Today is but our third day together.

Wednesday, my first day with you, council members were waiting to welcome me as I walked in the door, representing you all with a warm welcome.

Sue was also here to greet me, to go over hymns with me, wearing her Ringling Theater shirt.

And then Alice and I set to work preparing for today.

Thanks to Alice, we are ready to worship
not only in the liturgy which sustains us, but with the AC working. 

On my second day, for the first time I went home by way of the Merrimac Ferry and had my first ice-cream cone.  

The drive to the ferry was a delight, this is such beautiful country,

I am looking forward to taking hikes and learning more about Baraboo that is new to me, and learning about the life and worship and ministry of St. Paul’s, and the new things we will learn together. 

Well, my first Sunday with St. Paul’s seems a fitting day to turn to St. Paul’s famous words in the Epistle to the Romans.

“I do not understand my own actions.
For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.

For I know that the good does not dwell within me, that is, in my flesh.

For the desire to do the good lies close at hand, but not the ability.

For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.”

Words which seem in conflict with those of in Gospel of Matthew:

“Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me,
for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

“Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.

“Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me,
for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

***

Several years ago I was involved in starting a Family Promise ministry….

13 churches worked together to provide shelter and food and help with finding employment for families suffering homelessness

Each of the 13 churches took a turn 4 weeks a year hosting these families.

About as good a thing as a church can do.

The church of Jesus Christ lightening the heavy burdens of generational poverty.  

The good people of the church I was serving

—let’s call it St. Matthews, since this is our Gospel today–

”St. Matthews” had an empty parsonage which they gladly prepared for these families, and the good people of that congregation signed up for shifts to fill 24 hours for the whole week.

The rare chance to do something so very good
that we had no problem at all filling slots each of our 4 weeks.

On Monday, breakfast was served, lunches were packed, and everyone was gone by 7:30, children off to school and parents either off to work or to a day center for help finding a job.  

They returned about 4.

The good people of St. Matthew’s were there to greet families and play with the children as dinner was prepared.

One particular day, two lovely souls we’ll call Helen and Ellen had signed up to help.

Helen brought her two young girls with her to play with the children as Ellen prepared beef stroganoff lovingly made in her home kitchen.

While Helen and her girls were playing with the children,
one of the guest parents yelled something profane at her child,
snatched up the child and whipped her child right in front of Helen and her frightened girls. 

When the families set down to to homemade beef stroganoff,
they looked at the dish bewildered and uncomfortable,

Pushed the food around on their plates,
left most of it uneaten. 

Then while Ellen was doing the dishes the families ate what else they could find…hot dogs and cold cereal, energy bars that were to be used for their sack lunches the next day

Helen was heartbroken; Ellen was outraged.  

After the first year, St. Matthews withdrew from the Family Promise;  it could no longer sign-up enough people to serve homeless families.

***

To whom are Christ’s words addressed when he says, “Come to me all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.

Surely, homeless families, struggling under the heavy burdens of generational poverty…

Surely, too, the good people of St. Matthew, who did all they could do, yet grew weary of the weight of their work.

But then surely also Jesus speaks to us here at St. Paul’s,
and to other churches like ours,

who are weighed down by worry over the future of our churches

wearied by the questions of what it means to follow Christ in these bewildering times. 

St. Paul answers for the first churches who were as confused and bewildered as we are:

I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.

Sin he calls it, not small actions or behaviors,
but our common human condition, our flesh is the way St. Paul speaks of it, the law of the flesh, which captures us and which we cannot be free of.

We can’t help believing that when we do good and follow the rules, good should be the result, and this belief makes us vulnerable when the result does not match our own expectations

and the expectations others put on our shoulders.

***

What seems to be a conflict between what Jesus says and what St. Paul says is indeed in conflict, but in this conflict lies grace and good news.

We are not asked to solve the conflict between the promises Jesus makes and the reality of what it is like for us when we encounter our own human limitations.

We are asked instead to accept that none of us are pure,
that none of us has the capacity on our own to do good,

We we are accountable to God alone,
who judges us with steadfast mercy and grace.

We are not asked to change the world but to change our hearts,
to give up the burdensome illusion that is it all up to us
as if we were the first Christians to be weighed down by burdens too heavy to bear.

St. Paul’s words resonate with our longing and yet our inability to make everything right in the church and in the world

Our mission is to trust God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Results are are not our responsibility, and this is grace;
we are in no position to judge, and this is mercy. 

Jesus invites us to rest in him free of the ways we judge ourselves and from the judgements of others… 

For, as St. Paul says, the desire to do the good lies close at hand, but not the ability.

***

After the first year, The Family Promise ministry of St. Matthew’s ended because the longing to do good was too heavy a burden.

For a young mother to expose her children to seeing other children mistreated, for them to hear profane language, 

was too much to bear…

For someone who loves to feed people, the sound of the refrigerator and  the cupboards opening and shutting was too much to bear.

By the end of the year, it was all too much to bear,
so the good that we all wanted to do we did not do.

***

I am very glad to say that the Family Promise ministry did not end but carried on, 

other churches stepped in to ensure there were 13 congregations providing food and shelter to families suffering homelessness.

I like to think the ministry carried on because there are many good people like us who gather in worship and like us confess their sin and give to God in Christ the burden that it is up us alone, 

The conflict between the law of flesh and the gospel of Christ cannot be resolved.

It is the conflict of the cross, the source of our salvation, 

a grace and a mercy, 

setting us free the from sin and death 

of believing the good lies within us, 

when it is Christ at work through us that lightens burdens for all: thanks be to God.