Luke 14

Humility is notoriously elusive. That’s why, of all the hard sayings of Jesus, few are harder than those about humility. Think about what we’ve just heard from Luke. Jesus gets to eat dinner at a Pharisee’s house. And he watches how some guests make a beeline for the places of honor. But Jesus says, “When you get asked to a wedding banquet, don’t rush to the places of honor. The chances are you’ll be asked to shift down for somebody else: Go and sit at the edge of the bench at the bottom, and when the host comes, he’ll bump you up so you sit next to him.”

“All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

So what is humility here?

Perhaps it’s best to just give up the quest for humility. Because no deliberate act of the will can make it happen. Humility has a notorious paradox: It’s impossible to generate without killing it in the process. As soon as you think you’ve got it, you lose it by virtue of thinking you have it! No wonder Nietzsche saw humility as a false virtue that merely conceals the crookedness of its holder. Maybe all humility is false humility. Maybe there just isn’t a true version.

Or are we missing something, something quite simple?

Back to the parable. Notice a movement, a momentum that runs right through this story. And it comes to the surface in the word “invite.” Jesus gets invited to the Pharisee’s house; here in our parable the word “invite” occurs four times. Later Jesus tells us about who and how to invite others to dinner; then the parable of the giant banquet, another story of invitation. The momentum of invitation. Humility now looks very different.

Exaltation comes by invitation only, and the humble are those who never forget it.

Isn’t this what exposes all those ploys that parade as humility, exposes them as just that, mere ploys, devices, manipulative maneuvers to slide our way to the top. The person at the lowest place hears the call of the host; he’s swept up by an out-of-the-blue invitation, swept to the top by outrageous grace. Humility is indeed about knowing our place — knowing our place in the stream of grace. And exaltation is thrown in, free of charge.

Exaltation comes by invitation only, and the humble are those who never forget it.

What does this mean?

At least two things. First, it means that the humble don’t get captivated by their reputation. Why do the VIPs in the parable aim for the places of honor? Because they’ve got a religious reputation to think about, a position to maintain, a rank to live up to. They have to be seen. There’s a persona to cultivate, a status to preserve in the face of those who matter, a reputation to cling to at all costs.

And so the anxious self-questioning is bound to start up: “Am I coming across in the right way? Am I respected? Am I highly regarded? Am I credible? Am I getting known in the circles that matter?” (The answer to all these questions, by the way, is usually “no.”) It’s as if we’re always trying to step outside ourselves to monitor our performance, check up on how we’re being received. Life can never be fully lived because I’m always nervously looking over my shoulder, always on the defensive against the merest hint of a rumor, a misrepresentation, or a criticism. People like this miss out on the banquet of the kingdom because they can’t stop worrying whether they look the part.

This parable explodes self-scrutiny. It’s a vision of the church as a community where reputation is constantly being thrown to the wind. The humble can sit at the last spot, because in the end they know they are known, known and loved by the eternal God, infinitely better known than they know themselves, and yet, also invited to keep company with this same God, this same, strange God who invites us to sit next to his Son at the feast.

Exaltation comes by invitation only, and the humble never forget it.

Second, at the feast of the kingdom, the humble can’t get captivated by their reputation because they’ve been captivated by the host. The humble, we might say, are eccentric. Not so much weird (though most of them are) but ex-centric — ex-centered, living out of a center beyond themselves. They seem to be sustained from beyond, energized from outside, captivated from without. They’ve developed what you might call ex-centered attention.

I think of sitting by a running stream, or watching the waves crash on the beach, it seems I could gaze into the water for hours of unselfconscious fascination; or think of the 16-year-old at the party suddenly mesmerized by the blue eyes on the other side of the room; or the nurse in the makeshift hospital in Darfur, staring into the eyes of a newly orphaned baby whose mother has just died of AIDS.

And think of the people you’ve known who have had the most impact on your life: very likely they’re the ones who could look you in the eye and treat you as if no one else were in the room. People like that have what William Blake called “single vision.” They see things the way they really are because they’re not always trying to suck everything into the vortex of their own agendas. They’ve got a kind of flexibility and suppleness that can reach you as you are. Because they’re people who’ve had their insides turned out; pulled from beyond; allured, enchanted, captivated by the host of the feast.

Think of the guest who takes the lowest place at the feast: for them, nothing matters more than hearing the invitation, hearing the voice of the host: “Friend, move up higher.”

And think about this service of worship where everything is, in the last resort, designed to help us do just that, to hear that voice: just for this time, not to tug everything around us into our own project-of-the-moment;

Just for a minute, not to magnetize everyone else into our pressing concerns; just for a second, to imagine that the universe was not created to revolve around my passions but around the passions of the One who made it. The God who is by nature ex-centric.

What else are we here for, if not to get caught up in the Spirit’s eccentricity: the ecstatic rush of the Spirit towards the Son?

What else are we here for, if not to get caught up in the Son’s eccentricity, as he is eternally spellbound by his Father, and invites us to be likewise spellbound?

What else are we here for if not to be captured again by his voice, so captivating — the voice of Jesus Christ, the host of the feast?

Perhaps it’s a voice we may not have heard very clearly for a while, amidst all our self-monitoring. I don’t know. But we can be sure this voice speaks here at this feast, alluring, enticing us: “Friend, come up higher.” The voice of the one who was humbled and exalted; humbled and shamed in nakedness and exalted to the eternal feast of the Father. It is he who invites us to come to His table and feast.

Amen.

Luke 13

You can hardly imagine a more vivid picture of helplessness than the one suggested by Luke’s story about the Kyphotic Woman. Kyphotic. The original Greek word used to describe her gives a fascinating clue to what Luke wants us to see. The word translates not just “bent” or “bent over,” but a better translation would be “bent together” or “bent within.” This is a woman who is bent in on herself. It’s a picture of someone who has not only born the yoke of her oppression, but internalized it. She is not just a woman with an infirmity but, as Luke says, with the spirit of an infirmity. Whatever it was that had bent her, whatever emotional or physical burden she had born, Luke suggests, ultimately became part of her until her very body was conformed to its image. There is nothing she can do now to help herself out of the spiritual pretzel her life has become.

I don’t know if you have ever known anybody like that. Have ever been anybody like that. Someone, perhaps, who has started to believe that their ship is never going to come in. Someone who has bought the idea that all the problems in their life are all their fault. Someone who can’t even imagine being free from anxiety and fear. Some one who can make his mouth say, “God loves me,” but cannot say it in his heart. Some one who every day runs a race against a low self-opinion and every day loses. I don’t know if you have ever known anybody like that. Have been anybody like that.

If you have ever been caught on the horns of the faith dilemma—knowing that the one thing you need to straighten yourself out is the very thing you can’t seem to come up with—maybe you can understand. Maybe you can imagine how astounded she was by Jesus. “Startled” or “surprised” doesn’t really begin to say it. She must have been shocked, not just by what Jesus said, but by what he did. Did you see it? Did you see what he did?

“And seeing her,” the text says, “Jesus called her near and said to her, ‘Woman, you are set free from your ailment.’ When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.”



Did you see it? Maybe the movie that is playing on your mental motion picture screen is not exactly the same as mine.

“And seeing her, Jesus called her near…”  It’s like saying “he called her to him.” But how near do you suppose he called her? Near enough that a moment later he touches her. So near enough to look her in the face, don’t you think?

Now let me ask you, do you think he would have pronounced those words without looking her in the eyes? “Woman you are set free.” Would he have said that looming over her? This is Jesus we’re talking about here. He called her near and looked her in the face, don’t you think?



The traditional posture for a Rabbi teaching was to be seated. So when Jesus called this woman over to him I imagine he was still seated and that he bent down and looked up into her face, made eye contact with her – maybe the first time anyone had for 18 years and then he touched her. She was considered unclean because of her infirmity, so no one may have touched her in public for 18 years. Jesus is not just healing her physically, but spiritually, emotionally, and socially. He is welcoming her back into the human family as a daughter of Abraham.

 Walter Wink, in his book Engaging the Powers, suggests that Jesus’ action represented a revolution. In this short story, Jesus tries to wake people up to the kind of life God wants for them. So he demonstrates with this woman what he has been talking about.

    1. Jesus speaks to the woman. In civilized Jewish society, men did not speak to women in public. In speaking to her, Jesus jettisons the restraints on women’s freedom.

    2. He calls her forward to the center of the synagogue. By placing her there, he challenges the notion that women did not have access to knowledge and to God.

    3. He touches her, which revokes the holiness code. That is the code which “protected” the righteous from the unrighteous.

    4. He calls her “daughter of Abraham,” a term not found in any of the prior Jewish literature. To call her a daughter of Abraham is to make her a full-fledged member of the nation of Israel with equal standing before God.

    5. He heals on the Sabbath, the holy day. In doing this he demonstrates God’s compassion for people over ceremony, and reclaims the Sabbath for the celebration of God’s goodness.

    6. Last, and not least, he challenges the ancient belief that her illness is a direct punishment from God for sin. He asserts that she is ill, not because God willed it, but because there is evil in the world.

 Luke introduces the God who gets down on hands and knees with us. Luke’s God is a God who runs to fall on the neck of the prodigal and the feet of the broken. A God who bends to us…when we cannot even lift our own head!



We have a God, Luke assures us, who is soft, empathic, gentle; whose kindness is unfathomable. We have a God who cranes, who reaches, who loves us before faith kicks in and when it gives out. Don’t let anybody tell you that you have to scrape yourself together and run to God, that you have to screw up your will to do the right thing, that you have to dig deep and find your faith and offer it to God before God will speak to you. You have a God who loves you, who yearns for you, who, as the poet Roberta Bondi remind us, is in love with you.


According to Luke, there is no overstating the tenderness of God’s love. Or the healing power of that tender love.



I read the story about a little girl living in a rural community, smaller and more remote than Siloam Springs. She lived in a little house and went to a two-room school. She had loving folks and, from time to time, a good teacher. But the way she was growing up was not the way you would want your little girl to grow up. She had a cleft palate and the money for the repair hadn’t been there. By the time she was seven, she knew what the world was. She had heard the phrase, “only a mother could love that” and she understood it.



One day a special teacher visited the school and put the children through some basic speech tests. When it was her turn, the little girl went into the classroom that had been set aside for the exams. “Just stand over there by the door,” the teacher said from her desk at the far end of the room. “I want to test your hearing first. Turn your back, face the door and tell me what you hear me say.” 



“Apple,” the teacher said in a low voice.



“Apple,” the little girl repeated. 



“Man,” the teacher said. 



“Man,” the little girl repeated. 



“Banana.” 



“Banana.” 



“Okay,” the teacher said, “Now a sentence.” The child knew that the sentences where usually fairly easy—she wasn’t the first child to take the test, after all. She’d heard you could expect something like, “The sky is blue” or “Are your shoes brown?” Still, she listened very carefully.



So it was that standing with her face against the door, she heard the teacher’s whisper quite clearly, “I wish you were my little girl.”



The God who saw a daughter of Abraham in a Kyphotic Woman, is the same God who sees God’s own child in you. Before, between and after you reach out in faith; before, between and if you never deserve it, that God is reaching out to you. You have a God who loves you as his own.

Can you imagine seeing nothing but dirt and other people’s feet for 18 years? Jesus offered this woman not just physical healing, but a whole new way to see the world… literally. He offers the same to you and me.   Amen.

Hebrews 12

I expect that those who received the letter to the Hebrews must have felt very much alone. They were a tiny band of Christians, hanging on by their fingernails on the fringes of the great Roman Empire. There had been purges, persecutions, mocking by their pagan neighbors. A tiny, insignificant sect. How on earth could they keep hanging on to this faith in the face of such persecution?

The Letter to the Hebrews reminds them. They are not the first to walk this path. Their ancestors in the faith — Gideon, Samson, David — walked before them. They knew torture, prison, death, yet they kept walking in faith. They knew that one of the best ways to keep going forward is occasionally, such as here in the Letter to the Hebrews, to look backward.

Neil Postman says that if you teach in a college or university, no matter what you teach, you are a historian. The purpose of higher education as it’s practiced in the Chemistry Department, as in the History Department, the purpose of all higher education is history. It’s one generation telling another what we found out, what we know.

To be a teacher of any kind is to allow the past to have its way with us. One reason I think our culture tends to be a-historical, tends toward a kind of studied amnesia, is that the past is our greatest accuser and we have a human tendency to forget.

As G.K. Chesterton said, one of the difficulties of modernity is that we keep talking about how free we are. We’ve freed ourselves from our past. All that does, said Chesterton, is that we’ve become slaves to that arrogant oligarchy of those who just happen to be walking around at this moment.

There is something built into the Christian faith that we get from our Hebrew forebears that makes this faith inherently traditional, historical.

A sign on the Winchester cathedral in England says, as you enter the church, “you are entering a conversation that began long before you were born, and will continue long after you’re dead.” To be a Christian partly means that we don’t have to reinvent the wheel. We don’t have to make up this faith as we go. The saints will teach us, if we will listen. And for modern, North American people, it takes an act of humility to think that we actually have something to learn from the saints.

Walter Brueggemann, says “Israel was the sort of culture that loved its young enough to tell them what it had heard from God.” Israel loved its young enough to say “you don’t have to make up the way as you go. You don’t have to reinvent the path to God on your own. We’ll tell you. We’ll show you the way.”

Built right in to Christianity is the courageous determination to be traditionalists, to sit with the saints, and thus participate in one of the most revolutionary activities of the church. The letter to the Hebrews reminds us of our history and the heroes of the faith that are surrounding us.

Someone has said, there are two kinds of people in our lives, basement people and balcony people. Basement people are the ones who are always able to find fault with others and with us; balcony people are the ones who are always calling us to be our best, cheering us on despite our shortcomings and failures. We’ve all got people living in our basement and in our balconies, the question is to whom are we going to listen?

The writer of the letter to the Hebrews has chosen to listen to the balcony people, those heroes of the faith that are cheering us on to become more like Christ.

Dorothy Nolte, a therapist for children, says that when children live with excessive criticism, they learn to condemn. and the first people they learn to condemn is themselves. When you and I, in our formative years, have a critical parent, relative, sibling, or teacher who is constantly negative in their criticism of us, then we internalize their voices. They become part of us. Because they are negative and critical voices, we force them down into the lower levels of our lives, into the basements of our living. When something bad happens or when we’re facing a big challenge that we’re not sure we’re up to, then we hear those voices saying: “You’re stupid; you’re lazy; there’s something wrong with you; you won’t be able to do it.”

Psychologists discovered long ago that when school teachers expected that certain students wouldn’t do good work, then, in fact, those students did not do good work. They discovered that negative expectations cause us to function at a level that is lower than our ability. People living in our basements, those negative voices, drag us down, cause us to live at levels lower than we’re capable of living. They cause us to achieve less, and to enjoy life less. Who do you have living in your basement?

But we also have people who live in our balconies, people whose positive voices lift us up, encourage and inspire us, like those heroes of the faith we find in the letter to the Hebrews.

Robert Rosenthal, a Harvard psychologist, discovered, years ago, what he called the “Pygmalion Effect.” Pygmalion was an artist in Greek mythology who sculpted a statue of a woman from ivory which was so beautiful that he fell in love with it. He acted with love toward that statue and it came to life, becoming a living woman.

Rosenthal discovered that when school teachers expect that children will do well, those children do, in fact, do well. They function up to the level of their ability and beyond. Positive expectations enable positive results. It’s not magic. When we have positive expectations of people, then we give them positive regard, positive encouragement, positive support which enables them to succeed. That’s what balcony people are: people who believe in us. People who tell us, “I am for you, no matter what. You can do it.” They are the people who bring us to life, like Pygmalion, with their positive expectations, so that we can live the life we are capable of living.

Who is in your balcony?

So many people believe that God lives in our basements rather than in our balconies. God doesn’t live in our basements. He lives in our balconies, and he says to you and me,” “You are my beloved son, my beloved daughter. I believe in you; I sent my Son for you.”

God has high standards for you and me. He expects us to become like Christ. He expects us, as the writer of the Hebrews says in today’s reading, “to run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith…” We are running toward Jesus to become like him. God doesn’t live in our basement trying to drag us down when we stumble in the race. He lives in our balconies, God moves toward us with positive regard and nurture. He believes in us. He works by the “Pygmalion effect,” through the Holy Spirit. That is the way God means to bring you and me and this world fully alive, to help us finish the race to become like Christ.

There are voices from our basements and voices from our balconies? Which will we listen to? The writer to the Hebrews says that we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, the heroes of the faith from times past: Abel, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Moses. Their witness is that they heard the voice of God from their balconies in their own times and trusted that voice. They are up in our balconies as well, cheering us on, urging us to trust our balcony voices, especially God’s. If we will listen to the voices in our balcony, we will be lifted to the life we are capable of living.

If we will listen to the voice of God he will transform us into balcony people and we will join that cloud of witnesses as we cheer on those around us.  Amen.

Hebrews 11

My Dad boasts that he and I were both born in the “show-me state” of Missouri. Apparently Missourians like the phrase “seeing is believing.”  We tend to be skeptics; not accepting the truth of something unless we can somehow see it. But Hebrews says, “… faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen,” or to paraphrase, “Not-seeing is believing.” In other words, we do not believe what we see; rather, we believe what we do not see. The writer of the letter to the Hebrews certainly wasn’t from Missouri!

Eugene Peterson translates the first verse this way:  “The fundamental fact of existence is that this trust in God, this faith, is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living. It’s our handle on what we can’t see.”

Frederick Buechner comments, ”By faith, we understand, if we are to understand it at all, that the madness and lostness we see all around us and within us are not the last truth about the world but only the next to the last truth….Faith is the eye of the heart, and by faith we see deep down beneath the face of things – by faith we struggle against all odds to be able to see – that God … made us out of his peace to live in peace, out of his light to dwell in light, out of his love to be above all things loved and loving. That is the last truth about the world.” 

Words like “faith” are often seen as insider words with special, hidden meanings. But in reality, they are rich words that point to vital realities. While even everyday words can have a spiritual dimension, just as the ordinary events of our lives can speak to us of holy things, a word like “faith” points to the realm of mystery and depth that lies beyond our ordinary experience, conveying to us a reality beyond what we can see and touch.

There are many things in life that are indescribable: the power of music or art, falling in love, the death of a loved one, or the birth of a child. Even things that are really beyond words can still be talked about. The words we use might not encompass the subject, but they help us to get a handle on it, to look at it from various angles in the hope that we might gain some insight into reality.

The author of the letter to the Hebrews turns to Abraham as a perfect example of such faith. Without knowing exactly what he would find as he followed the call of God, Abraham left his home of origin and journeyed through a foreign land. Abraham did not see, yet he believed. He clung to God’s promise of descendants, even though to him it seemed an impossibility. “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

When we think about having faith, we often mean assenting to intellectual propositions. Do we believe there is a God? Do we believe that God is the creator, redeemer, and sustainer of all things? Do we believe the teachings of the Church throughout the ages? These questions make the assumption that belief is essentially a matter of the head and not the heart. Diane Bergant says that “faith is more an openness of the heart to trust than a set of theological propositions for the head to affirm.”

Faith, as used by the author of Hebrews, is much more than simply believing there is a God. Rather, it is an active trust in God.

Faith has a long memory and profits from the experience of those who have gone before us. Faith also hopes, looking beyond the immediate to God’s future and our part in it. Faith is tenacious and enduring, able to accept promises deferred in the conviction that even death does not cancel out God’s promises. Faith is indeed the conviction of things not seen, a conviction firmly held, but it is more: it is the substance, the essence, the very being of things hoped for.

God entrusts us with a holy freedom; people of faith always have the option of returning to “the land that they had left behind.” We know that land; it is the one we always view with the rose-colored glasses, the one that the Israelites in the wilderness longed for, the land with leeks and garlic, forgetting they were slaves in that land.

Our God is a God who is always calling us into new life, into a future that is to begin in the present. Faith’s object is God, trusting that God will keep God’s promises. In a nutshell the life of faith is a pilgrimage, a journey, as illustrated in the lives of Abraham and Sarah. Abraham’s response to God is expressed in action; Abraham sets off for the place God has promised, not knowing where it might be. Even when he gets there, the place is not his to claim. Indeed, he and his children and his children’s children sojourn as foreigners in the land of promise. Abraham anticipated a city with sure foundations even though he spent his life living in a tent, a city with a river flowing through it, even though he lived in a desert.

Faith is trusting in God enough to act on God’s promise. Faith doesn’t sit still, it responds, like Abraham did. The God who calls us into new life gives us a vision of the homeland we seek. Such vision enabled Abraham to remain faithful to the elusive, unseen God who called him. Such vision enabled him to live as a resident alien in the new land, and to see with fresh eyes the goals, values, and relationships of the new people God was birthing. The faith of Abraham and Sarah was more than right thinking; it also involved right acting. It involved not just their minds, but their hearts, and their whole beings.

The instructions given by Jesus in the Gospel require the same kind of faith. But the focus there is not the seeming incredibility of the object of faith, but the need to cling to that faith even when its fulfillment is long in coming. The followers of Jesus are told not to seek security in the realities of this world, but in the treasures that belong to the reign of God. Jesus then exhorts them to be steadfast in their faith, and he provides a story to explain what he means. The servants were entrusted with the management of the household. No one knew just when the householder would return. Therefore, a wise servant would be ever vigilant, since the householder could return at any moment and would expect to find everything in order and awaiting his reappearance. “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen”

If faith is not based on what is seen, then on what is it based? Its foundation is the trustworthiness of God, who has generously blessed these same people in the past. God’s faithfulness to Abraham is invoked to strengthen the faith of the Christians to whom the Letter to the Hebrews was sent – and to us.

Like Abraham and those Hebrew Christians of the past, we too are called to live our lives by faith, trusting with our hearts and our whole lives in the God who has come as one of us and given us his Holy Spirit to guide and empower us to live as his faithful people. Amen.

Luke 12:13-21

 My name is Stan and I’m addicted to my possessions. My problem is that deep down I don’t believe I have enough. I often think and act like I don’t have enough – enough money, enough time, enough stuff, enough control. I don’t think I’m the only one, but sometimes it’s hard to tell because we don’t often talk about it. Welcome to PA, possessions anonymous.

 We live in a culture that regularly tells us that we don’t have enough. Television commercials, billboards, and the internet not only tell me that I’m insufficient, incomplete, and not quite right on my own, but they also promise that if I only buy the product they’re pushing then I’ll be complete. Our culture unequivocally equates consumption with satisfaction, possessions with happiness, and material wealth with the good life.

And here’s my problem: all too often I believe it. Don’t get me wrong, I know it’s not true. More than that, I know it’s a downright lie. And I take as evidence the multiple biblical prescriptions warning about greed, as well as the fact that every time I purchase one of these items that is supposed to make me happy, I inevitably feel worse, not better.

Remember the Beatle’s song, “Can’t Buy Me Love,” “I’ll buy you a diamond ring my friend if it makes you feel alright. 
I’ll get you anything my friend if it makes you feel alright. 
’Cause I don’t care too much for money, money can’t buy me love.” There’s a lot of truth there.

What’s scary for me, is that I identify a little too closely with the rich guy in Jesus’ story. After all, he’s not a cheat, or a thief, or even particularly greedy. He’s just worked hard and made a good living. His mistake, in the end, doesn’t have to do with the wealth; rather, he goes astray by believing that his wealth can secure his future, can make him independent – from others, from need, from God. The allure of our possessions is that they create the illusion of independence. They give us the false promise that we can transcend the everyday vulnerabilities that remind us that we are not our own creation, we are created by God and always dependent on him.



Most of us have pretty much bought into the cultural assumption that equates what we have with how much we’re worth. But our worth is not dependent on our possessions but by who possesses us.

In the end, the Beatles’ were right: money can’t buy us love…or dignity, self worth, hope, or acceptance. So what does Jesus say about this problem?

The story of the rich and foolish farmer is framed by the commandment “Do not worry.” Just before the story of the farmer, Jesus told his listeners not to worry about what they would say when they were brought to trial for his sake. Just after the story, he said, “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear.” And in between, he told a story about one of the things we worry about most: money.

We can empathize with Jesus’ anonymous listener. Our wants seem to always outpace our income.

 So when Jesus’ listener asked him to command his brother to divide the inheritance, Jesus responded, “Take care! be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”

Human beings are greedy. Older translations use the word “covetous” instead of greedy. The two things are different: greed is wanting more than we need; covetousness is looking at what someone else has and wishing that we had what they have. There’s nothing wrong with having a nice car or house or clothes, but there is something very wrong when we feel incomplete if we don’t have all the things that we would like to have.

 In 1931, Alabama’s bishop, William George McDowell, said that the cause of the Great Depression was “the general extravagance in the recent era of so-called prosperity. This is an economic term for presuming on God’s providence. The vicious circle is something like this: our desires are inflamed by clever advertising till we feel we must indulge them for the things we want. We delude ourselves into thinking we must have the things we crave and that we can afford them.” Those were prophetic words, as applicable now as then.

 Many years ago, Clarence Jordan, rendered the gospels into the idiom of the modern South. Here’s his translation of today’s gospel from, “The Cotton Patch Version of  the Bible”:

“A certain rich fellow’s farm produced well. And he held a meeting with himself and he said, ‘What shall I do? I don’t have room enough to store my crops.’ Then he said, ‘Here’s what I’ll do: I’ll tear down my old barns and build some bigger ones in which I’ll store all my wheat and produce. And I will say to myself, ‘Self, you’ve got enough stuff stashed away to do you a long time. Recline, dine, wine, and shine!’ But God said to him, ‘You nitwit, at this very moment your goods are putting the screws on your soul. All these things you’ve grubbed for, to whom shall they really belong?’ That’s the way it is with a man who piles up stuff for himself without giving God a thought.”

 One reason I like Clarence Jordan’s translation of the story of the rich but foolish farmer is that Jordan translates the story correctly. The New Revised Standard Version reads, “This very night your life is being demanded of you.” But that is not what the Greek text says. Rather, it says, “They have demanded your life.” Who were the “they” who demanded the life of the farmer? His possessions, of course. He no longer owned his possessions; they owned him. Or in Jordan’s words, “Your goods are putting the screws on your soul.”

Somewhere deep inside, we all know that Jesus was stating a powerful truth. Everything we own also owns a little bit of us. If we own a house or a car, then we are under an obligation to earn money to pay for the house or car; we have to take time to see to it that our house or car is cared for. We are no longer quite as free as we were before.

The rich farmer made the mistake of believing that he really possessed his great wealth, although Jesus said that the reality was that his wealth possessed him. Movie magnate Sam Goldwyn, on being told that he couldn’t take it with him, replied, “Well then, I just won’t go.” But that is not an option. We can’t take it with us, nor can we refuse to go when it is our time. And neither can we really possess, we only hold in trust. We are simply stewards of what God has given us.

So, Jesus concluded his parable of the rich farmer by saying, “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.” He had stored his wealth in earthly barns, even though he had had the opportunity to put his trust in God rather than his possessions. And that is what this story is really all about. Placing our trust in our ability to provide for our future or trusting God.

The rich and foolish farmer tore down his barn and built bigger barns. Nothing wrong with that. It’s not what he did that got Jesus attention, but why he did it. God invites us to invest our whole selves in his kingdom rather than trying to build a kingdom of our own. So what is the bottom line on your ledger sheet, self or God? Amen.

Luke 11:5-13 

So what is it – this mysterious phenomenon called prayer? Is it talking? Is it listening? Is it personal? Is it corporate? Is it public? Is it private? Is it about me? Is it about you? Is it about God? Well, yes, yes, yes – and yes. It is about all of these things. But at its deepest level, prayer is more than all of them combined.

Prayer is about relationship and rest – relationship with God and resting in God. Or as Karl Barth said so simply, “In prayer , God invites us to live with him.”

I am assuming this morning that your prayer journey has been about as confusing as mine – a life long meandering through confusion, spurts of piety, intellectual embarrassment, and regular bouts of guilt. Am I praying enough? I should know how to do this – but I really don’t. I wonder, is anybody listening? Hey, is there anybody there? Hello?????

It was simple as a child. “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.” Every meal began with comforting predictability. “Come Lord, Jesus be our guest.” And in weekly worship I could be like the grown ups – God recreating me through our Christian identity prayer: “Our Father, who art in heaven hallowed be thy name.” And so, as a child, prayer was very simple – it was talking to God with familiar words, publicly and together – what one author calls cathedral prayer – the language of God’s people, spoken with God’s people, reminding us of who God is, and shaping us to be God’s people in the world.

But, then, in my teen years, a restlessness started growing in my soul – a nagging inner pull – a hunger that could not be expressed by words – a gnawing need to discover a God who did not just sit in heaven picking up the phone to answer my prayers. Yes, I began to yearn for a God who somehow was right here – and in here – present, immanent, intimate – a God begging to come close and to takeover every corner of my life.

Barbara Brown Taylor writes:

All sins are attempts to fill voids. Because we cannot stand the God-shaped hole inside of us, we try stuffing if full of all sorts of things, but it refuses to be filled…It is the holy of holies inside of us, which only God may fill. (Speaking of Sin, pp.66-67)

And so in my adult years, prayer has become a challenge and a mystery and a struggle to honor the God-shaped hole in side of me, and to resist filling it with garbage. One contemporary theologian has suggested a wonderful metaphor for God – God as water . “Water rushes to fill all the nooks and crannies available to it: water swirls around every stone, seeps into every crevice, touches all things in its path – and changes all things in it path.” (In God’s Presence, p.4). Oh, yes, God as water, rushing into every nook and cranny of our lives – carving us, caressing us, completing us – and changing us, sometimes gently, sometimes rudely. God as pervasive presence – this is the promise of maturing prayer-life, and I find it absolutely terrifying. Why? Because meditative prayer, quiet prayer, prayer as simple openness and nakedness before God – all of this means opening the dam of our egos, which have protected our autonomy – opening up our souls and letting God flow in – inviting God to transform who we are. And, this kind of prayer takes courage, it takes time, and it takes discipline.

For those of us still learning how to pray – both the public liturgical cathedral type prayers – and the quiet, personal, non-verbal listening prayers – we can give thanks that we have a good role model in Jesus. The gospels are full of stories of him praying – Jesus praying before his baptism, praying before he names the disciples, praying in the wilderness, praying before and during his healings, praying on the mount of transfiguration, praying with sweaty agony in the Gethsemane, praying his utter abandonment on the cross. But it isn’t just the dramatic moments. We are told again and again that Jesus gets up while it is still dark and goes away, to a place alone, to pray. Day in and day out, he opens up that dam of his heart so that God can flow into his day – giving him the power and the grace he will need for whatever lies ahead.

The disciples, of course, watch this daily discipline of praying, and they become curious. “Hey Jesus, teach us how to pray.” And so he complies, offering them the simple petitions of the Lord’s Prayer. He concludes by telling them: ask and keep on asking, search and keep on searching, knock and keep on knocking. Asking, seeking, knocking – a good user’s manual for prayer – all variations on the same theme – the theme of gut wrenching honesty before God.

Jesus tells us to ask – to ask for what we need, to ask for what others need, to ask for what the world needs. But beware: As Joan Chittister says: “We do not go to prayer to coax God the Cornucopia to make our lives a Disneyland of possibilities.” We do not ask God for what we want, but for what we need – and in the asking we discover what it is we yearn for most deeply, and in the asking we remind ourselves of what it is that others need.

 One pretty good measure of whether our petitions and intercessions are appropriate is to ask ourselves the question: are we willing to do anything concrete to help the situation we are praying for? E. Stanley Jones once said, “Pray like it’s all up to God, and work like it’s all up to you.” We offer up a prayer for peace in the Middle East. Are we willing to follow that prayer with a letter to the president? We pray for our friend who is struggling with cancer. Are we also willing to take her children for the afternoon, so she can get some rest. “Ask and keep on asking,” Jesus says – and maybe we will finally get our priorities straight.

And then Jesus continues: “search and keep on searching.” This is the quiet part, the mystery part, the listening part, the waiting part of prayer – the opening of that dam in order to receive a flood of grace – the hollowing out of our souls. This is the part of prayer where we give up control – and invite God to change us. Because if we really commit ourselves to search for God, we will soon discover that God has already found us.

There is a story about a wise elder, one of the Desert Fathers, who would regularly ask a newly arrived seeker to bring a bowl of water from a nearby desert pool. The elder would ask the young man to sit with him – and together they would observe the murky liquid as the sediment would settle at the bottom and the water would finally become clear:

Turning to the novice, the monk would say,” Your own life has been like that turbid water. But if you enter the silence with God, your heart will become clean like this water, and you will be able to reflect God. (W. Barker, To Pray Is to Live, p. 99)

 Ask and keep on asking, search and keep on searching. And then comes the third invitation: “Knock and keep on knocking” – loudly, persistently, desperately, honestly, authentically – knock, demand, implore, shout, plead, submit body and soul to your heart’s deepest desire.

The psalm this morning is stunning in its truth telling and emphatic in its tone. The words are all imperative verbs: wash me, blot out my transgressions, purge me, teach me, restore me, create me. God, make me new, right now, right here. This is not some timid soul politely requesting God to polish that which is tarnished. This is an honest sinner begging God to take him to the forge, and reshape him and refine him through the re-creative fires of God’s redemptive grace. This is prayer banging on God’s door – with all our doubt, all our passion, all our need, all our joy, all our hope, all our wonder giving us the strength to keep on knocking until the door of our own resistance is finally broken down.

Relating to God. Resting in God. Re-uniting with God. Returning to God. Such is the promise and power of prayer.

Lord, teach us to pray. Amen.

Luke 10:38-42

I’ve heard many wonderful reports on the potluck cook-out at the Bossler’s last Sunday, but one comment in particular stuck out to me. Someone said, “as good as the food was, and as great a setting as the Bossler home is, what I enjoyed the most was the relaxing atmosphere of being with the wonderful people of Grace Church. There was no pressure to perform in a certain way or be someone I’m not, I could just be myself and be with the people who love me for who I am.” That’s today’s gospel lesson, the good news that we get to live out every day and that this person experienced at our potluck. That is the biblical notion of hospitality.

As Luke tells it, Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, and one day he stops in a certain village where two sisters live–Mary and Martha. Martha takes the initiative, welcomes Jesus into her home, and begins preparing a meal for him. There is nothing unusual about this–showing hospitality, welcoming guests, feeding them well–these were very important virtues in that culture, and Martha is doing her best to show hospitality to Jesus and to make him feel at home. But while she is busily working away on the food, her sister Mary does something unusual. Normally in the ancient world, all of the adult women would have shared in the responsibility for preparing a meal, but Mary chooses not to help out. Instead she sits quietly at Jesus’ feet, like a male student or a disciple would, and listens intently to what Jesus is saying.

Finally Martha has had all of that she can stand. She is tired of doing all the work while Mary sits and does nothing. Now, we might have expected her to hiss at Mary through clenched teeth, “Hey Sis, I could use a hand with this, you know.” But she doesn’t say anything at all to Mary. She instead softly reprimands Jesus and tries to get him to tell Mary to get to work, what our modern psycho-therapists would say is triangulation. “Lord, Don’t you care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her to help me.”

Mary is sitting at his feet listening to him while an irritated Martha is politely telling him that if he has any sense of what is right, he’ll order Mary to get up off the floor and get busy helping her. What Jesus does is to gently respond to Martha and, then, apparently take Mary’s side in the dispute. “Martha, Martha,” Jesus says, “you are worried and distracted by many things, but there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen it; Mary has chosen the better part.”

Now, if we are going to understand what this story is saying to us today, we have to grapple with this response by Jesus. Why does Jesus praise Mary over against hardworking, worn out Martha? Why does he say that Mary, who simply sits and listens, has chosen a better part than Martha, who is sweating away preparing a meal and trying to provide some hospitality?

After so many stories where the disciples are told to “go and do,” this is yet another one of Jesus’ surprising twists. Just before staying with these women, Jesus charged those who thought they were keeping the law to go and be a neighbor the way a Samaritan was. And now it’s time to sit and listen. “You are distracted by many tasks, but Mary has chosen the better part.” The “go and do” of the previous chapter has suddenly changed to “stop and listen.”

What kind of sense does this make? For weeks we’ve heard Jesus’ call to set aside earthly distractions to help others. So Mary has somehow chosen the better part, sitting and listening rather than being worried and distracted like Martha. “Worried and distracted.” What’s that about? Martha is worried and distracted by her many tasks.

Martha’s hands and feet are busy, possibly even building up good healthy calluses for the kingdom, but they are the only parts of her body at work while ears, mind, and heart are numbed to the interruption that Jesus himself provides. The present moment is being missed in favor of the moment to come. Such busyness, even with the work of the kingdom, can bypass why that work is being done.

This is the other side of “go and do.” Sure, go and do. But pay attention to what you’re doing. God is calling us to move, but is also causing our hearts to be moved. And thus the question changes, from “What am I to do?” to “What is my heart hearing?” And so Mary sits to listen to what Jesus is saying, to hear him speaking to her heart.

Martha and Mary represent two traditions within ancient Israel. Martha represents the tradition of the Pharisees, who judged themselves and each other on how rigorously they observed the rules and customs and laws of their religious tradition.

Mary represents that better way, the tradition that focuses not on the complexity of religious law but rather on the simplicity of faith. It is a tradition that involves simple trust in God and the willingness to give up control over one’s life to God instead of trying to keep it to one’s self. It involves the willingness to risk, to give up having everything in life predictable, because when God leads, literally anything is possible.

Mary represents that tradition, and Jesus models it in his life. For Jesus, the letter of the law never got in the way of simple, direct communication with his Father in heaven. The letter of the law never took priority over the direct response to human need.

The context for this Gospel story is a dinner party. As far as Martha was concerned, the success of the dinner party depended on her. She saw herself as the giver and Jesus as the receiver in their relationship. She entertained Jesus by attending to the countless details that custom demanded.

But for Mary the success of the dinner party depended on Jesus. Mary saw Jesus as the giver and herself as the receiver. Mary entertained Jesus by being completely, personally focused on him and on what he had to say to her. That was true, genuine hospitality, and it was the hospitality of simplicity.

At its best, Christianity is a lot less complicated than it seems. What is really important is simply the intimate relationship of hospitality that goes on between each of us and the God who loves us unconditionally. What is at the core of our faith is God’s invitation to come to him in simple faith.

John Claypool says this about why Mary did what she did, “somehow Mary sensed that what Jesus needed in that moment was not something to fill His stomach, but a place where He could unpack His heart. You see, Jesus at that time was on his way to Jerusalem. He was close to the end of His life. He had many worries on His mind; He had much that filled His heart and what He really needed was a place where He could have the chance to be with somebody. He didn’t need things done for Him as much as He needed the kind of empathy that would make it safe to unpack His heart. And so Mary listened to Jesus’ heart and, therefore, she went in and sat with Him quietly as He talked out His feelings.”

Today, Jesus is our host. And what he desires from us is simply the presence of our hearts and our attention to what he has to say to each of us. As he comes to us in the busyness of our lives. What he desires from us is also what he has to offer to us: genuine hospitality in which he gives us the freedom to drop our burdens of guilt and worry and fear and to share with him our joys and our thanksgiving.

As we give him ourselves, his focus on us and his attention to us is complete. That is what Jesus called the better part, the part that Mary chose, the part that would not be taken from her. May you also choose that simple hospitality in which Jesus offers himself to you.  Amen. ~Rev. Stan McKinnon

The Rev. Charles E. Walling

Luke 10:25-37

Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.” But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, `Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.’ Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

 A couple of years ago a construction worker, named Wesley Autrey was standing on a subway platform with his two young daughters, ages four and six, waiting for a train; they were on their way to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade.  Suddenly another man on the platform, apparently suffering from a seizure, stumbled and fell off the platform down onto the subway tracks.  Just at that moment the headlights of the approaching train appeared in the subway tunnel.  Acting quickly and with no thought of himself, Wesley Autrey jumped down onto the tracks.  There wasn’t time to pull the man off the tracks.  So Wesley pressed the man into the hallowed-out space between the rails and spread his own body over him to protect him as the train passed over the two of them.  The New York newspapers called Wesley a Good Samaritan. 

One cannot help but wonder: Why would anybody do that kind of thing, knowing that it could have cost him his life.  Did he realize how dangerous it was?

The parable of the Good Samaritan offers an answer.  People do such things because they believe that it is important for them to act in this manner.  We have all known this since our childhoods.  How many times have we heard this parable—precisely to encourage us to act like the Good Samaritan. 

Even nominal Christians know this parable and its lesson.  It is very clear: we must aid our neighbor in need, even if he or she is a complete stranger or in the case of the Good Samaritan, even an enemy.

The people who heard this parable for the first time were Jews, probably simply people from rural Galilee.  In the parable the person whom Jesus tells the story is a Jewish scribe.  Clearly nobody in the audience would have identified with the hated Samaritan. 

No the Jewish audience would have identified with the victim who fell among thieves.  Why because Israel always seemed to be beaten up by other nations.  The list is long–Babylonians, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks and the Romans. 

Roman troops made their way through the streets of Jerusalem.  A Roman governor had turned the Jewish king into a puppet ruler.  There were skirmishes because people dreamed of freedom from Roman oppression but such protests were always put down by brutal and cruel force.  The Jewish audience would have identified with the victim: poor little Israel, a chronic victim, always being beaten up by bullies.  But in Jesus’ story suddenly the audience is asked to see God’s face in the actions of a hated enemy.

For many people it is only possible to accept this message after they have fallen into the proverbial ditch of life.  There you are stripped of everything—all your resources and even your human dignity.  Receiving charity from a previously hated enemy at that moment unblocks the streams of compassion in your own life too—compassion for any neighbor in need, which also makes it possible to show charity across boundaries.

In the rest of Luke’s Gospel the gospel writer wants us to see it is clear that God acts like the Samaritan.  God is not concerned with risks and actions that may seem foolish.  And this is where we are again surprised by the parable. 

Although the parable is an example story in which the behavior of the Samaritan is held up as an example to be followed, we are also confronted by the deeper question who is my neighbor?  The parable makes it clear that compassion, mercy and love are the key elements in a life of discipleship and obedience to God. 

The love command overrides all other commandments.  Mercy and compassion replaced the codes of purity and holiness. 

 So the parable lets us realize again how important our neighbors are, and that there is a reason why the Christian faith is a “relationship faith”.   We don’t have a relationship with God on our own, no matter how hard we try; our relationship with God is expressed through a relationship with our neighbors, and it is God who makes this relationship possible.

Loving God and loving our neighbor is, to borrow the imagery from Amos, the plumb line that determines whether that belief and the actions that result from that belief are true.  It is what makes the actions of Wesley Autrey so remarkable.  (726)

A group from the diocese, headed by Randall Curtis, is in Honduras this week working at an orphanage and can be followed at this blog: http://arhonduras.wordpress.com/.

Proper 9 Year C RCL, The Rev. Charles E. Walling

Galatians 6:(1-6)7-16

May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. For neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything; but a new creation is everything! As for those who will follow this rule– peace be upon them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God.

I am going to ask you this morning to turn off your built in tape recorders and to turn on those built in video cameras, your imaginations.  Imagine if you will that you live in a small traditional village in central India—a village that is off the beaten track; a village where the so-called modern world has not yet had its impact.  Living in that village, you would be surrounded by a diverse population divided between various Hindus, Moslems, Buddhists and maybe even a smattering of Christians.  Your world would be further divided by the remaining shreds of the caste system; a system where everyone knows his or her place; a system that says in affect you are what you were born into.  These distinctions would give shape and map the course of your life.  The distinctions would determine whom you would marry, with whom you would associate, how much education you might receive.  The distinctions would govern and control your life from birth to death.  And woe be to the individual who would forget his or her place; farmers do not become business people; Buddhists do not become Moslems, the uneducated do not become the educated and so on.  Your life would be based on what was determined by custom, tradition, the cultural, social, religious mores of that village.  You would never be free from these distinctions that govern your life.

Unless of course you were suddenly transported to North West Arkansas.  All of the familiar distinctions would disappear; all that gave meaning and purpose to your life in India would suddenly be gone; all of the reference points that gave form, meaning and shape to your life would be gone. 

As a transplanted person from India you would find yourself having to adapt to a new world.  Everything about life that had given meaning and purpose would not longer be applicable.  You would suddenly be free from all of those distinctions that dominated your past life and that had kept you in bondage.

If you were able to imagine yourself as that villager being transplanted from central India to North West Arkansas, you are approaching what Paul was trying to convey to the folks at first church Galatia.  Everything which determined their identity, station and status in life was gone.  All that gave meaning and purpose to life, all that determined their identity, all that formed and shaped them had been eliminated through the cross of Jesus Christ.  

All of the old reference points—the law, circumcision, the distinctions (Greek/Jew, slave/free, male/female) all that separated men and women from each other, all of the cultural, social, religious, political determining factors had been declare null and void.  Paul says it rather bluntly: “We have died” to all of those old reference points that gave meaning and purpose; we are now alive because of the new reference point the Cross.    From now on one’s identity is grounded not on who you are but whose you are.  The Galatians had experienced a new freedom.

For Paul this new freedom has practical consequences.  First this new freedom is a freedom to hold up each other in the “spirit of gentleness” and “to bear one another’s burdens” not with an attitude of judgmentalism but with the attitude of fulfilling the law of love in Christ.  This new freedom thru the cross calls us to look after and to care for one another both those in the household of faith and those who are outside of the household of faith.   If thru the cross Christ has freed us, then it is thru the cross that we are to be a part of the freeing process for others.

Secondly this new freedom means that each Christian, each of us, is held personally accountable.  We are not to think too highly of our individual selves for “anyone who thinks he is something, when he is nothing, deceives himself”.  Earlier in the letter Paul said that we are not to use our freedom as a mask or an opportunity to avoid serving others with joy, peace, kindness, gentleness and self control.  These he reminded his readers, then and now, are the fruits of the spirit.  They are the results of having been freed from the old reference points that shaped, formed and controlled our lives.

Finally this new freedom is to be known, experienced, and worked out with others and especially with members of the household of faith.  The freedom that Paul speaks of has nothing to do with the rampant individualism that is the major form of idolatry of our day.  Freedom does not mean “doing your own thing” because living that way is to become the slave of one’s own passions, interests and self centeredness.  “Doing your own thing” is not freedom; it is the modern version of bondage, of living under the law, the old reference point.  The freedom Paul speaks of is to the freedom to belong to a community, a body, a living organism.  It is a freedom that says our reference point is not ourselves, but the cross that stands outside of us.  It is the freedom to die to self, and those who can live that way, Paul prays,”peace and mercy be upon all who walk by this rule”.