Sabbath: 85% Neighbor 15% God

Luke 13:10-17

Now Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath.  And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight.  When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.”  When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.  But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the Sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured and not on the Sabbath day.”  But the Lord answered him and said, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger and lead it to water?  And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the Sabbath day?”  When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame, and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things being done by him.

When Sabbath became a Commandment, it was placed between first few Commandments about how to relate to God, and the remaining Commandments which are about how to relate to our neighbors.  That was no accident.  It was put in that spot intentionally to tell us that yes, Sabbath is indeed about humanity’s need to unplug from the world AND plug into the Divine one day out of seven… about 15% of the time.  But it was put in THAT particular spot to show us this Commandment IS JUST AS MUCH about humanity’s need to plug into compassion and care for our neighbors the other 85% of the time!  The Commandment about Sabbath was put in that particular spot because it is about BOTH… God AND Neighbor.  

Forgetting the “neighbor” part is what both Isaiah and Jesus address today.  Both would agree, we humans really do SO MUCH BETTER when we unplug from the world and plug into the Divine 15% of the time.  But that part wasn’t the problem either was confronting.  The problem for both Isaiah and Jesus was that folks had FORGOTTEN the part of “Remembering the Sabbath and keeping it Holy” that calls us to plug into the needs of our NEIGHBORS the other 85% of the time!   

In Isaiah’s day that forgetting led to economic injustice.  A “yoke” of unjust economic practices filled with selfishness, greed, indifference and exploitation had been piled on the most vulnerable in the country.  Isaiah told the people that until they removed that yoke from the people, the 15% of their time they were plugging into the Divine would do them absolutely no good.  Loving God for one day each week was not a permission slip to exploit your neighbors the other six!  These two dimensions of Sabbath are inextricably bound together.  When we live in a way that creates a community built on economic justice… a community that both sees and cares for it’s neighbors generously… for about 85% of the time… It is in living that way that we are opened up to receive the “Delight of the Sabbath” when we plug into the Divine the other 15% of our time.

The people in Isaiah’s day forgot that.  The leader in the synagogue who chastised Jesus forgot that.  SO many people who claim the title “Christian” in our government today have forgotten that.  They ALL focus exclusively on the Sabbath’s demand on us for that 15% of our time while completely abandoning the Sabbath’s equal demand on us for the remaining 85% of our lives!  In Isaiah’s day that led the leadership to forget the suffering of the least, the lost and the last.  In Jesus day that led them to let a woman continue to suffer for 18 years.  In our day it has led to legislation that abandons the poor and the homeless, the hungry and the sick, the elderly and the stranger all while our leaders make a continuous show filled with God-talk, kneeling in prayer on the legislature’s floor, and posting the Commandments in public.

Isaiah makes it clear.  THAT kind of performance doesn’t “Remember the Sabbath… it TRAMPLES on the Sabbath!  None of THAT will connect anyone with God.  ONLY the radical care of your neighbor will do that.  ONLY food for the hungry will do that.  Only satisfying the needs of the afflicted will do that.  Jesus too makes it just as clear.  The time you spend dramatically and publicly defending the sanctity of the part of the Sabbath that calls for 15% of your time to be plugged into God, will get you nothing, if you ignore the call of the Sabbath on the other 85% of your life!

God has never been fooled by that sort of religious performance and Isaiah told the people just that.  Jesus was never fooled by that sort of self righteous religious show and he told the leader of the synagogue just that.  And neither are we fooled by those who kneel on the floor of the legislature or have the Commandments posted in schools.  God knows.  Isaiah knows.  Jesus knows.  You and I know.  The only way ANYONE receives ANY benefit from following this Commandment to connect to the Divine for 15% of our lives, is by following the same Commandment when it calls us to love our neighbors and create a neighbor-loving, justice-practicing, hungry-feeding, foreigner-welcoming, crippled-healing, elderly-caring community in the other 85% of our lives!  

No one is fooled.  The way we FULLY remember the Sabbath and GENUINELY keep it Holy, is to live our lives in community… doing justice and loving kindness 85% of the time and having done that…  only then, unplugging ourselves from the world and plugging into the Divine for the other 15% of the time we are given.  It is in living by those percentages that we will have a life “riding on the heights of the earth”.  It is in that way of living that we will find we are sharing the in the “Delights the LORD”.  It is in that way of living that we will find that we have life, and it is in that way of living that we will have it… abundantly.  Amen.  

Brains and Woke Nonsense

Luke 12:49-56

“I have come to cast fire upon the earth, and how Iwish it were already ablaze! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what constraint I am under until it is completed! Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided:

father against son
    and son against father,
mother against daughter
    and daughter against mother,
mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law
    and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”

He also said to the crowds, “When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, ‘It is going to rain,’ and so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat,’ and it happens. You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?

Our brains evolved to create high speed neural pathways for the things we think and do all the time.  Those deeply ingrained neural routes allow the regular things we do all the time to become automatic.  Driving is a great example.  Think back to when you first learned to drive and how hard that felt.  A few years later, as those neural pathways firmed up a bit, driving became less anxious, right?  Eventually those neural pathways became so ingrained… so solid in your mind that even driving in the city became automatic.  

It is an AMAZING gift… until, let’s say, you rent a car in New Zealand.  There you discover the down side of having deeply ingrained neural pathways and how VERY hard they are to change.  But in New Zealand you really NEED them to change because there, they drive on the left.  Roundabouts go the other way round.  The turn signal and windshield wipers are on opposite sides of the steering column, so when you go to signal a turn, those ingrained neural pathways move your hand automatically AND... turn on the wipers… EVERY SINGLE TIME!  All those well worn neural pathways your brain had created over the years to make driving easier… NOW ARE WORKING AGAINST YOU!  You feel dumb, incompetent, and foolish... like fire has been brought to the earth!  And this is why… CHANGE… IS… HARD!

 

That’s what Jesus was telling the crowd.  CHANGE… IS… HARD!  AND YET… Jesus also told this and every crowd, that he wished the fire of change was already ablaze, ushering in the Kingdom of God.  That's because Jesus was out to do nothing less than CHANGE the WHOLE world, as Bp. Curry always says, “from the nightmare it is for so many into the dream that God intends.”  

Now, you'd think that if a change would make the world better for you personally, then it would be easily and eagerly embraced, but that’s not necessarily true.  There are countless stories of people sticking with the familiar rather going with something better.  I have gay friends who still choose not to get married even now, because for them, their neural pathways firmly laid down the idea long ago that marriage was not for them.  Those neural pathways that our brains create to make our world easier, are often so strongly laid down that the idea of changing them… even for something that might be a whole lot better… just seems too hard to even try.  CHANGE it turns out… really is BIOLOGICALLY hard. 

You'd also think that if a change would make the world better for someone you loved, then THAT change would be easier for you as well.  But that too, is not necessarily true.  When Kelly and I started dating we went to a Halloween party.  For the person I was falling in love with, I REALLY WANTED to instantly change and be completely comfortable at a Steel Magnolia’s themed Halloween party full of gay men complete with Bleeding Armadillo Grooms cake… I really did!  But the automatic neural pathways that had been laid down in my brain about gay men up to that point in my life could not be unmade in a single evening!  WANTING them to change was not enough… it took a lot more time and work to unmake, and then remake, those pathways in my brain.   

That’s why in these most recent times, so many of us are finding new names and pronouns and gender identities so hard!  Even when we WANT to do it perfectly, we inevitably run up against the biology that makes those things are some of the most deeply laid down neural pathways humans have.  The neural pathways for things like names and pronouns are sometimes forty, sixty, even eighty years deep!  Our brains did that so we didn’t have to re-meet people every time we ran into them.  But now, when someone asks you to use a new name and new pronouns you find that you are just as good at doing that as using the turn signal in New Zealand without turning on the wipers!  

Just WANTING to do once doesn't make it happen and that is frustrating in our instant gratification world.  Folks try to remember but inevitably fail.  Not understanding the biology of how hard this change is for everyone, people find themselves feeling dumb, foolish, and incompetent.  Those uncomfortable feelings burn like fire and make people want to dismiss the whole thing as "woke" nonsense!  But as followers of Jesus, when we encounter people who tell us that the way the world works for them is a nightmare, we have a Divine calling to work through our own uncomfortable, burning feelings, put in the time, and do the hard work to help them change the world so that their nightmare ends!  

To do that you don’t have to feel in your body like they feel in theirs.  You won’t.  You don’t have to understand "WHY".  You can’t.  All you can do... all we are called to do, as a followers of Jesus... is to hear our neighbor when they tell us that the way the world works now is a nightmare for them, and then work with them to change the world so it becomes more like the dream God intends for them.  

And YES… THAT will take much, MUCH more time than ANYONE involved wants it to take.  YES we'll all feel foolish, incompetent, and dumb along the way... that change will be hard… in fact it will be FRUSTRATINGLY HARD… for EVERYONE!  And yet THIS is part of the work to which we have been called as followers of Jesus.  This is a part of changing the world from the nightmare it is for so many, into the dream God has for it.    Amen. 

Guy Bring It!

Luke 12: 32-40

"Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

"Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks. Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them. If he comes during the middle of the night, or near dawn, and finds them so, blessed are those slaves.

"But know this: if the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour."

The year was 1969.  My parents and I were staying in a Motel in California.  I looked out of the window and below in the courtyard I saw a man carrying a large platter of food.  I asked my parents what he was doing and they told me that in a motel, you can pick up the phone, order food, and a guy will bring it right to the room.  Never, in all my two whole years of life, had I ever seen anything like it!  So… as the story goes… I walked over to the phone, picked it up, and said, “GUY BRING IT!”  No more waiting.  “GUY BRING IT!”

Abram and Sarai were frustrated with waiting.  Waiting for a child… a long, long, long promised child.  GUY BRING IT!  But beneath their waiting for a child in particular was a much deeper waiting for a sign that there would be any future for them at all.  Because without a child in that time and culture, they had no future.  They would be forgotten.  It would be as if they had never even existed.  They were waiting to see if there would be a future. 

In the Psalm, the psalmist is waiting for God’s Steadfast Love to deliver their nation from the horrors that all too often afflict the nations of this world… war, famine, and death.  GUY BRING IT!  Finally in the Gospel, the slaves were waiting for the Master to return from a Wedding Banquet.  Not a costume party or a retirement dinner or the Historical Society’s Garlic Festival, but a WEDDING BANQUET which meant Jesus was talking about waiting for The Kingdom of God.  GUY BRING IT!

The Kingdom of God, as Jesus talked about it, was God’s vision for how the world... our right now, every day, get up, eat breakfast, run to an appointment, stop by the Big Y, eat and sleep world… should really work.  Like a Wedding Banquet, the Kingdom of God would be a world where there is PLENTY!  More than enough food, water, shelter, peace, dignity, purpose, healing, safety and wholeness for everyone.  Like a Wedding Banquet, in God’s Kingdom EVERYONE would have a place set for them, so no one’s left out.  Like a wedding banquet, the Kingdom of God would be filled with joy!  THAT… my friends… is how God would LIKE this world… OUR world… our “RIGHT NOW” world… to work!  GUY BRING IT!  

Which sounds amazing!  Until you remember that in this parable, you and I… we weren't at the Wedding Banquet.  In this parable we’re the slaves stuck back at the house.  We’re like Abram and Sarai… stuck waiting for a future.  We’re like the psalmist… stuck waiting for God’s Steadfast to deliver us.  We are like two year old me… stuck waiting for “GUY BRING IT” in a California Motel room.  

We are, it would seem, unable to secure a future for ourselves.  We are, it would seem, unable to guarantee the people of our nation will be okay.  We are, it would seem, AWARE of the Wedding Banquet… AWARE of the Kingdom of God and God’s desire that ALL of creation be included, but unable to get ourselves to the party!  We are, it would seem, stuck at home with the hope for a future, the promise of security, and the joy of God’s Kingdom beyond our reach.  That’s how it would seem.  And why does it seem that way?  Because that’s how it is!  Look around and you will have to admit, we are just as successful at securing our own future, finding our own salvation, and creating the Kingdom of God as I was at getting food by yelling into the phone “GUY BRING IT” back in 1969.  

All of which would sound downright hopeless IF that was the end of these stories… but it is not!  In 1969 my yelling into the phone did not make “GUY BRING IT”, but the Steadfast Love of my parents, their good sense of humor, and their dialing up the restaurant and ordering room service did.  Abram and Sarai’s fear and worry did not secure their future, but God’s Steadfast Love and Faithfulness did, in time, make sure that “no one but your very own issue shall be your heir.”  The nation’s military and country’s bravado did not insure the psalmist’s security, but the psalmist’s hope, placed in God’s Steadfast Lovingkindness, brought them peace.  And while none of the slaves could get themselves to the Wedding Banquet, it turns out that it is “God’s Good Pleasure” to bring the Wedding Banquet back home to each and everyone of us, to sit us down at the table, tie on an apron, and serve up an Eternal Feast for all of creation as a gift.  

We live in times where we regularly question if there will be a future.  We live in times where we regularly question the safety of ourselves and particularly our neighbors in this nation.  We live in times where God’s vision for this world run in a way where everyone has enough seems laughable.  So what do people of faith do in these sorts of times?  Abram and Sarai just kept walking into God’s promise, voicing their doubts and fears and frustrations all along the way, until the promise was fulfilled.  That’s something we can do too.  The Psalmist continued to call on God to be true to the Divine Character of Steadfast Love and Faithfulness, and I’d like to think the psalmist did their best to reflect that Divine Character as they waited and although that’s not in the text that is something WE can do.  The slaves stayed dressed for action and kept the lights lit, doing the work they had been called to do until the Master brought the Banquet home to them.  We can do that too.  We can “walk in love as Christ loved us” for as long as we have to wait and as far as we need to walk.  We can do it together and together we can make our ongoing prayer… GUY BRING IT!  Amen.  

Steadfast Love and Faithfulness

Luke 12:13-21

Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” But he said to him, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” And he said to them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” Then he told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

   

A couple of weeks ago we heard the story about God and Abraham standing on the road outside of Sodom while God contemplated what to do with that grotesquely inhospitable city.  There, in the middle of the street, Abraham asked if God would stay true to Their Divine Character, even when dealing with this obscenely inhospitable city.  Would God continue act out of Hesed… out of Steadfast Love and Faithfulness… even when facing something so genuinely awful?  

Both of todays lessons ask of us, the very same question Abraham asked of God.  Will we stay true to reflecting the  Divine Character of Steadfast Love and Faithfulness even in our most challenging times… even when life presents us with things that are heartbreakingly horrible?

It was looking into the rabidly inhospitable city of Sodom that presented this question to God.  It was royal-level wealth, an inheritance worth arguing about, and a billionaire farmer’s bumper crop that presented this question to the characters in today’s stories.  But what asks the question is not meant to be our focus.  The question could have just as easily been asked by the loss of a loved one, a devastating diagnosis, a chronic illness, or even by a spouse’s return to rehab.

The questioner isn’t important.  The question is.  Will we, EVEN in life’s most devastatingly difficult moments, be true and reflect the Divine Character of Steadfast Love and Faithfulness no matter what?  In those horrible times will we continue to move our lives TOWARD our loved ones, our neighbor, toward our community, the stranger, the foreigner, and toward those who the world calls the least, the lost and the last…  Because when we live TOWARD the other, putting their needs before ours… this lesson, this parable, and honestly, a HUGE chunk of Scripture… both Old and New Testaments… all make it clear that when we walk our lives in THAT direction… when we stay true to reflecting the Divine Character of Steadfast Love and Faithfulness… we will find ourselves walking in the fullness and abundance of life even as we encounter the most horrible things imaginable.  When we walk in that direction… when we go with the Divine Flow… when we stay true to our calling to reflect the Divine Character of Steadfast Love and Faithfulness… we find life to be abundant and never ending, no matter what. 

If, however, in those horrible times we are drawn away from reflecting the Divine Character of Steadfast Love and Faithfulness… If we start pushing against the Divine Flow, and walking away from our neighbors, away from our community, away from the stranger, the foreigner, and those the world calls the least, the lost and the last… this lesson and this parable, and honestly a HUGE chunk of Scripture… both Old and New Testaments… all make it clear that when we stop reflecting the Divine Character of Steadfast Love and Faithfulness, when we go against the Divine Flow, when we walk our lives AWAY from our neighbor, we end up with a life that is filled with a fear, shame, defensiveness, hatred and anger that sucks the life we’ve been given right out of us.

The first lesson catches the king in that realization.  It’s not his money, work, or power that are his problem… it’s that his vanity has led him to stop reflecting God’s Steadfast Love and Faithfulness into the world.  His vanity has him swimming against the Divine Flow.  His Vanity has led him to walk deeper into himself and away from his neighbor and THAT is what has left him sliding ever deeper into despair.  

Likewise in the parable, bumper crops aren’t the problem.  Rather its the direction the man is now living as he obsesses about his barns.  His obsession has distracted him from reflecting Steadfast Love and Faithfulness toward his neighbors.  Walking into his worries and AWAY from the other… walking AWAY from his neighbors drains the life right out of him to the point where “that very night”, he walks himself right out of the last bit of the life he’s been given.

You and I are called by God to live our lives reflecting the Divine Character of Steadfast Love and Faithfulness into the world, walking the Jesus Way, or Going with the Divine Flow.  We are called to live that way NOT out of a fear that God will GET US if we don’t.  God doesn’t work that way!  That wouldn’t be true to God’s true character of Steadfast Love and Faithfulness, would it?  No, God calls us to live this way OUT OF God’s true character of Steadfast Love and faithfulness!  God calls us to walk the Jesus Way toward the other, live our lives going with the Divine Flow so that we might live into an abundance of life that no horribleness we could ever encounter could ever take it away.

Honestly, that’s the entire take home message, not just of these lessons but of a whole giant chunk of Scripture.  Put your ego on a shelf, haul down your defenses, open yourself up to God’s unconditional gift of Steadfast Love and Faithfulness and begin to walk this life you’ve been given as a reflection of that same Divine Steadfast Love.  Walk this life you’ve been given the Jesus Way… toward your neighbor… toward the other and the King in Ecclesiastes would tell you, THAT is real wisdom… Walking your life THAT way, Jesus would tell you, is the WAY.  Walking your life THAT way you will experience this life as this life was intended to be lived… filled with abundance, peace, love and joy no matter what horribleness we inevitably encounter along the way.    Amen.