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Scripture Texts: Luke 10:38-42, Amos 8:1-12, Colossians 1:15-28
July 17, 2016
I received news on Friday of the death of a great leader of the Episcopal Church, the Rt. Rev. Duncan Gray, Jr. the 7th Bishop of Mississippi. His father, Duncan Gray, Sr., was the 5th Bishop of Mississippi, and his son, Duncan Gray III, was the 9th Bishop of Mississippi, and was Bishop during my time in the Diocese of Mississippi.
Bishop Gray Jr. will be remembered as an advocate for civil rights. While a seminarian at Sewanee in the 1950’s he joined in an effort to change the whites-only admissions policy to the seminary and the University of the South, which was, and is, an institution of the Episcopal Church.
As Rector of St. Peter’s in Oxford, Mississippi, Duncan Gray Jr., spoke these words to his congregation on a Sunday morning in the fall of 1962: “The seeds of anger and hatred, bitterness and prejudice are widely sown, and as Christians, we need to do our utmost to uproot and cast them out.” That evening he went to a rally at the University of Mississippi and climbed up onto a concrete platform upon which stood the statue of a soldier of the University Grays, a regiment of Ole Miss men that suffered 100% casualties in the Battle of Gettysburg, and he pleaded with the protesters not to stand against the planned matriculation the next day of James Meredith as the first black student at Ole Miss. His words were met with violent response, as he was pulled down and badly beaten. The members of St. Peter’s responded by leaving the parish in large numbers. The following Sunday Duncan Gray said to what was left of his congregation, “you and I, along with every other Mississippian, are responsible…for what happened [at Ole Miss because] we are responsible for the moral and political climate in our state which made such a tragedy possible.”
I always admired Bishop Gray for his quiet wisdom and pastoral concern for the Diocese and the State of Mississippi, and I wish I could go to Jackson on Tuesday to pay my respects. A lot has changed since the turbulent years of the Civil Rights movement. Bishop Gray said as much last fall in an interview for The Christian Century, “We’ve still got a way to go, but we’ve come a long way from where we were back then.” Another testimony to the progress in reconciliation is the fact that James Meredith is a leading advocate and solid ambassador for Ole Miss.
Bishop Gray, Jr. did his utmost to stand for the values of the Gospel in the face of a great scourge of his generation. He has run his race. May he rest in peace and rise in glory.
It seems that every generation has some great scourge to face. The Prophet Amos, in the 10th century B.C. was called from his work as a herder of goats and dresser of sycamore trees to speak God’s word of judgment upon the house of King Jeroboam of Israel. Jeroboam, a son of Solomon, led the 10 northern tribes of Israel in a revolt against his brother, Rehoboam, who followed their father as king. The revolt succeeded and Israel was divided into two kingdoms. The two southern tribes, Judah and Benjamin, became the Kingdom of Judah, with Jerusalem as capital and also the center of religious life in the temple begun by King David and completed by King Solomon. The 10 northern tribes became the Kingdom of Israel. Their capital was at Samaria, and their religious life was dispersed among several sites in the kingdom. Jereboam instigated this revolt and this division of the Jewish nation on the grounds that he was protecting the common people from the injustices that his brother would inflict upon them. Whatever Rehoboam’s plans may have been, things were not better under Jeroboam. Retail business was able to infringe upon sabbath keeping. Measures of money were being modified to favor the wealthy in business transactions, and the poor were being sent into indentured servitude when unable to satisfy their debts, into which they came as victims of dishonest business dealings. The divine judgment that Amos says will fall upon Israel is that their religious observances, which were being undertaken by unrepentant and selfish hearts, would not be heard by the Lord, and that Israel would experience a famine of hearing a word from the Lord.
Every generation has a scourge. Ours is no exception. Our scourges are multi-layered and complex. The work of racial reconciliation is still incomplete. Deadly terrorist attacks on soft targets are tactics in a new kind of warfare. Nice, France is the latest killing field, and I wonder how the civilized world will rise up to face this scourge. We, like Martha of Bethany, are “worried and distracted by many things,” but to become excessively “worried and distracted” by these many things would trap us in fear, leave us in a famine of hearing the word of the Lord, and in danger of abandoning the hopeful word we hear in Paul’s Letter to the Colossians, that in Christ “all things hold together.” Christ is the Word that was in the beginning, the Word that spoke the universe into being, as the Gospel of John teaches us. Christ is the Word that is in and through all times, the Word that holds the universe together in spite of whatever scourge may batter against it. Christ is the Word that is sustaining the universe even now, until it comes to the fullness of purpose for which it was created by the invisible God, of whom Christ is the image, the absolute likeness and perfect representative, the exact counterpart, the Father revealed in and through the Son, present to us in Word and Sacrament.
I want to challenge you this morning to let go of whatever it is that may have you worried and distracted. Whether it is as significant as the scourges that threaten our nation and our world or as trivial as looking forward to Sunday lunch or Sunday afternoon activities. Whatever it may be, let it go and join Mary of Bethany in sitting at the feet of Jesus. How can we do that? By engaging what remains of this time of worship with heart and soul. Pray, don’t just say the Creed. The word ‘creed’ comes from a Latin word that means ‘to give heart.’ When we say ‘We believe’ we are saying, “We give heart.” Give your heart anew to the faith we have received as you say those familiar words. Another way is to pray, don’t just say the Prayers of the People. As each petition is offered, lift the people and the concerns that are expressed heavenward. Even if it is someone you don’t know or a name that seems to be on the prayer list in perpetuity, lift them up, and let our collective praying voices rise in loud chorus to the mercy seat. When you exchange the peace of the Lord today, do just that. Let your bidding be, “The peace of the Lord be with you,” and your response to that bidding be, “and also with you.” The peace we are bidding one another is the costly peace that we have with the Lord because of the blood of his cross. There, in the embrace of that sacrifice, is the world’s only hope for peace, and it is the peace which comes from that sacrifice, peace with God and neighbor, that we wish for one another. And when it comes to the Great Thanksgiving, that lengthy prayer of consecration of the bread and wine, and of those who will receive them, join me in praying it. Listen to the words. They are heavy with meaning. Take note of the actions that accompany the words. Let your heart beat a little faster in anticipation of seeing, with mystical eyes, in the bread and wine, Christ Jesus, the image of the invisible God.
In my recreational reading, I am currently in the third book of a trilogy by Elmer Kelton called “The Sons of Texas.” It tells the story of the Lewis family from Tennessee, who first started to explore Texas when it was in Spanish hands, and it was during that time that the patriarch of the family, Mordecai Lewis, was killed by Spanish soldiers. That did not stop the Lewis boys, who shared their father’s flare for exploring. When Texas came under Mexican control, the children of Mordecai began to migrate to Texas, homesteading in Stephen F. Austin’s Colony. Where I am in the story now is with the third wave of Lewis children, Andrew and James, with their sister Annie. When they left Tennessee, there was still open passage to Austin’s Colony. During their travels, however, the Mexican government closed off the pathway to American settlers, except for those carrying letters from Stephen F. Austin. The young Lewis’s did not have such a letter, and so the reunion with their older siblings was a journey by the hardest. It was also a journey that a single woman like Annie would not normally take, for the journey was hard and the Mexican government would not allow a grant of land to a woman who had no husband. But, Annie would not be deterred, because she felt strongly compelled to see her oldest brother, Michael, who left Tennessee a decade earlier when she was just 12. Let me read a little of Elmer Kelton’s words to you as Annie nears the end of the arduous journey and is about to see her brother Michael after so long.
Annie itched to make the final few miles to the place that would be her home, where she would finally see Michael again after all these years. She tried to picture how her brother would look, for she had only memory to go by, and imagination. . .She loved all her brothers, but Michael had always been special, for in a way he had been her father’s image. She had always clung tightly to Mordecai, and after his death she had clung to Michael. Texas had taken Michael from her. Now Texas would give him back.
In her brother Michael, Annie had seen her father’s image.
Our Father’s image. That is what Jesus offers us. May our hearts beat a little faster in anticipation of being in the presence of the him who is our Father’s image, in whom we have victory over any scourge because of the peace that comes from the blood of his cross.
