Sermon by Michelle - June 26

We live in a world of many, many choices.

My alarm goes off in the morning - do I get up, or hit the snooze button? I wander into the kitchen for breakfast - so many choices! Coffee, tea, milk, juice. Yogurt, cereal, toast, eggs. My kitchen is filled with the results of choices I made earlier, as I shopped. I sit down with my breakfast - do I enjoy a moment of silence, or turn on the news? I reach for my phone - Facebook, or Episcopal news blogs? When I'm done with breakfast, do I say morning prayer, or run off to the gym? So many choices, and it's not even 8 AM.

In a world filled with choices, lots of choices, constant choices, some big, some small, it's no wonder that people seek guidance. It's no wonder that - while I was in seminary, a small child in children's chapel told me that he was here "to learn how to make good choices."

And maybe he was. But I hope that wasn't all he was there for.

Church and chapel can teach any number of things - to children, and to adults, too. They can teach love, forgiveness, compassion. The value of community. They can be safe spaces where people learn about others who are different from them. They can inform choices. But, most importantly, they are places where we can meet God, and learn about God's love. And yes, you can do that in other places, too. But churches and chapels are the places we set aside to do that, and to do that together.

My hope for that little boy is that in children's chapel, he learned that God loved him. And that God loves everyone, whether they make good choices or bad ones. That God loves the person who hurt others but apologizes with all his heart as much as God loves the person who always makes good choices. In short, I hope that little boy learned that God's door is always open, no matter what. That there is nothing anyone can do, that would leave them apart from God, if they didn't want that.

This is the heart of our faith - not a list of rules, or set of instructions. We cannot earn our way to heaven. We go because we have been invited by the One who wants to spend eternity with us.

This, then, is the freedom that Paul describes in his letter to the Galatians. The freedom to go through life without a mental to-do list to complete in order to win God's favor.

The question, the question which plagued Christians in the first century, and continues to plague us today, is how do with live in that freedom? How do we honor God's gift of grace?

One solution is to say that what we do - the choices we make - don't matter. God loves us no matter what we do, so we might as well do whatever we want. A very extreme version of this idea argues that we really should do horrible things, so that we appreciate God's grace all the more. As Jesus himself said, the person who has a large debt forgiven will have a far greater appreciation than the person with only a small debt.

Paul reminds us that things don't work that way. That a person who truly loves God will not intentionally harm what God has created. That a person whose life has been transformed by Christ, and given the gift of the Holy Spirit, will strive to feed that spirit.

Paul, shocked by the behaviors he saw among the Galatians and their neighbors, wrote long lists of activities that he saw that he thought destroyed the spirit of God. And, on the opposite end, lists of the fruits created by that same spirit. That’s why Paul calls out idolatry, drunkenness, licentiousness, and so on. Not because only sober, chaste people go to heaven. But because people who withdraw from the world to drink or revel in shallow relationships are worshiping something other than God – as surely as people who actually worship idols.

The problem with lists and rules – as many of us who perpetually make lists know – is that inevitably, there is something that isn’t on the list, but should be. Those of you who were here for Bishop McConnell’s visit may remember his story about his childhood romps in a boarding school – in which he managed to rebel against his school so very creatively, that there was no rule against what he did. However, there was a clear sense that he had not acted according to the spirit of the school. Today we face countless choices in our daily activities, things which don’t necessarily make it onto either of the lists that Paul gives the Galatians. Is discussing politics with your neighbor the same as creating dissentions and factions? Is buying Girl Scout cookies the same as generosity? Or is eating them likely to take you down the wrong path? Paul never talked about racism, and people have accused him of misogyny. Does that make those things any less wrong? Should we trust Paul at all?

Paul’s lists, however, contain an element of wisdom, an element that rings through Jesus and his summation of the entire Old Testament: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and soul, and strength, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. As Jesus walks to Jerusalem, he finds people who do not embody this: the disciples, as they seek to hurt their Samaritan neighbors for slighting them; the man who wants to follow Jesus, but loves his family a little more. All the qualities on Paul’s lists embody this divine command: those who engage in idolatry love their idols more than God, obviously; but those who are jealous love their friends’ things more than they love their friends.

As Episcopalians, we have a different way of trying to nurture the Spirit of God within us. I’m not going to say it is better than what other denominations offer, it is simply our way.

You see, as Episcopalians, we believe that each person receives the Holy Spirit at their baptism. And so, at our baptisms, we commit to nourishing that spirit through our baptismal covenant. And at our confirmation, we renew that pledge, and each year at Easter, and each and every time we baptize someone else into the faith.

If you’ve never looked at the service, or thought about it in this way, you can see what I mean by turning to the baptismal covenant, beginning on p. 304 of the prayer book. It’s right there. We begin by affirming our faith in the Triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, or, if you prefer, Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. But then, we continue by vowing to do five things which – in Episcopal terms – will sanctify us, will nurture that Holy Spirit and bring us closer to God.

First, we commit to “continue in the Apostle’s teaching, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers.” In other words, we will keep coming to church. We promise to keep coming back, to worship God, and learn about God, and pray to God, in community. We promise to make time for God, in a deliberate way, and to continue to be grounded in sacramental worship, like the Eucharist. It is a way of honoring God. Jesus reminds us that we should love God with all our heart, and all our mind, and all our strength. Coming together to worship God is one step towards that.

It is not the only step. In our baptismal covenant, we agree to “persevere in resisting evil,” adding that whenever we “fall into sin, we will repent and return to the Lord.” This to me is the helpful addition to Paul’s list. We can try to do the right thing, to avoid enmity, strife, and jealousy. But, we are human. We are not perfect. Paul knows this, and in other places, he talks about the importance of asking for forgiveness from those we have wronged. Because souls can’t be weighed down by bad behavior, but they can’t be weighed down by guilt, either. Growing closer to God means making good choices as we can, but also leaving bad choices behind.

Next, we promise to “proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ.” Admittedly, this is the one we Episcopalians seem to struggle with the most. We are often reluctant to share the faith that is in us – perhaps we have all been given a lot of the gifts of gentleness and self-control. But there is no law against inviting a friend to church, either, or to sharing the joy you find here.

But the biggest two pledges, I think, come at the end. We vow to “seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves.” This is Jesus’s mandate, pure and simple. Right after that, most difficult of all, perhaps, we pledge to “strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being.” This, I think, is how we live into all Jesus commanded us to do, how we guide our lives in the way Paul tried to do with his list. Because, let’s face it: if you’re making enemies lists, or asking God to rain fire down on a village, you’re not loving your neighbors, seeking peace, or respecting the dignity of every human being.

The Christian life isn’t simply making a series of individual choices – it’s a life spent trying to grow closer to God. What we do isn’t just an individual utility-maximizing effort, it can reflect our efforts to love God and all God created. It’s a way of life.

What would happen, if all of us lived into our baptismal covenants? If we reminded our young people as they began to date – that forcing someone to do something they don’t want doesn’t respect their dignity, or show even basic Christian love? If we told others that they were beloved of God, and worthy of respect, not of abuse and denigration? If we weighed our words and actions, and considered their impact, before simply “saying what we think?”

It’s a tall order, and I’m not going to say it’s easy. Just like the Galatians, we will find that this life is hard, and somewhat counter-cultural. And yet, it is also oddly freeing. It frees us from the demands of having to live up to impossible standards, set by the world, or by our own imagination. It frees us from having to find things like food, or intoxicants or thrills to make us feel good, because we know that we are loved. It frees us from having to believe all that everyone says about us. And it frees us to be in true relationship with each other – to share each others’ joys, and carry each others’ pains. We can recognize that each person deserves to be loved, just as we are.

Yes, each day we face many choices. But for many of us, the most important choice has already been made. We have decided to follow Jesus, and to accept the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Let us continue to live into those agreements together, in all that we do.