Are You Leaving, Too?

Sermon by Pr. Craig Mueller on the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 21 + August 25, 2024.

Why did you leave?

A heartbreaking question. A sentence I read this past week in the novel Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng. Bird is a 12 year-old boy living in an America that runs on scapegoating and fear-mongering. His mother is a Chinese American poet who mysteriously leaves the family when Bird is nine years old. After finding some clues, Bird attempts to find his mother, now living in New York City. After a touching but cautious reunion, he finally asks, why did you leave? The rest of the novel answers that question.

We leave all kinds of things. We leave all kinds of people. We leave all kinds of places. We leave all kinds of institutions. For many reasons. Some selfish. Some life-giving. Some inscrutable.

Why did you leave? Why did you leave the place you grew up or another place you lived a long time? Why did you leave a marriage or a relationship? Why did you leave a job? Why did you leave a church?

Or maybe you were the one left. Like the marriage of someone I know. One day the spouse decides it’s over. Simply leaves. Takes all his stuff. No note. No goodbye.

In today’s gospel, many of Jesus’ disciples decide to leave, to go away. They say to Jesus: the things you are teaching are too hard, too difficult. They blow our minds. You feed five thousand of us with a measly basket of bread and fish. And then you call yourself the bread of life as if we need to eat you to live. And then: that’s what you actually say. If you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Then you have the nerve to ask us the obvious, does this offend you? That’s going too far, Jesus. We’re out of here!

Barbara Reid, a feminist biblical scholar and president of Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, gives a great one-sentence help with this difficult saying. “Just as a mother gives her very flesh and blood to nurture a new life carried within her, and then continues to feed the child from her own body after it is born, so Jesus nourishes with his very self all who are birthed to new life through him.”

Back to leaving. We’re surprised when people leave the church or organized religion. But in the scriptures people leave for all kinds of reasons. Judas betrays Jesus. Peter denies him. At the cross his closest disciples abandon him. Athenians ridicule Paul. John Mark deserts him. And at Paul’s trial, he says that everyone has left him.

It does come down to a choice. Then and now, not everyone stays. Not everyone sticks it out. Not everyone remains faithful.

Leaving Church is a provocative memoir by a famous Episcopal preacher, Barbara Brown Taylor. After twenty years of parish ministry, Taylor decides to leave the church for a career in university teaching. It’s not as if she never darkens the door of a church again, but she feels liberated from some of the petty and divisive aspects of organized religion. She finds God in new and surprising ways.

I had mixed feeling when I read the poignant book, Leaving Church. Not that I haven’t heard and read hundreds of stories about people wounded, or perplexed, or bored by the church. It just made me sad.

Can you say why you stay? Why you stay in the church? One writer answers this way. “Because the hopes, hungers, losses, and loves that have brought people to their knees for two millennia are still alive and well. Whether we use religious language to describe it or not, we are starving for coherence, for awe, for connection, for meaning. We are still hungry for spaces, rituals, and rhythms that will help us beat despair and recover wonder. We need questions worth pondering and truths worth trusting. We still need containers spacious enough to hold our pain.” (Debie Thomas)

To be sure, there are reasons to leave. Whether we’re talking relationships or religion. When it is abusive. When all the life is drained out of it. When there is no will or no way forward.

But in many cases, there are reasons to stay. It’s the Benedictine value of stability. To stay put. To love the one you’re with. To love the place you are. To learn from what presents itself. To be in it for the long haul. Not turning away when the going gets rough.

When some disciples have had enough and are leaving, Jesus asks a good question for all of us: are you leaving, too?

Peter bursts forth: Lord, to whom shall we go? Your very words are life-giving.

For some of us, that is how we feel. Where else would we go? To whom would we go? To what would we give our lives? Our faith, our church, our God have nourished us along the way. Filled us with hope when cynical. Challenged us when complacent. And calmed us when anxious.

But whether we choose Jesus, whether we choose the church, whether we choose religion, the words of Joshua in our first reading are apropos. Choose this day whom you will serve. Choose a path that moves you to more than yourself. Choose a way that opens your heart to wonder and gratitude. Choose some kind of practice that both challenges and comforts.

Maybe with Joshua, we will exclaim: as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord. Maybe with the author of Ephesians, we will put on the armor of God and speak out boldly against all forms of evil, all kinds of injustice, all manifestations of hatred, war, and abuse.

Whether you leave or stay, it does come down to choice. But stop! Let’s look at choice differently! If there is anything that is stable. If there is anything you can trust in these uncertain times. If there is anything unchanging, is it the gospel. It is the good news that in Christ, God will never leave you. Never abandon you. Chooses you. Even when you are unfaithful. Even when you leave or turn away. Even when you make regrettable decisions. Even you turn to things that are not life giving.

At this table Christ feeds you with his very life. Sustains you with food and drink. Nourishes body and soul. And fills you with faith, to join Peter in saying: Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.