Homily
for Sunday, April 29, 2018
Graves
Chapel
“The
Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”
Speaking of himself, Jesus once said those words to his disciples.
On
every road that Dave and I travel, whether in Earlysville where we live or as
we drive to faraway places or even on the beautiful country roads that bring us
to Graves Chapel, we pass abandoned houses. Over the years, I have observed a
pattern to the way an abandoned house disintegrates and finally settles into
the earth it stands on. Vines grow up its sides, sometimes obscuring windows.
Weed trees take root against the walls. As months and years pass, the
vegetation conceals most of the house, but it still stands, a testament to the
skill of those who built it. Even so, ultimately the walls collapse and cave
in. One such overgrown house, near the Charlottesville airport, has finally
been crushed by large trees that fell on it during a windstorm. Its windows had
survived the climbing vines, but the falling trees bulged the walls and
shattered the glass. The house has bowed its face to the world.
I
cannot pass one of these houses without imagining the family that once
inhabited it. What happened to them? Why was their house abandoned and left
behind? A foreclosure? A disputed estate? No surviving family members?
“Housing
insecurity” is a contemporary term for a range of issues that afflict poor
people in our country. Affordable housing is such a problem in many cities,
including Charlottesville, that working class people, the folks we need to do
so many important jobs for us, cannot afford to live there. Whether it is
caused by eviction when someone can’t pay the rent or mental instability that
drives a person onto the streets, homelessness is an escalating emergency in
our country. Every time I pass by an abandoned and moldering house, I think of
the homeless persons that might have been invited to live there. The very thought makes me both sad and angry.
“The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”
As a child, I heard a plaintive note in those words of the Lord, a tone of
sadness. I knew that Jesus was the son of Mary and Joseph, a poor carpenter. I
wondered why he couldn’t just go back home to live with his family. His calling
to be an itinerant and homeless preacher was beyond my comprehension.
Now
I recognize much more in the meaning of those words. Even though we Christians
say that Jesus was “the only begotten Son of God,” his choice repeatedly to refer
to himself as the “Son of Man” was significant. He not only identifies as one
of us, as a human being, but also as a member of a particular community of
humans: the ones who are poor and homeless, hungry and downtrodden, in need of
the most basic necessities of human existence—food and shelter, healing and
mercy. He named these people “the least of these.”
From
his birth in a stable, attended by lowly shepherds, until his abhorrent death
on the cross, Jesus was a poor child and a poor man. Of course he understood
and responded to the quiet desperation of the people he came to serve. We can
hear his words, “The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head,” as a poignant
reminder to take action in our service to his people. Remember, Jesus also
called himself “the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” When he says repeatedly in today’s gospel
lesson “Abide in me,” he is inviting us to follow his Way of love.
Have
you ever wondered who selects the appointed lessons and how the readings are
determined? There is something called the Revised Common Lectionary where the
specific readings for Sundays (and other holy days) are outlined, over a
three-year cycle. The RCL was developed some years ago by a committee made up
of representatives from the Roman Catholic Church and the mainline Protestant
churches. Isn’t it lovely to think of
the same lessons from Holy Scripture being read and pondered every Sunday
across America (and in other parts of the world) in Episcopal, Lutheran,
Methodist, Presbyterian, and Baptist churches? Many other denominations use the
Revised Common Lectionary as well. To me, it seems as if there is a potential
for an alignment of hearts among all those Christians who hear the same words
of the Lord read and discussed on the same day.
Today’s
particular lessons are very near my heart. These passages, especially the 4th
chapter of John’s first letter, most clearly and simply state the message that
has become my persistent theme: “God is love.” I admit that I’ve wished these
lessons would appear together for a Sunday I am preaching. Of course, I am now
reminded of the adage, “Be careful what you wish for.” Simply stating “God is
love” in no way encompasses the difficulties we face as we try to live out our
calling to love one another as Christ loved us. If we ever imagine that loving
our neighbors ought to be an easy task, we should simply consider how our Lord
ultimately exemplified His love for all mankind: by His death on a cross.
Still,
Jesus’s invitation “Abide in me as I abide in you” offers a promise of comfort
and support. In his first letter, John tells us why the persistence of abiding
works: “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides
in them…There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has
to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.”
How
can we reconcile the idea of “perfect love” casting out fear with a gospel
lesson which states, “Whoever does not
abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are
gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned”?
That is a fearful image of punishment, isn’t it? Imagine those words
issuing from a traditional fire and brimstone preacher, using them as a warning
to sinners about the ferocity of hell. Such preachers condemn moral failures—those
ordinary human sins that often involve sexuality or dishonesty—by instilling
fear and guilt in their vulnerable listeners. Can you think of a more powerful
tool than fear to keep someone in line? In fact, going back to the earliest
days of the church as an arm of the Roman Empire, there was a political
tradition of using religious fear to keep people under control.
We
see Jesus colliding with the ones who wielded this kind of guilt-driven
political power in his day: the Pharisees. Think of the persons the Pharisees
were likely to condemn—the woman caught in adultery, for example. Jesus treats
her with mercy and kindness, but what does he say to the ones who have accused
her? “You who are without sin, cast the first stone.” Jesus often seems to
enjoy the company of the very people the Pharisees judge to be terrible sinners,
and we can infer from his attitude toward them that he has no expectation of
human beings behaving perfectly. His less-than-perfect friends are not the ones
he expects to be pruned and thrown into the fire. As they abide in him and follow his Way, they
rest secure in his perfect love. They are free of fear.
So,
what does Jesus expect of us when he says, “Those who abide in me and I in them
bear much fruit”? He expects us to follow his “Way,” and it is the way of love,
the bearing of the gifts of love. Let’s
revisit some of the first words from the gospel lesson. “Jesus said to his
disciples, ‘I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. He removes
every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit, he
prunes to make it bear more fruit…Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the
branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can
you unless you abide in me.’” Jesus tells us that the circumstances of his
ministry subject him to God’s pruning as well. Sometimes things don’t work out
as He hopes and the Lord changes course. Sometimes that change in course occurs
when his servants fail to carry out his goal of “bearing fruit.” When we abide
in Jesus, following his Way of love in service to our neighbors, our human
failings can be avoided—and forgiven when we can’t avoid them.
I
cautiously put another thought forward. Could
I be correct that the pruned and burned branches in today’s lesson are NOT symbolic
of those considered obvious sinners and consigned to the fires of hell? If so, then
do they instead symbolize, as it seems to me, the ones who do not work to bear
the fruit of lovingkindness? Not bearing the fruit of love means not following
the Way the Lord has modeled for us, and that is what is important to Jesus. After
all, the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. There is much work to be done.
As
we abide in Jesus, as we follow his Way, we are able to bear the same fruit he
bears. We show kindness and generosity to the poor, the homeless, the sick, the
friendless, the prisoner. Living our
lives so that we can bear such fruit is not easy and does not generally make us
popular, famous, or wealthy. In fact, if we are honest about our requirement to
live as Jesus lived, then we ought to expect to become poorer and more
vulnerable ourselves. It is not about us, right? When love is at the heart of
what we do, the pruning is voluntary.
Henri
Nouwen was a Dutch Jesuit priest and spiritual writer whose many beautiful books
(such as The Wounded Healer) have
inspired people around the world. Nouwen has always been one of my favorite
writers, and I would like to share with you his words on our Christian call to
be fruitful. Nouwen taught at Notre Dame, Yale, and Harvard before finally leaving
the stress of competitive academia for a position as priest to a community of
disabled persons. His was an act of self-pruning. Here are his thoughts about what he learned along
the way: “There is a great difference between successfulness and fruitfulness. Success
comes from strength, control, and respectability…Success brings many rewards
and often fame. Fruits, however, come from weakness and vulnerability. And
fruits are unique. A child is the fruit conceived in vulnerability, community
is the fruit born through shared brokenness, and intimacy is the fruit that
grows through touching one another’s wounds. Let us remind one another that
what brings us true joy is not successfulness but fruitfulness.”
Listen
again to the beautiful words the apostle John wrote in his first letter: “God
is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” As
Nouwen suggests, the reward of such abiding is true joy.
We
find God in our own hearts, if we are vulnerable enough to look for God there. Believing
that “God is love,” may we also find our hearts in loving alignment with all
God’s children, our neighbors. As we abide in Christ’s love, we pray to bear
the fruits of kindness, mercy, and healing with everyone we encounter, but most
especially, with the ones Christ would call “the least of these.” AMEN.
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