by the Rev. Dr. Craig Lemming, Associate Rector
Click here to watch the sermon recording on YouTube.
Let us pray: Come, Holy Spirit, and fill our hearts with the fire of Christ’s love. Amen.
I am so grateful for the generosity of Spirit in this community of faith. We’ve been celebrating Disability Pride month with a series of powerful E-Vangelist reflections, newly composed Prayers of the People, viewing and discussing the documentary film Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution, and offering sermons and other spiritual resources to renew our commitment to welcoming all people into this community of faith. And thanks to the Rev’d Dr. Daniel Handschy, we’ve been learning about our ever-ancient and ever-new Eucharistic Theology that knits us in kinship with God and all of our neighbors. These gifts are not to be squandered. Despite the profound despair plaguing this country, I find hope in this community of faith. By tethering our hearts and minds to the love of Christ in worship, study, and service, seeds of hope take deep root and grow in the soil of our innermost parts.
Now, before I’m accused of romanticizing St. John’s, I think we are also self-aware enough to acknowledge our imperfections. One of the many gifts of being in beloved community is helping one another to recognize and to take responsibility for our shortcomings. As Jesus teaches in today’s Gospel, our wheat grows up alongside our weeds. We need the Holy Spirit and one other to discern the difference.
Today’s sermon is about how encountering God’s Love in Word and Sacrament forms us as gardeners of hope. Through seasons of despair, gardeners of hope help each other gather in good spiritual wheat; unafraid to also help each other bundle up our weeds. Dwelling in the Holy Scriptures, studying God’s wisdom, and practicing our tradition of loving and serving God and our neighbors, cultivates the spiritual wheat of hope while the fire of Christ’s love burns away the weeds we bind up together. St. Paul proclaims,
We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.
The inner, spiritual work of growing the Spirit’s fruit of hope while she burns away the weeds of despair takes place in our deepest soul spaces. This spiritual work is hidden deep within us and we do not immediately perceive wheat being harvested nor do we see weeds burning away. Spiritual hope is harvested unseen after many seasons of patiently, gently, and consistently caring for our innermost parts. Parts that need constant gardening. How do we do this inner, spiritual work when we cannot immediately identify our wheat or our weeds?
Dr. Richard Schwartz’s book, No Bad Parts outlines the Internal Family Systems therapeutic model. Schwartz teaches that our minds consist of multiple “parts” — Managers: our proactive protectors; Exiles: our wounded inner children; and Firefighters: our reactive protectors. None of these parts are inherently bad. Healing occurs when we stop fighting against these inner Mangers, Exiles, and Firefighters and allow our compassionate core “Self” to embrace them, unburden them, and guide them.
During this Disability Pride Month, I have been working with my inner ableist parts. When I was a teenager, the Jesuits at St. George’s College required all students to complete a month-long service project before returning for our final two years of high school. I was assigned to serve full time at St. Giles School for disabled youth. My dear uncle Neil was the headmaster at St. Giles. I marveled at how unafraid my uncle was in caring for the students and engaging them with grace, humor, and no-nonsense discipline. Uncle Neil held each student accountable to the high standards that the students set for themselves to achieve. Even though I completed my service project, I remember how terrified I was of saying or doing the wrong thing. Even though I loved learning how to serve the disabled youth, especially a brilliant blind student named Aidan who taught me how to read and type in braille, I was afraid of offending or unintentionally harming them. Even though Uncle Neil and Aidan encouraged me as I did my imperfect best to serve the disabled students, my inner “ableist part” was busy managing, exiling, and firefighting. Ableist parts grew like weeds alongside the good spiritual wheat that flourished in my companionship with the disabled. Now, decades after I served at St. Giles, honoring Disability Pride Month at St. John’s is helping me revisit my inner ableist parts, still burdened by ignorance and fear of offending people who are visibly and invisibly disabled. I am grateful for Dr. Richard Schwartz’s guidance. He writes,
going to war against a part usually strengthens it. When you exile it and pretend it’s not there, usually you’re just doing it to feel better about yourself, making it much harder to unburden it and counter the potential harm it might do […] We all have parts we don’t want to admit to, even to ourselves… [those parts] deserve to receive our guidance and love, rather than our scorn, shame, and abandonment.
My inner 16-year-old is grateful that St. John’s is a place of grace. We are doing our imperfect best to be better at loving God and loving our disabled neighbors as ourselves. As we learn God’s way of Love, we are all students together. Hidden wheat and weeds grow in each of us. The Holy Spirit is the only expert gardener here. As our Eucharistic Liturgy incarnates Christ’s kinship with one another and with God, the Holy Spirit strengthens us to gently and consistently do inner spiritual gardening. Today’s First Lesson reminds us: God cares for all people. God’s strength is the source of justice. God judges all of us with mildness. God teaches us that being just means being kind to ourselves and to others. God fills us with good hope because God gives us the gift of reconciliation. May we take responsibility for our wheat and our weeds. May our inner managers, exiles, and firefighters be unburdened by God’s grace. In celebrating Christ’s love in Word and Sacrament, may we be gardeners of hope with people of all abilities and disabilities. Amen.
