June 27 Proper 7
There’s a labyrinth upstairs in Bowen Hall. Many of you have seen or walked it. Walking the labyrinth is an ancient form of prayer, a prayer ritual that has resurfaced in the last few years as interest in contemplative prayer has grown. If you aren’t familiar with labyrinths, they are circular patterns laid out for walking like a path. Newer ones are often painted or inlaid on a floor, and some are formed as they were thousands of years ago, laid out on the earth with stones, perhaps in a courtyard or even in Chigger Field at Camp Mitchell.
To walk a labyrinth is to offer yourself silently to receive the Holy Spirit. A common practice is to remove your shoes, stand at the entrance to say a prayer, something like Come, Holy Spirit. Then you begin to walk along the pathway before you. The circular motion draws you into the circle and amazing to me, it draws you into yourself and fills you if you let it. You walk inward to the center, pause, pray and return along the same pathway. Your prayer shifts from receiving God’s spirit to offering yourself to act on what you have received while you walk along the circular path.
As in any kind of prayer, you don’t necessarily know what you have received at that moment. You can only be certain you have opened yourself to God and the rest will be revealed to you in the course of your every day experience.
Jesus set his face toward Jerusalem. Everything he did and said in these last days he did toward that end. He would not be distracted. Much as when we walk the labyrinth, Jesus was clearly focused on one thing: being open to the Father’s presence. How else could he go where he had to go and do what God wanted him to do? to show compassion, forgiveness, and love in the face of rejection, even violence and death. As he walked and prayed he knew what he most needed to share with his disciples and what he shared with them is as important to us as it was then to them.
What Jesus said and did has been passed down to us in scripture and in the history and experience of the church through the centuries. We have a common foundation with the disciples of listening to Jesus’ teaching, conversations about what he meant, and seeing that he heals the sick and feeds everyone. We have received the oral and written history of God’s people before Jesus. We have narratives about Jesus’ life, his teachings, and how he responded to an array of experiences. We have the law and we have faith which is greater even than the law, but does not take its place.
How does all this inform our lives? The primary point of today’s gospel lesson is that we must put everything, even our families, in its proper place in our lives. Secondly, Jesus showed the disciples that his life and teaching was not just to the people of Israel. His ministry was to all people, even people who were not ready to receive him.
You will remember in last week’s lesson Jesus and his disciples crossed the Sea of Galilee and entered Samaritan country. He immediately healed a man of what today we would call mental illness. Then he sent James and John ahead to a village where the news of this powerful healer had spread. The villagers were afraid and wanted them to go away and leave them alone. James and John were angry; they had been rejected; they wanted revenge. They wanted to show their power by burning them and their village. What is the teaching for them and for us? Jesus not only said NO; he rebuked them. Forgiveness and compassion, not anger, revenge were their mission. Do not be encumbered by your feelings or proud of your power; set your face on Christ and the Christian life.
Jesus said, “Foxes have holes, birds have nests but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” Homeless – unencumbered by mortgages, shopping, bills, leaky faucets, weeds to pull, and the daily round of obligations that most of our lives require. Jesus was unencumbered and free to set his face on his mission wherever it took him. Like backpacking—all you have is what you need for the journey limited by how much weight you can carry: boots, the clothes on your back, a little food, a little shelter, and a map to show you the way to your destination. Backpacking is a good measure of what we need: few material possessions and a mission.
Backpacking is also a good reminder of how too much stuff can make us weary, spoil our pleasure in the natural beauty and diminish the joy of companionship. Too much “stuff” can distract us from our mission and ministry no matter where we are. Even family matters that could better be left to someone else’s care, can distract us from our particular ministry as disciples of Christ.
Walking the labyrinth is a way to go inward, a way to be led by Christ, to be shown what is essential and what we can leave behind. Prayer focuses our thoughts and feelings so that our good bys can be as joyful for what we’ve shared as they are sad in our parting and prayer sets our face to what lies ahead.
This week I say good-by as your priest. Thank you! Thank you is the most essential thing I have to share with you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for all we adults have shared and for sharing your children with me. We have loved each other with no strings attached.
We have shared our questions and I have heard their amazing insights. “Thank you,” one of the boys said, “for treating the church so well we come almost every day.” I don’t hear that as simply a personal message, but a thank you to every one of you. No one person makes a church that attracts people; we are church and if a child feels welcome and nurtured, and wants to be here every day, all of us together make that happen. We have our face set on Christ.
I will miss you more than even I can know today. Patricia Lewis, your new Children and Family Minister is receiving the foundation we, catechists, parents, musicians, and everyone who has supported us. It is a good foundation we have laid together. She will take what we have begun and it will be so exciting to see where she leads you. It is not as hard to leave my work here knowing that I leave you and Patricia with each other.
Not every parting makes you feel like giving thanks for what has been, what is, and what is to come. I am grateful to be able to leave with a full heart for what we have shared and for the future. I will be taking what I have learned with you to the faithful but discouraged church in Magnolia. Once again I will start with a handful of families and we will seek the best way to follow Christ and to share Christ’s love and teaching in that place. Once a month I will preach and take my place at their altar to feed and be fed by Christ. I will sometimes be at the cathedral so they may have a woman at their altar and I may continue in my priestly ministry. I will be back to worship with you after a time. Christ Church is my spiritual home. That is where my prayers are guiding me today and I am thankful for the future as well as the past and present.
God has built our church, our whole church, on a common foundation. Jesus Christ is the chief cornerstone. As we set ourselves apart for prayer, our prayers are daily answered, sometimes yes, sometimes no. Always follow me, says Jesus. I will be with you. Amen.