The Pharisees get a bad rap in the Gospels! Why, to call someone a Pharisee is almost an insult! The Gospels of John and Matthew, describe them in the most negative terms. Matthew, for example, shows Jesus calling them evil and malicious. Luke’s account is not quite so negative, and Luke even shows Jesus occasionally speaking positively of them. And why not? They were the good people in ancient Israel, the fine, upstanding citizens like ourselves. Even though the Law of Moses was detailed and complicated, the Pharisees did their best to follow its commands. They kept the feasts and fasts. They went regularly to the temple and made the required sacrifices. They bathed and prayed at home. They donated generously to the upkeep of the temple and did their best to associate only with people whose moral standards matched their own. They were probably responsible for the survival of Judaism after the destruction of the temple in 70 AD. They were the good people.
And the Pharisee in the parable Jesus tells in this week’s reading from Luke’s Gospel appears to be better than most. He fasts twice a week, and he tithes all his income, not just what is strictly required. Why is he not a model for all of us good Christians? Perhaps it’s because of the way he prays. He doesn’t really express gratitude to God, does he? Instead, he contemptuously compares himself with others: “I thank you that I am not like other people.” Ironically, of course, he is “like other people,” even though he doesn’t see his resemblance to them. Worse yet, in his “prayer” he goes on to judge others, including the tax collector who has also come to the temple with him. And what does the Pharisee request from God? Nothing! He appears to trust solely in his own ability to follow the commandments and asks nothing of God. He has such a high opinion of himself that he almost has no need of God. He may be righteous, but does he love and trust God? Doubtful.
Does the Pharisee sound like anyone we know? A couple of years ago, a woman began a letter to Dear Abby saying, “I know I am a real catch. But for the life of me, I can’t get a date with the right kind of guy.” She went on to recite all her wonderful traits, then ended her letter complaining, “I’m so sick of meeting creeps. I really want someone in my own league. I’ve been told a thousand times that I’m gorgeous and stunning…. Where are the male equivalents?” Dear Abby’s sage response was, “They died of altitude sickness, trying to climb the pedestal you have placed yourself on…. [T]he sooner you become less preoccupied with your own perfection, the more likely you will meet your male “equivalent.” Of course, that attitude is just Dear Abby! We’ve never felt like that letter writer! Or have we?
And what about the other character in this parable, the tax collector? Tax collectors were really scum in ancient Israel. They were not good people. They followed very few, if any, of the commandments. They collaborated with the hated Roman government. They gouged their own people. They were not people I would want to emulate! However, in contrast to the Pharisee, the tax collector acknowledges his sins. Standing outside the holiest part of the temple, he knows he has not lived up to God’s expectations. In remorse and shame, facing the truth about himself, he beats his breast. And then he does the one right thing: he asks God for something! He asks for God’s mercy and compassion. Unlike the Pharisee, who asked nothing of God, the tax collector asks God for compassion, and, by implication, grace to amend his life. And so, as Jesus tells us, the tax collector in this parable went home “justified,” i.e., in a right relationship with God.
So is the tax collector our spiritual model? I don’t think that Jesus expected his hearers, or that Luke expected his readers, or, by extension us, to adopt a criminal lifestyle, surrender our integrity, or enter a morally dubious occupation, just so that we can be forgiven abundantly by God. As Paul asks in Romans 6, “What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? By no means!” Then should we do nothing but beat up on ourselves, continually acknowledging and bewailing “our manifold sins and wickedness,” denying any good things we have been able to do? Probably not. Rather, we are to acknowledge who we all are before God, that we “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” That we are needy, unfinished, imperfect creatures. That we are not self-made, that we cannot trust solely in ourselves if we are to grow spiritually, that we must depend on God to work within us. That if we are to have a right relationship with God, we need God’s help and God’s grace. That we must not close ourselves off from God’s grace by thinking that we don’t need it, but, rather we need to be honest and open about our need for grace to amend our lives and to continue to grow as God’s children. God knows who we are, and God loves us as we are, failings and all. When we acknowledge who we are, then God’s grace can work in us. There is no room for God’s grace, if we don’t think we need it, but when we ask God for grace, as does the tax collector in the parable, then God is more than ready to pour out God’s grace on us.
In Vienna in Austria there is a church in which the former rulers of Austria, the Hapsburgs, are buried. When royal funerals arrived there the mourners would knock at the door of the church to be allowed in. A priest inside would ask “Who is it that desires admission here?” A guard would call out, “His apostolic majesty, the emperor.” The priest would answer, “I don’t know him.” They would knock a second time, and again the priest would ask who was there. The funeral guard outside would announce, “The highest emperor.” A second time the priest would say, “I don’t know him.” A third time they would knock on the door and the priest would ask “Who is it?” The third time the answer would be, “A poor sinner, your brother.”
That, my friends, is what we all are. The truth is that we are probably like both the Pharisee and the tax collector – and both were sinners in their own way. Although we may not reach the level of the writer to Dear Abby, there are probably days when we think we don’t need God. Likewise, there are probably days when we feel our need for God acutely. What we want to do as Christians is, by God’s grace, to move further away from the Pharisee’s self-sufficiency and closer to the tax collector’s acknowledgment of our need for God’s grace. One way to do that is through prayer. Notice, in fact, what both the Pharisee and the tax collector are doing in this parable. They are praying. In fact, it is in prayer that we often come face to face with both truth and grace, the truth about ourselves and the grace of God. Like the tax collector, if we can pray focusing our attention on God rather than on ourselves, God will help us to see ourselves as we truly are, incomplete yet beloved by God, and God will help us to become the people that God wants us to be.
And so we must pray. Certainly, some of our prayer must be corporate prayer. We are surely nourished Sunday by Sunday by the corporate prayers that we offer in the liturgy. But we must also, at some point in our day or week, pray as individuals. In the midst of all our work, family obligations, committee meetings, much-needed rest and recreation, travel, visits with relatives and friends, exercise, we must find that quiet time in the day to encounter God personally. As you know, our church has inherited a rich tradition of contemplative prayer. Lest you think that’s something for only monks and nuns, let me quickly add that contemplative prayer is at its heart simply sitting quietly and opening yourself to God. There are many ways to do this. You can sit in absolute silence, you can meditate on Scripture, you can pray with an icon, you can write in a spiritual journal, you can join me here in this church on Wednesdays at noon and on our Advent quiet day in December . There are also many resources available to help you. What is important is to commit yourself to taking some time to let God speak to you through one or the other of these means. Are you willing to let God speak to you in this way? Can you commit yourself to even ten minutes a day being alone with God in prayer? If you do, I promise you that God will richly bless you in those ten minutes and in the rest of your life.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Bloom Where You are Re-planted
What must it have felt like? Just imagine, all the leaders of your people, the royal family, the political leaders, the artisans and craftsmen, most of the priests and royal spokespeople taken into exile, ripped away from Jerusalem and deported to Babylon. The beautiful temple built by Solomon looted and dismantled. That’s what happened to the people of Judea in 586 B.C. To feel the shock of that event, let’s think about it in our own terms. Suppose that after a failed series of political maneuvers and attempts at alliances, some foreign power invaded the United States, kidnapped the president and first lady, the members of Congress, the governors, the editors of the leading news media, the presidents of the colleges and universities, and the heads of the major manufacturing and financial institutions. Kidnapped them all and took them from Washington to their own capital. And on the way, the armies of this foreign destroyed the White House and the Capitol Building. This is what Jeremiah predicted would happen to the people of Judah, and this is what God allowed to happen. You can imagine that all the deported national leaders felt profound shock. You can bet that they were completely disoriented, that they felt dislocated and completely despondent. And what of those left behind? The peasants and workers, the petty artisans and slaves? What must they have felt? What do we feel when the ground shifts under our feet, and the world as we know it completely disappears?
God allowed all this to happen to the people of Judea, but the Exile was not God’s last word to God’s people. In today’s reading from the writings of the prophet Jeremiah, we get an inkling that there will be more to the story. In the midst of the people’s shock and desolation, God commanded Jeremiah to write a letter to the exiles. In the opening part of this letter, which is omitted from our lection, we learn that one of Jeremiah’s reasons for writing it was to contradict the assurances of the false prophets that the Exiles would return to Jerusalem in a year or two. No, Jeremiah tells them straight out, the Exile will last for a full seventy years – in the ancient world long enough for at least three, perhaps four, generations to be born. What is more important, through Jeremiah God commands the people to settle down in Babylon, to build houses and plant crops, to give their children in marriage so that the community will continue to grow and thrive, and to do good for the city in which they will now live. What is most important, as we hear in the verses immediately following today’s reading, God reminds the people of God’s promise of restoration: when the seventy years are done, “I will fulfill to you my promise and bring your back to this place. For surely I know the plans I have for you … plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.” Exile is not the last word, says God. But meanwhile, make the best of your circumstances, and “bloom where you are re-planted.”
“Bloom where you are re-planted.” Hai Doo was a refugee from Myanmar. When he arrived in this country, legally, he had virtually nothing. He works in a laundry, and he now owns a home in Phoenix, Arizona. When he first came to Phoenix, he was sure that owning a home was impossible for him. However, matching grants converted his $5,000 in savings into a $24,000 down payment on a house. “I never thought I would get help like this,” he said. We’ve heard a lot in the news about Joe Arpaio, the Maricopa County sheriff who has taken a hard line on undocumented workers in the Phoenix area. However, we have heard almost nothing about the programs in Maricopa County that have welcomed people like Hai Doo. Hai Doo is only one of a long list of people supported by both the federal and the state government, who have been able to settle down and begin rebuilding their shattered lives. The list includes refugees not only from Myanmar, but also from Bosnia and Kosovo, who came in the early 1990s, and more recently from Iraq, Sudan, Somalia, Bhutan, Burundi, Ethiopia, and China. Despite the dislocation of leaving their homelands, almost always in the midst of civil war, despite the change in climate, language, economy, and culture, these refugee communities have begun to flourish. Like many other dislocated communities, they have put down roots in the U.S., begun to regrow their families, and even begun to give back to the cities that have helped them. Like the exiled Judeans, they have heard a word of promise and taken heart. They have begun to bloom where they are now planted.
Where are we? Are we in exile? Sometimes, as I walk around this church, I feel as if we think we are. For sure we’re no longer living in the church of the 1960s and ‘70s. The pictures in the hallway celebrate that time and earlier, when children filled the classrooms, sang in the children’s choir, and trained to be acolytes. Adult choir members filled the choir pews. Teens came for youth group, and everyone enjoyed ice cream socials, picnics, and summer camp. There were plenty of workers for rummage sales and covered-dish suppers. It was a great time to be the Episcopal Church – or so we thought. Friends, the sad truth is that the world of those photographs is a vanished world, behind us just as surely as high-button shoes and buggy whips. We need only look around us to know that we are no longer living in that world and will not live in it again, or at least for a long time. Every conceivable activity from sports, to shopping, to entertainment, to school competes with church. There’s no such thing as the Sabbath – we live in a 24/7 world. New communications media enrich – or harm – our lives. Meanwhile, here at St. Peter’s, like many congregations, we have young families and retirees, but no teens, and we have few adults between forty and sixty. As elsewhere, our attendance and pledges are down, from even the 1980s, our choirs have hung up their vestments, and the ECW is the only church group that regularly meets. At a time when many congregations are joining clusters or sharing clergy, you have gone out on a limb to call a full-time priest – at least for now.
So is this God’s last word to us? Are we to remain dispirited and dislocated exiles? Not if we believe what God said to the Judean exiles through Jeremiah. Like them, we too have God’s promise: “I will fulfill to you my promise…. For surely I know the plans I have for you … plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.” I myself truly believe that the Holy Spirit is doing a new thing in our churches. We cannot yet see what shape that new thing will take. But we have God’s promise. With God’s promise in mind, while we wait for God’s will to be revealed, for St. Peter’s and for the Episcopal Church and other churches, we do so with hope. We continue to be faithful. We do the best we can, where we are, not where we wish we were. We adapt to new circumstances. We bloom where are re-planted.
What is most important, we hear God’s command to grow. If we believe God’s promises, then we consciously commit ourselves to doing everything we possibly can to reach out to others and to make St. Peter’s a truly welcoming, inviting, and inclusive community. For all of us commitment to growth means continuing to deepen our own relationship with Jesus, continuing to grow as his disciples through commitment to the disciplines, of prayer, study, worship, and giving of self and resources, in other words, as I told the confirmands on Wednesday evening, committing to a rule of life. For all of us, commitment to growth also means taking the needs of our wider community seriously and engaging in ministry that meets the needs of that community. Yesterday at Mountain Grace, we heard about the needs of the younger generation in this region and about ways some churches are reaching out to younger people. My imagination was stimulated, as I’d guess Carolyn Cogar’s and Anne Cappelletti’s were too. Commitment to growth also means experimenting with new ways of worship at new times, perhaps also with new forms of learning. Commitment to growth means making the activities of this parish known to a wider audience through diverse media. Commitment to growth, as Tom Ehrich keeps telling us, may even mean thinking like a marketer – however much we may believe that you can’t say “church” and “marketing” in the same sentence. And, most important, commitment to growth means personally inviting friends, neighbors, and relatives, to join us in any of our activities – or starting new activities that may be attractive to others.
Are we up to the charge? Do we hear God’s command to bloom in this new world where we are re-planted? Do we believe God’s promises? Are we ready to our part? With all my heart, I pray so.
God allowed all this to happen to the people of Judea, but the Exile was not God’s last word to God’s people. In today’s reading from the writings of the prophet Jeremiah, we get an inkling that there will be more to the story. In the midst of the people’s shock and desolation, God commanded Jeremiah to write a letter to the exiles. In the opening part of this letter, which is omitted from our lection, we learn that one of Jeremiah’s reasons for writing it was to contradict the assurances of the false prophets that the Exiles would return to Jerusalem in a year or two. No, Jeremiah tells them straight out, the Exile will last for a full seventy years – in the ancient world long enough for at least three, perhaps four, generations to be born. What is more important, through Jeremiah God commands the people to settle down in Babylon, to build houses and plant crops, to give their children in marriage so that the community will continue to grow and thrive, and to do good for the city in which they will now live. What is most important, as we hear in the verses immediately following today’s reading, God reminds the people of God’s promise of restoration: when the seventy years are done, “I will fulfill to you my promise and bring your back to this place. For surely I know the plans I have for you … plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.” Exile is not the last word, says God. But meanwhile, make the best of your circumstances, and “bloom where you are re-planted.”
“Bloom where you are re-planted.” Hai Doo was a refugee from Myanmar. When he arrived in this country, legally, he had virtually nothing. He works in a laundry, and he now owns a home in Phoenix, Arizona. When he first came to Phoenix, he was sure that owning a home was impossible for him. However, matching grants converted his $5,000 in savings into a $24,000 down payment on a house. “I never thought I would get help like this,” he said. We’ve heard a lot in the news about Joe Arpaio, the Maricopa County sheriff who has taken a hard line on undocumented workers in the Phoenix area. However, we have heard almost nothing about the programs in Maricopa County that have welcomed people like Hai Doo. Hai Doo is only one of a long list of people supported by both the federal and the state government, who have been able to settle down and begin rebuilding their shattered lives. The list includes refugees not only from Myanmar, but also from Bosnia and Kosovo, who came in the early 1990s, and more recently from Iraq, Sudan, Somalia, Bhutan, Burundi, Ethiopia, and China. Despite the dislocation of leaving their homelands, almost always in the midst of civil war, despite the change in climate, language, economy, and culture, these refugee communities have begun to flourish. Like many other dislocated communities, they have put down roots in the U.S., begun to regrow their families, and even begun to give back to the cities that have helped them. Like the exiled Judeans, they have heard a word of promise and taken heart. They have begun to bloom where they are now planted.
Where are we? Are we in exile? Sometimes, as I walk around this church, I feel as if we think we are. For sure we’re no longer living in the church of the 1960s and ‘70s. The pictures in the hallway celebrate that time and earlier, when children filled the classrooms, sang in the children’s choir, and trained to be acolytes. Adult choir members filled the choir pews. Teens came for youth group, and everyone enjoyed ice cream socials, picnics, and summer camp. There were plenty of workers for rummage sales and covered-dish suppers. It was a great time to be the Episcopal Church – or so we thought. Friends, the sad truth is that the world of those photographs is a vanished world, behind us just as surely as high-button shoes and buggy whips. We need only look around us to know that we are no longer living in that world and will not live in it again, or at least for a long time. Every conceivable activity from sports, to shopping, to entertainment, to school competes with church. There’s no such thing as the Sabbath – we live in a 24/7 world. New communications media enrich – or harm – our lives. Meanwhile, here at St. Peter’s, like many congregations, we have young families and retirees, but no teens, and we have few adults between forty and sixty. As elsewhere, our attendance and pledges are down, from even the 1980s, our choirs have hung up their vestments, and the ECW is the only church group that regularly meets. At a time when many congregations are joining clusters or sharing clergy, you have gone out on a limb to call a full-time priest – at least for now.
So is this God’s last word to us? Are we to remain dispirited and dislocated exiles? Not if we believe what God said to the Judean exiles through Jeremiah. Like them, we too have God’s promise: “I will fulfill to you my promise…. For surely I know the plans I have for you … plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.” I myself truly believe that the Holy Spirit is doing a new thing in our churches. We cannot yet see what shape that new thing will take. But we have God’s promise. With God’s promise in mind, while we wait for God’s will to be revealed, for St. Peter’s and for the Episcopal Church and other churches, we do so with hope. We continue to be faithful. We do the best we can, where we are, not where we wish we were. We adapt to new circumstances. We bloom where are re-planted.
What is most important, we hear God’s command to grow. If we believe God’s promises, then we consciously commit ourselves to doing everything we possibly can to reach out to others and to make St. Peter’s a truly welcoming, inviting, and inclusive community. For all of us commitment to growth means continuing to deepen our own relationship with Jesus, continuing to grow as his disciples through commitment to the disciplines, of prayer, study, worship, and giving of self and resources, in other words, as I told the confirmands on Wednesday evening, committing to a rule of life. For all of us, commitment to growth also means taking the needs of our wider community seriously and engaging in ministry that meets the needs of that community. Yesterday at Mountain Grace, we heard about the needs of the younger generation in this region and about ways some churches are reaching out to younger people. My imagination was stimulated, as I’d guess Carolyn Cogar’s and Anne Cappelletti’s were too. Commitment to growth also means experimenting with new ways of worship at new times, perhaps also with new forms of learning. Commitment to growth means making the activities of this parish known to a wider audience through diverse media. Commitment to growth, as Tom Ehrich keeps telling us, may even mean thinking like a marketer – however much we may believe that you can’t say “church” and “marketing” in the same sentence. And, most important, commitment to growth means personally inviting friends, neighbors, and relatives, to join us in any of our activities – or starting new activities that may be attractive to others.
Are we up to the charge? Do we hear God’s command to bloom in this new world where we are re-planted? Do we believe God’s promises? Are we ready to our part? With all my heart, I pray so.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
If You Had Faith....
“If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”
Why are you sitting in this church? Are you here out of custom or habit? Or do you hunger for the nourishment of God’s word and sacraments? What do you seek? More to the point, what does Jesus expect of you? If you’re here, sitting in this church, then perhaps you’ve already made some commitment to being one of Jesus’ disciples. If that weren’t the case you’d be home enjoying your coffee and Sunday paper. Even so, if we believe we’re trying to follow Jesus, then it’s not hard to wonder what true discipleship really entails. Even we long-time Episcopalians sometimes feel as clueless as the disciples in Luke’s Gospel seem to be.
For the last three months we’ve been on the road with Jesus, heading for Jerusalem and the inevitable conflict there. Along the way, Jesus has been offering the disciples, the Pharisees, the crowds, and, by extension, us glimpses of what discipleship involves. What have we learned so far? Through the story of the Good Samaritan we’ve learned that when we’ve landed in the ditch, God comes to our aid, often through people very different from us in social class or ethnicity. When Jesus visited the home of Martha and Mary, we learned that deepening our relationship with Jesus supersedes all personal and social obligations. Through watching Jesus heal on the Sabbath, we learned the importance of doing good to others even when the need to act violates community or liturgical boundaries. We’ve learned about the need for humility. We’ve been reminded that when we’ve gone astray God actively seeks us out. Last week we were warned of our obligation to take care of the needs of the poor in this life while we still can. In the verse immediately preceding today’s lesson, Jesus tells the disciples that they must forgive others as much as seven times a day! What? No wonder the disciples feel overwhelmed! Perhaps we do too, when we consider all that the Lord seems to want from us.
So the disciples ask Jesus to “increase” their faith. Perhaps they assume that they need more faith in order to live up to Jesus’ demands. But Jesus shatters their assumptions. I’m not talking about quantity of faith, he tells them. With even the smallest amount of real faith, with faith equal to a barely visible mustard seed, you can do anything that God calls you to do. You can be a full disciple, you can accomplish great things for God. All that’s needed is that you rely on God’s grace and not on your own powers. Certainly it’s human to fear that we’re only very limited beings. And often we let our fear excuse us from moving beyond “we’ve always done it this way.” Jesus doesn’t care about whether we think we have enough faith or not. He wants us to stop being concerned about ourselves and turn to God, whose Spirit is already in us producing the faith that we do have, the faith that drew you here today. Jesus offers the strongest possible assurance that whether we have enough faith for the life of discipleship is immaterial. If we trust God and share God’s love for us with others God will enable us to be the faithful disciples God has called us to be.
What might such a life of trust in God’s power look like? Tomorrow the church remembers Francis of Assisi. This afternoon we will bless animals in his name. Francis was born in 1181, one of seven children of a rich Italian cloth merchant. As a young man Francis was fond of wandering minstrels, bright clothing, rich friends, and worldly pleasures. At the age of 20, he joined a military expedition, was taken prisoner, and possibly experienced a spiritual conversion during his imprisonment. He began seriously to talk about betrothal to “lady poverty,” and repeatedly asked God for enlightenment. After a pilgrimage to Rome he had a vision of Jesus in the Church of San Damiano just outside Assisi, in which the icon of Christ crucified told him, “Francis, Francis, go and repair my house which, as you can see, is falling into ruins.” Thinking this meant the ruined church in which he was praying, he sold some of his father’s cloth and gave it to the local priest for the repairs. When his father repeatedly tried to draw Francis away from service to the poor and back into the family’s commercial life, Francis publicly renounced his father and his patrimony, even stripping off the clothes from his father’s house. After living for a time as a beggar, Francis heard a sermon on Matthew 10:9, in which Jesus instructed his disciples to go forth without any money or baggage to proclaim the nearness of the Kingdom of Heaven. Francis committed himself right there to a life of poverty and preaching. Within a year, Francis had 11 followers all dedicated to his vision of absolute poverty. Francis was moved to create an order of “Friars Minor,” i.e., brothers who would not be priests but would be committed to evangelism and living a simple communal life. In 1209 Clare of Assisi and her brother Rufino heard Francis preach and realized their own calling. In 1211, Francis received Clare, and the Order of Poor Clares for women was established. By God’s grace, the Franciscan order began to grow, and its final rule of was approved by the Pope in 1223. As he was praying in his mountain retreat on or about September 14, 1224, the Feast of the Holy Cross, Francis had another vision and received the stigmata, i.e., wounds in his hands and feet that correspond to Jesus’ crucifixion wounds. Suffering from the stigmata and from an eye disease, his body weakened by years of hard work and travel, Francis’s health began to decline. He died on the evening of October 3, 1226, at the age of only 45.
Stories of Francis’s deep faith and trust in God abound. Perhaps you’ve seen a collection of legends and folklore about him called “The Little Flowers of Saint Francis.” Many of these stories deal with his love for animals. On one journey, for example, it is said that he stopped in a forest grove and told his companions to “wait for me while I go preach to my sisters the birds.” The birds surrounded him, drawn by the power of his voice, and all stayed to listen. In another legend, Francis was said to have persuaded a wolf to stop ravaging the livestock of a village. Throughout his life of charity and poverty, Francis had a great love for all of the natural world. He preached to all, both humans and animals, of the universal ability of all creatures to praise God and of the human duty to protect and enjoy nature as both protectors and members of God’s creation. Having renounced by faith in God’s promises the inheritance of a cloth merchant’s son and having courageously embraced the life of poverty to which God had called him, Francis left the church a rich legacy of numerous communities dedicated to his ideals.
What does such a life of trust in God’s power look like in the 21st century? In addition to communities of monks and nuns, Francis’s legacy also continues to flourish among lay people. Anglicans and Episcopalians, for example, can join the Third Order of the Society of St. Francis, whose members live by Francis’s rule of evangelism and the simple life while maintaining their secular vocations. If you would like to see some examples closer to home of folks working together and faithfully following God’s lead in serving others, I invite you to come to Mountain Grace this coming Saturday. There you will hear about the Common Friars, an intentional community created by Paul Clever at the Good Earth Mission Farm in Athens and about Jonathan Youngman’s urban Jezreel Community. You can hear Harry Chase describe how the Maple Tree Learning Center reaches out to lower income families in the Appalachian region of Tennessee. If that’s not enough, you can hear about Academic Day Camps in Charleston, WV and about summer reading camps in our own diocese. Would you like to screw up your courage and put together a mission trip? Gordon Brewer, a deacon in the Diocese of East Tennessee, will tell you how. Would you like to be greener? Let Frank Edmands, a priest in this diocese, lead you into a deeper awareness of environmental issues for churches.
All of these people and many others model for us the life of faithful discipleship. Most of them probably started with less than a mustard seed’s worth of faith, but all of them let God lead them along the path that God had marked out for them. We thank God for their faith and their ministries. We thank God for the witness of Francis of Assisi. We also thank God for our own faith, the faith that has drawn into this church today. Trusting God, we step out in faith to do the great things that God will do as God works through us.
Why are you sitting in this church? Are you here out of custom or habit? Or do you hunger for the nourishment of God’s word and sacraments? What do you seek? More to the point, what does Jesus expect of you? If you’re here, sitting in this church, then perhaps you’ve already made some commitment to being one of Jesus’ disciples. If that weren’t the case you’d be home enjoying your coffee and Sunday paper. Even so, if we believe we’re trying to follow Jesus, then it’s not hard to wonder what true discipleship really entails. Even we long-time Episcopalians sometimes feel as clueless as the disciples in Luke’s Gospel seem to be.
For the last three months we’ve been on the road with Jesus, heading for Jerusalem and the inevitable conflict there. Along the way, Jesus has been offering the disciples, the Pharisees, the crowds, and, by extension, us glimpses of what discipleship involves. What have we learned so far? Through the story of the Good Samaritan we’ve learned that when we’ve landed in the ditch, God comes to our aid, often through people very different from us in social class or ethnicity. When Jesus visited the home of Martha and Mary, we learned that deepening our relationship with Jesus supersedes all personal and social obligations. Through watching Jesus heal on the Sabbath, we learned the importance of doing good to others even when the need to act violates community or liturgical boundaries. We’ve learned about the need for humility. We’ve been reminded that when we’ve gone astray God actively seeks us out. Last week we were warned of our obligation to take care of the needs of the poor in this life while we still can. In the verse immediately preceding today’s lesson, Jesus tells the disciples that they must forgive others as much as seven times a day! What? No wonder the disciples feel overwhelmed! Perhaps we do too, when we consider all that the Lord seems to want from us.
So the disciples ask Jesus to “increase” their faith. Perhaps they assume that they need more faith in order to live up to Jesus’ demands. But Jesus shatters their assumptions. I’m not talking about quantity of faith, he tells them. With even the smallest amount of real faith, with faith equal to a barely visible mustard seed, you can do anything that God calls you to do. You can be a full disciple, you can accomplish great things for God. All that’s needed is that you rely on God’s grace and not on your own powers. Certainly it’s human to fear that we’re only very limited beings. And often we let our fear excuse us from moving beyond “we’ve always done it this way.” Jesus doesn’t care about whether we think we have enough faith or not. He wants us to stop being concerned about ourselves and turn to God, whose Spirit is already in us producing the faith that we do have, the faith that drew you here today. Jesus offers the strongest possible assurance that whether we have enough faith for the life of discipleship is immaterial. If we trust God and share God’s love for us with others God will enable us to be the faithful disciples God has called us to be.
What might such a life of trust in God’s power look like? Tomorrow the church remembers Francis of Assisi. This afternoon we will bless animals in his name. Francis was born in 1181, one of seven children of a rich Italian cloth merchant. As a young man Francis was fond of wandering minstrels, bright clothing, rich friends, and worldly pleasures. At the age of 20, he joined a military expedition, was taken prisoner, and possibly experienced a spiritual conversion during his imprisonment. He began seriously to talk about betrothal to “lady poverty,” and repeatedly asked God for enlightenment. After a pilgrimage to Rome he had a vision of Jesus in the Church of San Damiano just outside Assisi, in which the icon of Christ crucified told him, “Francis, Francis, go and repair my house which, as you can see, is falling into ruins.” Thinking this meant the ruined church in which he was praying, he sold some of his father’s cloth and gave it to the local priest for the repairs. When his father repeatedly tried to draw Francis away from service to the poor and back into the family’s commercial life, Francis publicly renounced his father and his patrimony, even stripping off the clothes from his father’s house. After living for a time as a beggar, Francis heard a sermon on Matthew 10:9, in which Jesus instructed his disciples to go forth without any money or baggage to proclaim the nearness of the Kingdom of Heaven. Francis committed himself right there to a life of poverty and preaching. Within a year, Francis had 11 followers all dedicated to his vision of absolute poverty. Francis was moved to create an order of “Friars Minor,” i.e., brothers who would not be priests but would be committed to evangelism and living a simple communal life. In 1209 Clare of Assisi and her brother Rufino heard Francis preach and realized their own calling. In 1211, Francis received Clare, and the Order of Poor Clares for women was established. By God’s grace, the Franciscan order began to grow, and its final rule of was approved by the Pope in 1223. As he was praying in his mountain retreat on or about September 14, 1224, the Feast of the Holy Cross, Francis had another vision and received the stigmata, i.e., wounds in his hands and feet that correspond to Jesus’ crucifixion wounds. Suffering from the stigmata and from an eye disease, his body weakened by years of hard work and travel, Francis’s health began to decline. He died on the evening of October 3, 1226, at the age of only 45.
Stories of Francis’s deep faith and trust in God abound. Perhaps you’ve seen a collection of legends and folklore about him called “The Little Flowers of Saint Francis.” Many of these stories deal with his love for animals. On one journey, for example, it is said that he stopped in a forest grove and told his companions to “wait for me while I go preach to my sisters the birds.” The birds surrounded him, drawn by the power of his voice, and all stayed to listen. In another legend, Francis was said to have persuaded a wolf to stop ravaging the livestock of a village. Throughout his life of charity and poverty, Francis had a great love for all of the natural world. He preached to all, both humans and animals, of the universal ability of all creatures to praise God and of the human duty to protect and enjoy nature as both protectors and members of God’s creation. Having renounced by faith in God’s promises the inheritance of a cloth merchant’s son and having courageously embraced the life of poverty to which God had called him, Francis left the church a rich legacy of numerous communities dedicated to his ideals.
What does such a life of trust in God’s power look like in the 21st century? In addition to communities of monks and nuns, Francis’s legacy also continues to flourish among lay people. Anglicans and Episcopalians, for example, can join the Third Order of the Society of St. Francis, whose members live by Francis’s rule of evangelism and the simple life while maintaining their secular vocations. If you would like to see some examples closer to home of folks working together and faithfully following God’s lead in serving others, I invite you to come to Mountain Grace this coming Saturday. There you will hear about the Common Friars, an intentional community created by Paul Clever at the Good Earth Mission Farm in Athens and about Jonathan Youngman’s urban Jezreel Community. You can hear Harry Chase describe how the Maple Tree Learning Center reaches out to lower income families in the Appalachian region of Tennessee. If that’s not enough, you can hear about Academic Day Camps in Charleston, WV and about summer reading camps in our own diocese. Would you like to screw up your courage and put together a mission trip? Gordon Brewer, a deacon in the Diocese of East Tennessee, will tell you how. Would you like to be greener? Let Frank Edmands, a priest in this diocese, lead you into a deeper awareness of environmental issues for churches.
All of these people and many others model for us the life of faithful discipleship. Most of them probably started with less than a mustard seed’s worth of faith, but all of them let God lead them along the path that God had marked out for them. We thank God for their faith and their ministries. We thank God for the witness of Francis of Assisi. We also thank God for our own faith, the faith that has drawn into this church today. Trusting God, we step out in faith to do the great things that God will do as God works through us.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Grant Us the Fullness of Your Grace
It was May, 2007. John Bogle, the founder of the Vanguard Group of mutual funds, was addressing the MBA graduates of the McDonough School of Business of Georgetown University. He had been at a party, he told the graduates, given by a billionaire on Shelter Island. As he was chatting with the other guests, the late author Kurt Vonnegut took it upon himself to inform his friend, the author Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch 22 over its entire history. Heller responded, “Yes, but I have something he will never have . . . Enough.” Bogle was stunned, so stunned that he proceeded to write a book with the title Enough, that indicted the greedy practices of the entire hedge fund industry of which the host was a part.
Enough. How much is enough? How much food, and of what kind, do we need? How much clothing? Designer or bargain basement? How big a house do we need? Modest ranch or McMansion? How big a car? How much money in the bank? When do we have enough so that we can begin to share? With whom should we share? And how? Are there more effective and less effective ways to share our resources with others? How can we be intentional about our use of all of God’s gifts to us? What is God calling us to do? In our Scripture readings for today, we are asked again to consider our relationship to wealth. We are asked to ponder how much we truly need, and, as disciples of the risen Christ, to discern what our obligations might be to our neighbors.
Enough. What is enough for an ordained person in the early second century? What is enough for a lay person? Our reading from the end of the first letter to Timothy gives us some clues to the answers to these questions. You remember that this letter was probably not written by Paul himself, but rather by a protégé or disciple. Much of this letter deals with the contrast between false and legitimate leadership. Scholars have suggested that this latter part, which deals especially with the qualifications and responsibilities of ordained ministers, could have been part of an ordination service or sermon. The emphasis here, as also in our own ordination services in the Book of Common Prayer, is on living a life patterned on the Gospel and focused on nurturing and building up God’s people. Especially for those ordained, a life patterned on the Gospel is a simple life of contentment with the basic necessities. When church leaders live in this way, they avoid the distractions caused by the pursuit of wealth. They can truly put God at the center of their lives, and they can cultivate the virtues of righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, and gentleness. Perhaps all Christians, ordained and lay, are called to live simpler lives, lives focused on God. However, the author also realizes that for those who are not ordained, at least, wealth is not itself sinful, so long as we do not regard it as an end in itself. Rather, wealth is a gift from God, with which we are to do God’s work. When we remember that “all things come of thee, O Lord, and of thine own have we given thee,” then we can use our wealth to be “rich in good works.” What is important is that we recognize that God is the source of our wealth and that we have a responsibility to use our wealth wisely, so that ultimately we can “take hold of the life that really is life.”
Enough. How much wealth, how much conspicuous consumption is too much? How can wealthy people use their wealth responsibly to serve the poor in their midst? Jesus’ parable in today’s Gospel reading illustrates the reversal of rich and poor that we have heard throughout Luke’s Gospel. Remember the reversals in the Song of Mary in chapter 1: “he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty.” Remember the reversals of the Beatitudes in chapter 6: “Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry.” There are warnings here, no question about it. Even so, this parable is not about heaven and hell, not about the fate of the rich and the poor in the afterlife. Rather, the intention of this parable is to remind its hearers, especially the Pharisees who saw wealth as mark of God’s favor, but also the wealthy people who had joined the Christian community to whom Luke was writing, of their responsibility to use their wealth in this life for the good of others. In this parable we hear Jesus’ charge to be at work with God to alleviate poverty while we can , in this life. Rather than flaunting our purple and linen, the most expensive color and fabric in the ancient world, rather than dining sumptuously every day, we are to actually see the needy neighbor at our gate, the one that even the despised dogs lick, and we are to care for this neighbor now, while we still have the chance. Life is short and fragile, we are warned, and we are to be intentional about using God’s gifts to us to benefit those immediately around us. We are to ask ourselves, intentionally ask ourselves, “Do I have enough now? Do I need to latest gadget, the fanciest clothes, the priciest food, the largest house, the newest car? Can I justify using God’s gifts for my own benefit, even as I step over the person who is dressed in rags, who runs out of food before the end of the month, lacks adequate heating in the winter, and drives a beater to work, if they have a job and car at all? Do I have enough? Does my neighbor have enough? If the answer to the first question is “Yes,” and the answer to the second question is “No,” then we need to look honestly at our lives and see where we can be more intentional about sharing what we have.
How might we do that in Gallipolis in 2010? No, I’m not suggesting that we sell all we have, give everything to the poor, and join a convent or monastery. Nor am I suggesting necessarily that we buy all our clothes at the Salvation Army and our food at the Dollar store. What I am suggesting is that we assess our lives in light of our relationship with God and honestly and intentionally ponder our use of our resources. Look at your own checkbook – or Quicken program. What does it tell you? On what are you really spending God’s gifts to you? What proportion of your income have you returned to God? What proportion have you given to benefit your neighbor in some way? After you’ve considered your use of your own resources, here are some other concrete things you can do. Intentionally engage in a ministry that feeds or clothes people, or that provides shelter or help with the needs of shelter. Join a ministry that distributes the necessities of life to those who lack them, the Lutheran Social Services mobile food pantry and diaper distribution, for example. Enable others to access needed services and government programs designed to alleviate poverty. Become an Ohio Benefit Bank counselor, for example, and help us expand our ministry of connecting people to such basic services as Medicaid, food stamps, supplemental food for women, infants, and children (WIC), heating assistance, and financial aid for post-secondary education. Beyond providing direct assistance, consider the political realities underlying poverty. Where can we make systemic changes, so that working people are more likely to have enough to live on, more likely to have access to adequate healthcare, less likely to need handouts. Would you like to partner with God to ensure that the hungry are “filled with good things?” Not just on the third Tuesday of the month, but all the time? Consider following the prompts of HungerNetOhio or Bread for the World to persuade our elected officials to address issues of hunger legislatively. At election time, ask your elected officials what they are doing to address hunger, or housing, or health care.
And finally, pray. Ask God to guide you in your assessments and choices. For ultimately, our own souls are at stake. These readings remind us that our time here is short, our chances to serve others are limited, and our economic choices really do shape our identities and our eternal destinies. We serve others not out of a sense of guilt, or ascetic renunciation, or because we are communists, or because the poor are more virtuous than we are. Rather, in serving the poor we care for our own souls by imitating our generous, gracious, and giving God. My brothers and sisters, the good news is that when we pray for God’s guidance in the use of God’s gifts to us, when we ask God to show us when we have enough and when others don’t, God will grant us the fullness of God’s grace. God will lead into a more generous life, a life that partakes of God’s own life.
Enough. How much is enough? How much food, and of what kind, do we need? How much clothing? Designer or bargain basement? How big a house do we need? Modest ranch or McMansion? How big a car? How much money in the bank? When do we have enough so that we can begin to share? With whom should we share? And how? Are there more effective and less effective ways to share our resources with others? How can we be intentional about our use of all of God’s gifts to us? What is God calling us to do? In our Scripture readings for today, we are asked again to consider our relationship to wealth. We are asked to ponder how much we truly need, and, as disciples of the risen Christ, to discern what our obligations might be to our neighbors.
Enough. What is enough for an ordained person in the early second century? What is enough for a lay person? Our reading from the end of the first letter to Timothy gives us some clues to the answers to these questions. You remember that this letter was probably not written by Paul himself, but rather by a protégé or disciple. Much of this letter deals with the contrast between false and legitimate leadership. Scholars have suggested that this latter part, which deals especially with the qualifications and responsibilities of ordained ministers, could have been part of an ordination service or sermon. The emphasis here, as also in our own ordination services in the Book of Common Prayer, is on living a life patterned on the Gospel and focused on nurturing and building up God’s people. Especially for those ordained, a life patterned on the Gospel is a simple life of contentment with the basic necessities. When church leaders live in this way, they avoid the distractions caused by the pursuit of wealth. They can truly put God at the center of their lives, and they can cultivate the virtues of righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, and gentleness. Perhaps all Christians, ordained and lay, are called to live simpler lives, lives focused on God. However, the author also realizes that for those who are not ordained, at least, wealth is not itself sinful, so long as we do not regard it as an end in itself. Rather, wealth is a gift from God, with which we are to do God’s work. When we remember that “all things come of thee, O Lord, and of thine own have we given thee,” then we can use our wealth to be “rich in good works.” What is important is that we recognize that God is the source of our wealth and that we have a responsibility to use our wealth wisely, so that ultimately we can “take hold of the life that really is life.”
Enough. How much wealth, how much conspicuous consumption is too much? How can wealthy people use their wealth responsibly to serve the poor in their midst? Jesus’ parable in today’s Gospel reading illustrates the reversal of rich and poor that we have heard throughout Luke’s Gospel. Remember the reversals in the Song of Mary in chapter 1: “he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty.” Remember the reversals of the Beatitudes in chapter 6: “Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry.” There are warnings here, no question about it. Even so, this parable is not about heaven and hell, not about the fate of the rich and the poor in the afterlife. Rather, the intention of this parable is to remind its hearers, especially the Pharisees who saw wealth as mark of God’s favor, but also the wealthy people who had joined the Christian community to whom Luke was writing, of their responsibility to use their wealth in this life for the good of others. In this parable we hear Jesus’ charge to be at work with God to alleviate poverty while we can , in this life. Rather than flaunting our purple and linen, the most expensive color and fabric in the ancient world, rather than dining sumptuously every day, we are to actually see the needy neighbor at our gate, the one that even the despised dogs lick, and we are to care for this neighbor now, while we still have the chance. Life is short and fragile, we are warned, and we are to be intentional about using God’s gifts to us to benefit those immediately around us. We are to ask ourselves, intentionally ask ourselves, “Do I have enough now? Do I need to latest gadget, the fanciest clothes, the priciest food, the largest house, the newest car? Can I justify using God’s gifts for my own benefit, even as I step over the person who is dressed in rags, who runs out of food before the end of the month, lacks adequate heating in the winter, and drives a beater to work, if they have a job and car at all? Do I have enough? Does my neighbor have enough? If the answer to the first question is “Yes,” and the answer to the second question is “No,” then we need to look honestly at our lives and see where we can be more intentional about sharing what we have.
How might we do that in Gallipolis in 2010? No, I’m not suggesting that we sell all we have, give everything to the poor, and join a convent or monastery. Nor am I suggesting necessarily that we buy all our clothes at the Salvation Army and our food at the Dollar store. What I am suggesting is that we assess our lives in light of our relationship with God and honestly and intentionally ponder our use of our resources. Look at your own checkbook – or Quicken program. What does it tell you? On what are you really spending God’s gifts to you? What proportion of your income have you returned to God? What proportion have you given to benefit your neighbor in some way? After you’ve considered your use of your own resources, here are some other concrete things you can do. Intentionally engage in a ministry that feeds or clothes people, or that provides shelter or help with the needs of shelter. Join a ministry that distributes the necessities of life to those who lack them, the Lutheran Social Services mobile food pantry and diaper distribution, for example. Enable others to access needed services and government programs designed to alleviate poverty. Become an Ohio Benefit Bank counselor, for example, and help us expand our ministry of connecting people to such basic services as Medicaid, food stamps, supplemental food for women, infants, and children (WIC), heating assistance, and financial aid for post-secondary education. Beyond providing direct assistance, consider the political realities underlying poverty. Where can we make systemic changes, so that working people are more likely to have enough to live on, more likely to have access to adequate healthcare, less likely to need handouts. Would you like to partner with God to ensure that the hungry are “filled with good things?” Not just on the third Tuesday of the month, but all the time? Consider following the prompts of HungerNetOhio or Bread for the World to persuade our elected officials to address issues of hunger legislatively. At election time, ask your elected officials what they are doing to address hunger, or housing, or health care.
And finally, pray. Ask God to guide you in your assessments and choices. For ultimately, our own souls are at stake. These readings remind us that our time here is short, our chances to serve others are limited, and our economic choices really do shape our identities and our eternal destinies. We serve others not out of a sense of guilt, or ascetic renunciation, or because we are communists, or because the poor are more virtuous than we are. Rather, in serving the poor we care for our own souls by imitating our generous, gracious, and giving God. My brothers and sisters, the good news is that when we pray for God’s guidance in the use of God’s gifts to us, when we ask God to show us when we have enough and when others don’t, God will grant us the fullness of God’s grace. God will lead into a more generous life, a life that partakes of God’s own life.
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Making Me an Example
How do we show forth our commitment to Jesus? How do our lives witness to the life, death, and resurrection of our Lord? How do we “proclaim by word and example the good news of God in Christ?” Christians have struggled with these questions since the very beginning of the church. Even though we made valiant promises at our baptisms, we too struggle with these questions in our own time and place.
The writer of the first letter to Timothy also struggled with these questions, most likely at the very beginning of the second century. Many scholars believe that this letter, the second letter to Timothy, and the letter to Titus, which we collectively call the Pastoral Epistles, were not written by Paul himself. Lots of internal evidence suggests that these letters were more likely written by a disciple of Paul’s who was writing in Paul’s name, which was not uncommon in the ancient world. Whoever wrote these letters, they were accepted by those who put together the “canon,” i.e., the collection of gospels, letters, and essays that we call the New Testament. Those who put together the canon understood that these letters give us important insights into questions about Christian witness, and they reflect some of the thinking about faith and order of the earliest Christian communities. As we hear parts of First and Second Timothy this month and next month, we’ll see some of the questions that engaged a church in transition – a church not unlike our own church today. Actually, try reading them of a piece yourself – you may discover some insights for our continuing life together at St. Peter’s!
In First Timothy therefore we have a letter based on Paul’s own life and written as if to Paul’s younger companion in evangelizing the various churches in which Paul worked. Casting the letter in Paul’s name, the writer uses Paul’s voice to rehearse Paul’s history, his conversion, and the meaning of his work. In the segment we heard this morning, we get our first clue as to what witnessing to our faith might mean. For “Paul” witnessing means, first of all, acknowledging to ourselves and others that we have been rescued from a life that draws us away from God and brought by God’s grace into a life and a community that allows us live in and for God. What is more important, witnessing means acknowledging that we have been rescued for a purpose. We have been rescued by Christ to serve as an example to others, a “template” which is one of the meanings of the Greek word the writer uses, or a model for what life lived in Christ might look like. Witnessing to our faith means enabling others to see in us, in the quality of life that we live, a glimpse of salvation, so that they too might be drawn into that deeper, more blessed life in Christ. Although in the mixed-ethnic world of the early 2nd century, drawing others into Christian community was not an easy job – just as it is not in our world – the writer is also confident that Christ has strengthened him for this work – just as God strengthens us for witness!
At the same time that the writer of the Pastoral Epistles was struggling with the issue of witness, others in the early second century were called by God to proclaim their faith in Christ in a deeper way. It was the year 107. During the reign of the Roman Emperor Trajan, Ignatius, the bishop of Antioch, was arrested by imperial authorities, condemned to death, and taken to Rome in order to die in the arena. On the way from Antioch to Rome, Ignatius spoke to groups of Christians in every town through which he passed, encouraging people to remain faithful. When Ignatius and his prison escort reached the west coast of Asia minor, where they would board a ship for Rome, delegations from several churches visited with Ignatius. They gave him provisions for the journey and commended him to God’s care. In return Ignatius wrote seven letters, five to the congregations of those who had greeted him, one to the church in Rome, and one to Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, who would himself face martyrdom. In his letters, Ignatius stressed the importance of maintaining Christian unity in love and sound doctrine, he held up the clergy as the symbol of Christian unity, and he embraced Christian martyrdom as a privilege and gift from God. He is remembered most especially for reminding the Christians in Rome that, “I am writing to all the Churches and I enjoin all, that I am dying willingly for God's sake, if only you do not prevent it. I beg you, do not do me an untimely kindness. Allow me to be eaten by the beasts, which are my way of reaching to God. I am God's wheat, and I am to be ground by the teeth of wild beasts, so that I may become the pure bread of Christ.” In his letters and in his courageous death, Ignatius was surely a strong witness for Christ. In Greek the word for what Ignatius was is martyr. It was a generic word for witness, and could also mean “witness” in the legal sense. In English, of course, it has come to mean someone who tells what he believes, even though it results in his being killed for it, and more specifically, someone who dies while witnessing to faith in Christ, just as indeed Ignatius did. Is that what Christ expects of us? Are we too, like Ignatius, like some Christians in our own world, called to witness to Christ with our very lives?
Are there other ways to proclaim the good news of God in Christ? Yesterday, we remembered all those, Jews, Christians, Muslims, those of other faiths, and those of no faith, who died on September 11, 2001. Is burning a Qur’an the way to witness to our faith in Christ and to proclaim the good news? Our Jewish sisters and brothers, for whom this is the holiest week of the religious year, remember only too well the book burnings of the Inquisition and Nazi Germany. No, my friends, all of my clergy colleagues and I agree that burning the Qur’an is not the way to witness to the good news of God in Christ. Many clergy were ready to stand with members of the Muslim community in solidarity and recognition that this country at least grants freedom of religious expression to all its citizens. Here’s another way to witness to Christ. On my way home from Columbus on Friday morning, I heard this week’s Story Corps segment on NPR’s Morning Edition. The segment profiled two men who had been at Ground Zero, Jack Murray and John Romanowich. Perhaps you heard the segment too. Jack Murray was on the roof of his apartment building watching the disaster. “I can certainly say,” he tells us, “that if you were going to find somebody that day to go down there who was pragmatic and clearheaded, I was not that guy. I honestly thought the world was going to come to an end.” Murray went down to his neighborhood bar to see what other people were doing. He was a welder by trade and knew how to cut steel beams. So when a friend suggested he go down to the site he agreed. Sometime during that first night, as he cut through the twisted beams, he had an epiphany of sorts. He realized that he was standing on a gigantic funeral pyre and possibly breathing in the ashen remains of some of the dead. “It was kind of like a communion for me,” he said. For the next two weeks Murray stayed at the site cutting steel beams so that rescue workers could search for survivors.
John Romanowich came to Ground Zero as an employee of the Department of Design and Construction, the city agency charged with cleaning up Ground Zero. When he stepped off the bus, he said, he felt “like we crossed into a different reality.” He worked the 3 to 11 shift, which made it hard to see his wife and daughter. One day he couldn’t find his ID badge. His daughter had taken it to school so she could show everyone what a hero her Dad was. Romanowich spent four months at Ground Zero, from mid-September to mid-January. He found it hard to return to his former life. “We never felt right when we had to leave,” he remembered, “when we had to go home. So that was like you were getting cut from the team.” I don’t know what faith communities Jack Murray and John Romanowich belong to. But I do know that through their work and dedication they proclaimed in their bodies, by their example, God’s consoling love for humanity of all faith communities, ethnicities, and colors. They proclaimed God’s desire to rescue us all from destruction, hatred, and evil.
So how are we examples of Christ? How do our lives witness to Christ’s death and resurrection? How do we proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ? Who might see a glimpse of Christ in us? We all struggle with these questions, and there are no easy answers to them. I invite you, in your own prayer time, your own time alone with God, to reflect on your life through the lens of these questions. Is there a Ground Zero here where we might be called to serve? Or is our witness, our example, our proclamation less dramatic, less visible? Rest assured, God has called you too to be God’s witness, and in God’s good time, God will make clear to you how you are to respond to God’s claim on you. And when God calls you God will also strengthen you for God’s service.
The writer of the first letter to Timothy also struggled with these questions, most likely at the very beginning of the second century. Many scholars believe that this letter, the second letter to Timothy, and the letter to Titus, which we collectively call the Pastoral Epistles, were not written by Paul himself. Lots of internal evidence suggests that these letters were more likely written by a disciple of Paul’s who was writing in Paul’s name, which was not uncommon in the ancient world. Whoever wrote these letters, they were accepted by those who put together the “canon,” i.e., the collection of gospels, letters, and essays that we call the New Testament. Those who put together the canon understood that these letters give us important insights into questions about Christian witness, and they reflect some of the thinking about faith and order of the earliest Christian communities. As we hear parts of First and Second Timothy this month and next month, we’ll see some of the questions that engaged a church in transition – a church not unlike our own church today. Actually, try reading them of a piece yourself – you may discover some insights for our continuing life together at St. Peter’s!
In First Timothy therefore we have a letter based on Paul’s own life and written as if to Paul’s younger companion in evangelizing the various churches in which Paul worked. Casting the letter in Paul’s name, the writer uses Paul’s voice to rehearse Paul’s history, his conversion, and the meaning of his work. In the segment we heard this morning, we get our first clue as to what witnessing to our faith might mean. For “Paul” witnessing means, first of all, acknowledging to ourselves and others that we have been rescued from a life that draws us away from God and brought by God’s grace into a life and a community that allows us live in and for God. What is more important, witnessing means acknowledging that we have been rescued for a purpose. We have been rescued by Christ to serve as an example to others, a “template” which is one of the meanings of the Greek word the writer uses, or a model for what life lived in Christ might look like. Witnessing to our faith means enabling others to see in us, in the quality of life that we live, a glimpse of salvation, so that they too might be drawn into that deeper, more blessed life in Christ. Although in the mixed-ethnic world of the early 2nd century, drawing others into Christian community was not an easy job – just as it is not in our world – the writer is also confident that Christ has strengthened him for this work – just as God strengthens us for witness!
At the same time that the writer of the Pastoral Epistles was struggling with the issue of witness, others in the early second century were called by God to proclaim their faith in Christ in a deeper way. It was the year 107. During the reign of the Roman Emperor Trajan, Ignatius, the bishop of Antioch, was arrested by imperial authorities, condemned to death, and taken to Rome in order to die in the arena. On the way from Antioch to Rome, Ignatius spoke to groups of Christians in every town through which he passed, encouraging people to remain faithful. When Ignatius and his prison escort reached the west coast of Asia minor, where they would board a ship for Rome, delegations from several churches visited with Ignatius. They gave him provisions for the journey and commended him to God’s care. In return Ignatius wrote seven letters, five to the congregations of those who had greeted him, one to the church in Rome, and one to Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, who would himself face martyrdom. In his letters, Ignatius stressed the importance of maintaining Christian unity in love and sound doctrine, he held up the clergy as the symbol of Christian unity, and he embraced Christian martyrdom as a privilege and gift from God. He is remembered most especially for reminding the Christians in Rome that, “I am writing to all the Churches and I enjoin all, that I am dying willingly for God's sake, if only you do not prevent it. I beg you, do not do me an untimely kindness. Allow me to be eaten by the beasts, which are my way of reaching to God. I am God's wheat, and I am to be ground by the teeth of wild beasts, so that I may become the pure bread of Christ.” In his letters and in his courageous death, Ignatius was surely a strong witness for Christ. In Greek the word for what Ignatius was is martyr. It was a generic word for witness, and could also mean “witness” in the legal sense. In English, of course, it has come to mean someone who tells what he believes, even though it results in his being killed for it, and more specifically, someone who dies while witnessing to faith in Christ, just as indeed Ignatius did. Is that what Christ expects of us? Are we too, like Ignatius, like some Christians in our own world, called to witness to Christ with our very lives?
Are there other ways to proclaim the good news of God in Christ? Yesterday, we remembered all those, Jews, Christians, Muslims, those of other faiths, and those of no faith, who died on September 11, 2001. Is burning a Qur’an the way to witness to our faith in Christ and to proclaim the good news? Our Jewish sisters and brothers, for whom this is the holiest week of the religious year, remember only too well the book burnings of the Inquisition and Nazi Germany. No, my friends, all of my clergy colleagues and I agree that burning the Qur’an is not the way to witness to the good news of God in Christ. Many clergy were ready to stand with members of the Muslim community in solidarity and recognition that this country at least grants freedom of religious expression to all its citizens. Here’s another way to witness to Christ. On my way home from Columbus on Friday morning, I heard this week’s Story Corps segment on NPR’s Morning Edition. The segment profiled two men who had been at Ground Zero, Jack Murray and John Romanowich. Perhaps you heard the segment too. Jack Murray was on the roof of his apartment building watching the disaster. “I can certainly say,” he tells us, “that if you were going to find somebody that day to go down there who was pragmatic and clearheaded, I was not that guy. I honestly thought the world was going to come to an end.” Murray went down to his neighborhood bar to see what other people were doing. He was a welder by trade and knew how to cut steel beams. So when a friend suggested he go down to the site he agreed. Sometime during that first night, as he cut through the twisted beams, he had an epiphany of sorts. He realized that he was standing on a gigantic funeral pyre and possibly breathing in the ashen remains of some of the dead. “It was kind of like a communion for me,” he said. For the next two weeks Murray stayed at the site cutting steel beams so that rescue workers could search for survivors.
John Romanowich came to Ground Zero as an employee of the Department of Design and Construction, the city agency charged with cleaning up Ground Zero. When he stepped off the bus, he said, he felt “like we crossed into a different reality.” He worked the 3 to 11 shift, which made it hard to see his wife and daughter. One day he couldn’t find his ID badge. His daughter had taken it to school so she could show everyone what a hero her Dad was. Romanowich spent four months at Ground Zero, from mid-September to mid-January. He found it hard to return to his former life. “We never felt right when we had to leave,” he remembered, “when we had to go home. So that was like you were getting cut from the team.” I don’t know what faith communities Jack Murray and John Romanowich belong to. But I do know that through their work and dedication they proclaimed in their bodies, by their example, God’s consoling love for humanity of all faith communities, ethnicities, and colors. They proclaimed God’s desire to rescue us all from destruction, hatred, and evil.
So how are we examples of Christ? How do our lives witness to Christ’s death and resurrection? How do we proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ? Who might see a glimpse of Christ in us? We all struggle with these questions, and there are no easy answers to them. I invite you, in your own prayer time, your own time alone with God, to reflect on your life through the lens of these questions. Is there a Ground Zero here where we might be called to serve? Or is our witness, our example, our proclamation less dramatic, less visible? Rest assured, God has called you too to be God’s witness, and in God’s good time, God will make clear to you how you are to respond to God’s claim on you. And when God calls you God will also strengthen you for God’s service.
Sunday, September 5, 2010
You Have Searched Me Out and Known Me
Oh, You better watch out,
You better not cry,
You better not pout,
I'm telling you why:
Santa Claus is coming to town.
He's making a list,
He's checking it twice,
He's gonna find out
who's naughty or nice.
Santa Claus is coming to town.
No, I haven’t taken leave of my senses. Nor have I forgotten the date. Of course Santa Claus is coming to town, and a lot sooner to our stores than most of us would like. But I’ve often wondered about that song. When our children were small, I wondered what they made of it. The song was written in 1934. The later, less familiar verses assure us that “the kids in Girl and Boy Land will have a jubilee” as they discover all the toys that Santa has brought. But it’s those middle verses that give me pause:
He sees you when you're sleeping,
He knows when you're awake.
He knows when you've been bad or good,
So be good for goodness sake.
So...You better watch out,
You better not cry
You better not pout,
I'm telling you why.
Santa Claus is coming to town.
He sees you when you’re sleeping? He knows when you’re awake? He knows when you’ve been bad or good? He knows if you cry or pout? Surely that doesn’t describe Nicholas, the 4th century bishop of Myra in Asia Minor, from whom Santa Claus has descended? How could Santa see me and know me so well? Can anyone know me that well? Does even my spouse of 41 years know me that well? I doubt it.
Our psalm for today, Psalm 139, beloved of both Jews and Christians, suggests that there is someone who knows us that well, knows us even more fully than Santa. God knows us knows us through and through, God knows us even more deeply than the songwriters could ever have imagined. When we include verses 6-12, left out of our reading this morning, we are reminded that God knew us at our conception, perhaps even before that. God perhaps even marked us out for some special work. God knows us through and through now: “You have searched me out and known me, you know my sitting down and my rising up. You discern my thoughts from afar.” Moreover, and what is more important, there is nowhere we can escape God’s presence, for there is no realm where God isn’t present: “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?” At the limits of east or west, God’s hand still guides the psalmist. Even in the depths of darkness, “Darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day; darkness and light to you are both alike.” God is with us everywhere, and there is neither place nor thing that can separate us from God. Echoing Psalm 139, Paul even assured the Christians in Rome that “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” God is with us, in us, behind us, and before us, at all times, and in all places.
Like children who get caught up in the holiday rush, most of us are scarcely aware of God’s presence in our lives. Perhaps we’re oblivious to God’s presence, or perhaps we choose to ignore God’s presence. We’re “just too busy” to take the time for God. Yet God constantly takes the initiative to come more deeply into our world, and especially to those who earnestly seek God. As the psalmist reminds us, “You have searched me out….” We can experience God’s presence in our lives if we open the door to God even just a little. Rest assured, God will get through that crack! Certainly, we experience God’s presence in worship. Our experience of God is mediated or filtered through hymns, written prayers, and actions, but God is most definitely present to us here. And certainly we Episcopalians believe that Christ is especially present to us in the bread and wine that become his Body and Blood.
But is it possible for us to have an even more direct experience of God’s presence, what some have called a “mystical” experience? Many shy away from that word. I once heard an Episcopal priest say in a sermon that he had never, in forty years of being a Christian, ever had a “mystical” experience. Personally, I would doubt that, since he was a man of prayer. And there is nothing about the word “mystical” that should frighten or upset us. A mystical experience is simply a deep sense of God’s presence, a sense perhaps of direct communion with God (or Christ) that takes us to deeper levels of awareness of God’s presence. For some, mystical experiences may even include visions of Jesus or Mary or the Trinity. For almost all of us, such experiences are ineffable and indescribable. We might say with the psalmist, “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me.” Yet such experiences are real, and they can transform our lives in unimaginable ways.
Some of you good Protestant folk may again be wondering if I’ve taken leave of my senses. For many good historical reasons, and with some exceptions, Protestants have largely abandoned the pursuit of direct experiences of God’s presence. Yet the mystical experience has a long and honorable tradition in the church. In the 3rd and 4th century desert Fathers and Mothers, who lived in the deserts of Egypt as an act of devotion and commitment to God, in the medieval mystics, Hildegard of Bingen, Julian of Norwich, whom we heard about two weeks ago, the author of The Cloud of Unknowing, John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, in the 20th century English mystic Evelyn Underhill, and in the members of the World Community for Christian Meditation, just to name a few, we have a “great cloud of witnesses” of those who have sought and been granted more direct experience of God’s presence.
We don’t have to be monks or nuns. We don’t have to be spiritually adept or steeped in the faith. This is the good news: if we just leave the door slightly ajar, God will take the initiative and make Godself more deeply present to us. There are any number of ways, any number of “thin places” in which we may seek a deeper sense God’s presence. For some people, God seems especially present in nature, in a sunset or on a mountain top or watching animals or birds by a river or a lake, or at night contemplating the vastness of the stars. Sometimes we experience God’s presence in service to others, when we look deeply into another’s eyes or listen intently to another’s story. Many of us have a deeper awareness of God’s presence in sacred and blessed places, especially churches and monasteries where prayer has been offered for centuries. For some, praying with an icon can deepen our sense of God’s presence, as we let the picture be a window through which we can glimpse a bit of divine reality. For some, our own quiet places, wherever they are, can be places where, when we truly open ourselves to God, God graces us with a deeper sense of God’s presence. And for many of us, the various practices of contemplative prayer, and the various forms of prayer preserved in the Celtic tradition, help lead us into that deeper place. All of these ways of experiencing God’s presence more deeply are potentially open to all of us, if we would but take a deep breath and slow down long enough for God to get a word in edgewise. And indeed these paths to experiencing God’s presence more deeply are available to those of other faith communities too. Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism all have rich mystical traditions. To our surprise and perhaps delight, when we seek God contemplatively, when we seek to experience God’s presence more deeply and more directly, we often find that we are on common ground with those of other faith communities who are also genuinely seeking God’s deeper presence.
Come and experience what I’m talking about for yourself. Every Wednesday that I am here, from 12:00 to 12:30 here in the church, I will be praying contemplatively. If someone else joins me I will take the first 10 minutes of that time to teach a particular approach to contemplative prayer. We will also return to a contemplative approach in the Eucharist on the 4th Tuesday evening of the month. I plan some Quiet Saturday mornings later in the fall and winter, and I hope soon to begin offering a contemplative Eucharist later on Sunday afternoons. But don’t think of any of this as another task to be undertaken in order to be right with God. God is not commanding or demanding that you undertake any spiritual discipline. God is inviting us all into God’s presence. Anything that we may do, any way in which God makes Godself more deeply known to us, is God’s gift to us, a gift that helps us deepen our love for God and our gratitude for God’s great love for us.
I mentioned the Celtic spiritual tradition. I want to close by giving you just a little taste of what that tradition has to offer by sharing with you a prayer for Sunday morning.
I watch this morning
for the light that the darkness has not overcome.
I watch for the fire that was in the beginning
and that burns still in the brilliance of the rising sun.
I watch for the glow of life that gleams in the growing earth
and glistens in sea and sky.
I watch for your light, O God,
in the eyes of every living creature
and in the ever-living flame of my own soul.
If the grace of seeing were mine this day
I would glimpse you in all that lives.
Grant me the grace of seeing this day.
Grant me the grace of seeing.1
1. J. Philip Newell, Celtic Benediction (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), p 2.
You better not cry,
You better not pout,
I'm telling you why:
Santa Claus is coming to town.
He's making a list,
He's checking it twice,
He's gonna find out
who's naughty or nice.
Santa Claus is coming to town.
No, I haven’t taken leave of my senses. Nor have I forgotten the date. Of course Santa Claus is coming to town, and a lot sooner to our stores than most of us would like. But I’ve often wondered about that song. When our children were small, I wondered what they made of it. The song was written in 1934. The later, less familiar verses assure us that “the kids in Girl and Boy Land will have a jubilee” as they discover all the toys that Santa has brought. But it’s those middle verses that give me pause:
He sees you when you're sleeping,
He knows when you're awake.
He knows when you've been bad or good,
So be good for goodness sake.
So...You better watch out,
You better not cry
You better not pout,
I'm telling you why.
Santa Claus is coming to town.
He sees you when you’re sleeping? He knows when you’re awake? He knows when you’ve been bad or good? He knows if you cry or pout? Surely that doesn’t describe Nicholas, the 4th century bishop of Myra in Asia Minor, from whom Santa Claus has descended? How could Santa see me and know me so well? Can anyone know me that well? Does even my spouse of 41 years know me that well? I doubt it.
Our psalm for today, Psalm 139, beloved of both Jews and Christians, suggests that there is someone who knows us that well, knows us even more fully than Santa. God knows us knows us through and through, God knows us even more deeply than the songwriters could ever have imagined. When we include verses 6-12, left out of our reading this morning, we are reminded that God knew us at our conception, perhaps even before that. God perhaps even marked us out for some special work. God knows us through and through now: “You have searched me out and known me, you know my sitting down and my rising up. You discern my thoughts from afar.” Moreover, and what is more important, there is nowhere we can escape God’s presence, for there is no realm where God isn’t present: “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?” At the limits of east or west, God’s hand still guides the psalmist. Even in the depths of darkness, “Darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day; darkness and light to you are both alike.” God is with us everywhere, and there is neither place nor thing that can separate us from God. Echoing Psalm 139, Paul even assured the Christians in Rome that “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” God is with us, in us, behind us, and before us, at all times, and in all places.
Like children who get caught up in the holiday rush, most of us are scarcely aware of God’s presence in our lives. Perhaps we’re oblivious to God’s presence, or perhaps we choose to ignore God’s presence. We’re “just too busy” to take the time for God. Yet God constantly takes the initiative to come more deeply into our world, and especially to those who earnestly seek God. As the psalmist reminds us, “You have searched me out….” We can experience God’s presence in our lives if we open the door to God even just a little. Rest assured, God will get through that crack! Certainly, we experience God’s presence in worship. Our experience of God is mediated or filtered through hymns, written prayers, and actions, but God is most definitely present to us here. And certainly we Episcopalians believe that Christ is especially present to us in the bread and wine that become his Body and Blood.
But is it possible for us to have an even more direct experience of God’s presence, what some have called a “mystical” experience? Many shy away from that word. I once heard an Episcopal priest say in a sermon that he had never, in forty years of being a Christian, ever had a “mystical” experience. Personally, I would doubt that, since he was a man of prayer. And there is nothing about the word “mystical” that should frighten or upset us. A mystical experience is simply a deep sense of God’s presence, a sense perhaps of direct communion with God (or Christ) that takes us to deeper levels of awareness of God’s presence. For some, mystical experiences may even include visions of Jesus or Mary or the Trinity. For almost all of us, such experiences are ineffable and indescribable. We might say with the psalmist, “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me.” Yet such experiences are real, and they can transform our lives in unimaginable ways.
Some of you good Protestant folk may again be wondering if I’ve taken leave of my senses. For many good historical reasons, and with some exceptions, Protestants have largely abandoned the pursuit of direct experiences of God’s presence. Yet the mystical experience has a long and honorable tradition in the church. In the 3rd and 4th century desert Fathers and Mothers, who lived in the deserts of Egypt as an act of devotion and commitment to God, in the medieval mystics, Hildegard of Bingen, Julian of Norwich, whom we heard about two weeks ago, the author of The Cloud of Unknowing, John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, in the 20th century English mystic Evelyn Underhill, and in the members of the World Community for Christian Meditation, just to name a few, we have a “great cloud of witnesses” of those who have sought and been granted more direct experience of God’s presence.
We don’t have to be monks or nuns. We don’t have to be spiritually adept or steeped in the faith. This is the good news: if we just leave the door slightly ajar, God will take the initiative and make Godself more deeply present to us. There are any number of ways, any number of “thin places” in which we may seek a deeper sense God’s presence. For some people, God seems especially present in nature, in a sunset or on a mountain top or watching animals or birds by a river or a lake, or at night contemplating the vastness of the stars. Sometimes we experience God’s presence in service to others, when we look deeply into another’s eyes or listen intently to another’s story. Many of us have a deeper awareness of God’s presence in sacred and blessed places, especially churches and monasteries where prayer has been offered for centuries. For some, praying with an icon can deepen our sense of God’s presence, as we let the picture be a window through which we can glimpse a bit of divine reality. For some, our own quiet places, wherever they are, can be places where, when we truly open ourselves to God, God graces us with a deeper sense of God’s presence. And for many of us, the various practices of contemplative prayer, and the various forms of prayer preserved in the Celtic tradition, help lead us into that deeper place. All of these ways of experiencing God’s presence more deeply are potentially open to all of us, if we would but take a deep breath and slow down long enough for God to get a word in edgewise. And indeed these paths to experiencing God’s presence more deeply are available to those of other faith communities too. Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism all have rich mystical traditions. To our surprise and perhaps delight, when we seek God contemplatively, when we seek to experience God’s presence more deeply and more directly, we often find that we are on common ground with those of other faith communities who are also genuinely seeking God’s deeper presence.
Come and experience what I’m talking about for yourself. Every Wednesday that I am here, from 12:00 to 12:30 here in the church, I will be praying contemplatively. If someone else joins me I will take the first 10 minutes of that time to teach a particular approach to contemplative prayer. We will also return to a contemplative approach in the Eucharist on the 4th Tuesday evening of the month. I plan some Quiet Saturday mornings later in the fall and winter, and I hope soon to begin offering a contemplative Eucharist later on Sunday afternoons. But don’t think of any of this as another task to be undertaken in order to be right with God. God is not commanding or demanding that you undertake any spiritual discipline. God is inviting us all into God’s presence. Anything that we may do, any way in which God makes Godself more deeply known to us, is God’s gift to us, a gift that helps us deepen our love for God and our gratitude for God’s great love for us.
I mentioned the Celtic spiritual tradition. I want to close by giving you just a little taste of what that tradition has to offer by sharing with you a prayer for Sunday morning.
I watch this morning
for the light that the darkness has not overcome.
I watch for the fire that was in the beginning
and that burns still in the brilliance of the rising sun.
I watch for the glow of life that gleams in the growing earth
and glistens in sea and sky.
I watch for your light, O God,
in the eyes of every living creature
and in the ever-living flame of my own soul.
If the grace of seeing were mine this day
I would glimpse you in all that lives.
Grant me the grace of seeing this day.
Grant me the grace of seeing.1
1. J. Philip Newell, Celtic Benediction (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), p 2.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
You'll Be a Blessing
Where do you think you fit in the cosmos? It’s said that President Teddy Roosevelt liked to take his important guests outside in the evening. He would point to the huge Andromeda Galaxy and remind his guests that it contained a hundred billion suns, many larger than our own sun. After a little silence he would then say, “Now I think we’re small enough. Let’s go in.”1 Roosevelt knew that people could work together effectively only when they understood their relative importance in the grand scheme of things.
A humor web site offers us a slightly different take. The folks who run humor@emmitsburg.net suggest that we can gain a healthy – and perhaps humble – perspective on ourselves by looking in the mirror. At age 3, the site says, a girl looks in the mirror and sees a queen. At 8, she sees Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty. At 15, she sees a chubby, ugly, pimply teen who just can’t go to school looking like this. At 20, she’s too tall, too short, too thin, or too fat, but she goes to class or work anyway. At 30, she’s still too tall, too short, too thin, or too fat, but she’s too busy to do anything about it and goes out anyway. At 40, she’s still the same, but she says, “At least I’m clean and healthy,” and off she goes. At 50, she looks at herself, says “Well, that’s me,” and goes wherever she wants. At 60, she looks at herself, gives thanks that she can still see herself, and goes out and enjoys life. At 70, she sees wisdom, skills, and laughter and goes out with a grateful heart. At 80, she doesn’t bother to look; she just puts on a purple hat and goes out to enjoy life with her friends and family. Perhaps, say the folks on the site, we should just grab that purple hat a little earlier in life!
If Jesus were teaching today, he might suggest that both comparing ourselves to the stars and looking away from the mirror sooner would help us to have a clearer sense of who we are before God. What a strange dinner guest Jesus was in the part of Luke’s story that we hear today! We are still on the road to Jerusalem, with Jesus going from town to town and accepting invitations to teach and dine along the way. Here he has been invited by a leading Pharisee to dine on the Sabbath. You know, the Pharisees tend to get a bad rap in the Gospels. They were a sect that began in the diaspora, the colonies of Jews living outside Israel. These Jews were anxious to maintain the integrity and visible distinctiveness of their community in largely Gentile areas. So they very carefully observed all the rules and regulations in Scripture concerning dietary laws and Sabbath keeping. In inviting this relatively unknown travelling rabbi to dine, perhaps this leader of the Pharisees and his fellow rabbis were curious as to what Jesus would do and how he would interpret the rules and regulations. Perhaps they wanted to hear what new teaching he would give them.
Jesus must surely have disappointed them! He behaved in three ways definitely outside the norm for dinner guests in his day, or maybe in any day. In the first part of the story, which we don’t hear, he healed a man who had swelling in his joints. Remember that it was the Sabbath, and he wasn’t supposed to heal on the Sabbath. Healing is work, as we were reminded in last week’s Gospel reading, and one doesn’t work on the Sabbath. Jesus challenged his hearers here in the same way that he had in his healing of the bent-over woman, namely by reminding them that they would rescue a child or animal on the Sabbath, so it ought to be OK to heal.
Now everyone was surely on edge. So the second thing that Jesus did was to give his fellow diners a lesson in the proper etiquette for taking one’s seat. He told them that it’s smarter to take the lowest place around the table than the highest place. Of course, this was not news. Any Pharisee who read the Scriptures – and surely these Pharisees would have known their Scriptures backwards and forwards – recognized Jesus’ quotation of Proverbs 25.
If instructing his fellow diners weren’t bad enough, the third and oddest thing that Jesus did was to instruct his host as to whom to invite to dinner: not his family, his friends, and those able to reciprocate his hospitality, but rather the “poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.” The Pharisees must surely have shuddered when they heard Jesus say that. Most people believed that the “poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind” were that way because God despised them. Therefore a Pharisee would be ritually defiled by getting too close to them. Yet what does Jesus suggest? That one would be blessed by inviting such people, at least in the resurrection of the righteous.
Are we too at that dinner party with Jesus? Are we too observing him closely? What do we hear him telling us? I hear him telling us two things. I hear him telling us that we must let go of pride, self-preoccupation, and the desire for human accolades. That doesn’t mean being a doormat, but it does mean having a realistic sense of who we are. When we do have a realistic sense of who we are before God, when we put that purple hat on a little sooner in life, when we understand that all of us are created in God’s image and loved by God, then we will be truly blessed. Ultimately, God will enable us to become more than we are this minute. God will continue to help us to grow fully into the person God created us to be. As The Message Bible puts it, “If you walk around with your nose in the air, you’ll end up flat on your face. But if you’re content to be simply yourself, you will become more than yourself.”
I also hear Jesus reminding us that if we are created in God’s image, then God will also enable us to get beyond ourselves, to go beyond focusing on our own needs and the needs of our own immediate circle. God will enable us to share our life with people who look, talk, act, and maybe even smell different from us. God will help us to reach out to those whom we don’t normally see, know, or care about. The people with whom God is inviting and enabling us to share our love and wealth are all around us: single moms, homeless men, disabled children, gay folks, migrant workers, people who can’t make ends meet even though they’re gainfully employed, immigrants trying to adapt to our community. Jesus calls us to see them as equally beloved of God as we are. Jesus calls us to step out of our comfortable middle-class existence and invite them into our lives. Jesus promises us that when we do, we will be blessed. Hear The Message again: “Invite some people who never get invited out, the misfits from the wrong side of the tracks. You’ll be – and experience – a blessing.”
Daniel Clendinen tells the wonderful story of the wedding of his friend’s daughter, Lisa.2 The young couple couldn’t afford to invite the whole church. So they had the main street in downtown Waco, Texas blocked off. Guests danced in the street, enjoyed ice cream from Baskin Robbins, and shared wedding cake in a park gazebo. The groom, a pastor, had befriended a homeless man who lived under a bridge. Sure enough, “Coyote” came to the wedding dressed as usual: in jeans with holes in the knees, scruffy beard, and unwashed hair. He brought several of his homeless friends too, who then cleaned up afterwards. The bride’s neighbor, a small girl, came with her mother and grandfather. Soon all the younger folks were vying for the chance to dance with the 70-year old man. People strolling by were invited to join the festivities. There were smartly dressed guests alongside guests who had probably never been to a formal affair. However they were dressed, for this moment at least, “every person felt welcomed as an honored guest.” Every person was welcomed as God welcomes us and invites us to welcome each other. Every person was blessed by the others there. Every person was a blessing to the others there.
My friends, here’s the good news. When we know who we are, when we know that we are beloved children of God, when we feel free to be who we truly are, when we feel free to be the people that God created us to be, and then when we reach out to others, all others, in true welcome, we will be a blessing, and we will surely be blessed. And not only at the resurrection of the righteous. Right here and now, in our lives in this place, today. Do we feel free to step out of our comfort zone and embrace those who cannot repay us? Are we ready to stretch out our hands in welcome to all?
1. Thanks to Patricia Sanchez for this and the following story in Celebration Preaching Resources.
2. In this week’s Journey with Jesus, http://www.journeywithjesus.net
A humor web site offers us a slightly different take. The folks who run humor@emmitsburg.net suggest that we can gain a healthy – and perhaps humble – perspective on ourselves by looking in the mirror. At age 3, the site says, a girl looks in the mirror and sees a queen. At 8, she sees Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty. At 15, she sees a chubby, ugly, pimply teen who just can’t go to school looking like this. At 20, she’s too tall, too short, too thin, or too fat, but she goes to class or work anyway. At 30, she’s still too tall, too short, too thin, or too fat, but she’s too busy to do anything about it and goes out anyway. At 40, she’s still the same, but she says, “At least I’m clean and healthy,” and off she goes. At 50, she looks at herself, says “Well, that’s me,” and goes wherever she wants. At 60, she looks at herself, gives thanks that she can still see herself, and goes out and enjoys life. At 70, she sees wisdom, skills, and laughter and goes out with a grateful heart. At 80, she doesn’t bother to look; she just puts on a purple hat and goes out to enjoy life with her friends and family. Perhaps, say the folks on the site, we should just grab that purple hat a little earlier in life!
If Jesus were teaching today, he might suggest that both comparing ourselves to the stars and looking away from the mirror sooner would help us to have a clearer sense of who we are before God. What a strange dinner guest Jesus was in the part of Luke’s story that we hear today! We are still on the road to Jerusalem, with Jesus going from town to town and accepting invitations to teach and dine along the way. Here he has been invited by a leading Pharisee to dine on the Sabbath. You know, the Pharisees tend to get a bad rap in the Gospels. They were a sect that began in the diaspora, the colonies of Jews living outside Israel. These Jews were anxious to maintain the integrity and visible distinctiveness of their community in largely Gentile areas. So they very carefully observed all the rules and regulations in Scripture concerning dietary laws and Sabbath keeping. In inviting this relatively unknown travelling rabbi to dine, perhaps this leader of the Pharisees and his fellow rabbis were curious as to what Jesus would do and how he would interpret the rules and regulations. Perhaps they wanted to hear what new teaching he would give them.
Jesus must surely have disappointed them! He behaved in three ways definitely outside the norm for dinner guests in his day, or maybe in any day. In the first part of the story, which we don’t hear, he healed a man who had swelling in his joints. Remember that it was the Sabbath, and he wasn’t supposed to heal on the Sabbath. Healing is work, as we were reminded in last week’s Gospel reading, and one doesn’t work on the Sabbath. Jesus challenged his hearers here in the same way that he had in his healing of the bent-over woman, namely by reminding them that they would rescue a child or animal on the Sabbath, so it ought to be OK to heal.
Now everyone was surely on edge. So the second thing that Jesus did was to give his fellow diners a lesson in the proper etiquette for taking one’s seat. He told them that it’s smarter to take the lowest place around the table than the highest place. Of course, this was not news. Any Pharisee who read the Scriptures – and surely these Pharisees would have known their Scriptures backwards and forwards – recognized Jesus’ quotation of Proverbs 25.
If instructing his fellow diners weren’t bad enough, the third and oddest thing that Jesus did was to instruct his host as to whom to invite to dinner: not his family, his friends, and those able to reciprocate his hospitality, but rather the “poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.” The Pharisees must surely have shuddered when they heard Jesus say that. Most people believed that the “poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind” were that way because God despised them. Therefore a Pharisee would be ritually defiled by getting too close to them. Yet what does Jesus suggest? That one would be blessed by inviting such people, at least in the resurrection of the righteous.
Are we too at that dinner party with Jesus? Are we too observing him closely? What do we hear him telling us? I hear him telling us two things. I hear him telling us that we must let go of pride, self-preoccupation, and the desire for human accolades. That doesn’t mean being a doormat, but it does mean having a realistic sense of who we are. When we do have a realistic sense of who we are before God, when we put that purple hat on a little sooner in life, when we understand that all of us are created in God’s image and loved by God, then we will be truly blessed. Ultimately, God will enable us to become more than we are this minute. God will continue to help us to grow fully into the person God created us to be. As The Message Bible puts it, “If you walk around with your nose in the air, you’ll end up flat on your face. But if you’re content to be simply yourself, you will become more than yourself.”
I also hear Jesus reminding us that if we are created in God’s image, then God will also enable us to get beyond ourselves, to go beyond focusing on our own needs and the needs of our own immediate circle. God will enable us to share our life with people who look, talk, act, and maybe even smell different from us. God will help us to reach out to those whom we don’t normally see, know, or care about. The people with whom God is inviting and enabling us to share our love and wealth are all around us: single moms, homeless men, disabled children, gay folks, migrant workers, people who can’t make ends meet even though they’re gainfully employed, immigrants trying to adapt to our community. Jesus calls us to see them as equally beloved of God as we are. Jesus calls us to step out of our comfortable middle-class existence and invite them into our lives. Jesus promises us that when we do, we will be blessed. Hear The Message again: “Invite some people who never get invited out, the misfits from the wrong side of the tracks. You’ll be – and experience – a blessing.”
Daniel Clendinen tells the wonderful story of the wedding of his friend’s daughter, Lisa.2 The young couple couldn’t afford to invite the whole church. So they had the main street in downtown Waco, Texas blocked off. Guests danced in the street, enjoyed ice cream from Baskin Robbins, and shared wedding cake in a park gazebo. The groom, a pastor, had befriended a homeless man who lived under a bridge. Sure enough, “Coyote” came to the wedding dressed as usual: in jeans with holes in the knees, scruffy beard, and unwashed hair. He brought several of his homeless friends too, who then cleaned up afterwards. The bride’s neighbor, a small girl, came with her mother and grandfather. Soon all the younger folks were vying for the chance to dance with the 70-year old man. People strolling by were invited to join the festivities. There were smartly dressed guests alongside guests who had probably never been to a formal affair. However they were dressed, for this moment at least, “every person felt welcomed as an honored guest.” Every person was welcomed as God welcomes us and invites us to welcome each other. Every person was blessed by the others there. Every person was a blessing to the others there.
My friends, here’s the good news. When we know who we are, when we know that we are beloved children of God, when we feel free to be who we truly are, when we feel free to be the people that God created us to be, and then when we reach out to others, all others, in true welcome, we will be a blessing, and we will surely be blessed. And not only at the resurrection of the righteous. Right here and now, in our lives in this place, today. Do we feel free to step out of our comfort zone and embrace those who cannot repay us? Are we ready to stretch out our hands in welcome to all?
1. Thanks to Patricia Sanchez for this and the following story in Celebration Preaching Resources.
2. In this week’s Journey with Jesus, http://www.journeywithjesus.net
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