Choosing Christ
Pentecost 4, Proper 7
Fr. Tim Nunez
June 25, 2023
May my spoken word be true to God’s written word and bring us all closer to the living word, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
I’m happy to report that we had a great week at Camp Wingmann. I look forward to it every year for a few reasons. First is the opportunity to be with the campers. There are joys with each age group, elementary, middle and high school kids. I’ve chosen the elementary camp the last few years in the hope that my being there will help Good Shepherd kids and their parents choose to go.
For most of our kids, it’s their first time to be away from home for five nights. That’s a big deal. It’s a big deal when they make the decision to go to camp, and it’s a big deal once they get there. I cannot tell you how many kids got homesick at least once during the week, usually in the evening and they are tired from a busy day. Their eyes look at you, wide as saucers, a little wet. You know the dam is about to burst. And it’s not just being away from home. The kids are in a cabin with a bunch of other kids. Some of those kids are annoying, or maybe they all seem annoying.
And much of the week is spent doing summer camp stuff that challenges the kids. They have to clean their cabin every morning. Not many of them have shot a bow and arrow before. Not many of them have swum in a lake – most are used to swimming pools that have walls and steps, and absolutely no chance of snakes or alligators. (Many or most of our Good Shepherd kids are very used to lakes!) They have to participate in all sorts of goofy relay races, and some of the kids are not very athletic or coordinated.
All of that is couched in fun, of course, but it can be a lot for an 8-year-old to manage, and sometimes they just don’t, or not very well.
I’m sure those elements are true of any summer camp. But at Camp Wingmann they meet all of those challenges in the context of our faith. When a child is homesick, in addition to their counselors and friends consoling them they are taught and reassured that the Lord is with them.
The theme for the week was “Upended,” because, as noted in Isaiah 55:8-9:
For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
The camp’s t-shirts this summer have a delightful pun, YHWH vs. My Way. That’s an important lesson and one which I hope they’ve begun to grasp because it comes back to us again and again in life. And it is embedded in all three of our readings this morning.
We heard from the prophet Jeremiah this morning, which was said and written down about 600 years before Jesus. Why were Jeremiah’s words remembered and preserved? Because he was right. Everyone’s favorite verse from Jeremiah is 29:11, For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. But that verse is a bright light in a very gloomy moment.
Jeremiah has a real problem. He’s a prophet. The Lord has called him to warn God’s people that real trouble is coming and they need to straighten up immediately or they will lose everything, at least for a time. And they did. Babylon conquered them and uprooted them and exiled them to Babylon. That was catastrophic. They would eventually be restored to Israel, but not for about 70 years. So Jeremiah was right about the disaster and he was right about God’s promise for a future and a hope.
When Jeremiah does speak out, everyone mocks him and plots against him behind his back. No one wants that. If he doesn’t speak, God’s word creates a burning fire in his bones. He has no way forward but to trust God. But it’s hard. Jeremiah’s honesty in that difficulty is also remembered.
Jesus tells his disciples, “Look, do you hear what they are saying to me? Do you hear what they are saying behind my back? If they say I have a demon, or that I’m in league with a devil like Beelzebub, what do you think they’ll do to you? Just the same!” They will face the very same opposition that Jesus himself faces every day, which is akin to what Jeremiah faced but more intense.
The natural, the human, response to mortal threats is fight or flight. But Jesus doesn’t advise either. He says, “Do not fear them. Just keep speaking the truth in love and trust in the Lord.” His thoughts are not your thoughts and his ways are not your ways. It’s hard. People worry about our security, our health, risks and rewards. The Lord is worried about calling people into his Kingdom. We’ve got to let go of our reliance on temporal things and circumstances and trust everything to the Lord. It’s hard. His thoughts are not our thoughts and his ways are not our ways.
We are to put him first, ahead of all our fears but also ahead of all our loves. Jesus is very pro-family, but even love of our families must be second to our faith in him and our love of him.
Those who find their life will lose it. When we focus on our self-interest, we get all knotted up in temporal concerns and lose ourselves in the process. We can see that written large on social media. Our desire to put our selfies and highlights on Facebook, Instagram, Tick Tock and so on is directly tied to a startling rise in anxiety issues.
When we focus on Christ and ordering our lives around him and serving others in his name, we find life. “Those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”
Paul makes it clear. All of that “my way” that isn’t God’s way is, simply put, sin. On one level, the choice is the same as it has always been, the age-old decision to follow ahold or not. The difference between our struggle and Jeremiah’s era is that the battle is already won. “Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as just as Christ was raised from the dead, we too might walk in newness of life.” Let it die. You are redeemed. Live in Christ.
AMEN