In the north garden of the United Nations building in New York City stands a huge bronze sculpture. The sculpture depicts a man with a hammer in one hand and a sword in the other. The man is beating on the sword, in order to convert the sword into the cutting edge of a plow. This arresting sculpture was created by the Ukrainian artist Evgeniy Victorovich Vuchetich. It was given to the UN by the then Soviet Union in December, 1959. Although at that time the United States and the Soviet Union were “enemies,” the statue is a powerful visual reminder of our human desire to end wars and to convert instruments of death into tools that bring forth life.
Vuchetich’s statue alludes to one of the most famous passages of Scripture, which we just heard: “… they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks….” This image comes from the beginning of the book of the prophet Isaiah. Really three books bound together, the first forty chapters of Isaiah were written in the 8th century BC, during a period of great political turmoil in Israel. The passage that we just heard presents a series of wonderful images that point us to God’s promises and God’s future, to what lies beyond our immediate earthly events.
Speaking through Isaiah, what does God promise us? We hear first of all that devotion to God will be what brings all people together. We hear that humanity – all humanity – will be happy to receive God’s direction and instruction. We hear that people will no longer be motivated by envy, greed, resentment, retribution, and fear. We hear that people will renounce war, and that they will turn their instruments of war into implements that enable them to nourish each other. And, lest we get too dreamy about all these promises, we hear a challenge from God: “O house of Jacob. Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!” Through Isaiah’s words, God invites us – not commands us, invites us – to share God’s vision and to orient ourselves towards God’s promises, just as we follow a beam of light.
What a vision! While much of the church has just begun Advent, we are in the fourth week of our extended Advent. During this season we are invited to continue sharing God’s vision of what will be. As Jesus’ followers we are confident that God’s reign has already begun. After all, Jesus began his ministry by calling out, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near.” As we wait in this mid-time for God’s reign to be fully realized, in this Advent season we continue to divine its shape. Two weeks ago, we heard that there are no scapegoats in God’s realm, no one who is “other.” In God’s realm all are included, a promise echoed in Isaiah’s prophecy in “all the nations” and “many peoples.” Last week we heard that, as people already living in God’s realm, we owe our highest allegiance not to any earthly authorities but to Christ himself. Today we are reminded that in God’s realm, there will be both diversity and unity: all the many nations and peoples of the earth will come together under God, and will live with each other in peace. As followers of Jesus, is God’s promise of peace so surprising? Didn’t Luke’s gospel depict angels announcing Jesus’ birth with the promise of “Peace to all men and women on earth who please him?” Didn’t Jesus himself promise, in the gospel of John, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you?”
So do we see any of Isaiah’s vision of peace and unity realized in our own world? I was born in 1943. I was too young to experience World War II. But I do remember the cold war and the threat of nuclear disaster: “duck and cover” under my school desk, bomb shelters, and Nevil Shute’s On the Beach. I remember Korea, Viet Nam, India and Pakistan, Bosnia, and Iraq. Now Syria is in ruins. Forty years after the 1967 war, Israelis and Palestinians are still not at peace.
And in our country? We have just come through a divisive election, in which both sides vilified each other. We heard that some groups among us are dangerous and unwanted. Even local elections proved divisive, causing conflict in families, among friends, even in parishes. Many people fear for the future of our nation, state, and community. Will we ever get closer to Isaiah’s vision of unity and peace?
What about in our own lives? Are we at peace within our families, with our friends, within this parish? Or are we estranged from someone? Is there someone with whom we need to reconcile? Are we are peace within our own hearts? Or are we fearful, worried, angry, feeling unloved, or even unworthy of love?
If we want to catch glimpses of the reality of God’s promises, perhaps we need to begin with ourselves. Perhaps we need to make peace within ourselves. Perhaps we are called to accept God’s invitation to walk in God’s way on a personal level. As your pastor, I invite you to take time, even during this busy “holiday” season, to sit in silence and encounter the true source of all that we long for, the true source of shalom, peace. Find that deeper relationship with God. Franciscan Richard Rohr reminds us that, “This might well be the essence of the spiritual journey for all of us – to accept that we’re accepted [by God] and to go and live likewise.”1 Can you know the truth of that acceptance by God in your own heart and share it generously with others? Perhaps this is the time to engage in self-examination, to look hard at our relationships with family members, friends, members of this parish, and members of other faith communities and organizations. Perhaps this is the time to pursue reconciliation wherever it is needed.
Perhaps “now in the time of this mortal life,” we might consider accepting God’s invitation to partner with God in making real God’s promises of unity and peace. Can we truly accept that there are no “others” in God’s realm? I want to share with you a poem that so perfectly expresses that acceptance. It is called “Shalom: Magnetic heart.” The poem begins with the lines,
You and I are “other” to each other,
foreign creatures,
locked in our independent skin.
You and I, we’re unnerved
when we’re together,
we’re fractured, disconnected,
thin as moth-wing.
And yet, the same stuff
that tears us from each other
gravitates us to each other,
and all along,
the earth keeps spinning
to help us shake the
regret-dust from
our shoulders.
The poem ends with these lovely images of unity within God’s Shalom:
Shalom– She knows us better.
Shalom– She binds together the
blistered souls,
and we quiet ourselves,
eyes locked,
all “otherness” dissipated
in a stream of
perfect light.2 https://kaitlincurtice.com/
Can we accept that we live in a diverse nation that embraces people of all ethnicities, national origin, faith community, and gender? Can you find that part of God’s realm that you are uniquely called by God to contribute to? Can you make common cause with others across ethnic and religious lines? Perhaps you want to see immigrants treated fairly. Perhaps you want to stop the death penalty. Perhaps you want to see to see the people who grow our tomatoes receive a fair wage and access to decent health care. Perhaps you want to help end the scourge of addiction in this community. Today we offer a diverse community of people a hot meal. Where else in this county are we called to bring people together in peace?
And world peace? “Not in my lifetime,” you say. Yet, all over the globe, Episcopal Relief and Development, the United Thank Offering, and many other organizations are showing us how we might make it possible for “all people” to come together. An example. For generations different tribes have fought each other in Kalinga, a region of mountain villages in the Philippines. The region struggles with chronic economic hardship. In November 2012, three Episcopal congregations came together to begin planting trees. In the face of climate change that has denuded their mountains and eroded their soil, these communities have overcome decade old feuds to undertake a massive tree planting. In so doing they have helped various ethnic and tribal groups to come together in peace and to advance themselves economically. Is ERD on your Christmas gift list? Perhaps it should be.
And just one more example. This coming February, the Rev. Abeosah Flemister, a priest of our diocese, will visit us and tell us about Partners in Ministry in Liberia, a mission of our diocese that brings diverse people together to provide education for children. Are we called to be one of the partners in this ministry?
In any of these activities we are doing no more than accepting God’s invitation to follow where Jesus led and to share God’s peace with all. And we engage in any of these activities not because we rely on our own strength, or our own political leaders, but because we believe God’s promises. We especially trust that the end of all things, as God’s seers have taught us, is God’s shalom, peace, justice, and well-being for all creation. May it be so.
1. The Divine Dance (New Kensington, PA: Whitaker House, 2016), 109.
2. https://kaitlincurtice.com/
Sunday, November 27, 2016
Sunday, November 6, 2016
O Wisdom from on High
Is it All Saints Day? We began our worship singing that glorious All Saints Day hymn, “For all the saints who from their labor rest….” Then our sequence hymn, the between the New Testament lesson and Gospel, called us to rejoice with the saints and angels. So is it All Saints Day? Yes and no.
No, it is not All Saints Day, which traditionally falls on November 1st. This year we observed the day by welcoming Haven Rose into the Body of Christ through baptism. But also yes. The Revised Common Lectionary, which gives us all our Scripture readings for our three-year cycle of readings, recognizes that most people will not observe a feast of the church that falls on a weekday, even a major feast such as All Saints. So the RCL allows us to celebrate the Sunday following November 1st as All Saints Sunday, which we have done in previous years.
So why is it important to keep All Saints day in some form? Why not just bypass it and read what’s appointed for the 25th Sunday after Pentocost? One reason we keep All Saints Sunday is that All Saints was traditionally the end of the liturgical calendar, especially in the English church. And you can see why. We have come full circle through the two cycles of the liturgical year. First we had the cycle from the birth of Jesus through his resurrection, i.e., Christmas through Easter, what’s called the incarnation cycle. Then came the long season following Pentecost, which emphasizes deepening our understanding of God and God’s purposes and strengthening our Christian community, including mini-communities like this parish.
On All Saints we celebrate the culmination of all that growth in the lives of real people. This includes all the people officially on the calendar of the church before the Reformation: the martyrs, teachers, and theologians of the early church and the medieval saints and mystics. We also remember those, since the Reformation, who especially modelled the holy life for us, and especially those in the English and American churches. But we also remember on this day all those whose lives are known to us and God alone, those who showed us more clearly what a holy life might look like. Hear a few lines of a litany by priest and writer Barbara Crafton, that gives us a glimpse of some of those people:
O Rosa Parks and Thurgood Marshall, pray for us. O Oscar Romero and Raoul Wallenberg, O Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Medgar Evers, O William Wilberforce, pray for us. O all you whose names we do not know, who lived your lives or gave your lives in the struggle for freedom and justice, pray for us that we will be worthy of your sacrifice.
O Thomas Merton and Dame Julian, O Father Damien and Mother Theresa, O Thomas Beckett and Li Tim-Oi, pray for us. Blessed Augustine of Hippo, pray for us. Blessed Paul pray for us and help us to pray.
After mentioning authors, musicians, artists, and scientists, Crafton then comes to her own family: O Mom and Dad, O David, and O my little David who never saw the sun, pray for us. And we could all add the names of those saints who have blessed our own lives, as we pray with Crafton,
We give you thanks, O God, for setting us among the community of the saints, and for allowing the grace they showed in their lives to continue in ours – for in your kingdom, nothing is ever completely lost.
So All Saints is important, even if, in most years, we have to observe it on Sunday. But guess what: today is also the first Sunday in Advent. And why, you might wonder, are we starting the new season so soon? On All Saints we are essentially looking back. We see what God has done in Jesus, in the church, and in the lives of real people. After All Saints, it’s as if the church turns around and begins to look ahead. The readings for the last three Sundays of the traditional liturgical year, i.e., the next three Sundays, have an eschatological focus. That is, they focus on the end times, on the fulfillment of God’s promises and the coming of God’s reign. This focus continues into the next liturgical year in the traditional calendar, until the Sunday before Christmas, when we begin to look forward to the birth of Jesus and the beginning once again of the incarnation cycle.
Since our readings already call us to look ahead, we have elected to join the Advent Project. Along with other parishes in this diocese and elsewhere – with the bishop’s permission – we are bringing together the two parts of the focus on end times into a single season, a seven-week Advent. In doing this, we are not trying to compete with cultural Christmas, which in most of our stores has already begun. And we are not sourpusses, who adamantly refuse to be part of the “Christmas season.” Rather, we are taking the time to focus on God’s promises to us and, through our worship, to express our hope that God will speedily bring in God’s reign.
So what will change? Not our appointed Scripture readings, which already look ahead. However, our sermons may reflect more clearly our hope for the coming of the reign of God. Our paraments, the colored hangings in the church, and our vestments, next week will change to blue, the color for Advent. The collect of the day and the prayers of the people will be different. The service music will be a little different, and we’ll chant the opening of the Great Thanksgiving, which we’ll practice right after the announcements. And we’ll put up the new Advent wreath. See if you observe any other changes, as we move through this longer Advent.
And what might change for us personally in this longer Advent season? Despite what the stores and web sites tell us, it’s not Christmas yet. It’s not even Thanksgiving! Actually, as twenty-first century Christians, we live in what one German theologian called, “das Mittel der Zeit,” in the mid-times, the in-between time. We live in between the time frames of All Saints and Advent, between the past of what God has done and the saints have modelled for us, and the future of what we hope for and pray for when the “eyes of our hearts” are open. We live in the already-not yet.
As we hope and pray for the fulfillment of God’s reign, we seek to continue to grow in our relationship with the Holy One. We seek to more visibly reflect our commitment to Christ through the way we live. And we seek to continue working for justice and peace, so that the reign of God might at last be fully realized.
This week we stand at a decisive moment in the history of our nation. As followers of Jesus who embrace the Anglican tradition, we know that it is always appropriate to pray for the leaders of our nation. Indeed, on page 822, the Book of Common Prayer gives us a prayer for an election. And as you know, every week in the prayers of the people, we pray for our nation and its leaders. And so, as we exercise our right to choose our nation’s leaders and our elected representatives, we pray for all who vote. We pray that all who vote on Tuesday will do so thoughtfully and wisely.
In the end, in this Advent season, we continue to remember the hope to which we press. We remember that we are citizens not only of the United States but also, and more importantly, we are citizens of God’s realm. Even so, for many of us, this has been a more difficult election season than we have seen in many years. And so, remembering whose we are, and whose kingdom we yearn to see fulfilled, I offer you another litany, this one by historian and theologian Diana Butler Bass. Join me in saying, “May it be so,” after each petition.
I believe God creates the world and therein good, even very good, no matter how far from that goodness human beings wander; may it be so.
I believe Love casts out fear, and that living with compassion is the path to joy;
I believe Gratitude threads all of the connections in the web of life;
I believe Wisdom dwells among us, embodying both divine insight and human intellect;
I believe Hope banishes cynicism, always drawing us toward a creative future;
I believe Awe opens us to an awakened life that reaches out to the world to restore and save;
I believe Justice flows all around us, like a healing river;
I believe All Shall be Well. May it be so.
No, it is not All Saints Day, which traditionally falls on November 1st. This year we observed the day by welcoming Haven Rose into the Body of Christ through baptism. But also yes. The Revised Common Lectionary, which gives us all our Scripture readings for our three-year cycle of readings, recognizes that most people will not observe a feast of the church that falls on a weekday, even a major feast such as All Saints. So the RCL allows us to celebrate the Sunday following November 1st as All Saints Sunday, which we have done in previous years.
So why is it important to keep All Saints day in some form? Why not just bypass it and read what’s appointed for the 25th Sunday after Pentocost? One reason we keep All Saints Sunday is that All Saints was traditionally the end of the liturgical calendar, especially in the English church. And you can see why. We have come full circle through the two cycles of the liturgical year. First we had the cycle from the birth of Jesus through his resurrection, i.e., Christmas through Easter, what’s called the incarnation cycle. Then came the long season following Pentecost, which emphasizes deepening our understanding of God and God’s purposes and strengthening our Christian community, including mini-communities like this parish.
On All Saints we celebrate the culmination of all that growth in the lives of real people. This includes all the people officially on the calendar of the church before the Reformation: the martyrs, teachers, and theologians of the early church and the medieval saints and mystics. We also remember those, since the Reformation, who especially modelled the holy life for us, and especially those in the English and American churches. But we also remember on this day all those whose lives are known to us and God alone, those who showed us more clearly what a holy life might look like. Hear a few lines of a litany by priest and writer Barbara Crafton, that gives us a glimpse of some of those people:
O Rosa Parks and Thurgood Marshall, pray for us. O Oscar Romero and Raoul Wallenberg, O Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Medgar Evers, O William Wilberforce, pray for us. O all you whose names we do not know, who lived your lives or gave your lives in the struggle for freedom and justice, pray for us that we will be worthy of your sacrifice.
O Thomas Merton and Dame Julian, O Father Damien and Mother Theresa, O Thomas Beckett and Li Tim-Oi, pray for us. Blessed Augustine of Hippo, pray for us. Blessed Paul pray for us and help us to pray.
After mentioning authors, musicians, artists, and scientists, Crafton then comes to her own family: O Mom and Dad, O David, and O my little David who never saw the sun, pray for us. And we could all add the names of those saints who have blessed our own lives, as we pray with Crafton,
We give you thanks, O God, for setting us among the community of the saints, and for allowing the grace they showed in their lives to continue in ours – for in your kingdom, nothing is ever completely lost.
So All Saints is important, even if, in most years, we have to observe it on Sunday. But guess what: today is also the first Sunday in Advent. And why, you might wonder, are we starting the new season so soon? On All Saints we are essentially looking back. We see what God has done in Jesus, in the church, and in the lives of real people. After All Saints, it’s as if the church turns around and begins to look ahead. The readings for the last three Sundays of the traditional liturgical year, i.e., the next three Sundays, have an eschatological focus. That is, they focus on the end times, on the fulfillment of God’s promises and the coming of God’s reign. This focus continues into the next liturgical year in the traditional calendar, until the Sunday before Christmas, when we begin to look forward to the birth of Jesus and the beginning once again of the incarnation cycle.
Since our readings already call us to look ahead, we have elected to join the Advent Project. Along with other parishes in this diocese and elsewhere – with the bishop’s permission – we are bringing together the two parts of the focus on end times into a single season, a seven-week Advent. In doing this, we are not trying to compete with cultural Christmas, which in most of our stores has already begun. And we are not sourpusses, who adamantly refuse to be part of the “Christmas season.” Rather, we are taking the time to focus on God’s promises to us and, through our worship, to express our hope that God will speedily bring in God’s reign.
So what will change? Not our appointed Scripture readings, which already look ahead. However, our sermons may reflect more clearly our hope for the coming of the reign of God. Our paraments, the colored hangings in the church, and our vestments, next week will change to blue, the color for Advent. The collect of the day and the prayers of the people will be different. The service music will be a little different, and we’ll chant the opening of the Great Thanksgiving, which we’ll practice right after the announcements. And we’ll put up the new Advent wreath. See if you observe any other changes, as we move through this longer Advent.
And what might change for us personally in this longer Advent season? Despite what the stores and web sites tell us, it’s not Christmas yet. It’s not even Thanksgiving! Actually, as twenty-first century Christians, we live in what one German theologian called, “das Mittel der Zeit,” in the mid-times, the in-between time. We live in between the time frames of All Saints and Advent, between the past of what God has done and the saints have modelled for us, and the future of what we hope for and pray for when the “eyes of our hearts” are open. We live in the already-not yet.
As we hope and pray for the fulfillment of God’s reign, we seek to continue to grow in our relationship with the Holy One. We seek to more visibly reflect our commitment to Christ through the way we live. And we seek to continue working for justice and peace, so that the reign of God might at last be fully realized.
This week we stand at a decisive moment in the history of our nation. As followers of Jesus who embrace the Anglican tradition, we know that it is always appropriate to pray for the leaders of our nation. Indeed, on page 822, the Book of Common Prayer gives us a prayer for an election. And as you know, every week in the prayers of the people, we pray for our nation and its leaders. And so, as we exercise our right to choose our nation’s leaders and our elected representatives, we pray for all who vote. We pray that all who vote on Tuesday will do so thoughtfully and wisely.
In the end, in this Advent season, we continue to remember the hope to which we press. We remember that we are citizens not only of the United States but also, and more importantly, we are citizens of God’s realm. Even so, for many of us, this has been a more difficult election season than we have seen in many years. And so, remembering whose we are, and whose kingdom we yearn to see fulfilled, I offer you another litany, this one by historian and theologian Diana Butler Bass. Join me in saying, “May it be so,” after each petition.
I believe God creates the world and therein good, even very good, no matter how far from that goodness human beings wander; may it be so.
I believe Love casts out fear, and that living with compassion is the path to joy;
I believe Gratitude threads all of the connections in the web of life;
I believe Wisdom dwells among us, embodying both divine insight and human intellect;
I believe Hope banishes cynicism, always drawing us toward a creative future;
I believe Awe opens us to an awakened life that reaches out to the world to restore and save;
I believe Justice flows all around us, like a healing river;
I believe All Shall be Well. May it be so.
Wednesday, November 2, 2016
I Must Stay at Your House Today
What made Zacchaeus so eager to see Jesus? In his world, he was perhaps the least likely person to be eager to see an itinerant rabbi? The evangelist tells us that he was the chief tax collector. That means that he was not only an agent of the hated Roman government in Jericho, the city that was the entry point for goods coming into Israel from the east, but he was no doubt also a supervisor of other tax collectors. Which means that he was able to not only extract from the people the taxes that the Romans demanded, he was able to skim off a portion of what those under him could extort from the merchants and petty farmers who were forced to pay the Roman taxes.
Zacchaeus was obviously good at what he did, since he was not only a supervisor but also rich. And he was also deeply hated by the entire community of pious Jews. He was not welcome in the synagogue, and he was probably also intentionally blocked by the crowds who had come out to welcome Jesus to Jericho.
Since he was s a rich man, in Luke’s account Zacchaeus was also not likely to be someone curious about Jesus. If you read the gospel straight through, you would notice that rich men resist Jesus’ call to acknowledge the nearness of God’s reign and change their lives accordingly. In fact, Jesus begins his preaching in Luke with the sermon on the plain, in which he shouts, “… woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.” Then Jesus tells two stories about rich men. One is about the rich farmer who built bigger barns to house his abundant crop, but as the barns are finished God demands his soul. The other, we just heard a few weeks ago, the story of the rich man who dressed in fine purple clothes and Lazarus, who lay outside his gate, starving and so ill that the dogs licked his wounds. And in the chapter just before this one, we hear of the pious young ruler who is so attached to his wealth that he sadly leaves when Jesus suggests he give his money to the poor. In fact, after the rich young ruler leaves, the disciples ask Jesus, “Then who can be saved?” Perhaps the story of Zacchaeus is the evangelist’s answer to that question. Yet, we might also wonder, is Zacchaeus’s response to Jesus likely to be different from that of rich young ruler?
And, more important, after all this, what does the evangelist suggest about what really made Zacchaeus so eager to see Jesus? What made him race ahead of the crowds that blocked him and do something he probably had not done since he was eight years old, something that was so unseemly and incongruous for a man in his position? Was he moved by mere curiosity? Did he perhaps want to see if he might gain some business advantage from seeing this rabbi? Or maybe, just maybe, something was stirring inside Zacchaeus. Maybe, just maybe, God’s Holy Spirit had already begun to work in Zacchaeus. Maybe, just maybe, God seized the initiative and started a process that would radically transform Zacchaeus.
And us? Why are you here? Just as was the case for Zacchaeus, there is no earthly social or economic reason for you to be here this morning. To be sure, if this were the Middle Ages or Puritan New England, you would be punished or fined for not showing up to church on Sunday. Even as recently as the 1950s in the U.S., there was strong social pressure to participate in some faith community. Now, we have come a full 180 degrees from those earlier eras. Church support and attendance have declined precipitously. The majority of Americans, especially those under thirty, identify themselves as “nones,” i.e., having no religious affiliation, or as “spiritual but not religious.”
So why are you here? Are you just curious? What will the preacher say today? Is coming to church “icing on the cake” of the good life for you? Are you afraid of God’s wrath if you don’t come? Or did something stir within you and push you, pull you, or bring you here?
Or take my own experience with my first week-long silent retreat four years ago. The longest silent retreat I had done before that was for two and half days. What impelled me to sign up for a retreat directed by the Spirituality Network, drive four hours on a Sunday afternoon, and stick it out for a whole week? Maybe, just maybe, God had taken the initiative, stirred something within me, and pushed me, pulled me, sent me to a retreat center in Fremont, Ohio for a week.
So there is Zacchaeus incongruously perched in a tree when he finally gets a glimpse of Jesus. Then the unthinkable happens. The rabbi stops, looks up, and addresses Zacchaeus by name. Even more unthinkable, he tells Zacchaeus to hurry down from the tree, and he invites himself to dinner. Wouldn’t you have liked to be a fly on the wall during that dinner conversation? While the respectable, pious people wondered if this rabbi were ignorant of his host’s way of life, or naïve, or worse, clearly something was happening to Zacchaeus. Once face to face with Jesus, something life-changing was happening to Zacchaeus. We might say that he had a conversion experience, from which he gained a new understanding of who God is, and, more important, a new understanding of how he needed to change his life.
For, as Luke makes abundantly clear throughout his gospel, repentance and faith do not mean belief in a set of statements about God. Repentance and faith do not mean acknowledging that Jesus is God’s anointed one. Rather, repentance and faith always have an ethical dimension. A deep experience of the reality of God must always produce a changed life. Having faith always means being transformed by God to live a life closer to God’s expectations, a life modeled for us by Jesus. So, unlike the rich young ruler, when Zacchaeus experiences the reality of God in his encounter with Jesus, he is led to giving up his previous way of life and offering recompense to those he has wronged, far above what the Law of Moses required. And maybe, as Zacchaeus stood there and said all this to Jesus, maybe his joy was so deep that he was the happiest man that day on the Jericho road. Perhaps he was finally free of his sin and isolation. Perhaps indeed health and wholeness, salvation, had come to his house.
In seeking out Zacchaeus, Jesus demonstrates God’s relentless desire to bring us back into community with Godself and with each other, to be in relationship with us, and enable us to be in relationship with each other, to transform us into the people we were created to be. So why are you here? Did you come seeking the transformation that Zacchaeus experienced? We don’t have to climb a tree to see Jesus. As we come to the altar he calls us by name, invites himself into our lives, strengthens our bond with him, and continues that same transformative process that he initiated in Zacchaeus. Maybe, just maybe, that experience of Jesus’ bond with us enables us to see our lives differently, to know our connection with God, with each other, with all creation. Maybe, just maybe, when Jesus dines with us, he enables us to deepen our commitment to treating all with justice, compassion, and love. Perhaps he enables us to better work to bring nearer the reign of God. Maybe, just maybe, Jesus’ food and drink strengthen us to do the work that only we can do.
And maybe, just maybe, when Jesus calls us out of our hiding places, as he called to Zacchaeus, perhaps he also calls us to examine our use of our God-given resources. As Zacchaeus did, are we called to examine our use of our money? Are we called to share our resources more generously with the rest of God’s people? Are we serving God’s people in ways that use our gifts of time, of memory, reason, and skill? Are we called to change our lives in a way that might astonish those around us?
My sisters and brothers, the truth is that God, through God’s Holy Spirit, relentlessly pursues us. God stirs in us a desire to seek God. When we respond to God’s stirring, when we climb a tree to better see Jesus, when we sit in God’s presence silently listening for God’s voice, when we come to church to be nourished by Word and Sacrament, God delivers on God’s promises. God nourishes us, and enables us to become the loving people we have been created to be. But, watch out! You and everyone around you might be surprised by what happens next!
Tuesday, October 11, 2016
What do You See?
How good is your imagination? Can you picture where we are in the gospel account? We’re still on the move with Jesus, still heading for Jerusalem and everything that will happen there. Luke was a gentile, and his geography of Israel is a little sketchy, but we seem to be in some place inhabited by both Jews and Samaritans. Jews and Samaritans hated each other, so most probably they lived in separate villages. Jesus is approaching one of those villages, most probably a Jewish village.
So imagine yourself back in ancient times and put yourself on the outskirts of some dusty village. What do we see? I see a band of shunned people, united perhaps only by their shared disability. Are there only ten of them? They seem to be both men and women. Are they Jews or Samaritans? We’ll find out that at least one of them is a despised Samaritan. Actually, you can smell them before you can see them. Their clothes are so ragged it’s a wonder they can cover themselves. They are gaunt and scrawny, since all they have to eat are the scraps that kindhearted people give them.
What have they done to bring this misfortune on themselves? Absolutely nothing! They must have some kind of skin disease. If they have true leprosy, what we today call Hansen’s disease, they’ve probably lost fingers or toes, maybe even noses. Hansen’s is a disabling and disfiguring disease for which, in the ancient world, there was no cure. Unfortunately, the Law of Moses lumped many different skin diseases under the word “leprosy,” and declared those afflicted by these diseases to be unclean and unfit for normal society. So what do we see? We see a band of broken, starving, diseased people doomed to a life of exile and expected to stay as far away from the “clean” people as possible.
What did these doomed people see? They saw a holy man. Who knows how they knew who he was? They were desperate for help, and so they cried out to him.
What did Jesus see? Jesus saw them. He saw living, breathing, real people – not people defined by their disease – but real people needing help. He saw wives without husbands, he saw homes without fathers or mothers, he saw fields lying fallow with no one to work them, and he saw hopelessness and despair. And when Jesus saw them, he stopped. He allowed himself to be interrupted. And then he did something startling. He told them to go to the priests and begin the elaborate process of rituals and sacrifices through which they would again be declared clean.
What did the now former lepers do? All but one of them presumably did exactly what Jesus told them to do. They went and found the nearest priest and asked to be declared free of disease. One of them took a good look at himself. He saw what had happened. Samaritans didn’t follow Mosaic Law, so he knew he had little to gain from going off to see a Jewish priest. So he turned back to find that holy man through whom he had been cured. He shouted out his praises to God and then threw himself at Jesus’ feet in thanksgiving.
My friends, this is a story about seeing, and our response to what we see. It is not a healing story like others in Scripture, in which healing occurs when Jesus touches someone or someone touches him. Here, the healing occurs offstage so to speak. Remember that we’re in the part of this gospel account where Jesus is teaching his disciples about how a faithful community lives out its commitment to him. So here, we have a story that asks us consider what we see, and what we do when we see. And, not surprisingly, the story also challenges us in several different ways.
What do you see? The first challenge is to see the need of others. Can we see when someone is in need? Can we see when a friend or coworker is facing a health problem or difficult situation at home? Can we see when an international student is far from family and alone on university holidays? Can we see when someone who comes to Loaves and Fishes needs help? Can we see a homeless person as a child of God, and not just some dirty tramp? Perhaps further away, can we see the people in Haiti who again need help in recovering from a natural disaster? Can we see the need in the non-human world? Can we see the elephants whose numbers are plummeting because of our insatiable desire for ivory? Can we see our wonderful national and state parks as places that need our protection, so that our children and grandchildren will also be able to enjoy them?
And if we see, what do we do? Jesus saw the need of the people who called out to him. He stopped. He took action. He did something very concrete for them. What do we do when we finally see need? Do we ignore it, pass by, or hope that the people, the need, the cause, will all go away? Or, like Jesus, are we moved to take some kind of concrete action? Do we find the time to visit those who are lonely or grieving? Do we find ways to provide food for those who are hungry? Do we work for justice for those who are falsely accused? Do we reach out to those who have lost their homes in disasters? Do we support those who are working to make sure that wild animals and wild landscapes don’t disappear from the earth? I invite you to look around you, see a need that breaks your heart, and then follow the master in addressing it.
And finally, do we see God at work in the world? Do we see God as active in our own lives? The leper saw that he had been transformed by his encounter with Jesus, that something awe-inspiring and holy had happened to him. He didn’t break out a bottle of champagne and pat himself on the back for his cleverness. He didn’t return home to his village. He didn’t stick with the other lepers. He returned to Jesus to praise God and fall on his face, filled with gratitude for what had happened to him.
And here’s the challenge to us: to see what God has done for us and, more important, to be truly thankful for all the many ways in which God has blessed us. The truth is that gratitude may be the real measure of our spiritual health. Do we think we are self-made people? Do we think we deserve everything we have – and more? Or do we take the time to examine our lives, to really look at our lives? Do we take the time to look at our day or week and see where we have met Jesus in that day or week?
Anne Lamott has a wonderful little primer on prayer entitled Help, Thanks, Wow. It’s a book about basic forms of prayer. We know about “help.” All our intercessory prayers, for ourselves, for others, for the world, our prayers of the people in the Eucharist, are all forms of “help.” For most of us, if we pray at all, our prayer is usually a form of “help.” “Wow” is our praise of God. It’s a way of expressing our awe for who God is, for the great mysterious yet loving creator, for the God we see in the face of Jesus, for the spark of God that lodges within us. “Wow” is mostly what we do in liturgy and worship.
“Thanks” is something else. Yes, the Eucharist – the very word means thanksgiving – is a way of offering sacramental thanks for the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. But “thanks” should also be part of our daily walk with God. I invite you to take the time – lots of people do it at the end of the day – to look over your day and see if you have met Jesus anywhere in that day. If you come to the quiet day on October 22nd, you’ll even learn a simple form for looking over your day in order to discern God’s presence in it. And when you discern God’s presence in your day, when you can see how God has blessed you – and continues to bless you – then fall down on your knees, or raise your hands, or open your mouth in thanksgiving.
What do you see, and what do you do when you do see? Does it matter that you have committed yourself to following Jesus? Do you see as he sees? Do you see the need of others and respond to it? Do you see God at work in your own life, and do you say to God, “Thanks?” In a short while, we will leave this place after singing, “Now thank we all our God, with hearts and hands and voices, who wondrous things hath done, in whom this world rejoices.” It’s a hymn that sends you out into the world. So get up, go your way. Spend your life helping others, praising God, and thanking God for all of God’s gifts.
So imagine yourself back in ancient times and put yourself on the outskirts of some dusty village. What do we see? I see a band of shunned people, united perhaps only by their shared disability. Are there only ten of them? They seem to be both men and women. Are they Jews or Samaritans? We’ll find out that at least one of them is a despised Samaritan. Actually, you can smell them before you can see them. Their clothes are so ragged it’s a wonder they can cover themselves. They are gaunt and scrawny, since all they have to eat are the scraps that kindhearted people give them.
What have they done to bring this misfortune on themselves? Absolutely nothing! They must have some kind of skin disease. If they have true leprosy, what we today call Hansen’s disease, they’ve probably lost fingers or toes, maybe even noses. Hansen’s is a disabling and disfiguring disease for which, in the ancient world, there was no cure. Unfortunately, the Law of Moses lumped many different skin diseases under the word “leprosy,” and declared those afflicted by these diseases to be unclean and unfit for normal society. So what do we see? We see a band of broken, starving, diseased people doomed to a life of exile and expected to stay as far away from the “clean” people as possible.
What did these doomed people see? They saw a holy man. Who knows how they knew who he was? They were desperate for help, and so they cried out to him.
What did Jesus see? Jesus saw them. He saw living, breathing, real people – not people defined by their disease – but real people needing help. He saw wives without husbands, he saw homes without fathers or mothers, he saw fields lying fallow with no one to work them, and he saw hopelessness and despair. And when Jesus saw them, he stopped. He allowed himself to be interrupted. And then he did something startling. He told them to go to the priests and begin the elaborate process of rituals and sacrifices through which they would again be declared clean.
What did the now former lepers do? All but one of them presumably did exactly what Jesus told them to do. They went and found the nearest priest and asked to be declared free of disease. One of them took a good look at himself. He saw what had happened. Samaritans didn’t follow Mosaic Law, so he knew he had little to gain from going off to see a Jewish priest. So he turned back to find that holy man through whom he had been cured. He shouted out his praises to God and then threw himself at Jesus’ feet in thanksgiving.
My friends, this is a story about seeing, and our response to what we see. It is not a healing story like others in Scripture, in which healing occurs when Jesus touches someone or someone touches him. Here, the healing occurs offstage so to speak. Remember that we’re in the part of this gospel account where Jesus is teaching his disciples about how a faithful community lives out its commitment to him. So here, we have a story that asks us consider what we see, and what we do when we see. And, not surprisingly, the story also challenges us in several different ways.
What do you see? The first challenge is to see the need of others. Can we see when someone is in need? Can we see when a friend or coworker is facing a health problem or difficult situation at home? Can we see when an international student is far from family and alone on university holidays? Can we see when someone who comes to Loaves and Fishes needs help? Can we see a homeless person as a child of God, and not just some dirty tramp? Perhaps further away, can we see the people in Haiti who again need help in recovering from a natural disaster? Can we see the need in the non-human world? Can we see the elephants whose numbers are plummeting because of our insatiable desire for ivory? Can we see our wonderful national and state parks as places that need our protection, so that our children and grandchildren will also be able to enjoy them?
And if we see, what do we do? Jesus saw the need of the people who called out to him. He stopped. He took action. He did something very concrete for them. What do we do when we finally see need? Do we ignore it, pass by, or hope that the people, the need, the cause, will all go away? Or, like Jesus, are we moved to take some kind of concrete action? Do we find the time to visit those who are lonely or grieving? Do we find ways to provide food for those who are hungry? Do we work for justice for those who are falsely accused? Do we reach out to those who have lost their homes in disasters? Do we support those who are working to make sure that wild animals and wild landscapes don’t disappear from the earth? I invite you to look around you, see a need that breaks your heart, and then follow the master in addressing it.
And finally, do we see God at work in the world? Do we see God as active in our own lives? The leper saw that he had been transformed by his encounter with Jesus, that something awe-inspiring and holy had happened to him. He didn’t break out a bottle of champagne and pat himself on the back for his cleverness. He didn’t return home to his village. He didn’t stick with the other lepers. He returned to Jesus to praise God and fall on his face, filled with gratitude for what had happened to him.
And here’s the challenge to us: to see what God has done for us and, more important, to be truly thankful for all the many ways in which God has blessed us. The truth is that gratitude may be the real measure of our spiritual health. Do we think we are self-made people? Do we think we deserve everything we have – and more? Or do we take the time to examine our lives, to really look at our lives? Do we take the time to look at our day or week and see where we have met Jesus in that day or week?
Anne Lamott has a wonderful little primer on prayer entitled Help, Thanks, Wow. It’s a book about basic forms of prayer. We know about “help.” All our intercessory prayers, for ourselves, for others, for the world, our prayers of the people in the Eucharist, are all forms of “help.” For most of us, if we pray at all, our prayer is usually a form of “help.” “Wow” is our praise of God. It’s a way of expressing our awe for who God is, for the great mysterious yet loving creator, for the God we see in the face of Jesus, for the spark of God that lodges within us. “Wow” is mostly what we do in liturgy and worship.
“Thanks” is something else. Yes, the Eucharist – the very word means thanksgiving – is a way of offering sacramental thanks for the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. But “thanks” should also be part of our daily walk with God. I invite you to take the time – lots of people do it at the end of the day – to look over your day and see if you have met Jesus anywhere in that day. If you come to the quiet day on October 22nd, you’ll even learn a simple form for looking over your day in order to discern God’s presence in it. And when you discern God’s presence in your day, when you can see how God has blessed you – and continues to bless you – then fall down on your knees, or raise your hands, or open your mouth in thanksgiving.
What do you see, and what do you do when you do see? Does it matter that you have committed yourself to following Jesus? Do you see as he sees? Do you see the need of others and respond to it? Do you see God at work in your own life, and do you say to God, “Thanks?” In a short while, we will leave this place after singing, “Now thank we all our God, with hearts and hands and voices, who wondrous things hath done, in whom this world rejoices.” It’s a hymn that sends you out into the world. So get up, go your way. Spend your life helping others, praising God, and thanking God for all of God’s gifts.
Monday, October 3, 2016
The Size of a Mustard Seed
Uprooting mulberry trees and planting them in the sea? If you’ve ever taken down a tree, you know it’s very hard work. First, of course, there’s the chopping or sawing. Then if the tree was on a lawn or public space, you’d probably either rent a stump grinder or pay someone else to take out the stump.
What is Jesus talking about here? We are still on the road with Jesus, heading toward Jerusalem and all that will take place there. In this middle section of the gospel, the evangelist has collected a variety of Jesus’ teachings and sayings. No doubt the evangelist has also tried to arrange them in some coherent order. We’ve heard parables and stories about lost sheep and lost coins, and we heard about a dishonest manager and the rich man and Lazarus. In most of these stories and sayings, the evangelist has shown Jesus using overstatement and exaggeration, one of the favorite rhetorical tools of the rabbis.
As we come to this place in the gospel narrative, the disciples are clearly feeling overwhelmed and downright puzzled by all that Jesus has called them to be and do. So they make what seems like a simple request: “increase our faith.” But what exactly are they asking for? Is a faith a quantity that can decrease or increase? What would more faith look like in real life? If they had “more faith” would the disciples fast, give, heal, and teach more? Would they stop complaining as they trailed behind Jesus? Would they willingly let themselves be executed with Jesus?
Do you find Jesus’ response to his disciples perplexing? At this point, you might not even like the Jesus you see here. He doesn’t reassure the disciples. He doesn’t make a joke or pat them on the back. He barks at them, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed….” Then he uses the image of a master and slaves – overworked slaves – to suggest something about what faith really means. Although the image of hardworking slaves would have been perfectly acceptable to Jesus’ disciples and to the evangelist’s audience, it of course grates on our ears. And more than that, both the sayings about the mustard seed and the image of slaves are surely further examples of overstatement and exaggeration.
So what is the real message here? What is the evangelist suggesting to his own community – and by extension to us – about what faith is? Let’s unpack that word “faith” and look for a minute at what we might think it means. Is faith supernatural power, especially power that, if I believe hard enough, I can make God do what I want? Is faith acceptance of all the traditional statements of the church, believing seven impossible things before breakfast, as one wag put it? Do I have deep faith if I understand and accept every statement in the Nicene Creed? Do I have faith if I take the Bible literally, especially if I believe that creation happened according to the account in Genesis, or that every miracle occurred just as it is depicted? Do I have faith if I adhere to a set of specific devotional practices? Am I person of deep faith if I fast, tithe, and read Forward Day by Day every morning?
The truth is that faith – or perhaps, better, faithfulness – the faithfulness we are called to have as followers of Jesus, is none of these things. To begin with, faith is a gift of God. But it is not something that we earn as a reward for hard work. It is something we already have just by virtue of being a creature made in God’s image. We may have models of people who have faith, like the women Lois and Eunice mentioned by the writer of the second letter to Timothy, but we must still acknowledge God’s gift for ourselves.
Perhaps faith is more what we moderns might call a mindset. When we acknowledge God’s gift, then we can begin seeing the world as God sees it. We can acknowledge ourselves as part of God’s creation, and as such deeply and truly loved by God. We can also understand ourselves as only a small part of God’s creation, as one of God’s many children. And we can begin seeing ourselves as connected to everyone we meet, looking out at those both near and far, not with our egocentric desire to possess and control, but rather with compassion and a desire to help others grow and flourish.
What’s more important, faith is not something static, it is not something that comes in a quantity that Jesus or God can increase at our request. It is not something that we can throw away. We can ignore God, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that we have no faith. And more important, our faith, whether it’s in God or in anything else, is dynamic. It grows, flourishes, and unfolds throughout our life’s journey. It’s apt really that Jesus used the image of a seed for faith. Remember Jesus’ image of the mustard seed that grows to be a great tree, in which even the birds can nest? If we water and tend our faith, it too can become a green living quality within us that will reflect God’s presence within us and in the world.
The most important thing about faith is that it is ultimately a verb. Jesus was right in suggesting that if we have faith we do something. Jesus might have been exaggerating in using the image of the uprooted mulberry tree, but the truth is that ultimately if we acknowledge the divine gift within us, then we show forth our faith “not only with our lips but with our lives.”
And how do we do that? Not surprisingly, faith is a verb that calls us to look in two different directions at once. If faith enables us to see ourselves as one of God’s beloved children, then to remain faithful we must also hear God’s call to us. We must leave ourselves open to God in regular prayer and times of silence, however briefly, and go beyond our rote prayers or our spontaneous calls for help, to reach the God within us, to connect more deeply to the God within us, to hear more clearly the words of that God. And we do this not to prove anything, not to buy God’s favor, not to placate an angry God, but so that we might follow more closely behind Jesus, so that our God-given faith may indeed become that great green tree.
And then we must do our faith out in the world. Writer Debie Thomas reminds us that that to do faith is “To do the loving, forgiving thing we consider so banal we ignore it. Why? Because the life of faith is as straightforward as a slave serving his master dinner. As ordinary as a hired worker fulfilling the terms of his contract. Faith isn’t fireworks; it’s not meant to dazzle. Faith is simply recognizing our tiny place in relation to God’s enormous creative love, and then filling that place with our whole lives.”1 We do our faith by doing what God calls us to do, in our ordinary given lives, and, to the extent that we fallible humans can, with the mindset of Jesus. Doing our faith will look different for each one of us. For many of us, living out our faith will mean truly accepting ourselves as God’s beloved children. And it also will mean looking hard at our lives, forgiving those who have hurt us, forgiving ourselves for the hurt we have visited on others, and asking for forgiveness where we can. Doing faith will mean seeing Christ in the faces of strangers, especially of those who ask for our help. For some of us, doing faith might mean embarking on a new educational or career path, or taking in an unwanted child. For all of us doing faith will mean using our God-given financial resources intentionally, especially to support people and organizations that are helping us to care more intentionally for the earth, and that are working to bring God’s reign nearer. Doing faith will mean working for justice, especially among those falsely accused. For some of us, doing faith will also mean working to abolish the death penalty. And for all of us, and especially in this contentious political season, doing faith will mean using our right to vote thoughtfully and intentionally.
We have a myriad ways to fulfil our call to do faith in the world. And the truth is that we have all the faith that we need. As we do our faith, God may deepen and strengthen our faith. But even now, every one of you has all the faith that you need to do God’s will. Because, “the tiniest fragment of real faith, real fidelity to responding to God’s prior fidelity to us, can work wonders. Not only a sycamore tree, but even much more deeply-rooted problems, can be dug up and planted in to the sea, if we have that basic, deep-down trust in God.”2 May it be so.
1. http://www.journeywithjesus.net/lectionary-essays/current-essay .
2. Patrick J.Ryan, America (September 26, 1992), quoted in Synthesis, October 2, 2016.
What is Jesus talking about here? We are still on the road with Jesus, heading toward Jerusalem and all that will take place there. In this middle section of the gospel, the evangelist has collected a variety of Jesus’ teachings and sayings. No doubt the evangelist has also tried to arrange them in some coherent order. We’ve heard parables and stories about lost sheep and lost coins, and we heard about a dishonest manager and the rich man and Lazarus. In most of these stories and sayings, the evangelist has shown Jesus using overstatement and exaggeration, one of the favorite rhetorical tools of the rabbis.
As we come to this place in the gospel narrative, the disciples are clearly feeling overwhelmed and downright puzzled by all that Jesus has called them to be and do. So they make what seems like a simple request: “increase our faith.” But what exactly are they asking for? Is a faith a quantity that can decrease or increase? What would more faith look like in real life? If they had “more faith” would the disciples fast, give, heal, and teach more? Would they stop complaining as they trailed behind Jesus? Would they willingly let themselves be executed with Jesus?
Do you find Jesus’ response to his disciples perplexing? At this point, you might not even like the Jesus you see here. He doesn’t reassure the disciples. He doesn’t make a joke or pat them on the back. He barks at them, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed….” Then he uses the image of a master and slaves – overworked slaves – to suggest something about what faith really means. Although the image of hardworking slaves would have been perfectly acceptable to Jesus’ disciples and to the evangelist’s audience, it of course grates on our ears. And more than that, both the sayings about the mustard seed and the image of slaves are surely further examples of overstatement and exaggeration.
So what is the real message here? What is the evangelist suggesting to his own community – and by extension to us – about what faith is? Let’s unpack that word “faith” and look for a minute at what we might think it means. Is faith supernatural power, especially power that, if I believe hard enough, I can make God do what I want? Is faith acceptance of all the traditional statements of the church, believing seven impossible things before breakfast, as one wag put it? Do I have deep faith if I understand and accept every statement in the Nicene Creed? Do I have faith if I take the Bible literally, especially if I believe that creation happened according to the account in Genesis, or that every miracle occurred just as it is depicted? Do I have faith if I adhere to a set of specific devotional practices? Am I person of deep faith if I fast, tithe, and read Forward Day by Day every morning?
The truth is that faith – or perhaps, better, faithfulness – the faithfulness we are called to have as followers of Jesus, is none of these things. To begin with, faith is a gift of God. But it is not something that we earn as a reward for hard work. It is something we already have just by virtue of being a creature made in God’s image. We may have models of people who have faith, like the women Lois and Eunice mentioned by the writer of the second letter to Timothy, but we must still acknowledge God’s gift for ourselves.
Perhaps faith is more what we moderns might call a mindset. When we acknowledge God’s gift, then we can begin seeing the world as God sees it. We can acknowledge ourselves as part of God’s creation, and as such deeply and truly loved by God. We can also understand ourselves as only a small part of God’s creation, as one of God’s many children. And we can begin seeing ourselves as connected to everyone we meet, looking out at those both near and far, not with our egocentric desire to possess and control, but rather with compassion and a desire to help others grow and flourish.
What’s more important, faith is not something static, it is not something that comes in a quantity that Jesus or God can increase at our request. It is not something that we can throw away. We can ignore God, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that we have no faith. And more important, our faith, whether it’s in God or in anything else, is dynamic. It grows, flourishes, and unfolds throughout our life’s journey. It’s apt really that Jesus used the image of a seed for faith. Remember Jesus’ image of the mustard seed that grows to be a great tree, in which even the birds can nest? If we water and tend our faith, it too can become a green living quality within us that will reflect God’s presence within us and in the world.
The most important thing about faith is that it is ultimately a verb. Jesus was right in suggesting that if we have faith we do something. Jesus might have been exaggerating in using the image of the uprooted mulberry tree, but the truth is that ultimately if we acknowledge the divine gift within us, then we show forth our faith “not only with our lips but with our lives.”
And how do we do that? Not surprisingly, faith is a verb that calls us to look in two different directions at once. If faith enables us to see ourselves as one of God’s beloved children, then to remain faithful we must also hear God’s call to us. We must leave ourselves open to God in regular prayer and times of silence, however briefly, and go beyond our rote prayers or our spontaneous calls for help, to reach the God within us, to connect more deeply to the God within us, to hear more clearly the words of that God. And we do this not to prove anything, not to buy God’s favor, not to placate an angry God, but so that we might follow more closely behind Jesus, so that our God-given faith may indeed become that great green tree.
And then we must do our faith out in the world. Writer Debie Thomas reminds us that that to do faith is “To do the loving, forgiving thing we consider so banal we ignore it. Why? Because the life of faith is as straightforward as a slave serving his master dinner. As ordinary as a hired worker fulfilling the terms of his contract. Faith isn’t fireworks; it’s not meant to dazzle. Faith is simply recognizing our tiny place in relation to God’s enormous creative love, and then filling that place with our whole lives.”1 We do our faith by doing what God calls us to do, in our ordinary given lives, and, to the extent that we fallible humans can, with the mindset of Jesus. Doing our faith will look different for each one of us. For many of us, living out our faith will mean truly accepting ourselves as God’s beloved children. And it also will mean looking hard at our lives, forgiving those who have hurt us, forgiving ourselves for the hurt we have visited on others, and asking for forgiveness where we can. Doing faith will mean seeing Christ in the faces of strangers, especially of those who ask for our help. For some of us, doing faith might mean embarking on a new educational or career path, or taking in an unwanted child. For all of us doing faith will mean using our God-given financial resources intentionally, especially to support people and organizations that are helping us to care more intentionally for the earth, and that are working to bring God’s reign nearer. Doing faith will mean working for justice, especially among those falsely accused. For some of us, doing faith will also mean working to abolish the death penalty. And for all of us, and especially in this contentious political season, doing faith will mean using our right to vote thoughtfully and intentionally.
We have a myriad ways to fulfil our call to do faith in the world. And the truth is that we have all the faith that we need. As we do our faith, God may deepen and strengthen our faith. But even now, every one of you has all the faith that you need to do God’s will. Because, “the tiniest fragment of real faith, real fidelity to responding to God’s prior fidelity to us, can work wonders. Not only a sycamore tree, but even much more deeply-rooted problems, can be dug up and planted in to the sea, if we have that basic, deep-down trust in God.”2 May it be so.
1. http://www.journeywithjesus.net/lectionary-essays/current-essay .
2. Patrick J.Ryan, America (September 26, 1992), quoted in Synthesis, October 2, 2016.
Monday, September 12, 2016
Seek the Lost
“There’s a wideness in God’s mercy like the wideness of the sea; there’s a kindness in God’s justice, which is more than liberty.” We just sang those words. Do you believe them? Do you believe “there is welcome for the sinner and more graces for the good….”? Or is there a part of you that still believes you have to do something to get God to love you? Or worse, do you think that you’ve botched up your life so badly that there’s no way that God could love you? Or maybe it’s all those other people out there – whoever “they” are – who don’t deserve God’s love: the murderers, drug dealers, crooked politicians, child abusers, and streetwalkers? Or perhaps you believe that when “bad things happen to good people,” when people are caught in floods or tornadoes, or their cities are bombed, it’s because they deserve it, that God is punishing them – or the rest of us on their behalf. On this day fifteen years ago, some of us heard claims like that. So does any of this reflect your beliefs?
If your only idea of the God of the Hebrew Bible is what we heard this morning in the reading from Jeremiah, you might think that all those statements about God are true. Remember that Jeremiah originally wrote his prophecies at a time of great political upheaval, when the Babylonian armies had destroyed the temple in Jerusalem and were herding the Judean leaders into exile in Babylon. The prophet is very clear about God’s judgement of the people of Judah. Clearly God is enraged at them. God calls them foolish and stupid, skilled in evil, and ignorant of good. They have even violated creation. God pronounces judgement: God will destroy the land and make the earth mourn. And God is fiercely determined to carry out God’s plan.
And yet. Did you notice the hints that God did not intend to wreak total destruction? Did you notice something else besides God’s fierce anger? Did you hear “my poor people?” Did you hear that “my people” are foolish, like stupid children? Did you hear God acknowledge God’s deep relationship with God’s people, the hint of God’s compassion for them? Did you hear God say, “Yet I will not make a full end?”
Throughout this long book, the prophet continues to rail against the wrong-headed political alliances that eventually led to the triumph of the Babylonians over the Judeans. Yet, in chapter 30, God declares, “… have no fear my servant Jacob … and do not be dismayed, O Israel; for I am going to save you from far away, and your offspring from the land of their captivity.” And more: God declares, “I am going to restore the fortunes of the tents of Jacob, and have compassion on his dwellings; the city shall be rebuilt upon its mound, and the citadel set upon its rightful site.” Most important of all, God promises to make a new covenant with the houses of Israel and Judah. “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” The prophet Ezekiel, who also experienced the exile, also trusted God to seek out and restore God’s people. Using the familiar image of God as a shepherd, Ezekiel repeats God’s declaration that “I myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out. As shepherds seek out their flocks when they are among their scattered sheep, so I will seek out my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places to which they have been scattered ….”
Perhaps Jesus had that very section of Ezekiel in mind as he responded to the implied criticism of the Pharisees and scribes. And here let me remind you that, despite what you hear in the Gospel, in Jesus’ time the Pharisees are the good guys – literally. Though the gospels often show them arguing with Jesus, they strove to keep the Law of Moses, to “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest” it. They also continued the process of reinterpreting the law – which rabbis do to this day – so that the law remains relevant for those who try to observe it.
Like all good people, the Pharisees tend towards self-righteousness. Focused on their own efforts to be good, they exclude those who miss the mark more visibly. It is understandable that they might wonder why this charismatic rabbi not only seemed to avoid the obviously good people but sought out the least, the lost, and the left behind. Why would a self-respecting follower of God’s law do that? Here in Luke’s telling, Jesus answers their concerns by telling three stories, two of which we just heard. Just as we heard in last week’s gospel, Jesus uses hyperbole to make his point. Using images that would resonate with ordinary people, Jesus pictures a shepherd who chases after a lone sheep, leaving ninety-nine “in the wilderness,” then rejoices when he finds the lost one. Would a sane shepherd, even imagining that he had a flock that size, really leave them all to chase after one? Jesus then uses the image of a woman searching for a lost coin and rejoicing when she finds it. Would a person expend that much effort just to find one coin?
Wondering about what happened to the ninety-nine sheep left behind or the woman’s effort entirely misses the point of these stories. Jesus is not saying anything here about sheep, women, or even us. In answering the complainers, Jesus is saying something about God’s intentions. He is reminding his hearers – and us – that God takes the initiative to seek and rescue the lost. And maybe we’re all lost – only the ninety-nine “good” sheep and the nine coins hanging around the woman’s neck – that’s how the poor kept their money – don’t know that they’re lost. So God starts with those who do know that they’re lost, those who’ve wandered away and can’t find their way back, those who fall in between the cracks, or end up behind the drapes. And God not only takes the initiative to go looking for the least, the lost, and the left behind, God welcomes them, even eats dinner with them. To show what God was really like, “Jesus welcomed the people we ignore and despise. The sexually suspicious. The religiously impure. Ethnic outsiders. Rich tax scammers and lazy poor people. Soldiers of the Roman oppressors. The chronically sick and the mentally deranged. Women with multiple marriages, widows, and children. His closest disciples who betrayed him.”1
And why does Jesus – or God – take the initiative to seek out those on the margins? Of course in the parables, the sheep and the coin are forms of wealth. And you know what? So are we! So are all of us, even those who we good people wouldn’t be caught dead embracing! God loves all of us. And even more important, the least, the lost, and the left behind people are part of the community, and the whole is not complete without them. God’s search for us – all of us – is ultimately a quest for restoration and wholeness. “In this sense, all of us who are part of God’s creation should be just as anxious as God until the lost are restored and we are made whole again by their presence.”2
And so, what of us? If God always takes the initiative, if God always seeks us out, are we willing to be found? If we are, how do we let ourselves be found? On Tuesday, we wondered how to discern God’s will – which may be another way of asking the same question. No surprise: we discovered that we have to open ourselves to God’s presence in our lives. We realized that a deeper relationship with God helps us to be found by God and to let God lead us – even when the next steps aren’t always clear. The means? Intentional silent prayer is a good first step: letting go of our own ego, our own small needs and concerns, and simply sitting silently in God’s presence. Intentional reading of Scripture is another good practice. Daily examen, looking over your day and seeing God’s presence in the events of the day, is yet another good practice. We will experience all of them at next month’s quiet day, but I’ll be happy to give a preview of both practices to anyone interested.
But. Practices of prayer are never ends in themselves – if Jesus is our example. After taking time away for prayer, Jesus leapt right back into active ministry, healing, teaching, proclaiming the reign of God. Once God has found us, welcomed us, fed us, healed us, and strengthened us, then we have a responsibility to share God’s welcome with others, to actively seek the least, the lost, and the left behind, both those who come to us and those who don’t find their way through our doors, who may not even know that we exist.
Today, we remember all those first responders and everyone else who went out to help victims and family members of those who lost their lives in New York, Washington, and Shanksville, PA. And here’s another example. Every Wednesday evening, the Lost Sheep Ministry reaches approximately 250-300 people under the Interstate Bridge in downtown Knoxville, Tennessee. Many volunteers take part in this ministry. After a brief prayer service, they serve hot meals, give away gently used clothes, including work and interview clothes, staff a prayer table, provide dental and medical assistance, hold an annual flu clinic, and provide risk-free tuberculosis screening.3
Who are the homeless bridge people around us? To whom are we called to reach out with God’s love? “I once was lost, but now am found.” As God has found us, as God has showered us with love and great blessings, with whom are we called to share that love? Who needs to be found, so that the Body may be made whole?
Let your God love you. Then go out and to seek the lost, to share God’s love with them.
1. Dan Clendenin, “A Trustworthy Saying,” http://www.journeywithjesus.net/lectionary-essays/current-essay .
2. Jennifer Copeland, “Clean Sweep,” Christian Century, Sept. 07, 2004, http://christiancentury.org/article/2004-09/clean-sweep
3. http://lostsheepministry.org/under-the-bridge/
If your only idea of the God of the Hebrew Bible is what we heard this morning in the reading from Jeremiah, you might think that all those statements about God are true. Remember that Jeremiah originally wrote his prophecies at a time of great political upheaval, when the Babylonian armies had destroyed the temple in Jerusalem and were herding the Judean leaders into exile in Babylon. The prophet is very clear about God’s judgement of the people of Judah. Clearly God is enraged at them. God calls them foolish and stupid, skilled in evil, and ignorant of good. They have even violated creation. God pronounces judgement: God will destroy the land and make the earth mourn. And God is fiercely determined to carry out God’s plan.
And yet. Did you notice the hints that God did not intend to wreak total destruction? Did you notice something else besides God’s fierce anger? Did you hear “my poor people?” Did you hear that “my people” are foolish, like stupid children? Did you hear God acknowledge God’s deep relationship with God’s people, the hint of God’s compassion for them? Did you hear God say, “Yet I will not make a full end?”
Throughout this long book, the prophet continues to rail against the wrong-headed political alliances that eventually led to the triumph of the Babylonians over the Judeans. Yet, in chapter 30, God declares, “… have no fear my servant Jacob … and do not be dismayed, O Israel; for I am going to save you from far away, and your offspring from the land of their captivity.” And more: God declares, “I am going to restore the fortunes of the tents of Jacob, and have compassion on his dwellings; the city shall be rebuilt upon its mound, and the citadel set upon its rightful site.” Most important of all, God promises to make a new covenant with the houses of Israel and Judah. “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” The prophet Ezekiel, who also experienced the exile, also trusted God to seek out and restore God’s people. Using the familiar image of God as a shepherd, Ezekiel repeats God’s declaration that “I myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out. As shepherds seek out their flocks when they are among their scattered sheep, so I will seek out my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places to which they have been scattered ….”
Perhaps Jesus had that very section of Ezekiel in mind as he responded to the implied criticism of the Pharisees and scribes. And here let me remind you that, despite what you hear in the Gospel, in Jesus’ time the Pharisees are the good guys – literally. Though the gospels often show them arguing with Jesus, they strove to keep the Law of Moses, to “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest” it. They also continued the process of reinterpreting the law – which rabbis do to this day – so that the law remains relevant for those who try to observe it.
Like all good people, the Pharisees tend towards self-righteousness. Focused on their own efforts to be good, they exclude those who miss the mark more visibly. It is understandable that they might wonder why this charismatic rabbi not only seemed to avoid the obviously good people but sought out the least, the lost, and the left behind. Why would a self-respecting follower of God’s law do that? Here in Luke’s telling, Jesus answers their concerns by telling three stories, two of which we just heard. Just as we heard in last week’s gospel, Jesus uses hyperbole to make his point. Using images that would resonate with ordinary people, Jesus pictures a shepherd who chases after a lone sheep, leaving ninety-nine “in the wilderness,” then rejoices when he finds the lost one. Would a sane shepherd, even imagining that he had a flock that size, really leave them all to chase after one? Jesus then uses the image of a woman searching for a lost coin and rejoicing when she finds it. Would a person expend that much effort just to find one coin?
Wondering about what happened to the ninety-nine sheep left behind or the woman’s effort entirely misses the point of these stories. Jesus is not saying anything here about sheep, women, or even us. In answering the complainers, Jesus is saying something about God’s intentions. He is reminding his hearers – and us – that God takes the initiative to seek and rescue the lost. And maybe we’re all lost – only the ninety-nine “good” sheep and the nine coins hanging around the woman’s neck – that’s how the poor kept their money – don’t know that they’re lost. So God starts with those who do know that they’re lost, those who’ve wandered away and can’t find their way back, those who fall in between the cracks, or end up behind the drapes. And God not only takes the initiative to go looking for the least, the lost, and the left behind, God welcomes them, even eats dinner with them. To show what God was really like, “Jesus welcomed the people we ignore and despise. The sexually suspicious. The religiously impure. Ethnic outsiders. Rich tax scammers and lazy poor people. Soldiers of the Roman oppressors. The chronically sick and the mentally deranged. Women with multiple marriages, widows, and children. His closest disciples who betrayed him.”1
And why does Jesus – or God – take the initiative to seek out those on the margins? Of course in the parables, the sheep and the coin are forms of wealth. And you know what? So are we! So are all of us, even those who we good people wouldn’t be caught dead embracing! God loves all of us. And even more important, the least, the lost, and the left behind people are part of the community, and the whole is not complete without them. God’s search for us – all of us – is ultimately a quest for restoration and wholeness. “In this sense, all of us who are part of God’s creation should be just as anxious as God until the lost are restored and we are made whole again by their presence.”2
And so, what of us? If God always takes the initiative, if God always seeks us out, are we willing to be found? If we are, how do we let ourselves be found? On Tuesday, we wondered how to discern God’s will – which may be another way of asking the same question. No surprise: we discovered that we have to open ourselves to God’s presence in our lives. We realized that a deeper relationship with God helps us to be found by God and to let God lead us – even when the next steps aren’t always clear. The means? Intentional silent prayer is a good first step: letting go of our own ego, our own small needs and concerns, and simply sitting silently in God’s presence. Intentional reading of Scripture is another good practice. Daily examen, looking over your day and seeing God’s presence in the events of the day, is yet another good practice. We will experience all of them at next month’s quiet day, but I’ll be happy to give a preview of both practices to anyone interested.
But. Practices of prayer are never ends in themselves – if Jesus is our example. After taking time away for prayer, Jesus leapt right back into active ministry, healing, teaching, proclaiming the reign of God. Once God has found us, welcomed us, fed us, healed us, and strengthened us, then we have a responsibility to share God’s welcome with others, to actively seek the least, the lost, and the left behind, both those who come to us and those who don’t find their way through our doors, who may not even know that we exist.
Today, we remember all those first responders and everyone else who went out to help victims and family members of those who lost their lives in New York, Washington, and Shanksville, PA. And here’s another example. Every Wednesday evening, the Lost Sheep Ministry reaches approximately 250-300 people under the Interstate Bridge in downtown Knoxville, Tennessee. Many volunteers take part in this ministry. After a brief prayer service, they serve hot meals, give away gently used clothes, including work and interview clothes, staff a prayer table, provide dental and medical assistance, hold an annual flu clinic, and provide risk-free tuberculosis screening.3
Who are the homeless bridge people around us? To whom are we called to reach out with God’s love? “I once was lost, but now am found.” As God has found us, as God has showered us with love and great blessings, with whom are we called to share that love? Who needs to be found, so that the Body may be made whole?
Let your God love you. Then go out and to seek the lost, to share God’s love with them.
1. Dan Clendenin, “A Trustworthy Saying,” http://www.journeywithjesus.net/lectionary-essays/current-essay .
2. Jennifer Copeland, “Clean Sweep,” Christian Century, Sept. 07, 2004, http://christiancentury.org/article/2004-09/clean-sweep
3. http://lostsheepministry.org/under-the-bridge/
Monday, September 5, 2016
Are You All In?
We’re still on the road with Jesus. For the last month or so, ever since Jesus “set his face for Jerusalem,” we‘ve been walking the dusty roads between Galilee and Judea with him. All the while, Jesus has been flinging hard words at us. If you become one of my followers, be prepared for conflict with your friends and family, he told us last month. Just last week he told us not to assume that we are the high-status people, and to invite the riffraff to our parties rather than our families and friends. It’s hot, we’re tired, and we’ve had enough of Jesus’ hard teachings. “That’s it, Master, no more. Leave us alone.”
Maybe Jesus can already see Jerusalem and the events that will happen there – if not with his naked eye, then perhaps in his mind’s eye. So he flings his hardest teaching yet at us. He tells us to be prepared for the cost, the full cost of truly following him. “You have to hate your family members,” he says. “You have to follow me all the way to unjust execution, if necessary.” “You have to give away everything you have.” “Wait, wait, you can’t mean all that Jesus, can you?” He can, and he does.
OK, the rabbis of Jesus’ day were given to hyperbole. Maybe Jesus overstated his expectations for their shock value, so that he could get our attention. So what, as Luke tells it, did Jesus want his followers – and by extension us – to hear? In a nutshell, it’s not a piece of cake to follow him. We don’t follow him because it feels good. We don’t follow him when life calms down and we have time to get around to it. Being Jesus’ disciple is not a spectator sport, as if you can watch the clergy try to do it, but sit in the bleachers yourself.
When we decide to follow Jesus in a serious way, we are making a deep commitment. We are committing ourselves to putting God before all the other commitments in our lives, before family, social class, nationality, before all those pieces of our lives that are not God. We are committing ourselves to a way of life that puts the needs and desires of others ahead of our own needs and desires. We are committing ourselves to working for the good of all creation. We are committing ourselves to travelling lightly with our achievements and our “stuff,” while acknowledging our responsibility to share what we have. We are making a commitment to letting ourselves be transformed by God. As we travel behind Jesus, we promise to be ready to respond to God’s call to grow in ways that may seem difficult, risky, and strange. And we know, that, at some point along that road, Jesus will turn to us and say, “Are you all in?”
In effect, Paul posed that same question to Philemon and the others to whom the brief letter bearing Philemon’s name is addressed. Oddly, this letter is the only truly personal letter of Paul’s that has been preserved. And sadly, we don’t know much about it. You can easily figure out the broad outlines of the story. The slave Onesimus ran away from his master, Philemon, possibly also taking money or property. He met up with Paul in prison, where Paul converted him. Now Paul writes to Philemon asking him to take Onesimus back as a fellow follower of Jesus and promising to reimburse Philemon for any expenses. What we don’t know are where Paul was imprisoned, how he and Onesimus got together, and, most important, what Paul means when he asks Philemon to receive Onesimus “no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother.”
We do know this: whatever we now think about slavery – and some would criticize Paul for not taking a strong stand against slavery – Paul was following Roman law in returning Onesimus to Philemon. Upon Onesimus’s return, Philemon could have severely punished him, hobbled him, as was done to African slaves in the American South and in South Africa, or sold him away. Instead, Paul asks Philemon to treat Onesimus very differently, to treat him as a fellow member of a Christian community, and even, if possible, to send Onesimus back to Paul. In effect, Paul has forsaken the expectations of his culture, and is subtly undermining the system of slavery by reminding Philemon of his common humanity with Onesimus as a fellow follower of Christ. He is further asking Philemon to treat Onesimus differently than what law and custom would permit. And he does this, not by trying to coerce Philemon, but by gently requesting that Philemon follow his own example and treat Onesimus with love.
I wonder what we would do in Philemon’s place. I couldn’t help thinking of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn and another letter, the letter that Huck Finn planned to write to turn in the runaway slave Jim. The laws and the customs of the day tell Huck that Jim should be returned to his owner. Huck even drafts a letter. But then when he realizes all that Jim has done for him, how Jim has been a friend and father to him, Huck tears the letter up. Huck is definitely all in. I wonder if I would have had the courage to do what Huck did.
Even the reading from the prophet Jeremiah indirectly poses a question of commitment to us. Here Jeremiah uses the image of the potter shaping and reshaping the pot to suggest the way God works God’s transformations within us. However, Jeremiah is not addressing individuals but rather the covenanted community, the Israelites who have promised to follow God’s law. As we hear throughout this long book, the Israelites get entangled in untrustworthy political alliances, amass wealth, exploit the poor, and visit all kinds of injustices on each other. Jeremiah warns them here of the dire consequences of forsaking the promises they made to God. He assures them that God will force then to undergo a period of transformation, which indeed, as it turns out, happens when they are sent into exile.
And so: are you all in? Are you committed to Jesus and willing to pay the cost of following him? What examples might we choose to illustrate what full commitment looks like? Actually, we have some wonderful examples of what such total commitment to the beliefs of one’s heart actually looks like – even when those beliefs challenge the status quo of the culture around them. Think about those who enter vowed religious life, convents and monasteries. They truly give up all their possessions, traditionally even their clothes and their name, and they commit to a life in common with others, traditionally a life of poverty, chastity, obedience, and stability. How about those who took part in the civil rights struggles of the 1960s? The Freedom Riders challenged the status quo of segregated buses by riding interstate buses in the South in mixed racial groups and by defying local laws or customs that mandated segregated seating. Those who took part in the Montgomery bus boycott to protest segregated municipal buses walked to work for 381 days until the city finally caved in and allowed people of all races to sit where they pleased. Those of you who are athletes know the single-minded commitment that is necessary to excel in any sport. We were all charmed last month as we watched Simone Biles, Gabby Douglas, Alys Raisman, Laurie Hernandez, and Madison Kocian defend the USA’s gold medal title in the team all-around gymnastics event in the Olympics. Those young women had practiced for years to get to that place. They were definitely all in!
And are we? What does being all in look like for us? John Calvin suggests that there are four different ways in which we can show our commitment to Christ. The first is through self-denial, i.e., not seeing ourselves as the center of the universe, but rather recognizing that of God in everyone else and affirming our kinship with all people. Second, we can bear our cross, i.e., face whatever suffering comes our way in life without complaint, knowing that Christ bears it with us, trusting in God for the outcome of what we bear, and sharing the suffering of others. Third, we can meditate on eternal life, i.e., we can seek to understand ever more deeply who we are and whose we are, that we are all beloved children of God. And fourth, we can use God’s gifts properly, i.e., we can live a simple life, knowing that we are on a spiritual pilgrimage. We are called to live neither ascetically nor overindulgently as we remember that we will ultimately be accountable to God for how we have used God gifts. To which I would add one more: we are called to recognize that salvation, spiritual wholeness and health, are not do-it-yourself projects. We are all in this together. Just as Paul wrote to Philemon and the others in his Christian community, so we are also called to build up each other and to call each other to greater and greater love.
Are you all in?
Maybe Jesus can already see Jerusalem and the events that will happen there – if not with his naked eye, then perhaps in his mind’s eye. So he flings his hardest teaching yet at us. He tells us to be prepared for the cost, the full cost of truly following him. “You have to hate your family members,” he says. “You have to follow me all the way to unjust execution, if necessary.” “You have to give away everything you have.” “Wait, wait, you can’t mean all that Jesus, can you?” He can, and he does.
OK, the rabbis of Jesus’ day were given to hyperbole. Maybe Jesus overstated his expectations for their shock value, so that he could get our attention. So what, as Luke tells it, did Jesus want his followers – and by extension us – to hear? In a nutshell, it’s not a piece of cake to follow him. We don’t follow him because it feels good. We don’t follow him when life calms down and we have time to get around to it. Being Jesus’ disciple is not a spectator sport, as if you can watch the clergy try to do it, but sit in the bleachers yourself.
When we decide to follow Jesus in a serious way, we are making a deep commitment. We are committing ourselves to putting God before all the other commitments in our lives, before family, social class, nationality, before all those pieces of our lives that are not God. We are committing ourselves to a way of life that puts the needs and desires of others ahead of our own needs and desires. We are committing ourselves to working for the good of all creation. We are committing ourselves to travelling lightly with our achievements and our “stuff,” while acknowledging our responsibility to share what we have. We are making a commitment to letting ourselves be transformed by God. As we travel behind Jesus, we promise to be ready to respond to God’s call to grow in ways that may seem difficult, risky, and strange. And we know, that, at some point along that road, Jesus will turn to us and say, “Are you all in?”
In effect, Paul posed that same question to Philemon and the others to whom the brief letter bearing Philemon’s name is addressed. Oddly, this letter is the only truly personal letter of Paul’s that has been preserved. And sadly, we don’t know much about it. You can easily figure out the broad outlines of the story. The slave Onesimus ran away from his master, Philemon, possibly also taking money or property. He met up with Paul in prison, where Paul converted him. Now Paul writes to Philemon asking him to take Onesimus back as a fellow follower of Jesus and promising to reimburse Philemon for any expenses. What we don’t know are where Paul was imprisoned, how he and Onesimus got together, and, most important, what Paul means when he asks Philemon to receive Onesimus “no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother.”
We do know this: whatever we now think about slavery – and some would criticize Paul for not taking a strong stand against slavery – Paul was following Roman law in returning Onesimus to Philemon. Upon Onesimus’s return, Philemon could have severely punished him, hobbled him, as was done to African slaves in the American South and in South Africa, or sold him away. Instead, Paul asks Philemon to treat Onesimus very differently, to treat him as a fellow member of a Christian community, and even, if possible, to send Onesimus back to Paul. In effect, Paul has forsaken the expectations of his culture, and is subtly undermining the system of slavery by reminding Philemon of his common humanity with Onesimus as a fellow follower of Christ. He is further asking Philemon to treat Onesimus differently than what law and custom would permit. And he does this, not by trying to coerce Philemon, but by gently requesting that Philemon follow his own example and treat Onesimus with love.
I wonder what we would do in Philemon’s place. I couldn’t help thinking of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn and another letter, the letter that Huck Finn planned to write to turn in the runaway slave Jim. The laws and the customs of the day tell Huck that Jim should be returned to his owner. Huck even drafts a letter. But then when he realizes all that Jim has done for him, how Jim has been a friend and father to him, Huck tears the letter up. Huck is definitely all in. I wonder if I would have had the courage to do what Huck did.
Even the reading from the prophet Jeremiah indirectly poses a question of commitment to us. Here Jeremiah uses the image of the potter shaping and reshaping the pot to suggest the way God works God’s transformations within us. However, Jeremiah is not addressing individuals but rather the covenanted community, the Israelites who have promised to follow God’s law. As we hear throughout this long book, the Israelites get entangled in untrustworthy political alliances, amass wealth, exploit the poor, and visit all kinds of injustices on each other. Jeremiah warns them here of the dire consequences of forsaking the promises they made to God. He assures them that God will force then to undergo a period of transformation, which indeed, as it turns out, happens when they are sent into exile.
And so: are you all in? Are you committed to Jesus and willing to pay the cost of following him? What examples might we choose to illustrate what full commitment looks like? Actually, we have some wonderful examples of what such total commitment to the beliefs of one’s heart actually looks like – even when those beliefs challenge the status quo of the culture around them. Think about those who enter vowed religious life, convents and monasteries. They truly give up all their possessions, traditionally even their clothes and their name, and they commit to a life in common with others, traditionally a life of poverty, chastity, obedience, and stability. How about those who took part in the civil rights struggles of the 1960s? The Freedom Riders challenged the status quo of segregated buses by riding interstate buses in the South in mixed racial groups and by defying local laws or customs that mandated segregated seating. Those who took part in the Montgomery bus boycott to protest segregated municipal buses walked to work for 381 days until the city finally caved in and allowed people of all races to sit where they pleased. Those of you who are athletes know the single-minded commitment that is necessary to excel in any sport. We were all charmed last month as we watched Simone Biles, Gabby Douglas, Alys Raisman, Laurie Hernandez, and Madison Kocian defend the USA’s gold medal title in the team all-around gymnastics event in the Olympics. Those young women had practiced for years to get to that place. They were definitely all in!
And are we? What does being all in look like for us? John Calvin suggests that there are four different ways in which we can show our commitment to Christ. The first is through self-denial, i.e., not seeing ourselves as the center of the universe, but rather recognizing that of God in everyone else and affirming our kinship with all people. Second, we can bear our cross, i.e., face whatever suffering comes our way in life without complaint, knowing that Christ bears it with us, trusting in God for the outcome of what we bear, and sharing the suffering of others. Third, we can meditate on eternal life, i.e., we can seek to understand ever more deeply who we are and whose we are, that we are all beloved children of God. And fourth, we can use God’s gifts properly, i.e., we can live a simple life, knowing that we are on a spiritual pilgrimage. We are called to live neither ascetically nor overindulgently as we remember that we will ultimately be accountable to God for how we have used God gifts. To which I would add one more: we are called to recognize that salvation, spiritual wholeness and health, are not do-it-yourself projects. We are all in this together. Just as Paul wrote to Philemon and the others in his Christian community, so we are also called to build up each other and to call each other to greater and greater love.
Are you all in?
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