Passion

​Proper 11
Year B 2018
 
Passion
 
Last week my sermon was a little longer.  In all my time preaching I have never had the lights go out during my sermon.  Today’s sermon is shorter.  Hopefully that will help.
“And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves. Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them. As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.”
On Palm Sunday we announce the Gospel differently than any other Sunday of the year.  The Gospel is the story of the death of Jesus.  There is no response, just these powerful words, “The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ according to ….” It is not something we often talk about - Jesus’ passion.
I grew up understanding God’s love but know that I never understood it to its fullest.  Incarnation is something we will never understand.  We can’t.  We can proclaim it.  We can use words to tell others what it is but it’s truth will always elude us.  We can never hold the fullness of fully God and fully man.  One will win.  Either we will see Jesus as fully God or we will understand Jesus as fully man.
Growing up I got the God part.  Or at least when I thought about Jesus I could understand that part.  Jesus as God was easy.  Understanding Jesus as God allowed me to place Jesus up there.  It was the fully man part I struggled with.  Maybe like most people, it was easier to keep God at a distance, up there and yet at the heart of the Gospels, Jesus is fully man.  It is this fully man which allows Jesus to have compassion.  Jesus had compassion for them.  To put it another way, Jesus was with passion for them.  Passion filled him for these people.
His call to teach and feed came from that passion.  That is how Jesus responded to those in front of him, to those in need.  
I think that is our call as well.  More important than anything we do is our call as the body of Christ to teach and feed and not for ourselves.  I want you to think of yourselves as viceroys; as ambassadors of God and God’s redemption.  As viceroys of God we are called to see the needs around us.  We are given the mission of proclamation.  The people whom we are called to respond to are those who need it.  Jesus teaches, and he feeds.  That is our call.
I think to be able to teach and feed we begin with God.  Our call is to know that we are loved.  The world proclaims that you have worth because of your position, your work, what you earn, who your parents were or are, to whom you are married.  But as Christians and as people of faith we begin knowing our worth because of our relationship with God.  It is God’s love which gives us worth.  You are his creation, his handiwork, his joy and his hope.
Paul uses these words, “Consider your own call… not many of you were wise by human standards, not many powerful, not many were of noble birth.  But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak to shame the strong.”
 
But for us to grow in God we also must be agents of truth.  Communities of faith are strong because they trust each other enough to speak truth to each other.  We must, if we are to be agents of God’s love, be able to speak to each other in honesty and in love.  Without that we lose any ability of growing in God and of proclaiming to the world.
I think if we begin knowing God’s love and we can share with each other truth we can begin to do that which we are created to do.  We can serve.  If your relationship with God is about what happens in this place then it has no value.  If you are saved by God’s grace so you can get into to heaven then you have missed the point. 
In Clinton we face issues of poverty and race; we face hate.  We face issues the world faces.  We have in front of us opportunities to proclaim, by our action, God and God’s truth.  In four weeks, our students arrive. We have the opportunity to proclaim God’s love as we welcome them, and we are in the unique place to welcome, not just because of where we are but who we are and how we understand God’s grace.
All of this is about what is out there.  We are called to know God’s love and to be a community of faith so that we can do what God calls us to do.  Our mission is out there; our mission to teach and feed.