July 20, 2025
Sixth Sunday After Pentecost
Open our hearts, open our eyes, that we may see you, each other, and ourselves more clearly.
First things first: for those of you who read the revised common lectionary during the week, you may have noticed we didn’t read the Amos passage. I was one of those people who said, preachers, if there’s a tough scripture in the lectionary PLEASE talk about it because we don’t want silence to be mistaken for consent. But since I’m not going to be referencing it in my sermon today and I am using a passage from Isaiah instead, I asked Celebration Circle if we might swap out the readings.
I’m not spending time with Amos because the Servant Leadership Team gave me a specific invitation for this sermon: to help set the stage in some way for our Day of Prayer and Conversation coming up on September 14th. For those of you who are guests or are new today, we are planning this all-day event to reflect on the last 50 (!!!) years and look to the future. Although much has changed in our world, in our city, and in our own lives, what values do we continue to hold dear? Is God calling us in new directions? How will our inward and outward journeys continue and evolve? These are deep questions that get at the very heart of who we are as a community. This event will give us the chance to reflect on what we’re about – and what we want to be about. This is an opportunity to dream.
How do we prepare ourselves for such an important conversation? I think there are many ways – we can be praying, journaling, having individual conversations, talking in our mission and sharing groups. But most of all, I want to encourage us to see. After all, if we are hoping to cast a vision, the ability to see is essential. Now, I don’t mean physical eyesight, but rather spiritual insight. We need to truly see ourselves and those around us, and see the ways that God is at work.
Let’s take each of these ideas in turn using our readings.
The first is the gospel passage from our lectionary. It’s a story that frankly has always annoyed me: Martha gets shut down by Jesus when she complains that her sister Mary has left her all the work to do. While I’m not so much of a Martha in this community, in other contexts I am definitely a Martha, and it chafes that she gets no sympathy from Jesus (side note: Where most translations read, “Mary has chosen the better part” it may actually have just been “Mary has chosen a good part” so maybe at least Jesus wasn’t ranking them – I think there’s probably a whole sermon in this but that’s for another day).
But Jesus does have a point: the Marthas among us can get stuck on task completion and forget about connection. We get focused on what needs to get done and everything else sort of fades into the background, including other people. We Marthas have a to-do list that is a mile long and we don’t always have much time for those who aren’t helping cross items off it.
But Martha isn’t wrong, either. It’s all well and good to want to connect with others, but part of facilitating connection is the work of hospitality: there’s food on the table and everyone’s glass is filled. A setting that is warm and inviting doesn’t usually happen by accident. It takes work, and sometimes we Marys are so focused on the conversation we don’t realize we’ve left all that labor to someone else.
The truth is that we need both the Marthas and the Marys. We need both to make our community the wonderful, welcoming place that it is – and we need each other to illuminate our blind spots. This is true in any community, and I think it’s especially relevant as we prepare for this time of reflection on what is next for our community. There are those of us who will be just bubbling over with new ideas for how to welcome new folks in and share this gift of community we have with others, and there are those of us who will sit there thinking, “GAH! Do you have any idea how much work that will be?!?!?” Do you see yourself in either place? I can empathize with both, because which one of these people I am depends on the context, and maybe even the day.
So how can the Marthas among us lay down our to-do lists long enough to open our hearts to connect with each other and the Holy Spirit to be open to new things? How can the Marys among us recognize those who are doing heavy lifting already and ensure the new ways we want to connect don’t add an undue burden on those folks?
I also think this is a useful frame not just for the Martha-Mary distinction but for the other characters within us and around us as well: t; we have John the Baptists who aren’t afraid to piss others off in the pursuit of truth and justice, and the Pauls who figure out what love and reconciliation look like when you’re trying to bridge cultural gaps; we have Peters who are full of faith, making bold proclamations and stepping out of boats while the Thomases stand by, persistently voicing their skepticism; we have introverts and extroverts, young and old, we have those who show up on Sundays bright and perky and those who stumble in clutching their coffees.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg, right? We see and experience the world, and this community, in different ways. I think being aware of and attuned to ourselves and one another is essential, and I think we do a pretty good job at it. But as we prepare to ponder our future, I think it is especially important that we look at – and look out for one another. So I would encourage us to give extra time and attention to seeing ourselves clearly, and also turning towards one another, to see each other fully, recognize the beautiful, unique gifts that each member of this community brings, and consider what it means to serve one another in our myriad differences in this next chapter.
Which brings us to another kind of sight: seeing what God is up to. As I mentioned, the Isaiah passage is not one of the assigned readings for today, but it was in the Revised Common Lectionary during Lent. It was a few weeks into the new presidential administration, I was reeling from the visceral dread, that sense that, Oh no, this like last time, only much, much worse – and the words from Isaiah 43 jumped out at me: Look, I am doing something new. Hm. I wasn’t sure about that but I jotted down the phrase on a piece of scrap paper.
I spent a few weeks trying to figure out what the ‘something new’ might be. I mean, new things were certainly happening every day – you couldn’t even keep track of all of the outrages – but there was nothing that I thought, You know, that looks like the work of God. I was starting to get frustrated when I suddenly realized the irony. This was exactly what God was saying in the next line.
Look, I am doing something new!
Now it springs forth – can’t you see it??
I will make a way in the wilderness
and rivers in the desert.
Did you catch that? God was creating flowing rivers in the desert and no one was noticing! People were so focused on the past, on what God HAD done, how God HAD moved in the days of yore, that they seemed to be totally missing what God was doing right in front of them. Isaiah himself can’t resist the lure of the past: he prefaces this whole prophecy with this description of God, who:
made a road through the sea, a path in the mighty waters, who led chariots and warriors to their doom, a mighty army fallen, never to rise again, snuffed out and extinguished like a wick.
As far as Isaiah and his community are concerned, the story of the exodus is THE story, THE answer to all of the questions. Who is God? God is the one who made a road through the sea and destroyed our enemies. Who are we? We are the people who walked that path through the mighty waters to freedom.
And look, who can blame them? The exodus story had been told for generations upon generations – we’re talking roughly seven HUNDRED years at that point. It was inseparable from their identity. And so God cries out in frustration:
Forget the events of the past,
ignore the things of long ago!
This, I’ll remind you, is the same God who had told God’s people to remember over and over. The same God who said, every year for the rest of eternity I want you to reenact this special meal, so you never forget this whole thing. But now this same God is saying: Move on already!
For the better part of a millennium God’s people remembered this story, remembered that God’s saving grace came in the form of a dry road dividing the sea. And so, it seems, God’s people kept looking backward towards that distant shore, even though it had long ceased to be visible, because that is where God had showed up so mightily. Apparently, if you are so intent on looking backwards for the sea, you might totally miss the rivers God is creating right in front of you.
What does this have to do with us? Seekers, and the Church of the Savior, we have our origin story, too. We’ve had a few Moseses, we have the mighty ways that God has shown up in and for this community. And we remember these things, we keep them alive, we cherish them – as we ought.
AND – we have to remember to turn around, and look in front of us, to open our imaginations to the idea that God will do new things, show up in new places where we might not expect. How do we find the balance: not tossing the past aside but also not clinging with clenched fists, holding it loosely, leaving room to accept something new? Because this is God’s promise to us:
I am about to do a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not see it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
and rivers in the desert.
The wild animals will honour me,
the jackals and the ostriches;
for I give water in the wilderness,
rivers in the desert,
to give drink to my people,
the people whom I formed for myself
so that they might declare my praise.
May it be so. May we have the sight – to see ourselves, to see each other, and to see the ways that God is working, in and around us, as we consider the future of our community.
Amen.