Noah Stansbury

The Third Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 6A)
Matthew 9:35-10:8
All Saints Episcopal Church, Northfield, Minn.

As the gospel reading opens today, we are given a montage of Jesus journeying from town to town doing the things that we imagine Jesus does: preaching, teaching, healing, a few good men trailing in his wake. He tells interesting stories and admonishes his opponents and miraculously heals people with a gentle touch and a serene gaze. He gravely tells us that “the harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few,” and the clouds part and the music swells. It’s all very pious. You can almost hear the hymn:

Come, labor on.
Who dares stand idle on the harvest plain
while all around us waves the golden grain?
And to each servant does the Master say,
“Go work today.”

I used to be a member of a parish where the rector loved this hymn, especially at the end of the service with a big rousing organ accompaniment, and it’s very effective, to be sure. I had a fellow parishioner who was generally a very agreeable and kind person, but every time we sang this he would talk about how much he hated that hymn. “It’s so dour and heavy!” But in my youthful fervor I didn’t understand how you could dislike such inspiring words nearly straight from the pages of scripture. Jesus the all-knowing, all-seeing master and we the humble servants, with a world in need ripe for the saving right outside our doors. There’s a performance review on the line! Who dares stand idle?

Let’s rewind the tape a little, back to the montage. Jesus the itinerant preacher walks from town to town, teaching in the synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and as they encounter this man they feel the geography of their lives shift as old wounds begin the work of mending. And in town after town, village after village: crowds. Small ones, large ones, crowds of people who have heard the rumor of this prophet who leads a community of the blessed: the poor, the meek, the hungry, the mourning, the merciful, the peacemongers. As we go from town to town and village to village with Jesus, we see a picture emerging of a nation adrift, a community beset by division and desolation and a poverty of body and spirit so severe that the entire project of the people of God is in danger of collapse. Who is in charge? Who allowed this to happen? Where is the shepherd? And here Matthew gives us a word we render in English as compassion, but it carries the sense of the stomach clenching with emotion, even grief. Jesus is moved, not with pity or condescension, but with true compassion: an urgent understanding that the situation is dire and a desire to do something about it. The scope of the work is plain and it is overwhelming.

I currently serve the Church as campus minister at the University of Texas in downtown Austin. It’s a sprawling campus that is home to 52,000 students, and our little student center has been perched right on the northern edge of campus for almost 125 years. Episcopalians set the bar for campus ministry pretty low these days, so on my first Sunday there we had 35 students show up for our Sunday evening Eucharist and I was pretty excited. Thirty-five! Who knew such wonders were possible? But as I settled in, I began to worry. To be in campus ministry in 2023 is to try to bring some kind of good news to new adults dealing with the pressure to perform academically, dealing with a keen sense that the world they are inheriting is on fire both metaphorically and literally, dealing with the simple struggle to get the task list done and still be able to afford something to eat. No wonder the mental health crisis is a clear and present danger among college students: “harassed and helpless” is putting it lightly. 52,000 students is a lot, and I’m just one me. The harvest is plentiful, the work is enormous, and the laborers are indeed few.

Jesus understands this; he says as much. He sees the depth of the people’s pain and does not turn away or try to do it all on his own, which are the things I usually do, often to my own embarrassment. But all the same, Jesus does something very human: he asks for help. What he actually does is ask us, his followers, to ask for help. “Ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” In this moment, Jesus is not the divine taskmaster. He understands that the world is too big and the needs too deep for any one person to accomplish. We’re going to need more help.

Rarely do I pray for helpers. I wish for them, certainly, or complain that there are not enough helpers, but that is not the same thing. If we are going to pray that God’s will be done on earth, we will have to expand our horizons and pray in faith for God to send out laborers into every field, not just our own.

So send out laborers, O God! 

Send them into the highways and byways, to the towns and villages and cities, to people near and far. 

Send them to the college campuses, send them to the office parks. 

Send them to the soup kitchens and the refugee centers. 

Send them to the halls of power, and to the powerless who those in power threaten. 

Send them to the wealthy who need to be freed from their money and send them to the poor who have none. 

Send them to the addicted and the despondent, and send them to those who care for them. 

Send them to the fields of battle at home and abroad, and teach those who wage war to melt their rifles into gardening tools. 

Send them to the schools, O Lord, and to our children, and send them to those whose souls are being curdled toward violence. 

Send them to the Church, if you please, to the parishes and the seminaries and the monasteries.

Send them to bring a word of peace whose faith is damaged, and a word of encouragement to those who faith is strong. 

Send them to immigrants and the labor organizers and to all who have no one to advocate for them. 

Send them to actual fields, to the forests and to the seashores, to the parks and to our gardens and to the endangered habitats. 

Send them to the bees, who struggle so. 

Send them to the science labs and the hospitals and the nursing homes, send them to all the sick and lonely. 

Send them to us especially, for we too need a word of good news. 

Send them to those we love, send them to those we find unbearable, send them anywhere and everywhere, it really doesn’t matter: just send out your laborers, O Lord!

Send them out, for the harvest is plentiful and the laborers are precious few and the field stretches as far as any of us can see.

Jesus asks for help, and in nearly the same breath he turns and his loving, compassionate gaze lands on us, we who are already here. He fills his disciples with the same authority he himself possesses, the same love that enflames his most sacred heart, and then he sends them, not to the ends of the earth, but to those they already know. The kingdom of God, the kind of change that Jesus has in mind, is not something that happens in a vacuum. It’s not a universal principle that can be reasoned out. It happens in relationships, in a shared connection that makes the unbelievable claims of the kingdom of God believable. It happens because those twelve went out and bore witness to what Jesus had done and was doing, and they told someone else, and someone else, and on and on until you walked through that door this morning. The kingdom of God happens when a community of Jesus-followers gets together and keeps making room at the table, keeps greeting the person in front of them, keeps going out into the neighborhood to find more people to invite to the party. Old wounds are healed, new life bursts into bloom, the hungry are fed.

The engineering student who struggles with socializing finds a place where people are patient and gracious. That’s good news. 

The queer student with a physical disability finds a place where she isn’t reduced to an inconvenience. That’s good news. 

The straight-A student finds a place where his achievements aren’t the thing that defines him. That’s good news. 

The student raised with an abusive idea of who God is finds a place where she can say “because of this place I’ll still have a relationship with the Church.” That’s good news.

The good news of the kingdom of God is that there is something better than your status quo. God loves us too much to leave us where God finds us. And when Jesus sends a few laborers out, it’s not to save the world, because that was never our job. We are the helpers, and there are more on the way if only we will ask. Jesus, lover of our souls, is deeply moved to compassion for the harassed and helpless, and in every breath gives us the strength to go and do likewise, because this is the love that has been poured into our hearts. Thanks be to God.

The Great Vigil of Easter, Year A
All Saints’ Episcopal Church, Austin, Tex.

A few weeks ago I went to the movies to see Everything Everywhere All at Once, which has been getting a lot of attention since its world premiere right here in Austin at last year’s South by Southwest festival. The movie is about a lot of things–it’s a high concept science fiction flick–but at its heart, it’s about the damaged relationship between a woman named Evelyn and her daughter, Joy. Evelyn is exhausted and overwhelmed by her life, her marriage is on brink of divorce, and she can’t seem to finish her taxes. As the story begins, she is given the ability to shift between versions of herself, and she gets to gaze across an infinite number of parallel realities, all different versions of the same Evelyn: what if she had made a different choice in that argument with her father? What if she had chosen not to marry? What if by an accident of evolution everyone had hot dog fingers? What if she had turned out to be a chef, or a movie star, or a priest, or a princess, or anything else but what she is? What if she could live in any other world but this one? What if, what if, what if. It’s a tremendous power, to be able to see how it could have turned out, to be able to step out of sync with your own reality, to step out of time, just for a moment.

As Evelyn grapples with her new abilities, she discovers a parallel version of her daughter Joy who has been shifting between realities too. Joy has seen it all: everything, everywhere, all at once, and she has concluded that nothing can fix the pain she feels in the core of her soul. But she thinks she has found a way out: a black hole so dense that it will erase her from every universe. She has built a world around her that is bent on cataclysmic, all-encompassing self-destruction, and she doesn’t care who she takes with her. 

Every year during Holy Week we peer down into the depths of human darkness: our reluctance to care for one another in the way Jesus showed us, the ways greed and complacency and jealousy end lives while we stand around and watch, all the hundreds of thousands of mundane ways we crucify Jesus again every day of the year. In the crucifixion we see all the grief of the world, all the griefs of our own lives, summed up in one man who draws them into the very heart of God. And so too all the rituals and prayers we share this week are not just about us, or just about playacting a particular week in ancient Palestine. Every year during Holy Week the Church steps out of time, out of sync with the world, torn out of our own reality and placed into someone else’s. Every loving caress of the foot of a brother or sister contains every gentle touch in all the foot-washings before it, every song sung to the glory of Christ’s cross is chanted with all the voices that have chanted it before us, every drop of the water of baptism is poured in the same moment as all those who God has claimed in every age and place, from every tribe and language and people and nation. These are not things we do for ourselves, we do them because this very night is in itself the same night God has accomplished salvation for the world. This is the night when the Spirit creates a world to fill with love. This is the night of liberation from slavery. This is the night that God fills the hearts of a people who have been walking as if dead. This is the night that Christ rises from the dead, trampling down death by death, the breakdown of his cells reversing, his slack lungs snapping back to life as they fill with breath, adrenaline coursing through every vein as he tears off the shackles of the grave and raises us all with him.

As Evelyn confronts Joy and the other hurting people she has gathered around her, Evelyn is able to shift into each one’s reality. She finds the words they needed to hear, the healing touch they never felt, the desires left unmet, the joy and connection they missed in one another. She reaches into the far corners of the universe to drag that love and joy and healing and reconciliation into this one, short-circuiting every enemy in her path, giving gifts to each as she makes her way toward her daughter. Right there on the screen, death, despair, and destruction work backwards. One by one, lives are changed, people are made whole, life spreads. At last it’s down to Joy, who begs to be left alone, still convinced that nothing good will last, and for a moment, it looks like Evelyn will let her go. But there on the cusp of annihilation Evelyn looks at her daughter: “Of all the places I could be, why would I want to be here with you? You’re right, it doesn’t make sense. But maybe there is something out there that explains why you still went looking for me through all of this noise. And why no matter what, I still want to be here with you. I will always, always want to be here with you.”

Of all the places in all the universes that God Almighty could have been, God chose to be here with us, with you, this very night. God steps out of time of the dance of Death. God tears us all out of sync with life as we know it, and reaches into every corner of the universe to undo the power of Death. On that first Easter, God in human flesh laid in a grave, and decided that the worst we could do would not be the end of your story. There is not one place, not one time, not one version of you that God is not seeking to make whole, not one death Christ does not seek to unmake. It is not the nature of life to be contained. The resurrection of Jesus Christ spills into every time and place, drawing all of them together into one.

It is into this truth Julius has been baptized. It is this truth we all have reaffirmed and recommitted our trust. It is this truth which we wrap around ourselves. It is this truth that lights the way ahead of us. Wherever you find yourself tonight, cling to this truth: that Christ is at work, whether you can sense him just yet or not; that you are not alone, that death does not have the final word. He is coming for you to bring you out of whatever pain or grief or death you bear, to help you step out of time with life as you knew it,and into time with the dance of the resurrection which fills everything, everywhere, all at once.

The Third Sunday after the Epiphany, Year A
Religious Life Sunday
Psalm 27:1, 5-13 (BCP)
Episcopal Student Center, Austin, Tex.

When I was a boy, I loved love. The bookish beauty and the beastly prince, the curse lifted at last and sealed with a kiss: a true love truly returned. They lived happily ever after. I twirled with delight that this should be! Love was strong, love was true, love was beautiful, love was waiting for me. Someday I’d find my learnèd damsel (or later, it seemed, a handsome prince) and all would be solved: I’d be known, I’d be held, I’d be free. Happy then and happy ever after. The world has a way of sorting you out, of course, of telling you how it is, where you belong, who you are (whether what the world tells you has anything to do with reality is beside the point). For better and for worse we outgrow fairy tales, and if we’re lucky someday we grow back into them. We can let their tender vines wrap around the harsh corners of our lives and into the jagged places of the heart. But that in-between season can be awful and awfully long.

When I was a boy we sang songs about a man named God (in those days God was always a man). We were his and he was ours, whose banner over us was love. He invited us to his banqueting table, he was the vine and we were the branches. Songs can be like fairy tales, I think. They tell you something true and get deep, deep within, like a stream cutting a course through stone: wending, weaving, warping the atlas of the heart. Maybe that’s why I never really let go of the idea: Love was strong, love was true, love was beautiful, love was waiting for me.

When I was 26 I got on a train, the 8:05 to Boston. I walked through Harvard Square down to the river to a place where some men had built a chapel and prayed that they may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of their life, to behold the fair beauty of the Lord, and to seek him in his temple and kept on praying that for 150 years. Years later I would find a house of women in the hills of Tennessee–Mary Zita, Mary Madeleine, Elizabeth, and Hannah (and Penny the dog and Sophia the cat too)–who had been set high upon the rock to sing and make music to the Lord and the most wonderful biscuits after church each Sunday. They called each other sister, the Bostonians called each other brother, and they sought neither damsels nor princes. There in the silence of the monastery and the splendor of the hills I began to wonder what kind of love this must be. Was it strong? Was it true? Was it beautiful? Was it waiting for me?

Love came down from heaven all those years ago, strong and true and beautiful, and walked around a place I’ve heard about called Galilee. Love called out to ordinary people doing ordinary work, ordinary people like you and like me. Love asked if they trusted Love enough to do something about it, to let themselves be changed, and Love has been asking ever since. I met a man who had been a priest for 20 years and asked him if he thought it worth his time. “It takes a lot to do anything for 20 years,” he mused. “But it takes love most of all, to let yourself be loved by Love Itself and to learn to love well in return.”

Love is a grand idea, the best we’ve ever had, spinning out and on, filling the universe time out of memory, when God spoke in our hearts and asked if we would seek Love’s face. But seeking and finding is a full-time job, which I suppose is why we have monks and nuns and priests. You don’t have to be one of these: anyone can try. Anyone can ask, anyone can seek, anyone can find. Soon enough you find yourself seeking God’s face while you do the dishes and sing songs and share stories and laugh at the dog and cry, for sorrow and for shame and for beauty best of all. You find yourself seeking God’s face in a bit of bread as the wine slakes down your throat. You find yourself tending the scrapes and bickering about how to plan the garden and holding each other close when nothing makes sense. Sometimes you fight God in the middle of the night and ask how you got here in the first place and whether any of it was ever real. Love is more than damsels and princes, it seems. It’s more than beautiful chapels and quiet hills. Ask any of the monks or nuns or priests; they’ll be happy to tell you. Love is the very stuff of life: ordinary, boring, and mundane; elusive, transcendent, and mysterious; and without love, none of the rest is worthwhile at all.

“Late have I loved you, O Beauty so old and so new,” cried the saint. “late have I loved you! And look! You were within me, and I was outside myself: and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created: you were with me, but I was not with you. Those created things kept me far away from you: yet if they had not been in you, they would have not been at all.”*

We give ourselves to what we think matters, to the truths we think are worth building a life upon, which is another way of saying we give ourselves up for the sake of what we love, at least as best we can. We find the people whose deepness calls to our own, the places where we can put down roots, the things that help us make a home. Where these things are, love is, and where love is, God is. This very deepness in which all other deepness abides, this soil that feeds our roots, this one true home to which we are all called, this love in which all other loves find their meaning: this Love is strong, this Love is true, this Love is beautiful, and it is waiting for you. So love God, and love the people God brings to you. Love them as best you can for as long as you can, which in God’s time means you can love them forever, even when they walk the path we cannot yet follow but someday must.

When I was a boy, I loved love. Now I am older and hopefully wiser. I still love Love and I pray that God will keep me in the house of this Love forever. For now, I see in part and know in part, but one day I shall understand completely and see God’s face which I have sought for so long: strong and true and beautiful, waiting for me and for you.

Thanks be to God.

—

*Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, tr. Carolyn J. B. Hammond