Flaw, Fault, and Faux Pas Filled Faith

The Holy Gospel According to St. Luke, the 17^th Chapter

The apostles said to the Lord, "Increase our faith!"  The Lord replied, "If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and planted in the sea,' and it would obey you.

 "Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, 'Come here at once and take your place at the table'?  Would you not rather say to him, 'Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink'?  Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded?  So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, 'We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!' "

I love the disciples.  For totally the wrong reasons, I admit, but I love them.  I love them because they always seem to mess up and when they mess up it makes me feel better about my discipleship.  It’s schadenfreude... feeling good because, well, at least I’m not as bad as THOSE guys!  I’m far from perfect as a disciple, but at least I never wanted to rain fire on a village who didn’t welcome Jesus or tell Jesus “God forbid you go to Jerusalem!”

So, when I read this lesson I thought right away, (shaking my head and chuckling to myself) you disciples; not even faith the size of a mustard seed!  Who DOESN’T have at least THAT much faith?  But then I didn’t just read the lesson, I HEARD what Jesus was saying.   I heard Jesus say, “If you, Erik, had faith the size of the tiny, minute, minuscule, little, itty bitty size of a mustard seed the YOU'D be able to uproot a tree with your words and plant that tree in the ocean.”  And I thought, “Oh, no!  I can’t do that!  I can’t talk to a tree and get it to uproot itself and then fly over to the ocean and plant itself in the sea.  I can’t do that!  And what’s worse is right now I literally live a block from the ocean... I would only have to make the tree fly like a block and a half to get it to the ocean and I STILL can’t do it!  So my faith too, is smaller than a mustard seed!”

When it comes to seed sized faith, I never thought I had the largest out there, after all the largest seed is the sea coconut which can weigh up to about 90 pounds, but I also never thought I had the smallest seed sized faith either, which would be a rain forest orchid seed that weighs only 1/35,000,000th of an ounce!  I’ve never thought I had the biggest faith out there, but I did always think I had faith at least a little bigger than a mustard seed.  Maybe lima bean sized, or green pea sized, but now I don’t know how big my faith is.... celery seed size, maybe?  lettuce seed?  Maybe it really is only orchid seed sized.  I don’t think there is any way to really know!

And THAT, I think, was exactly what Jesus was trying to do.  When Jesus compared faith to the size of a seed, something people buy and sell as a spice, he was making his first important point about faith.  Faith isn’t like a seed!  It’s not a commodity you can order up by the pound from Jesus, God, the Holy Spirit or anybody else in the market.  In this first part of the parable the disciples thought that they needed to be first filled with faith in order to do the good things that Jesus did out in the world.  With that in mind, they came to Jesus for a faith fill-up.  Jesus let them know that you don’t get faith the same way you pick up a bottle of mustard seed or cumin at the market.

So faith isn’t a commodity.  What is it?  In the last 300 years or so, since the Enlightenment, the most widespread idea of what faith is all about is believing something that is unprovable or unbelievable.  In Jesus’ day though, faith was less about the ability to confess a belief in something unseen and more about a person’s life becoming radically centered in God.  Faith was more about loyalty, allegiance and a radical trust in God that would guide a person’s way of living in the world.  Faith was a trust in God’s love and care so complete there was no room for fear or anxiety.  It was seeing yourself, the people around you and all of creation as God sees them and then living our lives out of that vision.    

In the second part of this parable Jesus let the disciples know that thinking they needed faith BEFORE they went out to do God’s work in the world was wrong as well.  To show them their second wrong-ness, Jesus described a scene where a master and a slave are interacting.  In the story Jesus tells, however, the roles of the master and the slave are reversed and in this story the master serves the slave.  Jesus is trying to get the disciples to understand that their notion that they have to get faith BEFORE they do God’s work out in the world is just as backwards as a master serving a slave.  

It’s as if we’ve sat down at a restaurant table, snapped our fingers and placed our order with the One we’ve assumed is our waiter.  “Would you be good enough to bring me a heaping helping of faith please?  And I’ll have a cocktail while you get that ready.”  The disciples told themselves and I think we tell ourselves, that as soon as God gets here with our faith and we get sufficiently filled up on faith, THEN (and only then) will we be ready to go out into the world and do the things God would like us to do.

Here’s another way to illustrate that same idea....I’ve always wanted to play the guitar.  I don’t know how to play the guitar SO what I would REALLY like is for someone... God, Jesus, the spirit of Les Paul... someone to give me, or increase in me, or fill me up with “talent,” “chops” or even “mad guitar skills”... whatever it is that will allow me to play the guitar and THEN, filled with talent, chops and mad skills, I’ll go do good things in the world like play at church, camps and nursing homes.  But that’s not the way it works, is it?  If I really wanted to increase my ability to play the guitar... if I really wanted “chops” or “talent” or “mad guitar skills” what’s the only way to do that?  Yeah!  I’ve got to go PLAY the guitar!  

Jesus is telling us that if we want to be FULL of faith, if we want to have our lives radically centered in God, the way to do that is to start living it!  To spend our time focusing on the things and the people God is most concerned with in the world... the poor and poverty, the hungry, the lost, the last and the forgotten.  If we want to see our lives filled with faith we need to work at seeing the world and it’s people, their joys, their sadness and all of creation through God’s eyes and live our lives concerned with the same stuff that God is most concerned with.... unconditional love, compassion and justice.  In short, if we want to be full of faith, the way to do that is to go out there and start living faith-FULL-y! 

But what if we don't do it right, or perfectly or make mistakes and end up making things worse?  We need to remember that Jesus sent those first disciples, the ones I love for always being so wrong, out into the world with all of their imperfections perfectly in tact.  Jesus isn’t looking for the perfect or doctrinally correct or ideologically pure... just for the best we can do in each particular moment.  Sometimes what we can do in that moment will be awesome and more often than not, quite short of awesome.  But we cannot allow that to be a reason not to try.  Even if it looks and feels and sounds as clumsy as me trying to learn a new chord on the guitar, Jesus says we need to just go!  Go and live faithfully... feed the hungry in all the ways people are hungry; advocate for justice so the pay for a day’s hard work is actually enough to buy what you need to live; heal the sick in body, mind and spirit; visit those who are in prison in all the ways we humans find ourselves imprisoned ... because it is only in our living as faithfully as we can in the moment... flaws, faults and faux pas included that we will find ourselves filled with faith.  Amen.

It's Not "Just Lunch"

The Holy Gospel According to St. Luke the 14^th Chapter.

On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the sabbath, they were watching him closely. ⁷When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable.

⁸When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; ⁹and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, 'Give this person your place,' and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. ¹⁰But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, 'Friend, move up higher'; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. ¹¹For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted."

       ¹²He said also to the one who had invited him, "When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. ¹³But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. ¹⁴And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous."

He told them a parable.  With those five words Jesus changes everything.  Without those words this would be a nice lesson about how we should really try to have a little humility in our lives; about good manners and the social graces; about not having a big head.  Without those five words this would just be a very nice guide to being charitable and kind to those who are less fortunate.  Without those five words it would be a non-confrontational, non-controversial, easy to preach, easy to hear story that made no waves and ruffled no feathers.  But there they are... He told them a parable... and because this is a parable... the luncheon... it’s not just lunch, the dinner... not really about the evening meal and the banquet Jesus is REALLY talking about doesn’t involve a choice between chicken and fish.  

Jesus used parables to tell folks things that he knew would be hard for them to hear.  He set a hard to hear truth in the middle of a more comfortable, more familiar story like eating lunch or attending a wedding banquet.  That way he could gently invite them into a story and slowly work around to the hard truth they probably wouldn’t have sat still to hear if he had told it to them directly.  

Because that’s the way Jesus’ parables work, they tend to get more challenging the deeper into them you go, so I think we better start like Jesus did, with just a light lunch.  For lunch, Jesus says invite the poor, lame, crippled and blind.  I’m sure you know someone who has had experience with life when the ends don’t meet; where worries about money and bills haunt them in the night.  We all know someone who is fighting a life threatening disease, struggling with an injury, lives with constant pain or battles with the darkness of depression.  

Those are the folks Jesus is concerned with here, but this lunch is a parable, and the harder to hear idea Jesus is trying to communicate here is that we will have trouble living life to the fullest when people around us are having trouble simply living.  Just finding a person who is hungry and paying for them to have a one time meal is good, but it doesn’t meet Jesus’ deeper concern.  Community is his deeper concern and Jesus is challenging us to open ourselves here to new long term relationships...to seek out those who are hungry or hurting and not just help them find momentary relief, but to make them a part of our everyday lives and work with them to eliminate not just the symptoms of their hurt, but the cause of their pain at the source.  

The flip side of this parable may be even harder for many of us because this parable also challenges us when WE become the ones struggling with bills or pain or darkness to be more open about our pains and fears, our worries and our darkness, to set aside our pride and allow ourselves to be drawn more deeply into other’s lives, to be drawn deeper into community and not to go it alone.

You can see how Jesus works with his parables.  He first invites us into a story... “Hey, it’s just lunch” but then it turns out to be a lot more than “just lunch” and now Jesus is about to draw us even deeper into the story by inviting us to a banquet.  When Jesus talks about banquets and when Jesus specifically talks about wedding banquets in his parables he’s trying to tell us something about the Kingdom of God.  Now, keep in mind, when Jesus talks about the Kingdom of God, he isn’t talking about something that happens after we die.  He’s not talking about a place “up there” or “out there” or something that exists only on a spiritual level.  

When Jesus talks about the Kingdom of God, he is talking about this world, because the Kingdom of God is here in our everyday, figure out dinner, commute to work, pick up kids and do homework world... he’s talking about changing our world where a relatively few people have much and many, many, many others don’t even come close to having enough into the Kingdom of God.  Do you remember when the disciples asked Jesus how to pray?  Jesus told them, among other things, to pray, “Thy Kingdom Come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”  What Jesus was telling his disciples to pray for and what we pray for every week with that prayer is for that banquet, for God’s Kingdom, to happen here... we’re praying for nothing less than for the whole world to be transformed into heaven on earth.  

The author and Biblical scholar John Dominic Crossan describes the Kingdom of God as our world transformed into one of peace, banquet and equality.  While all too often the human way of changing things is done with violence, God’s Kingdom is grown through peace; as we hear in Micah, Isaiah and Joel, God’s desire is for our world to become a place were swords are beaten into plows and spears are turned into pruning hooks.  While the normal human ways of living in the world often leads to great disparities, with a few having way more than they need and many, many, many people struggling with far too little, God’s Kingdom is one of a great banquet, like the one described by Isaiah as a feast with meats rich with marrow and well aged wines strained clear... a world where everyone has enough.  And while our human ways of living all to often offer overwhelming opportunity to a few and put up social and political systems that keep others from ever having a chance, God’s Kingdom moves everyone to a place at the table where everyone has equal worth and status.  

You can see how this sermon would have been a lot easier if Jesus hadn’t, “told them a parable.”  Just the IDEA of the Kingdom of God alone is one that has a tendency, as the saying goes, to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.  I for one would have loved for Jesus to be a bit less challenging for my interview sermon, but easy was not what Jesus was going for and he’s not quite finished making things all parable-ly and difficult for us either.   

Take a look at the end of this lesson again, remembering that “giving a banquet” is code for changing the world.  Now, who is it that Jesus is having give this banquet?  Jesus says, “When you give a banquet.”  Yup, Jesus says this is our banquet to give... it is our world to change.  At first that might seem overwhelming but it isn’t meant to be.  Jesus isn’t asking us to do this all on our own, but we’re not supposed to wait for God to do it alone either.  God is looking for us to collaborate on this and, as Martin Luther King said 50 years ago, bend the arc of the moral universe slowly toward justice.  

One last food metaphor may just help us understand our part in all of this.  This metaphor comes from the pinnacle of Lutheran stereotypes - the pot luck supper.  With the stereotypical Lutheran pot luck no one person provides the entire banquet.  Each brings their specialty... some bring Jell-O colored to match the season of the church year, others the green bean casseroles, some the fried chicken and others bring brownies, baked goods and bars.  

In the same way, God is challenging us to imagine what would happen if every faith community had it’s own Kingdom of God speciality dish.  If each faith community in the world worked to push just one small piece of our world to work more like the Kingdom of God... Then imagine what would happen if we brought our small, but wonderful pot luck specialties together; shared them with one another and with the world.  Together we could make a banquet.

May all of you... you from Bethany who have been gracious enough to invite me in for the day and you, the folks from Faith, continue to perfect your congregation’s Kingdom of God pot luck specialties.  May you both find that piece of the world you feel called to change from the way it works now, into the way God would have it work.  May you both bend the arc of the universe toward justice and then get together with each other and with other faith communities of all different shapes and sizes and flavors and join your specialties and bend that arc further still until one day we all look up from our meal together and realize our banquet has become the Kingdom of God.  Amen. 

The Snodgrass Family Toaster

The Holy Gospel According to St. Luke, the 12^th Chapter

Jesus said, "I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!  I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress 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?

A new pastor went out to visit a man by the name of Elmer Snodgrass IV.  That’s right there had been three other people named Elmer Snodgrass before him.  Elmer was, well, a little different and his house looked almost normal.  I say “almost” normal because there was a couch and some chairs, pictures on the walls of the Snodgrass family but there was also a toaster.  Yes, a toaster... silver with two slots for bread.  Now that might not seem enough to make his house “almost” normal but this toaster was on an end table in the living room and there were two light bulbs screwed into each of the slots where the bread was supposed to go.  

The two sat down and Elmer reached right over to the toaster and pushed down the lever that you push to toast bread (except of course there was no bread; just a couple of light bulbs).  When he did that... nothing happened.  Nothing except that Elmer gave the toaster a frustrated, disgruntled look.  Now pastors with a couple of years of experience generally don’t ask questions about things like light bulbs screwed into toasters because, well, experienced pastors know that some things are better left as mysteries.  But this pastor was young and curious and as their visit went on his attention strayed to the shiny, silver toaster with a couple of sixty watt-ers screwed into the bread slots.  Eventually the pastor just couldn’t stand it anymore and he blurted out the question that he just couldn’t keep inside any longer, “Elmer, why are there light bulbs screwed into that toaster on that table.”

“Well,” said Elmer with a nostalgic air, “Back in my great grandpa's day when electricity came to town no one really had any idea what to do with it.  It was strange and different and didn’t come with any instructions.  They just got electricity and then a bunch of electrical stuff like light bulbs and toasters came in on the train.  Lots of people in town tried different things to use this new fangled electricity but my great grandfather knew the truth.  He knew that you were supposed to screw the light bulbs into these slots and you would get light.  Nobody believed my great grandpa but he kept going until he died trying.”

“So he tried all his life?” asked the young pastor.  “Yup, all his life.  Of course, he only lived a couple of days after electricity came to town.  You see he wanted to read while he was taking a bath and set the toaster with the light bulbs on the side of the tub for light.  And well...  You know my great grandpa is a town hero because of that.  No one else has ever taken bath with a toaster after that…saved countless lives.”  

“After that his son, my grandpa took up the cause and kept trying to get light by screwing light bulbs into toasters.  He passed on the mission to my father who then passed it on to me.  Lots of people say it won’t work, but it’s our tradition!  Every Snodgrass has sworn to keep trying until we get a toaster to light up a light bulb.”  

“So, you’ve tried to get light by screwing a light bulb into a toaster for four generations?” asked the pastor.  “Yup, and nobody’s gonna tell me that light bulbs don’t go into toasters.  You aren’t, are you?” asked Elmer.  “No” said the pastor.  Elmer quickly added, “But I won’t take a bath with a toaster…I’m not stupid.”  “Right,” said the pastor… “good idea.”

The moral of this story is the same as the moral of the story from the Gospel today and that is, “if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.”  It’s not that the Snodgrass family needed to try harder to get light by screwing light bulbs into toasters, (after all he and his family had been trying for four generations!).  What they needed to do was to try something entirely different, like, say a light socket!  But for Elmer, screwing the light bulb into the toaster was more than just his personal quirk.  It was tradition!  It made him feel comfortable, stable and connected with his family through the generations and no one was going to tell him that things just didn’t work that way.  He would never go against his family that way.

That’s what Jesus meant by telling us that he brought division and not peace.  You see, Jesus brought with him a new idea, that God was really a God of grace and love and justice.  That God was more interested in how we took care of the people who were the least and the lost and the last in our society than anything else.  Jesus challenged the political and religious powers of his day and insisted that God was not a God of vindictiveness and revenge that needed to be pacified with sacrifice but that God was calling us to change the world.  He challenged them to change the world from a human made empire where a very few people had lots and lots of everything but many, many people didn’t even have enough to survive and change it into the Kingdom of God... a place of peace and equality where no one had too much but everyone had at least enough.   (Truth be told it really wasn’t a new idea even when Jesus pitched it back then.  The prophets had pitched it time and time again though the ages as well but  unfortunately it never seems to catch on for very long.) 

Of course to the people with all the power and wealth in Jesus’ day his idea was a threat.  It was VERY different than the way things had been done for generations, and as we all know, for comfortable folks, different is bad.

Jesus knew that if someone from a family started following him and his teachings about God, then there would be trouble in that family. He knew that, but Jesus also knew that “if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.”  Jesus knew even before Einstein quoted it, that the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over and over again and each time expecting a different result.  

Even though a couple of thousand years have gone by since Jesus told this story, it’s still true today... Jesus came to change the world into a place of radical equality where everyone had enough and where there was peace because of that kind of justice.  His warning about it is also still just as true today, that changing the world... even just a corner of it in your family or community or in your congregation is not an easy thing.  We all know that when someone suggests that something should change, even the suggestion can cause that “fire on the earth” that Jesus talked about.  

Our challenge from Jesus today is to take a step back from the comfortable spots in which we live and see things through God’s vision of peace, equality and justice.  Some of the things we’ve always done do promote God’s Kingdom and need to be kept and built up even more.  But if we’re honest about the world we live in and the decline of the Church over the years; some of what we hold onto and some of the things we do work more like a toaster with a light bulb on the side of the tub.  

Jesus knew that changing the world into the Kingdom of God would bring about division and it would burn like fire.  But Jesus also knew that to be faithful to God, some things would have to change.  What needs to change?  What can and should stay the same?  My prayer is not just for us here at Nativity, but for the whole Church and really the whole world; that we would have the courage to brave the fire and change what needs to be changed, but also honor the things that need to remain the same and, as the Serenity prayer says, be given the wisdom to know the difference.  Amen.

A Bigger Dent In the Couch Cushion

The Holy Gospel According to St. Luke, the 12^th Chapter

"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."

In my first call I was asked to join the volunteer fire department.  It was a town about half the size of this town and most of the people in that town worked during the day in the larger town about half an hour away but I was one of the few who were there during the day, so, with a class and a pager I started waiting.  

The other time I had a pager was when I was on call as a hospital chaplain in seminary.  As the on-call chaplain we were called when a nurse got totally fed up with an unruly patient or more often if someone “coded”.  That meant that somewhere, someone’s heart had stopped beating and the emergency team was running to the spot.  Waiting for anything is hard, but waiting for things like fires or people in medical crisis are a special kind of waiting.

In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus told a parable and used the image of household servants waiting for their master.  Because this story is a parable, it isn’t just a lesson about how to be a good butler or maid.  It’s about something much bigger than that.  

In this story Jesus tells the crowd that the master has been at a wedding banquet.  Not a costume party or a retirement dinner or a town festival.  It’s a marriage banquet and the folks gathered to listen to Jesus would have known that a wedding banquet was code for The Kingdom of God.   

Now, the Kingdom of God isn’t something far away or somewhere you go after you die or simply a spiritual place.  The Kingdom of God is God’s vision for how our world... our every day go to work, raise a family, eat and sleep world should really work.  In the Bible there are a lot of images used to help us understand God’s vision for our world.  One of my favorites is the one Jesus uses here...the banquet... Lots to eat, everyone around the same table and no worries about fat, calories, cholesterol or carbs.

Around this table no one is more important than anyone else; everyone is equal; everyone’s hurts, pains and relationships have been healed and we are at peace with both our creator and each other.  One of the biggest marriage feast stories in the Bible is the marriage feast of the lamb from the book of Revelation.  The lamb, of course, is Jesus and he’s the one that has made the Kingdom of God a reality where everyone is equal, where everyone has enough and where all of creation is together in peace.

There’s another interesting connection with Revelation in this Gospel story.  Jesus has the master knocking at his own door.  I don’t know about you but I don’t knock at my own door… unless I’ve locked myself out.  So this isn’t by accident either.  Jesus is standing at the door knocking and this turns out to be one of the times the original Greek is pretty neat.  The Greek verb for knocking here is a special tense that means he knocks and then just keeps on knocking... minutes, hours, days, years whatever it takes the knocking continues until we open the door.  It shows us just how persistent Jesus is when it comes to getting into our house, into our lives.  Whether we open the door to Jesus because we want to let Jesus in or simply because we need that persistent, never ending knocking to stop, the bottom line is that Jesus is determined to get us to open the door and will not stop until we do.  So again, this story isn’t good advice for people who are maids or butlers.  This parable is about the Kingdom of God and how you and I are called to wait for our world to be completely transformed into the Kingdom of God.  

As a chaplain I had to wait a particular way.  We had a little room at the hospital where we stayed and were ready to go at any time.  As a firefighter I had to wait a certain way too, with my turnout gear ready to go in the back of my truck.  But for both of those jobs, there was a lot to do while I was waiting.  There was training and the classes and practice and maintenance of equipment and the building of relationships and trust.  It was never the kind of waiting that just involved making a bigger dent in a couch cushion.  It was always a very active waiting.  It wasn’t enough to just to sit and wait.

What Jesus is trying to tell us with this parable is that we in the church need to be waiting in that same kind of active way.  Waiting for the Kingdom of God is not supposed to be just about warming a pew for an hour on Sunday.  Jesus is calling us to collaborate and join in on making the Kingdom of God a reality in our world. 

To do that, in the parable Jesus tells the servants to be dressed for action.  Being dressed for action is another repeated theme in the Bible.  When someone is baptized we say that they are clothed in Christ.  The apostle Paul tells us to put on the armor of faith that that we might be ready for action.  No matter what the image is, the idea is the same; there is more to waiting than just sitting around.  Jesus is calling us to learn more and more about what the Kingdom of God is all about... but not just learn about it, but also work in our corner of the world to make it a reality.  

Another image of how we are to wait is when Jesus tells the servants to keep their lamps lit.  There is a lot of darkness out there in the world.  A big part of the world would have you give up hope, to stop waiting, to let that light go out, to think maybe it isn’t worth the wait for this Jesus guy who got hung on a tree.  But this parable tells us that waiting for Jesus... working on changing the world IS worth it!  That just as the smallest light beats back the biggest darkness, small changes in our lives and in our communities really do make a difference... they really do start to change the world!

The light is worth keeping lit.  But to keep it lit it has to be cared for, just like fire equipment at the station, the light of Christ in our lives just be maintained.  We’ve got to come together and learn from one another.  Hear again about God’s unconditional and overwhelming love for us and for the world.  Be there for the person who’s life is going through a dark time and shine that light on them to remind them about your love for them and God’s love for them.    Just like we say when a person is Baptized... “Let your light so shine before others that they may see your good works glorify your Father in heaven.”  

You and I are called to a special kind of waiting... A collaboration with God and with one another and no matter who we are, where we are or what we’ve done or not done in this life... All of us are called to work with God to do nothing less than to transform this world so that there is a place prepared for everyone to enjoy that feast.  God wants it so much that He’s going to knock on our hearts until we let him in and join him in changing the world.  The more we understand the vision for a world that is filled with peace, enough for everyone and equality, the more we will be inspired to not just sit around and wait, but actively wait by living our lives together in service to one another and to those who need our care in the world.  

My prayer for you today is that you would continue to do just that.  That you would not just wait, but actively do what you can to join God in transforming our world... study together, serve together, love together, laugh together, eat together until the day the whole world joins together at God’s amazing and never ending feast.  Amen.

Hog Futures Washed Out! Pork Belly Market Sinks!

Luke 8:26-39

Then they arrived at the country of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee. As he stepped out on land, a man of the city who had demons met him. For a long time he had worn no clothes, and he did not live in a house but in the tombs. When he saw Jesus, he fell down before him and shouted at the top of his voice, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me”— for Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. (For many times it had seized him; he was kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles, but he would break the bonds and be driven by the demon into the wilds.) Jesus then asked him, “What is your name?” He said, “Legion”; for many demons had entered him. They begged him not to order them to go back into the abyss. Now there on the hillside a large herd of swine was feeding; and the demons begged Jesus to let them enter these. So he gave them permission. Then the demons came out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned. When the swineherds saw what had happened, they ran off and told it in the city and in the country. Then people came out to see what had happened, and when they came to Jesus, they found the man from whom the demons had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind. And they were afraid. Those who had seen it told them how the one who had been possessed by demons had been healed. Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them; for they were seized with great fear. So he got into the boat and returned. The man from whom the demons had gone begged that he might be with him; but Jesus sent him away, saying, “Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.” So he went away, proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him.

When Jesus stepped off the boat it wasn’t after a nice weekend cruise.  The boat he stepped off of had just been in a terrible storm.  The storm had rocked the boat and scared the disciples out of their minds all while Jesus slept.  The storm was on the verge of sinking the boat and the disciples finally woke Jesus up and then Jesus commanded the water and the wind to stop and they did.  

That was the boat Jesus stepped off of into that Gentile land.  That is what the disciples had just seen and now they were seeing yet another amazing thing.  A man possessed by demons; lots of demons it turns out.  They called themselves “Legion” and a Roman legion was 6000 men so that’s gotta be a lot of demons!  The man didn’t wear cloths, he lived in the tombs among the dead bodies, he was a gentile, and... on top of that, oh yeah, he had demons…lots of demons.  From the Jewish point of view this was way more than three strikes; any one of those things; no cloths, dead bodies, being a gentile... not to mention the 6000 demons was enough to make him unclean.  Unable to have a relationship with God. 

Jesus changed all that.  Simply with his presence, Jesus intimidated 6000 demons to beg for a transfer to the pigs on the hillside and then Jesus let them go.  (As a side note: This of course was the first time anyone ever made deviled ham.)  The pigs then proceeded to run down the hill and like lemmings they ran off the cliff and into the sea and drown.  Everyone was amazed.  The disciples had just seen Jesus quiet a storm and now they saw him have power over a legion of demons.  Where did this man’s power end?  Could it end?  If that is what Jesus could do to the wind and the sea and to demons, what could Jesus do to me?

That last question, “what could Jesus do to me” is the question that seized all those pig farmers and people of Gerascene with a great fear.  Jesus’ presence had already affected the people in a way they could not have liked too much.  While Jesus’ presence had cured the town demoniac and made the cemetery safe again, his presence had also just washed out Hog futures for the town.  The pork belly market sank in an instant.  The people of that town had seen their hard earned bacon drown and Jesus was the one who made it all happen.  

The bottom line fact of the matter is that the presence of Jesus came with a price.  The presence of Jesus transformed the world in which these people lived.  People’s lives were different now that Jesus was here and in the end the people made a decision and they decided that they just didn’t want their lives to be that different.  They didn’t want Jesus and his presence transforming things. Today it was a demoniac cured and that was nice, but look at the cost; look what they had to give up.  Tomorrow who would be transformed by Jesus, and what would be the cost then?  It could be someone in my family, it could even be me, but then what would that cost me?  How would Jesus transform me?

In the end, the fear of being transformed by Jesus and the fear of what that would mean and how much that would cost scared the people so much that they asked Jesus to leave.  They didn’t want Jesus’ transforming presence around anymore.  I don’t believe Jesus loved them any less after they made that choice.  He certainly didn’t give up on them.  He sent the healed man back to be with them and to keep working with them after all.  It’s just that for that moment, the cost of being changed by Jesus was higher than the people were willing to pay. 

That ends up being the hard question this lesson asks of us today; Is the cost of being transformed by Jesus higher than we are willing to pay?  We may believe that Jesus is around.  We may even see God at work in this amazing world.  But are we as individuals and us together as a church ready and willing to let him work in us?  Are we willing to allow Jesus to heal those who are broken in this world even if that means loosing everything we have?  Are you willing to have everything you have worked for, everything that you have been given, all the privilege, all the wealth, all the trappings of your life, all that you believe will secure your future run down the hill and jump into the lake so that just one other human being can be clothed and given his right mind?  We have so, so much and because we have so very, very much it makes it so very, very hard to let it go, to let Jesus transform our lives.

It’s no wonder those people were afraid.  It’s no wonder the people didn’t want Jesus around anymore.  There is, as Deitrich Bonhoeffer said, a cost to discipleship; a cost to having Jesus around.  That cost is more than just giving an hour on Sunday morning.  It is more than throwing a few dollars in the plate.  It is more than volunteering for a couple of things at church.  Those things are good... just not the whole cost.

The whole cost of discipleship, the cost of having Jesus’ transforming presence in our lives is our willingness to loose it all.  All of it; to have everything you have, everything simply run down the hill and jump into the sea.  This is not just giving up the optional stuff or the extravagance.  The cost of discipleship means giving up everything…giving up your life.  When Christ calls us to discipleship, says Bonhoeffer, he calls us to come and die.  Die to ourselves, die to our stuff, die to our greed, die to our need for control, die to insisting on things being done my way, die to our desire for more and more and more… we are called to die to all of our demons for only then can we be clothed in Christ, put in our right minds and receive the gracious gift of true and real and everlasting life that God wants for us all.  Bonhoeffer reminds us that discipleship is costly because it demands everything and at the same time discipleship is filled with grace because it leads us to the only kind of life that is a real life; one filled with meaning, purpose and worth... a life that makes a difference in the world.

I don’t really know you or your town so all I can do is leave you with some hard questions to wonder about.  They are the same questions I struggle with myself so you are far from being alone.  What is the thing in your town that causes a legion of trouble for the weakest and most vulnerable of your neighbors?  Are you ready to invite Jesus to stay for a while here in your town?  Are you ready to have him use your hands and minds and resources to send that legion of trouble off the nearest cliff?  Are you willing and ready to pay the price of having Jesus around?  Are you ready for discipleship?  Amen.  

Will we?

One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee's house and took his place at the table.  And a woman in the city, who was a sinner, having learned that he was eating in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster jar of ointment.  She stood behind him at his feet, weeping, and began to bathe his feet with her tears and to dry them with her hair. Then she continued kissing his feet and anointing them with the ointment.  Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw it, he said to himself, "If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what kind of woman this is who is touching him--that she is a sinner."  Jesus spoke up and said to him, "Simon, I have something to say to you." "Teacher," he replied, "Speak."  "A certain creditor had two debtors; one owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty.  When they could not pay, he canceled the debts for both of them. Now which of them will love him more?"  Simon answered, "I suppose the one for whom he canceled the greater debt." And Jesus said to him, "You have judged rightly."  Then turning toward the woman, he said to Simon, "Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair.  You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not stopped kissing my feet.  You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment.  Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little."  Then he said to her, "Your sins are forgiven."  But those who were at the table with him began to say among themselves, "Who is this who even forgives sins?"  And he said to the woman, "Your faith has saved you; go in peace."

Soon afterwards he went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. The twelve were with him,  as well as some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Herod's steward Chuza, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their resources.

We all love those kinds of movies where the good guy is obviously good and the bad guy is obviously bad.  We enjoy being able to pick out the evil guy by nothing more than his black top hat, cape and handlebar mustache.  We don’t even need to see him tying the heroine to the railroad tracks to know where he stands.  We love to be able to pick out the good guy too.  He’s the one wearing a white outfit and his light saber is calming green, not angry red.  These stories make things simple and in our complicated lives we like simple.  Everyone is easily identified as either 100% good or 100% bad.  

The temptation when we read this gospel story from Luke is to read it like one of those clear cut Hollywood scripts and at first, the actors in Luke’s story seem to do a good job playing their parts. The Pharisee starts out by being rude, arrogant, inhospitable and kind of a jerk, so he seems to be well on the way to being a perfect 100% bad guy.  

The woman too seems at first to be playing her part well.  She enters the room with proper humility having realized God’s love and forgiveness in her life.  She gives Jesus proper thanks for those gifts.  She gives him the respect, honor and treatment due the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.  So she too seems to be well on the way to playing the perfect, 100% good guy in this drama.  

They play their roles well at first but people just aren’t that simple.  The truth is that the Pharisee who is arrogant, rude and a kind of a jerk also, like all Pharisees, has committed the whole of his life and being to growing closer to God.  We might argue with his methods and theology but deep in his heart, the thing that drives him every minute of the day in every aspect of his life is a desire to grow closer to God.  The truth is, it’s just really, really hard to be 100% evil when your heart’s deepest desire is to grow closer to God.  

The woman too, it turns out, isn’t exactly 100% good.  Even if we do our best to make excuses for her past, imagining a horrible childhood or a series of seemingly unavoidable and tragic decisions, the truth of her life is that she became a prostitute and in doing that she hurt herself, her family, others and her community.  The reality of this story is that neither the Pharisee nor the woman is 100% anything other than 100% human.  

At the synod assembly this past weekend, instead of a guest speaker, the Bishop gathered a group of people who, when surveyed about their religious affiliation, check the box labeled “none” on the survey.  In current religious lingo, these folks are called “nones”... not the nuns with the habits, but “nones” as in people with no religious affiliation.  In New England, 75% of people choose to fill out that survey question in that way.  

One temptation when church folk think about the “nones” is to see them in a similar, simplistic, good guy - bad guy way.  The gathered group of pastors and lay delegates to the assembly being 100% “good” and those that claim “none” on their religious affiliation survey as maybe not “bad” but at least as people lacking something very important... something we church folks have got and they are missing. 

The truth about the Pharisee and the prostitute is that neither was 100% bad or 100% good... they were both 100%  human with all the good, bad, nice, mean, shine, muck and mire that humanity entails.  The other truth about the Pharisee and the prostitute is that both had something the other needed... and both needed something the other had.

The Pharisee needed to learn about the depth and breath of God’s forgiving grace and love.  He needed to learn that no one is ever, EVER beyond God’s infinite and unconditional love and he needed to learn how to be hospitable, compassionate, humble and caring.  She had all of that!  She KNEW God’s love!  She KNEW God’s forgiveness!  She KNEW how to respond to God’s love and grace and she KNEW how to be hospitable, thankful and caring of her neighbor.  Whether he recognized it or not he needed her and what she knew and understood.  Would he set aside his pride and be honest with the ways he was broken?  If he could see her as an equal and as a gift in his life, she had something special that could help him grow in faith, she could help him in his desire to grow closer to God.  

But it wasn’t just him that needed her... she needed him just as much!  His gifts were passion and an understanding of discipline.  He knew the Law could be a gift and by dedicating yourself to the law it could help you live within healthy boundaries and living that way made for a less anxious life.  He knew the peace of having God in your heart and knew rituals and the practices that could bring peace into her life too.  

Would she could dare to risk being hurt by a religious institution that had treated her badly?  If she could set aside the way of life she had fallen into and if she could see in herself that she was just as worthy of God’s love and grace and just as worthy of being in God’s presence as he was, then she too could shed the guilt, shame, fear and loneliness that plagued her; learn from him, grow in faith, and more fully become the beloved child of God she was created to be.  

At the synod assembly it became very clear from the conversation the bishop had with the “nones” and from the questions that followed that the lesson Jesus was trying to teach at dinner is a lesson the Church desperately needs in our time.  We too must realize that those outside of the Church have something that we inside the church desperately need... and I’m not talking about a check book either!  The folks that check the “none” box often have a way of understanding God’s love and grace and a perspective on faith that we need to hear and learn from and if we can do that, then eventually we may someday get the opportunity to share the wonderful perspectives on faith that could help make their lives more beautiful as well.  

But an attitude of superiority... an attitude that we in the Church are better and those outside the church can’t live without us just won’t fly.  It won’t fly because it simply isn’t true!  Those of us in the Church are NOT superior, we are no different than the Pharisee... no different from the woman... we are all just 100% human like everyone else in this world. 

And just like the Pharisee and the woman, the truth is that we NEED each other for the same reasons the Pharisee needed that woman and that woman needed the Pharisee:  To expand our understanding of breath and depth of God’s love and grace in our lives in ways we just can’t see from our perspective inside the Church!  From their unique perspectives they could help us grow in faith in ways no one inside the Church ever could!  Inside or outside of the Church we are all broken.  Inside or outside none of us have all the answers.  Inside or outside all of us need a caring community to help us make it through this life.  Inside or outside, God is working in amazing ways in everyone’s life.   

There are lessons for us that we can learn.  Lessons to be taught to us by people with experiences and thoughts and perspectives we know nothing about.  Our teachers though won’t be coming here to teach us what we need... if we want to learn the lessons God has to teach us through them we will have to go to them.  In the story from Luke we don't know if the Pharisee learned the lesson the woman had to teach him.  We don't hear if the woman learned what she could learn from the Pharisee and the story of whether we in the Church will learn what the "nones" have to teach us has yet to be written.  Will we set aside our pride, decide to take a risk, go outside our walls and seek the lessons God has to teach us through the "nones"?  That is the question for us today... will we?

Prophecy and Judgment Needed Fast and Furry-ous!

There is a need in our time to reclaim the proper understanding of Biblical prophecy and divine judgment.  To do this, the work of mid-twentieth century Biblical scholar, Wile E. Coyote S.G. can be instructive.  His unique approach helps students understand how biblical prophecy really works by arranging a humorous story in such a way that the audience is quickly shifted from a passive, observational role into the prophetic role within a few moments of the opening scene.  

In his seminal work, “Fast and Furry-ous,” Coyote immediately establishes the overarching context with a fruitless foot chase of the Roadrunner carried out with knife and fork in hand.  Seeing a direct pursuit to be ineffective, Coyote then begins a series of efforts intended to trap or trick the Roadrunner into becoming his next meal.  The first effort is to lie in wait and at the last moment hold up a metal trash can lid into which the Roadrunner is meant to collide at full speed.  The Roadrunner stops short and turns in a cloud of dust to run off in the other direction.  When Coyote then attempts to take up the chase, the Roadrunner returns at the precise moment needed and holds up the same metal lid and Coyote is the one who collides with it.  

In the very next scene the pattern of the Roadrunner actively using Coyote’s methods against him is continued as Coyote attempts to capture the Roadrunner with a boomerang.  Once thrown, the boomerang returns to ring the neck of Coyote and to further the lesson, we see that the Roadrunner has also thrown another boomerang and after he runs off, that boomerang also returns to assault Coyote.  Coyote uses this scene to both reinforce the pattern whereby his malicious efforts are used against him but also to help students understand that Roadrunner’s active participation is not necessarily needed for the pattern to continue.  Coyote then uses several scenes to demonstrate this new aspect of the lesson when he attempts to ride a rocket which ends up launching him into an overhanging rock formation and pulling a keystone from under a boulder only to have the boulder fall in the wrong direction crushing Coyote.  

At this point Coyote has first established that the proper understanding of Divine judgment is not that God guides natural disasters such as hurricanes or tornados to harm or kill one population in an effort to change the behavior of a completely unrelated population.  Divine judgment is rather the natural and often painful consequences that are returned to one group of people who have not lived in a loving, generous or compassionate way toward another group of people who are in a less powerful political or economic position.  The lack of care, cruelty and malice that one group throws at another less powerful group will, as Divine judgment is delivered, literally boomerang on the first group and at least figuratively if not literally ring their necks.  

As the lesson continues it becomes increasingly easier for the audience to not only see the natural and consequential nature of Divine judgment but also to personally take on the prophetic role.  After Coyote runs into the tunnel painting that he just created on the side of a cliff and the plunger explodes in his face when he tries to detonate the dynamite hidden in a mound of bird seed, the audience may not know the exact details of what will happen when he straps an ice making refrigerator to his back, fits it with a meat grinder and straps on snow skis but the audience is now prophetic enough to know that it will end poorly for Coyote.

  

At this point the audience has not simply heard about biblical prophecy but they have been drawn in by the story and BECOME prophetic in a similar way in which many biblical prophets, such as Jeremiah, were prophetic.  The audience was able to see the historical pattern of malice and cruelty that Coyote intended for the less powerful and knew from that history that as the Coyote continued on the same path, there would follow further reversals and misfortune for him.  

In our time, as in every time, there are historical patterns of cruelty and malice being directed at the poor, weak and marginalized by those with greater wealth and power.  As safety nets are removed and opportunities for fair wages are undermined, history reminds us that these actions eventually always lead to Divine judgment which play out in the lives of the oppressors as dramatic and often horrific reversals.  The goal of biblical prophecy is not to predict an inevitable future but instead to remind those in power of what will happen if they continue to walk the path of cruelty and malice that they are currently walking.  Prophecy is meant to wake up those in power to their Biblical calling of care for those who are weaker, unfortunate or oppressed before the judgment falls.  

We need to reclaim prophecy from those who have attempted to make it a sick joke linking hate and weather and stand up and warn those in power to change their oppressive and manipulative ways.  God does not delight in judgment and is happy to see the repentance of those who have been walking down a malicious path, but if the people, governments, corporations and organizations of this world played so brilliantly by Coyote continue to insist  on living the real world version of jumping out from behind a billboard with an ax to attack the weak and powerless, God’s divine reversal will just as certainly insure that the “beep-beep” they jump out to assault will turn out to be the horn of an oncoming bus rather than their intended victim.