Sermon on Matthew 5.1-12

The Rev. Joseph Peters-Mathews

St. Joseph-St. John, Lakewood

All Saints Day, Year A

Matthew 5.1-12

November 5, 2017

Listen. Close your eyes if you need to,

            and listen.

It’s 1906.

A Black couple gets pregnant before they’re married,

            and the mother, Sarah, runs away.

The father, Coalhouse Walker, a brilliant jazz musician,

 buys a car, stops taking tour work,

            and goes to visit her every week.

He wants to get back together,

            and he wants to get married.

She refuses to see him for months.

Finally they are reunited

            and share their dreams for their baby —

                        dreams of a world

where the poor in spirit

receive the kingdom of heaven

                                    and those who hunger and thirst for righteousness

are filled.

Coalhouse dreams of a world

where people of color get justice.

On the way home from this dream-filled picnic

            the Irish fire department destroys Coalhouse’s car

                        because they can.

Coalhouse seeks redress in the courts,

            but there’s no justice.

He complains to the city of New Rochelle,

            but there’s no justice.

He calls off the wedding.

He wants justice.

Sarah thinks that she can appeal

to President Teddy Roosevelt,

                        who is running touring the United States.

She goes to see him,

            shouts her hopes, and says

                        “I’ve got a son!”

The police shoot first

            and ask questions later

                        certain they’ve either seen a gun

                                    or heard her say she’s a got a gun.

So quickly Coalhouse and Sarah

            have gone from dreaming about the Model-T

                        taking them safely around the United States

                                    to a destroyed car

                                                and a mother,

unarmed,

dead at the hands of the police.

Act I of the musical Ragtime

            ends with Sarah’s funeral.

At the Fifth Avenue Theater,

            a cast of about fifteen

                        looks like forty

                                    in procession to Sarah’s grave.

They are dressed in black,

            and lights give their silhouettes a life of their own.

These people, and shadows of people, move to the grave,

            mourning Sarah’s death,

                        moaning in grief.

Here is Sarah,

            a poor black woman

                        who just wants her child’s father’s car restored

                                    so she can get married.

Here lies Sarah,

            a meek woman,

                        who is dead without a trial

                                    and not ruling the earth.

Here lies Sarah,

            pure in heart.

Has she seen God?

In her death,

            Coalhouse loses his mind in anger

                        and seeks his own form of justice.

Her friends though,

            know the dreams that Sarah had

                        and that those dreams don’t die with Sarah.

This is what Jesus is teaching his disciples and the crowds on the mountain today.

These are a people under oppression,

controlled by violent rule

with unchecked military action as policing.

They know the reality of seeking help 

and winding up dead.

They know the reality of feeling like strangers in their home land,

            never having been in power

                        yet despised for merely existing.

Then Jesus speaks blessing into existence.

Like at creation, Jesus’ saying it makes it real and true:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit,

for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 

"Blessed are those who mourn,
"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
"Blessed are the merciful,
"Blessed are the pure in heart,
"Blessed are the peacemakers,
"Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake,
May I live to see,
When our hearts are happy
And our souls are free.
Let the new day dawn,
Oh, Lord, I pray.
We'll never get to heaven
Till we reach that day.”
A day of peace.
A day of pride.
A day of justice
We have been denied.
Let the new day dawn,
Oh, Lord, I pray...
We'll never get to heaven
Till we reach that day.

for they will be comforted. 

"Blessed are the meek,

for they will inherit the earth. 

for they will be filled. 

for they will receive mercy. 

for they will see God. 

for they will be called children of God.

for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 

Jesus is talking to a crowd of people

            who are already poor in spirit,

already wearied by the changes and chances of this life.

These are a people who mourn daily,

who have been forced into meekness,

who long for righteousness to flow like an endless stream

            and justice to roll down like waters.

They are trying to have mercy on their family members

            who sell out and become tax collectors

                        or sell their bodies to make ends meet.

The crowds following Jesus

            are pure in heart

                        because maybe this one,

                                    maybe this Messiah,

                                                will be the one who frees them from Roman rule.

In Matthew’s writing,

            these are people who will be disowned not just by family,

                        but whole communities —

persecuted by culture and empire —

            for following Jesus.

Jesus tells them that they are all blessed,

not they will be blessed.

Jesus says they are blessed,

            and for many of them

the Kingdom of Heaven is already theirs.

These people follow this wandering rabbi.

Then he dies.

Some people remember when he told them

            they were blessed,

                        and some of them hide figuring their lives are over too.

Jesus rises from the dead.

He’s already made it clear

            that unlike Coalhouse

                        he won’t be leading armed revolt.

But his resurrection demonstrates

            that not even death wins.

The meek have inherited the earth.

The merciful have received mercy.

The peacemakers are children of God.

These beatitudes, these blessings,

            aren’t directions for how to live

                        so you’re rewarded extra.

These beatitudes are promises of hope.

They are promises of resurrection.

They are prayers that life won’t always be like this.

Even remembering Jesus’ death,

            and writing about Jesus’ life,

                        Matthew is dropping gems of hope for

Jesus’ followers in the future and in every present.

As the mourners make their way to Sarah’s grave

            one of her friends refuses to accept the terrible reality

in which she finds herself, in which she has always lived.

Even as her friend lays dead, her friend sings,

“There's a day of hope

May I live to see,

When our hearts are happy
And our souls are free.
Let the new day dawn,
Oh, Lord, I pray.
We'll never get to heaven
Till we reach that day.”

We’ll never get to heaven till we reach that day.

Even at the grave, she makes a song not unlike,

            Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.

As Sarah’s friends who are mourning her

            call for hope in the midst of their strife,

                        Coalhouse makes a prediction:

People of color being beaten and killed by the police

            will happen again.

And again.

And again.

He’s shot with his hands up,

            trusting the human promises of a fair trial.

At Sarah’s funeral Coalhouse essentially predicts his own death.

He predicts the deaths of

Mike Brown and

Philando Castille and

Sandra Bland and

Charleena Lyles

and

            and

Even in his anger, fear, and desperation, Coalhouse is able to say

Give the people

 A day of peace.

A day of pride.

A day of justice
We have been denied.
Let the new day dawn,
Oh, Lord, I pray...
We'll never get to heaven
Till we reach that day.

With all the canonized saints we celebrate today,

             and with those from among our friends and families,

                        and Sarah’s mourning friends who somehow have hope,

we remember Jesus’ words of blessing.

We remember Jesus’ promise

            that the world isn’t as it seems

                        and that the Kingdom of God is at hand.

Sermon on Matthew 22.34-46

The Rev. Joseph Peters-Mathews

Proper 25, A; Pentecost +21

St. Joseph-St. John, Lakewood

29 October 2017

Matthew 22.34-46

If you want to do magic,

            you need to practice.

Yesterday as I drove home from convention,

            I was nestled in to my podcasts,

                        like I am driving to and from the church during the week.

One of my weekly podcasts

            is a show I used to listen to on public radio

                        when I was in high school on the way to church.

The show is called To the Best of Our Knowledge

            and it’s a show where long-form interviews

help fuel deep insights into our world.

Keeping up with the release of Stranger Things Season 2 on Netflix

            this week’s episode was called “Even Stranger Things.”

It was, it is,

            an investigation into the paranormal.

One of the interviews

            was with an anthropologist at Stanford

                        who has specialized in religion.

When Tanya Luhrrman was in grad school

            she spent time with some English pagans.

In her study of them,

            she joined them:

                        casting spells, familiarizing herself with Tarot,

and getting to know their experience of reality

not as rational as we might experience.

In the podcast interview she reflects on an unexplained experience

            and says that among the magicking community,

            it’s well known:

                        if you wanted to do magic,

                                    you had to practice.

In today’s gospel text,

            the Pharisees want to know

                        how good of a Jew Jesus is.

“Which commandment in the law is the greatest?”

            they ask.

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,

and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’

This is the greatest and first commandment.”

Obvi.

It came first.

Jesus adds to his answer

            something the Pharisees don’t ask

                        something that’s not verbatim in the Hebrew Scriptures:

                                    And a second is like it:

“You shall love your neighbor as yourself”

But. But.

“On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

Everything contained in

            the Law —

how Jews are supposed

to treat one another and foreigners —

            and the Prophets —

                        God’s directions for what to do

                                    when being punished for not keeping the law —

                                    boils down to,

                                                “Love God. Love your neighbor.”

Love God. Love your neighbor.

The Diocese of Ohio

            ran an ad campaign,

                        “Love God. Love your neighbor. Change the world.”

If you want to do magic,

            you need to practice.

I’ll be preaching on the beatitudes next week.

Spoiler alert:

            they're not a list of ways to behave

                        so that you get something back.

They’re promises of what has been done

            because of God becoming flesh.

They are reality that we don’t always see,

            but reality nonetheless.

We may look naïve as Christians

            saying that peacemakers are children of God.

Or we may look callous

            and unloving when peaceful proctors

                        are mowed down by cars

            or unarmed folk

                        are killed by police

                                    and say that peacemakers are the children of God.

But we’re not naïve nor callous.

The gospel and resurrection aren’t magic,

            but they are not the world as we expect

                        or experience it.

Because of the Resurrection,

            we live in a world of what

                        might be, what really is —

even though we can’t see it. Yet

If you want to do magic,

            you need to practice.

When we gather to hear of

            Jesus, him crucified, and resurrected,

                        we practice

                                    doing what seems magic.

Gathering each week in faith

            is rehearsing — it’s practicing —

                        the world we want to see.

You might have noticed I don’t spend a lot of time

            shaking hands at the peace.

I don’t need to shake every hand here

            to long for the day when we’re all at peace with one another

                        while practicing it with those closest to me.

When we pray to be sent out

            to do the work we’ve been given to do

                        we go having been fed by Jesus

                                    who told us to love God and love our neighbors.

When we sing “For everyone born, a place at the table” and

            we make room for everyone at this Holy Table

                        and the tables on Wednesday night

                                    we’re practicing the heavenly banquet at the end of time.

When we sing “And God will delight when we are creators of justice”

            we prepare to change the world

                        by loving God and loving our neighbor.

Those lyrics are practicing the day

when all has been made well

            and all people have been restored

to unity with God and one another

            in Jesus.

If you want to do magic,

            you need to practice.

Our Gospel text today

            is after Jesus has been up on the mountain

                        with Moses — the embodiment of the Law,

                        and Elijah — the embodiment of the Prophets.

Matthew’s gospel is getting closer and closer to the crucifixion.

And when put to the test again,

            Jesus says to love God

                        and love neighbor.

He doesn’t just roll over.

He goes toe to toe with those who accuse him.

Jesus loves God and loves his neighbor,

            which doesn’t just mean being nice.

And he changes the world.

Matthew’s gospel is getting closer and closer to the crucifixion

            and after it the Resurrection.

Because of the Resurrection,

            death has been defeated

                        and reality has been changed —

                                    whether we see or experience it or not.

When we sing,

            “Christ has died.

            Christ is risen.

            Christ will come again,”

                        we state as faithful fact

                                    that there’s more to life than we see.

Believing that

            and working for it,

                        striving to make it real, what we see and know

            may seem naïve

                        or it may seem like magic.

It’s not magic,

            it's hoping that at the last days

                        we experience the joy of God’s eternal kingdom.

It may seem like magic.

If you want to do magic,

            you need to practice.

That’s what we do at this Table —

            and at those.