13 Pentecost/Proper 15/Ordinary 20 Year B August 19, 2018
Luther Memorial Church Seattle, WA
The Rev. Julie Hutson
Proverbs 9: 1-6 + Ephesians 5: 15-20 + John 6: 51-58
Beloved, grace, mercy, and peace are yours from the God who saves, creates, and sustains you. Amen.
God speaks to us in many and varied ways. We most often think of God speaking to us in Scripture, but I can think of so many other ways: music, the beauty and splendor of Creation, the love between two people, a fine glass of wine, a delicious meal. I also know that God sends prophets and preachers and teachers and artists and poets to teach us. Especially poets. Mary Oliver is a beloved poet of our time. If you haven’t met her words yet, I hope you will go and find them. They truly are wondrous. Today, in your bulletins you have a copy of one of her poems and I hope you’ll just enjoy it now and then take it home and enjoy it later. Let it say different things to you on different days. Shall we look at it together?
The Summer Day
(A poem by Mary Oliver)
Who made the world?
Who made the swan and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean –
The one who has flung herself out of the grass,
The one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
Who is moving her jaws back and forth
Instead of up and down –
Who is gazing around with her enormous
And complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention,
How to fall down into the grass,
How to kneel down in the grass,
How to be idle and blessed,
How to stroll through the fields,
Which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
It is the question of a lifetime. It is the question that burns in our souls when we let it and that spurs us on when we need it, and that simmers in our minds, boiling over when we least expect it.
In The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien writes “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
The author of Ephesians writes a similar sentiment to the church at Ephesus and likely to other churches in our second reading today. “Make the most of your time, for these are evil days.” I must confess, the days do seem to be pretty bad lately. Human rights are being rolled back, the rich are getting richer off the backs of the poor, we are a nation that cares more for our guns than our children, hate crimes are on the rise, and we have lost faith in our leadership and perhaps, even, in ourselves. In fact, hate seems to have regained popularity and revenge is the deal of the day. Maybe they are truly evil days.
But what do we do with the first part of that sentence from Ephesians? How do we make the most of our time? What do we plan to do with our one wild and precious life? All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.
It’s tempting to see this portion of the letter to the Ephesians as a moral code…a reminder of “how to act so your grandmother will be proud of you.” But it’s not that, really. The author sets up a series of three examples to make a point:
Don’t act like fools, but like wise and thoughtful people,
Don’t be ignorant, but try to discern the will of God,
And if you’re going to be filled with something, let it be the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, and not just too much wine.
In this passage, the church is shown the shape and substance of a life of love, light, and wisdom, the themes of the entire letter. The text cautions against specific actions that do not make the most of the time, do not, in effect, treasure creation so that we aim for living…a life of thanksgiving.
Living lives of gratitude, of thanksgiving, is certainly one of the ways we make the most of the time we are given. Gratitude is a strong indicator of happiness. Taking the time in each day to name what is right and good, to give thanks, even for the smallest of gifts of the day, is one of the ways we make the most of the time. Maybe, on some days it’s hard to name the things we are thankful for. On the hard days. We all have them. Author Geneen Roth suggests this helpful practice, that on those days we ask what is not wrong. What isn’t wrong today. Sometimes that’s an easier question than: What is worthy of my gratitude. What isn’t wrong? And then we are able to name the simplest gifts and be thankful. For we cannot fully know what God has created as good and given to our care and for our mutuality without first living lives of thanksgiving.
Living lives of service is another way we make the most of the time we are given. Service to others flows out of the gifts we have been given. Service to others is one of the ways we steward our own lives. It is generosity of time and talent when we serve one another. On some days service will be the coordinated efforts designed to make a difference in the world. Volunteering or marching or helping build a house or serving meals at the shelter. Service also looks like supporting your community of faith as housing is built, parking across the street for a time, for the sake of homes for our unhoused siblings. And, be assured that service is also small beautiful acts…bringing bounty from your garden to share on Sunday morning…or the homemade zucchini bread that showed up last Sunday. Service is asking how your neighbor is doing that day and listening for the answer. Service is texting your friend who is hurting or anxious with a reminder that you love them. Serving one another is the call of the Gospel. The early church would wrangle over this and misunderstand and over and over again would need to be reminded that serving all people is serving Jesus. It’s another way we make the most of our time.
Prayer is another way we make the most of the days. I confess that more often than not, I find myself fitting prayer into something else that exists: I will pray while I take a walk or sit in traffic or eat my lunch. And you know, there’s nothing wrong with that. Prayer is a practice worthy of many conversations and sermons. But here’s what I know for sure….in prayer we are changed. Our hearts are turned toward the God whose love and mercy pour out over us. To know that another is praying for us also changes us. And I believe that God hears our prayers….and I believe that prayer is the connective tissue between God and God’s people and between God’s people and God’s people. Praying with thanksgiving, in need, in sorrow, in anger, in frustration, in joy, in peace….prayer is another way we make the most of our time.
Today is the fourth Sunday the texts have invited us to remember that Jesus is the bread of life and that we are called to a holy meal. Today’s reading from Proverbs is especially beautiful around that…Wisdom has set the table and rather than having her hired help serve, she goes out and invites everyone and serves them herself. It’s tempting to hear this as a reminder of how sacred hospitality is, but today, dear ones, I hope you hear the invitation. Wisdom is inviting us to her table. A meal that was set before the beginnings of time. A meal that requires no worth to come. A meal that really is come as you are. And so we come, with all of our selves, even those parts that are perhaps, not the best uses of our lives. We come with our fears and our anxieties, we come with our anger and our mistrust, we come with our judgment and our prejudices and our uncertainties… and we pull up a chair for a meal that is pure mercy and pure love.
Every day this table is set. Every day it is set for us and the Divine, the Holy One, Wisdom, God is out hunting us down in the streets of our lives, inviting us to the table.
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
Amen.