{"id":2262,"date":"2019-08-25T11:00:04","date_gmt":"2019-08-25T15:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=2262"},"modified":"2019-09-08T13:09:29","modified_gmt":"2019-09-08T17:09:29","slug":"weight-of-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2019\/08\/25\/weight-of-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Weight of the World"},"content":{"rendered":"

Click here to hear the full service<\/a><\/p>\n

Luke 13:10-17<\/a><\/p>\n

Click here to hear the sermon only<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Let there be peace among us and let us not be part of our own or another\u2019s oppression.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was a perfect late fall day.\u00a0 You know one of those days where the warmth of the sun on your face and the light jacket that you are wearing has everyone remarking to each other that it looks like a mild New England winter may be in the making.\u00a0 \u201cIf it could feel like this in February, that would be wonderful\u201d. Nodding in agreement with the full knowledge that New England winters never work like this.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I had been ordained to the priesthood two months prior and was serving as an assistant priest in a parish west of Boston, the beginning of the church year was in high gear.\u00a0 Parish activities were fully underway, church school, bible study, pastoral response ministry, cooking lunch for those on the margins, the resale shop to name a few of the goings on.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

That day I had just returned from visiting Ellen one of our homebound parishioners.\u00a0 While her body didn\u2019t allow her to attend Sunday worship, her mind was sharp, and her quick wit was always provided a delightful visit<\/span><\/p>\n

I walked into the office and our parish administrator said \u201cRob called and said his son was gone and is sobbing uncontrollably\u201d.\u00a0 \u201cHe want either you or the rector\u201d to call him immediately. I must note here due to the sensitivity nature of the story, I am using pseudonyms.\u00a0 Rob\u2019s and his family were a fixture in the town. His wife was his high-school sweetheart, his sons were smart, popular, and handsome and played a lot of sports. I called and said \u201cHi Rob, M said to call you\u201d.\u00a0 Rob replied: \u201cmy son is gone, my son is gone\u201d still sobbing uncontrollably. I said: \u201cI am on my way to your house right now\u201d. On my way out the door the rector was getting out of his car having run out to meet with someone and grab a sandwich.\u00a0 I said \u201chand me your sandwich, Rob just called and said his son is gone, I was on my way to the house but feel it is better if you go\u201d. \u201cI\u2019ll stay here and hold space\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

The rector called me a little while later from Rob\u2019s house and said that Rob\u2019s son who was a freshman in college had taken his own life.\u00a0 It hit all of us like a brick wall. Rob\u2019s wife and his mother were both in shock. The entire town was in shock. News travels fast in a small town.\u00a0 Many of our youth group members and their friends came to the church and wept openly. Many parents came to the church and wept openly and held their children close.\u00a0 Many people we had never meet came to the church as a place of solace.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Later that evening I was sitting in my office which overlooked the side street where the church was located\u00a0 an saw three police cars and an ambulance pull up and run into a house three doors up. I only saw flashlights scanning a corner room when more students came into my office.\u00a0 We found out the next day another young person had taken their life. In the following weeks there would be additional young people who would take their own lives. The air hung heavy everywhere in the town.\u00a0 Parents were fearful, youth were fearful. The schools partnered with the town and houses of worship to be with each other. To provide support, to hold space, to offer a shoulder or a meal, to provide love. An entire town was weighed down with grief.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know if the expression \u201cwe made it through\u201d is an apt description.\u00a0 However, we were all bent over carrying the weight of the world, the weight of grieving parents, the weight of grieving young people, the weight of an entire town.\u00a0 What I do know is that people in this town and surrounding towns came together, supported each other, cooked for each other, held each other, cried with each other, held space for each other when on some days that was all that was all we could offer.\u00a0 Rob and his family have moved out of the town but is still active in the church and he serves on a foundation for suicide prevention. The school system and houses of worship still work together most recently to address the opioid epidemic among young people.\u00a0 A tragedy brought people together. It is love and an awareness that no one should have to shoulder anything alone that keeps them together.<\/span><\/p>\n

I want us to try something this Sunday.\u00a0 You know they say that when we are tense we tend to hold our shoulders up near our ears.\u00a0 So try this, hold your shoulders up to your ears in a tense position. Then try to move your head to the left, now to the right.\u00a0 It\u2019s hard right? Now try and move your body, to the left, to the right. It\u2019s hard. Now let go with an exhale.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is an expression \u201che \/ she looks like they are carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders.\u201d What we just did was an example of that statement.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When you are carrying the weight of the world it is hard to move.<\/span><\/p>\n

We don\u2019t know what weight the bent over woman was carrying: perhaps she was the victim of some sort of oppression, perhaps her binary pronoun did not match their non-binary authenticity, perhaps she was the victim of domestic abuse.\u00a0 If it wasn\u2019t for the fact she was bent over she would just have been another woman going on with her day to day activities.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But Jesus noticed that she was carrying the weight of the world and had been for so long that people assumed that she had an infirmity.\u00a0 But Jesus sees her suffering and he heals her on the Sabbath. Notice here that Jesus approaches the woman. Not the usual healing stores of the infirmed approaching Jesus for healing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In the second half of the Gospel the woman recedes from the narrative and we move into Jesus\u2019 encounter with the leader of the synagogue. It\u2019s not the healing that concerns the leader of the synagogue, it\u2019s that Jesus heals on the Sabbath day.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Sabbath was meant to be a complete day of rest as God had rested on the 7<\/span>th<\/span> day.\u00a0 No work was to be done; no farming, no fishing, no shopping, no cooking, no healing.\u00a0 The leader was caught up in the when\u2019s and the where\u2019s of the letter of the law by pointing out that this was not the day.\u00a0 Pick another day to heal. But Jesus saw the same law much differently. The law did not trump God\u2019s action when it came to God\u2019s children especially this child of God, the daughter of Abraham.\u00a0 From where Jesus stood, what better way to honor the Sabbath than by setting a captive free?<\/span><\/p>\n

This is why he came after all.\u00a0 Early on in Luke\u2019s Gospel Jesus made know his work in the world as he read the words of Isiah:<\/span><\/p>\n

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.\u00a0 He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord\u2019s favor. Luke 4:18-19.\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

The invitation that Jesus gave the woman who was carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders is the same invitation he extends to us today.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jesus says: Stand up!\u00a0 Breathe and let your shoulders down with whatever the weight of the world that you are bearing.<\/span><\/p>\n

He invites us to stand up and be transformed, and to be released from the things that leave us bent over, feeling low and less than, to be released from whatever bondage messes with our self-worth and our self-esteem.\u00a0 We are invited to come from out of the shadows and valleys, and into the light of God\u2019s amazing and healing love.<\/span><\/p>\n

So many times we try to put our best foot forward and never let on how burdened we may really feel.\u00a0 Some of us come into a place of worship with our brokenness and we feel that if we keep a smile on our faces and pretend that everything is alright no one will ever know the weight that we are facing.\u00a0 Once inside places where we think we are safe we still are unable to look up and see the world around us. We may feel alone or forgotten. We may struggle to see and remember that God is present. But like the woman who stood tall in the synagogue that day, we are the children of a loving and caring God.\u00a0 God\u2019s grace working among us and through us helps us to stand up straight.<\/span><\/p>\n

This week in a news release from the Public Affairs Office of the Episcopal Church the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, The Rt. Rev. Michael Curry and the Episcopal Bishop of the Diocese of Southern Virginia, The Rt. Rev. James B. Magness have invited Episcopal Churches to take part in a national action to remember and honor the first enslaved Africans who landed in English North America this week in 1619.\u00a0 The Bishops have asked that Episcopal churches toll their bells for on minute today at 3:00 pm Eastern Time.<\/span><\/p>\n

To quote Bishop Curry \u201cI\u2019m inviting us as The Episcopal Church to join in this commemoration as part of our continued work or racial healing and reconciliation.\u00a0 At 3:00 pm we can join together with people of other Christian faiths and people of all faiths to remember those who came as enslaved, who came to a country that one day would proclaim liberty. And so we remember them and pray for a new future for us all.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Bishop Magness in his response says \u201c The 2019 commemoration of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans to North America is for me a highly personal occasion.\u00a0 As a descendent of slaveholders, and as a white male who came of age in the racially polarized south during the 1950\u2019s and 1960\u2019s, I am painfully aware of my own complicity in furthering and perpetuating the subjugation of my African American brothers and sisters.\u00a0 At a time when the racial divide in this country seems to be growing rather than diminishing, we are in dire need of a moment, an event when we can stop and take stock of our responsibilities to bring races together, perhaps in a new manner that truly is an embrace of what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Rt. Rev. Susan Goff, bishop suffragan of the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia further notes \u201cThe first African people were brought to this continent in harrowing and dehumanizing circumstances.\u00a0 As we remember the 400<\/span>th<\/span> anniversary of their survival, I pray that we will do the hard work of reconciliation that God longs for us to do.\u201d \u201cGod forgive us. God give us courage and resolve. And God bless us.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

On the cover of the The New York Times Magazine Section of August 16<\/span>th <\/span>there is a grey hued photo of water and the caption below reads \u201cIn August of 1619, a ship appeared on this horizon, near Point Comfort, a coastal port in the British colony of Virginia.\u00a0 It carried more than 20 enslaved Africans, who were sold to the colonists. American was not yet America, but this was the moment it began. No aspect of the country that would be formed here has been untouched by the 250 years of slavery that followed.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The 1619 Project, a major initiative from The New York Times was born to not only chronicle that day but to place the consequences of slavery at the center of a larger story that we tell ourselves about where we are as a country.\u00a0 You can find the entire article and supporting and educational material on The New York Times website.<\/span><\/p>\n

My sisters and brothers, I want to tell you: there is no day, week, hour or moment that the God who formed and created us does not see our plight or hear our cries.\u00a0 Our God energizes us and gives us hope no matter what trail, burden, or injustice we might face. And God gives us one another to share in that hope.<\/span><\/p>\n

I would like to stand before you and preach that we are beyond being bent over carrying the weight of the world but we all are aware that recently we have witnessed firsthand the actions of the weight that is being pressed down on innocent children, the weight being pressed down on those who feel that they are not heard, the weight of families whose loved ones have died as a result of guns violence.\u00a0 We are never in a position in God\u2019s eyes to oppress another, belittle another, scare or gaslight another or to act like another is less than. That thought that it doesn\u2019t happen here, it won\u2019t happen here, it doesn\u2019t apply to me disconnects us from the love of God and from our neighbor.<\/span><\/p>\n

Like so many prophets known and unknown, past and present, like Jesus himself, we have been put on this earth so that we might find a way to ease one another\u2019s pain and release from bondage and set them free, to raise up people and children who will stand tall knowing that they are precious children of God and worthy to share in God\u2019s love.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was a Sabbath day when the bent over woman was told to stand and stand she did and she praised God.<\/span><\/p>\n

With God\u2019s help, any day is a good day to help others to stand.\u00a0 Amen.<\/span><\/p>\n

– The Reverend Dr. Karen Coleman<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Click here to hear the full service Luke 13:10-17 Click here to hear the sermon only   Let there be peace among us and let us not be part of our own or another\u2019s oppression. It was a perfect late fall day.\u00a0 You know one of those days where the warmth of the sun on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2679,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[26],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2262"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2679"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2262"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2262\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2282,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2262\/revisions\/2282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}