Sermons

"The Lord Looks on the Heart"

A Sermon by Mary Garner at Emmanuel Church, Newport
June 18, 2006

Last week, there was a Father’s Day lunch at Maddie and Adele’s school. My husband had planned to go, but it ended up that he had to be out of town that week. The girls saw no reason why I couldn’t go in his place, after all hadn’t I tried to fill in as their father all the times that Geoff was away with the Navy? I’d struggled to help with math homework, tried to explain why boys are hard to understand, and tried to fill in and be fun, as their father is, during long separations. In the same way, Geoff stepped in for me when I needed to be at seminary or here at church. So, I agreed to go. It just happened that that was a very busy day for me. I needed to take communion to some of our parishioners who were sick at home and the Girl’s Friendly Society was having a party for me to celebrate my ordination. I decided to wear my collar for my official duties and just take it off for the lunch at school. Well, I am a brand new deacon and I have come to find out that putting on a collar isn’t easy. The studs and openings are small and it is very hard to reach around to the back of your neck to get the thing properly attached. It took me almost half an hour to get dressed and I ended up deciding to just leave the collar on.

Many clergy have complicated feelings about wearing a collar. In seminary, they tell you to wear it when you are acting in your capacity as a deacon or priest. The hard part is figuring out when you aren’t acting as a deacon or priest. In the ordination vows, you promise to pattern your life in accordance with the teachings of Christ and to be a wholesome example to people. That sounds like a 24/7job. But some have come to see a collar as a symbol of privilege, of superiority as if clergy stand over and above all the lay people in the church. I took a class on the religious life at Weston Jesuit School of Theology and the professor explained to me that Roman Catholic teaching claims an ontological change comes with ordination. That means that you do not just do different things when you are ordained - you become a different person. A stamp or mark is embedded forever on your very being. Whether or not you are wearing a collar, you are different.

So there I was, undoubtedly the first mother in the history of All Saint’s Academy Catholic School to come to a Father’s Day lunch wearing a collar. Many of the fathers stared at my collar. Just what was I supposed to be? Well that is the question and I imagine I’ll spend the rest of my life struggling with just what it means to be ordained. I do hope that in time it won’t take me half an hour to get my collar buttoned. I think there is a deeper and more important issue here than what a deacon or priest should look like or what it means to be ordained. Just what are we Christians supposed to be? As Episcopalians, we believe in the priesthood of all believers and the ministry of all the baptized. Baptism changes our very being because in the sacrament we are sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ’s own forever. That too is an ontological change. All of us as members of the household of God are called to confess the faith of Christ crucified, to proclaim his resurrection, and to share in his eternal priesthood. I believe that all of us struggle with how to live out our baptismal vows in a secular world. It is not always easy to do because living as a Christian means looking at the world in a different way. To be a Christian is more about confronting the expectations of the world than in meeting them. Too often Christianity is reduced to an otherworldly, pious obsession with the afterlife instead of what it really is meant to be, a passionate, embodied struggle to live as Jesus did right here in this life.

In the reading from I Samuel, we hear that the Lord looks on the heart. All of Jesse’s sons tall, dark, and handsome are passed over by Samuel, because God has chosen David, the youngest son, to be king. To choose the youngest was a radical idea in that culture. But God chooses the one who is not even important enough to be invited to the sacrifice, the one so inconsequential that he has been given the lowly job of taking care of the sheep. In the Gospel, the kingdom of God is compared to a tiny mustard seed, almost too small to be noticed, yet a seed that grows into a great shrub with large branches, big enough to provide nests for the birds of the air. As Paul writes in the epistle, “We regard no one from a human point of view. If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; everything old has passed away, everything has become new.” There it is- the challenge and the promise of Christianity, an invitation to look at the heart- not the accomplishments or the appearances, to care deeply about those who are not considered worthy enough to be noticed.

There are so many people here at Emmanuel who work every day to look on the heart and who try to see Christ in the homeless and the hungry, the forgotten, and the despised. There are many who strive to see God’s new creation, the newness of life in Christ in all who come to this church for strength and consolation. I am filled with gratitude for the privilege of working and worshipping with you for these past four years. Thank you for all you have given me and taught me. You looked at my heart and helped me to answer God’s call to be a priest. You reminded me that while it is good to love God our mother, we must also love God our father. You helped me understand that knowing theology is important, but living it is even more important. And you taught me that preaching justice must go hand in hand with preaching love and reconciliation. I will treasure all that I learned here at Emmanuel. I know that you will continue to ask yourselves “Just what are we Christians supposed to be?”

Let us pray that we will always be aware of ourselves as a new creation and that we will do our best to look on the heart as God does. Amen