The Ven. Richard I. Cluett
Jesus offers wonderful and gracious words of God’s promise being fulfilled. Those who heard them joyfully receive it. And then Jesus tells the people that he is being sent, not to his hometown, but to others to bring God’s Good News. The people are enraged that Jesus has, in effect, rejected them and they try to do him harm. But he is not able to work with them because they think they know him so well. He cannot help them because he is “only Joseph’s son”. We might call it, The Curse of Familiarity.
All is not right with the world. Jesus knows that. You know that. I know that. All is not right with the world.
The people among whom we live believe we are known quantities. They think they know us from way back when; they know what we did; they know the mistakes we have made; they know some of the not-very-nice things that we have done. So, therefore, how could we have anything of merit to offer? How could we have powers or gifts or ideas that could be put to use for their benefit and well-being. “After all, you are only Ricky Cluett. Dick and Jane’s son.’ Or “You are only my brother. I know you and you can’t.” So they think.
And eventually sometimes we might even begin to believe it, too. And so we make no offering, we do no deeds of power in our own homes, among our own people, in our own hometown. We keep what we have to offer to ourselves.
All is not right with the world, and so the world does not teach what Jesus teaches about God and about the nature of worth and power. How do we help Jesus bring the reign of God closer in our own day and time to those the world sees “as only this or only that,” people stripped of merit, stripped of ability, stripped of gifts, stripped of power?
How can we share what we know of Jesus so that people are empowered for fullness of life in God’s kingdom, rather being stripped of possibility? How can we help them know the Jesus who has the power to heal and to redeem and to make whole. And that beginning to know, they might begin to believe, and to be healed, and to become whole and holy, and to know themselves as living signs of Jesus?
How do we build a heritage for our children worthy of Jesus who calls them and empowers them for life? How do we build a church to equip them? How important it is for them to know and for every one, for all God’s children, to know that God has opened the kingdom to every race and nation and tribe and clan and family and condition and person!
It is true how important it is for us and for the homeless and the hungry and the imprisoned and the disenfranchised and the elderly, and the young. All those whom our society, the world, would separate or exclude because “they are only”; and therefore they cannot, or may not or should not… All are included by Jesus in God's kingdom now, today and forever.
We are reminded by Jeremiah today that God has need of each one of us. We each have something to offer. We each have a unique offering that if kept inside makes the world a poorer place.
All is not right with the world and so too many do not know this Good News. They can't prove it by their experience. Real life has taught them something else.
Let me give you an example of why I think this is so important. Some of you may remember a time several years ago when the diocese was exploring an alternative model of ministry and lifestyle for faith communities, focusing on small congregations, particularly in Schuylkill County. The model calls for the gifts and ministry of every person in the community.
The principle upon which the model is based comes from Roland Allen, an Anglican Missionary, and states, “The mission of the Kingdom of God in a particular place depends upon the people of God in that place and that God supplies all necessary gifts.”
As part of our exploration, the steering committee asked Margaret Sipple and me to visit each congregation in Schuylkill County to discuss these ideas and to try to help people see how this might work in their community.
As we met with parishes, and introduced the new possibilities, you could see in the faces of the people that “this would never work here because the gifts are not here.” It was obvious that too many felt they had no gifts to discern, nothing to offer, no power over their lives.
In one parish, Margaret asked one elderly woman to trust her and to come forward to be interviewed. She came, reluctantly, shuffling forward, stooped down, face kind of pinched tight. It turned out that she had been a widow for more than 40 years, her husband having died in the mine. She was in her mid-70’s. She had raised four children by herself. She had worked for decades as an aide in a nursing home taking care of the sick and elderly. When forced to retire due to her age, she opened up two rooms in her home to take of people who were too sick or elderly to care for themselves. She had taught Sunday School for decades, served on the altar guild, too. One child was a doctor. One was a teacher. One was back in college training to be a nurse. One was employed in a trade. But in her mind, she had no gifts, no skills, no successes, nothing to offer. And we had brought her into the center of the community.
We asked the people who had listened to her story to tell her what gifts and skills and powers they had heard her using. They spoke of her gifts as love, caring, courage, perseverance, teaching, nursing, sharing... and on and on and on. When they were finished, her face was wreathed in smiles. She sat tall, she walked tall, and she knew she had been wonderfully gifted by God and had been faithfully using those gifts her whole life. And so did her community know of her gifts, too.
Every family, every community, every man, every woman, every child needs to know that they were created in God's image and had been given priceless gifts by God, unique gifts, and that God was with them in every moment of their waking, sleeping, celebrating, suffering, caring, and being cared for. And they need to know that the Lord needs them and what they have to offer – and so do we all need them, everyone.
When we are open to receive what they have to offer, the world will be more all right than it ever was before. Amen.
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