A Sermon for the Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable always in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

My point of departure today is the prayer I just prayed, which comes from Psalm 19, verse 14. It is the prayer I habitually pray before I preach. Many preachers pray some version of this psalm verse before they preach.

It is a familiar verse. It is even the epitaph on the gravestone of country-western star Johnny Cash, “the man in black.”

When we pray the psalm, we are acknowledging that when we are to stand before God, we will need for the Spirit to enter our hearts, to go deep inside us, even to those secret places, which we are ashamed or afraid to show to others. Wonderfully, God hears our prayers and breathes new life into us.

Read today in concert with Mark (9:38-50), the psalm is a prayer against presumption. The gospel guards against the presumption of believing in a God who is too small, in a mission that is too narrow, and of a faith that leaves out the expansive work of the Holy Spirit, which has no borders or boundaries, and which defies our human attempts to regulate and restrict the Spirit’s movement in the church, in the world, and in our very lives.

I believe that one of purposes of worship is to open us up and take us into the regions of the human heart, the vast heartland of our lives. I want to take us on a journey today. To trace the movement of the soul in our worship. The ways in which God meets us and moves us and brings us to a place of thanksgiving.

The Holy Eucharist, our principal act of worship, has two parts: the Word of God and the Holy Communion. It is the purpose of the Word of God to move us to the Holy Communion. How does the liturgy do that?

Go into this or any Episcopal church on any Sunday and you’ll see the congregation stand, sit and kneel. It looks like an exercise class at the Y! Stand, sit and kneel. (Visitors new to this tradition may have a hard time keeping up, and feel uncomfortable, like it was their first time at a yoga session or spin class.)

We sit to listen for the lesson from scripture, the sermon, or a song sung by the choir. We stand to praise to God in song, for the proclamation of the Gospel, and to recite the Creed. We bow our heads and bend our knees to acknowledge our need of God if we are to worship God; and so we pray: May the words of our mouths and the thoughts of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord. Cleanse us and then fill us. Send your Holy Spirit to inspire us, breathe new life into us. As we pray elsewhere in the prayer book: So draw our hearts to thee, so guide our minds, so fill our imaginations, so control our wills, that we may be wholly thine, utterly dedicated unto thee; and then use us, we pray thee, as thou wilt, and always to thy glory and the welfare of thy people.

I need to acknowledge that, like a workout at the Y, or a course of physical therapy, the Word of God can be challenging. At times it might make us uncomfortable (in the same way that physical exercise might push us). We will be challenged and even made uncomfortable as our understanding of God’s ways are enlarged and we are stretched. But I also need to trust that God’s saving purpose is to build us up as the Body of Christ. As they say at the gym: no pain, no gain.

When we break and share the Word of God, we are enlarged and strengthened to go forward to the Altar for the Holy Communion. Word and Spirit move us to the Eucharistic table, the family table of the people of God. The tide is irresistible, we go together, with outstretched hands to receive the grace, which our Lord so deeply desires to give to us, children of our heavenly parent. It is the fulfillment of our prayers: Give me Jesus. And Jesus gives himself to us, filling us with his love.

Today our worship is a celebration of the Holy Eucharist. “Eucharist” means thanksgiving. The prayer we pray at the altar is called the Great Thanksgiving. When we gather around the altar it is for the purpose of giving God thanks for the great gift of Jesus.

Worship leads us to God and brings us to express our gratitude for all the ways God has blessed us. Worship leads us to gratitude.

Thomas Merton wrote: “To be grateful is to recognize the love of God in everything He has given us—and He has given us everything. Every breath we draw is a gift of His love, every moment of existence is grace, for it brings with it immense graces from Him. Gratitude therefore takes nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, is constantly awakening to new wonder, and to praise of the goodness of God. For the grateful person knows that God is good, not by hearsay, but by experience. And that is what makes all the difference.”

How about you? What are you thankful for? How has God blessed you?

Since the start of my ministry with you last summer, I have heard so many people share with me their warm feelings for St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, which they called a “special place.” People have used that same phrase repeatedly: “A special place.” In those moments they were expressing to me their gratitude for the life and ministry of this parish. They described to me the many and diverse ways they have been blessed by the ministries of St. Mary’s. They were sharing their hearts. They were expressing their gratitude.

Gratitude is not just something we feel. Gratitude is something we do. We give God thanks for everything … or at least, we try. Our faith encourages us to give thanks for all our blessings, great and small.

Henri Nouwen wrote: “The choice of gratitude rarely comes without some real effort. But each time I make it, the next choice is a little easier, a little freer, a little less self-conscious. Because every gift I acknowledge reveals another and another, until finally even the most normal, obvious, and seemingly mundane event or encounter proves to be filled with grace.”

Let’s go back briefly to the gospel text for today. Jesus’ disciples complained that an outsider was doing deeds of power, even casting out demons, in the name of Christ. I wonder whether their grievance is an instance of ingratitude, a failure to see the many and great blessings that come from the person and work of Christ. The Lord works in mysterious ways. Will we see him in all his redeeming work?

C.S. Lewis spoke of his conversion to Christian faith—he described himself as the least-likely candidate for conversion—as the baptism of his imagination, and he wrote of Christ as the true light by which we see all things. Christ shows us our blessings.

The Book of Common Prayer is a treasury of prayers and thanksgiving, including this General Thanksgiving:

Accept, O Lord, our thanks and praise for all that you have done for us. We thank you for the splendor of the whole creation, for the beauty of this world, for the wonder of life, and for the mystery of love.

We thank you for the blessing of family and friends, and for the loving care which surrounds us on every side.

We thank you for setting us at tasks which demand our best efforts, and for leading us to accomplishments which satisfy and delight us.

We thank you also for those disappointments and failures that lead us to acknowledge our dependence on you alone.

Above all, we thank you for your Son Jesus Christ; for the truth of his Word and the example of his life; for his steadfast obedience, by which he overcame temptation; for his dying, through which he overcame death; and for his rising to life again, in which we are raised to the life of your kingdom.

Grant us the gift of your Spirit, that we may know him and make him known; and through him, at all times and in all places, may give thanks to you in all things.

I will conclude by quoting the medieval mystic Meister Eckhart: “If the only prayer you say in your entire life is ‘thank you,’ it will be enough.”

Thanks be to God. Amen.

The Rev. Gregory Bezilla