Reverend Rita's Sermons (July - December 2007)...
(Updated 11/23/07)

Infant Divine - 12/24/07
Joy This Christmas - 12/16/07
Peace on Earth - 12/16/07
Waiting with Hope - 12/02/07
What Kind of King is This? - 11/25/07
My Redeemer Lives - 11/11/07
God Have Mercy - 10/28/07
Teach Your Children Well - 10/21/07
An Attitude of Gratitude - 10/14/07
At the Table - 10/07/07
The Great Chasm - 09/30/07
Prodigal Forgiveness - 09/23/07
Be All That You Can Be - 09/09/07
Honor - 09/02/07
A New Sabbath - 08/26/07
The Sword of Peace - 08/19/07
Why Church? - 08/05/07
Starving for God's Word - 07/22/07
Let It Shine! - 07/15/07

Infant Divine

Christmas Eve
14 December 2007

I've really had babies on the brain this year. Not only my own baby of course, but my sister has had her first child, but a dear friend of mine who has struggled with infertility for years is now pregnant and due in March, and the Dopps have been doubly blessed with twins. And this abundance of babies is making me look at Christmas in a totally new light. The miraculous part that catches my attention isn't the angels or the star, but the arrival of a bouncing baby boy.

The baby in the manger is obviously the center of attention. It's not that I haven't noticed him before. But this year I've been pondering, what does it really mean that God entered the world as a baby? A baby is so totally the opposite of what we think of God as being. God created the entire universe! God is omnipotent, omniscient, and all those other omnis. God is so great and magnificent that philosophers have to come up with mind-bending ways to think about God, as in the famous, unanswerable riddle, "Can God create a stone too heavy for her to lift?"

Well, this Christmas it strikes me that if that's the best the philosophers can come up with, then they're missing the whole point entirely. This advent we have looked at various stories in the Bible that teach us that God uses power in ways we wouldn't expect. Jesus didn't use his power to save himself from the cross, but rather to forgive his enemies. God doesn't use her power to judge, but to redeem.

But for all that we talk about how God's love for us is eternal and unconditional, for all that we know that God is always ready to forgive us – do we really, truly believe it? It's so hard for us to trust that. We think, No, surely we have to earn God's favor. Surely God, who knows the wickedness of our hearts, surely God will punish us as we so richly deserve. The love language is beautiful, but we don't quite believe it, and no matter what God does, no matter how many ways God shows his unending love for us, still we are skeptical. So what good would it do for God to show up in the flesh and tell us outright? We still would have a hard time believing it.

That is why I think God came in the form of a baby. Not to save us with God's love, but to teach us how to love – to love unconditionally, and to truly take care of one another. Because here's the thing about babies: they are a lot of work! And much of that work is downright unpleasant. They mess their diapers, they spit up all over you, they cry for no apparent reason. They can't behave or mind their manners. You can't tell them to hold on just a minute because Mommy needs to take the pot off the stove before it catches fire. They are demanding, tyrannical, smelly creatures! And yet, how we love them. How many of you think that you got the best, the cutest, the smartest kids around? Even when they run us ragged with the crying at 2 AM, we still love them. Because the truth is, there's no such thing as a bad baby. They don't yet know right from wrong. Yet we care for them selflessly, and we love them with a love as pure as we humans can experience. Babies can bring out the very best in us.

Unfortunately, they can also bring out the worst in us, as our newspaper headlines have reported this month. But that was true of Jesus when he was an adult. For that matter, it's still true of Jesus. Some people do take offense. Some people react with violence and murder. We don't all get it right.

But how then does God respond? Does God rush down from heaven, prepared to give someone a solid spanking? Or does God say, "How can I heal these broken children of mine so that they will be whole?" No matter how sorely we test it, does God's love ever end? No, for as the Bible itself says, "A mother will sooner forget her child than I the Lord will ever forget you."

So it is no accident that God came in the form of a baby. Mary was first given the choice. She faced rejection and judgment from everyone around her, but she said, "Yes, I will bear this child and love him." Joseph could have put Mary away and had nothing to do with this child, but he said, "Yes, I will care for this child as if he were of my own flesh." The wise men left their ivory tower and followed the light of that love, bringing gifts as all neighbors do: diapers and Fisher Price toys and onesies – I mean, gold, frankincense, and myrrh. The shepherds, coarse and crude as they were, rushed to Bethlehem at the news, falling down on their knees and worshipping, "Oooh, who's the cute little precious darling man? You're so adorable!"

This is the miracle of Christmas: that God made herself completely vulnerable, put himself entirely in our care, to murder or to cherish as we would. This is more precious than a divine rescue mission, for God gives us the chance to learn how to truly love and care for one another.

May the Christ child be born in your heart, this night and every night. Amen.

Joy This Christmas
Isaiah 35:1-10 ; Matthew:11-2-11

16 December 2007

I feel as if I need to apologize for this sermon. It is not the one I set out to write. Our theme for this advent Sunday is joy, which ought to be something of a no-brainer for Christmas. But I was not feeling very joyful this week. If you follow the news, you know that so far in the month of December, four children have been killed by their parents – three of them within a 48-hour span this past week. It's terrible news anyway, but now that I've become a mother through foster care, these stories feel personal to me. And perhaps they do to you as well, through our involvement with the Forgotten Child program. Whenever I hear one of these stories, I think, "What if CPS had not gotten involved in Sam's case? Could it be Sam we'd be hearing about on the news? Or Ernie and Joey?" It has amounted to a very personal feeling of grief and loss, and whenever I have tried to force my mind back to the topic at hand, to joy, it just felt like a lie. Not that joy is a lie, but this is one of the occupational hazards of the ministry. When your heart is full of something, you must speak about it, because everything else echoes falsely within your soul.

But if you think about it, while Christmas is indeed a story of great joy and beauty, it is also a story of tragedy. For that matter, the Christmas story is also about the murder of innocent children, in this case at the hands of a mad king who was so jealous over the very idea of the Messiah's birth that he ordered his soldiers to kill all the male children under the age of two. That would have included Sam, and Ernie, and Joey. But they also say that you should never step into the pulpit unless you have good news to tell. There is good news, even in such a sad week as this one has been. We will get to it, but we will not take the direct route. So this has ended up being a rather somber sermon for the Christmas season. I hope you will forgive me, and I hope you will accept the honesty of my heart. And to tell the truth, a faith that is not capable of dealing with the harsh realities of the world is not worth very much at all. So let us look boldly into the abyss, and see what unexpected good news we might find there.

Our gospel reading today continues with the story of John the Baptist, fast-forwarding a bit to a later time. He is in prison and has sent his disciples to ask Jesus, "Are you the one we have been expecting, or is there another?" The commentators I read took John to task for this. They pointed out how excited he had been when Jesus had first appeared, "Behold, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!" and all that. How then, the commentators wonder, can he now lose faith? Why does he have doubts?

Well, I can understand why John might be having second thoughts. He escaped death at the hands of that first Herod because he lived in Nazareth, not Bethlehem, but now he faces execution at the hands of another Herod. He's been waiting for a Messiah who will chop down the tree that bears bad fruit, so surely now he is wondering, "Jesus, aren't you going to do something about this?" Is that so wrong of John to question? When God comes, don't you kind of expect things to get better? Reading the headlines of those deaths this week, I too asked, "Jesus, aren't you going to do something about this? Are you the one who is to come, or are we waiting for someone else? Because I sure hope whoever is going to come will take care of these innocent ones."

And Jesus sends back an answer to John, an answer that quotes our passage from Isaiah, an answer that is typical of Jesus in that it seems to answer a different question altogether. It's an answer that's all about joy. If you've been paying close attention, our Isaiah passages throughout this advent season have been ramping up the joy to greater and greater heights. First it was the people who were joyful, as nations streamed to God's holy mountain and they beat their swords into ploughshares. Last week the animals got into the act, as the lamb and the lion lay down together and the bear ate straw with the ox. This week, nature itself celebrates. "The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, and the desert shall rejoice!" This is some pretty powerful stuff, if even inanimate objects are joining in the party! And the part that Jesus refers to, about miracle healings. The thing is, it's not just about the blind seeing again. It's about the lame ones not just walking, but leaping and prancing like deer, the tongue of those who were mute now singing for joy. It's extravagant, all this jubilation. Things aren't just set right, they're fantastic! The Isaiah passage goes on, with words that are particularly poignant regarding our own recent tragic news: No traveler, not even fools, shall go astray, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away. To which I say: Amen. Come quickly, Lord Jesus! Please, come quickly, O Lord. And Jesus ends his message to John saying, "Blessed are those who take no offense at me."

It's a beautiful message, but a cryptic one, one that doesn't exactly answer John's question, except perhaps in this way: John asks if Jesus is the one he's been expecting, and Jesus says, "Look around. Can you see the joy? Or do you take offense?" Let us take that answer, then, and apply to our news this week. When we read these stories of horrible and senseless, meaningless violence, can we see any joy? Can we see the lame ones leaping and the mute ones singing? And you know, forget lions and lambs lying down together, right now I'll be happy with parents who do not hurt their children any more. Can we see it? For the little ones who died, to quote from the funeral service I use, "All sorrow and sickness have ended, and death itself has passed." And now they are safe in God's tender care. It doesn't make up for their deaths, but they're safe now. And CPS has saved so many other children. They can't save all of them, but think of all the children that have been saved: Sam, and Ernie, and Joey. And our other dear ones in this church family, Brynner and Brayden, Carson, Dylan and Aiden, Dallas – they are all safe. And as the Christimas trees go up, and the lights go on, and the presents begin to make a colorful pile, the eyes of these dear ones are filled with joy, and they leap and dance and sing. And whose cancer is in remission? And who welcomed their son back home from Iraq? And who has gotten married, and who has had a baby? There is so much joy. Let us not take offense at their happiness!

If we are waiting for a God who will fix everything for us, if we are waiting for a God who will rescue us from all the bad things in this life, then we will keep on waiting. But if we are waiting for a God who saves us, a God who brings joy even at the darkest times, if we are waiting for a God who restores our souls and wipes away our tears, and brings good news to those who are poor and in desperate want of it – then let us not take offense. The psalmist says, "Our God is coming, and will not keep silent." But God is not coming to shout a word of condemnation, but a word of peace and hope and joy.

This I believe from the bottom of my heart. I know that even when the TV news is bad, God's news is always good. And I have come to believe more and more every day, that the church is desperately needed to be counter-cultural. To bear witness to that good news.

Peace on Earth
Isaiah 11:1-10; Matthew 3:1-12

9 December 2007

Our theme for this second Sunday of advent is "peace," and as I've been reflecting on what I wanted to say, I kept hearing that word "peace" a lot, and it was coming from my car radio. I have already confessed to you last year that after Thanksgiving, I keep my radio tuned to 101.9, the station that plays all Christmas music, all the time. Normally I keep my radio turned to 89.1, NPR, where the word "peace" doesn't come up nearly so often as the word "war," along with a host of other negative words. Somehow the contrast between the two seems even stronger to me this year. For some reason I noticed it a lot more: the fact that in our modern, cynical world, the Christmas station sings unashamedly about peace, about love, and pumpkin pie and family and home. It's so doggone wholesome! Sure, during the rest of the year you have the religious stations, but 101.9 is secular. Yet here for this one month we get no songs about sex, booze or gangsta rap. Even the sultry Eartha Kitt in the materialistic "Santa Baby" sings, "Think of all the fellas that I haven't kissed!" That's about as racy as it gets. Instead, the longing here is about home and family. "And the prettiest sight you'll see is the holly that will be on your own front door."

It's so odd, if you think about it. I wonder if all these pop stars singing carols really mean it. Do they consider themselves to be Christians, or is this just a Christmas cash-in for them? And yet, regardless of their motives, we get a month's worth of peace on earth and good will toward all – sometimes even where we don't expect to find it! I thought I knew the song "Here Comes Santa Claus," but did you know there's a line that goes, "he doesn't care if you're rich or poor, he loves you just the same. Santa knows we're all God's children, that makes everything right. So jump in bed and cover your head, 'cause Santa Claus comes tonight!" We could stand to hear that more often. And if Eartha Kitt, God bless her, represents Christmas at its most materialistic, we also have the song, "My Grown-up Christmas List," and I won't sing it because it makes me cry. "No more lives torn apart, and wars would never start, and time would heal all hearts. And everyone would have a friend, and right would always win, and love would never end. This is my grown-up Christmas list."

Maybe it's good to hear it from pop singers. It reminds us of how basic and universal these hopes are. In the midst of endless versions of "Winter Wonderland" and "White Christmas" – both songs that seem sorely out of place in San Antonio – suddenly no less a colorful personality than David Bowie interrupts Bing Crosby's "Little Drummer Boy" to sing, "Peace on earth, can it be? Years from now, perhaps we'll see. See the day of glory. See the day when men of good will live in peace, live in peace again." He goes on to say how this might be accomplished. "Every child must be made aware, every child must be made to care, care enough for his fellow men to give all the love that he can." A beautiful descant, and our hearts can't help but echo Amen in response. But then a commercial cuts in, and I tune the radio back to NPR, and I wonder: can peace really be that easy to achieve? What about those of evil will?

John the Baptist has a thing or two to say about those of evil will. Last week I talked about how we anticipate God's coming in different ways during advent, and here is another one: the beginning of Jesus' ministry, as heralded by John the Baptist, the one who prepared the way of the Lord. His harsh words to the Pharisees and Sadducees grate on our ears compared to the sweet songs of 101.9. We don't know what kind of Baptist John was, but he sure sounds like the southern variety here with his talk about the wrath to come and the unquenchable fire. A hellfire and brimstone preacher if there ever was one! He doesn't preach peace on earth, but "Repent or burn!" "Even now," he warns," the axe is lying at the root; every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire." That's what happens to those of evil will. That's what we all believe, isn't it? Peace, but only for those of good will, those with whom God is pleased. The rest will be tossed into the fire! Judgment. It is so hard for us to escape that image of God, especially when we hear it echoed here so loudly. But this is John speaking. It is not Jesus.

Our passage in Isaiah also speaks of a tree – one that has also been cut down. In fact, if you read the last few verses of the previous chapter leading up to this, it seems that God has been doing some clearcutting: "Behold, the Lord of hosts will lop the boughs with terrifying power; the great in height will be hewn down, and the lofty will be brought low. God will cut down the thickets of the forest with an axe, and Lebanon with its majestic trees shall fall." Even the Bible can't resist that image of a terrible and vengeful God.

But then, in the midst of this scene of destruction, lo, there shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of its roots. And the Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him," and of course later Christians will see this passage as speaking about Jesus. We get a description of his wisdom and understanding, and then wait for it because here comes the fiery part: "and he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked." So shall it be to those of evil will, yes?

And yet – what does this passage mean? Does Jesus have one lethal case of halitosis? How do you kill someone with your words? We all know the old nursery rhyme: sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me. So how does Jesus kill the wicked with the breath of his lips? It seems he does it by talking. How do you destroy enemies by talking? What is the word Jesus uses above all? What is the word with which he greets the disciples when he appears to them in the resurrection? Peace. Peace be with you. The words he spoke to his murders on the cross: Forgive them, for they don't know what they're doing.

When the angel appears to Mary to tell her of God's plans, he says, "Do not be afraid." When the angel appears to Joseph to tell him what to do about Mary, he says, "Do not be afraid." When the angel appears to the shepherds to tell them what has happened in Bethlehem, what does he say? "Do not be afraid." Peace. Peace. Peace.

This is the rod with which Jesus strikes the earth. This is the word with which Jesus slays the wicked. Peace. Not as the world gives, but my peace I give to you. The peace that passes understanding. The perfect love that casts out fear. Jesus is the reason for the season, and the reason for Jesus? Is peace. Not for those of good will, because they already have it. Those who are well have no need of a physician, but rather those who are sick. Peace for those of evil will, for by this word they are destroyed and turned into something new, into trees that bear good fruit. "Peace on Earth. Can it be? Can it be?"

Waiting with Hope
Isaiah 2:1-5; Matthew 24:36-44

2 December 2007

If last week's text seemed strange for Christ the King Sunday, surely this text seems even stranger for the start of advent. Which advent are we talking about, anyway? The one with the little baby in Bethlehem? Or is the Second Coming? Well, if our text is anything to go by, it's both. We remember Jesus' coming in the past even as we anticipate his return in the future.

Now, we in the UCC don't as a whole believe in the rapture. In fact, I'd never even heard about it until I was in college. When my friends in Intervarsity Christian Fellowship told me about it, I thought, "You have got to be joking!" It seemed to me like the most absurd contortion of theology I'd ever heard of – albeit beautiful in its own way. I was impressed by how these supposed biblical literalists were able to construct a totally non-biblical belief by taking half a verse here, an obscure vision there, and putting it all together into a blueprint that counts down to the minute when all this apocalyptic stuff is going to take place. Funny, though. They call themselves biblical literalists, yet the ignore that part of our text today which says the angels don't know that hour, nor even the Son of Man. So Jesus doesn't know, but this modern-day rapturists do? The mind boggles.

And yet, for all that I don't believe this doctrine for one minute, I have to confess that a text like today's, with these people being whisked away while at their labors, is disturbing. It does seem to lend credence to this whole rapture thing, and I cringe a bit and want to ignore this text. It just goes to show you how that rapture thought has managed to penetrate even my brain.

Because here's the thing: this text isn't about rapture at all! I feel like a doofus, but one of the commentaries I read this week points out that we're reading it all wrong. First of all let's start with what seems to be obvious: the rapturist point of view. Two people are laboring side by side and one is taken up while the other is left. The Christian is the one taken up in the rapture, while the other one gets a series of apocalyptic books named after them, "Left Behind." Seems pretty straightforward. Except that no where in the text does it tell us which of these two people is the Christian.

My commentator pointed out, however, that there's a significant clue. Jesus starts this whole thing off with, "As it was in the time of Noah." They were eating and drinking and making merry, and the flood came and swept them all away. The flood, we might say, took them away. And who in the end is the one left standing, the one "left behind"? Noah and his family. The ones taken were taken by destruction. The ones left were saved by God. That sheds a whole different light on this story, doesn't it?

So what then does this text mean? Is there going to be another flood? Or perhaps this time a fiery Armageddon? Well, I do not believe that God punishes people in that way, and I base that on the Bible itself, as in that Noah story. Because after the flood, God repents and says, "Never again will I send destruction on the earth." So if God is not sending destruction on those who are taken away, then who is?

Well, think of the story of Jesus' own crucifixion as we heard it last week. The authorities arrest him, and soon everyone is swept up in this mob mentality: the Temple priests and the Roman governor, the people on the street, and even the disciples themselves. They are caught up in this frenzy of violence. The destruction that follows is of their own making, whether they participate in the crucifixion or the run away and hide from it. And who do we find is left behind? Who are the only ones who don't get caught up in all this? Mary Magdalene and the women. They stay by the cross until the end. They go to the tomb in order to anoint Jesus' body.

But the ones who are caught up and taken away, they aren't just evil. I daresay most of those people would not have considered themselves to be evil. Only a few people actively plotted Jesus' death. The rest got caught up in it because of their fascination with violence. Either they were bystanders who love a good bloodletting, the way we all rubberneck at traffic accidents, or they were afraid like the disciples that they might get caught up in the violence as well, that Jesus' fate might end up being their own. So once again we ask: why were the women not taken in the same way? I think the answer is that they weren't afraid. Oh, I'm sure they were a bit scared, but they loved Jesus more than they feared the violence. Their love enabled them to overcome their fear. The ones who were left were the ones who lived not by fear, but by love.

So look again at our passage today: people are carrying on in the usual way, but one will be taken and one will be left. When the day of destruction comes – a day of humanity's own making – some people will get caught up the violence and be swept away. Those people are the ones who live by fear. But some will not get caught up in it. They'll be able to continue their ordinary lives and not drown in the flood of violence because they live by love. I can't help but look at the world around us, a world full of violence, but above all with that threat of terrorism. Oh, terrorism is real all right, but think of how it has come to dominate our lives ever since Sept. 11. When you go to the airport, the sign says "Today's terror alert level is orange." Here's the thing, though. It will never go down to green. So how do we respond? Do we live in fear? Do we look with suspicion on anyone who looks Arab? Do we seek to build walls along our borders to keep "those people" out? Do we get caught up in the frenzy of fear and terror? Or do we keep out of all that floodwater? Do we hold steadfastly to love? Do we reach out to our neighbors, to strangers, even to our enemies, knowing that the only way, the ONLY WAY that terror alert level will ever go down to green, is when we reach out to one another as friends and not as enemies?

It sounds pie-in-the-sky, even Pollyannaish. This kind of simple faith is naïve in such a day and age, surely. Indeed, proponents of the rapture and Armageddon call this gentle Jesus a wimp. But as we saw last week, Jesus ain't no wimp. He has power, all right. Awesome power. But he uses it to forgive, not to condemn, to save, not to destroy. You want to talk biblical literalism? Jesus is called a lamb, not a lion. He says to love your enemies, not to smite them.

This is all well and good, but what does it have to do with advent? As I said at the beginning, this season is as much about that second coming as it is about remembering the first one. The question for us, then, is this: when Jesus comes, what is it like? What will happen? Rapturists say that when Jesus comes, he will smite all his enemies. All the godless heathens will be destroyed, as in the days of Noah, they would say, and the good guys will be taken up into heaven as Noah was taken into the ark. But remember: Noah didn't stay in the ark. He came back to earth, to this earth, a world that was full of hope. Our passage from Isaiah has a different vision from that of the rapturists. "In the days to come, the Lord's house will be higher than the hills. All the nations shall stream to it and say, "God will teach us the holy way." God shall judge between the nations – and the seminary professor who taught at our clergy seminar told us that a more accurate translation would be: "God shall establish justice." Indeed, lest we think God's justice means someone is in for a smiting, what do we find here? "They shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore." The terror alert level will be reduced to green.

Friends, God's coming is not an occasion for fear. It is an occasion for hope. Rapturists might say they live in hope: in hope of hitching a right on that escalator to heaven before the bad stuff breaks out. But I've known many a recovering fundamentalist, and I've seen them struggle with their fear that they are not good enough, their terror that God is going to punish them. Rapturists may look confident on the outside, with their bumperstickers reading, "In case of rapture, this car will be unoccupied," but I guarantee you, they are really living in fear. They are already caught up in the violence they say is going to come, and it’s a violence of their own making. Their attitude is one of despair that the world is going to hell, and they pray desperately not to go along with it.

But Jesus preached a gospel of hope, not of despair. And it's no wimpy hope, either. It is a hope so steadfast that it is able to withstand the floodtide of fear. It is a hope so powerful that is able to make friends of enemies. It is a hope so profound that it alone in all the world is capable of reducing the terror alert level to green. These are not just idle words, not just a pretty dream offered in Isaiah that no one expects ever to be fulfilled. This is real. So as we begin this advent season, let us reflect on what it is we fear, and what it is we hope for. Let us search within ourselves for that hope which God has given us, a hope which will enable us to transcend our fear and withstand the tide of human violence.

What Kind of King Is This?
Luke 23:33-43

Christ the King Sunday
25 November 2007

Today is the last day of the year. Did you know that? That is, it's the last Sunday of the Christian year. Advent, starting next Sunday, is the beginning of the Christian calendar. We go through Advent, Christmas and Epiphany, telling stories of Jesus' birth and childhood. The few weeks before Lent usually cover stories about the calling of the disciples, or Jesus' early ministry. Then we're into Lent, Palm Sunday and Easter. The Easter season tells stories of the early church from the book of Acts. Then we have Pentecost, and what is anti-climactically called "ordinary season," telling stories of Jesus' ministry. And the year winds up on "Christ the King" Sunday. It's a triumphal day, the climax of the whole year, Christ as King. Let's have a big round of the Hallelujah Chorus!

But the truth is, it's not a very big deal in Protestant circles. How many of you even knew this was a special Sunday with its own name? We're not too much into kings these days, anyway. Oh, some people are. They're all about a mighty warrior King Jesus who rides around on his white horse with a sword in his hand, slaying his enemies and conquering the world – sounding more like Saddam Hussein than Jesus meek and mild. I daresay most of us in this church don't have that image of Jesus. Our Christ the King is a monarch more like Queen Elizabeth II. Genteel, well-coiffed, very mannerly, whose portrait appears on the wall but otherwise doesn't have much to do with our everyday life. We're just not into royalty.

In October I attended a seminar for clergy in our conference, where we studied the assigned Bible passages for advent. We therefore did not discuss this particular passage, but we did talk about another one filled with royal imagery for Jesus, and one of the other ministers objected to this language. She pointed out the problem, which is that Christians throughout history have had an unfortunate tendency to identify their earthly king with King Jesus, and to endow that earthly ruler with all the rights and powers and moral authority we otherwise reserve for God. This, of course, has led to all kinds of abuses in Jesus' name. And she had a point. You couldn't really argue with her. Except I did! For me, calling Jesus King means that no earthly power ever has the right to that title and degree of loyalty, whether a king or a president – or even a church leader. Jesus to me means the end of all earthly kings. So I have a point, too. Still, it's not a title that sits easily with us, especially not Americans who have only the faintest notion what a king is, anyway.

So the concept of Christ the King is a difficult one for us to grasp. It contains an inherent, powerful contradiction, but we Christians are so used to hearing that name that we don't really see the tension. And that's where our Bible passage for today comes in. I don't know if the lectionary committee has ever read Rene Girard, but those of you who are taking my class will recognize the significance of this passage falling on "Christ the King" Sunday! There are certainly many triumphalist, Ride On King Jesus passages that could be read on this day. But instead the text is about the crucifixion, a passage we usually hear on Maundy Thursday or Good Friday, services that most Christians don't attend and so never hear. Why in the world would the lectionary committee assign this text for such a day? The climax of the Christian calendar, and we hear about Jesus' death? Rather morbid, isn't it? A nice, cheery way to lead us into Advent! Ah, but the "king" bit is in there, almost in passing. It's on the sign that is nailed above Jesus on the cross, "This is the King of the Jews." A sign of mockery, not homage. But that's the entire point. This is our king: a naked man hanging on a cross. This is his triumph: the moment of his execution.

We do know this story, but to hear it in such a context gives it a different meaning, doesn't it? What happens here? First of all, he is taken to a place morbidly called "the Skull," Golgatha, and he is crucified there with two criminals. The people watching mock him. "If you are the King of the Jews, God's chosen one, then save yourself!" they shout at him. They are thinking in worldly terms, of what an earthly king would do. No earthly monarch would subject themselves to such degradation, to be executed like a criminal among criminals. Any earthly monarch would use their power to save themselves. It's what each of us would do, isn't it, whether we are monarchs or not? We use our power to save ourselves. It makes sense. So if Jesus does not save himself, then he must have no power. Right?

But Jesus does save someone. One of the criminals scolds the mockers, saying, "This man has done nothing wrong." And Jesus says to him, "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise." He saved a criminal, someone who by his own admission was being justly condemned and executed for his wrongdoing. Jesus didn't save an innocent man; he saved a guilty one.

And that's not the only person he saved. As the people mock him, as the guards cast lots for his clothing, Jesus says, "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing." That verse is vitally important to my own understanding of Jesus, yet only Luke records that saying. If you recall, this summer we read through the Gospel of Luke, particularly some of the more challenging parables and teachings, and if you recall, a common thread in all of them was forgiveness. Forgiveness for those who seem least deserving of it. An extravagant forgiveness that does not merely balance the scales but tips them far into the side of grace. A father's forgiveness for his wastrel son. A rich man's forgiveness for his dishonest manager. Forgiveness for a leperous Samaritan. Oh, forgiveness is important in all the gospels, but it is front and center for Luke. And on the cross Luke shows the most extravagant, incomprehensible, most undeserved forgiveness of all: Jesus forgives his own murderers. That's the real power in this scene. This is our King.

But it's only half the story. The title "king," as I said earlier, is a problematic one for us today. In addition to the problems I already mentioned, it's archaic. There are very few kings today who hold any real power. The aforementioned Queen Elizabeth II, does so little that Brits debate whether it's even worth having a monarch any more. So Christians sometimes want to update the language – but what other title can we use? Jesus the President? Jesus the Prime Minister? Jesus the Speaker of the House? All of this positions are elected, but no one elects Jesus. The difference is important. Consider, for example, the people President Bush presides over. We might be called citizens. We might be called the constituency. But one thing we definitely are not: we are not Bush's subjects.

A monarch, however, rules over subjects. Whereas the people tell a president what to do, monarchs tell the people what to do. It may be an archaic form of government, but it is one that is important for us as Christians. We no longer recognize any earthly kingdom, but we do recognize and submit to a heavenly kingdom, to the reign and rule of Christ our King. Only Christ has the right to that title, because any earthly ruler will inevitably abuse their power. But Christ never abuses power. Rather, he teaches us by example how to properly use our power. And we as his subjects have an obligation to follow that example. We have already heard in our gospel selection today how Jesus uses his power: not to save himself, but to save others. Not to condemn, but to forgive. Jesus as a King is unlike any earthly king or queen who has ever lived, for he rules through service. He told us in the gospels that other masters lord it over their servants or subjects, but under Jesus' kingship, whoever would be lord of all must be the servant of all.

My Redeemer Lives
Job 19:23-27

11 November 2007

I have to confess that I take a perverse delight in being a single, unwed mother. That is technically what I am! Of course, I'm not what people think of when they think of single, unwed mothers. They don't expect a single, unwed mother to be a minister, for one thing, nor do they expect them to have become mothers by adopting children through foster care – although I might point out that on the day I adopted Sam, many of the people who adopted that day were single. I actually have reservations about telling people how I adopted Sam because then I inevitably get praised for being so noble and saintly to take on such a child, even though I assure you I decided to adopt for entirely selfish reasons. I'm no saint.

So while I am not what comes to mind when people think of single, unwed mothers, nevertheless, when people talk about single, unwed mothers, and they always do so in negative terms, I always think, "They're talking about me." You hear it all the time. You hear it all the time. "The problem with today's kids is that so many of them are raised by single, working mothers." That would be me. "The problem today is that these kids don't have a man in the home." That would be me. "These black boys today go into gangs and drugs because their being raised by single, unwed mothers." That, friends, would be me. Oh, I know I'm not who they have in mind, but still: that would be me.

I was reading a parenting book recently, and such books always like to use anecdotal stories to illustrate their points. Sometimes the negative examples were about married couples, and sometimes married people appeared in the positive ones. But I swear that whenever a single mother appeared in the anecdote, it was negative. Believe me, I noticed. And when you are a single, unwed mother, and you constantly hear all around you stories about how people like you are the reason why kids are so messed up today and society is going to pot – maybe you don't start believing it, but you do start feeling a bit guilty and definitely ashamed.

There are many other examples of how people start feeling guilty or ashamed because society passes judgment on them because of their difficulties or misfortune. Smokers who develop lung cancer sometimes resist receiving treatment, because they fell that they deserve what happened to them. I once attended a panel discussion on AIDS, and a man on the panel who had the disease himself said that people often asked him how he got it, and he knew they asked him so they could decide whether or not he deserved it. With the financial hard times we're entering, people who lose their jobs or find they can no longer pay their bills, may feel it's the result of something they did wrong. And with all the talk about the nation's obesity problem, those of us who tip the wrong side of the scales invariably feel guilty and ashamed of our own bodies.

It's even worse because there's a grain of truth in society's judgment. How do people get overweight, after all? We all know the potential consequences of smoking and other risky behaviors. And yet does that mean the person with lung cancer or AIDS does not deserve sympathy? Does that mean we should scorn those who are overweight? And you know, maybe those single, unwed mothers have enough hardship to deal with without folks blaming them for the downfall of society.

But it seems to be human nature to blame folks for their own misfortune. Job of all people knew that. If you recall the story, all his children died, his house was destroyed in a storm, and he developed horrible boils all over his body. It's a story that arouses sympathy, but it also causes people to make moral assessments. When so many bad things happened to Job, could it be that he somehow deserved it? To us now, reading this story thousands of years after it appeared, we might be a big smug and say, "We wouldn't pass such judgment on the poor fellow." Yet when we hear of colossal disasters today, don't we sometimes look for "meaning" in it? That is, we look for a sign of the justice of the universe, of God. For we want to believe that God rewards the good and punishes the evil. So when we see what looks like a lot of punishment going on, we start wondering who is to blame.

So it happened with Job. A series of tragedies befell him, and his friends, who ought to have been sympathetic, gathered around him and tried to comfort him by saying, "Reflect on your sins. You must have done something to deserve this. Have patience and be strong, for God gives us these trials to test us. The majority of the book of Job is taken up with speeches by his friends, all saying in various ways that there was a reason for his misfortune. And while most of the time Job resists them, clinging to his faith in his own innocence, nevertheless there are times when he starts to wonder if they might be right. He starts to believe that he deserves it, and that God may indeed be punishing him.

Our passage today, though, is from one of those moments when he rallies. Those of you who are fans of Handel's "Messiah" may recognize some of these verses as one of the arias. Handel used a more archaic translation, however, with the powerful words, "I know that my Redeemer liveth, and he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth. And though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God." These verses are usually interpreted, especially by Christians, as referring to the resurrection. After we die, even though the worm crawl in and the worm crawl out, we will be resurrected and will see God.

Well, I can certainly see where people come up with that interpretation, but that's not really what Job is talking about here. Job's friends have been haranguing him for half the book already, and at the beginning of this chapter, he snaps. "How long will you torment me," he cries – not to God, but to his friends. "How long will you break me in pieces with your words? Ten times you have cast reproach upon me; are you not ashamed to wrong me?" He goes on to describe how his acquaintances have abandoned him, and his own relatives have turned away from him. His servants ignore him, his wife is repulsed by him, his brothers find him loathsome, intimate friends abhor him, and he says, "Even young children despise me; when I rise, they talk against me."

And now he says those famous words, "Oh, that my words were written, that with an iron pen they were engraved on rock. For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh shall say I see God, whom I shall see on my side." In other words, even if everyone abandoned him, all who should have been loyal cursed him, even if it takes forever for Job to vindicated, he knows that day will come. That word, "redeemer," can be translated many ways, and we as Christians have heard it so many times we almost lose sight of its meaning. The redeemer is the defender, the one who answers everyone's argument against Job, the one who in the end will vindicate Job against everyone who thought he had done something to deserve his misfortune, who redeems him from the guilty verdict that everyone had delivered against him.

Job is a very complex book, and it wrestles with itself in trying to figure out what it all means: why do bad things happen to good people? But the message throughout, voiced by Job himself in his angry cries for justice, and finally by God in the end, is that our misfortunes are not brought on by God. We do not deserve the evil that befalls us. This is not God's punishment.

So if a smoker gets lung cancer, if a drug user gets AIDS, if a single unwed mother has to get a job to support her family – that is not God's punishment. As I was reflecting on this for the sermon, I wondered whether this meant I'm soft on people's responsibility. Am I saying, "Puff away, because lung cancer isn't God's punishment"? Hardly! Cancer is its own burden, after all. But I am saying that people, we, you and I, should not pass our own moral judgments on other people's misfortunes. Job's friends were his friends, not his enemies. They thought they were helping him, even consoling him, in their own way. But they just couldn't resist that need to find a moral lesson in Job's afflictions. They couldn't help feeling a bit smug to see him in such misery on his ash heap.

Society, we, you and I, we tend to join in with Job's accusers. We mean well, or so we say, but our self-righteous judgment only wears people down. It destroys them. As Job said, we break people apart with our words. We think we're doing it in God's name. After all, God teaches us right from wrong, right? God tells us the way we should live. But Jesus came to save sinners, not to condemn them. And if Jesus doesn't condemn, then who in the world do we think we are to do it?

In the end, no one deserves such suffering, and God does not send it upon anyone. God is our redeemer, our defender, not our accuser or persecutor. Even if it takes forever, yet in our flesh shall we see God, and we will see God on our side.

28 October 2007

As I was reading different commentaries about our gospel reading for the day, one person observed that in some ways this story is inappropriate for us today. Self-righteous piety is not a sin that many of us commit. Oh, we may think we have a better understanding of Christianity than some others do, but we don’t generally go around thinking ourselves as being grand for how often we go to church, or how large our tithe is. This commentator suggested that we ought to translate this parable into terms that fit our modern condition, such as economics. The Pharisee in the parable, he said, is like the free-market capitalist, the self-made man who is successful and prays thanks that God has not made him like those welfare moms or high school drop-outs or lazy workers who have made nothing of themselves. In other words, the Pharisee is the one who benefits from the current economic order, who thinks he got himself where he is and has everything he needs, whereas the tax collector is like the person who is disadvantaged by the economic order – the welfare mom, the working poor – who knows that he can’t make it in the system, and who prays for mercy.

I thought that was a very interesting interpretation, although I’m still not sure how much it would really fit us. We in this church tend to be bleeding-heart liberals, and I doubt any of us look down on so-called “welfare moms.” But it’s interesting that this commentator saw economic self-righteousness and not pious self-righteousness as the central sin of our modern society.

Now the problem with any parable is that we want to identify with the one that Jesus favors. Jesus favors the outcast, and so we want to identify with the tax collector. But that is a bit self-righteous. We need to be more honest and admit that we are more like the Pharisee. We need to let ourselves be challenged by the lesson, and not just shored up in some self-aggrandizing perception that we are the favored outcasts of Jesus. Yet if we don’t suffer from the pious self-righteousness of the parable, and we don’t suffer from economic arrogance as in the commentator’s interpretation, how then are we like the Pharisee?

The Pharisee’s problem is that he thinks he got himself where he is. While he pays lip service to thanking God for not making him like the wretched tax collector, nevertheless his prayer drips with self-satisfied confidence. He’s praying to God, but really he’s praying about his success and privilege. He’s a self-made man. He sees himself as self-sufficient, and in that I suspect we are like him. For while we in this church recognize some of the inherent injustices in our current economic system, I suspect we nevertheless buy into the myth of self-sufficiency. In our heart of hearts, we do believe we are self-made. We take pride in our accomplishments, and chief among our accomplishments, chief of the goods of our society, is the ability to provide for ourselves and our family. Sure, we don’t look down on welfare recipients (supposedly), but don’t we take pride in our ability to pay our own bills? Don’t we see independence as one of the most important marks of maturity? Think of those milestones: earning your first paycheck, buying your first car, buying a home, achieving something. We don’t want to receive handouts, whether from the government, or from family or friends. If any of us has ever had to borrow money from our parents, do we need feel a certain shame in that? Don’t we seek to pay that loan off as quickly as we can? Oh, we can talk about how the church is a community and so on, but we take pride in self-sufficiency, in the belief that we do not have to depend on any one else for anything.

One of the questions I really wrestle with as a minister is the challenge posed by my friends who are atheist or agnostic. They seem to get along just fine without God, and I continually ask myself how to talk to them about God – about how perhaps they might need God. For as far as they are concerned, they don’t need God. They look to science to explain how the world works. They look to humanist principles for their ethics. They look to friends and family for love. How, then, do they need God? They are apparently self-sufficient. And if they don’t need God, perhaps I don’t need God either.

And let’s be honest with ourselves. Don’t we sometimes, with our image of ourselves as self-made and self-sufficient – don’t we sometimes see God as one more optional luxury in life? Something that is good to have, like a wide screen TV or remodeled kitchen, but as something that isn’t essential? How often do we think of church in terms of what we get out of it? There is frequently a feeling that we ought to get some personal benefit out of church, that we go to get a high from God, or to hear some beneficial message. And let’s be honest: church doesn’t always deliver, does it? Sometimes you go and you’re bored. Sometimes you go and the sermon is lame, or the hymns or ho-hum. So what’s the harm in skipping church every now and again? Believe me, I’m not trying to make this into the church truant officer sermon! But think about how we view the purpose of going to church. After a long week, and a busy weekend, and the weather is lovely, and you’re just too comfortable on the couch, or you really wanted to catch that movie, and why not just skip church this week? After all, we don’t need it. We can experience God on our own. And if we don’t experience God on our own, well really, aren’t we doing pretty well for ourselves? Religion: something that it’s nice to have, but it’s not really essential. Because we make ourselves. We provide for ourselves, and we don’t rely on anything or anyone else for our well-being. Not even God. Maybe, maybe we can recognize a little bit of that Pharisee in ourselves.

But let’s go back to the tax collector. Now, he was an outcast yes, but he was not poor. The way the tax system in those days worked was that the government decreed that a certain amount of money needed to be collected from the provinces, and it was up to the tax collectors to literally go around and collect the taxes from people. The tax collectors were expected to collect a little bit extra in order to earn their own living. But the extra amount they collected varied, and I’m not sure whether there was any specific regulation about how much extra they were allowed to collect. So here’s this fellow, doing well for himself financially, but no one likes him or trusts him. The people he collects from know he skims off the top, and they resent him living off of their hard-earned money. The government knows he skims some off, and wonders if he’s living so large, maybe the government can raise the taxes a bit and cut into this guy’s profit margin. From a Jewish perspective, he was considered unclean because he handled worldly money. From a nationalist perspective, he was resented for working for The Man. So here’s this fellow, self-made, well-off, but with no place in society, no friends, no community where he belongs. He knows how lonely that self-sufficiency is, he knows how hollow his prosperity is. So he goes to the Temple, and in a quiet corner prays, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

And that, my friends, is why I believe we go to church. That is the role God plays in our lives. It’s not that we get to be more pious. It’s not that we go to feel good religious feelings. It’s not that we go to be intellectually stimulated by profound thoughts. We go because we are in need of mercy. Yet mercy is the antithesis of self-sufficiency. Mercy is a gift. You cannot earn it. By definition we depend on the kindness of others for mercy. And that is threatening, because we pride ourselves on being self-made, on not being dependent on others. In our lives we are the Pharisee, proud of our self-sufficiency, but in our heart of hearts we know we are the tax collector in need of mercy.

I mentioned earlier some of the great accomplishments we achieve in our lives, but I suspect that those are not the real moments that stand out in our lives. Rather, the times that stand out were the times of mercy, that we did nothing to earn. I once led a men’s fellowship meeting, and the topic of discussion was when we had really experienced God in our lives. And they started out with the usual, excuse me, hallmark drivel about “I experience God in nature.” But then one man talked about the birth of his children. You could feel a shiver throughout the entire room, and the tenor of the discussion completely changed. The birth of a child may seem on the surface to be a story of self-sufficiency. You get married and make a baby – or even adopt one. Science tells us the mechanics of how that baby came about, there’s nothing supernatural about it at all. Having a baby can even seem to be an accomplishment. But tell me the truth: when you first held your baby in your arms, you were scared to death! You hold this helpless human being and think, “What in the world have I gotten myself into?” Holding that baby you are so keenly aware of how you are not qualified for this job. You tremble at the infinite number of ways you can screw it up. Oh, science will tell you how that baby came to be in your hands, but all you can think about is, “This is a miracle.” Bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh, this baby came from me but is its own being. I have to raise and care for this child but she will never be mine to own. You didn’t earn it and you sure don’t deserve it, but there it is: that is mercy.

Or think of marriage. This also seems to be something we do for ourselves: we find our partner, we make the decision, we plan the wedding, we pick out the hors d’oeuvres for the reception. But on that day when you’re standing there looking at your partner, you’re terrified. How will this work out? Will this really last a lifetime? Who can say what will happen? I’m not ready for this! It’ll be a sheer miracle if this works out. Yet despite all those very realistic fears, you go ahead. And if it does all work out, it is indeed only by a miracle. You didn’t earn it and you sure don’t deserve it, but there it is. That is mercy.

Or think of grief for someone who has died. We’ve read the self-help books, we know about the stage of grief. We tell ourselves that we need to take the time to grieve, even as we are really thinking that it’s time to get over it and get on with our lives. Because we can’t let grief destroy us. We’re self-made! We don’t want our neighbors to show up with a casserole, because it reminds us of the hole in our lives. We don’t want to cry, because it reminds us of how weak we are. And when people ask us how we are, we smile and say, “Fine.” But then someone insists on bringing that casserole, and when we smile and say, “I’m fine,” they put their hand on our shoulder and say, “I am so sorry for your loss.” And we dissolve into tears, because we aren’t self-sufficient at all. That is mercy.

We go to church because we can put up a good front with our friends and family. We can say we’re all right, we can have many accomplishments, we can look self-sufficient. But God knows our bank statement. God knows our cholesterol level. God knows we get bored by the sermon, God knows we want to wring our boss’s neck, and that we don’t know our next-door neighbor’s first name. God knows all our secret shames and fears, above all our fear that we aren’t self-sufficient at all. God knows how lonely and pathetic and inadequate we feel. But God loves us anyway. We didn’t earn it, we sure don’t deserve it, but there it is. That is mercy.

Praying in the Temple like the tax collector: that is why we go to church. Not because it’s some extra benefit in our lives, but because we need it: grace and love and mercy. That is the lesson of this parable: that the measure we give out will be the measure we receive. Because we have been shown great mercy, we ought in turn to show mercy to others. Because none of us, whether Pharisee or tax collector, will make it on our own. We are not self-made. We are not self-sufficient. We are forgiven and loved. We didn’t earn it, we sure don’t deserve it, but there it is. That is mercy.

Teach Your Children Well
2 Timothy 3:14-4:5

21 October 2007
Children's Sabbath

You may have heard about a new report that came out from the Barna Group, an organization that does research on churches and religion. The report surveyed young people age 16 to 29 about their views of Christianity, and the results were not pretty. Only 16% of non-Christian young adults have a "good impression" of Christianity. When asked how they view Christians, young adults overwhelming said they see them as judgmental, hypocritical, and old-fashioned. What's especially surprising is that church-going young adults had much the same response. There is some good news, both groups saw Christians as having good values and principles, and as being friendly. However, 80-91% of the young adults said that Christians are anti-homosexual, show contempt and hatred toward gays, and have made homosexuality a bigger sin than anything else. One-quarter of the respondents said that Christianity had changed from what it used to be, and that it was not like what Jesus taught.

These are pretty damning statistics, and yet I have to confess, I kind of agree with them. I don’t think our Christianity is like that, but when you consider that the media are more inclined to interview Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell, rather than our own UCC president, John Thomas, you can see where young people would get a very negative image of our religion. Yet the people who conducted the survey said these young people were not only speaking about what they'd seen on TV. They were speaking about things they had experienced directly, from people they knew.

I think it's a good idea for us in the church to consider this study carefully, and to examine ourselves. Even if we don't think we fit the picture that these young adults see, nevertheless we could learn something important about how we need to present ourselves to the public eye. It's important for us to do that kind of self-examination, because hidden underneath all the negative statistics, there's an opportunity here for us, because we find that young people wish Christians really were more like Jesus. They'd like for the church to be an institution that they can respect.

Today is the Children's Sabbath, which was begun by the Children's Defense Fund. The Children's Defense Fund is primarily concerned with issues of education and health, but in my sermon today I want to focus on religious education, spiritual health. Because these things are also important to the well-being of our children, yet parents and grandparents often feel at a loss as to how to nurture their spiritual growth. Especially when a report comes out like the Barna Group, and we become more wary than ever about giving our youngsters a negative view of Christianity.

At my church in Houston, I often dealt with newly married couples or new parents who would say they didn’t want to raise their children to believe that only Christianity was right and all other religions were evil. They wanted their kids to be open-minded, open to new experiences, and they were hesitant to raise their children as Christians. "We want our child to decide for herself what her religion will be; we don't want to impose ours on her." I don't hear that kind of thing as much anymore. I don't know if it's because San Antonio is a different city, or if it's because times have changed. And often those parents were coming out of a very negative upbringing themselves, one in which religion was literally beaten into you, rather than nurtured and nourished.

But I always advised these parents that they will short-change their children if they do not give them a religious grounding. Kids have an innate sense of God and the divine. For that matter, I've known atheist parents who were baffled when their four-year-old started talking about God and angels! That religious sensitivity varies from child to child, of course, but faith is something that comes natural to many children. You don't have to be rigid and doctrinaire in teaching your kids about religion, but quite frankly you're kidding yourselves if you think raising your child without religion will make them open-minded. Here's an analogy. I don't want my child to think that English is the only good language in the world and that all other languages are bad or inferior. So I'm not going to raise my child with any one language. Instead, I'll wait for him to grow up to an age where he can decide for himself what language he will speak.

You see the flaw in the logic here?

You have to teach your child language, or else they will never be able to speak any language at all. Or here is another analogy, and one that is a little closer to religion: citizenship. I don't want my child to think the US is the only decent country, I want him to choose what country he will be a citizen of, so I won't teach him what it means to be an American. But if a child never learns what it means to be a citizen, then they will not be able to choose what country to be a citizen of. It's the same with religion. Grown-ups make the mistake of thinking that religion is about a set of intellectual beliefs that a child is too young to understand, so you ought to wait until they're old enough to form their own opinions. But that is not what religion is. Religion is about a community of faith. It means to be connected to a people that began in the past and continue into the future, a community that has its own stories and history and traditions and rituals. A community that entails certain obligations. We need to teach our children what communion is, and why we collect an offering. We need to teach our children that God cares about people who are hurting or ill or injured, and that's why the church helps them. We need to teach our children that God is with us, that we can still trust God even when we are sad or angry or hurt. Even when someone we love dies. If we do not teach our children these things, what it means to be part of a faith community, then we will stunt their emotional and spiritual growth. Why then, when we care so much about the health and welfare of our kids, would we neglect them in this way?

Our scripture reading today comes from Paul's second letter to Timothy. (For the bible scholars among you, please note that scholars do not believe Paul actually wrote this letter to Timothy. It's not written in his style. It is rather written by an elder to a younger leader in the church. Timothy is, as it were, used as a model. But even though Paul didn't write it, the counsel in this letter is still worth heeding.) Timothy was a young man who grew up in the church and has now become a church leader – perhaps the minister of a congregation, or maybe even something higher like a Presbyter or Bishop. Earlier in the letter, Paul mentions Timothy's grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice. Timothy is in fact a third-generation Christian. He didn't convert to this new faith as his grandmother did. Rather, she passed her faith on to her daughter, who passed it on to her son. In our passage today, Paul reminds Timothy of how "from childhood" he has known the sacred writings, both the Old Testament, as well as the story of Jesus.

Timothy would have learned these stories before he could understand what they meant. But learning them so early meant that these stories took root within his heart. He carried these stories with him as he grew up into youth and then adulthood. Now Paul urges him to be persistent in preaching the gospel. But there is no way Timothy could have done that if he hadn't already been well-grounded in the stories. I think this is what it means in Jeremiah, when God says, "I will make a new covenant; I will put it within them and write it on their hearts. No longer shall they teach one another or say, "Know the Lord," for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest."

This is why the common practice in our faith tradition is to baptize infants. Other traditions prefer to baptize only people who are old enough to understand what they're getting themselves into, and I can certainly understand the logic of that. But on the other hand, does God only start loving us when we are old enough to know what that means? Does the gospel only go to work in us when we are old enough to say yes to it? Is the church, in short, only for grown-ups? Hardly! This is why I hate it when people say the children are our future. They're here now! They are already a part of the church! The gospel is just as true for them as it is for any of us old-timers. When we baptize a child – when any of us were baptized as children – we don't take that decision away from them. Rather, we make a promise to them even before they can understand it. We make a promise to love them as God does, to teach them of God's love, to raise them to live as God wants them to live. The congregation, too, makes this same promise, because it really does take a village – or a church – to raise a child. All of us share this task, not only parents.

And above all, we have to teach children by our own example, If we want them to grow up to be good Christians, then we have to live as bad Christians. This gets back to that Barna report I mentioned in the beginning. These young people know what Jesus is about, and they see that the church has failed to live up to that calling. How did they get this impression? From their experiences with real Christians that they've known. If Christians are behaving badly, especially in the name of their religion, then kids notice. They notice, and they will grow up to be adults who are soured on Christianity. And who can blame them? If Timothy's grandmother and mother had been judgmental, self-righteous people, then Timothy might not have stayed within the church at all. He might have left in disgust at what being Christian means.

If we don't want our kids to grow up soured on religion like the respondents in the Barna survey, then we need to look carefully at how our words and deeds model our religion to the children around us. What do we want them to inherit? How do we want them to understand the gospel?

An Attitude of Gratitude
Luke 17:11-19

14 October 2007

Finally after a string of tough passages, we come to this story, which one of my bible's happily labels, "Ten healed of leprosy." It's about time! We haven't had a healing in a good while. But of course a healing story is never just a healing story in the gospels, and so it is with this one.

Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem. He'll actually arrive there two chapters from now, beginning his final week of ministry. Our passage today even reminds us in case we've forgotten that fact, "On the way to Jerusalem, he was traveling between Samaria and Galilee." Let's pause for a brief note about Samaria. We're all familiar with the parable of the Good Samaritan, which appears only in Luke's gospel. You may know that Samaritans weren't looked upon with much favor by the rest of the Jews. Samaria was in northern Israel, and when the two kingdoms fell to foreign invaders, many people were carried off into exile, especially anyone connected with royal families or the priesthood. We're familiar with stories of their suffering far from home in the tales of Esther, and Daniel in the lions' den, and so forth. The Samaritans, perhaps because they were in the boondocks, were largely left alone by these foreign invaders, and they were allowed to stay in their homeland and continue with their ways.

You all know how it happens when people leave the old country and try to carry on their traditions and ethnic heritage in a new land. Our Germans here preserve the traditions they brought with them back in the 1850s. The language you speak here is no longer spoken anywhere back in the old country. The old country is now the new Europe, or something, full of American slang and Big Macs. If you went to Germany, you'd probably be surprised to discover how many of the traditions you've kept alive here in Texas have been forgotten in the motherland. In some ways, you're more German than the Germans!

So it was with the Samaritans, and the exiled Jews. For several centuries the exiles preserved their heritage in a foreign land, and when they were allowed to go home, they considered themselves to have held on to the true faith, while the Samaritans had let their culture lapse. For one thing, the temple in Jerusalem had been destroyed in those wars, so the Samaritans built their own temple in northern Israel. To the exiles, this was blasphemy. Hence all of that scorn of the Samaritans that we find among Jews in Jesus' time. As far as they were concerned, the Samaritans had strayed from the true faith.

I apologize for the history lesson there, but it's important to the story. Jesus is passing a village near the bad neighborhood of Samaria, and these ten lepers hail him from afar. You probably also know how due to the highly contagious nature of leprosy, lepers were kept at a distance from healthy people. No wonder, really – who wants to get a disease that makes their flesh rot and fall off? But as if the disease wasn't bad enough, healthy people considered the lepers to be sinners. The disease, they thought, was God's punishment for some sin they had committed. That's why these lepers were standing far off, and cried out for mercy from Jesus, because they didn't think they would be allowed to go near him. We don't know what they meant by mercy, though. Perhaps they wanted him to heal them, or maybe they were hoping for a hand-out, or just a kind word. For someone to treat them like decent human beings would be balm to their souls.

Jesus sees them and tells them to go show themselves to the priests. In that most popular book of the bible, Leviticus, among all the excruciatingly detailed laws, we find that if people who have any kind of skin blemish are healed, then they go show themselves to the priest, who declares them to be physically and spiritually cleansed, and then they can reenter regular society. It's interesting that the text says they were only cleansed as they went to report to the priests. In other words, they still had leprosy when Jesus addressed them. So when they headed out to see the priest, it was an act of faith on their part.

But now comes the twist in the story. One of them, when he sees that he has been healed en route, he turns back. Instead of going to see the priest as Jesus told him, he goes back to Jesus, praising God, and thanks him. And this man was a Samaritan. He, as it were, had been under a double curse. The other nine, once they were healed of their disease, could reenter normal society, could take their places once more, get their old jobs back, be welcomed by society and offered the place of honor at dinner. But the Samaritan, once he was healed of leprosy was still a Samaritan. He would have been scorned even by the other nine lepers who used to beg on the streets with him. No one would offer him the place of honor. This guy doesn't go to the temple priest with the other nine, because that priest being a Jerusalem Jew, would have still thought he was a sinner. No, this guy realizes who the real priest is. He understands who is the one truly sent by God. So he returns to Jesus, thanking him and praising God. It's not that the other nine weren’t grateful. And I'm sure when they reached the temple, they too praised God. But those nine, having been cleansed, returned to the status quo, to a society based on racism and prejudice, a society where people were cast out of society because they were ill. The nine were grateful, all right, grateful to get back to the "in" crowd! But the tenth? The Samaritan? When he was healed, he refused to go back to the way things were. He turned, and entered instead the kingdom of God, where all are welcomed, where there is no racism or prejudice, where people are not judged because they are ill.

This story is about so much more than mere healing. It's less about a miracle cure than it is about a spiritual cleansing, in which the polluting qualities of prejudice and hatred and judgmentalism are washed away, and we enter into a new society in which there is no longer male and female, black and white, Republican and Democrat, gay and straight, citizens and illegal aliens– for we are all one in Christ Jesus. It's a story about being cleansed from the leprosy of the soul, and entering into God's realm of grace.

As I read this story, I was thinking about what it means to give thanks, to be grateful. The opposite would be to be ungrateful. It would mean a sense of entitlement, that whatever you gave me or did for me is something that was owed me, so I don’t need to thank you for it – echoing last week's story about how we don't thank the slaves for doing their job! The opposite of gratitude is a kind of selfishness, an arrogance, a sense that you don't need the other person – and that echoes the tale from several weeks ago about the rich man and Lazarus!

To be thankful, then, to be grateful, means a recognition that someone has given you something that you did not already have, or has done something for you that you could not or now do not have to do yourself. It means acknowledging a kind of interdependence, that we need one another. All the more so when it's God we’re talking about. To be grateful to God means to recognize that we can't get here on our own. That Samaritan leper, not only would he never be healed in body, but he would never have been healed in soul without God – he would never have been welcomed as a blessed brother, a beloved child of God, without Jesus' recognition of him. The other nine weren't grateful to Jesus because they felt that to be healthy and whole was their right. They were eager to leave Jesus behind because he would remind them of their leprosy, when they had been unclean, social rejects. They weren't grateful to have been healed. They were grateful for being the top dogs in society once more. Not quite the same thing, is it?

I was reading an article in "Christian Century" magazine this week about the notion of discipleship. That it's not just about having faith, but about living as disciples, followers, students of Jesus. The lesson set for us in today's story, then, is about gratitude. When the Samaritan returned to Jesus, he said, "Were not ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?" This foreigner, this Samaritan, was singled out by Jesus because of his attitude of gratitude. What then might it mean for us to cultivate an attitude of gratitude?

It starts simply enough with a lesson that Miss Manners has been trying to pound into people's heads for decades: always say thank you. How often in daily lives do we take things for granted? If the spouse fixes coffee for us, do we say thank you? Do we thank the person who holds the door open for us? What about the person who bags our groceries? The person at work who brought the donuts? What if, as a matter of our discipleship, we made the effort to look someone in the eye and say "thank you" five times a day? I'd say ten times, but if you're like me, you'd lose count with such a large number. If we were conscious about saying "thank you" five times a day, I'm sure we would actually say it more times than that!

Such a practice acknowledges our interdependence with one another, but what about our dependence on God? Jews, for example, have a blessing for everything. All the blessings begin the same way: "Blessed are you, O Lord our God, Creator of the universe," and the second part is the variation, depending on the situation. "Who gives us bread to eat, who gives us the night that we might rest, who guards our path as we drive to work, who gives us friends to warm our hearts." I like that blessing, because it praises God and it gets specific. So what if as a second practice in our discipleship, we made an effort to say a blessing five times every day, to notice five things that God has given us that we would not otherwise have, to acknowledge the ways in which God graces our lives every day?

I don't want to get too proscriptive here, telling you all what to do, but you get the picture. Gratitude takes practice. You can't wait to do it only when you feel like it. As Miss Manners would say, Yes, you have to thank Aunt Mabel for that bright orange sweater she knitted for you even if you hate it – especially if you hate it! We don't always feel grateful. The gift may not be wanted, we may not like the way someone did something for us – but those feelings come out of arrogance, out of selfishness, out of a sense of entitlement to other people's time and effort. And if we think that of one another, what then do we think of God? So let us practice that attitude of gratitude. Let us not only have faith, let us do it. Let us be disciples of Christ.

At the Table
7 October 2007

I've discovered another theme of our unplanned sermon series on the tough neighborhood of Luke's gospel. It's sort of the opposite of prooftexting. Prooftexting is when you lift a story r verse out of the bible and interpret it on its own, without regard to context. Hopefully you've seen over the past few weeks how this approach can lead to problems. Rather, I believe that any one part of the bible is only properly understood with regard to all the rest of the bile. This method of interpretation helps us make sense of stories and sayings that otherwise baffle us – or worse, that seem to teach things contrary to the gospel.

Today's lesson is no different. On the surface, we have a seemingly pointless story about slavery. "The master expects the slaves to serve him, and he doesn't thank them for doing their duty." O—kay. Big deal. That's what Jesus is all about, right? Putting them in their place! The fruitless cry of many a parent: "You're gonna set that table, and you're gonna thank me for it!" Do your job and quit whining!

Well, al right. We can see how there might be an application for this story. We in the church are supposed to do our religious duty without expectation of thanks. Except that's not exactly good news, is it? It makes the gospel sound more like...drudgery. is that what this passage means?

We could end it there, or we could use the technique we've been using over the last few weeks. We can look at this story within the context of the bible as a whole. And today, Worldwide Communion Sunday, provides an excellent counterpoint. Because at the Lord's Supper, the master does serve the servants. He serves them the bread and wine. In John's gospel, he does even more: he washes their feet. Indeed, he tells them, "No longer do I call you servants. Now I call you friends." Jesus is all about reversing expectation, reversing conventional wisdom. With that context in mind, then, we start to see today's story in quite a different light.

To start off with, I think it's telling that Jesus says, "Which one of you would serve your slaves?" This isn't a story about how the gospel is. It's a story about how we are. And Jesus meets us where we are, starting with the way things are normally done. That is how the world handles things, with slaves serving their masters.

Next, notice what task these slaves are at: plowing the fields, tending the sheep. In other places, these are metaphors for the work of the disciples. "The kingdom of heaven is like a sower who went out to sow. The kingdom of heaven is like a shepherd tending the sheep." Even the talk about serving at the table is a metaphor for the ministry of hospitality of the Lord's Supper.

But what about this issue of thanking the servants for doing as commanded? Again, rather than assume this is about the joyless act of duty, let us take Christ as our model of servanthood. When he washed the feet of the disciples, certainly none of them thanked him! I think they were too dumbfounded! Washing people's feet sounds like a pretty grubby task, but when Jesus performed this service, what was his mindset? Was this drudgery for him? Or was it in fact an act of joy, a gift of love in which, while thanks might be made, that's not why he did it? The letter to the Philippians talks about the spirit with which the servant Jesus went about his duty. "Have this mind among you," the letter says, "which is yours in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God, did not consider equality with God something to hold on to, but instead emptied himself and took on the form of a servant."

Now let's be honest. Even we in the church can make Christian love into a form of drudgery! Sure, recognition is good, but sometimes we perform our service wanting thanks. In fact, we can even turn it into a kind of competition. "See? I’m a better servant than you, nyaah!" But is this the mind Jesus had in him? He didn't do it all for thanks. His service was his thanks: his thanks to God, because it is a joy to do God's work. His thanks to us, because he loves us.

Our table fellowship today, which we share with our fellow Christians across the globe, this table reminds us of all that we have been given. It's a reminder that Jesus made a place of honor for us at his tale. A reminder that he washed our feet in welcome and made us clean. A reminder that he gave his own body and blood to fill and nourish us. A reminder that he gave us each other as fellow disciples, as brothers and sisters. A reminder that Jesus has brought us good news, and that he invites us and empowers us to join in God's mission of peace and reconciliation in the world. Having that mind among us, why would we ever ask for thanks? Would we not instead say, "Don't thank me. I'm only doing my duty. It's my pleasure."

The Great Chasm
Luke 16:19-31

30 September 2007

The lectionary is giving me a real workout this summer! I used to think of Luke as being the nice gospel, with those familiar, heart-warming stories of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son, and those sweet Christmas tales. But this summer is proving to be a journey through the – maybe not the dark side of Luke, but certainly the tough neighborhood!

This parable of the rich man and Lazarus should leave us squirming in our pews with its image of the rich man burning in fire, and Lazarus not so much as lifting a finger to give him a drop of cooling water. I mean, sure, the rich man should have shown kindness to Lazarus in his lifetime, but it seems a bit much for Abraham to say, "There is a great chasm between us, so that even if Lazarus wanted to cross and help you, he can't!" And we're supposed to believe Jesus would preach such a parable?

Well, the first thing I learned in my research is that he didn't. Or, not exactly. There's a verbal clue, here. The parable refers to hell as Hades. (The New International Version covers this up and uses the word "hell" in the text, although the footnote says the actual word is "Hades.") Jesus, being a good Palestinian Jew, would never use that word. He would say gehenna, which is the Hebrew word, and indeed anywhere else in any of the gospels, that is the word he uses. That little word Hades, which those of you who used to watch "Xena: Warrior Princess," will recognize as being Greek – that Greek word is a clue that this story of the rich man and Lazarus is not one that Jesus himself came up with. That's not to say he didn't preach this parable; even the Jesus Seminar agrees that he did. But rather than invent this story himself, he took an existing story, like a fable, and retooled it for his own purposes. It would be like taking one of our "heaven" jokes today, "A rabbi, a priest, and an imam met at the Pearly Gates...," and then turning it into a sermon illustration – which I've certainly done before!

Granted, we don't know how the story originally went, but I take some comfort in knowing that Jesus didn't create this story himself. However, even knowing that, we still have to deal with the message, and like our parable last week, this one too falls under the category of "doozy." There's a rich man, and like our rich man from last week, he is very rich. He has a feast every single day. At his gate lies Lazarus, dirt poor, covered with sores, so weak that he can't shoo away the dogs that come to lick his sores. (How's that for a disgusting, graphic detail?) All Lazarus wants is the scraps from the rich man's table. With a feast every night, you know there would be tons of scraps. Lazarus could feast like a king off the rich man's scraps, yet the rich man gives him nothing. They both die, and Lazarus is borne away on angel's wings to lie in the bosom of Abraham, while the rich man roasts in Hades. So far so good. Maybe this is as far as the original story went. I don't know that for sure, but so far the story is within the realms of moralism that we would all be comfortable with.

But now the tough part begins. The rich man begs for a bit of mercy from Lazarus – again with this rich detail: "may he dip the end of his finger into the water and cool my tongue." But it's not Lazarus who answers. It's Abraham, the Father of the Jewish people, the great Patriarch. He gives the customary moral, but then goes on. "And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us." That phrase, "besides all this," might be a clue that Jesus has added this bit to the fable. But why would Jesus say such a cruel thing?

At this point, I want to depart from this parable and take up another one of Jesus' hard saying. It appears twice in Luke's gospel, including once coming up in a couple of chapters. I bet the lectionary is going to toss that one at us in a couple of weeks! But I'm going to jump the gun here. That saying, which might sound familiar to you, goes like this: "I tell you that to everyone who has, more will be given, but for those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away." I always used to think that saying was about possessions, which makes it sound like the rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer. But that's not what it's about at all. Rather, that saying is about spiritual qualities. And what spiritual qualities do we associate with Jesus – the very parables that appear at first to be lacking in this parable of the rich man and Lazarus? Kindness, generosity, forgiveness, mercy, love. If you have even a little of these things, then more will be given to you. But if you do not have these things, then even what you have will be taken away. Seen this way, it sounds a bit like an easier saying of Jesus: the measure you give out will be the measure you receive.

So with that in mind, let's return to our parable. And furthermore, let's look at this parable from the context of the two that come immediately before it: the prodigal son and the dishonest manager. Two guys who royally screwed up, yet because they showed just a little mercy, they received mercy and kindness in abundance. Our rich man here, though? He never gave so much as a scrap to Lazarus. We might could understand how the prodigal son's father, or the manager's boss, might not want to forgive them. Indeed, conventional wisdom would say they had every right not to show kindness and mercy. In the same way, conventional wisdom would wonder how in the world this rich man couldn't even spare a scrap for this miserable soul lying right on his doorstep? This rich man had every reason to be kind. It would have been so easy for him to show the tiniest speck of mercy – which means his lack of mercy and kindness are all the more horrible. Why wouldn't he help Lazarus? Maybe he thought Lazarus deserved his fate, that Lazarus had lived a sinful life for God to punish him with those sores. Maybe he though Lazarus was unclean, both spiritually and literally what with those dogs licking him, and he didn't want to be tainted. Maybe he thought that if he was kind to Lazarus, all the other lepers would show up wanting a handout, and then what would happen to his feasts? Maybe he thought, like the city of San Antonio did a couple of years ago, that no tourists would want to come visit if they saw this disgusting fellow lying in the doorway. We don’t know why he refused to show kindness to Lazarus, but surely his reasons were every bit as weak and stingy as these. This man, who shows no mercy in this life, receives no mercy in the metaphorical afterlife either. To those who have, more will be given. But those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. We can see this being played out literally with these two men in the afterlife.

But there's something still more that I want to look at in this parable: those harsh words of Abraham: "Between us and you a great chasm has been fixed." That reminds me of that gate from the beginning of the parable: "At the rich man's gate lay a poor man named Lazarus." Granted, a gate isn't a chasm, yet they are both obstacles that divide, obstacles that are difficult to cross. The question I have then, is this: who fixed this great chasm in the afterlife? My first assumption is that it is God. This is the afterlife, after all. But does God build such impassable divide? I'm reminded of yet another bible verse, this time from Paul's letter to the Ephesians: "For Christ is our peace, who has made us both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility." God does not erect barriers. God is the one who overcomes them. Who, then, fixed this great chasm?

Have you figured it out yet? It's the rich man. The rich man has a fixed a chasm between himself and Lazarus, a barrier so that "those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us." In life, the rich man fixed a chasm that Lazarus tried to cross, but could not, and the rich man in his spiritual penury could have crossed it, but did not. Now in the afterlife, that gate has become a great chasm. Once again Lazarus cannot cross that divide, and now the rich man can't either, because from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. So endeth the lesson. Apparently

Yet is Jesus saying that stingy rich people will be sorry in the end as they roast for all eternity in a Greek afterlife while vindicated Lazarus looks on in comfort, resting in the bosom of Abraham? No. Jesus is making a graphic argument in order to catch our attention, but we know that Christ is the peace that makes us one, breaking down the dividing wall of hostility. And indeed we find that this is not the end of the parable. The rich man cries, "Oh Abraham, send Lazarus to my brothers so that they can avoid this fate!" To which Abraham replies, "They already know what to do from Moses and the prophets." "Oh they won't listen to the scriptures!" says the rich man. "But send them a miracle, a messenger from the dead. Then they'll pay attention!" And Abraham says, "Dude, if they won't listen to the prophets, they won't listen even to someone raised from the dead."

Trick answer! Who do we know that was raised from the dead? Aside from Lazarus in the gospel of John. Jesus! Oh, I could do a whole sermon just on this last bit, but I'm already on page seven, so I'll try to make this brief. I think Jesus is just driving home his point about "to those who have more will be given, but those who have nothing will lose what they have." Jesus is saying that even a miracle isn't going to impress people like this stingy rich man. They already have the scriptures – Jesus isn't even teaching us anything new. It's the same message as it was from the beginning: love the Lord your God, and your neighbor as yourself. It ain't rocket science! Yet some people still don't get it. Why? Because they create a dividing wall of hostility between themselves and others, a dividing wall that says, "Those people are scum, icky, gross, evil, sinners. Thank God I'm on the right side of the gate, and I can keep them out." The reason why a miracle appearance by a resurrected man won't make a difference to them is that the great chasm is still fixed in their minds. The rich man only cares about himself and his brothers getting rescued. He never ever cared about Lazarus. He never ever sees, even in Hades, how he and Lazarus are brothers too. He never ever understands that the chasm is of his own creation.

But Jesus is the peace that breaks down the dividing wall of hostility. Oh sure, he doesn't say that in this parable, but he says it all over the place everywhere else, over and over again. What's the peace that makes us one, breaking down the dividing wall of hostility? We heard about it in the prodigal son, and with the dishonest manager – it's mercy, forgiveness, kindness, love.

Oh, I could tell you so many stories that illustrate this, but I'm going to tell just one. It appeared in a recent column of Dear Abby. A woman wrote to tell how she and her husband had four children. But when one of their sons came out to them as gay, she and her husband rejected him and had nothing more to do with him. Years passed, and the woman's husband died, leaving her alone and penniless. She appealed to her first three children to take her in and help her out, but none of them would. Then her fourth, estranged child, called her up. He and his partner took her into their home, gave her a place to live and supported them. Now this woman was writing to Dear Abby to tell people, "Don't reject your gay children. Don't waste the years that I did."

It didn't take a man raised from the dead to change her mind. And why should it have? She had never listened to her scriptures anyway. Rather, what changed her mind was receiving mercy and kindness from those to whom she had shown none herself, and from whom she no right to expect anything. Were those guys Christians? They sure sound like it, but I don't know. Regardless, Christ was certainly at work in them, breaking down the dividing wall of hostility and bringing the peace that makes us one.

The good news is that there is hope for the rich man. It just won't come in the way that he expects. But don't worry, fella. Jesus will get to you, too.

Prodigal Forgiveness
Luke 16:1-13

23 September 2007

One of my commentaries called this parable of the Unjust Steward the toughest parable of them all. I suppose that's open to debate; there are a couple others that are also troublesome, but certainly this parable leaves you in knots. The UCC's sermon web page skips it altogether, and instead focuses on the epistle reading. I can hardly blame them. I have read many, many interpretations of this parable over the years, and while sometimes they have made interesting points about particular details in the parable, none of the explanations has been entirely satisfactory. I'm always left at the end shaking my head and saying, "Yeah, but what does it all mean?" Jesus seems to be saying that we should use ill-gotten gains in an unscrupulous way to buy friends and favors. Sounds more like something from a TV reality show with Donald Trump rather than the gospel!

But this week I found an interpretation that finally at long last makes sense of this parable. Lo, miracles do still happen! Let me make it clear, though, that I cannot take any credit for the brilliance of this interpretation. I didn't come up with it; I just knew where to find it. (And for those of you taking my Girard class, I found the link for this off of the girardianlectionary.net site! The direct link is: http://personal1.stthomas.edu/dtlandry/steward.html) so to quote Paul, I now pass on to you what I have first heard, and I'll be interested to hear if you find this interpretation as convincing as I do.

The first thing to know is that this parable is less about money than it is about honor, reputation. In the ancient world, the world of Jesus, your standing in society was very important, and rich people would use their money in generous public works that would cause people to look well on them. This was illustrated in the film, "The Gladiator," where the Emperor Commodus used his money to stage all those productions in the Coliseum. People didn't pay to view these spectacles: the Emperor or some wealthy patron paid for it, and people went for free. Literally, whoever put on the best show got the most fame and honor.

So this rich man has a steward, a man who manages his funds. But now he's heard from others that his steward is squandering his money. We don't know how he's squandering it: embezzling it on a yacht, gambling at the race track, paying for lavish lunches and listing it as a business expense – we don't know. The point is that the steward is misbehaving and it has caught the attention of the rich man's peers. If a boss can't control his workers, then it reflects badly on him, so the rich man's reputation is suffering because of his steward's behavior. He calls the steward to account, and threatens to sack him.

The steward then ponders what his future may hold. If he loses his job, he doesn't like his employment options. All he knows how to do is be a steward: he can't do hard work like digging, and he doesn't relish the idea of making a living by begging in the streets. If the rich man sacks him, it is unlikely that anyone else will want to hire him as a steward because he won't have a good reference. So he concocts a plan "so that people may welcome me into their homes."

Bible scholars have often interpreted that to mean he wanted to be taken in on charity – but really, how would that be different from begging? Rather, this new interpretation says he's wanting to restore his reputation enough to get a good reference so that someone else will hire him. And what is his plan? He visits his boss's debtors, and reduces their bill. He cancels some of their debt. He forgives them.

Here again, when we read this it doesn't make much sense to us. He's cutting into his boss's profits. The boss didn't tell him to do this. Some scholars have said he cut his own commission on the debt. Some say he cut the interest and left the capital on the

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