Sunday, June 13, 2010

Your Faith Has Saved You

In the summer of 1991 Jeffrey Dahmer was arrested for kidnapping, torturing and murdering seventeen men. Even though there wasn’t the shadow of a doubt that he had not committed these crimes, in court he pled – as was his legal right – not guilty. In 1995 those who had bombed the Murrah office building in Oklahoma City denied their guilt, as did a former football player accused of murdering his wife. On a much larger scale, Serbian leader Slobadan Milošević, charged with organizing and executing a mass “ethnic cleansing” in the former Yugoslavia, pled not guilty at his trial at the Hague, and even presented evidence to justify his actions. “Not guilty” is what many of our political leaders claim when the web of lies and evasions they have created unravels, and their marital infidelity comes to light. Mark Sandford on the Appalachian Trail? Right. And just in Thursday’s newspapers, we learned that BP’s 2009 regional response plan, which was approved by the federal government, vastly understated the dangers of a spill and overstated BP’s ability to respond. The answer of BP’s spokesman to queries about the plan’s glaring lies? The company is “reviewing” the plan. What’s wrong with this picture? Don’t any of our public figures accept responsibility for what they’ve done? Don’t any of them demonstrate humility and integrity?

Was St. Paul anything like these notorious public figures? Was Simon the Pharisee in today’s Gospel lesson? Surely not, you would answer. Wasn’t Paul a Pharisee of Pharisees, a highly educated member of his community? Neither Paul nor Simon had murdered anyone. As far as we know, they didn’t cheat on their taxes, they weren’t unfaithful to their wives, and they didn’t terrorize their servants. Indeed, if Paul and Simon were observant Pharisees, they worshipped regularly, tithed meticulously, kept away from notorious sinners, avoided any chance of ritual defilement, and followed a complicated rule of personal conduct. Sounds like some people that we know. Like me, you probably haven’t murdered anyone, cheated on your taxes, abused those who work for you, been unfaithful to your spouses, or knowingly broken the law. We worship regularly, support the church and worthy charitable organizations, engage in outreach to those less fortunate, do our best to follow Jesus’ command to love God and our neighbors, and know how to behave in various social situations. Clearly we’re not like Jeffrey Dahmer, Timothy McVeigh, OJ Simpson, or Mark Sandford. So, like Paul and Simon, having followed all the rules, are we righteous in God’s sight? Are we acceptable to God? Have we bought our way into heaven?

Absolutely not, says Paul! He was writing to new Christians in Galatia, a region of Asia Minor, in about 55 AD. The early church was still struggling with the question of whether new Gentile Christians had to in effect become Jews and adopt all the tenets of Mosaic law. Before his encounter with the risen Christ on the Damascus Road, Paul himself was sure that following every jot and tittle of the Mosaic law and the Pharisaic code would make him right with God. After that life-changing experience, Paul learned that salvation was God’s gift to all. In the strongest possible terms he reminded the Galatian Christians that all have been made acceptable to God, not through observance of the law, of rules and regulations, but through Jesus’ death and resurrection. It wasn’t that Paul denigrated the law, it was rather that he realized that it wasn’t sufficient to make us acceptable to God. On our own, however closely we follow all the rules, we cannot meet God’s standards. But by God’s grace and with faith and trust in God, Christ transforms us, so that we begin to become the people we were truly created to be, not through our own actions, but through Christ’s power working within us.

In our story of Simon the Pharisee we have a vivid example of what Paul was talking about. As we see him in today’s story, although Simon had invited Jesus to his house, he seems to have treated Jesus disrespectfully. Simon seems to have believed that in his scrupulous observance of the law and the customs of the Pharisees he was righteous in God’s sight. In contrast to Simon, the unnamed woman who barged into this all-male gathering knew that she was not righteous in God’s sight, that she was desperately in need of God’s mercy and forgiveness. Unlike Simon, she threw herself at Jesus’ feet and ministered lovingly to him, showing her repentance with her streaming tears. In turn, Jesus praised her great love, the love that sprang out of her realization that God had accepted and forgiven her. Jesus’ assurance to her that her sins had indeed been forgiven, and her faith had saved her, were spoken to Simon and his guests as well as to her. Salvation, he reminded them cannot be earned, even by the holiest and most righteous men. Rather, forgiveness and salvation are God’s gifts to us, gifts which we receive when we acknowledge our sins and weaknesses and accept God’s forgiveness in faith. The story doesn’t tell us what happened to Simon and the woman after this encounter. But we can hope that both of them, and the other guests as well, were transformed by Jesus’ declaration of God’s forgiveness and grace.

That message is for us too. We may not be murderers or thieves. We may not be drug addicts or prostitutes. We may not have cheated on our spouses or our taxes. But the truth is, whether we admit it or not, whether we think about it from one Ash Wednesday to another, we are all sinners. We are all as capable as Paul, Simon, and the “woman of the city” of greed, sloth, lust, avarice, gluttony, wrath, envy, and pride, to say nothing of others not included in the Seven Deadly sins list. Collectively, we may be doing as much harm to the environment as BP. But the good news is that we are already forgiven for our “manifold sins and offenses.” Whenever we acknowledge our sins and weaknesses, we discover that in Christ God has already forgiven us. What is more important, when we acknowledge who we are, and have faith in God’s saving power to heal and strengthen us, God begins to work in us. God begins to change our lives from the inside out, so to speak. God begins to transform us more and more into Christ’s likeness.

This is our proclamation as a church. This is the message we need to share with the world: that we don’t have to buy our way into heaven, that there are no sins we can commit that will make God hate us, and that through Christ’s action we have all been made acceptable to God. Is this what the rest of the world hears from us? Sometimes I wonder. With our wrangling over property, sexuality, abortion, and God knows what else, I wonder whether a message about God’s unconditional acceptance of us ever gets through. Sometimes I wonder whether anyone else thinks that the church is a place of forgiveness and acceptance.

Here’s what I would like our message to be. Evangelical writer Tony Campolo tells the story of a trip to Hawaii for a conference.1 Jet-lagged and hungry, he woke up at 3:00 AM and decided to leave his hotel and go out looking for something to eat. The only place open at that hour was a hole-in-the wall dive. Tony quickly found out that at that hour most of the patrons were streetwalkers. That particular night, one of them, a woman named Agnes, mentioned that the next day would be her 39th birthday, and that she had never ever had a birthday party. The counter man confirmed that all the women were regulars. So Tony came back at 2:30 the next night. He decorated the joint and put up a big sign saying “Happy Birthday, Agnes!” The counter man had found a cake and told all the girls. Right at 3:30, in walked Agnes. Everyone shouted “Happy Birthday,” and Agnes nearly fainted. Then Tony suggested that they all pray. With half the prostitutes in Honolulu listening, Tony prayed that Agnes’s life would be changed, and that God would bless her. When he had finished, the counter man said somewhat angrily, “Hey, you never told me you was a preacher. What kind of church do you belong to anyway?” The Holy Spirit must have been at Tony’s elbow when he said, “I belong to a church that throws birthday parties for prostitutes at 3:30 in the morning.” “No you don’t,” said the man. “There ain’t no church like that. If there was, I’d join it. Yep, I’d join a church like that.”

You and I did join a church like that. God help us to be that church.


1The story is from Campolo’s The Kingdom of God Is a Party. It was retold by David E. Leininger in Lectionary Tales for the Pulpit (Lima, OH: CSS Publishing, 2009).

Sunday, June 6, 2010

When the Lord Saw Her

“I can’t believe this happened to them!”1 Sixth-grader Elizabeth Kowalsky, a member of St. Andrew’s Church in Colchester, Connecticut, had just learned of the earthquake that struck Haiti this past January. She and her friends already knew a lot about Haiti. The church had had a relationship with Haiti for many years, and its high school youth group had hosted annual “rock-a-thons” to benefit the Haitian Health Foundation. Last fall, without being asked or prompted by adults, last fall the middle-schoolers decided they wanted to do something too. “It felt like the right thing to do,” Elizabeth said. The kids decided to collect shoes and supplies for Haiti and created a project called “Flip-Flops for Education.” Word got around, and soon students in other schools were collecting shoes and money. By the end of the project, on October 24th of last year, the St. Andrews children had collected 2,000 items and $1900.

Had the St. Andrews middle-schoolers heard today’s lessons? In starting their “Flip-Flops for Education” project, could they have been wanting to follow in the footsteps of Elijah and Jesus? Could they have been led by the Holy Spirit to do God’s work? Did they see a need and act on what they saw? The story about them in a recent USA Weekend article doesn’t tell us, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they were inspired by Scripture to reach out to others without being asked. For both our Old Testament and our Gospel lessons for today give us powerful examples of reflections of God’s compassion for “the least of these.” Both of our stories highlight the plight of widows. In ancient Israel, both in Elijah’s time and 900 years later in Jesus’ time, most widows were in very desperate straits. There was no life insurance back then, and widows did not inherit their husbands’ property. Unless they had grown sons, they were dependent on the charity of their husbands’ families or other relatives. No wonder the Scriptures of both Jews and Christians condemn those who neglect or abuse widows and praise God for defending widows and their children.

In our story from 1 Kings, Elijah first encountered the gentile widow from Zarephath as she and her son were on the point of death from starvation. “Don’t be afraid,” he told her, speaking God’s words of assurance. Then he announced that God would continue to feed them all, the widow, her son, and Elijah himself. Later, when the son, lay mortally ill, Elijah again reached out to her. He prayed – fervently – and begged the Lord to restore her son. When her son was restored, the widow – remember she was not an Israelite – understood that in the healing of her son, God had come to her through Elijah’s pleading. She also understood that Elijah’s power to heal was a sign of his authority as a spokesperson for God. “Now I know that you are a man of God,” she said, “and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is truth.”

The story of Elijah’s healing of the son of the widow of Zarephath would surely have been in the minds of the hearers of Luke’s Gospel. And they probably would have seen the obvious parallels. The situation was similar in Nain: a widow facing destitution because of the death of her only son. As the procession of mourners came toward him, Jesus saw her. He really looked at her. He didn’t turn away. He didn’t cross to the other side of the road to avoid her and the procession. He looked at her and knew how desperate her situation was. And his response was similar to Elijah’s. His heart went out to her. “Don’t cry,” he said. However, here is where this story is a little different from Elijah’s story. Luke has told us from the beginning that Jesus is more than simply a prophet. His identity as God come among us was foretold to his mother even before he was conceived. His birth was attended by angels. At his baptism, he visibly and publicly received the Holy Spirit. When he preached his first sermon, he indirectly identified himself as the Messiah. Just before this episode in Nain, when a centurion – another gentile – asked him to heal his slave, Jesus did so. Now, without the widow’s even asking, Jesus reached out with compassion to her. He disregarded the possibility of ritual pollution by touching the bier. He didn’t need to pray to God to heal her son. He simply commanded the boy to “rise,” demonstrating that he was himself the Lord of life. Then Jesus, like Elijah, gave the boy back to his joyful mother, thus also restoring her hope for the future. And as in the story of the widow of Zarephath, the people here, the disciples and the crowd, got it. They acknowledged that Jesus was a great prophet, like Elijah. But what is more important, they understood that Jesus was more than a prophet, that indeed “God has looked favorably upon his people.”

What do we learn from these two stories? First of all we learn that God cares deeply for “the least of these.” The mission of Jesus – and ours – is about addressing real human need, and it is about compassion, compassion for all, especially the poor. As we read through Luke’s Gospel, Luke will remind us again and again of God’s concern for the “least, the lost, and the left behind.” These stories also show us that God sees, truly sees, human need, that God answers prayer, and, what is most important, that God graciously takes the initiative to heal us, irrespective of who we are or what we have done. Ultimately, by God’s grace and as a true gift, God offers us new life in Jesus.

We’ve entered the long season of Pentecost, the green season, the season of growing in discipleship, of being more and more transformed into Christ’s likeness. We will be hearing about Elijah and his successor Elisha for the next several weeks. We will be reading Luke’s Gospel through the end of November. We will have many other opportunities to ponder what God expects of us as disciples of Jesus. What can we, who seek to continue growing in Christ, apply from today’s lessons to our life here at St. Peter’s? For me, these lessons suggest three verbs: look, pray, and act. Let’s start with look. As Jesus’ disciples, we are first called to truly look at human need. As Jesus’ disciples, we cannot look away, cross the road, ignore, refuse to see. Instead, we are called to look need squarely in the face. I see a little of the need in this community in the faces of those who ask for help from my discretionary fund. As most of you probably know, I’ve fed people at the Golden Corral, put people up at motels, bought a gas cylinder, a bus ticket, and groceries, and paid water and electric bills. Those of you who have gotten to know the people who come to Loaves and Fishes, or those who take diapers from us as they gather food, also see something of local needs. I wonder how we can get closer to the other needs in this community, and not only the need for material help, but also the need for real human connection and for spiritual sustenance. What are we still failing to see? Where does Jesus want us to look next?

Perhaps we also need to pray. Of course, we always need to pray. All prayer is important, our own personal prayer, and our prayer as a community. Could St. Peter’s become known as a place of prayer, a place that actively prays for the needs of individuals? Perhaps in addition to my writing a check, I need to pray for those who seek help from us. Perhaps we need to pray for those who come to Loaves and Fishes. Perhaps we need to pray with them. Perhaps we can pray for a deeper vision of how we can respond even more effectively to the needs around us. And perhaps too we can continue to go deeper in our own contemplative prayer lives, so that as we grow in our love of God, we can better radiate that love out to others.

And finally, we need to act – or support those who act with both our goods and our prayers. In Loaves and Fishes and in our diaper ministry, we are already faithfully doing God’s work. Several of us have trained as Benefit Bank counselors and our site is officially open. More of you can train! Last week two of us met with Ariel Miller, the director of the Episcopal Community Services Foundation, to launch a new project of working with Rio Grande students in submitting on line the required federal forms for financial aid. We are also considering extending the program to local high schools. Can we involve some of you in that effort? And where else are we called to model God’s compassion? Where else can we be bearers of God’s grace?

We pray to you today, O God, that you will continue your transformation of us and of this parish. As we cooperate with you in our ongoing conversion, help us to be attentive to the wonders and miracles that you work in our lives and through us in the lives of those around us.

1 This story appeared in the April 18, 2010 issue of USA Weekend.