August 27, 2006 Sermon
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Proper 16 – B
August 27, 2006 Allan Conkling
My grandfather, Clarence Dougherty was 96 when he died back in 1975. Born and raised in rural Mississippi, he won an appointment to West Point, and became a career officer in the Army. Somewhere along the way he married my grandmother, a native Texan. She was a proud descendant of a long and pedigreed line of Episcopalians, who before that had been English Protestants. Grandfather, on the other hand, carried the DNA of Irish working folks who had immigrated here, Lord knows when. Given the historic sentiments between the Irish and English, one is not surprised that my grandparents all their life argued like cats and dogs. On one visit to the Conkling home when I was about 10, the old Colonel and his wife were in the throes of one of their arguments, sniping at one another, Grandmother chiding him for his stubbornness. Feeling henpecked and harassed as he always did, Grandpa—who in those days wore one of those old fashioned hearing aids with the long wire going from ear to shirt pocket—took the little box and turned it off mid-sentence and proceeded to fall asleep in a chair. “Clarence! Clarence, are you listening to me?” shouted Grandmother from the kitchen. “Honestly,” she said, “that old man is as deaf as a post.” The picture of my Grandfather turning off his hearing aid and going to sleep has stayed in my mind all those years, as an example of someone who makes the choice to become as “deaf as a post.”
The readings for today are in many ways hard to hear. More than once this week did I want to tune them out and become “deaf as a post.” Ephesians 5:21 says, “Wives be subject to your husbands.” This is a touchy one at my house. In one sentence Paul single handedly sets back women 2000 years and fans the flame for male chauvinists everywhere.
Similarly,
when Jesus says that “no one can come to me unless it is granted by
the Father,” or, “no one can come to the Father except by me…”
(John 14:6), this is troubling to me as an ecumenically minded
Christian. John’s Gospel with its incredible prologue, “In the
beginning was the word, etc” and
William Shakespeare said, “It is the disease of not listening, the malady of not marking, that we are troubled withal.” How then do we listen, and what can we learn (if anything) from these hard words? First off, let me say that it is one of the blessings of this Anglican/Episcopal faith of ours that we take the Bible seriously, without taking it literally. Studying Scripture with a critical eye allows us to admit that the Bible, while inspired by God, was written by very human hands. It is filled with passages that are time-bound, and if taken out of context can be used to hurt. The Bible is like electricity: It can power a city for good, but if handled incorrectly can kill.
In our Ephesians reading for example, Paul is a teacher. Like a teacher, he uses examples from his world. Sometimes the images are good, sometimes they are not. Were he alive today and instructing about God and the church, Paul might simply use the old cliché, “It takes two to tango.” His point was that God loves us - so we need to love and serve God in return. Be accountable to God, be mature in Christ, be open to the Spirit in the bonds of common affection. “Listen up!” Paul might say, “this love must be shown not only here but in the world…Take it out!”
From Jesus we learn that we must also “Take it in.” To partake of Christ’s body means that we take him in, to our very center, being transformed inwardly after the image of Christ.
These days many people worry about the changes in our beloved church. Some want to see it change more, some wish we could change it back. Others of us wish we could simply turn off our hearing aids and go back to sleep. But we cannot. Readings like today remind us that God is forever working his purpose out “as year succeeds to year”. And that which happens here in the church, must first begin here [within us]. God’s word is revealed to us in Scripture and the breaking of the bread. Usually, what we discover, are that the things which worry us the most don’t worry God nearly as much. That is good news!
Gathered together in unity at this table, walls of separation are brought down as strangers become are friends. The broken are healed, the prisoners are freed, and the outcasts are welcomed in. Then the Scripture will be fulfilled: “As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”
Copyright © 2003 Emmanuel Episcopal Church. All rights reserved.
Revised: 09/18/06