Everyday Faith

Psalm 112, Hebrews 13:1-8, Luke 14:7-14

September 2, 2007

Rochelle A. Stackhouse

This week Hamden public school students returned to classes, and at our house, one of

the things that means is that lists come home from teachers explaining what school supplies are needed and what the requirements are for the year. At the end of one of the letters Luke (my middle schooler) brought home, the teacher said that if the student complied with all requirements, the year would be a joyful one. After I did a dramatic reading of this at home, Luke responded, “yeah, right.”

I thought of this because our readings this week contain sets of instructions, even a list in the case of Hebrews, for how to live in human community in ways that will bring joy. We might read all this and say, with Luke, “yeah, right.” Or we might risk disappointment and hope for more; we might imagine that another kind of world is possible than the reminders we had this week of people in the New Orleans convention center after Hurricane Katrina or the terrible shootings at Virginia Tech last spring. So, on the last weekend of summer, here are some lists, letters, if you will, from our teachers in scripture, offered to us with the hope that following them will bring us joy.

· Delight in God’s commandments. We do not live a faith that is meant to make us dour and unhappy and rigid and exclusionary, but we are to delight that God has given us the gift of loving and respectful ways to live with one another.

· Be merciful: forgive extravagantly as you have been extravagantly forgiven.

· Be generous, especially with the poor or anyone who has need when you have something you can give, and go out of your way to do this.

· Make justice a standard by which you conduct all your business, family life, politics, and work.

· Show hospitality to everyone, at every opportunity, especially those who are strangers or those who cannot repay that hospitality.

· Pray for those in prison or those being tortured; join in solidarity with those who suffer in this way. Do this without judgment.

· Treat all the family relationships in your life with honor and respect: spouses, partners, children, parents. Honor and respect one another in speech and action.

· Don’t get caught up with “stuff,” thinking you need more of it or of the money to buy it or thinking you need to have what everyone else has. If you have enough, and most of us here have more than enough, be content.

· When you look for role models, don’t look to the celebrities or the most “popular” people, but to those who live loving, honest, faithful lives, even if they don’t make the headlines, maybe especially if they don’t make the headlines.

· Trust God.

· Don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid. The writers in the Bible say that over and over again for good reason. For fear can turn us away from all these other things.

· Let love continue. Always. Everywhere. Toward everyone.

This is what living the Christian life is all about. What we do here on a Sunday morning is meant to nurture us in this kind of living, but where the rubber meets the road is outside those doors. A Biblical scholar of several centuries ago, Matthew Henry, wrote that “Christ marks what we do, not only in worship, but at our tables.” I’d add in our offices or classrooms or warehouses or hospital rooms or shops. Christ does not “mark” what we do in order to keep a list of who is naughty and who is nice, but marks what we do in order to support us and give us the courage (to en-courage us) to try living as those lists call us to live. Christ’s attention to us is a gift.

There’s an old hymn churches used to sing on Labor Day weekend by Geoffrey Dearmer called “Those who love and those who labor.” The second verse goes like this: “Where the many work together, they with God in love abide, but the lonely worker also finds Christ standing right beside. Lo, the Prince of common welfare dwells within the market strife; lo, the Bread of heaven in broken in the sacrament of life.” We will break this bread together today, but then we will each go forth to the sacrament of life. Trust God. Don’t be afraid. Love. Amen.