# Sermon for the Ninth Sunday After Pentecost August 02, 2023 - [ Blog ](/news-categories/blog) *By the Rev. Barbara Lemmel Co-Pastor, Harvard Epworth United Methodist Church* *(The following is a transcript of the service audio, July 30, 2023)* ![The Rev. Barbara Lemmel](/sites/g/files/omnuum7126/files/styles/hwp_1_1__360x360_scale/public/thememorialchurch/files/230730barbaralemmel.jpg?itok=bJdlW-_5) Good morning and welcome to worship this morning. My name is Barb Lemmel, and as Calvin said, I'm one of the co-pastors at Harvard Epworth Church just down the road on Mass Ave. And it's their great pleasure to share their clergy with you this morning and to hold you all in prayer and they appreciate your prayer as well. Every once in a while I've heard a story in my life about a pretty ordinary person doing something that made me think, oh, I didn't know that was possible. And I want to tell you one of those stories this morning. It's a story of Julio Diaz. Mr. Diaz is a social worker in New York City, and I can never remember if he works in Brooklyn and lives in the Bronx or lives in Brooklyn and works in the Bronx, one or the other. But every night when he goes home, he has a pattern. He takes the train home and he stops one stop short of his home and gets off at that subway station, goes upstairs and has dinner in his favorite diner, and then goes back down into the subway and takes it one more stop home. So one night Mr. Diaz is coming home and as he does his usual stop, one stop early, and it goes through the mostly empty subway station, a teenager approached him with a knife and demanded his wallet. So he gave him his wallet. And as the teen turned away, Mr. Diaz said, "Wait a minute. You've forgotten something. If you're going to be out all night, you're going to need a jacket because it's cold. Take my coat too." And the teen was confused and said, "What are you doing?" And Mr. Diaz said, "I got to tell you, there's not that much money in that wallet, so I figure you need some help. I'm going up to have dinner at a diner, and if you'd like to, you're welcome to join me." And the teen agrees. So they go up to the diner, they sit down to have dinner, and everyone in the diner comes and says hello to Mr. Diaz because he goes through every day, right? And finally at some point the teen says to him, "Do you own this place or something?" And he says, "No, I eat here a lot." And the teen says, "But you're even nice to the dishwashers." And Mr. Diaz said to him, "Didn't anyone teach you that you should be nice to everybody?" And the teen said, "Well, yeah, but I didn't think anybody actually was." So they go on with their dinner. Mr. Diaz is a social worker after all. And so he asks the teen at some point, you know what his life goals are and he doesn't really get an answer back. And finally the bill comes, and Mr. Diaz says to the teen, "You know, I'll buy you dinner, but you've still got my wallet, so if you'll give it back to me, I'll pick up the check." So the teen slides, the wallet across the table, Mr. Diaz pays for the meal and then says, "I'll give you 20 bucks for your knife." And the teen gives him his knife, takes the $20. They don't see each other again. So the reporter at StoryCorps who is interviewing Mr. Diaz, said to him, "What made you invite your mugger to dinner?" And Mr. Diaz said, "I figure you treat people right and you hope they treat you right." That's as simple as it gets in a complicated world. You treat people right and you hope they treat you right. I don't know if Mr. Diaz is a person of faith. The story did not tell me. I do believe that he's an example of what I think of as faith in its most mature expression, which is a faith of humble confidence or maybe confident humility. I can never decide, which I like better. Confident enough, Mr. Diaz is, that treating people is the thing to do, that he treats right even the person who's demanded his wallet, and humble enough to know that that doesn't always mean you get treated right. I mean, this man is a social worker in New York City. He knows all about how bad human behavior can be, and yet he's a social worker in New York City. He also knows how human nature can be transformed for good and for love. And so he treats people right, with all the confidence that that's the way to live and all the humility that knows you don't always know how things are going to turn out, and yet you keep doing right. Jesus told his followers that the Kingdom of Heaven is like a small mustard seed that grows into a great tree where all the birds can come and nest in the branches. That the Kingdom of Heaven is like yeast that you mix into flour so that the whole loaf rises. I don't know if you bake, I bake, I even baked bread before the pandemic, right? And I know that just a healthy pinch of yeast, if you give it flour and you give it water and a little salt because that makes the bread taste better, and a lot of time, even a little pinch of yeast, will raise the whole loaf. Embed [Harvard Memorial Church](https://soundcloud.com/memorial-church "Harvard Memorial Church") ยท [The Rev. Barbara Lemmel - July 30, 2023 | Sunday Sermon](https://soundcloud.com/memorial-church/the-rev-barbara-lemmel-july-30-2023-sunday-sermon "The Rev. Barbara Lemmel - July 30, 2023 | Sunday Sermon") If there's anything that's humble, it's yeast. It's so tiny, you don't even see it. It'll lay around and not do anything for ever and ever. And when you give it flour and when you give it water, when it has nutrition and it has liquid, it knows what to do. It is confident in what its role is. Its role is to multiply. And indeed it does. And if you've ever had yeast that got out of control, you know that it doesn't matter how much you tell it not to multiply, it's going to do what it knows how to do. Confidence and humility for Julio Diaz, his yeast was, "I figure you treat people right and you hope they treat you right." That simple phrase, that little bit, as he watered it with his life and with his experience and with all the interactions of the people around him, that began to create the Kingdom of God, the beloved community, a place where people are valued for who they are, regardless of maybe what they've done. That yeast brings forth wondrous life. And so it's a happy accident of the lectionary this morning, the assigned readings for these summer months, that in conjunction with these verses about yeast and the mustard seed, is also these verses in Romans 8, because for me, those express humble confidence and also are about yeast. You say again, Paul's words, "We do not even know how to pray as we ought, but the spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words." I can agree with the first part. I've been a clergy person for over 30 years, but I still don't know how to pray. Not always, not how I ought, maybe. I still wonder if prayer works or if my prayers are working. That's the humility, right? And yet we're promised that the spirit herself comes and intercedes for us and brings our prayers, especially those ones that don't have any words. Because how do you begin to say what is enough for the need of that moment? Intercedes with us to bring those prayers to God. And the Greek that's translated as intercedes is also translated as heaves, as in picking up something heavy. And I have this image of the Holy Spirit standing on one end of my ponderous prayers and helping me heave them up to God. That gives me confidence. No matter my prayer, even if there aren't words, and maybe especially if there aren't words, God hears, God opens, God makes amazing things possible. And then Paul goes on to say this, "All things work together for good, for those who love God and who are called according to God's purpose." That is my hands down favorite verse in all of scripture. I was so excited when it was in the lecture for the Sunday that I got asked to preach here at Memorial Chapel. It's like the spirit or something. All things work together for good. Now, Paul was not stupid. Paul lived in the real world as we do. Paul is not saying that all things are good. All things are not good. I don't need to tell you that. All you need to do is open the newspaper. All you need to do is listen to the radio. All you need to do is walk out into the street. All things are not good. Our world is torn apart and tearing apart with division, with tragedy, with climate catastrophe, with more things than we can even begin to list here. Paul is not saying that all that is good. Paul is saying, all things work together for good, for those who love God. And I don't believe for a minute that Paul means that God doesn't work all things together for good, for those who don't love God. So if that's what you're thinking, just put that over on the side. I'll get to that in a minute. What I do believe and what I know, is that when I remember this verse, that is my yeast. When I'm in the middle of something and I'm thinking really? Are you kidding me? This is what I have to deal with today? This is what's ahead of us on the planet? When I remember that all things work together for good for those who love God, I can take a breath. I can remember that God is in this too. I can remember that there are possibilities that I can't even conceive of any more than I could conceive of inviting my mugger to dinner. That phrase is the yeast that works in my heart, that helps me to open and to rise and to be witness to God's possibilities. And so I have a question for you this morning, each of you gathered here. I want to know what your yeast is. I want you to think a moment to maybe it's a piece of scripture. Maybe it's a phrase from a song. Maybe it's something you read in a book. Maybe it's something your grandmother used to say. What is the phrase, doesn't have to be big, that is your yeast? What are the words or the experiences or something that reminds you of the goodness and the presence of God, that even this incredibly hard thing before you can be transformed into what the Buddhists call a fierce teacher, an opening for learning, a possibility for life, yes, even in the face of death. Think for a minute. And I'm going to ask you to do something this morning, and even before I ask it, I know full well that you're going to hear it and be like, oh, I can't believe she asked me that. So hear me out, right? I'm going to ask you to find another person here in the sanctuary and tell them what your yeast is. All you have to do is say what the phrase is. You don't have to tell a whole story. I know some of you aren't sitting next to other people, but you can scooch down the pew, right? Or you can turn in front or in back. I'm going to give you just a couple of minutes to say to each other in twos, threes, whatever, what your yeast is. Like right now. Thank you all. I asked you to share this because this is one of the ways you give it food. This is the one of the ways you give it water. This is one of the ways you help your yeast to grow. It's also one of the ways you claim it as the core of who you are and who God has made you to be. That yeast is your pearl of great price. That's your treasure hidden in a field. It's your piece of the Kingdom of God. And as you live it, the world that Jesus came to bring, becomes more real. So claim this yeast and hang onto it and grow it because you need it to face your life, because the world needs you to live it, to help to begin to heal it, to help to be part of God's effort to put all that's broken back together. If enough of us live our yeast, if enough of us are what God has placed in this world, if enough of us let that Holy Spirit flow through us and out into all that is around us, our world becomes more the place where we invite each other to dinner, where we treat each other right, where we know that all things can work together for good. May this be true. Amen. See also:- [ Sermon ](/archive/sermons) Share on:- [ Facebook ](#) - [ Twitter ](#) - [ Linkedin ](#)