Today our second reading for morning prayer comes from Matthew 17 the account of the possessed young boy, which is also the account of the disciples failure, and a lesson in the power of faith. This is an account which is jam packed with things that we could spend several weeks of sermons unpacking, expanding, studing, and analyzing. A sermon could easily come from any of these topics. But today, as seminarians I want us to look at this account in a different light because in here, between the lines, is another set of lessons. Here we see Jesus teaching in a quiet way that speaks directly to our current and future ministries.
This is the first of two Lenten sermons done this year.
Many of you have probably seen or heard of the motivational posters that are often displayed in offices. Most all of them have some pretty photograph taking up most of the poster and then below the photo in large colored print on a black background is a word that exemplifies some attribute or quality that the purchaser of the poster wants to emphasize, like teamwork, character, vision, etc. Under that is some statement, quote, or often humanistic platitude that is designed to engender the appropriate response in the reader. For instance under the large word vision you might find, “If you can conceive it, you can achieve it.” It is interesting that if you search on the internet for motivational posters what you will find up near the top of the list a site which specializes in “demotivators”. One of their posters depicts a coastal scene with a gorgeous sky, a peaceful sea –but out of that sea juts the bow of a ship which has either sunk and is stuck or else is in the final throes of its journey to the deep. Underneath the picture is the title “Mistakes” with the tagline “It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others.”
Some days Ezekiel’s life probably felt a bit like that. He would be right. Not that his life was a shipwreck, or a mistake, or that his life would serve as a warning to others because of its disastrous nature, but rather he was called to be a watchman, a warning to his people of eminent danger they faced for their faithlessness. It was he who spotted the enemy coming and put out the call to prepare. Consider his first day on the job of being a prophet…
No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and Mammon.
Our Gospel reading today opens with these words. Hard words these. They leave no room for quarter. No room for vacillating. As sure as the defenders of the Alamo you are challenged to step over the line in the sand. You cannot straddle this fence. In or out.
In 1986 Henri Nouwen, a Dutch theologian and writer, toured St. Petersburg, Russia, the former Leningrad. While there he visited the famous Hermitage where he saw, among other things, Rembrandt’s painting of the Prodigal Son. The painting was in a hallway and received the natural light of a nearby window. Nouwen stood for two hours, mesmerized by this remarkable painting. As he stood there the sun changed, and at every change of the light’s angle he saw a different aspect of the painting revealed. He would later write: “There were as many paintings in the Prodigal Son as there were changes in the day.”
Today, as we consider our readings, we come to realize that like Henri Nouwen, our readings present to us the concept of prodigal in several different lights each with its own unique contribution to our understanding of what it is to be prodigal so that we can avoid it. Given how we usually view the concept of prodigal it is easy to see the younger son, the wild and reckless one, as the prodigal – but what does prodigal really mean? Really.
A Glimpse into the Theology of Crumbs
Crumbs. We dust them off our clothes, and out of our crumb catchers after meals. If we discover some in our bed at night they rudely awaken us, tiny and wholly unwelcome visitors that somehow seemingly snuck into our bed from the pit itself. And did you ever get one in your shirt? They are a nuisance in our times of plenty. They are so undesirable that over centuries we have even taken the word crumbly and in the modern vernacular turned it into the word crummy to describe things that we find lousy, inferior, or poor. We have often heard the term used to describe things, such as in a crummy life, a crummy job, a crummy marriage, a crummy paycheck, a crummy church, or a crummy sermon.
But crumbs are just smaller portions of some greater whole, little bits as the Greek of our gospel lesson literally states, and are not always a bad thing.
