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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. 

(Jeremiah 2:4-13; Ps.81:1, 10-16; Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16; Luke 14:1, 7-14)

             I belong to a book group, which meets every couple of months, whose stated purpose is to read “the classics”.  That word means different things to different people, so we’ve read all kinds of books – everybody gets a chance to pick – and sometimes the book seems like a complete dud.  But usually you see why it’s a “classic”; because even though it may have been written out of a world that on the surface is very different from yours, it speaks to you. I had that experience a while back when we read the novel A Passage to India, by E. M. Forster.  It was written about a hundred years ago, and takes place in British colonial India.

            The strongest impression the book made on me was how it brought to life the interface between the culture and psychology of the English, on the one hand, and  the Indians (both Hindu and Muslim) on the other: how utterly different they were, and therefore how difficult it was for them to live together, and to get along, which they had no choice but to try to do.  To oversimplify outrageously, as described in the novel, the British instinct was to value efficiency; identifying a desired result, figuring out the best way to get it, and then making it happen; keeping to schedules; certain that there’s a right way and a wrong way to do things.

            Forced to coexist with that, in Forster’s novel as in history, was the view of the much older Indian culture that all of that stuff is relatively unimportant: that our day-to-day lives reverberate with much larger forces at work in nature, and in the universe; that there is divine music being played all the time in our lives, between you and me right here now; and that’s what we need to pay attention to, that’s the purpose of human life.

            Of course most of the time these two points of view talked right past each other, and we know how that played out in history: sometimes the consequences of that utter lack of understanding were lethal (usually for the Indians.)  But there were times in the book (as I’m sure there were in real life) when someone from one side stepped back from insistence on his or her particular way of life, and made the effort to understand, and appreciate, the other, to allow it to be fully itself, and live; and when that happened, new life, larger life, was created, and there was growth, for everybody involved, on both sides. 

            That’s a kind of experience that the Christian life invites us to; and there’s a verse that we just heard in the letter to the Hebrews that guides us in that direction.

            We’ve been hearing from this letter for a month now. The letter to the Hebrews is mostly an exposition about Jesus Christ, who he was, and is; and, because of who he is, why following Christ is the way successfully to bushwhack our way through life, through all the wrong turns and pitfalls that come our way, past all that to the joy and the fulfillment that God constantly offers us in creation. Hebrews is a highly condensed letter, with a lot of intricate reasoning, and most of it needs a certain amount of unpacking.  But the last chapter, from which we heard today, is different: it turns from abstract theologizing to practical advice: good life-lessons of a kind we find in many of the New Testament letters, and lessons that we need to hear regularly.

            In today’s reading the author of Hebrews uses a particular figure of speech that reminds us of this.  Twice today we heard the admonition, “Do not neglect…”  “Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have….”  In other words, this is something that we already know to do, but as people of faith we know we need to remind ourselves: we need to be proactive about keeping such things foremost in our minds, and not be asleep at the wheel.  This is one of the reasons we come to church. “Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.”  It’s important to understand that this is not about somehow getting on God’s good side.  Rather, when we take a hand in the increase of God’s joy, in the mystery of creation we make it possible for the Holy Spirit to enter more fully into this world, and do God’s work of healing and reconciliation, in ways we can’t foresee.    

            The other use of this phrase – “do not neglect…” – in today’s passage occurs near the beginning, in a well-known verse: “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.”  This verse is appealing in a number of ways, not least for the hint of adventure that’s involved: we all love a mystery guest.  But what’s going on here?  Why should we not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, and what does entertaining angels have to do with anything?

            We have to be a little careful here.  The verse doesn’t mean that we should be nice to strangers because they might suddenly reveal themselves as magical beings hovering three feet off the ground, who’ll grant us three wishes.  

            Let’s remember the biblical understanding of angels. There are plenty of stories about angels, and references to angels, in both Old and New Testaments. What makes an angel an angel?  We get our English word “angel” from the Greek angelos, which means “messenger” (and the Hebrew word for “angel” in the Old Testament has essentially the same meaning.)  

            Of course the different angels in the Bible carry different messages, because they address different situations.  But whatever the specifics of the message might be, God’s purpose, through the angel – through the message – is to bring to the person the angel visits a greater awareness of the kingdom of God – God’s nature, God’s love, God’s power – in the specific circumstances of that person’s life. For example, when the angel comes to Mary, at the Annunciation, he tells her that she’s going to have a son: that’s the kernel of information. But of course that’s not the whole story, by a long shot.  This son of hers is going to be the living, physical presence of God on earth, the ultimate expression of God’s love for humanity.  So there’s literally a world of meaning, about who God is, in the angel’s message.  And Mary receives that message just the right way: like a seed: it grows in her, and opens her to a world that neither she, or anybody else, had ever conceived of before; and it starts her on a new, utterly different direction in her life; which we see in the unique faithfulness she shows, demonstrated throughout her story in the gospels.  This is the kind of life-changing message that angels bring: this is what makes an angel an angel.

            The specific instruction to us in the verse is, “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers….”  To “show hospitality” to people means more than simply to give them food and drink and a roof over their heads.  It means opening not only your home, but also your heart, to them.  It means to live out, in however small a way, the knowledge that humanity is one family.  So hospitality in its essence doesn’t necessarily have anything at all to do with food or drink or shelter; but rather in offering ourselves – who we are, as much as what we have – in honoring who the stranger is, embracing the common humanity we share.  It’s an expression of trust, which is freely given; which ultimately is trust in God.

            In A Passage to India, on those rare occasions when someone puts aside his or her insistence on their own way of seeing the world, and welcomes in the other’s – when they show hospitality to strangers – that’s a sacrifice that’s pleasing to God.  And we know that because of the new, larger, richer life that’s created, for everyone involved.

            There are many ways someone to appear to us a stranger, and many ways for for someone to be our guest.  Whenever we find ourselves in such situations, if we show hospitality, I think the chances are pretty good that the stranger will actually turn out to be an angel, whether he or she knows it or not.  Because that stranger will bear a message from God: that through our self-offering, our eyes will be opened to a part of the kingdom of God that we hadn’t seen before.  So let us not neglect to show hospitality to the strangers who show up in our lives. We’ll start to find angels popping up all around us.  Thanks be to God.

(Jeremiah 1:4-10; Ps. 71:1-6; Hebrews 12:18; Luke 13:10-17)

            I’m going to ask you a question.  What is prophecy (in the biblical sense of the word)? 

            It’s not fortune-telling.  In the Bible, prophecy has to do with speaking the truth: truth which, for whatever reason, we have forgotten, or are blind to, or intentionally ignore.  And since all truth originates in God, that’s the truth that prophets speak: the truth of the real world, which we’ve moved away from, constructing a fictional world of our own, which we find more comfortable; but which is fictional.

            So hearing prophecy – true prophecy – is almost always an uncomfortable experience.  And I think it’s appropriate that we’re outside today, because I think the biblical prophets were mostly outside when they spoke (like John the Baptist and Jesus), because most people don’t want to have somebody like that under their roof, it wasn’t safe.  I also think the prophets take up so much literal space in the Bible because the need for prophecy is so constant, it’s part of human nature to go off track this way, we do it all the time.

            I’m bringing this up today for two reasons. The first is that we heard this morning, and will be for the next couple of months, from the prophet Jeremiah. It’s a long book, and a lot of it’s a tirade: a furious, wailing, fist-shaking denunciation full of finger-pointing.  Jeremiah nails people for pride, hypocrisy, slothfulness, infidelity of many kinds, most especially infidelity to God.    As somebody once said, there was nothing in need of denunciation that Jeremiah didn’t denounce (at one point he even denounces God for giving him this job, this thankless task of prophecy.)

            But all of that’s just part of what Jeremiah has to say; and I’m glad that we’re going to be hearing from Jeremiah for a while now, because his message has a beginning, a middle, and an end; and the passages we’ll hear outline that story.

            Jeremiah certainly begins by talking about what’s gone wrong.  He tells the people of Israel, You’ve abandoned God, you’ve shut God out of your lives, you’ve gone to other gods  To turn away from the one God is to turn away from the one real source of life, and truth.  And he says, Because you’ve done this – because you’ve turned away from God – you’re going to be in trouble.  The biggest kind of trouble.  And this is, specifically, what it’s going to look like (and he uses various metaphors for this, one of which is to take a big clay pot and smash it to bits.)  So get ready, he says, and don’t complain. You’re responsible.  

And for the people of Israel – people of faith – such turning away is also breaking the covenant, which is the foundation of their identity as a people.  It’s betrayal, and comes at a deep personal cost, and not just for the Israelites. This is the second part of Jeremiah. He goes on to speak in God’s voice, saying, You should know how this tears at my heart.  This isn’t what I wanted for you.  This is the opposite of the highest hopes, the most wonderful dreams, that I had for you.  (If anyone has a family member who’s been the victim of addiction – some behavior that’s ruining their lives, that they can’t stop themselves from doing, and you’re sitting there having to watch it happen – that’s the kind of sorrow, the desolation, that Jeremiah says God feels.)

             And at the very end of our time with Jeremiah, we will hear him say, again on God’s behalf, But the story’s not over: here’s how to come back.  Here are the first, tiny steps on that road.  Because, even though you’re sitting in the middle of a mess, and all you can see around you are ruins, know that I have not abandoned you.  I will never abandon you.  You need to recognize the truth: that I am who I am: I am the Lord your God, and you are my people.  I will make a new covenant with you, and I will write this one on your hearts.

            This is the prophecy of Jeremiah, and there are gifts of the spirit for all of us in all of it.

            The other reason I’m talking about prophecy today is because this afternoon our church is participating in a particular prophetic witness.  At three o’clock this afternoon, the bells here at St. John’s will ring for one minute. We will be joining thousands of other churches around the country, from many denominations, to mark the four hundredth anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved people in the colonies that became the United States of America.  We don’t know the exact date, but it was in late August of 1619 that something over twenty African men and women were debarked from a ship (ironically named the White Lion) at a place called (also ironically) Point Comfort, now the site of the Fort Monroe National Monument in Hampton, VA.   

             As you may remember, earlier this year the Episcopal Church in Connecticut  proclaimed this a season in which we focus on the sin of racism.  That word is often used in a very polarized and polarizing way, which unfortunately diverts us from the real work that’s there to be done, by all of us.  A good approach to the subject was recently made by a current public figure who put it this way (and I’m paraphrasing): The conversation about racism is really about a community that has been left behind, and worse, for many generations, left behind simply because of the color of its skin. When you’ve been denied job, after job, after job because you’re black or because you’re brown. Or when you go to the emergency room to have your baby. The fact is that w if you are a black woman you are four times more likely to die in childbirth there because that healthcare provider may not believe you, may not even hear you when you say I don’t feel right. Because that health care provider instinctively doesn’t value you the way he or she would value a white person.

            That public figure went on to talk about the same kind of racism in the system of justice in this country.  She could as easily have included the educational system, the financial system; there’s racism all through our society: it’s not confined to folks who put on white hoods and lynch black people .  And if you resist this idea, if you feel disbelief, the literature on racism in America is voluminous.  I’ve put the names of just three titles on a piece of paper, and I ask respectfully that you take a look at one or more of them.

            But the whole issue is framed well in a recent article by – please excuse me – my cousin Drew Gilpin Faust, recently retired president of Harvard and a historian of the antebellum and Civil War South.  She writes that, in the most recent national conversation on racism, “…we are…avoiding the most fundamental work.  The media frequently report accusations that this or that public figure is a racist, and usually the circumstances or actions described are deeply concerning and worthy of condemnation.  It is good that we are noticing.  But name-calling and shaming seem to me too often expressions of a certain smugness and self-righteousness on the part of the accuser, acts that too often simply seek to separate us into saved and damned, sheep and goats….This pattern is dangerous.  It situates the issue of race in individuals and their personal morality and choices, rather than focusing on the broader, structural, historical forces that perpetuate inequality and injustice in the United States – inequality and injustice for which we all, sheep and goats alike, bear responsibility.”

            This is prophecy.  Because it’s telling us truth that we’re ignoring, or denying. As people of faith, God calls us to do something about that.  Thanks be to God for Jeremiah, and all the prophets, throughout history, who remind us of who we are.

(Isaiah 5:1-7; Ps. 80:1-2, 8-18; Hebrews 11:29-12:2; Luke 12:49-56)
 
            Some time ago, somewhere or other, I read about a sermon which was titled, “Things I Wish Jesus Had Never Said.”  And I remember thinking, What a great idea! Some of you might feel the same, and could probably come up with some suggestions (I’ve got a few of my own.)  But it wasn’t until this past week that I actually did a Google search for that sermon, because I thought the gospel reading that we heard today might be on the list.

            But I was frustrated in my quest for an answer to that question; because what the search turned up was, not a single sermon, but dozens with that title (including more than one sermon series), by preachers from a wide variety of denominations, over a number of years.  So evidently it wasn’t just me who thought “Things I Wish Jesus Had Never Said” was a great idea; and, clergy being just as prone to thievery as anyone else, there’s a whole bunch who saw that title and thought, Oh boy!  I can go to town on this one.

            Today’s gospel is actually full of things I wish Jesus hadn’t said.  And, in all honesty, I also wish the lectionary hadn’t put this text in front of us on the occasion of my first sermon in a month, I’d rather come back talking about the lilies of the field.  But when the Bible presents us with words we don’t like, or don’t understand, that’s exactly where we need to put our best attention.

            Most of the things in today’s passage that I wish Jesus hadn’t said go in one particular direction: Jesus sowing division, making trouble.  I came to bring fire to the earth.  Do you think I have come to bring peace to the earth?  And we can be forgiven for thinking, well, actually, yes; but Jesus says: No, I tell you, but rather division!  This is not the kind of thing we’re used to hearing from this man.  And Jesus tells us further that this  division will be of the most personal, painful kind: son against father, mother against daughter, daughter-in-law against mother-in-law. And there’s another layer to this in-your-face: in these specific examples Jesus is quoting the prophet Micah, which his hearers would have recognized; so this is Jesus’ way of saying, If you thought I’ve come here to just let you off the hook of what you wish someone had never said, you’re mistaken.

            So.  How are we to understand these words, which we wish Jesus had never said?  How does this square with the Jesus we know and love, whose way we want to follow?  What is our Lord Jesus Christ teaching us here?

            In this cycle of the lectionary, for the last eight weeks, we’ve been hearing from the gospel of Luke, from the long section that begins in chapter 9 with these words: “When the days drew near for [Jesus] to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.”  The phrase “s et his face to go”  literally translates as “hardened his face to go”.   Jesus knows he has to go to Jerusalem – he knows it is there and only there, the seat of worldly power for his people, that he can fulfill his mission – and he knows that it will end up costing him his life.  So it’s no wonder he has to “harden his face” to this task.   And the gravity of what he’s heading for, the bitter nature of the struggle, the life and death stakes – all of that’s in the air for the next nine chapters of the gospel (that’s how long in Luke’s telling that it takes Jesus to get to Jerusalem.) And every now and then in that stretch, some of the awareness of that reality filters out into language like we heard today.

            Jesus’ mission, his life-work, was to proclaim the presence of the kingdom of God: the presence, in this life here and now, of the infinitely powerful Creator of the universe who for some unfathomable reason loves every single one of us.  That’s the good news, that’s what we love to hear Jesus talk about, and to see him live it out.  We heard Jesus express this in a particular way in the gospel reading last week (in words we are very glad Jesus said): “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”  That’s Luke chapter 12 verse 32, which you could put on a refrigerator magnet and issue to every Christian at baptism, for one thing because it establishes the context in which we should put all the things we wish Jesus had never said.

            But Jesus does say those things; because for some equally unfathomable reason we live in a broken world.  We all know this: a world that’s gone wrong: a world in which it seems to be part of human nature that most of the time we ignore the kingdom that Jesus says it is God’s good pleasure to give us.  Out of the infinite number of examples that occur every day, I’ll pick one from the gospel reading we heard a couple of weeks ago. Jesus is speaking to a crowd, and one of them says to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.”  And Jesus answers, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?”  And immediately he turns to the crowd and says, “Take care!  Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”

            Now, the man has asked Jesus what seems to be a normal question. Inheritance – transferring property from one generation to the next – is something that everybody experiences some way or other, it’s codified in law or custom in every human society, and evidently there’s a problem that’s come up between this man and his brother.  But Jesus sees in his request the brokenness of this world, here in the form of greed, rearing its ugly little head.  Jesus sees it, and he calls it out, names that brokenness, to the people who are there to witness it (and to the man himself): Take care!  Be on your guard!  Greed is among us, and comes in many shapes and sizes.

            This is Jesus bringing fire to the earth. This is Jesus bringing division, rather than peace.  This is Jesus naming the places where there is division: where we are creating it.

Yes, there are things we wish Jesus had never said.  But what that really means is that there are things we wish he didn’t have to say.  But he did have to say them.  And we know he did.  Because they’re the truth.

And this is the teaching: it is our call as Christians to follow Jesus in this way: to recognize those places where the world is broken, where it’s gone wrong, to name them, and to go there: to bring the love of God there: God who alone can heal.  It’s precisely in this that we are the Body of Christ.  This is why throughout the gospels Jesus is constantly telling people: Take care!  Be on your guard!  Stay awake! Watch!  Be alert!  Be wise as serpents!  We are disciples of Christ so that we can be apostles: sent out into this broken world to do God’s work.  And thanks be to God for the things we wish Jesus had never said.

(Amos 7:7-17; Ps. 82; Colossians 1:1-14; Luke 10:25-37)

            There’s a woman I know who holds elective office in this area, whom I see every now and then; our politics are not the same, but I think she’s a terrific public servant, and I would vote for her every chance I got.   I ran into her once a while ago, and the subject of Loaves and Fishes came up (she’d always been a supporter, and was glad to hear of the construction which had begun.)  But at one point in the conversation, she used a figure of speech that brought me up a little short: she said, I always say, we need to take care of our own.

            The reason it gives me pause is this: if by “our own” is meant “all of our own”, that is, everybody around us, even those on the margins, then I agree (and I think in fact that’s what she meant.) But as I have heard the phrase in conversation, the actual intention is usually to distinguish “our own” from others who are considered to be not our own, for whatever reason.  And when we make this kind of distinction, when we start prioritizing whom we care for, we’re on a slippery slope.  

            For people of faith, this is fundamental. The very first chapter of Genesis tells us that all people are made in the image and likeness of God; and therefore are all of infinite value and dignity.  As Christians we especially need to be alert to this: in our baptismal covenant, we promise “to strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being”; and “to seek and serve Christ in all persons”.  If we’re not mindful of this, if we don’t keep it in front of us, we’re just as prone as anyone else to forget it, and to slip into unthinking marginalization of people who are not like us – not “our own”, whether that’s because of race, or religion, or social position, or political opinion, whatever.  We humans are very good at creating boundaries, and at identifying reasons for them – sometimes very convincing ones.  But for us, that cannot be the last word.

              This is on my mind for two reasons.  The first is today’s gospel story, the parable of the Good Samaritan, which I’ll have something to say about in a minute.

            The other is something I experienced on our pilgrimage to the Holy Land last month: the wall, built by the Israeli government, which separates Palestinian land in the West Bank from the rest of territory of Israel.

            This is an extremely complicated situation, but just very briefly: in the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel reclaimed a large area from the nation of Jordan: over 2000 square miles of land, which surrounds Jerusalem.  This land is all west of the Jordan river, so it’s called the West Bank.  It was populated entirely by Palestinians, who were given some limited authority by the Israelis, but they weren’t given citizenship. So they’ve never been able to vote, and they have very little voice in how they live.  They’re a subjugated people.

            Over the years, the tensions boiled over into two major Palestinian uprisings (the Arabic word is intifada).  The second, in the early 2000’s, was particularly awful: it seemed like every week, for a couple of years, there was a terrorist bombing of some public place, or a random shooting.  So that’s when the Israeli government decided to build a wall (it’s sometimes called the separation wall), to seal off the West Bank from the rest of Israel.

            I’m just going to say a couple of things about the wall.  The first is that the wall was effective: terrorist activity fell off to virtually nothing once it was up, the bombings and shootings basically stopped.  So the wall did the job it was built for.

            But the wall’s still up, 17 years later.  And when they built it, they didn’t always follow the border: in fact about 85% of the wall cuts into Palestinian territory, dividing communities, separating farmers from the fields they work, and neighborhoods from water sources.  There are many hillsides from which you can see land on both sides of the wall.  On the Israeli side there are modern apartment buildings, carefully tended neighborhoods, with plantings and swimming pools.  The Palestinian side is a slum: crumbling buildings, a lot of bare ground with junk and broken glass lying around, and barely enough water to drink, let alone use for plants.

            And standing next to the wall brings the whole problem into sharp focus.   Most of it’s 28 feet high, rusted steel, ugly, implacable.  It’s a monument to perpetual hostility, for both sides, you can feel it dividing the world into us and them – our own, and everybody else. For the Palestinians it’s an open wound in the body of their people.  And as long as it stands, there will never be peace.

            So here’s where we get to the story of the Good Samaritan.   Of course that term has long been in popular usage; for most people it means someone who goes out of their way to help someone in need.    Well, that does happen in the story, but doesn’t begin to do it justice.  A lawyer stands up and asks Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life.  Luke tells us the lawyer does this to “test” Jesus, to try and catch him in a mistake. Which Jesus certainly recognizes but disregards – for Jesus every moment is a teaching moment – and asks the man, what is written in the law?  What do you read there?  So the man quotes the first two commandments: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and love your neighbor as yourself.  And Jesus tells him, You’re right; do this, and you will live.    

            But the lawyer – still testing Jesus – asks, And who is my neighbor?  And Jesus answers with the parable.   There’s a man who’s on his way from one place to another – we know nothing else about him – and he’s set upon by robbers who take everything he’s got and beat him up and leave him lying half dead on the side of the road.  And as he lies there, three separate people happen upon him, one at a time.  The first two are a priest and a Levite, and they each cross to the other side of the road and pass him by.   There’s a reason for this: it was against the law for religious officials – which included Levites – to touch a dead body (which it turned out wasn’t the case, but neither of them was going to take the chance.)

            The one who actually does something about the situation is a Samaritan.   As you may know, there was great enmity between Samaritans and Jews, they hated each other, for reasons that went back hundreds of years; and for Jesus to make the hero of this story a Samaritan turns the world upside down.  Think of someone  whom you detest – for what you think are good reasons – and make that person the good guy in this story: that’s what Jesus is doing.)  That’s how radical this story is.  And the Samaritan doesn’t just care for this man who is his traditional enemy, he goes several extra miles: puts him on his own animal to get him to an inn (which means he himself has to walk); he sees him through the night; the next day before he goes on his way he gives money to the innkeeper to take care of the man, and says if you have to spend more I’ll repay you when I come back . 

            And when Jesus finishes the story he asks the lawyer, Which of these three (the priest, the Levite, and the Samaritan), do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers? Remember, the lawyer had asked him Who is my neighbor?  Jesus is telling him, That’s the wrong question.  The answer to that question is simple: every human being.       Even someone who’s always treated you with contempt. Even someone whom all of your friends insist is not one of your own.  The commandment you quoted to me is, Love your neighbor as yourself.  So the question you should be asking is, How am I loving my neighbor?  What am I doing about that?   And if I am really loving my neighbor as myself, are there limits to the lengths to which I will go?  

Those are the questions.  Because this is the kingdom of God Jesus is talking about.  When we open ourselves to it, it changes us; and changes the life around us.  And if someone asks you, Why do you go to church, this is the kind of thing you can point to.  It’s not the way the world operates, and there are plenty of people who won’t sign on to it: the wall did the job, we’re taking care of our own.  But the problem didn’t go away; because this is not who God created us to be.  This is why we call Jesus our Redeemer: because he calls us to who we really are.

             In our Book of Common Prayer there’s a prayer that’s titled, “For the Human Family”, with which I’m going to close.  Let us pray. “O God, you made us in your own image and redeemed us through Jesus your Son: Look with compassion on the whole human family; take away the arrogance and hatred which infect our hearts; break down the walls that separate us; unite us in bonds of love; and work through our struggle and confusion to accomplish your purposes on earth; that, in your good time, all nations and races may serve you in harmony around your heavenly throne; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.”

(2 Kings 5:1-14; Ps. 30; Galatians 6L1-6)7-16; Luke 10:1-11, 16-20)

            I started coming back to church in the early 1980’s, and at first it was slowly, once or twice a month; but before too long I was showing up most every Sunday.  And one of the main reasons was that I had coming to see something: whatever I thought I’d learned about life, to that point, and about the way the world works, was being described most clearly, and truthfully, in the language of Christian faith: in what I was experiencing in church: in the scripture readings, in the sermons, in the prayers, in all the things we do together in the liturgy.  And an example of this – something that happens in the world that’s made clear in Christian faith – occurred to me as I was thinking about a verse in one of the readings for today.  Maybe because it was the Fourth of July last week, it’s an example from the world of baseball (our national pastime.)  And I apologize in advance to any Yankee fans here for the painful memories this will bring up.

            Even those of you who care nothing about baseball (or maybe just flat-out hate it) may remember that in 2004, the Boston Red Sox won the World Series for the first time in 86 years.  There was a popular superstition that this long drought was caused by what was called the Curse of the Bambino: in 1918, right after winning their last World Series, the Red Sox traded Babe Ruth (whose nickname was “the Bambino”) to the Yankees.  Gigantic mistake: Babe Ruth went on to become the greatest player in baseball history. And not only did the Curse of the Bambino mean that the Sox failed to win another World Series in all those years (sometimes coming heartbreakingly close), during that time the Yankees were their special tormentors, year after year turning up to beat them at the most crucial times, and in the most painful ways.

            And in 2004 it looked like it was going to happen again: the Sox and Yankees met in the playoffs (which were best-of-seven) to determine which American League team would go to the Series; and the Yankees won the first three games.  All they needed was one more, and the Red Sox now had to win four in a row.  No team in baseball history had ever come back from a 3-0 deficit to win four straight, but that’s what the Red Sox had to do. And had to do it against the Yankees, who had beaten them so consistently in so many crucial situations, for so many years.  The Curse of the Bambino hung heavily in the air.

            But these Red Sox had a particular mindset. That year, they had taken to calling themselves “the Idiots.”  One of them put it this way: “We’re just idiots this year.  We feel like we can win every game, and we feel like we have to have fun.  We want to keep the thinking process out of it.”  Idiots: too idiotic to be aware of the Curse of the Bambino; too idiotic to know they couldn’t do something no one had ever done before.

            And – because they were idiots – they did it. The Red Sox won those next four games, and went on to win the World Series in four straight.   Embracing their identity as “The Idiots” gave them a freedom that did away with the Curse of the Bambino.  People don’t talk about it much anymore, and the Red Sox have won two more World Series since then.

            Now.  This is all silly, yes?  It’s just baseball: trivial, meaningless (except to people who think it’s not.)  But to my mind, “The Idiots” meeting the curse of the Bambino is a tiny little vibration of a much larger and more profound movement of the Spirit, which Paul talks about in a verse from his letter to the Galatians, in the passage we heard today.  It’s at the very end of the letter, when he’s summing things up: “For neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything, but a new creation is everything.” 

            In this letter, Paul is writing to the church in Galatia which he had founded and then moved on from, keeping tabs on it through the mail (that’s what Paul did), He has recently been informed that there are now leaders of the Galatian church who are insisting that circumcision is a requirement for all baptized Galatian Christians, as specified in the book of Genesis for all children of Abraham.  

            This news drives Paul crazy, because it’s completely counter to what he taught them (and because all his hard work there seems to have gone down the drain.)  So he writes to them to say, You’re abandoning the gospel which I passed on to you, you’re throwing away the fundamental truth about what God has done: about the way the world works.  (Paul even opens the main body of the letter by saying, Even if I, or an angel from heaven, tell you something different than the gospel I communicated to you back then, don’t listen.)  Paul is saying, Circumcision – and uncircumcision – is completely irrelevant. There is nothing you need to do – there is nothing you possibly can do – for Christ to live in you, and for you to live in Christ:  Christ is alive: God has already done this, for you.  The world has changed.

            This is the new creation which Paul talks about: a new creation that does away with the dead hand of the Law, and its human requirements which choke the Spirit; a new creation that does away with the ways we divide ourselves (“There is no longer Jew nor Greek, there is no longer slave nor free, there is no longer male and female; there is no longer Red Sox fan nor Yankee fan (for some people that’s the most unthinkable of all); for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

            And there’s one other little touch in the passage we heard today that’s subtle, but very important.  Paul dictated his letters: they were put to paper by a secretary, a professional scribe.  We know this because at the end of a number of his letters he announces that it is he himself who is writing those particular words (“I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand”, or some variation of that.)

            But – uniquely – at the end of the letter to the Galatians he does it in a different way.  What we heard today was this: “See what large letters I make when I write in my own hand!”  What he’s saying is: See how totally stupid my handwriting is?  Aren’t you glad someone who’s actually good at it wrote the rest of this letter?  So what he’s really saying is: I’m an idiot – just like you: a flawed human being – just like you; in the language of faith, a sinner – just like you: someone who is completely dependent on God’s love, and mercy, and goodness.  And the seal of that love is God in Christ.  
That’s a fact of life.  And it doesn’t matter that we’re idiots.  We’re free: free from our ignorance, free from our fear, free from our sinfulness.  The only difference between us and everybody else is that we’ve been made aware of this; we try to stay aware of it; we try to live by it.   Let us then say with Paul, May we never boast of anything but the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to us, and we to the world.  And peace, and mercy be upon us all.  Thanks be to God. 

(2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14; Ps. 77:1-2, 11-20; Galatians 5:1, 13-25; Luke 9:51-62)

            This morning I’m going to share with you something I brought home with me from the ECCT pilgrimage to the Holy Land.  And it was a pilgrimage: that’s the way our bishops conceived it from the start, over a year ago.  It was not a sight-seeing tour, it was not a vacation.  We had fun, but it was overwhelmingly a time of focus, and concentrated attention; thanks to the leadership of Bishop Ian and Bishop Laura, who were both with us, and to our guide, a Palestinian Christian named Iyad. We began our days at 7 – except the three days we started at or before dawn – we joined for prayer after breakfast; from then until lunch we were on the go exploring something from the life of Jesus, then the same in the afternoon; a few days there’d be an hour or two of free time before dinner; there was almost always a speaker after dinner, by which time most of us were running on fumes; and we’d close the day with prayer.  It was a very full schedule, but I’m quite sure that, to a person, we wouldn’t have had it any other way: it was a gift, and we loved every minute of it.   

So here’s what I brought home, and I’m showing it to you this morning because it relates to something in the gospel reading we just heard. This is an icon.  Over the past year or so I’ve been learning a little bit about icons, and about the spirituality around them.  Icons are flat pictures, usually painted on wood, usually depicting Christ, or Mary, or one of the saints. They’re very common in the Eastern church, used in prayer and meditation.  During one of our free periods in Jerusalem I bought one, at a little store which was just up the street from where we were staying and had been recommended by our guide Iyad,.  It’s a painting of Christ as the Good Shepherd. I looked at a number of different icons; but as I was considering which to buy, and talking with the man who owned the store, a Palestinian Christian in his 70’s, at one point he said to me: Before you buy it, you have to love it.

            And I saw there was one I did love.  In this picture, I could see a relaxation to the way Jesus’ arms look as he holds on to the lamb; which reminded me strongly of how I always felt holding on to my kids’ ankles when they rode on my shoulders. You can see how naturally his arms hang; what effort he’s expending (which isn’t a lot) is in his hands, in the grip (I remember that too.)  And in some way, you get the impression that the lamb is grounding him, providing stability for him: because there’s a relationship here, of love and devoted service. I remember that feeling too, from carrying my kids that way.  (I miss it.)

            But of course what’s most immediately striking about the picture is Jesus’ gaze – you could call it a stare – directly at the viewer.  This is common to most icons that I’ve seen.  Jesus looks somber, even stern.   And the Western response – accustomed as we are to saintly depictions of Jesus, full of love and joy and fulfillment (which is not wrong) – is instinctively wary: is Jesus scolding me?  Right from the get-go?  Why?  What have I done?

            Now, I’m certainly no expert on icons. But having been around icons a little, and trusting the fact that for centuries the Eastern church has used them as a regular part of spiritual practice, I see something else.  I see Christ looking at me and saying, I’m talking to you here.  Yes, you.  What do you see in this picture?  What it does it say about yourlife?  And what are you going to do about it?  I’m offering you a step into larger life: a step into the kingdom of God.  Just be aware that following me is at some point going to mean leaving what’s familiar to you: at some point, taking you away from your happy place.  But you can be sure that whatever discomfort you might feel is nothing compared to what you will receive.

            And this is where it relates to today’s gospel story.  

            Today’s passage, from Luke’s gospel, begins with these words: “When the days drew near for Jesus to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.”  The words “taken up” are a literal reference to Jesus’ ascension into heaven: that is, at the end of the life of Jesus Christ on earth, including his resurrected life.  So the phrase “the days…for Jesus to be taken up” refers to all the events which culminate in his ascension: his final conflict with the religious establishment, his arrest, trial, crucifixion, death, resurrection, and ascension.  Luke is talking here about that whole sequence of events.  And he tells us that when those days “drew near”, Jesus “set his face to go to Jerusalem.” (The Greek literally means “hardened his face to go”.)   So it’s clear Jesus knows that what he’s heading into is not going to be pleasant, and he knows it’s going to end in his death.  But he knows this is his mission: this is what God has given him to do; so he resolves to do it: he sets his face.  Sometimes, facing the truth, and acting on it, takes resolve.

            And right away Luke gives us examples of what this means.  Someone tells Jesus, I’ll follow you wherever you go; and Jesus famously answers, Foxes have holes and birds of the air have their nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.  Meaning: if I have nowhere to lay my head, and you’re going to follow me wherever I go – figure it out; and be clear about what’s involved in following me.  
Jesus says to someone else, Follow me (Jesus wants us to follow him; he just wants us to do it with our eyes open); and this man says, Lord, first let me bury my father (something any of us would want to do – it’s obeying a commandment.)  But Jesus answers him, Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.  Jesus refers to those who don’t recognize  the kingdom of God – who do not recognize real life, true life, among them – Jesus calls those people “the dead”.  This is hard core.  This is the Jesus of the icon.

And then finally a man tells Jesus, I’m going to follow you, but let me say goodbye to the folks at home first.  And Jesus tells him, No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.  In the act of plowing, once you’ve started you have to keep your eyes on the ground in front of you to make sure the furrow stays straight: you can’t look behind you.  Once you’ve started on this way – this work – this mission – you can’t look back.  The truth is the truth, all the time.

Now.  This passage we heard today is in chapter 9 of the gospel of Luke.  There are fifteen more chapters to go, the bulk of the gospel, we still have that in front of us, in Luke’s telling of the whole story: all the parables of the kingdom, the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son; healing stories; the resurrection: all the good news of Jesus Christ.  This is the truth which we  joyfully proclaim, and joyfully try to live by.  But we do that in the knowledge that it’s not always going to be a comfortable experience, in a world gone wrong – a world that is often indifferent or hostile to the message we bring – and a gone-wrongness that we’re certainly part of.

But – with Jesus – we set our faces toward Jerusalem.  We see the world the way it is.  We do not flinch at the parts we don’t like: especially at our own brokenness.  We are not sightseers here.  We are not tourists.   We are pilgrims, trying to live in the truth, always in the knowledge of God’s goodness, and that God is carrying us on God’s shoulders.  What more is there to say?  Thanks be to God.