Do All the Good You Can

 

Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

This is the sermon that was offered up during Eucharist on September 20, 2020 at Trinity Episcopal Church in Muscatine, Iowa. The Eucharist service was also streamed to Facebook. Services were affected due to the COVID-19 pandemic and all people in person were physically distant and wore face coverings. The scripture readings were Jonah 3:10-4:11, Psalm 145:1-8, Philippians 1:21-30, and Matthew 20:1-16.

O God, let us remember that we are to labor in your name, to do your will. May we work to love you and our neighbors, remembering that the last will be first, and the first will be last. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

In a sermon from 1799, John Wesley, an Anglican priest, spoke about his own guiding principles for life.

"Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Neither is love content with barely working no evil to our neighbour. It continually incites us to do good: as we have time, and opportunity, to do good in every possible kind, and in every possible degree to all men."

Like all good ideas, people have carried it with them. Google John Wesley and the word “quote” and you will find any number of inspirational memes and posters that have rewritten these words in a fashion that matches our own language 

Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as ever you can.
-John Wesley

Today’s readings do a great job of reminding us that sometimes ego gets in the way of understanding what “Do all the good you can.”

And that’s today’s big idea.

Do all the good you can.  Can you say it with me?

Do all the good you can.

It sounds so simple, really.  But it’s not. 

 
Imagine that a rock has hit the windshield of your car, spiderwebbing cracks across the driver’s side of your car.  Darn.  As a result, you have to cancel plans to head out of town. Instead, you spend the time having new glass put into your vehicle.  That’s not good.

 
Or is it?

Later on, we’d be thankful that the circumstances allowed us to be home for a surprise visit by a cherished loved one. Or if we heard that there had been a pileup on the interstate that we were going to be traveling. Or if any of a thousand different unexpected things happened as a result of us not being able to travel on that day.

God has a sense of humor that way.  He sends Jonah to Nineveh to tell the people to change their ways.

That’s a “Do all the good you can” moment. 

 
But Jonah doesn’t follow instructions and heads the other direction.  He thinks he knows what is best.  Prior to this reading, he’s been thrown off a boat and swallowed by a giant sea monster and thrown up on the land. Chastised,  he went to Nineveh and the people listened.

Then, instead of rejoicing because the people changed their ways, Jonah goes off for a good pout. He complains that God cares more for people than a plant he was sleeping under.  

Although I always have figured this was more of a parable than a true-life event, I can appreciate the story of Jonah. The point is, Jonah has good inside of him.  He cared for people in the boat he was traveling in while he tried to escape God.  And God interacts with him.  In spite of being a very human mix of good and bad choices, God loves Jonah enough to put up with his tantrum and to still love him.
Jonah just needs to work on loving his neighbor.  And so do most of the workers in the Gospel today.

They are toiling for a daily wage, as we do, and they are tired.  But they don’t seem to know enough to “Mind Your Business.”  The workers who were there were paid fairly enough--unless they compared themselves to someone else. The idea of Do all the good you can conflicted with the concept of “It’s not a fair world.”  And Jesus calls them on it.

It’s not a fair world.  I get it.

It’s not fair that women get paid less than men for the same work.

Or the color of your skin can impact your chances for getting a fair shake in the world.

It’s not right that some people have to choose between filling the car with gas and filling a prescription.

But the people of Trinity Episcopal here in Muscatine have a long tradition of doing what they can to ease those burdens.  Instead of complaining about the lack of fairness, they have rolled up their sleeves and done what they can to alleviate the burden. There’s a history in this church of Doing All the good you can.

In this whirlwind of the past week, it’s been one thing after another for me.  We all have times like that, and perhaps that isn’t fair either.  For our Jewish brothers and sisters, this next week is known as the Days of Awe, that time between the Jewish New Year and the Day of Atonement, or Yom Kippur.  It’s a time of introspection and reflection.

Reflection.  That’s what I am hoping for this week and I hope you take time for the same. As I listen to your stories, and collect ideas as I call your families, I will be praying for us as a community, within these walls and without, as we work to define and then put into action what Do All the Good You Can means for us. 

And I’ll fail sometimes.  My ego will get in the way.  I will disappoint you, because I am authentically and truly human.  Unintentionally, my best attempts may step on a long-held traditional way of doing things of which I was unaware.  But I’ll ask you to lovingly engage in conversation with me, and to give me grace as I learn.  I’ll do the same for all of you.  And our community will become stronger because of it.

As we go forward, let us pray that our faith and our sense of good may help us to reach out to one another in Grace and honesty, for those who are easy to love and those who are not.

  
And together we will do all the good we can.

Amen.