August 25 -- Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost

[Chloe, submissive, ashamed, cowering at our “No-o-o-o.]

It’s a powerful image this week as we gather around the story of the woman who was bent down, pushed down for 18 years.  

The text says it was a physical ailment, but the people of that time and the many people today too, believe that our physical ailments can be manifestations of much deeper spiritual ailments — stress, pent-up anger, bitterness, shame…

And the way those religious leaders were used doing business, there’s no question in my mind that they spoke to the people in tones similar to how we would sometimes speak to Chloe when she had misbehaved:  “No-o-o-o.”  And that woman cowered physically for 18 long years (half a lifetime for most in those days).  Can you imagine?  

We religious ones — we church people — had better be careful how we speak to those who are not in and of this religious establishment...because that imposition of shame, I’m afraid, is not outdated.  (Pew Research study about a few years ago: top words associated with the word “Christian” — judgmental, hypocritical, anti-gay).  Ever experienced church shaming...if you haven’t been to church in a long time, or don’t believe the right way, or break church rules?  Have the Pharisees ever pressed down on you or someone you know?  (Please don’t ask someone, upon return from a long absence from church: “Where have you been?”)

As soon as we get up on our high horses about church or spirituality or religious practices or the non-religious, and push others down — the one we follow and call Jesus has no time for that.  We see it in our Gospel here.  We can do the same thing with the Sabbath...

There’s an amazing reversal in this Gospel from Luke — very characteristic of Luke.  Holy flipping.  Jesus takes the poor and the lowly, sick and the sorrowing, the outcast and the stranger, the weak and the bent down...and Jesus raises them up, reverses their status.  Think of poor, young Mary; the 10 lepers; the Samaritan.  Jesus takes them and raises them up, does a holy flipping of their place in the community.

And Jesus takes the proud and the strong, the rich and the showy, the arrogant and the judgmental…and he brings them down.  The text today says, “he puts them to shame.”  The one who’s ashamed is lifted up, and the one who is used to shaming others is brought down.

In other words, Jesus has no time for compassion to go by the wayside.  Whenever mercy is not being shown, Jesus steps in.  Our God is a God of mercy and compassion — showering down on us and on this world like an ever-flowing stream.  And woe be to the one who’s getting caught up in judging and shaming others, especially the weak and the lowly, the sick and the forgotten.  It’s like Jesus has this radar for judgmental and powerful types.  And he hones right in on them, and he eats with them, and he teaches them.  He stays with them.  

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I think we all have our moments in both camps, don’t we?  Sometimes we are pressed down with shame and pain, including in our self-obsession, unable to stand up straight and look around to see our neighbors in need.  (Luther’s definition of sin: self curved inward.)  Can’t see anyone else...

And other times, oh, we can see others just fine: We can see them mis-behaving, we can see them being lazy or irresponsible, or not going to church, or not being Christian enough — basically not being as good of people as we are.  

Yeah, we’re not curved inward, we’re out and up in everyone else’s business.  And failing to take a deeper look at our own lives and souls.  I think we all have moments in both camps.

And that’s where Jesus moves in.  He levels us when we’re full of ourselves, pious, hard-working, little “holier than thou’s”.  He says, “Hey, cool it, let it go, come down here with us.”  

Maybe there’s someone in your life for whom your good judgment on them seems perfectly appropriate, but your anger and frustration with them is so overwhelming, you’re so high up on your horse, you’re so right...That’s when Jesus steps in and says: “Hey, breathe; come down here with me.”  

Jesus brings the temple leaders down, he shames them, and in so doing perhaps there’s even a hidden gift there.  “You guys are getting so obsessed with the law — the Sabbath, in this case — that you’re starting to use it as a weapon.”  Remember: they were only defending the Sabbath.  Nothing wrong with that.  (We’ve just finished a whole book here in Adult Ed, which defends the Sabbath.)  Author talks about it there too, actually:  How we can skew the Sabbath (and actually miss the absolute gift that’s there).  When the keeping the Sabbath becomes a weapon or a burden and not a gift, Christ steps in.  When the Bible is used as a weapon, not a gift, Christ steps in, and says, “Where is mercy, where is compassion, where is the radical welcome I proclaim?”  I wonder if there’s any way Jesus was actually giving a gift to those high-and-mighty religious leaders, even if they failed to see it right away.  And Jesus brings us down too — has no patience for our lack of compassion and mercy-showing toward our neighbor.  Jesus steps in to crush our pride, to lift up those we have hurt, and to restore community.  This text about the woman’s ailment, about the Sabbath, is about restoring community.  (The 10 C’s are about community!)

Thank God.  There is forgiveness for the sinner, for the proud and the arrogant, and the rich, and the nosey; there is forgiveness for the judgmental and the cruel.  Thank God, because I can live up there sometimes.

And there is hope for us when we’re pressed down.  When we’re bent so low by life.  Burdened by sorrow and pain, spiritually crippled, physically pressured, hurting and longing for a better day.  Jesus steps in and gives us healing and peace.  Jesus steps in and calls us, names us, what we are:  “Daughter of Abraham, son of Sarah, child of God, stand up straight.  Look around.  You are set free of what ails you.”  

Jesus comes to you this day, friends in Christ, Jesus arrives in this place in wheat and wine, water and Word, and offers us new life, a new day.  The resurrection is real.  You have been raised up with Christ, buried with him and therefore raised with him — not just after you die, but right now.  God has turned the world on its head, through Christ Jesus!  We are given new life this day, and even you are free of your ailments — free to live in hope, free to live in trust that God is with us, that God forgives us, and that nothing can separate us from the love that God has for us.  We no longer have to shame others or cower (like Chloe) in fear, for we are children of God, released to live as the people that God has molded us to be in this world, for this world.  Alleluia!  AMEN.  

August 18 -- Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

I never cease to be challenged by the divisiveness of Jesus.  On one hand, so much language and imagery about how he’s my friend, our friend, like the old hymn -- “What a friend we have in Jesus.”  I’ve sung this together with the family of faith in their last days, as well as that great Gospel song, “Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling, calling for you and for me…”  It’s wonderful to have a God who is a friend, someone waiting for and walking with us even now.  Someone who takes us by the hand.  But if we who are not yet on our deathbeds, who have (God-willing) plenty of time and health left to share some things on this earth…if we who are actively living, have only a picture of this gentle, sweet Jesus, then we’ve traded our Bibles for just a few of our favorite songs and images!

There was a book few years ago by Kendra Creasy Dean entitled “Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers Is Telling the American Church”.  She argues, that our young people, studies are showing, are emerging and drifting away from our churches, with not much more than an image of a God who is simply “nice.”  The fancy term is Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.  Let’s just call it “Nice God Up in the Sky” religion.  This “Nice God Up In the Sky” religion, as she describes, has made its nest in the hair of Christianity, and is in fact sucking the life out of the church of Jesus Christ, living off of the complicated cross-and-resurrection core of our faith, like a parasite.  If the “Nice God Up in the Sky” religion had a creed, these would be the 5 pillars, acc. to Dean and her colleagues.  See if this sounds familiar:  “1) Sure God exists, whatever, and God watches over us from way above, 2) God wants us to be good and nice and fair like the Bible says.  3) We should also all be happy, and feel good about ourselves.  4) God’s not really involved in our lives, except when we need God to solve a problem.  And 5) if we’re good, when we die, we’ll go to heaven.”  Maybe these ideas don’t sound too off base, but know that Christian theologians, and martyrs, and scholars and saints down through the centuries — would call this creed profane and lazy.  “Nice God Up in the Sky” religion is not scaring our young people away, running for their lives, terrified of the church — there’s really nothing scary about it — it’s just not interesting, it’s not captivating or challenging, it’s not life-giving — it’s boring. It’s slowly but surely “life-draining”...like a parasite. 

I’m afraid, in many ways we could be responsible for teaching this to our kids (I certainly could be guilty as charged) — maybe because “a nice God” teaching is a reaction to the “mean, wrathful God” teaching (like Zeus with a lightning bolt) that some of us grew up with…

But this easy, nice, sweet, friend Jesus preaching-and-teaching is slowly-but-surely eroding the church, rounding out the edges, watering it down, making it harder and harder for us to even hear Jesus’ challenge today.  (I imagine preachers this Sunday — I know some — who are either irritated that this text was coming up again or make jokes about how this is a good week to go on vacation or preach on something different.  I myself joked with Marie, “Good thing so many are traveling right now.  Who wants to hear this text about Jesus bringing a sword?!”)  

But, but friends, Jesus speaks anyway, thank God!      

“What did you expect?”  Jesus asks us today, in less-than-sweet tones.  “Did you expect me to come and affirm your status quo?  Did you expect me bring you just gentle words of encouragement?  Did you expect me to take a look at how you’re treating one another and this earth, how you hoard your money, and your gifts, how you exclude one another and trample one another, how you fail to forgive, how you hurt, and judge, and ridicule, and attack one another, and simply say, well, you’re doing the best you can?  Good for you.”   

Friends in Christ, Jesus loves us too much to let us off the hook that easy, and Jesus is too alive in our world today to stop speaking to us, even if it might be hard for us to hear — with the buzzing nest of “Nice God” religion in our hair.

Just because we might be drifting in these late days in summer, doesn’t mean God is drifting.  Just in case you’re feeling drowsy, or distracted, or lost, or cynical these days…about life, about church, about the world, Jesus does not get drowsy, or distracted, or lost, or cynical — thank God! 

We are shaken to the core by this powerful text, wrenched back to life by a God who is teeming with energy and life, “Did you think I came to bring peace?”  Jesus, for one thing pulls out that “Nice God Up in the Sky” nest, rips it to pieces and sets it ablaze.  Jesus arrives onto our scenes TODAY, and rips us apart from our social circles, our family circles, our cultural circles, our political and economic circles — which can give us some sense of identity and security.  But if those circles fail to align with his agenda, then “wake up!” he cries.  

“My welcome is bigger than you can imagine, my love is wider, my forgiveness wraps around this…universe, my embrace has no end.”

And that’s going to upset a lot of people.  Jesus’ mercy is everlasting, his embrace is all-encompassing, his agenda is to set the captives free, recovery of sight, peace to the oppressed (1^st 12 chapters of Luke!), but what he doesn’t have time for, is those who stand in the way of that mission.  All are forgiven, yes.  Grace abounds, yes.  But if you refuse the path of discipleship — that difficult road of sacrificial giving and loving your enemy — then move aside.  Thank God: Christ’s realm arrives with or without our permission or our participation.  But we are nudged again this week to get on board!  Thank God.

I’ve learned and experienced in my ministry of 13+ years...that the more welcoming we get as a church, the more mission-minded we become, the more justice-seeking we act, the more we get on board — the more we upset.  At one time, it was just welcoming people of different nationalities (Norwegians and Germans mixing) — and divisions formed. Then different skin colors (black and white and brown) — and you know divisions formed.  Then in the 70’s the church worked on welcoming more explicitly women and divorcees into leadership — and divisions formed (and we’re not all the way past these historic struggles).  Now we’re working on welcoming even more explicitly the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual+ communities, and look how that’s going for us, as a church, as a nation.  The more welcoming you get, the more people you upset.  

“Did you think I came to bring peace?  What did you expect?  You know that clouds in the west mean rain…”    

What about caring for and welcoming the undocumented  immigrants into God’s embrace and into our sanctuaries? 

Or people of different socio-economic brackets, ages or abilities? What about people who don’t take care of “our” church?  Or the non-human members of this planetary society?  The more that Christ is understood as “cosmic” (as he is throughout the New Testament btw), the more divisions will ensue.  

And yet, AND YET, the mission goes on, the embrace extends, the compassion and mercy of our God reigns down on us still, and still on all those with whom we share this universe.  And despite the division that will inevitably occur when we join along side the One who first joined along side us, we will be alright.  Even in the division that our welcome may cause, even among ourselves, our congregations, we will be alright.  

We press on, friends in Christ, not because we have an agenda, not because we want to “change the world,” or the church or the city or ourselves.  We press on as Christians because of God’s agenda.  God has an agenda of freedom and grace and justice and mercy and compassion, and that has captivated us.   

That freedom locks us down ironically, it binds us together — and we can’t help but continue to be faithful, to continue in the covenant of our baptisms — that is, living among other faithful ones, hearing and tasting the Word, following Christ out into the world, striving for justice.  

WE-WILL-BE-ALRIGHT, surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses who have gone before us, following in the shadow of a God who is rich and complex, gentle and provocative, human and divine, so-much-more-than-just-nice-and-far-away, a God who is both peaceful and divisive.  Let us go now, renewed and strengthened, centered and bold.  In Jesus name. AMEN.

August 5 -- Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

Two brothers fighting it out.  [whining] “Tell my brother to give me that.”  But these are not little boys fighting and whining.  They’re grown men.  And they’re not fighting over a toy; they’re fighting over the family inheritance.”  Trying to draw Jesus into it.  (Remember triangulation with the two sisters?)

There are many things that are instructive about this Gospel text today, but what occurs to me is that the one who’s getting treated unfairly, the one who actually has a case, I think, the one who’s getting none of the family inheritance, is the one who prompts Jesus‘ parable.  The corrective story is for the brother who’s getting the raw end of the deal!  

I think you and I could figure out some ways we are that brother, the one getting cheated.  

Think about it for a moment:  How many ways are you getting the short end of the stick in this life?  How have you been sucker punched in the economic, social, familial, professional, federal, psychological boxing ring of this life?  

I don’t know about you, but my prayer to God can sometimes sound a lot like this brother who’s getting stiffed.  “God, tell them [whoever the them is] to give me my fair share!”  Housing market, job market, family life, church life, retirement, vacation, kids…”God tell them to stop jacking up the prices on gas and groceries.”  “Why don’t we get the kind of beautiful weather everyone on our trip to paradise?”

Can we be as whiny in our prayer life as this brother who simply wants his fair share...and who goes to the source to ask for it?  I mean, we can say some pretty articulate and eloquent prayers, but can the content be just as whiny?

And again, Jesus doesn’t get roped into arbitration, triangulation.  He seizes upon the bigger picture.  

When this man and (if we’re honest) you and me are caught up in this act, in this lifestyle of pining and whining for what we don’t have, for what’s owed to us, for how we got wronged and how others deserve a shaming and more, then we are getting caught in what Ecclesiastes calls the “unhappy business” of life (vanity)...then we are no longer “on guard,” as Jesus would warn, “against all kin‘a greed.”  

“Your life does not consist in the abundance of possessions,” Jesus reminds us again today.  Your life does not consist in the abundance of possessions. “Beware of storing up treasures.”

And here’s the good news:  God through Jesus has freed us in the life hereafter and even in this life, even today — God through Christ has freed us from the “unhappy business” of pining and whining...because we have been promised something much greater in our baptism:  richness toward God — faith.

Faith is a gift given to us in baptism.  It’s nothing you have to buy, it’s nothing you have to earn.  It’s just given freely to you and to me...at the very beginning  And this is an antibody against the virus of greed and vanity:  FAITH.  This will protect us from pining and whining, faith in Christ!  

This “word of God, word of life” today is like finding a most precious letter in the attic, or the closet, or the top shelf of the garage hidden among all the junk.  Colossians: You have been buried and raised with Christ, so you don’t have to keep living in a state of fear and scarcity and sadness and bitterness and clenching on so tightly to what you have, even if you have very little.  Because you have been buried (first) and then raised with Christ, this long-lost letter says:

You have been given this greatest treasure that is faith, and you are renewed this day, free to live in the image of God who created you!  

[Our former presiding bishop Mark Hanson, used to vividly describe the old coffin-shaped fonts, meant to drive this reality home…]

We die to the old [pining and whining]...and are born to the new in baptism [faith].  

How do we we live into that reality?  How do we cultivate fields of gratitude, when there are fields and fields of “pining and whining” all around us?  How, friends in Christ, can we be even better farmers of thanksgiving?  (I say ‘even better’ because there is so much generosity in this place.)  It’s not that we’re not already farmers of thanksgiving, cultivating fields and lives of generosity and seeing the abundance even when times are lean.  But this text is calling us back, again, and challenging us even more in our generosity, that is, in our “joyful releasing”.  [‘sweet spot’ story]  How can we even better share our gifts, our treasures, our inheritances, our possessions…rather than locking so much up in our barns...like that man with lots of money in the parable?  Bigger barns, more houses, more money, more things.  And what are ways that we can remain generous, gracious and thankful even when that same generosity and fairness doesn’t seem to be extended to us by the world? 

[slowly] Friends, Jesus frees us to let go...of our possessions.  

They were never ours in the first place.  And if you died tomorrow — which could happen to any of us — if you died tomorrow, would you have shared your things in this life in a way that reflects the God who loves and creates you anew?  Jesus frees us from greed.  And fear.  Jesus‘ gift of faith, given freely in baptism, is the antidote to our anger and our bitterness. 

Author Tod Bolsinger offers a few suggestions on his blog for cultivating generosity:  “Hang out with generous people.  It will rub off on you.”  I suppose that implies the opposite then too:  

Keep an emotional distance from those who are not farmers of thanksgiving.  I’ve noticed that bitter people can rub off on me also.  Hang out with generous people.  (Looks like you’re in the right place!)  

  

Bolsinger also suggests practicing generosity.  (Fake it ‘til you make it, I suppose.  Studies tell us this works with self-confidence...how about generosity?)  He writes: “Leave a big tip when you go out to dinner.  Buy [fair trade coffee] and give it to your neighbors.  Buy a struggling young [professional] a new suit or offer to pay the rent for someone who needs a helping hand.  And then thank them.  Tell them that you are doing it for yourself, and that they are doing you a favor.  Then find something that you are hanging on to a little too tight and just give it to someone.  Give away your [porcelain doll collection, or your baseball cards, or favorite shirt], or whatever.  Empty your wallet in the offering plate just for the experience of doing so.  Write the biggest check you can ever imagine to some work of God in the world, and watch how there is still food on your table.  And don’t ask for any recognition for it, because this is helping you.  Reorganize your finances so that the first tenth of every bit of income that comes in your door goes to the work of God.  I mean really tithe.  Look at it as a whole lot better deal than the rich [landlord, in our text] got.” (Which was, of course, poverty in God.)   

How is all this setting with you?  It’s hard for me, in a way, to even read these suggestions...because I can be kind of stingy.  But I’m trying to trust in the gift that’s been given to me (and you) — faith, “richness toward God”.  

Let’s stick together, siblings in Christ, let’s encourage one another, inspire one another, and keep practicing generosity together, knowing that God stays with us through it all, and that we have been freely given the riches of faith!  AMEN.