Sermons
Faith is not about getting it all right, faith is about taking the journey, knowing that we can’t fully understand and know everything, at least not during this mortal life. As St. James says in the Epistle today, we all make mistakes. As St. Paul says elsewhere, we see through a glass darkly, we see through a mirror dimly. It is impossible for us to understand it all, to get it all right. It is impossible for us to be perfect.
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You are loveable because God loves you. Reflect on that, and then ask yourself, what can I do in response. I, who have this enormous amount of love filling me every day, how can I share that same love with someone else? At work, at home, at school, on the street, in the store, wherever you are think of how you can share that love with my neighbors, with my enemies, with all of creation. How can I share that love that God has already given me in grace? Why? Because God loves you.
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It is also a story of a clash of two different world views or mindsets, imaginations of how this world should operate. One mindset is the one of the brothers, who are afraid. It is a mindset of punishment, revenge, vengeance, an eye for an eye justice. They know they did wrong, they know they should be punished for it, and are afraid of what that punishment is going to look like. That is their view of how things are probably going to go.
The other mindset is the one that Joseph has, which is the imagination of forgiveness, of mercy, of grace, of reconciliation. I think the brothers’ mindset is probably where most of the world is. A lot of the time, most of us feel that same way, too.
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Jesus says follow this way, the way of mercy. "Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me." Follow Jesus on the way of mercy, on the way of grace, on the way of love because that is the world view of God. That is the ordering of the world in which a little child can be taken and put in the middle as an exemplar, as Jesus did in our Gospel just a few weeks ago.
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What a Gospel we just heard! The story of the camel, the rich man, and the eye of the needle. It's a tough one, and we might find ourselves asking, is Jesus talking to me? Is Jesus really asking me to sell everything I have and give it all to those who are living in poverty? We might find ourselves thinking, that's too much, Jesus. I can't do that. It's not realistic. I have too many responsibilities. Just no. And we find ourselves trying to turn our ears down a little bit and wait for something a little more palatable to come out of Jesus's mouth. If we do that, we're going to miss out on some really important things that Jesus wants us to explore. So why don’t we take a little time today and try to unpack this Gospel passage together.
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Sin. We don’t like to talk about it very much. And I get that. I don’t like to talk about it very much. It makes me uncomfortable. Sometimes feelings of guilt and shame might start rising within us as we think about what it is we have done wrong. We might get defensive. It just seems easier to avoid even thinking about our sin than dealing with it. Additionally, we have a history of misnaming sin, of calling things sin that aren’t, and not calling things sin that are. And sometimes in that misnaming we have weaponized sin language to use it against people, abusively, hurtfully. Dare I say, sinfully. So it is easier not to talk about it.
