Born

a Sermon for Christmas Day A
Text: Luke 2:1-20

[Note: the original sermon was preached from sparse notes. What follows is a reinvisioning based on those notes.]

GOD of Hope and Wonder, you gave us the greatest gift of the season: yourself. Be with us as a parent and child, that we might love you and one another so unconditionally. Amen.

Origins
We love origin stories. We love to know where things come from, and what in our past drives us today. Comics shoot up in price when a character’s origin is featured. The most popular episodes of TV shows are the ones that flashback to a poignant moment in a character’s life.

Jesus’s origin story is no different. We love responding to the question of where Jesus came from. What is interesting is that the four canonical gospels give us very different options.

1. Mark has no origin story, beginning with Jesus as an adult.
2. John begins with the creation of the world and speaks about the origin of Jesus’s ministry.
3. Matthew gives the birth story and then speaks of the wisemen and the flight into Egypt.
4. Luke offers the birth story (this time with shepherds) as well as a later trip to Jerusalem for the 12 year-old Jesus and his parents.

Because of this devotion to origin stories, we might give more interest to the beginnings of things, than where they actually go.

The Reason
I’m sure you’ve seen this cliché somewhere or heard someone say it. I saw this week on the sign outside of a real estate office. It says “Jesus is the reason for the season”. Reason for the season? What does Jesus really have to do with Santa Clause and mistletoe and gift giving? This season in which we storm the stores and gobble up ridiculous stuff and then give it to people who don’t need one more thing cluttering their lives: Jesus is the reason for that? Really?

Okay, that may be a bit cheeky, but so is a little rhyme that is supposed to remind us, not of our faith, but of that pastoral image of a little baby born. But this story isn’t supposed to be the beginning—the origin story—but the middle chapter. The story is a story of relationship between GOD and the people, and the introduction of Jesus serves as an important moment in the midst of that relationship.

The Event
So let’s put on our thinking caps for a moment. Let’s all pretend to be world-class theologians and think about this actual event. And ponder what it really means. We might drift a little close to heresy, but what fun would it be if we didn’t?

Let’s think about what the second person of the trinity is doing with these observant Jews that accept GOD’s call for them, to bring the king into this world.

1. GOD chose to give up omnipotence to be human
2. GOD didn’t become an adult, but a small, vulnerable child

GOD accepted the human process, of growing in the womb, coming through the birth canal, and facing the cold, bright, frightening reality of birth. The divine deity accepted complete and total vulnerability and utter dependence on its chosen parents. Part of me believes we don’t have stories of Jesus’s early life in the canonical gospels because we don’t want to envision our GOD as helpless, swaddled, and crying for milk or attention.

And just as profound, GOD chose to be a child to Mary, not just a parent to her.

Our Event
We celebrate this day a GOD who loves us enough to share in our experience.
Who came to us 2000 years ago and still comes to us today.
Who invites us to love each other with familial love.
Who loves the poor and unlovable—and yet still has room to love us.

May GOD’s peace be with you this day and always.

Gotta Have Faith

a Sermon for Proper 22C
Text: Luke 17:5-10

GOD of Hope and Wonder, open our minds to your generosity and love, that we may be transformed by your faith. Amen.

Our gospel contains a word that I don’t like very much: Faith. Funny, right? I don’t dislike the word itself, and I don’t have an unreasonable problem with the concept. It’s just…I don’t think we get it.

When I was younger, I hated the way some would use certain ‘churchy’ words, like faith, belief, and all that because I never felt like I really understood what they were trying to say. One particular time in college, this one woman was going on and on and I counted the number of churchy words she was using and about the time she got to 40 or so, I decided to give up. It’s why I try to push people to express their beliefs (spiritual foundation?) with non-churchy words: because we need to be adept at expressing ourselves, not parroting church words.

We also seem to have the wrong idea about faith, because we want to quantify it. Because if we quantify it, then we can compare each other. We act like we have a gauge that measures our faith: “I’m only a four today; maybe we should go to church so I can raise it to seven or eight.” Or as if we had a faith thermometer: “Hmmm. 98.6; average faith, today!” But really its that we see people using the churchy words and we think they have more faith. Rick Warren must have more faith than I since he talks about it so much! Or we look at people doing stuff that we don’t want to do and we assume it is because they have more faith: Mother Theresa amongst the people with leprosy: I certainly don’t have enough faith to do that.

Mustard Seed Extract
This is where the disciples are at: they ask Jesus to increase their faith. Jesus has given them all of this stuff to worry about and do, so they certainly don’t have enough faith to accomplish it all. And how does Jesus respond? By blowing up this notion. He teaches them this about faith: if you have the smallest speck of faith, you could throw a tree into the sea. In Matthew, it’s move a mountain, but here, it’s a tree. If we think about what the disciples were asking, Jesus’s response doesn’t make sense:

Jesus, we only have X amount of faith, but what you are asking for requires X+Y!

The system they are operating from is this: if you have a little faith, you can get a little action; middle faith—middle action; big faith—big action; but Jesus says if you have the teensiest, weensiest bit of faith, you can do the most amazing miracle: apparently a type of spiritual telekinesis.

He seems to be saying:

“It isn’t about how much, and it certainly isn’t about the quality, either. You’ve got the faith you need.”

GOD and the slaves
Then Jesus seems to shift gears and starts talking about slaves. It goes something like this: Let’s say you are a landowner and your slave comes to you after a long day to see what you want for dinner. Would you invite the slave to sit down? No! Of course not! You’ll send him into the kitchen to make dinner, serve you, clean it up, then he can eat! Do you expect a pat on the back for doing what’s told of you? Now think of it this way: GOD is the landowner and you are the slave. Would you expect any different treatment?

There is something about this that doesn’t compute. I read it over a bunch of times and I couldn’t make sense of it. That doesn’t seem like the picture of GOD that we’ve been working through in Luke. That seems like GOD, the micro-manager.

Jesus begins by saying “Would you say [this]”? As you are—in the world as it is.

How does the story Jesus tells change if we do,
not what we would normally do,
but what he hopes we will do?

Because as I was reading it, I really wanted to say “yes!” I want to be a person that does invite the slave in to sit down. So I re-imagined the story this way.

A different story
The slave comes to you to ask what you want for dinner and you say “sit, please.” And because he is a good slave, he will follow your instructions, though he is confused by your behavior. You notice right away that he is hot and sweaty and that he has been in the field all day, so you offer him a drink. You walk to the kitchen and pour two glasses and place one in front of him and one in front of you. Since he does all of the cooking, you are afraid to offer him anything to eat, but you can make a sandwich, so you go back to the kitchen, make some sandwiches and place one in front of him and one in front of yourself. And then you eat.

While you are sitting there, you ask him a question. You want to get to know him better. And you realize quickly that you don’t really know him all that well. So you keep asking questions and he begins to open up, telling you about his life and his beliefs and his dreams and his hopes for the world and as he is about to take the last bite, you run to the kitchen for some chips because you don’t want the conversation to end, so you open the bag and put it in front of him and he keeps going. And about the time that you are content and happy, he stands up and clears the table. He returns with a pitcher to fill your glass and he says this:

“Thank you. You didn’t have to do that. You are so generous. This meant a lot to me.”

And then you respond by saying “The pleasure was all mine. Let’s do this again soon.”

“OK.”

Doesn’t that feel right? Doesn’t that fit better with what Jesus has just been saying? And just as Jesus changes the characters over here, we can change these characters around. God is that landowner and we are that slave. How does this match the previous chapters of Luke? It was only a chapter ago that Jesus told the three parables of the lost things: the sheep, coin, and son(s). In that, we get a picture of GOD that comes to us in our weakness and out of ridiculous generosity. Does GOD really expect us to meet the minimum requirements to receive generously? Is GOD that obsessed with minimum standards? The GOD that runs out to greet the ungrateful and rebellious younger son and then the ungrateful dutiful one?

In fact, by giving us the question, Jesus invites us into this thinking. “Would you do [this]?” And we say “Yes!”

So what does this have to do with faith? Everything.
Because faith changes us.
Because faith makes everything new.
Faith is found in generosity and hope and love and devotion.

May we be a people of love and generosity and GOD’s transformative grace. And may we be so changed by GOD that we can move mountains and throw trees into the sea.



NOTE: The actual sermon was preached from very simple notes. This is a recreation posted on October 13th.

Risking Cooties

a Sermon for Proper 19C
Text: Luke 15:1-10


GOD of Hope and Wonder, you give and give and give to us. Help replace the jealousy we feel when you give to others with joy. Amen.


I have an irrational fear of garbage. It isn’t really compulsive or that I’m afraid that the garbage itself will do anything to me. It’s just that I’m worried about contamination. When I touch the garbage bag, I feel like my hand is contaminated. I want to clean it and I don't want to touch anything with it. So when I take the garbage out, I prefer to do it one bag at-a-time because then I don’t turn the doorknob with a contaminated hand—I keep one free. I know its irrational.

In many ways, this morning’s gospel lesson deals with that same irrational fear of contamination. Let’s call it what we have been calling that stuff since we were kids: cooties. It’s a fear of cooties. And the pious people are afraid of the cooties. So they obsess about staying clean and pure. This gospel, then, isn’t just about the cooties, but the risk: its about being pure and keeping space and sharing intimacy.

Before the story begins, Jesus was walking. We know the story. He starts out in the north by himself and along the way, he collects 12 stooges: Larry, Moe, and ten Curlys. Then a bunch more stooges start following him that don't get to be counted as official stooges because Jesus wants 12 (to represent the 12 tribes, I suppose). Then people start following him that heard, saw, and met Jesus along the way and want to be a part of what He is doing. But of course, this isn’t only one type of people: Jesus is followed by all sorts: which includes the riffraff. So tax collectors, prostitutes, and other people that always have cooties come along. And of course, he also collects the pious: the Pharisees, Scribes, and Sadducees. All of these people are following Jesus: thousands following him.

So what happens from the start? Jesus “welcomes” and eats with the sinners. Now, this doesn’t sound so bad to us, but the word translated as “welcome” is more literally “to bring into one’s arms”. So Jesus is hugging and kissing these people…these people with cooties. It isn’t like he’s giving a handshake that can be easily wiped off. He’s getting them all over his arms and his chest and his face. He might even be kissing these people on the mouth, getting the cooties all over the place. And after this, he doesn’t sit with them for a couple of minutes then go take a shower—to clean all of that stuff off of him. He stays there. He lives there where they are. He lives in the dirt and impurity. This is the radical nearness that Jesus was practicing.

Now, the Pharisees, of course, get mad at him. And we know the main reason: because Jesus broke the rules. This is par for the course by now. Jesus is flaunting his rule breaking. But let’s be honest: it isn’t just that, is it? Many today would be horrified by this action, too. Because we want Jesus to remain pure. He can’t have cooties; he can’t be compromised; he must remain purely divine. So I imagine them pleading with Jesus: “let the disciples do that. Don’t get yourself dirty; we need you. Send them.” Jesus must remain untainted.

Jesus responds to this with three parables about lost things: a sheep, coin, and son(s) because he wants to talk about intimacy. Each of these parables is about separation and distance. Each is about our distance from GOD. And yet, in each, GOD comes to the lost. GOD searches for us. And isn’t that what Jesus was doing? He was going to the lost, and sharing intimacy with those that weren’t on the inside, weren’t safe at home or being responsible? He went to them and risked everything to be with them and to share in that space with us.

It seems to me that Jesus is calling on us to go to each other. He answers the question about his own intimacy by talking about GOD. He means for us to go to one another as GOD comes to us. Even though we might not want to or we’re scared or we have pious people telling us not to, we’re to go. I’m reminded of prison ministry programs or ministries amidst the diseased and dying. I’m reminded of inner city ministries and ministries with the rural poor.

Jesus encourages us to think about a dangerous concept: to put ourselves at risk for the gospel. It’s going to hurt. It isn’t going to be easy. But it’s right.

It’s about risking cooties.


NOTE: The actual sermon was preached from very simple notes. This is a recreation posted over a month later on October 13th.

The Gift

a Sermon for Proper 17C
Text: Luke 14:1, 7-14

GOD of Hope and Wonder, you have given us the most amazing gifts: in our world and in baptism. Help us to know and feel the generosity of giving that you dream for us. Amen.

We all know what it is like to give presents. Searching for the perfect gift. For me, I turn the page on the calendar to December 1st and an alarm goes off in my head: time to start looking for Christmas. Sure, 3 ½ weeks isn’t enough time to discover the perfect gift, but getting good gifts is important, too.

What’s a good gift? A gift you know they will like…because they’ve told you. You get the wishlist out and you buy from it. You’re both happy. After a couple of years, you’ll forget what you’ve given and they’ll forget that you gave it to them, but so what? In the giving, you’re both happy. That’s a good gift.

The perfect gift, on the other hand, is something you know they’ll like because you know them well. And chances are, they didn’t know that they even wanted it until you gave it to them. They can determine your love and appreciation for them through the gift. This begins to get at the perfect gift.

'The Gift'
Do you like puzzles? There is one that the French philosopher Jacques Derrida gives us called ‘The Gift’. It goes something like this:

Alex gives a gift to Bob. But as soon as Bob receives it, he receives something else: an encumbrance or a debt. He now, because of protocol, must give a gift to Alex in return. This debt is made worse by the fact that he is required to put as much into giving the return gift as Alex put into giving it: it has to cost the same in both money and effort. He also can’t give the return gift the next day—it has to be given spontaneously, so Bob must search out the day that expresses the same amount of spontaneity.

Let’s say Alex figures this out and decided to save Bob some of this headache, so he chooses to give his gift anonymously, since Scripture seems to encourage that. But that makes it even worse for Bob, since he still gains the debt, but no means of getting rid of it, and has to search for who gave him the gift. At the same time, Alex gets extra self-esteem for having done something really generous.

And what if Alex’s gift is met ungraciously by Bob, wouldn’t that fix the problem? No, because then Alex recognizes his own superiority in selflessly giving this gift—that Bob just isn’t capable of recognizing its value.

Many might think the conversation ends here. Either there is no way to solve it or Derrida is being too cynical in his description of gift-giving. But Derrida doesn’t actually end here. Derrida recognizes the problem, what he calls “the Impossibility”. That we are stuck in an arrangement that truly is unsolvable, so he gives us two important responses:

1. Give the gift anyway and accept that this is the arrangement. Strive to give without expecting anything in return, while knowing that you will. But it is the gift itself—and the circle filled with generosity and reciprocation—that begets a deep connection between people.
2. Trust in our economies. This means that we know that they system works this way, but people don’t. Alex gives a gift out of love and generosity and Bob receives it and feels it and is compelled, not out of duty, but that love and generosity, to give a beautiful gift in return.

In this morning’s gospel, Jesus reveals the very same notion about ‘The Gift’. He says to be generous and give without thinking about what you are going to get in return. Give. That’s what I’m asking you to do. Give.

Then he throws us for a loop, because he tells us what we are going to receive: grace. He says to us: here’s what you’re going to get; but don’t do it for that reason. Do it to do it. Give generously.

Baptism
What this means is symbolized in what we’ll be doing in just a few minutes: we’ll be baptizing this beautiful little girl. She will receive a gift today that comes in three parts. The first part comes from GOD and it is one that we all comprehend: she gets GOD’s grace. That’s the one we all think of first. The other two are gifts that we get to participate in. We give the gift of membership. In just a few minutes, in baptism, she gets to be one of us. She’ll get all of the rights and responsibilities that each of us has as Christians. She is a full member of the club. The third part of the gift, and perhaps the most important is what we all get to do for her. Her parents and godparents will stand up and vow to her and to GOD to raise her well to spiritual maturity. Then all of us will do the same—vowing that we will care for her spiritual well-being.

When Derrida talked about ‘The Gift’, he was speaking about relationship and obligation, but we’re giving this girl a gift she can’t repay. There is no way that she can give us all a gift in return. But in a few years, if we all do our jobs, she’ll be standing up and vowing to help another little girl grow up in the Spirit. Just as many of us have been given that opportunity.

Jesus gave us a gift that we couldn’t hope to repay in the Incarnation, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection. We can’t hope to repay that kind of gift.

Dr. King's Gift
We received a gift 47 years ago yesterday in an event known simply as “The March” or “The March on Washington.” And at the end of the march, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave one of the most important speeches in the history of the western world; a speech that rocked the world and motivates people half a century later. A speech that is now referred to by its iconic image: “I have a dream”. There’s a lot about the speech that we remember, including the second most recognizable line; in reference to his daughter, he dreams of the day in which she will be judged “not by the color of her skin, but the content of her character.”

But this speech isn’t just a speech. It is a sermon. And we know this because Dr. King quotes the prophets Amos and Isaiah. This one I read to you this morning is from Isaiah:

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."

At the first level, Dr. King is talking about race. At the second, he’s talking about equality. But where Dr. King, in quoting the prophets, is dwelling is up here, at the third level: the Kingdom of GOD.

The Kingdom isn’t about being color-blind or post-racial; it isn’t simply about getting along well with everybody. It’s about loving and sharing with everybody regardless of what it means.

My last image, and I’m not sure where it came from, goes like this. When somebody asks us for some money, and we want to give it to them, we reach into our pockets, and we hand it over [demonstrating]. When our arm stops moving—when we’ve offered the money over to the other person—is the moment that the money is no longer ours. Even though it hasn’t left our hand yet, it is no longer ours. It’s GOD’s. If the other person takes it or not. What they do or don’t do with it. It isn’t ours. In giving generously, we give up possession and we hand it over.

The Kingdom, baptism, gifts to strangers and to friends and family are all opportunities for our generosity. For us to not only feel good for doing it and to be good in the eyes of others, but to live in the way Jesus instructs us to live. We’re asked to be generous without concern for what we get out of it.

To show generosity in spite of receiving.

Looking for the Law

a Sermon for Proper 16C
Text: Luke 13:10-17

[This is a written-out version of what I preached without notes. It is a pretty accurate recreation of the flow and wording.]


GOD of Hope and Wonder, you give us your Law and we feel the need to blind ourselves with rules. Help us to see the Law and what it truly means for us. Amen.

The story begins back in seminary. I had this professor named Jay that told us a story. It was a story about a new rector taking over in an Anglican church in Ontario, Canada. The names of the people were withheld, so I’m going to give some names to these characters. The previous rector we’ll call Fr. James. We’ll call the new rector Fr. Dan. Neither of these names has any theological meaning or deep importance for this story, they are simply names that came to me, except for Dan. This story isn’t the story of one my classmates (Dan), but I wanted to put him into this story in homage to him.

So, the story begins on Fr. Dan’s first Sunday. He does the service in the normal way. After Communion, he clears the table, comes out in front of the altar, blesses the people, dismisses them, and then processes out into the world. The second Sunday, he does the same thing. The third Sunday goes the same way. Only this time, as he is standing out in the narthex, shaking hands, a kind, older gentleman pats him on the shoulder and says:

“I hate to tell you this…[words which actually mean something else to us] but you are doing it wrong.”
“What do you mean?” Fr. Dan is confused.
“You are forgetting the special bow,” the man says. “C’mere. I’ll show you.” And the two walk back to the sanctuary so that the gentleman could demonstrate. “It goes like this. You do what you do from behind the altar, see? Then you turn to the back wall, and you bow.”

Dan, being a smart priest, tries to make sense of this. There is no cross on the wall, but the consecrated elements are kept off to the side so he asks if the bow is to the elements. “No—the middle of the wall,” the man says.

So Dan goes into the Parish Hall to ask the people at coffee hour about this “special bow” and person after person says “Oh yeah! The bow! You have to do it—I love the bow!” Dan, still completely clueless, decides to call Fr. James first thing, Monday morning to ask him what was going on.

“Fr. James. This is Dan from St. Paul’s. I know we have a lot to talk about, and we’ll do that soon, but I have to ask you about one thing: what is with the special bow?”
“What bow?”
“The special bow,” Dan says. “You would bless the people, turn to the back wall, and bow, and then process out.”
There is silence on the other end for a moment until Dan hears a deep laugh. “Dan, I wasn’t bowing. I was turning off the radiator.”

This old church used steam heat, of course, and there was a radiator right behind the altar. Fr. James would bend over, turn the cap, and turn off the heat to the nave.

Our professor told us this story for two reasons:

1. How quickly actions become liturgy. You do it a couple of times and it becomes “what we do here” and then do it a couple more times and it becomes “what we’ve always done”.
2. How we give importance to actions, regardless of their purpose. There were probably only a couple of people in the church that new what Fr. James was doing, but the rest of the congregation believed that he was doing something important and symbolic. They decided that it was important and each person concocted some deep, theological reason behind this bow. The truth was that Fr. James was just being lazy.

This is what our gospel is about today. But first, let me introduce you to the characters.

Again, these characters don’t have names and I just came up with them because I wanted them to have names.

The first character is Lucy. She is a beautiful, happy woman, who 18 years ago had a spirit come into her body and bend her over. She can’t look up; she can’t look into other people’s eyes. She can look at the floor and the ground. This is her life today.

The second character is Sam. Ignore for a minute what Jesus says about him. Sam is a good guy. He is pious; a rule follower. We would like him. He would no doubt be the president of Rotary and a well-liked member of the community. A good man. But he has one problem: he loves Lucy, but he sees her and thinks that there is nothing he can do. It is what it is.

The third character is a wandering preacher. Let’s call him…Jesus. And he is preaching away, and Lucy catches his eye. He sees her and stops mid-sentence. “This won’t do,” he says to himself and in moments, he puts his hands on her and tells her that today is a new day. All she needs to do is stand up.

And Lucy listens to him…and she stands up…and she praises GOD.

Now Sam sees this and he is irate. He is mad because 1) Jesus broke the rules and 2) he’ll catch the blowback for this. So he yells at Jesus, telling him to “Stop! You’ve broken the rules!” And, we know that if he were a good Episcopalian, there would be a second condemnation: “Lucy! What are you doing shouting in the middle of the service? Who said you could praise GOD in a church?”

And Jesus responds, not with the semantic argument that we think he does: but instead with a simple chastisement of his own: “you are breaking the law by following the rules.”

If we look at what GOD says about the Sabbath, we go back to Exodus and Deuteronomy: the two places Sabbath is described in the Ten Commandments. In Exodus it tells us that we are to keep the Sabbath day (sundown Friday to sundown Saturday) holy and we are not to work because GOD created the world in 6 days and on the 7th he rested.

So Sabbath is about rest.

Then in Deuteronomy 5, it says that we are to keep the Sabbath day holy and we are not to work because GOD liberated his people from Egypt and redeemed them.

So Sabbath is about redemption.

Rest and Redemption.

So, in the couple thousand years between Moses’s arrival with the Ten Commandments and the day Jesus walked into that synagogue, good, well intentioned people tried to figure out what GOD meant by having us not work. So they started with the farmers, the slaves, and the livestock (since they were specifically mentioned in the commandment). Then they added the housekeepers and the cooks and the shopkeepers and everybody else until they had created rules making it so everybody had to rest on the Sabbath. Whew! And they felt good about this until some smart aleck in the back asks the room “what about ______?” For us, that would be “what about doctors? Or police? Or firefighters? We have to work on our Sabbath day. So they started adding page after page of exemptions to the hundreds of rules. And Jesus knows these rules and picks out of the myriad choices—a really juicy one—and he throws it out into the middle of the room for everybody to see. It deals with livestock. Now, they aren’t talking about cute, cuddly sheep in the field necessarily. They’re talking about oxen that pull the plow or carts and goats that produce milk.

Now does anyone know the first two changes to your body when you fast? You lose water and muscle mass.

They knew that the livestock wouldn’t die with a fasting day, so this isn’t a life-or-death decision. But they wanted their livestock to be in tip-top shape for Sunday morning. They didn’t want their oxen weak or their goats to be dry and not producing milk. Jesus, mindful of the Law which says that the Sabbath is about rest and redemption looks at this rule and he says to himself “this exemption is about money.”

So he compares this exemption to the state of this woman. The livestock exemption isn’t life-or-death, but about health and vitality. There is no such exemption for the health and vitality of a woman. It is important for us to recognize that this is a woman—that she is imprisoned and in need of redemption. That she is symbolic of all of those people that are locked up, not by GOD’s Law, but by human rules based in prejudice and hatred. That Sam, in supporting the status quo, even telling her to come back tomorrow, is trying to refuse her rest and redemption on the Sabbath. But Jesus won’t wait—he does it the moment he sees her. He says “what better day than the Sabbath to give this woman rest and redemption? You have it, Sam. The people in this room have it. And now she has it.”

We’re given this wonderful example today to show us how we, by trying to be good people, condemn them instead. That we have a whole bunch of rules that we bring into this space with us: the special bows, the types of music we like, the times we stand and the times we kneel. These are all our rules, not GOD’s Law. It isn’t Jesus’s teaching. It isn’t the Kingdom of GOD. It’s our stuff.

Today, we can be mindful of all of our rules that blind us from GOD’s dreams for us. That our Sabbath might be truly about rest and redemption. And that we make time to ask ourselves and one another “who needs rest today? And who needs to be redeemed?”

Reflections

I didn't preach the last few weeks, but I wrote a couple of reflections on the gospels.

This one is for the Compassionate Samaritan parable.
This one is for the Martha and Mary story.

Enjoy!

Accepting vulnerability

a Sermon for Proper 9C
Text: Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

GOD of Hope and Wonder, the mission you have given us is dangerous and deeply rewarding. May we have the courage to accept the challenge you give us. Amen.

Sometimes Jesus doesn’t make it easy for us, does he? The instructions that he gives the 70 are to go out, taking nothing with them, and travel to all of the places Jesus wanted to go. These are not easy expectations. What if we left here and some headed to Peachtree City and others to Roscoe and others Fayatteville. You leave from here without stopping at home and without your cars. All right everybody, stand up and get moving! You’re not excited by this prospect? You don’t want to walk all that way without clear expectations for what you are to do when you actually do get there? And considering he also says to leave your purse at home, when you arrive there at about dinner time, you’re going to be pretty hungry and have no money…I can’t understand why you aren’t motivated by these prospects! Huh…I’m going to have to rethink my expectations.

What I was asking you to do is no more out of character for us than it would have been for them. Jesus was asking a lot of these people. He asked them to leave everything behind. Everything. One set of clothes. That’s it. He even makes it tougher on them: they’re to go barefoot. This is a high demand.

Why does he ask this of them? To remove what prevents them from relying on GOD. He is putting these people in danger, in a position of complete dependence on something other than themselves. This is what Jesus is expecting of the 70.

What does Jesus expect of the people they will meet? These 70 people will arrive in their various towns in pairs. They will be hungry, dirty, tired, and with nothing of value—no means of helping themselves. If the people the 70 meet are Jews, they are likely to take them in and offer to clean their feet, offer them food and a place to stay, and demonstrate a profound sense of welcome, that everybody that walks through their door deserves their help. This is a profound sense of hospitality that few of us could imagine happening today.

Jesus is expecting these 70 to depend on GOD to provide for them and depend on the hospitality of others. Those are some pretty lofty expectations.

Few of us are comfortable with this subject; with this part of the expectation because Jesus is asking us to be vulnerable. In a world of strength, being vulnerable puts us at the bottom.
Jesus asks us to voluntarily empty ourselves of worth and power and influence and become dependent on GOD and our neighbor for our very survival. I highly doubt that Jesus only intends for us to hear this metaphorically. I am also not saying we’re supposed to literally walk to Peachtree City shoeless to stay in a stranger’s house and hang out for a few days, but I don’t think that such a vulnerable position is only supposed to happen inside us. What would it mean in today’s terms to empty ourselves in this way: to make ourselves that vulnerable to GOD and one another? Does it mean living without a savings account to protect us? Does it mean selling a car and asking others to take us where we need to go? Does it mean giving away the excess—the stuff and the money that goes beyond putting clothes on our backs and food on our tables? Does it mean abandoning our glorious homes and living in a state of physical and economic poverty? If we are honest to Jesus’s teaching, none of these questions is ridiculous. And this puts a lot of pressure on the way we do live—on our Western obsession with personal and corporate security. We want assurance of safety in the moment and for tomorrow. And deep down, we know better. We know that no amount of border guards and no amount of weaponry can ever keep us entirely safe. No amount of “cushion” in the bank will ever bring us complete economic security. Jesus shows his followers that the only assurance of safety we have comes from being entirely dependent on GOD and one another.

These words aren’t easy to hear any more than they are easy to say. If we trust in GOD, we will receive abundantly. But that trust is shown through vulnerability.

The assurance we have comes from Jesus. This gospel comes immediately after the pericope in which Jesus “turns his face toward Jerusalem”—an act of confidence and certainty of purpose and focus in direction. These 70 followers are sent out to the places that Jesus wants to go. In this new direction for Jesus, there is urgency. And in this morning’s pericope, there is similar urgency placed, not on the disciples, but on 70 of his followers. Jesus is calling on them to “get vulnerable already! It’s time to go!”

We talked about this on Wednesday at the Bible Study, about that number, 70; that it is likely a reference to a list of nations from Genesis 10, in which the nations of the world numbered 70. So Jesus is sending out all the nations of the world, a precursor to what would happen later at Pentecost. It also helps us to see this as our call—as something that Jesus asks of each of us.

But this expectation comes with a second expectation: an expectation of what those followers will find when they reach the towns and cities. Some that the 70 will visit will show uncommon welcome, feeding and clothing and caring for their needs, while others will not, receiving the dust from the followers’ feet.

The hope is that enough places will show that welcome so that all 70 will be cared for and that their needs will be met.

The lesson that I take away from this pericope involves how like the 70 we are—called into vulnerability by GOD—and how like those townspeople St. Paul’s is. We have the opportunity to go out into the world vulnerably and the opportunity to provide for those charged to this vulnerable life. Because if Jesus expects us to be so vulnerable, doesn’t he expect everyone to do the same? And if someone comes among us who is stripped down to the metaphoric shirt on her back, are we not the householder that should invite her in? Are we not the ones that should feed her and wash her feet and give her a place to stay?

The life of the Christian is to be vulnerable and to protect others; to allow ourselves to be weak in the face of our enemies and strong in defending the poor and the abused—concepts that are so opposite our cultural priorities and alien to our usual modes of thinking. And let’s be honest, even being the protector requires vulnerability—to let someone into your house, to eat your food, to live with you—is to share in an uncommon intimacy that few of us could truly understand.

We are challenged this week by a charge that is uncomfortable and frightening: to be vulnerable to GOD, to friends, and to strangers. To show uncommon hospitality to those that need love and nourishment of all kinds: spiritual, psychological, emotional, theological, intellectual, inspirational, and on and on. To show a profound intimacy that comes from believing Jesus when he suggests we put all of our trust in GOD. To extend that invitation of profound welcome to others knowing that doing so may well change the very foundation of our faith and the very core of our being. We are those townspeople that Jesus is hoping to transform.

Sharing in the reconciliation

a Sermon for Proper 7C
Text: Luke 8:26-39

GOD of Hope and Wonder, it is often so easy for us to see the brokenness and separation—that we can’t see your work in us and for us. Help us to better see and know your dream for us. Amen.

GOD longs to reconcile the world. GOD longs to make us whole and bring us back together. Verna Dozier calls this “The Dream of God” in her book of the same name. This dream is to reunite the people in a profound new kingdom that is very different from the way the world is now. It’s a beautiful dream—a dream that GOD invites us to share in over and over…in Scripture, in revelation, in worship. We might not want to think of GOD as a used car salesman, but He keeps pitching it to us, talking it up, wanting us to want it too. And to be perfectly blunt, the Kingdom of GOD is actually a pretty good deal.

This work of reconciling has been everywhere in our Scripture readings lately, especially in the gospel lessons from Luke. Last week—the woman who cleaned Jesus’s feet with her hair and Jesus forgives her of her sins—that’s about reconciliation. Two weeks ago—Jesus raises the widow’s only son from the dead—that’s about reconciliation. Actually, that’s a double reconciliation, restoring both the son to the community, and also the mother. A reconciling two-fer. Today’s gospel about a man possessed by demons is about reconciliation: about restoring this man to his community. This is a big part of GOD’s dream: our reconciling with one another. GOD longs to reconcile the world.

We know separation, don’t we? Separation here, separation in the world, separation between one another, and separation from GOD. We know separation. We don’t like it and we don’t want it. We know Jesus doesn’t like it and doesn’t want it. We know GOD doesn’t like it and doesn’t want it. That’s where the Spirit comes in. That’s why we can trust: GOD longs to reconcile the world.

We get in this reading from Luke a picture of reconciliation. A man possessed by demons is healed and restored to community. We know this is complete because toward the end of the gospel, these people, who hear about this crazy event are brought out to see this man, who was naked and talking craziness was now “sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind.” Resist the temptation to ask where the clothes come from—think about the visual here, the symbolism. The man, who was naked, is now freshly clothed and restored to humanity. He is brought back in. All that separates him from the community is gone. The very picture of reconciliation.

This man was once like everybody else. He no doubt has a family, maybe kids, maybe a good job and a home in the good part of town, but when Jesus shows up, he’s naked and living in the tombs. Could there be a more vivid image of this man’s separation from the community than his living among the dead?

For us, this naked man lives on in the lives of those victims to evil and injustice who also at one time had families and loved ones and a job and home and mattered to people until that fateful day in which they looked around and they were living in the subway tunnel and don’t remember the last time they saw their children or the last time they wore a suit or the last time someone looked at them with respect and love. Many of us have seen that person and felt pity or repulsion or perhaps both at the same time. And almost in the same way, that person remains to us as nameless as the man in the gospel lesson—but just like him, we probably still remember them—or at least our brief time together. A nameless man becomes our anecdote—the easy reference for a person that has lost everything. But GOD promises reconciliation: which may or may not be in that person’s lifetime, but is eternal and hoped for here on earth. He can be reconciled with his family and the world just as surely as we can be reconciled with one another and with GOD: right here, this morning. All it takes is a first step.

When Jesus set foot on the soil, at the beginning of this pericope, this was soon after a crazy boat ride from Capernaum that rocked the little fishing boats that they crossed in and Jesus had calmed the storms—another big miracle. But when he steps out of the boat and onto this shore, he has left the safety of his home territory and, for the first time in the gospel of Luke, walks into gentile territory. He is met by a gentile, filled to the brim with demons, naked, living in tombs, and the demons are frightened and want to make a bargain. And Jesus gives them permission to leave the man, and the demons are soon vanquished. But after saving this man and restoring him to his community and reconciling him with GOD, other gentiles come back to Jesus and tell him to get out.

It might be easy for us to see in Jesus’s ministry an obviousness that everyone would get him, and see his miraculous acts as the very works of GOD. But not necessarily to gentiles and not to all of the people that lost a bunch of pigs in a mass swine slaughter. They don’t yet see a benefit to keeping Jesus around. But the man with the new clothes does. He wants to be with Him. Makes so much sense, doesn’t it? Stick with the person that saved you. Jesus has a different idea.

Just as the man is restored to his full humanity—reconciled with the world community—he is restored to his home community. As much as he wants to travel out into the world with Jesus, he is reconciled to a specific community—to these particular people from whom he was separated. And then Jesus went home.

We are a community of reconcilers. In baptism, we are called to a ministry of reconciliation. In gathering every Sunday, hearing the word, confessing our sins, receiving absolution and then sharing in a great act of reconciliation—we greet each other with the sign of GOD’s peace. Each Sunday, we reconcile with one another and we bring the kingdom closer. This is our bold proclamation.

GOD longs to reconcile the world; all of it. The big parts and the small parts; the cities and the farming communities; the mega-churches and the people meeting in a living room; the down-and-out and the people that are just down; everyone gets to be a part of it. There is even the promise of sending someone to make it happen, even in hostile territory.

Like the man sent home to proclaim the good news of what was done to him, we are called to do that very thing—to share what GOD does for us. We all have a place in this bold and beautiful dream that is both simple and challenging: to love one another and describe what GOD has done for us. To love and to share. Remember that the man was naked? He was vulnerable. The good news requires our own vulnerability—our own metaphoric nakedness. This is the first step, our chance to get out of the boat onto foreign soil and, with GOD’s help, begin the great reconciliation of the world.

From dead to living

a Sermon for Proper 5C
Text: Luke 7:11-17

GOD of Hope and Wonder, your compassion for us is immeasurable; continue to bless us with compassion and community. Amen.

If ever there was a ‘Wow!’ event in Jesus’s ministry, this would be it. That’s what Bill called it on Wednesday: a ‘Wow!’ event. Jesus strolls into town and raises a man from the dead. I’m thinking something on par with a Western where the hero rides in, sees the damsel in tears, and tells the man to “get up” and the man springs to life. He then asks for directions to the nearest saloon.

From dead to living.

What catches me as I read this story, however, isn’t the miracle: it’s where Jesus’s attention is. Jesus has compassion for the mother and then does what he does. He does it for her.

Who is worth this?

Worth a ‘Wow!’ event?
Worth being given her son back?
Worth the transformation from dead to living?

Who is worth this?

A woman with no name. Apparently nobody bothered remembering her name—just her condition. She goes by ‘the widow’.

For Jesus, The Widow is worth this.

There is a bunch of stuff that we know about widows, right? We know that they were married to a spouse who has since died. Historically, the moniker of ‘widow’ has been given primarily to a woman. This says a great deal about cultural priorities. In the patriarchal Palestine of the 1st Century, men were the primary source of work, ownership, and representation. Therefore, if a man’s wife were to die, he still remains a man—his social worth is unchanged. But for a wife, that connection to society evaporates.

We also should note the attempts made to help widows. One example is the Jewish law that allowed for a widow to marry her husband’s brother, granting her the ability to return to society. The Widow’s son apparently afforded her some place, even without a husband. For as strange as this sounds, they were actually trying their best to help.

What else do we know about widows? There is a further clue in the word’s origin which essentially means a woman who is “separated” or “solitary”.

For the 1st Century Jewish woman from Nain, this couldn’t be truer: she was in political solitary. For a 21st Century Christian woman from Newnan, we might have a closer understanding as emotional solitary.

It seems to me that these ideas: ‘separated’ and ‘solitary’: represent the reason Jesus believes the widow is worth this ‘Wow!’ event. “How can we change solitary into community? How can we regain community?”

Jesus answers this with resurrection.

Truthfully, I’m not sure whether Jesus thought of his own mother when he saw The Widow or not. I’m sure he thought of her in that ‘what if’ sense that we do when we think of scenarios that make it easy for us to plug in ourselves and loved ones. In the same way, though, death precedes a ‘Wow!’ event: when Jesus goes from dead to living.


Moving from solitary to community—

Placing people out of solitary and into community—

Changing community to eliminate solitary.


Just as Jesus restores The Widow to the community by resurrecting her connection to community, GOD longs to restore each of us to community from the solitary that confines us. From the stuff that separates us from grace. The health issues, soccer practice, chauffeuring kids, preparing for guests to arrive, work and more work, and all of the distractions—all these things separate us—they are our solitary. And truth be told, we know, deep down, that this is honestly more sin-full than taking a drink of scotch. Sin isn’t an act—it is that which separates us from GOD. This is GOD’s hope for us—to be back—to leave the exile we put on ourselves. To rejoin community. And for those of us in the community, to make room in ourselves for those that aren’t.

And we know that GOD wants something else. This something else has to do with the community. For me, the most important words in the Gospel are these: “and with her was a large crowd from the town.” By the common interpretation of the law, The Widow was now destitute and subject to the mercy of the city. But here was a large crowd that were there out of support, out of love, out of compassion for her. In resurrecting a dead son, Jesus doesn’t simply restore this community, he breaks the established order: the dead can become the living.

We know that GOD doesn’t want us to put our interpretation of the Law before our love of Him or one another. And that interpretation created separation and solitary more than the death of the husband or the only son. GOD wants us to be a certain community: a community of compassion and reconciliation, where none are relegated to solitary because of human reasons, even because of life and death.

I’ve only been in this community now for eight months, but St. Paul’s radiates that compassion. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like it, and sometimes some of us get off track, but the heart of St. Paul’s is this compassion. I’ve been a part of moments of welcome and of support—in which the Spirit moves us to act as Christ to one another. I’m reminded daily of the hunger for justice and missional opportunities here, near here, and far away from here. This is the St. Paul’s I know. This is the community GOD continues to call us to be.

GOD has big plans for us: all of us. That’s the Kingdom; and it gets closer every time we show compassion; every time we do things out of love for GOD and our neighbor. We pull the Kingdom a little bit closer. This is why we are worth it.

A matter of trust

a Sermon for Palm Sunday, Year C
Text: Luke 19:28-40

GOD of Hope and Wonder, we gather this morning in joy and confusion, to celebrate this bittersweet day once again. Help us to see how much you trust in us—and that we might return the favor. Amen.

Today is a strange day in which we commemorate both the Palms and the Passion. It may seem a bit confusing since we start on a Sunday, skip to Friday; only to rewind to Thursday later in the week and do the Passion all over again on Good Friday. The chronology alone is a headscratcher.

Some of you might be asking yourselves why we do it then. Why read the Passion gospel now if we are going to read it again in a few days? The answer is simple: the church doesn’t trust us. It doesn’t trust that we’re going to come back Friday to actually hear that part of the story. It wants to make sure that every one of us hears the Passion, so we read it now and again in five days. The church doesn’t trust us. But let’s be honest, why should it? Many of us won’t come out Friday. Many will stay at home, treating Good Friday as any other day. The church knows this because we don’t have a very good track record. So, yeah, the church has a right to not trust us.

Me? I trust you! I know you will all come back on Friday. So I’m not going to preach on the Passion—I’ll save it for Good Friday. We’re going to talk about the Palm Gospel instead. We’re going to talk about Jesus finally arriving at his destination, walking into a Jerusalem suburb and riding a donkey up to the gates of the city. We’re going to talk about this happy day that caused such joyous response.

But first let’s look at the first thing that happens. Jesus gives his disciples some pretty specific instructions: go to this particular place, steal a donkey, and when you are asked what you’re doing, simply say “The Lord needs it.” Now, if I were one of those disciples, and I was given that, I’m not sure I’d simply say “OK!” and keep moving! Would you? Where’s the bargaining? “Um…Jesus, I get that you want this donkey but I think I’m gonna need something a little more tangible to give them.” Right? But they dutifully follow Jesus’s instructions—a miracle for the disciples, really—and when it goes down like Jesus said, we get to a second strange part: the owners actually ask the disciples what they’re doing, and trusting Jesus, (GOD bless ‘em) they say “The Lord needs it.” The text doesn’t say what happens next—but they get Jesus the donkey. Apparently the owners trusted in Jesus too! I can’t explain it. It seems absolutely crazy. But I’ll tell you this: it says something to us about Jesus, about this moment, and about trust.

The reason I bring up the donkey isn’t just because of its strange place in this story, but because of what it represents to the larger story. We know that Jesus was called Messiah— GOD’s anointed. We know that many disciples were following Him because they thought he was the new King, the descendant of David—the great unifier. Jesus—later laughed at as King of the Jews—was making his grand entrance…on a donkey. For the disciples, this must have been a bit confusing.

In their excellent book, The Last Week, Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan refer to Jesus’s arrival at Jerusalem as ‘the other’ Triumphal Entry. See, Pilate didn’t live in Jerusalem. He came from the west, bringing with him a large escort of Roman soldiers. He would come to Jerusalem in advance of the big holy days, knowing that a big show of Roman might would keep the natives in line. So you can imagine this Roman officer showing up with all of the accoutrement of Imperial power. Soldiers on horseback, many more marching with these tall banners to demonstrate the majesty of the Roman Empire. Pilate, of course riding along like the Grand Marshall of this ancient parade. So here comes Pilate, showing up in Jerusalem for Passover from the west, while on the other side of town, approaching from the east, is this poor, ragged man, riding on a donkey—the polar opposite of imperial power.

Jesus’ entrance was visually symbolic—symbolic of the leadership of heaven (as shown by Jesus) and the leadership of earth (as shown by Rome). Jesus didn’t just tell people parables, he demonstrated them—he revealed truths that can only be attested to visually, with our eyes. When we close our eyes and imagine all of the pomp and circumstance of a Roman parade, all of those elements, things that make us look skyward, that makes us sense the sheer numbers of soldiers, that make us see their weapons and the various tools by which victory can be claimed, we know that this wasn’t just a celebration of victory, it was a celebration of power and strength. These things make Rome seem bigger and stronger and scarier then anybody else. And in the midst of this is Pilate, the stand-in for Caesar, bringing all of the Emperor’s authority with him…authority that was larger than life…authority that spoke of intimidation, domination, and control over people through acts of military strength and economic coercion. All of this would come to mind in Jesus’s symbolic entrance.

But also coming to mind is that Jesus shows up, representing not the powerful, but the poor. A king and conqueror who enters without a weapon or armor, but with open palms and dusty robes. He didn’t enter on a stallion, but a donkey. He didn’t have the big military escort, but an entourage of peasant disciples. Nothing about Jesus intimidates or coerces; frightens or dominates…except for the wealthy and powerful. Except for Temple leadership that were on the Roman payroll and Roman authorities that didn’t want anything messing up the good thing they had going. For them, the biggest threat wasn’t someone bigger or stronger, but someone not swayed by the riches of earth. Jesus showing up on a donkey with joyous supporters was the very thing that frightened them the most.

For us, Palm Sunday may simply be seen as the kickoff to Holy Week. The day that leads to a strange paradox several days later when joy turns to outrage. The day of bittersweet exuberance. But it’s so much more. It is the day in which we see what real courage looks like. The day we see what it really means to stand up for our convictions. The day we see the true nature of our world, revealed in its ugly, naked quest for earthly power and dominance. And the day we catch a glimpse of what the Kingdom of GOD looks like when practiced on earth. And at its center, this requires trust.

All of that Roman coercion displays a lack of trust, but Jesus expected and reinforced trust. Trust in Him and trust in GOD. It is easy for us to trust in the world. We trust in gravity. If I drop an apple from my hand, it will fall to the floor. We trust that will happen. We’ve done it and continue to do it. But trust really only matters when it’s tested. It only matters when we enter the city as the disciples did, knowing what we’ll find their and hoping that it isn’t true.

To truly trust GOD, we must have faith in the Spirit’s direction for St. Paul’s. That in spite of things that upset us, we trust that the Spirit can, will, and more radically, does lead us. That’s trust.

Think of the trust-fall. It’s a team-building exercise that requires one person to fall back, trusting that the person behind them will catch them. When done in a group, the person not only falls back, but trusts that the group will keep her up as she is passed around the team. As one who has done this many times, it is still difficult to do. Because here’s the thing about trust—we have to start it. If we were falling down anyway, it’s easy to trust the person behind us, because either way, we’re falling. But we have to put our bodies out of balance. We have to shift the weight to the heels of our feet and lean back. We have to start the falling. The only time I’ve seen well-prepared trust-falls fail is when the person falling doesn’t let themselves fall.

More than anything, Palm Sunday represents trust in GOD. Jesus’s last chance to turn around and skip the Passion. Our own last chance to skip committing ourselves to this incredible relationship with our maker, our guide, and our courage. In light of all that has been thrown at us we have been given this shot. This opportunity. This chance to shift our weight, lean back, and…

“There was a man who had two sons”

a Sermon for Epiphany 4C
Text: Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

God, Father, we know that we don’t always listen, we don’t always follow, and we don’t always come home when you call. But please help us come in from the cold and share our lives with you. Amen.

“There was a man who had two sons,” Jesus begins. Three figures: a father, an elder son, and a younger son. We know the story pretty well and we refer to it by a very recognizable name. And the way we deal with what it says is to focus most of our energy in the first part, about a younger son that is lost, who deeply offends his father, runs out into the world recklessly and comes home penniless. We focus also on the father who runs out to this lost son and we marvel at the amazing forgiveness offered by the father. This no doubt leads us to better understand God’s relationship with us and to see God as practicing radical forgiveness, which is comforting. We might even be encouraged to practice that radical forgiveness with our children, which is a bit challenging.

But, as we all noticed, there is a second son. A man that represents right living and hard work. Unlike his brother, he stayed home with his father and took responsibility for the land. He demonstrated that he is of good character and will be an honest and quality caretaker of his inheritance—which is two thirds of the family’s original land—now all of what’s left. We look at this character and we say “what a good man.” We probably even explain away his outrage at his father’s generosity—because it doesn’t seem fair.

The way Jesus tells the story is to treat both of these brothers as taking action—each is the primary figure in his part of the story. In the first half, the brother rejects his father, leaves, and comes home broken. In the second half, the brother rejects the father’s feast, doesn’t enter the home, and stands on the outside as his father comes to him. The most telling statement of the older son’s is this: “For all these years I have been working like a slave for you”. ‘Like a slave.’ We might hear that as a euphemism—because we actually use it that way—as we “slave all day in the kitchen”. But I think the brother actually means it. Even though they are working the same farm, the older son feels separated from his father. He doesn’t feel like family. He doesn’t feel like the heir of a fortune. He feels like a slave, as one with no self-identity and no hope, following someone else’s rules. The irony of this son’s life is that his proximity to the father and his own sense of responsibility leave him feeling isolated and alone. This sense of separation causes the older brother to reject his father’s dream on the happiest day of his life.

Earlier in the week, I was looking through a book I picked up a year or so ago called The Father & His Two Sons. It is a collection of artwork depicting this classic parable. Many of the works were stunning, giving me insight into the nature of the story, and some have forever changed the way I visualize it. But one struck me personally. The second-to-last one in the book is a painting by Jonathan Quist called Rembrandt’s Prodigal Son Revisited. In Rembrandt’s depiction of the story, the artist uses light sources to first draw your attention to the father’s reconciliation with the younger son and then your eyes are drawn to the face of the unhappy older son as he watches on. Quist puts himself in this recasting. In his own words, he describes his place in the painting:

“I have replaced the elder son with an image of myself as an artist, painting the staged embrace between the father and prodigal son. In this way, I have full control of the situation. I am not required to participate in the embrace because I am going about the prestigious task of painting. The large canvas, tools, and easel ensure this separation.”[1]

In the painting, you can really feel the separation—the easel divides the painting in half. What affects me is that Quist observes in himself something of which I am completely afraid: that I put up barriers that separate me from God. My barrier isn’t the canvas, but that I could make God theoretical. I build up this wall of theory and belief and emotional or rational certainty that sometimes prevents me from truly loving God. I’ve been staring at this picture all week, my eyes drawn to this artist in his green work clothes, so as not to get his “real” clothes dirty, his expressionless face and stiff posture showing how seriously he takes his work. His detachment, both physically and emotionally, from this moment that represents complete joy, satisfaction, and the very grace of God reminds me of the ways I detach myself and the ways I sometimes allow my familiarity with our practices get in the way of my ability to worship, to personally join in the embrace.

This is the problem of the older son: his separation from the father comes from his belief that he has been behaving properly. When given a choice in his life to do the right thing or stray from it, he chose to do the right thing. He did what he was supposed to. He followed the rules. But those rules became too important. They became the very thing that separated him from his father. His own selfish righteousness led him to become lost in his own home. Now we don’t know what happens next. The parable ends with the father reasoning with the older son. Since Jesus is telling this story to the Pharisees, it is clear from the beginning that he sees the younger brother as the tax collectors and the sinners with whom he was just eating and the Pharisees are the older brother.

Timothy Keller suggests that this parable teaches us three things about our relationship with God, whether we are a younger or older brother.

1. “The Initiating love of God”

For both of his sons, the father leaves the home to get them. The younger as he returns, and for the older as he disobeys. God makes the first move toward reconciliation.

2. “Repent for something other than sins”

Jesus is showing us that we can be in need of repentance without having sinned. In the younger son, you have the example of someone whose very life becomes representative of sinfulness, but in the older, you have one who has done nothing wrong, and yet needs to repent and share with God.

3. We must be “melted and moved by what it costs to bring us home”[2]

For the reconciliation that Jesus does to bring us back to God to work, we must let it affect us. For us, this means taking to heart the sacrifice that Jesus makes on our behalf. It means confronting that sacrifice as freely-given grace and allowing that grace in, letting it seep into our pores and letting it change us and make us new.

I think that’s the real reason we stick to the first part of the story. Like the pious young man, we can easily feel comfortable in our own righteousness and smug superiority. And kind of like Ruby Turpin, the character Matt+ mentioned last week who obviously knows the right thing to do and the right way to behave…except that she really doesn’t. We want doing the right thing or dare I say, merely believing the right things to stand in place of loving God and living with God. But Jesus wants us to see that living in God’s house is as simple as accepting the invitation—because He comes running to get us. It means getting over our own righteousness—even if it means cleaning out the pigsty. It means letting the grace touch us—worthy or unworthy—and permanently change us.

Who we are is defined in our relationship with God. The text doesn’t say what happens after the father comes to get the older son. Just as our future isn’t written. But what would it be do you think if we let the father open that door for us, holding it and bowing his head as we enter the house to see the whole town drinking wine and making music? What would it be to walk in through the kitchen, into the living room, someone shoving a glass in our hand as we pass the table and we see under the big bay window a couch—and sitting in the middle cushion is our little brother, back from the dead? And what would it be to sit down in the empty space next to him and say simply “welcome home”?

I think that’s a little bit like what Jesus does for us.




[1] The Father & His Two Sons: The Art of Forgiveness. (Eyekons Publishing: Grand Rapids, 2008) p. 56

[2] Keller, Timothy. The Prodigal God. DVD, Zondervan.

The view from up here

a Sermon for Epiphany 4C
Text: Luke 4:21-30

Please Pray with me: God of Hope and Wonder, we long to be part of your vision for the
world; help us to see you at work in the world and within us. Amen.

Remember, this story is about the cliff.

We came to church this morning feeling that this was an ordinary Sunday. We thought that some semblance of normal was being restored to the world and we could begin to go about our lives as normal. And our first two readings might even seem to reinforce that thinking. And then we get to the gospel.

The Gospel itself looks straightforward or simple enough. Jesus says something, people get excited, then Jesus makes the people mad, so they try to kill him. We might even think that Jesus himself gives us the message of this story: “no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.” OK. You can’t go home again. Got it. Time to move on!

Except that we can’t move on. Moving on would mean that we ignore the real cause for the outrage. It would mean that the reason for collective violence would be swept under the carpet. That isn’t the gospel. So what caused these family friends, this home congregation, to not only get upset at Jesus, but cause the collective body to intend to murder him?

He told them that they don’t get to be first. That God likes some other people better. And that many of those people would gain power and influence at the expense of the faithful. He put the mirror up to the people and said, in essence:

“When I read from Isaiah these words:

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.

I didn’t mean that you are the captives or the blind or the oppressed, but that you get the short end of the stick.”

And when Jesus said this, the crowd was going to kill him as a blasphemer by stoning him to death in a way—by throwing him off of the cliff and onto the stones below.

The key, of course was his choice of examples. As long as the poor, the blind, and the oppressed are nameless, “we’re all good”. But when he names gentiles that were given favor over Jewish people in the same boat, they became outraged.

It seems as if we have a hard time with this notion, too. We like the idea of “bringing good news to the poor” as long as we still get to be wealthy (or at least middle-class—which is wealthy by international standards). We like the idea of releasing captives—if they haven’t done anything to us or aren’t considered our property. We like the idea of giving sight to the blind—as long as they don’t see something we’ve overlooked. We like the idea of letting the oppressed go free—as long as they don’t have it as good as we have it. We like to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor—except that we don’t actually want that to happen, because then we all get to move to the back of the line. And after a while, our feet start to hurt because that line looks really long from back here. It seems as if, deep down, we believe that we’re the ones who are oppressed and need saving from the current state of affairs. So when Jesus’s words are only words, we feel good. But when we are asked to live them as the oppressor, we balk.

The truth is that Jesus could walk into most any church in America and grab a Bible, read that passage and say that the people chosen for salvation and authority in the new age aren’t Christian, but are homeless or displaced, are hungry and malnourished, haven’t had access to safe drinking water or doctor care in who knows how long. And the people would be furious. He’d be called a false prophet and run out of town. He’d hear the people shout “That isn’t Biblical” as they drive him away.

But remember, the story is about the cliff.

The location for the story is “the brow of the hill on which their town was built”. Luke gives us an image of a people who live on a hill. This would no doubt be the scene of some wonderful childhood stories of Jesus running through the meadows down in the valley, of clothes hung on lines in the breeze of the hilltop. The town itself could be seen from some distance away—a vision that might cause a weary traveler to want to set down some roots in this beautiful location. From the hilltop itself, an observer could get a wider view of the countryside than anywhere else. Even in military terms, the elevated location would serve as a tactical advantage. In every way, this town is in an idyllic spot.

But this hill also has a cliff—a source of danger for children running around and a temptation for the town’s more malicious members. The cliff may be the hill’s darker side—the drawback for the benefits the people get in living there.

For Luke, the location is the visual and most explanatory part of the story, because Jesus comes up from lower ground and tells the people that they’ve got a great view, that they are great people, but their position also gives them blindspots. That they can’t see everything from this hill. That this hill doesn’t help them see themselves any better or one another any better. The outrage didn’t come out because Jesus said good things about Gentiles, but that Gentiles, even Gentiles that had oppressed Jews, could better know the mind of their God.

That message is Good News, isn’t it? Jesus tells us that God’s vision for the world is bigger than we are. That to be a part of the vision doesn’t require joining an exclusive club with membership dues, name tags, or offices to be held. It merely requires relationship and participation with the vision.

It also means that we don’t have to have all of the answers—and even better—that we don’t! That we can learn from other people and other cultures. That we can gain insight from people that we don’t even know. That we aren’t all that there is, and we aren’t “the best”.

Most important, though, is that it sheds light on the inner darkness. That we like feeling special. We like knowing that someday we’ll each get a chance to give Jesus a hi-five. And we like knowing that our hard work will pay off in some way. That we like being different and we’re worried that if the outsider can have what we have, it won’t be as good.

For us, in this Epiphanytide, the cliff is the source of our great vision and our great hubris. It is the place in which we endanger our own understanding of God by squeezing it too tightly and dashing others to the rocks. But it is also the place in which we can realize that problem—our hard hearts transformed into forgiveness by the grace of God. It is the place of the revelation made blind by our own insecurity—the place in which our innersight may be restored to match or even better our physical site.

May you find yourself awakened and given new sight this day by a God that longs for your collaboration in vision and may that cliff be the site of your greatest triumph.

Looking for superpowers

a Sermon for Christmas 2C
Text: Luke 2:41-52

Please pray with me. God of Hope and Wonder we thank you for families, friends, and most of all, our relationship with you. May we continue to learn how to love you and be your children. Amen.

There are a few strange things you probably noticed this morning in our gospel from the evangelist we know as Luke: The holy parents forget Jesus in Jerusalem; Jesus just hangs out in the Temple for 3 days; Jesus talks back to Mary when she comes to collect him. OK, maybe that last one isn’t so strange, considering the Jesus of this story is a pre-teen. Sorry to those in this room in the 11-13 range, but many adults have come to see this as the unfortunate byproduct of your hormones. Hey don’t look at me—I’m just reporting what I hear! My kid’s not even 2.

These are strange things, for sure. How could Mary and Joseph be so careless with Jesus, the Son of GOD? After the strange circumstances of his conception and birth, the angel visits, and the prophecies, how can they not check whether or not he was on the caravan? That he was, in fact, playing with the other kids? But I think this reveals more about us than about them. About our priorities and the way we govern our lives.

But really, most of us don’t have our minds on Mary and Joseph, anyway. Our minds aren’t really on the 12 year-old Jesus, either, but on the 30 year-old Jesus as a 12 year-old. Like a fiancée discovering their love’s baby books, yearbooks, and family photo albums, we’re looking for clues into the Jesus we know by looking at his past. We want to know more about him; as if discovering what his favorite food was might help us to grow spiritually. So this…this is really about us. And since we treat Jesus as some kind of superhero, looking at Jesus’s past is an attempt to discover what Superhero Jesus was like as a child. We look for evidence of superpowers to answer the unanswerable theological questions that have haunted Christianity for centuries. Was he born with superpowers, or did they show up at baptism? Does Jesus know who he really is, or does he merely have a hunch? Does he understand the world at birth, or does that understanding just show up one day, or does it only happen in death? These dizzying questions circle around the Scripture and we hope that they can get answered because really, deep down, this is merely part of our own pursuit to better understand him and his nature. In this way, the story of the pre-teen Jesus is full of new confusions.

It says in verses 46-48:

After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him they were astonished;

This is perhaps the closest thing we have to seeing pre-teen “superpowers”. Jesus was “sitting among the teachers…And all who heard him were amazed”. We might be tempted to see that what was amazing about his teaching was his age. That the maturity of his answers were beyond the ability of a “normal” 12 year-old. But I think that’s weak. Especially in light of our modern bias against the wisdom of youth. No, I’m more inclined to see it plainly—Jesus, at any age, gave some pretty solid answers. At the same time, it also didn’t say that he answered well—it says that they were amazed. This is the same word used in later chapters in the crowd’s response to Jesus’s miracles. There is something remarkable about this adolescent, isn’t there?

It is that moment in the Scripture, when the teachers are amazed and the parents come in and are astonished that helps us understand what it means to move from the Incarnation in the birth of Jesus to the ministry of Jesus’s later life. This pre-teen Jesus is on the cusp of living into his called life. It would have been common in Jesus’s time to not see Jesus at 12 as a boy, but as a young man. The teenage years were seen as full maturity. Similarly, if Jesus were following the rabbinic traditions at the time, by the age of 12, he would have memorized all of Scripture and would soon be exploring Midrash and all of the great questions of Judaism. In other word, at 12, Jesus might reasonably be considered a budding academic. And further, those sitting around him in the Temple aren’t likely to be 70 year-old graybeards, but young men, many of which could very well be in their late teens and twenties.

What is most profound, therefore in this Scripture is not a revelation of Jesus’s childhood, but a defining moment in Jesus’s maturation and the revelation of Jesus’s adulthood. One scholar highlights an interesting textual shift in the midst of this reading. He points out that the story begins from the parent’s perspective. After they come to the Temple and find Jesus, the perspective shifts onto Jesus. In verse 51, the perspective is singularly about Jesus. It says:

Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them.

The story becomes centrally about Jesus. The text itself narrates Jesus’s independence from his parents, even as he succumbs to their direction and instruction. In many ways, this is a demonstration of Jesus’s maturity and adulthood—that he is able to follow his calling from GOD by being obedient to his parents, even after the point in which he no longer needs to.

In finding a ‘Father’ that takes the ‘top spot’ from Dad, Jesus is making both a deeply human and deeply spiritual decision. This is small comfort for parents that are dreading the onset of their own kids’ budding adulthood. But this is more than maturity and the passage of time; more than some imposed sense of wisdom or a practiced custom. This is, instead, the image of one who is changed through his new relationship with GOD and with the world. And each of us is given that opportunity to be changed—whether we like it or not.

As the children of parents who had trouble with our growing up; as children of parents who reluctantly allowed us to move out on our own; or as parents, with children at home or children long gone we are all in the midst of following GOD’s call and exploring the redefinition of relationship that comes with it. For many, this can be a traumatic time, full of confusion and even estrangement. But it is necessary, if not inevitable.

We often speak in our culture of growth and maturity as loss—a loss of innocence, as well as a loss of peace and harmony and a loss of dependent relationship. But rarely do we see what is gained. As each of us is separated from our families and customs, and as we bind ourselves to GOD through faith, we gain community. We gain new family. We gain the fullness of GOD’s love and a multitude of ways to love GOD back. We (St. Paul’s) are a product of that love and that relationship.

I don’t have answers to all of our questions…but I do have faith in those who ask them. I have faith that people of all ages are looking for a better relationship with GOD. I believe that in their hearts, whatever their age, resides the wisdom of GOD’s love. That, in our midst, there are apostles who will soon lead, prophets who will soon speak, and teachers, doers, and healers discovering their calling. If we are willing to cast ourselves in with God.

May we each continue to explore GOD’s work for us, help one another discover our spiritual gifts, and be a family-of-origin for world-changers. Amen.

Rejoice in repentance

a Sermon for Advent 3C
Text: Luke 3:7-18

Let’s begin this morning looking back 20 years. It was a particularly memorable Christmas for me. We had extended family around, including cousins, which was unusual. And on the morning of Christmas Eve, I came down stairs to find a big box under the tree with my name on it.

As every 10 or 11 year-old knows, the hardest thing about seeing a big box for you under the tree before Christmas morning is having to wait all day, staring at it. It was like a beacon, calling out to me. “Drew! Here I am! Open me!” And I could hardly resist. I couldn’t stay in the same room with it.

Making matters worse was this was 1988/89 and my Christmas list contained only one item. Normally the list was full: GI Joe, Transformers: but not this year. This year contained just this: The Nintendo Entertainment System.

I had been bugging my parents for months and talked about it constantly. We had inherited an Atari 2600 the year before, but this was evolution! This was proof of progress! This was countless hours of entertainment and fascination! Well, when I saw that box, I became convinced that what was inside was the NES with its two controllers, the light gun, and Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt. I could hardly wait to finally make that game mine.

The next morning, the first thing I race for was that big box, and when it was my turn to open a present, I ripped the paper off of the front and inside was a big model of the space shuttle. I was heart-broken. And I’ll admit it—my expectations kept me from appreciating the present that was given to me. More tragic is that my Dad had bought this model to build with me and my 10 year-old self couldn’t get that. I was focused on other things.

In many ways, our expectations get mixed up in the “holiday season”. We’ve had some challenging readings here in Advent so far, and this morning’s is no exception. We’re all looking ahead to Christmas with its carols and its egg nog and its presents and its fellowship. The season is naturally pregnant with expectation. At the same time, that expectation leads us to ignore the signs around us. Just as my 10 year-old self knew that the box was the wrong shape—hours spent staring at the NES box behind the counter in KB Toys told me that—we look at life, and the season, through expectant eyes, not eyes of observation.

This morning, we finally get to hear that grating and persistent message of John the Baptizer’s that we talked about last week. We get to hear the jarring language (“You brood of vipers!”) and the threats (“but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire”) that we might be quite tempted to overlook—to ignore in our attempt to get happy about Christmas. To be joyful at the coming of Jesus.

We know John comes to prepare the way for Jesus. And talking about John at the beginning of the church year is appropriate. It makes chronological sense. It makes theological sense. But I wonder if we take seriously the notion that he came to prepare the way for Jesus…to lead us on the way. That the Good News is first revealed by John and begins here.

John has this big crowd of followers who are all wondering if he is the long-expected Messiah. He looks like what they expect the Messiah to look like, and he talks like what they expect the Messiah to talk like, and he behaves like what they expect the Messiah to behave like…but they still aren’t sure. That’s interesting, isn’t it? So this disparate group has just been put in their place by this potential Messiah and they still ask “What then should we do?” John responds by telling them to be generous and fair with what they have. If you have two coats and you see somebody without one, give it to him. Pretty simple. Then the tax collectors ask what they should do, and John tells them not to cheat people. Take only what you are instructed to take. And the soldiers are told to be happy with the wages they receive, and not bully others and take from them. John’s instructions come to us as no-brainers, don’t they? Especially in light of what we know our faith to be about. But let’s pause at this window for a minute. If we look inside, we see a culture in which safety and security required that you look after yourself first. Having two coats meant you had a spare in case something happened to the first one. It meant having coats for different kinds of weather. It might have even meant that it was the only luxury you had. As for the tax collectors, most of their income came from collecting more than was prescribed—marking up the taxes. Like a merchant that sells goods from a manufacturer to a store, the income has to come from somewhere. And for the soldier, brutal treatment and extortion was a means of keeping the peace. John’s teaching isn’t so common sense in that context—and can seem eerily similar to our own world.

But John’s teachings here are about fairness. We should read them in the way that our guts tell us to. Despite the expectations the world has for us, we should be fair and generous to others, collecting only what is needed, while taking nothing for ourselves. That’s a pretty solid way of operating. But I think it does more than that—I think it gets our focus off of ourselves and onto other people. It isn’t what I can do for them, but for what can be done for them. See the difference? Just take the ‘I’ out.

John is preparing the way for Jesus, not physically: scuffing the ground from Bethlehem to Jerusalem or sweeping the dust off of the road: and not emotionally as a pre-Messiah herald because people couldn’t figure it out. John prepares the way by helping people let go of themselves. Letting go of self-sufficiency. Letting go of personal consumption. This is repentance. This is John’s preparation. For us to see Jesus as the Messiah, we must first repent and give up that devotion to self and materialism and macho bravado and ladder-climbing and all of that stuff. So we can just let it go. Hand it over.Because that understanding of expectation, that sense of ‘what I’m going to get’ keeps us from understanding Jesus as the Christ. John prepares Jesus’s way by altering our expectations of the Messiah.

This morning, we celebrate Gaudete, as is traditionally symbolized with a pink candle in the advent wreathe and is an ancient practice that is being renewed in the church. The word gaudete is Latin for “rejoice” and has been used to infuse some joy into an otherwise penitential season. I’ll admit that I had a hard time seeing the joy in this reading when I started. The others, I definitely could. But this Gospel lesson is about joy. John reveals the Good News that will be brought to new life in Jesus. That is joyous. That our calling is to give to others what is missing in their lives is joyous. That our calling is to not take from others and to treat them honestly and fairly is joyous. And most of all, that we can give away the pressure and the anxiety of self-sufficiency to our Messiah so that we might live our lives in joy and generosity—that is joyous.

Today, we can rejoice in our new expectations for the coming of our Lord. May his name be praised forever.

Stand up and raise your heads

a Sermon for Advent 1C
Text: Luke 21:25-36


We have a promise that God is with us, that we have a teacher and a guide. We have a promise that dreams can be fulfilled and that tomorrow can and will be a better place. We have opportunity and responsibility in our hands. We have the time and the place for this action: today, right here: to prepare ourselves. And we have one instruction: “stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

So here we are, at the end of Jesus’s ministry. On the first day of Advent. New Year’s Day in the Christian Calendar. New year, new gospel, so we dive into Luke; and in the gospel, we’re starting toward the end in chapter 21. This is one of the strange components of a Lectionary in which we don’t actually tell the story in order. We begin the year with Jesus telling us how it’s all going to end, and then we jump back to the beginning. And in the Spring, we have Lent, which hits the Temptations, and then jumps to Jesus’s final days. Then there’s Easter and Pentecost, which are chronologically sound, following Jesus’s death and resurrection, but then we get into the Season of Pentecost, where we rewind and go through Jesus’s actual teachings. All of which lead up to this one. At the beginning.

The teaching itself is a prophecy, not unlike the one from two weeks ago about the Temple. This one is bigger, though. This involves not just human stuff, but cosmological stuff: “the sun, the moon, and the stars”. And the global human response is distress—everywhere. The phrasing is truly appropriate for us as we deal with current warming trends in the oceans and news reports of icebergs that broke from the Antarctic ice shelf and are now drifting north toward New Zealand, while our region is still recovering from hurricanes and flooding: “The roaring of the sea and the waves” indeed!

I’m mindful of the fact that we don’t really know how we ought to take this type of talk. Some look at the Scriptures as something to decode. As if the secret to the end times is hidden within the text even though Jesus himself tells us that we won’t know “when the master of the house will come”. This is a cottage industry within Christianity, peaking of course with the Left Behind books. But this thinking has been with us for a long time—each time disproven by the world’s existence past the predicted date.

Another response that many have taken is to ignore this talk, either confining it to its time and place or by ignoring the graphic imagery. In either case, the purpose is to desensitize the scripture to something more palatable and less strident; depriving it of its power to affect us and make us feel a certain way. This seems just as harmful to the Scripture.

We seem to be less afraid of the details of the Scripture itself than we are about discussing what the end actually looks like. About what it means to stop being…us.

It is said that we have an obsession in our culture with youth. I think a more accurate expression of this is that we have an obsession with avoiding aging. We don’t want to be young, we just don’t want to be old. The now common practices of cosmetic surgery and taking pills to stave off the outward effects of aging serve as obvious proof of this. The issue isn’t about becoming children again (though for some, that may actually be the case), but something more elemental: our understanding of youth is that in youth, our sites are set on tomorrow. Youth is about promise and expectation and hope and anticipation. It is about what is coming in the future.

Middle age, then, comes to represent the potential realization of those dreams and hopes and expectations. It is the time in which we embody the future in a present. We then take on a caretaker roll—maintaining the world, the institutions, the practices of a person of a certain age. Our prescription for middle age is to live in the present.

This leaves our senior time as representing the past. Our bodies prevent us from doing the things that we did when we were younger and our appearance changes.

But the truth is that we prefer to think about what could be to what is and certainly prefer it to what was. We catalog aging as a process of losing hope and optimism, as we are overtaken by pessimism and “realistic” thinking. We fight idealism because our own lives have seen things that have brought anger into our hearts and tears to our eyes.

In the middle of this talk of destruction, confusion, and conflict, Jesus tells his disciples this: “Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” Jesus talks about the end of things, not as a source of destruction and devastation, but of fulfillment of expectations, of hopes, and of dreams. A time of the old becoming new. In death, we are born anew. We talked about this two weeks ago when we tackled the “mini apocalypse” in Mark—the destruction of the Temple and the birthpangs—but in this one, Jesus gives his disciples instructions: to hold up their heads and stand tall.

This isn’t about arrogance, indignation, or confrontation. This isn’t about feeling special or chosen. This isn’t even about feeling righteous. This is about believing. Believing that hardship leads to reward. Believing that we have somebody that is there for us when we feel all alone. Believing that, in spite of today, tomorrow will be better.

When Jesus tells his disciples to be ready, he doesn’t couple that with “because tomorrow the world will end,” but with “so that your hearts may not be weighed down”.

As is often the case, Jesus may as well be speaking right to us. This may as well be a direct line to our own time. Because sometimes we feel bad, our hearts feel pretty heavy. We look at tomorrow, not with hope and optimism, but with anxiety: because we fear loss; that something will be stripped from us. For some, this is the fear of having the car keys taken by a son or daughter—that tomorrow might be the day.

But Jesus tells us not to fear: not to be afraid of tomorrow. That we must hold our heads up to the light and see the world as it truly is. What we long for about youth is that freedom to not fear tomorrow, to not worry about what will happen this time next year or the year after that, and to not worry about loss. But who says that we don’t all have that freedom? Who says that we have to look at tomorrow with death-colored glasses? Who says that we can’t be hopeful dreamers?

We have a promise that God is with us, that we have a teacher and a guide. We have a promise that dreams can be fulfilled and that tomorrow can and will be a better place. We have opportunity and responsibility in our hands. We have the time and the place for this action: today, right here: to prepare ourselves. And we have one instruction: “stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”