Proper 9 A

July 6, 2008 

Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67

Psalm 45:10-17

Romans 7:15-25a

Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

Twenty years ago at a small round breakfast table with three captain chairs in the office area of a ladies clothing store, the name and logo of my design studio was born through the store’s owner who was my landlord. I rented the space next to his in the strip mall. As we sat together talking about the goings-on around town he asked me if I’d settled on a name yet.

"Well, I’ve got one in mind." I said. "What do you think of Schemes and Themes?"

"Schemes and Themes." He said the words with wonder and a hint of acceptance in his voice. His wife was steaming dresses in the next room. He hollered to her, "Hey honey……how about Schemes and Themes for the name of Pam’s business?" She said she loved it. He said he did too. (But he wouldn’t have loved it unless she did. Because he loved her like Isaac loved Rebekah. He wouldn’t think of disagreeing with her about anything. In fact, she had an identical twin sister and he didn’t dare disagree with her either!)

He reminded me that he had drawn logos for a lot of the businesses in town. He said he thought he had a knack for it, so I invited him to go ahead and see what he could come up with. He got up from the table right then, got a piece of paper out of the printer, and a pencil, and sat back down next to me. He took a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it. Then he took a big puff, blew the smoke up in the air and looked upwards for a few seconds with his eyes closed like he was trying to see something coming together on the back wall of his mind. He set his cigarette in the ash tray, the smoke swirled around between us and he started to draw in the center of the paper – a great big ampersand. (The common symbol for the word "and") It had graceful curves that were thick in some places and thin in others. It almost mirrored the smoke hanging in the air above the paper. When he had it like he wanted he started to write the words on either side of the ampersand in letters that matched it -- curvy, thick in some places and thin in others.

I sat still and quiet while he drew. There was no need to force words into the smoke-filled space between us. I didn’t want to distract him, not even with a compliment. When he finished, I thought what he drew was absolutely perfect. I told him so and I thanked him.

Since he knew all that I was planning to do from that studio he said he wanted to emphasize AND more than the other two words. I would have never thought to emphasize the AND! It was just a connecting word to me. He captured not only my ambition for the business with the logo he designed for me but also something of my identity, who I am at my core. I wasn’t aware of that at the time.

The AND means even more to me now than it did then. It is even more expressive of my identity in the work I do now. I can’t imagine how we could proclaim the Gospel as Jesus commissioned his followers to do, without the word, and. Jesus the Christ of God was fully human AND fully God. The AND is huge in that statement. It’s crucial to our understanding of who Jesus was and is. He was the Word of God given in the commandments AND he was the Word of God made flesh. He is law AND grace.

That’s what he was talking about in today’s Gospel with his invitation to his disciples to take his ‘yoke’ upon them. He was referring to the yoke of Mosaic Law, the commandments God gave to Moses. The law was the yoke that bound the people to God. Their relationship with God was proper and righteous when they obeyed the law but they fell out of relationship with God when they didn’t. Of course, God still loved them. God always accepted them back into a proper relationship when they repented of their disobedience and turned their hearts and minds toward God with a renewed intention of obeying the commandments. But they could never carry out that intention. It was always easier to be disobedient to God than it was to be obedient. It still is.

But since Jesus is both law and grace, he is God’s will to be in a mutual relationship with us that is based on love and faithfulness and he is the grace to stay in that relationship when we turn away from God, as we always do. We commit ourselves to God who is Father AND Son AND Holy Spirit. To walk in the light of God as Christians, particularly Anglican Christians, is to hold together people who would more than likely not choose to be together. People for whom sharing a common life in Christ is anything but easy. That is truly our Anglican identity. We are Catholic and Protestant, traditional and progressive, high church and low church. We don’t think alike. We have preferences in worship that aren’t shared by everyone we worship with. We interpret scripture differently. We have different perspectives, different hopes and dreams. We are unique for the very reason that we try to hold together people who are not the same and don’t want to be. We set ourselves to a mission of bringing people together with our Lord at the center and long ago we discovered that it was impossible for us without God’s help. But because we remember that our Lord is with us as he promised, we have not yet abandoned that mission. And I pray we never do.

Anglican bishops from all over the world will be leaving their homes for the Lambeth conference later this week. I pray that as they sit together at those tables, study scripture, and say their prayers together, that something new even surprising is born. That they won’t force words too quickly into the Spirit-filled space between them. When they are tempted to limiting their vision so that they see each other through us and them/you and me lenses, I pray they emphasize the AND, that they remember with affection those who are NOT there. I pray they will look for Christ in each other. Acknowledge each other’s talents and wisdom. And together come to the deepest truth of who we are as Anglicans.