Sweet Jesus, I reckon

Proper 14, Year C, RCL Genesis 15:1-6, Psalm 33:12-22, Hebrews 11:1-3& 8-16, Luke 12:32-40

Before I get to the sermon proper I just want to tell you why today’s lessons are the best ever, my favorites.  I know you know that I say this with every set of lessons upon which I preach, but today I really, really mean it.  So much do I love the reading from Genesis that I gave up the prophet Isaiah in Track 1 for Abram and God in Track 2.  And I love Isaiah—hands down, all time best prophet ever.   And the reason I gave up Isaiah? Because of that word ‘reckon’ in the Genesis reading.  Where I come from, way out west, folks do a lot of reckonin’.  I get that same big sky, mountain meadow, high plains feeling when we recite the verse from Psalm 104 that begins “yonder is the sea, great and wide…”   Yonder and reckon feel like home to me.

Then there is the epistle—The Letter to the Hebrews.  I read once that the Letter to the Hebrews is the most sublime of all the epistles.  Also, the author is unknown.  These two things together lead me to the conviction that it was written by a woman, maybe even Mary Magdalene herself.  But before I ever thought that, I carried around in my wallet a scrap of paper on which I had copied out Verse 1 of Hebrews 11—“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”  These words have been, not exactly a comfort, but a tonic, a strengthener, for many years now.

And then in Luke, there is our sweet, sweet Jesus, calling us his little flock, which melts my heart every time, reassuring us of our favored position, and giving us some pretty simple instructions for maintaining our place in the kingdom.  Above all I think it is the sweetness of Jesus that keeps me coming back for more.  I can do many hard things for the sake of sweetness.

So that’s it—sweetness, sublimity, and cowboy talk and I’m hooked!  To what end?  More of the same, I reckon.  Because the through line in today’s lessons is the fulfillment of desire and there ain’t nothin’ more sweet and sublime than that.  I know something of this because I lived a good many years not knowing what I really wanted out of life, not able to name my desires and feeling thwarted but not really knowing why.  The current issue of Parabola magazine is devoted to the subject of desire and while each contributor takes a different tack, I can conclude that I am not alone in a personal history of being cut off from the ability to discern my heart’s desire.  Our materialistic, dualistic, reductionist culture has deprived most of us that very ability.  We don’t know what we want and in mighty and inculcated efforts to satisfy we don’t know what we repress and obsess, conform and deform until neurosis is the more or less acceptable norm.  Need I say that we wreak havoc in the lives of others all the while, endlessly compounding the problem. 

Now Abram was an old, old man and in a vision God comes to him and says, “Abram, fear not, I am your shield, your reward is great”.  Abram, fearing not, says, “Well, I don’t know how great it can be, because there’s only one thing I want and I’m too old, that is to say, my wife is too old, for me to get it”.  Abram’s heart’s desire was a legitimate heir.  He discerned it and he named it before God.  It was outlandish.  God didn’t laugh, but nearly everyone else did—Sarai, as we know later, did and the very sublime author of the Letter to the Hebrews did, in a really funny throwaway line, when she called Abram “as good as dead” because he was so old.  No, God didn’t laugh, but acknowledged Abram’s heart’s desire, and promised him an heir.  And Abram believed…and it was reckoned unto him as righteousness.  We are called, through desire, to believe and without that no reckoning can happen—nothing can add up without our first coming to believe.

The Letter to the Hebrews expands upon the meaning, or experience, of belief.  Belief is taking action according to desire—the result—creating (or in Abraham’s case pro-creating) some-thing from no-thing.  We may say the impulse, the desire, for the created order, sprang from God, and the Universe flared forth.  The desire for creation is from God, is good, and is reflected and replicated in us.  When we act in faith upon our goodly desires, that is to say when we obey, we do not see all the ramifications in our own time but we can, because of faith, greet them from a distance.  How sublime is that?  This, I think is what is known as living in hope.  And make no mistake, belief, faith and hope concern the present.  My life is qualitatively re-created every single moment that I come to believe, act in faith, and live in hope.

Jesus said, don’t be afraid, little flock.  Find your heart, the kingdom is yours.  Here’s some clues—it’s not in money bags or in stuff; and--be ready.  Because there’s going to be a reckoning.  Everything will add up.   Amen.

Carol Bernice, CHS

Chapel of the Holy Spirit

Melrose

August 8, 2010