Sermon by the Rev. Matthew Hoxsie Mead

Sermon by the Rev. Matthew Hoxsie Mead

September 17, 2017: Proper 19A: Christ Church Pelham

This past summer our Seminarian Michael Kurth worked in a hospital as a chaplain-in-training. The program he was in is called Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE), and it is required for ordination. I did my CPE way back in 2003. A good amount of CPE is practical training: learning some of the dos and do nots of making hospital visits.

Each day is divided into two parts. Part of the day is spent doing rounds, checking in with scores of patients on the floors each chaplain is assigned. Some visits are a few moments and a prayer. Others are longer stays with deeper conversations.

The other part of the day is spent working with the other chaplains-in-training, learning from each other and sharing within appropriate bounds of confidentiality. You learn a lot about yourself, you learn a lot of things that are best practices in pastoral care, and occasionally you hear a horror story and you file it away as something you need to make sure never happens again.

One such horror story involved one of our chaplains-in-training who was from a fundamentalist background. It turned out that he told family members of a man who was dying that the illness was because the he and they were not faithful enough.

Sometimes you hear about the Prosperity Gospel. Proponents of the Prosperity Gospel preach that if you pray enough and have enough faith in Jesus, you will prosper, you will be healthy, and you will be successful. If you don’t… well usually they don’t preach that side of it in public, but this is what it looks like in the real world.

This chaplain unleashed the heresy and pain that is and accompaniesFundamentalism and the Prosperity Gospel on people who were suffering, and the only good that came out of it is that he was removed from the program and banished from the hospital.

But wait – there was more! We discovered that he was also trying to convert patients to his particular branch of Christianity.

Thisis also linked with the Prosperity Gospel. In his mind, true faith would bring about miraculous health. It meant that he spent a part of every visit to patients who were Jews, Muslims, Atheists, Buddhists, Catholics, Lutherans, Episcopalians, etc., trying to covert them.

When he failed – and he always failed – he would take his shoe from his foot, hold it up, and shake the dust off as he left the room. A reference, he explained was to Matthew 10:14 “If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town.”

Again, he was removed from the program and banished from the hospital.

The CPE program – like all clinical training – puts trainees into real world situations and sometimes the trainees fail. In this case, CPE worked because it caught a problem pastor before he could be unleashed as an ordained leader. I don’t know if he was ever ordained. I hope not, but not every denomination has the same checks and standards that the Episcopal Church does.

I tell you this story for two reasons. First, pastoral care is a serious thing. Deacon Katie and I make visits on behalf of the church to parishioners in the hospital and to their homes. We are both trained and ordained for this. Our Seminarian Michael Kurth is trained, and he will eventually be ordained.

Anyone can make a visit to a hospital to a parishioner or a friend, and I strongly encourage you to go – visits help. But when you go, observe a few norms. Don’t stay too long. Don’t try to offer medical or psychiatric advice. Don’t pry. Don’t break confidences. Never blame the illness on the person or a lack of faith.

Second, there are many “Christians” who specialize in interpreting the Scriptures in ways that are abusive – I put “Christian” in quotes because I’m not convinced these people are really following Jesus Christ.

Today’s Old Testament Passage is about the Exodus. Every time there is a major hurricane some awful “Christian” with an oversized platform blames the storm on some group of people. I googled “Hurricane Harvey Christian” and the second result was titled “Gay people are to blame for Hurricane Harvey, Christian leaders say”.

Article after article about “Christians”, writing, preaching, broadcasting on TV or radio, explaining how this disaster is God’s revenge on a segment of the population.

It is very bad theology, it is not Christian, and it is wrong. It stands in contrast to Jesus’ command that we are called to love one another as he loves us. It stands in sharp contrast to our passage from Paul today who asks “Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister? Or you, why do you despise your brother or sister? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God.”

Our Gospel today is the passage about forgiveness par-excellence. “Peter came and said to Jesus, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.””

It is true that we are called forgive others. It is also true that we are called to renounce evil, and the entire chapter and context that this passage appears in makes that quite clear.

That said, this particular passage on forgiveness is another example of a text that is interpreted far too often by false teachers to allow evil deeds to be left alone to fester in the darkness. I Googled “Matthew 18 abuse”. It resulted in 14 million articles.

Time after time when Christian leaders are caught sexually abusing someone, in an affair, embezzling money, lying, or committing any number or immoral acts or crimes, someone quotes this verse. We are called to forgive, and our baptismal covenant and the Scriptures require that we seek out justice. We are called to forgive, but we are not called to be led by wolves who are pretending to be shepherds.

I could go on and on, but I think you probably get the point. Being a Christian is about following Jesus, loving one another with the same self-sacrificial love that he loved us with, rejecting evil,and embracing love. Practice your faith, interpret the Scriptures, and let your words and actions be colored through a lens of Jesus’ command to love your neighbor. God is Love and he is our Judge, and he has commanded us to love and leave the judging to him.

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