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Sermon for October 4, 2009
Pastor Sara Kay Olson-Smith
Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Texts: Genesis 2: 18-24; Psalm 8; Hebrews 1:1-4, 2: 5-12; Mark 10:2-6
Grace to you and peace, from God our creator and from Christ Jesus, who binds us into community.
Last week, I had the honor of officiating at my college roommate’s wedding. It was a beautiful wedding, outside on the shores of Puget Sound outside of Seattle. It was beautiful, also, because of their families. Weddings tend to be crazy events because not only does a couple get joined together, but their families begin this process, too. It is often the first time that the bride and groom’s extended families get to know each other, and it can often get pretty wild. I was, I admit, a bit nervous about how all this would go for Ang and Zak. Their families are pretty different. Not only was it an interfaith marriage, Angie is Roman Catholic and Zak is Jewish, but it was more. One family is from small town Minnesota and another from urban areas on the East and West coasts, not to mention multiple divorces and complicated family trees. I was just bracing myself for all sorts of craziness.
But you know what? There wasn’t any! Their families just sort of went with the flow, participated, and loved Ang and Zak. They somehow figured out how to be together and love each other through it all. They were gracious and patient and listened and were just plain amazing. It wasn’t necessarily easy, but by the end of the wedding day, not only were Ang and Zak joined together in marriage, but their families were woven together into a new community, too.
We hear in our readings today about marriage and the ways that God calls us into faithful partnership, but I think that these readings can speak to us beyond those specific relationships. We hear in these readings of both the difficulty and the gift of human relationships, and the ways that through the grace and the love of God we are able to stick together with one another.
In our first reading we see God with the first human. And God said, “It is not good that man should be alone.” It is not good for us to be alone. We are made to live in community. This is not just about marriage or our immediate family. We are made to be in community, to be connected to other people. We are not isolated creatures. God knew this and made all creation to surround that first man, and soon a woman, a partner. This is God’s gift for us. God has given us one another. We are given community.
Our psalm, too, reminds us that we are surrounded. The psalmist looks out at the wonder of creation – the stars and seas and all the grandeur – and asks, “Who am I, who are we, in the midst of all this?” It seems, the psalmist responds, “We are surrounded, embraced. We are surrounded by not only the beauty of creation, but also by community. We are surrounded by God’s protective and loving care, even in the face of our enemies.”
God gives us community, which is a gift but never easy. We are, as Jesus reminds us, hardhearted people. It is our hardheartedness that gets us into trouble, in our marriages and in all our relationships, including our relationship with God. It is hardheartedness that Jesus confronts within those Pharisees and those who divorce, and those who judge those who divorce, and those who keep the children away. It is the hardheartedness of humanity that refuses the gift of relationships with one another that God gives. It is the hardheartedness of humanity that we call sin. It is the hardheartedness of humanity that nailed Jesus to the cross. But Jesus, as we hear in Hebrews, made himself lower than the angels, opened up his heart to the suffering and sinfulness of the world and brings us forgiveness. Through his redemptive love, Jesus breaks open our hard hearts and showers us with grace and mercy. In the warmth of Christ’s forgiving love, our hearts melt.
It is this forgiveness, the grace and mercy we know in Jesus that allows us to be in relationship with one another and with God. Community is hard work and we all make mistakes. Each of us are hardhearted or hard headed sometimes. It is tough work to be community. But we can continue to be together with one another, to forgive over and over again, to soften our hearts to one another, only because we have known the forgiveness and love of Jesus.
Here at St. Peter’s, we've formed a pretty wonderful little community over the years. We are comfortable with one another and know each others stories. We’ve argued and forgiven one another, sometimes repeatedly. We know each others flaws and gifts. We’ve probably been a part of rubbing off some of one another’s rougher edges. We are, as some of you have said, “ family.” It has not always been easy to be community together, but we’ve done it and committed to it and have continued to grow at being gracious and forgiving and faithful in it. This is one of the gifts which God has given to us in this place, a gift for which I, and I am sure each one of you, am most heartily grateful. God knew, for each of us, that it was not good for us to be alone, and gave us one another.
It is these relationships which make it ever the more difficult to think about the ending of our ministry here. This family will be scattered into new places. But just as God heals our hard hearts, so, too, does God heal our broken hearts. The gift that God has given us is that as we leave from here we are not alone. We are surrounded. Through the gift of the church, we know that we are held in the prayers and care of other congregations and other people. We don’t face this journey alone. God blesses us with one another and others who will walk with us and weep with us and hold us.
In time, we will be joining together with other communities – St. Stephen or Advent or Good Shepherd or someplace else. God will give to each of us new relationships to form, but this is not going to be easy. It will be a bit like putting families together when people are married, joining different communities – not an easy thing to do. Making new friends and forming new community is hard work. We, and the communities we will join, will make mistakes. Hardheartedness will break in from all sides. It is only through the grace and mercy of Jesus that those new relationships will form. In prayer and patience, honest conversation and a little bit of time, through bread and wine, Jesus will come, offering forgiveness and grace and another chance for each of us. Jesus breaks into all of this to forgive us, to bind us together again, to soften our hearts. It is God’s grace that will carry us through these coming weeks. It is the grace of God which will, when we are ready, surround us with new community, new friends. God knows it is not good for us to be alone, and will, most certainly, bless us with community and relationships.
God knows the man is lonely before the man knows and gives him a helper. God sees the suffering broken world and gives to us a Savior, who transforms our hardheartedness and calls us brothers and sisters. God forgives us and God gives us another chance to love, over and over again. God has bound us together, and those relationships and the gifts that they have been to us can never be taken away. The love which has held us together as God’s people in this place does not stop because we stop gathering here each Sunday. The love and relationships we have known in this place will hold us and give us courage to live out that love in new places.
We are, after all, bound together, not by the strength and goodness of our own love, but by the strength of God’s love for us. We are bound by the love which holds us to God, love which is known in Jesus. We are bound together by the love which we taste and receive at this table. We will not all be around this table in a few weeks, but it will still be God’s table, wherever it might be. At that table we will be taken into God's arms – like little children – and blessed, our hard hearts and our broken hearts healed. We will hear the words of God’s love given for you, broken for you, shed for you. Filled with bread and wine we are not alone, but held, surrounded by God’s people, bound together in God’s love.
Thanks be to God.
Amen .
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