The Rev. Timothy Hodapp's Sermon
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Year C, Proper 25, 2013
Readings: Sirach 35:12-17, Psalm 84:1-6
2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18
Luke 18:9-14
The Rev. Timothy Hodapp
Trinity Episcopal Church, Hartford
October 27, 2013
In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
My dear friends in Christ:
She was at church, making her weekly visit, just a bit behind because her catnap lasted longer than she’d intended. Usually, she’d have been up the long aisle, into her row — six from the front; seated on her chair, four in from the center — by the time the bell in the church tower tolled the three o’clock hour.
But not today. The thick orthopedic shoes she now wore weren’t the heels she preferred and had worn to church for years; yet at 83 she was happy she could plod her way up the church steps, ever so carefully and increasingly more slowly, each Sunday and each Thursday afternoon.
Sunday was her community time. Time to be with her people. Time to pray. Time to sing. Time to sit down after service for coffee, cookie, and always a catch up on the news.
But Thursday, down her aisle and in her row and on her chair, this was her time with God.
This Thursday, she was a few minutes late. As she pushed the heavy door inward, a gust of wind swept up the steps and she caught the lavender scarf around her neck before the fall gust took it away.
“Thank you, God,” she said, “I need this more than you.” She felt the bells in the tower toll the three o’clock hour as much as she heard them as she made her way into the dimly lit church.
“Just you and me,” she whispered as she paused in the narthex. “My God. My church. My chair.”
With one hand on her scarf and another on the back of one chair, moving chair to chair, she slowly made her way up the aisle.
And then stopped. Someone was seated in her row. Someone was sitting on her chair. The entire church was empty except for what looked like a young man in a dark sweatshirt, the hood over his head.
“Who’s that?” she mumbled. “Who’s in my chair?”
“Why God?” she looked up. “There’s a church full of chairs! Why is he in mine?”
The police car had turned off the main drag and onto the street directly in front of the tall, red brick and brownstone church just as he came around the corner.
He pulled the black hoodie over his head and climbed the stone stairs to the church door.
“God,” he said, not in prayer but more like a threat, “that door better be open.”
And it was.
He stepped inside, the door softly closing behind, and stopped. He hadn’t been in a church since he was 14 years old. Gran took him to church the years he lived with her after his parents’ split, and Mama went into endless rounds of rehab.
Every Sunday they were in church together. Gran believed in Jesus. Gran knew Jesus was with her in her church community. Gran knew Jesus was there when she prayed. Gran testified to Jesus presence when she took her little grandson to school, to the grocer, to the church.
Gran believed because Gran knew. Gran knew Jesus.
“But I sure as hell don’t,” he whispered in the back of this old, dark, empty church. Stepping from shadow to shadow he made his way down one of the side aisles.
As he walked, the memories picked away at the hard shell around his broken heart. He was in trouble. Deep trouble. And there wasn’t anyone. No Gran, now long dead. No one, because that’s the way it is.
Deeper into the church he went, the windows in the clerestory glistening in colored glass above sent color onto the stone floor at his feet.
That scent! Like dusty smoke stuck in wood, sulfurous, like after a match is struck, but sweeter… the memory of Sunday with Gran so many years ago.
“It’s cold in here,” he muttered, and pulled the hoodie up over his head. “And dead,” he heard his voice fall as he stepped out from behind one of the pillars, into a row of chairs, where he sat.
Looking up toward the altar, the candlesticks, the gold cross, he chuckled. “I could swipe those and be out into the alley in seconds.” But he didn’t move an inch.
Instead, he stopped as the place continued to spark memories. Gran seated him right next to her. He’d lean into her when he got tired, when the readings went on, when the sermon didn’t shout itself from the pulpit. And Gran put her strong, heavy arm around him, pull him in.
He leaned forward, his thick arms out in front of him, fists clasped, hooded head down, chin on his chest.
“I don’t know you, God,” he started. “I l don’t believe. You left me when she died. I’m on my own… I’m in trouble… and I don’t know who you are.”
He paused. “What am I doing? Who am I talking to? Who cares what I’m saying? Who’s listening?”
The bell in the tower clanged. Three times. He heard something. Then silence.
“Of course it’s quiet,” he thought. “It’s dead in here.” He barely lifted his head, looking up to the altar, to the light through the window above. The colors blurred as the tears began.
“God,” he heard himself say, “God, where are you?” And now, more loudly, fists apart but still clenched, arms raised to the roof above him, shouting to the silent space, “God! Where are you?”
And turning, he saw her, an old woman clutching at her purple scarf, leaning in toward him, her gnarled hand barely touching his shoulder, her tears mirroring his.
Huh. What if today’s parable had ended in another way?
How unlike the prayer of the Pharisee in today’s Gospel from the one that Jesus teaches his disciples earlier in Luke, 11: 1-13.
Jesus’ prayer opens with God’s name, God’s kingdom, God’s will; and then moves to our need of God for daily bread, forgiveness, and deliverance.
The Pharisee, who by definition is valued by God for the laws he keeps, proclaims his worth.
Of course, it’s one thing to appraise my value by what I bring to the auction floor. It’s something else when I appraise my value by comparing how shiny, bright, new, fresh, complete, and perfect I am in comparison to his or her dull, old, rotted, incomplete, imperfection. At least I’m not the tax collector.”
How differently the parable might have ended if the Pharisee knew how like the tax collector he was. If the Pharisee had dared to get close enough to have seen the tax collector’s tears.
If the Pharisee had been aware that he was beloved of God simply because of who he was as God’s son, not because of his perceived perfection; and that, indeed, his own sin, pride, behavior was puny when placed beside God’s love for him.
And, that he, the Pharisee, could extend the very presence, power, perfection of God’s love to the broken tax collector, folding under the weight of his own sin, weeping in the shadows of the synagogue, seeking the loving face of God.
- I am here today to sing of God’s power and might in my life.
- I am here today to pledge my loyalty to God in the work of this Church by the gifts that I bring.
- I am here today to be nourished by God in this community.
- I am here today, to be sent back out into the world.
We are called to witness to God.
We are called to participate in God’s mission, desire, power to restore what has — by sin, dissension, division — moved so far from what God prefers for us.
We are called to participate in God’s mission to reconcile what has been broken beyond recognition of what God has created for us.
When I step out these doors and onto these church steps or into the parking lot, do I dare be Christ’s disciple in the week ahead?
- Do I dare keep my eyes open for ways to extend the power of God’s forgiveness to anyone God places before me in the week ahead?
- Do I dare fight the urge to judge, compare, give thanks to God that ‘I’m not like him… I’m not like her…” and see, instead, my brother in need; my sister who awaits God’s touch through my hands, in the week ahead?
- Do I dare witness to what I profess I believe this morning?
Before the sun sets on this late fall day, you and I have the absolute thrill to be like God. To be Godlike. To be Godly.
Don’t be afraid. You’re not alone.
Cry out if you need to. God’s listening.
Reach across boundaries when God invites you. You are God’s presence in the life of your sisters, your brothers in need.
We meant what we prayed in our opening Collect. Listen again to these prophetic words…
Almighty and everlasting God, increase in us the gifts of faith, hope, and charity; and, that we may obtain what you promise, make us love what you command, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.