August 17, 2025

I'm really not much of a sweets person. I think many of you know that about me by now. But without fail, every year that we go back to Arkansas, at least on two or three occasions, we buy donuts for breakfast. And so it was that I found myself in Beebe, Arkansas, my wife's hometown, a town that is 90% white or black, and actually even over 80% white. So whatever diversity there is, is very limited. But I found myself at Star Donuts in Beebe, Arkansas. And donuts are an interesting idea. They're quintessentially American.

Donuts as we have them today were developed in the early 19th century by the mother of a seafaring captain in New England. And she took these exotic spices he was bringing home, cinnamon and nutmeg, and started incorporating them into millennia-old practices of taking dough and frying it in oil. And somewhere along the way, either she or her son had the idea of creating the center hole to the modern donut we have today. But it was an amalgam, a mixing of different cultures, different ideas, different concepts, all brought together.

And this particular donut shop in Beebe, Arkansas, lives into that ideal even more fully. The man who runs it is Arab-American. His wife, who was tending the shop the morning I went in, is herself Chinese. And not only do they sell donuts, but they sell kolaches, which are these kind of Czech-Texan pastries with meat filling. And they have breakfast burritos. So it was all over the map. And then, after I had ordered and received my goods, as I was leaving, the lady behind the counter said, safe home, which is the literal translation of the Gaelic-Irish slán awália. And so we have this beautiful blending of all of these cultural dynamics at play from the diversity of the pastries to the people in this interaction, to the usage of language. It was that perfect encapsulation of the American ideal of the melting pot that all of these things come together in some kind of new iteration.

It's that finding unity in diversity that I talk about so frequently from this pulpit. And there is a goodness in that. But, but, if that is true, what do we make of today's gospel passage? If this is our ideal, how do we make sense of this challenging and disorienting set of verses from St. Luke's Gospel today? Well, I want to step back for a moment and remind us all where we were last week. And especially, friends, those of you joining us online who weren't able to hear my sermon, I want to take just a moment to outline my remarks from last week and to kind of frame us where we are in this present moment.

Last week, we were in the middle of chapter 12 in St. Luke's Gospel, and we had the parable of the watchful slaves waiting for their master to return. I observed that in this rendering, and it's parallel in St. Matthew's Gospel, there's this admonition not just against alertness and diligence versus apathy and inattentiveness. But there is also this reflection on good action versus bad. And if we look carefully, the ending of our gospel passage from last week and where we pick up this week, we have nine verses that are cut out. And these nine verses are particularly difficult. Last week's passage and this week's passage bookends this section where Jesus talks about a slave. A slave who is put over his master's household. And when he is in charge, initially he does good things and performs well. And so the master departs. And upon that departure, the slave begins to mistreat the others in the household under his authority. And there is much, there is much we could talk about narrowly in the concrete dynamics of that passage. About how we mistreat each other when we don't think additional eyes are on us. How we take advantage of each other when we think we can get away with it.

But, if we step back from the literal senses of those nine verses, there's a more figurative sense in which there's this dichotomy between right action or good action and bad action and inappropriate action. Action that is framed out of anxiety and fear versus action grounded in trust and belief in the good news of God and Christ. As we discern that difference, it can often be hard to know whether the action we're undertaking is one that is action to bear fruit or one that is action that is reactionary to the forces of oppression and injustice that we see in the world around us. Inasmuch as we constantly feel like we need to be reacting to the present moment, sometimes those actions do no more than spin our wheels and exhaust us and deplete the energy that we are called to reserve as we wait upon the movement of the Spirit and further discernment.

It's a difference. It's a difference between acting out of our own volition and acting out of the depth of faith that we hear explicated and so richly described in St. Paul's portion of Hebrews that we heard last week and this between chapter 11 and chapter 12. It is this difference between discernment and a deepening of our spiritual life and an embrace of faithfulness over freneticism. So last week I said we can't really understand the gospel admonitions that we hear without seeing this fuller picture as developed in St. Paul's letter to the Hebrews. And the faithfulness, the faithfulness that we are called to always and forever ground ourselves in.

And that holds true today as we encounter this particularly difficult and challenging passage from St. Luke's Gospel. But even at that, there are some ways in which, if we pay close attention to this reading today, that it's a little bit more complicated than what we hear just at kind of a surface, superficial level. For one thing, and I have to credit Audrey West at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago for identifying this, it is an error if we see Christ's statements in teaching today as prescriptive. That we are to be these kind of antagonistic rabble-rousers in the world around us. That we are to cause this discord, to sow dissension, to be in adversarial relationship with one another. And instead, the more fruitful, the more coherent understanding of this passage, if we take all of what Jesus teaches us throughout the gospel tradition. It's that this is not so much proscriptive as it is descriptive. When we live into the faithfulness of what it is that Christ is calling us into, when we live into the ideals of love and charity and compassion, there will be times of discord and dissension. There will be fraught relationships, even amongst those we most deeply and closely love and cherish, even in our own households.

And this is seen no more clearly than in the great parable of the prodigal son. Because in as much as we like to focus on that resulting reconciliation, between the father and the second son. That reconciliation springs forth. Brings out of it a separate level of conflict. This new place of contention. Between the older son and the father. So even as the father is living into the ideals of the gospel. There is this new conflict that springs forth. And when we are attuned to that, we find the truth of what Jesus says to be not so much a difficulty as it is an authentic and honest recognition of what we face. when we embrace the love and charity and compassion that we are called to consume ourselves with in preaching and proclaiming the good news of God in Christ.

We see that further in a second sense, in a very specific linguistic turn that we have in our gospel passage today. And I often don't go down linguistic rabbit holes, but I found this one specifically captivating. The word that we hear in verse 50 is that I have a baptism, and this is Jesus speaking, with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed. But that word stress is not really all that helpful or necessarily accurate to what is rendered in the Greek. It is the passive present form of the verb synecho, which has a multiplicity of meanings and can be translated as stress or distress, but can also be interpreted as absorption of consuming attentiveness, compulsion, or preoccupancy. And so, if we think about Jesus saying, not what stress I'm under, but what preoccupancy I have, with the gospel until it is completed? What preoccupancy consumes me until my work is finished?

When we consider today the call we have in being proclaimers of the gospel, the invitation we have is to have that same level of passion and commitment. To be so consumed by, so preoccupied with the gospel that even when we face challenge, even when we have difficulty, even when the road gets tough, we can be so consumed that we stay single-mindedly focused on the goal and the goodness that lies ahead. So what are we compelled towards in our call to be purveyors of the gospel? What is the work that is called out of us and that we are to strive for until completion?

Again, just as in last week, I think St. Paul's letter from the Hebrews today offers our answer. We are again to be a people apart, a people sojourning in faith, even as we encounter and experience times of challenge, oppression, and difficulty. And yet all of these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised, St. Paul says. We are to continue striving even when the results of that striving aren't necessarily clear. And there's, too, a pitfall that St. Paul alerts us to that is important for us to be mindful of today as well. Verse 12, 1, we hear, Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely. The sin that clings so closely. And here I found John Shelley from Furman University particularly evocative when he says this mention of sin in 12.1 invites reflection on the nature of sin. The singular form challenges our popular tendency to think of sin as a list of acts or deeds that cause trouble and for which one is worthy of blame.

If we do think of sin in the singular, he says, it is usually a reference to the basic orientation of the self. That we get caught up in these senses of presupposition, arrogance, pride, presumption, the will to dominate. But scholars on the margins have challenged us to consider that maybe the fundamental sin is a bigger temptation of our sense that we are the ones that matter, that we are the ones that fix things, that our eagerness to volunteer for soup kitchens for other social service agencies to assist those living in poverty are the sum and completion of our work. Instead of addressing the real, structural, overarching challenges and changes that must be brought forward in order for lasting and true peace and justice to reign. And what might it cost us, he asks, if we were to commit to such a work? Going back to what I was saying at the beginning, that sense of spinning our wheels on fruitless and facile kinds of efforts can sometimes exhaust us when the real and lasting work His work we are called to in a structural and overarching sense.

And that brings me, in a final sense, back to donuts and dreams. To pastries and progress. How often we take our ideals, the things of this world, that we are so consumed by. The places in which we want things to be just so in our own view, our own perspective. And we do not orient ourselves more fully, more importantly, more foundationally to the work of the Spirit. The work that calls us out of our own. Spaces and places. And ideologies. In as much as we help to disorient others. To a new alternative. A more fuller and richer world of the spirit. And I do not say any of this. To dismiss or discourage. The important works of action. of justice, the important places of witness to inequality and injustice. But my prayer for us this morning is that we take to heart the important points that we hear in this admonition from our gospel and in the teachings from St. Paul in Hebrews that we heard last week in this. that no matter those places of action we have in our lives, no matter the work that we undertake to build a more just and loving and compassionate world in this material space and time, we nevertheless are ultimately called to have our focus over the horizon. On the things of true and lasting importance that are the things of the kingdom.

That the wellspring of our energy, our sustaining ability to work in spaces of justice and peace. Ultimately comes from that reality of being a sojourner. Of being one who is here only for a season. and to center and surround ourselves with this great cloud of witnesses who teach us in their own lives how to be the people of action that are nevertheless a people apart, a people with a gaze and an orientation fixed upon the kingdom that is to come, not on the things of the world in this very hour. So may we, even in this moment of difficulty in the society around us, even in this moment of encountering very difficult and challenging words from our Savior in our gospel today, may we be ever more sustained in our own work of being a people of the kingdom. A people called to be consumed with a preoccupancy on the things of goodness, the things of love, the things of lasting importance. And in being that, and in so doing, may we ever be more nourished, strengthened, and committed to our God. and through our God, to the work that lies ahead. In the name of our Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.