Having a Lawyer-Advocate for Heaven

22 Pentecost C  27    November 10, 2019      

Job 19:23-27a   Psalm 17:1-9

2 Thes.2:13-3:5     Luke 20:27-38

Lectionary Link

One of the mistakes that we often make in ministry is that we use the statistical and the hypothetical to diminish the personal and the individual.  We use the anecdotal to discount the personal experience of another almost as if it were a competition for who has suffered the most.

I remember a woman who had had a miscarriage and another woman told her she would be just fine because she had had three miscarriages.  The woman meant to project empathy but it seemed to discount the significance of how unique loss and pain can be.

Sometimes theology, the Bible, creeds and doctrines can be used to avoid the personal because the personal is what is new and what is happening to someone right now.  And when we want to make people part of the statistics too quickly or a biblical example, we discount their immediate pain.

Today in the Gospel story we have a dialogue between Jesus and some Sadducees.  It involved theological shop talk between a representative of a prominent religious party in Judaism and the new Rabbi on the block, Jesus.  Religion in the time of Jesus was like the religion in our own time;  often people want to make sure that they belong to the group which believes the best and the prescribed correct way.  A hungry or sick person or distressed person, a person in deep loss is really not concerned about theological fine points; they just want relief, salvation, health or comfort.  And religious people often are more interested in making sure that you know that they believe correctly with the right wording than providing relief and care.

The theological take on the Sadducees is that they did not believe in the resurrection from the dead.  They were different than the Pharisees and other religious parties within Judaism.  And since they didn't believe in the resurrection, that is why they were, "Sad, you see." (groan here)

Why didn't the Sadducees believe in the resurrection?  It wasn't necessarily because they didn't want to.  Their method of what established true belief was very limited.

The Sadducees were real traditionalists.  They believed that belief could only be established if it could be found in the Torah.  So they limited their Hebrew Scriptures to but five books.  If a belief could not be found in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, or Deuteronomy, it was an unsupported innovation and had to be rejected.  The Hebrew Scriptures for other Jews included what is often called using the acronym TANAK, the Torah, the Nevi'im (the prophets) and the Ketuvim (the writings).

So the Sadducees presented a teaser, a riddle to Jesus cynically asking Jesus to rule on a hypothetical that they did not believe in.  "Let's stump Jesus about his resurrection preaching."  The hypothetical is full of irony for various reasons.  If the Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection, what kind of immortality did the Sadducees believe in?  They believed in an objective immortality; they believe a person attained immortality in their offspring, so it was very important to have children.  What if a man married and didn't have children before he died?  The Torah required that the brother of the decease to marry his widow and the children of the marriage would become the deceased brother's immortality.  Such a forced marriage was called levirate marriage.  So what if there are seven brothers and they all died and had to marry the one woman?  The woman bore no children so none of the brothers would have objective immortality.   

Can you see how divorced from actual life this joke of the hypothetical was?  Why do we have resurrection thinking in the first place?  Because we all feel personally unfinished in this life.  We have lost people we have deeply loved and it seems totally unfair that they should be removed from our lives.  We feel threatened by the seeming finality of death.  The loss of death is not some theological hypothetical; it is deeply personal.  Resurrection thinking is the personal belief that hope and justice and perfection will actual win out.  And if they don't then why would a God of love plant such a hope within me?  Just to taunt me for wanting something I could never become?  Just to taunt us about justice which can never be realized?  We come to a point of knowing that we need to become our better angels, and the words of Jesus assure us that our vision of perfection is not a cruel hoax, it is the ultimate invitation of our future.

What do we need before we can enter the realm of becoming angels?  We need a Redeemer.  We need an advocate, we need a really good lawyer.

The cry of Job that was immortalized in Handel's Oratorio, was "I know that my Redeemer lives."  The nuance in the Hebrew word for Redeemer, is one who advocates or makes the case for.  The story of Job was the case study for the good man who had bad things, the very worst things happen to him. All of his "good" friends believed that they were lawyers for God in telling Job that he must have done something wrong for such bad luck in his life.  Job felt helpless to defend himself; sometimes we can think that bad luck is proof itself that we deserved all of the bad things that happened to us.  Yet Job could not find a one to one correspondence with any particular thing he had done and the horrendous punishing outcomes.  Job's friends were lawyers trying to defend a very wrong view of God.  Job cried out for an ultimate lawyer and advocate who would defend the basic integrity of his life, not because he was perfect but because he was a person of faith who looked to a forgiving God.

So what can we learn today from our Bible lessons?  Don't let our limited biblical and theological exposure keep us from experiencing the true implications of a loving God.  And do not let our statistics and our hypothetical anecdotes steal or diminish the real pain of people who are in loss of all sorts.  Let us know Jesus to be our Redeemer, our perfect lawyer who makes the case for the gift and the integrity of our existence and who says to us, "Do not let anyone ever say to you, "You are a mistake."" Jesus our Redeemer is the one who is leading us to become our better angels in this life in part, but more fully in the next and we won't have to worry about marriage in the next life because we will not be lonely or alone and we will know universal fellowship.  Imagine one's life like a Word document which continually get edited and improved.  And then when we die, Jesus the Redeemer can open our file with "edit enabled" function turned on.  And Jesus our advocate can edit us towards our angelic selves through his graceful revisioning of our lives.

I know that our Redeemer lives and he is making the case for the value of our lives now and he will usher us into an angelic future life forever.  Amen.

The Beatitudes: Christian Martial Arts of the Saints

All Saints' Sunday  November 3, 2019 Daniel 7:1-3,15-18  Psalm 149 Ephesians 1:11-23  Luke 6:20-31

Lectionary Link
Our cinematic life and Halloween life is full of superheroes, including kings, queens, princes and princesses provided by Disney imagination stories.  D.C. comics and their like have proliferated and one might ask why we are so obsessed with entertainment by imaginative superheroes?

Why do all the kids dress up like superheroes and princes and princesses?  And why do we do it at Halloween is such a big way?

Why do we like superheroes?  We perhaps feel the limitations of our human conditions.  While we think that we are most superior of all the animals, we look at birds and think, "I can't fly.....I wish I could fly like a bird."  And so Superman is invented; a human  who can fly like a bird.

We invent superheroes because we are not completely satisfied with just being human.  We are jealous about the strength of elephants, the swimming of fish, the flying of birds.  We really want to have all of the unique traits of the other animals, but alas we can only be human.  So we invent extra-human, super human beings.

In the past, we used to find our superheroes in the Bible and in our churches.  The Messiah was the best person of all human imagination for people of faith.  The prophets and the saints were also superheroes to whom we looked for inspiration because they were like us but they did great things and even became legendary.

What modern science taught us was to discount the entertainment and imagination value of the Messiah and the saints.  Modern Science taught that the superior truth involved only things that could be empirically verified; everything else was mere fancy.  And once the unable to be verified truths of the Messiah and the saints is discounted, what happened?  There still remained a great hole in human imagination, the truth of human imagination.

And that hole got filled with superheroes galore, with science fiction and with Disney kingdoms.  The truth of imagination did not and will not go away.  We dispensed with the discourses of the truth of imagination which we have in the biblical epic of prophets, seers, Messiah and saints, and we have allowed endless surrogates to replace what we once had as the truthful imaginations of faith of our biblical tradition.

Once science was established as the predominate truth of common sense life, people of faith got an inferiority complex about their biblical truth.  People like Thomas Jefferson responded by cutting out of the Bible, everything that did not comport with scientific reasoning.  Worse, biblical fundamentalists acknowledged the truth of science and then began to argue that everything that is recounted in the Bible is scientifically true.

And people have come to live divided schizoidal lives regarding science and faith.  It is completely dishonest to say that one cannot be a poet and a scientist at the same time.  It is completely dishonest to say that one cannot understand and participate in discourses of faith and discourses of science at the same time, and not be crazy.  But many people have come to believe that it is either biblical faith or science and not both.  And those same people fill their lives with superhero genres and they dress up as Spock at a Trekkie conventions, and think that we Christians are wacky?

We, Christians need to stand up for our Messiah, Jesus.  We need to stand up for our saints and souls whom we venerate as value setters for our lives.  We have the three days of All Hallows' Eve, All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day to enter into the truth of the poetry of our faith.  Whether one is Christian or not, it is hard to avoid thinking about post-death experience for ourselves or for those whom we loved and  have lost intimate accessibility to.  Our superhero, Jesus the Messiah, became so because of the exemplary way that he lived, died and re-appeared, to affirm the truth of the imaginations of the afterlife.  So in these three days, we celebrate the resurrection afterlife of Jesus, the saints and the souls who have been saints for us in our personal histories.

Jesus, the Messiah, and the saints are witnesses to us that we too are called to be heroic in the witness of faith, first in the small things, as preparation for when we might be called to do a greater thing for the community.

Why do we read the beatitudes on All Saints' Day?  The beatitudes might be called the lifestyle of many of the heroic saints.  They were blessed and beatified because of what they were able to endure.

I have come to called the beatitudes the Christian martial arts for oppressed people.  Most us can never really identify since we've never been slaves; we never lived under the duress of oppression.  The early followers of Jesus had to live martial arts lives; they had to live peaceful resistant lives.  Imagine the slave owner who is impressed with the cheerful diligence of his slaves, whom he holds as his pets.  How can those slaves seem so cheerful?  How can they sing those "spirituals" in such duress?  The Christian martial arts life style of the beatitude for oppressed people became so winsome, it took over the Roman Empire.  When Christianity became Christendom, for most Christians, the beatitude lifestyle was dispensed with as not needed for people in power.

The beatitudes were written as martial arts for the oppressed, to help people not only survive but to impress their oppressors about the superior quality of their life in the Holy Spirit.  The Christian belief is that the Christian martial arts of the beatitudes for oppressed people will in the end win out because slavery and oppression and chauvinism are evil; they are not of God.

The saints are those who lived in the power of the Christian martial arts of the beatitudes.  And if you and I do not need to live the life of the beatitudes, because we are not living under the conditions of oppression, we need to live the Christian martial arts of the beatitude on behalf of and in solidarity with the oppressed wherever they are found.

The best of the saintly life is expressed in the Christian martial arts of the beatitudes.  This is the heroic life.  This is the super heroic life.  This is what the life of the Risen Christ can be within each of us as we let the conditions of this life call us to this kind of saintly life.

Today we thank God for the Saint of Saints, Jesus the Messiah, our superhero.  We thank God for blessed Mary and an entire train of exemplary saints who lived the life of the Christian martial arts of the beatitudes when they were oppressed and when they saw others suffering oppression.  And we ask  that we in our time and place might find a way to follow them in learning to practice the Christian martial arts of the beatitudes.  Amen.

Self or Social Entitlement or Entitled by God's Mercy?

20 Pentecost Proper C, October 27, 2019
Jeremiah 14:7-10,19-22  Psalm 84:1-6
2 Timothy 4:6-8,16-18  Luke 18:9-14

Lectionary Link
The Gospel of Luke includes much about how those who were apparently unlikely people, become the favored selected and chosen ones for events of grace and salvation.

The Gospel of Luke was written for communities of the Risen Christ decades after Jesus lived.  They were communities which practiced the Christian mission to the wide spectrum of people in the Roman Empire.   So, how did the Christian mission become the community of so many who would have formerly been known as unlikely?

The writer of Luke's Gospel wanted to trace this mission to all unlikely people, back to Jesus.  So his writing told of the stories of how Jesus made the unlikely people, the outsider and the forgotten, the chosen and favored people of a graceful encounter with Jesus.

Who were the most likely favored people during the time of Jesus?  It would have been the Jews and their religious leaders.  The likely people of favor would have been those who observed and followed the rules of the various religious leaders of the chief religious sects of Judasim, the Pharisees and the Sadducees.  The religious leaders would have been honored people of authority like rabbis, scribes, lawyers and priests of the Temple.  Rich people were likely people of favor because their wealth was assumed to be evidence of God's blessing.

Who were the unlikely people of favor during the time of Jesus?  Women, children, tax-collectors or publicans who were non-observant Jews who collected taxes for the Roman Emperor, centurions and Roman soldiers, Samaritans, fishermen, and all manner of people who fit the purity code categories of being defiled or unclean because they had a sickness.  People who had unclean spirits; people with leprosy, blind people, deaf people, people with withering hands, and people who could not walk and people who followed the radical prophet John the Baptist.  And Luke presented that Jesus was really concerned about poor people.

What had happened between the time that  Jesus of Nazareth walked on this earth and the time five decades or so later when the writings of Luke Gospel came to their textual form?

The Jesus Movement had moved out of Jerusalem and Israel.  It had spread to the cities throughout the Roman Empire.  The Jesus Movement had attracted people from diverse backgrounds; it had moved way beyond the synagogue communities.

So how do you tell the story of what you have become in Christian community and practice?  The Gospel of Luke proclaimed that the churches of the cities of the Roman Empire became diverse communities because of Jesus of Nazareth.  "We've become a diverse community of "unlikely" people because Jesus brought unlikely people to the experience of God's grace.

How do you tell the story of Jesus of Nazareth knowing what the Jesus Movement had become in the five decades after his life?

If the Jesus Movement was so inclusive, then it was inclusive because Jesus must have been inclusive.  So when the story of Jesus was told, it must be told to show how he included all of the unlikely people of people of valid faith of his time.

Jesus was presented as hanging out with and inviting people who were unlikely to know the favor of God as it was preached and practices by the Pharisees and the Sadducees of his time.

Many people did not know the favor of the official religious people of the time of Jesus.   Yet, this entire group of unlikely people were shown to experience the favor of God through their meeting with Jesus Christ.

Luke, the writer, believed that the diversity which the Jesus Movement had become, had it origin in the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth.  As he gathered all of the oral traditions about the life and the sayings of Jesus, he found that Jesus was one who welcomed the unlikely people of his time to God's grace and favor.  Jesus went to people who did not darken the door of the synagogue and the Temple. Jesus associated with the unlikely religious people of his time.

The parable about the contrasting prayers of the Pharisee and the tax-collector indicate to us that Jesus believed that God welcomed the unlikely religious folks of this world to God's favor.

The tax-collector of the parable was one who had no religious resume.  But what did he have?

He had a heart of contrition.  He did not believe he was entitled to anything.  He knew he was guilty of a manifold acts of dishonesty to make a living.  The tax-collector of the parable of Jesus represented everyone who has come to the awareness that we are not entitled to anything based upon an inherent status that we receive from our birth into a particular social setting.

We cannot earn the entitlement from God if we believe that we naturally deserve it more than other people because of our group identity.

Everyone actualizes the favor and entitlement from God when he or she comes to the point of contrition, to say, "Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner."

The amazing thing about the gift of God's grace is that we can't actualize it unless we are in the condition to actually acknowledge and receive it.  And it is state of contrition, the sense of needing a higher grace, which helps us to actualize salvation in our lives.

What are the signs of contrition?  We no longer feel automatically entitled to anything.  We don't take credit for what we did not earn; we don't live as people born on third base and think that we've hit  triples.  We quit comparing ourselves to others as being more favored because of our pedigree and social, education or economic attainments.  We have no problem in committing humility, because we've actually experience the greatness of God.  Instead of living as life stealing parasites off the greatness of God, we live as loving dependent children on the largesse of God's good favor, who are ever thankful and ever generous to share with others.

The Gospel of Luke presents to us a program of how we can move from the sense of self-entitlement to the grace of knowing ourselves as entitled through God's grace as one of God's children.

Each of us is the Pharisee and the tax-collector in the parable of Jesus.  We are the Pharisee when we catch ourselves acting in the mode of self-entitlement or entitlement because of our social status.  We are the tax-collector when we arrive in the honest place of contrition when we with deep honesty sigh, "Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner."  Amen.

Prayer and the Field of Probability

19 Pentecost  C proper 24  October 20, 2019
Genesis 32:22-31   Psalm 121
2 Timothy 3:14-4:5  Luke 18:1-8

Lectionary Link

As I read the parable of Jesus, I thought about the song of Rolling Stones.

You can't always get what you want

You can't always get what you want

You can't always get what you want

But if you try sometimes, well, you might find

You get what you need

A young boy asked an old priest, "Does God always answer your prayers?"  The old priest said, "Yes, God always answers my prayer, but God mostly says, "No! Not yet."

You and I might think, "what's the use of praying, if apparently God mostly says, "No!"  And even about all of the good things that we ask for as well, like world peace and freedom from suffering for the innocent.

The parables of Jesus are like riddles which need some serious pondering to come to the insights which are "hidden" therein.

The parable which we have read today is an insightful parable because it poignantly illustrates what we often feel about not always getting what we want from God.  And when we feel like we are not getting enough of what we want from God, we are tempted to quit asking and quit praying.

This parable illustrates that to have a right relationship with God, we have to understand a chief attribute of God.  We have to understand that Freedom is a chief attribute of God, and if Freedom is a chief attribute of God and creation is made in the divine image, all of creation shares a portion, a limited portion of freedom in the big field of Freedom which is God.

God honors genuine freedom within created order.  This is why the conditions of probability govern our lives in what might happen to us.  We often encounter situations, not of our own choosing which affect us in harmful ways.  We cry out to the total conditions of freedom in our lives for justice.  And we don't get the response that we want.  What happens often if we don't get the gratification that we want and when we want it?  Sometimes we just give up.  We let our prayer muscles atrophy.  What's the use, if I cannot get what I want when I want it?

Can we see how the unjust judge in the parable, does not represent God; he represents the conditions of freedom which permits an entire variety of events which can happen to us?  And some of the events which can happen to us are not favorable to us, they can be horrible or even unjust.

Jesus was trying to give his disciple a realistic orientation to the life of what freedom means.  It does not mean we have God on retainer as one who intervenes on our behalf whenever we want.  Why doesn't God intervene and just force everyone to be good?  That would violate the genuine attribute of God who is pure creative freedom, but who shares a degree of freedom with every other being.  God will not violate the conditions of freedom; to do so would be to make God like a big pre-programmed machine guaranteeing outcomes.  What worth is a choice if it was already pre-determined?

What does Jesus recommend for living faithful lives?

First Jesus says to be realistic about honoring the conditions of freedom in our world.  The conditions of freedom can sometimes seem to be like the unjust judge of the parable.  What do we do if we don't get what we want when we want it?  Even if it is something unselfish that we are asking for?  The human temptation is to give up.  By giving up, it shows that we are in denial about the genuine conditions of freedom in our world.  By giving up, we compromise and sell short the genuine freedom that we have to make a difference.  We can let our faith and prayer muscles atrophy by giving up.

Jesus told his disciples to always pray and never to lose heart?  "Why should I continue to pray, Jesus if I don't get what I want?"

Jesus was trying to teach us that God respect the free conditions of the world and God enters the free conditions of the world through Jesus as the example of what to do with our freedom.  What did Jesus do?  He used his freedom to pray and to heal and to teach and help the poor.  Jesus showed us how to use our freedom.  He taught us not to let our freedom to pray and act with justice and mercy atrophy.

In the total field of freedom, we have to practice the democracy of stuffing the ballot box of freedom.  If we fill the field of freedom with prayer and goodness, then we will wear out the unjust judge, who represents the equal probability of bad things happening over good things.  Our prayers and our deeds can cumulatively lead to vetoing the unjust judge of the probability of bad things happening.

Jesus reminds us not to discount the power of our votes of prayers and goodness.  We can with persistence attain a majority to influence outcomes, so do not give up.  Do not lose heart.  The forces pride and greed have counter-motivation; let us rise to the occasion to be motivated by a persistent faith anchored on the witness of freedom given to us by Jesus Christ.

Generally, the habit of "nagging" is not an admirable quality.  But Jesus invites us to do "holy nagging" of faith in the field of freedom, so that we can influence the judge of probable outcomes.  The quantity of prayer and deeds of faith can have good outcomes because they become influential majorities in the field of freedom.

I went to High School in Minneapolis with a boy named Jim Janos.  Jim went on to become a Navy Seal and went to Viet Nam and he returned and became California-ized on the muscle beaches and with the help steroids morphed himself into the professional wrestler with a new name, Jesse, "the Body," Ventura.  He took that name as a wrestler.

The famous biblical wrestler was Jacob.  Jacob had fled his home after he stole the birthright from his twin brother.  He got married, but at some point he had to return home to enter the promise of God to his grandfather Abraham and his father Isaac.  But he was worried that his twin brother Esau would want revenge for stealing his birthright.  On one night of journey back,  Jacob did not see in his dream a ladder from heaven; rather he found himself in a wrestling match with a man who was an appearance of God to him.  It was not so much a wrestling match as Jacob holding on.  He stubbornly held on and said, "I will not let go until you bless me."  As a wrestler, the blessing he received included a new name; he received the new name "Israel," meaning the one who strives with God and prevails.

Jacob had the promise of a blessing but he still had to have the persistence of faith to hold on to possess the blessing.

Jesus invites us to hold on in stubborn, persistent, nagging faith until we get the blessing of the outcomes of love and justice.

Today, let us remember to be totally realistic about the conditions of freedom which constitute our life experience.  Let us not be naïve about what can probably happen in our world.  Let us not be so frightened by the probability of bad outcomes, that we quit in our persistent faith and prayers.  Let us not surrender the field of freedom to the forces of evil.  Let us persist, one act at a time till we build majorities which are able to influence outcomes for goodness, love and faith.

What is the Risen Christ saying to us today?  Do not lose heart.  Do not quit praying.  Amen.

Eucharist As Returning to Say Thanks

18 Pentecost, C proper 23, October 13, 2019

2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15c  Psalm 111

2 Tim. 2:8-15   Luke 17:11-19    

Lectionary Link

The Bible is a story about how God is for everyone but God makes appeals to everyone in ways that are relevant to each people and each person.

The Hebrew Scriptures are about how God became relevant to the people of Israel.  It is also a story of their failure to properly appreciate what God wanted them to do.

Sometimes they totally forgot the One God and went after the other gods and goddesses of their neighboring tribes or their conquerors.

Sometimes in fear of being too compromised with outsiders, they made their rules so legalistically  tight to keep the community totally separated and isolated from foreigners.

And when they become too exclusive, when being a foreigner became the equivalent of being an unclean person and a sinner, there were prophets and seers who arose to remind them that even though God did something special for Israel, God also was special to other people, to foreigners too.

The story of Naaman is a story about the natural bias for each person and religious group to believe that God is so special to us that we begin to think and act that we are special to the exclusion of others.  The prophet Elisha offered that God's healing touch was available to foreigners too.

All are made in the image of God; not all are fortunate enough to be born into conditions of knowing what that means.

Naaman, like all human beings was vulnerable to what can happen to human beings.  Even though he was a general in Assyrian Army, he was dreadfully ill, so ill that he was desperate enough to go outside the medical practices of his own country.  An Israelite slave captured in war told him about a holy prophet in Israel who could help him get better.  He went and begrudgingly submitted to the total folk remedy, and he was cured.  And he knew that God loved him, the God of Israel, to whom he would be loyal even when he had to pretend to be religious in his own country.

What connection for us in this sermon could Naaman, the Assyrian, have with a Samaritan leper who was healed by Jesus?

They were both foreigners to people who thought that God had chosen them so exclusively, that outsiders could not be let into the wonderful secret of God's favor.

The Samaritans were remnant people of the divided Kingdom of Israel who experienced the onslaught of the Assyrian forces, and they inter-married with their captors.  They forsook their "ethnic" purity, and they were rejected by the Kingdom of Judah where residents believed that they maintained the true tradition of the Torah, and partly because they had been carried away into captivity in Babylon and Persia.

The Samaritans had a Torah based religious practice centered on the Holy Mount Gerizim.  In the time of Jesus, the Gospels presented the Samaritans as notorious enemies who were avoided by the Jews.

What is the textual function of the appearance of the Samaritans in the Gospels?

The Samaritan in the Gospel highlights the universal needs of all humanity.  No one wants to be foreign to inclusion by God.  No one wants to be an outsider to significant community.  What can separate us from community?  Sickness and disease.  In other times and places, and even in our own time, sickness can separate people from caring society.  A really bad sickness can be regarded as a "curse;" even a curse from God.  And if God has a curse on someone, they must be defiled and quarantined from full inclusion in the community.  After all, if such people can be contagious; the curse can be contagious.  So sick people are both physically and socially shunned.

Jesus Christ came as the reconciler between God and humanity.  He was the one who proclaimed that being sick was not a curse from God; it was only being vulnerable to an entire range of things that can happen to any human being.

And what can separate us from the love of God in Christ?  Can sickness? No it can't.  Can being a foreigner or an immigrant separate us from the love of God in Christ?  No.

St. Paul was the architect of the paradigm of God's favor coming to the Gentiles, to the Samaritans, to the sick, to the shunned, to the neglected.

The early Christian communities were communities which practice a fuller inclusion than did the synagogue communities.

The early preachers believed that Jesus was a reconciler for the people of the world and so they did everything they could to show how the inclusion of Gentiles and foreigners was central to the message of Christ.

A Samaritan leper was doubly oppressed.  He was just of mongrel ethnic heritage; and he was defiled with leprosy which required that he be quarantined from society.

But what is the punchline of the Gospel?  The Samaritan was one who returned to offer his thanksgiving for being healed.  He was symbolic of all of the outsiders who had come to receive the healthful salvation of the message of Jesus Christ.  He is the second Good Samaritan of the Gospel of Luke.  He is an outsider who is more diligent in his thanksgiving than those who behaved as those who were "entitled."

What is perhaps the chief crime of entitled people?  Entitled people do not think they have to say thank you, because they live as those who think that deserve to be exempt from bad things happening to them.

Are we living lives in such entitled ways that we do not think that we have to take time to offer thanksgiving?  Why did God ask us to keep a sabbath?  To remind us that we can never be so entitled as to forget to return and say thanks, and not just in private, but also in the community of other thankful people.

What is this event at the altar called today?  It is called Holy Eucharist.  What does Eucharist mean?  It means thanksgiving.  Thank you for not presuming that your salvation entitlement makes you forget to be thankful.  Thank you for returning here today to offer the chief Christian event on Sunday, Holy Eucharist, Holy Thanksgiving.  

And what happens because we chose to return to give thanks?  Jesus says, "I give you my body and my Spirit in an affirming presence of my salvation in your life."  Thank you for returning to say thanks.  Amen.

Faithful Acts Are Their Own Reward

16 Pentecost, C proper 22  October 6, 2019
Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4  Psalm 37:1-10
2 Timothy 1:1-14   Luke 17:5-10

Lectionary Link

I would like to tell you a story about two little girls who were sisters.  One was ten and the other was eight.  Their names were Susie and Sally.  Sally, the younger sister had some bad luck.  She had taken a bad fall while riding her bike and she had broken her leg.  So, she had to remain in bed.  Their mother came to their bedroom and said, "Susie, I would like for you to clean your room now."  And Susie said, "But do I have to do it alone?"  Her mom said, "Yes, you do because your sister cannot get on her feet."

Susie was pouting about having to clean her bedroom alone.  Sally said to her, "Susie, I am jealous of you."  Susie ask her, "Why are you jealous of me?"  Sally said, "Because you get to clean the room.  You have two strong legs and you can move around.  I cannot clean the room because I have to stay in bed."

So Susie thought, "Well, I guess I should be thankful, because I get to clean my room, because I can."

What Jesus was trying to teach with his stories is that all of us are supposed to do good.  And we get to do good because we can do it.

As babies and little children we think that we should be rewarded to do good.  Or we might be afraid of punishment if we don't do good.  But as we grow up, we realize that the reward is that we get to do good.  Doing good things is its own reward.

St. Francis was a hero because he discovered.  "Wow, God, I get to be good.  It is the best reward of all to be able to do good things."  So what did Francis do?  He gave his money to poor people.  He collected food for them to eat.  He was a friend of animals and the trees and the sunlight.  What reward did St. Francis want?  Yes, he like everyone, probably wanted to go to heaven, but he discovered that we can have a reward before we go to heaven.  What is the reward?  We get to be good.  We get to be kind.  We get to share with other people.  To be able to love is the best reward of all.

Jesus also said that a little mustard seed would grow into a very big tree.  He was teaching his disciples that they could not have "big faith" without doing all of the little deeds of faith each day, each hour and each minute.  If we do all of the little deeds of faith, they collect and form the character of our lives.

Let us learn of Jesus and Francis today:  We get to be good.  That is our reward.  And when we get to be good, we help others, we help our pets and we also take good care of our environment.

Let us say today to Jesus.  Thank you Jesus for this great reward.  Our reward is that we get to be good.  Amen.

Greedy People Are Really Good at What They Are

14 Pentecost, C p 20, September 22, 2019 
Amos 8:4-7.  Psalm  113
1 Timothy 2:1-7   Luke 16:1-13
Lectionary Link One has to salute greedy people.  Why?  Greedy people are really successful at what they do and with what they are.  Greedy people have singularly self focus in looking out for themselves to the neglect of others.  Their greed usually creates lots of collateral sinning as well.  To amass as much wealth as one can for oneself, one also has to become dishonest.  Don’t misinterpret what I am saying; not all wealthy people are greedy.  Greed is when one is a slave to wealth and one serves it and the power and prestige of wealth even if one does not need it.

One can find in the parable words of Jesus a fascination with a greedy steward.   Jesus often uses symbols of notorious sinning to make a counter-point.

I believe that the words of Jesus are often about stewardship being the basic issue of our lives.  Whom does my life belong to?  Whom do I serve?  Do the words, deeds and the way I manage my material existence reveal whom I serve in this life?

The genius of the creation story reveals that God as creator is the owner of the universe and a very generous and permissive landlord to all the Adams and Eves.  But what if the tenants begin to behave as though the apparent possession of what we have is treated by us as actual ownership of our lives and all that we have?

Once we are fooled into the belief that “possession is nine tenth of the law,” then we begin to act as we are the owners of our lives.  We can begin to believe that the main principle of living is to “look out for number, one, namely me.”

And we can get really clever at being selfish.  We can get really clever at being greedy with our time, talent and treasure.

And Jesus was fascinated about how good at their vocation greedy people actually become.  But then he opines:  Isn’t it ironic how devoted to greed people can become?  How is it that people of faith, children of light,  do not show a corresponding profound devotion to the God of love who owns their lives and who has shared so generously?  Why is it that people of faith who have been given so much cannot imitate in a profound way, God who is love and sharing and caring with everything.

It seems as though Jesus is saying, “People, don’t you understand the big story of Genesis?  God who created you and owns you has given everything to you.  And all God asks is that we share in the way that the God of love shares with us and that we acknowledge the divine ownership of our lives.”

Desire or the energy of life is violated when the capacity that we have to love God and each other is expressed as the selfish energy of idolatry which leads to greed and the other forms of addiction.  Greed is the addiction to wealth.   Have you noticed how in our society greed is actually promoted as a virtue?  Greed is a socially accepted form of addiction.  We are not scandalized that 5% of people own most the wealth of our country; we think it is more important that each of us could rise to become one of those lucky 5%.

And we must clearly say that if we look at the words of Jesus and our country, we cannot say that our our country is “Christ-like.”   Why?  The words of Jesus are rather blunt: “You cannot serve God and wealth.”

You did hear about the very rich man who did not like it when the pastor started using a different translation of the Bible.   The pastor asked him why he did not like the different translation.  And the rich man said, “Well, we should use the King James Version.”  And the pastor ask, why.  The rich man said, “Well, in the King James Version, Jesus said, “You cannot serve God and Mammon.”  No one knows what Mammon means.  But in the new translation, Jesus says, “ You can’t serve God and wealth.  I don’t want people to get the wrong idea about my wealth.”

So do you think that Jesus is against wealth and that Jesus would be against the “free market?”  Not at all.  I think the market is truly free when people make the creative free choice to make sure that everyone has enough.  This is what an enlightened free market looks like.  The free market has meant that greed can win the day;  Jesus hopes that generosity could win the day.

And if Jesus said, “You cannot serve God and wealth,” I believe that what he was directly implying was that we can serve God with our wealth, with the wealth of our time, talent and treasure. 

The stewardship prayer from the Hebrew Scriptures that is often used at the offertory”. All things come from you, O God, and from your own, have we given thee.”  This is expression of what the free market means in the biblical sense.

Biblical stewardship is how we avoid the addiction of greed.  This is how we honor the basic stewardship contract that we are meant to have with our creator, owner, landlord God of the universe.

Why was Jesus so fascinated with greed?  I believe that Jesus knew that the wonderful human capacity could be transformed for truly marvelous human endeavors.  If we have the capacity for greed; we have an equal capacity for generosity.  Every human evil capacity can be transformed to an opposite good and creative outcome.

Jesus came to show us that human capacity can be transformed towards excellence.  The story of the New Testament is how ordinary people encountered the Risen Christ and had their lives changed.

You and I are called to represent Jesus through living transformed lives.  Greed may not be our problem but we might have other habits which need to be transformed.

God created us with wonderful capacities and God gave us the stewardship of all that we have and are.  We find that we often fail miserably in the task of being good stewards with what God has given us.

Jesus came to rescue us in our poor stewardship and show us the path of good stewardship.  The mystical experience of the Risen Christ is to put us on the path of the transformation of our lives.

Today, we can like Jesus, be fascinated with all of the greed in our world, and all of the evil in our world which is permitted because of genuine freedom.

Can we also believe in the transforming power of the Holy Spirit in our lives to have our lives transformed and model for this world, the best use of freedom in our lives for the loving and just stewardship of our world?  With God’s help, let us be on the path of transformation.  Amen.

Archery Anyone?

14 Pentecost, Cp19, September 15, 2019
Exodus 32:7-14   Psalm 51:1-11
1 Timothy 1:12-17  Luke 15:1-10
Lectionary Link

One of the consistent criticisms of Jesus found in the Gospels is that he "ate with tax collectors and sinners."  For us, we are probably okay with Jesus eating with sinners; we'd rather he not befriend IRS agents.  Like Jesus most of us could also say that some of our best friends are sinners.

Is St. Paul a friend of ours?  He referred to himself as the foremost of sinners.  Probably because he was guilty of accessory to the murder of St. Stephen and he was never prosecuted except when he was struck blind in a mystical experience with the Risen Christ who kind of said to Paul.  “Stop it.  You are persecuting me and you are violating the Torah too like that big commandment about not killing.

The criticisms of Jesus as presented in the Gospel perhaps reveals how great Law can become petty legalism in the practice of religious communities.  Mountains can be made mole hills and mole hills can be made into mountains.

It's like the neighborhood association not caring about speeding your car through the neighborhood where children play but you better clean up after your dog or there severe consequences.

How did the friends of Jesus come to be designated as a special category of sinners?  In the great biblical story of creation, didn't everyone get designated as sinner from birth because of the great Fall?

Let's talk about sin and sinners for while and to do so I ask "Archery anyone?"

How is sin related to archery?

In the Hebrew Scriptures the Hebrew word for sin is "chet" which literally means missing the mark.  When that word was translated into Greek, in the Greek version of the Hebrew Scriptures, called the Septuagint, the word used was a term from archery, "hamartia" which means missing the mark.  If an archer missed the target, he sinned.

Today, you and I are invited to ponder the meaning of sin and sinner.  In general, we might say sin is doing something bad and sinners is what we call ourselves because we know that we can be sinful in our behaviors.

The philosopher Nietzsche wrote a book about the genealogy or beginning of morals.  He concluded that good and bad essentially were defined by people who had the power to define what good and bad were.  This went directly against people of faith who believed that there is some transcendent or divine reference to establish what is good.

In the Hebrew Scriptures, the Torah was the document to provide a basis for what was to be regarded as good and bad.  Moses found the people deeply in need of moral education.  He could not leave the children of Israel alone.   Moses realized that his days were numbered; he would not always be with the children of Israel.  “What would the children of Israel do when I’m not here to tell them what to do?”  God called him up the mountain to provide him with a legal document, a constitution for Israel to have when the  “living lawman” would no longer be in their midst.  And what happened while he was gone?  The children got restless and got the pro-tem leaders to build a golden calf to worship.  Moses came down and got so angry that he destroyed the first copy of the commandments.   So he had to return up the mountain to get another copy (long be Xerox).

The Bible uses archery metaphors to talk about sin.  Sin, in both, Biblical Hebrew and Greek meaning to miss the mark, miss the target.  It is the human condition to be born as bad archers; we are born to miss the mark because in our tendency toward “self guided” ego states, we tend to act toward the targets of self interest and immediate desire gratification.  We are born as the “gang that can’t shoot straight,” because we take on the habits of all that is imperfect and misguided in our environments we end up being sinners who sin.

If we are supposed to be moral archers in our life, what do we need? We need to know what we are aiming at and we need to need archer instruction to teach us how to shoot.

The word Torah, in Hebrew, comes from the root meaning, “to take aim.” The word for sin in Hebrew and in the Greek translation of the Hebrew means to miss the mark; to miss the target.  So the Torah was the needed correction for people who were born to be bad archers.

The giving of the Torah to Moses was first to show the people of Israel the target of our moral aim. We are to love the one God with all our hearts, souls and minds. We do this by not having other idols or competitors for God. We do this by honoring God ‘s name with non-hypocritical behaviors, we do this by giving Sabbath time worship as proof of the God priority in our lives. And the rest of the commandments are about how to love our neighbors, honoring parents, valuing life, marriage relationships, truth, property and learning impulse control.

When Jesus came into his ministry in Palestine, he found that the great principles of the Torah had become in practice the division of people into the good guys and the bad guys. Sin and sinners had become redefined. Sinners were those people who could not maintain all of the ritual purity requirements of the religious authorities. This meant that vast numbers of the populace were automatically defined as sinner with no possible way of becoming ritually pure righteous people of faith. The religious leader had the authority to define what was sin and who were the sinners.

They were deeply disturbed that Jesus was hanging out with people who they defined as sinners.

Jesus told parables about being lost. What is good about being lost? If your child is lost at the mall, why is it good that he or she is lost? Because it means mom and dad deeply love and value one who is lost they expend great effort to find the lost one.

Jesus was convicting the religious leaders about not valuing lots of people. And if Jews who did not keep all of the ritual rules of Judaism were lost, what did that mean for the Gentiles?

Jesus declared people as lost because he said that God deeply valued everyone that God wanted to find everyone And if we are found by God, it means we can be on God’s archery team. And if we are on God’s archery team, we can appreciate sin as a positive concept.

If sin means that as moral archers we are missing the target, how that that be good? Well, Jesus gave us an impossible target to aim at. He said that we had to be perfect as the Father in heaven is perfect. That means that we are always going to be missing the target. But what is important? It is important that we know that we are aiming in the right direction.  Being in the archery team of Jesus means that we have a moral exemplar to teach us how and where to shoot. It means we have the “swooshing” energy of the Holy Spirit to carry our moral arrows in the direction of God who is perfect. And though we never quite reach the target, we are assured that the grace of Christ always makes up the difference between us and God, and so we live for another day on the archery team of Jesus learning to shoot at the right target in the right moral direction of God unsurpassable perfection.

Jesus came to say that there is no longer religious people and then there are sinners, you know those other people who are different than I am in the way I describe correct behaviors. We are all sinners, “the gang that can’t shoot straight,” so we need to accept the graceful intervention of the Greatest Archer of all, Jesus Christ, who is better than the legendary William Tell who had to shoot the apple on top of his son’s head.

Today, Jesus says to us, “you are valued people whom I am found.    To us who have been born as the “gang that couldn’t shoot straight,” Jesus say, “ Archery anyone?  Come and join my archery team.  Come and sin under my guidance, that is, come and make sure that when you miss you are missing towards being better today that you were yesterday because you have set as your target loving God with all your soul and might. And we are never done doing that and we are never good enough in doing this to judge other people as “unacceptable lost” sinners.

May the grace of Christ, enlighten our sinning today as we continue to miss the mark, but at least be aiming towards God’s perfection. Amen.