It's a Trap!

Luke 18:9-14
October 24, 2010 (30th Sunday in Ordinary Time)

1.  In 1980, singer Mac Davis came out with a hit song.  Here’s the chorus from that song:

Oh Lord it's hard to be humble when you're perfect in every way

I can't wait to look in the mirror 'cause I get better lookin' each day

To know me is to love me, I must be a h(eck) of a man

Oh Lord it's hard to be humble, but I'm doin' the best that I can

One of the reasons I like this song is because I know there are a lot of humble people in church!  Let’s have a show of hands here.  Who out there is humble?  Ok.  Well, who out there is the most humble?  Raise your hand!  Don’t be shy! 

Of course, there’s the rub.  We knew we were in trouble when the gospel reading starts with the clear statement that the following parable is for people “who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt.”  The last time I checked, most of us think our opinions and beliefs are right, if not righteous.  And people who don’t see things our way, if not contemptible, are at least sadly mistaken. 

It’s an especially tricky problem for those of you who may have enjoyed some power or authority in your life.  A good one that Susie Delano shared with me this week comes from the inimitable Mohammed Ali:  Prior to take-off on a plane, Mohammed Ali, was told to fasten his seat belt. He boastfully replied, "Superman don't need no seatbelt,"  to which the flight attendant responded, "Superman don't need no airplane either."

Oh Lord, it’s hard to be humble!

2.  The parable from Luke seems simple.  Two men go up to pray in the temple.  The Pharisee gets up in a good public place and crows on and on about how great he is.  He is religiously perfect—fasting and tithing on a regular basis.  He thanks God for his ability to be faithful like this, and he is especially thankful that he is not some villainous piece of garbage like the traitorous and thieving tax collector he sees across the way.  The trouble with the Pharisee, unfortunately, is that biblical scholars tell us that Pharisees were hardly the self-righteous blowhards we often imagine them to have been.  The Pharisees were a movement in Judaism to make the keeping of the law more of a daily practice accessible to all the Jewish people rather than just to the priests in the temple.  They believed that Jews would be better off in religious terms if all would keep God’s law more carefully and in everyday ways.  Most scholars admit that Jesus himself shared many of these Pharisaical tendencies.  And, except for the part where this Pharisee specifically thanks God for not being some lesser person, it’s not that terrible of thing to thank God for helping you be good! 

What about the tax collector?  It’s not easy to imagine a modern-day equivalent to the tax collector—he was not much like an IRS agent.  Tax collectors were entrepreneurs who collected taxes for the Roman Empire—as such they were considered traitors, and it was common knowledge that they used extortion, graft, and all kinds of thievery to shake down the populace.  Any money they collected above what was owed to the Romans went right in their pockets.  The closest analogue in our society might be a loan shark or a Mafioso who also oozed the opposite of patriotism.  This particular tax collector, the one in the parable, has apparently come to some sort of crisis point in his life.  From the description given, he seems to be honestly convicted of his sinfulness as he prays, “God, be merciful on me, a sinner!”

It’s easy, even given what I’ve told you about how the Pharisees weren’t all that bad and how the tax collectors were that bad and worse, to be attracted to the humble and contrite tax collector and be repulsed by the bragging and pious Pharisee.  Even Jesus seems to point us this way, saying that the tax collector went home justified, meaning that he went home set right by God.  Obviously, our sympathies should go with the tax collector even as our condemnation should be against the proud Pharisee.

3.  But watch out!  This parable is a trap!  You see, as soon as we feel superior to the Pharisee, we become the Pharisee.  Preaching professor David Lose says, “For as soon as we fall prey to the temptation to divide humanity into any kind of groups, we have aligned ourselves squarely with the Pharisee. Whether our division is between righteous and sinners, as with the Pharisee, or even between the self-righteous and the humble, as with Luke, we are doomed. Anytime you draw a line between who's "in" and who's "out," this parable asserts, you will find God on the other side.”  Lutheran pastor John Petty agrees.  He writes, “The twist is that even when we're at our best, such as the pharisee, we're actually worse off than we were before we shaped up.  Now, we're under the illusion that we're "special" and "better."  [This is a special kind of irony.]  It means that even when we think we're close to God--especially then--our self-righteousness in thinking so means we're actually farther from God than we were to begin with.”

This is why trying to be humble is a losing proposition.  In fact, it might not even be possible to try to be holy!  When we try, we inevitably fail, or we succeed, but in succeeding, we alienate others with our pride at managing to be so holy.  No wonder so many people outside of the church (and even inside it) think that we Christians are hypocrites.  If you’re like me, you have at least one family member and probably several friends who are to willing to tell you that they don’t go to church because it’s full of a bunch of over-pious hypocrites.  They don’t want to be part of that!

4.  As much as we would like for these people to come to church and see that church is so much more than their negative perceptions, we have to admit that Pharisees and good church people can be hard to take.

Regarding this passage, theologian Albert Nolan has said that, “One of the basic causes of oppression, discrimination and suffering in that society was its religion….And nothing is more impervious to change than religious zeal.  The piety and good works of the dutiful religious man made him feel that God was on his side.  He did not need God’s mercy and forgiveness; that was what others needed.  The sinner, on the other hand, was well aware of his desperate need for mercy and forgiveness and of his need to change his life….Jesus soon discovered that it was the dutiful religious man, rather than the sinner or pagan Roman, who was an obstacle to the coming of the kingdom of total liberation.” 

The same goes for us in these days.  How many times have you seen a poor person on the side of the road or some other suffering person in this world and uttered something to yourself like, “There but for the grace of God go I.”  Or, when you are totally honest with yourself, how many times have you thought, “I am so grateful that I’m not like someone else.”?  I’m not proud of it, but my parents taught me when I was young that it was better to be an American than to be anything else.  So, by being an American, am I better?  Am I luckier?  Am I more justified by God?  Please remember that the tax collector went home justified. 

5.  So what’s it going to take?  How can we reset this whole situation so that it is not a trap?  How can we live in such a way that we can live as God would have us live (like the Pharisee) and avoid the prideful comparisons (also like the Pharisee)?  How can we be justified, saved, redeemed, set right, and set free by God alone?

Well, it’s useless to try to be humble.  So why don’t we try to love like Jesus?  Why don’t we try to love the sin-soaked tax collector amongst us?  Why don’t we love the criminals, the sex offenders, the terrorists, the illegals, the repulsive?  And while we’re at, why don’t we love the Pharisee, the boor, the braggart, the self-righteous, the overly confident?  Author Jayne Hoose points out that, “To act towards others out of love often requires us to look beyond the obvious.  What is it that compels the Pharisee to compare himself favorably to the tax collector before God?  [Why did he need to do that?] A more loving response to this parable might be to try to understand the underlying needs and hurt of both the Pharisee and the tax collector.  It is only when we regard others out of love that true humility follows.  Love and humility are essential partners.” 

6.  Jesus has a way of doing this to us.  He tells a story that seems obvious:  the Pharisee is a schmuck and the tax collector is justified.  But as the story pulls us in, and we go farther and farther into it, we end up where we so often end up:  standing with all the rest in need of love.  We need to be loved and we need to give love.  Love your neighbor as yourself, even if he is a Pharisee, even if she is a tax collector.  And, neighbor, we will love you. 

Let us pray:

Holy God, our righteous judge, daily your mercy surprises us with everlasting forgiveness.  Strengthen our hope in you, and grant that all peoples of the earth may find their glory in you, through Jesus Christ our Savior and Lord.  Amen. 

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Our Greatest Joy

Luke 17:11-19
October 10, 2010 (28th Sunday in Ordinary Time)

1.  For many of us, there was a childhood ritual that occurred the day after Christmas or after your birthday when you were kids.  Your mom marched you to the dining room table, sat you down, and made you write thank you notes.  You had to say thanks, to discuss more or less how much you liked the lumpy sweater or the toy you received from Grandma.  You had to describe how you would use it, and how much it meant to you.  In my family, and maybe in yours, though, the content of the thank you note did not matter quite so much as the basic existence of said note.  You could be ecstatic with gratitude in your heart, but if you didn’t write a note, and actually say “thank you,” that was a BIG problem. 

2.  In today’s gospel reading, we get to see what it was like for Jesus to do something for someone else and not get the equivalent of a thank you note.  As in much of Luke, Jesus is on the road from his home in Galilee toward Jerusalem.  On this road, in a border region between Jewish Palestine and Samaria, Jesus comes across a small leper colony.  In the ancient world, communicable skin diseases were a terrible scourge, and people who had these diseases were forced to live in quarantine away from healthy people.  And the quarantine was especially serious for Jewish lepers since the Jewish law exacted strict standards of physical and ritual purity.  Even if a leper recovered from his illness, he could not re-enter Jewish society without first checking with a priest and getting his stamp of approval.  So these lepers were doubly excluded from life:  from day to day interaction with healthy people and any interaction with the ritual life of their religion.  By this time in Jesus’ ministry, it was well known throughout the region that he was a miracle worker—he had healed hundreds if not thousands of sick people, and even these quarantined lepers knew that he was probably their only chance to be cured.  So, when he comes within earshot, they call out for his mercy. 

So, being Jesus, Jesus cures them.  He sends them to be checked out by religious authorities in the temple, and as they turn to go, they discover that they are all better.  And you know how it ends.  Only one comes back to say thank you.  To accentuate how unique, how special, it is that this one is giving thanks, Luke tells that of the ten lepers, only the Samaritan, the foreigner, came back. 

3.  We don’t often think of how Jesus felt.  We are more likely to think of him as all-powerful, or as a perfect example, or as a teacher, or as a character in an ancient story.  But he was a person.  He had feelings.  He could be happy, he could be sorrowful.  And I have no doubt that he could have his feeling hurt.  It had to sting that he had healed ten and only one said thank you.  Now, it was not necessary for the other nine to say thanks—it wasn’t like Jesus took their healing away from them because of their lack of good grace.  But you know and I know that it is nice to hear “thank you.” 

 

4.  It takes a while to learn to express gratitude.  I’m sure this is why our mothers made us sit down and write thank you notes.  We are so oriented to receive and to take that it is all too easy to forgo gratitude altogether.  We can be a lot like the nine lepers.  They’re not all bad.  They had faith in Jesus and his power and his mercy.  And they were good at following directions.  When Jesus tells them to go to the temple and show themselves, they get right to it.  But Jesus is not their drill sergeant.  When he says “frog,” he doesn’t expect people to jump.  The great preacher Barbara Brown Taylor puts it this way: “I know how to be obedient but I do not know how to be in love.”  Oh yeah.  To be grateful is to acknowledge a relationship.  It is to acknowledge the tie between you and God, or you and someone else. 

Author David Steindl-Rast suggests that when we say thank you to God, we are implicitly saying that we are close to God.  He writes, “One who says, ‘Thank you’ to another really says, ‘We belong together.’”  In this sense, expressing gratitude is one way of expressing love. 

5.  Of course, the first step in being thankful is to notice the blessings you have received.  Presbyterian minister Lynne Baab says, “It is truly amazing how many blessings we can notice if we take the time to pay attention.  It changes our heart over time if we try to notice all the ways God is already working, rather than focusing on the ways we want God to act.”  If we spend all our prayer time asking God to do more we can forget to spend time thanking God for what God has already done. 

6.  Perhaps this is why our own worship is based so much on giving thanks.  When we come together to pray, we like to celebrate what God has done and is doing.  Sure, we also try to be obedient to God and God’s desires for our lives.  And we also ask God to intercede on our behalf.  But when we come to worship, we come with thanksgiving and praise on our lips.  We praise God for being who God is, and we thank God for doing the things God does. 

One of the central features of our worship is the sacrament of communion, also known as the Lord’s Supper or the “Eucharist.”  The word “eucharist” means “thanksgiving” in Greek.  And the Great Prayer of Thanksgiving is what we call the prayer that ties the Lord’s Supper together.  In one way, it is a prayer of gratitude before a meal. 

It begins this way:

The Lord be with you.  And also with you.

Lift up your hearts.  We lift them to the Lord.

Let us give thanks and praise.  It is truly right and our greatest joy to give our thanks and praise.

Now, I bet a lot of things give you joy in this world.  The sunshine, the blue sky, spending time with loved ones, meaningful work, etc.  But in this prayer, we say together that OUR GREATEST JOY is to give thanks and praise to God.  It is our greatest joy because in so doing, we recognize and remember that we love God and God loves us.  We remember all the great and merciful acts that God has done for us in history, culminating in the gift of Jesus Christ.  And we are grateful.  We are grateful not because we are such great people with such exquisite manners.  We are grateful because of who God is.  Because God is who God is, it is truly right and our greatest joy to give God our thanks and praise. 

7.  We all need to remember this sacrament, this Great Thanksgiving, and build up personal and community habits of gratitude.  Our Wednesday morning study group recently spent some time considering gratitude as a spiritual discipline.  We discussed what a good idea it would be in our prayer lives to spend more intentional time counting our blessings and saying thanks to God.  There are so many motives for gratitude:  in the creation, in our families, among our friends, in our work—you name it, there are lots of ways God is caring for us and building us up.  Like the Samaritan leper, we ought to turn around and say thanks.  And saying thanks, building up those habits of gratitude, will lead to an even better appreciation of God’s never-ending love.  Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote: “Only they who give thanks for little things receive the big things. We prevent God from giving us the great spiritual gifts he has in store for us because we do not give thanks for daily gifts.” 

So, we thank you God for the little things you do for us.  We thank you for this church.  We thank you for our homes.  We thank you for our friends.  We thank you for being with us.  We thank you for Jesus and his love for us.  We thank you and we acknowledge that we depend on you for everything, big and small. 

I would like to close with a prayer that was written by Rev. John Thomas, the president and general minister of the United Church of Christ denomination. 

“Let us pray: Teach us to practice gratitude in our lives that we may honor the graciousness at the center of your creation. Forgive every form of self-centeredness that assumes we are entitled to what we have and make us mindful of every good gift and of every good gift-giver. Thus, may we return again and again to you as those redeemed and renewed by your love rather than our deserving and so experience the joy of your presence that makes us well. Amen.”

Faith to Move

Luke 17:5-10
October 3, 2010 (27th Sunday in Ordinary Time)

1.  Do you remember the story from the book of Exodus about the Israelites wandering around in the desert for 40 years?  It was tough going through those forty years, just one of the many tough times they went through.  If you’ve been listening closely to our Old Testament readings for the last few weeks, you’ve been hearing the sad stories of exile and punishment from the biblical prophets.  Well, anyway, getting back to the Exodus—do you remember that the Israelites were hungry out in the middle of nowhere?  God hears their complaints and gives them manna, which is this sort of flaky sweetbread that settled with the morning dew.  God commanded that each family gather only as much manna as they would need for one day, anything extra would go bad.  And, in fact, those greedy families who hoarded the manna would find that it would not last more than one day—the leftovers would quickly fill with worms and become inedible. 

Naturally, this whole experience with manna has become a powerful metaphor for both Jews and Christians who are trying to remember that God will meet our daily needs.  In the wilderness, the Israelites didn’t need barrels full of manna; they just needed enough to sustain them each day.

2.  The disciples in this morning’s gospel reading want more than what is sufficient for one day.  They say to Jesus, “Increase our faith!”  Wouldn’t that be great?  Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you had so much faith you could store it away for those times in your life when you know you could use an extra boost?  It’s not completely possible to be sure about the tone of Jesus’ response, but I like to think that he laughs at the disciples a little.  He seems to say, “You need more faith like the ancient Israelites needed more manna!  What are you going to do with all this surplus faith?  Do you honestly have a need to plant mulberry trees in the ocean?  Do you honestly have a need to move mountains with the power of your faith?  The last time I checked, the faith that you have was getting you through the day!” 

3.  Like manna, it seems you can’t store up faith.  In fact, the gospel passage seems to suggest that the question is not “How much faith can I have?” but rather is “What is my faith for?”  Professor Kim Long writes, “In this economy, faith is not stockpiled in a storehouse for the working of spiritual wonders, but is lived out as obedience to a just and loving God….[F]aith cannot be measured, only enacted.” 

4.  Back in the late 1800s, there was a famous Methodist revival preacher named Samuel P. Jones.  He did a lot of preaching in Ryman Auditorium, which nowadays is the home of the Grand Ole Opry.  I want to share with you a piece of one of Rev. Jones’s sermons.

[An old church member] says, “I am waiting for faith.”  Yes, you have been waiting forty years for faith.  How much have you saved up?  Like the fellow who had ten bushels of wheat, and was waiting till more grew before  he could sow what he had.  Sow it, and you will have a hundredfold.  By keeping it, you will not get any more, but the rats will eat up what you have.

… “I want to be a blacksmith as soon as I get muscle.”  Why don’t you go at it?  There he stands until at last he has got muscle enough to lift the hammer.  He is “getting it” with a vengeance.  How did you get faith?  By using what you had.  I tell you what tickles me—to hear fellows down praying for faith.  “Lord, give me faith.”  The next time you get any in that way, bring it over and let me see it.  That ain’t scriptural, that talk you are doing now.  Christ rebuked those who prayed for faith.  The trouble with you is not that you need more faith.  You use the faith you have, and then you will get more.  I would as soon pray for sweet potatoes as faith.”

I love that last line!  “I would as soon pray for sweet potatoes as faith”!

5.  Rev. Jones is surely right.  Use your faith if you want more of it.  This is the gist of the story Jesus tells the disciples when he asks if the master should invite the slaves in for dinner after a hard day’s work.  The answer, at least in Jesus’ day and age, was “no, I would have them continue serving me since they are meant to serve.”  Jesus concludes, “So you also, when you have done all you were ordered to do, say… ‘we have done only what we have ought to have done.’”  In other words, we must not forget that God is our God, and we are here to serve.  We don’t need more faith, or an increase, because we have what we need from God to serve right now.  Faith, if we can talk about it increasing at all, increases in service.

6.  And how do we know this?  German theologian Margit Ernst-Habib  says that we need to “understand the faith talked about [in this passage] as Christian, not in the sense of the faith of the Christians, but in the sense of the faith in Christ that mirrors the faith of Christ.”  You see, when Jesus tells us we need to serve if we want to have faith, he is not just telling us what to do.  He himself models this.  Jesus Christ is the Lord who serves.  He serves the poor, he serves the sick, he serves the downcast, he serves the lonely, he serves the stranger, he serves you, and he serves me.  This is the faith to move.  Faith, in a very real sense, can hardly be thought of as a noun, but would better be considered a verb tied very closely to serving our God and neighbor. 

7.  There is a very famous line in a poem by Spanish poet Antonio Machado.  It is:  “Caminante, no hay camino; se hace camino al andar.” Or, “Traveler, there is no road... it's made by your own footsteps.”  So we move in faith. We reach out and serve.  We make the road ahead of us by walking and serving.  And that’s what actually constitutes our faith!  We can’t stockpile God’s gifts.  They are for sharing right now. 

On the night before his crucifixion, Jesus served the Last Supper to his disciples.  Because of that night, we continue to come together around this table to be with him and be strengthened by his own body and blood.  As part of that evening, Jesus stripped down to his undergarments, got down on his hands and knees, and like a slave washed the disciples’ feet.  If you want an increase in faith, this story is a great place to start.  We believe that the fullness of God was pleased to dwell in the man Jesus.  And this Jesus behaved as a slave to his followers.  And so, this meal, this bread and wine, remind us that we are to serve.  We are to reach out and care for others, to remember their dignity, and to remember that they, too, are beloved by God. 

So on this World Communion Sunday, we give thanks to God that our servant Lord taught us that faith is to give your life.  May we be strengthened at this table to move, to serve, and so to have faith.

Let us pray: 

By your will, O God,

we go out into the world

with the good news of your undying love,

and minister in the midst of human need

to show wonders of your grace.

We pray for men and women

who minister for you around the world.

May all Christians be strengthened by our mutual concern,

and supported by the sharing of our gifts.

Let us not be discouraged by doubts or other barriers

but make us brave and glad and hopeful in your word;

through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

The Invisible Man

Luke 16:19-31
September 26, 2010 (26th Sunday in Ordinary Time)
Rev. Brett Hendrickson

1.  Some of Jesus’ parables are so familiar:  the Prodigal Son, the Good Samaritan.  Some not so much.  Here we’ve got one of the less popular, but it’s a goody!  There is so much detail and humor in these verses from the gospel reading, and the characters—though a bit caricatured—are true enough to life.  Of course, there’s the rich man.  He’s not a bad guy, he’s just privileged.  He was born that way, with a silver spoon in his mouth.  Then there’s Lazarus, the only person in a parable to have a particular name.  He’s the opposite of the rich guy.  Instead of fine clothing, he wears nothing but his own worn out skin, which itself is full of sores.  Instead of eating sumptuous feasts, he eats nothing but what he can beg.  Instead of being greeted by the beautiful people, stray dogs disgustingly lick him while he’s down.  Then in the story, we have the patriarch Abraham, who seems to be in charge of something like heaven.  He’s more or less to this paradise as is St. Peter at the pearly gates in our jokes about heaven.  Across an impassable chasm from heaven, there is a place called Hades, which is full of fire and torment.  And, strangely, both the suffering ones in Hades and the comfortable ones in the bosom of Abraham can see each other. 

2.  Remarkably, and of key importance for the parable, the rich man never sees Lazarus when Lazarus is a fetid beggar outside the gates of his compound.  He never sees him when he is coming and going from his dates with the rich and famous or from his jaunts to the finest shops.  The rich man doesn’t see Lazarus until his backside is being warmed by the fires of Hades.  Then he sees Lazarus living the comfortable life up in paradise, and he somehow conjures up his name.  But he still doesn’t speak to him directly.  Instead, the rich man, who is used to giving orders, tells Abraham to send the poor Lazarus to come and refresh him in Hades.  And when that is refused, he asks that poor Lazarus be removed from the paradise that he so richly deserves after his miserable life, and be sent back to earth to haunt the rich man’s brothers and scare them straight.  This request is also refused.

3.  The natural sense of the parable is that both Lazarus and the rich man get what’s coming to them, and so perhaps it is also natural that we are likely to feel sympathetic with Lazarus and even laugh a little bit about the rich man’s hubris and comeuppance.  But, I think that if we are honest, we need to swallow our laughter and remember that it is far more reasonable in this day and age in this rich country to remember that we are more like the rich man.  There’s a website on the internet called Global Rich List.  On this site, you can enter what your income is, and it tells you where you stand financially in the whole world.  I entered mine and my wife’s income into the site and found out that together, we are the 49,322,169^th richest people in the world!  So, pretty far down the list?!  Not so.  It turns out, even at 49 millionth place, we are in the top 0.82% richest people in the world!  In other words, in a group of 100 random people around the world, I would be the richest.  I imagine those 100 people in a line behind me, and I know that I can see the 98^th and 97^th richest people right behind me.  If I really try, I can even see down to probably the 90^th richest person.  But I can’t even see the really poor people at the end of the line.  They are like Lazarus to me.  They are completely outside of my vision and my experience.

4.  That’s the problem right there.  Too many people live in this world completely outside of our sight.  Because of poverty and other sinful barriers, we cannot see them.  The terrible truth of this situation is what inspired Ralph Ellison’s famous novel The Invisible Man.  The protagonist of the book is a nameless African American man who has been made metaphorically invisible by the society he lives in.  The narrator says, “I am an invisible man. 
No I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allen Poe: 
Nor am I one of your Hollywood movie ectoplasms.
I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids
- and I might even be said to possess a mind. 
I am invisible, simply because people refuse to see me.”  It’s the gospel story all over again. The rich man in Jesus’ parable could have seen the poor, sore-covered Lazarus outside his gate, but he had no reason to do so, and so he simply was blind to the suffering, downtrodden man before his gate. 

5.  What is perhaps worse is when the rich like us go out of our way to not see the poor and the suffering.  I live in west Belleville not far at all as the crow flies from the slums of East Saint Louis.  The quickest way for people in our part of town to get to downtown St. Louis is to take Illinois 15 west and then navigate through the blighted and burnt out neighborhoods of East St. Louis to the Poplar Street Bridge.  But if you take this route, there is almost no traffic.  All of us, myself included, find it better, safer, easier, less terrible, to take the longer way around on the 255 up to I64 thus completely skirting the devastation of our neighboring city.  I would say we Bellevillians must  be a pretty rotten bunch to act this way, but all over the country, cities like Belleville, and like Alton, have found ways to route better off people away from poor people.  In this awful circumstance, we are willfully blind.  We don’t see because we do not want to see. 

6.  The upshot of Jesus’ parable, sadly, for the rich man is that there’s not really anything new to say.  The rich man desperately wants Lazarus to be sent back to his family, with the notion that a specter from beyond the grave would at last open their eyes.  That an apparition would do the trick to remind them of their religious obligations to care for the poor.  But Abraham says no.  He says there is no new word to give on this.  It’s all been said before.  The law, the prophets.  It’s all in there:  take care of the poor, comfort the afflicted, tend to the suffering.  And if you didn’t hear the old, old, story, not even the ghost of Lazarus will turn you around.  I guess I don’t really have a new word either.  We all know that we Christians cannot bumble through life with blinders on.  We all know that the poor, the imprisoned, the oppressed, the foreigner are all our specific responsibility.  What more is there to say?  If we haven’t listened to all that, and we persist in our willful blindness, not even seeing a resurrected man will turn us around once it’s too late.

But, it’s not too late.  That’s why Jesus tells the parable in the first place.  He wants those who hear him to do something now.  We are still able to open our eyes and clean out our ears.  We are still able to repent and start seeing.

7.  And this need to see the poor, and to serve the poor, and to be one in Christ is urgent.  An old saying attributed to the British stateman William Gladstone is “justice delayed is justice denied.”  There is no time to wait.  The urgency of poverty in this world is extreme.  Jesus’ parable about the rich man and Lazarus suggests that it is not our certitude about God and the afterlife that will ultimate motivate a change in our behavior.  Instead, we will be motivated by the certitude that suffering people exist in this world, and we need to see them and care for them and help them find justice now, before it is too late for us and too late for them. 

8.  It’s like the campaign that you see around Illinois with the big signs that say “Start Seeing Motorcyles!”  We need to start seeing the poor.  Let me give you some suggestions on how to do this. 

• Pray.  Pray that God open your eyes to the suffering of your fellow human beings.  Pray that God give you a compassionate spirit and the energy to serve.
• Talk.  Talk to your friends and neighbors.  What are they doing to help others?  Can you help them?  Find out from them why they got interested in the work they do to help others.
• Reflect.  Think about what God has given you.  What are you good at?  What are your interests?  Is there some way that you can both help the Lazaruses in this world AND use your God-given gifts and interests.  Do you like to read?  Read to the blind.  Do you like to garden?  Find a way to beautify blighted areas.  Do you like children?  Become a mentor.
• Finally, make a commitment.  When it comes to helping the poor, to providing justice now rather than later when it is too late, the important word is this:  something is better than nothing.  You don’t need to be the next Martin Luther King.  You need to do something.  Do it here at the church, or do it with another group.  It is not possible to be a rich Christian, and we are all rich in some way, without serving the poor.  Let me conclude with words from the passage in 1 Timothy that we heard this morning:  “As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty, or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but rather on God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. ¹⁸They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, ¹⁹thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life.” 

Brothers and sisters, Amen.

Pray for Everyone

1 Timothy 2:1-7
September 19, 2010 (25th Sunday in Ordinary Time)
Rev. Brett Hendrickson

1.  You may have noticed in the past few years, even the past few decades, that politics and religion in this country have gotten mixed up.  Presidents, congresspeople, governors, even Supreme Court justices, call upon God for help and ask for God’s blessing.  Something called “family values” has become shorthand for a conservative Christian social agenda.  Cases come to trial about removing “In God We Trust” from our money.  And in the last three years, Illinois has required a daily “moment of silence” in classrooms across the state and then repealed that requirement as being covertly religious.  Everyone knows that we enjoy “separation between Church and State” in this country, but we aren’t sure what that means, and most of us only want that separation when it is convenient for us.  Sometimes people say that they just wish politics and religion could remain separate.  They especially say to me, as a pastor, that the church should not get involved in specific political issues—that we should just preach the Golden Rule and stay out of particular debates. 

Even if we thought that course of action were preferable, the Bible again and again shows that all of human life, including political leaders and political structures, must be met through the person of Jesus Christ. 

It’s no surprise really.  Both politics and religion are focused, at least in part, in how we ought to live together.  Naturally, we Christians must find ways to live in the world.  It’s an old concern.  The advice we heard from 1 Timothy this morning admonishes us to pray for “kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity.”  That kind of advice made especial sense for early Christians who were trying to live peaceably in an empire that was openly persecuting them.  But perhaps it makes sense for us now as well.  How must we live to be Christians in the world?  And to make the question a little more focused for this morning’s sermon:  how must we pray to live as Christians in a world that is ruled by powerful people and political systems?

2.  Fortunately we Presbyterians have a leg up on this question.  Our Presbyterian form of government with representative bodies of elders, presbyters, and delegates to General Assembly is not dissimilar to many western democracies.  You can’t be a Presbyterian for too long before being introduced to the Book of Order, the governmental part of our church’s constitution, which is full of theology as well as rules and regulations about how we are to work together as a church.  One of our favorite catchphrases, which comes from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, is that we like to do things “decently and in order.”  Indeed, part of my seminary education was to become familiar with Robert’s Rules of Order!  The reading we heard this morning from 1 Timothy is a bit like an ancient Book of Order.  The writer of the letter, ostensibly Paul, is instructing Timothy on how to run a church and be a good Christian leader.  The passage we read this morning focuses on how important it is to pray for everyone.  Special emphasis is placed, as I mentioned, on praying for muckety-mucks, head honchos, grand poohbas, and other politicians and rulers.  It seems that it has long been our responsibility to make intercessions with God for our earthly leaders.  In other words, our religion is supposed to play a role in politics. 

3.  So for whom should we be praying?  Well, there’s President Barack Obama.  Then of course, there’s the congress.  Our senators are Dick Durbin and Roland Burris—we should certainly pray for them.  And depending on where you live, your congressperson is either Jerry Costello or John Shimkus—both need our prayers.  The mayor of Alton is Tom Hoescht and the mayor of Godfrey is Michael McCormick.  But we need not limit ourselves to the United States.  We can pray for the leaders of other nations:  for President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of Iraq.  We should pray for our military generals and for Ban-ki Moon, secretary general of the United Nations.  We should pray for the leaders of our enemies: for Mahmoud Admadinejad of Iran, Kim Jong Il of North Korea, the leaders of Al-Qaeda, and for the leaders of Mexican drug gangs.  The letter to Timothy makes it clear that we Christians must pray for all these leaders—the good, the bad, and the ugly—because Jesus Christ gave himself as a ransom for all people, everywhere.  It is not our job to distinguish who deserves our prayer.  We are to pray for peace, for godliness, for dignity and leave the rest to our Lord. 

4.  Naturally, we must not pray only for leaders and rulers.  We must pray for all people.  We don’t believe that prayer is some sort of vending machine, where we put in the prayer and God must dispense the result.  Instead, we believe that we have been taught to pray by Jesus’ own example.  We believe that prayer reorients our lives and reminds us that we all rely on God.  We believe that prayer brings healing to individuals and to communities.  So we are called to pray for everyone. One incredible website I found while preparing this sermon is http://www.prayer4every1.com/.  Anyone can go to this website and enter a prayer request and it is immediately posted so that all visitors to the site can lift up other people in prayer.  A few recent entries included a little girl who has been having seizures, for a woman named Janice, for the ministries of a church in Florida, and for all married people. 

We pray for all these people because we believe with the writer of 1 Timothy that: “there is one God; there is also one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human, who gave himself as a ransom for all.”  This good news is not meant to exclude those who don’t believe in Jesus but rather to include all in the merciful salvation won for us in Christ. 

5.  But more than the good news of this universal salvation given to all people, there is also the good news that when we pray in the name of Jesus Christ, we reorient ourselves and our society.   I was recently reading through some instructions for prayer in the introduction to a Lutheran daily devotional book.  The writer suggested that each of us, upon waking in the morning, sit up in bed, cross ourselves and say, “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”  Likewise, when we go to bed at night, we should say our prayers, making intercessions for all people, and asking for a godly rest through the night.  In this way, you live your whole day with prayer bookends around your actions, your thoughts, and your encounters. 

And when those prayers are made in the name of Jesus Christ, the one who perfectly reveals God’s love and goodness to us, we begin to see the world, see other people, see our leaders, and see ourselves in a new way.

In the Wednesday morning study group, we have been studying the apostle Paul.  Do you remember what happened to him on the road to Damascus?  In the experience of conversion, he was blinded by the light of Christ.  Later, when he joined fellow Christians, who prayed for him, something like scales fell from his eyes and his vision was restored.  Something similar happens to us when we approach the world in prayer through the mediation of Jesus Christ.  We see new things.  Indeed, we see basic human dignity where before we saw strangers and enemies.  We see the need for justice and peace where before we saw the seduction of national or economic interests.  We see brothers and sisters who live by the same mercy and grace that we live by when before we saw no one at all.  This is the power, the gift, and the necessity of prayer for all people.

Let us pray:

Great God of the whole world, we pray for our rulers and leaders, that they may guide the nations of your world with compassion and justice that all people may live in all godliness and dignity.  Send your Spirit to continue to teach us to pray so that, in you O Christ, all human beings may find the truth of your love.  In your holy name we pray.  Amen.

Celebration!

Luke 15:1-10
September 12, 2010 (24th Sunday in Ordinary Time)
Rev. Brett Hendrickson

1.  Did you know that just about every day is a good day for a party?  If you have trouble cutting loose and letting down your hair, if you need a pretty darn good reason to have any fun at all, then, boy, do I have some good news for you!  If you do even a little bit of searching around, you can find a reason to celebrate every single day.  For example, today, September 12, besides being both Commissioning Sunday and Grandparents’ Day, is also Chocolate Milkshake Day, National Video Games Day, and on the perhaps lest festive side of things, National Pet Memorial Day.  If these days don’t satisfy, we can probably get by with celebrating tomorrow, which is also Fortune Cookie Day, Uncle Sam Day, Positive Thinking Day and National Peanut Day! 
Of course, I remember with the rest of the nation the anniversary of September 11 and the tragedies of that day, but today I would rather get us back on track to celebrate.  Every Sunday morning is a great day to celebrate what God does for us. 

2.  The last few Sundays here at church have not been completely celebratory.  The scripture texts have been pretty tough on us.  Lately, in our lectionary readings Jesus has been hanging out with Pharisees, who totally get him down with their nit-picky legalism.  And then he’s with a crowd of followers, whom he normally has good words for, but last week he gave them some hard words.  He challenged the Pharisees’ social customs and unjust pecking order and he challenged the crowd of followers to commit themselves fully to his gospel.  But in the very next verse, in Luke chapter 15 verse 1, Jesus is back in his comfort zone:  he’s with tax collectors and sinners.  

Jesus knows who he’s with when he’s with tax collectors, prostitutes, moral reprobates, ne’er-do-wells, and the like.  These are the kind of people who know what a sin looks like.  They are intimately related with that place in human experience that today’s 12-step movement calls “rock bottom.” 

In today’s theologically-sophisticated Christian church, we are quick to point out that we are all sinners.  And so maybe we should imagine ourselves in this group close to Jesus.  Lord knows we’ve all had our own scrapes with sin, with bad mistakes, with regret.  That’s precisely why we start our worship services with a prayer of confession.  We acknowledge who we are and what we’ve done so that we can receive forgiveness and move on with our worship and thanksgiving. 

But on the other hand, these sorts of New Testament sinners might be out of our league.  In fact, Jesus makes clear that, not only have these people done some bad things, they are also on the edges of society.  They have been ostracized.  They are not welcome with the good people—the Pharisees, the regular folk—you and me. 

But on yet another hand, maybe we do belong with them, with these legendary New Testament outcasts—the tax collectors, the prostitutes, the ne’er-do-wells.  I say this because as Christians, we have made a commitment with Jesus Christ to welcome the stranger, to live with the outcast, to embrace a social reality that defies prejudice and division. 

In any case, whether we should be comforted by seeing ourselves in the group with which Jesus felt most comfortable—or whether we should be challenged by seeing ourselves amongst the holier-than-thou Pharisees, we all can recognize how awful it feels to be alone and lost. 

3.  In Jesus’ parables, there’s a little lost sheep and there is a little lost coin.  The way the stories are set up, it is clear that Jesus wants us to see ourselves in the sheep and in the coin.  We may not even know we are lost, though we probably do—what’s really at issue is that God, respectively the shepherd and the sweeping woman in the story, has lost us and wants to get us back. 

The main mover and shaker in these parables is God.  God moves to find and restore the lost one.  God leaves the other 99 sheep to find the one.  And God turns the house upside down to find the what was lost.  God is always coming to bring us back when we lose our way.

Methodist bishop Will Willimon remembers a story from Annie Dillard. 

Annie Dillard, the great American writer, tells in her book about her life growing up in Pittsburgh. She was a smart young woman. By the age of fifteen she’d read through all the books in the Carnegie Branch of the Pittsburgh Library near her home. And reading those books she decided that all this religion stuff is bunk and God doesn’t really exist. So she took it upon herself at age fifteen to show up at Shadyside Presbyterian Church and she said to her aging pastor, “I want my name off the roll. I don’t believe in God anymore.”

The pastor said, “Okay.”

Annie Dillard said, “You’re not going to try to argue me out of it?”

And he said, “No, no, no. You’re too smart for me. There’s no way I could argue you back in.”

So she said, “I want my name off the roll.”

He said, “It’s off the roll.”

She said, “Okay.” She walked out of the minister’s office and on her way down the hall she heard him mutter to himself out loud, “She’ll be back!” She wheeled around, went back into the office and she said, “What did I hear you say?”

He said, “Oh, I said I presumed that you’ll probably be back.”

And she said, “Look, this is my life. I live my life like I want to live my life. I’m not coming back!”

Well, Annie Dillard wrote in her life story, “As I write this I’m 48 years old and I’m back.”

The amazing truth of the gospel is just that.  God wants us back and will come get us no matter what.  No matter how far away you get, no matter how lost you become, no matter how turned around you are, God will stop everything to come and get you.  One person has said it this way, “To lose faith is to wander into that place where one can be found.” 

4.  And once the wanderer has been found, then God does the unexpected.  When the lost one is found, all the people, the sinners and the Pharisees, the insiders and the outsiders, are called out to party.  God doesn’t need any other reason to celebrate.  Nothing is more worthy of celebration than when one of God’s beloved is restored.  To the consternation of the holy and to the comfort of the sinner, God parties like there is no tomorrow when God finds us and brings us to safety.

Way back in 1980 (that’s 30 years ago, believe it or not!) the band Kool and the Gang had a huge hit in their song, “Celebration.”  You have most certainly heard this song—the lyrics of the first verse go like this:

There's a party goin' on right here
A celebration to last throughout the years
So bring your good times, and your laughter too
We gonna celebrate your party with you.

Yes, we should celebrate!  At the end of it all, today’s gospel does not invite the sinner to repent.  Instead, it invites the righteous to join the party when the community is restored. We once were lost, but now we’re found.  Once, we were gone, but now we’re here. So all together: let us bring our good times, and our laughter too.  We gonna celebrate this party with you.  Amen.

The Calculus of Discipleship

Luke 14:25-35
September 5, 2010 (23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time)
Rev. Brett Hendrickson

1.  If these were the only words we had from Jesus, we would have a very different idea of who he is.  Most of us think of Jesus as merciful.  He’s a healer and a miracle worker.  He’s the Son of God who gives of himself to save and redeem us.  He’s the King of Heaven sitting on God’s right hand welcoming us to the eternal banquet at the end of our earthly life.  But then, in passages like the one we hear from Luke’s gospel this morning, Jesus suddenly is speaking words to his followers that are as hard as nails.  He seems almost unreasonable in his stridency.  He says, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.”  These are incredibly hard words!  What are we to make of them?  How in heaven’s name can the Lord of love and mercy, the one who is always trying to draw us together into a community of faith, say these hard, divisive things?  Well, I’ll say up front that most Bible scholars and commentators try to lessen the impact of these words in some way.  They either say that the Aramaic word for “hate” had a more benign meaning than the English word.  Or, and this is more common, they say that Jesus was exercising poetic hyperbole to make a very serious point.  These kinds of interpretations help us get our heads around Jesus’ words, but we must not forget that Jesus said something very demanding—very serious.

2.  I don’t want to bury the lead too much—I think the point of Jesus’ words, and the point of this sermon is that being Jesus’ followers—his disciples—demands everything we’ve got.  Rev. Alyce McKenzie remembers a story from her childhood that sounds awfully familiar—perhaps you had a similar upbringing:  “When I was growing up, my dad was big on perseverance proverbs. ‘Winners never quit and quitters never win.’ ‘When the going gets tough, the tough get going.’ He even had a picture over his desk in his study of Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry’s battle flag that flew over the USS Niagra during the Battle of Lake Eerie in 1812. It read ‘Don’t Give Up the Ship.’ …Growing up we were never allowed to quit anything. That’s enough to make you think twice before you join the marching band.”  It’s a good lesson for children, and maybe for adults too:  If you sign up to do something, see it through, do not give up.  Of course, there are times in our lives when quitting is appropriate—sometimes we start things that become too harmful or just don’t make sense to continue with.  But the basic point stands—don’t sign up for something unless you are ready to commit to it.

3.  Jesus is looking around at the crowds that are following him around.  He sees people that are in the crowd for a lot of different reasons, and one senses that he feels distinctly suspicious that many of these people are fair-weather friends.  One has to wonder if he may also look around the Christian churches today, gathered this morning, and wonder the same thing.  So he decides, with hard words, to make clear to all of us following him that there are serious ramifications of being his disciple.  One commentator has said that this passage is “the fine print” of being a Christian, and that once you’ve heard it, you can’t say that you haven’t.  The fine print of Christianity is that being Jesus’ follower must be your number one commitment in your life. 

4.  Once you know the fine print, that being a Christian can be nothing less than all-consuming, then Jesus invites you to get out your calculator and make some prudent calculations.  He gives a couple of examples that, unfortunately, continue to be relevant in our modern world.  First, he mentions a contractor.  The wise contractor does not start a building project until he first calculates whether or not he will be able to complete the job.  Otherwise, he’ll be stuck with a half-finished eyesore and be the laughingstock of all.  To drive the point home, he makes another example in the area of warfare.  What military leader would lead his troops into a war without first being next-to-positive that he could win the conflict?  Even if you’re not a contractor or a military general, you get the gist of what Jesus is trying to say.  When you say, “Jesus, I will follow you,” when you agree to be a member of Jesus’ church, when you make promises at your own baptism and at the baptism of others, you commit yourself to something that hopefully you have made provision to carry through. 

5.  So, how would we make this tally?  When we were examining this incredibly demanding fine print, how would we calculate what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called the “cost of discipleship”?  Well, what do you think it requires to be a Christian?  Let’s start with the baseline.  You need to come to church to worship with your fellow Christians pretty regularly.  You need to serve others in some way.  You need to give of your time and talent.  You need to pray.  You need to study.  Ok, that already can seem like a whole lot in busy lives.  But after Jesus’ words that we need to forsake everyone, even ourselves, to follow him, that we need to take up the cross, even these tall orders do not seem quite tall enough.  There are more difficult tasks.  We must turn the other cheek.  We must forgive those who harm us.  We must give the coat off our own backs.  We must go the extra mile.  We must love our enemies.  Perhaps there’s even more.  Perhaps we cannot move through our lives keeping our religion separate from politics, or from our family life, or from our work, or from our school.  Jesus suggests that we need to give up all our possessions.  More hyperbole? 

Have you ever done those little thought experiments where, with friends, you say:  “If you had to give up one of these for the rest of your life, what would it be?  Would it be chocolate or red wine?  Would it be french fries or pancakes?  Would it be movies or books?  If you had to choose just one of the pair, which would it be?  In the context of Jesus’ terribly hard words, in the context of the fine print, which would it be:  following Jesus or anything else? 

6.  By now, if you’re like me, you are realizing that you are not going to be able to do this thing.  If I have to give up all my possessions and put my family in 2^nd place and live out my faith in every arena of my  life without fail, then, no, I can sincerely say that I am going to be found wanting. 

But the good news (and there is always good news!) is that all these commitments are not the price of a ticket into Jesus’ company.  Jesus is inviting all of us now.  We don’t need to be perfect disciples to join in.  That’s right.  Total commitment is not the price to follow Jesus, it is the inevitable consequence.  If you stay with him on the way to the cross, if you never leave him, if you make him first in all, the consequences could be hard indeed. 

7.  But you will not be alone.  Thanks be to God, when we follow Christ and take up the cross with him, we are given the Church.  I’m talking about the Church with a capital C.  This is the congregation of the faithful that goes beyond the congregation of First Alton.  It’s the Church of all those who have read the fine print and signed up anyway, those who know full well that their priorities will never line up with the priorities of the world.  You know, the priorities that say it is fine to go to church on Sunday and not think of it again until next week.  Or that say that it is fine to spend all kinds of money on clubs and property and luxuries and give some spare change to the church. Or that say that some people are better than other people on this earth because of their citizenship or class or race or gender.  Or that actually think that poor people deserve to be poor because they lack what it takes to be well-off like us.  Maybe we’d like to be members of a Church where everyone was like us and had the same sophistication or money or background or family that we had.  But that’s a Church that is ignoring the hard words from today’s gospel.  That is not the Church that Jesus is giving us.  Jesus is giving us a Church made up of all those other disciples who have agreed to give their all.  Jesus is giving us a Church that is ruled by the priorities of his cross.  It’s not an easy place to be, but it is the only place to be.

Let us pray:  God of all people, give us the courage and strength to follow where you lead us.  Help us to find our value, our identity, and our purpose in you and in no other.  In Jesus’ name we pray.  Amen.