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The Third Sunday After Pentecost
O God, who hast taught us to keep all thy commandments by loving thee and our neighbor: Grant us the grace of thy Holy Spirit, that we may be devoted to thee with our whole heart, and united to one another with pure affection; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (Proper 9)
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The Third Sunday After Pentecost
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Scripture citation(s): Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30
A Sermon by
Fr. Mead
on
Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30
✛
Wisdom's Children
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Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Nearly forty years ago when I was a brand new priest working on a graduate thesis in Oxford, England, I was given a summer assignment in the parish where my wife and I lived in the attic of the Parish Priest’s house. He was Fr. Anthony Fletcher, now a retired honorary assistant for Saint Thomas. The assignment was to knock on every door on the streets of several sections of the parish and introduce the inhabitants to their “Church of England church.” Behind those doors were all manner of religious believers and non-believers and people in between. There were even some practicing church members. This kind of thing may seem unthinkable to us, but you could still do those things and be welcome in a neighborhood forty years ago in England – it was, after all, The Established Church of England, the Church of the Nation.
In today’s Gospel, we hear Christ’s description of how, given people’s expectations, the Lord can’t win. John the Baptist is accused of being a crazy and possessed ascetic, and the Son of man is accused of being a glutton, a drunkard, and a consorter with sinners and tax collectors. “But,” he says, “Wisdom is justified of her children.” Who are these children?
They are the “babes” Jesus refers to as he thanks the Father for the spread of the Good News of his Kingdom. While the worldly wise miss the point, the babes, Wisdom’s true children, perceive mercy and life in the Lord, who says, “All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father; and no one knows the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”
And now comes Christ’s great invitation. The words are among the most famous of all: “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
The attendance at Saint Thomas’ services in one year is around 80,000. But in between services, climbing the Fifth Avenue stairs of their own free will in between those services, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, are, conservatively estimated, another 300,000 people. We have spent time studying these nave visitors, and we began an initiative this past January of a nave outreach to them. It is very gentle, not nearly as bold as a knock on a door by the Vicar in England.
We know that many different kinds of spiritual conditions and types climb the stairs and enter the nave, and we also know that they visit for quite different reasons. They tend to fall into categories, and the types we notice we call Wanderers, Lookers, Seekers, Finders, and Keepers.
Perhaps 100,000 of the visitors in a year are Wanderers. Wanderers have no clear desire even to be in a church. They may be looking for a changing table, a place to eat their hot dog, or a restroom. At best they mistake Saint Thomas for a museum. They may click a photo of the reredos because it seems to match something in their guidebook, just like the photo they clicked ten minutes before at Rockefeller Center’s skating rink. They possibly don’t realize Saint Thomas is a functioning church, and they may not know what that means anyway. The closest they might get to spiritual realities isn’t very close: They might ask, “Has anyone famous been married here?”
Lookers could be taken as Wanderers but they aren’t. They’re here for the purpose of seeing the gem that this building is. This is a widely overlapping category. A Bishop or Dean could be a Looker on an occasion. Lookers, the largest number of visitors, may number nearly 200,000, and they may be very knowledgeable church folk or simply tourists. Although they usually go once they’ve achieved their Looker purpose, there is no telling what else has happened.
There are perhaps as many as 20,000 Seekers who visit Saint Thomas in a year. They may not even know they are Seekers, but we are definitely in spiritual country here. Many come back, and back, if they can. Many live or work nearby, but we have no way of knowing unless they meet us and say so. Some repeatedly pick out a place in the church to go and pray, often the Chantry where they find the Sacrament or the central nave where they love the reredos.
Perhaps there are 2,000 Finders. Although there’s no way of knowing how many, really, you can tell they’ve found something here and come back to it. Their presence in the nave, whether we know them or not, is a great joy; for sure, they make Saint Thomas a constant house of prayer for all people. And now for Keepers. Perhaps there are a few dozen every year? Who knows? A lot of them are here right now, a lot more are somewhere else in the vineyard. They have taken the Great Invitation of Christ; they have also undertaken his yoke. These categories can and do co-exist in one person. Yours truly has been, at one time or another, in every one of these visitor categories, as I still am. So are you.
Isn’t this all a joy and glory? The Lord has given the world, the city, and us a great gift here on Fifth Avenue. This is his Church. The mission is his. Let us all pray to be the children of Wisdom, the babes Christ has in view. And let us be welcoming and on the lookout for the other children of God. “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
