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Welcome to AnchorCast, a weekly podcast of homilies and sermons from Christ Our Anchor Anglican Mission in Nashville, Tennessee.
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer.
Amen.
So I come to you this morning fresh off the plane from the 148th synod of the Diocese of Quincy.
Due to various weather conditions, our flight was delayed and we ended up taking an in-air detour through Michigan and then Ohio to finally safely land in Tennessee around 1030 last night.
Kevin had worse luck and landed at 1 a.m.
this morning.
But neither the airport, the hours cramped in a plane, the hordes of travelers, nor the stress of travel could remove the joy, hope, and peace that I received at our synod.
Now, on face value, synod should not be a fun time, especially for an introvert like myself.
Synod is a lot of small talk, a lot of church, a lot of meetings and many, many, many presentations, and a lot of patiently waiting.
And I’ll be honest, truth be told, I don’t really know what is going on most of the time at synod.
I just kind of wait for our dear vicar.
I follow his lead and I do whatever he ends up volunteering me for, which ends up being quite a lot if you sit next to Father Dan at synod.
And yet, from all of this, I come away from synod very, very tired, but also energized.
The theme of this year’s synod was our labor is not in vain.
And that is the message that has so filled my heart with joy and renewed my hope for what God is doing in the world.
Now, what might be expected of me is to share some deep and great insight from the Episcopal address or one of the many great sermons.
Or maybe I should have been deeply moved by one of the many presentations of the work God is doing at our missions around the world.
But with no disrespect to the many speakers and ministers and our own dear bishop, that while those were all good and uplifting, they are not the greatest impact of synod for me.
The greatest impact for me of synod was the people.
I’ve been to many, many church meetings in my life.
They are formal, bureaucratic, boring, and outside of a few guys in very strange clothing, they could easily be mistaken for a business meeting.
There are arguments, debates, politics, and all the things that you would expect among fallen man trying to come to a common decision.
Now, it’s not to say that these things do not exist at our synod.
They absolutely do.
But there is something at synod that transcends the ways of man and points us to a better way.
At synod, you can sit back and see the workings of men who have come to know our Lord and have been deeply transformed by him.
Without words, outside of presentations, and without knowing that anyone is watching, our bishop, our abbot, the many priests, nuns, deacons, and visiting bishops show the love, grace, mercy, and peace of God in and through their actions.
It is in the smiles.
It is in the hugs of true fellowship and brotherly love.
It’s the willingness to serve at a moment’s notice when the bishop asks you to do something unexpected.
It is the earnest, passionate prayers, the love that we share together for our bishop, and the shared care and devotion that we have to our Lord and his holy church.
The sweet conversations we have about our parishes and the work God is doing within them.
It is how the conversation changes from the conservation of money or space or time and budgets to an exuberant generosity of all things when we talk about the poor, the needy, the lonely, and the lost.
In all of these things, I am able to see God at work in real people and real places.
I am reminded that St.
Andrews doesn’t stand alone.
Our labor is not in vain.
God is doing a great work, not just here in Nashville, but all over the world.
God can and does change hearts.
Years of prayer and service do make you a better person.
I’ve seen holy men.
I’ve received their kindness and care.
Our God is at work and present in our world today.
Our labor, indeed, is not in vain.
Which brings me to our gospel reading today.
St.
Luke shares with us one of our Lord’s stranger parables.
Jesus tells us a story about a city that is led by a powerful judge.
This judge is not necessarily wise, and I get the sense from Jesus' story that the judge isn’t particularly kind or fair.
This judge doesn’t respect God or really care about people at all.
Virtue, brotherly love, kindness, compassion, and so on do not move this judge.
He is a man that only cares about power and comfort.
He wants all the tax money, and then he wants to be left alone to the feast.
So far, so good.
Not a very strange parable at all.
And I’m sure the first hearers of this parable assumed Jesus was about to tell them a story about greed or power.
They were ready to hear another powerful admonition directed towards the Romans and maybe the Jewish leaders.
Instead, where Jesus goes with the rest of the story is to tell a joke.
And I do mean a sort of joke.
Jesus has a sense of humor, and I think it shows in this parable and other places.
You see, in this city, there isn’t just an awful judge, but there’s an equally awful old widow woman.
She too is grumpy, mean, and selfish.
All she cares about is getting back at her so-called enemy.
In hearing the story, you can almost see Jesus winking to the crowd as he talks of her.
We all have someone in mind when we read this story.
The mean old Gladys who’s still mad about what Margaret did at the church raffle all those many years ago.
Gladys who won’t stop talking about it and always is seeking to find a way to get back at Margaret.
Gladys who’s constantly bothering father and whoever else who will listen about it.
So in reading this, it is funny and it is okay to laugh at the Bible.
Jesus tells jokes.
Humor is good.
And I have no doubt that Jesus got a good bit of laughter when he taught this to the crowds all those many years ago.
So as the crowds laugh at the notion of this widow, Jesus tells them that she’s constantly hounding this judge about her adversary.
And I’m sure they laugh even harder thinking of the selfish judge who just wants to live alone in luxury, just constantly being hounded and bothered by this equally awful widow.
And the imagery is just really great there.
So I’m sure standing there, they are waiting for the punchline about greed or being annoying or something else.
But Jesus, instead of going these directions, and this is kind of the joke in it, he turns to the crowd.
You see, this wasn’t a parable for Rome, and it wasn’t for the rabbis or the Sanhedrin or the temple priest.
It was for them.
And I have no doubt that a hush came over the crowd when they realized the joke was on them.
Jesus, in more or less words, says, listen, guys, you are all laughing because we know the old widow was right.
You could annoy someone into getting what you want.
We’ve all done it to our parents when we were kids in the market, and our kids do it to us today.
We do this without hardly ever thinking.
But remember that I am the good shepherd.
I’ve heard the call of my people time and time again.
I listen, I care, I act, and yet you don’t pray.
You turn to idols.
Your lips are silent towards me.
Why don’t you pray?
Why don’t you have faith in me, the good judge?
Those words hurt.
They sting.
They hurt then, and they hurt now.
At Synod, a dear missionary bishop from India shared stories of his father’s missionary work in the 50s and 60s and the work that they had going on in India today.
And one story he shared was of a young missionary who was quite a bit more successful than the other missionaries they sent out.
He was converting some of the most dangerous villages.
These are villages where previous missionaries had been beaten or almost killed just by going in.
The people did not want them there.
But he was going there and was converting villages, and they wanted to know why this missionary was so successful.
So they started talking to him and asking questions and trying to figure out what he was doing.
And it turned out, well, he wasn’t particularly smart, and he wasn’t doing a special technique.
He was doing what everyone else was taught to do.
He wasn’t really big.
He was kind of a small guy, and he didn’t dress any different from anyone else.
They couldn’t figure out what it was.
But finally, in talking to the man, they figured it out.
Between classes at seminary, when others were talking in the hallways, he would stop off in a quiet corner to pray.
He would pray between meals.
He would pray between calls.
He would pray between chores.
Constantly throughout the day, this man was praying to God.
This is what made the difference in his ministry.
He prayed constantly, and God listened.
After this story, the bishop shared a statistic that the average Christian prays a total of four minutes each day, and sadder yet that the average pastor only prays six.
So I would say that we, the global we, the church universal, are the crowd Jesus is teaching today.
Now for those of you who are kind of church calendar nerds, you might already know this, but Thursday was the feast day of the Oxford Martyrs.
On the 16th of October in 1555, Bishops Latimer