SERMON
at
Christ Church, Watertown, Connecticut
Pentecost XII
August 15, 2010
by
The Rev. Stanley C. Kemmerer, AHC

The phone rang. I took the call. I recognized the voice: a former client. Now employed in a job he had described as a good fit, with people he liked, the day I’d congratulated him at least. I hoped he still held that job.

“I don’t need Stan, the outplacement guy,” he said after an exchange of pleasantries.” I breathed a sigh of relief. “I need you to put your priest hat on.”

He’d called, it turned out, because he’d remembered our theological discussions, sandwiched into conversations about how his job search was going, or what progress he was making putting together the information we needed in order to help him.

“I go to church and I believe. I don’t have any trouble with God. Believing in Him is easy. And I don’t have any problem with the Holy Spirit. It’s Jesus. Him being God. All this literal stuff. That you have to believe every word or you’re going to hell. I don’t believe it and it’s driving me nuts. There have to be other approaches. We’ve talked about them. Are there any books?”

I hadn’t even looked up this Sunday’s lessons but the words, “I have not come to bring peace but a sword” came into my mind. And I was being asked to become an accomplice.

For from now on a house of five will be divided: three against two
and two against three; the father divided against the son, son
against father, mother against daughter, daughter against
mother, mother against daughter-in-law, daughter-in-law against
mother-in-law.

My caller is in his late 40’s. He was raised in the mainline United Church of Canada. His wife was raised in an evangelical, biblical literalist Protestant tradition. The church they, their 12 year old son, and her family, all of which live in the area, having moved there to be near them, attend is that kind of church. His family are all back in western Canada. The marriage has been in trouble in the past, I know from our conversations. To them this Jesus may now represent a source of division.

Another call, a couple of days later: From Dr. Mansoor, who spoke to us here on Ash Wednesday: He was calling to ask if we would be co-sponsors of a rally at the Capitol building in Hartford and, “I would really love it, Stan, if you could be there with us.”

A week ago Friday about a dozen individuals from a group called Operation Save America, a right wing, Christian extremist organization staged a protest and verbal assault against the Muslim community who had gathered for Friday prayers (The Islamic community’s version of Sunday worship.) at their mosque in Bridgeport. As children and their parents were leaving the mosque after the service, they called the children murderers through their bullhorns, yelled “islam is a lie” and “Jesus hates Muslims,” among other slurs.

Islamophobic protests have been launched against the construction of mosques in California, Georgia, Wisconsin, Illinois, and elsewhere.

A Christian extremist (I would use the term “terrorist” to describe it and other such groups.) group in Florida is organizing “burn the Q’uran” events each year on September 11th.

This despite the fact a person is not considered a good Muslim unless he loves Jesus, that the Q’uran reveres Jesus and that Mohammed taught God had created all religions so that all people could each find a way to worship Him.

The shameful acts the rally, of which we, in fact, were a co-sponsor, as was our Diocese, condemned reflect the Prince of Peace being used as a sword. But the rally itself was a witness to how He also is a figure around which the faiths can unite because as Christians, Muslims, and Jews alike proclaimed Friday afternoon, we each revere him, though in our different ways.

Total commitment brings division. Because, always, there are others who don’t share that commitment or have commitment in opposition. And we might naively say, “That’s a good reason not to take religion seriously; it gets you in trouble.” And doing so certainly has.

Enough so that a Hartford Seminary professor is writing a book the title of which will be The Crooked Road to Christian Ethics. It will have seven chapters, “each one dedicated to a great bludering injustice that has been committed by Christians in the past, for example, the Crusades, inquisitions (there wasn’t only one!!!), colonialism, slavery, witch hunts, and pogroms.”

Yes, religious zeal has gotten us in trouble. It’s also changed the world for the better. It’s made the impossible possible. As this morning’s lesson from the Epistle to the Hebrews points out: It was by faith they crossed the Red Sea as easily as dry land while the Egyptians, trying to do the same, were drowned.

It was through faith that the walls of Jericho fell down when the people had been around them for seven days…

Is there any need to say any more? There is not time for me to give an account of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, or of David, Samuel and the prophets. These were men who through faith conquered kingdoms, did what is right and earned the promises. They could keep a lion’s mouth shut, put out blazing fires and emerge unscathed from battle. They were weak people who were given strength, to be brave in war and drive back foreign invaders.”

And not just them: We are not British subjects today because a poorly armed, untrained, volunteer army of young (they weren’t very old by modern standards) kids overcame the best trained, best equipped military force in the world at that time, that greatly outnumbered them, because they were willing to be committed.

I see in this morning’s gospel an invitation. An invitation to self-examination. To permit that self-examination this is a sermon in two parts. I’m going to pause it at this point and continue it after the Prayers of the People…..


When in your life has your Christian profession cost you, or brought division? Tell God.

If it hasn’t, why hasn’t it? Tell God.

On which occasions in your life have your values, your commitments resulted in division or estrangement? Were they worthy of God? If so, thank God you had the courage to stick to them. In not, ask God’s forgiveness your commitments were unworthy or that you didn’t have any.

When in your life have your commitments been to reconciliation? Thank God.

Ask God for the discernment and courage to make and keep commitments worthy of discipleship to God’s Son, Our Lord, without regard to any division they may cause. Ask God for the grace to endure the cost of discipleship.

Amen.