Focusing on the positive is "choosing life"

Sermon delivered Sunday, Feb. 16, 2014 (6th Sunday After the Epiphany, Year A), at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN (Deuteronomy 30:15-20, Matthew 5:21-37).

“I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life, so that you and your descendants may live” (Deuteronomy 30:19).

Our reading from Deuteronomy today comes near the end of that book, as the Israelites are preparing to cross into the Promised Land after 40 years of wandering in the wilderness. As they stand on the brink of the fulfillment of the promises God has made to them, Moses is near death, and these last several chapters of Deuteronomy detail his “parting words” to the people before naming Joshua as his successor. After a long recounting of the laws given at Mount Sinai, Moses reminds the people that if they obey the laws God has given them, they will prosper, but if they do not, they will perish.

Although only one of these choices offers a desirable outcome, inherent in this exhortation is a reminder of their free will: the Israelites actually do have a choice in the matter of whether they will love God and follow his commandments or not. God does not make them obey him, controlling them like puppets; he grants them the freedom to choose disobedience, even if it leads to their destruction.

Like the Israelites, we too have a real choice as to whether we will love and obey God or not, whether we will choose life or whether we will choose death. We too are free to choose disobedience, even if it leads to our destruction. We only need to take a brief look at the evening news to find plenty of examples of how often people choose destructive behaviors over life-giving ones. And truth be told, there are probably plenty of examples a lot closer to home than the evening news.

Within our own lives and choices, we can all find examples of times when we chose to break our own religious covenant – the vows we made at our baptism – and the negative consequences that resulted. The times we turned a blind eye to someone in need, the times we spoke harshly to our spouse or children, the times we neglected to spend time with God in prayer and worship, the times we knowingly participated in unjust social systems simply because it was easier than challenging the status quo – in all of these times, we broke the covenant we made at our baptism to be regular in prayer and worship, to share our faith with others, to seek and serve Christ in all persons, to strive for justice and peace among all people and to respect the dignity of every human being. [1]

Each time we break one of these vows, we are, in however small a way, choosing death instead of life. Although we may not feel like we are making a conscious choice to disobey our baptismal covenant in those moments, we could have chosen to behave differently. We could have chosen to see the person in need rather than walking past them. We could have chosen to hold our tongue when we felt negativity and harsh words rising up. We could have chosen to get up and come to worship even when we felt like sleeping in. We could have chosen to challenge the policies and programs in our communities that perpetuate social inequalities and injustices. We do have the ability to be conscious and intentional about our actions, and to make choices that are life-giving rather than destructive.

But lest we think “choosing life” is a matter of simply doing the right things, Jesus’s teachings in today’s Gospel passage (Matthew 5:21-37) from the Sermon on the Mount remind us that obeying the letter of the law is not enough – we must embody the spirit behind the law in our thoughts and attitudes. It is not enough just to refrain from killing someone, Jesus says, because nurturing anger and ill will towards someone can be a kind of “death” as well, both for the other person and for us. Focusing only on our outward actions neglects to take seriously how powerful our thoughts really are. This is why so many religious traditions teach that it is important to purify one’s mind as well as one’s actions.

What we dwell on mentally has an enormous impact on our emotional and even physical well-being. We have the choice between life and death not only in our actions, but in our mindset. If we choose to focus on the negative all the time, we are essentially choosing death. If we choose to focus on the positive, we are choosing life. This is why the Apostle Paul offered the following advice in his letter to the church at Philippi: “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (Philippians 4:8). To a church dealing with disagreements and conflict amongst themselves, Paul urges them to focus on the positive. Find some common ground. Emphasize what they can agree on. In doing so, they “choose life” for their community, because we all know how destructive it can be to only focus on conflicts, disagreements, and things that divide us.

And this holds true not just within the church, but in broader contexts as well. If we can focus on the positive, on the things we share in common, on the ways we can get along with one another, we can choose life rather than death not just for the church, but for the world.

Eboo Patel (center) in the midst of an interfaith dialogue.
Image from Inside Islam, http://insideislam.wisc.edu

One of our current Sunday School classes for adults at 10 a.m. is called “Embracing Interfaith Cooperation.” The class is based on a series of videos of talks and interfaith group discussions led by Eboo Patel, founder of an organization called the Interfaith Youth Core in Chicago. The Interfaith Youth Core strives to hold up the stories of interfaith cooperation throughout the history of our various religious traditions, and to train college students to become the next generation of interfaith leaders. They seek to educate people about the fact that the dominant assumption that people of different religions have always fought and will always fight is simply not true. Although our history textbooks and the evening news tend to tell us the story of the “clash of civilizations” and the inevitability of religious strife, Eboo and the Interfaith Youth Core remind us that there is actually a long history of interfaith cooperation in our respective religious histories that is often unknown to the general public.

Tonight at our Nourish program, we will welcome some of our Muslim neighbors in Williamson County to St. Paul’s for dinner and conversation. Because today’s dialogue is a Christian-Muslim one, let me highlight a few stories of interfaith cooperation between Christians and Muslims from our shared histories.

We are all familiar with the storyline that tells us that Christians and Muslims can’t get along, that we must fight and compete with one another about religious claims and political views. But as far back as the 8th century in what is now Iraq, Christians and Muslims were engaging in peaceful dialogue and debate in the courts of a Muslim caliph named Harun al-Rashid, who intentionally invited people of many religious faiths to his court to participate in an exchange of ideas that would broaden the minds of all involved. [2]

An icon of St. Francis greeting Sultan Malik al-Kamil.

In the 13th century, in the middle of the Crusades, St. Francis of Assisi met with the Egyptian sultan, Malik al-Kamil. Although Francis’s initial aim was to stop the wars over the Holy Land by converting the sultan to Christianity, when he actually met and spoke with the sultan, he discovered a devout man of God in whom he recognized something holy. The sultan likewise acknowledged Francis as a holy man, despite their disagreements on matters of religious doctrine. Francis came away from the encounter with at least some respect for Islam, and instructed his followers to live at peace with their Muslim neighbors. [3]

And closer to our own day, despite the news we hear in the U.S. about Christians being oppressed and mistreated in majority-Muslim countries, friendships and support between Christians and Muslims continues to go on at the grassroots level. During the political uprising in Egypt in 2011, hundreds of Christians joined hands to create a human chain to protect their Muslim neighbors as they prayed in Cairo. [4] And after an Anglican church was bombed in Pakistan last year, hundreds of Muslims joined hands to form a human chain around the church to protect their Christian neighbors as they returned for mass the next week. [5] The images of these two events (see below) went viral on Facebook and other social media sites, showing the power of the people to lift up positive stories to counteract the dominant narrative of conflict. These powerful displays of solidarity show that it is possible for us to choose life rather than death, to choose cooperation rather than competition and conflict.

Christians protecting Muslims at prayer in Cairo, 2011 (image from the U.K.'s Daily Mail)

Muslims surrounding church to protect their Christian neighbors in Pakistan, 2013 (image from Huffington Post)

Some might say that focusing on the positive is a form of living in denial, that if we only look at what we have in common, we miss the importance of our very real differences, that if we ignore our points of disagreement, we sweep things under the rug and don’t get a realistic view of the complexity of our relationships, whether we’re dealing with family dynamics, church conflicts, or interfaith dialogue. This is certainly a valid critique; if we deny that we have any differences at all, we do ignore the reality of our uniqueness as individuals and the particularities of our various traditions. But given the extent to which our culture encourages us to focus on conflict, it is important that we remind ourselves that conflict is not the only storyline out there.

And so, we keep lifting up the positive, we keep looking for common ground – not to ignore our differences or particularities, but in order that we might choose life rather than death, that we might choose peaceful encounters and life-giving friendships rather than fear, suspicion, and violence.

“I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life, so that you and your descendants may live” (Deuteronomy 30:19).

Participants in the interfaith scripture study circle between St. Paul's, the Islamic Center of Williamson County, and the Nashville Gurdwara (Sikh community). The group met once a month for three months, January-March, to study common topics in our sacred texts (the Bible, the Qur'an and the Guru Granth Sahib).

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Footnotes:

[1] See the Baptismal Covenant, p. 304 in the Book of Common Prayer

[2] See the introduction to Zachary Karabell, Peace Be Upon You: Fourteen Centuries of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish Conflict and Cooperation. Vintage Books, 2008.

[3] The Saint and the Sultan, Paul Moses. Online information at http://www.saintandthesultan.com/about.html
Hoke, Wendy A. “St. Francis and the Sultan: Lessons for Today.” Catholic Universe Bulletin, 31 October 2006. Accessed online at http://www.catholic.org/diocese/diocese_story.php?id=21816 10 February 2014.

[4] “Images of solidarity as Christians join hands to protect Muslims as they pray during Cairo protests,” The Daily Mail (UK), 3 February 2011, accessed online at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1353330/Egypt-protests-Christians-join-hands-protect-Muslims-pray-Cairo-protests.html 10 February 2014.

[5] “Pakistani Muslims Form Human Chain to Protect Christians During Mass,” Huffington Post, 8 October 2013, reprinted from The Express Tribune. Accessed online at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/08/muslims-form-human-chain-pakistan_n_4057381.html 10 February 2014.

Being a "light to the nations" means helping others to see the light in themselves

Sermon delivered Sunday, Jan. 19, 2014 (2nd Sunday After the Epiphany, Year A), at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN. (Isaiah 49:1-7)

The season of Epiphany is all about light. It begins with the light of the star of Bethlehem guiding the magi to the Christ Child, and ends with Jesus glowing in dazzling light on the mountain at the Transfiguration. These two dramatic manifestations of Jesus’s identity bookend a season chock-full of stories about Jesus being made known as Messiah and Son of God.

The light of the season of Epiphany carries with it a message: “Behold, to you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior!” “This is my Son, the Beloved, in whom I am well pleased. Listen to him!” The light shines as a beacon to point us to Christ. And we, in turn, are called to let the light shine through us so that we may point others toward Christ. In the season of Epiphany, as we remember the ways Christ was made known to the people of his day, we consider the ways we can make him known to the people of our day.

Our collect for today summarizes this central theme of Epiphany: “Grant that your people, illumined by your Word and Sacraments, may shine with the radiance of Christ's glory, that he may be known, worshipped, and obeyed to the ends of the earth.” We are “illumined” as we take in the light of Christ through the Scripture and through the Sacraments, and as it shines in us, others will come to know and worship him as well. The season of Epiphany reminds us of the call to evangelism and mission at the heart of our faith.
Today’s reading from the Hebrew Bible contains one of the most well-known biblical “catch-phrases” on the subject of evangelism and mission: “a light to the nations.” God says to the prophet Isaiah, “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant
to raise up the tribes of Jacob
and to restore the survivors of Israel;
I will give you as a light to the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth” (Isaiah 49:6).

“I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”

In an historical context where the prevailing assumption was that each nation had their own god or gods, whose role was to protect only the people of their nation, this was a revolutionary idea – that the God of Israel would care about the people of other nations. In fact, most of the biblical writings prior to the time when the Israelites were in exile in Babylon – the period when this passage from Isaiah was probably written – assumed just the opposite: that the God of Israel cared only for Israel, and whatever “salvation” was promised had to do only with the success and prosperity of Israel, not of anyone else. This passage is one of several in Isaiah and in other writings dated to this period that represent a significant theological shift – from a view of salvation as being “all about us” to a view that included “them” as well – the other, the outsider, the foreigner, the stranger. The goodness and mercy and blessings promised by God to Israel are available not only to them, but to all people. The role of Isaiah – and of Israel as a whole – as a “light to the nations” is to bring that goodness and mercy and blessing to all people. It is not enough to receive it for themselves; they must be willing to share it with everyone.

Unfortunately, the way both Jews and Christians have read and interpreted this passage has often presumed that only Israel – or in Christian thought, only the church, as the “New Israel” – has the light to share with others. As Christians sought to be a “light to the nations,” we saw ourselves as a shining example to those other more “primitive” or “uncivilized” people who we considered to be in darkness, and through our actions and our theology we continued to assert our superiority over other nations and peoples. As this passage about being a “light to the nations” became one of the theological underpinnings behind Christianity’s worldwide missionary outreach, we forgot the inclusive flavor that it had in its original context. Instead of saying, “I believe that God loves and cares for you and I am willing to include you in what is most holy and sacred to me,” too often the message expressed by the missionaries was more like, “I believe we have the light and you don’t, and God disapproves of the things you hold most holy and sacred.” In many cases, instead of bringing light, we brought more darkness. Instead of inclusion, we brought rejection and condemnation.

So how can we be obedient to Isaiah’s call to be a light to the nations, to Jesus’s call to make disciples of all nations, without falling into the same mistakes that some of our forefathers and foremothers made? How can we share the good news so that it is actually received as good news, rather than as rejection and judgment?

Well, we can think about the people we know or have known who truly are a “light” – to their community, to the nations, to the world. What are those people like? Are they angry, judgmental people? Are they in the habit of pointing out others’ flaws, or of telling them how much their behavior is unacceptable to God? Probably not. Their light most likely flows from a genuine love and acceptance of those around them. Are they the only ones who have the light? No, they probably cause others to shine too when they are around.

The true lights of this world cannot possibly judge the darkness, because they bring light to wherever they are, and they see the light in others. They don’t claim to be the only ones who have the light, but they help others to see the light in themselves. And in doing so, the light becomes much stronger than if it were proceeding from only one person or one group. To me, that is what it means to be a “light to the nations.”

It is interesting that although Christian theology names Jesus as the “light of the world” (John 8:12), Jesus also says that we are the light of the world (Matthew 5:14)! In the Sermon on the Mount, he says to those gathered to hear him teach, “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:14-16). Jesus, the very light of the world himself, did not tell his followers that he was the only light, but taught them to see the light in themselves.

And he taught them that that light shines more brightly as a result of our actions. It is a cliché, but it is certainly true that actions speak louder than words. The trouble with the way some of our forefathers and foremothers approached the missionary task is that their actions did not match up with the words they were sharing. Their words said that God loved and cared for all, but their actions said that some people were worth more than others. They were more concerned with making sure that others had the right beliefs than they were with living out those beliefs themselves.

My favorite saying about evangelism is one attributed to St. Francis of Assisi: “Preach the Gospel at all times; if necessary, use words.” We preach the Gospel, the good news of Christ, not primarily by what we say, but by how we live. The truth of this statement has been illustrated powerfully in the past 10 months by the first Pope to take St. Francis as his namesake. What has captured the world’s attention about Pope Francis is not his words, but his actions. In word, he has not said much that departs from traditional Roman Catholic teaching, but what is different about him is the way he lives. While others have affirmed the church’s teachings about caring for the poor, Francis has chosen to give up the comforts of the papal palace, dress simply, and be among the poor as much as possible, inviting several street people to the Eucharist at his birthday celebration in December. While others have said and taught that the faithful should put their trust in God and not in human force, Francis has chosen to leave the bulletproof Popemobile behind and embrace the risk of traveling unprotected and vulnerable among the people. Francis is living proof that the Gospel, authentically lived, is powerful.

So how can we be a “light to the nations?” Perhaps we can take our cue from Pope Francis and from his namesake, seeking to live an authentic life of faith modeled on the teachings of Jesus. The best way to be a light to others is not to assume we are bringing them a light they do not already have, but by to affirm and help them see the light in themselves.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

Sermon delivered Sunday, Dec. 29, 2013 (1 Christmas, Year A (John 1:1-18)), at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN.

On this First Sunday After Christmas, we hear a very different version of the Christmas story than the one we heard on Christmas Eve. Rather than shepherds and angels and a family sent to the stable because there was no room for them at the inn, we hear John’s version of “the beginning” of Jesus’s story, a beginning that began not in Bethlehem, but at the beginning of time, before the creation of the world. John’s account is a cosmic creation story, a magnificent theological poem about the very essence of the Divine breaking into the depths of our world: “the Word became flesh and lived among us” (John 1:14).

And in this artistic proclamation of the origins of the Christ, the author of John’s Gospel gives us what I believe to be one of the most powerful summaries of the Christian message in all of Scripture:

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it” (John 1:5).

In that one sentence lies the heart of the Gospel: the power of light over darkness, of love over hate, of life over death. Jesus’s Resurrection is the ultimate expression of this truth. Death itself could not extinguish the light that came into the world with the birth of Christ, and it continues to shine through all the ages, despite countless attempts and threats to extinguish it.

This is the heart of the Gospel, the Good News that we proclaim as Christians: that nothing will be able to extinguish the light of God that shines in all creation. The Apostle Paul said in his letter to the Romans that he was convinced “that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38). This is the message we are called as Christians to proclaim to a broken and hurting world: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5). And we are called to proclaim this message precisely during those times when we cannot see the light, when all seems to be darkness, when the world around us tells us there is no joy, no hope, and no love.

Many of us know that Christmastime can bring with it both great joy and great sadness. There’s something about this time of year that has a way of bringing up old memories, of reminding us of Christmases past that were happier or more joyful than this year, of making us acutely aware of the absence of those departed family members whose presence was so much a part of what Christmas meant to us in the past. This is why we gathered the week before Christmas for our first “Blue Christmas” service here at St. Paul’s, to acknowledge and sit with those less-than-merry feelings as Christmas grew nearer.

But now Christmas is here, and sometimes the “blue” feelings show up even more poignantly after the pomp and circumstance of Christmas Eve is over, after all the presents are opened, the family from out of town has left, and all the merriment is over. Although Christmas lasts for 12 days, our culture is done with it the day after December 25th. The trees and lights start to come down on December 26th, and the working world immediately goes back to “business as usual.” This sudden removal of all festivity can sometimes feel like a bit of a “let down” after the “high” of Christmas Day. The Sunday after Christmas and the Sunday after Easter are known amongst church leadership as “low” Sundays, and although we’re usually talking about attendance numbers, we could also as easily be talking about spirits. There is a natural human tendency to feel a bit low after a great high. But the celebration of the church goes on, even when it doesn’t match up with the culture around us. It is still Christmas, and we continue to celebrate the birth of Christ.

It is particularly appropriate during this post-Christmas Day “low” that we hear and affirm that “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” Because this reminds us of something that is absolutely essential to the Christian life – that we continue to proclaim the truth of the Gospel not only when we feel happy and joyful and confident in the ability of light to overcome darkness, but even during the times when we most doubt it, when we are consumed by fear, sadness, and despair.

The only time we let the light go out in our churches is on Good Friday – in a symbolic recreation of the darkness of the crucifixion, when the disciples thought the light really had gone out, when that light of the world that John’s Gospel speaks of was, for a time, absent. But the light did come back – it burst forth from the tomb in the body of the Resurrected Christ and set ablaze the light that the church has carried ever since, through times of deepest darkness. In the Church, we are an Easter people, a Resurrection people. Except for the one liturgical exception of Good Friday, no matter what else is going on in the world around us, we come to church to see the light. Our calling as Christians is to carry that light even when the darkness creeps in around us and we are certain it will extinguish the light.

This is a difficult task, to be sure, and I dare say it would be impossible for any one person to do. But the good news is that none of us is called to carry the light of Christ alone. We are part of a community of faith, the Church, which is the very Body of Christ, which will go on proclaiming the good news of the Gospel even when we as individuals are not able to proclaim it ourselves. When we fall into despair and find ourselves quite literally unable to say the words of faith, when we have no will power to pray, and when we can affirm nothing but the existence of the darkness around us, the corporate prayer of the Church goes on in endless praise of the One who is the Light even in the midst of the darkness.
When we cannot see the light ourselves, we come to church to allow others to hold it up for us. When we cannot find the words to pray, we allow the community to pray for us until we are able to join in again. We are able to carry the light of Christ through the darkness only to the degree that we are willing to carry one another through the difficult times.

And, thanks be to God, the truth of the Gospel does not depend on our emotional state of being. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it,” whether or not we believe that is true, whether or not our hearts are in it when we say that statement. Trusting in the truth of the Gospel, a truth that comes from outside ourselves, we can continue to say it, even when the world around us screams that the light has gone out. We light the Advent candles of hope, peace, joy, and love even when the world says there is no hope, peace, joy, and love. We sing songs of praise even in the midst of great loss. We do so because we are an Easter people. We do so because at the center of our faith lies the proclamation of a Truth that is greater than the truth of this world: “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5).

Christmas Message 2013: Are you ready for Christmas?

Sermon delivered Christmas Eve 2013 at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN.

“Are you ready for Christmas?”

How many times have you asked or been asked that question, by friends or family or even strangers you greet this time of year? It’s one of the ways we make small talk with each another as the calendar moves closer to December 25th. “Hi, how are you, good to see you. So are you all ready for Christmas?”

When someone asks this, what they generally mean is, “Is your tree up and decorated? Have you finished your Christmas shopping? Have you bought all the groceries you’ll need for Christmas dinner? Are the sheets for your guest room washed and on the bed, ready to welcome family from out of town?” Are you ready for Christmas?

But there’s another layer of meaning to that question that we don’t often think about. It’s probably not what you intend to ask, or what the person is asking when they say it to you, but that question is actually a very appropriate question for the season of Advent, the season leading up to Christmas. It’s a question about preparation. But instead of asking whether we have our physical house in order, we could hear it as a question about whether we have our spiritual house in order. Are you ready for Christmas? Are you ready not just for a visit from family, but for a visit from God himself? Have you made room for Christ in your heart? Are you ready for Christmas?

The answer, of course, is probably “no.” No, we don’t have all the groceries bought, no, the sheets are not on the bed; in fact, they’re still in the washer and we’re hoping this service won’t go on too long so we can get home and finish taking care of that, and no, we didn’t manage to get everything on our Christmas shopping list, and we’re worried sick that little Johnny will hate us forever when he discovers there’s no X-Box under the tree. And on top of all that, we’re supposed to be ready for a visit from God himself? No, we’re not nearly ready for that, either.

And guess what? In the classic paradoxical way of the Gospel, this is actually a GOOD thing! Tonight, I’m inviting you to give thanks for all the ways you are NOT “ready for Christmas.” Because a lot of times, the more ready we think we are for something, the less ready we actually are.

The people of Jesus’s day thought they were ready for Christmas, for the coming of the Christ, the Messiah. They expected a great king who would overthrow the occupying Roman government and restore the kingdom of Israel. They were ready for power, for force, for military victory. But they didn’t get what they were so sure they were ready for. Instead, they got a helpless baby, born to a peasant family in a barn, who grew up to preach peace, to advocate loving enemies rather than defeating them, and who allowed himself to be put to death by the Romans rather overthrowing them.

By contrast, Mary knew she wasn’t ready for Christmas. She wasn’t ready to become a mother, much less the mother of God. “How can this be?” she asks, when the angel appears to announce an impossible future for her life. Joseph wasn’t ready to be a father, certainly not before he was even married, and certainly not to the very Son of God. And when the time came for Jesus to be born, they still weren’t ready – traveling away from home, with no place to stay and “no crib for his bed.” This young, unprepared couple was certainly not “ready for Christmas.” But because of their unreadiness, they were forced to acknowledge their total dependence on God. “I am the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word,” Mary says to the angel (Luke 1:38). It was precisely the fact that they were not prepared that allowed them to be open to the unexpected movement of God in their lives.

If we think we’re ready for Christmas because there is food in the fridge and there are presents under the tree, because we’ve checked off all the items on our to-do list, we may actually close ourselves off to a real encounter with God. If we think we’ve taken care of it all, we may forget that we need God to take care of some things for us. We may begin to think that we have “done Christmas,” patting ourselves on the backs, forgetting that Christmas is not something we have the power to manufacture, but a pure gift from God.

Our gift-giving this time of year is meant to be sacramental, an outward and visible sign of the free gift of God’s love incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ – which is an inner and spiritual grace that all of our physical gifts can only loosely approximate. But so often, we forget the intended sacramental nature of giving and receiving gifts this time of year, and fall instead into a kind of false thinking in which we take pride in our ability to give gifts, and accept the message of our culture that those with more have the better Christmases; those with the most expensive gifts, with the best family situations, and with the most lavishly-decorated homes – those who are “ready for Christmas” by all secular standards. But actually, those who are the most unprepared for Christmas – those without a tree, without gifts, without a rich feast awaiting them tomorrow – are really the most “ready for Christmas,” in the spiritual sense. Oscar Romero, the late Roman Catholic archbishop of El Salvador, put it this way:

No one can celebrate
a genuine Christmas
without being truly poor.
The self-sufficient, the proud,
those who, because they have
everything, look down on others,
those who have no need
even of God -- for them there
will be no Christmas.
Only the poor, the hungry,
those who need someone
to come on their behalf,
will have that someone.
That someone is God.
Emmanuel. God-with-us.
Without poverty of spirit
there can be no abundance of God.

The more ready we think we are for Christmas, perhaps the less ready we actually are. Because the more we trust in our own abilities to create a picture-perfect Christmas, to make everything “just right” by secular standards, the more likely we are to forget our need for God.

So if you’ve arrived at this Christmas season feeling harried, worn out, and frustrated, rejoice! Give thanks! This unreadiness is an opportunity to acknowledge your total dependence on God, to admit that you need someone to come on your behalf. Remember that Christmas is not about your ability to give dozens of gifts, but about your ability to receive just one. In all your lack of preparedness, in all your failures and foibles, in those moments, you are truly ready for Christmas.

Remember the past or forget the past?

Sermon delivered Sunday, Nov. 17, 2013 (26th Sunday After Pentecost, Proper 28C), at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Franklin, TN (Isaiah 65:17-25, Canticle 9 (Isaiah 12:2-6))

There seems to be a tension between the messages in our two readings from Isaiah today. In the first reading, from Isaiah 65, the prophet brings us this word from God:

“I am about to create new heavens and a new earth;
the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.”

But then, right after that, we read Canticle 9, which is from Isaiah chapter 12, which encouraged us to remember the things of the past and the “great things” that God has done:

“Give thanks to the Lord and call upon his Name;
Make his deeds known among the peoples;
see that they remember that his Name is exalted.
Sing the praises of the Lord, for he has done great things,
and this is known in all the world.”

So which is it that we’re supposed to do as people who want to be faithful to God – remember the things of the past, or forget the things of the past? Recall and retell the history of our relationship with God, or look for God to do a “new thing” in our midst? Should we look to the past or to the future for our sense of inspiration and connection with God?

The authors of these two passages from Isaiah had different opinions on this question. Even though both passages appear in the book of Isaiah, biblical scholars believe that they were written in two different times in Israel’s history, by different authors.

Isaiah 12, which exhorts the people to remember the “great things” that the Lord has done, was written during a period of Israel’s history when the recent past looked much better than the future. King Uzziah, who had recently died, had led Israel to be a prominent political and military force in the region. But now, the armies of the neighboring Assyrian Empire were gathering on the horizon, and the political future did not look so promising for the nation of Israel. In this context, the prophet calls the people to remember the great things of the past. The “new thing” that seemed immanent – attack by a hostile neighboring country – did not look like it would be a cause for rejoicing.

The writer of Isaiah 65, by contrast, is writing over 150 years later, after the nation of Israel has been defeated by the Babylonian Empire and the Israelites have spent 50 years in exile, away from Jerusalem and the land that was so sacred to them. When the Babylonians were then defeated by the Persians, all the peoples who had been displaced from their homelands under the Babylonians were allowed to return home. Some Israelites returned to Jerusalem, but when they arrived, they found their beloved city in ruins, with their temple, the most holy place in the city, destroyed. All those “great things” that God had done for them in the past that the author of Isaiah 12 had encouraged them to remember seemed a glimmer in the very distant past. Things had gotten so bad that no amount of turning to the past would be a comfort. It is in this context that the writer of Isaiah 65 brings this word from God to the people:

“I am about to create new heavens and a new earth;
the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.
But be glad and rejoice forever
in what I am creating;
for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy,
and its people as a delight.”

In this context – after having been to the depths of despair, to a place so low that it seemed they couldn’t go anywhere but up, the future looked brighter than the recent past for the people of Israel. Even though Jerusalem was in ruins, at least they had been allowed to return, and there was hope for the possibility of rebuilding. Dwelling on the loss and destruction of the past, or nurturing nostalgic memories of the way things used to be back in the “glory days” of the kingdom of Israel would only distract them from the necessary task of moving forward. And so the prophet encourages the people to forget the things of old and rejoice in the new thing God is about to do in their midst.

Though these two messages – the call to remember the past and the call to forget the past – can seem contradictory at first glance, the early church saw fit to include them both in our sacred scriptures, and it wasn’t because they were unaware of the tension. No, this tension between celebrating the past and looking to the future lies at the heart of the Christian faith, which, by definition, lives in a tension between the “already” and the “not yet.” We proclaim the truth that in Jesus, “the kingdom of God has come near,” and yet we acknowledge that the fullness of that kingdom will not be realized until the next world. In our Eucharistic proclamation, “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again,” we both look to the past for inspiration – in the life, death, and resurrection of the historical Jesus of Nazareth – and find inspiration in the future, through the promise that Christ’s “kingdom” – a new age of justice and peace – will indeed one day come “on earth as it is in heaven,” and it “will have no end.”

And what a blessing it is that both messages are included in our scriptures. There are times when one message seems more comforting or helpful than the other, just as it was for the ancient Israelites.

When we feel grateful and thankful for the many blessings we see and feel all around us, when we are in periods of our lives where we feel safe, happy, and fulfilled, we may find ourselves focusing on the sentiments in Isaiah 12 – “sing the praises of the Lord, for he has done great things.”

But when we go through those dark periods where, like the Israelites returning from exile in Babylon, we feel that our lives have turned into a series of one calamity after another, of trials and challenges that seem to have no end, when it seems that we have fallen so low that there is nowhere to go but up, we might find comfort in the words of Isaiah 65 – “I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.” No doubt many in the Phillippines right now, still reeling from the effects of the recent typhoon, would find themselves in this category. When the former things are not things we want to remember, such a message can come as a blessed relief, a source of true joy – that the former things that have caused us such pain and suffering will not be remembered or come to mind, but instead there will be this new creation of a world of peace, where even the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

Which message do you most need to hear in this season of your life? Are you in a place where you feel grateful for the wonderful things God has done in your past, or are you looking ahead, waiting and hoping for an entirely new creation? Are you singing the praises of the Lord because he has done great things, or are you longing for the days when the former things will not be remembered or come to mind?

I invite you to reflect on that question as we move into the season of Advent in a few weeks. This tension between looking backward and looking forward for inspiration and connection with God is particularly relevant during the season of Advent, since Advent both invites us to prepare for the celebration of an event from the past – the birth of Jesus in the first century – and calls us to prepare for an event in the future – the Second Coming of Christ. During Advent, we both “sing the praises of the Lord” for the great thing he has done in the birth of Jesus, and look forward to that new creation promised when Jesus will “return to judge the living and the dead.” As you prepare for Advent this year, think about where the emphasis is in your own life this season – looking back to remember the things God has done in the past, or looking forward to a new creation. Perhaps whichever one of these passages from Isaiah most resonates with you might become a meditation piece for you this Advent.

Of course, it is also important to remember that Scripture does not force us to choose only one way of thinking – EITHER remember and celebrate the past OR forget the past and look to the future. Both motifs are scriptural, and we are given the space to do both. So, if it feels like a false choice between the two, sit with both of them. You can both “sing the praises of the Lord for the great things he has done” AND “rejoice forever in what God is creating anew” in your life.

Because, of course, God has ALWAYS done “new things” in the midst of God’s people, and they never did completely forget the past as they moved into their new ways of being – otherwise they would not have preserved the stories of our faith that have been passed down through the ages. So we too do not have to completely forget the past in order to open ourselves to the new things God will do in our future – we only have to be willing to live with that Advent-flavored tension between the “already” and the “not yet.”

Persistence in prayer even when we do not get what we ask for

Sermon delivered Sunday, Oct. 20, 2013 (22nd Sunday After Pentecost, Year C, Proper 24) at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN, on Luke 18:1-8.

“Jesus told his disciples a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.” (Luke 18:1) Luke tells us that today’s parable, about the widow and the unjust judge, is about persistence in prayer. It has a similar theme to another parable Jesus tells earlier in the Gospel of Luke, about the friend at midnight. We heard that parable earlier this year, at the end of July, but let me refresh your memory. The parable of the friend at midnight is in Luke 11:5-8:

“[Jesus] said to them, ‘Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, “Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.” And he answers from within, “Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.” I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs.’”

“Because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs.” Although the friend initially turns down the request, he ultimately gives in because the person knocking at his door just won’t give up. The same is true with the widow and the unjust judge. Though the judge cares nothing about the woman or about granting her what she asks for, he finally gives in because of her persistence and tenacity.

Jesus’s message in both these parables seems to be: if you know that persistence and constant asking can be effective in finally getting what you want from other broken and sinful human beings, who do not always have your best interests at heart, how much more should you be certain that God, who loves you and does have your best interests at heart, will give you what you want if you are persistent in asking?

These two parables are unique to Luke, but Luke links the parable of the friend at midnight with a saying of Jesus that appears in some form or another in all four Gospels: “ask, and it will be given to you.” The parable of the persistent friend at midnight in Luke is followed by this passage, which appears to be commentary on the parable: “Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.” (Luke 11:9-10). The same exact words appear in Matthew in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 7:7-8). Mark and John do not have this exact passage, but the same theme appears in those Gospels as well. “Whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours,” Jesus says in chapter 11 of the Gospel of Mark (Mark 11:24). And in John 14, Jesus promises the disciples, “If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.” (John 14:14)

These passages seem to suggest that all we have to do is ask, and God will give us whatever we want. They can easily lend themselves to a “vending machine” view of God, where all we need to do is insert prayer, press D4, and health and wealth will promptly be deposited into the receptacle at the bottom of the machine, ready for us to grab and tear into like so many candy bars. But I expect that most of us would bristle at that concept of God, because we know that most prayer does not work that way. It does not seem to be as easy as “ask, and you shall receive,” as “select your desired outcome and it will be delivered to you, no questions asked.” Although sometimes our prayers do seem to be answered exactly as we have asked, I’m sure that most of us have any number of examples of times when we asked for something from God and did not receive what we asked.

This is not a new problem for the “modern believer;” the earliest Christian communities already recognized that they did not always get everything they asked for from God, that not all their prayers were answered by a fulfillment of the requests they had made. The author of the letter of James deals with this issue by arguing that the people are not receiving what they ask for because they are asking wrongly, because their desires are not in line with the will of God. James 4, verses 2-3, says this: “You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures.”

James’s answer for why some prayers go unanswered is that people are asking for the wrong things for the wrong reasons. That can be a helpful interpretation when we know deep down that our motives in asking or the things we are asking for are probably not the most godly, that they may be motivated by selfish desires. In those cases, we can accept that our prayers are not answered because we were not asking for the right things. But what about the cases in which we ask for something that we believe to be in line with the will of God, when we ask for the very things God has promised us, like life and health and justice and mercy and resurrection and peace, and we do not receive them?

Jesus tells the disciples that they will be able to heal in his name, and in the Gospels and the Book of Acts we have stories of the disciples healing the sick and raising the dead, but I have never known a Christian who was able to literally raise the dead. The prophets constantly tell us that God has promised to “restore the fortunes of Zion,” and yet the conflict in Jerusalem and the surrounding areas continues unabated. The prophets tell us that God wants “justice to roll down like waters,” but we see oppression and injustice continuing in our own society and around the world.

So how are we to reconcile these unanswered prayers with Jesus’s words that “if in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it”? That “everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened”?

Again, this is not a new question. The biblical authors also struggled with unanswered prayers. The psalmists asked, “How long, O Lord?” How long will you hide your face from us, how long will you not respond to our prayers, to our cries for help? The prophet Habakkuk asks, “O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you ‘Violence!’ and you will not save?” (Habakkuk 1:2) Job cries out to God, “Even when I cry out, ‘Violence!’ I am not answered; I call aloud, but there is no justice” (Job 19:7). In Psalm 22, the psalm Jesus quotes while dying on the cross, the psalmist says, “O my God, I cry in the daytime, but you do not answer. By night as well, but I find no rest” (Psalm 22:2).

Significantly, though, the biblical authors never take the step that so many people do today, to assume that the fact of unanswered prayer must mean that God does not exist. The biblical writers “keep the faith” even in the midst of unanswered prayer, even when God does not turn out to be their own personal divine vending machine. They express their anguish about unanswered prayer to God, not only to other people. And they remember the times God has answered prayer and how many blessings they have received from God. In the same chapter as Job cries out that there is no justice and his prayers are not answered, he goes on to say that “I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth” (Job 19:25). Immediately after the verse in Psalm 22 about crying to God but receiving no answer, the psalmist goes on to say, “Yet you are the Holy One… our forefathers put their trust in you; they trusted, and you delivered them… you are he who took me out of the womb, and kept me safe upon my mother’s breast” (Psalm 22:3-4, 9). In the midst of laments about unanswered prayer in the Bible, there is almost always a recall of times that prayer has been answered, when we asked and it was given to us, when we sought and did find, when we knocked and the door was opened to us.

Perhaps this is what it means to be persistent in prayer: not only to keep asking over and over again, but to stay in relationship with God even when we do not get the things we ask for in that particular moment – to ask questions and struggle with God even when the door seems to be closed. To remember, even in those moments, Jesus’s promise that God has our best interests at heart and will in fact grant us the justice and the good things that we seek – even if it might not come in the ways we expect or desire. The biblical writers continued to affirm the goodness of God despite their unanswered prayers, and Jesus invites us to model their persistence not only in making continued requests for what we want, but not to lose heart as we ask – to remain steadfast in believing that the God to whom we pray does indeed have our best interests at heart.

Parable of the Dishonest Manager: An Opportunity to Admit We Don't Understand

Sermon delivered Sunday, Sept. 22, 2013 (18th Sunday After Pentecost, Proper 20C), at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN, on Luke 16:1-13.

Our passage from Luke’s Gospel today presents us with one of Jesus’s more difficult parables, in which Jesus seems to encourage cheating and dishonesty. The parable is a story about a manager who “cooks the books,” so to speak, adjusting the amounts due from his boss’s debtors so as to give them a break and ingratiate himself with them so they will owe him a favor once he’s lost his job as a result of his corrupt dealings. As we listen to the story, we’re expecting a traditional outcome: the bad guy gets told what-for by the boss and faces the consequences of his actions. We’re probably expecting to hear about some weeping and gnashing of teeth.

But instead, the boss praises the manager for this behavior! And then Jesus summarizes his message with a strange piece of advice: “I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.”

What?? “Make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth?”

That doesn’t sound like the Jesus we know, the Jesus who consistently warns us about the dangers of our riches becoming an idol, who says it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven and tells us we must give up all our possessions to become his disciple. And just a few verses after this strange bit of advice, he warns us that no slave can serve two masters, that we cannot serve both God and wealth.

So what does this saying mean? Why does Jesus tell us to “make friends for ourselves by means of dishonest wealth?”

Well, first of all, it bears saying that this parable has been confusing to the church since its earliest days. Everyone from the early church fathers like Augustine and Jerome through the 16th century Reformers like Luther and Calvin and on to modern-day scholars like John Dominic Crossan and Amy-Jill Levine has attempted to understand and explain it, and there are a variety of different interpretations.

Some say that the “master” in the parable represents God, while others say the “master” represents this world and wordly pursuits. Some say the “children of light” refers to the disciples of Jesus, while others say it is a reference to the Pharisees. One interpreter even suggested that the unjust manager represents Jesus himself, who goes against the typical rules of this world and turns things upside down, stepping in to cancel the debts owed to the master as Jesus cancelled the debts of our sin on the cross. [1]

Some try to make sense of why the manager was praised by suggesting that perhaps the master was really the one who was unjust, a rich tyrant who was oppressing all his tenants, and so the “dishonest” manager was actually the “good guy” by freeing the tenants from the debts they owed this unjust master. In this interpretation, the manager is a sort of “Robin Hood” figure, taking from the rich and giving to the poor. Some say that perhaps the master commended the manager because the manager actually had done the master a favor: he made the master look good and generous by cancelling a portion of the debts owed by his debtors, and perhaps the master would have been glad to collect anything, even a partial amount, on the debts that were owed him from people who had accumulated such large amounts of debt.

A fairly common interpretation across the centuries is that because the master commends the manager for acting “shrewdly,” what is praiseworthy about the manager is not his dishonest dealings, but his shrewdness, his cleverness, his creativity. Even though he has essentially stolen from his master, his master commends him out of a sense of resignation – like, “Well, this guy really took me to the cleaners, but hey – you’ve got to hand it to him for his ingenuity!” The lesson for us is that we should be as shrewd and clever in figuring out a way to assure a good eternal future for ourselves as this guy was in securing a good future for himself in this world.

Many interpreters have linked this passage with the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25, where Jesus tells us that at the final judgment we will be rewarded based on how we have treated “the least of these,” and with Jesus’s many sayings about the last being first and the first being last in the kingdom of heaven. So, when Jesus says to “make friends for ourselves by means of dishonest wealth, so that when it is gone, they may welcome us into the eternal homes,” the “they” he is referring to is the poor. Those who interpret the parable this way point out that even though Jesus says “make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth,” he also acknowledges that such wealth will not last – various translations have “when it is gone” or “when you fail,” showing that the goal of Jesus’s statement is not for us to put our trust in riches, but to point out that what will last is what we have done with our riches. If we “make friends” with the poor – even through unjust dealings – then the poor will be in a place to advocate for us in heaven when we arrive, saying, yes, these people offered drink to the thirsty and food to the hungry. Those who had been “last” in this world having been made “first,” they will be in a place of power in the next world and will be able to welcome us in if we have done right by them in this world.

One issue with that interpretation is that it still does not explain why we should make friends with the poor by means of dishonest wealth – couldn’t we do the same thing with honest wealth, with “clean” money rather than “dirty” money? And it’s also not clear that the debtors that the manager assists in this parable really were “the poor.” Given the fact that they had such large amounts of debt, they were probably also fairly rich farmers, so that forgiving their debts would hardly be an example of Robin Hood taking from the rich and giving to the poor, but more like Robin Hood taking from the king and giving to the aristocrats. And it doesn’t deal with the fact that, however much the manager’s cooking of the books may have helped the master’s debtors, the manager was ultimately acting out of self-interest – a strange thing to hold up as an example, given how important right intentions are in other places in the scriptures.

At least one interpreter has suggested that the key to this puzzling parable is to read Jesus’s words sarcastically. [2]  It is worth remembering that we do not have any indications of tone of voice in the scriptures, and we all know how much difference tone of voice can make in our understanding of any given statement! For instance, a few weeks ago when we read the Gospel passage where Jesus tells his followers they must hate father and mother, wife and children – basically everyone except Jesus himself – and then Father Bob got up during the announcements and told you all he hated you, everyone laughed because we could tell by his tone of voice and facial expression that he was joking. But imagine if you just read somewhere that the rector told the congregation he hated them! With no tone of voice or context, such a statement could be easily misunderstood! And that’s what some interpreters suggest has happened to this statement from Jesus. Most interpreters have tended to read this statement “straight” – that is, at face value, as genuinely expressing what Jesus meant to say. But what if he was being sarcastic?

“Make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth, so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.” Sure, go ahead and try that. Use your dirty money to strike deals for yourselves. Look out for number one and make sure someone always owes you something. But what good will those friends be to you when that money is gone? Will they be there to welcome you into the eternal homes? In the words of Dr. Phil, “How’s that working for you?”

Of course, we really have no way to know for sure whether Jesus was being sarcastic or not. (Perhaps this is one area where the oral tradition would have been more helpful than the written Scriptures!) And all of these interpretations have some point or another that doesn’t quite “fit” or make sense.

I thought there might be something to this parable that we Christians were missing because of some cultural blinders, so I turned to the Jewish Annotated New Testament, a collection of commentary on the Christian scriptures from the perspective of Jewish scholars and rabbis, of which Amy-Jill Levine is a primary editor. After a few notes connecting some of the Greek words used in this parable to similar words elsewhere in the New Testament and a few brief comments about the differing opinions as to who the “lord” and “master” represent in the parable, that resource summed things up with this helpful piece of insight: “This parable defies any fully satisfactory explanation.” Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m thinking that if A-J Levine can’t even figure this one out, it’s probably time for me to throw in the towel!

But then that got me to thinking. Perhaps there’s a lesson for us in the fact that this parable “defies any fully satisfactory explanation.” There is a tendency for us as human beings to want to be able to explain things – it’s the impulse that drives both scientific discovery and our religious pursuits. We want to know God and understand the universe, and we like anything that makes us feel like we’re succeeding in that regard. We like the parables that are easy to understand because they give us a sense that we have things figured out, that we can summarize the mind of God with a nice little story about the Good Samaritan or the Prodigal Son, where the message is, “we screw up, God forgives us, and we all live happily ever after.” Those stories make us feel good and safe, and rightly so. But parables like this one, that “defy any fully satisfactory explanation,” remind us that we cannot wrap God up in a nice little box and place him on a shelf next to the other subjects we’ve mastered, like arithmetic and spelling. In a sense, God himself “defies any fully satisfactory explanation.”

So these confusing parables remind us, then, that we do not fully understand God. They are reminders of our limitations, and an opportunity for us to admit that we don’t know, that we don’t understand. In the Zen Buddhist tradition, students are often given koans to work on by their teachers. A koan is a kind of parable, but often more like an unanswerable riddle. A famous one that you may have heard before is, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” They are meant to boggle the mind, to circumvent linear, rational thought, and to encourage the student to open her mind to a nonrational, intuitive response to the question – or simply to “be” in a state of unknowing, and to be comfortable with that.

I believe that Jesus often chose to answer people’s questions with parables rather than direct answers as a way to encourage a similar kind of response – stop trying to explain it all and figure it all out. See if you can get the sense of the point I’m trying to make from the gist of this story. Or maybe just take a step back and remember that God is God and you are not – and you don’t have to figure it all out.

So what did Jesus mean when he said we should make friends for ourselves by means of dishonest wealth? The collective wisdom of the church throughout the centuries is: we don’t know. And perhaps that’s a pretty healthy response for us to have sometimes when speaking about the mind of God.


[1] Robert Farrar Capon, Kingdom, Grace, Judgment: Paradox, Outrage and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2002. Summarized in outline form on GoBibleStudy.com, “The Hardest Parable: The Unjust Steward” (9.22.10), http://www.gobiblestudy.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Parables_Grace_Capon_Unjust-Steward_Luke-16-1-131.pdf

[2] See Donald R. Fletcher, “The Riddle of the Unjust Steward: Is Irony the Key?” Journal of Biblical Literature, 1963, p. 15-30 (esp. pages 27-29). And some comments in this thread at Christianity Stack Exchange:  http://christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/2220/what-is-the-parable-of-the-shrewd-manager-about

Seeing with "kingdom eyes"

Sermon delivered Sunday, Sept. 1, 2013 (15 Pentecost, Year C, Proper 17), at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN (Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16; Luke 14:1, 7-14).

Both our readings from the New Testament today focus on the themes of hospitality and solidarity with both neighbors and strangers.

The author of the letter to the Hebrews encourages us to “let mutual love continue,” and reminds us “not to neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.” We are also encouraged to “remember those who are in prison, as though [we] were in prison with them; those who are being tortured, as though [we ourselves] were being tortured.” In the Gospel passage from Luke, Jesus encourages us to choose humility over arrogance, and to invite and include the most vulnerable and marginalized members of society in our community gatherings.

We should give to others and extend hospitality not only when we can expect to receive it in return, but even when we know the recipients cannot reciprocate. For in doing so, we mirror God’s love to us – God gives to us freely, despite the inability of human beings to “repay” God for the gift of our life.

And we also offer a foretaste of that kingdom to come where all people will stand equal as children of God, where we will treat one another with love and respect not out of a desire to receive anything in return, not out of an attempt to lift ourselves up, but out of a recognition that we are all brothers and sisters in the family of God. With our worldly eyes, we see inequalities, separateness, and divisions, but with kingdom eyes, we will be able to see the oneness of humanity and the equal value of every human being.

Our faith gives us the opportunity to see with kingdom eyes now; we don’t have to wait for the kingdom to come. In the Lord’s Prayer, we pray for God’s will to be done “on earth as it is in heaven.” As we strive to live out our faith and follow the teachings of Jesus, God will use us to bring a glimpse of that kingdom to the world here and now, on earth as it is in heaven.

Because our natural tendencies as human beings can be so contrary to kingdom values, in order to do this, we must be intentional about our behavior. We must choose to see with kingdom eyes. We must choose to offer hospitality to strangers and neighbors alike – to push against our natural inclinations to speak only to those people we already know, to invite only our friends to our parties, and instead, choose to see the stranger as a brother and a friend.

The letter to the Hebrews tells us that we should “remember those who are in prison, as though [we] were in prison with them; those who are being tortured, as though [we ourselves] were being tortured.” The kingdom reality is that all Christians are one body in Christ, and when one member suffers, the whole body suffers with it. The kingdom reality is that all people – Christians and non-Christians alike – are God’s children and thus part of the greater family of God. When one of us is hurting, we all hurt. But so often, we don’t even know that one of us is hurting, because we don’t know one another. We see each other with worldly eyes, as “other,” as “different,” as “stranger,” as a statistic rather than a human being, and our empathy fades. But if we take the time to get to know one another as fellow human beings, as brothers and sisters in the family of God, we begin to hurt when others hurt, to care when our brothers and sisters are in prison, or tortured, or murdered, or deported, or slandered. When we know one another, when we hear one another’s stories, we can begin to see with kingdom eyes – we can recognize one another as a brother or a sister.

Allow me to share an example of this with you from my own life. Shortly after 9/11, I heard that a Sikh man had been murdered at a gas station in Arizona. I had never heard of Sikhism, and when my religion professor explained that Sikh men wear turbans and beards as part of their religious faith and that this man had been mistaken for a “terrorist” because his shooter thought he looked like Osama bin Laden, I shook my head at what sounded like an awful situation, but it quickly faded to the back of my mind. Two years later, I happened to be at a conference where a young Sikh woman presented a collection of video footage of interviews with the relatives of this man, as well as interviews with other people who had experienced discrimination and hate crimes in the weeks and months after 9/11. As I listened to story after story of people who had been yelled at, beaten, shot, and killed simply because of the way they looked, I felt like the Apostle Paul when the scales fell from his eyes at his conversion experience (Acts 9:18). I had had no idea about what had been happening to the Sikh community, the Muslim community, the Hispanic community – really, anyone with brown skin – in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, because I didn’t know them. Our paths never crossed, and so I had never heard their stories. I had been seeing with worldly eyes rather than with kingdom eyes. I hadn’t known that my brothers and sisters were suffering.

After the screening, I introduced myself to the woman who had shown the footage, whose name was Valarie Kaur. Her goal was to take this footage, which she had collected for a project as a college student in the year after 9/11, and turn it into a feature-length documentary film. I offered to help in whatever way I could, and eventually became the film’s communications director through a second stage of production and its eventual national tour. It was my work with that film that made me so sensitive to the shootings that happened last August at the Sikh temple in Wisconsin, that motivated me to buy those sympathy cards for you all to sign and to take a group of you to visit the gurdwara here in Nashville.

In the middle of the film, which we titled “Divided We Fall,” there is a scene where a college-aged Valarie and her 18-year-old turbaned cousin Sonny, who was her cameraman for the project, discuss what the turban means to them as Sikhs. When it is Valarie’s turn, she says, “I see somebody with a turban, and I say, ‘There’s a sadar, he’s a Sikh man. He’s like my uncle, he’s like my brother, he’s like my grandfather. I know him. We come from the same place. He probably speaks Punjabi. He says the same prayers that I do.” She looks down, with a pensive look on her face. Her cousin pauses, then asks, “Why are we making this documentary?” Valarie looks away thoughtfully, smiles, then looks directly into the camera and says, “So other people don’t look at the turban and see fear, hatred, something laughable, something less than human… so that other people don’t look at the turban and see an enemy where I see a brother.”

I wonder if that isn’t why Jesus asked us to invite “the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind,” to our luncheons and dinners – so that we wouldn’t look at them and see something laughable, something less than human – so that we wouldn’t look at them and see fear where Jesus sees a brother. So that, as we ate together, we could hear their stories, stories that would make us human to one another, stories that would allow us to see each other with kingdom eyes, as brothers and sisters in the family of God.

This is what we’re about as a church whenever we go to Church in the Yard and listen to the stories of people who are experiencing homelessness, or when we sit down at Spring Street to share a meal with our African-American neighbors, or when we visit the mosque or gurdwara and share tea with Muslims and Sikhs. We are intentionally connecting and building relationships with people we might not otherwise get to know. We are pushing back against the default mode of society that keeps us apart in separate circles of community that never touch one another. We are choosing to see one another with kingdom eyes, so that we will know when one of our brothers and sisters is suffering and remember them as if we were suffering ourselves.

Jesus says that if we show hospitality to those whom society separates from us, we will be blessed, and will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous. But, as I’m sure anyone who has participated in any of the ministries I just mentioned could tell you, the blessings are also available here and now. Because as we extend hospitality to both neighbors and strangers, we discover that there are no strangers in the kingdom of God, and we are able to touch a glimpse of the kingdom, breaking in to our everyday lives, on earth as it is in heaven.

What are the multitude of your liturgies to me?, says the LORD.

Sermon delivered Sunday, Aug. 11, 2013 (12th Sunday After Pentecost, Year C, Proper 14) at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN. (Isaiah 1:10-20)

For the past month or so, our readings from the Hebrew Bible have come from the prophets: Amos, Hosea, and this week, Isaiah. This prophetic tradition will continue through the rest of the season after Pentecost, with readings from Jeremiah, Joel, Habbakuk, and Haggai.

Although the details of their historical contexts differ, all the prophets speak to a people who in one way or another have fallen away from God. They point out the ways the people have not lived up to what God has called them to do and to be, and call the people back to right relationship with God.

Oftentimes the “issue” at hand for the prophets is that the people are worshipping other gods or have adopted ritual practices other than those prescribed by the God of Israel. Our passage from Isaiah often gets read in that way. “What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?” God says to the people. “I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats. When you come to appear before me, who asked this from your hand?”

At face value, it sounds like God is mad about the Israelites doing something he didn’t tell them to do, like worshipping Baal or other gods. And since both Judaism and Christianity ultimately came to believe that animal sacrifice is not necessary to please God, it is easy to read that understanding back into the text and judge the ancient people for their “primitive” understanding of God.

“Those silly people back then,” we think. “They actually thought God wanted them to kill animals for him? This passage clearly shows that God didn’t want sacrifices, but they kept on doing it anyway! Apparently they really were hard-headed and rebellious.”

Latent in this assessment is the assumption that we, the modern reader, are not so hard-headed, that we understand what true worship is, whereas the ancients did not.

One of the problems with this interpretation is that this passage is not about the people adopting unacceptable religious practices. In fact, all the religious rituals described in this passage – offering sacrifices at the temple in Jerusalem, observing the Sabbath, celebrating the appointed festivals on the religious calendar – had been commanded by God in the Mosaic law. By all outward appearances, the people were actually doing everything right. They were performing the ritual actions God had said God wanted. So why does God suddenly say he doesn’t want them to do the very things he had commanded them to do?

Well, because they were really only fulfilling one part of the instructions God had given to them. God had not only given commands about ritual practice, but also about ethical behavior – and the people weren’t doing so great with the second half of that equation. Their ritual observances, however correctly they were performed, were not acceptable to God because outside of worship, the people continued to behave unethically.

This is not an unfamiliar theme in our own day -- that outside of worship, people continue to behave unethically. Christian author and speaker Brennan Manning observed this about the modern-day church: “The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians, who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, but walk out the door and deny Him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.” However much we may be tempted to assume we in the modern world have “matured” and made “progress” from the “primitive” times of the ancient world, human nature has not actually changed very much. It may be dressed up with technological advancements and an “evolved” understanding of God and what kind of rituals God requires, but the fact remains that it is still easier to say the words of faith than it is to live them.

We read the Scriptures not so that we can pat ourselves on the back by how much “progress” we have made since ancient times, but so that we can hear how God is still speaking to us today. In order to do that, sometimes we need to undertake a little modern translation. To hear what the Spirit is saying to God’s people through this passage from Isaiah, we might consider what it would sound like if we translated all those references to ancient Israelite worship to references to our worship in the Episcopal Church today. It might sound something like this:

What are the multitude of your liturgies to me?
says the LORD;
I have had enough of your Eucharists and baptisms;
I do not delight in red wine,
or these flimsy wafers you call bread.
When you come to appear before me,
who asked you to pour water over things and call them holy?
Don’t come to church any more;
giving your tithe is futile;
lighting candles and processing down the aisle is an abomination to me.
Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter… the calling of vestry meetings and diocesan conventions --
I cannot endure these sacred gatherings while you go on sinning.
Your liturgical calendar and your church gatherings
my soul hates;
they have become a burden to me,
I am weary of bearing them.
When you stretch out your hands,
I will hide my eyes from you;
even though you say the Prayers of the People just as they are written in the Book of Common Prayer,
I will not listen;
Because your hands are full of blood.

Hopefully this “modern translation” makes clear that the meaning of this passage is not that God hated the sacrifices of the Israelites, any more than God hates us celebrating the Eucharist. Those things were and are the core elements of our ritual lives. This passage must be read with a tone of thick sarcasm, spoken like an angry lover in a quarrel: “You expect me to accept those roses after what you’ve done??” God speaks in this passage like a hurt lover refusing to accept an otherwise desirable gift because the giver has been unfaithful.

If we want to consider what the Spirit is saying to us through this Scripture today, we must consider how our hands are “full of blood” in the Episcopal Church today. How are we complicit in the world’s ways of violence, degradation and exploitation of our fellow human beings? Are we nurturing scorn and contempt for our brothers and sisters who have left the Episcopal Church to affiliate with Anglican churches in other parts of the world? Are we gaining revenue for our ministries by investing funds in companies whose business practices may not be in line with the ethical teachings of Jesus and the prophets? Do we provide food or financial assistance to those in need but ignore the systemic inequalities that keep them trapped in a cycle of poverty?

The “blood on our hands” may not be literal blood from going out and slaughtering anyone, but in subtle and often unintentional ways, even we, who think of ourselves as a “social justice-minded church,” can participate in and benefit from the unjust structures of this world. That is why we have the prophets to call us back, to sit us down for a “come to Jesus” meeting and point out where we have fallen short. And the good news is that like Ebenezer Scrooge on Christmas Eve, we can make a choice to change our ways once we have been made aware of our sins, and God has promised forgiveness if we do. Even at the end of that angry speech about how much he hates our rituals because of our unethical behavior, God still ends with a promise of forgiveness: “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow.”

God’s promise is that he will wash away the blood on our hands, offering us new life, another chance – over and over and over again. In our baptismal covenant, we promise to repent and return to the Lord whenever we fall into sin. Not if we fall into sin, but when – because, human nature not having changed much in 2,500 years, we know that we will. And we also know that God’s grace and mercy will be there for us every time, because God’s nature hasn’t changed much in 2,500 years either. Like the lover who ultimately forgives her partner because her love is stronger than her anger, so God’s love for us is stronger than God’s anger over the ways we are unfaithful. And that, my friends, is good news.

Hear what the Spirit is saying to God’s people.

Martha's problem was not her actions, but her attitude

Sermon delivered Sunday, July 21, 2013 (9 Pentecost, Year C, Proper 11), at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN (Luke 10:38-42.

In today’s Gospel from Luke, we hear the familiar story of Mary and Martha. This passage is a favorite for use in women’s Sunday School classes or women’s retreats, where women are often asked, “Are you ‘a Martha’ or ‘a Mary’?”– which is just church code language for asking whether you are a “Type A” personality, organized and task-oriented, or a “Type B” personality, more carefree and process-oriented.

In an attempt to soften the edge for poor Martha, who often gets a bad rep as the uptight taskmaster, the leaders or facilitators will sometimes reassure those of us who identify with Martha that being “a Martha” is not a bad thing, that Mary and Martha were both devoted followers of our Lord; they just had different ways of showing their devotion. Martha showed her devotion by taking care of the details and preparing the house, while Mary showed her devotion by sitting with Jesus and listening to his teachings. The assumption is generally that both ways of showing devotion are equally valid, just different – so that those of us who identify with Martha don’t wind up feeling “less than” our friends who are more contemplative like Mary.

But if we look closely at the text, Jesus actually does issue a value judgment about Mary and Martha’s behavior and motivations. Nowhere in the passage does Jesus say that both Mary and Martha’s ways of being are equally valid. Instead, Jesus says that “Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her” (Luke 10:42).

Now, in Martha’s defense, she was probably doing all the appropriate things a woman would be supposed to do in that culture to prepare for a house guest – preparing a meal, washing the guest’s feet, offering the guest a place to stay. There was a lot of work to be done to offer proper hospitality to a guest, and Martha was the kind of woman who was going to make sure everything was taken care of, and done well. This in and of itself is not a bad thing – and Jesus does not chastise her for her attention to detail or her desire to provide appropriate hospitality to a guest. Instead, he critiques her because she is “worried and distracted by many things.” The problem is not with her actions, but with her mindset.

The “better part” that her sister Mary has chosen is to sit at Jesus’s feet and listen to his teachings – which was the position of a disciple. For this moment, at least, Mary has remembered her identity as a beloved child of God and a disciple of Christ. By contrast, Martha has lost sight of her identity – her mind is on tasks to be done rather than on the joy of being in the presence of her Lord.

We really have no way of knowing whether Mary was really a “Type B” kind of person, always laid back and happy to sit in blissful meditation all day long, or whether she could be just as task-oriented and organized as Martha at times. And we don’t know for sure that Martha didn’t know how to stop doing and just be. Maybe she was just as capable of sitting still as Mary was. But the point is that whatever their usual habits or personality types, in this particular moment, Mary is in a better “head space” than her sister Martha. She is able to be truly present with Jesus during his visit, something that Martha cannot do because of her many worries and distractions. Mary has not lost sight of the forest for the trees, so to speak. She has not gotten so caught up in preparing for Jesus’s visit that she forgets to actually enjoy his visit.

How many of us have been there – so caught up in the details of what needs to be done to prepare for a big event that we forget that this event was supposed to be an enjoyable and joyous occasion? I’m sure any one of us could share a few stories about that friend who gets so caught up in the details of entertaining that everyone feels like they’re on pins and needles at her parties because her stress levels are so high – or an uncle who was so obsessed with arranging the details of where everyone was going to stay at the family reunion that he ruined the event for everyone – or the boss who was so worried about taking care of details for the big corporate event that he didn’t seem to enjoy the event at all.

While it is true that each of us have a little of both “Martha” and “Mary” in us, it is also true that their behaviors in this story do represent distinctive personality types. Some of us are more prone than others to “worried and distracted” behavior. Some of us are more likely to let the details kill the spirit of the event, to get so caught up in the moment that we lose sight of the big picture. If you feel a bit uncomfortable by how much you see yourself in Martha’s behavior in this story, then the lesson in this story is particularly important for you. That lesson is this: the details are important, but they are never more important than the spirit of the task. Things are never more important than people. Expectations, customs, and to-do lists are never more important than relationships.

This is not to say that we should throw out all our to-do lists and go meditate under a tree somewhere and stop working or feeding our children. It is important to “do” things sometimes, and we can show our devotion to God through service. The passage immediately preceding the story of Martha and Mary is the story of the Good Samaritan, which we heard last Sunday – and that is certainly a story that shows the importance of serving others, that teaches us that faith must be rooted in action. If the Good Samaritan had not done something, the injured man’s needs would not have been met. But imagine what the story would be like if the Good Samaritan had helped the man, but while doing so he was irritated and worried because taking the time to help this man was really delaying him from his next appointment, and while he was going with him to the inn, he started yelling at the priests and Levites who passed by, “You call yourselves spiritual leaders? And you’re leaving me to do all the work?” That would certainly change our perception and assessment of the “Good Samaritan,” wouldn’t it?

With Martha, the issue was not her actions, but her attitude. Active, loving service is an important part of a vibrant life of faith. But worries, distractions, and resentment are not. This is why it is so important for those us with strong “Martha tendencies” to remind ourselves that it is precisely in those moments when we feel like we don’t have enough time to enjoy life that it is most important to take time to do so: to take off the apron and sit down in living room to enjoy a drink with your guests, to take a break from the project for work and go out for a hike with your friends or family, to let go of structure and constant words in your prayer life and allow yourself to simply be in God’s presence.

The “better part” that Mary chose was to be attentive to the present moment, to sit at the feet of her Lord and remember her identity as a disciple. If you ever find yourself getting so caught up in a task that you forget why you’re doing it in the first place, or begin to become resentful of those who aren’t doing it, you might think of Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus, and take a step back and remember who and whose you are. You, like Mary, are a disciple of the Lord, invited to sit and be still at his feet. You are a child of God, a God who loves you and wants to spend time with you just as you are. A God who comes to visit you, just as he came to visit Mary and Martha, and who desires not a household put in perfect order, but an open heart ready to receive him.