Beautiful Impartiality. Easter Day Sermon

This sermon was preached on June 2nd at Trinity Episcopal Church in Excelsior. 

You can listen to the sermon at Trinity's website: http://trinityexcelsior.org/2013/06/03/faith-is-the-word-by-reverend-aron-kramer-6-2-2013/

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Proper 4C, June 2 2013

The Voice is a reality television singing competition; the concept of the show is to find new singing talent contested by aspiring singers. The contestants are voted into each round by the American public, well, those who watch the show. The series has a panel of judges who critique the contestant’s performances. Judges also serve as a coach, guiding their teams through the season. The judges compete to ensure that their act wins the competition, making them the winning coach.

Adam Levine, the Maroon 5 lead singer, and a long-standing coach on the show, was caught in a surprising moment this week. How many of you heard him say, “I hate this country.” Of course Twitter blew up, literally, calling him unpatriotic, and a bad person and I am sure a number of other things I can’t say in this sermon.

I am not willing to go there, I think he was expressing his frustration at losing two of his favorite singers, he was deeply disappointed because he invests himself greatly into the people he chooses to coach. It can be easy to feel disappointed, especially when results are out of your hands, when your success depends on other people. It was unfortunate how Levine expressed his disappointment, but I think Adam Levine is probably a wonderfully patriotic and passionate American. He was born in LA after all.

The interesting thing, and it may only be interesting to me, is that none of you here today jumped on Twitter and started raging about how unpatriotic Jesus is. Of course Devon probably would have put you in a corner or something worse if she caught you tweeting during Church, but most likely, none of you will take to Twitter to talk about how Jesus was quite similarly disparaging his own people. “I tell you this,” Jesus says in todays Gospel, “not even in Israel have I found such faith.”

Now, I wish I could paint a picture of Jesus saying these words in the same way Adam Levine did. One of the Disciples, hanging around Jesus, heard Jesus mutter under his breath, “These darn Israelites are so faithless, if only they could be more like the Centurion.” I imagine the disciple turning around and whistling as if he hadn’t heard anything at all, the whole time thinking to himself, how can I write a global best seller about this perfect guy calling me a faithless person?

Instead, as it says in the Gospel, Jesus didn’t mutter under his breath, or accidently leave the microphone on, he walked right up to the crowd and said, “You all don’t have enough faith!” That’s downright mean, if I said that to anyone here, you would kick me out of this sanctuary in a minute, or you would leave the church and never come back. We don’t want to hear that we are faithless people; we don’t want to hear that someone else has more faith.

Luckily the shock, and maybe even our disappointment, is watered down in the seven verses following todays Gospel reading, chapter 7:11-17. Jesus leaves the Centurions place and goes to another community where he raises a dead man, a man we know nothing about; the son of a mother who did nothing more to show she was a faithful person than by grieving the death of her son. In her grief, Jesus has compassion. Suddenly having faith takes a different turn

With that additional context, it becomes clear today’s Gospel text is not about how we determine who is faithful and who is not, but rather how we are faithful and how our faith is observed. It becomes a text that reminds us faith is not a complex journey of ins and outs, theological and scientific treatises, it is simply about knowing that Jesus could heal your friend from afar, not only by touch, but by a word spoken distantly from the one who is sick. It becomes a text that asks us to find surprise and hope in places we wouldn’t expect to find it.

Are there things in your life you don’t think can surprise you anymore? Are there things in your life that just don’t hold the same mystery, the same power, the same inspiration they once did? Are these things filled with disappointment, with frustration when they once were filled with love and passion? Did Jesus feel this way about the Israelites, or maybe about his own ministry? Where do we go to rediscover mystery, adventure?

When I was the Associate Rector in Duluth, at St. Paul’s, I found myself in an uninspired place; I wasn’t sure what was next. My spiritual director at the time remembered that I had loved reading fantasy novels when I was younger. She looked at me during a moment of stillness and said, “Go back, read the novels of your childhood”.

I did, and you know what, I found out what was next. I discovered imagination that had fallen asleep, or more likely, had been put to sleep by my mundane, in the moment loving adult self, a self that was unwilling to take risks or hope for a future better than the present. To this day I read a fantasy novel from my childhood each month, old Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms novels. I read them because they hold a key for unlocking something in my heart and mind I can’t find anywhere else.

What that key unlocks is my imagination, my desire to explore and go on adventures. After all, we are all explorers, God created us, I believe, with this one common bond, that we are meant to explore, meant to expand our worldview and broaden our perspectives as part of the human family.

We seek not because it is the right thing to do; not because it is the Christian thing to do; we seek not because we ought to. We seek, we explore and we imagine because God is constantly at work, and constantly moving in our lives. God is an ever-living surprise, so to speak, God is always doing something new and we desire to be a part of that. We seek so we can discover our deepest desires, so we can align our hearts and minds with the adventure that God has set us upon.

I heard the other day the universe is constantly expanding at this alarming yet amazing rate. Well, we are just like the universe, constantly seeking what is next. Even against our will sometimes, we are thrust into situations where our worldview is expanded and accelerated beyond what we ever imagined it could be. Things we thought held no inspiration for our lives become alive with possibility. People who were passersby yesterday become mentors and heroes the next.

Imagine with me for a moment, imagine what the world would be like if we decided it was complete, there was no need for adventure, for exploration. Think of what we would miss if we didn’t dream about what the future could be. Think about the children and their wonderment, the questions our kids ask us about random and funny things, seemingly simple topics that stump even the most intelligent adult.

Which of the children here today will be the next great physicist to discover I don’t even know what. Which of these children here will be the first to discover the next great environmental breakthrough? Which of these children present today will create the next world changing technology in how we communicate with one another?

And which of these children would have a chance to do that if we prevented them from being filled with wonder, if we prevented them from being surprised by God at work in the world. Not a single one of these children would grow up to change the world if we told them everything in the world is complete and there is nothing more for them to do. Surprise and wonder are vital parts of our lives, of how we experience the world and the people around us.

I am not sure what Jesus’ intentions were when he determined the crowd travelling with him less faithful. How do you determine faithfulness? How do we know if a person is faithful or not? What makes a faithful person? Christianity, Christian faith is not demonstrated by a recitation of facts. There is a big difference between belief and faith; too often belief has taken the place of faith in our Christian context. Is faith anything more than accepting fully the promise of God for a better future, for a better world?

Last week at the top of the steps stood my daughter, arms extended, standing firm on the last step before the landing. She looked at me determinedly and said, with a hint of a smile on her face, “What is the password?” First I said, “Naomi is the greatest daughter in the world.” She didn’t budge. So I said, “Naomi is the cutest and most beautiful girl in the world!” Still she didn’t budge, So I dug deep into my memory and said, “Naomi is my favorite daughter.” She laughed and said, Daddy! I’m your only daughter! Then asked if I gave up, to which I said yes. She leaped up and jumped into my arms and said, “The password is faith, Daddy! The Password is faith!”

Faith IS the password, its surprisingly simple, that is all we need to know, faith isn’t some convoluted complicated process of understanding, faith is simply faith. We go through life so often looking at disappointment and losing surprise. Maybe we should consider losing our disappointment and try discovering the surprise.