10 Pentecost Yr C

Our churches give considerable attention these days to who’s in and who’s out. Fact of the matter is that Jesus spends much more time and energy in the gospels talking about money and possessions than he does about sex. In front of us today are two passages that teach us about the proper place of money and possessions, and where our priorities are.

Look at what we have here in Luke. It was a bumper crop, a good year. What does a farmer do with a bumper crop; he puts it in the barn. That done, he relaxes. He can afford to. He has earned his contentment. He is happy and then he dies. Isn’t that the way it is supposed to be? Isn’t this good news? And yet, this farmer is called a fool, what is so foolish about what he has done?

This is a story about the perennial seduction of greed; it is about the perennial seduction of idolatry. Today we may call it conspicuous consumption and it has many faces and facets. This teaching is as urgent in our time as it must have been in the 1st century.

There’s a story about a man, Ed. Ed is over eighty years old, and has worked very hard all of his life. Because he saved his money very carefully, Ed is probably very wealthy. He has never married and has no family, except for his sister, who lives with him. Ed's home is a very modest one, and he scrupulously watches every penny that he spends. But he also has his treasure, and it sits in his garage, covered by a thick canvas cloth. It is a restored car, worth more than many people's homes, and Ed loves that car. He spends most of his waking hours sitting in an old chair in front of the open garage door, guarding his treasure. If anyone happens to walk by – the mail carrier, a visitor to a neighbor's home, a repair person, Ed is quick to call that person back to his garage to show him the car, barely lifting up the cover and letting them have just a peek at a corner of his prized automobile. Whenever he talks about the car, Ed gets a gleam in his eye as if he is talking about the most wonderful thing in the world. But if the subject is just about anything else, Ed grows angry and cynical. The world is a corrupt and terrible place, he says, and everyone is a crook. He often talks about how to protect himself and his property, even if he has to use his gun to do so. In the two years since Ed bought this car, it has never been out of that garage. It has never been taken out from under that thick canvas covering. Ed has never taken it for a ride, never shared the thrill of driving down some beautiful, winding, wooded road with his sister or a friend at his side.

I’m not sure that Ed is wrong, or his love for his car is wrong, it isn’t about being right or wrong. It is about priority though, and that’s why greed is so foolish and so seductive. It’s not the purchase of the vehicle, or the latest gadget, or the big house, or the shares of stock, that is problematic. It’s the misplaced priority about that. It’s turning the object into the idol, it’s turning ones attention into oneself and away from others, away from the common good, away from the Creator.

The Colossians passage demands that our attention be turned away from greed and toward Christ, who is all and in all. Greed is a way of worshipping wrong gods. In fact, the Colossians passage shows us that we must die to that which is killing us. That’s what greed does; it kills us, that’s what was happening to our man Ed. The by-product of greed and idol worship is the bitterness that builds up in our hearts and our souls, little by little, bit by bit. Greed is self-destructive. Colossians commends a new-self, the one baptized into Christ, who centers life not on self, but on mercy, compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, and forgiveness. There is a genuine alternative to the seduction of greed and idols. We need to know where we stand and to whom we belong.

There are many preachers, who seem to get all the TV airtime and the press, that preach a gospel of prosperity. It’s the message that if you do the right things, pray the right way, even believe the right words, you will be rewarded with riches. Reading the Gospel of Luke and Colossians, I don’t know how that message can be found. It is so clear that the life of discipleship is not about getting more and getting ahead. The life of discipleship is about dying to that which is killing you, to be raised to new life clothed in Christ. It is to be free to be merciful and compassionate, nonjudgmental and inclusive.

What is killing you? What do you worship? What is your idol? What foolish treasures do you store up? These questions also need to be addressed to us as a church, and us as society. What is it that holds us hostage, that keeps us in bondage, that we need to die to, so that we may be free to be a merciful and compassionate society, a society of neighbors, like the compassionate Samaritan, rather than a society of mean-spirited people. What is it that we must die to so that we may be in relationship with one another and with God? What are our idols? How do we choose against the foolishness of storing up treasures? I don’t have the solution for you or for us, just some suggestions for adjusting our attitude toward wealth. First, we may need to realize that wealth is not happiness, that money and possessions do not bring peace of mind. Second, we may need to decide to share rather than hoard. Sharing is a biblical imperative, even if some call it by another name. Third, we may need to make a commitment to serve God instead of money. While it is important to be responsible about money, to plan for our retirement and our needs, we should also plan for what someone has called our "expirement" – for the death that came unexpectedly to the rich fool in this parable told by Jesus. We need to ask if our lives, in all their multi-faceted and multi-tasking glory, reflect the priorities God would like us to have.

Whenever we worship the created rather than the Creator, we have lowered our sights and limited our vision – we have "missed the mark," which is the definition of sin. It doesn't mean that material things are evil in themselves. Not at all. God's creation is good. It is the "Who" that's at the center of our lives that matters. And it is how we regard the things that we have that is central to our well-being in God's eyes. And it is well-being in God's eyes that constitutes the good life.

Everything we have is a gift from God. We may work hard, but what we have is a gift, not a reward. Wealth is a means, not an end, and most of us need an attitude adjustment about it. We have seen in our own lifetimes incredible bouts of greed – in the 80's, and the 90's, and the terrible price we are now paying for the greed of recent years – no wonder that we have given way to disillusionment and hunger for what truly satisfies.

God’s amazing and abundant love and grace truly satisfies. Taste and see the goodness of the lord.

9 Pentecost Yr C

Jesus was praying, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray. Jesus responded in three ways. First, Jesus gave the disciples words to pray with. Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial. Then, the gospel writer Luke has Jesus tell a story of a relationship. There is a person who needs some food for a visitor, even though the visitor arrives in the middle of the night. That person goes to the door of his friend, maybe his neighbor, and knocks on the door in the middle of the night and asks for some bread. The friend sounds mightily irritated to be awoken in the middle of the night, but the story suggests that he did in fact after a little convincing, give over the bread. And then what we hear from Luke this morning is about boldness. What we have before us is not just the so familiar words we pray as the Lord’s Prayer, but we have those words in the context of relationship and boldness. Ask, search, knock. Jesus' instruction invites trust and boldness, ask, search, knock, confident that you will receive what you ask. There is no one among us listening who would give a snake or a scorpion to a beseeching child, so how then, Jesus implies, can we not trust that God as divine parent will give us all that we need, including and especially the Holy Spirit?

Jesus seems most interested, at this point, in an invitation to a relationship than an explanation about the technique of prayer. Prayer is not a list, but a relationship. In this passage Jesus invites us into relationship with God through prayer, offering us the opportunity to approach the God whose name is too holy to speak and whose countenance too terrible to behold with the familiarity, boldness, and trust of a young child running to her parent for both provision and protection.

I do think that we tend to get caught up in all sorts of questions about prayer. How do we pray? What do we pray for? And the big ones, does God answer prayer and does prayer change God? Just as Jesus gave the disciples words to pray with, we Episcopalians have all sorts of beautiful prayers that have been handed to us through generations of the faithful, and we have wonderful new prayers that broaden our imaginations. However we are a little bit challenged by extemporaneous prayer. We tend to be formed as people of well thought out and constructed prayer. We tend to rely on the beautiful words of those who came before us. When we are wordless, when the feeling we have is so awesome, so fearful, so sad, so joyful that we are left wordless, speechless, these prayers of our people can lift us up and carry us along.

And there are times, like Anne Lamott writes in Traveling Mercies that our two best prayers are, help me, help me, help me and thank you, thank you, thank you. Like Anne Lamott suggests, spontaneous prayer comes without thinking. We pray like that all the time. Articulating those spontaneous prayers is harder for us just because we don’t have much practice doing it.

The point of all of this is that prayer is the work we do in building our end of the relationship we have with God. That relationship is both personal and corporate. Each of us engages the relationship in a very personal way, and need to discover a personal prayer life that is intentional, spirit filled and nurturing. There are myriad ways to grow our personal prayer; one size does not fit all. Personal prayer even changes over time, depending on where and when life takes us. It’s only in the last few years I have been able to sit in quiet prayer. With young children, trying to find quiet time was near impossible, and if I tried to be quiet to begin my day, before anyone else was awake, I just fell asleep again. I also needed to exercise, so I did that early in the morning while everyone else was still asleep, and I learned that I could combine prayer and exercise. That is a discipline I continue even though small children have become large. But I have also found, with some practice that I can spend some time now in quiet prayer, without fidgeting and without falling asleep, most of the time.

We also engage our relationship with God in a corporate way. We gather together in prayer, in fact that is who we are as Episcopalians, people who share common prayer. We sing together, we have silence together, we say our prayers together, we read and hear scripture together, we eat together, and together we are sent out into the world to continue the work God has given us to do.

Bottom line though, is that prayer is a relationship, and a relationship must be worked at, it can’t be taken for granted or set aside, or it will fail. This relationship with God has at its foundation good faith and reciprocal love. It is a relationship that is transformative. "I pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time- waking and sleeping. It doesn't change God- it changes me," writes C.S. Lewis. Prayer is really much more about us than about God. Prayer is about our overflowing need to know our creator, and to be known by our creator.

And yet I speak of boldness in prayer. How do we speak of boldness in this relationship with God? Especially when in our ears we hear, blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth. How do we speak of asking for what we want, when it seems like God should already know that. Ask, search, knock. I think being bold in our prayer makes us clearer about what we are asking. I think being bold in prayer makes us discern what it is we really may want or need. As we are bold in prayer, who we need to be, what we need to do, whom we need to serve, begins to dawn on us like a beautiful mountain sunrise. A sunrise that illuminates all else.

And I know that God always responds to prayer. Often that response is, no Kathy, not now, not ever. Sometimes that response is a surprise to me. I, in my infinite wisdom, would not do it the same way God does it. C.S. Lewis has also written, “There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, "All right, then, have it your way."”

Does prayer really work? I turn to Barbara Brown Taylor, a wonderful preacher and writer, in her collection Home by another way. She says about a young child, “I want her to believe in a God who loves her and listens to her, but in that case I will need some explanation for why it does not always seem that way.” Barbara Brown Taylor continues, “One day, when Madeline asks me outright whether prayer really works, I am going to say, ‘Oh, sweetie, of course it does. It keeps our hearts chasing after God’s heart. It’s how we bother God, and it’s how God bothers us back. There’s nothing that works any better than that.”

Amen.

8 Pentecost Yr C

My favorite high school teacher was Mr. Everett Anderson, we affectionately called him Ev. He was a diminutive man. Most of us took his Shakespeare class and actually loved it. Ev could be caught jumping up and down and on top of desks with excitement. Most of us claim him as our favorite teacher, but he didn’t look like or act like or sound like the kind of person any of us would consider cool. Ev taught us about learning, about passion, about reading, and about getting along with one another. Jesus seems to choose the most unlikely teachers for us. The hated Samaritan man, the woman at the well, the child at his feet, the sinners with whom he ate, instead of respected Pharisees or lawyers, instead of authoritative experts or great prophets. However, the teachers Jesus has chosen for us are teachers who do the unexpected and who are the unexpected, like my favorite high school teacher. The Priest and the Levite in the compassionate Samaritan story we read last week, really do what is expected of them. They were not allowed to be unclean, therefore they could not touch the man who had been beaten, they had to, in fact they were required to cross the road.

Our dear Martha in our story today does what is expected of her when she is entertaining people in her home, she can’t be blamed for that. You know what it’s like to have people over to your home for a meal, and Martha has this added stressor, Jesus is actually important in her circle of friends. You know what it’s like to spend the whole day cleaning, you know what it’s like to plan the menu, to buy the groceries, to prepare the meal, to set the table, to get everything just right. And you know what it’s like to feel like you’re in it alone, when no one steps up to help. You get a bit resentful, maybe even cross. You may even say out loud to whoever is close enough to hear, “doesn’t anyone care that I’ve got to do all this work myself?” Ahh, Martha, we are so much like you.

Martha actually has much to teach us. She reminds us of the value and sacredness of the work of hospitality. She reminds us never to take that work for granted; she reminds us that to even begin to meet Jesus, we welcome all comers with food and drink.

When I reported for duty on Friday afternoon for the opening of Hills Alive, the huge Christian music concert in the park, I opened up the bulletin that listed everything going on, and flipped through it. I was reading the thank you page, and there we were. St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, greeters, for the whole city to see. I suddenly realized how much sense that makes. Some have wondered about our involvement at Hills Alive, it is definitely outside of our particular box, and my answer has been about my commitment to “staying at the table.” What I mean by that is that I am committed to being part of the community of people who are Christians, because I think that we all have something to learn, because I don’t think
that there is only one way to walk the Christian journey, and because I know that staying away effectively silences our voice, and I am not interested in being silenced. Our involvement in Hills Alive as greeters, as ministers of hospitality just like Martha, is perfect. The metaphor of “staying at the table” is a metaphor of hospitality. Martha reminds us that the work of doing, of setting the table and inviting all to come, is very important work indeed.

But that is not the only piece of the story today. In the midst of Martha’s frustration with Mary, this is not Martha’s story, it is Mary’s.

Mary becomes the unlikely teacher today. Mary sits at Jesus’ feet, in the company of men, receiving all that Jesus has to teach. Mary is doing the unexpected, and making Martha quite mad in the process. Luke’s gospel shows us what the Kingdom of God is like. The Kingdom of God is like Martha working in the kitchen, and Mary learning at Jesus’ feet.

The most helpful way to read this story is in relationship to the story about the compassionate Samaritan. The pairing of these stories point to the importance of doing and hearing in the Gospel of Luke. The placement of these two stories illustrates that it's doing AND hearing, not doing OR hearing that matters. When the lawyer in the compassionate Samaritan story asked about the bottom line of what it means to be saved, Jesus goes to the heart of the matter by telling a story about love in action on the part of a hated stranger toward his most unexpected neighbor. In today's story, we hear that sitting at the feet of Jesus and listening carefully is also important, right at the heart of things, too.

Mary listens to Jesus, and the Kingdom is near. We live in a world that seems to equate busyness with importance, and a long to-do list, especially when it's finally completed, gives us a sense of satisfaction and even security…at least, until we start on a new list of tasks to be completed. Our days are full, one after another, of many things, and our minds are full and overflowing, worried and distracted, sometimes like Martha, by many things.

Can you imagine what life would be like, even for a little while, without all of the things that keep us busy? Can you imagine what life would be like, even for a little while, without all the talking we do? Can you imagine what life would be like, even for a little while, just listening to what Jesus may be saying? It may be a little like the Kingdom.

It seems to me that we can't hear God still speaking if we don't stop, not just sometimes but regularly, and just sit and listen, like Mary at the feet of Jesus. How can the Stillspeaking God get a word in edgewise over the beepers, cell phones, voicemail, television, and radio messages that bombard us? How can we tend to our internal lives like careful gardeners who spend time nurturing new growth, pulling weeds when necessary, and gently showering the thirsty green plants with refreshing water?

Our teachers today, the unexpected one Mary, the expected one Martha, show us the wisdom of balance. Mary shows us the wisdom of quiet listening, of expectant listening, of listening for the voice of Jesus. Martha shows us the wisdom of hospitality. Our job is to find the balance, to make room for both ways to meet God and greet God, and in the encounter, the Kingdom is near.

7 Pentecost Yr C

In the gospel of Luke today we have a story that is very familiar to us. We are probably most familiar with it as the Good Samaritan, but I’d like you to think of it as the compassionate Samaritan. The compassionate Samaritan is embedded in the story about a lawyer who has come to Jesus asking about eternal life. First, the lawyer asks Jesus what he must to do inherit eternal life. Jesus answers that question with the story of the compassionate Samaritan, and then the lawyer is able to identify who in the story was the neighbor and the lawyer is told by Jesus to go and do likewise. Today I would like for you to entertain the idea that this story is not just about being good. I would like you to see its complexity.

The setup for the story of the compassionate Samaritan is very important. Luke presents the lawyer as questioner. The lawyer represents legal experts who have been present to monitor Jesus’ faithfulness to the law, and legal experts are among those identified as persons responsible for Jesus’ rejection and suffering. However, this lawyer is asking about eternal life, and the question provides the platform for Luke to expound upon the behavior appropriate for an orientation to the resurrection.

The story of the compassionate Samaritan is an illustration of appropriate behavior for a person who loves God and who expects to inherit eternal life. Remember, we’ve talked about this before, when Luke uses the term eternal life, he is referring to the new creation that is a reality in the life of those who profess Jesus Christ as Son of God. The term eternal life is not narrowly defined by what happens after death. It is about the absolutely new life that is the gift of God through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is about living in the here and now as much as it is about the hereafter. Therefore the story of the compassionate Samaritan is about an ethic of compassion,
it is about how we are related to our neighbors.

The setting to the story is on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. This is a very dangerous road, as most travel on foot was in this 1st century rural setting, replete with robbers and full of the possibility of violence. And Jerusalem is the city where the temple is. Many people would be traveling between Jerusalem and Jericho after visiting the temple in Jerusalem.
As are those in this story. First a Priest, then a Levite and lastly a Samaritan.

Next we look at the characters in this story. A priest, a Levite, and a Samaritan. It almost sounds like a joke someone might tell. Something like, a priest, a minister and a rabbi go out fishin. They toss all their stuff in the boat, and push off for the middle of the lake. Once out there, the priest realizes he forgot his lures. So he stands up and steps out of the boat and walks to the shore, gets what he needs and comes on back to the boat. A little later, the minister gets hungry and realizes he forgot his sandwich in the car, so he steps out of the boat, walks to the shore, gets his sandwich and comes on back to the boat. Well, the rabbi had left his jacket in the car and it was getting a little chilly, so he stepped out of the boat but fell right into the water. The priest said to the minister, do you think we should have told him where the stones are?

But, the original hearer of the compassionate Samaritan story is shocked long before the storyteller ever gets to the punch line, because the hearer would think “a priest, a Levite and a Samaritan would never be in the same story.”

You see, the shocking joke here is that it is the Samaritan who is compassionate. The priest and the Levite shared high status in the community of God’s people. They were “temple people.” They were born into priestly families. They were very concerned with relative status, they epitomized the temple culture of who’s in and who’s out, they were in and just about everyone else was out. Within their world, their association with the temple commends them as persons of exemplary piety whose actions would be regarded as self-evidently righteous. The priest and the Levite were accustomed to being evaluated on the basis of their ancestry, not on the basis of their performance.

So the picture the teller of this story has established is of two holy men who have done their business at the temple in Jerusalem, and who are now traveling on the dangerous road to Jericho, who see a man by the side of the road beaten and bleeding, and who pass to the other side of the road instead of helping.

Into the picture arrives the Samaritan, and everyone who is hearing this story laughs. A Samaritan, they exclaim, Samaritans are no good lazy bums. They don’t even go to the temple in Jerusalem to worship, they keep to themselves, there are just not like us. The Samaritan is a man who is in direct contrast to the holy men of the temple. He has no pedigree, he is a merchant, he worships at a different temple. It is this distinction that makes this story shocking.

You and I have heard this story so many times we just about know it by heart. But it is shocking. The Samaritan as the one who has compassion for the beaten and bleeding man at the side of the road is shocking. And, the actions of the Samaritan man condemn the holy men’s failure to act.

The Samaritan is the one who participates in the compassion and covenantal faithfulness of God, not the holy men. This is not just a story about a good guy who helped someone out. This parable of the compassionate Samaritan undermines the system of status and honor based on pedigree that was the way things were in 1st century culture. Once again, Luke is telling us a story that shows how the kingdom of God is near; the kingdom of God is about reordering human interactions.

The conclusion of Luke’s story has Jesus asking the lawyer, who himself has a pedigree, who in this story is the neighbor. The lawyer answered correctly, and Jesus admonishes him to go and do likewise. Eternal life is about compassionate interaction regardless of honor and status.

This is as hard a message to hear in the 21st century as it was in the 1st century. The culture of the 1st century and the culture of the 21st both place so much value on status. The message is clear in all our popular media, worth is based on the size and number of your toys; worth is based on what you wear, where you eat, how big your SUV is. The purpose of assigning worth to all these things is that it then becomes easier to identify those who are below you.

But Jesus shows us that we are honorable and valuable because we are God’s creation. Jesus’ life shows us that in God’s eyes everyone has a place in God’s house, in God’s kingdom. Jesus pours out his life so that we may know that truth. Jesus fills us with new life so that we may have abundant love for ourselves and for others.

Amen, Alleluia!

6 Pentecost Yr C

The readings from Luke for the last three weeks have been about the unfailing love and abundant grace that God has for us. We have heard how that love and grace calls us into relationship with God, and transforms us. We have heard that God does not call us away or out of the world, but instead calls us to do our work, to be in relationship, to go about our business in a way that is new, in a way that reveals God’s unfailing love and grace to the world. We also call this discipleship. This is our call, this is our work. The gospel of Luke is all about being a disciple.

To be a disciple is to be on a journey of active faith formation, and to be a disciple is to be part of ushering in the reign of God. According to Luke, the reign of God is about reordering human interaction, we see that when Jesus brings to the center those people on the margins. And the reign of God is about loving one another as God has loved us offering peace to all we encounter. In the gospel passage from Luke this week, we hear that discipleship is expanded to include everyone, and that discipleship is about radical hospitality.

In the New Revised Standard Version translation we just read, we heard that Jesus appointed seventy disciples and sent them out in pairs. However, many New Testament scholars are convinced the earliest transcripts read 72. Seventy-two is a significant number. At the time Luke’s story was told, the number of the world’s nations is seventy-two. Seventy-two is also reckoned in an apocryphal book, Enoch, as the number of princes and languages in the world. And according to legend, seventy-two elders were commissioned to translate the law from Hebrew to Greek, a project undertaken in order to win renown throughout the whole world for the Jews and their God.

Seventy-two really means everyone. So now it is not just the original Jewish disciples of Jesus that spread the Good News of God in Jesus Christ. It is gentiles as well, and it is all of us; every one of us is a disciple and we are all called to spread the Good News.

Last Wednesday the church celebrated the feast day of St. Peter and St. Paul. A gift that St. Peter and St. Paul give to us in the 21st century is the gift of disagreement. At the very beginnings of the church, these two important church leaders could not agree on who’s in and who’s out. The argument about circumcision which is referred to in the Galatians passage, was a huge argument in the 1st century. Basically, the question was do disciples of Jesus have to be circumcised as a Jew before they can be baptized? This question was about what it means to be a disciple of Jesus, and what it means to be Jew. It is a question that caused communities to stop talking to each other; it caused communities to split apart and even stop eating together. The answer to the question however, was always Love one another as God has loved you. And, a sign of that love was to settle your differences before you come to the table to eat. St. Peter and St. Paul taught us to agree to disagree, because we are all part of one family. The way St. Peter and St. Paul taught us to agree to disagree is to practice radical hospitality.

That is what this passage before us today is about. All of us are called to radical hospitality; all of us are called to discipleship. What we have before us is both sides of hospitality, offering hospitality as well as receiving hospitality.

Jesus sends the seventy-two out to do the work of preaching and teaching, and harvesting the fruits of that labor. Jesus sends them with instructions. Those instructions are about receiving hospitality. First say “peace to this house” and then stay there and receive their hospitality. Eat and drink, cure the sick and preach the Good News. If they do not welcome you, if they do not offer hospitality, leave in protest, and know that the kingdom of God has come near. Remember, what Luke means when he writes about Jesus ushering in the kingdom of God is the reordering of human interactions. Jesus brings those who are on the margins to the center, those who are first will be last, those who are out will be in.

What does the discipleship of radical hospitality look like in the 21st century? Discipleship is offering hospitality and receiving hospitality, and in doing so, the kingdom of God is near. As disciples we are called to welcome the stranger. We are called to offer rest, to wash their feet, and a place at the table. When we offer this radical hospitality, we act as disciples and the kingdom of God is near. We, as disciples, are called to offer hospitality to everyone, people we agree with, people we disagree with, people that look like us, people who look different than us, people that we grew up with, people who are strangers.

As disciples we are also called to go out into the world, walking along side one another, and say to all we meet, Peace to you, peace to your house, peace to your people. We are to take the gospel seriously, be transformed by it and offer it’s message of hospitality to all we meet, to all whose paths we cross, and to all who come alongside us as we journey together. In this age of rampant individualism, offering hospitality and walking alongside one another, including and especially those who are different from us, is a radical and difficult call. This encounter requires attentive listening and willingness to enter into another’s world and be transformed by this world.

Peace to this house, peace to your house, peace to the stranger’s house.

Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness: Come let us adore him.

2nd Sunday after Pentecost Yr C

Imagine the hot and sticky day this story in Luke took place. Imagine the people who are in mourning over the death of this widow’s only son as they exit the city’s gate on their way to the family burial plot where this young man will be laid. Imagine the sadness and the grief of everyone in attendance, because the grief is indeed shared by all.

Imagine now as Jesus and his followers show up at the city gate, hot and tired themselves after their travels from Capernaum, to this neighboring town of Nain. They hear the weeping and wailing of the funeral procession, and know immediately what is happening. Jesus sees the widow in her pain and shares with her words of compassion. Those bearing the dead boy stood still and Jesus raises her son from the dead. Jesus has done what the prophets of old, Elijah and Elisha, had done, called upon God to come be with them, to visit God’s grace upon them and to be with them in their pain, and suffering, and grief.

In Luke’s gospel today we have a clear picture of who Jesus is. Essentially, Jesus gave this woman new life. When we ask the question what does this Kingdom look like? When we ask the question what does it mean to be a new creation? What really is new life? The answer lies right here, and in other stories like it. The people who lived when Jesus lived saw Jesus give this woman back her life. Without a son and without a husband, she was as good as dead. That is the reality as she lived it. Jesus changed everything for her, that’s what the Kingdom is about. What was lost is found, what was dead is alive, the son who went away returns.

This is not just Good News, it is revolutionary. In the 1st century Mediterranean culture in which Jesus and his friends lived, a person's worth was measured by the household he belonged to. A woman in that culture had status and protection only if she was married or had male children. The woman in our story had neither once her son had died, she would be absolutely and completely vulnerable, therefore as good as dead. By restoring her son to life, Jesus restores the woman to life. By restoring the woman to life, Jesus once again calls down upon himself the anger of the powerful that are interested in the status quo, not in someone talking about and demonstrating how life is in God’s kingdom.

The Kingdom that Jesus proclaims and that Jesus embodies is a reality that empowers the powerless, that brings to the center those who are on the margins, that gives voice to the voiceless. And Jesus says, go and do the same.

Our question, as usual is so what? So what does this story told more than two thousand years ago have to do with us today? This story is important to us on at least three levels. First and foremost is that the evidence shows us that God did indeed act, and continues to act in the lives of the Hebrew people, with the prophets Elijah and Elisha. God did indeed act and continues to act in and through Jesus, in living, loving, suffering and dieing, and in the resurrection. I truly believe that something amazing happened then, and continues to happen today, in the resurrection. God began this new creation in Jesus, and invites us to be agents of that new creation, and in fact gives us the responsibility of being citizens in the new kingdom. It is true that we do not earn God’s love, but it is also true that we have work to do.

Secondly, is that Jesus challenged the status quo, Jesus shows the people of the 1st century and continues to show us today that the same ol same ol is not the way life should be. Jesus shows the new way business is being done in the new kingdom. What happened then, and what continues to happen today matters. It matters that Jesus gave this widow new life, and her son as well. And how we respond to that matters.

And just as importantly is that this widow encounters hope and compassion that transforms her life. When I say we are agents of new creation, this is what I mean. You and I are called to bring the hope and compassion of Jesus into every corner of our lives, in our work and our school and at play, and transformation happens.

Today we are celebrating Amber Brant’s graduation. Amber has been an active member at St. Andrew’s her whole life, except for the few years she and her family lived in Las Vegas. Amber was just confirmed, she runs our nursery, she leads our youth group, she helps Dave with Sunday School and Sonshine Saturday and VBS, and she’s on the vestry. But that’s just a piece of who Amber is. Amber brings the hope and compassion that transforms lives into everything she does. Amber volunteers in the Habitat for Humanity office, and she has volunteered at the Black Hills Humane society. This hope and compassion that Amber brings to her school, her work, and her play, is practiced in her family, by her parents and her sister. This hope and compassion that Amber brings into everything she does is formed by her baptism, and is a result by her being marked as Christ’s own forever.

I believe that young people are not our future, but are our hope and compassion right now. We have so many who have graduated from high school and gone on to college who carry God’s hope and compassion to all the corners of their lives. Amber shows us that today. Amber will be heading out to Northern State University in the fall, leaving a piece of hope and compassion with us that will continue to transform us.

I challenge each of you to be agents of God’s new creation, agents of Jesus’ resurrection, I challenge each of you to bring hope and compassion into everything you do, and we will transform our world.

Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness: Come let us adore him.

1st Sunday after Pentecost Yr C, Trinity

We find ourselves at the time of our church year when it seems like we are completing one thing and embarking upon another. The Sundays of Easter have come to a conclusion, we have celebrated the Day of Pentecost, although we call these days the Days after Pentecost, and we alight for a moment on this, Trinity Sunday, before we come to rest in the ordinary days.

That all sounds so linear, like we can finish up one thing and then begin the next. But you all know that I am not a linear thinker, and therefore in my mind, seasons have a tendency to overlap, or to extend, or to be hurried, but never to happily move in a straight line. The challenge in my life is to be fully present to the now, yes, to look back and see where I’ve been, and to look forward to see what may be off on the horizon, but to let the anxiety of the past and the future be what it is in the present, no more, no less. If I don’t, I will miss incarnation, and I will miss resurrection. In other words, being fully present to now, puts me in a position to see, hear, feel, God in our midst, the reality and the truth of God in you and me and in all of creation. Being fully present helps me to experience the wideness, the boldness, the tenderness, the compassion, of God. It is to be able to listen to God, and to subject myself to God’s authority. If our lives are a narrative, a story that we write with God, then God’s authority is as author, creator.

I do believe being fully present is a good way to experience this thing we call Trinity. The three in One, the One in three. Because Trinity is much more like a dance than a doctrine. Imagine, the God of the universe who creates, who authors, all that is, seen and unseen, who is love, exuberantly spilling over into what we call son and spirit. God being with creation, in the midst of creation, continuing to create, loving, healing, reconciling, speaking, writing the story. So how do we talk about Trinity?

Here is an example. I really love being a mother. Motherhood has changed for me these days. Our boys have grown up and are in various stages of taking steps away to lives on their own. I love to watch Tom and Willie grow and deepen. Deepen in character, faith, expression and relationship. As their mother my heart breaks when they are in pain, and my heart soars when joy finds them. As their mother, I try to prepare them and support them both in their successes and their mistakes. My greatest hope is that they will grow into the full stature of Christ.

Being a daughter these days is hard. I miss my mother, and there are still days that I miss my father, who died sixteen years ago last week. My mother, who is the mother of eight children, never missed a band concert, or a swimming meet. She lived through my boyfriends and bad judgments. When I was 23, I went by myself on a 6 month trip to Europe, only now do I begin to realize what I must have put her through. And she helped take care of Tom and Willie when they were younger.

And then there’s being me. A woman who is creative, passionate, stubborn, compassionate, controlling, has good judgment sometimes not so good judgment once in a while, wife, priest.

All of these, mother, daughter, wife, are always in relationship. Nothing I do, or think, or am, can be separated from the rest. I bring to this present moment all that I am, all that I have been, and all that I am becoming. It is the story that I write with God, while responding the joys and challenges life presents.

If that’s not Trinity, I don’t know what is. Trinity is at its essence relationship. It is relationship among what is, what was, and what shall be. It is relationship among creator, created, and community. Trinity is lover, beloved, and new life.

I remember so very clearly the Sunday night youth group that the priest came to, to explain to us teenagers everything we ever wanted to know about the Trinity. I remember nothing else about that night, except that I left as confused as I had come.

Today I know that that is because understanding Trinity isn’t an exercise of the intellect. Nor is Trinity to be described adequately by our language, because Trinity does not dwell in the world of language. I think efforts to construct Trinity are woefully inadequate. Even the Nicene creed that we all recite by memory each week, which was compiled by men who tried desperately to describe what Trinity is not, only is a glimpse of what may be true. Because the real truth of Trinity lives in that part of us that is intuitive and relational. Trinity exists in the part of our humanity that yearns to be in relationship, that yearns to dance.

Theologians have written tomes about Trinity, I write only this. Trinity is the truth we find in the God who loves us so much to come into our lives as one of us, to be forever among us and forever before us. Trinity is the way in which our lives are lived in relationship, relationship that makes real the body of Christ. And Trinity is the life that is made absolutely new through our creator God.

One of my favorite hymns goes like this. “I bind unto myself today, the strong name of the trinity, by invocation of the same, the three in one and one in three. I bind this day to me forever, by power of faith, Christ’s incarnation…. I bind unto myself the power of the great love of cherubim…..I bind unto myself today the virtues of the starlit heaven… I bind unto myself today the power of God to hold and lead.” We call upon the authority of the one who is creator, the one who created, and the one who gives new life.

We must bind ourselves to the strong name of the Trinity. We must bind ourselves each and every day to the chance for new life given to us and written for us by our Creator.

I had the great privilege once to spend a week at Kanuga conference center in the mountains in North Carolina, to listen to my favorite author Madeleine L’engle speak about this and that. She talks and writes about leaving her apartment in New York City and walking the few blocks to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, where she was writer in residence, and that she would recite this rune, as it is called and was before we knew it as a hymn, “I bind unto myself today the strong name of the Trinity, by invocation of the same, the three in one and one in three.”

We must bind ourselves to the strong name of the Trinity, to the authority that creates us, redeems us, and makes us new creations. We must be fully present to Trinity, to the relationship that enfolds us, empowers us, gives us new life, and calls us from darkness to light, brokenness to wholeness.

In the name of the one who is creator, who is redeemer, and who is sustainer of all life, In the name of the one who is father, son and spirit, In the name of the one who is mother, daughter and compassion, be present to the power that protects you, guides you, and gives you new life.

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God: Come let us adore him.