Category: Sermons

(Haggai 1:15b-2:9; Ps. 145:1-5, 18-22; 2 Thess. 2:1-5, 13-17; Luke 20:27-38)
 

“Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living.”

            In the 1970’s, when I was in my mid-20’s, I began to discover an awareness of God’s presence in life, my own life and the life of the world around me.  This wasn’t because I had any particular convictions that I wanted to see fulfilled, it was years before I started going back to church; but it seemed more and more apparent to me that just about any human situation, when you boiled it down far enough, was essentially a matter of where God was, or was not.  Whether the people involved thought of it that way or not – and most certainly didn’t – God was either being loved, or not: ignored, denied, yelled at, misunderstood, run from screaming; or listened to, delighted in, joined with, learned from, followed.  Again, whether the people involved thought of it that way or not, this was what I saw happening.

             I was talking about all this at the time with two friends who were professional writers, very smart and good guys, and they put up with me – people don’t talk about God, and I’m sure that what I had to say was rambling and incoherent from me, but they listened; and finally one of them put up his hand and said, Look: God’s a good Monday-morning quarterback.

            For those who may not be familiar with that euphemism, it means a second-guesser, someone who, after the fact and from the safety of the sidelines, tells you what you should have done differently.

            If my friend really meant that about God, then of course it’s tragic that his understanding of God was so impoverished, so completely off.  If, however, what he meant was that that’s the way people in general think about God, then he had a point.  I think it’s indisputable that the picture of God as someone who spends all his time grading our performance is quite common; and we have to acknowledge that the church, over the centuries, bears a lot of responsibility for that terrible misconception.

            And it is a misconception.  God does not look back.  God looks forward.  The three readings today, each in its own way, all testify to this, they all look forward.   The Old Testament reading from the prophet Haggai, writing near the end of the Babylonian exile, is a beautiful statement of hope, God telling the people to look forward, to the reestablishment of the temple in Jerusalem: Take courage, do not fear; my spirit abides among you.   The reading from 2 Thessalonians looks forward to “the day of the Lord”, looks forward to a clearer understanding, by the grace of God, of what that means, what it’s going to look like.

            The reading from the gospel of Luke looks forward as well, but not just in the way that would seem most apparent.  The reading has to do with the resurrection, which is obviously looking forward, to the life after this one; but in this story we heard words from Jesus that involve something much larger, that’s easy to miss.  Years ago, during this week of the lectionary schedule, there was a meeting of clergy in our western part of the diocese with Bishop Jim Curry, and at the beginning, as kind of an icebreaker, he invited each of us to name our favorite gospel story. One or two people chimed right in, and then there was a little pause, and someone said, “Not this week’s.”   I think everybody there knew what he meant, today’s gospel seems like kind of an in-group story about a point of theology that doesn’t seem terribly relevant to this life, and the argument’s kind of hard to follow; but there’s certainly more here than that. 

            In this story Jesus is confronted by a group of Sadducees.  In the Judaism of Jesus’ day there were two main subgroups, the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The Sadducees were a smaller number; they were the aristocrats, and the conservative party.  They recognized as Holy Scripture only the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, and they refused to believe any doctrine that was not authorized by those books.  This therefore meant that they did not believe in a bodily resurrection after death – that idea was a development in Jewish thought that occurred at least 500 years after the Torah was written – and the Sadducees approach Jesus to test him on this issue, apparently either to trip him up like the Pharisees were always trying to do, or to convince him, to get him on their side.

            To prove their case, they refer to a passage from Deuteronomy that has to do with marriage laws: if a woman’s husband dies and they have not had a son, the man’s brother is required to marry her and provide her with a son.  This law existed for two reasons: it kept property within a family, because only males could inherit property; and it provided some measure of protection for women, who in that patriarchal society were economically powerless.

            The Sadducees who come to Jesus to get him to weigh in on the resurrection have cooked up a hypothetical case in which a woman marries seven brothers in succession, because they each die, and each leaves her childless, and their question is, if there is a resurrection, in the next life, which one of the seven would be her husband?  They evidently believe that this cockamamie story is a bulletproof argument on their side because it irrefutably demonstrates that belief in the resurrection is logically excluded by the law of Moses.

            The whole idea reminds me of a famous story about St. Augustine, who was once asked by an atheist, What was God doing before he created the universe?  And Augustine answered, He was busy creating hell, for people who ask stupid questions like that one.

            It’s a stupid question because this is God we’re talking about, and it’s futile to expect God to behave according to our own expectations, to conform to our human notions of logic, to live by standards that we establish.  Jesus makes essentially the same point with the Sadducees (although he does it with a good deal more patience than Augustine) when he says that we shouldn’t expect the life we live on earth and the life of the spirit to operate by the same rules.  Jesus is telling the Sadducees that they’re wrong, that the resurrection is a reality.

            But the point he comes down to, the principle on which he bases everything he’s been saying, is contained in the words he finishes with: God is not God of the dead, but of the living.

             These words do not simply address the question of the resurrection.  Jesus is saying something that has much bigger implications, something that affects all of our life, something about who God is.  He’s saying that God cares about what’s going on now, with you and me; God is involved with what’s going on now, with you and me. That’s God’s work.  It’s another way of what Jesus has said from the beginning: that the kingdom of God is among us.

            In Christ, God is our friend on the way of life: our friend who loves us; who is always gently drawing us forward into that kingdom of love and peace and joy and justice; who is always inviting us to join in the creation of that kingdom in this world.  This is not a Monday morning quarterback.  This is God for us, God beside us, God within us: not the God of the dead, but God of the living.  Thanks be to God. 

(Daniel 7:1-3, 15-18; Ps. 149; Ephesians 1:11-23; Luke 6:20-31)

              In our church calendar, the final three days of Holy Week are Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday (when we celebrate the Great Vigil of Easter.)  In church-speak we refer to those three days as one unit which we call the Triduum (“Triduum is Latin for “three days’.)  We do that because those three days are all part of one continuous story, from the Last Supper through Jesus’ death on the cross,  It’s a time that we always encourage you, every year, to participate in the services we hold on those days, to walk that path that leads to Easter Day: because each day has a different spiritual dimension to it, and it’s a unique opportunity to grow in the knowledge and love of God, in living through that one story, to prepare for the Resurrection.   

            Today we celebrate All Saints’ Day (which was actually this past Friday.)  All Saints is one of the seven principal feasts of the church year, and there are some in the church who consider it to be the second day of a fall Triduum: All Hallows Eve (Halloween), which is almost entirely a secular holiday, but does have a particular spiritual reality in Christian faith; All Saints’ Day, which celebrates all the Christian saints, known and unknown; and All Souls’ Day, which even most Christians don’t  know exists, but commemorates all the faithful departed (as we call them) – all who have walked this Christian way, as you and I are doing, not just those who have been canonized.

            This fall Triduum, in the words of the Christian writer Cynthia Bourgeault, is a kind of mirror-image of the one in Holy Week: both “deal with that passage from death to life that is at the heart of the Christian…path….”  In the spring, at Eastertime, there’s new life, that’s all around us, and we focus on the life that springs forth out of death.  In fall, we’re surrounded by the cycle of life coming to an end, and we behold our mortality, and remember those who have passed beyond this life, into eternal life.  We do this because it’s all part of the truth that we proclaim, as people of faith.   

            And today we proclaim it in beholding the saints; and in the spirit of this day, I brought along a little show-and-tell.

            In 1985 I acted in a production of William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, at the American Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford, CT.  The play was directed by a woman named Zoe Caldwell, who was one of the great stage actresses of the second half of the 20thcentury.  Her opening night gift to the actors was a piece of parchment – each of us got one – at the head of which was written, in fine calligraphy, “The Great Chain of Acting”.  Beneath that are 18 names, in 18 degrees of separation, that establish a direct line from William Shakespeare to every one who was in that production: 1598 – William Shakespeare worked with Christopher Beeston; 1637 – Christopher Beeston worked with Michael Moone; on down to 1982 – Dame Judith Anderson worked with Zoe Caldwell; 1985 – Zoe Caldwell worked with Jack Gilpin, The Taming of the Shrew, Stratford, Connecticut, May 18, 1985.

             All these old names were the stars of their day: these are the saints of the English-speaking theater, up until all of us on that last line.  The point Zoe Caldwell was making in this opening-night gift was that all of us who chose this particular line of work have, in some measure or other, a particular seed of the spirit, which was passed along to us by those in whom that seed had flowered before; and which we have, to nurture and grow in our own way; and in the process, pass along to others.  It was to remind us of the common purpose – the common mission – joined in by all of us, all the people on that list, we who were doing the play, and everyone who ever set foot on a professional stage, down through the years.  We on that last line are names that won’t be remembered the way the others are; but we’re nonetheless part of the same, much bigger, picture.

            You see where I’m going with this, on All Saints’ Day.  We here in the household of faith are part of an infinitely bigger picture.  It’s a picture which is expressed, in majestic language, in today’s reading from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians: the big picture of what we Christians sometimes refer to as God’s plan of salvation; and how, along with all the saints, each one of us fits into it (because we do.)  In the verse that immediately precedes the passage we just heard, we hear the thumbnail version of this big picture: that God “has made known to us the mystery of his will…that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.”  So that’s God’s ultimate plan: to gather up all things – the sacred and the profane, what’s whole and what’s broken – and heal it all; and there will be one kingdom of God.   

            And we – you and I – have a part in this process: three times, in this passage, we hear the word “inheritance”.  In the first verse (v. 11): “In Christ we have…obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purposes of him who accomplishes all things….”  So it’s not just that God, in Christ, has done something for us, and we just sit back, fat and happy: God, in Christ, has given us something, that is now ours, to live by, to use: that’s what an inheritance is for.  Then in v. 13: “…you…were marked with the seal of the…Holy Spirit; this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people…..”   So the inheritance we have from God in Christ is pointed to our redemption – our return to the wholeness in which God created us.  In Christ we have been given something that fuels us forward in that process.

            And then verses 17-18: “I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints….” You hear the process, the movement, in all of that: always moving forward, in faith.  In faith, because it’s so hard to believe, that we could be part of all that; so impossible.  We’re too small; too insignificant.

            Well, today is the day on which we remember those who – just like us – were also too small, and too insignificant; but – trusting the power of God – didn’t let that stop them, and put one foot in front of the other, in whatever they were each called to do; and through the power of God, were able, one way or another, to make the kingdom of God a present reality: a foretaste, and a promise, of the time when God will “gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.”

            This “gathering up” is the vision of the book of Revelation: that in God’s good time, all will be made well: there will be nothing but peace, there will be nothing but justice, there will be nothing but joy; God will dry every tear, the lion will lie down with the lamb, throughout the Bible there are images of that great gittin’-up morning.  And somehow – impossibly – somehow, as we are in Christ, God asks, and empowers, each one of us to have something to do with that, every day, no matter how insignificant it might seem: some way to witness to the eternal and all-powerful love of God: to plant the tiniest seed of it, that’s all it needs, to take root, and grow, and flourish.

What a call!  What a gift!  What a blessing!

This is what we behold, in the saints that we honor on this day: saints who were just folk like you and me, like it says in the hymn, that’s no lie. This is our inheritance, in this great chain, that goes back 2000 years.  Hallelujah.   Thanks be to God.

Sermon by layspeaker Bill Kamp​

(Luke 18:9-14)
 
Lord, may these spoken words be faithful to the written word and lead us to the living word, through Jesus Christ our Lord.                    
 
The parable that is today’s gospel reading is fairly well known, and is a great life lesson and reflection for all of us. The same faith embraces both the Pharisee and the tax collector, although they are quite obviously two very different men.  
 
 
Dr. Philip McLarty, a well known Presbyterian and Methodist minister, and also the 
Reverend Charles Hoffacker have both outlined this parable very well, and so in full 
disclosure, I offer that some of my words this morning were taken from their writings.

Pharisees are regularly treated in the gospels as Jesus’ opposition, as self righteous 
hypocrites who, in general, were not good people. In this story, this Pharisee is pictured in a slightly different light.  He is no liar. He fasted more often than called for, he tithed far more of his income than required. He seemingly did everything he could to follow the written law of his people, and its centuries of interpretation.  He worked hard to earn his place in life.  He really was, in many ways, a good man.  Perhaps, except for his total lack of humility, he was a man to be admired and emulated.

Yet, in many ways, his words are troubling.  In his prayer, he denigrates so many other people: he points out that he is not like “THEM”. His words center on himself only, and cuts off all others from consideration. Four times in his brief prayer, the word “I” appears.  Remember the old saying, “there is no “I” in team”.  

Unlike the tax collector, he doesn’t confess his sins.  Surely he has some.  He doesn’t 
ask God for strength, or help, or guidance, or mercy.  In his mind, he is above all that.  He merely “reports” to God all the reasons that God should be proud of him. He is so obnoxious that he is also a pretty easy target to dislike.

The tax collector, on the other hand, asks God to be merciful to him.  He knows he is a sinner. Is he the good man in this parable? Well, let’s look at that a little closer.
In the days of Jesus, tax collectors were little more than white collar criminals. Many made huge fortunes.  They routinely charged two or three times what they should have.  They kept this “profit” to enrich themselves at the expense of others, many of them among the poor.  Tax collectors were among the most hated and despised members of the Jewish community. Maybe he is the one who is not so likeable in this story. 

Or perhaps, we can all learn something from both of these two very different people.  Jesus said that the tax collector went home “justified” because he confessed his sinfulness and asked for mercy from almighty God.  While that may sound great, there is no indication that the collector would not go right back to his thieving ways.  Perhaps he went home feeling righteous, even though God knows, and we know, he wasn’t.  We really can’t be sure what direction he took.  But maybe, just maybe, he is sincere in his prayer, and IS moving in the right direction.  Perhaps God’s forgiveness to all who come to Him, will lead this collector to feel compassion to others around him, and change his sinful ways.  

We cannot be sure which direction the collector moved in after his time in the temple. But, if we can picture ourselves as the tax collector in this parable- perhaps saved by faith and forgiveness – we can understand the depth of God’s grace and move on from judgment to compassion. God’s forgiveness for all is a very powerful force. 

And the lesson to be learned from the Pharisee?  He condemned others to make himself look better.  In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus said:
 
“Don’t judge, so that you won’t be judged.
   For with whatever judgment you judge, 
         you will be judged;
    and with whatever measure you measure, 
     it will be measured to you.” 

As McLarty said, perhaps the lesson to be learned is that no matter what your sin may be, the self-righteousness of the Pharisee, or the unworthiness of the tax collector or something else, there is mercy and pardon for all who call upon the Lord. When you recognize your own sins, and remember that through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ those sins are forgiven, then you can be just as forgiving of others. 

So for me, the lesson to be learned from this story is that yes, God is forgiving of everyone, no matter who you are, no matter what your sins. But is up to us, each and everyone one of us, to use God’s forgiveness wisely, to move forward in less sinful ways, to be the best person we can be, and not allow ourselves to sit in judgment of others.   AMEN. 
 

(Jeremiah 31:27-34; Ps. 119:97-104; 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5; Luke 18:1-8)
 

I have a pretty simple message today.  This sermon could be titled, Prayer For Dummies.

I’m sure most of you are familiar with the “…for Dummies” series of instructional books – yellow and black, with a blackboard-style logo, and a cartoon “dummy” figure on the cover.  They’re on all kinds of topics: Music for Dummies, Personal Finance, Medicare, there’s even a Christianity for Dummies – the titles run into the hundreds. It’s a huge, international franchise.

            But ironically, the original inspiration for this wildly successful moneymaker may well have come from a professional-turned-hippie in the late 1960’s.  A little over a half-century ago there was an aeronautical engineer named John Muir (a distant relative of the famous naturalist) who, in the mid-1960’s, “dropped out” (in the style of the time): quit his job, moved to Taos, New Mexico, opened a garage, and spent the rest of his life as a car mechanic.  The reason his name is remembered today is that, in 1969, he wrote a book which became a cult classic.  It was called How To Keep Your Volkswagen Alive: A Manual of Step-By-Step Procedures for the Complete Idiot.  This book was definitely a product of the hippie generation: it was hand-lettered; and the illustrations and diagrams were drawn by a cartoonist: not the kind you expect in a typical manual, but nonetheless, finely detailed, and perfectly comprehensible.  And it was published in a spiral notebook: eminently practical, you could leave it lying open and work with both hands.

             Volkswagens were very popular for a long time in this country, and the book sold millions of copies.  And in the early 1970’s, my first car being a Volkswagen, I bought it; because even though I had very little aptitude for this kind of work, if you own something you should learn how to take care of it, and this book seemed not just user-friendly, but idiot-friendly (or dummy-friendly), which I certainly was. The whole presentation sent the message, Relax, folks, this is something anyone can do.

            And it didn’t turn me into an expert mechanic; but I learned how to change the oil, I learned how to adjust the carburetor (I learned what a carburetor actually did); and when slightly more complicated problems came up, I learned that with application and what little common sense I possess, there were things I could get done. 

It’s much the same in the life of the spirit.  This is the point Jesus is making in today’s gospel reading: a point so simple, and natural to us all, that he illustrates it with a funny story (as if to say, Relax, folks, this is something anyone can do.) Luke tells us up front that this story is a parable, and that it’s about prayer (“Jesus told his disciples a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart”); and it’s in the Bible; so we automatically approach it with hushed reverence.  But I’m quite sure Jesus means his hearers to laugh at this story.  I think he probably didn’t tell them it was about prayer until the story was over. It’s even structured like a joke: there’s a setup, and a payoff, and it happens fast.  

Jesus tells us, In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people.  That’s a laugh in itself: he’s saying, Once upon a time, there was a judge who was the world’s worst judge.  And he tells us there was a widow who kept coming to this judge and saying, Grant me justice against my opponent.     Now, Jewish law, and tradition, and the Hebrew Bible, were all emphatic about the requirement to care for the helpless: especially widows and orphans.  But – being the worst judge in the world – that makes no difference to this guy, and he ignores her, despite the fact that she keeps coming back to him (he’s evidently stubborn and lazy on top of everything else); until finally he says to himself, Though I have no fear of God nor respect for anyone else – even though I’m the worst judge in the world – yet because this widow keeps bothering me (whether her cause is just or not is completely irrelevant to him), I will grant her justice so that she may not wear me out.  The words “wear me out”’ are a bad translation: the literal meaning is, “give me a black eye.”  So the worst judge in the world gives this widow what she wants because he’s afraid she’s actually going to haul off and sock him in the kisser.  This is slapstick.  And (for my generation) central casting for this little sketch would give us Phyllis Diller as the widow and Rodney Dangerfield as the judge.

Luke tells us at the beginning of today’s passage that Jesus tells his disciples that this story is “about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.”  He makes several points about prayer in the story, but first and foremost is, however we pray, we keep at it.  This is Prayer For Dummies, chapter 1. Jesus uses the clown-show story the same way John Muir used the funky lettering and cartoon illustrations to show that prayer is not reserved for holy persons. Anybody can pray; and everybody should pray.  It should be as natural as breathing. 

Now: “Pray always”, Jesus tells his disciples (which would include all of us.)  “Pray always.”  This does not mean that he wants us to spend our whole lives on our knees, or in church. So what does he mean by the word “Prayer”?

            In the back of our Book of Common Prayer, beginning on p. 845, is a section called “An Outline of the Faith”, which describes itself as “a brief summary of the church’s teaching” on various subjects: God (Father, Son, Holy Spirit), the Holy Scriptures, the sacraments, and a number of others.  It’s in a question-and-answer format.  On p. 856 there’s a section on prayer, which opens with the question, “What is prayer?” And this is the answer: “Prayer is responding to God, by thought and by deeds, with or without words.”  So prayer is not just about asking for things, and then crossing our fingers, hoping God is listening and in a good mood; which is unfortunately what I think a lot of people understand prayer to be., and therefore why they don’t get around to it very often.

            I think the BCP definition of prayer is a good one.  I would expand on it this way.  When we pray, we open ourselves to the reality that God is alive; and present in our lives: always inviting us to join in the creation, every day, of God’s kingdom here in this life: the creation of a world full of all the good things we talk about here: love, joy, peace, justice, hope.  All of us dummies can be part of that.

            And Jesus tells us “not to lose heart” in the practice of prayer because he knows our human tendency is to expect results from any expenditure of effort; and prayer usually doesn’t yield the kind of results we’re used to looking for, in this life.  These are matters of the Spirit, and the effects usually aren’t immediately apparent: which shouldn’t concern us (don’t lose heart, Jesus says.)

When we are praying in this way – when we are responding to God by thought and by deeds, with or without words – we are enabling the Holy Spirit to work through us for God’s purposes, stumbling, bumbling dummies though we be.   And on this Stewardship Sunday, let us remember that we’re not just keeping the building open.  We’re maintaining the Body of Christ, in the fulfillment our mission: through the Holy Spirit, trying to live into the kingdom of God.   And for our call to that mission, thanks be to God.

Lamentations 1:1-6; Ps. 37:1-10; 2 Timothy 1:1-14; Luke 17:5-10)

            I don’t know if anyone else is like this, but it took me a long time to learn that it’s important to read the directions. Of anything: a math test, a kitchen appliance manual, a driver’s license renewal application.  I think I just always instinctively felt that reading directions was kind of a waste of time, that it was common-sense stuff that I already knew enough to get by without, and I could figure out what I needed to as I went along.  And I have to confess that it wasn’t really until I got married that I learned otherwise: that – to pick a random example – when you ignore words like – say – “Wash in cold water”; “Gentle cycle”; and “Tumble dry low” – there are consequences that reverberate into larger areas of life, which are uncomfortable, and – through paying attention to the directions – avoidable.

            It works much the same way with us here in church. We get directions, in the life of faith. We get them mostly from scripture, especially of course from the words of Jesus in the gospels.  These directions are usually simple, but sometimes not easy to understand, and very often not easy to follow, for a variety of reasons.  That’s why we read them over and over again, year in and year out.  These directions make demands of us.  Sometimes they require sacrifices, which are not easy to make. 

            But the more we read them, and the better we follow them, the more we come to understand that they are for our good, and the good of everyone around us, and for a very simple reason: they lead us into the real world: the world that God created.  So we follow directions that we sometimes don’t fully understand.  In the language of faith, this is the virtue of obedience. 

To ask obedience from adults doesn’t feel quite right, does it, it feels like asking people to dumb themselves down.  But by the grace of God today we have an excellent analogy staring us in the face.  In a few minutes we’re going to have a baptism: we are going to welcome a young person into Christ’s church, into the Episcopal branch of the Jesus movement. We look for obedience from our kids because there are things we grownups know better than they do just from having been around a while and knowing the world a little better.  So we can say, do your homework, brush your teeth, don’t run between parked cars into the street.  Well, we are all children in the kingdom of God, grownups usually more than kids (Jesus refers to his disciples as “little children”, or “little ones”); and obedience in the life of faith is at least as important for us. 

Today’s reading from the gospel of Luke is one of a cluster of stories in that gospel that in one way or another are about obedience: following the directions: learning to live in the real world.  Last week we heard the story about the rich man who, in his life on this earth, paid no attention to the poor beggar Lazarus who lay suffering by his gate; and when they’d both died, and Lazarus was in heaven with Father Abraham, the rich man, suffering in Hades because he’d ignored Lazarus, called up to Abraham, Tell Lazarus to warn my brothers about this situation; and Abraham told him, They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them: they should follow the directions.  

Later on in Luke’s gospel we hear the story of the rich ruler who asks Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus answers,  “You know the commandments. “

And as if to say, You know this already, he lists some of them: you shall not murder, you shall not steal, honor your father and your mother.  And the ruler says, I’ve kept all the commandments since my youth.  To which Jesus replies, Okay, if you want to go the whole way, go sell everything you own, and you’ll have treasure in heaven; and come and follow me.  The point is that following the directions – in this case, obedience to the commandments – is where we start.

            Today’s reading comes about because, a few verses before, Jesus has given his disciples some directions about forgiveness that are quite simple and extremely hard to follow: he says, “…if another disciple sins, you must rebuke the offender, and if there is repentance, you must forgive. And if the same person sins against you seven times a day, and turns back to you seven times and says, ‘I repent’, you must forgive.”  Well, even if our friend does something hurtful to us and repents, which of us would take that and forgive seven times in a day?  But: that’s what God does, over and over: we sin, we repent, God forgives; we sin we repent, God forgives; that cycle never stops.  

That’s the love of God, and the kingdom of God that Christ calls us to enter.  

            So in the first verse of today’s reading, in response to this command of Jesus to forgive like God does, the disciples throw up their hands and say, “Increase our faith!”  We can’t do this on our own!  And Jesus tells them, You already have the faith within you.  It’s simply a matter of obedience: follow the directions, and you will grow into it.

Now the way Jesus explains this is hard for us to hear, and to understand, because of the example of slavery he uses.  But in Jesus’ time slavery was an unquestioned fact of life, and he uses it here just as he uses the metaphors of fishing and farming elsewhere in the gospels.  They are all circumstances from everyday life that his hearers would have been familiar with, which he uses to illustrate the reality that God’s kingdom is among us.  

            The summation Jesus makes of this metaphor of slavery is in the last verse: “So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, ‘We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!”  There’s a lot that we don’t like hearing in that sentence: is he saying that we’re just mindless robots?  And that we’re supposed to accept that?

            Well, of course nothing could be further from the truth.  Forgiving like God does, for example is a great, free, personal work of the spirit. These words of Jesus are just a different way of saying what he’s said from the beginning: that the kingdom of God is among us.  He is calling us to be who God created us to be.  Jesus is describing the relationship to God in which we stand: our utter dependence on God, who gives us life, and through whom alone we know the truth; which Jesus tells us, makes us free.  
So we begin by praising God, worshiping God, thanking God. And as disciples of Christ, we are to be alert for those times in life when God is being shut out – ignored, denied, in whatever way, by ourselves and by anybody else – and in such situations, ask ourselves, what can I do to serve God in this situation?  

How can I help God to get in?  

This is following the directions.  This is the life in the Spirit of God – the life of peace, and joy – into which we are welcoming this young man today.  Thanks be to God.

(Jeremiah 8:18-9:1; Ps. 79:1-9; 1 Timothy 2:1-7; Luke 16::1-13)

            Some of you will remember Jack Palmer, a wonderful man and a parishioner here for many years.  At his funeral here, years ago, there was a eulogy from one of his grandsons, who said that Jack had given him the following advice about speaking in public: “Tell ‘em what you’re going to tell ‘em; tell ‘em; tell’em what you told ‘em.”  So: here’s what I’m going to tell you: I’m going to tell you something about what it is that we do here, and something about why it’s important.  Now I’m going to tell you.      

            You all remember Mr. Rogers – Fred Rogers, who had the children’s television show for so many years (and who was himself a Presbyterian pastor.)   He once told a story on the show that has been since repeated many times: he said, “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers.  You will always find people who are helping.’ “  This little story has become something of what nowadays is called a “meme”: a belief, or a phrase, or a story, that gets passed around contemporary culture as established truth.

About a year ago – right after what was then the latest mass shooting (the one at the synagogue in Pittsburgh that left eleven dead) – that story of Mr. Rogers’ was back in the air again; and there was an article in the Atlantic Monthly about it, saying that it had become a kneejerk source of comfort at news of disaster, for grownups as well as children; and that it was wrong for grownups to see it and to use it that way.  The author put it like this: “As an adult, it feels good to remember how Mr. Rogers made you feel good as a child.  But celebrating that feeling as adults takes away the wrong lesson. We were entrusted with these insights to make children’s lives better, not to comfort ourselves for having failed to fashion the adult world in which they must live.” 

            Well, there’s a valid point in there (about our responsibility to make a better world for our children to grow up in.)  But I think the author otherwise completely misunderstands the story.  And how he misunderstands it, and why, both have to do with what we do here, in church.

            Here’s how he misunderstands it.  When bad things happen that are big enough to make the news, they’re scary to a child because the child knows instinctively that things aren’t supposed to be that way: people aren’t supposed to get shot up in a place of worship, the World Trade Center isn’t supposed to get destroyed by terrorists, hurricanes aren’t supposed to destroy villages and leave thousands homeless.  We grownups know that too (mostly); but however else we react, it’s not scary to us in the way it is to a child because we’ve seen it too many times before, we know these things happen in life.

But – and this is what the author of the Atlantic piece gets wrong – what’s at the root of the child’s fear is the sense that God’s not there, God’s gone away, maybe God doesn’t exist at all.  And it doesn’t matter whether the child has ever thought of God, or heard a single word about God: that’s what it is: God being the wholeness, and the goodness, that a child naturally expects the world to be.  And when Mr. Rogers’ mother tells him to look for the helpers, she is pointing him to the presence of God that is that is there, that is alive in the world, for children and grownups alike.  She’s showing him that God has not left, at all. (We Christians can even see the helpers in this story in Trinitarian terms: God the Creator is there, the one who created us in God’s own image; God the Redeemer is there, the one who both calls us and shows us how to be who God created us to be; and God the Sanctifier is there, the Spirit of God at work in us.) “Look for the helpers.  There are always people helping.”  That’s to say: God always has been there, and always will be.  The author of the Atlantic article didn’t make that connection. That’s how he got it wrong.

That’s a connection that we make here.  It’s in one of our Eucharistic prayers: “Open our eyes to your hand at work in the world today.” This is the something about what we do here that I’m telling you.  Here’s the part about why it’s important.  It may be one explanation of why that writer got it wrong.  A few years ago, as part of a sermon, I read to you something by the psychologist Carl Jung, which I’m going to read again today  (back then one of you told me I could read it every week.)  It’s from a letter, written in 1959, to a woman who had asked him to explain a comment he made in a newspaper: “Among all my patients in the second half of life…every one of them fell ill because he had lost what the living religions of every age have given their followers, and none of them has been really healed who did not regain his religious outlook.”  In her letter, the woman wondered what Jung meant the phrase “religious outlook.” And this is what he wrote back:

When you study the mental history of the world, you see that people since times immemorial had a general teaching or doctrine about the wholeness of the world. Originally and down to our days, they were considered to be holy traditions taught to the young people as a preparation for their future life.  This has been the case in primitive tribes as well as in highly differentiated civilizations.  The teaching had always a “philosophical” and “ethical” aspect.

In our civilization this spiritual background has gone astray.  Our Christian doctrine has lost its grip to an appalling extent, chiefly because people don’t understand it any more.  

Thus one of the most important instinctual activities of our mind has lost its object.

            As these views deal with the world as a whole, they create also a wholeness of the individual, so much so, that for instance a primitive tribe loses its vitality, when it is deprived of its specific religious outlook.  People are no more rooted in their world and lose their orientation.  They just drift.  That is very much our condition, too.  The need for a meaning of their lives remains unanswered, because the rational, biological goals are unable to express the irrational wholeness of human life. Thus life loses its meaning.  That is the problem of the “religious outlook” in a nutshell.

            The problem itself cannot be settled by a few slogans. It demands concentrated attention, much mental work and, above all, patience, the rarest thing in our restless and crazy time.

“The irrational wholeness of human life.”  

I think that’s a very concise – and truthful – way of saying that we know a lot of the time life isn’t the way it’s supposed to be; sometimes in ways that make children scared (and make grownups grieve, and despair.) But we know nonetheless that there is a way it’s supposed to be; and that that happens: God is present in our lives. Finding the helpers is one of the infinite number of ways we can see that.   This is why that story deservedly became so popular.

And it is here – in church – that we learn this, that we learn this is the truth.  Here is where (in Jung’s language) we do the mental work, where we give the concentrated attention, where we learn the patience for this restless and crazy time. Because it is God who is our wholeness: God who is the source of all truth; and in whom, therefore we put our whole trust.  That’s what we learn here.  That’s what we do here in church: we learn to live, as the children of God that we are.

So: I told you what I was going to tell you; I told you; and I just you what I told you.  But there’s something more about what I told you than Jack Palmer had in mind.  What I just told you, my sisters and brothers in Christ, was this year’s stewardship sermon.  Four weeks from today is Stewardship Sunday, when we make our commitment to the financial support of our church for the coming year.  We’ll be doing the usual things between now and then, sending out pledge cards, and a letter from me, and you’ll be hearing various other things over the next few weeks about stewardship.  But I wanted to start by talking about why we’re here, because that’s the foundation of everything else that we say and do.

So let us begin this season- as we should always begin everything – by thanking God.  Let us thank God for God’s church; thank God for this church, for each other, for all the company of faithful people; thank God for the spark of God’s spirit that leads us here, each in our own way; thank God for always inviting us to new, larger life; thanks be to God.  Amen.

Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28; Psalm 14; 1 Timothy 1:12-17; Luke 15:1-10)

            Who here is familiar with the name Felicity Huffmann?  I thought some of you would be.  Felicity Huffman is an American actress; she was one of the stars of the TV series “Desperate Housewives”, which ran for nine years, and has done a lot of other TV and movies, and is married to the well-known actor William H. Macy.

            But unfortunately Huffmann’s been in the news lately for a different reason.  She and a number of other people were arrested last March for participating in a college admissions scam, administered by a private college counselor. Huffman and her husband have two teenage daughters, the older of whom was applying to college.  The counselor’s plan was to have her apply for extra time on the SAT’s, meaning she’d have a particular proctor whom the counselor knew he could bribe to correct her wrong answers, and raise her scores to the level necessary to get her into her first choice.

            But the FBI had known what this counselor was up to – the legal term for it is conspiracy to commit mail fraud (I don’t know why it’s called that, but it’s a felony) – they arrested him, “flipped” him (as the saying goes) into a “sting” targeting more than 50 people who were all involved in some variant of this scheme, and last March they sprung the trap.  These folks were all wealthy enough to pay for this “service” (Huffman herself paid the counselor $15,000.)  The students themselves knew nothing about it.  Part of the counselor’s pitch was, “They’ll feel great about themselves, and be none the wiser, and they’ll get into the school they want.  It’s a win-win!”

            Well.  When Huffmann was arrested and handcuffed in front of her daughters, tears streaming down the girls’ faces, the older one said to her, “Why didn’t you believe in me? Why didn’t you think I could do it on my own?”  Pretty horrible.

            I’m going on about this, not because I think you might have missed the last few issues of Us magazine, but because there’s an aspect to this story that has to do with something essential to our lives in Christ, which comes up in today’s readings.  And this occurred to me because Annie and I know Felicity Huffmann and Bill Macy, we were friends in our New York theatre days in the 70’s and 80’s. And we know that they’re good, smart, sincere people.  She made a stupid mistake, and she’ll be living with the consequences of it for the rest of her life.

            And here’s where our lives as Christians comes in. I think to myself, How is she going to live the rest of her life?  I see the pictures of her coming in and out of various court buildings and I see the anguish in her face; and the jail sentence that she just received, and the fact that her acting career is almost certainly over, is the least of it.  I have no doubt that she is tortured – every day – by the knowledge of the damage she’s done to her family, especially her older daughter, and that she did something she knew was very wrong, that she betrayed herself. 

            But I have to say, speaking both as her friend and as a Christian, that I hope she is tortured.  Because that will mean she’s really facing the truth: which is the first, and most essential, step in the act of repentance: turning in a new direction.  Repentance: the act through which God’s infinite and all-powerful mercy pours into our lives.

            This is part of the Word of God speaking to us in today’s reading from 1 Timothy.  This letter is mostly concerned with practical matters, like church administration and how to deal with false teaching.  But as in all of Paul’s letters, whatever the specific issues might be, everything – all of life – is grounded in the reality of God in Christ. And he understands that because of what happened in his own life, which is why he makes reference to it a number of times in his letters.  Paul was a man of very strong faith, who – in what he thought was defense of that faith – enlisted himself in the persecution of Christians: identifying them, prosecuting them, jailing them, and sometimes assisting in their execution; because what Christians were saying about Jesus was, according to law, the worst kind of blasphemy against God, and deserving of such punishment.

            Paul did this zealously, until he himself had a personal experience of the risen Christ on the road to Damascus: the blinding flash of light, knocked to the ground, and he hears a voice saying Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?  And Paul says, Who are you, Lord?  And the voice answers, I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.  Well, there’s no question in Paul’s mind that this is God speaking to him; and even though it turns his world upside down, he knows it’s the truth.  His realization of who God really is – his facing the truth – was the first step in his repentance.  He saw that what he’d been doing had been horribly wrong, had in fact betrayed God, and therefore betrayed himself.  And when I think, how is Felicity Huffmann going to live with herself after what she’s done, I think, how did Paul?   Right after his conversion, he was in the same position, only worse; how did he live with himself?

            Well, he tells us, in today’s reading: “…I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence.  But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief….”  He received mercy.  That’s all we can do: receive; open ourselves to the love of God, because that’s what it is. In the words of the great Christian writer Frederick Buechner, “[God’s] love sees us with terrible clarity and sees us whole.  [God’s] love so wishes our joy that it is ruthless against everything in us that diminishes our joy.”  God’s mercy is God’s love in the act of healing.
And it’s something we all need.  Which of us has not acted ignorantly, in unbelief?  Which of us has not done things that we’re ashamed of? That there’s no excuse for?  That makes us cringe when we remember?  How did Paul get past that?

            Well, he didn’t “get past it”, really; none of us do. But in the love of Christ, he received the mercy of God, which is infinite, and beyond our comprehension; but we know it’s real, because we can feel it.  We can feel that it is in God’s nature to be merciful.  And we can feel God’s pleasure in giving mercy: Jesus testifies to this in today’s gospel: “”…I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.”

And maybe, in the infinite mystery of creation, this is because God works through our repentance – our turning in a new direction – in a way that is otherwise impossible.  

This is what Paul seems to be saying in the reading from 1 Timothy: “The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners – of whom I am the foremost.  But for that very reason I received mercy, so that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display the utmost patience, making me an example to those who would come to believe in him for eternal life.”   

            This is God’s mercy, which changes lives; and spreads the love of God out into the world.  Sometimes that mercy is a hot fire.  But it purifies; and sanctifies; and heals us into a new, larger life, that we could never conceive was possible.  As we heard Paul say today, “To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever.  Amen.” 

(Jeremiah 18:1-11; Ps. 139:1-5, 12-17; Philemon 1-21; Luke 14:25-33)

I know a man who, growing up, was a golden boy: he was at the top of his class academically all the way through school, an excellent athlete, tall and good-looking, popular, imaginative, funny, the whole package.  He went to a top college, fell in love with a girl there, they both went to the same top law school, got married, both got jobs in different law firms in the same major American city: his had the distinction of being the first firm in the country to charge $1000 an hour for its services. So this young man’s future was assured.

            But very soon, he realized that that life was not for him: it was not who he was, and is.  So he left the firm – and the law – after less than a year.  And of course he knew that decision would come at considerable sacrifice: it cost him a lot of money, and what the world sees as power and prestige; and it also cost him his marriage.  

            He’s now a high school math teacher, and I don’t mean to suggest that everything’s a bowl of cherries for him – he’s been married and divorced again, and you wouldn’t call his life exactly settled.  But, whatever others might think is good or bad about his life, he knows what it means to live truthfully, according to the dictates of his conscience, and what he believes is really important about life; and he knows what it costs when you don’t act that way.   That kind of bottom-line awareness of the stakes that are really involved in day-to-day life is a fundamental element of Christian faith.

Today is what at St. John’s we call Startup Sunday.  

We resume our schedule of two services, the choir is back at the ten o’clock (thanks be to God), church school’s underway again; we’re back to the way we do it most of the year, to what we’re used to. Things are back to normal.  So it feels good, doesn’t it?  Feels comfortable.  

So let’s be grateful that, by the grace of God, we get a gospel reading today which smacks us right in the chops and says, Wake up, folks! Let’s remember what we’re really about here.  A few weeks ago I mentioned a sermon I’d heard about titled “Things I Wish Jesus Had Never Said.”  Today’s gospel might be part of a companion to that called “Things I Can’t Believe Jesus Really Meant (Or Anyway I Sure Hope He Didn’t)”.  If you don’t hate your father and your mother, your wife and your kids, brother and sister – if you don’t give up all your possessions – if you don’t hate life itself, you can’t be my disciple.   Startup Sunday.  Doesn’t it feel more like Lemme Outta Here Sunday?

So there’s a rule of thumb in this situation: if you hear something in the Bible that you don’t like, or don’t understand, go right at it.

There are several characteristic things about Jesus that are evident in this gospel story.  One is that he was constantly telling people to be alert to the pitfalls, the dangers of this broken world: to stay awake, be aware of what was really happening around them.  Another is that Jesus was able – uniquely of any person in history that I’ve come across – to just look at someone and in a flash see into the bottom of that person’s heart: see who they think they are and who they really are, what they think they want and what  they really want.  (Sometimes he didn’t even have to look at them, he could just feel it.)  And finally, Jesus didn’t always have a very good temper.
All three of these traits are front and center in today’s story. Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, for his final confrontation with the powers of this world.  So he’s ministering on the way – teaching and healing – but his focus is always straight ahead.  And there’s come to be a crowd following him, because his ministry – his words and actions – have attracted a lot of attention: nobody’s ever seen anyone like him.

But Jesus is perfectly well aware that a lot of these people – probably most – are just along because of the buzz, because he’s the latest, because they want to be there to see one of those miracles they’ve heard he does.  And Jesus wants nothing to do with a posse, an entourage.  He wants disciples: people who want to learn about what’s really real: about the truth of God’s presence and work in this world, and who want to live more fully into that, whatever it costs, because it’s the truth.  It’s the same for us here as it was for the people in this story, and sometimes Jesus needs to get our attention about that.

Which he does here in the starkest possible terms.  Luke tells us there’s a crowd following Jesus, and that he turns – the impression is that he turns on his heel, suddenly – and lets the hangers-on, the spectators, have it right in the teeth: unless you hate your mother and father, unless you hate life, unless you give up all your possessions, you cannot be my disciple.  So. This is what following me means. Are you in?  Or not?  He’s challenging them.

Now: here’s what this language means.  God is always doing new things, in this world, all the time, and some of them are big.  God can turn the universe inside out.  God can turn death into life.  And when God presents us with something new,   God is asking us to make changes in our lives. And sometimes those changes are big and painful: as big  and painful as hating our mother and father and so on.

Of course, we can decline to do this.  God has given us freedom, and we make up our own minds. We can stay in the world we find comfortable.  We all do make that choice at least sometimes, every single one of us.  But when we do that, we should be aware that we are not acting as disciples of Christ.  Jesus sets the bar high.  But as always, hard as it sometimes is to hear, Jesus is telling us the truth; and the truth, as Jesus also tells us, will make us free.

There’s a good example of what discipleship means in this way in today’s reading from the letter to Philemon.  Philemon is a Christian, who was converted by Paul, and who hosts a church in his house.  One of his slaves, a man named Onesimus, has run away, has met Paul (who is in jail), and has through Paul’s ministry become a Christian himself.  With this letter Paul is sending him back to his master Philemon, asking Philemon to see him, and receive him, now not as a slave, but as a beloved brother; and to send him back to Paul: that is, give him his freedom: or, more truthfully, recognize his freedom.  

And Paul puts this on the basis of Christian discipleship. As we heard, he tells Philemon, “Formerly he was useless to you…”: that’s to say, forget the work he did for you as a slave: that’s not part of the kingdom of God; which means that’s not part of your world any more, Philemon: is it?  “Formerly he was useless to you, but now he is indeed useful both to you and to me.”  Useful how? Paul is saying, together we have a chance here – all three of us together – to spread the love of God in Christ out into the world.  He is asking Philemon to be a disciple of Christ, and give up a possession.  And give up not just literally the piece of property that a slave was, like a sofa, but give up his relationship to this man as master to slave: give up that way of seeing the world, which he’d had all his life, and just assumed was part of the natural order of things.  And do this not because Onesimus has become a Christian, but because Philemon is a Christian; and for disciples of Christ, the whole human race is our immediate family.

This is asking a lot.  But Paul sees the opportunity that God is offering all three of them here: he writes to Philemon, “Perhaps this is the reason he was separated from you for a while, so that you might have him back forever, no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother – especially to me but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord.” 

Paul sees the wonderful new world that God is opening for Philemon to step into.  It’s going to come at a cost, and not just because he’s giving up a possession: Philemon’s friends will think he’s not only a kook, but a traitor to his class; he might become an outcast.

But put that next to the new beloved brother he will have: the new dimension of life that will now be his.  This is the treasure in heaven, which neither moth nor rust can consume, and thieves cannot break in and steal.  On this Startup Sunday, let us give thanks to God for our call to the discipleship of Christ.  Amen.