. On this holiday weekend, it's not hard to think of names of those who made hard choices for this nation: George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and so many others.
It's not hard to think of those whose impact has changed the world: Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Teresa, Dorothy Day, Oscar Romero, Rigoberta Menchu and Wangari Mattai.
In case you don’t recognize those last two names, they are among the giants of our times Rigoberta Menchu, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 for her work in social reform and justice for indigenous peoples in central America and Wangari Mattai won the Goldman prize for his reform work in South Africa.
They are ordinary people who came to do extraordinary things, and in the midst of dangerous, life threatening settings. They and countless nameless others bear witness to the promise that a righteous voice can still be heard in these days and we have as much chance, if not more, of being that voice as anyone.
To the apathy of the times then and the apathy of our times now, Jesus words call to live in faith to live in hope to live in witness to the righteousness and justice and peace that is at the very heart of our faith.
Jesus calls to the little ones, and he isn’t talking about children in the chronological sense, but rather about people of developing faith.
Throughout Matthew's gospel, the new disciples are often referred to as infants or little ones. While they are not literally children, they have a child-like hunger to learn more, a child-like courage to try.
Think about the way children approach life: they soak up everything they can; they are eager to learn; they are naturally drawn to growth; they learn through play and practice and imitation; they are full of the hope and expectation that is embodied in Jesus himself.
Well past the shelter of childhood, these new disciples are not naive - they know about the troubles of this world, for they are its citizens as well. They may not have starved, but they have known hunger. They may not be sick, but they love those who are. They may not have been imprisoned, but they know they could be at any time with one false move, one careless mistake.
And you can hear how endeared these infants are to Jesus. He presents his yoke to them, his mantle of discipleship, and offers assurance with this gift. "My yoke is easy, and my burden is light."
The image that comes to mind fits in with our summer mindset easy and light and resting conjure images of putting our feet up and living a life of leisure. It may speak to our overscheduled and over busy lives that this text that we hear the words this way/
As Boring notes, "This is not some slight of hand invitation, some deceptive recruiting strategy. "The 'easy' yoke of Jesus is not an invitation to a life of ease, but of deliverance from the artificial burdens of human religion, which Matthew sees as a barrier to the true fellowship of the kingdom of God (23:4)" (275).
Quite simply, Jesus invites us into the paradox of faithful service in his love, one in which those seemingly insurmountable struggles of our world suddenly become life-giving callings when we dare to take up his yoke and follow
They are good words to remember as contemporary disciples living in these days, God is with us as one who shares the yoke and transforms the burdens. It does not mean ease or easy in the way that first comes to mind, but rather a gracious and sturdy presence that steadies our lives as we find God’s way among all the other ways that unfold before us.
For the living of these days we are given gifts that bring us face to face with radical love that stood fast even when the cost was great, and we sit elbow to elbow with others who live into that meaning each day and encourage us on the way of our pilgrimage.
We gather here each week and discover something about who God is and who we are and we find food for the journey.
Gathering here each week month after month, year after year, our lives are remade, comforted in moments of struggle, challenged in seasons of complacency, stretched by the ever before us Gospel that meets us where we are and calls us to be more like Christ.
In the living of these days what the what this world needs is people like you and me, apologists for the Christian faith, people in process making progress, who are fed at the table and then find our way out in to the world to be God’s people.
And it may well be that we do the greatest things when we are among the least, that we are most faithful when are most uncertain and move forward any way seeking to do the right thing with love.