Offered by the Rev. Matt Rowe
July, 9, 2017

Texts       

Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30         

Romans 7:15-25a

Sermon Audio

Sermon Manuscript

Allow me to say a word of thanks to all who attended the farewell reception for Cindy and Chase this past Wednesday. Your presence and your generous response to the appeal for a thanksgiving offering was very much appreciated. I want to make it as tough as possible
for them to leave us, and you played a key role in my plot.

 

A time of staff transitions can be an anxious time in the life of a congregation. When Chase told me that he had been invited into the discernment process about joining the staff of St. Michael and All Angels in Dallas, I thought back to my youth group years, when our youth minister left at the end of my junior year. Our youth ministry was in an interim period during the whole of my senior year, and I daresay was a contributing factor to the spiritual disquietude that developed in my soul during college.

Here at Emmanuel we have a wonderful group of rising seniors. I hope this year is filled
with great experiences and spiritual growth that will send them off to college firmly planted in the knowledge and love of the Lord. I am confident that Haley will be a great friend and mentor, along with those who will offer time and presence to assist with our youth ministry.

There is also, I am sure, some concern about what will happen when Cindy is no longer at her post in the parish office. I was not surprised when Cindy shared with me her plans to move back to Houston, her hometown. During the past year trips to Houston have become more regular for Cindy, and so her plans make sense to me.

While on the subject of staff transitions, let me share news of another congregation thrust into a transition more stressful than ours. The people of St. Nicholas in Midland learned about two months ago that their Rector, David Huxley, will retire for medical reasons on November 1st. On Thursday, however, he abruptly called it quits because of rapidly declining health. I bid your prayers for St. Nicholas, and for Fr. Huxley and his family, all of whom must be weary and carrying heavy burdens.

Here at Emmanuel, most of the office duties will be taken up by Carly Allen, whose position title will change from Parish Life Director to Director of Communications and Parish Life. She is spending a lot of time with Cindy, learning the many details she will need to know in order to keep the office running smoothly.

A few of Cindy’s duties will be taken up by other staff members. Carolyn McKee, our Finance Manager, will handle acknowledgement letters for special offerings, and will also function as our purchasing agent. Coordinating lay ministry schedules in conjunction with Jess Stanford, Ski Lisewsky, and John Caldwell will fall to Fr. Christian. I will take the lead on keeping the official parish records. We will also ask for office volunteers to assist with receptionist duties in the afternoons, so if you have some free time and are of a mind to, your offer of help will be gratefully received.

When the moving truck sets out for Houston with Cindy’s worldly goods, one item that will not make the trip is her lawnmower. I am purchasing it from her as replacement for my thirteen year old machine that repeatedly gets stuck in putt-putt mode, gets repaired for around $200, but then has a relapse after three or four mowings. I borrowed Cindy’s and took it for a test mow. It performed admirably, and so we have struck an accord for it to enter into my service. What to do with my machine, I have not yet decided, but it is not good for a lawnmower to be stuck in putt-putt mode.

Nor is it good for the spiritual life to be stuck in putt-putt mode. Today we hear Jesus speak of those in his generation who are just there stuck. He likens the situation to that of children whose music is ignored. Have you ever had a child who took music lessons? They have to practice. And you hear the same song over and over. Pretty soon you tune it out, or you go crazy. Nobody then notices and taps their feet when they hear a happy song coming from the music room. Nobody feels a tinge of melancholy when the song has a sad ring to it.

Jesus says that he and John the Baptist are like those musical children being ignored. John the Baptist, at that moment sitting in Herod’s prison, is the one who brought the “sad” song, with his urgent call to repent, his prickly demeanor, his ascetic lifestyle. Finally, Herod could ignore him no longer. At this moment in the gospel story John the Baptist is a prisoner, but he will soon be a martyr.

Jesus, meanwhile, brings the “happy” song. When he shows up there is laughter and merriment, relief and release, grace and mercy, eating and drinking. The Greek mood of the word for “drinking” implies, “and I’m having one now.” And the response to Jesus? “He’s a glutton, a drunkard, and he keeps company with all the wrong people!” Those in spiritual putt-putt mode do not understand. They refuse to understand.

The name Charlie Cook may be familiar to some. He taught pastoral theology when I was in seminary, and he was once almost elected Bishop of Northwest Texas. The real meat of the pastoral theology courses comes during the senior year, and during ours, Charlie took sabbatical, and a series of guest instructors, most of whom were parish priests, took his place. Mostly they told war stories about parish ministry, as if they were trying to scare us away from it. Most of the time I listened to the war stories with just one ear, thinking I’m such a nice guy, none of this would ever happen to me. I probably should have listened a bit more closely.

One war story I do remember was that of a priest who came to serve in a large parish
that included a day school. We’ll call the place, “St. Putt-Putt Church and School.” The new Rector soon realized, as so often happens with parish day schools, that the school felt itself no part of the church except as the organization that gave them space to have school.

This new Rector wanted to unite the ministry of the church and school, and he articulated a vision for making it so. The faculty and board of St. Putt-Putt School did not understand the Rector’s vision. Further, they refused to understand, and didn’t see any sense in having

some meddlesome priest nosing about their business. They hit upon a plan to derail the Rector’s vision by inviting him to a social. The main refreshment was a cake which had the vision statement written in icing, along with the heading, “Fr. So & So’s Vision.” The point was to eat the entire cake, and with it the Rector’s vision, so it, and he, would go away. “To what shall I compare this generation?”

 

Spiritual putt-putt mode is not reserved for the recalcitrant and the grumblers. It can happen even to those who want to understand, who try to be faithful. Paul writes of this in Romans 7.  “I don’t understand my own actions.” “I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” “I can will what is right, but I can’t do it.” “I don’t do the good that I want, but the evil I don’t want is what I do.” “When I want to good, evil lies close at hand.”

 

Paul can say this from personal experience. Before he became an apostle of Jesus, he was a persecutor of the followers of Jesus. He thought that he was being faithful, that to stamp out the Jesus movement was to choose the good. He was so convinced that he was in the right, that he had the ways of God all figured out, that he thought himself authorized to do harm to those who did not fit into his system of right and wrong. And Paul would say that was exactly his problem. It was his system. He figured it out. He studied. He observed the law. Paul supposed that the grace of God was a just reward that he achieved. And so Paul can say that even the law of God, which is good, can be perverted and used as an instrument of spiritual death by the baleful, corrupting might of sin.

 

Paul speaks, not only from his own experience, but on behalf of anyone who has ever,
by their own earnest effort and striving, sought to achieve God’s grace as due compensation for hard work performed, rather than receive God’s grace as the extravagant gift that it is through the sacred blood, the divine life that was offered on the cross.

Paul asks, on our behalf, “Who will rescue me from this body of death?” The answer? “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” And that leads to the wonderful, encouraging words of the 8th chapter of Romans, as Paul explains how spiritual putt-putt mode is forever repaired through the law of the Spirit of life in Christ that brings freedom from sin and death, enabling us to run in the full throttle power of life in the Spirit.

 

Functioning under our own power, employing our own resources, will lead us ever back to those Romans 7 realizations: I don’t understand. . .I do the very thing I don’t want to do. . .

I do the evil that I don’t want to do. . .evil lies close at hand. . .” and to throw up our hands in self-contempt, or fall to our knees in self-loathing, and cry out, “Wretched man that I am.

Who will rescue me from this body of death?” Remember Paul’s answer we must: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

 

We look beyond ourselves to Christ the Lord, who is sufficient, whose grace abounds and is offered as a gift to be received, not a reward to be earned. To him we admit the complete uselessness of our systems of right and wrong, our muddle-headed schemes for proving our worthiness to God, confessing, says the Rev. Carol Anderson in her book, “Knowing Jesus In Your Life,”  “that we cannot fix our own lives,” that we are forever stuck in putt-putt mode,

that we need the overhaul only he can effect.

 

The wonderful thing about it, the good news in all of this, is that he is only too happy to help. There’s no appointment needed, and there is no charge for his expert service. It’s already been paid for “on a green hill far away.” Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.