This morning’s gospel raises the issue of how we pray.

When I served at St. Mary’s in Belleview, by God’s grace he led us to build a new sanctuary. There was a section for the organ and choir off to the left, facing the nave at about a 45-degree angle. However, the pews were too close together for kneelers. There, as here, the congregation knelt for the Prayers of the People, Confession, and part of the Eucharist. So, I suggested they lean forward, sitting toward the front edge of their seats. It would look like they were kneeling and also reverential.

They agreed. Well, almost all of them agreed. One woman said, “No.” She explained that she felt very strongly that she should stand to pray. This woman was very active in ministry, a true parish leader, and she was very serious. She was the only one of about twenty who felt that way, not even her husband.

Meg and I went through a brief phase where we were enamored of Ikea. If you’ve never been, it’s an enormous store filled with all manner of housewares and furniture. When you enter, you’re supposed to go up the escalator and wind your way through the upstairs and then the downstairs, finding what you came to buy along the way; resisting or not resisting a thousand impulse buys along the way. Then at the end are Swedish meatballs. Well, a little café that sells them because it is a Swedish company.

It's a dazzling piece of capitalism.

Their furniture is inexpensive in part because they’ve outsourced the assembly part to you. We once crammed a sofa and loveseat into the back of our minivan, and still had room to bring the kids home, too.

As Jesus walked by the Sea of Galilee, He saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the lake-for they were fishermen. And, He said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” Immediately they left their nets and followed him. As He went from there, He saw two other brothers, James, son of Zebedee and his brother, John, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father and followed Him. Matthew 4:18-22

            We just heard Jesus calling Peter, Andrew, James and John. He was calling them from something that they were very familiar with. He was calling them away from what had been the only life they knew and what appeared to be their life. They dropped everything and followed Him. My, what faith! Guts? All we know from scripture is that they were fishermen, living day after day in their profession. It doesn’t tell us if they had a passion for anything different than the only thing they knew, fishing.

What we do know is that Jesus had a plan for them.

John Templeton was from the small town of Winchester, Tennessee, the son of a poor cotton farmer. He went to Yale, graduated near the top of his class in 1934, became a Rhodes scholar at Oxford and eventually the founder of the Templeton Growth Fund. He was a brilliant man, extremely successful and a generous philanthropist. Despite becoming a billionaire, he lived frugally and lived quietly in a fairly modest home in the Bahamas.

He also had a keen interest in reconciling science and faith in the pursuit of ultimate truth, and collected books on the subject. He wanted that work to continue, so he built a library outside of Sewanee, Tennessee, where his books would go after he died, with apartments where scholars could come and study. It was completed in 2000, the year that our family arrived at Sewanee, where I went to seminary.

This week’s parable is, without question, the scariest. It includes dogs licking sores, death, and eternal punishment in a place filled with eternal flames and endless thirst. The indictment for not having a truly godly heart is clear. People know better, but apparently choose to ignore or at least minimize passages like this from Deuteronomy that are consistently in the law and the prophets.

It is so good to see you! You could be just about anywhere else right now. You could be curled up with your jammies enjoying your second cup of coffee. You could be golfing or fishing or hunting whatever is in season. You could be out to brunch or at the beach. You could be catching up on a few loose ends at work that really need to get resolved. But you are here. It is so good to see you!

Those watching online could be watching anything else right now. Some of them will be watching later, but even so they could be watching anything or nothing at all. They could be on a hike or bike ride. They could be reading a book, which I gather is where a lot of movies come from. Or you could be doing nothing. It is so much easier to do nothing than something. But here you are!

It’s kind of fun when you look at someone and can tap into their absolute joy. I looked at this young dad, Alex, holding his brand new baby girl and a flood of empathy hit me.

I remember very well holding my newborn son for the first time. I had just one blaring thought in my mind, “Don’t drop him!” Every fiber of my being was intensely focus on protecting and preserving that precious little boy who had just shown up.

I remember very well seeing my daughter for the first time, equal in love as with my three boys, but also a white flag of surrender going up over my head and heart.

I’d like to take you down a culinary path this morning. Think about beans, specifically red kidney beans. If you eat them, when and how do you eat them? Many of us might first think of chili. Others a cold bean salad. Then there are refried beans, commonly served with Mexican food. In New Orleans, red beans and rice are the traditional meal on Mondays.

In our culture, we tend to think of beans as an ingredient in a recipe or a side dish. But for much of the world, beans are the main dish. They are inexpensive and nutritious. They are the primary source of protein and high in dietary fiber, as well as rich in essential minerals like iron and folate.

This passage from Hebrews says, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.” What does that actually mean?

Let’s take a moment to think about how much has changed since the time Abraham settled in the Land of Canaan. In Abraham’s time, about 1900 BC, the bronze age, the region had large families or tribes that were mostly herdsmen and semi-nomadic, moving their flocks around in the region. There was some agriculture and there were a few cities, but they were small. Damascus, Syria for example, was around 1,000 to 2,000 people. They had no written language, no written law, and only basic tools and weapons. The chariot was the technological edge.

There is a lot to consider in today’s Gospel, particularly Jesus’s healing touch and his teaching about what honors God on the sabbath. But let’s not rush past the opening sentences.

“Now Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. And just then, there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight.”

Here she is, crippled and unable to stand up straight, and going to church. We must not rush past her effort, which is an expression of great faith. Even now, we are among people who make a similar effort, people for whom it takes a great deal of time and struggle to get ready for and get to church.