3rd Sunday after Pentecost, 6/9/2024

Sermon: 3rd Sunday after Pentecost, 6/9/2024, House of Prayer, Hingham, MA
Text: 2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1
Grace, Peace, and Mercy from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Change is a multifaceted experience. It can be experienced with fear and trembling, it might come as decay and destruction; it can also be transformative and lively, bringing hope. We often say that change is a part of life, ironically, an immovable and unchanging law within our lives. The only thing that will never change is that things change. Our very bodies are testament to this, ever changing, until the moment of death. It is the sign of life’s finite quality. When I was a chaplain student at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts, aside from the many testaments to the finitude of life that you find at a hospital, I remember this anecdote by an older patient from Trinidad and Tobago. As fellow Caribbean islanders, my interest was peaked as to how he ended up in frosty New England, just like I did. Of course, there are myriad of reasons as to why people move, but what remained etched in my mind was how he talked about change. He told me about how he had gone back to Trinidad and Tobago and felt himself lost there after so many years away. How the buildings had changed, and the people that populated his memories long gone from the places he cherished when he lived there. It got him thinking and questioning, if that place was still home, when everything he knew about it had changed. It became a short stay, as he returned back to Massachusetts, into a place that once different, has now become familiar. In this case, change holds an ambiguous feeling, mingled with loss and acceptance of the new place, an acquiescence to the laws that govern a finite and constantly changing life. There are also changes that bring destruction, a reality we witness in history books and newspapers. Events in the world of politics that shake the foundations of our common life, which agitate the feelings of different group’s interest and vision for society. As we live in a divided society, we wonder about the negative changes that can come about by the ambitions of certain groups and individuals. But change can also be renewing and life-enhancing. As some of you know, I had the joy of being at our New England Synod Assembly, where we have chosen our new bishop elect, the Rev. Nathan Pipho, who will lead and guide us as a synod for the next 6 years. We of course welcome the beneficial change of fresh leadership and vision. And with the input of a new vision, we can start to look into the future with hope for the new thing that God is doing. Among the changes that the New England Synod is praying for, with support from our new Bishop-elect, is that we know that the Body of Christ comprised by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, needs to accept the God-directed changes within itself, for its sake; as the Apostle Paul said: “so that grace, as it extends to more and more people, may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God”. The Lutheran Christian tradition is not a white-church affair, it is concerned with the whole Body of Christ, meaning the inclusion and support of the voices and leadership of people of color that are our church. The Gospel has always been for everyone to receive and live by.

And in such a thought centered on the spirit of change, we can be uplifted by the words of the Apostle Paul in our epistle reading today. With the uncertainty that comes from changes, there is one certainty that anchors us in shifting seas: “we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus”. The resurrection of Christ is the fulfillment of a promise to which we are grafted into in baptism. And I would like us to hear Paul again, as he encourages the Corinthian church in his letter:

“So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.”

So in Christ, Paul exhorts, do not lose heart in the face of changes, no matter how difficult or complicated; and more even in transformative change, we should pray for hearts full of courage to embrace the good challenges of change. Paul, in this text puts our human life at the forefront. Evidently, there are many things that can happen to our bodies. We are finite, vulnerable to sickness and, ultimately, death. And not only that, there is a whole host of environmental factors to consider. Our bodies, this outer nature, can be affected by poverty, racial and social exclusion, and violence. Yet, even in the face of this wasting away, as Paul described it, because of Christ’s life, death and resurrection we are renewed day by day. And this is the ultimate change upon our changing bodies. It is not the “wasting away” that has the final word, it is the eternal renewal gifted to us by God in Jesus Christ, it is the unchanging yes of God to our lives that we grasp with faith and takes us beyond the momentary afflictions, all those things we can be vulnerable to. A salient point in Paul’s argument here stems from the fact that the Corinthian church he is writing to, was heavily divided between the wealthy and the poor, the privileged and the downtrodden, the educated and the uneducated, and judgements were being made, that clearly one position was more graced than the other. That perhaps because the changes of life had hit some harder than others, then perhaps it meant that God’s eternal love and salvation was meant to those whose bodies showed an “unchanging blessing”. But Paul would have none of that, that was not the Gospel of Christ, and he himself had the scars to prove it. The Gospel is lived in the midst of trial, just like Jesus faced the Cross. The promises of God in Jesus Christ are given to us not on the basis of the condition of that outer nature that we have. In many ways, we deceive ourselves if we depend on having these things to live out the Gospel. All the nice things we possess, they are temporal, sand that runs through the fingers. But the blessedness of God we can grasp in faith is an unchanging reality, the eternal call of God on our lives that seeks to unite us to His Goodness, even in our failings, even in our fragility. God’s grace is not cordoned off due to our changefulness. It is the joy that is readily available to us in accompaniment with the hard realities of our temporal life. So do not lose heart, Beloved. This by no means rejects the body or anything temporal. It puts these things in their proper place. For we know our own limits. The spiritual journey is not how to maximize the capacity of our finitude. But rather to maximize the trust of our faith in the God who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead. That our attention is not taken over by the reality of the many currents of change and decay, but rather by the voice that speaks to us always the life-giving word that brings us to God’s presence. The question is, how can my days become more abundant in the hope and love and mercy of God in Jesus Christ. In the world, we can be faced with the abundant problems of the visible world, so much that it’s even hard to imagine God’s promised future. But that is the right moment to exercise faith. To trust in what is not seen yet, God’s incoming Kingdom. To live out the love proclaimed in the Gospel now, in expectation that God’s eternal desire for us is going to manifest in His time. This is our gift, this faith that overcomes us and brings us to new life despite anything that we might fail or succeed in doing.

So in exercise of that faith that grasps the unseen, and awaits the eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, let us pray this prayer written by the monk Thomas Merton:

My Lord God,
I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
nor do I really know myself,
and the fact that I think I am following your will
does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you
does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.

And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road,

though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore will I trust you always though
I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.

I will not fear, for you are ever with me,
and you will never leave me to face my perils alone. Amen.