The Joy of Salvation

Almost every day during the week when I am in the church office there are individuals who stop in and ask for help.  They are women and men, young and old, homeless, or impoverished with toddlers or young children, unemployed and hungry.  Most of them hope to receive a gift card so they can buy food, infant supplies or household items from Stop & Shop.  I listen to their stories, and when it is appropriate and I have gift cards on hand, I offer them a card.

There are times when a person who comes to see me just needs to tell their story.  They no longer have any welfare support from the State, or they have a rent payment that is past due, or a utility bill they cannot pay and the electricity has been shut off.  Many of these people are fearful of being evicted, as their situations are desperate. Some of the people have been referred to us because they were told we might be able to assist them.  My policy is never to give money or a check, but only a gift card in the amount of $20.00.  But, as you know, not much can be purchased for that amount.

When I run out gift cards, I normally buy ten of them, and no longer have the funds to buy more cards, the best support I can offer is to listen and refer them to another place where they might find assistance.  I also tell them about the City Meal Site and the food that is available here every week on Tuesday.

On Tuesday afternoons around 3:00 a crowd begins to gather outside the parish hall entrance waiting for the City Meal Site to finish preparing a hot meal that will be served to them beginning around 4 or 4:30.  Normally, 200 or more people show up at our church for a meal.  The meal is served by a group of 15 to 20 volunteers who come from churches on the East Side and Greenville, and from Brown University, Providence College, Johnson and Wales, and a technical high school that sets up the tables and place settings every Tuesday morning.  The cost of each meal is about $2.70.  Food that is prepared and served and the place settings are either purchased at a very low cost or donated by area bakeries and other suppliers.

Our experience at All Saints’ is not uncommon.  It reflects the fact that we are living during a very difficult and troubling economic time.  Many federal and state programs have been curtailed or eliminated because of sequestration.  It is a time in which financial wealth seems more important than compassion to some of our national leaders.  As a consequence it is our poorest citizens and children who suffer with greater hardship than at any time since the Great Depression. 

Where is there a sense of hope?  What has happened to our collective responsibility for compassion, care and healing?  How can we in this city, state, and nation support wellness for all people?  Can the people I see ever regain a feeling of joy and well-being?

Our Scripture readings today are about joy and wellness.  The prophet Jeremiah said to the exiles in Babylon that they should seek the welfare of the city.  They are to build houses, plant gardens, eat the produce they grow, and have families for themselves and their sons and daughters.  All this is to be done right in Babylon where they are placed in exile.  The point is that, despite the destruction of Jerusalem, the captivity of the Israelites, and all the hardship they have to endure, contributing to the welfare of Babylon will also benefit them.   Jeremiah said in his letter that the Lord of Hosts said, “Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”

Then in the Letter to Timothy attributed to Paul, Timothy is told to present himself to God as a worker approved by God whose ministry is to explain the word of truth.  Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead.  There is hope in the resurrection to new life, so Timothy is to  “endure everything for the sake of the elect, so that they may also obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus.”  Salvation is the hope and joy that comes from health and well-being.

The culmination of endurance and resurrected new life is the subject of the Gospel of Luke.  It is the familiar story of Jesus healing ten people who were sick with leprosy. Although ten people were healed, only one of them, a Samaritan, returned to thank Jesus.  Jesus asked where were the other nine?  The Samaritan who came to offer thanks was an outsider who rejoiced in the relationship that emerged with Jesus.  In his response with thankfulness for being healed, Jesus said it was his faith that made him well.

Our ministry, yours and mine, is to live with gratitude and thankfulness for every gift we receive.  When health is restored, whether physical, emotional, or economic, when compassion is given and received, we are to give thanks to God for the gift of life bestowed upon us through Christ’s resurrection.

There is a sense in each of these readings from Jeremiah, Timothy and Luke that endurance or perseverance matters.  No matter the place nor the circumstances of one’s life, enduring in faith will result in joy, thanksgiving and well-being.  We are to trust in God, to live our lives filled with the transformative power of healing, and to speak the word of truth and compassion for all in need.  This is our praise and thanksgiving to God, the author of our salvation.  Amen.

Rekindle the Gift of God

The subject of today’s Gospel of Luke and also of Paul’s letter to Timothy is faith.  In Luke, the disciples asked Jesus to “increase their faith.”  In the letter to Timothy Paul asked Timothy to “rekindle the gift of God.”  Both of these passages have significant implications for us 21^st century Christians.  What are we to make of our faith in the midst of all the cultural diversity and social issues of our time?

When the disciples asked Jesus to increase their faith it was as though there was some way to measure the amount of faith they had.  Did they have just a tiny bit of faith about the size of a mustard seed, or an abundance of faith, so much that no vessel could contain it?  Jesus, who, in his parables, always seemed to turn things upside down challenged the prevailing customs and mores of his day.  He responded to the disciples by telling them they lacked faith.  Their faith was smaller than a grain of mustard seed.  He said, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”

The point Jesus made is that faith, when considered to be as microscopic as a tiny mustard seed, can be the instrument of spectacular results.  As for a mulberry tree, how could anyone imagine a large and substantial tree planted in the sea?  A small amount of faith, no larger than the size of a mustard seed, has the power of transformation like a huge mulberry tree uprooted out of solid ground and planted in the sea. 

Jesus taught the disciples, and he teaches us, that what matters is what one does.  There will be times when there is little faith, but there will never be times when one should not act responsibly with compassion, forgiveness, and love.  Instead of measuring the level of faith in quantitative terms, it is the quality of faith that makes a difference.  As an illustration Jesus told his disciples a parable about what slaves or servants were expected to do.  Today, we are God’s servants and know what we are called to do.

Our faith is always in need of rejuvenation, what the Apostle Paul referred to as “rekindling the gift of God.”

Paul, in his letter to Timothy written from prison, said that he was grateful to God and longed to see Timothy so that he could be filled with joy.  He was reminded of Timothy’s “sincere faith,” a faith that had lived in his grandmother and his mother, and now a faith that lived in him.  Paul asked Timothy to “rekindle the gift of God” because it is God who gives us a “spirit of power and love and self-discipline.”

Paul said, “join with me in suffering for the gospel, relying on the power of God, who saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works but according to his own purpose and grace…. Hold to the standard of sound teaching that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.  Guard the good treasure entrusted to you, with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us.”

Ours is a holy calling today just as it was in the time of Jesus’ disciples, and in the time of Paul and Timothy.  We are to adhere the standard of sound teaching as we receive it in the Bible, and we are to share the faith and love we have received through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Through our baptism the Holy Spirit lives in us and we are given the power and grace to minister to one another and to others.

The late John Kavanaugh, who was a professor of Philosophy for many years at Saint Louis University, wrote, “As Christians, we are sent into the world as Christ was sent. We are an incarnate people.  In terms of our civil societies, we are a people of inculturation.  Our faith lives in and through the cultures we inhabit.  Herein lies the splendid diversity of all the ways our faith is celebrated…. But the Incarnation is also about realities beyond this world and its ways.  It is a testimony to truths that extend further than the reach of the earth or any culture.”

You and I come from various national and cultural traditions, but we share the faith that has been entrusted to us.  That faith is what we celebrate when we gather for worship.  It is our praise and thanksgiving to God for all that we receive.  As it is stated in one of the Eucharistic Prayers in our Book of Common Prayer: At God’s “command all things came to be: the vast expanse of interstellar space, galaxies, suns, the planets in their courses, and this fragile earth, our island home.”  

We celebrate the reality of God’s compassion that transcends all things that came to be, a compassion that is beyond all the cultures and traditions we know.  We are to be good stewards of all that has been entrusted to us.  Part of that stewardship is caring for the pets and animals that surround us.  And so, today we shall bless the animals created by God for our enjoyment as part of our thanksgiving to God for all the blessings of our lives.  Amen.