August 13th, 2018

Proper 14 2018
Year B
 
 
 
 
 
         Have you ever had the experience of someone presuming to know you?  I have.  I have had people presume to know me because I am a white Southern male. I have had people presume to know my theology because I am an Episcopal priest; and married; and 62 years old; and…  So often people who think they know you really don’t know you at all. It could be that we have not let them, or they have not tried, but for whatever reason people place their expectations on others.  I think that presumption is at the root of gossip.  Presuming to know someone well enough is what it takes to hear gossip and that same presumption is what it takes to pass it on.
         
          Maybe, one of the greatest gifts my father ever gave to me was that he never presumed to know me; or anybody I ever knew.  Truly knowing someone takes work.  It can’t be done over Twitter.  It can’t be done on social media.  Facebook friends are not really friends because being a friend and knowing someone requires time and attention. That was what my father gave me.  We got to know each other on Saturday mornings fishing in a small v-hull boat in the Okefenokee swamp.  He took time and made our friendship important.  He worked on it.  He asked me questions about what I believed; how I understood things.
        
         I think as a husband I get into the most trouble when I presume to know what Alicia wants; when I answer the question for her … “Sure, she would enjoy that”, “Yes, she is free for dinner”.
        
         This is the scene we have at the beginning of this Gospel.  If it weren’t so sad it would be laughable.  The people who heard Jesus speak presumed to know him.  We know his parents.  We know where he is from. We know his family.  We know who he is.  How can he say he came down from heaven?  What more do they need?  We saw him playing in the street and working in his dad’s shop.
        
        They have judged Jesus and their hearts are closed to anything new and anything different.  They presume to know Jesus and, in that act, they lose any opportunity to truly know him.  They deny themselves the chance to know the God incarnate.  
        
          It is not something that was just “back then”.  We must be very careful.  In our zeal to be right, to be correct, we too can miss God and God moving in our lives.  Evangelism is a term I don’t think we or most Christians understand.  For too many, evangelism is trying to get someone to believe in a doctrine or an understanding that you believe in. And often it is done as a threat.  If you don’t believe this way you will die.  If you don’t get it right God will not love you.
        
          True evangelism is much different.  I think true evangelism; effective evangelism is living out your faith.  It is living out God’s love by loving others in an outward and visible way.  But at the heart of living out our faith is getting to know the other.  At the heart of our faith is not presuming to know the other but instead listening to understand.  God’s redeeming love was never a threat that someone must believe. God’s love proclaimed through Jesus Christ is love that acts in the midst of pain, or disease. It is acting to feed and restore the poor and hungry; it is always about going to where someone is with the truth of God’s love for them. It is always about listening to their pain and responding to that pain.  It is about seeking to know someone else and not presuming to know who they are and what they need.
        
That is the heart of our mission.  It is at the heart of welcoming without a litmus test.
        
          Do you know Jesus as your friend and savior?   That is not wording we use often.  But maybe they are important for us.  For us to be able to share God’s love through Jesus Christ we must engage with Christ.  We must know him and not presume to know him.  It is the question we should ask each day.  It is the reason we come to this place each week.  In this Eucharist we come forward and ask Jesus to come again into our life.  We ask to encounter the risen Lord again.  But this is not what it means to be Christian.  This is where we begin.  In this moment we seek to know Christ and we seek then to go forth, bearing Christ to the world.  We seek to reach out with the love of God.  We are seeking to do what Christ did day by day.
       
          I can’t tell you how to do that.  I cannot give you a few rules to make this happen.  I will tell you do not presume.  Do not think that somehow if you are here you have done what you need to do.  Instead, step out of these doors seeking to live as God moves.  Make this day a day where you are willing to wonder about how God loves.