Untitled

Joseph P. Mathews, OSL
All Saints, C
1 November 2007
Luke 6.20-31

Those who have been attending CHURCH on a regular basis might have noticed a few changes tonight from the way some things have been happening this year. I’ll get to the text shortly, but first a few comments about tonight’s service. As the year started I thought about the hospitality of changing certain things every week. In the beginning, today was the switching point of the first semester. How we respond to the first lesson with the Psalm has changed and will stay the same through the end of the calendar year. Our creeds and prayers of the people have been relatively consistent; each has had one change over the course of the semester.

The biggest change – how we respond to the second lesson in preparation for the Gospel lesson - is a direct result of this day. We’ve come together tonight to remember all God’s saints and those close to us who have died in the last year. We’ve changed from a gradual hymn – one that sandwiches the Gospel lesson, often to give room for a Gospel procession into the people – to an alleluia as the Gospel acclamation. In the burial rite of the Book of Common Prayer¬ – the service book of The Episcopal Church – after communion the priest says, “You only are immortal, the creator and maker of mankind; 
and we are mortal, formed of the earth, and to earth shall we 
return. For so did you ordain when you created me, saying, ‘You are dust, and to dust you shall return.’ All of us go down
to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, 
alleluia, alleluia.”
As we’ve gathered here tonight having come from various graves our song continues to be the joyful song of the resurrection – alleluia, alleluia, alleluia – and our Gospel text for this day lends itself to that song and calls to mind the Saints of God who surround us now in a great cloud of witnesses and those souls who have passed from our lives in recent times. And now to address the Gospel before us.

Today’s Gospel text contains the Lukan Beatitudes, which as I read them you may have noticed are not the ones that we usually see on bookmarks or lists or ever discussed really. Luke’s version of the Sermon on the Mount, or as Dallas Willard likes to put it “Discourse on the Hill” was recorded before Matthew’s and the words Luke has for us are sharper and – like how I think the Gospel should be read and lived – scarier. In addition to having Beatitudes – blessings, this text contains Woes and the beginning of the Lukan account of Jesus’s speech about loving one’s enemies. All three parts can be applied to our lives in some way or another, regardless of how the text directly speaks to us.
The first part of the text is a section of blessings. Blessings are for the poor, the hungry, and the weeping. Something that did not escape my eye the first time I read this passage (while I had Matthew in my head) was that these blessings are not for those who lack in a spiritual sense, but rather for those who merely lack. The poor were at the bottom of the heap in the First Century CE. As such not only would the first line have spoken to them, but the second and third parts too. If you are poor you may not be able to feed yourself – or more scary to some, your family. If you are doing your best to pay rent and get food on the table, but feel like nothing is working, you might break down into tears. Frequently. Jesus talks to these people in these parts.

The blessings Jesus gives the poor, the hungry, and the weeping is a role-reversal that has is a common theme in the Lukan narrative. Although the Sunday readings have us in Luke 18 now, for the last many chapters Jesus has been flipping things upside down. Rabbinic teaching of the day was that those who were wealthy were blessed of God. The people with tables full every meal had done what they were supposed to do and God was rewarding them. Here Jesus takes that and completely rejects it.

Rather than saying the rich and the full are blessed, he offers them woe. Those who are rich have received their due. Those who are full will be hungry. Those who laugh will weep. This is a message of hope for some but not for others. The Mathian version of the Beatitudes we are used to hearing not only spiritualizes huger and poverty, but also omits Jesus’s woes that Luke records. How, then is this Gospel text good news for those of us not utterly oppressed? Though we may be weeping at the losses of our loved ones, how can those of us who are neither deeply impoverished nor starving see what Jesus has to say as good news? Do the woes apply to…us?

I would say that depends. The Good News of this text for many of us comes in the way Christ spoke to the disciples. The langue here in the Greek is active and performative – think back to how the Christian creation story is recorded. God speaks and it is. In saying these things and speaking these words, Christ not only verbally rejects the rabbinic teaching of the day, but through the Word of the Almighty makes it so. The poor are blessed. The hungry are filled. The weeping do laugh.

But what of the second part of the sermon here? Where Jesus talks about loving our enemies, turning the other cheek, giving to anyone who begs?… I quote verse 31 in summary, “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” Here Jesus is saying more scary things. Roles were reversed at the beginning of this lesson, and now Jesus is calling us out of the safety that we may have found in our faith. We are not called to return evil for evil. Or to hate those who hate us. We are not called to grudingly give our coats and keep our shirts. We are not called to question the motives or usages of those who beg or are in need. We’re to return a slap for a slap, give more than is asked of us, and give to whomever asks of us. This is not safe in the world in which we live, where we might be kidnapped or physically harmed or where we ourselves might be starving or cold. These people, though are the people we remember today. The legend of Saint Martin of Tours, patron of the local Catholic parish is that he took the cloak off his back and gave it to a beggar.

As I think about those I’ve lost in my life in the last year I think about my grandmother, who on many occasions told me to turn the other cheek. She died early in the spring, and I remember the tears that I wept from the Honors Cottage to the Wesley. While writing this today I teared up thinking about those tears. I remember how stoic I was during the entire burial and how much I laughed with my family at her house. I also remember that it really hit me not during the service of Death and Resurrection, but during the remembering of the dead at St. Mark’s. Elizabeth Mathews was a saint of God. In showing her love for other people she became active in the performative language of Christ.

Loving one another in the radical way that Christ loved us is dangerous indeed. Christ addresses it when he says, “Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man.” Here he tells us that our radical, world-changing love is to include all people as people. All means all, and people means recognizing that every human being is a creation of the divine. Labeling others in terms of one aspect of their life devalues them as human beings and objectifies them as items to be tossed about. Conversely, those who maintain established norms so well that no one speaks badly of them are warned that they’re not doing something right and should reevaluate all that they’re doing.

On this All Saints Day think about the communion of saints – those who have come before us, those with us now, and those who are yet to come. Think about those we remember tonight – individually and corporately – who loved everyone, especially their neighbors and in doing so joined in the active, performative language of Christ in blessing the poor, the hungry, and the weeping. Think about saints today - those from all walks of life beside you, those you know, and you yourselves evaluate how you are loving your enemy, giving to all who beg, and blessing the poor.

I leave you with the words of a hymn that I adore, number 712 in the United Methodist Hymnal, written by Lesbia Scott. It’s a hymn entitled “I Sing a Song of the Saints of God” and was originally written as an Anglican hymn but has been made more specific to the American church. It addresses the love we are to show to God and to our neighbor and illustrates that our living into Christ’s words is not dependent on our job or station in life.

I sing a song of the saints of God,
patient and brave and true,
who toiled and fought and lived and died
for the Lord they loved and knew.
And one was a doctor, and one was a queen,
and one was a shepherdess on the green;
they were all of them saints of God, and I mean,
God helping, to be one too.

They loved their Lord so dear, so dear,
and his love made them strong;
and they followed the right for Jesus' sake
the whole of their good lives long.
And one was a soldier, and one was a priest,
and one was slain by a fierce wild beast;
and there's not any reason, no, not the least,
why I shouldn't be one too.

They lived not only in ages past;
there are hundreds of thousands still.
The world is bright with the joyous saints
who love to do Jesus' will.
You can meet them in school, on the street, in the store,
in church, by the sea, in the house next door;
they are saints of God, whether rich or poor,
and I mean to be one too.

In the name of the Alpha and the Omega: the God who was, the God who is, and the God who is to come. Amen.

Untitled

Ashley Davis
28 October 2007
22+ Pentecost, C
Luke 18.9-14

So, on our way back from Park Memorial this afternoon, Paul, and Jeana, and I were listening to this song and it struck me that there was some syncronicity to this song and our Gospel text for the day. It is a dialogue song. Gary Coleman’s part of the opening dialogue goes like this:

GARY COLEMAN: Right now you are down and out and feeling really crappy
NICKY: I'll say.
GARY COLEMAN: And when I see how sad you are/ It sort of makes me...Happy!
NICKY: Happy?!
GARY COLEMAN: Sorry, Nicky, human nature-/ Nothing I can do!/ It's...
Schadenfreude! Making me feel glad that I'm not you.
NICKY: Well that's not very nice, Gary!
GARY COLEMAN: I didn't say it was nice! But everybody does it!

Yes, I just quoted “Shadenfreude” (which is German for happiness at the misfortune of others) from Avenue Q in a sermon. The song ends with the lyrics, “Shadenfreude: making the world a better place to be.”

Meanwhile, back at the text…Verse 9 tells us that this parable was written to “some who were confident in their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else.”

I think the first question we should ask is, “Who you talkin’ ‘bout, Jesus?”

Luke says Jesus speaks to “some,” but we want names, don’t we. Traditionally, we have assumed that Jesus is talking to the Pharisees, all Pharisees are proud and self-righteous now aren’t they, talk about stereotyping, but notice that the text does not say that Jesus addressed the Pharisees.

Drop down to the closing line of our passage, “all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.” This is a direct quote from Luke 14:11, when Jesus talked to the guests who chose a places of honor at a banquet. The last verse keeps us from limiting who Jesus is talking about to just one group.

I think maybe at this point, since you are all intelligent people, you realize that this is just as easily about the disciples and certainly just as easily about each of us. We read this parable and immediately and ironically think, gosh, that Pharisee was wrong, glad I’m not like him, and whoops you are.

Let’s dig into the body of this passage a little more. Both people go up to the temple. Regardless of which direction you come from the temple was at the highest point in Jerusalem so you had to go up. Prayer has been a theme from the beginning of this chapter, which told us through the widow to “pray persistently” and here to beware of the “perils of presumptuous prayer.” We get both the position and the prayer of both individuals. Both people start out with the word “God” and that is about as much as they have in common. The Pharisee stands up front and offers God a prayer of thanksgiving and reminds God of all he has done for God. The tax collector stood at a distance and said,” God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” The tax collector’s words mirror the beginning of Psalm 51, except that he adds the words “a sinner.” The Psalm goes on to say, I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me…create in me a clean heart and put a new and right spirit within me.”

Let’s hold up before we give the tax collector some metal of honor and make the Pharisee out to be a certified stinker. This parable neglects the fact that this tax collector, once he has wiped his eyes and blown his nose, will head home and probably continue his shady job. Sure it sucks, it is a nasty business, but he is stuck in it. To care for his family and what not, tomorrow he will take from his neighbors, turn money over to the empire, and keep some for himself. How many of us get the prayer right in church and fail to live it out in our daily lives?

On to the Pharisee, the parable doesn’t tell us that he sang “The Summons” all the way to the temple that day, or that he had tears in his eyes as he prayed, or that he was awash with emotion, and really meant all that he said. What preacher wouldn’t love a church full of people as committed as the Pharisee: he titles regularly, teaches Sunday School, visits the sick and feeds the hungry.

His prayer wasn’t that bad, it is very similar to many classic prayers of the time, look at the Psalms. The thing that separates him from the Jewish form is that he doesn’t say thank you from sparing me from being a thief or a rogue, but thank you that I am not like “this” tax collector. Here, he changes from a grammar of gratitude to a grammar of elitism. Here, he stopped praying and started speaking. With one sideways glance, he measures himself against his neighbor and is quite pleased with the distance he finds.

So in a sense this parable is a warning against pride, and self-sufficiency, and of relying on one’s own good works. It is also about being aware of who you are, both as a sinner and as a child of God, without having to compare yourself to your neighbor. As it so happens, we having been studying just this same thing in Tuesday lunch Bible study, Henri Nouwen in his book Compassion says, “Through union with God, we are lifted out of our competitiveness with each other into divine wholeness. By sharing in the wholeness of the one in whom no competition exists, we can enter into new compassionate relationships with each other. By accepting our identities from the one who is the giver of life, we can be with each other without distance or fear. This new identity, free from greed and desire for power, allows us to enter so fully and unconditionally into the sufferings of others that it becomes possible for us to heal the sick and call the dead to life.”

The group that the Pharisee belonged to did not make this easy for him, to be a Pharisee meant that you separated yourself from others so as to maintain purity before God. If you drew cartoon balloons over each of our heads I imagine some of them would say, “ Thank God I’m not like those fundamentalists.” Or “Thank God I’m not like those liberals.” Or “thank God I’m above all this.” Is there anymore of a sign that we have no idea who we are? Isn’t it so much easier and more comforting to look at others than to try to make sense of our own paradoxical selves? As our opening lyrics of the sermon said, does it really make the world a better place in any way for me to feel glad that I’m not you? Who you talkin’ to Jesus? Me and you and you and all of you.

In the name of our creator who invites us all to remember our true identity as children of God, an identity that doesn’t come from comparing ourselves to others or separating ourselves from them, amen.

Fall Break Part 2

No gathering.

Fall Break Part 1

No Gathering

Fifth Sunday

Gathering of song and scripture.  No sermon.

Untitled

Andrew Garner
23 September 2007
17+ Pentecost, C
Untitled
Luke 16.1-13

Let us pray.

Holy and most gracious Father, you have been made known to us through your Son. Thank you for sending Him so that we may have eternal life. Bring your spirit here in this place this evening and speak through me so that what I speak may be heard. Thank you for this day. In Christ’s holy name, Amen.

I just want to start out by saying thank you for allowing me to come before you again on the tail end of a stormy weekend. I am going to have to be honest with you today, I have been reading and studying the gospel reading for the week and I wasn’t comfortable with it. It just didn’t sink in very well with me. Yes, I got the general picture and I even finished typing my original sermon for this evening yesterday. But even after I got done with it, I still wasn’t happy.

So, I got up this morning thinking that I needed to write it again, and how correct I was. I went to church hoping that I would get some inspiration and thankfully, I got it. At St. Mary’s in Andalusia, we are searching for a priest and interim priests come every Sunday to fill in. I was anxious to hear the priest’s sermon today to get what she had to say about the gospel reading. It wasn’t as if I was cheating by all means, but picking up pointers.

Let us now turn to the gospel reading for this evening. Jesus, and I love how he does it, gives us another parable to help explain a complex and hard message for a lot of us to follow. It is of the dishonest manager and as I read just a few moments ago was the manager’s response to getting caught for accounting his master’s money the wrong way. That in itself is just a simple telling of the message, but like Jesus, he loves to make it cryptic so we have to think on it and digest the true meaning. I ask all of you this. How do you use your material possessions?

When I ask myself this, I think, well… I am very selfish. And I think everybody here can say that as well. Yes I know that many of you are on a budget while in college and cannot spend the huge amounts of money that we want to, believe me, I was there. Jesus in the gospel lesson makes it very clear that we are to use what we have for His glory and His glory alone. If your material wealth is in money, than why not give most to charities or more importantly to the church? In materials, donating them to the poor or giving stuff away that you never use. I can think of a few things in my possession that I can give away at the drop of a hat because I have no use for them.

This reading reminds me of and I am paraphrasing the wealthy man asks Jesus, “How does one inherit eternal life?” Jesus says simply, “Give everything to the poor.” If in our current world that we live in today Jesus asks us to do that, would we?

I honestly don’t know what my answer to his summon would be, but I think I would say, “Lord, If I were to give you all of my possessions, than how am I to serve your Father in heaven to His glory?”

So, I ask a very simple, but complex question, “What can you do with your possessions for Him?” I hope that you take that with you back to your dorms, apartments or houses and look around to see what you can donate or just do without. Remember, there are more people that need it more than you do in most cases. And most importantly, what can we do for His glory?

Let us pray.

Thank you Lord for allowing us again to come before you this evening on this day of rest. I humbly ask that you be with us in our daily lives and that all will be well in this week that lies ahead. And, as we partake in the Eucharist in a few moments, please help to remind us of the sacrifice of your Son on the cross. It is in the most precious and holy name that I pray, Amen.

Rivers of Love

Steven Doss

16 September 2007

16+ Pentecost, C

"Better Than Paige's" or "Rivers of Love"

When a river begins at the top of the mountain, it has only one purpose, to get to the ocean. Many different things try to impede the process of that river as it makes it’s natural journey towards that ocean. Trees fall into the river, creating a natural dam that disrupts the natural flow in a vicious struggle between two opposing natural forces. Not only does the river have to deal with nature attempting to block its passage to where it needs to go, but mankind also places barriers to keep the river from it’s place. Though the river has all these barriers, it ultimately will reach its goal. The flow of the river will push the trees that block its path away. It will find the holes that are placed in the man made dam, so that it can get to where it needs to be in the quickest time possible.

The gospel lesson for this evening is one we have heard ever since Sunday School. It is the story of a woman who has 10 coins and loses one. Rather than be content with the 9 she already has, she struggles to find the coin that she has lost. Being poor college students, struggling so that we can pay our bills and needing all the money that we can get, this story relates to us in a better way than the story that comes later. A shepherd has 100 sheep and again, he loses one. He spends as much time as needed so that he can find the one he lost. In both these cases, we are given a glimpse into the love of God. Even when we are “lost,” God will try and find you. This is further exemplified in the parable that follows: The Story of the Prodigal Son. We all know the story, a young man wants to leave his father with his inheritance to go to the big city and live it up. He blows all his money on the pleasures of life, but ends up living destitute. He returns to his father a humble and broken man. The father comes to his son with open arms and an open home. Again, the moral of this story is that God’s love is all encompassing. No matter how “lost” you are, God will always look for you, and when you return, God will take you in no matter what. It’s nice to know that God’s love is always there, and that is a good lesson to take home from these texts. However, one thing that many people overlook is the reasons that people get “lost” from God’s love. We love looking at the ocean that the river flows into, but we fail to understand the what the trees that lay across the path that the river flows through.

To begin with, we have the natural blockades that slow us realizing that God loves us. The human condition is one of our greatest assets. It allows us to do wonderful things. It allows us to have wonderful feelings of love, compassion, and hospitality. But, with that we also have the not so wonderful things. Grief, fear, despair: all those human emotions that can cause us to become lost. In my life, I’ve had many opportunities to show both aspects of our natural condition. For instance, as many of you know, I had to hear about the death of a close friend via instant messenger while I was in Korea. I remember how it felt as I was riding to work that day. I thought that I could handle it…I thought that I could just “play through the pain” as my high school soccer coach would put it. I broke down many times that day. It was the first time I had ever really drank either. I told my friends there that I was in no condition to go out with them for the weekend, but I did anyway, thinking that would help. 80,000 Won later, I did not feel any better. Through all this, I had in the back of my mind that God was not there anymore. I thought God had sent me to this place where I was completely alone, and did this to me as a cruel test, a test that I did not want to take at all. I knew all my friends were hurting as well, but for the first time I did not want to put them first. I felt a different aspect of the “personal relationship with God” that I heard so much about…I felt that God had a vendetta against me. God sent me to Korea just to turn around a kick me in the butt. This is an extreme situation, but it tells us of a universal truth. God’s love towards me had “hit a snag” in my mind. It was my own humanity that caused a blockage in God’s love getting to me. I had reached a pit of despair. My own psyche had told me that God had left me. I was the lost sheep. I was the lost coin.

We also have worldly barriers that prevent God’s love from reaching us as quickly as it should. We live in a capitalistic society. Many of the people in this world require only one thing to be, in their minds, happy. Money. The almighty dollar. While it is nice to have enough to get by, many of us take it to the extreme. We feel that getting money is the only way to fill the voids in our life. We have to have the newest electronics, the flashiest car, and the nicest clothes. Without it, we feel like less of a person in the grand scheme of life. We shun friends, family, and God as we strive to make a little more in our pay check than the next person. We become lost when we place the love of our worldly above all else.

Now, we’ve talked a good bit about why we become lost, but there is good news. Even though we place barriers, God’s love will always try to reach us. What we need to realize that even though it hits some snags along the way, God’s love will constantly flow from God’s self to us here in the world. It will try to reach us, but we do have to try and meet it half way. Even though it is hard, we must realize that the end of a part of our life is not the end of all of it. Also, we must realize that this world is fleeting. We cannot shun our responsibility to our world and all it’s peoples because we wish to have it a little better than the next person. If we constantly look to keep up with the Jones’, we miss what is passing us buy, which is the essence of God’s love. The world’s barriers will get in the way, but God’s love will try and get by them. If we help it out a bit, then it will get there faster.

When a river begins at the top of a mountain, it has one purpose, to reach the ocean at the bottom. Along the way, it gets slowed by the trees and rocks that block its path. But, the river’s flow will smooth and erode the rocks to dust. It will push the trees that cross the path out of the way. The natural barriers will all succumb to the flow of God’s love. The dams that we put up in our quest for worldly significance will fall, just as long as we leave some pathways in our hearts for that river to flow. In the end, God’s love will prevail…it will never stop trying to get to us. We will all have many times where we are the lost coin. We will see many days that we are the lost sheep. We will always be searched for by God, no matter what. The river will reach us, and it’s up to us to try and make the flow come to us as easily as possible.

Labor Day Weekend

No gathering

Untitled Sermon

Paige Swaim

26 August 2007

Pentecost 13+, C

Untitled

I’m at this point in my life where I find myself suddenly redefining who I am. And I have to tell you that I feel a little bit ashamed of that. I mean, I’m 24—little for that game, right? Shouldn’t I know who I am by now? And shouldn’t I have the confidence to just be that person, and not be so afraid of what other people think about me? But the truth is, I’m realizing just how much of my former confidence I drew from the people around me, and an environment where I was comfortable. I spent this summer coming to terms with the fact that I am deeply afraid of confrontation, and deeply afraid of failure. So now I enter my bright new future as a graduate student feeling less excited and more uncertain that I expected—uncertain about my abilities in a lot of areas, but most of all in my ability to be who I believe I am.

I remember vividly a good friend of mine calling me early last fall and telling me, with great frustration, that going to law school was a lot like going back to high school—cliques, drugs, in-crowd and all. Much to my surprise and disappointment, I’m starting to fear that divinity school may not be so different. Sure, the people here are much “nicer”—they are polite, even friendly—on the surface. But is that the same thing as true Christian community? And do I have the courage to call it like I see it, to face rejection and labeling to be friends with the people the “in-crowd” consider (however “nicely” they put it) weird, boring, or just plain unworthy? I feel like a fourteen-year-old again, and God is having to re-teach me disciplines I thought I had mastered long ago. It doesn’t help that some of these people might someday hold my job in their hands! I’m realizing now, as I’ve been realizing all spring and summer, that this life of love God calls us to really is totally radical—even to the very people who are trying to devote their lives to it. Following the example Christ sets for us in this passage from Luke will be far more difficult than we think, but it is also desperately important for our Christian community and the world at large.

We find our gospel passage this Sunday towards the middle of what scholars call Luke’s Journey narrative, a time when Jesus and his followers are traveling towards Jerusalem and the Passion. Luke couches many of the “great teachings” of Jesus in this narrative, including the Luke-an version of the Sermon on the Mount. Along the way, Jesus speaks, by turns, to his disciples, the crowds of followers, and his opponents. This construction of Luke’s text makes beautiful sense: As they travel towards the heart of his mission, Jesus is preparing his followers for the tests they will soon face in—and after—Jerusalem. And as we as readers follow Jesus’s journey, we also learn about the kingdom of God and the actions of true disciples. Throughout this journey narrative, we are being prepared for what is to follow in Jerusalem—and because the author of Luke-Acts is uniquely concerned with the life of the post-resurrection church, we are also being prepared to carry on the ministry of Christ in the world around us.

One question, then, is this: What is this message God empowers us to live? What might this gospel passage, in particular, teach us about the ministry to which we are called? Let’s take a closer look at this text, and see what we can find out. We enter the story to find Jesus teaching in a synagogue on the Sabbath. He sees a woman come into the synagogue who is “bent over,” and immediately he calls her to him and restores her. Although Jesus tells the synagogue leader and worshippers that the woman has been bound by Satan, the story doesn’t read like a typical exorcism. Instead, Luke continually uses the language of Jesus’s metaphor: Jesus sets free—unties—the woman, just as most Jews would untie their valuable ox or donkey to lead the animal a few feet to water.

The synagogue leader is distressed. Jesus has just really upset the status quo—which is usually a difficult thing for people, especially powerful people, to accept. But let’s not give in to the temptation to completely villainize this man: the problem was really much deeper than a threat to his comfort zone, or even to his power. For the Jewish people in this story, the interpretation of what is Sabbath would have been a question of deepest identity—as it remains for many in the Jewish faith today. How Sabbath is interpreted reflects an understanding of God, of God’s chosen people, and, as one of those chosen people, a spiritual understanding of self. By healing this bent woman, Jesus has usurped the leader’s supposedly God-given authority to interpret the Sabbath and its worship. He has also threatened the understood Jewish identity in a number of ways.

Jesus has called attention during a sacred time to someone—and a woman, no less—whose disability would have been seen as a mark of God’s displeasure; he has risked ritual uncleanliness by touching her; and he has violated the interpretation of Sabbath rest and worship that defines his people and their understanding of God. It’s no wonder Jesus’s actions cause such a controversy—and, judging by his similar Sabbath healings earlier in Luke’s gospel, a controversy that Jesus probably expected from the second he began teaching that day. Jesus purposefully caused a major identity crisis for an entire community!

Earlier, I suggested that we examine this passage in light of Christ’s message and mission in the world. Here, Christ makes it clear that God values the well-being of Creation—and particularly she who is downtrodden, “bent over,” and overlooked—far more than unbending “religious” obedience. We are all of value both to God and to one another. We are a people called to receive liberating healing, and, as the body of Christ, we are also called to dispense it. Sabbath should be a time of restoration to that mythical pre-fallen state, a place of rest, peace, and joy in God’s presence; and as Jesus lived it, everyone is to be invited into Sabbath as an act of Sabbath. And that does mean everyone.

You see, in this passage Jesus reaches out to a person despised or forgotten by her people, and restores a bent woman to her dignity, healing her and honoring her with the title “daughter of Abraham.” She is an example to us all: she came to worship, and was healed. She was an outcast, and yet beloved of God. We can relate to her, and we should also reach out to those in circumstances like hers. Luke’s narrative also does this Daughter of Abraham considerable injustice, however. Although she speaks, praising God in fact, the gospel of Luke does not give us her words. She, like so many women then and now, is silenced for us; and as we speak the liberating message of Christ, we need to be careful that we don’t also become someone else’s “muffler.”

Yes, we are empowered to bring hope and freedom to those on the margins of our success-and-power-driven society. That is one of our missions. But we have to be cautious when we do this not to let the mission become our mission alone rather than God’s, and we surely must take care not to silence the many voices longing to tell their stories. And we all do some silencing, even when we may have good intentions in other areas of our lives. We become passionate about proving ourselves, making our case, even fulfilling our Godly missions—but it’s so easy to forget, or even not to realize, how we are part of the problem.

How many of us silence the voices around us with our sarcasm, our sideways-glances, our thinly-disguised “jokes”—or simply our inattention? How many of us admit theoretically to the value of all of God’s children, but are only willing to live that out in the ways with which we are comfortable—much like the synagogue leader? For some of us, we reach out to people “in the name of God,” but never in true unashamed friendship under our own names. Sometimes, we work willingly on behalf of the poor or those who don’t know Christ’s love, but can’t handle truly valuing the opinions of a person who disagrees with our perspectives. At times, many of us use what we see as our God-given platforms to criticize the journeys of people who are different from ourselves. How often do we, through our own disdain, silence others’ ability to flourish and minister, while at the same time professing to heal the world in Christ’s name? There is more than one way to be marginalized, and more than one way to be silenced.

I stand here, telling you all that Jesus tells us to love one another. You probably already know this, and it seems like such a “nice” message. I promise you, however, that what I’m up here preaching is not a gospel of “warm fuzzies” and “niceness” and “can’t we all just get along?” Christ demonstrates clearly here that there will be times when we don’t, in fact, get along with the authorities and the crowds around us. Very few people, it’s true, will ever be angry at you for being “nice” and “agreeable” all the time—trust me, I fall into that trap more often than some of you might know. But true, radical love—that’s a different thing altogether.

People will criticize you for loving the care of your neighbor more than your political party, or for believing that the crazy-annoying guy in your class has something vital to offer to your group of friends, or for seeing the sacred worth in a person who leads a lifestyle or holds opinions vastly different from your own. People will fear you because you will care more about doing the will of God than the will of the church, your family, or your employer. You will feel that you risk not being accepted, not being “successful,” that you risk having to confront and disagree with people who have real power in your life—and you will be right. Fortunately, you will also have God’s promise of refuge, and, hopefully, a community who like the crowd rejoiced over the Daughter of Abraham’s restoration, will take joy in God’s work in the world.

Luke follows the story of this liberation with parables about the nature of the kingdom (or kindom, if you will) of God, and I believe we can understand those parables as a kind of a commentary on tonight’s passage. Jesus is showing us what the kingdom of God—the “kingdom that cannot be shaken,” as our passage in Hebrews states—is like: who is included, and who we—as members of that community—are. So then, perhaps this passage is as much about identity—who we all are in the kindom of God—as it is about Sabbath. Maybe the two are more related than we usually care to realize. If Sabbath is a time to recall and recreate God’s intended world, then aren’t we all, as children of God, called to follow the Daughter of Abraham and Christ’s examples? We should come to God for renewal, and we should constantly be inviting others into that renewal as well. Christ calls us to find our identity not by excluding others to define ourselves, but to open our arms to people we see as totally different—economically, socially, intellectually, personally—so that we can define ourselves through community, purpose, and love. God empowers us, as God empowered Jeremiah in our Old Testament passage, to speak and live out this message to the world. Let us do so with discernment, compassion, and humility. Let us be a people who see as Jesus saw a Daughter of Abraham in a bent old woman; let us be a people who restore dignity and voice to everyone who is, as one poet writes, “bent / by unbending ways.”

Jesus Meek and Mild...Not!

Joseph P. Mathews, OSL
19 August 2007
Pentecost 12+, C

Luke 12.49-56
“Jesus Meek and Mild. Not.”

God of Flame, ignite us, set us on fire, rekindle us, and enflame us in passionate love for you. Draw us out of the confines of our safe and predictable faith and out to the high seas of adventuresome discipleship. May we burn brightly for your love. Amen.

Today’s text is not an easy one to preach. As I looked at the lectionary readings for today I had choices: Isaiah’s first song; a Psalm; a continuation of the discourse on Faith from the letter to the Hebrews; and finally, Jesus meek and mild. Not. “I came to bring fire to the earth!...Do you think I have come to bring peace on the earth? Ha! Division, I say! Dividing houses: fathers from sons and mothers from daughters!” No, this is not Jesus meek and mild, as much of our artwork portrays. Bishop Will Willimon, currently of the North Alabama Annual Conference has this to say about the text, “I confess I always feel a dread when we come to this particular Sunday of the year, this text from Luke, and this Jesus who runs counter to so much that we’ve tried to make him.” This, beloved, is a hard text to preach. But so is most of the Gospel when spoken to be applied to our lives. And it was to this text that I felt lead to speak on.

This week’s lesson is a continuation of pericopes – selections of scripture used to build a sermon around – of Christ’s warnings and exhortations. Two weeks ago Christ told the disciples not to worry because life is more than food and clothing. “Look to the ravens and the lilies,” he tells them, “they neither sow nor reap nor toil, but are fed to fullness and clothed splendidly.” Last week was “fear not little flock.” God wants us to live in the kindom here and now. This week, however, the tone changes. “Fear not little flock,” becomes “be terrified instead!”

By talking about fire, Jesus evokes a long history of imagery from our sacred text: Ecclesiastes lists it as a gift along with water, iron, honey, wine, and other things as gifts from God. But fire can be – and is meant to be – frightening, too. After Old Testament battles, how many cities were burned completely to show their total defeat? Fire is used for purification in Old Covenant religious rites. (What are some other fire references that we have from which to draw?) God lead the wandering Israelites by a pillar of fire at night. I AM appeared to Moses as a burning bush. Fire is a sign for the presence of God as well as being a gift representative of destruction and purification. When Jesus speaks of bringing fire to the earth, we have this imagery.

After the proclamation that fire is coming to the earth – fire of destruction, fire of purification, and/or fire of the presence of the Almighty – Jesus alludes to his coming death: “I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed!” Christ has come to take away the sin of the world. But Jesus has talked elsewhere in the Gospel about his mission on earth: to show we mortals how to live into the Kindom of God here and now. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Can you imagine being Jesus? Not yet to the point of praying “your will not mine” in terms of his death, but knowing that it’s coming? Can you imagine trying to change the world – to shake the foundations of the systems that are in place from the ground up - when you have boneheaded disciples with you who just don’t get it, even after you’ve explained it to them, and told them that they don’t get it? What kind of stress is that?

After telling the disciples – and us – of his stress, Christ throws a card that makes many people uncomfortable, particularly in light of his title Prince of Peace. “I’m not here to settle your arguments! I’m not here to make everything happy times! I’m here to bring about strife and division among you! Your houses will be split between those who follow me and those who do not!” This rejection of bringing peace is not a justification for war. In the first century of the Common Era, Israel was under Roman occupancy. Many expectant Jews planned for Messiah to throw off the Roman oppressors and bring about peace. But, as we know, he didn’t. He brought about a peace that passes human understand, and he tried to share it with us.

Christ tells us here that his message is not one of maintaining the status quo. He taught, acted, and lived as though heaven were already on earth. He expected his followers to do the same. Throughout the Gospel Jesus challenges the powers that be – government bodies, religious leaders, and human nature. He healed on the Sabbath and called the leaders hypocrites. He worked and lived for a Kindom that no one could actually see, even though they were living in one of the greatest empires in Western history. He said last week to “sell all that you have.” What? Sell all that I have? Depend on others who may at the same time be depending on me? That runs counter to our ingrained desires of self-preservation.

Following Christ causes division, particularly if we seek to live as a kindom people, where all are treated justly with fairness, and where God’s grace that we the baptized enjoy be enjoyed by everyone else – especially those we think deserve punishment for their actions. The Rev. Taylor Burton-Edwards observes that those most invested in earthly kingdoms will be most disturbed by talk of the Heavenly Kindom’s presence. I’m not saying to storm the jails and break them down, although this was considered an act of sanctity in the sixth century church. But we do have specific instruction to visit the jailed and show God’s love to them. I don’t suggest we have an anarchist revolution, but do suggest we strive to make a just society within our various forms of government.

If following Christ causes division, what are we doing that’s divisive? What are we doing that we think is divisive but is only maintaining the status quo? Who are we, as Christians, making angry? Who are we as a people called United Methodist stirring up? Who are you, as a body of believers and as individuals making question what they think and do? How are we living into those beautiful vows of our water baptisms – renouncing the spiritual forces of wickedness, rejecting the evil powers of darkness, repenting of our sin, and resisting evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves, putting our whole trust in Christ’s grace and being Christ’s representative to the world – so that we are being baptized with fire?

Our Social Principles can be a good jumping off point. What does this church of which you’re a member believe? Do you agree? Do you disagree? Why? What are you being done to change it? In our democratic system of government they can be changed. But what conclusions have the roughly a thousand members at the general conferences since our church was birthed reached and why? Do those things for which the United Methodist Church already stands for bring division and fire?

Furthermore, how are we not letting ourselves bring about divisions with fire? In her book Teaching that Transforms: Worship as the Heart of Christian Education, author Debra Dean Murphy is critical of worship styles that “dumb down” the faith and take Christ’s dramatic claims - “DIVISION! FIRE!” – and box them into a consumer culture’s limits: 

"…the market driven character of much of our worship; the dumbing down of he church’s historic liturgy; the thoughtless capitulation by Christians to consumer capitalism; the extolling of managerial models of ecclesial leadership; the view of the church as a promoter of ‘family values; and defender of (abstract) principles of love, justice, and freedom; the facile identification of Christianity and nationalism; the failure to train the imaginations of the young; the devolving of rigorous Christian discourse into pious sentimentality; and the growing trend across Christian traditions toward a vacuous, generic, benign pop spirituality."[1]

How do we suppress fires in our worship? What songs do we not sing? What passages of scripture do we avoid? What prayers and litanies go unsaid? Which affirmations of faith that are available to us do we not say? How do we shroud the fire of compassion, the flame of mercy, and the Light of the World in our personal lives, thoughts, words, and actions?

After telling the crowd of people listening that following him is not easy and brings division Jesus talks about something they can really understand: the weather. The geographic location of this narrative lends itself to Jesus’s speech: to the south was a desert. As such, when the south wind blew, the heat was coming in. The people of Jesus’s day knew this and understood what was coming. But they, not unlike the disciples, didn’t really get what he was talking about: the Kindom of God. Today it might sound something like this: “You hypocrites! You understand the weather! You have satellites and know when tropical depressions are forming off of Africa. You can monitor storm systems and air pressures and fronts of air, but don’t you see what’s going on here?” As the Evangelical Lutheran Church in American’s General Synod has just disbanded, our General Conference will convene next year, and The Episcopal Church’s General Convention will gather again in 2009, what new things are coming? Will the delegates – who will have The Weather Channel in their hotel rooms – listen to God’s new things? Or will they, like the disciples so many times, listen to only what they know and think is safe? May your fervent prayer be that they catch on fire with enthusiasm, even if as John Wesley suggests, that causes people to come from miles around to watch them burn.

I close with a song from The Faith We Sing that gives us instructions and hope. It tells us what to do now as we wait for what is to come. It reminds us of what we’ve been told to do and what we’ve been told will happen. This is David Haas’s “We Are Called”
Come! live in the light! Shine with the joy and the love of the Lord! We are called to be light for the [kindom], to live in the freedom of the city of God! Come! Open your heart! Show your mercy to all those in fear! We are called to be hope for the hopeless, so all hatred and blindness will be no more! Sing! Sing a new song! Sing of that great day when all will be one! God will reign and we'll walk with each other as sisters and brothers united in love!
And the refrain goes like this: We are called to act with justice. We are called to love tenderly. We are called to serve one another, to walk humbly with God.

In the name of the Holy and Triune God, Creator, Christ, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

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1. Brazos, 2004. p. 23