Readings for the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost (Year B – Track 1 – Proper 12)
This sermon was preached at Christ Episcopal Church in Eureka CA on Sunday July 28, 2024.
This morning’s reading from the Gospel of John features a crowd of Jesus-followers of all ages gathering by the water, sitting down on the soft earth to learn spiritual lessons from Jesus and to be nourished by the simple offerings of a young child. This honestly sounds a lot like what just happened this last week at Camp Living Waters, our deanery-wide overnight camp in Redwood Valley. (We even ate plenty of fish, even though it was Swedish Fish, the candy. And speaking of leftovers, there’s plenty of extra Swedish Fish for you to enjoy at Coffee Hour if you’d like.) This year, I served as the coordinator for our daily Eucharists as well as for “Glade,” our daily gatherings in the shade to share and reflect together on the spiritual lessons of the day. The theme of camp this year was real-life superheroes and each day we introduced a new hero: Presiding Bishop Michael Curry, Betty Chinn, Sister Jacqueline of the Community of the Transfiguration, and Greta Thunberg. We talked about how real-life superheroes use their gifts to serve others, how they face their fears with courage, and how they believe that God’s power can be made manifest even in their weaknesses. I had the privilege of listening to campers and counselors share with me their fears and what they perceive as their weaknesses and then teaching them that God’s power and presence can be made known through their weaknesses just as Christ’s power was “made perfect” in St. Paul’s weakness and Christ’s presence was revealed while the disciples were terrified on the Sea of Galilee, when Jesus said, “It’s me! Don’t be afraid.”
I’m grateful for what felt to me like a very successful week of camp. I will also admit that I did not always love driving 100 miles a day to camp and back and there were oftentimes when I would get caught up in preparing and arranging the details of the liturgy or the lesson or the crowd control that I forgot to pray, especially to pray for the young campers or to pray with them. Looking back, I feel there were some missed opportunities to pray with campers and even counselors. But one of the wonderful things about prayer is that it can work even retroactively. God is not limited by time in the same way we are, so I pray that the seeds planted at camp grow in the hearts and lives of all who attended, and I urge you to do the same.
This invitation to pray for others comes through powerfully in our reading today from Ephesians in which Paul bows his knees before God and prays for his siblings in Ephesus and offers one of the most remarkable prayers in the entire Bible. He writes this prayer while in chains, referring to himself as “a prisoner for Christ Jesus for the sake of the Gentiles.” It is Paul’s love for the Gentiles that inspires him to write this prayer in the first place. As I told the campers, if you are not Jewish, you are traditionally an outsider who has been fully welcomed into the family of God by the radical and scandalous hospitality of Christ expressed through Paul. This radical inclusion of us Gentiles ought to make us always think twice before excluding any other group of people from the full embrace of God’s love, which is why Camp Living Waters welcomes and embraces all campers and which is also why the Episcopal Church welcomes those whom other denominations often exclude and even condemn.
The original Greek of Paul’s prayer in Ephesians is a little tricky, which is why it can be a little challenging to follow in the NRSV, a translation that attempts to be as faithful as possible to the letter of the text rather than the spirit of the text. At camp, we use Eugene Peterson’s popular translation called The Message which attempts to capture the poetic spirit of the text; and although I’m not always a fan, I appreciate The Message’s translation of this prayer, which I offer to you this morning. I offer it as my prayer for you today; and I also offer it as a challenge. I have copies of the prayer and I challenge you to take the prayer home, to kneel before the Lord this week, and to pray these same words for someone else. Pray these words for someone you know, someone you don’t know, and someone you hope to know very soon.
God hears our prayers wherever we are and in whatever posture we might be, but we Episcopalians certainly know that there is something powerful and effective about showing God our reverence through our bodily postures, so I encourage you, when you pray this prayer at home, to kneel like St. Paul before the Lord, if possible and if not too painful. I know that kneeling can be very difficult and painful for many people. I also hope that you find comfort in knowing that your priest, when he’s not running around at camp or trying to catch up on emails or attending meetings, tries to regularly kneel before the Lord in prayer for you, not just today but all throughout the year. And from now on, this prayer from Ephesians 3 will guide all my future prayers for you. Receive this prayer today.
I get down on my knees before the Father, this magnificent Father who parcels out all heaven and earth. God, I ask that you strengthen everyone here, everyone in this congregation, by your Spirit—not a brute strength but a glorious inner strength—that Christ will live in them as they open the door and invite you in. And I ask that with both feet planted firmly on love, they will be able to take in with all the saints the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love. May they reach out and experience the breadth! May they test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! May they live full lives, full in the fullness of God. God, you can do anything—far more than we could ever imagine or guess or request in our wildest dreams! You do this not by pushing us around but by working within us, your Spirit deeply and gently within us. Glory to you in the church! Glory to you in the Messiah, in Jesus! Glory down all the generations! Glory through all millennia! Oh, yes! Amen.
DANIEL DeFOREST LONDON 