The Senior Sermon of Janet Constantine, LSPS Class of 2006 from the North Texas North Louisiana Synod, delivered on September 20, 2005, in Christ Chapel

Matthew 19:23-30

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

I am indebted to Harry Fosdick, hymn writer, whose life bridged the 19th and 20th centuries for our opening hymn, God of Grace and God of Glory. I don't know that I've ever sung this familiar song with more sincerity than today. Certainly it echoed my prayer, God grant me wisdom, grant me courage for the facing of this hour -- this particular hour in which I offer my senior sermon to you.

Today's gospel reading, chosen from a daily lectionary called Between Sundays by Gail Ramshaw, presents us with the middle panel of a triptych of passages. On the first panel is the story of the conversation between Jesus and the rich young man. The third panel has the parable of the laborers in the vineyard, the RCL reading for last Sunday. Being the middle panel, our reading looks back in the first paragraph and forward in the second. It begins as a reflection, or postmortem of Jesus' conversation with that young man who went away feeling old and sad. In the second part of the text, Jesus speaks with the disciples about rewards and then follows it with a parable about rewarded laborers. At least that's the way Matthew has given it to us. He ties this whole scene to Jesus' encounter with children, and statement that the kingdom of God belongs to ones who are like children.

The disciples are astounded by these teachings that children have the right idea and the rich-those considered favored by God, already showered with obvious blessings -- might not be there. Jesus merely repeats the point with one of his most famous hyperbolies. A camel can go through the eye of a needle more easily than the rich can get in the kingdom. Of course, it would take the imagination of a child to even think about it -- enough imagination to giggle at the image, enough imagination to imagine other things in the world being different too. The rich young man was after all, a model citizen, kept all the rules, he was trying to be perfect. Actually that means he was seeking that wholeness and peace that could come from just one more great mitzvah. The kind of peace and healing that Jesus was walking around giving out free to the others of the day -- the lame, the poor, women of ill repute, outcasts of all kinds. If they could get it for free, wasn't there some kind of sliding scale where his riches would benefit him?

The disciples, too are looking for a way in. They don't mind giving up money; they didn't have much money anyway. But they were looking to gain that privilege, status, and power that the rich had automatically. Peter, speaking as always for the group, seeks clarification. They've sacrificed so much. What will their reward be? "What then will we have?" I think in the back of his mind, he knew that things were likely to get harder before they got easier in this way that Jesus was taking, opposing not only the Romans, but even saying things in opposition to long-held beliefs about God's favor. Maybe he was even praying another line from Fosdick's hymn. "God grant us wisdom, grant us courage for the facing of these days." "How will God reward our sacrifices?" he wants to know.

Haven't we wondered the same? What's in it for us? I'm not sure how long chapel should be today, but we could be here quite a while if we discussed the sacrifices we've made to learn about this proclaiming of the kingdom; then we'd have to add missing lunch. After all, we're not just ordinary Christians, we're members of the seminary sect. Once a man came to my apartment door selling magazines. I told him it wouldn't do him much good to knock on the doors at Eisler Haus, we were all seminary students. "Gee," he asked, "do you have to take a vow of poverty?" "Something like that, yes." We're spending at least a year's decent salary hoping to get a job that will offer us about half of that. Like others of our culture though, we don't mind the sacrifice if the reward is worth it. Like we want to order a double cheeseburger, large fries and a Diet Coke, in order to model a healthy lifestyle.
Yes, in our world we, like the rich young man, find our identity in what we have -- even if what we have is an M. Div. or a Ph. D. or a title like Reverend. Even the poor in today's world define themselves and others in terms of what they possess.

Except one woman I met. It was in Mexico City, a section called Cartonlandia because the homes are made of cardboard cartons. You can have electricity if no one steals your little cable to the pole, and water if you have had work to have money on the day the truck comes by. I met her on that hill, the wind was blowing, and we were downwind from the garbage dump. I'd stepped off the bus with my church group and a translator. Prompted by my pastor, I asked her, "What do you pray for?" "You know," she replied, "here we don't have many things. But nobody bothers us, and we have peace." "I come from a place where we have many things," I answered, "but we don't always have peace." I'll tell you that I realize now that I met Jesus Christ in that woman. And I understood my riches, and the impediment they were to me. I went away sad, wondering, who then can be saved?

I was so overcome by the encounter, that I could not even participate in the next activity, playing with children at a day care center. I just sat in a corner and wept. The only thing that brought me wholeness was to let my life be turned around, a metanoia, and become totally dependent on God-like a little child. I've been processing that encounter for the past three and a half years. Because at that moment I realized I could not not serve my God with all my life. That nameless woman lives on with me, rewarding my every effort, my every sacrifice, here at seminary. I guess you could say she has informed my theology. Para mi, Jesús era una mujercita;or perhaps her name was Wisdom. I've gone to three years of seminary, more trips to Mexico, a trip to Peru, and a year's internship in a bilingual congregation and I'm still processing. God grant us wisdom, grant us courage, lest we miss your kingdom's goal.

Jesus answered Peter with some promised rewards just ambiguous enough to keep the scholars busy for a couple of millenia. But the main thing Jesus promised was that by grace through faith, they would indeed be in the kingdom; they had that true salvation -- a new relationship with God. It took them a while to process and understand it, too. The perfect completeness they eventually experienced manifested the present reality of salvation. The kingdom of God was at hand, is at hand, right here. They became children of God, totally dependent on God's grace, and full of imagination about this new creation. It had been foretold by Isaiah in the passage Martha read: "I the Lord am first, and I will be with the last." And in the Psalm, "Do not fear, for I am with you." It took some moving of the Holy Spirit, but then they too could sing, "Let the gift of your salvation be our glory evermore."

Two weeks ago we took yet another trip to the border. It was different for me this time. I have begun to realize my reward. I felt at home, as much at home in the church in Reynosa as I do at my home congregation in Richardson. I understand now that we have received manifolds of homes. We are members of a big family of thousands of brothers and sisters -- the Church. And this family is almost as dysfunctional as the ones we've left behind-trying to differentiate ourselves we call it. So there's plenty of places to practice those good family systems skills.

As the psalm says, God has saved us for his name's sake, so that he might make known his mighty power. I'm sorry for the masculine pronouns in that verse, for I found God's mighty power in a little Mexican woman. It has taken some time for me to develop enough imagination to conjure up a big needle with this little bitty camel plodding through. Now that I can, of course, I love engaging and playing with children, for whom this kind of imaging comes more easily. Now I can re-imagine the world to be like the kingdom of God. To be a place where power, love, and wisdom are synonyms, a place where first and last are irrelevant, because cooperation, not competition, is the basis for human social structure. Where what looks to us like a great reversal turns out to be a great equalizing.

It has happened -- we have been transformed, and are being transformed by a re-creating of our minds. Now I just love to tell that story, because it demonstrates one more time, that God has granted us wisdom, and granted us courage to serve that One whom we adore. So as it turns out, with God all things are possible. ¡Sí, se puede! Amen.