September 20 -- From Bitterness to Clean Hearts (Pentecost 16A)

 “Create in us clean hearts, O God, and renew a right spirit within us. Amen.”

Well, pick your analogous story to today’s fabulous, but potentially bitterness-inducing Gospel parable from Jesus:

Let’s say there’s a new hire at work, who comes on board right at the beginning of December.  And when the boss hands out the Christmas bonuses, she gets the same amount as everyone else.

Or...you’ve got the guy who gets a World Series ring, even with only 4 plate appearances with Nationals!  He still gets the exact same ring in October as those guys who showed up for Spring Training, and gave it all for the team day-in-and-day-out!  Happens all the time.

Children jumping contest — but everybody gets a trophy

We’ve had a tactile example this week...of the rain here in DC-Maryland-Virginia region — showering everyone/everything, regardless.   

And in this pandemic, what about all those who have got it better than you.  Who seem to be in a much better place with work, kids, school, time off...fabulous stories, but potentially bitterness inducing?

Or...you don’t need an analogous story: could easily just connect to this same story that Jesus tells today.  Every day, there are day-laborers, ready to work.  Not sure if this exists here but in San Diego, outside of any Home Depot, groups of men (mostly) are hanging out early in the morning with cups of coffee, hoping you might hire them for some yard work or project in the house...  
$20 for the day — that’s the equivalent to one denarius.  $20 — not much for a day’s wage, but it’s enough to feed a family that night at the dinner table — some rice and beans, maybe a small bucket of fried chicken.  So imagine a man doing some major landscape work instead of vineyard work, and he hires guys all through the day, and pays the ones he hires last, right around happy hour, the same wage he pays the guys he hired at 6am.

Any bitterness?  Are you above it?  Are you happy for the late hire-ons,  the shortest jumpers?

When you think of it in terms of providing dinner that night for the worker and his or her family, maybe it’s understood a bit little differently.  Seems to me that’s what the landlord in the parable was thinking.  This tells us about Jesus:

God is certainly interested in everyone having enough to feed their family around the table.  God is certainly interested in the community taking care of one another.  God is certainly compassionate and generous.  That’s what Jesus kicks off this whole story to say the realm of God is like...everyone having what they need, everyone having enough.

Do you hear this story and relate more to the land owner — what’s your first inclination, in terms of your perspective: are you too in a position to hire day laborers?  Or do you relate more to the workers?  Have you been or are you currently in a tight spot where you need to feed your family tonight or can barely eek out rent for this month?

My pastor colleague and friend Cyndi, who has always been an advocate for disability rights, and is in a wheelchair-scooter herself, shared with me that she doesn’t believe the ones who were hired last are lazy.  They just weren’t as physically attractive and able as the big strong ones who were hired first.  [pause]  “This is a disability gospel, you see!” Cyndi exclaims. The late-comers desperately wanted to feed their families too; they wanted to be hired all day too.  But someone else could jump higher, lift more, cut faster — offer more bang for your buck.  

“Are you envious because I’m generous?” the landowner asks the bitter ones.  There’s a perspective that I think we all may be able to share:

We can be envious of others’ blessings — those who seem to be doing better than me.   Family members and friends who seem to be doing better than me.  Co-workers who make more, parents who how have more, neighbors who show more...

As the temperatures drop (here in the mid-Atlantic regions), as the leaves start to change and drop, this is a season, an opportunity for growth and great soul searching.  God is working on you quietly, even with all the noise and energy even chaos all around, God is working on you, whispering:  

“Let go of your bitterness and resentment,” God’s words are deep down in our bones, “Stop worrying about what others are getting, and what you’re not getting.  Do you have enough to eat tonight?  I want everyone to have enough, you see?  And your anger and your bitterness is pulling you down, holding you back from being the fully human being I created you to be.  Let that stuff go, and share and love and enjoy...as I have shared and loved you — generously, freely, and compassionately.  That takes some work, I know,” says God, “but I created you to do this, so I know you’ve got it in you...I know you’ve got that clean heart...and I know I created a holy community for you to support you in this heart-tending work.”  

This is our time, friends in Christ — both to recognize God’s compassion and generosity, where everyone gets what they need, everyone gets enough, everyone gets to feed their families, roof over their head, the medicine they need, the education they need (I guess God gets quickly political here, if we’re paying attention, but if it’s God calling us to it, then food and clothing and health is literally theology).

Yes this is our time, friends in Christ — both to recognize and give thanks for God’s great compassion and generosity, and also this is our time to slow down and recognize God’s great compassion and generosity within ourselves...even and especially if its been buried.  Don’t dig it out — God’s compassion that’s in you — let it rest in you today, let it settle, like a seed in the soil:  God’s compassion grows in you, deep down, in and through us all, finally breaking the surface and bettering the world, offering beauty and food and companionship.  These are the ways God’s love is made known — through us!  In tangible, real ways — food and companionship...  Isn’t it amazing when a new tree you’ve planted turns from from a beautiful little sapling, to an actual source of shade, or a source of food, or a source of beauty...and maybe even into a companion or a friend?

That’s the kind of growth God’s got in store for us, friends in Christ.  

God has planted us, and grows us.  See what’s also happening?  Christ is both planted and planter!  Sheep and shepherd.  God is ultimately the gracious vineyard owner here, bestowing gifts of enough on all of us, no matter what time we arrived!  

Siblings in Christ, we entrust ourselves to God, who loves us, who showers us with blessings, brings us in, calls and sends us out...with enough.  With clean hearts to share our abundance, and this good news of our generous God whose name is Love.

This is a narrow way — recognizing, taking hold, and receiving God’s abundant mercy.  And today we continue down this winding, narrow way...together, singing our praise and thanks for the broadness of God’s generosity all the while.  AMEN.

May 17 -- Paul & Our Many Altars (Easter 6A)

Friends in Christ, if Paul was to wander through your life — your daily routines, where you spent your time and your money, where you made sacrifices: the things that bring you great joy, the things that get you really upset, and the ways you speak — if Paul was to wander down “your street”, stand at the center of your personal “town square” (the Areopagus) — WHAT WOULD HE NOTICE?

The question is not: “Are you/is anyone religious?”  The question is: “In what ways are you extremely religious?”  Everyone worships something.  The word worship, broken down, “worth-ship”.  What’s worthy of your sacrifices?  That’s what we worship.  Lots of people go to church but don’t worship God.  Because God’s not worthy of their sacrifices, the church is not worthy of their sacrifices: traveling the world is what’s truly worthy of their sacrifices.  Clothing or hobbies or housing improvements or sports or fancy alcohol or knives or guns or shoes or concerts or cars or crafts are what’s truly worthy of their sacrifices.  We all have our thing, I think.  What’s your thing?

The best way for Paul to wander down any one of our “streets” is for him to take a look at our credit card statements, right?  Our Amazon (non-essential) recent purchases.  Or however you can track how and where you spend your money.  (I was shocked at how much our family spent on food in this past year’s credit card report — not restaurants but food: organic, locally sourced, healthy food.  It’s more expensive.  We’ve admitted that’s a place we’re willing to make sacrifices.  I guess you could say it’s one of our idols.)  And I won’t even divulge all my non-essential Amazon purchases.  That’s the real “giving record,” right?

That’s where we can see where we really make sacrifices.  I know the whole, “but it’s not just about money when it comes to church” idea.

And that’s true, but so often, I think, we can hide behind that.   So much is about money...  x2 That’s why Jesus talked about money all the time!

“Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Mt. 6.21; Lk. 12.34).  What is it that you treasure?  What is it that you protect?  What is it that you make sacrifices for?  Where is your heart?
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Well, all this was true in the ancient world as well, as Paul walked through the streets of Athens, “Athenians,” he says, “I see how extremely religious you are in every way.”

But there’s something else:
Paul notices that there is an altar to an unknown God.
You see, the people of Athens — like us today — worshipped all kinds of gods.  I think it was more overt then: maybe less shame or denial about it.  They made sacrifices openly to the gods of sports, food, parties, travel, transportation, music, crafts and weather.  (BTW, living in Southern California all those years, I think we really worshipped the weather there.  I mean, people really make sacrifices for that beautiful weather, higher cost of living, etc.  And our observation, leaving that region was all these comments on how much we were going to miss the weather.  How different is that from worshiping an ancient sun god?)  That’s just one of many altars...

But there was this one altar that was unmarked.  It was like the fill-in-the-gap altar — one for everything else.

...and Paul seizes on that image to introduce them to a different kind of God.

See, it actually was in fact a fill-in-the-gap altar:  Like today, the people lived in great fear.  If you didn’t sacrifice to every god out there, if you worship at every altar — the altar of security, the altar of beauty & youth, the altar of war, the altar of food and drink and sport and weather, the altar of work...If you don’t appease every god, then trouble would inevitably befall you.
So just in case you miss one, there was this little “fill-in-the-gap” altar.
 Just in case you forgot about a god or two.  You could sacrifice at the altar of the unknown god.

       Paul seizes on that to draw them into a new understanding...
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See, it’s like, there was “something else.”  The people even knew it.  This way of living and worshiping and making sacrifices at all these altars, this way of being extremely religious was coming up short.

Don’t we see that too?  Do you ever feel that?  All these things we worship, and yet, somehow, it’s never enough?  (We’re having some real time to reflect on these during this shutdown.  During this “great pause” that this global pandemic has forced upon us...)

We’re always pouring more and more out at all these different altars?  And every god, will endlessly take our sacrifices: our money, our time, our devotion, our energy, our whole lives.  But it’s like they’re never appeased.  The gods are never appeased, and they’ll just keep taking…  (Just talking with dear friends about the tolls that stress is taking on our bodies, especially these days — I realize that not everyone is feeling stress right now amid this shut-down, some are even downright bored.  But, for so many, parents of school kids, or toddlers, balancing jobs and work from home, school, family, economic pressures, etc. the frantic pace at which we’re running around our own homes, from altar to altar to altar (it’s like all those altars got crammed into our house)…

Yeah, Paul could say it to us too:  “I see how extremely religious you are in every way!”

And, let me say, if life has had the brakes slammed on, and you’re more in the camp of twiddling your thumbs, staring at the wall, that’s certainly an opportunity for devotion to the many gods to tick up — surfing the shopping websites, buying crazy things in large amounts, consuming food, alcohol, social media, technology, instruments to fill the time.  So many altars!

Paul says it to us too:  “I see how extremely religious you are in every way!”
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But then there’s this one other little altar.  This little tiny chapel, this insignificant table in the corner.  This silly, old cross.  Laughable really, in the shadow of all the other towering altars.  

Paul seizes on that little altar, and takes that fearful theology (“talk of God”) around that altar — how that has infected Christianity now too:  fearful theology — and fills it with incarnational theology.  God is with us.  This little, tiny, insignificant altar you see here, Paul says, “I proclaim to you that the God who made the world and everything in it, [the God] who is [composer and conductor] of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands…[this God] allotted the times of [our] existence and the boundaries of the places where [we] live, so that [we may] search for God and perhaps grope for [God]...though indeed [God] is not far from each one of us.  For ‘In [God] we live and move and have our being….’”

We don’t grope for God, as if God is some object of our attaining, yet another thing to acquire [“gotta go to church to get some God in my life…”].  No, Paul proclaims here: We are IN God already.  My whole life changed with I started to accept that.  [say it again]

This little, un-named altar is an entry point into experiencing a God that is truly above all other gods!  A God who’s got the whole world — the whole universe — in a loving embrace.  A God in whom we “live and move and have our being.”  A God whose name is love, in Christ Jesus.

This is where Paul takes us...along with his ancient hearers.  Paul preaches of a God who is beyond time and space, who is above all our petty obsessions and weaknesses, who holds us even as we try to appease other gods!

This little Altar, this Book, this Water doesn’t contain God (God doesn’t live, cooped up in here)!  But they do, we confess, carry God.  This little altar, this old book, these drops of water, point us to a God who is loosed in, with, above, below, all around and throughout, under this entire universe!

We cannot encapsulate or domesticate this God of whom Paul speaks!  All we can do is give ourselves up to this holy movement — sacrifice ourselves to what we are already in God’s hands.

...Think of when children are angry and restless in their mother’s arms: there’s no use in trying to overpower her, “Just rest. Just breath. It’s OK.”  Can’t we be like restless children running from altar to altar to altar?  (Paul was once a restless Saul!)

Friends in Christ, we are truly IN Christ.  Not every day do we get to reflect on the all-inclusive, all-loving, all-surrounding embrace of a God in whom “we live and move and have our being.”  Being in Christ is where we find ourselves.  So now all we we can do is enjoy it, take a breath...and go make disciples.  Go invite others into this understanding, into this joyful awareness.  Tell them that we don’t have to make all these other sacrifices at all these other altars!  Go, make disciples by pointing them to the water and the word of life, and this community of love, this communion.  For simply in this following, there is peace.

Peace that is fuller and deeper than any other peace that any idols can offer.  Love divine, all loves excelling!   Jesus calls us away from those other loves, to come and follow, make your sacrifices here, and make disciples.  You are Christ’s witnesses to these things: you have a job to do!  It’s a blessed burden, a labor of love.

Thanks be to God, who holds us and this whole cosmos now...and forever more.  Go spread that Good News.  Breathe.  It’s gonna be ok.  Because at this altar, we celebrate...that... God’s got us.  AMEN.

January 26 -- Third Sunday after Epiphany

I’m afraid that the quick (immediate) response of Andrew and Peter, James and John is more a feature of Matthew the Gospel writer than what might have actually happened.

Matthew’s text says they “immediately” left their nets and followed Jesus…they just dropped it all, which is both inspiring and intimidating when we put ourselves into the text.

Sometimes I wonder if it was more complicated than that.  Some archeological evidence is helping to confirm my wonder:  You see, fishing was big business, although I’ve always tended to think of fishing as a lower class job, stinky and for people without much in that time, archeologists and historians are showing us that fishing was actually quite lucrative.  Because of the Roman Empire’s presence there were trade channels throughout the Mediterranean and so a fisherman was actually quite connected and well paid.  So much so that it was not uncommon to become the family business…like the Zebedee and Sons Fishing Co. we hear about here today.

If fishing was just stinky low-wage labor, I think it would be much easier to follow Jesus...

Just like if we didn’t have anything, if we hated our jobs, if our families and friendships were unimportant, and if all our stuff — our homes, our valuables, our positions, our inside-industry connections — didn’t matter to us, sure we could drop the nets and follow Jesus too!

But as it turns out, I have many things.  We all do, in this context.  Many nets, many fish, many relationships, many dollars, and many-a-healthy day left.  Many blessings. [pause]  Maybe I should title the first part of this sermon “When Our Blessings Become Our Excuses.”
So many excuses...that frankly make me want to believe it was easier for the disciples because they didn’t have all the things I have.  If they did, they never would have risked it all.  “It was easier for them; they were just fishermen.”

But maybe I’m kidding myself.  To leave behind their livelihoods and their connections to “follow Jesus” in a political and economic climate as harsh as the ancient Mediterranean world was just as frightening and risky – if not more – than it would be today.
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What are your nets, friends in Christ?  What are your excuses, blessings that you’re unwilling to yield?  What do you need to drop in order to hear Christ’s loving invitation more fully?   Doesn’t have to be just physical things...Do you have obsessions that are getting in the way?  Relationships that are unhealthy and “tangle-some”?  Anger at something someone did to you, that’s pulling you under?  Anger at God?  What stuff is holding you back from letting go and following this One who proclaims, “Repent, for the realm of God is here & now!”?

Let’s engage a little more: Type, write down and answer this question (p28 is blank).  It’s one thing to say you believe in Jesus, but what is it that’s keeping you these days from following Jesus, i.e. what are your “nets”?

That’s a private question, and rather than dropping them immediately, or bringing them up front or burning them symbolically right now, take those “nets” home.  Live with that which is entangling you a little bit longer.  Hopefully you’ve named it; that’s good.  Now live with it, for a bit more.  Acknowledge that “nets” can be a companion – probably been with you for a long while.  Even our unhealthy habits – our anger, our over-consuming, our destructive relationships – can become friends because they’re what we know.

But in time, maybe later today, maybe later this week or in a month, maybe during Lent, start to let go of those, start to put down those nets.  God will give us/you the strength.

“Nets” — I wonder about the nets the disciples were carrying, even after they left their physical nets.  What were their doubts, their fears, their anger, their child-hood wounds...  even after they got on the road with Jesus?  We can engage this text on many levels...

But the bottom line is that Christ calls us.

Jesus calls you from the safety of your nets, from the security of your boats.  Jesus calls you from your blessings...and your burdens and pains, and invites you, invites us — commands us, actually — to plunge into the deeper waters and rockier roads of ministry.  All that we do is ministry: as we work in the office, as we parent our children, as we drive our cars, and as bake our bread.  All is ministry, and Christ is calling each of us deeper.  That’s why you’re here today: because Christ has a call for you.  (If you were dragged here by your mom, then that’s God working through her :)

And sisters and brothers in Christ, while this plunging deeper talk may sound difficult and frightening, and it is certainly risky, this is God’s gift to us today.  This is God’s love and God’s grace at work in many and mysterious ways.

God is offering us a richer life in following Jesus.   Following Jesus looks different for each of us; and the specificity becomes clearer as we start let go of all the baggage, all the nets.)   But I trust it looks something like ‘deeper connections,’ as we plunge into Christ’s call —
deeper connections with our neighbors, with the earth, with our own bodies.  All, such a gift!  This is salvation, in fact!

God is offering us our integrity and our health in this summons.  (The word salvation, of course, comes from salvus which is all about wholeness and health of body, mind and spirit.)

So many of us live divided lives.  Hidden secrets, immense baggage from past experiences.  And we tend to pad that pain with stuff, we tend to busy our lives so much that don’t have to hear Christ’s command, Christ’s beckoning:  “Drop that stuff.  And follow me, Marie, Kate, Richard, John.   Let’s go fish for people.  We’re going to plunge into the world, and find lost, lonely, stuck, angry, sad, hopeless people.  We’re going to pull them out from the depths of despair, from death itself, and into the radiance of God’s grace and mercy.  How ‘bout it?  That’s the kind of fishing we’re going to do now…

“And I am here with you,” Jesus assures us, “as you leave your abundance and your pain, your lucrative busy-ness and all the noise in your lives, your determination to be secure, I am here,” Jesus says, “holding you and calling you this day to come and follow me.”

The road will be rocky.  The seas will be choppy.  But when we are held in the arms of Christ, there is true peace—the peace that passes all understanding.  That peace is yours...even today...even now...even before you drop anything and decide to follow.

But let’s let go of those nets.  That’s the gift.  God’s got you and Christ’s peace pours down on you...this day and forever.  AMEN.

September 29 -- Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost

About 12 years ago, a member of the first congregation I served gave Heather and I an car!  Actually it was an old, giant, green Dodge conversion van with plush bucket seats, and a back bench that turned into a bed with the push of a button.  Heather and I would never buy a car like this.  But the they were planning to get rid of it, offered it to the other pastor, and he told them to give it to us.  At the time it had less than only 90,000 miles.  It had tons of space for a little family who loves to take driving vacations… So we agreed.  It’s was a wonderful vehicle, for the most part.  We got lots of great use out of it – drove it all the way to South Dakota and Texas and another trip to Colorado.  But as you might imagine, the old van started to show its age.  Different things would break, and stop working — like the gas dial, just dropped one day to a permanent E.  Cruise control, one time, just decided to give up out on an open road in West Texas.  And one day, when I pulled into the driveway of our house in San Diego, this little black handle t-shaped handle just broke off of the shaft.  It had the words “Emergency Brake” indented in white.  

Today’s Gospel text is the story of Lazarus and the rich man.  Reminds me a little of Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol.  The scrooge and the poor, and the similar idea of a radical reversal of fortunes in the afterlife.  Remember Jacob Marley, Scrooge’s old partner visiting him and warning him of the chains of punishment for his self-centered, money-hungry actions?  Except, unlike Scrooge, there’s no mercy for the rich man in this story.  He fails to share his wealth, and that’s that.  The poor man goes to heaven and rich man, well, he doesn’t reach heaven.  Kind of a harsh story at first glance, especially as we proclaim a God of grace and love and mercy…
I can see some of you looking at me wondering what in the world any of this has to do with an emergency brake…

And the answer is easy.  Stories like these are emergency brakes.  Prophets like Amos and Timothy who we read today are like emergency brakes.  (go home and read them again)  They can stop us from going out of control, from breaking the emergency brake!  
These lessons can stop us from losing the ability to hold back, slow down, from losing the ability to remember whose we are, and who God is!  

We come to church to use our emergency brakes – starting always at the baptismal font, being challenged by this Word, being fed by the body of Christ at this manger-table.  We’re not just passively being reminded of something nice, we are actively taking part in God’s gifts.  The image and the sounds of emergency brakes are much more graphic – the screeching, grinding, snapping; much more vivid than just a gentle, passive reception of the Word of God, Word of Life.  Friends, we can go out of control when we reject God’s gifts, when the brake breaks!

And among God’s gifts is the stark message that we need to come to a halt, pull back…and remember that God is God.  Every Sunday we say the Lord’s Prayer.  “Our Father in heaven” – bold statement of faith, Luther reminds us – that God is above all.  God is God, not us.  Stories like these, bold admonitions like these, emergency brakes like these, grinding halts, are not threats but gifts, even if they are a little abrasive and graphic.

The gift of this Gospel text, the grinding, is that God wants desperately to release you from the clutch of greed, from the “death grip” of fear.  God longs to free us from our things, our desires, our fears, and our money.  Remember Jesus’ mourning over the rich man?  “How hard it is,” he says, “for the rich.”  Friends in Christ, God frees us from sin and death, from eternal damnation through gift of grace, but how God longs, as well, to free us now from the grip we have on our things, money, stuff, desires.  

Our earthly things give us some sense of security [pause], but in the end these are just things, just money, that will finally rust and decay.   [pause]

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about talking about tithing this week.  When I say tithing, I mean taking 10% of my income and “giving it up to God,” which biblically means offering it to wherever I worship regularly.  I lost sleep this week and worried my heart over a stewardship and wondering about just asking everyone to start tithing [period]—

Not to consider tithing, or to increase a percentage point or two in your giving this year (with the hopes of maybe doing it again next year, if you can).  That’s usually the option that’s presented during stewardship season, and I think you know that is certainly an option.  But I’ve been thinking about asking everyone to just go the whole nine yards, in your pledging!  I really wish I was preaching this sermon in a different congregation, or that a different pastor was here saying this…because for a pastor to preach about tithing is his/her home church can be perceived as the pastor campaigning for more funds, even more money for himself or herself.  (I’ve wondered if it might be a good idea to do some pulpit swaps during October.)

Please, please don’t hear this as fundraising.  Please don’t hear that I’m asking you to tithe so that we can pay the bills.  Please don’t be another one of those worshippers that tells their friends this week, that they’re not coming back to this church because all we do is ask for money.  Because, I’m not, asking for money.  [slowly]  Offering 10% at your home worshipping community, with no strings attached, is a deeply spiritual and worshipful practice.  The whole definition of worship is “offering” – offering our whole selves up to God.  This is the emergency break.  The grinding, pulling back.    

We’re not just passively being reminded of something nice at church, we are actively taking part in God’s gifts.  (Worship prof: every worship service is preparing us for death.)  Our money is so important to us.  We withhold it and send messages with it all the time, even in our churches.  But so often we forget that it was never ours in the first place.  One pastor, when asked if she was a tither, responded, “Yes, I am because then I know I’m getting 10% of my spending right.”  Friends in Christ, followers of Christ, let’s tithe together, let’s talk about it together, and then let’s pray for the faithfulness to celebrate as we watch our surplus flows right out of these doors, serving the needs of the community and the world, Lazarus’ at our gates – there are so many.  (our HOD: “Called by worship to your service, forth in your dear name we go, to the child, the youth, the aged, love in living deeds to show.”)  

There’s a story of Ivan the Terrible, the medieval Russian conqueror, who had his troops baptized with their swords in the air.  We can sure do that with our wallets, our credit cards, our investment portfolios.  “Maybe I’ll drop a few dollars in this baptismal water, but that’s it.  I’ll just give in other ways.”  Maybe we should have a ceremony later this month where we bless and even throw a little baptismal water our wallets, water stains on the leather…
The truth is, we can all tithe.  Studies actually show that the more faithful tithers usually have the lowest incomes, more able to entrust themselves to God, I guess?  “How hard it will be for the rich,” Jesus says to us.
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I like to try in my preaching to approximate the mood and the tone of whatever lesson I’m preaching on.  And I pray that I’m doing that here, that I am being faithful to this text in a season of stewardship.  Jesus is calling us out.  Calling us to a grinding halt. And while at first glance, it seems a threat or a burden, ultimately this is a gift.  Tithing is a gift not a burden (not a gift to the church, it’s a gift to you!).  The gift of this text the gift of sacrificial, first-fruits giving…[pause] is joy and peace, freedom from what we think is ours.  (“we joyfully release…”)  The gift is a surrender to a loving God who promises to hold us always, like Lazarus, to wrap us in loving arms, and to take us home.  God forgives us constantly, and our worship, that is our offering ourselves to God, is a way to acknowledge that we accept God’s embrace, God’s love and forgiveness.    May that grinding grace go with us now, protecting us, enlivening us, and freeing us to live generously and confidently in this world and always.  AMEN.

September 22 -- Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost

[“I did not see that coming” story]

Jesus throws us a curve ball today.  “I did not see that coming!”  What would you do if you had someone working under you canceling debts, cooking the books, and overspending for personal gain?  You’d fire ‘em, right?  And yet Jesus tells a stories where the crooked manager gets commended, where the reckless and selfish son gets a party thrown for him (just before this story).  

Jesus is a flips everything.  He sucks us in—we’re rooting for the owner to deal justly with this scoundrel—and then he flips everything on us...in this curious story about wealth and poverty.  How can you be trusted, how can you deal with heavenly things, if you can’t even deal with a little dirty money, with a little street ball?

Jesus, for some reason favors the poor, the dishonest, and the outcast…(but especially the poor) in the gospel of Luke.  And this is one more instance where mercy wins the day.  Mercy even over fairness.  Mercy...and shrewdness!

I was trying to think up a modern-day parable to match this one.  And here we are at the beginning of a new semester, and George Mason University right down the street, “the largest, most diverse and fastest-growing university in Virginia”—so I’m thinking about college debt, and the president of GMU, Anne Holton, former Secretary of Education for state.  She’s not exactly the owner, but let’s just say…  And some clever guy over in the business office, collecting tuition from students, gets caught embezzling some of those funds.

I did some quick sloppy numbers based on their website — tuition, room, board, other expenses, I got about $28,000...for one year at George Mason!  

And so this sly fox in the business, financial aid office gets canned.  But they make the mistake, unlike most businesses, of not making him collect him things and leave immediately.  And before Anne Holton and the rest of the school can catch up with him, he starts...forgiving student tuitions and debts!  He cuts this student’s tuition in half, that one he drops 20%, another one he cuts 40%…on his way out the door!

Messed up, right?!

In Jesus‘ story, he is commended.  Why?  Because he acted shrewdly and made friends (with the poor).  Maybe those students will end up being wealthy doctors and lawyers and take him and his family in one day.  He didn’t burn bridges at the end of his job with GMU; he built new ones.  And President Holton, in Jesus’ story, praises him for that.

This story ought to have us scratching our heads and squirming (and chuckling).  What in the world is Jesus up to?!  

Is Jesus saying we should be dishonest in our business practices?  That we should steal and lie and cheat?  I think that’s what we want to see.  I think we all have that urge to cut corners, and if a story Jesus tells gives us license, then all the better for us.

I don’t think this is what Jesus is saying at all.  And I don’t believe Luke’s first hearers thought that either.  Jesus was a master of storytelling, and he had the people on the edge of their seats, laughing, catching all the irony and nuance.  If you walk away thinking Jesus is telling us to be dishonest in business (to “keep on keeping on”, “that’s the way the world works”), then, I think, you’re missing the point completely.  
Eugene Petersen’s translation helps us understand.  He translates key verses like this: “Streetwise people are smarter in this regard than law-abiding citizens.  Constantly alert, looking for angles, surviving by their wits.  I want you to be smart in the same way — but for what is right — using every adversity to stimulate you to creative survival, to concentrate your attention on the bare essentials, so you’ll live, really live, not just complacently getting by on good behavior.” (vss. 8-9)

Jesus is saying two things: 1) be clever and 2) take care of the poor.  Do what you can with whatever you have.  Use what you have...use the contacts or connections that you have...to make the world better.  Don’t just robotically go through the motions on the straight and narrow, under the radar; take risks, build community, forgive debts, call people on their stuff, and make friends with the poor.  I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Jesus is obsessed with talking about wealth and poverty.  (Dave Cross pointed out in our devotions last week in Council that Jesus talks more about money than just about anything else!)  

Today Jesus says, “You cannot serve God and wealth.”  Give it away.  The poor are going to have to vouch for you in the great hereafter, they’re going to have to write you a letter of recommendation for the Great Feast-That-Is-to-Come.  How are we doing at taking care of the poor?  If we’re not squirming now, we’ll be squirming next week when we hear about the rich man and Lazarus!

So the dishonest manager in the story, forgives massive amounts of debts owed to his former company, right?  He forgives the olive farmer and the wheat farmer, 50%, 20%.  Do you know how that slashing of debt would have affected those farmers‘ communities and families?  Cultural anthropologists and archeologists read this story and tell us that those farmers would have gone back home and thrown a huge party to celebrate that kind of debt reduction...kind of like if your college debt was cut in half — so $28G x 4 = 112,000 for 4 years — that’s $56,000 you don’t have to pay!

This is our God:  Crazy.  Bad with money.  Bad at business.  But rich in love and mercy and forgiveness.  Some commentators say this is Jesus — that dishonest manager is Jesus — cutting our debts, forgiving our sins.  Lord’s Prayer in the Gospel of Luke: we’ve sanitized with our translation, but the Lord’s Prayer is about finances…  “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”  

Give forgiveness of debt a try again this week, friends.  Maybe it’s not financial forgiveness that you’re in a position to give.  (Maybe it is.)  But maybe someone owe’s you an apology.  And you’re waiting for it.  It would be appropriate, but they’re not coming forward.  Give forgiveness a try this week.  Just let it go — not by going up to them and telling them, “You owe me an apology, but I’m going to let it slide.”   No, just let it go.  Forgive them.  Get on with gratitude.  Don’t think about what is owed to you, but rather what you’re thankful for!  

This is what our God has done for us, friends in Christ:  Slashed our debts, forgiven our sins, and commended us.  Every single one of us has a burden of debt/shame/guilt/sin/brokenness/bitterness, and today that’s forgiven.  That’s our God — bad at business, but rich in love, overflowing with faithfulness.  

And fun.  Our God is fun.

“I did not see that coming.”       

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.

February 17 -- 6th Sunday after Epiphany

Friends, today we have Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain.  Mount?  That’s Matthew.  In Luke, we are told very clearly, very “plainly” that Jesus “came down...and stood on a level place.”  Such great vertical imagery in Luke: Jesus comes down and looks up!  What’s the symbolism there?  Seems to me that the vertical movement [+], the geography matches the content...

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And he’s really talking to his disciples, in the midst of the crowd.  That’s interesting too.  He’s not trying to preach to everyone in the world here.  Everyone in the world is welcome to listen and follow Jesus.  But here in Luke, Jesus is addressing his disciples, the text says.  That is, this those who follow him.  I would say then, Jesus is addressing us, the church, those who don’t just want to adore him or watch him from the sidelines, but rather, us who follow him, who try to do what he does.    

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And he’s not condemning the rich people of the world here, in these “woe to you who are rich” — I wonder if that might be hard for us to hear sometimes, as one of the wealthiest countries and even counties in the world.  He’s not condemning the world’s rich here.  He’s talking to his disciples, I’d say, to the church, the insiders.  As theologian and professor Eduard Schweizer points out, it’s still early in his ministry:  Jesus is issuing to his disciples “a call to action”.  

“Hey, this is what it means to follow me: not that.”  Let the “riches thing” go.  This is a path of humility and suffering, he preaches to his disciples.  It’s a path of less and not more.  It’s a path of valleys and plains not mountain peaks.  [It’s Charlottesville not Monticello...]  

And in this letting go, that Jesus is always calling us into, in this path of less not more, in this journey fraught with suffering, in this way of the cross, there is ultimately joy...even now, Jesus preaches to his people…not just after we die.

Another word for blessed — makarios in the Greek — is simply “happy”.  Try reading it that way:  Happy are you who are poor, hungry, laughed at…     What?!!

When we you let go of our stuff, of our grip, there’s more room for God.  There’s joy.  Mother Theresa: “God cannot fill what’s already full.”  Have you ever given something away or given something up, that you thought would be a real pain to let go of, but you actually felt better when you went through with it?  Travel guru Rick Steves says about packing for a trip: “No ever returns from a big trip, and says, ‘Man, that was great, but you know, I wish I had packed more stuff.’”  No, going lighter, letting go, giving up, surrendering to God actually yields a surprising joy.  

Confirmation kids and picking up trash:  “Hey, this is fun!”  

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Now, let’s also be aware, there are pitfalls in this text:  This is not to say that we don’t have to worry about the poor, because according to Jesus here, they’re all happy and blessed.  I hope you know that.  And going down that road is a reflection on us more than it is about God.  This Plain Sermon isn’t a commentary on poverty and spinning it out in a pious light.   There’s nothing romantic, beautiful or happy about poverty and systemic injustice — these are monsters that we Jesus-followers are called to confront, to name and work to alleviate and eradicate .  It’s a separate sermon, and a constant theme in Luke to see that Jesus is always against injustice and on the side of people who are poor and on the outside.  

But, this Sermon on the Plain is about us, today.  

And it’s about God, through Christ, again surprising us with joy.  Jesus is inviting us today, yet again, to let go, to give up our ways and follow instead after his way.  This is a call to action. 

So, how will you do that this week, and into this still new year?  How will you do that?  :)  Not how will you recruit or point your finger at what others should and could do.  (Sometimes there’s a tendency, for me anyway, to think quickly who else needs to hear this message… :)

What does the way of humility and mercy look like for you?  Lent is coming friends.  What do you need to let go of, in order to be in and enjoy this blessed state of poverty, hunger, exclusion and defamation that Christ is describing here? [pause]

Well, think about it like this:  What is it that weighs you down?  Or what are you protecting or hanging onto the tightest?

Dad has shared with me about his time serving as pastor to a congregation in Norway over 40 years ago...and how different that was from being at the center of the Missouri Synod conflicts back in the 1970’s:  See, in St. Louis, there was so much money and so much power tied up there at the center of the conflict.  Who was going to get whole buildings, if/when the church broke apart?  Where would all the investments go?  Who would benefit and who would be made to suffer for their actions?  Everyone was clinging on so tightly, you see?  Grasping for survival, everyone was staking their territory. Dad talks about roots: Roots can be a beautiful image, but they can also render us un-move-able, stubborn—great, oak stakes in the ground, where joy can start to drain away, because the whole focus becomes about protecting the institution, that great immovable oak.  It was a bitter time back then, in the church, and especially, in his experience, in St. Louis.

But in Norway, where I was born, it was a community of ex-patriots, a Americans far from home, just trying to be a faithful community of Christ.  Strangers in a strange land: Texans in the Arctic Circle, to be specific.  There were no stakes, no roots, no territories to protect.  There was no jockeying for power and position.  They were a mix of denominations: Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans.  In a way, they were poor and hungry, laughed at by their friends and family.  See?  And with that poverty came this freedom.  They were free to try different things, to learn from each other’s traditions, from the cultures around them, to let go and to trust, to get back to the basics of the Christian faith.  Dad talks about those years fondly, as you can tell…That icy Norwegian air, was fresh air and joyful.

I guess that’s an example of the church (of all things) becoming what we cling too in a desperate way, weighing us down.  What would it look like  for you to “let go”?  As opposed to that posture of gripping in a protective, frightened, even angry way...

That’s the symbol, btw, during Offering when the acolyte lifts up the plate.  And puts it on the altar.  Here we are God!  All of what we have is yours!  We give you thanks and praise you!  Take us now—in all our brokenness and blessing—and use us... 

And God does...and God calls us bless-ed.

Do you hear Christ’s call to action here, friends?  Can you sense the graciousness?  Not from a lofty place, but actually from a seated position...Jesus looks up at them.  On the plain.  

Can you sense the joy, the fuller life that is being offered to the insiders, that is his disciples, that his church, that is you and me?  This is what it looks like to follow!  

And it’s nothing for the fainthearted or the immobile oaks.  “Let go, put down your nets, those things you used to hang on to, and join me,” Christ beckons, “down this way of mercy and humility...and in this way you will find joy!”  

Friends, this is what it looks like to be planted instead by the water, as the prophet Jeremiah poetically describes.  Supple, moving.  The church always in procession, not static.  

My favorite chapter in Taoist literature: 

We are born gentle and weak.

At death we are stiff and unyielding.

Green plants are tender and filled with sap.

At their death they are withered and dry.

Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible is a disciple of death.

Whoever is soft and yielding is a disciple of life.

The stiff and unyielding will snap in the wind.

The soft and weak will bend and prevail. (Chapter 76)

Friends in Christ, God comes down to offer us life.  

It’s ours for the receiving, it’s ours to open our hands and en-joy.  It’s ours for free...and for freedom, this day and always, into eternity.  Thanks be to God.  AMEN.  

January 27 -- 3rd Sunday after Epiphany

If I made you close your eyes and read you passages from all 4 Gospels (the first 4 books of the New Testament)—Matthew, Mark, Luke & John—you would almost always be able to pick out which book was Luke because it would mention so frequently the Spirit.  (This week’s Gospel text starts out “Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returns to Galilee…”  Jesus has been in the wilderness, he’s coming home after the Spirit drove him, tempted for 40 days by Satan.)    

The Holy Spirit figures into Luke’s Gospel more than any other Gospel, and twice as much as Matthew and John (larger books).  (Come read Luke with us on Saturday!)  You see, the different Gospels have different agendas, and one of Luke’s main agendas is to proclaim the work of the Spirit, in Christ’s life, and then that same author, Luke, goes on to write the book of Acts, where the Spirit figures into our lives too, not just Christ’s, but the life of the church (the Spirit is Christ’s gift to the church) — many words are spoken and deeds are done by everyday Christians, because they are “filled with the power of the Spirit”.  (Martin Luther King, Jr. was just an average man, actually.  But filled with the power of the Spirit, he said and did great things.)  How does the Holy Spirit figure into your life and into your being?  Specifically, how does the Spirit “fill” you?

Imagine a man rowing a little boat wildly at sea: a metaphor for our lives (think of all we do, rowing, rowing, rowing, even while we’re exhausted).  And now envision that man putting up a sail, and letting the wind fill that sail, putting his oars back in the boat, off he skips across the water…[p] Spirit’s driving.

Heather and I have a friend from college, SH, who’s a pilot...and he also loves to sail and surf.  And one time he was describing to me in beautiful detail that moment that he never gets tired of when he flies: when the wind lifts the plane off the ground at take-off.  If you’ve ever flown, you’ve probably felt that too…[that moment], when you no longer belong to the ground...and you’re taken by the wind.  Shin pointed out that it’s the same kind of moment in sailing and surfing too…

The word spirit in Greek and in Hebrew is the same word for wind and breath: pneuma in Greek / ruach (f.) in Hebrew.

The Holy Spirit fills us like wind in our sails and allows us to move in ways and into places we never could have...by our own rowing.  

So how does that “flesh out” for you?  [p]

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Well, in Jesus’ case, filled with the Holy Spirit, he faces temptation in the wilderness (first 13 verses of Chapter 4), and then he faces, perhaps even more impressive...his hometown crowd.  For a prophet, it’s hard to return home and get any kind of serious audience.  Everybody just sees you as this innocuous kid.  Has anyone ever taken the wind out of your sails when they told everyone that they knew you when you were a teenager?  That’s what the hometown crowd can do.  There’s great power in that.  You can have power over a person when you say, “I knew him/her/you when…”  

Jesus is only about 30 years old here (dismissive of young Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez...) But he’s got something to say, in spite of the power that his hometown crowd might have over him.  And he says it.  Come back next week (for Part 2 of Jesus’ Homecoming) to hear how they respond, but here’s what he says...here’s Jesus’ Inaugural Speech agenda:

He lays out our priorities for the new term.  And it’s aggressive.  These are not gentle suggestions, or sweet promises for after we die!

This is what Jesus comes to do in the world now, with real people, in real time.  I tend to want to spiritualize this list, but I’m convinced that Jesus in the Gospel of Luke would chastise me heartily for sugar-coating and making excuses.  Here’s Christ’s agenda!  He declares war on my ease and comfort, on my unwillingness to change and take risks.  If the Gospel of John’s all grace overflowing like gallons of wine, then the Gospel of Luke is Spirit-fire.  

Here’s God’s holy-righteous, fiery, Spirit-borne agenda:  To bring good news to the poor.  (What would that be?  What would good news to the poor mean, someone without a paycheck and no back-up?)  To proclaim release to the captives.  (I’ve known people who worked as officers in prison system: I wonder how they hear that?  Know anyone who’s locked up?)  Recovery of sight to the blind (sounds the least controversial, the most innocuous, for us...until Christ tells me that I’m the one who’s blind, and when my sight recovers, by the power of the Holy Spirit, there are people and situations that I will suddenly see that need healing). To let the oppressed go free (in case you didn’t get it the first time) and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor!

This is an offensively economic reference.  The Year of the Lord’s Favor comes from Leviticus, and it’s the idea that every seven years is to be a Year of Jubilee, where every person and every nation is to forgive the debts owed to them.  The Lord’s prayer, which comes right out of the Gospels, actually says, “forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.”  The Lord’s prayer is inherently economic...and therefore problematic.  Because incurring and collecting debt is the way our system works.  Yet Christ is inaugurating something radically different!  

And all this is all because he is filled with the Holy Spirit.     

Friends in Christ, that same Spirit fills you this day!  [p] 

It lifts you and me to say, do and imagine things that we never thought possible.  It’s that moment where we no longer belong to the ground.  We are taken by the Spirit, by the wind, and we are lifted.  There’s a moment as the spirit-filled body of Christ, where we no longer speak our own minds, but rather speak the mind of Christ!  We’re taken by the Spirit, you see.

My own mind usually suggests caution and retribution...but we are of one mind in Christ, so loving our enemy is Spirit-borne.  That’s not me rowing wildly alone.  I can’t love my enemy by myself, but with the community and the Spirit, I sail.  

My own mind might suggest shrewd financial dealings that always benefit me and the people closest to me...but we are of one mind in Christ, so we share our wealth freely and joyfully.  That’s not me panting breathlessly on the sea, wondering how I’m going to make it.  I can’t give generously by myself, but with the community and the Spirit, I sail.

My own mind might suggest isolation, cut-off, from the messiness of the city, of civilization, of community that are naturally not perfect, to say the least.  It’s cleaner to just go it alone.  “Let me just paddle here!  And you paddle over there!”  [p] We can’t live faithfully together, on our own accord.  We can’t do church on our own accord.  We’ll tear each other down, break up.  But with the Holy Spirit, we sail.  We lift upwards, we trust, we hold each other, and we soar.  

With the Spirit, we hear the Gospel, and our sight is restored.  

With the Spirit, friends in Christ, we are set free, even if that makes us uncomfortable!  We are set free.

Praise the one who frees us, this day and every day.  Praise the one who brings light to a weary world.  That light is ours, and it’s ours to share!  AMEN.          

October 14 -- Twenty-First After Pentecost

Grace to you and peace from God, our only Source and Ground.  AMEN.

“How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God.” Ouch!  In one of the wealthiest counties in the nation, in one of the wealthiest countries in the world.

“Easier for a camel…than for a wealthy person...” How would you explain this...say, to children?  How do you explain it to yourself?  (Actually saw the eye of a needle in a museum in Rome…but, not much help...)  What’s Jesus really getting at here?  This is worth our reflection, and we’ve gotta wrestle with this.   But let’s start by acknowledging “Jesus loved him” (vs. 21).  In fact, that’s the only instance in all of Mark... 

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A couple years ago, I participated in a Gathering confession, like we here at the beginning. But these words, I’ve never been able to forget: “God, we hang on to and save up our money and our possessions as if you didn’t even exist.  We cling to our riches and our earthly things as if you’re not even real.”   

I think what Jesus is saying to the rich man in the story -- and to us who have money and things too -- that’s it’s even harder for us because we can fool ourselves into thinking that we can really secure and protect ourselves.  With pension plans, and insurance, with airbags, and security alarms, with a strong military and police force, with trusted financial advisors and back-up plans, and investments and security cameras, with brilliant doctors and nurses, plenty of warm and rainproof clothes and roofs over our heads…[pause] and with a clean record to our name: “I’ve kept all the commandments, never broken the law, if I did it was so minor and wasn’t even a big deal.  I pay my taxes, and I even go to church.” 

So, I really think I deserve all this...that I’ve worked for!   I can at least totally justify why it’s OK for me to have it all…

“With all our stuff, with all our money and privilege, who even needs God (except as maybe a sweet grandpa in the sky, who benignly loves us and throws a few reminders at us once in a while about how we better behave)?”  The poor and sick need God, they’ve got nothing else.  But the healthy and the wealthy?  “Who even cares if God’s even real or not?”  Are you getting the energy around this confession?

“God, we hang on to and save up our money and our possessions as if you didn’t even exist.”   

And today we hear Jesus sigh: “How hard it will be for those of us with wealth to enter the kingdom of God.”

Our possessions and our money become like a blanket that shields us from the deep truth that all we have and are comes from God, belongs to God, and returns to God at the last.  

Truly trusting in God is even harder when we’re wealthy (and I’d add in healthy).  This is what Christ was getting at:  Entrusting ourselves to our Source and Ground, even now...  

So what might this all look like for you, as you use and share and spend money?  As you make decisions about the future?  How are you doing these days with trusting in God?  Does your bank statement reflect that too?  “Lord, I’ve kept all the commandments!”  He’s fishing for that pat on the back.

But Jesus doesn’t give it so easily.  Jesus doesn’t let him off the hook.  The rich man in the story went away sad.  And he didn’t get to hear what Jesus said next…

We do:  Jesus sighs and comments for a moment on how hard it is for people how have a lot of stuff now to trust God.  Then the disciples — namely Peter — takes his turn at fishing for a pat on the back.  “We’ve left everything and followed you!”  Nope.  He doesn’t get it either:

Finally, we can’t rescue ourselves... 

Friends in Christ, this is about God doing the rescuing.  God being the final provider of shelter, security and eternal safety...even now.  God’s the ultimate security guard, security system, God’s the ultimate nurse and doctor and advisor, the true back-up.  For us it’s impossible, but for God, sisters and brothers, even we can be saved.  Even we can live free.  Open and trusting.  Peaceful and honest.  Naked before God.

Luther’s definition of sin was the self turned inward.  Suspicious, anxious, scared, protective, paranoid...and then all the behaviors that come as a result of that deep-seeded fear.  

I love to compare that with our little lab-mutt, Chloe.  She embodies trust.  Chloe rolls over on her back, fully exposed, naked and entrusts her whole little life to me!  For a while there, we had an issue with peeing on the floor, and we have a dear friend who is our personal dog-whisperer.  Andrea, told us that especially with her breed, these accidents are actually communication:  her way of telling us that we have her absolute submission, “I’m all yours, here’s everything I have.  I am literally emptying myself for you.”  [too much?]  

How would that look for us?  What if that was a metaphor for how we worshipped God and served our neighbor?  Go in peace, serve the Lord…[empty]!  What would that look like?  

“How hard it is” even to imagine, right?  I mean we’re so much more guarded and controlled than Chloe.  So much more turned-inward and blanketed with stuff, I’m afraid, too.  

[open hands]  “God, how can we trust you with the same self-emptying as a sweet, loving and submissive dog?  Help us to use and release money and handle our affairs as if you really did exist, as if you really are real!”  That’s our prayer. 

And sisters and brothers in Christ, I hope you know — and if you don’t, I’m going to tell you now — I hope you know that God does love us and forgive us, even us wealthy ones!  Just as we love and will do everything we can to protect and shelter and save our little Chloe, so God loves us even more!  You know that, right?  

God loves us and grieves to watch us live all clenched and curled up.  God graciously waits for us to roll over, even today, and entrust ourselves, into Christ’s everlasting providence and forgiveness.  Because the sooner we do that, the happier we’ll be: that’s when we enter the kingdom!  It can happen even in this life, even on this earth, even amid these headlines and developments and struggles.  That kind of love, that kind of grace, that kind of rescue, can only come from God -- who is for you, who forgives you even when you struggle to surrender, even when you’re ashamed to be naked, even when you can’t let go or roll over, even if you go home sad.  Remember, Jesus looked and the rich man, and loved him.  He loved him...and then invites him to trust even more.  

Our journey continues, friends in Christ, and we are not alone.  Our journey continues together, and through it all, God stays with us...always.  Peace amid the storms.  AMEN.