10 Pentecost Sermon

THE REV. KATHLEEN M. STURGES

I’m starting a new church today and this is its symbol, a genie lamp. It’s perfect because the church will be called The Church of Genie Jesus. And when our members pray we are not going to pray prayers for a new car or a bigger house or to win the lottery. No. We will pray for the good things that we understand that God wants. When someone is sick, we will pray for healing. When a marriage or family is breaking apart, we will pray for love and unity. When we see that our world is full of violence and hate, we will pray for peace and justice. And when we do, Genie Jesus will answer our prayers quickly and clearly, in thirty days or less, guaranteed! Doesn’t that sound great? Yes! Because in real life, prayer and answers to prayer are much more sticky than that.

Today in our reading from the gospel of Luke, the disciples raise the issue of prayer with Jesus. Once again, he’s off and praying, but once he is done someone says, “Lord, teach us to pray.” It’s actually an odd question coming from these Jewish men. What do they mean, “teach us to pray?” when they’ve been steeped in prayer in their homes from day one. Prayers for the morning, prayers for the evening, prayers for the weekly Sabbath, prayers for the seasons and events of the year. These disciples knew lots of prayers. Yet there must have been something about Jesus and his prayer life that seemed different to them. Perhaps it was the connection, the peace, or the way of being with God that prompted the request, “Lord, teach us to pray.”

To which Jesus responds, “When you pray say: Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. Forgive us our sins... and do not bring us to the time of trial.” This prayer is known to us as The Lord’s Prayer. Here in Luke it’s a shortened, honed-down version of the more familiar words we read in the gospel of Matthew and recite every Sunday.

I think it’s unlikely that Jesus meant that these are the exact words to use to pray. As if they made up a special formula that unlocked the key to the mystery of prayer. Rather, I suspect he was laying out for us an understanding of the essence of prayer which begins with identifying to whom we pray. We pray to a God who is hallowed, who is holy, who is totally other along with being so caring and so loving that God is like a loving father or mother, a loving parent to us all. That is where we start in prayer - knowing who God is and we connect with that God in loving and intimate ways. Then we get down to brass tacks. Give us each day our daily bread; Give us what we need. Forgive us our sins; help us to stay connected to you and to those around us. Do not bring us to the time of trial; keep us away from suffering and hard times. Jesus invites us to lay it all out to God.

But he doesn’t stop there because he knows full well that prayer can be a sticky thing. Disciples throughout the ages struggle with praying prayers and wondering about God’s response. Did God hear me? Does God care? Why does it seem like nothing is happening? So Jesus continues by offering a few analogies.

Let’s say you had a friend who knocked on your door in the middle of the night and he needed bread. You wouldn’t want to bother with him, but for the sake of a good night’s sleep you would give him whatever he asked. And what parent when her child asks for a fish or an egg gives instead a snake or a scorpion? So if you, who are fallen and flawed, broken and full of mixed motives, are able to give good gifts how much more, how much more will our Father in heaven give his children very good gifts? Even when it seems that our prayers are not being answered, rest assured, Jesus is telling us that indeed God is answering and giving us exactly what we need. It may not be exactly what we want, but it will be just what we need. Because at the core of all that we need is God’s very presence, God’s Holy Spirit in our lives - God’s being that fills us with peace and comfort and connection no matter what.

Still, to be quite honest, there are plenty of times when I just would like to have a Genie Jesus. I’d like to pray a good prayer, rub a genie lamp and see the answer quickly and clearly. But you know what? This lamp is not the symbol for our church nor is it the symbol for our prayer life. In our church and in our prayers, our symbol is this, the cross. In this cross we know the message of great hope, great power, infinite love. In this cross we also recognize suffering and pain and we remember that sometimes we don’t get what we want. That even Jesus prayed for one thing, but ultimately said, “Not my will, but thy will be done.” And that the will and the ways of God can often seem quite confusing from the perspective of our human eyes.

This cross, this symbol of our church and of our prayers also declares that no matter what the world throws at us that God is greater. That God will have the final word. That Jesus is not our Genie, but Jesus is our Lord. And that through Jesus our Lord all of our prayers will be answered.

Things Never Go As Planned: Mid-Week Reflection

EMILY RUTLEDGE, YOUTH MINISTER

When life doesn’t go as planned.

I am beginning to feel there should be a special season in the church year when we lament, discuss, and reflect on the ways that life just doesn’t ever end up as we have planned. Disease, divorce, death… failure, finances, family… careers, campouts, cooking.

From the biggest to the smallest things in life sometimes watching our projected outcome fall painfully short of reality rattles us to the core. I often find, for myself, it is the smallest upsets that dredge up the most grief. It’s when I burn the cookies that my sorrow about a life-altering disappointment bursts forth. We have an amazing ability as a people to compartmentalize and move on from tragedy. Sometimes we trick ourselves into thinking because we were able to show up to work or school the next day and function on some level of normal that the wound is healed.

But here is the real secret: We can be broken as hell and still do the next thing we have to do.

I have a cousin who is a distance runner and when I was training for a big race and struggling with hip pain he told me that each race is about something. There is never a perfect race. It’s a mental thing, a physical ailment, the weather, or a broken shoe, there is never a race without an issue; no matter how well you prepare.

Well, that truth stinks.

And is still truth.

Naming it did a lot for me. It didn’t take me to some enlightened level that allowed me to own my pain and name it freely when feeling it. I still cry about my grandmother’s death when I burn cookies or about my inability to pass any kind of important exam the first time when I unsuccessfully teach my child to ride a bike. Life is one big string of ‘things not going as planned’ stitched together with love and community and grace and reconciliation.

It’s the stitching together where God works but we often like to blame Her for the falling apart. It’s in the friend who cries with you out of pure love and empathy. It’s in the casserole that shows up when the newborn can’t stop crying and you can’t wear pants with buttons. It’s in the Eucharist each week that is placed in your hand reminding you that even our God lived a life of ‘not as planned’ but that the pain and beauty work together for unimaginable good. It’s in the owning of our brokenness and our need for each other more than for a perfect life.

In Jeremiah 29:11 we are told “I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.” I think we can all call nonsense on that verse standing alone… it’s the second part of Jeremiah’s advice and a little context that reminds us that this ‘things not going as planned’ has been going on for God’s people a long time. Jeremiah tells the exiled citizens of Jerusalem (who did not plan to live 500 miles from home) he is writing to, “build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters.” In other words, y’all are going to be in exile a while, make yourselves comfortable. There is good down the road but don’t expect it tomorrow, go on with life as it is now, where you are, exactly as you didn’t plan.

There is never a perfect race, no matter how hard your train. There is never a perfect life no matter how hard you pray or how much you hope or how well you are educated or how closely you follow the rules… but there is lots of grace and love and redemption along the way. Find your joy there.

9 Pentecost Sermon

The Rev. Kathleen M. Sturges

Whenever I hear the story of Martha and Mary I get my hackles up, which is probably not the best response to hearing Scripture. Still, I want to run to Martha’s defense. It’s Martha, you know, that invites Jesus and his band of followers into her home. Jesus depends on such people like Martha to provide a roof over his head and food in his mouth. And as you may know, hosting a group of people in one’s home is not a passive activity; there are meals to plan, food to prepare, tables to set and dishes to wash among other things. No wonder Martha is described as being busy with many tasks. That phrase, “many tasks,” is literally translated as “much service.” And that word “service” is the same word that Jesus will use later on when he says that if anyone wants to become a disciple that person needs to be servant of all. So Martha in all her tasks is actually engaged in discipleship with her acts of service. To which I say, “Go Martha!”

Then there’s her sister, Mary, whom we are told is sitting at Jesus’ feet listening to what he is saying. Now, at first, it may sound like Mary doesn’t have much of a work ethic. She’s may be even lazy, sitting there while her sister slaves in the kitchen. But that phrase, “sitting at Jesus’ feet” does not necessarily tell us her literal location, at the feet of Jesus, rather it primarily communicates her role. For sitting at someone’s feet in Jesus’ day was meant to communicate that that person, which always was a man, was taking on the role of a student or a learner. So when Mary is “sitting at Jesus’ feet” it isn’t a passive or lazy act. On the contrary Mary is doing something very radical. She is claiming that she, along with all the men, is a learner, a student, even a disciple of Jesus. To which I say, “Go Mary!”

But my impulse to root on and defend both sisters, Martha of service and Mary of contemplation, is rooted in the worry that Jesus is going to choose one over the other. And at first read it seems that he does. Mary is picked and Martha is left in the kitchen wondering what went wrong.

However, if we had the luxury of having our Bibles in front of us this morning and we were turned to the gospel of Luke chapter 10 we would see that this Martha and Mary story is set in a certain and, I believe, an intentional context. For immediately before our story today Jesus is asked a question that we heard last week, “Who is my neighbor?” to which Jesus responds with the well-known story of the Good Samaritan – the ultimate story of discipleship as service.

And immediately following our Martha/Mary story, Jesus is asked a different type of question by his disciples when they say, “Lord, teach us to pray.” Jesus answers their request by saying, “Our Father, who art in heaven...” He gives them the Lord’s Prayer - the ultimate prayer of disciples throughout the ages.

It’s no coincidence that Martha and Mary are sandwiched between these two lessons that proclaim that both service and contemplation and prayer as essential to a rich, deep, abiding life of faith. Service and prayer are not in competition with each other, but complementary and necessary. So Martha, the sister of service, and Mary, the sister of contemplation and prayer, do not need to be pitted against one another in some sad sort of sibling rivalry. Rather they are equally cherished sisters in the family of faith.

Yet there is something more going on here. Martha seems to feel that she is in competition with her sister and looks to Jesus to take her side when she says to him, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.” It’s a plea to be chosen – to lift service up over and against contemplation. But Jesus will have none of that as he responds to her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”

Since we know the greater context of this story, we know that Jesus isn’t picking one sister over the other, that Mary of contemplation and prayer is not better than Martha of service. But Jesus does declare that although Martha is doing everything right she is missing one thing - one essential thing. And I suspect that one thing is presence. She is not present in the moment.

(This idea comes from a Catholic priest, Richard Rohr, in his book The Naked Now.) Martha, we know, in the midst of doing a disciple’s act of service is worried and distracted about many things. She is not present to herself and her feelings of resentment towards her sister, she is not present in any healing way to her guests, and she is not certainly not present to her God who is right there in her midst. What Mary is doing as she sits at Jesus’ feet isn’t better or worse than what Martha is doing, but the critical difference is that Mary has chosen to be present, aware, in tune with the moment while Martha remains distracted.

What Jesus offers Martha as she engages in acts of service is an invitation to be present, to be aware, to be fully in the now of this moment in her life. Jesus offers us the same invitation.

How many of us are sitting here in church doing the “right” thing, but are worried and distracted about many other things? Perhaps you’re thinking, “When is Kathleen going to wrap this up so I can get out of here and onto the next part of my day?” Or maybe you are distracted with worry over the health and well-being of a family member or friend. Or you may be worried about the state of the world which seems full of hate and violence. There are a lot of good reasons to be worried and distracted, but that is not what this moment, right now is all about. Right now we are in church worshiping God, praying to God, trying somehow to connect with and be renewed by God. Later we will likely be engaged in different occupations. And whatever the rest of the day brings, acts of service or contemplation or even the daily chores of living we are always invited to choose the better part, the one thing – presence. Be present in this moment. Be present to your life. Be present to the now regardless of what you are engaged in. For as we seek to be present in this moment, we say “yes” to Jesus’ invitation to choose the better part and open ourselves up even more fully to the holy, life-giving, powerful Presence – God in our midst. 

"Good Christians" Mid-Week Reflection

THE REV. KATHLEEN M. STURGES

“You know, you don’t have to go to Church to be a good Christian.” I hear that now and then when someone discovers that I am a priest and, obviously, feels defensive. I don’t see the use in responding head-on to such a statement. And thankfully, making any judgement in regards to who is or is not a “good Christian” is not my job (anyone’s job). Still the declaration makes me sad because it seems that the speaker is missing out on richness of the Christian faith. For at its heart, Christianity is about connection - meaningful connection with God, with the Body of Christ (full of flawed people of whom I am chief) and with the world.

The words from our gospel reading this Sunday still ring in my ears, Luke 10:1 begins, “After this the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs….” I hear this as saying that our faith is not something one does alone. Wouldn’t it have been more effective to send out seventy solo missionaries so that double the people could have heard the Good News? Perhaps, but that’s not what Jesus did. Sharing the love of Jesus and doing the works of God in the world is something better done together than alone. Yes, you can stay home and quietly read your Bible, pray, listen to a sermon by yourself, sing songs of praise in your car - do all the things we do each Sunday in church alone - but it’s not the same. There is something missing and that is the rich connection with God experienced in the midst of the Body of Christ.

So for me it’s not about whether one is being a “good Christian” by going to church or not. Rather what I am concerned about is that Christians don’t miss the opportunity to live into fullness and goodness of the faith through life in the Church.

7 Pentecost Sermon

The Rev. Kathleen M. Sturges

Expectations matter. They can be a force to either help or hinder us. They can open us up to possibilities or close us down. It well known in medicine that if you give a patient a sugar pill and tell her that it will help with pain, that that the expectation will cause her brain to release endorphins which bring pain relief. Hand a glass of wine to a connoisseur and if he “knows” it to be of high quality and high price he will rave about the exquisiteness of a bottle of 2 Buck Chuck. Tell one runner that the jitters she feels before a race actually helps her to run faster and another runner that those same jitters will slow her down and often they will perform according to expectation.

Expectations matter. They can help or hinder, open us up or shut us down. And expectations play a big role in our reading from the Old Testament as we are introduced to a man called Naaman. In his story how God is at work in plenty of ways through the unexpected and how one’s expectations can either open someone up or shut them down to the working of the Spirit.

Now Naaman is a mighty warrior, but he does not fight on the side of Israel. Rather he is a commander in the Aram army, the enemy of Israel. Naaman is a successful and powerful man, but he has something rather unexpected in his life: he has leprosy.

Now the term translated here as leprosy and in all the biblical texts is actually a generic term that describes a large number of skin disorders. It’s rather unlikely that Naaman suffered from that disfiguring, nerve-destroying leprosy we know as “Hansen’s Disease,” for he is not barred from contact with others. Nonetheless he is suffering. And perhaps that is what makes Naaman open to the counsel from an unexpected source.

For in Naaman’s household there is a lowly servant girl, an Israelite who had been captured in one of Naaman’s army’s raids. Surprisingly, she takes pity on Naaman and tells her mistress that there’s a prophet in Israel who could heal him. It speaks to Naaman’s desperate condition that he heeds her advice, packs up and heads out into a hostile and foreign territory to seek a cure. Jumping ahead Naaman arrives at the home of Elisha the prophet, but Elisha does not go out to greet the mighty Naaman. Instead, Elisha sends a servant with a message. Now I didn’t have a lot of extra time this week to research the hospitalities codes of biblical times, but I suspect it may be similar to our codes of conduct. When a guest comes to your house you do not stay upstairs to read a good book, or finish making the beds, or fold laundry. You wouldn’t send your youngest child down to greet a guest with the message that the tea is hot and the cookies are out on the table and just help yourself. That would be rude and your guest would take offense.

It seems that something like that is going on here. Naaman arrives only to be intercepted by E Elisha’s servant who communicates this message, “Go, wash in the Jordan seven times and you will be healed.” The message itself is really good news. Naaman can be healed and the path to healing is easy peasy lemon squeezy! But does this make Naaman happy? No. He becomes enraged - this is not what he expected. In fact, Naaman has very clear expectations of how this healing would go which we hear in our reading. “I thought that for me he, the prophet Elisha, would surely come out and stand and call upon the name of the Lord his God and would wave his hand over the spot and cure the leprosy!”

You can imagine Naaman frustrated and furious stomping around muttering to himself, “This is not what I thought would happen! And on top of that my home country has much better rivers than the Jordan....” Things were not going as expected and because of that Naaman almost misses the chance to be healed. But to Naaman’s credit, even in his anger he is able to hear the voice of reason which comes, once again, from an unexpected source, his servants who say, “Father, if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said to you was, ‘Wash and be clean’?”

So Naaman goes down to the Jordan river to wash. As he lowers his body into the water not once, but seven times many things are washed away including his pride, his false sense of control and his misguided expectations. And as he rises up out of the water he is made clean and healed by the Spirit of the Lord God of Israel.

Expectations matter. They can help or hinder - open us up or close us down. It certainly was the case for Naaman. He expected to be healed so he made the journey into Israel to see Elisha the prophet. But upon arriving Naaman had such a narrow and specific idea of how the healing would occur that he almost missed what God’s Spirit was actually doing.

And so it is with us. When we expect that God is with us it opens us up to seeing more of the Spirit at work in our lives and in the world. However, we all, I suspect, are full of specific expectations about God - how God should operate, whom God should bless, what the timetable should be and in what fashion. When we narrow our expectations to such a degree we run the risk of missing all the ways, the unexpected ways that the Spirit is actually at work. Like Naaman, we need to wash ourselves of our pride, our false sense of control, and our misguided expectations so that we can be open to the ways of God. No doubt it is the Spirit’s will that we all receive the blessing of healing and wholeness, but more likely than not, it will come in unexpected ways.