Laundry Lists and Love...

This isn't the best title for a sermon, but it is the best I could come up with. 

I think everything has to do with relationships. How we relate to God, how we relate to one another, how we regard the rich and the powerful and the poor and the marginalized. And no one relationship is disconnected from another.

Thanks this week especially to David Lose, Carla Works, and Peter Bush.

Finally, something that has nothing at all to do with the sermon, but it was part of my soundtrack as I was writing it. Javier Barria's cover of one of my favorite Led Zeppelin songs, "The Rain Song."

MATTHEW 5:21-37

“You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire. So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are on the way to court with him, or your accuser may hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison. Truly I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘you shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to go into hell.

“It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

“Again, you have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but carry out the vows you have made to the Lord.’ But I say to you, Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let your word be ‘Yes, Yes’ or ‘No, No’; anything more than this comes from the evil one.”

This is the Word of the Lord.

Wow. That is quite a list, isn't it? It's like Jesus is taking the Law and putting it on steroids. Many scholars call these the “antitheses,” because Jesus is saying, “you have heard... BUT,” putting expectations over and against established expectations.

Oh, goody, new rules. Peachy. And a laundry list of stuff, too... murder, anger, adultery, divorce, making oaths... and the punishments are over-the-top! For cryin' out loud, being condemned to Hell for calling someone a fool? Mutilating our body to refrain from committing sin? No wonder these fall in to the category that's called “the hard sayings of Jesus.”

It goes without saying that most Christians don't follow the letter of these sayings. We get angry. I know I do, anyway. Divorce is common nowadays, and in our lawsuit-crazed society we swear oaths verbally and with our signatures all the time. I don't know of anyone who has come to the Lord's Supper, then before taking part has left to go make up with someone they'd had a quarrel with. It has probably happened, sure, but I have never seen it. I don't know of anyone who has poked their own eye out or cut off their own hand to refrain from committing sin.

As a list of rules – I am gonna go ahead and just say it – these are unreasonable. If I have to treat this passage as a checklist of things I cannot ever under any circumstances do, or else, I give up. I can't do it. I mean, for crying out loud, I get upset at people's FaceBook posts, and don't even get me started about Twitter!

And let me go further: If we treat the Scriptures as a list of rules and regulations, a law-book, a Constitution... we will fail. Maybe not every time, on ever point, no. I may do OK not lusting after my neighbor's wife, but as soon as I get in a hurry to get from one job to another and Highway 280 gets backed up around the Summit, I can promise you someone is gonna swing in front of me from the other lane, cut me off, and I will at least call that driver a fool.

I can tell you that I know of at least one person who was mentally ill, and who obsessed over keeping every point of Scripture, and was constantly tortured that he could not do it all, to the point that, one night, he lay down on some railroad tracks. And no, the story does not have a happy ending.

But what if... what if the point of what Jesus is saying here goes deeper than keeping rules, following laws? Look at what Jesus is actually saying here, look at the focal point of his antitheses.

“...If you are angry with...” “...if you insult...” “...if you say...” are some of the phrases Jesus uses to start off this reading, and he does it over against murder. Jesus seems to say anger is worse, or at least on a level, with killing... and to be sure, someone would have to be pretty angry with someone to kill them, you'd think. But I want to suggest to you that this isn't even about antecedents to murder.

It is about how we think about – how we treat – one another. It ain't about rules. It's about relationships. God cares about our relationships. That is the thread that weaves this seemingly stream-of-consciousness reading together. It isn't random rules and threats of punishment. It's about how we relate to one another, and through that, how and if we relate to God.

Isn't that amazing? This is truly revolutionary thinking! God is not the Unmoved Mover of the philosophers, nor does God see us as playthings, nor is God completely disinterested in God's creation. God is not simply a spiritual director or a dispenser of divine karma. God cares. God cares about us, and God cares about our relationships.

I know that sometimes people say or even do bad things, and our natural reaction is anger, our natural tendency is to strike back somehow. We have a right to! But at least in the Christian community, that right is less important than the responsibility, on both the part of the offender and the offended, to reconcile.

God cares about us. God cares about our relationships.

Think about it – when we hold a grudge, the person we are mad at is living in our head rent-free! It takes our heart and mind away from the things that matter, it causes stress, and stress can kill us. Better to forgive, even if we cannot safely forgive face-to-face. Forgiveness isn't about letting someone off the hook, remember, it is about allowing ourselves to move on and grow out of that and into our life in Christ.

And notice how the burden of reconciliation isn't just on the one offended – Jesus says that, whenever we realize we have offended someone, even if we are in the middle of church, even gathered around the Lord's Table, we must go and fix it right then, it is that important. Right relationships with one another both speak volumes to those outside of the faith looking in on us, and those relationships help to strengthen our individual and corporate walk with God.

Believe it or not, this dovetails in perfectly with Jesus' words about adultery, lust, and divorce, because if we value other people deeply enough to care about right relationships, one thing we are careful not to do is objectify other people – remove their humanity, define them as a body part or value them only for what the can do for us. We cannot treat people as possessions and truly value relationships with one another or with God.

God cares about us. God cares about how we care for and about others.

Now, treating people, specifically women, as a possession was exactly what Jesus was talking about when he was speaking of divorce. In Jesus' time, remember, women had no rights, no identity of their own. Rabbinic tradition held that a man could write up a “bill of divorcement” and leave his wife if she displeased him in any way. Women couldn't own property, had no legal recourse, could not work... for cryin' out loud, even the Ten Commandments lists “your neighbor's wife” in the same “Thou shalt not covet” sentence as his livestock!

A woman could be left homeless, destitute, starving to death, because she burned the toast.

So this isn't about forcing women, or anyone, to stay in bad, even abusive, relationships, it is about elevating women, and by extension all people, of any race or gender or nationality or orientation or identity, to the level of equal human beings.

I am serious. If we can get that one thing right, everything else will fall in to place.

If I consider every human being equal, then I don't have to worry about being greater than someone else. No one has to be less-than for me to feel good. If every human being is of equal value in the eyes of God, then my concern for right relationship with God compels me to act like it – to reconcile, to support, to heal.

If I am honest, it would be easier if our passage today was a list of rules and regulations, a checklist I could review every day and give myself a pass-or-fail. Relationships are messy, difficult things. I am a dyed in the wool extrovert (I know that is a shock), but there are days when I just don't want to be messed with. There are times when I get hurt or offended or wronged and, by golly, someone owes me an apology.

But...

God cares about us. God cares about our relationships, and right relationships are more important than being right.

In the coming week, I'd like to invite you to join me in doing two things. First, call to mind one of the relationships in your life that is most important to you. One that is healthy and whole and good and sustains you. What makes that a good relationship? Why is that relationship so important? Reflect on that relationship this week, and in your time of prayer and meditation give God thanks for that person and the relationship you share.

Second, think about another relationship that is important to you, but it has suffered some damage. Don’t waste time trying to figure out who was to blame for the hurt; rather, hold that person, hold that relationship in prayer. Offer that broken relationship to God as an arena of God’s help and healing. And here is the hard part: take some time and think about what action you can take to move that relationship to greater health.

That's it. We start small. Just one.

Let us pray.

O God, the strength of all who put their trust in you:

We give you praise for our good relationships. Help us to see, and to focus upon, the things that are good and right and which bring us joy and life.

And because in our weakness we can do nothing good without you,

give us the help of your grace to begin to heal those relationships which require reconciliation, and to practice forgiveness in those places where reconciliation is not possible.

Loving Creator, may we please you both in will and deed;

through Jesus Christ our Lord,

who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,

one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The Rich Man and Lazarus: Waking Up

I am indebted to David Lose for his insight into today's Gospel reading. I preached the core of this sermon in 2010, but have reworked it somewhat. I as always look forward to your comments and constructive criticism.

LUKE 16:19-31

"There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man's table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. He called out, 'Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.' But Abraham said, 'Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.' He said, 'Then, father, I beg you to send him to my father's house-for I have five brothers-that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.' Abraham replied, 'They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.' He said, 'No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.' He said to him, 'If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.'"

This is the Word of the Lord.

When Jesus spoke in parables, he used scenery, items, situations and characters which were familiar to the people who were listening to his words. There are scholars who believe that our parable this morning is an adaptation of a Jewish folk tale, for example. But Jesus does something in this parable that he does nowhere else, in any parable at any point in any Gospel in the entire New Testament in any translation: he gives one of his characters a name.

Oh, it sounds normal enough, like all of Jesus’ parables. Here’s the rich man, enjoying the fruits of his wealth, while right outside his doors, at the gates of his compound, a sick, starving, forgotten man slumps weakly, wracked with hunger, eaten with sores. But alone among every story Jesus ever told, this poor, suffering man has a name: Lazarus!

Now, I’ve heard a lot of sermons about this parable: I’ve heard preachers who used it as a way to describe the afterlife, for example. Once, I even heard someone suggest that the rich man and Lazarus were actual people that Jesus knew, and that the parable was describing eternal events which had actually happened.

Those kinds of interpretations frustrate me, because the point of the parable isn’t any of that.

This parable, with its rich description of comfort for the suffering and torment for the disengaged wealthy, isn’t at all about the afterlife, not really. The parable is a parable, a story which drives home a point. It is not a systematic theology of the afterlife.

This parable isn’t even about money, believe it or not. The point of the parable is found in one small word: Lazarus. Not, like so many people in the parables of Jesus, a loosely-defined character in a larger story, nor is he, like so many people who ask for healing or restoration in the Gospels, defined by his condition or his disease. He is Lazarus. He is a person, an entity – singularly among all the people who occupy all of Jesus’ stories, he has flesh.

We know who Lazarus is… and the shocking truth is, so does the nameless rich man in this parable! Honestly, I confess that I have read and heard this parable for as long as I can remember, and it never occurred to me. I always imagined that Lazarus, the poor, diseased, marginalized, forgotten, impoverished man, was invisible to the man of wealth and means, the powerful, the respected, the comfortable. But when he, in his torment, calls out across the chasm to Abraham, he sees and calls Lazarus by name!

Can you imagine? This rich man would have gone in and out of his house regularly; even if he conducted business in his home, he would have gone to synagogue meetings, would have visited relatives, he would have gone out of his home to meet with other powerful people. He would have walked past Lazarus every day, must have noticed him, had to have seen him! What is stunning about this parable isn’t simply that this rich man did not help Lazarus, did not send out a plate of food or offer to have his wounds treated or give him a place to sleep or even some bedding to soften the ground he lay on, it’s that it apparently never crossed the rich man’s mind to do so!

It seems an impossibility, doesn’t it? To, every day of his life, stroll nonchalantly by someone starving to death, huddling in stinking rags, and not even think to offer assistance! How is this possible? The words he uses when he speaks to father Abraham across the abyss offer us a clue.

Notice that he never addresses Lazarus directly. He speaks to Abraham, and expects Abraham to command Lazarus to act as the rich man’s servant: bring him some water, be his messenger.

Even though he knows who Lazarus is, t the rich man, Lazarus isn’t really a person. Apart from his ability to in some way serve him, for the rich man, Lazarus doesn’t really exist. He has no face, no voice. In this rich man’s universe of experience, it is not much of a stretch to say that he sees people tools, objects, things that exist to be used. To serve, to come and go at his bidding, to fulfill his desires. They are not his equals, not even really human beings.

In short, the rich man is not dealing with reality. He is disconnected from the world around him. He has lived his life in a fantasy world, where he is the center of the universe, and everything lives and moves and has its being by his power and for his pleasure. And by the way he speaks in his torment, he never wakes up from this terrible dream, even after it’s too late.

I’ve been privileged to know some pretty rich people in my time, folks who are wealthy enough to get their names on buildings, business owners, philanthropists, executives, folks like that. None of these comparatively rich people have acted like the rich man in our parable today. They at least appeared to care about others, they were charitable and engaging, seemed to be committed to helping others, compassionate, all of that.

Having money isn’t the problem. It’s a thing, a tool, in some ways money isn’t even real, it’s nothing more than a set of figures on a balance sheet or a bit of data on a bank’s computer. To say money is the problem, that money is evil or lacks compassion or refuses to give the poor a name, to give the powerless a voice, is a ridiculous statement. It’s like blaming a table for climate change.

We live in a world where, right now, the UN estimates that hunger could be completely eradicated for thirty billion dollars a year.

Americans spend thirty billion dollars per year losing weight!

The entire population of the planet could have clean, safe drinking water for about ten billion dollars per year.

That is one-half of what Americans spend each year on pet food.

The problem is not money. The problem is us. Our priorities. Our focus.

The focal point of the parable of the rich man and Lazarus can be distilled to a simple, yet razor-sharp, question: what, or who, is the center of our universe?

If the center of our own universe is ourselves, then everyone and everything else, including the love of money, becomes a means to an end, and that end is our own self-fulfillment.

I know people who have no more money than I do, yet act like that rich man in the parable. If I’m honest, there are times when I have acted like that rich man in the parable. I ignore the needs of those around me, walk past someone who is hurting because I’m in a hurry, or in a bad mood, or don’t want to be bothered. At those times, at far too many times, I am the center of my own universe.

Our readings today call us to abandon our fantasy world, to wake up from the dream where we are the center of the universe. Give the poor a name, yes. Give the powerless a voice, yes. But even they are not the true center of our universe, are they?

The rich man begs Abraham to send Lazarus back from the dead to warn his brothers, because if someone were to rise from the dead, surely they would awaken from their own fantasy worlds, certainly they would listen!

I don’t ever like to read more into Scripture than is there, but this statement… surely it is a message to you and I, to everyone who lives on this side of the Cross, to all Resurrection people.

That chasm that existed in the parable between the tormented rich man and the comforted Lazarus exists, in reality, today. There have been many sermons which call upon us to identify with Lazarus, which remind us how like the rich man we are, but what if we were to identify ourselves with the rich man’s still-living brothers?

After all, we Resurrection people have seen a man put to death for caring for the poor, for announcing God’s mercy for all, for daring to forgive the sins of any, and we have heard the testimony that this man was raised from the dead and vindicated by God as the supreme embodiment of God’s kingdom logic and royal love.

Though we indeed have the law and prophets, God loves us enough to also to send a man from the dead to awaken us!

We cannot afford to remain in this fantasy where we are the center of our own universe. All that we have, the stuff we own and the green paper in our wallets and the balance on our checking accounts and the value of our stock portfolio, these things cannot save us. If we have learned anything from the housing bubble bursting and the Great Recession and the constant lesson of natural disasters, it is that any security we find in these things is an illusion, a dream. We might as well treat them as what they are meant to be, tools to be used to fulfill the mission and purpose of the Kingdom of God.

Our things cannot save us, no. Our wealth cannot provide real security, no.

The Good News is that we who call upon the name of Jesus have already been saved, are being saved, and shall be saved. We who call upon the name of Jesus find our security and hope, our calling and our purpose, ultimately in him.

The center of our universe, the heart of all we pursue, our focal point and foundation, is, and always must be, Jesus Christ.

In Christ, the poor have a name. We all have a name.

In Christ, the powerless have a voice. We all have a voice.

It’s as simple as waking up.

"A priest, a rabbi, and a Samaritan walk into a bar..."

My deepest thanks to folks like Michael Rogness, David Lose, Kathryn Matthews Huey, D. Mark Davis, and Delmer Chilton for their keen insights and scholarship on today's Gospel reading.

The verdict in the Zimmerman trial came down as I was finishing the sermon tonight, and it shines a light on one of my most deeply held convictions: governments don't bring justice. Courts don't, nor do political processes of any kind. We do. We change hearts, we change outcomes, we build communities and societies where people like Travon Martin can walk without fear and where people like George Zimmerman can put away their guns and their aggression and their prejudices...

...by becoming a neighbor.

LUKE 10:25-37

Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. "Teacher," he said, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" He said to him, "What is written in the law? What do you read there?" He answered, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself." And he said to him, "You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live."

But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" Jesus replied, "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, 'Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.' Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?" He said, "The one who showed him mercy." Jesus said to him, "Go and do likewise."

This is the Word of the Lord.

“Who is my neighbor?”

The lawyer who asked the question knew his stuff, of course: When Jesus turned his question back on him, he responded without hesitation, quoting Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18. Maybe it’s the familiarity of the passage, or the fact that the parable overshadows everything leading up to it, but I never really noticed before how, out of all of the Mosaic law, all of the Scriptures detailing how the Children of Israel are to act, eat, worship, and think, the answer to the biggest question of all – life, the universe, and everything – even then, even to the experts in Jewish law, was love.

So my question is this: if the lawyer knew this already, why ask? Was he testing Jesus as a way of demonstrating to the people listening to Jesus that he was right? That Jesus was right? That the Law was right?

Or… was the real question that follow up question, “who is my neighbor?”

I like the direction David Lose of Luther Seminary takes with this – when the Scripture says the lawyer was “wanting to justify himself,” perhaps he wasn’t looking for confirmation of his actions. Maybe he really was seeking – wanting to know precisely what is required for the sake of justice in light of the commandments he has quoted. “OK, I get that, Jesus. But help me out, give me some parameters: Whom do I have to love just as much as I love myself, whose needs and welfare need to be as important to me as my own? Are there not are at least some people who are not my neighbor, someone it’s okay not to love?”

I don’t know, maybe he is hoping Jesus will say something like, “Well, if you can manage to love your family and friends and maybe throw a coin at a beggar every once in a while, that's pretty good. Just be sure to worship regularly at the temple, obey all the religious laws about sexual morality, and pay your pledge every year. Then you're all set - or as you put it, you'll inherit eternal life, and you'll go to heaven when you die, because, after all, you will have earned it.”

Nope. Jesus responds by telling a story that redefines “neighbor” not in terms of race, religion, or proximity, but in terms of vulnerability: Whoever is in need is your neighbor.

The man who was attacked and robbed was apparently Jewish. His fellow Jews, professional religious people, no less, went out of their way to go around him, no doubt fearing he was already dead and not wanting to make themselves unclean – after all, they had important business in Jerusalem, priest and Levite business, much more important than mere people, right?

Wrong, by the way: especially if they were heading the same way as the robbed man, they were done with all their Temple duties, ceremonial uncleanness wouldn’t have hurt them a bit, and besides, the Law said they had to help someone in need!

And what’s more, by all indications, be they cultural, racial, or geographical, the priest and the Levite were already this robbed and beaten man’s neighbor. If anyone should help this poor guy, it’s his people, for crying out loud!

Now, Stephen Patterson tells us that, in Jesus’ time, it was a pretty common theme to have a priest and a Levite in a story, kind of like a joke that starts out, “a priest, a rabbi, and a (fill in the blank) walk in to a bar…” The people listening would have strong feelings about the first two, no one listening to the story is surprised that the priest and Levite have no compassion. But normally in those stories, the third person, the one who gets it right, the one who saves the day, is a regular, run-of-the-mill Israelite. Someone like them!

That isn’t what happens though, is it? Of all the people to have compassion – and I mean a real, gut-wrenching need to respond, because the Greek word here is exactly the same kind of compassion Jesus felt when the Gospel of Luke tell us he saw a mother processing to bury her son, and it is the father’s response when he sees his lost son returning home in the parable of the Prodigal Son! Of all the people to drop everything and rush to help, a Samaritan?

Jesus’ audience would have been shocked and probably deeply offended that the hero coming around the bend is a hated Samaritan. After all, the Samaritans were considered "half-breeds," traitors who had colluded with Syria against the Jews. The Samaritans were so despised that, even after Jesus' moving story, the lawyer could not bring himself to say the 'Samaritan' word! That's how deep the hatred ran.

The Samaritans considered themselves Jewish, and in fact thought that the people in Jerusalem had it all wrong. The Samaritans believed that the center of worship was on Mount Gerizim, not Jerusalem. They knew that the Jews considered them not only traitors, not only racially inferior, but absolutely unclean! A really good Jew would go the long way around to avoid a Samaritan town on his way to Jerusalem, not wanting his sandals to even touch the dirt of the village.

So you could imagine that the Samaritans felt just as much spite for the Jews. Besides, this Samaritan is in Jewish territory, on the same dangerous road, and those robbers could still be hanging around, waiting for their next victim. But this man doesn't let the Law, or fear, or hate, or the knowledge that he himself is hated keep him a higher righteousness: what loving God and loving your neighbor really means.

Somewhere along the way, the priests and the Levites of Jesus’ day had let their quest for holiness violate God’s commandments to love. This Samaritan didn’t even think of the consequences, though. He just acted out of his compassion, taking time out of his day, going out of his way to render aid and get the injured man to safety, spending money he would never see again to make certain that his recovery continued in his absence.

One of the things I wonder about is what happened to the man after the Samaritan left? After he recovered, his bones mended and his wounds healed, after he went home to his family and friends… was he changed?

Did he still laugh at the “Samaritan” jokes? Did he turn away when someone said mean things about Samaritans, or treated the cruelly? Or was he changed? Did he defend the Samaritans? Reach out to them? Treat them with the same love and compassion he had received?

Because if there is one thing I have discovered in my life’s journey, it is that my prejudices, my preconceptions, my most dearly held hatreds are exposed and challenged and destroyed not by arguments, not by political processes, not by logical evidence, but by flesh and blood. Meeting and becoming friends with people who refuse to fit my mental stereotypes means that either they, or my stereotypes, must go.

In a way, we can see ourselves as the good lawyer, having our understanding of Scripture deepened, going away from the conversation a more complete believer. We can, in a way, see ourselves as the Samaritan, crossing boundaries of culture and creed and class in the name of Jesus to help a person in need.

Yet is there not, in these interpretations, a lingering sense of superiority? We come out on top either being educated or condescending to help the less fortunate… I want to suggest that there is a third, much more difficult way.

Look at the structure of the story: by turning the usual template of “a priest a Levite, and an Israelite…” on its head, by making the hero of the day a hated outcast, doesn’t that mean the guy in the ditch is us? We're not the good Jewish lawyer or the Samaritan, we are lying in that ditch, and we desperately need our enemy to forget what he's been taught and what he understands his rights to be. We need him to forget the risk and the robbers, and stop and help us in our need. He needs to be moved by pity for our suffering.

When I speak of meeting and making friends with people who challenge and ultimately destroy my hatreds and prejudices and preconceptions, it is not with the tone of someone who has done the hard work of reaching out, of purposely seeking opportunities. I haven’t taken the risk, these friends have found me, have taken a chance, and have endured my stupidity and accidental cruelty and have loved me anyway.

They have loved me anyway…

Perhaps we are the person in the ditch… and the Good Samaritan is God. Deep down, most of us don't want God's hand-out of love, we don't want God's generous offer. We are only aware of God because God first loved us, after all, otherwise in our total depravity we would never give a second thought to God. But we know about God and God’s love and we want to deserve it, we want to earn it… but, of course, we can't. We really can't. We are the one in the ditch. We are the wounded and foolish one, the one helpless and in need of help and healing.

Jesus concludes his story and there is a wonderful turn of phrase when he asks the lawyer that follow-up question. The lawyer asked, “Who is my neighbor?” and in the Greek, Jesus asks the lawyer, “Which of these three do you think… had become a neighbor? Here is where the rubber meets the road: who has done the hard work, sat through the long nights and spent the time and money and gone out of their way to help?

We know the real answer to that lawyer’s first question, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” The answer is “nothing.” We can’t do anything, it’s already done! We were saved when Jesus died on the cross, we are being saved every day as we walk closer with our loving God, and we will be saved on that final day of days when Jesus comes again. It is done. We cannot earn God’s love, because even when we were furthest from God, in the depths of our sin and separation, God loved us and sent Jesus to die for us.

We are called to live in that love: to be the good lawyer, seeking to learn more and more about responding to God’s boundless, resplendent love; to be the good Samaritan, acting with heartfelt compassion, being the hands and feet of Jesus Christ to a world that is broken, bleeding and half dead… and when we need it, to receive the friendship, the assistance, the compassion and love of others, even when they don’t think or look or act or believe the way that we do.

Because just like that traveler on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho, we are on a journey. Eternal life isn’t about hitting the jackpot when we die; God has already saved us. Eternal life, life lived abundantly, is here and now and tomorrow and the next day and every day. God has reached down, pulled us from the ditch, has healed our wounds and carried us to safety and paid our way!

Our calling, our journey is to act like it! To love because Christ first loved us, to become a neighbor to anyone in any kind of need, and to grow every day in God’s love.

“Who is my neighbor?”

Everyone. Everyone.

They Knew Him Too Well...

Deepest appreciation to the writing and scholarship of David Lose, who helped me put my brain around the reading.

I have to say a word about the excessive use of italics in the following reading. As I've mentioned, I write like I speak; the metering, phrasing and the paragraph breaks aren't always grammatically correct or particularly pretty.

For the past couple of weeks, I've been forgoing printing out the manuscript of my sermons, choosing instead to take advantage of technology and read them from the screen of my trusty BlackBerry. This saves paper and means that I don't have to drive to another county to write and print.

It also means that I don't have the luxury of penciling in breaks - lines I place between words in a sentence to get the emphasis right - or to underline words that need a particular stress. Thus the egregious generosity with italics. I beg your indulgence and forgiveness as you read the following.

To the point of the sermon: It turns out that knowing Jesus is all well and good. The difference lies in what we do about that knowing...

Mark 6:1-13

He left that place and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him. On the sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astounded. They said, "Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands! Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?" And they took offense at him. Then Jesus said to them, "Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house." And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them. And he was amazed at their unbelief.

Then he went about among the villages teaching. He called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics. He said to them, "Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave the place. If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them." So they went out and proclaimed that all should repent. They cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.

This is the Word of the Lord.

It’s easy, this side of the Resurrection, to shake our heads in disgust at those villagers of Nazareth. Imagine, having the living Word of God right there in front of you, speaking the very words of God, and blowing it off as nothing more than a home town kid trying to make himself more important than he really is.

Oh, sure, just like everyone else in that region of Judea, they’d heard the rumors, they’d listened to the wild tales of healings and exorcisms and miracles and signs. Every story seemed to be stranger than the last, and the travelers who told them seemed to get more and more excited every day. Could this Jesus be the Promised One?

The residents of Nazareth, almost to a person, rolled their eyes when they heard that. They knew Jesus too well to fall into that trap!

There were frightening stories, too – Jesus challenging the Pharisees, openly defying the most powerful people in the province. Mary had even taken James and the family and gone to try and bring him back to Nazareth before he went and got himself killed… but they’d come back empty-handed, and said nothing about the trip to anyone. That figured, they all thought. They knew the guy, after all. They knew him well.

So that Saturday, the synagogue was buzzing as Jesus took the seat of the teacher and began to speak… but it wasn’t an excited buzzing. After all, this guy was just a carpenter, or at least he had been until he laid his tools down and walked off. Who did he think he was, anyway, acting like a teacher? He wasn’t even legitimate! Everyone knew about how Joseph had left town for the census with a very pregnant fiancée, and returned from Bethlehem with a new baby. Why, some folks had even whispered that Joseph wasn’t the kid’s father to begin with!

That first synagogue, in Capernaum, the people had heard Jesus speak with authority and had responded with wonder and confusion: “What is this,” they asked, “A new teaching—and with authority!” Today, though, in this synagogue, though Jesus spoke with no less authority, the whispers were not filled with wonder; rather, their words dripped with derision. “Where did this guy come up with this stuff? The gall! Doesn’t he know who he is? Doesn’t he know that we know who he is? Does he really expect us to forget what he is?”

We’re told that Jesus “could do no deed of power there,” and that “he was amazed at their unbelief.” Imagine it! It is beyond comprehension, isn’t it, that the very Lord of Life found himself at a loss, that anything could offend him in such a way!

We who have read the Gospels know that Jesus healed people, like the crippled man at the healing pool, who didn’t know how to ask for what they needed. Jesus even healed people without intending to – like the hemorrhaging woman we met last week. And then there were the people who were beyond asking for what they needed, like the demon-possessed or the little dead girl. In every instance, though, there was some degree of faith, some openness to the transformative power of Jesus. But here, in Nazareth, in the synagogue he had known his whole life, among the people who knew him best and who should have loved him the most, they had instead slammed shut the doors of their hearts. They had nothing for him, and wanted nothing from him.

They knew him too well to believe him. They’d seen this guy, had shared meals with him, had hired him for carpentry jobs. They were his brothers and sisters, cousins and neighbors, and while everyone had always known Jesus was different, they didn’t view this difference as a good thing. Jesus had been a weird kid, and had not changed when he grew up. Rabbi? Healer? Messiah? Please, don’t be ridiculous. He was Mary’s kid, the odd one.

God couldn’t speak through him, he was just Jesus. No one special, not qualified to interpret the Scriptures, certainly not worthy to speak the Word of God! If anything, he was an OK carpenter. Best to ignore him, and maybe he’ll get the message and go back to his hammer and saw and leave all this crazy talk alone.

And I have to wonder, how often do I do the same thing? Close the doors of my heart to a word from God because the messenger is someone I know too well, or have dismissed as unworthy of my attention? What would it mean to my faith journey if I laid aside the need to check credentials, to dismiss someone who is outside my circle, or who is so familiar to me that I “know” God couldn’t use them?

Could I be more like the disciples who, even though they struggled with the things Jesus said, wrestled to understand who he was and what it all meant, were willing to do what he said – even though it meant traveling into the unknown, walking two by two out into the countryside, with not a dollar or a loaf of bread to their name, dependent upon the hospitality of utter strangers, preaching a message they didn’t quite grasp?

There was no guarantee of success; in fact, there was every possibility that they would fail spectacularly, starve on the road or end up stoned to death by an angry mob. Yet as Jesus sent them, they went, no questions asked. They went because they knew him so well.

Yes, let’s not forget that these disciples were just as intimately acquainted with Jesus as the people who’d grown up with him. They had spent long hours on the dusty roads with him, had eaten with him, shivered in the cold night as they slept in the desert between towns. There had to have been hundreds of conversations about nothing, jokes told around the fire and long, comfortable silences.

They knew him too well… to not believe him. And despite their shortcomings, despite their doubts and utter lack of comprehension in so many areas, when they commanded demons to leave people, they did! When they anointed people for healing, they got well! When they preached repentance, people listened!

The difference between the people of Nazareth and those road-worn Apostles was simply faith.

I have to tell you, this idea that the difference between the miraculous and the mundane being in us, and not in God, makes me very uncomfortable.

I’ve been brought up in my faith journey to believe that God doesn’t need us, that God isn't inhibited by our faith or lack thereof, that what I believe or think or do matters not at all when it comes to God accomplishing God's purposes.

Isn’t one of the central elements of our belief system the doctrine of “justification by grace through faith?” Isn’t it a cornerstone of Reformed Theology that it's all up to God? God is the one who justifies. It's by grace, not by our work. Our faith is really just an awareness of and trust in what God has done.

Without God’s grace, without the drawing of the Holy Spirit, are we not all like the citizens of Nazareth, Jesus’ neighbors and family members, who look at the hometown prophet and are left cold, offended and ultimately disinterested? Everything: our faith, our inclusion in the Kingdom, our being born again to eternal life is under the complete control and will of the Creator of the Universe, and not a thing we ourselves have any power over.

This is a fact. But what if what’s at stake here isn’t a matter of God’s ultimate purposes or our eternal destinies? After all, it’s not like Jesus couldn't do anything there, we read that he did perform some healings, though it wasn’t like other towns where they were breaking down his doors. What if, rather, the Word of God is simply inviting us to contemplate the possibility that we have actually have something to do, that we have an important role to play in the Kingdom. To say it another way: this isn't about doing works to attain salvation, or about willing ourselves to have enough faith to reach out to God, it's about the role each one of us is invited to play in sensing, experiencing, and making known God's will and work in the world.

We who are the Church apparently have a choice to make: a new choice every day, when we face that front door to our hearts. Do we consult our list of doctrines, our criteria for inclusion and acceptance, and decide that we’ll only hear from God if it’s through someone who meets the standards, thank you very much? And if the terrifying happens, that God actually has a word or an action for us to carry out, a Kingdom work which will change the life of someone else? Isn’t it safer to lock the doors, nail a board or two across them, and go see what’s on TV?

Or will we boldly, recklessly fling open the doors of our hearts? Take them off the hinges, even, and set them up on sawhorses and make communion tables out of them? Will we walk out onto the dusty roads with comfortable shoes, a walking stick, and not a dollar or a loaf of bread to our name, and see what the wild, boundless, joyous and unpredictable Spirit of God has in store for us today?

May we always, habitually, joyfully throw those doors open wide. May we know Jesus too well to not believe him!

A Pharisee and a Traveling Preacher Walk Into a Bar...

I stink at titling sermons, have you noticed?

Appreciation to The Center for Excellence in Preaching, as well as David Lose and Working Preacher, Kate Huey, AND Gil Bailie of the Girardian Lectionary. Though the text is not included here, I am again using "World In Prayer's weekly posting as the Prayers of the People.

Genesis 12:1-4a
Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
So Abram went, as the LORD had told him; and Lot went with him.

Romans 4:1-5, 13-17
What then are we to say was gained by Abraham, our ancestor according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” Now to one who works, wages are not reckoned as a gift but as something due. But to one who without works trusts him who justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness.
For the promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith. If it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. For the law brings wrath; but where there is no law, neither is there violation.
For this reason it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham (for he is the father of all of us, as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”) — in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.

John 3:1-17
Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” Jesus answered him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?
“Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

This is the Word of the Lord.

John 3:16 is, by far, the most universally well-known Bible verse of them all. You see it at football games (Tim Tebow wore the Scripture reference in his eye black during the 2009 championship game, not to mention the guy in the rainbow wig with the sign), you see it on everything from throw rugs to wristwatches to billboards, and just about everyone you meet on a daily basis can say the verse in the King James Version. Martin Luther called this verse “the Gospel in miniature.”

But we do the reading a disservice by separating this one verse, as beautiful as it is, from its deep and somewhat troubling context. Where it all began was with a late-night visit between a respected member of the religious community and a disheveled traveling preacher.

Late at night? Well, of course! You wouldn’t expect a well-known Pharisee, a Jerusalem V.I.P., to be hobnobbing with itinerant rabbis, it’s simply not done. Nicodemus is recognized, you see. People know who he is, he has wealth, influence, and a seat on the Sanhedrin, and to be knocking on the door in broad daylight, especially after this Jesus person had caused all that uproar in the Temple – knocking over the moneychangers tables, babbling about destroying the Temple and restoring it in three days!

Well, it would make sense if Nicodemus was at the head of a column of Temple guards and coming to arrest Jesus, but to simply speak with him? Preposterous!

Yet as hard as Nicodemus tried to fit in with his fellow Pharisees, as much as he tried to blend in with the other members of the Sanhedrin, he found himself up late, pacing the floor, trying to figure out what it all meant. He had to know. He had to see this Jesus fellow up-close, speak with him, and find out what made him tick.

So Nicodemus waited until all the lights were out, and made his way down the narrow, familiar streets to the house where the rabble-rouser and his motley crew were staying. The young man who answered the door raised his eyebrow when he made out who had knocked, but he ushered Nicodemus in as if this kind of thing happened every day. The Pharisee stood there as the man awoke Jesus, then returned to his own sleeping mat and almost immediately began snoring softly.

Jesus offered Nicodemus some wine in an earthen cup, and led him out to the small courtyard where they could speak without disturbing the others. Nicodemus was surprised to find that he was nervous.

Then again, if someone will overturn tables, swing a whip around, and caterwaul like an Old Testament prophet, they are, to say the least, unpredictable. But he had rehearsed his words carefully all the way over, and as Jesus settled on a rough bench, Nicodemus launched into his speech.

“Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.”

Do you know how many dirt-poor rabbis from Podunk towns all over Judea would kill to have a powerful member of the Jewish ruling party acknowledge that their ministry, their preaching was blessed by God? And this upstart, this Galilean nobody, had the audacity, the gall, to interrupt him!

“Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”

Actually, the Greek, anothen, could mean “born from above,” “born anew,” or “born again.” Nicodemus heard it as “born again,” and was doubly incensed. Not only had he been interrupted, but interrupted with nonsense!
But Jesus, of course, meant it differently. You must be born of water and the Spirit to enter the Kingdom of God.

Over the course of the conversation that followed, Nicodemus went from angry, to confused, to awestricken. What had begun as a quest for information became a journey to an unknown land.

You see, for Nicodemus, what you do and how you live has everything to do with if and to what degree God loves and accepts you. One must keep the laws, keep the feasts, make the sacrifices, observe the rules, and if one is diligent enough in those observances, over time, perhaps you will earn righteousness. Maybe, just maybe, God will bestow love upon you.

You control the outcome. You decide whether you are beloved or not. Redeemed or not. Blessed or not. Righteous or not. In a sense, with this kind of power over your destiny, God becomes almost irrelevant.

But a baby doesn’t have to observe rules, or feasts, or sacrifices in order to be born. The baby has no say at all in the process of being born. The whole matter is decided, initiated, and controlled from outside. Being born, as far as the baby is concerned, just happens.

So the message Jesus gave Nicodemus, and is giving us, is that getting born again is something with which we have very little to do. This is something that comes from God. Further, to be born again is to first die. Marcus Borg writes, “‘Dying and rising’ and ‘to be born again’ are the same ‘root image’ for the process of personal transformation at the center of Christian life: to be born again involves death and resurrection. It means dying to an old way of being and being born into a new way of being…a way of being and an identity centered in the sacred, in Spirit, in Christ, in God.”

And if Nicodemus wasn’t dizzy from all of these implications which whirled madly around him already, Jesus went on to detail how it’s done, and why.

He reached back to Numbers 21 and reminded Nicodemus of when the children of Israel, wandering in the wilderness, had once again displeased God and were being punished with a rash of deadly snakebites.
God instructed Moses to make a bronze serpent and place it on a pole. When someone was bitten, they had too look up, look at the very thing which had afflicted them, in order to live.

We spoke last week about how death and sin are so intricately related. If death is to be defeated, if it is to be conquered, then we must look upon that very thing which afflicts us: we must see Jesus, nailed to a cross, dead. Dead for us. In “The Joy of Being Wrong,” James Alison writes that “God raised up this man who had been killed in this way for us. The victim of human iniquity was raised up as forgiveness; in fact the resurrection was the raising up of the victim as forgiveness. This it was which permitted the recasting of God as love. It was not just that God loved his son and so raised him up, but that the giving of the son and his raising up revealed God as love for us.”

Oh yeah, that’s the “why.” That’s where John 3:16 comes in. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

The word “world” there is interesting. Usually, when John uses the word (which is “kosmos” in the Greek), he is signifying that entity which is hostile to God’s will. Some commentators suggest that the true force and scope of God’s unfathomable love can be seen by translating the verse, “For God so loved the God-hating world...!” After all, isn’t it true that God’s love is not only unfathomable but also somewhat offensive?

God does not ask the world if it wishes to be the recipient of God’s love. God just goes ahead and loves, and not only loves but gives the world God’s only beloved Son over to death. The one who dies for you clearly has a significant claim on you, and John makes that clear. God's love – surprising, all encompassing, unasked for and undeserved – is also given unconditionally. God loves us, that is, whether we like it or not.

And lest we think that the act of believing is a kind of mental assent to a rigid set of doctrines, a pulling ourselves up by the bootstraps, some kind of self-hypnosis, or anything else that can once again place us in the driver’s seat of our own salvation, let’s return to Marcus Borg.

In his book, “The God We Never Knew,” he says, concerning the concept of belief in John, and indeed in the entire New Testament, that rather than strict intellectual assent to propositions and claims, belief is trust, is faithfulness, and, “in a very general sense…[it is] the belief that there’s something to all of this.” Borg says that faith that “believes God” is not something we can simply will, on our own: “we are led into it. It grows….It is not a requirement that we are to meet but a quality that grows as our relationship with God deepens.” But we do have to “take the first step,” he says, “and then another (though sometimes we are virtually pushed into this by desperation or lured into it by example or experience).”

Lent is a time of disorientation, or at least it should be, for all of us who, like Nicodemus, live like we have it all figured out. Lent is supposed to remind us that all our dieting, fitness, and age-defying make-up products will not keep us alive. We are dust and ashes and to dust and ashes we will return. And Lent should remind us that for all our self-help, get-rich-quick schemes and for all the ways we self-aggrandize ourselves for being self-made individuals, we are finally helpless. We need a Savior to do it all for us. We need a Savior to die for us. Sin is that serious.

Lent is a time of disorientation. But it is also, thanks be to God, a time where we, like Nicodemus, can experience a reorientation to a new perspective!

Let us pray.

Seek First...

Jesus doesn't offer investment advice or self-help pop-psychology. He offers a hard choice. I can only hope I've done the text justice.

I am grateful for the work of John Petty of "Progressive Involvement," David Lose of "Working Preacher," and John van de Laar of "Sacresdise" for their work, which figures extensively in this sermon.

Though it is not included here, I am also adapting the "World in Prayer" for the Prayers of the People.

Isaiah 49:8-16a
Thus says the LORD:
In a time of favor I have answered you, on a day of salvation I have helped you;
I have kept you and given you as a covenant to the people,
to establish the land, to apportion the desolate heritages;
saying to the prisoners, “Come out,” to those who are in darkness, “Show yourselves.”
They shall feed along the ways, on all the bare heights shall be their pasture;
they shall not hunger or thirst, neither scorching wind nor sun shall strike them down,
for he who has pity on them will lead them, and by springs of water will guide them.
And I will turn all my mountains into a road, and my highways shall be raised up.
Lo, these shall come from far away, and lo, these from the north and from the west,
and these from the land of Syene.
Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth; break forth, O mountains, into singing!
For the LORD has comforted his people, and will have compassion on his suffering ones.
But Zion said, “The LORD has forsaken me, my Lord has forgotten me.”
Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb?
Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you.
See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands;

1 Corinthians 4:1-5
Think of us in this way, as servants of Christ and stewards of God’s mysteries. Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found trustworthy. But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. I do not even judge myself. I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then each one will receive commendation from God.

Matthew 6:24-34
“No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you — you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
”So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.”

This is the Word of the Lord.

There’s a bumper sticker I saw awhile back that reads, “If you aren’t completely appalled, you aren’t paying attention.”

I don’t really know how long it’s been going on, or where it started, but it seems like our society is bent on having something to be terrified about all the time, and if you aren’t sharing in the horror, you’re apparently misinformed, or, worse, part of “the problem.”

Politicians, TV commentators, and radio talk-show hosts make a very good living by pushing the panic button – health care, immigration, inflation, this crisis, that ideological attack, the other side’s lies about something or the other, it goes on and on.

Never mind that you and I live in one of the most affluent societies in the history of the planet. My friend the Reverend Barbara Vaughn says that we'd rather be scared and confused by those we think know better than trusting our own intelligence. As a result, if the politicians and pundits can get us to worry about taxes, shrinking incomes and rising prices, shortages and uncertainty, they can sway us to think and act and vote the way they want us to, and we go along with it.

But in our Gospel reading today, Jesus says, “Wait. You’re better than that.”

At its core, today’s reading is a question: what, or who, do we place our trust in? Is it God, or is it “stuff?” If this is no small question for you and I, it was an even greater challenge to the people who were listening to Jesus that day on the mountainside.

There were a few very rich people in ancient Israel. At the top were the aristocratic families, many of whom were of Greek or Roman background, who had received their property through military conquest. They made up about two or three percent of the population at most.

Under them were the four or five percent of people who were merely wealthy: the major tax collectors, and those who held high positions with the major landowners. The tax collectors and landowners were agents of political oppression. You can count the priests and scribes in Jerusalem among them. They were not necessarily rich in terms of assets (some were, though), but they lived in palatial splendor. If the tax collectors were political oppressors, the priests and scribes were religious oppressors, so the people caught it from both sides.

Everybody else was poor. A good seventy-five percent of the people were merchants, fishermen, artisans, and farmers. Today, these are respected, often well-paid professions, but back then these workers lived a hand-to-mouth existence, making barely enough to get by, if that.

At the very bottom rung were the fifteen percent who were beggars, cripples, prostitutes and criminals who lived off the land outside the cities. So, rather than feeling challenged when Jesus said “you cannot serve God and wealth,” the people would have been in full agreement. After all, with the various taxes they paid approaching fully half of their already meager income, they regarded their economic superiors as greedy, living high on the hog while so many were near starvation. These wealthy and super-rich rulers were obviously following money and power more than God.

But one doesn’t attempt to serve two masters simply by having an abundance of wealth. Jesus makes six statements in these verses against worrying, and while it’s true that the wealthy felt great anxiety over keeping and enhancing the things they’ve accumulated, it isn’t hard to imagine that the people listening to Jesus that day, the poor and the poorer, had plenty to worry about. Funny thing is, no matter where they were in the economic spectrum, they worried about the same things: security and acquisition.

Soren Kierkegaard once defined anxiety as "the next day." We don't know what will happen "the next day," which creates anxiety this day. If you accumulate enough stuff – food, clothing, money, things – you will be secure against that great unknown that is “tomorrow.” Of course, we soon find out, if we’re paying attention, that there is never “enough.”

So, you see, Jesus isn’t offering a spiritual or doctrinal directive when he says that we cannot serve two masters. He is stating a physical reality, a psychological truth. It isn’t that we shouldn’t serve two masters, or that it would be a really good idea not to serve two masters, or that we should strive to not serve two masters. It’s that we cannot serve two masters, period. We lack the ability.

What Jesus is offering is a chance to reject scarcity and embrace abundance, to leave behind the economics of the world for the economics of God. To serve God is to be in relationship with God, and to live in the Kingdom of God, and the currency of the Kingdom of God – the coin of the realm, if you will – is love.

Love – and especially God's love – cannot be counted, tracked or stockpiled. And when you live in this kind of relationship of love and trust, you've entered into the realm of abundance, the world of possibility, the world of contentment. Suddenly, in this world – Jesus calls it the "kingdom of God" – not worrying actually becomes an option. This world invites us to trust God's faithfulness in the same way that the lilies of the field trust in spring, or a bird trusts the currents of the air it sails upon.

This is the world Jesus invites us into: a world of abundance, generosity, and new life. But it is also a world of fragility, trust, and vulnerability. Lilies and birds, after all, can't defend themselves but must trust God's providence and love.

But let me ask you something: is this “don’t worry” philosophy realistic for everyone in our world today? Can we speak about the lilies of the field and the birds of the air to the people of Libya, to those still digging out of the rubble in Christchurch, New Zealand, or to Uganda’s Invisible Children, or to the millions living in refugee camps across the world? Can we tell a homeless man not to worry, or someone struggling with illness to set their anxiety aside?

I contend that this is why Jesus commands us to strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness. I’ve seen the word “righteousness” also translated as “justice,” and for good reason. “Righteousness” sounds as if we are to be seeking personal purity. This is a good idea, and certainly part and parcel of a right relationship with God, but the context of the passage compels us to look beyond the personal.

To seek the Kingdom’s justice is to recognize this fact: There is no lack of wealth, food or resources in our world today. There is only the lack of sharing, connectedness and equitable distribution that would ensure that all people have enough.

Living as servants of God, as residents of the Kingdom of God, requires a shift in our loyalties – from ourselves, our resources, our accumulated treasure, to God, God’s resources and God’s interconnected community. To share, to connect, to distribute. To be the solution. To let the victims of violence and war discover that they can be free because they are surrounded by peacemakers who are protecting and shielding them. To allow the hungry and the homeless to find that they are free because they are welcomed into the hospitality of caring brothers and sisters. To truly care for those who are the least, the lost, the forgotten, the marginalized.

Will it work, this putting the Kingdom of God, and God’s justice for all creation first? Will all of our needs be met as well? I don’t know. Jesus certainly thinks so. And we’ll only find out by trying… so let it begin here.

It Gets Better!

It isn't like the "It Gets Better" campaign I've enjoyed seeing blossom over the past month or so... but, then again, it kinda is.

Haggai 1:15b-2:9
In the second year of King Darius,
in the seventh month, on the twenty-first day of the month, the word of the LORD came by the prophet Haggai, saying: Speak now to Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua son of Jehozadak, the high priest, and to the remnant of the people, and say, Who is left among you that saw this house in its former glory? How does it look to you now? Is it not in your sight as nothing? Yet now take courage, O Zerubbabel, says the LORD; take courage, O Joshua, son of Jehozadak, the high priest; take courage, all you people of the land, says the LORD; work, for I am with you, says the LORD of hosts, according to the promise that I made you when you came out of Egypt. My spirit abides among you; do not fear. For thus says the LORD of hosts: Once again, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land; and I will shake all the nations, so that the treasure of all nations shall come, and I will fill this house with splendor, says the LORD of hosts. The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, says the LORD of hosts. The latter splendor of this house shall be greater than the former, says the LORD of hosts; and in this place I will give prosperity, says the LORD of hosts.


2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17
As to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we beg you, brothers and sisters, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by spirit or by word or by letter, as though from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord is already here. Let no one deceive you in any way; for that day will not come unless the rebellion comes first and the lawless one is revealed, the one destined for destruction. He opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, declaring himself to be God. Do you not remember that I told you these things when I was still with you?
But we must always give thanks to God for you, brothers and sisters beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the first fruits for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and through belief in the truth. For this purpose he called you through our proclamation of the good news, so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. So then, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by our letter.
Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and through grace gave us eternal comfort and good hope, comfort your hearts and strengthen them in every good work and word

Luke 20:27-38
Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to him and asked him a question, "Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. Now there were seven brothers; the first married, and died childless; then the second and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her."
Jesus said to them, "Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive."

This is the Word of the Lord.

One of the difficulties we run into as twenty-first century people is that, very often, when the Scriptures make reference to people, places, and events, we have no real frame of reference for them. Groups like the Pharisees and Sadducees, for example, tend to get grouped together in our minds and in our conversations, filed away in a box marked “enemies of Jesus.”

In reality, these two groups were as different as you could get and still be within the same general ideology. To begin with, the Sadducees counted only the Pentateuch, or first five books of our modern Old Testament, as authoritative. The Sadducees insisted on a very strict literal reading of Scripture, and since these five books of the Bible make no mention of an afterlife, they held that there must then be no such thing.

The Sadducees were the elite in Jewish culture – they were the ones who were in charge of the Temple’s operations (and, as a result, became rich off of the merchants who sold goods in and around the Temple); and from a select few of their families, the chief priests were assigned.

In contrast, the Pharisees take—and I know it sounds odd, but bear with me—a more liberal view of Scripture. In Jesus’ time, the Pharisee held the whole Bible as it existed as authoritative. As a result, they believed in a resurrection, a life after death. What’s more, they were much less wedded to the Temple as the center of culture and worship. If the Sadducees were the religious elitists, the Pharisees were much more democratic in their practice of religion.

Now, the way this played out in practice is, rather than being limited to the strict interpretation of the text of the Law, and only the text of the law, the Pharisees sought to place the Law into the context of daily life. This resulted in hundreds upon hundreds of supplementary rules. For example, if one is to do no work on the Sabbath, then one must define what “work” is, right? So they developed, over time, some 39 general categories of activities which are prohibited on the Sabbath. These are: Carrying, Burning, Extinguishing, Finishing, Writing, Erasing, Cooking, Washing, Sewing, Tearing, Knotting, Untying, Shaping, Plowing, Planting, Reaping, Harvesting, Threshing, Winnowing, Selecting, Sifting, Grinding, Kneading, Combing, Spinning, Dyeing, Chain-stitching, Warping, Weaving, Unraveling, Building, Demolishing, Trapping, Shearing, Slaughtering, Skinning, Tanning, Smoothing, and Marking.

And while these laws (and believe me, that list is a tiny representation of the legal minutiae the Pharisees developed) served to produce in the Pharisees the very self-righteous superiority they had originally rebelled against in the Sadducees, it is their ability to have a construct of faith apart from the Temple proper that allowed them to rescue Judaism from obscurity following the temple’s destruction in 70AD. By contrast, the Sadducees all but ceased to exist.

Now, that’s the wider historical background, but if the dispute is between the Pharisees and Sadducees, why on earth drag Jesus into it? He certainly was no fan of the Pharisees, and the feeling was mutual. Well, our reading takes place during the last week before Jesus is crucified. When Jesus came into Jerusalem, his first stop was the Temple, where he singlehandedly drove out the moneychangers. Now, as you might imagine, running the moneychangers out served to take a bite out of the Sadducees’ profit margin. Thus you might say that, in all of Judaism, the one thing the Pharisees and Sadducees could agree on was that they hated Jesus.

Obviously, the question they pose to Jesus is meant to not only discredit him, but by extension to show the impossibility of life after death. The law they referenced – called levirate marriage from the Latin levir ("brother in law") comes from Deuteronomy 25:5-10 and sought to insure the preservation of one's family name by stipulating that a man should marry the childless widow of his brother.

Think about it: if there is nothing to hope for after the end of life, then the most important thing a person can hope for, the only immortality available, is that one’s name will live after them. Thus the levirate marriage law would have been of inestimable importance to the Sadducees. Yet for all the importance they placed on the idea, their question was based upon a ridiculous and improbable situation. I mean, Elizabeth Taylor hadn’t even been born yet! But, of course, they weren’t really interested in the answer at all, were they? They were interested in discrediting Jesus, and if they made fools of the other folks who believed in the resurrection, well, that was a bonus.

But it turns out that the Sadducees were making an error. Not just in thinking they could confuse and embarrass Jesus. No, they were making a mistake that many of us make: they were assuming that the afterlife is, at its core, merely an extension of this life.

I don’t know if you ever saw the movie “Beetlejuice,” but I found its (thankfully comedic) interpretation of the afterlife depressing. The dead were either employees of – or victims of – a bureaucracy, where you took a number and waited in line for years only to find that they’d misplaced your papers.

And what Jesus tells them is, oh, no, you’ve got it all wrong. It’s better than that.

In our reading from the book of Haggai, the exiles have returned from a 70-year captivity in Babylon, dragging with them their meager possessions and a few building materials, and they’ve managed to cobble together a Temple. It’s ramshackle, tiny, pitiful. An embarrassment. Their stomachs growl as they wonder, is this it? Is this all we ever have to look forward to? Living hand-to-mouth under the heel of some king or another, worshiping in a shack, the rest of our lives? This is when God whispers in their ear, “No. It gets better.”

What is it we hope for? Do we, like so many Christians today and through the centuries, hold to some Greek notion of the immortality of the soul, where whatever it is we imagine our spirit or soul to be carries on, a wisp of who we are now, into the Great Unknown? In our Gospel reading, Jesus tells us, “Oh, no. It gets better.”

Hear the Word of God, from First Corinthians, the fifteenth chapter, reading from the New International Reader’s Version: “The body that is planted does not last forever. The body that is raised from the dead lasts forever. It is planted without honor. But it is raised in glory. It is planted in weakness. But it is raised in power. It is planted as an earthly body. But it is raised as a spiritual body. Just as there is an earthly body, there is also a spiritual body. It is written, ‘The first man Adam became a living person.’ The last Adam became a spirit that gives life. What is spiritual did not come first. What is earthly came first. What is spiritual came after that. The first man came from the dust of the earth. The second man came from heaven.”

It is the whole person, not some wispy essence, that God promises to redeem. We do, in fact, die – there is no escaping that. But because of the One who died on the cross and was raised again from death, we live and die with the promise that God will similarly raise us from death to new life where, in the words of Jesus today we “cannot die, because [we] are like angels and are children of God, being children of resurrection” (David Lose)

Marcia Thompson puts it this way: “Heaven does not equal earth taken to perfection. Life in God is not an extension of this life. Resurrection is complete transformation. The only thing that holds this life together with the next is God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”

The Sadducees thought that they were God’s favorites because of how they were born – the children of privilege, destined to prosper, to enjoy the authority and profit of controlling the religious life of a nation. The Pharisees thought that God’s favor was a thing to be earned, an ideal to attain through careful observance of every nuance of legal observance. Neither had it right, of course.

The resurrection life isn’t just a future hope, but a current crucial aspect of our existence. Heaven isn’t “up there,” but as Henry David Thoreau said, “Heaven is under out feet as well as over our heads.” Yes, there is a beyond, and yes it is beyond anything our minds can comprehend, but eternity begins now. This is why we live. This is why we love. This is why we worship. This is why we hope.

Oh, yes. It really does get better.