Sermon — July 9, 2023

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

There are certain phrases that evoke a whole story. One of my favorites is “I just couldn’t resist…” As in, “I’m trying to cut down on caffeine, but an iced coffee sounded so good on a day like today, and I just couldn’t resist.” “I know that Sue didn’t want me to tell anyone about her new boyfriend, but my friends started gossiping, and I just couldn’t resist…” Or, my favorite, from a blog post about someone’s visit to the British Museum, captioning a photo of an ancient Assyrian column—“I know it says ‘Kindly do not touch the displays,’ but I just couldn’t resist. I just kind of had to hug them.” I just couldn’t resist. I knew the thing I was about to do was the wrong thing to do. But I did it anyway.

It’s a feeling the Apostle Paul knew all too well. “I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate… I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good that I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.” (Romans 7:15, 17-18) Has this ever happened to you? I suspect it has. Maybe it’s a vice you can’t give up, or a New Year’s Resolution you inevitably fail, or the simple daily reality of procrastination. But it’s clear that sometimes, even when we know what the right thing is to do, we just can’t make ourselves do it. And even when we know that something’s wrong, well, sometimes… we just can’t resist.

Now, Paul isn’t writing to his therapist. This isn’t a confession to a trusted friend. In fact, Paul’s Letter to the Romans is his only letter to a congregation that he hadn’t founded himself, the only letter where he didn’t know the readers face to face. It’s his summary of the good news he was proclaiming for the churches in the great imperial city, and so his writing is less concerned with the practical questions and conflicts of the small-church life in Thessalonica or Corinth, and more with the big and universal themes of theology.

So this isn’t a description of a personal problem that only affects Paul. It’s his great reflection on psychology, and particularly on the human will. He describes a pattern that we all know to be true: That there’s a big difference between thinking you should do something or wanting to do it, and actually doing it; that knowing something is wrong doesn’t always stop you from choosing it.

It’s what Martin Luther called “the bondage of the will.” It’s as if our willpower, our ability to actually do the things that we want, is in bonds, chained up. And this sense of unfreedom, feels like a struggle with an external foe. We tend to identify with the part of ourselves that knows what’s right and wants to do it. And this other part, this part that struggles against it, feels like a foreign object, like something else that is inside us, but is not us; Paul calls it “sin that dwells within me,” something separate from his “inmost self,” and he experiences the struggle as a kind of “war” between “the law of my mind” and “another law,” the “law of sin” to which he is captive. (Romans 7:22-23) And he faces this struggling with bafflement. I know what’s right, he says. I just can’t do it. Something comes over me, and I just can’t resist it. And so “I do not understand my own actions.” (Romans 7:15)

This is a pretty pessimistic view of human nature. But in a paradoxical way, if this is the central Christian theological claim about the power of “free will,” it’s actually good news for all of us.

Because if you find yourself thinking that this sounds an awful lot like you—if there’s some unhelpful behavior you find yourself repeating again and again and again, however much you try to snap out of it, or some words that come out of your mouth that you immediately regret—I hope you realize that it’s not just you. It’s not just you who struggle with whatever you struggle with. It’s me. It’s Paul. It’s everyone around you, and every human being who’s ever lived. We may all struggle with different things at different times, but we all struggle with this divided human will, this gap between what we know and what we want and what we do. And when you fall into that gap, it’s not your fault, per se. It’s a pre-existing condition.

This is what allows Paul to write from a position of empathy, not judgment. In fact, this colors everything else that Paul has to say about sin and righteousness, grace and forgiveness. He doesn’t write like the preacher who stands in the pulpit pointing down at the pews, “You do not do what I want.” No. He stands, facing God, and lets us in on his prayers: “I do not do what I want!”

But at the same time that Paul claims that we are imperfect, that our wills are held captive, he continues to proclaim that we are fundamentally good. I don’t love Paul’s dichotomy between “the mind” and “the flesh,” the “will and the members,” as if the body were the source of sin; this has been a sexist trope since before Christianity even began. But I respect what I think Paul is trying to express, which is the goodness of the true self, of the “inmost part” that delights in God, despite the presence of this countervailing force. He does not condemn you and you as miserable sinners because we “just couldn’t resist”; he acknowledges our collective struggle against the universal “law of sin.”

And so far, at least to me, this is good news. It’s potentially life-changing news. If you are convinced that you’re the only one who struggles with temptations or regrets, then the natural shame response is to hide things away, to pretend everything’s fine, to suffer alone. But there are few things in human life that benefit from being hidden away. And to be reminded that everyone has struggled in a similar way, from the Apostle Paul himself down to the present day, is to be invited into the kind of honesty and compassion that come from this very human solidarity.

But that’s not all. It’s wonderful to be freed from the shame of being the only imperfect person in the world. But we need more. We want more. We don’t just want empathy when we mess things up. We want to stop messing up! We want to be more free to be the people we know we can be. We’ve learned over time that we can’t do it on our own, no matter how hard we try, and so we’re left asking the question of Paul, “Who will rescue me?” We need someone to save us from this mire.

And in he comes, riding on a donkey.

Now, it’s a core conviction of the Christian faith that Jesus is, in some sense, the ultimate answer to this problem; that he will “rescue” us from the power of sin and death, (Romans 7:24) that he will “set us free from the waterless pit,” as Zechariah says (Zechariah 9:11); that one day, all that has been hidden will be revealed, and we will know God face to face, Amen.

But in the meantime, this work has already begun. Jesus has come, and taught us, leaving us with a deeper understanding of what is good and right, what it means to love. Jesus has died and risen, breaking evil’s ultimate hold over us, although that victory is not yet complete. Jesus has sent the Holy Spirit, to be our advocate and guide. And just as Paul imagines that “sin dwell within me,” so Jesus has promised that the Holy Spirit will dwell within us. We are not alone in our struggles. In fact, to the extent that we do anything right, that we even try to resist, it’s because our will is moved and strengthened and led by the very spirit of God.

And through it all, God treats us with compassion, supporting us when we need strength and forgiving us when we fail. Jesus looks at each one us, knowing us more deeply than anyone else, knowing the things about us that we’ve never told a spouse, or parent, or friend. Jesus listens to all our inner turmoil, and replies,

“Come to me, all you that are wearing and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from m; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:29-30)

Amen.

Sermon — July 2, 2023
The Rev. Greg Johnston
Lectionary Readings

I’ve just finished watching—you might say “binge-watching”—the Netflix cooking competition show The Final Table, in which twenty-four chefs from around the world faced off in a series of culinary competitions. Murray said to me last week while I was cooking and watching, “Daddy, what are you doing? Oh, just watching another show about cooking things you’ll never actually cook?” And it’s true, in the same way that the first thing I do every week when The New Yorker comes is crack open Tables for Two, and read a review of a restaurant I’ll never go to with food nobody else in my family would ever eat. I just love this stuff.

But there’s something I’ve noticed in these cooking competition shows, as well. They’re not just a live broadcast of some chefs in a kitchen with a bit of color commentary. Like any good TV, they try to tell human stories. And so they do background interviews with each of the chefs about their childhoods, or their cooking careers, or their vision for the restaurant they’ve founded. And I’ve noticed, as I watch an episode of one of these shows every evening while I cook dinner, that nearly every chef has a mentor whose legacy they’re trying to live up to. For one, it’s the father and the grandfather who were both chefs and who founded and ran the family restaurant through good times and bad before handing it down to him. For another, it’s his single mom in a blue-collar town who transmogrified the cheapest ingredients, night after night, into a homey dish that showed her love. For another, it’s the renowned chef who took a young kid under his wing, showing her the ropes and supporting her when nobody else would.

Each one of these chefs, in other words, has been given the gift of love by someone who made them into the person they are today. And each one, at some point, no matter how many Michelin stars they have to their name, reveals that they are still trying to live up to the gift of that love.

I say all this by way of introduction to a Gospel passage that is short, sweet, and simple. If all you had were Jesus’ words to his disciples today, you might think that Christianity is the easiest religion in the world. And in a sense, you’d be right!

The early Church was full of traveling apostles, of prophets and preachers who’d travel from place to place just like Canon O’Connell visited us last week. Jesus and the early Christians taught that there were spiritual rewards for welcoming these wanderers with kindness. Welcome a prophet in the name of a prophet; receive a prophet’s reward. Welcome a righteous person in the name of a righteous person; receive a righteous person’s reward. (Matthew 10:40-41) Jesus lived in a culture in which hospitality was a household obligation, not the name of an industry. A traveling bishop or prophet would stay in your home, not a hotel. It’s expensive to feed another person, and hard work to host them; and Jesus offers a reward to those who receive and welcome his most prominent disciples as they go about their work spreading the good news.

But then Jesus goes on: “whoever gives even a cup of cold water, even to one of these little ones, in the name of a disciple—truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.” (Matthew 10:42) There’s some debate among Biblical scholars about what exactly “little ones” means. (There’s some debate among Biblical scholars about what nearly everything means.) Maybe it’s literally children who are “these little ones.” Maybe it’s the socially-disadvantaged, or just “ordinary folks.” But whatever the case, scholars agree that it’s a “deliberate contrast” to the “prophets” and the “righteous,” the famous, great, and good. ^[1] It’s not hosting an elaborate stay for an archbishop that matters; even welcoming the “little ones” counts. And as Saint Jerome noted, it’s not a bowl of soup or a cup of coffee here; it doesn’t cost you anything in fuel to warm it up, or ingredients to mix together. It’s just a plain old cup of water, something anyone can give.[2] And yet this simple, unpretentious act is enough. Whoever does even only this in the name of a disciple will never lose their reward.

So congratulations to all those on the St. John’s Coffee Hour rota. Even if you have no idea how to turn on that baffling coffee machine, even if you just put out the lemonade and iced tea, even if you only served a pitcher of water: you have been saved! You have offered a cup of cold water to dozens of these “little ones” in the name of the disciple Saint John, and you will not lose your reward.

If what you’re interested in is eternal salvation, Christianity is the easiest religion in the world. In today’s gospel, Jesus gives us one thing to do, and it’s such a small and concrete task—once in your life, give a cup of cold water to one of the “little ones”—and you will not lose your reward. And the tininess of this task way of expressing, in Jesus’ form of teaching, the same truth that Paul expresses in our epistle in his own way. Christianity, properly understood, is not a list of rules to follow, or difficult work to be done. It’s the story of what Paul calls “the free gift of God,” which is “eternal life.” (Romans 6:23).

God’s love is free. And it’s a gift. We do not have to do anything at all to earn it, in order to receive it.

But we are left wondering how to live up to it.

This is the tension within which Paul lives in his whole Letter to the Romans. And this is why Jesus does give so many moral teachings. “What then?” Paul asks, “Should we sin, because we are not under law but under grace?” (Romans 6:15) Should we take this incredible free gift of God, which offers us an eternal reward in exchange for a cup of cold water, and throw it in God’s face? Should we take God’s unconditional love and use it as an excuse to treat one another like garbage, because God will love us all the same? Should we take the freedom we’ve been given and freely choose to follow the way of sin, and violence, and death? “By no means!” the apostle pleads. God loves you unconditionally. That doesn’t mean you should act like a total jerk. Throughout his letters, Paul is constantly trying to juggle these two competing aims: how to convince the early churches, on the one hand, of the amazing beauty of God’s grace and mercy, God’s unconditional, self-sacrificing love; and how to stop them, on the other hand, from acting in ways that are completely off the rails. And we modern Christians find ourselves in the same situation as they were, thousands of years ago.

You have been given the gift of life, and love, and hope. You have been a given a legacy and a model for the person you could be; if not by some mentor in your own life, than by the one big Mentor in whose name we gather here. You have been given a gift, and it cannot be taken away, no matter what you do. But you’ve also been given a choice. What will you do with that gift? What will you do with that legacy? Will you, who have been trained and loved by generations of chefs, turn around and treat your sous chefs like they belong in the compost? Will you, who have been handed the love of home cooking, sell mom’s apple pie recipe to McDonald’s and cash out? Will you, who have been loved beyond measure and forgiven beyond reason by God, hold resentments and grudges and judgments against the people in your life? It’s up to you. You have the freedom. You have the choice. You have been given the gift. You will receive your reward. You do not have to do anything to earn God’s love, anything at all.

But it’s the work of a lifetime to try to live up to it.

^[1]Ulrich Luz, Matthew 8–20: A Commentary on Matthew 8–20, ed. Helmut Koester, trans. James E. Crouch, vol. 61B of Hermeneia: A Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), 121.

[2] Jerome, Commentary on Matthew 1.10.42.

Sermon — June 18, 2023

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

All across New England, it’s officially strawberry season. Towns across Connecticut are holding Strawberry Festivals. Last weekend, when we were down in Long Island, we had our first farm-stand strawberries of the year, a rare chance to bite into a ripe berry that was actually red all the way through, without the tasteless white core of a strawberry picked underripe for shipping from California. And If you’re lucky, this time of year, you might even get the chance to go strawberry picking, and to encounter one of the great paradoxes of food pricing: the less work the person selling strawberries has to do, the more you pay, so that if they pick them in California and ship them here, it’s maybe $6 a quart; if they picked them at a local farm, it might be $9; if you pick them, well that’s like $12, at least. But of course it’s worth the extra couple of bucks, especially if there are kids involved, to have the amazing experience of standing in a field of endless fruit, picking ripe berries warm from the sun and maybe popping one or two in your mouth. (I won’t tell if you do.)

And this is what the incredible bounty of spiritual life can sometimes feel like. We’re surrounded by the beauty of the world and the mystery of God. We can walk into any church on any Sunday morning and hear beautiful music, and reflect on God’s love, and pray. Any time, any day, we can take a moment to sit and be grateful for something, or maybe even to read something from the Bible or a devotional. There’s so much out there waiting for us, and all we have to do is reach out and grab a taste. After all, Jesus says, “The harvest is plentiful.”

… “But the laborers are few.”

At the same time that I’m reminded of the incredible bounty of the U-Pick experience, I’m also reminded of the news this week from the Episcopal Church’s Executive Council meeting down in Providence, which noted, among other things, some alarming trends in the availability of clergy. In every region of the church, it seems, there are about four or five times as many open positions as there are priests looking for a new call. And it’s about to get much worse: roughly one-half of our clergy are within ten years of retirement. (Not me, for better or for worse.)

“The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.” And if this is true of clergy, it’s even more true for laypeople. In parishes like ours across the country, a dedicated core of faithful lay leaders and volunteers are in very real danger of burning out as they rotate through every imaginable position in the church to try to keep things afloat. And it’s a vicious cycle: the fewer members there are, the less likely it is they can afford a full-time priest; but the more part-time of a priest there is, they more of the work falls on those fewer members.

And yet the harvest remains plentiful. I’ll admit that people are not strawberries. But I can’t help but think that being a part of a church in a community like this is something like standing in a field full of berries, with only two hands to pick them. There are twenty thousand people in this neighborhood, give or take a few, and only—what, 100 active members of this church, if you’re being generous? And I’d like to think that maybe another couple hundred of those 20,000 might appreciate, might even benefit from, the good news of God’s unconditional love for them, in the same way that you and I benefit from hearing that good news, from being reminded of God’s beauty and forgiveness and grace week after week. There are so many ways we can serve this community; the harvest is so plentiful. But the laborers are few.

What’s true for the church is true for individuals, as well. When you’re in a busy season of life, even if you’re one of the relatively small number of people who want to engage in a deeper spiritual practice, it can feel impossible. The strawberries are there, ready for you, but there’s just too much going on in life to be able to go and pick them. And so prayer or quiet time for reflection become just yet another task on an overwhelming list, and the one that’s easiest to sacrifice in pursuit of the rest.

But it seems that this has always been the case. The harvest has always been plentiful. The laborers have always been few. At least this was true for Jesus’ little crew, a dozen apostles in the midst of a whole culture. They had an incredible opportunity to share the good news of the kingdom of God, but there only twelve of them, and they had so little time. So what are we to do?

Jesus answers this question for the disciples in what I think is an interesting and surprising way. He sends out his twelve apostles, and gives them simple instructions: Go, proclaim the good news. Take take no gold, or silver, or bag. (Matthew 10:7-10) And then he says, wherever you go, “As you enter the house, greet it. If the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it; but if not, let your peace return to you. If anyone will not welcome you, or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet” and go. (Matthew 10:12-14)

Now, not many of us are likely to become itinerant wandering evangelists, laboring to gather in the harvest door-to-door, as the apostles do. But all of us are laboring in some vineyard, all of us are oot in some strawberry field, trying to harvest something, hoping that we’ve planted bears fruit. That might be in your work life, or your family. It might be in a ministry or a group you’re part of at church. Or it might be in your own prayer life, or just the attempt to get out of your own way. And what Jesus says the apostles should do if it’s not working is really interesting to me. If their efforts aren’t bearing fruit, he doesn’t tell them to “take up your cross” and endure it, he doesn’t tell them to “offer it up” to God. He says, “shake the dust off your feet” and move on.

It seems important to me to say that this is not advice to give up when the going gets hard. “If anyone won’t listen to you, shake the dust off your feet” isn’t good relationship advice, whether that relationship is romantic, or with a friend, or family. But Jesus gives us the permission to do some spiritual discernment, and to ask ourselves: Is this thing that I’m doing right now hard but fruitful, or is it ultimately just fruitless?

Picking strawberries, after all, is hard work. It’s fun for a day trip with the kids, but as a job it’s really tough. But it bears good fruit, and that’s what matters.

There are so many ways to pray. There are so many ways to be involved in a church’s life or in a neighborhood community. There are a lot of jobs, even multiple professions, if you really need a change. Not all of them are easy. But when something is draining you of life, not giving you life, it’s important to remember that there are a lot of strawberries in the field, and maybe this row you’re standing in right now has just been plucked clean and there’s nothing more that’s going to come from it, no matter what you do.

There are many things in life that are worth doing, even though they’re hard. There are many houses that are worthy of your blessing of peace, many fields that are hard to harvest but that bear good fruit. And there are other things that are simply not worth your time, and where the appropriate answer, in Jesus’ words, is to “shake the dust off your feet” and head down to the next town. We are finite human beings living in a world of nearly-infinite possibility, and there is no time to waste on fruitless things; for “the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.”