Topography; the Value of Places

15  Pentecost, Cp17, September 1, 2013

Jeremiah 2:4-13 Ps. 112

Heb.13:1-8        Luke 14:1, 7-14

 Lectionary Link

  In the appointed Gospel for today, we have read an account of Rabbi Jesus making some comments about human behavior at a party. He finds that the behavior at a party exposes some underlying motives and values that often determine human behavior.  Motives and values are a manifestation of desire.   Desire is the deep projecting energy of life that brings us to be attached to the things of our lives.  Projected Desire creates hierarchies of values, stated very simply as I like, I prefer this more than that.  I prefer to eat rather than to starve; this is one of the most basic hierarchy of values.  But it gets more complicated and elaborate than that: some prefer to get merely a piece of bread and a cup of soup or some prefer to have Beluga Caviar on Melba toast with Champagne.  Desire can get differentiated in many layers of values.

  A major value in life is found in the hierarchy of desire expressing where we want to be.  Making the scene, having the best seat to be able to hob nob with the people of money, power and influence; this is the value of place that Jesus was addressing.  Jesus noted that the party goers wanted the best seats in the house so they could be seen to be in places of honor and be associated with important people.  They wanted to be in the best place to schmooze; to connect and promote their cause or personage with the people who matter the most in society.

  Life in society and our lives in particular involve very intricate interactions in systems of topographical value.  Real Estate agents can tell you about the value of places; beach homes on Malibu; why do people want to be there? Such  high demand drives up the prices so that only a few can afford to be there.

  People want to be in front row seats, corporate boxes at sports and entertainment events.  Herein is an expression of the value of place, the value of topography.  Desire is projected upon preferred places because the kind of activities and events which occur in a place.  We value places for the activities and for the people who inhabit a place.

  Look at how we have words of value for places.  A place of value is often called a Mecca, after the Islamic holy place.  We have words that imply a pejorative judgment upon places, “the wrong side of the tracks,” slums, Skid Row and Ghetto.   We have terms of value that place negative judgments upon places that are avoided or segregated by certain people.  We may say that such places has undesirable people or people who frighten us; such places become for us places to avoid.  We cannot promote our influence and power in life by going to such places.

  You may say that I am reading too much into this party seating debate by Jesus of Nazareth but the wisdom of Jesus is that in the ordinary daily interaction he found that we live out the basic values of our lives and so when we zoom out from mere favored party seats to all of the topography of our lives, we can begin to see the values that are assigned, unwittingly to the places of our lives.

  Why are we here, not just in general but why are we in any particular place?  Why we here in this place now?  Obviously the preferred seats in an Episcopal Church are middle to back; front pews are avoided as if the preacher were going to do some major slobbering or ask for money.  Are we here because it helps our political resumes as the “in place” to be seen?  Probably not.

 The words of Jesus ask us to do a values review in uncovering the attachment to the places of our lives.  In doing so, we should also uncover the values we have placed upon the places which we avoid.  Do we avoid them because they have no value to our lives?  Do we avoid them because we want to avoid the people who inhabit such places?  In our survey of the values we put on places we can also note our patterns of segregation.

  Jesus invited people to challenge their patterns of segregation by switching places and sharing spaces.  If we have a party we should invite people on the “D” list or those who would truly benefit from the hospitality that we have to offer them.  Jesus invites us integrate through an open hospitality.  Trading places begins with the imagination of faith as we try to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes and “feel with them.”  Can we come to value the places of other people so that we value their lives in a different way to act with love, empathy and compassion?  The practice of the faith of the Risen Christ means that we build bridges to connect segregated spaces of people caused by pride, class-ism  racism, and any form of prejudice that divides people and causes them to devalue each other to the point of “extreme avoidance” or suppression or persecution.

  How can we address the problems that we might find in the way in which we value space?  The founding philosophy of our country states that we endowed with certain dignity because of the way in which we have been created. St.Paul said that each person has a body and each body is a location; each body is a place and it is a favored place because it is a temple of the Holy Spirit of God.  God desires and favor each of us as a favored place of the divine presence.  If we accept this incredible favor for ourselves and for other people then we acknowledge the starting point of the dignity of life of all people in all places.  This starting place of the omnipresence of God means there is a profound equality of persons and places in the eyes of God.  This starting place is where we go to evaluate all of our values concerning the values of people and places.  The Psalmist ask, “Where can I can I go from your presence, O God?”  The answer, “No where.”  Jesus was the presence of God in the worst place of life; death upon the Cross.  The divine presence even in death became known to us as the promise of eternal life.

  What Jesus was trying to say is that we all belong together.  The way in which we practice belonging together is by continually building bridges of connection.  To those who are neglected we give recognition; we say, “come up higher, don’t let anything hinder you from human fellowship and human well-being.”

  Today, we are here to remind ourselves that God’s hospitality to us has called us to higher dignity.  We come here to realize our bodies as a location of the presence of Christ as we partake of the bread and wine of Eucharist.  We accept this invitation to “come up higher come to the place of highest power and influence in accepting our bodies as the dwelling place of God’s presence.”  But in accepting this marvelous hospitality of God for ourselves, we also are to be evangelists of the hospitality of God to all.  We are to go forth and invite everyone to the wonderful hospitality of God who is willing to be known to be the God of all and in all.

  Let us do a review today of our values that we have for places; let us examine any unhealthy segregation that we wittingly or unwittingly practice.  Let us be thankful that Christ does not segregate Himself from our bodies as a temple of divine dwelling.  And let us go forth to offer the profound invitation of Christ as we say to all who need to hear it said to them in a personal way, “My friend, come up higher.  Come close to the Good News of God’s Love.  Amen.

The Sabbath Principle; Holy Time towards Love, Mercy and Justice

14 Pentecost, Cp16,August 25, 2013   

Jer. 1:4-10   Psalm 71:1-6

Hebrews 12:18-19,22-29  Luke 13:10-17

Lectionary Link

 In the history of time, the history of a religious Sabbath has been wide and varied in observance and practice.  Perhaps some remember the practice of the so called “blue laws” where certain items could not be sold on the Lord’s Day.  I remember in Texas the irony of not being able to buy a baby’s bottle from a grocery store on Sunday but buying beer was permitted.  The logic of such blue laws was sometimes inscrutable, or perhaps it merely depended upon the lobbyists who could exert the most influence upon those writing the laws.

  We could look at the rules of Sabbath as being used to force the society to give a place for religious institutions.  The Sabbath rules have been influential to maintain the religious perspective in societies.  We can observe today how in the United States the Sabbath is no longer an obligation which is given as much legal and social support as it has been given in the past.  With the proliferation of team sports for youth, worship times are facing stiff competition for participation in the form of attendance.  If given a choice, youth sports is seen as more vital for a child’s immediate well-being than attending a religious service.

  In the Gospels, Jesus is often presented as being in conflict with religious leaders regarding the practice of the Sabbath.  In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus is quoted as saying, “Humanity is not made for the Sabbath; Sabbath is made for humanity.”  This would suggest to us that the notion of Sabbath has a degree of flexibility to it in how it is understood and practiced by humanity.

  If the Sabbath is practiced as being incompatible with health, safety and justice, then the Sabbath may actually lose its spiritual value.  Jesus was confronting people who were making the Sabbath legalistically impractical for human life.

  What would we say if fire personnel refused to put out fires on Sunday?  Or police refused to fight crime on Sunday?  Or doctors and nurses refused to care for patients and handle emergencies on Sunday?  We would say the practice of Sabbath is of no value if it actually hinders health, safety and welfare.

  If I practice racial discrimination and prejudice, but say, “Well, I do go to church every Sunday,” what good does going to church do me?  Well, I might say, “At least it keeps me from murder and that’s worth something, isn’t it.”

  It reminds one of the commercial where the accidental amateur is pretending to be a surgeon and when asked if he is a doctor, he replies, “No, but I did stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night.”

  Are you kind, and love your neighbor as yourself?  No, but I did go to church last Sunday.  Just going to church does not stand in as a substitute for practicing love and justice.

  The religious leaders were upset that Jesus healed a woman on the Sabbath.  Such healing was regarded as work to them and so he was violating the Sabbath.  Jesus pointed out their selective and inconsistent thinking about the Sabbath.  If they watered their livestock on the Sabbath, why would they object to someone being made well on the Sabbath?

  Jesus confronted their motive for how they practiced the Sabbath.

  It might be beneficial for us to consider some reflections upon the Sabbath.   In the history of humanity, we have a history of how time can be differentiated by the various activities that we do during the passing of time.  Our bodies dictate how we have to spend some of our time; we get tired and we have to sleep.  In fact, sleep time or rest time takes up more than a third of all of the time of our lives.  Our bodies tell us we must eat and drink and do other activities for body maintenance.  And we must designate time for eating and drinking and doing body maintenance.

  The rest of the use of our waking time might be called discretionary time; most of our discretionary time gets accounted for in the division of labor standards set by our cultural setting for people at different ages of life.  We divide discretionary time into work and play.  A major calling in life for each person is to discover how best to use discretionary time to achieve what one regards to be most important in life.

  In the history of humanity one can find a special category of designated time for the gods or for the One God of Israel, or for the Trinitarian God of Christianity.  Time for the divine has been found in perhaps every culture.  In the biblical tradition we find that God spends six out of seven days of the divine time creating but on one day, God rests from creation.  From this ancient story of God resting after creation, we can find the justification for rest.  After all if God rests, we cannot be any better than God and we should rest too.

  So then tabernacle, temple, synagogue, church and mosque become the institutional places to express the religious rest time that is called worship.  Worship time may not really be the rest of sleep.  It is the rest of doing something towards the horizon of human experience so that we may be able to endure human experience.

  Institutional religions can literalize and legalize Sabbath rest and worship to a list of do’s and dont’s.  But to literalize a Sabbath rest only invites exceptions.  Someone must feed the babies and the children; someone must take care of the farm animals.  There are many expressions of human need that do not come to a halt just because it is the Sabbath or because it is Sunday.  On Monday in the grocery store, I am often asked by the cashier if I enjoyed my Sunday day off.  To which I reply, “I worked.”  And certainly the religious leaders of the synagogue knew that they had to work at teaching and prayer on the Sabbath.

  The Gospel invitation of Jesus is for us to be authentic about the Sabbath principle without being literal or legalistic about any particular practice of the Sabbath.

  To be authentic about the Sabbath principle, we need to ask ourselves some questions?  Does my practice of the Sabbath promote the actual practice of justice, love and mercy in my life?  Does my practice of the Sabbath help me to overcome my prejudices in life?

  Yes, I do like to see as many people in church on Sunday  as I can even if for the selfish purpose of soothing the preacher’s insecurity about his ministry being relevant to enough people to keep the Episcopal Church parish enterprise alive and well.

  But it could be today we need to express authenticity in the Sabbath principle in a variety of ways.  I would like to persuade us to give 24 hours a week in a God-ward direction in our lives as a way to deliver us from the pride of mere humanism.  Of that twenty four hours, eight hours are given as sleep.  So you get religious Sabbath credit for holy sleep.  Go and ahead designate at least one night of sleep as worship to God.  So that leaves you 16 hours to spread out in a movable and cumulative way through the other 112 hours of being awake.  16 hours can be woven into your schedule; yes you can include Sunday worship, private prayers and meditation, Bible reading, devotional reading, spontaneous prayers, prayers during commuting, prayers during a walk or work out, prayers while playing golf, works of outreach and mercy.

  Find at least sixteen waking hours a week to work on love, mercy and justice for yourself and for others.  When we seek God, we are seeking to rest from pride of mere human work and accept the accompanying source of grace from somewhere else, even from the one whom we address as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  We literally try to rest from our egos so that we are receptive and open to change in our lives toward authentic love, justice and mercy.

  If you and I are honest we could spend sixteen hours a week in giving thanksgiving for the gift of our lives as we know them.

  So today, let us embrace the Sabbath principle; we reach toward God in resting from both human pride and failure.  We ask for grace to practice in a more excellent way, justice, love and mercy.  And when we fail in willful ways, we don’t excuse ourselves by saying, “afterall, I did go to church on Sunday;” rather we humbly ask that all of our Sabbath time will help us accept forgiveness for failure at love and justice, and recommit ourselves to being better at love and justice tomorrow than we are today.

  The Gospel of Jesus Christ invites us to integrate the Sabbath principle into our lives and to make our Sabbbath time authentic with the practice of love, mercy and justice.  Amen.

Holy, Wholly Negligible as a Metaphor

    In human experience we may grapple with trying to conceive of greatness in terms of quantity and we use the word “infinity” to refer to an impossible quantity.

    We perhaps use infinity as metaphorical attribute of God.  We may use infinity to refer to space, time and matter as a way of measuring the limits of human experience.

   The notion of infinity would present us with what is impossible to know.  If an infinite number of things are in relationship with each other, how would it be possible to know fully cause and effect relationships?  How could we gauge the effect of the flapping of butterfly wings on weather patterns?  We might say that the effect would be trivial, negligible or insignificant or unable to be registered in our methods of perception.  But what is the totally negligible effect of all of the events for which we have no access in measuring the sum total of all untraceable events?

    It could be that the intuitions about God have to do with human beings feeling very small in the face of what we cannot experience; we sense the effect of an infinite number of negligible and so we might indeed confess God as the Holy Negligible, or the effect of the infinite number events that we call insignificant because we cannot register in knowable ways their direct or collateral effect upon us.

     In the face of what we cannot know, in the face of the great negligible, humanity has had to tell stories to give purpose and meaning and science has been one of the stories of coming to meaning and purpose.

    Historically, we can note that when we did not travel very far in the world, we had people telling stories about travels in purgatory or the afterlife, in a place in the sky called heaven.  Such places were regarded to be knowable places in human experience.  So, persons  in medieval Europe knew how to get through purgatory, but they did know not know the existence of Tokyo or how to get there.  As knowledge has grown and the earth become to be discovered as a globe and gotten smaller through travel, there has been less concern about purgatory and the afterlife.

    As we have conquered more of the negligible, the nature of speculation about the unknown has been more along the lines of science fiction.

  Modern science has not ended the negligible; it has seemingly changed how we define and approach the negligible.  Modern science has not removed the negligible; it has but cleared up some of the immediate fog of the negligible.  But we are still small because the more area of the negligible that has been discovered, the more we have come to appreciate vastness and plenitude; the more we have come to appreciate the microscopic and the nanoscopic.

We are less certain about details of heaven and purgatory today, even while we can appreciate the meaning of interior and creative parallel world and its relevance to our external world.        
 As people of science we are elated with discoveries that become technological products, there remains tentativeness about any discovery or products because the once seeming negligible has been exposed to be not insignificant.  In the discovery process we view the negligible afresh but now standing on the pedestal of the latest discovery. 

  We as people of faith can embrace  tentativeness of our lives because of the sum total of the negligible that we encounter at any time.  This could help us be humble about presuming to use the poetry of our revelations as causative absolute agents of the world as it is.  Rather our Biblical metaphorical poetry should teach us respect for God as Holy, Wholly Negligible.

We Become the Words that Form Us; A Baptismal Sermon on Prevenient Grace

13 Pentecost, Cp15,August 18, 2013

Jeremiah 23:23-29  Psalm 82

Hebrews 12:1 – 14  Luke 12:49-56

  Everyone take a deep breath?  Why do we breathe?  We need oxygen to live.  We take it into our lungs and it goes into our blood and carried throughout our body.  So air becomes us when we breathe.

  Why do we eat and drink?  We need food and drink to run our bodies just like a car needs gas to run.

  When we eat and drink, food and water become us.  So if you’ve eaten lots of pizza, how come you don’t look like a pizza? 

  Well, pizza gets changed into energy; pizza has sugar, fats, carbohydrates and protein and these are the kinds of fuel that we need to make our bodies healthy.

  So we become our breath and we become our food and drink.

  Do you know what else we become?

  We become our words.

  We don’t eat or drink words.  We don’t breathe words but we do hear words and we read words.

  And words go inside us  and they make and they form us.  We become words.  Words educate us and teach us.  Words take over our bodies because our bodies speak a language through our actions.  If I hit you with my fist, what is my body saying to you?  If I hug you or smile at you what is my body saying to you?

  Today, we are baptizing Hailey and we are promising to help form her life by the words that we give to her.  The words that we give to Hailey will become her.  So it is very important that we give Hailey our very best words because we want to help her become the very best person that she can become.

  What good words are we giving to Hailey today?  First we are telling her that God loves her and cares for her and so we are going to love and care for her too.  We are telling her that God forgives her so that she does not have to be perfect from the start of her life.  We are telling her that God has given her some very special gifts that she can develop and when she finds her gifts she will help make us better.  We are telling her that her life has special meaning and purpose.  We are telling her that she has freedom and that she can choose many wonderful things in life.

  Hailey can not understand all words yet but she can already understand the body language of the people who care for her.  She can see their smiles; she can feel their touch; she can know that people who love her are giving her food and bathing her and protecting her.  Hailey is already receiving the good body language of the people in her life.

  So do you see how Hailey is becoming the words that she comes to hear and take in?

  You and I are the words that we take in.  We need to take in good words so that we give out good words to Hailey and to each other so that we help each other perform the best body language of all.  The language of love and care for each other.

  So this is what we’re doing today.  We are promising to give Hailey and each other the best words in life.  Why?  Because we become the words of our lives and we want to become the very best words of life.  And we become the very best words in life when practice love and kindness and care.

  Let us say together: Hailey, we give you our very best words today.

We give you love.  We give you kindness.  We give you care.  Welcome to the family of Christ.  Amen.

When There Is No Peace

13 Pentecost, Cp15,August 18, 2013

Jeremiah 23:23-29  Psalm 82

Hebrews 12:1 – 14  Luke 12:49-56

Lectionary Link

  There are all sorts of bad occurrences in life and if we are fortunate we are able to have an abundance of good things happen to us that not only even the score with bad occurrences but also tip the scales in favor of lives where we can have liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

  As people with basic actuarial probability common sense, we can see in our world what seems to be an uneven distribution of good and bad occurrences in the lives of the people of this world.  In America, we think that we’ve been fortunate for the most part in that we come to a place in our national experience where we get more than our fair share of the good occurrences that can happen to people.  We either feel proud of our heritage or blessed by sheer good fortune.

  We know that our country may sometime seem like a divided family, in political and economic terms.  And as bothered as we get in our own country, we cannot help but feel the divisions on the streets in the Egypt, in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, in various African countries and other parts in our world.  And lest we feel too isolated from this world pain, we need to remember that perhaps as many as 750,000 Americans died in our greatest family dispute, the Civil War.  We dare not be too proud about the ways in which we have handled our own country’s internal disputes.

  It is a fact of history as long as we can remember that people have disagreed and people have ended up harming each other for the beliefs which they held to be the most important for their well-being.

  We have a doctrine of sin to give us a great causal explanation as to why people and even families come to internal strife.

  Churches, mosques, synagogues, families, countries and nations all have come to strife.  And we do not really know how to come to meaning regarding the strife when it happens.  Historians with 20/20 hindsight views believe that they can find reasons and causes as to why people have come to strife with each other.

  One of the meanings that people find within strife is a belief that we are under discipline as students of the God of life.  Painful things happen as lessons to make us better.  Life in part is an ordeal for growth.

  In the early Gospel communities, one could find people who believed that they experienced an incredible excellent event; they believed that this teacher and prophet, Jesus of Nazareth, had been cruelly killed.  But they also believed that they experienced the risen Christ as a reality which created a new community experience.

  Fire is a biblical symbol for purification.  The Risen Christ, as an oracle within the Gospel communities spoke insights through their leaders about the situation of the early Gospel communities.

  Families were divided by faith, religious practice, religious beliefs and doctrines.  The Jewish religion had parties that followed the teachings and practices of various prominent rabbis, scribes and religious figures who had inherited their teachings from earlier teachers.  Each rabbi took from a former rabbi the teachings and applied those teaching in a way that gained a following or maintained certain traditions.  Rabbi Jesus had a sort of established school and set of practices within Judaism.  What would the teaching of Rabbi Jesus become outside of Palestine?  And how would Judaism become altered by the followers of Jesus who were not Jews?  Certain innovations would make the followers of Jesus unacceptable to the existing strands of Judaism.  Dispensing with circumcision and dietary laws and Jewish feast days, were innovations that would cause family members to to become divided.

  The Gospel communities had to account for the pain of division within Judaism and from the  pain of the separation of the Gospel communities from the synagogues.

  This is the fire; this is the division not peace that the oracle of Christ gave to the early Gospel communities.

  Why is a family divided for religious reasons?  I thought religion was about peace.  I thought that Jesus was the Prince of Peace; I thought that angels said “Peace on earth” at his birth.

  Is this purifying fire a satisfactory metaphor of explanation for us as to why people are not at peace?

Sometimes we are naïve about the Gospel and Scriptures.  Since we believe they are inspired we wrongly believe that they actually cause things to be the way that things are; we should rather believe them inspired because they are written by persons who looked for profound meaning to the recurring issue of division within every community that has ever existed.

  Let us come to the insight today regarding division and the purifying fire of life experience.  In freedom each of us has arisen in our situation as unique persons on unique educational paths.  And we seem to share some education paths more closely with some and less closely with others.  Unique education experiences mean that there can be such uneven educational paths in human experience that we truly seem to be unable to understand each other and we can come to painful disagreements and divisions.

  Faith means that we come to accept the uneven patterns of educational developments in the lives of people, even to the point of knowing that pain, disagreement and division are inevitable.  What we have hoped for in our country is to preserve the right of people to be on different religious and educational paths.  I think we have learned this better in our country than was known by the early Gospel communities; we have learned it  better than when religious communities have united the sword and interpretations of  holy books to force uniformity and persecute and burn heretics.

  Let us appreciate today, the struggle of faith and honor the uneven development in how people come to know reality of God and the practice of the insight that God is love.  Let us honor the freedom of people being different in their faith experiences as well as different in all manner of human experience.  Let us honor difference with laws that protect the freedom of everyone while at the same protecting the vulnerable and those without the means to protect themselves.  We hope that the fire of division in our world is a purifying of people learning to be educated away from ignorance and selfishness which causes the suffering in our world.

  In faith we pray again today that suffering will have redemptive outcomes for people to become better able to practice love and justice.  I believe that the Risen Christ as an oracle for us today would inspire us to the further practice of love and justice.  Amen.

Faith, Being Beckoned into the Future by Hope's Targets

12 Pentecost, Cp14, August 11, 2013   

Isaiah 1:1, 10-20 Psalm 50:1-8, 23-24

Hebrews 11:1-3 (4-7) 8-16 Luke 12:32-40

 Lectionary Link

  In our lives we live with an intuition that is provided us from a kind of parallel kingdom that is within us.  This intuition that can arise from within us comes in the form of a message that says to us always, “There is something better.  There is something more.  There is other life, another life, life  in our future.”  And even when we are getting ready to leave this life and when our dear friends are getting ready to leave this life in the body as we know it now;  our intuition tells us that there is still more life.  Why does it do that?  Plenitude of life teaches us the humility of knowing that we are always contained by something greater than us because we can know that our great Container preceded us and will also succeed us after the wicks of our bodies burn down toward their ashy residue.  Our intuition also inspires imaginations of an afterlife as well, as a kind of humility in recognizing that the few decades of our lives are not the only and final or even significant decades in the life everlasting.

  We are born with a biological life that gives us orientation in growth, so we know that such growth implies a future.  Growth means we have a future whether we want it or not; the question then becomes how do we live into our future?  What does our future mean?

  We have the general and automatic future promised to us by the very nature of growth but we need to process automatic growth with intentional meanings.  And this effort to be intentional in the meaning of growth into a future is where we encounter a way of living, called the way of faith.

  The writer of the letter to the Hebrews wrote in a way about faith that became watershed reflections upon the faith of people who are the legendary and historic figures of the Salvation History that is recounted in the Bible.    Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Rahab, Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, the prophets: What did all of these have in common?  According to the writer to the Hebrews, they all had faith.  Many of them had weaknesses and faults but what distinguished their lives in the midst of the mixed blessings of personhood and circumstances, they had this virtue called faith.

  How does the writer to the Hebrews describe faith?  “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”  Things that we hope for have not happened yet.  So hope has created a host of events that have not occurred yet.

  The shadow of hope is despair and pessimism.  We can let the negative vision of the future cripple us now with fear and anxiety.  The visions of worst case scenarios can rise before us to defeat us before we even try to do anything.  The boredom of the ordinary or the mediocre can depress us to try to do anything different.  After all, what difference will it make?   We cannot change the world in any significant way.

  Faith is a deliberate way of living with hope.  Faith is an intentional way of articulating hope.  Faith is acting with a purpose; acting towards a future target that has captured our imagination toward making our lives better and the life of our world a more excellent place.

  Faith involves focusing upon a target and so in faith we profess a love and a desire for something that has not happened yet.  This focus aspect of faith is crucial since with faith we can have the proper relationship towards hope and the future.  An unhealthy relationship with hope and the future is manifested in mere dreams and fantasy as entertainment in our present pain, boredom or discomfort.  To live by faith is to not let the vision of hope degrade to cloudy dreams without feet upon the ground.

  The heroes of faith written about by the writer to the Hebrews were people who had to pick some very real and down to earth targets.  They felt they were inspired to wants some important things for their future.  Abel, an accepted offering for God; Enoch, a faithful walk with God; Noah, a crazy notion for building a ship; Abraham and Sarah, wanting their own child.  Isaac, to pass on the family blessing; Jacob, a promise of a divine blessing; Joseph, the vision of not being trapped in Egypt; Moses, a promised land; Samuel, leadership for his people; Rahab, a harlot who wanted to survive an attack on Jericho; David, a king who wanted an established kingdom and line of succession.  Prophets; who wanted listening faithful audiences to love God and practice justice.  All of these people had specific targets created in their contexts from the inspired intuitions of hope.  They did not let these targets go; they focused and they worked and they persevered.  They did not give up.

  The writer of the Hebrews said it was important to have targets of hope and act in faith towards those targets.  The writer also said that none really achieved their targets in any final way, writing they were all really looking for a better country, a better location, a better environment, a better place to be, a heavenly country.  They were always looking for another specific future.

  What is the difference between achieving a future with faith or without faith?  Frankly, biology guarantees that we will all have a future of sorts.  But do we regard ourselves to be in the automatic ruts of our family or our society or our current peer group to attain the cookie cutter pre-ordained roles given for us in the future?

   Faith, is not just living in the ruts which guide up toward the future;  faith involves a worship of Greatness, a worship of the Great One and in that worship finding an inspired intuition that gives us specific targets of hope in our future.  And then with intention, deliberation, preparation, hard work, perseverance, prayer, pleading, intense desire, tenacity and grace we exercise the daily narrative of events in our lives toward the targets of hope realizing that the targets are not ends in themselves.  The achievements of the target goals are significant milestones toward the next milestone in a never ending journey into the future.  
  Faith involves a calling from the One who seems to mark our lives with sublime modes of communication.   I can remember the call to the priesthood.  Oh, to be a priest.  There is my target of faith, to be a priest.  And then I got there and as I carried a plunger towards the church bathroom, I thought, “Wow, is this it?   Thousands of people hanging on my every word…..Not!”  But do we regret hope’s targets because they are temporary and not final?  Not at all because within the attainment of the target, thousands of more targets of hope open up to continue to beckon us to live with the attitude of life called, faith. 

  Jesus, as the one who lived with faith towards hope’s future, gave us the vision of living towards having  the treasure of faith with God.  Faith is living in the state of being prepared.  Faith is living with the freedom to be disillusioned with the temporary attainments in life even as good as they seem to be in our quest for them, why?  Because there is always more.  There is always hope’s visions of new targets for our faithful actions.  There is always Son of Man; There is always Super Man/ Super Woman; There is always the Surpassing Humanity as a target person of each of us in a surpassing future state to keep us, keeping on.  And it is the focus of “keeping on” which is God’s most graceful achievement of faith in our lives.

  The targets of hope are not about arriving at a final destination; they are lures to focus the intentional acts of faith by which we continue to believe that hope is the best of all vision and not the cruel tease for us to want things we can never have.  We come here today to worship God so as to open ourselves up to the intuitions of hope; these intuitions create targets and these targets of hope for us personally and for our community can inspire us to live by faith.  And as Scriptures say, “Without faith, it is impossible to please God.”  Amen. 

Move from the Reign of Quantity to the Reign of Quality

11 Pentecost, Cp13,August 4, 2013  

Ecclesiastes 1:2,12-14;2:18-23  Psalm 107:1-9,43

Col. 3:1-11  Luke 12:13-21

Lectionary Link

    Carlos Slim Helu, Bill Gates, Armancia Ortega, Warren Buffett,  Larry Ellison, Charles Koch, David Koch, Li Ka-Shing, Liliane Bettancourt and Bernard Arnault.  These are the current top wealthiest persons on Forbes list of Billionaires.  It is a phenomenon to be impressed with quantity; the greatest number is a telling sign of importance and that is why I try to make reverse quantity work in my favor, as in, one who is missing most of his hair.  We have an official score card for quantity in all manner of things; the Guinness Book of World Records is a constantly being updated book of world records.

  We are very impressed with quantity when it comes to money and possessions.  We often worry about the quantity of our money and possessions.  We often live in the fear of lack and as a result we can practice hoarding.  But hoarding is really the financial virtue of savings and one can never have enough savings.  We save for the rainy day and if we don’t have rainy days to use up all of our savings before we die then it gets left to our survivors.

  Coupled with our Gospel lesson today we have the introduction of the book of Ecclesiastes with the famous phrase, “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.”  This expression was written by a wisdom writer in the Hebrew Scriptures.  One should really read Ecclesiastes to appreciate the variety of writing genres that are found in the Bible.  The writer of Ecclesiastes claims to be one who seeks wisdom; Ecclesiastes,  had the fortune of being very wealthy but came to realize that the one who was wealthy was equal in death to the one who poor because “you can’t take your wealth with you.”  You leave your wealth to be managed by those after you and you cannot guarantee how your wealth will be used after you are gone.  It often happens that one’s wealth leaves discord in a family after one is dead.  Heirs often disagree or lose their good relationships in the distribution of the one’s wealth.  Such was just another vanity of vanities for the writer of Ecclesiastes.

  The distribution of inheritance is the context for the Gospel parable of Jesus in today’s Gospel.  Jesus seems to be a bit different kind of wisdom teacher than the writer of Ecclesiastes.  The writer of Ecclesiastes wrote in small wisdom phrases, sometimes call Proverbs.  The book of Proverbs is from this wisdom tradition of the Hebrew Scriptures as well.  Jesus as a wisdom teacher was known both for his proverbs but also for the more indirect method of teaching in his use of parables.  The parable is a story.  A story is a an art form in language performance; a story employs the re-representation of some life events in time-lapse form so that an entire sequence of events is sped up because events of an actual past cannot be truly parallel with the time when the story is being told.

  A parable or story speeds up past time and the purpose of any story is to get people engage as if they were a part of the events of the story.  And as we hear a story we interact with the events of the story by making judgments upon the characters who are presented in the story.  And we may be drawn to a story for entertainment purposes and suddenly in the parable there is a “gotcha” moment.  Suddenly we are confronted with having made judgments on the characters in the story and the character turns out to be us.  A parable is not a frontal attack; it is an indirect attack, even a sneaky attack.

  "Jesus please be the arbitrator in our family inheritance dispute."  Jesus is the one who had no earthly wealth at all except the clothes on his back.  Jesus was not going to leave any property or money and he did not have any heirs in sons and daughters.  Jesus had no family and no money to leave anyone. And perhaps this would seem to make him the perfect person to arbitrate the family will.  When the worth of a departed loved one is reduced to the money that has been left, then the value of that person’s life has been minimized or missed or lost.

  The parable of Jesus was about how we assign or express the value of people in life.  What is my treasure?  What is my worth?  We are taught to regard personal value or worth in terms of dollars and cents or in terms of property that we own.  Yes, money and property can seem to be important treasures in our lives supporting the comfort levels of our lives.

  With his parable, Jesus confronted his listener about the tendency to measure the worth of life through the practice of greed.  Greed is the addiction to have more for the sheer purpose of having more.  Greed is to make the reign of quantity supreme.  I cannot rest unless I have more.  Quantity of money and property is what will allow me to rest and take my ease.  Quantity of money and property is my blessing and my heavenly rest.

  And then Jesus stated the ancient truth that was also stated in Ecclesiastes, “Sorry, but you  can’t take it with you.  You came into this world naked and you leave as dust.”  And once you’ve left this earth what is the quantity of your money and property going to do for you?  You cannot control it after you’ve gone.  Yes, there is the legal instrument of the Will; but if money and property is the only thing that you leave in this world, then you have no guarantees and final say.

  The issue in life about human worth is the issue of having treasure and wealth toward God.  Jesus had nothing but he has left endless wealth to everyone by the example of his life.  This is the kind of treasure and wealth that we need to be concerned about in our lives.  Can we live in such a way towards others that we create a domino effect of goodness that will truly ripple into the future forever?  A legacy of greed and hoarding can inspire future greed and hoarding as a devastating domino effect of sin and selfishness and  we already know this legacy in our world because of uneven distribution of the goods of this world.  The message of Jesus is to inspire us to counter the selfish hoarding syndrome that is so prominent in our world.

  We cannot avoid money and property in life even if we try to; so the issue is not really about the goodness or badness of money and property; the issue is about over-coming the reign of quantity in life with the reign of quality.  Life is not about having the most; life is about how we put together what we do have.

  How are we putting together what has been given to us in our lives?  How are we putting our community lives together?  How are we putting our families together?  How are we putting our parish life together?  Are we learning to let the reign of quality take over our lives.

  Money and property are nice; they are so easy to count.  But we can fool ourselves in thinking that we can quantify our value by such easy mathematics.  Quality cannot be so easily quantified.  How many tiny and small acts of kindness does a parent perform to add to the character of a child?  How many small acts of mentoring does a teacher perform to bring excellence to a student?  The love and care and concern with which we express our life gifts towards the people in our life cannot be quantified. But in our world where quantity is often regarded as being what is valued we are tempted to say, “What’s the use in bring quality to life?”

  The Gospel of Jesus for us today: Let us not be dominated by the reign of quantity in life in terms of money and property; let us enter the realm of the reign of quality and let us be rich toward God by placing ourselves in this tradition of the domino effect of the love and kindness of Jesus.  Amen.