A sermon for the Second Sunday after Pentecost and the day after our latest Guns to Gardens event

It’s a story of radical transformation. First, the tax collector turned convert, the taker turned giver of banquets in honour of Jesus, the Messiah, the money-grubber turned gracious host to sinners and self-righteous folk alike – for how else did the Pharisees observe his company, and how else get into conversation with Jesus, unless they, too, were among Matthew’s guests. Talk about dining across the divide!

Then, then no sooner had Jesus spoken about coming to heal the sick, to bring mercy to the needful, than a woman, taking him at his word, but secretly, stole up to him to touch the fringe of his prayer shawl. And he saw her, and he knew her need, and he healed her with a word of affirmation: “Your faith has made you well.” He healed her body and her bowed down, but still secretly hopeful, spirit.

It’s a story of radical transformation, and none more so than the final twist, the turning from death to life. The child, already surrounded by paid mourners and undertakers, lifted from her deathbed by the Author of Life, who wrote her a new chapter, unexpected and unlike anything that had been seen before.

The radical transformation from death into life. It is our hope, and a challenge to our world-weary faith. How rarely do we expect a miracle, how rarely do we anticipate real change?

Yesterday morning, when the sun rose, this was a shotgun barrel, designed for hunting, for ending life. By lunchtime, it had become a garden tool, forged in fire and hammered out (not by me this time, but by my talented husband), designed to dig into the earth that God has made, out of which God formed the plants and the trees, out of which God crafted humanity, and breathed into it the spark of life, according to the stories of Genesis. Radical transformation: a tool designed to kill had been converted into a tool to grow new life.

There was an array of humanity on display in our parking lot yesterday, from different backgrounds, philosophies, different deeply held beliefs on how to bring to awakening the beloved community imagined by those who dreamed of peace on earth. But all were willing to try something, some radical transformation. The Pharisees, as much as the tax collectors, wanted Jesus to be the real thing; they had more to lose by challenging the status quo and being wrong than those who were already in the wrong, so it made them somewhat spiky; still, they were there.

And what if Matthew had decided that it wasn’t worth risking a solid, if squalid, career to follow Jesus? And what if the woman had given up hope, and failed to reach out to Jesus? And what if the leader of the synagogue had not had the courage or the foolhardiness to go beyond anything that was reasonable or expected or had any hope of success for the sake of his child? What if he had not come to Jesus and asked, as unrealistic as it was, for that radical twist of creation that would bring his daughter back from the dead?

But they did. All of them, each of them trusted God more than their own imaginations. And they were right so to do. Because Jesus treated each of them, groundbreaking physician that he was, that he is, to the radical grace of an infinitely compassionate and merciful God.

That is not to say that their lives became trouble-free. The girl would grow up to know grief as well as joy, pain as well as pleasure. But she would at least grow up. And she would grow up knowing that Jesus had brought her into a new and marvellous life. 

A Facebook memory popped up this morning: three years ago on June 11^th, a number of us here today were marching up E222nd Street, demanding a radical transformation of this nation and its powers and principalities following the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, while others looked on. We are still waiting on a radical transformation.

And, I heard recently from someone who said, “Oh, and now they’re telling us to do this Guns to Gardens thing, as though that’s going to solve the problem …” At which point, having been uncharacteristically quiet for a while, I said, “Oh, I think that’s us; I think that’s me. I’m doing Guns to Gardens with my parish and our community. Not because I think that it will end all of our problems with gun violence. But if it removes one gun from a home with a child who is at risk from its presence, or an elder who is heading for an accident; or if it hands a lifeline to someone feeling the weight of despair and the matching heaviness of the handgun – if it saves one life, one family temporarily from grief, isn’t it worth it?”

The story is told within the group that does these things across the country of a woman who kept guns under her bed for years because she didn’t know what else to do. She brought them to an event and watched them go under the saw. “I’ll finally sleep tonight,” she told her hosts. 

And what of the grace that brings together police and pacifists, gun rights advocates and abolitionists, the fearful, the bold, and the faithful, all in one place and one mission? We can’t often do that, but God does, and God has.

Next time the opportunity for something radical presents itself – perhaps it’s a new relationship, or a chance for conversation with someone you never in a million years would imagine exchanging words with, or the chance to get truly creative, or the chance to challenge an addiction, or the chance to turn an avenue of death into a route back to life – next time you hear that voice of doubt asking, “But is it really worth it; worth the effort, the upheaval, the risk of disappointment, or of failure?” remember Matthew, and the Pharisees, and the woman, and the child.

There will always be enough grief in the world, enough obligations, enough left undone. But the leader of the synagogue came to Jesus to ask for one more chance at life with his daughter. The woman with the haemorrhage came with one more dose of hope. Matthew heard his chance to do something radical, something new with his life, and he got up without a word, without a murmur. Because we may not know where he will lead us, but following Jesus is never the wrong choice. Because we may not know how much we need him, but he has come to save us. Because turning to Jesus is never the wrong choice, and it may lead us to a radical transformation, even if it takes some time, and always to unexpected grace.

Amen.