Access

Sermon by Mother Daphne Cody on the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost + Sunday, February 16, 2025.

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Today's gospel is about access. Access to Jesus. Who has it, and who doesn’t have it. Access is a currency we deal in all the time, consciously or unconsciously. Consciously is when we pay extra at an Airbnb to get beach access. Unconscious examples include things like a zip code, an education level, or a network of friends. These types of things give us access to all sorts of things we take for granted: libraries, parks, social stability, and information.

People with privilege often assume they have access to anything or anything they want (I’m thinking of certain individuals during the last several weeks in the White House).

Access is tricky. A week ago, I watched the Super Bowl halftime show’s Kendrick Lamar performance. I was impressed with the skill and artistry of it. I for sure appreciated it - I did feel a little old, maybe. I love rap music, but those words were coming quite fast for me, especially on a Sunday evening after a day of pastor responsibilities. I just let those thousands of words wash over me and then I let it go.

It wasn’t until Monday that I saw commentary everywhere about Kendrick Lamar’s political brilliance, his creative expression of the Black American experience. It took other people telling me so, but I realized on Monday that I was a white person who only kind of half understood what was going on in that Kendrick Lamar performance. I'm so used to having access to the art and entertainment I consume. With this, I now see, I only had partial access.

What about access to Jesus? Can you pay for it? How in fact does one get access to the grace and salvation Jesus offers? I'm Episcopalian now, but in my youth I went to church with my family in an all-white big suburban Methodist Church in Northeast Ohio. I loved church, and I felt very close to Jesus there. We children were told, "Be quiet, be respectful, don't run! We are in God's house."

In my suburban neighborhood, on a block populated with boys, including my brother, there was only one other girl to play with, Kathy Drescher from across the street. Kathy and I were in the same grade at school and got along great. Not ever best friends at school, we were constant playmate-summertime friends.

Kathy was Lutheran. I learned from her by the time we were six or seven that her church was ALSO God's house. She told me so. We argued about that for a little bit but then decided God probably had two houses. It was clear to me that the Lutherans had the same access to God as I did. Kathy and I reasoned back then that God was probably somehow both Methodist and Lutheran. I realized much later, in my twenties, that God is actually . . . Episcopalian.

Let’s look at our scripture, shall we?

In this point of Luke’s telling of his gospel, Jesus is just at the beginning. He has just named his start-up team and now, here he is, preaching the same sermon he just preached unsuccessfully at the synagogue back home: blest are the poor, woe to the rich, etc. etc. Later Jesus will tell parables about this same leveling economic justice, this topsy-turvy kingdom of God that is his Good News.

It’s the same message — told in so many different ways — where the last shall be first and the first shall be last.

So here we are. We might be able to imagine this day Luke writes about: Jesus comes out among the crowds on this level place. Interesting that he picked a level place to emphasize his point.

In this scene, I imagine the bewildered new disciples standing there, stunned by the sea of human need around them People have brought their sick and their dying ones to Jesus. Some probably look ravaged, or disfigured, or sallow. The people who have come have no other healthcare options. Even more difficult to see are the ones troubled with unclean spirits. Untreated mental illnesses among the crowd probably make the situation even harder for the new team to take in.

I assume that these disciples are good, tenderhearted people overwhelmed by what they are witnessing, seeing, smelling, and hearing, as these need peasants press in around them.

But now zoom out: Look at the others there that day too. Jesus has most likely been monitored all along by those who don’t like his message. You bet community leaders, religious leaders, and guardians of the establishment are keeping an eye on what is going on. Luke has already told us that the authorities are growing concerned about the crowds gathering around Jesus, so you can picture this other “outer” group watching suspiciously from the sidelines, keeping firm hands on their wallets. If you were in that scene, where would you be?

Blest are you who are poor, for yours is the Kingdom of God. Blest are you who are hungry, for you will be filled. Blessed are you when people exclude you, revile you. Jesus further says I’m sorry for the rich, for you have received your consolation. I’m sorry for you who are full now, for you will be hungry. I’m sorry for you who are powerful now, et cetera.

On the level place that day, we see the poor and sick and needy, pressed close to Jesus, touching him, feeling his power, healing, and love. We see the affluent and self-sufficient and powerful, unaware of their need, staying outside and distant from Jesus, aloof and suspicious, disconnected from others, gripping tightly to their belongings. Who is blessed here? Who is to be pitied? Where are we in this scene?

It very well might be that you place yourself among the sick and the suffering, the ones desperate to touch Jesus. If that is you, blessed are you, because Jesus came for you. you are probably among the closest ones to God, held close, held fast, beloved.

You instead might have recognized yourself out on the margins, with no desire to wade in among the crowd of mixed up, lost, and ripe-smelling people. You might see yourself as fitting the description of one of the “woes -” rich, or comfortable, or satisfied, or held in high regard in town, and so you placed yourself there.

But let me propose that because we are here at church today, that you and I are in a third role in this scene. The role of the disciples.

For whatever reason we were invited to be here, or called to be here in this church at this service on this day. Friends of Jesus, as disciples we have been given access to the God who blessed the whole creation into being, and we have been given access to people we may not ever otherwise meet: those we dwell in the inner circle of God’s care. Jesus’s main mission in the world, especially according to Luke, was to provide access to God’s healing, God’s mercy, and God’s love and friendship to people who lacked access.

Many decades ago, my Lutheran playmate Kathy and I puzzled over the differences between our churches. There were very few differences. It seemed to me the Lutherans had a stronger sense of identity as Lutherans. It seemed to me they had better hymns. I for sure wished the Methodists had communion as often as the Lutherans.

Kathy and I thought it was dumb that we had separate churches, and our parents could not explain why, not to our satisfaction. We didn’t know at the time that leaders among the Lutherans and Episcopalians were working hard to find common ground. It took until I was a mom to my own children that both our churches agreed to a plan for Common Mission. The differences were important, and they needed to be addressed seriously, of course, but the issues between the churches would have been difficult to explain to little Kathy and to little me. They would’ve been difficult to explain, I believe, to Jesus.

Access to the healing grace of God revealed in Jesus is drawn wider when we work together publicly and loudly. Here in Lakeview, that is just as important now as it ever was. When I arrived here in Lakeview in late 2023, Pastor Craig and I hit it off right away, and he and I figured that our collegial relationship is as good a place to start as any. We pray that God will bless our work to expand access to God’s grace. Expanding access to all those on the edges who are on the outside looking in, those suspicious of faith, those too busy to care, those isolated in their ceratinty, those lost in their illusions of self-sufficient success..

Come in here, to where Jesus is, in the crowd, where it’s difficult. Wade in, and feel something again.