Pentecost X, Proper 12, Year A

1 Kings, 3:5-12
Romans, 8:26-34
Matthew, 13:31-33,44-49a

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

On a late summer Saturday afternoon nearly three years ago, my family set off to do some errands. After leaving the grocery store, we swung by my parents' home to drop off something. No one was there, but I had a key. When I opened the front door, the phone was ringing. The answering machine got the call, and as I started to leave I heard a familiar voice on the incoming message. It was one of the parish's wardens, leaving a message about whether my parents had any idea where I was because the rectory was on fire. That piqued my interest, and I ran to the phone and learned that someone passing by the rectory had seen flames lashing out of the rectory windows and had called the fire department.

I ran outside hopped in the car and told my wife what was happening. I then told myself to take it easy and to be light on the pedal as we drove back home. It was one of the longest drives I've ever endured. We talked as we drove. "Maybe it's not that big of a fire." But soon we discarded that as wishful thinking, and then began thinking of what would be lost, and quickly we realized that it was only stuff. During the drive back in, we probably said that thirty times, "It's only stuff." Our child was sitting in the back seat of the car, oblivious, and we were all fine. What was important was intact.

Misfortune is usually a tremendous opportunity for some clarity, for seeing the big picture. Family, friends, Church - that's the big picture, the core elements of life. Life has so many distractions messing with our focus. We often become obsessed with trivialities, little things - not the important things. We develop routines and habits and projects and presumptions that become engrossing and limiting. Then something will happen that shakes up everything, and we see the big picture. What really is important becomes important to us.

I love being an Anglican Catholic; I love the tradition of this parish. It is so rich and full: historic, cultivated, nuanced, intelligent, poetic. But I also know that given all of this richness, we can become obsessed with detail. One of our great spiritual temptations is to major in the minors, to focus on minutiae, things that are more important to us than they are to God, things that non-Christians don't understand and could care less about. When this happens, we become inward looking, cut off from the essential mission Jesus gave us - to go and make disciples of all people. Converts, people new to the faith, people re-finding their faith, are essential to the health of the Church, because they help focus all of us on God's purpose and on the essentials: love, joy, mercy, trust, hope, patience, generosity, gentleness, self-control, purpose.

The best part of being a parish priest is being there as someone begins to experience God, begins to become aware of their purpose in life, begins to trust God. There's nothing better for my spiritual life, nothing more renewing, nothing more helpful in widening my vision to see the big picture, nothing that better helps me focus on the important things. People new to Christianity, seeking God, minister more to us than we to them. It's being there as someone finds the one pearl of great price, sharing in that joy, that clarity.

Besides misfortune, besides new Christians, God gives us something else to help us to focus on what's important in life. God gives us his Spirit. The Holy Spirit allows us to communicate with God. Anyone who has ever prayed - even an non-believer who calls upon God in a moment of need - has experienced the Holy Spirit. In prayer, God reveals to us what is most important in life. Prayer leads us to discovery, to finding treasure, to finding the one pearl of great price.

In today's epistle, S. Paul tells the Romans, "the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought." Where does the Holy Spirit lead our prayer? What ought I to pray for? Three thoughts about this.

First, we should probably start with forgiveness. The beginning of spiritual life is in recognizing our corruption, that we're not as we ought to be, that we're often weak, limited, narrow, that we need to change and grow. We want God's mercy upon us, and we want merciful, humble hearts toward other people. For the most part, Christians know these things. It's why we come to mass.

We want merciful, humble hearts in part because we want good relationships with other people. We can't be Christians on our own. We need other people. Together we're the body of Christ - not individually. And this points us to the second thing to pray for - the common good. Sure, we pray for our own needs, but it's more important that we pray for others, for the larger community. We'll never begin to see the big picture unless we see more than ourselves.

The Old Testament lesson today is King Solomon's prayer for wisdom. He's taking on King David's mantle. He knows that David is a tough act to follow. Solomon knows he needs wisdom, and wisdom not for his own purposes, not for self-gratification, not for a long life, not for wealth, but so that he may govern well, so that he may best serve God and other people. His concern is God's people, and God praises Solomon for being primarily concerned for the commonweal, for the greater good - not his own. We want our leaders to work for the common good. It's not what have they done for me. The question we ask of them is not: am I better off? The question we ask of them is: is the community better off, is the country better off, is the world better off?

I've heard it said that the justice of God is to give us what we most desire. So sure, we pray for ourselves and our own desires, but we don't set our hearts there. One of the best reasons to pray for our own desires is that at least we know how silly and narrow we can be. We want our own desires to become less important to us, the well-being of others to be more important. That's the mark of a Christian hero. The higher, more mature prayer is for the good of others, the good of the community.

We pray for mercy. We pray for the common good. Third, and perhaps most important, the Holy Spirit leads us to pray for a grateful heart. Everyone needs to spend more time giving thanks. At all times, the very worst times as well as the good times, we have things for which to be grateful. As long as we can give thanks, we are always going to be alright. There's no strength, no comfort, no joy more powerful than a grateful heart.

During the American Revolutionary War, blacks who crossed to the British side got their freedom - a pregnant irony. Following the war, several thousand of them fled to Nova Scotia rather than returning to their owners. Eventually some of these decided to return to Africa and to establish a colony in Sierra Leone. Some of them had been taken into slavery from the very river mouth to which they had returned. One of these returning Africans was John Gordon, who had become a Methodist lay leader in North America. Four years after returning to Africa, he met the very man who had kidnapped him and sold him into slavery. So much of our culture encourages revenge and retribution, but that's not the Christian way. It's not the cross. John Gordon "gave his captor a present and told him, 'Your thoughts were evil, but God meant it for good - I now know God and Christ.'" ⁽¹⁾

"We know," Paul told the Romans, "that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purposes." (Romans 8:28) Suffering does not get in God's way. God never wants us to suffer, but he never lets it be in vain. He can use our suffering, our loss, for good. Gordon was grateful for his suffering. Through suffering, he had discovered the one pearl of great price. Christian heroes allow gratitude to shape their souls.

Prayer for mercy, prayer for other people, prayer for a grateful heart, these show us the important things in life. They expand our focus. When we see bigger, we see that God is working for good, that the future abounds with promise and fulfilment. The future, like the little mustard seed, is hidden. But like the mustard seed, it's gloriously full.

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

1. Adam Hochschild, Bury the Chains, Houghton Mifflin Company (2005), p. 208. S. Paul: "Bless those who persecute you: bless and do not curse them. . . . Never avenge yourselves." (Romans 12:14,19)