In the Beginning - Christmas 3A

Christmas 3A

Pillars of Creation - Hubble Telescope

December 25, 2016

In the beginning was the word.   We’ve heard these words before, at least the first three.  In the beginning.  It’s the same phrase that kicks off the poetic start of the whole Bible story, of our whole narrative.

In the beginning, God created heavens and the earth.  Light and dark.  Sky and sea. Sun and moon.  Plants and animals,. And finally, God created man and woman.  Let’s take a moment and think about this.

Have you ever seen pictures from the Hubble telescope, that amazing tool that helps scientists actually see galaxies, stars and planets, or that vast expanse of interstellar space, as we sometimes pray in our Eucharistic Prayer?  I would encourage you to look it up sometime.  The photos are unbelievable, with shapes and stars in beautiful colors, with galaxies forming.  It’s mind boggling how vast that expanse is, and God creates that.

If you’ve ever been in a natural disaster, earthquake, flood, tornado or ice storm, you know first-hand the incredible power in our earth.  If you have not, I get that same sense when watching storm waves.  Incredible power.  God creates that.

Mountains, and seas, and sunsets, and valleys. Our earth is beautiful and bucolic.  God creates that. 

Majestic trees, birds that fly through the air, a miraculous feat. So we don’t think this creation is too vast or beyond our scale, snails have mathematically perfect spiraled shells.  If you stop and think about the plants and animals around us, if you stop to really see them, it’s a beautiful marvel.  And God created that too.

Finally, humans. From the magic of a newborn’s fingers and toes, to the strife we cause each other, to the beautiful and frightening things that our minds are capable of. We humans are conflicted, complicated and creative.  And God created us too.

So back to Genesis. In the beginning, God created all that is and all that will be.  The expansive universe, powerful natural forces, beauty, majestic and marvelous plants and animals, complicated and creative humans.  In the beginning, God created all of that.  And as the writer of Genesis says, it was all very good. 

For the history of humanity, God was present with the people in the powerful, marvelous, complicated world God created.  God was with Adam, Eve, Cain and Abel, God saw the oppression of Israel by the Egyptians.  As things happened on earth, God repeatedly intervened through God’s people in history. Through Moses and the law. With the prophets who spoke out against power, greed and oppression.  With King David. Through prophets, and kings, and shepherds and soldiers.   God  dropped in to this world in ways that we could comprehend, or at least acknowledge. 

And yet, we kept messing things up. God was too far away to feel God’s presence.  We ignored the law, and we ignored God’s simple requests to us to love God and to love our neighbor, despite God’s continued presence and promise to be with us forever.  And so, in the ultimate act of assistance, God sent us God’s self in the form of Jesus Christ, which we celebrate today. 

Jesus Christ was born, not in majesty or power, but to immigrants. Immigrants in a strange land who were strangers, treated like strangers, and had were given no where to sleep, despite Mary’s delivery.  They were, effectively, homeless whom society had dismissed. An ironic place for the king of kings to be enter our life, wouldn’t you say?

Why would God send God-self to earth to be born as a man, from a homeless immigrant woman?  A person, fully human who lives and grieves and eventually dies?  I have a priest friend from Seattle shared a story he’d heard to explain why. Imagine you’re out on a walk, walking slow, admiring God’s creation.  An ant crosses your path, carrying or trying to carry a big load. The ant struggles and drops, tries again.  But it’s just too big. About that time, along comes another ant, who easily takes some of the load, and the happy ants go on their way.  But what if you’d tried to help?  Could you have taken a part of the ant’s load?  Not likely, without doing damage to the load or the ant.  In this inglorious but relatable analogy, we are the ants.  God cannot reach down and take our load directly.  God is too big, too immense, too powerful, too much not an ant.  So, God sends an ant to help.  Jesus. 

Through his life, Jesus experienced normal human events. He got separated from his parents, and subsequently scolded. His mother asked him to perform a miracle at the wedding in Cana, much to his chagrin.  Who hasn’t been prompted to do something or perform on command when you didn’t want to? He experienced the same human emotions we do.  He felt joy, contentment, frustration, anger, betrayal.  Jesus was fully human.  Jesus, this baby whose birth we celebrate today. 

Jesus was fully human.  He was born, and as we know, he dies a humiliating, cruel death.    

And while he had ten fingers and ten toes, Jesus was also fully divine.  As the Epistle reading says, Jesus is “a reflection of God’s Glory, and the exact imprint of God’s very being”.  So the created is the creator. An exact imprint of God’s very being.  That’s hard to imagine, that this little baby was fully divine. Think back to the things we see and know about God from his created world.  God is as vast as the galaxies God creates.  As powerful as seas and storms and winds. As beautiful and majestic as mountains. As creative and complicated as humanity.  All of that. God created all of that, and it was very Good.  And today, we celebrate all of that – wrapped up in swaddling cloth, born to a homeless immigrant. 

And through God’s experience in our world through Jesus Christ, God experienced all humanity had to offer, the good and the bad.  This is part of what we celebrate today. God knows first-hand of our lives, our joys, our struggles. 

But here’s the other thing.  Through Jesus Christ, an imprint of God’s own self, we experience the love and grace and forgiveness that’s only possible with God.  With Jesus the man, fully divine, we see love and tenderness of Jesus freeing the man from demons, healing the blind and sick, eating with sinners, loving the prostitute.  We see God’s grace in action on earth. 

God sent Jesus Christ to be light in the world.  And the darkness cannot overcome the light.  We have seen it in action.  We’ve felt it, God’s grace and forgiveness through the kindness of friends or strangers, and through the Holy Spirit, we have it. From Jesus’ divine nature ,we have all of that power, and majesty, beauty and creative in us.   

So today and throughout the Christmas season, we celebrate the birth of this human God child. We celebrate that God knows first hand through Jesus of our toils and tribulations, of our emotions, of our failings. And God loves us incomprehensively and indefensibly.  Through this human God child, a little piece of our human experience was lived by God, shared by God, transformed by God, and made new by God.

Finally, through the birth of this child, an exact imprint of God, learn of love, kindness, forgiveness, compassion, and grace.  We have all of that light in us and with Jesus we have seen how to use that light. Some believe we live in very dark times.  I would suggest that since the beginning of human history, humans have lived in dark times, and some probably believed their times were the darkest. But the darkness cannot overshadow the light.  Let me repeat that.  The darkness cannot overshadow the light. Your job, our job is to be that light, bringing God’s grace to every interaction, every person we meet.

Through this Christ child and now through you, the light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it. 

Amen.

Advent 1A 2016

Happy Advent and Happy New Year! Today is the first Sunday of Advent, and the first day of the Christian Year. I know Advent is met with some trepidation. Whether it’s the unfamiliarity of the hymns, the stark nature of Advent, or simply having to wait, Advent is often maligned and underappreciated. Part of that is due to what goes on in the streets and on TV. It’s been Christmas since before Thanksgiving, if the stores are any indication. Everyone else is doing the Christmas thing. What’s the harm?  All around us and everywhere beyond us, it’s already Christmas. This makes our holding on to Advent hard culturally.

It’s made even more difficult because of how we’re wired inside. We want shiny new things, and we want them now. We all are wooed by immediate gratification. Waiting is something we try to avoid having to do, whether it’s getting in the shortest line at the grocery store, or wanting Christmas hymns now. The whole concept of Advent is hard, both because of what goes on outside in the world, and inside, in our heads and hearts.  

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Lutheran pastor jailed and eventually murdered by the Nazis, wrote of Advent, "Life in a prison cell reminds me a great deal of Advent. One waits and hopes and putters around but in the end what we do is of little consequence. The door is shut.”  

I can relate to what Bonhoeffer said. Sometimes waiting is like being in prison. So much is out of our control. Whether you’re waiting for a doctor, waiting for news, we feel powerless, because we are powerless. What we do is, as Bonhoeffer says, of little consequence.

We can change little, if anything of the circumstances out there, beyond ourselves. We can’t make the delayed flight, the doctor’s news or Christmas come any sooner. It is out of our control. And we don’t like it when we are not in control. We don’t like waiting.

This is why I think we don’t like Advent. We don’t like waiting. Now there is a part of Advent we can get behind. Not only is a time for waiting, but it’s a time for preparing. We do that well with our world. We tidy, decorate, cook, bake, clean, purchase wrap. We do a lot of preparing of that world around us. Advent provides us a time to prepare. And we take all of that time to prepare our setting.

But here’s the thing. This isn’t the kind of preparing that we’re asked to do. When we’re supposed to be preparing, I’m pretty sure it isn’t about the Christmas cards, tree or presents. What today’s readings tell us is that now is the time to wake from sleep, to put on the armor of light. Now is the time we are to be ready. Why?  Because we do not know the hour or time when God’s kingdom will come.

It’s back to that waiting thing. We don’t know when the Son of Man will come. And to step back even farther, we’re also a little confused about what that even means – when the Son of Man will come. Beyond the immediate coming of the Christ baby, what did Jesus mean when he said “But about that day or hour, no one knows?”. What day?  In this instance, a little confusion is in order, because throughout time, theologians have offered very different understandings of what that means, the coming of the son of man. Some people and some traditions see that as the return of Jesus Christ to earth, where there is a final moment of judgement. This is made popular by some Christian billboards, and apocalyptical writings, such as the “Left Behind” series. Some people and some traditions see this as the moment of every person’s death, when you meet Christ and are judged based on your life. Finally, others think about this as the Christ’s reign on earth, here and now, through God’s actions and ours. Regardless of which of these you see the coming of the kingdom of God, the Gospel reading is pretty clear about what happens at that time.

Jesus starts by rooting this moment of judgement in history. At the time of Noah’s Ark, people were going about their business, and many were swept away. Jesus continues the illustrations with every day activities of both men and women. Men in the field, women grinding grain. One is taken, one remains. Pretty stark. Jesus continues that like a thief in the night, we don’t know when this will happen, so we can’t really prepare. Yes, if the homeowner knew what time the thief was to come, he’d be prepared. But we don’t know when we’ll meet Christ face to face. Regardless of which of the meanings of that resonates with you. We don’t know when we’ll meet Christ in this world here and now. We don’t know of the day of our demise and we’ll meet Christ, and we certainly don’t know of the time when Christ will return and judge all of humanity.

Enter the world of social media. Anyone who’s posted anything to Facebook, or snapchat or any of the others, or anyone who even remotely understands what Facebook is, knows that it provides an opportunity to post a picture of a moment. People post a picture or a saying or a cartoon of what’s happening or where their head is at that moment. It’s a snapshot of someone’s day, an event, a meal. It provides a way to record that moment and share it. It memorializes a moment. And then life goes on. The dinner is over, the sunset fades, the trip concludes. The next time there’s an interesting day, thought, event or meal, there will be another post. Facebook and social media in general provides a still life of what’s happening in my life, our community, our world. It’s a series of still lifes, of moments.

That’s what I imagine the coming of the kingdom of God to be. It will happen in a moment. And I hope the moment it comes is one of the moments I’d be happy sharing. I want to believe, that I’ll be working at the community breakfast, praying, or otherwise being light in the world. But of that time, no one knows. What happens if I encounter Christ and I’m grousing, or angry, or not helping my fellow man?

The Gospel tells us it could happen at any moment, and if we knew, we’d stay up and catch that thief. But we don’t. I don’t get to decide. It could happen at any moment. While we cannot stay hypervigilant for every moment, there’s one really good and easy thing we can do. That is to be present for every moment, to believe and act as if this is the moment we meet Christ. This is the moment. Every single moment we’re given. We are physically present, and we can choose to be emotionally and spiritually present too. This may be the moment I meet my maker. This may be the moment I meet Christ in my neighbor, in the alien.

Every moment we have, we are given the choice, as Paul writes in Romans, to either lay aside the works of darkness or put on the armor of light. I received a gift from a dear friend today. It’s a book full of light and hope. There’s a quote in there from John Tillotson, Archbishop of Canterbury in the 1600’s. “Fill each day with light and heart”. That’s what we’re asked to do as Christians.

Back to Advent and its time of preparation. What if, instead of preparing our external world, we worked on preparing inside? Of working on being aware of each moment?  Of cultivating a habit presence to this moment. To this holy moment. Advent, with its intended absence of hustle and bustle, the opportunity to take things a little slower and simply wait, gives us a chance to catch up to each of our moments. To sit in silence. To pray. To slow down. To think about the moments you’ve had, and think about any way you can to be more present with the moments you may have tomorrow. How can you be fully present and fully sharing Christ’s light and love in the world in every moment you are given.

Try during this Advent to increase your awareness that THIS moment may be the moment that matters. This may be the moment you come face to face with Christ. Try to live each as if that’s true, because it might be. Take Advent as an opportunity to be increase your awareness of each moment, to not rush through this season, cleaning and decorating and buying gifts. We cannot reflect Christ’s light if we don’t recognize it. And we can’t recognize it if we’re too busy rushing about, and preparing our external world without preparing our inside world.

It is only with God’s grace, as the collect says, that we can put on that armor of light, that we can even recognize the light or Christ’s holy presence in and around us. It is not up to us. We can’t do it on our own. We can’t bake enough cookies to truly be prepared. It is through a connection with God.

I’ll close with the quote from Bonhoeffer, this time with the concluding sentence which I conveniently left out before. "Life in a prison cell reminds me a great deal of Advent. One waits and hopes and putters around but in the end what we do is of little consequence. The door is shut, and it can only be opened from the outside."

Enjoy Advent.

Sit. Be still. Be aware. Wait for God.         

Amen

Proper 25C - Tax Collector and Pharisee, and God

Today’s Gospel reading is another twisty story from Luke.  We’ve made our way through a lot of parables about power, privilege, poverty, humility, and God’s unimaginable love of all.  Today, we hear another parable from Luke, today about the Pharisee and the tax collector. 

As a reminder, in those times, the Pharisees were well-respected, devout Jews who loved God and lived Godly lives.  Tax collectors were way worse than today’s IRS employees.  Tax collectors were Jews who’d been hired by the Romans to collect taxes. The Roman Empire didn’t care how much the collectors took, as long as Rome got its share.  As a result, tax collectors charged much more than needed, and pocketed the difference.  They were considered traitors by the Jews, and particularly the religious Pharisees who worked so hard to maintain a God-centric Jewish identity, despite the Godless Roman Occupation. 

The Pharisee was doing everything right.  The Pharisee is at the temple praying.  I tithe, I pray, I fast. There’s nothing wrong with his actions. He continues, Thank you God. Thank you that I’m not like the rogues, thieves or that tax collector.  And although our jaded ears hear the negative that, we’ve probably all offered a similar prayer.   Thank you God. Thank you that I’m not like that homeless person. Thank you that I don’t have a crazy sibling, Thank you that I have a house, a nice house compared to them. Thank you that my kids don’t behave like their kids.   

On the other hand, the tax collector wasn’t doing anything right.  He was a traitor to his people, he was a thief, he didn’t even have the correct prayer stance for the time, and the story tells us he stood far off, as if he knew he wasn’t worthy.  His prayer, a simple, “Be merciful to me, a sinner. “

The hearers of this story would have expected one to be justified, and one not, but they would have been surprised at which one was justified.  They would have assumed it was the Pharisee, because they were part of the system that judged – judged the Pharisee as good, and the tax collector as bad.  But Jesus again throws in a surprise ending, with the tax collector leaving justified, as if he got a reward that rightfully belonged to the Pharisee.  But actually, they both left with what they’d sought.  The prayer of the Pharisee was more like a book report or status update.  I’ve done this, and this, and this.  Thanks.  The Pharisee left with what he’d sought from God, which was – nothing.  The tax collector, on the other hand, asked for mercy, and left justified. 

What does this mean?  It doesn't mean that one man was better than the other, because of who he was or what he'd done. To think this would be to swap one judgmental error for another.  The Pharisee was not better than the tax collector, as he perceived.  We need to be careful not to turn this into an equally incorrect judgement. The tax collector is better than the Pharisee.  No one is better.  No one is more loved.

It doesn't mean that one man was justified  because he was repentant. This story doesn’t even tell us that one man is justified because he was repentant.  We’d sure like to think that.  We’d like to fill in rest of the story.  The tax collector left justified, and quit his evil ways, never took more than was owed, and even paid people back. But in fact, it doesn’t say that. Because it’s not his permanent change of heart that made him justified.

This is why I’m not a social worker.

I have a social work degree, and my senior year at the ripe age of 20, I was an intern serving as a case manager in an Illinois prison.  I had a caseload of 50 inmates, who’d arrange to come see me, their case manager, every 2 weeks.  I really tried to help them. 

I had one gentlemen who came in with another inmate.  They weren’t supposed to come in my office with two, for my safety.  But they did.  It turns out, Joe was deaf, and his buddy interpreted for him. But they used a funky made up sign language which I spotted because I knew American Sign Language.  They had connected in prison, and never learned real sign language. I offered to teach them.  After my book was scanned to assure it had no contraband, I set up a schedule and started teaching both of them, so they’d be able to communicate with the rest of the world upon their release.  Months after my internship ended, I ran into the other case manager. He asked if I knew that Joe really wasn’t deaf.  It turns out, at one point in his transferring between prisons in Illinois, he arrived much sooner than his file, and he donned a deaf persona.  When his file finally made it, some well intentioned staff person noted in his file that he was deaf, because he’d been there for weeks, deaf.  All of a sudden, Joe was deaf.  But not really.  They did this because it got the two of them special considerations. No yelling guards, always have a buddy with you.  

It was about that time, that I realized that I don’t have it in me to be that magnanimous in that job.  I realized I could get easily burned out, because the people I was trying to fix, were not always going to meet me half way. They may never repent.  And I wanted them to. 

And I still do, to some extent.  It’s human nature.  We wonder if the pan handler will use the money for good or ill.  We wonder if the sex workers served by Rahab’s Sisters even want to get of the life.  But the truth is, it doesn’t matter in God’s eyes, and I don’t want to be that judgmental.  I don’t want to create strings for good works. 

God's love and mercy extends to us all if we ask, regardless of what we have done, will do, have been, or will be.  It's all because of God's nature, and Jesus Christ's sacrifice for us.  Today’s Gospel teaches us that it does not matter, what good things the Pharisee had done, what bad things the tax collector had done, what attitude either of them had towards their future. What matters is God’s nature, God’s grace, God’s love. 

There’s a contemporary Christian song by the band Mercy Me, with a refrain about God’s love that says it’s “Not because of what I’ve done but who you are.  Not because of who I am but what you’ve done. “

It’s not about me.  It’s not about the tax collector or the Pharisee or repentance.  It’s about God’s love.

And that’s really really hard to remember.  It’s hard to remember when things are going really well – that our good works are the cause of God’s grace.  It’s hard to remember when things are going really badly – that our bad works could somehow equate to a lack of love and grace from God.  It is always about God’s grace and love.  We need tools to remember it. 

 The tax collector provides a basis for the Jesus Prayer.  "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." 

This is a brief, but powerful prayer. It includes several types of prayer all wrapped up.  It’s got adoration, praising and adoring Jesus the Lord and Son of God.  It’s got confession, admitting I’m a sinner, and it has a petition of God to have mercy on me.  For me, it’s great because it’s short, and I can memorize it, and as a result, will never be without a prayer on my lips. 

The Jesus Prayer is the center of the book, The Way of the Pilgrim, by an anonymous Russian writer.  In the book, the pilgrim meets a religious teacher who encourages him to pray as follows:

“Sit down in silence. Lower your head, shut your eyes, breathe out gently, and imagine yourself looking into your own heart. Carry your mind, that is, your thoughts, from your head to your heart. As you breathe out, say, "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me." Say it moving your lips gently, or simply say it in your mind. Try to put all other thoughts aside. Be calm, be patient, and repeat the process very frequently.”  And so he does, thousands of time per day. 

The Jesus Prayer is not a magical incantation, but a way to quickly, simply put God back in the center. And when we put God back in the center of our world, of our very breath, we can find peace with ourselves, and with the world around us.  Nineteenth century holy man Serafim of Sarov observed, “have peace in your heart and thousands around you will be saved”. 

In the New Church’s Teaching Series book, The Practice of Prayer by Margaret Guenther, the author talks about how uses this prayer to accompany her manual labor, turning drudgery into a time of connection with God. One of her favorite times to pray at labor involves cutting wood.  She will size up old logs, and estimate how many times she can pray the Jesus Prayer for a particular log. Then she prays her way through.

The Jesus Prayer doesn’t solve all problems. But it’s succinct, easy to remember, and most relevant to today’s reading, it keeps the focus on God and God’s love and  mercy, not on us and our wins or losses.  It reminds us of God’s unconditional love, and moves us away from the conditional love we are so good at.  I can get behind the tax collector, if he really is a changed man.  I can help the homeless if they help themselves.  It’s tough.  It’s impossible without God. But by keeping God’s unconditional and unearned grace always on our lips, we can say, I will, with God’s help.   

Proper 21 - Lazarus and the Rich Man

When I was confirmed in Evanston Illinois, I was given a “red letter bible”.  For those of you who don’t know what that is, it’s a bible where all of Jesus’ words are written in red print.  I must admit that I was originally perplexed why there were no red letters in the first half of the bible, and little in the end.  It all seemed to be concentrated in what I now know to be the Gospels.  Funny, huh?

In any case, if you look at a red letter bible, and look particularly at the Gospel of Luke, it’s hard to find any red letters that don’t talk about wealth, power, privilege, and the dangers of these.  Or something singing the praises of the weak, poor and sick.  Today’s Gospel reading continues, following on the prodigal son, and Jesus lambasting the Pharisees for the hoity toity dinner party and power-grabbing seating chart, and it being easier for a camel to go through a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven.   Today, we hear about the rich man who walks past Lazarus, not the same Lazarus we hear about around Easter.   To be sure, these are difficult words to hear, particularly as Americans, as Episcopalians, as St. Thomas. Compared to the other Episcopal Churches in the area, we are one of the most wealthy.  As a denomination, Episcopalians, are one of the most wealthy, and as a nation, the United States is the most wealthy.  I would love to say something pastoral that would make this lesson easier to take, easier to preach, easier to hear.  Easier to think it’s not talking about us.  But that’s not my job. And in fact, it is precisely aimed at us. 

Lest you feel too depressed before I even begin, or tune me out at this point, the end of the story gets better.  There is hope. But not before there’s a call to change, and some serious self-examination to be done. 

Every day, when the man came and went, he’d see Lazarus, who was so hungry that he’d have been happy with the crumbs falling from the rich man’s table.  He was so sickly that dogs licked his wounds.  In your mind you might envision Fluffy, the neighbors Pekinese, licking his nose.  But that’s not what this was. This was much more likely a pack of wild, mangy street dogs, trolling the streets for trouble – or food.  To say the dogs were licking his sores tells you something about how sick and defeated Lazarus was, how unable he was to fend off the dogs.   And the rich man walked by this scene, every time he left his home, in his expensive clothing. 

Both men die, and Lazarus goes to Abraham’s bosom, while the rich man goes to Hell.  The rich man asks Abraham to “send Lazarus to dip his finger in the cool water”.

Abraham responds that when the rich man was on earth, he had nice things, and Lazarus was in agony. Now the tables are turned. He further says that a great chasm has been fixed so no one can go between where Lazarus ends up and Hell.

The rich man doesn’t give up. He begs Abraham to send Lazarus to earth to warn his brothers.  Abraham responds that if the rich man didn’t listen to Moses  and the other prophets, neither will they listen to someone who rises from the dead. 

Why did the reach man end up in hell?  It wasn’t his wealth per say.  But the wealth certainly contributed.  I’ll agree with Martin Luther King, who wrote about this very passage, and concluded that it wasn’t the wealth, but the rich man’s actions that landed him in hell.

He didn’t see Lazarus.

MLK wrote that the first sin of the rich man was that he passed by Lazarus and never saw him. He went to hell because to the rich man, Lazarus was invisible. And worse, by not intervening, he allowed Lazarus to become invisible to everyone. Anecdotally, I can tell you that one of the greatest challenges and most disheartening truths for the poor of today is that they’re seen as invisible.  Few people make eye contact on the streets, and they begin to feel like they are, in fact, invisible. 

Acted superior in life, as in death. 

The second grave error the rich man made was that he acted superior to Lazarus both alive and after they’d died.  Alive, he walked past as if Lazarus wasn’t there, wasn’t suffering.  Once they’d died, he repeatedly asked Abraham to have Lazarus do things for him. Never asking Lazarus, but ordering.  Dip his finger in cool water.  Go warn my brothers.  Even in death, Lazarus is seen as a lesser man. 

Set rules about chasm on earth. 

Finally, it was the wealthy man’s refusal to acknowledge the chasm between he and Lazarus on earth that fixed the chasm forever.  Being a pretty visual and literal person, I thing of this as two men and a big pit.  On earth, Lazarus was in the big pit. Lazarus definitely knew there was a gap between he and the rich man who stood on the edge  But while coming and going, the rich man never noticed the pit or Lazarus, or maybe he noticed but couldn’t be bothered.  Now in death, the rich man is in the pit, and he now clearly sees the chasm between the bottom of the pit and the top.  But he set the rules while on earth.  Pit? Chasm? What pit? I see no chasm that needs to be crossed.  The rich man  set the rules on earth. He refused to see the distance, the need between himself and Lazarus, thereby cementing the chasm as uncrossable in death. 

Hearing this Gospel is pretty condemning.  Comparatively speaking, we all have nice things. All of us in this room have riches that far exceed many others in this world.  To tell you just how wealthy we are as a country, there’s a website, globalrichlist.com, where you can enter your income, and it calculates your relative wealth compared to everyone in the world. For me, in a middle management government job, I am in the top 1% worldwide.  Sobering. 

Paul talks more about wealth in this letter to Timothy, and his letter provides some context and instruction on what to do with that wealth.   He does this after some pretty stern warnings too.

Paul warns that you can’t take it with you.  He tells the people that they came into the world with nothing, and will leave with nothing, so why be trapped by senseless and harmful desires that happen when they want to be rich.  He tells them that the love of money is the root of all evil.  Note that he says it’s the love of money, not the money itself.  It’s not about the money. It never really was.  It’s about what the money does to a person, if they’re not careful. 

That’s the real danger of money.  If we’re not always watchful, wealth can distort our interactions and perceptions of God, of our neighbor, and even of ourselves.  Regarding God, wealth makes man lose sight of our need of God. We think money can solve our problems, or we can buy our way into heaven, or we forget that God does not really keep track of our earthly wealth.  With our neighbor, the Gospel illustrates the problems that come with wealth. Wealth creates a sense that one is superior to another, makes us invisible or immune to the needs and plight of others, and it creates an uncrossable chasm between us and them.

 Finally, within ourselves, wealth creates a great sense of discontent. We begin to desire wealth, and more things that wealth can provide, rather than being content with food, clothing and shelter we need today – with “our DAILY bread”.  As Paul reminds, there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment. 

I can’t overemphasize the importance of contentment. It comes from a place of deep gratitude for what you have, rather than what you don’t.  Socrates said it well.   “He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have”. 

Again, it’s not about the money itself. It’s about what the money does to a person.  Paul concedes this by offering consoling words to people with wealth, which again would be all of us.  He commands them not to be haughty, or to set their hopes on uncertain riches.  Today, the same is true.  For those who find themselves with riches, focus on God and our deep and always need of God, on helping your neighbor, on being content with what you have.

We are called to do good, be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share.  Talking about Lazarus and the rich man, Martin Luther King said that the greatest challenge of the church is that we need to be as concerned as Christ is for the least of these – for our vulnerable brothers and sisters in Christ – for the Lazaruses of our time.  He wrote, “And we must do it because in the final analysis we are all to live together, rich and poor, lettered and unlettered, tutored and untutored.  Somehow we are tied in a single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality.”  We need to see the chasm now, and cross it now. 

Proper 17C August 28, 2016 - The Dinner Party

250 words  That’s it. That’s all today’s Gospel reading contains. But it’s amazingly filled with several life lessons, all wrapped up in a narrative story.  You have to marvel at the succinctness and precision of Jesus’ parables. 

Parables give us a human-now glimpse of what eternity is like. They provide us with present examples of what we should do now, and use very mundane and real events as teachable moments.  Jesus uses settings such as the vineyard workers, the dinner party, the mustard seed. These were all things very familiar and common. The people hearing the stories, and subsequently reading the stories could immediately relate.  He was able to use common language, paint a common picture and use it tell a universal truth.  When Jesus told the story, there was something magnificent in the midst of the mundane.

And this was important because he was pointing to a truth about an unknowable and unfathomable kingdom yet to come.  People couldn’t understand what he was talking about  - resurrection life, kingdom of heaven. But they could understand a story about a vineyard, or seeds planted in fertile ground, or a dinner party.

Even though there were commonplace events, people and things, there was always something new in the story. Something jarringly unexpected.  Perhaps this is because the settings were so familiar, the context was so mundane,  the outcome so anticipated.  Listeners and now readers are lulled into a sense that they know this story, and know how it’s going to end.  But when Jesus told the story.. whammo… he’d turn the story on its head.  And what people expected, was absolutely not what they got.  It’s not that Jesus’ teachings were new.  It’s that through these everyday things, Jesus deconstructed what had developed into a wrong-headed teaching or acting. Jesus was able to correct the common-place thinking and acting, with unexpected outcomes to common-place stories.   

Today’s Gospel story and parable is about a dinner party.  Jesus is invited to dinner with the upper crust of his time, at the home of a leader of the Pharisees. As he comes in, the other guests are watching him. Jesus already had a reputation as a rabble rouser, so the establishment was watching.  Closely. 

Jesus notices their glances, but he notices something more.  He notices how people are jockeying for their place at the table. And true to his reputation, he had some rabble to rouse. He chides the other guests for their jockeying.  Instead, he suggests that guests should be humble. Don’t presume to sit in the place of honor.  If you do, you might be asked to leave, and how embarrassing would that be!  What he suggests to the guests is that instead of trying to take the place of honor, they sit in a lowly space.  That way, you might be asked to move up.  And how cool would that be!

To be clear, this isn’t about getting a seat so the guests could see or hear better.  Jesus isn’t critical of the seating chart, but rather the hidden values surrounding the seating.  It has more to do with our presumption that our position in a room, in a meeting, at the dinner table inherently gives us more cred. The seating makes the man, or woman. Think about a long corporate boardroom table.  The chairman of the board often sits at the head of the table.  But if someone else came in before the meeting, and sat in that seat, that wouldn’t make them the chair.  The same goes with other positions or seats.  And why do we care about the best seat, the most prestigious meetings or clubs? 

In our society, no, in our humanity, we have an addiction to externally validated honor. We see it in self-aggrandizing Facebook posts, with name droppers, and social climbers.  This isn’t a new problem. Jesus had this issue with his disciples.  Who among us is the greatest, the disciples asked.  Let my sons sit at your right and left, a meddling mother suggested.    

And here’s an example that’s very close to home for me.  In a previous job, there was a group of managers that routinely meet with my boss.  Mostly, I was not in the room invited.  And for the first few years, I felt like Linus, tagging along with the big kids, “Hey, wait for me. What about me?” Sometimes I’d go in the room, figuring it was ok because it was my boss’ meeting. Clearly they’d need me.  Clearly I mattered.  I’d sit in that meeting room feeling important.  Until one day I was asked to leave.  Ouch.  After that, they’d file in for their weekly meeting, and I sit in my office and wait. If they wanted me to move up to the table, they let me know.  And honestly, being in that meeting or not didn’t change my job or my real worth at all. 

It could have changed my sense of worth, IF I worried about what others thought. If I bought into the social norm and expectation that power and prestige matter, and that where you sit, what meetings you’re in matter.   And of course I do sometimes.  We all do, sometimes. 

But why?  We are loved and known by God as perfect just as we are.  If that’s the case, why should you let someone else decide what you’re worth? You already know. Why would I give the power to anyone else to assess my worthiness?  Don’t give them that power!

Through this story of being invited to dinner, Jesus taught a great lesson about humility, based on the behavior of the guests.  But he didn’t stop there.  The story continues as he tells the hosts of the dinner that they shouldn’t just invite the rich and powerful.  Jesus is warning them not to invite important people just to receive credit because they’re honored, or because they might reciprocate.  Again, it’s not all about honor.  Jesus suggests that they should be finding and inviting the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. These people wouldn’t normally be running in the same circles. They’d need to be sought out and found.   And they wouldn’t be able to repay the honor of being invited. Invite them.  Be hospitable to them.

Paul adds to this theme of hospitality.  Be hospitable to all.  You may entertain angels unaware.  This sense that that we might not recognize the Holy in our midst is pretty compelling for me.  This, plus our commitment to seek and serve Christ in all people is what drives me to be personally involved with the community breakfast, with Rahab’s Sisters dinners, in having been a foster parent. It’s why Fr. Doug enjoys the interactions at the Food Pantry on Campus. It’s more than giving them a bag of food, or breakfast. It’s interacting with the people.  Those broken people, those people in need are children of God.  Christ is in them.  And maybe one of them really is an angel.  More than charity or writing a check, this is why service, personally connecting with other people is so critical.  

In this story, Jesus is providing some great human, present-time examples of how we should be treating each other.  He’s also hinting at the way things will be in the eternity of the resurrection. Maybe you won’t be honored now by your lowly seat at the table, or by the guests you invite who are poor or crippled. But these are exactly the traits that are honored and valued in eternity – humility, graciousness, kindness to all, welcoming to all.  Through this parable, Jesus is showing us what “thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” really looks like.

This is what we are expected to do, how we are to behave. Not because we “have to”, but because this is what our forever looks like. We have the opportunity to practice it here.  At the heavenly banquet, everyone is invited, and there is no prized seating arrangement.   The Pharisees, the blind, the crippled, the homeless, the bankers.  It’s a big messy, socially mixed up party.  Start practicing now, so it’s not so awkward then.  The rules will change. The humble, hospitable, poor, lame, outcasts will be present, honored and loved, just as we will be.  Let’s start practicing for that party now.