“Jesus … willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance”
Luke 18:9-14
OT 30C / Reformation Sunday
27 October 2013
Out of love and zeal for truth and the desire to bring it to light, the following theses will be publicly discussed at Wittenberg under the chairmanship of the reverend father Martin Lutther,1 Master of Arts and Sacred Theology and regularly appointed Lecturer on these subjects at that place. He requests that those who cannot be present to debate orally with us will do so by letter.2
In the Name of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
1. When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, “Repent” [Matt. 4:17] he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.
So begins our initial causing document … the instigation, the “point to it” reason that we are all here today … in a building, assembled as an incorporated faith community, named Lutheran … those are the opening words of the 95 Theses, hammered by the Augustinian monk Martin Luther on the church door at Wittenberg, Germany on the eve of All Saints’ Day some 497 years ago this coming Thursday, October 31, 1517.
Maybe you didn’t know that about Luther … about the Reformation … about what became the Lutheran Church around the world.
Yes … later … what it all became, what it turned into, is of course the stuff of legends and books and movies. A little German monk takes on the multi-national banking system, a banking system which had formed an unholy alliance with the Vatican … he translates the Bible into the people’s common language, paves the way for contemporary music to be sung in praise and worship, sets the wheels in motion for the American Revolution and modern democracy … you could even say he’s responsible for Bellevue and Redmond, Bill Gates and Co., because he was the first effective user of modern word-publishing technology.
Yes, he did all that.
But first, but first, Martin Luther had a beef with the Church about … repentance.
Namely, that the Church of his time had turned “turning” … for that, “turning,” “turning around, re-turning” is the literal meaning of the New Testament word we translate as “repent” … the Church had turned “turning” into … a work, an enterprise, a whole economy of scale, designed to entrap people and keep them in their place, keep them down without hope of newness of life, keep them on the gerbil-wheel of needing to do do do enough to earn forgiveness, righteousness, before God … but never quite getting there.
Luther knew that wasn’t repentance. It might have been penance … doing something to earn forgiveness … but it wasn’t repentance.
So what is repentance? This is what Luther writes in his Small Catechism:
Repentance … confession … consists of two parts. One is that we confess our sins. The other is that we receive forgiveness … and firmly believe that we are forgiven by God.
That’s it. And that rhythm, according to Luther, is what our whole lives are to be about.
It’s so simple, so clear. And yet, so many have and continue to be offended by this simple word … getting it so wrong so often, that we need to revisit this most basic of discipleship concepts … the freeing word, brought to people by Christ once, and then renewed, throughout history, by Reformers such as the apostle Paul and Martin Luther and even in our day by Rob Bell and Nadia Bolz Weber and other contemporary discoverers of the Gospel’s word of freedom and forgiveness for us.
And our Gospel text today will give us, latter-day seekers, pursuers, pilgrims of Reformation, re-formation of ourselves and of the church, of the church and of our society, our text gives us a good vehicle to explore, and think on, and discuss, and live forth, we who are called into, charged with, carrying this standard into the world.
It is a short and simple word … six brief verses for us, for which Luke gives us a preamble, a statement of Jesus’ purpose in telling the parable:
(Jesus) also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt:
This parable. This parable which follows immediately after the parable of the unjust judge, which was our text last week. This parable, which follows for us two, three weeks after those stories of thankfulness and “enough,” Jesus healing the lepers and only one returns to give thanks, Jesus talks about having faith as a mustard seed, that faith which is “enough” for him, and for us.
Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.
Now, at that sentence, we need to stop and take stock. We must not insert ourselves in our own 21st century time, into this story, and assume our position, our hearing, is the right one.
It is our modern hearing of that first sentence that sets us up.
We hear “Pharisee” and we think, oh, big religious jerk. We hear “tax collector” and think, oh, poor guy, misused and misjudged by Jesus’ society, an outsider, precisely the person who Jesus would choose to be with … not the Pharisee.
That’s our modern interpretation, our modern hearing.
But we are way, way off from where Jesus’ original audience was.
People of Jesus’ time and place would have heard “Pharisee” and thought “oh, there’s a respected religious leader, one to whom honor is due.”
Jesus’ hearers would have hears “tax collector” and thought “scumbag … rotten, cheating scoundrel, dirty collaborator against their own people, their own religion … sold out to collect taxes for the despised Roman invaders.”
They would have considered the tax collector to be as bad of a guy as the unjust judge in last week’s Gospel text.
So now that we’ve got that straight, let’s hear how they pray.
The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people; thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.”
Putting on our first century ears … our Pharisee sounds like a model citizen, and a model religious figure, doesn’t he? He’s a pillar of the church. He gives the tithe to God; he participates in the physical self-denial of his religion. And he’s thankful that he is not disobedient to God’s Word.
And yet … his prayer is neither one of repentance nor gratitude. It’s all about him.
Look, listen for what it is that he gives thanks:
I thank you that I am not like other people; thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.
He’s thankful to God for this?
Who has brought this state, this condition, upon this Pharisee anyway, that he’s not like these “bad” people? Not God. The Pharisee has done it all himself … and what has he done?
Just kept the law, the rules, rules of his religion, rules of his society.
So should this Pharisee be congratulated for that?
Jesus sure doesn’t think so.
Hear Jesus’ word in the Gospel reading from a chapter earlier, from our worship a couple of weeks ago:
Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, “We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!”
And there’s also no repentance in this Pharisee’s words … he’s thankful that he’s not like other people, but he’s certainly not repenting, in these short sentences, from how he lives his life … he’s self-righteous. A man with no mercy, no compassion toward these others, who are his neighbors.
In contrast, observe the tax collector:
But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”
The tax collector repents … he repents of what he’s done (the text isn’t clear, but perhaps he’s cheated both taxpayers (by charging them too much) and the government (by holding back some of what he’s received, for himself). He repents of what he’s left undone … namely, he hasn’t lived as part of the community. His body language tells that tale …he stands far off, not even looking up to heaven but beating his breast.
Those two phrases right there are bright blinking signals for how he feels, and how God feels about him.
Standing far off … not by himself as the Pharisee, by himself at the Temple, so others could see how pious he was … no, this tax collector stands far off … at a distance … and we remember another one who while he was far off, was swept off his feet in welcome … the prodigal or lost son, whose father runs out to greet him while he was still far off … he doesn’t even give his lost son a chance to come near and explain himself. Neither does this tax collector come near … he simply cries,
God, be merciful to me, a sinner!
Beating his breast … this was an ancient practice of those who were in sorrow or mourning … a little later in Luke’s Gospel, those who were present for Jesus’ death on the cross, after it was all over, are said to have returned home beating their breasts.
And so we see how Jesus feels about this tax collector and his repentance:
I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.
And there … right there … is the patent offense of this text. And not just the offense of this text … but the offense of the Cross … the offense of the Christ.
For right here, Jesus shows us, tells us what the entire life of believers is to be about.
REPENTANCE.
The Pharisee prays in precisely the way everyone would have expected of him. The “pillar of the church” lives into everyone’s expectations of him. He does all the right stuff, makes all the right moves, gives in all the right ways, and stays away from all the wrong people.
And yet … he’s not justified; he’s not brought into God’s justice, he’s not made right with God.
The jerk, the conniver, the swindler, the thief … he stands far off, away from everyone else, not even looking up to heaven, but beating his chest and saying “God, be merciful to me a sinner” … and he goes home justified; he is made right with God. He, like the persistent widow in last week’s text, he goes home with God’s justice in hand.
This is a text meant to offend the hearer.
As well it should.
Because repentance is not all about us.
But neither is it all about the Pharisee, nor the tax collector.
Did you notice how many times the Pharisee says “I”?
I thank you that I am not like other people … I fast twice a week, I give a tenth of my income.
I – I – I – I.
But so does the tax collector refer to himself.
God be merciful to me a sinner!
What kind of a confession is that?
Not one I would use. Nor, probably, would you.
It’s still all about them.
Which is an appropriate word of warning for us, today, too. Of the “pillars of the church” – we might think, “oh, they’re so good, they’ve just got to go to heaven when they die because of all the good they did and do in this life.”
But that’s not the way God works.
And neither is, “Woe is me, I’m not good enough” … sliding downhill into “I’m a no good, miserable, wretched excuse for a human being … God would never, ever want anything to do with me.”
Both those extremes … are just that, extremes. Ditches into which we fall, ditches where we are pulled away from discipleship … away from following Jesus, away from serving each other.
Perhaps more of us fall into that second ditch than the first … we are Lutheran after all … but being too self-degrading and shameful is just as sinful as being self-exalting and arrogant.
Both those extremes … focus on them … Pharisee … tax collector … sinner … you … me … us.
But remember …
It’s not all about us.
It is all about God … our God who wants to show us that in Jesus … the entire life of believers is to be one of repentance. In other words, it’s all about God.
This Word is patently offensive. Neither the Pharisee nor the tax collector “get what they deserve.”
What this parable is all about, is that our God, in Jesus, is all about unexpected reversals of fortune, and judgment rooted, not in condemnation, but in mercy.
Unexpected? Yes.
(Jesus) also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt.
I tell you, this man … this scumbag jerk of a tax collector … went down to his home justified … made right with God … not because of his confession, not even because of his humility … (because then the parable wouldn’t make any sense, would it?) … no, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other because God chooses to do so.
Scumbags are justified, and pillars of the church are not.
The exalted will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.
Neither gets what he deserves.
Because this Word, this repentance, this life-rhythm into which Jesus calls us … it is all about God … our God, who in Jesus calls us, gathers us, feeds us with the meal of reconciliation, peace, forgiveness and life … and says to us one and all … pillars of the church, and scumbags alike …
I forgive you all your sins.
The Word which calls forth from us … deep, abiding thankfulness. Thankfulness that shows and lives itself forth in the freedom of living, and serving, others.
Always. Constantly. Forever … and always, moving out from that posture of repentance … so that we know whose we are and why we are doing and serving, living and loving and growing in the faith and service of God’s Word of Life … for the life that is to come and the life that is now.
When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, “Repent” [Matt. 4:17], he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.
Repent. Be turned around by Christ’s call to us, to hear Christ’s Word to us … be turned around, and then, renewed and reformed from that posture of repentance. Again, and again, and again.
THAT’S what it means to be a Lutheran Christian in God’s World.
May we live into that Word faithfully … may we continue to hear God’s call to repentance, receive God’s word of forgiveness, and respond to God’s call to service … for this is the cycle of life that really is life, for Jesus’ sake, for our sake, for the sake of this world God loves.
Amen.
Sunday, October 27, 2013
Sunday, October 20, 2013
20 October 2013
“Wrestlers, evangelists, and persistent widows”
Genesis 32:22-31 / 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5 / Luke 18:1-8
OT 29C
20 October 2013
Much of what we’ve been reading and hearing as our Scripture texts, since this summer, have been about the outer struggles we encounter as we follow Jesus’ call to be his disciples … especially, particularly, how we are called to serve those to whom Jesus always goes and serves first … namely, the poor, the outsiders, the marginalized, the downtrodden, the ill, those despised by the world.
Last Sunday, we turned a corner of sorts … moving more inside ourselves, as we heard texts and sang songs and talked about carrying forward a sense of Thanksgiving for all that God has done for us.
Ah, but now, this week, we are all about our inner work. The hard stuff, the deep ploughing, introspective thinking and meditating into our spirits and souls and hearts.
All that stuff that northern European descended American Lutherans run from like snakes on a plane.
Well, buck up! That’s the Word our texts have to say to that attitude. Because The Deep Inner Work is where our texts are leading and guiding us today.
A man who wrestles with God.
Instructions on the “what it takes” behind being a faithful disciple-proclaimer of God’s Word.
A persistent widow demanding justice, and the inner change she works on an unjust judge.
We start with that story from Genesis, about Jacob,
And a man wrestled with him until daybreak.
Yes, it is a deliberately ambiguous text. It begins with Jacob returning with his family and possessions “back home,” the place and people from whom he fled long ago, well, actually, one person in particular, his brother, Esau, from whom Jacob and his mother stole the birthright-blessing Esau deserved, Esau being the first born son of Isaac, but Jacob and his mother tricked old Isaac into blessing him, Jacob, the younger son.
So Jacob had run away, far off, so his brother couldn’t catch him and, he guessed, kill him; Jacob, the cheat, the dishonest, the schemer and plotter, made a life and got wives for himself in a far off country.
As he got closer to home, Jacob sent his flocks and herds and wives and kids across the river first, so his brother Esau would see them and think, “Hey, this brother of mine is powerful; I don’t want to harm him now,” or, perhaps, Esau would have a softer heart, seeing his long-lost inlaws.
Jacob stayed back for the night.
And a man wrestled with him until daybreak.
Now, the text doesn’t say this is God. We surmise it from Jacob’s words,
For I have seen God face to face …
But like so many stories in the Bible, it can have a couple of meanings.
So we needn’t spend time dwelling on the “did Jacob really, literally wrestle with God in a body” question. Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. That’s not the point.
The point is, Jacob wrestled with God … wrestled with his faith, his hopes, his dreams, his desires, his being comfortable in his own skin, who he was created to be … he’d wrestled with God for years. The cheat, the fraud, the one who split his family apart and ran off, it turns out he had a conscience after all. He thought, no he just didn’t think, he likely had sleepless nights, dream filled, troubled nights, melancholy days, spent wondering about what he had done and what he had left undone, in his life, with his family, how he had treated them, and through them, how he had treated God.
So this incident marks the capstone, the point of Jacob’s “sorting it all out.” It was through his internal wrestling that he’d come to grips with who he was, who he was to be, and how he needed to come back as the prodigal to his brother. He limped to be with his family and to meet up with his brother, he limped because of his wrestling; this, the mark of his struggle, his inner work; now, Jacob moves toward reconciliation with his brother, and a new life in his old home.
And so it is for us too. How many of us have life-stories, life-situations, like Jacob? Have we simply stuffed them, tried to avoid them, kept them far far away from us?
God calls us into a wrestling match. To bring those stories, those situations out, to wrestle with them, to wrestle with God in them. In prayer and meditation. In conversation with others. In confession and forgiveness. At the table of communion.
God calls us to wrestle with them, and with God. God’s big enough for our wrestling. Indeed, I’m sure the relationship God prefers, is the one with us as the wrestler, rather than as the “pious pretender,” You know what, who that is.
Bible unopened on the coffee table, one hour of church once a month the extent of our spiritual exercise.
God calls us into a wrestling match.
But wrestling isn’t the only inner work into which our texts guide us.
Paul’s advice to his young protégé Timothy contains words particularly pointed toward us, in these days.
For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths.
The context of these words is, of course, Paul, giving a message to the young pastor Timothy, who has stayed behind in the church-community which Paul has founded, and then, Paul has moved on … these verses before us today are words of encouragement for Timothy to “keep on keeping on.”
Ah, but there’s some fine, rich, deep stuff for us in, under, between these words.
“Doctrine” … that’s a loaded word these days. It should be … and was, in earlier English translations, “teachings.” That makes more sense, teachings coming from those teachers which those with itching ears will accumulate for themselves.
But then there’s that word “desires.”
For Paul, that’s a terrible word.
Literally, the word is “lustful passion.” And for Paul, the sin is that people will find teachers and teachings who will feed their own lustful, selfish passions … passions for power, passions for wealth, passions for political gain … rather than holding fast to The Story, our story, as handed down to them, to us, through the Scriptures, through the ages.
Make no mistake. It is all right and good for us to have passion for The Story, the Word of God, God’s story, Jesus’ story, to and for us. But those with “itching ears” turn their backs on that community-story, that Christ-body-story … the story that requires us to dig inside, and see our sin, our shortcomings, our falling short of God … and drives us to repent and ask for forgiveness … those with “itching ears” wander off, in their selfish passions, to make life not about community, and wholeness in God, in Christ … but rather, all about themselves.
We have seen this in spades of late, and of this selfish passion, finding falsehood, pawned off, pandered to itching ears, I cannot and will not be silent.
Now, it is good and right for us to have spirited debate, faith talk and public policy talk, about how we as a society shall live and be with the poor.
But in the past few months our nation, our political, opinion, media leaders, we the people, have been part of a reprehensible twisting of God’s Word against the poor … slandering the clear word of Scripture, throughout the history of God’s people, the Word which is always and forever, to and for, on the side of, those of our community who are poor, powerless, downtrodden and marginalized, ill, elderly, widow and orphan.
It is a lie, a damned lie that “God helps those who help themselves.”
It is blasphemy to deliberately misquote the Word of Scripture, in order to justify pulling the most minimal of societal safety nets out from under those who cannot work or earn a living.
And it is surely displeasing to God that our fellow Americans living in poverty have increased in number every year, save one, since 1999, and dramatically since 2007.
Many faith leaders have heard these horrible words of late, and fearing that fate of the Israelites when they ignored, twisted and defied the Word of God’s clear command to favor the poor … fearing that the fate of the Israelites would also come upon these United States … these faith leaders, Christians of all confessions and politics came together this past week, and stood before the buildings of Congress, reading from this Bible … quoting from these highlighted 2000+ verses in the Bible where God explicitly states his favor toward the poor and powerless.
Isaiah 10.1 ff - You people are in for trouble! You have made cruel and unfair laws that let you cheat the poor and needy and rob widows and orphans.
Amos 8:4 ff - You people crush those in need and wipe out the poor ... those who are needy and poor don't have any money. We will make them our slaves for the price of a pair of sandals.
Micah 6:8 - The Lord God has told us what is right and what he demands: "See that justice is done, let mercy be your first concern, and humbly obey your God."
Matthew 25:45 ff - Whenever you failed to help any of my people, no matter how unimportant they seemed, you failed to do it for me.
This is Sound Teaching, the Solid, Unshakeable Word of God for us.
We Americans have much for which to answer, before God and before the world God loves … and through these texts, God’s Word, God calls us today to repentance … to repentance as a nation, as a people, no more politics or party spirit … all of us.
We are called to fall to our knees, to repent in ashamed tears before our God … to repent for our speech and behavior these past three weeks and more, for the abuse of our poor brothers and sisters in need, suffering people nearly brought to wreck and ruin, some, even close to the threshold of death itself, because of our stubbornness and division as a nation, as a people.
We have much, much deep work to be about. This is most certainly true.
But it is not deep work without hope.
The Gospel text for today does, certainly, include gospel … Good News … for us.
The story is one we’ve heard before … the unjust judge, the persistent widow, the parable on encouragement in prayer, that’s what Jesus calls it.
The widow wants justice against an unnamed opponent. We should note, however, in our hyper-polarized state of living today, that she does not demonize her opponent. Call him or her an “evildoer.” No, the word she uses literally means “anti-justice.” Grant me justice against my anti-justice.
And yet, that term is a subjective term, it’s the widow’s opinion, expressed feeling that she’s been wronged.
A judge is required to decide the case. A neutral third party, an “other.”
So the widow stands at the judge’s door and knocks. And knocks and rattles. And rattles and cries for justice.
It’s a figure for prayer, and the kind of prayer into which Jesus is calling his disciples. It is prayer that is “in it for the long haul,” that continues and continues and does not give up.
Biblical commentator Fred Craddock has these words to say about this passage:
The human experience is one of delay and honestly says as much, even while acknowledging the mystery of God’s ways. Is the (one praying) being hammered through long days and nights of prayer into a vessel that will be able to hold the answer when it comes? We do not know. All we know in the life of prayer is asking, seeking, knocking, and waiting, trust sometimes fainting, sometimes growing angry.
There’s that wrestling again.
Persons of such prayer life can only wonder at those who speak of prayer with the smiling facility of someone drawing answers from a hat.
In a large gathering of persons concerned about certain unfair and oppressive conditions in our society, an elderly African-American minister read this parable and gave a one-sentence interpretation: “Until you have stood for years knocking at a locked door, your knuckles bleeding, you do not really know what prayer is.”
Enter the unjust judge. He is unjust because he doesn’t listen to the widow’s requests. But finally he abates.
The English translation we have before us is a poor rendition of what he’s really saying.
Which is:
… because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so I don’t get a black eye in the process.
The judge’s motivation for giving the widow justice? He doesn’t want to look bad.
In honor- and-shame based societies … sometimes, our own … certainly, the Mideast at the time of Jesus … “looking bad” before others is something to be avoided at all costs.
We have seen this recently in the Amanda Knox trial.
Americans have a hard time understanding why the prosecutor in Perugia continues to submit the same old evidence, evidence which has been disproved, evidence which one trial overthrew already, to try to prove that Amanda Knox is guilty of murdering her roommate Meredith Kerscher.
But to Italians, it’s very clear.
This is all about “saving face,” in Italy known as not ending up with Brutta Faccia … “ugly face.”
Retracting his position now, even in the face of overwhelming evidence against him, would bring the Perugia prosecutor Brutta Faccia … “ugly face” … among his constituents. A state of shame for him, his family, his associates.
The same is true of the unjust judge in our text. He decides he needs to save face … get this nagging woman off his doorstep and out of his life … before people start talking … “What is going on between you and that woman, anyway???” … it would be an embarrassment to him … and so he decides to grant her justice … whatever that is … the text is not clear … and again, it’s not important.
Because what IS important is what Jesus says in the very next sentence.
Listen to what the unjust judge says.
And will God not grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them.
The point, according to Jesus, is that God doesn’t care about Brutta Faccia … saving face … this God who comes to us as one of us, born a baby in poverty, who lives our life, suffers our suffering, dies our death … this God, our God, doesn’t care one whit about “face.”
Indeed, this God, our God, dies to “face” forever … and in Jesus’ rising from the dead, lives anew for life anew, in life to come, and to redeem and make whole the life that is now.
So, back to our story’s analogy … if even this unjust judge grants justice, so much more will God hear the prayers and cries of his people.
“His chosen ones?” … well, that’s simple … anyone who calls on God in prayer does so by the movement of the Holy Spirit in their lives, so that’s chosen enough right there. Don’t get wrapped around the axle over that.
May it take a while? Yes. We all know that. And that’s where the wrestling comes in. Sometimes our prayers are “works in progress,” meaning, what we are praying for at first … after we go deep, plough the ground well in our lives, meditate, wrestle, do the deep deep work of faith … we may, no, we will find that our prayers change along the way, through the wrestling, the knocking, the seeking, the asking.
Ask Jacob. Surely when he started his journey, running away from his brother and mother and dying father, stolen birthright and blessing and all, surely his prayer was something other than what it was, there, in the place of our Old Testament text today, as he limped across the river to meet his brother Esau once again.
And so it is with us. When we wrestle … when we engage with these texts, through prayer and study and meditation … when we worship together, when we confess our sins and hear the words of forgiveness, when we commune together at Jesus’ table and at his invitation and in his welcome … as we gather as wrestling community … we change, too. Our prayers take on real flesh and blood, for real lives, the lives of those for whom and with whom we live and breathe, walk and work, suffer and rejoice, live and die.
And The Good News of all Good News … we are not left hanging …
When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?
The Son of Man has come, and comes, and is coming, and will keep coming … in these gifts of bread and wine, water and word of forgiveness, comfort and hope … in this community of fellow-wrestlers … The Son of Man comes … and grants us faith … faith enough for us … faith-strength to wrestle, to wrestle and reflect, to wrestle and repent, to wrestle and rise to forgiven, freed, new life … for our neighbor, for ourselves, for our nation, for this world.
The Son of Man has come, and comes, and is coming, and will keep coming. To us. For us.
So wrestle, wrestle my friends … wrestle … and hope, and dream, and live … live in, and for, the life that really is life.
Amen.
Genesis 32:22-31 / 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5 / Luke 18:1-8
OT 29C
20 October 2013
Much of what we’ve been reading and hearing as our Scripture texts, since this summer, have been about the outer struggles we encounter as we follow Jesus’ call to be his disciples … especially, particularly, how we are called to serve those to whom Jesus always goes and serves first … namely, the poor, the outsiders, the marginalized, the downtrodden, the ill, those despised by the world.
Last Sunday, we turned a corner of sorts … moving more inside ourselves, as we heard texts and sang songs and talked about carrying forward a sense of Thanksgiving for all that God has done for us.
Ah, but now, this week, we are all about our inner work. The hard stuff, the deep ploughing, introspective thinking and meditating into our spirits and souls and hearts.
All that stuff that northern European descended American Lutherans run from like snakes on a plane.
Well, buck up! That’s the Word our texts have to say to that attitude. Because The Deep Inner Work is where our texts are leading and guiding us today.
A man who wrestles with God.
Instructions on the “what it takes” behind being a faithful disciple-proclaimer of God’s Word.
A persistent widow demanding justice, and the inner change she works on an unjust judge.
We start with that story from Genesis, about Jacob,
And a man wrestled with him until daybreak.
Yes, it is a deliberately ambiguous text. It begins with Jacob returning with his family and possessions “back home,” the place and people from whom he fled long ago, well, actually, one person in particular, his brother, Esau, from whom Jacob and his mother stole the birthright-blessing Esau deserved, Esau being the first born son of Isaac, but Jacob and his mother tricked old Isaac into blessing him, Jacob, the younger son.
So Jacob had run away, far off, so his brother couldn’t catch him and, he guessed, kill him; Jacob, the cheat, the dishonest, the schemer and plotter, made a life and got wives for himself in a far off country.
As he got closer to home, Jacob sent his flocks and herds and wives and kids across the river first, so his brother Esau would see them and think, “Hey, this brother of mine is powerful; I don’t want to harm him now,” or, perhaps, Esau would have a softer heart, seeing his long-lost inlaws.
Jacob stayed back for the night.
And a man wrestled with him until daybreak.
Now, the text doesn’t say this is God. We surmise it from Jacob’s words,
For I have seen God face to face …
But like so many stories in the Bible, it can have a couple of meanings.
So we needn’t spend time dwelling on the “did Jacob really, literally wrestle with God in a body” question. Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. That’s not the point.
The point is, Jacob wrestled with God … wrestled with his faith, his hopes, his dreams, his desires, his being comfortable in his own skin, who he was created to be … he’d wrestled with God for years. The cheat, the fraud, the one who split his family apart and ran off, it turns out he had a conscience after all. He thought, no he just didn’t think, he likely had sleepless nights, dream filled, troubled nights, melancholy days, spent wondering about what he had done and what he had left undone, in his life, with his family, how he had treated them, and through them, how he had treated God.
So this incident marks the capstone, the point of Jacob’s “sorting it all out.” It was through his internal wrestling that he’d come to grips with who he was, who he was to be, and how he needed to come back as the prodigal to his brother. He limped to be with his family and to meet up with his brother, he limped because of his wrestling; this, the mark of his struggle, his inner work; now, Jacob moves toward reconciliation with his brother, and a new life in his old home.
And so it is for us too. How many of us have life-stories, life-situations, like Jacob? Have we simply stuffed them, tried to avoid them, kept them far far away from us?
God calls us into a wrestling match. To bring those stories, those situations out, to wrestle with them, to wrestle with God in them. In prayer and meditation. In conversation with others. In confession and forgiveness. At the table of communion.
God calls us to wrestle with them, and with God. God’s big enough for our wrestling. Indeed, I’m sure the relationship God prefers, is the one with us as the wrestler, rather than as the “pious pretender,” You know what, who that is.
Bible unopened on the coffee table, one hour of church once a month the extent of our spiritual exercise.
God calls us into a wrestling match.
But wrestling isn’t the only inner work into which our texts guide us.
Paul’s advice to his young protégé Timothy contains words particularly pointed toward us, in these days.
For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths.
The context of these words is, of course, Paul, giving a message to the young pastor Timothy, who has stayed behind in the church-community which Paul has founded, and then, Paul has moved on … these verses before us today are words of encouragement for Timothy to “keep on keeping on.”
Ah, but there’s some fine, rich, deep stuff for us in, under, between these words.
“Doctrine” … that’s a loaded word these days. It should be … and was, in earlier English translations, “teachings.” That makes more sense, teachings coming from those teachers which those with itching ears will accumulate for themselves.
But then there’s that word “desires.”
For Paul, that’s a terrible word.
Literally, the word is “lustful passion.” And for Paul, the sin is that people will find teachers and teachings who will feed their own lustful, selfish passions … passions for power, passions for wealth, passions for political gain … rather than holding fast to The Story, our story, as handed down to them, to us, through the Scriptures, through the ages.
Make no mistake. It is all right and good for us to have passion for The Story, the Word of God, God’s story, Jesus’ story, to and for us. But those with “itching ears” turn their backs on that community-story, that Christ-body-story … the story that requires us to dig inside, and see our sin, our shortcomings, our falling short of God … and drives us to repent and ask for forgiveness … those with “itching ears” wander off, in their selfish passions, to make life not about community, and wholeness in God, in Christ … but rather, all about themselves.
We have seen this in spades of late, and of this selfish passion, finding falsehood, pawned off, pandered to itching ears, I cannot and will not be silent.
Now, it is good and right for us to have spirited debate, faith talk and public policy talk, about how we as a society shall live and be with the poor.
But in the past few months our nation, our political, opinion, media leaders, we the people, have been part of a reprehensible twisting of God’s Word against the poor … slandering the clear word of Scripture, throughout the history of God’s people, the Word which is always and forever, to and for, on the side of, those of our community who are poor, powerless, downtrodden and marginalized, ill, elderly, widow and orphan.
It is a lie, a damned lie that “God helps those who help themselves.”
It is blasphemy to deliberately misquote the Word of Scripture, in order to justify pulling the most minimal of societal safety nets out from under those who cannot work or earn a living.
And it is surely displeasing to God that our fellow Americans living in poverty have increased in number every year, save one, since 1999, and dramatically since 2007.
Many faith leaders have heard these horrible words of late, and fearing that fate of the Israelites when they ignored, twisted and defied the Word of God’s clear command to favor the poor … fearing that the fate of the Israelites would also come upon these United States … these faith leaders, Christians of all confessions and politics came together this past week, and stood before the buildings of Congress, reading from this Bible … quoting from these highlighted 2000+ verses in the Bible where God explicitly states his favor toward the poor and powerless.
Isaiah 10.1 ff - You people are in for trouble! You have made cruel and unfair laws that let you cheat the poor and needy and rob widows and orphans.
Amos 8:4 ff - You people crush those in need and wipe out the poor ... those who are needy and poor don't have any money. We will make them our slaves for the price of a pair of sandals.
Micah 6:8 - The Lord God has told us what is right and what he demands: "See that justice is done, let mercy be your first concern, and humbly obey your God."
Matthew 25:45 ff - Whenever you failed to help any of my people, no matter how unimportant they seemed, you failed to do it for me.
This is Sound Teaching, the Solid, Unshakeable Word of God for us.
We Americans have much for which to answer, before God and before the world God loves … and through these texts, God’s Word, God calls us today to repentance … to repentance as a nation, as a people, no more politics or party spirit … all of us.
We are called to fall to our knees, to repent in ashamed tears before our God … to repent for our speech and behavior these past three weeks and more, for the abuse of our poor brothers and sisters in need, suffering people nearly brought to wreck and ruin, some, even close to the threshold of death itself, because of our stubbornness and division as a nation, as a people.
We have much, much deep work to be about. This is most certainly true.
But it is not deep work without hope.
The Gospel text for today does, certainly, include gospel … Good News … for us.
The story is one we’ve heard before … the unjust judge, the persistent widow, the parable on encouragement in prayer, that’s what Jesus calls it.
The widow wants justice against an unnamed opponent. We should note, however, in our hyper-polarized state of living today, that she does not demonize her opponent. Call him or her an “evildoer.” No, the word she uses literally means “anti-justice.” Grant me justice against my anti-justice.
And yet, that term is a subjective term, it’s the widow’s opinion, expressed feeling that she’s been wronged.
A judge is required to decide the case. A neutral third party, an “other.”
So the widow stands at the judge’s door and knocks. And knocks and rattles. And rattles and cries for justice.
It’s a figure for prayer, and the kind of prayer into which Jesus is calling his disciples. It is prayer that is “in it for the long haul,” that continues and continues and does not give up.
Biblical commentator Fred Craddock has these words to say about this passage:
The human experience is one of delay and honestly says as much, even while acknowledging the mystery of God’s ways. Is the (one praying) being hammered through long days and nights of prayer into a vessel that will be able to hold the answer when it comes? We do not know. All we know in the life of prayer is asking, seeking, knocking, and waiting, trust sometimes fainting, sometimes growing angry.
There’s that wrestling again.
Persons of such prayer life can only wonder at those who speak of prayer with the smiling facility of someone drawing answers from a hat.
In a large gathering of persons concerned about certain unfair and oppressive conditions in our society, an elderly African-American minister read this parable and gave a one-sentence interpretation: “Until you have stood for years knocking at a locked door, your knuckles bleeding, you do not really know what prayer is.”
Enter the unjust judge. He is unjust because he doesn’t listen to the widow’s requests. But finally he abates.
The English translation we have before us is a poor rendition of what he’s really saying.
Which is:
… because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so I don’t get a black eye in the process.
The judge’s motivation for giving the widow justice? He doesn’t want to look bad.
In honor- and-shame based societies … sometimes, our own … certainly, the Mideast at the time of Jesus … “looking bad” before others is something to be avoided at all costs.
We have seen this recently in the Amanda Knox trial.
Americans have a hard time understanding why the prosecutor in Perugia continues to submit the same old evidence, evidence which has been disproved, evidence which one trial overthrew already, to try to prove that Amanda Knox is guilty of murdering her roommate Meredith Kerscher.
But to Italians, it’s very clear.
This is all about “saving face,” in Italy known as not ending up with Brutta Faccia … “ugly face.”
Retracting his position now, even in the face of overwhelming evidence against him, would bring the Perugia prosecutor Brutta Faccia … “ugly face” … among his constituents. A state of shame for him, his family, his associates.
The same is true of the unjust judge in our text. He decides he needs to save face … get this nagging woman off his doorstep and out of his life … before people start talking … “What is going on between you and that woman, anyway???” … it would be an embarrassment to him … and so he decides to grant her justice … whatever that is … the text is not clear … and again, it’s not important.
Because what IS important is what Jesus says in the very next sentence.
Listen to what the unjust judge says.
And will God not grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them.
The point, according to Jesus, is that God doesn’t care about Brutta Faccia … saving face … this God who comes to us as one of us, born a baby in poverty, who lives our life, suffers our suffering, dies our death … this God, our God, doesn’t care one whit about “face.”
Indeed, this God, our God, dies to “face” forever … and in Jesus’ rising from the dead, lives anew for life anew, in life to come, and to redeem and make whole the life that is now.
So, back to our story’s analogy … if even this unjust judge grants justice, so much more will God hear the prayers and cries of his people.
“His chosen ones?” … well, that’s simple … anyone who calls on God in prayer does so by the movement of the Holy Spirit in their lives, so that’s chosen enough right there. Don’t get wrapped around the axle over that.
May it take a while? Yes. We all know that. And that’s where the wrestling comes in. Sometimes our prayers are “works in progress,” meaning, what we are praying for at first … after we go deep, plough the ground well in our lives, meditate, wrestle, do the deep deep work of faith … we may, no, we will find that our prayers change along the way, through the wrestling, the knocking, the seeking, the asking.
Ask Jacob. Surely when he started his journey, running away from his brother and mother and dying father, stolen birthright and blessing and all, surely his prayer was something other than what it was, there, in the place of our Old Testament text today, as he limped across the river to meet his brother Esau once again.
And so it is with us. When we wrestle … when we engage with these texts, through prayer and study and meditation … when we worship together, when we confess our sins and hear the words of forgiveness, when we commune together at Jesus’ table and at his invitation and in his welcome … as we gather as wrestling community … we change, too. Our prayers take on real flesh and blood, for real lives, the lives of those for whom and with whom we live and breathe, walk and work, suffer and rejoice, live and die.
And The Good News of all Good News … we are not left hanging …
When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?
The Son of Man has come, and comes, and is coming, and will keep coming … in these gifts of bread and wine, water and word of forgiveness, comfort and hope … in this community of fellow-wrestlers … The Son of Man comes … and grants us faith … faith enough for us … faith-strength to wrestle, to wrestle and reflect, to wrestle and repent, to wrestle and rise to forgiven, freed, new life … for our neighbor, for ourselves, for our nation, for this world.
The Son of Man has come, and comes, and is coming, and will keep coming. To us. For us.
So wrestle, wrestle my friends … wrestle … and hope, and dream, and live … live in, and for, the life that really is life.
Amen.
Sunday, October 13, 2013
13 October 2013
“Jour de l’Action de grâce”
Luke 17:11-19
28th Sunday in Ordinary Time
13 October 2013
After hearing those texts – especially our Gospel for today, you may well be wondering, did we make a mistake? I mean, the calendar says mid-October, but the texts definitely read “Thanksgiving.”
Well, that’s because these these verses from Luke are the “traditional” Thanksgiving reading … the ten lepers, standing on the side of the road, calling out to Jesus to have mercy on them … Jesus, seeing them, telling them to go show themselves to the priests … then, in their going away, they find themselves clean … but only one turns back to thank Jesus.
It is partly, just the way the texts go. We have been making our way through Luke’s gospel in a fairly linear manner, and this week’s Gospel follows immediately after last week’s.
But our lectionary also takes into account that there are other English-speaking countries in North America besides the US … and yes, tomorrow is the Day of Thanksgiving for our neighbors to the north, in Canada.
Or, if you are Quebecois, Jour de l’Action de grâce.
But even if you and I are not celebrating a Day of Thanksgiving tomorrow, there is plenty in this text for us to feast upon today.
Jesus meets ten lepers and heals them … and yet, only one turns back to give Jesus thanks.
There is, certainly, more than a hint of “entitlement,” of which the nine lepers who do not return serve as example.
Local author Dan Allender, professor at the Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, wrote a book a few years’ back titled Sabbath. In that book, he offers a particularly salient word about our own personal sense of thanksgiving:
If you (only) get what you deserve, it is impossible to be grateful.
Those nine lepers … even though they were in the region between Samaria and Galilee … an ethnically and religiously mixed area of Israel … by their actions they show that they were most likely Jews, immediately heeding Jesus’ command to “go show yourselves to the priests.” They most certainly knew the laws and rules of their religion which, because of their illness, forbade contact between them and others … family, friends, and most especially kept them from being part of the community gatherings of their religion. They were considered “unclean” and had to stay away, to live away, from others. They were outcasts, forced to wander and beg, having a miserable existence.
So when they heard Jesus’ command to “go and show yourselves to the priests” they had to know something was going to happen to them … that they would be healed … because otherwise, the priests would run away from them, unclean as they were … so the nine went away right away to do exactly what Jesus had told them to do. When they saw that they were “made clean” … the word Luke uses here is catharsis- a complete cleansing … they just kept right on going … they might have recognized Jesus as something special when he came along, but as soon as they got what they wanted, they went right back to their religious “business as usual.”
The tenth leper though … Luke notes that “he was a Samaritan.” Samaritans were considered “half-breeds” by their Jewish relatives … they had their own religious center (not Jerusalem, but Mount Gerazim in Samaria) and had a syncretistic religion … a belief system which combined Jewish law and faith practices with those of the non-Jewish, surrounding countries.
But even if you didn’t know that about Samaria, or Samaritans, if you just read the Bible references to “Samaritans,” you would get that they were considered second-class citizens by the Jews.
The woman who meets Jesus at the well in John’s gospel … she is a Samaritan … and wonders why Jesus – one she realizes is a Jewish rabbi or teacher – she wonders why he is bothering to talk to her.
And then, of course, there’s the story of the Good Samaritan, earlier in Luke’s gospel … where the Jewish priest and lay religious leader pass the beaten up, injured man by … “just following orders” of their Jewish religion, because coming in contact with this man … injured, maybe dead, would have rendered them ‘unclean’ and thus unfit for their religious service … but it’s the Samaritan, the outcast, the outsider, who does the neighborly thing, picks the man up, puts him up at a local inn, where he can heal from his injuries.
Jesus doesn’t buy into this “second class citizen” business about the Samaritans at all.
Neither does that tenth leper, “he was a Samaritan.”
Again, the Samaritan, he’s the outsider, the outcast, here. He can’t go to Jerusalem along with the other nine and show himself to the priests because they don’t consider him to be a faithful Jew. Oh, perhaps, he could turn around and go to his own Samaritan priests … but he doesn’t.
He’s found something else … someone else … someone better than just “business as usual.”
He turns, turns back, to “return thanks” to Jesus.
And Jesus … Jesus sees this as an opportunity to make a point to his disciples, and the others traveling with him.
Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?
Jesus makes his point. This Samaritan, even though he has been made clean, the very fact that he’s a Samaritan makes him “unclean” to the Jews and there’s nothing he can do about that … to the Jews, he’s basically, the same as a Gentile. Impure of religion. Not to be ‘hung around’ by a Jew, least of which, a rabbi, a teacher, a healer.
And yet … and yet … this one… this foreigner, this outsider, this outcast with nowhere to go … he is the one who “gets” Jesus.
He is the one of the ten … all of them, given the “mustard seed” of faith by God … all of them, given all that they need for faith, hope and trust in God in this life … but only this Samaritan “gets it” … he “gets” that he has all that he needs … he “gets” what God is doing in and through the life of this Jesus … and in “getting it,” in his “returning thanks” … in Luke’s words, eucharisteo … yes, like our word Eucharist, a full, rich, compete thanks … his life is changed, forever.
It is only of him, and only for him, that Jesus says these words:
“Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”
It’s a sentence full of meaning, which we need to unpack to fully understand.
Well … it’s a weak translation of Luke’s word … which has a rich meaning of “wholeness, completeness, being restored to a former state of safety and well-being.” This man, this foreigner, this Samaritan, is being re-made, re-born. Born again, if you will.
Get up … the word is “arise,” the same word, yes, used to describe what will happen to Jesus at the tomb some time later. This Samaritan, he is being re-born for this life … this leper, once as good as dead to his family, his friends, the rest of the world, because of his illness … now, he’s been given a new life … as I said earlier, born again. Yes, it’s just for this life … but it most certainly points to the greater new life to come, which faith in Jesus will bring him and all who believe, in the One who lives, and dies, and is raised to life again.
Go on your way … it’s an interesting choice of words for Jesus … why doesn’t Jesus invite this Samaritan to join him as a disciple, to come along with him on his journey? It’s a fair question … but also, fairly answered, when we look at those other “Samaritan” stories.
The “Good Samaritan” in Luke … and the Samaritan woman who meets Jesus at the well … they both … do not stay put, but move on … move on, to take their message, THE Message, of love, faith, hope and life … to take it on to others.
The Samaritan woman at the well in John’s gospel … her words to other, when she’s telling them about Jesus, they say it all …
“Come and see …”
That’s what “getting it,” the mustard seed of faith, planted in him, in us, by God, sprouted, come to life, does for the tenth leper. He has all he needs from God, for faith, for freedom from sin, and sickness, and the curse of death, in this life and for the next … he has all he needs … so he claims it … and he goes forth to live in it.
And so … this is where this story of “returning thanks” connects for us.
What we take away from this simple little story, is a prayer … a prayer that this change would happen for us, too … that we would be changed, healed, made whole, like this Samaritan.
Not that we would just have religion … “go to church” … take our places as the insiders … the entitled, the deserving, why, even those nine cleansed lepers did that. Anyone can have a mundane religiosity … talk the talk … be part of “church,” and treat it as being no different from country club or gathering of soshy friends, with a cross slapped on top of it for good looks … comfortable, and easy …
anyone can, and many, many do …
But that isn’t what this faith as a mustard seed, planted within us … that is not what this is all about … NOT AT ALL …
And so we pray that we would be like that one thankful, changed Samaritan … that we would rise from this Eucharist, this thanksgiving, this praise, this meal and this worship, rise to live in this same deep, rich life-changing thankfulness … a thankfulness in which we claim that the faith we have been given is enough …
… enough to change us, cleanse us, heal us, through and through, inside and out, for the life to come and most certainly, for the life we are in, right here, right now …
… so that the mustard seed of faith given to each of us would sprout, and grow, and bear good fruit, in our lives, and always, always for others …
… sending us out, like the one who “returned thanks,” as whole, well, people of faith, Christ-followers … not just worshippers, not merely members, but all, DISCIPLES … disciples who follow Jesus, disciples for others, disciples for life, the life that really is life.
Amen.
Luke 17:11-19
28th Sunday in Ordinary Time
13 October 2013
After hearing those texts – especially our Gospel for today, you may well be wondering, did we make a mistake? I mean, the calendar says mid-October, but the texts definitely read “Thanksgiving.”
Well, that’s because these these verses from Luke are the “traditional” Thanksgiving reading … the ten lepers, standing on the side of the road, calling out to Jesus to have mercy on them … Jesus, seeing them, telling them to go show themselves to the priests … then, in their going away, they find themselves clean … but only one turns back to thank Jesus.
It is partly, just the way the texts go. We have been making our way through Luke’s gospel in a fairly linear manner, and this week’s Gospel follows immediately after last week’s.
But our lectionary also takes into account that there are other English-speaking countries in North America besides the US … and yes, tomorrow is the Day of Thanksgiving for our neighbors to the north, in Canada.
Or, if you are Quebecois, Jour de l’Action de grâce.
But even if you and I are not celebrating a Day of Thanksgiving tomorrow, there is plenty in this text for us to feast upon today.
Jesus meets ten lepers and heals them … and yet, only one turns back to give Jesus thanks.
There is, certainly, more than a hint of “entitlement,” of which the nine lepers who do not return serve as example.
Local author Dan Allender, professor at the Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, wrote a book a few years’ back titled Sabbath. In that book, he offers a particularly salient word about our own personal sense of thanksgiving:
If you (only) get what you deserve, it is impossible to be grateful.
Those nine lepers … even though they were in the region between Samaria and Galilee … an ethnically and religiously mixed area of Israel … by their actions they show that they were most likely Jews, immediately heeding Jesus’ command to “go show yourselves to the priests.” They most certainly knew the laws and rules of their religion which, because of their illness, forbade contact between them and others … family, friends, and most especially kept them from being part of the community gatherings of their religion. They were considered “unclean” and had to stay away, to live away, from others. They were outcasts, forced to wander and beg, having a miserable existence.
So when they heard Jesus’ command to “go and show yourselves to the priests” they had to know something was going to happen to them … that they would be healed … because otherwise, the priests would run away from them, unclean as they were … so the nine went away right away to do exactly what Jesus had told them to do. When they saw that they were “made clean” … the word Luke uses here is catharsis- a complete cleansing … they just kept right on going … they might have recognized Jesus as something special when he came along, but as soon as they got what they wanted, they went right back to their religious “business as usual.”
The tenth leper though … Luke notes that “he was a Samaritan.” Samaritans were considered “half-breeds” by their Jewish relatives … they had their own religious center (not Jerusalem, but Mount Gerazim in Samaria) and had a syncretistic religion … a belief system which combined Jewish law and faith practices with those of the non-Jewish, surrounding countries.
But even if you didn’t know that about Samaria, or Samaritans, if you just read the Bible references to “Samaritans,” you would get that they were considered second-class citizens by the Jews.
The woman who meets Jesus at the well in John’s gospel … she is a Samaritan … and wonders why Jesus – one she realizes is a Jewish rabbi or teacher – she wonders why he is bothering to talk to her.
And then, of course, there’s the story of the Good Samaritan, earlier in Luke’s gospel … where the Jewish priest and lay religious leader pass the beaten up, injured man by … “just following orders” of their Jewish religion, because coming in contact with this man … injured, maybe dead, would have rendered them ‘unclean’ and thus unfit for their religious service … but it’s the Samaritan, the outcast, the outsider, who does the neighborly thing, picks the man up, puts him up at a local inn, where he can heal from his injuries.
Jesus doesn’t buy into this “second class citizen” business about the Samaritans at all.
Neither does that tenth leper, “he was a Samaritan.”
Again, the Samaritan, he’s the outsider, the outcast, here. He can’t go to Jerusalem along with the other nine and show himself to the priests because they don’t consider him to be a faithful Jew. Oh, perhaps, he could turn around and go to his own Samaritan priests … but he doesn’t.
He’s found something else … someone else … someone better than just “business as usual.”
He turns, turns back, to “return thanks” to Jesus.
And Jesus … Jesus sees this as an opportunity to make a point to his disciples, and the others traveling with him.
Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?
Jesus makes his point. This Samaritan, even though he has been made clean, the very fact that he’s a Samaritan makes him “unclean” to the Jews and there’s nothing he can do about that … to the Jews, he’s basically, the same as a Gentile. Impure of religion. Not to be ‘hung around’ by a Jew, least of which, a rabbi, a teacher, a healer.
And yet … and yet … this one… this foreigner, this outsider, this outcast with nowhere to go … he is the one who “gets” Jesus.
He is the one of the ten … all of them, given the “mustard seed” of faith by God … all of them, given all that they need for faith, hope and trust in God in this life … but only this Samaritan “gets it” … he “gets” that he has all that he needs … he “gets” what God is doing in and through the life of this Jesus … and in “getting it,” in his “returning thanks” … in Luke’s words, eucharisteo … yes, like our word Eucharist, a full, rich, compete thanks … his life is changed, forever.
It is only of him, and only for him, that Jesus says these words:
“Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”
It’s a sentence full of meaning, which we need to unpack to fully understand.
Well … it’s a weak translation of Luke’s word … which has a rich meaning of “wholeness, completeness, being restored to a former state of safety and well-being.” This man, this foreigner, this Samaritan, is being re-made, re-born. Born again, if you will.
Get up … the word is “arise,” the same word, yes, used to describe what will happen to Jesus at the tomb some time later. This Samaritan, he is being re-born for this life … this leper, once as good as dead to his family, his friends, the rest of the world, because of his illness … now, he’s been given a new life … as I said earlier, born again. Yes, it’s just for this life … but it most certainly points to the greater new life to come, which faith in Jesus will bring him and all who believe, in the One who lives, and dies, and is raised to life again.
Go on your way … it’s an interesting choice of words for Jesus … why doesn’t Jesus invite this Samaritan to join him as a disciple, to come along with him on his journey? It’s a fair question … but also, fairly answered, when we look at those other “Samaritan” stories.
The “Good Samaritan” in Luke … and the Samaritan woman who meets Jesus at the well … they both … do not stay put, but move on … move on, to take their message, THE Message, of love, faith, hope and life … to take it on to others.
The Samaritan woman at the well in John’s gospel … her words to other, when she’s telling them about Jesus, they say it all …
“Come and see …”
That’s what “getting it,” the mustard seed of faith, planted in him, in us, by God, sprouted, come to life, does for the tenth leper. He has all he needs from God, for faith, for freedom from sin, and sickness, and the curse of death, in this life and for the next … he has all he needs … so he claims it … and he goes forth to live in it.
And so … this is where this story of “returning thanks” connects for us.
What we take away from this simple little story, is a prayer … a prayer that this change would happen for us, too … that we would be changed, healed, made whole, like this Samaritan.
Not that we would just have religion … “go to church” … take our places as the insiders … the entitled, the deserving, why, even those nine cleansed lepers did that. Anyone can have a mundane religiosity … talk the talk … be part of “church,” and treat it as being no different from country club or gathering of soshy friends, with a cross slapped on top of it for good looks … comfortable, and easy …
anyone can, and many, many do …
But that isn’t what this faith as a mustard seed, planted within us … that is not what this is all about … NOT AT ALL …
And so we pray that we would be like that one thankful, changed Samaritan … that we would rise from this Eucharist, this thanksgiving, this praise, this meal and this worship, rise to live in this same deep, rich life-changing thankfulness … a thankfulness in which we claim that the faith we have been given is enough …
… enough to change us, cleanse us, heal us, through and through, inside and out, for the life to come and most certainly, for the life we are in, right here, right now …
… so that the mustard seed of faith given to each of us would sprout, and grow, and bear good fruit, in our lives, and always, always for others …
… sending us out, like the one who “returned thanks,” as whole, well, people of faith, Christ-followers … not just worshippers, not merely members, but all, DISCIPLES … disciples who follow Jesus, disciples for others, disciples for life, the life that really is life.
Amen.
Sunday, October 06, 2013
06 October 2013
“More of this isn’t better”
2 Timothy 1:1-14; Luke 17:5-10
OT 27C
6 October 2013
You have no doubt seen those AT&T commercials featuring an adult man sitting in what appears to be a first grade classroom, getting input from some kids about topics which sort of loosely have something to do with cell phone wireless plans. The man’s stiff and serious, and the kids are smart and cute but say some pretty outrageous things.
One of those commercials, which has gotten a lot of air, has a little girl making this answer to the man’s question, “Who thinks more is better than less?”:
More is better than less because if there's more less stuff, then you might want to have some more.
But then, your parents won't let you because there's only a little.
If you really like something, you'll want more of it.
We want more,
We want more,
Like, you really like it, ya want more.
What a perfect illustration for our texts today!
The disciples want more … they want more faith. It’s a typical request from typical people who could be saying and praying the same words today. We say and pray the same words today, as we face situations in our personal lives, in our community and world, in our faith communities … “Jesus, just give me more faith.”
More is better than less …
We want more,
We want more …
And Jesus’ response … Jesus’ response seems rather cold-hearted, doesn’t it? Like he thinks they don’t have any faith at all … if they had even a smidge of faith, they should be able to Harry Potter-like order a tree to be uprooted and thrown into the sea.
Ah, but what’s really going on here?
In reality, it’s another of those strange exchanges going on, between the disciples and Jesus, if the disciples would pay attention to what they are saying, and what Jesus is saying, they’d get it … ah, but they don’t, once more.
Increase our faith!
The word they use, even if we don’t know the Greek of the New Testament, we can understand it. Prostheis. Like our word, “prosthetic,” or “prosthesis.” Something added on to what already exists, like a prosthetic leg or arm added on to a body. Something added on to what already exists.
And Jesus’ response …
If you had faith the size of a mustard seed …
And one more language note … the sense of Jesus’ “if” is less “if” and more “since” … Since you have faith the size of a mustard seed …
So both disciples, and Jesus, recognize that they … disciples … have faith already.
They have faith already.
But they want more.
More is better than less because if there's more less stuff, then you might want to have some more.
If you really like something, you'll want more of it.
We want more,
We want more …
The thing is, what Jesus is getting at here, is that faith is NOT like other earthly stuff, toys and money and cell phone plans. More of it isn’t better, because what we have already, what we’ve been given already, Jesus says, is enough.
This is the Word that Paul is giving to his young protégé, Timothy, in our New Testament reading. Timothy is like a new young pastor in her first call; Timothy’s out in the field, helping lead a fledgling Christian community; Paul founded it, then moved on, and Timothy is now the servant-leader who remains.
Timothy remains … but he’s got some misgivings about his qualifications, his credentials to carry out the task ahead of him. Most likely … probably … he wants more … more faith, more learning, more ability to pray, to worship, to quote Scripture.
But Paul reminds him in this letter that, indeed, Timothy has all he needs:
I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and how, I am sure, lives in you. For this reason I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you … for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and love and of self-discipline.
Timothy has all he needs … faith enough to move forward in serving and leading this community of faith. God has given to Timothy as God has given to all who God claims, and Christ names as his own, through the gift of Baptism … a spirit of power and love and self-discipline.
In other words, Timothy doesn’t need more. He has all he needs.
For the disciples, too, it’s the same thing. They have all they need. Remember how, earlier this summer, earlier in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus sent seventy of his followers out to cure and heal and cleanse and make new. And they did it. They did it well, so well that Jesus remarked about it when they came back.
But they want more.
It is their, it is our theology of scarcity that does this. The thinking, the believing, that there just isn’t enough … but if we had more … more house, more work, more money, more time … it would be better.
Churches get stuck in this theology too. If we just had more … more people, more kids, more stewardship, more programs to offer, more to attract people …
More is better than less because if there's more less stuff, then you might want to have some more.
If you really like something, you'll want more of it.
We want more,
We want more …
Most of you know that I came to Nativity from one of the most rural synods in our Evangelical Lutheran Church in America … Southwest Minnesota. Yes, it’s a large synod with nearly 250 congregations (in comparison, our synod, NW Washington, has just a few over 100 congregations) but many if not most of those congregations are small, family-sized (around 50 in worship), yoked together with 2, 3, 4 or more others into parishes, so they can afford to call a pastor.
SW Minnesota is a declining area of the country. It’s a farming area, and as the small farms go away and the large farms take over, the young people move away to find work in the Twin Cities, leaving the villages and towns with a disproportionate number of seniors, retirement homes and nursing facilities … and the younger people who remain are often very poor and need many services to survive.
And many of the problems we have in urban areas are exacerbated there because the population is so small … alcohol and drug abuse, depression and suicide rates are far higher than the national average.
It is a beautiful place, but it can also be a very depressing place to live. It’s very easy to get caught up in living in the past, looking back to the “glory days” of busy towns, each town having its own school … and full churches with big Sunday Schools, and not needing to “share a pastor” with another congregation or congregations spread out across miles and miles of Minnesota prairie.
And yet … and yet … the SW Minnesota Synod continues to be a place, a people full of hope … a synod birthing hope, with active congregations doing ministry, sending youth to servant trips and youth gatherings, students to seminaries to train to become pastors, and active, growing multicultural ministries among the synod’s growing population of Hispanics.
I believe this theology of abundance that’s evident there is best summed up by the synod’s mission statement:
By God’s grace, together we have what we need.
By God’s grace, together we have what we need.
Isn’t that a great word? A word of abundance, and joy, and hope. A word which so well sums up our text for today.
While the disciples want more, Jesus knows that they have enough … already … enough faith, enough power and love and self-discipline, in the words of Paul to Timothy … enough to live in, and into, the Word and work Jesus gives, the discipleship life, life lived in the shadow and shape of the cross, the servant life, the giving life, to and for others, in Jesus’ name, into the world God loves.
And the same is true of us. By God’s grace, together we have what we need. We have enough faith … faith given to us in our baptism, faith nurtured in us by family, like Timothy, by friends and faith friends, by companions along the discipleship way of following Jesus. We have enough faith … faith fed and strengthened in Holy Communion, faith sending us out from this table as servants, servants who know what we ought to do, what we are called to do, in Jesus’ name.
By God’s grace, together we have what we need.
We have enough faith.
Jesus says so.
He who gives you faith says so.
So go forth and live in, and into it, this faith, this life, Jesus calls us to live, in his name. Amen.
2 Timothy 1:1-14; Luke 17:5-10
OT 27C
6 October 2013
You have no doubt seen those AT&T commercials featuring an adult man sitting in what appears to be a first grade classroom, getting input from some kids about topics which sort of loosely have something to do with cell phone wireless plans. The man’s stiff and serious, and the kids are smart and cute but say some pretty outrageous things.
One of those commercials, which has gotten a lot of air, has a little girl making this answer to the man’s question, “Who thinks more is better than less?”:
More is better than less because if there's more less stuff, then you might want to have some more.
But then, your parents won't let you because there's only a little.
If you really like something, you'll want more of it.
We want more,
We want more,
Like, you really like it, ya want more.
What a perfect illustration for our texts today!
The disciples want more … they want more faith. It’s a typical request from typical people who could be saying and praying the same words today. We say and pray the same words today, as we face situations in our personal lives, in our community and world, in our faith communities … “Jesus, just give me more faith.”
More is better than less …
We want more,
We want more …
And Jesus’ response … Jesus’ response seems rather cold-hearted, doesn’t it? Like he thinks they don’t have any faith at all … if they had even a smidge of faith, they should be able to Harry Potter-like order a tree to be uprooted and thrown into the sea.
Ah, but what’s really going on here?
In reality, it’s another of those strange exchanges going on, between the disciples and Jesus, if the disciples would pay attention to what they are saying, and what Jesus is saying, they’d get it … ah, but they don’t, once more.
Increase our faith!
The word they use, even if we don’t know the Greek of the New Testament, we can understand it. Prostheis. Like our word, “prosthetic,” or “prosthesis.” Something added on to what already exists, like a prosthetic leg or arm added on to a body. Something added on to what already exists.
And Jesus’ response …
If you had faith the size of a mustard seed …
And one more language note … the sense of Jesus’ “if” is less “if” and more “since” … Since you have faith the size of a mustard seed …
So both disciples, and Jesus, recognize that they … disciples … have faith already.
They have faith already.
But they want more.
More is better than less because if there's more less stuff, then you might want to have some more.
If you really like something, you'll want more of it.
We want more,
We want more …
The thing is, what Jesus is getting at here, is that faith is NOT like other earthly stuff, toys and money and cell phone plans. More of it isn’t better, because what we have already, what we’ve been given already, Jesus says, is enough.
This is the Word that Paul is giving to his young protégé, Timothy, in our New Testament reading. Timothy is like a new young pastor in her first call; Timothy’s out in the field, helping lead a fledgling Christian community; Paul founded it, then moved on, and Timothy is now the servant-leader who remains.
Timothy remains … but he’s got some misgivings about his qualifications, his credentials to carry out the task ahead of him. Most likely … probably … he wants more … more faith, more learning, more ability to pray, to worship, to quote Scripture.
But Paul reminds him in this letter that, indeed, Timothy has all he needs:
I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and how, I am sure, lives in you. For this reason I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you … for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and love and of self-discipline.
Timothy has all he needs … faith enough to move forward in serving and leading this community of faith. God has given to Timothy as God has given to all who God claims, and Christ names as his own, through the gift of Baptism … a spirit of power and love and self-discipline.
In other words, Timothy doesn’t need more. He has all he needs.
For the disciples, too, it’s the same thing. They have all they need. Remember how, earlier this summer, earlier in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus sent seventy of his followers out to cure and heal and cleanse and make new. And they did it. They did it well, so well that Jesus remarked about it when they came back.
But they want more.
It is their, it is our theology of scarcity that does this. The thinking, the believing, that there just isn’t enough … but if we had more … more house, more work, more money, more time … it would be better.
Churches get stuck in this theology too. If we just had more … more people, more kids, more stewardship, more programs to offer, more to attract people …
More is better than less because if there's more less stuff, then you might want to have some more.
If you really like something, you'll want more of it.
We want more,
We want more …
Most of you know that I came to Nativity from one of the most rural synods in our Evangelical Lutheran Church in America … Southwest Minnesota. Yes, it’s a large synod with nearly 250 congregations (in comparison, our synod, NW Washington, has just a few over 100 congregations) but many if not most of those congregations are small, family-sized (around 50 in worship), yoked together with 2, 3, 4 or more others into parishes, so they can afford to call a pastor.
SW Minnesota is a declining area of the country. It’s a farming area, and as the small farms go away and the large farms take over, the young people move away to find work in the Twin Cities, leaving the villages and towns with a disproportionate number of seniors, retirement homes and nursing facilities … and the younger people who remain are often very poor and need many services to survive.
And many of the problems we have in urban areas are exacerbated there because the population is so small … alcohol and drug abuse, depression and suicide rates are far higher than the national average.
It is a beautiful place, but it can also be a very depressing place to live. It’s very easy to get caught up in living in the past, looking back to the “glory days” of busy towns, each town having its own school … and full churches with big Sunday Schools, and not needing to “share a pastor” with another congregation or congregations spread out across miles and miles of Minnesota prairie.
And yet … and yet … the SW Minnesota Synod continues to be a place, a people full of hope … a synod birthing hope, with active congregations doing ministry, sending youth to servant trips and youth gatherings, students to seminaries to train to become pastors, and active, growing multicultural ministries among the synod’s growing population of Hispanics.
I believe this theology of abundance that’s evident there is best summed up by the synod’s mission statement:
By God’s grace, together we have what we need.
By God’s grace, together we have what we need.
Isn’t that a great word? A word of abundance, and joy, and hope. A word which so well sums up our text for today.
While the disciples want more, Jesus knows that they have enough … already … enough faith, enough power and love and self-discipline, in the words of Paul to Timothy … enough to live in, and into, the Word and work Jesus gives, the discipleship life, life lived in the shadow and shape of the cross, the servant life, the giving life, to and for others, in Jesus’ name, into the world God loves.
And the same is true of us. By God’s grace, together we have what we need. We have enough faith … faith given to us in our baptism, faith nurtured in us by family, like Timothy, by friends and faith friends, by companions along the discipleship way of following Jesus. We have enough faith … faith fed and strengthened in Holy Communion, faith sending us out from this table as servants, servants who know what we ought to do, what we are called to do, in Jesus’ name.
By God’s grace, together we have what we need.
We have enough faith.
Jesus says so.
He who gives you faith says so.
So go forth and live in, and into it, this faith, this life, Jesus calls us to live, in his name. Amen.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)