September 6, 2026 – The Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Greg Phelps
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be always acceptable in your sight, our strength and our redeemer. Amen. (Gesture to be seated if people are up)
Children are invited to Children’s Chapel
Todays’ Theme: things that unify us and things that set us apart as a church
In a pool store in Farragut, they’ve had a cartoon on the wall for years. It shows two young men sitting at the bottom of a drained swimming pool. The caption is “Oh dude- Labor Day already?”
Well, here we are again on Labor Day weekend. The end of summer. On a recent episode of NPR, the speakers reflected on summer as time of freedom and timelessness, think easy living. But all summers end.
I’ve mentioned before the difference between kronos the worlds time and kairos, Gods time. Time and how it is reckoned is something that helps define ourselves as a church. Most of you have seen variations of “Top Ten Reasons I like the Episcopal Church.”
Number Five is- the church year is color coded!
The Old Testament lesson today begins by setting out a new system for defining a year’s beginning. In the prelude to the momentous events of Passover in spring. The passage begins “This month shall mark for you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year. Thus, Spring defined the beginning of the year for centuries. Not until 1582 did Pope Gregory (Ahem) move the beginning of the year from the first day of April to the first day of January. There was of course resistance and those people who insisted on celebrating the beginning of the year in April became known as April fools.
Astronomically speaking summer begins about June 22 with the summer solstice and ends September 22 with the fall equinox. American secular culture tends define summer as Memorial Day to Labor Day or often end of school in Spring to start of school in Fall. Schools however, in Knox County at least are starting at the “ungodly” date of August 10—heresy!
Christian culture uses these time definitions to both unify and set aside in contrast. Diana Butler Bass in her book the People’s History of Christianity For the Rest of Us notes how Christians moved their holy day from the Jewish Sabbath- Friday the last day of the week, to Sunday the first day of the week to differentiate from their Jewish forebears. Similarly, we have set aside Easter which usually follows the Passover schedule. But the Hebrew year 5787 (2027 for us) is a Hebrew leap year so they added a leap month, so Passover will be late. Easter for once precedes Passover as it is set for Sunday following the first full moon after the spring equinox. (Which is early this year on March 28th!)
The church calendar even set some names for geographical discoveries. When the Western world was more homogenously Christian, we saw remote places discovered being named for the Christian holiday closest; thus, we have Ascension Island and Easter Island.
Pentecost to Advent in the church calendar overlays the time that follows northern European agriculture-== planting to harvest. The church calls this “Ordinary Time} and as mentioned is color coded green. And all this begins in Exodus as God lays out the new system to keep the Passover of our Old Testament forbears.
Love is something else that helps define us as Christians.
We’ve been working our way through Romans, Exodus and Matthew recently. In Roman’s Paul introduces himself to the Romans and elegantly lays out his core theology which is centered on love.
In today’s readings he uses the unifying theme of love over and over again saying “love one another,” and “love does no wrong to a neighbor therefore love is fulfilling the law.” Paul uses the word LOVE in his epistles over 100 times emphasizing the centrality of the unifying force of love. Depending on the translation, love is used in the bible between 150 and 300 times! Love is what defines us as Christians.
Last week, Father Mark focused on the love shown by and for Dolly Parton. He even sang a verse from 9 to 5. But he missed the best one. The song Dolly Parton wrote, popularized by Whitney Houston.
Think of St Paul belting out “And I- I- I- I have always love you.”
Love a unifying theme again
But for humans even in churches, sometimes love is not the only force involved. Sometimes we wander off the reservation. As the collect today notes “resist the proud who confide in their own strength. Sometimes we must reach out to pull back those who are on the wrong course in order to keep our unity.
The Gospel of Matthew today lays out the schema for those who have strayed. It’s actually a pretty good representation of what HR departments do these days. First one-on-one, then a meeting with two or three others as witnesses. And then finally in front of the whole church. Some churches deal more quickly and harshly.
When our family lived in Georgia over thirty years ago, we had a gay parish member suffering from AIDS. Ken was a delight and well loved. He showed up to serve the homeless and other outreach ministries. He was a gifted cook for our parish suppers. One day after serving the homeless, he told Gayle and I how he’d been a lifelong member of a more fundamental church. When they found out his secrets, they didn’t just ask him to leave but physically, arms pinioned on both sides, ejected him from the church. And he came to us.
Some of my proudest moments for that church were how we took him in, loved and cared for him for several years before he succumbed to his illness; with our pastors at his side in the final hours.
So here in Matthew, however we see a pivot from the HR policy of termination. Matthew sees sinners as opportunities for additional evangelism. He says “treat them as a Gentile or a tax collector” ie one who needs more love to bring them back to the church. Matthew points his efforts at unification again saying that when even only “two or three are gathered in my name I am there among them.”
We here at Good Samaritan also unite to remember those of us who cannot be in church, both by video outreach and bringing communion to those who cannot be physically with us. Sending out the Eucharistic visitors the celebrant says: “In the name of this congregation I send you forth bearing these holy gifts, that those to whom you go may share with us in the communion of Christ’s body and blood. We who are many are one body
And the congregation responds— because we all share one bread, one cup.
Fall is a time in our American culture defined roughly from Labor Day to Thanksgiving. It is a time of re-engaging in the world. We have so much coming up! The kids are back in school. The office is calling, we have Justice Knox and national elections coming at us. Here in the church, we have just finished our mission fairs, restarted our youth and education and adult education and after long drowsy days of summer it is time we engage the world again. Let us go forth into the world rejoicing in the power of the spirit. Hallelujah, hallelujah.
Amen