Homework...

Gospel Reading: Luke 14:1,7-14

Not for a place of honor did your Son come among us, O god of the lowly, but to invite to the wedding feast the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame. Let such humility grace our table and lead us to renounce the quest for power and privilege. … Amen.

(From Prayers for Sunday and Seasons, Year C, Peter J. Scagnelli, LTP, 1992.)

It seems there is a common theme lately in sermons to this community. A lot of them seem to be focusing on breaking attachments to money and power and other things that serve as pseudo-security in place of God.

Here is the same topic again today – in Jeremiah, the prophet talks about the people forgetting and turning their back on all God did for them, his continual provision and faithfulness: rescuing them from Egypt, leading them through the wilderness – through a land no one survives in – and bringing them into a land where there is plenty. Instead of remembering that they owe all their current prosperity to God, they start attributing it to themselves and to other gods. Through Jeremiah, God laments, “My people have changed their glory for something that does not profit… they have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and dug out cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns that can hold no water.”

In the Psalm, we hear again God’s promise to take care of his people’s needs, as he has continually done in the past, and his wish that they would accept what he wants to give them.

I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and said,
"Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it." … O that my people would listen to me.

Hebrews is very straightforward in its advice.

Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have.

I’m not sure why this keeps being the theme of sermons here. Maybe it’s something this community particularly needs to hear – or maybe it’s just a topic everybody needs to have reiterated. Probably both. Are you aware if it’s sinking in for you?

Money is not security; God is security.
Money is not ultimately of any value; God is of ultimate value.
Money may or may not even get you daily bread; God provides for your every need.

Money is only useful if you can trade it for what you need or want, but if what you need isn’t available, money won’t get it for you, and if the person who has what you need doesn’t want money for it, there again, money is not use. We’ve seen also that money can very easily and very quickly lose value and even become completely worthless. And it’s of no use at all in obtaining things of really great value.

“Will you be my friend? I’ll give you a hundred dollars…”
“Will you drop the charges against me? I’ll give you a hundred dollars…”
“Will you marry me? I’ll give you a hundred dollars…”
“I want to be a senator. I’ll give you a hundred dollars…”
“Can I have an indulgence to erase my sins? I’ll give you a hundred dollars…”

When people try to trade money for these things, it becomes a scandal – money, in these situations, actually reduces the value of what it’s traded for. Inappropriate use of money in these areas fosters disillusionment: with the political system, with the church, with relationships… it cheapens them, it makes them seem untrustworthy. Why? Because these things are based on a higher value than money.

For some things that have really ultimate value, money is not even a scandal, it’s just a joke.

“God, will you let me in? I’ll give you a hundred dollars…”

What does God have to do with money? Does God buy things? He owns the cattle on a thousand hills – he doesn’t need anything from us. It’s the other way around, he gives us everything. What do we have that we have not been given?

But still, it’s habit to hang onto our things, our abilities, our relationships, even our lives, as though they are ours and not God’s. And we try to get more by taking from each other. An outward representation of that is what Jesus saw at a party: people schmoosing and trying to network and make connections to power and wealth to get up the ladder, trying to sit closest to the host of the party, to be seen as more important. Parties are often still like this – you’ve got some folks trying to sit with or talk to certain other folks – the kids who are more popular, the bosses who are more powerful, the stars who are bigger celebrities. At the same time, people are trying to avoid and get away from those they feel are lower than themselves or might somehow pull them down.

But Jesus says we’re not to be like that – from either side. Neither the brown-nosers nor the snobs.

As one commentator, David Lose, noted, Jesus is not just being Miss Manners when he talks to people about how to act at parties – and who to invite. This business about who sits closest to the host is about pecking order, but Jesus says forget the pecking order – it’s the other way around. Don’t try to sit in the highest seat; sit in the lowest. Don’t try to be the king; be everyone’s servant.

And if you’re the one who’s throwing the party, don’t invite people you want to impress, people you think can help you advance your career, your station in life. You scratch their back and they’ll scratch yours. No, don’t do that – that doesn’t earn you any favor with God, because there’s nothing hospitable or generous about it; it’s a calculated investment, but whatever you get back is all the benefit there is to that kind of transaction. It doesn’t win you any points in heaven.

No, if you want to invest in something truly valuable, try to do something to win God’s favor – as Jesus advises. Do something good for someone who can’t do anything for you. Invite people to your party who can’t even bring the bean dip.

Since this money and economy and giving topic seems to keep coming up, possibly it’s something we need to learn better. In school, when a concept is difficult to grasp with just a lecture, the teacher gives you some homework to practice…

I think that’s a good idea to implement in church. Lots of times, people just come to church and listen to the lecture, and I don’t know how much application of the learning takes place afterwards. I guess that’s fine if you’re just auditing, but really, why even audit a course unless you actually want to learn the material?

So, I’m giving a homework assignment. Now, I’m not the teacher; you won’t turn it in to me. Jesus is the teacher; I’m just subbing today. But this is some of the material he left for us to work on.

Nicodemus - faith and reason

Year A, Lent 2
Readings: Genesis 12:1-4a Romans 4:1-5, 13-17 John 3:1-17 Psalm 121


The story of Nicodemus is fascinating to me. I think it describes what often happens when a logical, analytical mind encounters spiritual truth.
Nicodemus is trying to understand who Jesus is and where his power is coming from - because he figures it has to be from God, but how does that work, exactly?
He's sincere - he really wants to understand, "What is this relationship between body and soul? - between God and man?" but when Jesus answers him, Nicodemus finds the reply very confusing.
Jesus had said that, to see the kingdom of God, everyone needed to be 'born from above,' but that didn't make sense to Nicodemus. "How can anyone be born after having grown old?"
Jesus tells him. "What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit..."
That still didn't clarify it totally for Nicodemus, because his next comment is, "How can these things be?"
I find this conversation encouraging, because I think Nicodemus is an intelligent person, so if he's confused, I feel reassured that, when I'm confused about faith questions, it's not that I'm not smart enough, it's just that the answers really are hard to understand.
I also find it encouraging that, when Nicodemus says he's confused, Jesus works harder at explaining it. I'm grateful for people who have the courage and honesty to say when they don't understand something, even if it makes the teacher irritated, because usually then the teacher will say it again more clearly and maybe use some examples, and the result is that everybody understands better. Think how many people have come to understand God's purpose in sending Jesus to save humanity - which is what our faith hangs on - from the single verse of John 3:16 - part of Jesus' further clarification to Nicodemus. It's such a clear explanation. When I was little, we memorized it in Sunday school. You probably know it, too.
"For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life."
We can partly thank Nicodemus for that excellent summary because he asked the question.
Asking questions is, I think, an important foundation of scientific inquiry, and we've come up in a scientific, questioning age. Everything is being and has been questioned and examined, turned inside out, defined and re-defined - like we were trying to chart and re-map in specific details all the vagueness of the past, to take away the element of mystery that wrapped around everything in the medieval period. We don't want 'hocus pocus'; we want reality - something solid and definite to believe in.
Here's an interesting little piece of linguistic information about that word 'hocus pocus,' the way we talk about words or rituals that seem silly and pointless. "Hocus pocus...abbra cadabra, and Viola! Here's a bunny!"
But it's fake; it's a trick to make you think the magician has powers, but really he doesn't. He just knows how to make you look the other way at the right time.
During the Protestant Reformation, people were beginning to question what the rituals in church were all about, really. The service was all in Latin, and so people didn't know what was being said and mostly didn't understand what was being done, but at some point, the priest would say a particular thing, a bell would ring, and everyone was supposed to look, because the priest would hold up the bread, and that was how you received communion - that's how you received grace. The people who attended the service didn't actually take communion by eating the bread or drinking the wine; they received it by seeing it. So, if you weren't paying attention then, you could miss the main part of the service and seemingly it wouldn't do you any good. But some people started to wonder whether any of those things, which they didn't understand, were actually doing them any good anyway.
People had lost track of what all those things meant that the priest was doing and saying, and they started to question whether those things had any meaning at all. The words sounded like gibberish. When the priest held up the bread, he said (in Latin) "Hoc est corpus meum" - "This is my body." But most people didn't know Latin. So it's not suprising, really that when the priest said "Hoc est corpus meum" - and maybe the bells would drown out the 'meum' part, leaving just "Hoc est corpus..", it's understandible that what people heard was 'Hocus pocus,' - - and that came to have a meaning of its own related to how they felt about what they saw and heard in church. Maybe all these rituals and unintelligible words don't really have a meaning. It's just 'hocus pocus...'
People became dissatisfied with accepting things they didn't understand; they wanted reasons and answers.
Religion has reacted in different ways to this cultural shift of wanting to question everything - in many instances defensively, making it wrong to question issues of faith, which put a lot of people in the predicament of feeling they had to choose between thinking or believing. Some people were executed because of dilemmas like this. And some fought back, carrying out executions of their own and breaking all the things that smacked of mystery and 'hocus pocus' to get back to a 'true religion' based on reason and not meaningless movements and unintelligible words. But just because someone doesn't know the meaning or understand the words doesn't mean they don't have meaning - we have to be careful to balance our capacity for reason and desire for explanations with respect for what we don't understand.
As Fr. John and Fr. Jack discussed in the Lenten series class Wednesday night, "faith vs. reason" is a false dichotomy - that's just not how it is - God made us with the ability to reason. It's only right that we should use it - and the faithful use of gifts God gave us will not lead us away from God but toward God, even if the path seems to wind around.
And it has wound around quite a bit - even in the past 10-20 years, not to mention the past 100. Our culture has changed a lot in this questioning and exploration. One thing I think we're learning from this process is that we're not likely to ever understand it all. For every new thing we've learned this century, we've discovered whole areas of things we never dreamed about before - and each new thing is more beautiful, and complicated and amazing than we imagined. Remember what whole new worlds, literally, were opened up to our imaginations by the invention of the telescope and the microscope, for example, and more recently with quantum physics, genetics, and multi-dimensional math.
As we look for answers to our questions about life and the world, as we try to understand, God shows us new things, and each thing we understand is more amazing than we had imagined before... until I think eventually, more than answers to our questions about life and the world, we begin to want to know the God who made this world and gave us life.
In our class Wednesday night, talking about how the world began and why we're here, we had a big discussion about this relationship between faith and science. George Kondos made a comment about Einstein saying that science was trying to understand the mind of God. Einstein represents to many people the pinnacle of modern scientific thought - one of the most brilliant minds of all time - and his conclusion is that science is essentially a search to know God.
Isn't that really theology?
I love theology, and I think it's the highest of all fields to study, but I think even that is not where the journey of faith is leading. One of the most brilliant theologians of all time - St. Thomas Aquinas - after he had written tomes of material constituting a complex and beautiful systematic theology, one day completely stopped writing. Because, he said, something had happened while he was celebrating the Eucharist one day, and whatever that experience was, it made everything he ever wrote seem like 'so much straw.' Compared to what he'd been trying to describe in his theological writings, the reality was so much more amazing - so the thing to do then was worship, not write about it.
Our ability to reason and our desire to understand may be things God created in us, but they're tools, things to help us get to where we understand enough to worship, and at that point, the rest of it, as amazing and complicated and beautiful as it is, won't even be able to hold a candle to the one who made it. This may partly explain the stories why some people who meet Jesus just stop whatever they were doing to follow Him - even though not everybody does it immediately when they meet him, like some of the disciples did.
As I mentioned at the beginning, I love the story of Nicodemus, because it took him a while to work it out. Today's gospel reading is not the only place he shows up. Here, in this passage, we see the beginning of his journey - questioning, trying to understand who Jesus is and how he has access to God's power. Later, he comes up at Jesus' trial, trying to offer a voice of reason in Jesus' defense. Then, still later, he is one of those who come to take Jesus' body down from the cross, "bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes.." - kind of like those wise men from the East, whose scientific inquiries led them to follow a star.
Nicodemus, a Pharisee who was diligently trying to observe and follow the law, started from a different place. While the magi started from science, Nicodemus started from religion, but they all found themselves on a journey of faith that ultimately led them to worship the God who made it all, who created the star, and who gave the law, and who sent his Son to show us how much God wants us to know him and be with him, because he made us and loves us, brains, questions, and all.

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Given to St. John's, Silsbee
Feb. 17, 2008

About cheating

Year C - Pentecost, Proper 20
Readings: Amos 8:4-7(8-12); 1 Timothy 2:1-8; Luke 16:1-13; Psalm 138


Lord, may we know your word, speak your word, and love your word. Amen.Today’s OT and Gospel readings both talk about cheating.
Basically, if you’re cheating anyone, stop it - especially if you’re cheating poor people or anyone at a disadvantage to you.
The message in Amos is very harsh toward people cheating the poor.
‘Hear this, you who trample the needy… The Lord has sworn… "I will never forget…"’Amos describes some methods people were using in his day to increase their profits by tricking or cheating their customers.
"Skimping the measure, boosting the price, and cheating with dishonest scales…selling even the sweepings with the wheat."Methods are the same today – for example, next time you get gas, notice the sticker on the pump that certifies the pump has been checked to ensure it pumps a gallon of gas for a gallon of gas.
And when I pay $.75 for a bag of chips from the vending machine, and 2/3 of it is air, with 5 chips in the bottom, I feel like someone is skimping the measure.
Now, a popular method of ‘boosting the price’ seems to be tacking on lots of little fees and surcharges for things you didn’t request but didn’t know you had to exclude.
Then there’s the whole area of financing, which invariably ends up making people with less money pay a lot more. Currently, the issue of sub-prime mortgages has been in the news a lot. From what I gather, these are high-risk, high-interest loans made to people who probably really can’t afford to buy a home – and sure enough, most of them couldn’t pay, especially with the high interest. Now, their houses are being foreclosed on, and that whole area of the market has collapsed, sending other sectors of the economy into a tailspin.
Who’s most affected by this? People who can least afford it.
By way of contrast, last year’s Nobel Peace Prize went to an economist who developed a system of micro-lending to help very poor people start businesses. These loans have been so successful that whole sectors of the economies in many developing nations have been strengthened.
It’s not a matter of money – it’s a matter of the lender’s motives.
It’s a matter of justice.
What about credit cards? How are credit cards marketed?
They’re often presented as sources of cash flow – offered to people who have very little cash… like college students. When I was in college, credit card companies would set up tables in the SUB and give away ‘free’ stuff to people filling out applications. Talk about ‘buying…the needy for a pair of sandals"…
So, in addition to tuition, room and board (which we took out loans for), students were encouraged to rack up additional expenses on credit cards with high interest rates. Pretty much every college student I know is at least up to their eyeballs in debt, and even if they find a good job, they’ll spend a substantial chunk of their lives paying it back.
In the meantime, what if they need to buy a house? …. Remember, the housing market has basically collapsed.
And these are college graduates – what’s the situation for people without a degree?
And there’s no time to talk about who doesn’t have health insurance or what you learned about the insurance on your house after Rita…Many things in our society are unbalanced – usually in the favor of whoever has the money, power, or influence. Think Jack Abramoff… and the influence of lobbies on the laws that get made.
If you’re going to oppress or neglect someone, it’s easiest to oppress or ignore the people who are without representation – the poor, the weak, the uneducated, the powerless – because they don’t fight back as much.
BUT, they do have a key advocate. God seems to have a particular concern and care for these folks. And as the Church, we’d better be looking out for them, too. We’d certainly better NOT be contributing to injustice against them.Many times, particularly in the prophets, God’s word is that he doesn’t care about sacrifices and ceremonies – not if the rest of the week is full of injustice. Earlier in Amos, the prophet delivers this message from the Lord:
I hate, I despise your festivals, / and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies…
Take away from me the noise of your songs; / I will not listen to the noise of your harps.
But let justice roll down like waters, / and righteousness like an ever-rolling stream.Over and over again, God’s theme is Justice:
"And what does the Lord require of you but to do justice…." (Micah 6:8)But cheating perverts justice, turns it upside down, makes it meaningless.
And if we, as Christians, representing Christ (because we do) – if we cheat people, especially disadvantaged people, not only does it destroy their trust in us personally, but they can associate our behavior with the Church, and with Christ – and they can decide that, if that’s what Christianity is, they want nothing of it.
They’re chased away from hope because they don’t hear, don’t see evidence in us of God’s particular care for the poor, the sick, the weak, and the lonely.
If we, who profess to know and follow God, commit injustice, this puts a barrier in front of people who need hope in God more than anything else - and that’s inexcusable.
This may sound like overkill if all the injustice you did this week was cheat on your math homework.
But part of the message from Luke’s gospel is that, unless they stop – and turn around – little cheaters grow to be big cheaters.
It’s only a matter of time and degree from cheating on tests to cheating on taxes.
The mindset that justifies it and the basic pattern are the same.
As a person gains more responsibility, cheating has wider ramifications.
Think about Enron. How many people lost their jobs? How many lost their retirement?
So if you’re cheating at anything, stop now.
If you’re not – don’t start.In light of all this, the gospel reading from Luke sounds pretty odd.
Here’s a story of a guy who gets fired for cheating his boss, and then his boss compliments him for how clever his cheating was.
What was Jesus trying to say by telling this story?
And why did he pick a cheater as the main character?I don’t know, but my theory is maybe he wanted to show that he knows what kinds of things people get into, and he’s not shocked that people cheat.
When we cheat, God’s not shocked; God knows us already better than we know ourselves. He knows, and he’s not shocked. God can even appreciate the ingenuity and talents we used to do it, since God’s the one who gave us those gifts, but it’s a shame for us to use them on schemes instead of doing something good with them.
It’s also a shame if we don’t use our gifts for anything at all – maybe thinking the only thing we can offer to the church is the gift of being ‘nice’ while we’re here. But there are a lot of attributes natural to each one of you that really contribute to the life and health of the church.
What if you’re not necessarily that nice, but you’re strong? Great! We have heavy stuff.
What if you’re funny? Excellent – there are people here who could use a laugh.
What if you’re good at soccer? What if you know all about horses? What if you can explain complicated things? What if you think about things in simple terms? What if you plan things? What if you read, write, paint – draw, sing, or dance?
Fantastic! Obviously God thinks the church needs it, because he gave it to you and brought you here.Part of Luke’s commentary on the story of the dishonest manager is to say basically that ‘it’s a shame the world is more creative than the church is…’
It’s true –
How much time and money and artistic talent – genius even – go into making a Super Bowl commercial to get people to drink beer or change their car insurance?
How much goes into trying to get people to come to church?People are capable of amazing feats of ingenuity and persistence. Think of anybody who’s dating. Guys and girls both will do all kinds of clever, creative, crazy things to impress a date. Did you see the movie 50 First Dates ? - perfect example.
What if that kind of creativity were given toward honoring God? If we think about how we’re spending our time and creativity now, then cut out the worthless and bad things (which God’s not shocked about because He already knows)
What would we do differently?
Think about it – Make some changes
And let’s see what God will do with us.

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Given to St. John's, Silsbee
Sept. 23, 2007

Palm Sunday ("I am with you")

Year C, Palm Sunday
Liturgy of the Palms - Gospel: Luke 19:29-40
Liturgy of the Word - Passion Gospel: Luke 22:39-23:56


At the beginning of this service, we heard about Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem. People were singing, "Hosanna!" "Save us!" In the Passion Gospel, this tune changed to "Crucify him!"
The Passion means so many things, but one thing it means is that Jesus knows what it's like to be hurt - really, really hurt. He even knows what it's like to die. One of our beliefs as Christians is that Jesus' suffering and death can offer comfort to us, but it's not perhaps the kind of comfort we'd prefer.

Passion
What does it mean to describe this part of the gospel story as 'the Passion' ?
The way it's most commonly used, you'd think passion means long, slobbery kisses in romance movies. There's nothing like that in this story, though - there's a lot of shouting and hitting and pushing and crying; a man gets his ear cut off, and a whole group of people kill someone who's innocent and a couple other people who are probably guilty, but there are no passionate love scenes.
There is a sense in which passion means love, and so Jesus' Passion also means love, but it's a complicated kind of love. Real love, though it can involve kisses, also often involves tears - pain, sadess, confusion and other very difficult things - that's when the idea of passion gets closer to its real meaning.
The word passion comes from a Latin word that means 'to suffer.' And Jesus suffered - a lot. So it's called the Passion because it's about Jesus' suffering.

Suffering
The fact of suffering is one of the most difficult things we have to deal with in life, both because it hurts so much and because it doesn't make sense. Most of our hardest questions for God have to do with suffering.
Jesus' interactions with different people in the story illustrate, I think, questions people still have about pain.
The soldiers blindfolded Jesus and hit him, saying, 'Prophesy! Who is it that struck you?' It's like they were saying, 'If you're God, you should know everything, so where does pain come from?'
The chief priests and elders say, 'If you are the Messiah, tell us.' Jesus says, 'If I tell you, you will not believe...' I think this mirrors the confusion and frustration many of us feel at the fact that God is not tangible in ways we want or expect him to be, and we have to act so often on faith, hoping in things we can't see.
Even if he thinks they won't believe, why won't he tell them? I think because the whole point of his coming here, the whole point of the Incarnation was not to tell them a message anymore but to show them, because they hadn't been able to believe the message they were told.

Two Criminals
Perhaps the most important interaction occurs between Jesus and the criminals executed with him. One of the criminals questions him sarcastically: 'Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!'
The second criminal denounces him, saying, 'Do you not fear God?' He then says, 'Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.'
The first criminal's question is really a hard one. Why would Jesus, if he's God's Son, not use his power to get himself - and us - out of our pain?
I don't fully know the answer.
But I think Jesus' response to the second criminal gives us some idea. 'Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.'
It seems to me these two criminals are both saying essentially the same thing - the same thing everyone had been shouting on the way into Jerusalem the week before - "Save us!" They, and the crowd, and Pilate and the chief priests and elders and everyone else there, and we today, all want relief.


What relief?
What relief does Jesus' suffering offer for our suffering?
I think the 23rd Psalm, which has so often provided comfort in sorrow, offers part of the answer, and one passage particularly: "though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me."
One message of Jesus' Passion was this: I am with you .... I am with you in your suffering.

There is no attempt to answer our 'Why?' with any sort of 'Because...' He simply says, 'I am with you.'
The meaning of compassion, literally, is to 'suffer with' someone. Their pain is your pain. Because of his Passion, his suffering, Jesus is able to have true compassion for us, to suffer with us - our pain is his pain. I am with you in your suffering.

The corollary comes next week, at Easter, when we say that his victory and his joy will also be ours - I am with you in suffering, and you will be with me in Paradise.

In the film, Shadowlands, about the life of C.S. Lewis and particularly his marriage to Joy Gresham, Joy contracts cancer not long after they get married. Though she is dying, there are periods of relative health, and during one of these, they go on a belated honeymoon. While on a walk in the countryside, it begins to rain and they run for cover under an awning. Joy turns to Lewis and begins to talk about what will happen when she dies; she wants him to look after her son. He doesn't want to talk about it, though. A minute before, they had been laughing, and it had almost seemed possible in that moment for him to forget she was dying.
'Don't spoil it,' he says.
'It doesn't spoil it,' she says. 'It makes it real. The pain then is part of the happiness now.'

I think that is also part of the message of the Passion.
God is with us in suffering - and we will be with him in Paradise.
The pain now is part of the happiness then. It doesn't spoil it. It makes it real.
Amen.

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Given to Vidor Presbyterian
Palm Sunday, 2007