Don't Give Up!

I am deeply indebted to the scholarship and thoughts of Kathryn Matthews Huey, D. Mark Davis, Meda Stamper, and David Kalas.

Nothing pithy or humorous to say. Just encouragement: Don't give up...

LUKE 18:1-8

Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. He said, "In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, 'Grant me justice against my opponent.' For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, 'Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.'" And the Lord said, "Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?"

This is the Word of the Lord.

There are some beautiful representations of prayer in classic art. No doubt when I say the words “Praying Hands,” either a painting or sculpture of hands pressed together in an attitude of prayer comes to mind – we've all seen it, haven't we? Or the familiar painting of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, kneeling at a rock, face turned toward heaven. Or an elderly gentleman at a table, clasping his hands, a loaf of bread in front of him.

There's nothing at all wrong with these kinds of representations, any more than there is anything wrong with these kinds of quiet, dignified prayers. Our Gospel reading today has nothing to do with these kinds of prayer, though.

We begin with a picture of a judge who isn't much of a judge. When you and I hear the word “judge,” we picture a man or a woman in a black robe, gavel in hand. As I understand it, for people in Judea the time of Jesus, the leader of the synagogue was called upon to mediate disputes among people in their village. The priests of the Temple in Jerusalem were judges as well, many meeting together in the Great Sanhedrin to hear and decide matters of religious and civil importance.

And yes, injustices abounded with these different judges – the High Priest owed his job to the Romans – in fact, Pilate kept the priestly garments under lock and key, and if the Roman Prefect didn't like what the Chief Priest was doing, he simply replaced him. Even so, scholars and historians note that the priestly class in Jerusalem lived sumptuously off the proceeds from the Temple tax, and was thus quite dedicated to keeping the status quo.

By stark contrast, the widow had, quite literally, nothing. John Pilch writes that the “word for 'widow' in Hebrew means 'silent one' or 'one unable to speak.' In the patriarchal Mediterranean world males alone play a public role. Women do not speak on their own behalf.” Women could not own property or work to earn a living. Without a husband or a male child to support her, the widow was dependent upon the kindness of the synagogue or Temple for her basic daily needs.

Now, of course, we don't know who this woman's opponent was, or what the person had done against the widow, all we are certain of is that (a) this judge doesn't care, and (b) the widow doesn't care that this judge doesn't care. She has a need, the judge can address that need, so she is by cracky gonna get her need addressed!

\You can just see this widow waiting at the judge's door every morning, first in line. Maybe she interrupts him again at lunch, and maybe every time she is turned away she gets back in line again, so by the end of the day she has been turned away by the judge several times. Maybe she knocks on his door during supper. Maybe she makes a point to sit in the front row at they synagogue and stare at him the whole time...

After awhile, the judge gets heartburn every morning because he knows who is gonna be there when he opens his door. He hears her voice in his dreams, he is beginning to lose sleep – the Greek for where the judge says “...so that she may not wear me out...” has, as its primary meanings, “to beat black and blue, to smite so as to cause bruises and livid spots.” He is feeling verbally beaten up by this widow's constant haranguing! So for the sake of his own health, he gives in and answers the widow's request.

Perhaps the first time this widow stood before the judge, she did so properly, following decorum. Once he turned her away, though, she was faced with a hard choice: give up, and let her opponent keep whatever she had taken from the widow, or keep fighting for her rights.

One of the principles I taught in sales is that, most times, people will take the easiest option given to them. That's why the best salespeople give only the illusion of choice: So would you like the red one or the green one? And when faced with opposition, either real or imagined, the easiest option for humans is to give up, find a better way, or settle for no way at all.

But if Moses had given up after that initial, disheartening encounter with Pharaoh, the Hebrews would not have been freed. If the children of Israel had given up marching around Jericho after five days, the walls would not have fallen. If the Syrophonecian woman had given up when she received no response — or a negative one — from Jesus, her daughter would not have been healed. If, following the coming of the Holy Spirit, the apostles in Jerusalem had given up at the first sign of opposition, the church there would have floundered while they cowered. If Paul had given up his missionary efforts as soon as he encountered difficulty, untold numbers of individuals and communities would not have heard the good news.

So yes, maybe surrender is easy, but giving up is the easiest, quickest way to lose. And not giving up is a basic key to victory in any sense of the word.

At the point in time Luke was writing his Gospel, people were probably starting to feel discouraged. Everyone expected Jesus to be coming any day now, but time wore on and no Jesus. They were tired of waiting for the deepest hope of their hearts, and it just wasn't happening. They were tired of being persecuted as a tiny little minority in a great big, powerful empire. They were anxious and suffering.

So this parable is most decidedly not about how to nag God with our repeated requests so, eventually, we'll wear the Almighty out and God will give in and give us what we want. Rather, today's passage is about waiting and not being discouraged, not losing heart.

Society may have told the widow that she was a nobody without a voice, but she knew otherwise, and her persistence helped her hold on to that knowledge: Barbara Brown Taylor says, “She [was] willing to say what [she] wanted – out loud, day and night, over and over – whether she got it or not, because saying it was how she remembered who she was.”

One of the doctrines of Calvinism, which serves as the basis for our Reformed theology in the Presbyterian Church USA, is “Perseverance of the Saints.” This doctrine has been taken to mean a lot of things, like “Once Saved, Always Saved,” or evidence that people who may fall away from the faith were never “really saved” in the first place. But I rather see the idea of “Perseverance of the Saints” as an encouragement, reassurance that, for the Christian, staying the course is worth it.

Our New Testament Lectionary reading, from Second Timothy, follows on this theme of persistence, not giving in or giving up. Paul writes to Timothy, “In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I solemnly urge you: proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable; convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching. For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths. As for you, always be sober, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, carry out your ministry fully.”

Do you hear how those words stand out? Proclaim, be persistent, with the utmost patience, endure, carry out...

Don't give up. In the face of prayers that continue to go unanswered, and we don't know why, don't give up. When justice is slow, when good things happen to bad people and when good people just keep getting bad things, don't give up.

Jesus ends the parable with a question: “...when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

Faith is not about our doctrines, faith is not about what we believe. Marcus Borg puts it best: “you can believe all the right things and still be in bondage. You can believe all the right things and still be miserable. You can believe all the right things and still be relatively unchanged. Believing a set of claims to be true has very little transforming power.”

Rather, faith has to do with relationship. With giving your heart and your trust, your radical trust, to God. Soren Kierkegaard says that “faith as trust is like floating on a deep ocean. Faith is like floating in seventy thousand fathoms of water. If you struggle, if you tense up and thrash about, you will eventually sink. But if you relax and trust, you will float.”

Faith as trust is trusting in the buoyancy of God. Faith is trusting in the sea of being in which we live and move and have our being.

In this sense, then, persistence in prayer has very little to do with what we pray for. Sure, the content of our prayers is important, but part of what we learn as we grow in relationship with God as we pray, and pray, and pray, is how to pray. Prayer is one of the ways we remind ourselves of who we are, and prayer shapes our hearts in a way that reflects the heart of God.

It bears repeating, then: don't give up. God, who is not at all like the unjust judge, doesn't move in our time frame, no, and sometimes the answers to our prayers don't come, or they seem to come in ways that make no sense.

Don't give up. We are promised the Holy Spirit, we are promised justice, and we are promised the now-and-coming Kingdom of God. We are precious to God, and these are the best gifts that God can give to us.

Don't give up.

The Tenth Leper...

This is a reworking of a sermon I first gave in October of 2010. I rethought some of the text, so it is different, but it would be disingenuous to not point out that I am basically pulling this from what my first preacher-mentor called "The Barrel."

I really wanted to say something about the "lepers" in our society. Hopefully, those who hear and read can make the connections. But it is one reason I enjoy preaching passages about leprosy - in seeing the person behind the "uncleanness," in daring to touch, in daring to heal, Jesus showed amazing and life-altering compassion for the marginalized, the hated, the forgotten, the despised. I cannot but believe that if we in Western Christian culture were to emulate that active love-as-a-verb, no one would ever be in the outer darkness of society again.

LUKE 17:11-19

On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, they called out, saying, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!" When he saw them, he said to them, "Go and show yourselves to the priests." And as they went, they were made clean. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus' feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus asked, "Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?" Then he said to him, "Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well."

This is the Word of the Lord.

On the dusty road that wound its way to Jerusalem, Jesus and his disciples topped the hill and trudged down into a cluttered gathering of houses, shops, and animals. Even out here in the borderlands, this arid “no man’s land” between Galilee and Samaria, word traveled ahead of Jesus, and they could see people clustered around the gate of the village.

Everywhere Jesus went, a crowd was sure to be waiting, hoping to see a miracle or perhaps get a free meal. The disciples could hear them begin to call out as Jesus neared. Anyone else would have found their cries a reason for cynicism – always wanting a miracle, a sign, bread from heaven, proof that he was the Messiah. But the disciples knew that all Jesus was interested in was another opportunity to preach about the Kingdom, to do the work of his Father, and to get on to Jerusalem… and as confusing and terrifying to all of them as that prospect was, they trudged onward with Jesus.

Jesus began to speak, and the crowd fell silent. In the distance, the disciples heard a new noise. An unwelcome noise in that day and age. Bells tinkling, and weak voices calling out, “unclean! Unclean!” The crowd around the shabby gate recoiled in horror at the sight of the ten lepers, swathed in rags, raised their hands in unison and began to cry out to Jesus, “Master, have mercy on us!”

The hot wind swirled dust around the feet of Jesus and the disciples. After a few moments, even the lepers fell silent, waiting to see what Jesus would do. Finally, Jesus spoke: “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” 

The lepers paused, looking at Jesus a long time before they finally turned and trudged off toward the synagogue on the other side of the village.

The disciples felt the weight of the crowd’s disappointment. They had hoped to see something astounding, and the whole incident passed with nothing at all very interesting happening. The grumbling had already begin, an undertone to the sound of Jesus beginning to teach.

The crowd didn't see what was happening just a few yards behind them. The lepers had stopped, stock-still, staring in shock and joy at one another’s faces and hands – the scars and open sores of the leprosy were gone! Their skin was a healthy brown, not a mark in sight! At a dead run, nine of them tore off toward the synagogue, already shouting for the leading rabbi.

No one is exactly sure what Biblical leprosy was. The 13th chapter of Leviticus describes several different diseases, including forms of psoriasis, and the text appears to lump some forms of mildew into the mix when discussing leprosy. What we understand today as leprosy, or Hanson’s disease, is curable with multiple drug therapies. According to the World Health Organization, the number of people affected by the disease is steadily falling.

But the problem with leprosy in that day and age wasn’t simply that the people who had it were sick. No, the real horror of leprosy was that the people who suffered from leprosy were believed to be cursed by God, to be suffering punishment for their sins. They were instructed to wear rags, to ring a bell and cry “unclean!” wherever they went as a warning to others lest they, too become unclean, the leper was required to live apart from the community, and excluded from worshiping God. Far from being pitied, lepers were feared, hated, loathed, despised.

The Jewish Law instructed the leper who had been cured to go to the priests, to be inspected, and to make an offering of thanks. Everyone knew this, and those lepers who still had hope dreamed of the day they could go and be pronounced clean, and rejoin their families and their community. Stories always circulated of this one or that one who had been pronounced clean, but like all urban legends, no one seemed to have firsthand knowledge of this happening – always a friend of a friend who lived three villages over, my brother-on-law’s cousin’s accountant’s sister, that kind of thing.

Then the lepers began hearing about a traveling rabbi who had done the impossible, touching a leper and healing him instantly! Could it be true? As time wore on, and the stories of this man grew more frequent, it certainly seemed more and more possible. If this was the same man who was said to have brought sight to the blind, cured the lame and even cast out demons, surely he could even make the unclean pure!

When the news came to the band of lepers that Jesus was coming, they decided it was high time they took a chance on this teacher – perhaps he was a prophet, perhaps he could cure them as he had others.

So they rang their bells and cried their cries, and confronted, at a respectful distance of course, this miracle making man.

When Jesus simply told them to go and show themselves to the priest, they were a bit puzzled, of course, but they turned and went, because if you learned anything from the story of Namaan, it was that when a prophet gave a leper an instruction, you did whatever you were told.

And it was in that singular act of faith that they were made whole.

I have always wondered about the other nine… like Jesus, I wonder why they, too, didn't come back and fall at his feet. I assume that they went ahead to see the priest… that was, after all, what the Law demanded. And it is easy at this point to sound cynical, to say that it wasn't the Law that cured them, it was Jesus, how could they think of following the rules at a time like this… but…

One of the things I hope I have conveyed whenever I have spoken about leprosy was just how horrible a disease this was. Whatever it actually was, and we really don’t know, the person with leprosy wasn't simply sick. The person with leprosy was damned.

Think of it – the person who contracted leprosy had done nothing wrong. Yet in the mere act of becoming infected they were forced from their community, singled out for hatred, and denied access to worship – they not only lost their home and family and job and everything they held dear, they were denied access to God as well!

I think of the picture Jesus drew of those not allowed into the Kingdom in the last days, like in Matthew’s eighth chapter; they are “cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” That kind of hopelessness, that kind of loneliness, that kind of bereavement. All because they got sick.

I can imagine that, the second they realized that the leprosy had gone, thoughts of seeing their spouses and their children, their homes and their friends, after all these years, everything that was finally possible flooded their minds and all they could think of was getting home right now! I can imagine a whoop of joy as they set out at a dead run to find the priest, to be given the freedom they had missed like a drowning man misses air.

Nine run off, and one man stands, silent, looking at the clouds of dust their ratty sandals kick up.

The Scriptures tell us that he was a Samaritan, and while this is a significant point to the narrative, he was not all that different from the nine, who (we can assume from the way Jesus speaks about them) were Jewish Galileans. This man would have had a home, and a family he loved, and worked that provided for his loved ones, and a place he went to worship God, and yes it was the same God the Jewish people worshiped; just worship interpreted in a different manner.

He had thus lost the same things as everyone else had when he became sick, and he had just the same opportunities opened wide for him in this moment.

But he didn't run away. This man turned back.

No, that isn't accurate. I don’t think he turned back, looking at the crowd, hearing Jesus speak while calculating his next move. There wasn't an internal debate about waving to Jesus as he strolled across the border into Samaria.

There is some discussion that, since he was a Samaritan, going to a Jewish priest wouldn't have done much good – after all, Jews considered Samaritans unclean anyway, and a priest wouldn't pronounce him clean of that, ever. There is truth to this, of course, but I don’t think the Samaritan spent any time thinking about this.

I think, I imagine, that this man, alone among the ten, understood all that had happened.

We can speak of “sin” in a couple of different senses. We can speak of actions or inactions that are sinful – murder, adultery, and so on… and we can speak of sin as a state of being – the state of separation from God.

We Resurrection people understand that it is in that state of separation, when we were furthest from God, at our most despicable and unclean, that Jesus Christ died for us. God in Jesus Christ loved us at our most unlovable, and though we did not deserve it or know to ask for it, the blood of Christ cleansed us from our unrighteousness, destroyed the barrier of separation caused by sin, and brought us in to right relationship with God.

What happened to that one formerly sick man on that street in that nameless village that day is a tangible representation of what Jesus Christ has done for us all. And while any statement concerning the thoughts of that Samaritan is purely conjecture, I can fully believe that, in that moment, somehow, he knew it.

Those other nine, they saw what had happened for them in the immediate, in the temporal, and yes, it was glorious. But that one man, maybe his first thought was being able to once again worship on Mount Gerissim, to offer his sacrifices and songs of praise… to feel connected to his Creator once again.

So no, he did not simply turn back, he ran back, shouting praises at the top of his lungs, falling flat on his face at Jesus’ feet, lost in the joy of the gift of life and wholeness he had been given.

Barbara Brown Taylor puts it like this: “[Nine] behaved like good lepers, good Jews; only one, a double loser, behaved like a man in love.”

For this one man, no priest would do. The priests hadn't given him life. What that Samaritan did was return, at a dead run, to the source of his life – the feet of Jesus.

Martin Luther was once asked to describe the true nature of worship. His answer? The tenth leper turning back.

Worship is response. We don’t worship because we hope God will save us, we worship because God, through Jesus Christ, has already saved is, is saving us, and will on the last day save us.

And worship is acting out our beliefs. While it is true that we are here in this place at this time for the purpose of worship, the things we do and say and sing here are not all there is to say and feel and experience when it comes to worship.

Worship, for the person who is daily growing in relationship with Christ, is lived in the moment, every moment of every day. It isn't a ritual, it can’t be taught. You can't really tell someone to be thankful, you can’t really instruct in a life of worship. That would just be putting on an act. Thankfulness, worship, comes from within. Worship is an act of praise, and it is an act of service – we worship when we sing or pray, yes, but do we not also worship when we give, when we serve, when we speak?

Birds don’t sing because they've learned how. Birds sing because they have a song. The tenth leper didn't worship at Jesus’ feet because he was told to, he worshiped because he was in love.

May God grant that you and I realize that we, too, have been given our life as a gift from Jesus Christ, may we, too, sing because we have a song, and may we, too, spend our days falling in love.

God Ran...

My thanks to Barbara Brown Taylor,  Roger McCort, and Jean Moon for insight on this sermon. It was first preached in 2010, and Roger and Jean's comments on the blog helped me with this edition.

The image of God running fascinates me.

Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, "This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them."
So he told them this parable:
"There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, 'Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.' So he divided his property between them. A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. But when he came to himself he said, 'How many of my father's hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands."' So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. Then the son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.' But the father said to his slaves, 'Quickly, bring out a robe-the best one-and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!' And they began to celebrate.
"Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. He replied, 'Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.' Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. But he answered his father, 'Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!' Then the father said to him, 'Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.'"

This is the Word of the Lord.

Our God is a God of the unexpected. An extravagant, overwhelming, breathtaking God!

Now, this is easy to see in our Gospel reading this morning; after all, the parable of the Prodigal Son is one of the best-known, most-preached parables in the Gospels. We approach it as a parable about repentance, most of the time, because to our 21st-century Western minds, that's the obvious message: no matter how bad we mess things up, if we repent, God is faithful –eager, even – to take us back, to restore us to fellowship with God.

And that’s true, of course. Yet as you might expect, there's more to this parable than meets the eye.

Remember that when Jesus told this parable, he was speaking not to 21st-century American urban and suburban Protestants, but to first-century Middle Eastern Jews. Most of those listening to Jesus were farmers who worked and lived on land that had been in their family for generations untold. In their society, one didn't grow up and move away, one didn't strive to make it alone, to be self-sufficient, independent, autonomous. Each generation took the place of the one before it on the land, raising the next generation to do the same after. Your livelihood, your status in the community, your identity, all of this came from the soil.

So as the parable begins, the listeners are scandalized. For a son to refuse to fulfill his duty to the family was reprehensible. Horrible! And it gets worse! The patriarch of the family, the father, held a place of honor in society. Patriarchs didn't run. Patriarchs didn't get up from the table when a guest arrived. Patriarchs did not plead with their sons, they told their sons what to do, period. And a son would never, ever receive his inheritance while the father was still alive! The rabbis had a saying: “three cry out and are not answered: he who has money and lends it without witnesses; he who acquires a master; he who transfers his property to his children in his lifetime.”

Yet the son makes this demand, and the father complies. Now, dividing the inheritance meant more than just writing his son a check. The father had to divide the land, then watch as his son put that land up for sale… there was no way the community could not see the shame, both of the disrespectful son and the father who could not control his children. I mean, honestly, they would have said to one another, who ever heard of such a thing? What is a bag of gold when you have land? Who ever heard of such a thing?

And of course the son throws his money away, losing it all to Gentiles, no less, and of course he is reduced to wallowing in the mire with pigs. That’s predictable, after all. And up to now, the people listening to Jesus are right there with him. As scandalized as the crowd is, there is really not too much out of the ordinary with this scenario. It happened often enough that the Talmud describes a ceremony to deal with it—a qetsatsah ceremony, to punish a Jewish boy who loses the family inheritance to Gentiles.

Here’s how it works. If the offending son ever dares to shows up in his village again, the villagers can fill a large earthenware jug with burned nuts and corn, break it in front of the prodigal, and shout his name out loud, pronouncing him cut off from his people. After that, he will be a cosmic orphan, a nonperson, someone better off going back and living with the pigs.

Perhaps some of the people who have been around Jesus for awhile hear the Prodigal's words, “I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands,'” and thought that making the son a hired servant would be a very compassionate, loving thing to do. Certainly better than qetsatsah, and perhaps the son could work enough to buy back a little of the land he'd lost. Perhaps, in time, if the son is faithful in his service to the father, he can earn a little honor back for the family name. Surely this is the message of the parable! That even when we sin and dishonor God, we have the opportunity to work our way back into God's good graces. What a message of freedom, what a message of hope!

But they ain't heard nothin' yet!

Our God is a God of the unexpected. God is extravagant in mercy, overwhelming in love, breathtaking in compassion. The son returns, and before he can approach the house his father does that thing that patriarchs do not ever do! He runs! Runs! Crashes into his son with a warm embrace, and before his son can get out his well-rehearsed speech, his father has covered his rags with a robe, has put a ring on his finger, has killed the fatted calf!

I've said it before, I'll say it again: preposterous! What kind of patriarch – what kind of father – what kind of God – would do such a thing? Ignore propriety, thumb his nose at tradition, flout the rules? You don't just forgive, man! There are procedures for this kind of thing! There are expectations! What will the neighbors think?

Propriety? Tradition? Expectations? God is extravagant in mercy, overwhelming in love, breathtaking in compassion. There are more important things than rules, than what the neighbors will think!

So the fatted calf is killed. That calf would have been enough to feed the whole village. Roger McCourt says that the fact that the father held this party and fed the people of the village served to begin the process of reconciliation between the son and the people of the community he had broken faith with.

And while the party is going full blast inside, the other son stands outside. He is angry, and isn't afraid to let his father know all about it! “Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!”

Sure, we take the high road when we read this, we deplore the faithful son for refusing to take part in his father's joy, but can we not also admit that we understand – even agree with – his point? It isn’t fair. None of this – the dishonor and embarrassment to the family when the younger son sold off his inheritance, the whispered reports of that younger son’s debauchery, and the galling sight of him – skinny, smelling of pigs – walking right down the middle of the road right there in front of God and everybody – none of it was right or proper or fair.

But sometimes? Sometimes love isn’t fair, is it?

I think that the elder son’s problem was that he didn't understand his father's heart. He had only seen his father as someone to work for and obey. He obeyed the rules, but he did not have a close relationship with his father, and all that father wanted was a relationship.

God is wanting a relationship. God wants to have fellowship with us, to fill us with God’s love, fill us with his Holy Spirit. God delights in us. God desires our time, our adoration, to walk and talk with us. Jesus died to reconcile us to God, so that wall of separation between us would be torn down.

Peace and reconciliation always involves change, always provokes a crisis. You can’t have peace and stay exactly who you are, or even who you want to be. Sometimes you have sacrifice things as real as land that has been in the family forever. Sometimes you have to sacrifice honor and even self-respect. Sometimes you have to run like crazy to protect your loved ones, even those loved ones who have done you irreparable harm. It’s all a matter of priorities, and for this father, reunion is all that matters. Extravagant, overwhelming, breathtaking reconciliation. Reunion that finds the lost and brings them home. Reconciliation that brings the dead back to life.

Oh, yes, it feels good to stand in the yard. It feels good to know who’s right, who’s wrong, and which one you are. But there is a banquet going on. You can hear the music and the dancing even out in the yard, and there is plenty left to eat. Sometimes we have to give up the right to be right.

Not many more days now, and Jesus will top that last hill overlooking Jerusalem. He may look like he's walking, but no. If we are the Prodigal in this parable, then Jesus is the father, and he is running – to the Cross? Yes. Because in the mind of our extravagant, overwhelming, breathtaking God, what is important is not what we have done to hurt the relationship – how many times we've sold our inheritance, wallowed in the slop, and come dragging back up the road. What is important is reunion –reconciliation – healing the relationship between ourselves and our God. That is everything.

We can go to the party as we are, as long as we don’t insist on staying that way. Our God is a God of the unexpected. God is extravagant in mercy, overwhelming in love, breathtaking in compassion. God's banquet doors are flung open wide, the table is spread and the chairs pulled out for anyone who will come.

So... you gonna stay out here all night, or are you coming in?

The Blame Game...

I owe a great debt to the writings of Dr. Bruce Epperly, the Rev. Dr. Delmer Chilton, James Allison, and D. Mark Davis for their writings and insight.

God doesn't judge people by causing disasters... rather, I think, God looks to those of us who call ourselves by the name of Christ and judges whether or not we are worthy, in our reactions to disaster, of that Name.

Luke 13:1-9

At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. He asked them, "Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them — do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did."

Then he told this parable: "A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, 'See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?' He replied, 'Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.'"

This is the Word of the Lord.

Seminary professor Haddon Robinson tells the story of a young woman who talked to her pastor about her sin of pride. She says, "Pastor, every Sunday I come to church and look around and think to myself that I am the prettiest girl in the church. I try to stop but I just can't. Am I horribly sinful?" Pastor looked at her and said, "No dear not sinful; just horribly mistaken.”

In our Gospel reading today, a group of people point out an act of ghastly violence, and apparently ask Jesus if it was the sin of the murdered Galileans which caused God to let Pilate do his evil, and Jesus says, in effect, “no, you’re horribly mistaken.”

The people addressing Jesus are doing what comes naturally, it seems. Every time there is a natural or man-made disaster, some TV preacher somewhere pops up and plays the blame game, blaming the disaster on the victims: 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, the earthquake in Haiti, the list goes on and on.

And the blame game gets all too personal as well. Barbara Brown Taylor tells about her days as a hospital chaplain, when she sat with the mother of a little girl undergoing an operation for a brain tumor.

“On the day of the operation, I found her mother sitting under the fluorescent lights in the waiting room beside an ashtray full of cigarette butts. She smelled as if she had puffed every one of them, although she was not smoking when I got there. She was staring at a patch of carpet in front of her, with her eyebrows raised in that half-hypnotized look that warned me to move slowly. I sat down beside her. She came to, and after some small talk she told me just how awful it was. She even told me why it had happened.

“'It’s my punishment,' she said, 'for smoking these... cigarettes. God couldn’t get my attention any other way, so he made my baby sick.' Then she started crying so hard that what she said next came out like a siren: 'Now I’m supposed to stop, but I can’t stop. I’m going to kill my own child!'”

Jesus looks at us in all of these situations, and when we play the blame game He says, “no, you are horribly mistaken.”

What we are looking for is theodicy. A theodicy seeks to show that it is reasonable to believe in God despite evidence of evil in the world, and offers a framework which can account for why evil exists. We want the universe to make sense, for there to be cosmic laws of cause and effect. There has to be a reason that good things happen to some people and bad things happen to others. Life should be fair!

But what Jesus seems to say here is, “no, sometimes life isn’t fair. Sometimes stuff just happens. People fall victim to bloodthirsty despots or shoddy construction, and they are guilty only of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Then he says something that is, frankly, jarring. “But.”

“…but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.”

Is Jesus contradicting himself? “They didn’t die because they were sinners, but unless you watch it, bub, you will.” Yeah, that’s totally fair.

But Jesus isn’t addressing theodicy here, He’s talking about hypocrisy. What I would like to suggest is that Jesus is speaking to these people – and to all of us – about the tendency humankind has to look at the shortcomings and perceived moral failures of others as a way of ignoring our own spiritual needs.

This isn’t the only reference Jesus makes to this tendency. Jesus asks in another place, “Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?”

Our tendency is to look at the world around us and react like the owner of the garden who loses patience with the fig tree and demands its destruction. God looks at the world and sees it in the same way as the gardener sees that fig tree: Just a little more work, a little more time, and let’s see what good things can happen.

To “repent” literally means to change one’s mind, to think differently after. Jesus calls us to look away from what’s wrong with others, and more than that, to abandon the idolatry of the blame game.

In the early twentieth century, The Times of London invited famous writers to answer the question: “What is wrong with the world?” In response, they got many long essays spelling out both the problems and the writer's assessment as to who was to blame. God, the Devil, the Church, the Communists, the Fascists, White people, Black people, Asians, Hispanics, the Jews, the Germans, the Italians, the Chinese, the Moslems, and the Americans.  It was women, men, the “Older Generation” and “These Young People Today.” 

In the midst of all of this, theologian and author GK Chesterton, looked at the question, “what is wrong with the world?” and wrote, simply: “Dear Sirs, I am. Sincerely, GK Chesterton.”

When we focus on the sinfulness, or saintliness, of another, we are distracted from our own journey with God. In this season of Lent, we are called upon to turn from fear - to faith, to turn from sin - to grace, and to turn from the world - to God. We are called on to dig around our own fig tree, thank you very much, and to fertilize it with prayer and the Word, and to bring forth fruits of good works and righteousness – again, not because by doing this maybe God will notice us and forgive us, but as a response to the fact that God already loves us, with a steadfast love that endures forever.

When we do this – when we address our fear of other groups or individuals who think, act, look, believe differently with faith that God loves them as well as us, and with the assurance that God’s steadfast love indeed endures forever; when we confront the sin we see and the sin we commit with the grace of a God whose forgiveness flows from Calvary; when we commit to seeking the Kingdom of God above all the world has to offer… it doesn’t mean that bad things stop happening. Tornadoes blow down churches as quickly as they do casinos, and the homes of the righteous are destroyed as quickly as the unrighteous. Floods don’t discriminate, nor do fires or AK-47s. Faith isn’t fire insurance. Faith is a foundation which gives us the strength to not only endure the storms of life, but to be a source of strength and guidance for others as they, too, ride out the storm.

I’m not sure I have this figured out, but it seems that, every time we expect God to respond to the sinfulness of the world with wrath – fire from heaven at best, or some kind of obvious smiting, for cryin’ out loud – God rather responds in patience and in love.

When we say things like, “God is love,” we understand that the ultimate expression of that love is the cross of Christ. Now, it is not as if God loved us by throwing Jesus to us as if we were a pack of hungry crocodiles. No, God's love for us empowered Jesus to create for us a way out –  out of our hopelessness, out of our violence, out of our death.

There is a certain kind of theological imagination which sees Jesus on the Cross, with the Father observing from above. In some versions the Father is pleased, because he is being offered a sacrifice which will wipe out our sins; in another version the Father is horrified by the cruelty which we are showing towards his Son. I think these both miss the point. The Father was present at the Cross not as a spectator, but as an active participant, a revelation of God’s self in the very dying from of Jesus, as the source of the love which overcame death and its dominion in our lives, which tore the doors off the Kingdom to make a way for us all.

God’s wrath is not senseless anger – the garden owner demanding the tree be cut down, destroyed. Towers fall, evil rulers send planes and bombs against their own people, earthquakes shake and storms blow, but these are not God’s judgment.

No, God’s judgment is love. And when we say that God’s love is steadfast and endures forever, what we are saying is that there is no limit, no expiration date, it cannot, and will not be exhausted. God doesn’t get tired of loving us, and God doesn’t get tired of loving the world – the whole world, everyone! God’s inclusiveness is beyond our comprehension: God loves the vulnerable as well as the well-heeled, the weak as well as the powerful, the sinful as well as the righteousness.  Our love is a shadow of God’s love for us.  We are limited, but God’s love elects all creation and God’s providence heals all who are broken.

God digs around the roots a bit more, fertilizes with grace and love and compassion, and waits – actively, working at all times, but patiently.

And our response when there is tragedy, when there is disaster, when there is suffering of any kind, even our own, must never be to play the blame game. No one wins that game, ever.

Rather, God calls us to be conduits of grace, facilitators of providence, reflections of that steadfast love of God that really does endure forever.

Easter - We Are Resurrection People!

That's a recurring theme in my sermons, that and the al-fedjr, the twilight before dawn. Fitting touch-points on this Easter, wouldn't you say?

Jeremiah 31:1-6
At that time, says the LORD, I will be the God of all the families of Israel, and they shall be my people.
Thus says the LORD: The people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness;
when Israel sought for rest, the LORD appeared to him from far away.
I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.
Again I will build you, and you shall be built, O virgin Israel!
Again you shall take your tambourines, and go forth in the dance of the merrymakers.
Again you shall plant vineyards on the mountains of Samaria;
the planters shall plant, and shall enjoy the fruit.
For there shall be a day when sentinels will call in the hill country of Ephraim:
“Come, let us go up to Zion, to the LORD our God.”

Colossians 3:1-4
So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.

John 20:1-18
Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples returned to their homes.
But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” When she had said this, she turned round and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? For whom are you looking?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.‘” Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told them that he had said these things to her.

This is the Word of the Lord.

How easily we say the words, “Christ is risen.” How simple it is to acknowledge that the tomb is empty, that the Lord has conquered death, hell, and the grave, that we serve a risen Lord. Easy, because, all too often, it’s just words, isn’t it? We are Resurrection people, after all. We live in this reality, the reality that says Jesus “is,” not Jesus “was.” We are Resurrection people. We associate springtime with resurrection because it’s an integral part of our vocabulary.

We forget, all too easily, that there was a time when, as Barbara Brown Taylor puts it, “only place springtime happen[ed]… [was] on the graves, not in them.”

Mary Magdalene wasn’t going to the tomb that morning to check the status of the body. She was going to the tomb because she was grieving. This was the place where she could get closest to the one person who had looked on her as if she were human, as if she were valuable, as if she, a woman, were equal. At least there, in the twilight before dawn, she could be close to him again, just on the other side of a stone, close enough to touch, really. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

Do you see how it was? No one was thinking about Resurrection, not because of a lack of faith or because Jesus hadn’t told them again and again, but because it made no sense, it was dancing to architecture, it was painting with math, completely beyond comprehension.

Jesus was dead. End of story. All those years, all those miles traveled, the stories and parables and healings and dangers and triumphs and evenings in a group around a fire, everything, all of it, gone.

So Mary Magdalene walked toward the tomb in the darkness. But it wouldn’t be dark for long.

Oh, it wasn’t like someone turned on the floodlights and everyone instantly understood it, of course not. No one got it, not completely, for a long time. In Matthew’s Gospel, right before the verses we call the “Great Commission,” the disciples are in Galilee, on a mountain, and Jesus appears to them, right there, as real and present as this pulpit or that pew, and still we read, “When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.” This is very likely long after all of the events the other Gospels fill in for us between the Resurrection and the Ascension. Well after they’d broken bread with Jesus. Long after Thomas had been invited to touch the wounds in Christ’s hands and side.

Is it any surprise that, when Mary Magdalene topped that hill and saw, as the sky slowly began its metamorphosis from darkness to dawn, that the stone was rolled away, that her first thought was not Resurrection but robbery?

Sure, Peter and John ran to the tomb, but it wasn’t to confirm that Christ had risen, was it? It was to try and figure out who had stolen the body and where they’d taken it. We’re told that John believed, but we don’t know what, exactly, he believed.

How easily we say the words, “Christ is risen.” How simple it is to acknowledge that the tomb is empty, that the Lord has conquered death, hell, and the grave, that we serve a risen Lord.

John and Peter have gone, “returned to their homes,” whatever that means, and Mary Magdalene is left alone, weeping, so brokenhearted at the double loss, not only of her beloved teacher’s life, but even of his body, that the appearance of angels at the tomb doesn’t even faze her! Of course she doesn’t recognize Jesus at first, standing right there in front of her! Jesus is dead, and someone has stolen his body. Someone has taken everything, literally everything, away from her!

What does it really mean to be Resurrection people?

Could it be that one instant – that moment when Jesus says, “Mary,” and she realizes – she knows – she finally understands? That burst of joy, that rush of raw, jaw-dropping excitement that drives her to embrace Jesus, even when such a thing is unheard of, that consummation of a hope she didn’t even realize she harbored?

I think it’s odd that the last time we hear from, or about, Mary Magdalene is when she goes to the disciples and tells them that she has seen Jesus, and relays what He told her to say. The disciples have their own Resurrection experience, of course, and their lives are changed by the inflowing Holy Spirit. The great Good News of God-With-Us, risen and triumphant, bursts upon the scene and never stops sprinting. But it is Peter, James and John, the other Apostles, and later Paul, who spur the horses, not Mary.

I don’t know the answer, but I have suspicions.

We are Resurrection people, but we live in a place that, all too often, feels much more like that dark path through the cemetery than anything else.

How easily we say the words, “Christ is risen.” How simple it is to acknowledge that the tomb is empty, that the Lord has conquered death, hell, and the grave, that we serve a risen Lord. And how hard it is to make those words more than just that – words.

We celebrate the Lord’s Supper this morning, in part because it serves as a point of reference, a reminder of the fact that, and I am quoting Romans 5:8, “…God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

Perhaps the purpose of us leaving Mary Magdalene there, bursting with excitement, stumbling over her words with joy as she tells the disciples that Christ really is alive, is that, in a way, she serves as another point of reference: a reminder that we live in what the Arabic-speaking people call “al-fedjr,” the twilight that is just before the dawn.

Mary Magdalene is perhaps a reminder that we really are Resurrection people, and someday the dawn will break. Someday we, too, will turn in awestruck excitement, and see the Risen Lord, and he will call us, too, by name.