Sunday Sermon -The Rev. Dr. Hillary Raining (July 5, 2026)

[00:00:01] Speaker A: The holy gospel of our Savior Jesus Christ according to Matthew. Glory to you, Lord Christ Jesus said, to what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another. We played the flute for you and you did not dance. We wailed and you did not mourn. For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say he has a demon. The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners. Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds. At that time Jesus said, I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants. Yes, Father, for such were was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father. And no one knows the Son except the Father. And no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. Come to me all you that 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. The Gospel of the Lord. Praise to you, Lord God. [00:02:23] Speaker B: I invite young children to go with Katie now to the music room for [00:02:26] Speaker A: story and singing and prayers during the sermon. [00:02:30] Speaker B: In the name of one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen. Please be seated. In our gospel today, Jesus says Wisdom is vindicated by her deeds. So I don't know what kind of commentary it is on the wisdom of my deeds that I decided to go down to the great state fair on the Mall last week in 102 degree weather. It may not be very wise, but I love a state fair and a state fair of state that is very much a Hillary coated activity. Now some of you may not know this, but I grew up in the very definition of rural small town America. Very much farm country. Born and raised in northeastern Pennsylvania, my small town in the Appalachian Mountains had more cows than people. That's literally true. You can check the census. Ours was the sort of town that SCAP would have likely have come to help and volunteer in. The county and state fair were a way of life and community. The school district was closed for the first two days of county fair season. It was also closed on the first day of bear season, deer season, bow season and turkey season. So you can see where our priorities lied. I have personally watched or participated in tractor pulls, rodeos, greased pig and watermelon competitions, rattlesnake roundups, ice cream eating competitions, and outhouse races, all at the and if you're wondering what some of those events are, I will tell you later at coffee hour. Now. Every year in Pennsylvania for the State fair, people would wait in anticipation to hear what subject was deemed worthy enough to be fashioned into the world's largest butter sculpture. For example, this year on our 250th, we went all out. It was a 1000 pound butter sculpture titled A toast to our nation's 250th. The sculpture had included everything Betsy Ross, the American flag, the Founding Fathers signing the Declaration of Independence, their glasses lifted in celebration with milk instead of wine. God bless America. This thing of beauty. Anyway, I like a fair, is what I'm trying to say. But I'll be honest, even with all that enthusiasm for a state fair, I I wasn't sure I was going to go to this event at all. I've been watching the news. I've been hearing that for some it was poorly received, that few people were attending, and that it felt more partisan than patriotic. I was going to also be honest and say that I haven't really felt much like the celebratory feeling I thought I would for the 250th anniversary of our country. Apparently, I'm not alone in this. As the United States celebrates this monumental occasion, the overall national mood is profoundly anxious, deeply divided, and if I'm going to use a word, bleak. Multiple major polls released for the 4th of July show that while Americans still hold onto the core foundational ideals that we were founded on, many of us are feeling incredibly sour about the current trajectory and the stability of our nation. A look at data from Gallup, Pew and other sorts of researchers have shown that a massive 77% of Americans believe the Founding Fathers would be disappointed in the United states. Today, roughly 69% of adults report being dissatisfied with how things are going in the country overall. And in a striking records survey, many Americans do not believe that the US will still exist as a united nation in 250 years, with two thirds believing our democracy is at the risk of falling. Despite all this, I was ready to give the State Fair a shot. The great State Fair. I've given you all my American Fair bona fides. You can tell I went in good spirit and was really hoping to go and have an open mind. I think I was hoping to feel the stir of patriotism that I've missed on this amazing anniversary. There were a few Exceptions when I was delighted. Particularly the Pennsylvania booth where there was both a Knoebels park bench and a free giveaway of OTs chips, which if you know, you know that's a big deal. But beyond those points, it felt a little hollow. We would pass things that I thought should have been celebrated. There was a killer bluegrass band with only about eight people watching them. There were several states that didn't show up at all. The crowd was really thin and, I'll admit, extremely lacking in anything resembling the cultural diversity that makes up our beautiful country. It was a pretty white crowd. The only places that had lines were the Tent for War and Florida. I don't know why I didn't get in there. I assumed there was a great giveaway. I didn't make it in, but I left feeling sad. And to me, that is what I'm personally wrestling with on this 250th anniversary of these United States. I'm feeling sad to be sad. I'm lamenting the patriotism I struggle to find. Most days I'm depressed in my struggle to feel as though I'm making a difference. I'm scared for the rights that have been lost and the lives that have been affected or ended by our diversive policies. I am heartbroken at the gap that feels too widened all the time by the politics that make us forget that what unites us is greater than what divides us. That in our striving for independence, it feels like we have forgotten what it means to be interdependent on one another, to be yoked together in our burdens. I am sad to be so sad. In our gospel reading today, Jesus looks around his world, the current generation, as he calls it, the mood of the nation, if you will. His world is occupied by the Romans, a bloody occupation, and I think he sounds sad as well. Jesus says to the crowd, to what will I compare this generation, this moment in time? It is like children sitting in a marketplace, calling to one another, we played the flute for you and you did not dance. We wailed and you did not mourn. Scholars look at this teaching and say that Jesus is citing the children's games that were often played in the marketplaces at the time. These would have been mock weddings and funerals, times for celebration and wailing. Jesus is describing, then, a scene where children are refusing to participate in the games of other children. But it's not just child play Jesus is talking about. He's comparing this to the spiritual life. Sometimes we are called to rejoice with other, with one Another. And other times we are called to wail and grieve with one another. This is wisdom, Jesus says, and wisdom is vindicated by her deeds. In other words, Jesus is saying our actions, not our opinions, our actions will show us what we know about God. To Jesus, wisdom is about how we live and love together. Now, this is a very common theme throughout the Bible, especially as it relates to the very hard art of living together. Well, as a society, especially one that wants to hold out the kind of hope that our republic says it stands for. Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. These things do not just happen. They're never meant to be just words on a page. They are to be lived, wisdom shown forth by real deeds, ideals that will be vindicated by their deeds. That we do. But how? So how do we live into this that Jesus is calling us to? What do ideals and wisdom look like in a world that feels so divided? Well, according to Jesus, we dance and we mourn. We dance and we mourn together. Let's start with the mourning. Since many of us are feeling sadness, anxiety and fear with all that we are sitting in and stirring in, these feelings we know are not held lightly. Sorrow and pain are not things that many of us could honestly say we court as a path to wisdom. But we have all had times in our lives where deep sorrow and grief have actually led to our hearts being opened more and more. The grief we feel is a reminder that things are not whole. The grief we feel, this sadness we feel is the marker that we are called to something different. That is true in our sadness, but not just in our own. The sadness of our nation together. Because when we lament, we're not just lamenting what we want. No. In the biblical tradition, mourning and wailing is a group activity. Funerals in Jesus time were a group activity, you would wail together and notice Jesus language. Here he says, we laughed, we wailed, and you refused. Jesus is saying here that real wisdom is empathy. When we allow the sadness of our hearts, the things that we are feeling touch the sorrow of others, where we see the inequalities of others and our hearts are moved. Empathy is not just a character trait, it is a skill. It is an action. Empathy is often avoided because it is so hard to have to access the part of ourselves that knows the same kind of pain that the other is going through. But if we do not practice the skill of empathy, we will not truly be wise to be a united country. The sorrow we feeling may be a mark of our deep love. And rather than let it shut us down or make us angry. We can use it to break our hearts open and lead to connection. So wisdom lived in sadness can turn to empathy into action. But Jesus is clear here. We cannot only see day in mourning. He tells us we must dance. In our beautiful opening hymn we remember that we must lift every voice and sing. We must live into the hard wisdom that is then hope it's demanded of us in this gospel. Again, this is classic biblical wisdom. From the psalmist right down to the prophets. All who describe the journey of true unity involve being willing to weep with others and rejoice with others, to dance and to mourn, to let our fears and pains turn us to hope. [00:14:51] Speaker A: Why? [00:14:52] Speaker B: Well, to quote the Reverend Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas, who says a lack of hope leaves the Holy Spirit with nothing to work with. A lack of hope leaves the Holy Spirit with nothing to work with. By this she means that human hope acts as the catalyst for divine action to disrupt systems of injustice. You might say it's the raw material that helps us believe that there is more than just history. There is more than just our present. There is a future yet unwritten one that we need to be willing to joyfully work towards. It's going to be hard work, but without joy, without hope, it is likely we'll give up. Reflecting on our time at the mall, I would say that we did find some hope at the great State fair as well. Not in the booths, but in the form of conversations and laughs that we had with the people we met. There were some genuinely nice, friendly folks down there, lots of smiles, lots of talk with people who had traveled a far away to be here. It did give me some hope that this young country of ours, the journey it has yet to take, can be achieved but won't be if we don't hold on to the hope. Now please hear me, I do not mean this in some simplistic way, but in the way that Jesus is talking about in the hard work of wisdom. Not just hoping for our preferred wished outcome, but that God's outcome will come to pass. And the Bible's clear about what that looks like in society. Justice, mercy, humility, peace. This takes effort, but we need the joy to sustain that hope into being alive. These actions lead to wisdom. Dean Andrew Britten wrote about this this week and I was reading this passage. To me it, it really summed it up beautifully. He says Jesus acts and wisdom's call in this passage have offered a vision of life where each is valued, where all needs are met. This call to a hope filled future does not happen without costly change, including for the privileged. The banquet of wisdom and hope is not just a tasting menu for the jaded spiritual appetite, but a soup kitchen or a rowdy potluck of the unlikely redeemed. To me, at our best, that also sounds like what our country tries to be. So for those who are responding to this wisdom call that Jesus is giving us with actions, it will look like a life that is joining that feast. To be both fed and to feed. To be truly wise means we must mourn and we must dance, we must lament and we must sing. We need to remember that we belong to each other, letting these emotions move us into action instead of shutting us down so that we have the hope that is as true now as it has ever been and will ever be. To lament these areas where wisdom is not yet lived is to also put a mark in the sand for where God is calling us to go. Jesus is saying to this generation, now is the time to be wise, to let your sadness break you open to the places where injustice and inequality still still live amongst us. To mourn that, to name it and then to use it to make our actions truly wise. And now is the time to let our joy be real, to dance, to lift our voice and sing, to ring with those harmonies of liberty. You can't sing that kind of song without some kind of hope. So you that as well the empathy and the hope together so that our actions here and now build the next 250 years on the wisdom of God's vision. Then and only then will we know life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Then and only then will we look at our country and say we did not stand in the way of God blessing it. Then and only then will we truly know that we have been wise. May it be so. Amen.