The Fourth Sunday After Pentecost

June 8, 2008, Proper 5A

St. Peter’s Church in the Great Valley

Sermon by the Youth of St. Peter’s:

Jamie Alexander, Cam Alexander, Stephen Cross, Christina Davidson, Maurie Davidson,

Laura Fabius, Chris Herbst, Matt Herbst, Cordy McAvoy, Peter Zibinski,

Hosea 5:15-6:6; Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

MATT

Today we gather for the worship of our God and the celebration of the baptism of Ashley Hirt and Alexa Cataldi. During their baptisms, we are reminded of our own baptisms, of how we were brought into the church, and of the forgiveness that many of us were given in our early years of life. In a few minutes, we will all renew our baptismal covenant. Now we ask you to ponder the core of what we will be promising in that covenant with the words we, the youth of St. Peter’s are about to say. At the end of the baptismal covenant are five questions. Everyone here will be asked the questions. We believe that today’s readings will help us answer them.

PETER

The first question is “Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?” We think this question means, “Will you keep coming to church?” Teaching, fellowship, sharing bread and praying are all things we do here. Baptism is how we join the church, and the church is a place that accepts anyone.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus accepts people who are rejected by others. Matthew was a tax collector. He gathered money from his people, and gave it to the government that was oppressing them. Worse than that, the head of Caesar was engraved on that money, so each piece was a graven image. Handling money made Matthew unclean, yet Jesus sat down to eat dinner with him. The woman who touched Jesus’ cloak had unexplained bleeding. That meant that she was not pure. Jesus was breaking the purity laws by allowing her to touch him. But he turned to her and told her that she would be well. Finally, he took the little girl who had died by the hand. Touching a dead body meant that Jesus was defiled. But that is not what happened. When Jesus took the little girl by the hand, she got up, because she was alive again. Jesus defied others to help the ones who needed it.

LAURA

The second question is “Will you persevere in resisting evil, and whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?” Jesus says, “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’” Jesus desires the understanding and acceptance of one another, not people sacrificing their eternal life because they desire material things. In this Gospel lesson, Jesus shows us that he desires the company of people who need him. He actually likes to eat dinner with tax collectors and sinners! He offers the steadfast love of God by liking to be with people. Baptism is a sign of the steadfast love that you are given by God and your parents at birth. In baptism, you are given God’s forgiveness and offered the chance to continue to be forgiven and try to change your ways when you make mistakes.

The third question is “Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?” The people in today’s Gospel story were witnesses when Jesus performed miracles. It was the personal reports of witnesses that spread the talk of Jesus’ miracles. Even though these miracles of healing and acceptance happened to people who were looked down on, those people were so amazed that they had to talk about the changes in their lives. That is why the end of our Gospel portion says, “And the report of this spread throughout the district.”

STEPEHN

In the old times, there was no gossip, but there were God’s sibs—or we would say, God’s friends. “Sibs” means “friends” in Old English. Because most people could not read or write, the word of God was spread by word of mouth. The main source of information was the reports of God’s sibs, the people who told the stories about God’s people and the changes that God made in their lives.

Now that is not the case. Today we know gossips as people who spread news about others in order to make themselves look good. What a once a way to show the glory of God has turned into a way of hurt. How can we change this sin back into a way of showing God’s glory?

JAMIE

The fourth question is, “Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?” People do not need money but acceptance. As we talked about this question, one of us shared that she had helped in a soup kitchen. She thought it would be a scary experience because of what she thought she knew about homeless people. What she found was that everyone was really nice and friendly. She told us that she learned to give everyone a chance, not just the “cool” people, or people who have everything they think they need.

Why do we need to help sinners? Jesus said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.” Sinners are the people who need us the most. In fact, we are all sinners, if sin is what separates us from God. We cannot be embarrassed to be with them, like the Pharisees were embarrassed to have dinner with Jesus and Matthew. We need to invite them to “dinner,” that is, into our lives.

CORDY

The fifth question is “Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?” We had a lot of different ideas as we talked about this question. One of us is very concerned about the lives of AIDS patients in this country and the rest of the world. As we talked about how Jesus is so accepting of people that others rejected, we realized that these days, Jesus would invite a person with AIDS to sit next to him at dinner, even though no one else would. Jesus might not worry so much about tax collectors who are a little more respectable these days.

Another one of us is concerned about kids our age who are depressed and lonely, and sometimes even suicidal. We talked a lot about how the theme of depression is expressed in music we listen to, stories we read and websites we visit. One of us brought up a website called adamsletter.com. The author, John Cosper, tells the fictional story of a teenager who commits suicide. The teen feels that his real name has been taken away and replaced with ugly adjectives. There is always a better way out of a sad situation than doing something that hurts yourself or others. On the website, Cosper says, “Our biggest problem is. . . a lack of love for one another.”

CHRIS

We think that this church is a safe place where dignity is respected, even if sometimes we have weird thoughts! We think that this church is a place where we learn to have love for one another. In today’s Gospel, Jesus accepted others, even when everyone else thought they were unacceptable. In the lesson from the prophet Hosea, we hear that God will “come to us like the showers, like the spring rains that water the earth.” That sounds like baptism, where we celebrate the God who accepts all of us in love. God accepts all of us, no matter who we are, and so we should accept everyone and share God’s love with each of God’s children.