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 1st 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….
