Evensong Sermon for October 12, 2008

YEAR 2, PROPER 23, SUNDAY, EVENSONG & BENEDICTION:
JEREMIAH 36:1-10; 1 CORINTHIANS 4:9-16, JOHN 14:1-7

My day began at 4AM when my son Liam woke up – he didn’t want anything, he just didn’t want to sleep. When I came downstairs to begin setting up for church, I found out that the Red Sox – I am from Boston – lost last night’s playoff game by one run in extra innings. After morning prayer, I discovered that our child care expert wasn’t coming in. When she didn’t show up on time, I assumed, and later confirmed that she was sick. Five minutes before Solemn Mass began, I discovered that we were short a thurifer. At the last minute we had to adjust all of the acolytes and the effects of that rippled throughout Solemn Mass.

This morning ranks as one of my favorite Sunday mornings since I have been at Saint Mary’s. You might not think it was an ideal morning for me, but it was. All of those difficulties are small potatoes compared to what really happened today.

Because the nursery wasn’t staffed, I got to receive communion with my son. He’s not quite 2. When he says the chalice, he points at it and says: Beer. As a baptized Christian he is part of this community as much as anyone else, even if he doesn’t always get all the details, and there is nothing quite like the experience sitting next to him at our Lord’s Table.

We began Sunday School for children for the first time in years. We had four kids – we have the potential for six, and I’m thrilled. They are three and four years old. Maybe they can’t explain adequately the position of Saint Abelard on the Atonement, but I think they understand what really matters. They learned that through Jesus they were not only children of Abraham but also children of God.

Solemn Mass – for all the stress that it began with – was wonderful. I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to see parents bring their children to the front so they can see, and today this happened. Everyone from the youngest to the oldest was able to worship Jesus Christ who died and rose for all of us. It was marvelous.

Tonight we read from Jeremiah and from Saint Paul. Both of them had more bad days than most people. He lived through the collapse of the kingdom of Judah, but in the midst of that, he was also an outcast among his own people. Things had gotten so bad for Jeremiah that he has been banned from visiting the temple. The scroll that he writes and sends to be read ends up being burned by the king. Eventually Jeremiah gets put in prison, and remains there while the kingdom crumbles.

Likewise, Paul has gone through some hard times: he writes: “To the present hour we hunger and thirst, we are ill-clad and buffeted and homeless, and we labor, working with our own hands.” He says he is reviled, persecuted, slandered, and has become refuse to the entire world.

Yet both Jeremiah and Paul recognized that having a bad day – or a bad week or a bad year – wasn’t a reason to stop spreading the good news of God’s love to others, they didn’t let bad news ruin the joy of seeing the love of God radically affect and change people. Neither Paul nor Jeremiah stopped preaching because they were rejected. Neither stopped when things didn’t go as planned. Why?

For me the answer is summed up in the reading we will hear at Benediction. Jesus says: “Let not your hearts be troubled; believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And when I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.”

When things don’t go perfectly, when things seem like they are falling apart, I think of this reading. As a Christian, what matters for me is that God loves me so much that he will never let anything separate me from his love. No matter what may trouble our hearts, Jesus is preparing a place for all of us: that’s what matters. As a kid I got that. It was a great day because the kids we had today in Sunday School get that too. I hope and pray that no matter what is going on in our lives, we are all able to get that, and also experience what its like to pass that great news on to someone else.