On Sundays, we have been reading our way through the stories about the Patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) in Genesis, through the Letter to the Romans, and through the Gospel According to Matthew. The Preacher sometimes is able to tie more than one reading together in a coherent homily. Sometimes, that is just impossible.
Then, there are Sundays like the one coming up where the decision about which passage should form the basis of the homily is incredibly difficult because each of the readings and the Psalm are so powerful that the Preacher has a hard time deciding what to do. Each text almost preaches itself.
It’s a Preacher’s Candy Shop!
There is the passage in Genesis about Jacob’s flight from Beer-Sheba to Haran to escape the wrath of his brother Easu, whom he had cheated. One night, he uses a stone for a pillow and dreams of a ladder to Heaven on which angels are ascending and descending. The dream is so powerful that it changed his life. “So Jacob rose early in the morning, and he took the stone that he had put under his head and set it up for a pillar and poured oil on the top of it. He called that place Bethel” (Genesis 28:18-19a). Bethel means House of God. Bethel is about eleven miles north of Jerusalem. It became a principal place of worship for the descendants of Jacob (Israel). Jacob’s sacramental action described in the text is nothing less than the consecration of the stone and the place. “Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it!…How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven” (Genesis 28:16-17).
Jacob was not seeking God. He had stolen his brother’s birthright and his father’s blessing and was running for his life. There, in the middle of nowhere, God found Jacob and blessed him. That’s the kind of God we worship: one who shows up in unlikely places, to unlikely people, and gives undeserved blessings that transform our lives and, through us, the lives of others. We will be reading more amazing stories about Jacob in the coming weeks. In each one, we will see how God’s patience with Jacob was grounded in God’s hope for Jacob and his descendants.
Then there is Psalm 139. A perfect response to the reading from Genesis, it is an unbridled outburst of praise for the eternally patient God who has always known us, loved us, pursued us, blessed us, and guided us. Just read it!
St. Paul wrote to the Romans during a time of suffering. His words are balm for us during this Pandemic: “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us” (Romans 8:18). We can only hope! Yes, hope! We can’t see what the future holds, but we can and we must hope that it will be better than the present and the past. If we knew what the post-pandemic world will be like, we wouldn’t need to hope for it. “For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience” (Romans 8:24b-25). This is a timely word for us at this point in the “sufferings of this present time.” I don’t know about you, but I’ve reached a point where I’ve baked about all the bread my freezer can hold, put together enough puzzles, binge-watched plenty of TV shows, and listened to all the arguments about mask-wearing I can stand. I need patience! St. Paul reminds us that when we have hope, we will find patience.
Finally, in this Preacher’s Candy Shop, there is the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares. In this parable, Jesus explains that our attempts to purify the Church, or society, or our own spiritual lives for that matter, place us in danger of making premature judgements. What appears to be good wheat now may eventually be revealed to be weeds. What appears to be weeds now may eventually be recognized as wheat. So God holds back the hoe because we tend to be too impatient. Our prejudices toward people with a different color skin, different nationality, different politics, different religion, different language, or any difference, may cause us to write them off. When we are privileged, we tend to do that quite often. What would the world be like if we devoted ourselves to fostering hope in others, especially those who are different from us? Such hope, of course, requires patience.
Take some time to read each of these passages in this Preacher’s Candy Shop and enjoy the flavor of each nougat. As you do, remember the immortal words of Forrest Gump, “My mom always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get.” He’s right. So, we always patiently hope for the best.
Blessings,
The Very Reverend Ron Pogue
Interim Rector
St. Martin-in-the-Fields Episcopal Church
Keller, Texas