Loading...The Sermon for the 2nd Sunday after Pentecost
Offered by the Rev. Matt Rowe
SCRIPTURE TEXTS
Exodus 19:2-8a
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“The harvest is plentiful.” The words of our Lord Jesus ring especially true to me this day, as I think back on the week just past at Emmanuel, a week which saw the return of Vacation Bible School to our ministry offerings. VBS lay fallow for three years, and that is okay. Sometimes it is necessary to let a field rest before planting it again. This year we planted, and thanks to the diligent efforts of Haley Halfmann, our VBS Director, the result was three mornings of fun, learning, artistic expression, and friendship that I hope will be a source of spiritual enrichment to the children who participated, and by extension, to their families, as they hear the accounts of each day of VBS.
VBS returned as an art camp this year. The fine arts seem to be an approach that is a fitting way for Emmanuel to share the gospel in our community. Special thanks goes to our art mentors, Susan Kinney and Jack Price, who did a wonderful job sharing their talents with the children and inspiring the talent within each of them. In addition to Haley, Susan, and Jack, Chase planned games to fit with each day’s Bible story, and I shared the story for each day with them. We had the help of some of our young people
who served as group leaders and art assistants, and we appreciated the background support of many members of the parish.
One thing I appreciated about VBS was hearing the sound of children echo through the halls of the building. I’ve grown so accustomed to the sound of workers and their tools of the trade, and it was refreshing to hear children enjoying the fruits of all the labor that has been part of this season in our common life.
While on the subject of workers and their tools, the installation of the revised and expanded pipe organ is to get underway this week. While still at least a month away from being playable, we can all anticipate hearing the pipe organ again soon.
A plentiful harvest, that is the reason our Lord Jesus called his twelve disciples. They were chosen to follow him, to learn from him, and to be commissioned by him as laborers in the harvest. Jesus chose twelve to correspond to number of the tribes of Israel, those people who journeyed with Moses from Rephidim into the wilderness of Sinai, who made a covenant with God at Mt. Sinai, a covenant to be God’s priestly people in the world, through whom all the world would come to know God, to bless God, and to join the ranks of the people of God.
By choosing twelve disciples, Jesus was reconstituting a new Israel, one that would fulfill God’s dream to have, among all the peoples of the earth, a priestly people who would be God’s special possession, who would go and proclaim the good news. That priestly people is us, the church, the community of the New Covenant, as the catechism describes, whose mission, says the catechism, is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.
The restoration of unity on such a grand scale might be said to be the fruit of the plentiful harvest Christ sends us into the fields to gather. St. Paul describes the tools we bring into the harvest field as peace and hope. These we have because of the cross of Christ, a sacrifice made for sinners while still sinners, a sacrifice in which we are justified,our relationship to God restored by God’s grace alone, through no work or merit of our own.
Being the recipients of such grace makes it possible for us to be at peace with God in the present time and have the hope of glory for the future. In the letter to the Philippians, Paul will call the peace he says is ours in Christ, “the peace that passes all understanding,” and that is a frequently used bidding in the blessing as the liturgy concludes. Such inner peace is ours as we lean on Christ, accept the forgiveness he made possible on the cross, and allow his grace to fall on us like cooling rain. Even in the midst of confusion and divisiveness, and all the many challenges that confront us in the news of each day, we can know the peace that passes understanding because God in Christ has saved us from sin and death, and made our relationship with him whole and beautiful again. That solid rock assurance is also our cause for hope. Our future is secure and bright because Christ has won the Easter Victory, shares that victory, life ever new and full to the brim, with us who in baptism have died to sin and been raised to the new life of grace.
With the tools of peace and hope in hand, we go into the harvest field to share the good news of a new covenant, a loving, welcoming, personal relationship with the creator of the universe who is good, whose mercy is everlasting, and whose faithfulness endures from age to age.
