Sermon: The Most Rev. Jeremy Greaves
May these words be spoken and heard in the name of the triune God, creator, redeemer, and spirit of life and love. Would you please be seated?
Well, it’s wonderful to be here this morning, and I thank the Dean for his hospitality and the invitation to preach this morning. If I was at home in Brisbane, I would begin by acknowledging the first people of the land on which our cathedral is built, the Yagera and Turrbal people, their elders past and present. And so here I acknowledge the first people of the land on which we gather this morning, pay my respects to their elders of the past and the present. I also begin by remembering my grandfather, Bishop W. H. Baddeley, who stood in this pulpit to preach the gospel 81 years ago in December, 1944. And all those who have done the same over the past a hundred years or so in this place.
A few years ago, before I was a bishop, my spiritual director asked me a very simple question that has stayed with me ever since. He said, “Who are you working for?” And so I started to rattle off all the usual suspects, the bishop, the wardens, the parish council, the strategic plan, the music director, the youth director. And then he stopped me and he leaned in and he looked at me intently and he said, “Who are you really working for?” So I took a deep breath and said, quietly, “If I’m honest, I’m probably working for myself.” And there was a long uncomfortable pause, and I shifted in my seat and he looked me in the eye and he said, “So how’s that working out for you?”
And while I struggled to find an answer, he followed up with, “What might it look like if you worked for God?” It’s the sort of uncomfortable question that the best spiritual directors know just when to drop into a conversation. The sort of question that pulls you up short and invites you into a place that is both incredibly uncomfortable and deeply confronting at the same time. What might it look like if you actually worked for God? And it’s a question that brings me back to the very core of my faith, because if I actually believe all the stuff I write, and preach and teach about God, then working for God is very different to working for all those others. So what might it look like to work for a God who searches out the small, the lost, the one, the unlikely. The God who is with us, even in the valley of the shadow of death. The God who is light, even in the darkest night, who welcomes tax collectors and sinners, who is wasteful with love even when we are wasteful with the gifts that we’ve been given. The God who sets us free, when we are bent over and bowed down.
What does it mean to work for a God who says even when you are poor, you are blessed. Even when you are hungry, you are blessed. When you are weeping and hated and reviled and excluded, you are blessed, even then. What does it mean to work for the God whose story is always one of hope rather than fear? In the darkest place, when you are bowed down, bent over by so much, even then you are blessed and there is cause for rejoicing. And so that story from the gospel that we’ve just heard helps us imagine what it might look like to work for that God. Jesus is teaching in the synagogue on the Sabbath when he sees a woman bent over, unable to stand up straight for 18 long years. Jesus sees her and calls her forward and says, “Woman, you are set free from your infirmity.” And he lays his hands on her and immediately she stands up straight and tall, praising God. And so if that’s a story that paints a picture of what it looks like to work for God, it might mean bending down to see those bent over by life’s burdens.
Bending down to see people crushed by poverty or illness or loneliness or injustice or despair. It means standing with those who have been bent over for so long, excluded or marginalized, and doing that even when it disrupts our comfortable routines or challenges our assumptions. Because most of us know what the darkness of being bent over feels like. Most of us have been in that place at one time or another, weighed down by everything that’s going on around us. We know the weight of deep division and uncertainty. We know the weight of all that is going on in our world and our lives, the weight of the climate crisis, the weight of housing affordability and homelessness, of racial injustice. And under the weight of that, so many of us are bowed down and feel tired and anxious or unheard or invisible. And in that place we can begin to feel afraid.
And fear is such a powerful force. Fear makes us grasp for certainty and control. It leads to building walls, drawing lines, and holding tightly to traditions and power. In the church it can turn us into a place of exclusion instead of welcome. The synagogue leader in Luke’s story thought he was protecting God’s law, but his fear made him blind to the woman’s suffering and to God’s active love breaking into the world. And so Jesus shows us a better way, a way of hope. And the woman is not only healed, but she stands straight and tall and is able to praise God. She goes from that posture of brokenness to one of freedom and joy. And this is the hope that Jesus invites us into again and again and again, hope that begins in darkness, but insists on resurrection. You see sitting in the dark bent low by the darkness, there are two possible stories that play out more clearly than in any other place. One is a story about fear and one is a story about hope. A few years ago, Anne Lamont wrote, “Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You watch and wait and work. You don’t give up.”
The great John of the Cross knew what it meant to walk through the dark night of the soul bent low by the darkness. But for John, the darkness was not an absence of God. It was the place where God was most present, teaching us to trust beyond what we can see. Or as Barbara Brown Taylor says, “At the heart of the faith is learning to walk in the dark.” And it seems to me that that is where we can find hope. And that’s the kind of faith that the world desperately needs right now. A faith willing to walk in the darkness, to stand with those who are bent over and to trust that God’s healing hands are at work even when we can’t see the full picture. And so working for that God, of course, it means more than just showing up on Sundays. It means living out the hope of resurrection in every part of life with compassion and empathy and mercy and love. It means standing with all those who are marginalized. It means caring for our planet in the face of the climate crisis, loving those who are sick, lonely, or marginalized.
It means breaking down the walls that keep us separate and inviting everyone to the table. Nothing, not even the darkest night, is outside God’s power to transform. And so as people of faith, as we walk forward together, we should heed the call to stop working for fear, for comfort, for control, for ourselves, and begin to work out what it might mean actually to work for God. And whether it’s in grand cathedrals or small community gatherings, whether it’s in our policies or our prayers, we should be people who set others free, who lift up the bent over, who embody the healing love of Christ. In the darkest places, the gospel promises that the dawn is always breaking. The dawn of everything again and again. And in that place, God breathes a new invitation every morning into our lives. Every new beginning can be an altar, an encounter with God, an invitation to participate in God’s work for the world. It seems to me that in this season together we have a choice. We can continue to be bowed down in fear, or we can help each other stand straight, learn to walk in the dark. And then because of the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us to shine on those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death, and will guide our feet in the way of peace.
May we always work for the God who sets the bent over straight, who calls us into hope, and who is endlessly inviting us into a new day of freedom and joy. In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.