View from my childhood home
Rev. Molly F. James, PhD
Christ Church Cathedral, Hartford, CT
October 29, 2017
Proper 25A, Deuteronomy 34:1-12, Psalm 90, 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8, Matthew 22:34-46
May God’s Word be spoken. May God’s Word be heard. May that point us to the living Word who is Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
My mom spent her whole professional career as a teacher. She started her career teaching math to elementary students and ended it teaching writing and literature to high schoolers. In between, and for much of my childhood, she spent it teaching adults how to build their own houses. She and my dad built the house I grew up in, and then she joined the faculty of that school. They hired her because she has gifts for teaching and because she has an undergraduate degree in history. They wanted a teacher whose professional training was not as an architect or an engineer or a carpenter. The mission of the school was to show people that anyone could take the three week course and learn to build their own house; it did not require any previous training. My mom taught Heat, Climate, and Foundations. In one particular session, she had a student who was a kind and thoughtful older gentleman who asked insightful questions during her lecture on the varieties of ways one could heat a house and what were the most efficient options for various locations. After the lecture he came up to chat with my mother. It turned out he had a PhD in Thermodynamics and was a professor at an Ivy League University. He had spent decades studying and teaching. He was far more qualified to give the lecture my mother had just offered. He could have hijacked her class or he could have spent all of the lunch break telling my mother what she did wrong. He did neither of those things. Instead, he complimented her on how accessible she made the material and offered a few polite suggestions on things that might be helpful to consider for future lectures.
My mom and I have talked often about that thermodynamics professor and what a wonderful example he set of humility. He was by far the expert in the room that day, but he did not need to announce that to the class. He didn’t ask those “questions” that were really just an opportunity for him to show the class how much he knew. That professor understood a very important truth: it wasn’t about him.
I thought of this story again this week as I reflected on our readings for today. Our readings also remind us of that all important truth: it is not about us. It is about God. It is about loving our neighbor. These are truths that Moses and Paul understood well. Poor Moses. He spends all that time leading the Israelites through the wilderness, hearing them complain about how life was better in Egypt, trying to help them and get them to understand God’s desires for them. He gets to lead them to the Promised Land. He even gets to see the Land in all its glory and beauty. But he does not get to go to it. God tells Moses, “I have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not cross over there.” Now, we can imagine that Moses might have wanted to rant and rave about that. How unfair! He spent all that time and energy getting the people to this point, and he does not even get the reward of even a day in the Promised Land. We could easily construct a whole monologue here, but Moses doesn’t say any of that. Because Moses knows that it is not about him. Moses is a faithful servant of God. He understands that it is not about his own desires or his own glory. It is about God. It is about the people of Israel. Moses’ mission in life was not to achieve personal greatness, it was to give glory to God and care for the people.
And Paul knows this truth too. He tells the people in Thessalonica, “So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us.” Paul is willing to give of his very self for the people. He fully understands that living a faithful life means taking your ego out of the equation. It means letting go of our own desires for personal glory. It means seeking the good of the whole community above all. As our Gospel today reminds us, we are called to love God and to love our neighbors as ourselves. There is the key. We are called to LOVE.
If love is our motivation then we cannot be solely focused on ourselves. Love requires relationship and giving of oneself.
We are called by God to lives of generosity. We are called to lives that are holy. We are called to live lives that point to God, because as Moses, Paul, and that thermodynamics professor knew, it is not about us. It is about God. It is about living lives that are grace filled and humble.
I trust that each of you have stories like my mom’s, stories of someone who has inspired you by the humble and loving way they have lived their lives. I hope you will share these stories with each other, and whenever possible, tell the person who inspires you too! The world can always use more stories that inspire us to live more generously.
I hope each of us will keep these stories of grace and humility in our minds as we go about our daily lives. In this stewardship season we, the Cathedral community, are called to reflect on how we can live more generous lives. How can we be more generous with our time, with our hearts and with the material wealth with which we have been so richly blessed? Because, after all, it is not about us. It is about God. It is about loving our neighbor. It is about being generous so that our neighbors can thrive.
May each of us find enumerable ways in the coming days and weeks to live more generous lives. And may we draw daily on the depths of God’s love and grace, so that we can be a people of love and generosity in the world.
AMEN.
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