This week's sermon

DO THE NEXT THING

          When I was Rector of St. Paul’s in New Haven I became the unlikely good friend of Bob, the Rector of Christ Church, New Haven.

          It was an unlikely friendship since Christ Church was the extremely Anglo-Catholic, “high church” that had smells and bells and chanting and more genuflecting than is good for your knees full of academics from Yale and successful business people and lawyers. St. Paul’s, on the other hand, was a rather low-church full of social activists who would protest most anything at the drop of a hat.

          Nevertheless, Bob and I became good friends.

          The week before he was retiring and moving to Cape Cod, we had a farewell lunch.

          During lunch, Bob told me a remarkable story.

          “For thirty years,” he told me, “I’ve prayed everyday for God to speak to me out loud and in English and tell me what I should do with my ministry.”

          It was an odd prayer, I thought, but I accepted it from Bob.

          Then, after a few bites, he said, “and last week that prayer was answered.”

          I choked on my wine when he said that, and sitting my glass down with trembling hands.

          Then Bob said, “God spoke to me out loud and in English with a slight Southern accent and said, rather annoyed with me, ‘Bob, DO THE NEXT THING!’”

          In today’s extraordinary lesson from 1^st Kings, Elijah is fleeing in terror and makes a long journey, with the help of an angel who feeds him, into the wilderness to Mount Horeb. He’s awakened in his cave and told the Lord would be passing by.

          After a great wind, and earthquake the a rain of fire there comes a sound of ‘sheer silence’, God spoke to him and told him to go home and ‘do the next thing’ of his mission.

          Then, in the Gospel, Jesus is in a Gentile land and frees a man possessed by a ‘legion’ of demons. A ‘legion’ is a large number. Jesus sends them into a herd of pigs who run into the lake and drown.

          Not good for the pigs or their swineherds.

          (Would Jesus had allowed the demons to enter cattle or a flock of ducks? I don’t know. But the Jewish rejection of pork may have played a role. Who knows?)

          Jesus was told by the people of that land that they were afraid of him and he must leave. But Jesus left the healed man who proclaimed his holiness to all the land.

          And Jesus returned to Galilee to DO THE NEXT THING in his ministry.

          That’s what you and I are called to do, beloved. We are called to ‘do the next thing’ in our ministry.

          On this Juneteenth, that means to do our part for racial equality and equal treatment for people of color.

          Just as we must ‘do the next thing’ in proclaiming the Good News to the people of Litchfield and beyond by feeding the hungry, clothing the poor, seeking justice for all and reaching out to all people with love and acceptance.

          We must ‘do the next thing’ in our community and in our world.

          We must proclaim and do the work of the gospel.

          But we must also “BE” the gospel, the good news, to ourselves.

          The next thing is to BE the gospel, my brothers and sisters.

          Be the ‘Good news’—today and always….