Connecting with the healer. October 13, 2019 The Rev. Kathleen M. Sturges

Luke 17:11-19

"Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!" cried the band of lepers. But that wasn’t what they were supposed to say. They were supposed to say, “Unclean, unclean!” to warn anyone who might come close. Because leprosy was a fearful and dreaded disease in biblical times. So much was unknown which meant that anyone who presented with any kind of skin condition whether it be a rash, a scaly blemish, or actual leprosy was categorized as a leper. And with that came strict rules of conduct. Forced to live outside of the community, they were to wear shabby rags for clothes, keep their hair unkempt, and shout “unclean” to anyone who drew near. Perhaps the most frightening thing about leprosy was that it didn’t kill you. But with no family, no friends except other lepers, no work, no temple, lepers were the frightful equivalent to the walking dead - alive without any hope.

So, really, what did they have to lose on the day that Jesus passed their way. Instead of, “Unclean!” they shouted, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” Exactly what they were asking for is unclear - a piece of bread, some water, a kind word - who knows? But whatever they were seeking I bet Jesus’ response took them by surprise. "Go and show yourselves to the priests." Even if they knew of Jesus’ reputation as a healer, what was he talking about? He hadn’t done anything. Showing yourself to a priest implied healing because the only reason for a leper to visit a Jewish priest was so the priest could verify a healing and allow reentry back into the community. But they weren’t healed. Nothing had changed. They were no better off than they had been before Jesus came on the scene. Still, they headed out and a funny thing happened on the way, “as they went,” the gospel of Luke tells us, “they were made clean.” Their step must have quickened as it happened, anxious to find a priest to verify their health so that they might rush home to wife or husband, to parents or children, joyously shouting, “I’m healed, I’m healed!” They all must have been so excited and yet one of them did something different than the others. Instead of rushing ahead to the next thing, one of them stopped, turned around and went back to give praise and thanks to God. "Were not ten made clean?” asked Jesus, “But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?" Then he said to him, "Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well."

How often we are willing to settle for less than the fullness of what God desires for us? That’s what’s going on here. Nine out of ten lepers are happy enough with a skin-deep healing. Only one is able to recognize that full healing, a cure that is more than skin deep, involves connecting with the healer himself. For when Jesus declares to the man that, “your faith has made you well,” he’s talking about something bigger, something deeper than just a physical healing. The leper’s faith expressed in gratitude made him healed and whole inside and out. And it’s not that Jesus is offended by the others who don’t return to give thanks. He doesn’t need our thanks. But he knows that we need to give thanks because gratitude is good for the soul. And that’s the deeper healing that God desires for us all.

Just as science now tells us that leprosy is actually very hard to catch and not something to be afraid of, so has science shed light on the fact that gratitude has measurable positive effects on our minds and bodies. Gratitude does, indeed, makes us well. In part it makes us well because it has a way of slowing us down. I’m sympathetic to the nine lepers who didn’t stop and give thanks, but rushed onto the next thing in life. Believe me, I could offer plenty of illustrations from my own life and from many of yours, too, where a prayer was answered - a tumor benign, a job found, a relationship restored, and so on - and yes, for a moment we may pause in gratitude, but all too quickly then rush onto the next concern, the next worry, the next prayer for relief. 

Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk, once said that, “To be grateful is to recognize the Love of God in everything.” That is what Jesus wanted for all of the lepers and wants for us - to recognize in the deepest parts of being God’s love in everything - in creation, in others, in ourselves - for as we do, we are made well by that love. 

That’s not to say that we are to take on Pollyannaish view of the world - a determined, false cheeriness when faced with real life burdens, pains, injustices, and sorrows. It’s no accident that Jesus encounters the ten lepers in a land, we are told, that is somewhere between Galilee and Samaria. Now that may not mean much to us, but to a Jewish listener it would have signaled a type of borderland place - Galilee was good and safe, Samaria, in the Jewish mind, was bad and threatening. This region somewhere between Galilee and Samaria was a place of both/and - where both joy and sorrow, strength and struggle, mercy and injustice existed. Quite similar to the place we find ourselves in most of the time. And it is just such a place that Jesus is willing to go, drawing near to find us, to heal us, and if we are willing, to make us well. Gratitude helps us to see that in the midst of our complex lives the Love of God is in everything. Sometimes, though, like the lepers we are called to take a step in faith, in gratitude, and then in doing so we become healed.

For gratitude is not just a feeling outside of our control that randomly washes over us now and then. It’s more like a radio channel that, with practice, we can choose at any time to tune into. And as we tune in, we connect to God and from that connection flows love and grace and compassion in us and through us.

“Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” That cry never goes ignored. Jesus responds with a divine outpouring. And then he waits, waits for us to notice and to know - to really know how much we are already loved, already forgiven, already being made whole so that we might turn to him full of thanks and praise. Thanks and praise that makes us well.

           

The Spirit within us. October 6, 2019 The Rev. David M. Stoddart

2 Timothy 1:1-14

This is a Tibetan singing bowl. We use it as a gong to begin and end prayer time in our contemplative prayer group. But it’s not a gong: it’s a singing bowl, and it makes a haunting kind of sound. So, there is a fascinating musical composition called Longplayer, composed by Jem Finer. It is made up of six pieces played on 234 singing bowls of different sized and different tones. The six pieces are played simultaneously. They start out in sync, and then different sections of each piece slowly start weaving in and out of the others in many, many different combinations and permutations until, finally, all the pieces come back into sync. But for this composition, it will take one thousand years for that to happen. Longplayer began playing at 12:00am on January 1, 2000 — so its been playing continuously for over 19 years now — and it will finish at midnight on Dec. 31, 2999. A foundation has been started to make sure it keeps playing. There are several listening places around the world, including the Lighthouse in London, and you can also listen to it streamed online. The sound is mesmerizing and sinks into you: the piece conveys the sense of music playing forever, always changing and yet always the same. And after awhile, you can forget you’re listening to it, even though it continues without ever stopping.

Why do I tell you this? Because for me this is a helpful metaphor, a way of understanding something that Paul tries to convey in the reading we heard today from his second letter to Timothy. Now, I’m going to refer to the author as Paul: this may have been written by one of Paul’s associates, but the message is the same either way. Timothy has something, something special, something amazing. But he didn’t give it to himself. His grandmother Lois had it and his mother Eunice had it, and they no doubt passed it on to him. Paul had it, and he also passed it on to him by laying hands on him. More importantly, though, those women and Paul were merely conduits: what is being passed on comes from God and God alone. Timothy’s awesome gift is nothing less than the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus Christ himself — a spirit, we are told, of power and love and self-discipline.

And Paul tells Timothy to  rekindle the gift of God that is within you. The Holy Spirit, of course, never grows cold. She never gets tired, never goes away, never goes out. So when Paul tells Timothy to rekindle this gift, he cannot mean to make the Spirit present again, because the Spirit never left; he cannot mean to make the Spirit flame up again because the fire of the Spirit is always there. So Paul must be encouraging Timothy to reconnect with the Spirit within him and to feel her warmth anew, to remember that he has this gift at all. For it is the Spirit who enables him to experience the presence and power of the Risen Christ in his life.

Each one of us has this same gift. It comes from God, and there are many ways God can activate it in us: through the witness of faithful people, through the waters of baptism, through the laying on of hands by a priest or bishop, through a simple prayer of faith. And we can imagine or envision the Spirit in many ways: as fire, as wind, as breath, as energy, as power. But I personally love the metaphor of music, which is why I think of Longplayer. There is a song going on in our souls all the time, a deep hum of love which never stops and never fades. It is vibrating within us and among us right now. But we can and do easily forget to listen to it. The din of daily life, the noise of the world, the clamor of our own minds can all drown out the divine music which is always playing.

And it is always playing. I need to emphasize that: we don’t control the Holy Spirit. We don’t make the Spirit happen. The Spirit within us is a gift: the word “grace” is used in this reading multiple times, and grace means God’s gift, unearned and freely given. So we don’t have to believe more, try harder, or exert greater mental and emotional energy to gain the Spirit. The Spirit lives within us as pure gift right now. The fire is always burning, the music is always playing. We simply need to trust in that Presence and allow ourselves to tune into it.

That is one of the primary purposes of our common worship: to remind us of the Spirit within us and, together, to recognize and realize that Spirit at work. But of course we are only here for an hour: most of our time is spent in the world, living our lives. So it’s important we find ways to connect with the Spirit daily. Those ways will vary from person to person, depending on our personalities and circumstances. But I think I can safely say that we can all find ways to listen for the Spirit and ways to act in the Spirit. Listening for the Spirit means praying, however that works best for us. I find sitting in contemplative prayer to be so connecting and life-giving, but that is just one example. Others include meditating on passages from the Bible, reading a devotional book, journaling, praying as you do your daily tasks like getting dressed or doing the dishes. All those are ways of tuning in — and not forgetting.

But beyond just remembering the Spirit, we are also called to tap into the Spirit. For she is a Spirit of power and love and self-discipline. There are ways of living well and loving that are beyond our power to do. People in 12 Step recovery programs know this: they depend on a Power greater than themselves to stay clean and sober. But all of us need this power, this Spirit, if we are to follow Christ into fullness of life. Deliberately invoking the Spirit and trusting in the Spirit’s power to work through us are ways we fully tune into the Spirit. Whether we are trying to love a difficult co-worker or we are taking significant risks for the sake of goodness in the world, Paul reminds us to rekindle the gift of God that is within us and use it.

So I have two questions to leave you with. First, how are you connecting with the Spirit in prayer every day? If you aren’t, I encourage you to do so. Second, how are you intentionally using the power of the Spirit to live and to love? If you aren’t, I encourage you to do so. The bottom line is  that we have this amazing gift within us. It’s a pure gift, freely given, always available to us, no strings attached. The music within us is always playing: we need only open our ears and our hearts to hear it.

What we do in this world matters. September 29, 2019 The Rev. Kathleen M. Sturges

Luke 16:19-31

It’s been said that the nature of the gospel is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. And today I’m feeling afflicted - afflicted because the parable that Jesus tells in the gospel of Luke is hard to listen to. It’s about a rich man whose wealth and privilege enables him to luxuriate in all the comforts of this life while just on the other side of his gate a poor man, named Lazarus, languishes. In time, Jesus explains, both men die and in the afterlife their roles are completely reversed. The rich man ends up in a place of torment: Lazarus in the tender comforts of Abraham.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m really happy for Lazarus. But the reason I find this story so afflicting is because my relatively comfortable life makes me to identify more with the rich man than with someone lying in the street hungry and covered with sores. And what adds to my distress is that Jesus doesn’t portray the rich man as a particularly bad guy. If he did then I could at least try to put some distance between him and me. But no, there’s no mention that he’s mean or arrogant or that his money is ill-gotten. What seems to be going on here is that the man’s wealth and privilege has gently lulled him into a state of insensitivity. A state where he’s able to live his life to the fullest all the while turning a blind eye to the suffering right outside his gate. And because of that things do not turn out well for him in the end.

Which makes me wonder, I’m going to hell? And will some of you be joining me there? Now I’m being a bit tongue in cheek here because, thank God, the entirety of the gospel, the Good News of God’s amazing love and forgiveness, mercy and grace, is a bigger message than one parable can possibly hold. Yet this story should not be ignored or dismissed. Jesus told it because we need to hear it. And what we need to hear is that what we do in this world matters. It especially matters when it comes to how we live in relationship with those who are suffering - the poor, the hungry, the powerless. You know, Scripture is clear, God has a special love and concern for folks like that. That’s the gospel news about “comforting the afflicted.” But there’s something else that also runs throughout Scripture, a rebuke directed toward the wealthy, the privileged, those with power and resources - a rebuke towards those who live well while others suffer. That’s the part about “afflicting the comfortable.”

For just like the rich man in the story today, our relative wealth and privilege, whether we intend it to or not, creates barriers and gates which distance us from those who are poor, hungry, powerless. More often than not we don’t move in the same circles, we don’t live in the same neighborhoods, we don’t worship in the same church. And that separation, that distance that exists between different groups of people, whether in the world of the parable or in the reality of our lives, helps to perpetuate drastic inequalities where some thrive as many others wither. This is not right. It is not ok. The parable sends this message loud and clear - but there’s more there’s also an invitation to live another way. Moses and the prophets pointed to this way. Jesus’ life embodied the way - the way of love.

For love at its most basic level is a uniting force. It’s an energy of connection. When we love, and I don’t mean in the romantic or sentimental way, but love with a quality of deep caring, we are naturally drawn towards one another. Like with Lazarus. Did you know that for all the parables that Jesus told this is the only one where someone is given a personal name? And by giving him a name he becomes a person to us - not just part of the anonymous mass of the poor and the need who are much easier to overlook, but someone who is known, humanized. And when we are able to see someone as human, as a beloved child of God, it has a way of cracking open the gate and giving more space for love to flow. 

Which makes me think about a comment a friend made to me the other day. This friend is a faithful Christian identifies as politically conservative. We were catching up on each other’s lives and she was excited to share with me the news that one of her sons was marrying a lovely young woman next month. A woman whose family was from Mexico. She explained how her future daughter-in-law was an American citizen, but her parents were not. They were living in the States illegally. She then paused for a moment of reflection and said, “You know, the immigration issue looks a lot different when you actually know someone.”

Isn’t that the truth. In a world full of separation and division, what often makes the difference for us, what has the potential to enlarge our hearts, is to actually know someone, to recognize Christ, on the other side of our gate - whatever that gate may be. Gates often divide, but they don’t have to. They can also mark a point of connection. Gates can lead us from isolated, separated lives into the world of others. They can become a portal through which we step to meet, to know, to love, to serve the people that God cares about most, the children and grandchildren of Lazarus.

This is all possible because each one of us knows what it’s like to be on the receiving end of that kind of grace. The grace of God in Christ who enters into each one of our lives - opening every gate, crossing every border, filling every chasm - so that we might be drawn toward love, united in love, healed with love. And then to be called to love with a love that know no bounds. With a love that draws us to each other. So that no one is left afflicted and all are able to enjoy the tender comforts of this world and the next. 

God can deal with reality. September 22, 2019 The Rev. David M. Stoddart

Luke 16:1-13

Jacobellis vs. Ohio, 1964, was a noteworthy Supreme Court case that garnered lots of attention. Its notoriety stemmed in part from the subject matter, which was deciding whether Louis Malle’s movie The Lovers was obscene or not. But while the Court ruled it wasn’t, they couldn’t agree on why it wasn’t. Four different opinions were issued, the most memorable one written by Justice Potter Stewart. In his opinion, he said that the first amendment protects all obscene speech except for what he called “hard-core pornography.” And about that he wrote, “I shall not attempt today further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.” Later in life, he said he somewhat regretted writing that because despite producing what he thought were many excellent and important opinions, that was the one everyone would remember and most associate him with.

But many people have found it useful, and not just in assessing pornography. For example, I don’t know how to define kitsch, bad religious art, but I know it when I see it. And I do see it in some editions of the Bible and some of the stuff that gets passed around on the internet. Jesus always looks like he just came from the hair salon — he is assumed to have hair, of course, and it’s long and flowing; he looks like one of the Bee Gees. His clothes are immaculate and he has this glow about him. And he is lily white: his mother, his disciples, his enemies are all lily white. And perfectly dressed, like they just stepped out of a Christmas pageant. And they’re all so clean: even the beggars are clean. Such art is vaguely sentimental and very unreal, like a fairy tale.

But it’s not a fairy tale: that’s why it’s bad art. Jesus came into the real world, a world that is messy and dirty and difficult. It’s a world where lepers have bodies that are horribly disfigured and prostitutes have bodies they have to sell just to survive. It’s a world where poverty and disease are rampant, and death is never far away. It’s a world where a few wealthy and powerful people oppress the poor, often with staggering cruelty. And it’s a world in which everyone is morally compromised, especially when it comes to money. After the Kingdom of God, Jesus talks more about money than he does about anything else — far more than he talks about sex or even prayer. And he tells disturbing stories about it: rich guys building big barns to store their wealth in — and then dying before they can enjoy it; a vineyard owner who pays people who work for one hour the same amount he pays people who work all day; a young man who squanders his father’s wealth and then is welcomed back home like a hero; and then today’s story about a manager who cooks the books, commits fraud, and is praised for it.

All of Jesus’ parables are meant to bother us, and today’s is no exception. It raises as many questions as it answers. For one thing, the manager is accused of malfeasance, but there’s no audit done and he’s given no chance to defend himself. He’s presumed guilty. That, plus the fact that he calls the rich man his “master,” kurios, indicates he’s probably a slave and has no rights at all. Slave or not, he has very little power in this situation, and he uses what little power he does have to decrease the amount that people owe his master, hoping to win their favor. And the master praises him! Perhaps lowering the invoices increased the rate of collections: a bird in hand, after all, is better than two in the bush. Certainly the master is getting something out of this deal. And, actually, the most odious character in the story may be the master: at the end of the day, he’s better off.  He doesn’t care that his former manager is desperate, he doesn’t care that he had to debase himself, he doesn’t care about the man at all: the only thing the master cares about is amassing more wealth, one way or another.

What is perhaps most upsetting to our sensibilities, though, is that Jesus clearly sympathizes with this disgraced manager. But that should not surprise us, because in so many of his stories about money, Jesus obviously favors the underdog, the powerless, and the poor. He is apparently not bothered that the manager committed fraud: he holds him up as an example.  Like so many of the people Jesus encounters and loves, the man did what he had to do to survive — and God is on his side.

We are all morally compromised when it comes to money because we are all part of a system which all too often takes advantage of the poor. We may not be able to define economic injustice, but we know it when we see it: people working in horrific conditions for slave wages in developing nations to manufacture goods we enjoy here; people providing intimate and essential care for our loved ones in nursing homes for minimum wage; people working two jobs and not being able to afford health care; people having to choose between rent, food, and medicine; women getting paid less than men for doing the exact same job; hungry people going to church food pantries, homeless people sleeping in church buildings. There is no way to read the Gospels without seeing very clearly that Jesus is on the side of the losers, that God loves all those who struggle just to survive.

But the good news in all this is that God can deal with reality. Christ didn’t enter a fairy tale: he entered a messy world, and he loves people in that messy world. And one way Christ loves is through us, through those who have money, resources, and power. His words may offend us, but they are not words of condemnation but exhortation: And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes. Our wealth is tainted by economic injustice, but let’s at least use it for good. Every year this church gives away tens of thousands of dollars to help people in need, both in cash and through ministries like our Food Pantry and Grab a Bag. Our common stewardship makes that possible, and we should rejoice in that. But the Gospel also challenges us as individuals and families to see our money as power: how we invest it matters, how we donate it matters, how we spend it matters, how it is spent in our name and on our behalf matters. Jesus shows God to be the ultimate realist: God is not too proud to use our wallets and our bank accounts to further the Kingdom and to help the powerless. And we should not be too delicate or too blind to see that and work with it.

Until all are found. September 15, 2019 The Rev. Kathleen M. Sturges

Luke 15:1-10

It probably doesn’t come as a surprise to you that I am no shepherd. And I don’t even know anyone who is a shepherd. So call me crazy, but I’m still pretty sure that I know the answer to the question that Jesus poses today. “Which one of you,” he asks, “having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?” My answer? No one. No one that is because who in their right mind would put at risk 99 of something that they already have for the sake of one that they may or may not recover?  No one. In that situation you just move on.

But that’s not the only question for today. “What woman,” Jesus wonders, “having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it?” Now Jesus is talking about a world I totally get given that I am a regular loser of inanimate objects - keys, glasses, cell phones, remotes regularly go missing around my house. And when they do the hunt begins. The more valuable the item is to me the more desperately I will search for it. However, there comes a point where if the lost item is seemingly nowhere to be found, no matter how precious, I give up. I stop looking, cut my losses and move on.

Because that’s the way the world works. But that is not the way that God works. Jesus isn’t asking these questions today to poll us for our answers but to reveal to us the wonder of how God works in the world. Even more than the shepherd who single mindedly sets out to find the one sheep or the woman who thoroughly scours her home for the valuable coin, God is absolutely committed to searching and searching and searching until all who are lost are found. Found not in order to be judged, punished, and condemn, but found so that they may be nourished, healed, and restored. 

That is what makes the Gospel message such Good News for all of us. Because who among us hasn’t known what it is to be lost - lost in the wilderness of worry, grief, fear, anger, sickness, pain? We’ve all been there. And if that is where you find yourself today, lost in one way or another, know that there is hope. God is seeking you even now and will find you, guaranteed. And the same goes for those whom we love and care about, the ones for whom we pray, who are struggling, who are suffering, who are living in the dark. God will not fail them. God will relentlessly pursue them with love all who are lost until they are found.  

But as comforting as that message is I can’t help but notice that Jesus isn’t telling the story of the lost sheep and coin primarily to the tax collectors and the sinners of his day - those who would have clearly identified with being lost and have taken great comfort in these parables. Rather Jesus is talking to the Pharisees and the scribes, the religious insiders of his day, people like us. People who have a beef with Jesus because he is welcoming to sinners and not only that, but he’s eating with them, too. Meaning that he isn’t just being nice and polite to the riffraff of society, maybe offering some kind of generous handout or donation. No, he’s going further than that, much further. He’s hanging out with these people like they’re friends. He’s connecting with them, even accepting them. And that is just too much.

We get that, don’t we? I mean, we love it when the Good News is about how much God loves us and those whom we love. But when Jesus tells us that that same love and mercy extends to people we don’t love. People we don’t approve of. People that may even threaten or hurt us. Then the news of God pursuing and welcoming and even rejoicing over people like that sounds rather offensive. 

Likely that is the reason that Jesus is talking to folks like us because it turns out that we, along with the Pharisees and the scribes, who identify as being relatively good people need to be challenged. Challenged because we - good people like us - have a tendency to judge. I know I do. I don’t mean too. I know I shouldn’t but I still catch my mind thinking things along the lines of, “Well, if she just did it my way she’d be a lot better off,” or “Sure, he’s in that mess because he made bad choices.” When we think that way, good people, it’s all too easy to completely miss the fact that we are actually just as lost as everyone else and in equal need of being found and repenting. Just like the one sinner that Jesus speaks of who repents, sparking joy in the heavenly realm. But when I speak of repenting, I don’t mean flaying ourselves with regret or guilt or shame. What I mean is repenting in the original sense of the word. The Greek is metanoia which means to change one’s mind, to turn in a new direction. For when God’s love finds us we repent by turning towards that love, that grace, that mercy, that forgiveness, letting it transform us so that we are no longer lost in the wilderness or stuck in a false sense of righteousness. Instead we are restored to wholeness.

For the truth is that we are all sheep - lost and found. All coins - lost and found, too. All of us beloved and belonging to God. The God of the lost who welcomes sinners and even eats with them. The One who will never call off the search until we are all fully found and able to join in the extravagant and abundant joy of heaven rejoicing.

Focus on the love and beauty of God. September 8, 2019 The Rev. David M. Stoddart

Luke 14:25-33

It’s family that will always get to us.  When a 22-year-0ld woman named Perpetua was arrested in 2o3 for being a Christian, she was threatened with a cruel death. The Romans were experts in brutality and often displayed the instruments of torture they would use if people did not deny their Christian faith. But the cruelest torture of all for Perpetua was being separated from her infant son, and then having her elderly father brought to her, who begged her in tears to renounce Christ and spare him and her child the horror of her dying. That more than anything else wrung her heart and she almost heeded his words. Almost. Jump ahead eighteen hundred years, and we’re singing different verses of the same song. Martin Luther King, Jr. often received death threats on the phone and in the mail, but what got to him more than anything was when they started threatening his children. In all the years of his civil rights work, that was the only thing that ever made him consider carrying a gun. He almost did it. Almost.

If we were to take a poll of everyone’s least favorite Gospel passages, today’s reading from Luke would easily fall in the Top Ten, and might even make it to Number One: Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Even when we remember that the use of “hate” here is just hyperbolic, an Aramaic figure of speech, and not a literal command, the passage is still strong and disturbing. We might even hear it to mean that God expects us to forsake all natural affections if we really want to follow Christ.

But that would be hearing this passage incorrectly. What is so moving in the stories of Perpetua, Martin Luther King, Jr., and many others I could name is the deep love they had for their families. Their safety and emotional well-being mattered to them immensely. They did not cease to care about them, and they never came close to hating them or rejecting them. But Perpetua stood her ground. During her interrogation, she said simply, “I am a Christian,” and was then torn apart by wild animals in the arena at Carthage, leaving her son motherless. Martin Luther King, Jr. continued to work for justice as he felt led by Christ to do until the day he was shot dead, leaving his children fatherless. They loved their families, but clearly they loved something else even more.

The Good News of Jesus Christ is never about rejection, it’s never about constricting or diminishing our selves. It’s always about enlarging our selves: expanding our hearts, opening our minds, deepening our trust, growing in our ability to love and be loved. Jesus doesn’t sign anyone up to join a new religion. He calls us to follow him in the way that leads to fullness of life, a life lived in close communion with God and with other people. And he calls us to follow him into that abundant life even when it causes distress or suffering to us or to those who are nearest and dearest to us. And of course Jesus himself didn’t escape this. There are few images more poignant and devastating than depictions of a heartbroken Mary holding the dead and broken body of her son after they take it down from the cross. Jesus was not the only one who paid a price that day, as he well knew.

So what are we to make of all this? One of the reasons this passage is so disturbing is that, as a church community, we try to support families and children. We don’t want to think that faith could ever cause any conflicts with those we love or cause them harm. And certainly circumstances have changed since Luke wrote his Gospel and faith in Christ could easily lead to persecution and death, and would often cause pain to families and even tear them apart. We would be naive, however, to think that we are somehow exempt from this. I know that if I had focused on pleasing my unchurched parents, I would most certainly not be standing up and preaching to you right now. Christ can indeed call us in ways that bother or hurt the people we are closest to.

But having said that, the real focus here is not just on families per se, but on following Jesus even when it is costly to do so. When Jesus talks about bearing our cross, as he does in this passage, he is not referring to just any suffering, like having cancer or grieving the death of a loved one: he is referring specifically to the suffering that comes from following him. And since following him affects everything — our relationships, the way we spend our time, the way we spend our money, the values we embrace, the public policies we support — he teaches us that it is inevitable that we will come into conflict with the broken world around us. It may or may not be with our immediate families, but it will happen. In fact, if it doesn’t happen, if our faith never makes us uncomfortable, if it never causes us to suffer in any way, then we need to ask ourselves, “Why is that?” How real is our faith if it changes nothing and costs us nothing?

Myself, I can think of some ways that I pay a price and certainly ways that my family pays a price. I can also think of many ways I resist paying the price and don’t want to suffer for my faith. So I have no high ground to stand on as I preach this. But for me, the crucial  take away from a reading like this is not how much am I willing to bear my cross but rather how much am I willing to focus on the love and beauty of God. Because ultimately that’s what makes it worthwhile to pay the price. Jesus devotes his earthly ministry to showing us a way of being in this world that is so good, so beautiful, and so fulfilling that we would want it, no matter how much we might suffer for it. People like Perpetua, Martin Luther King, Jr., and countless others down through the centuries had that vision: they could taste and see the goodness of God, the beauty of God’s kingdom, and they knew it was worth paying any price for, knew that in the end they, and their families, and the world would be better off because of it. I don’t know what it will cost me, but I want that same vision myself. I pray for that vision, for that faith, for that love. And I invite you to do the same.

Deeper into the dream of God. September 1, 2019 The Rev. Deacon Lawrence J. Elliott

Alright, you people up here in the front, move to the back. I want you to give your seats to my friends. Friends, move up higher. That might be a little humorous for us today, but imagine in real life, then and now.

Pliny the Younger, a Roman who lived from 61 until 100 CE, wrote of a banquet he attended: “Some very elegant dishes were served up to [the host] and a few more; while those which were placed before the rest were cheap and paltry. He apportioned three different sorts of wine; but you are not to suppose it was that the guests might take their choice, on the contrary, that they might not choose at all. You must know that he measures out his friendship according to the degrees of quality.”

So when Jesus speaks of moving up higher, it’s not just for conversation with the host, but for the best food and wine, and to be seen by others. But what does this mean for us?

Imagine for a moment that you’ve been invited to a wedding. It was lovely, and as you move into the banquet room you see it’s very beautifully decorated.

There are name cards at each place and a porter sends you to table 20, in the corner, near the entrance used by the wait staff as they come and go. Great. When the bridal party enters you look for an empty place. You move their name card to your place in the corner and you move up higher, to their place, table 4, right up front. Just as the speeches and toasts are starting, one of the porters comes over and says, “I’m sorry sir, there’s been a mix-up. This place is for Miss Martin, and my seating chart shows your place just over there. Come, I’ll show you. [Pause] You know many of the people in this room and they are all looking at you as though you’re in handcuffs being taken to jail. “For all who exalt themselves will be humbled,” Jesus said.

Imagine again. You’re at your place in the corner, table 20, by the door. The bride and groom are walking about, talking with the guests. They get to you and are genuinely surprised to see you there. They apologize for a mistake which must have been made. They look around but see all the other places are taken. “Why don’t you come and join us at our table. The waiter will get a chair and bring up your plate.” Now all your friends are looking at you differently. Some are jealous and angry while others are happy, aware of your long relationship with the couple. “And those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

When you try to honor yourself, it does not work. Now your honor has been given by the bridal couple. All will see and no one can take it away.

One last imagining. You’re at the same banquet where you’ve been assigned to table 4, right up front. A young woman arrives with a porter who tells her to wait just a moment while he sees what he can do. It seems she has no place to sit. You take your name card and rise from your chair, “Here, take this place.” She protests, but you say, “Really.” You have honored both of you by your humility and willingness to take the lowest place, and you have followed Hebrews, which tell us today, “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.”

But Jesus is not yet done with the Pharisee. After this teaching on humility, Jesus continues with a harder teaching for his host, the other Pharisees, and for us: “When you give a banquet,” he says, “invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

What a teaching! What Jesus suggests is really incredible: invite people—all of whom are ritually unclean—to a banquet hosted by one whose focus in life, whose way to salvation, is to follow the laws of Moses and be clean. “This man is telling me to throw away the law,” he thinks, “and to spend my life unclean, disobedient, and unsaved. I cannot do that. These people will defile me.”

It might be hard for us to understand the significance of ritually clean and unclean to this Pharisee. Maybe it’s like a very fastidious housekeeper who keeps plastic covers on the living room furniture, a room not even the family can use, a person who can hardly stand to have people over—tracking in all that dirt—and now being asked to remove the covers. Maybe it’s like having people for dinner who blow their noses at the table, cough in your face, pick food off the floor and eat it, and who reach into serving bowls with their fingers. To the housekeeper and the dinner host, these people are unclean. They are disgusting and we don’t want to be around them.

As I’ve said, we can’t really know how the Pharisee felt, but the Bible gives us something to work with. The Laws of Moses laid out ritual purity in extensive detail, in Leviticus, chapters 11-21. God spells out what is clean and what is unclean; how something is made unclean, how long it must remain unclean, and how to purify it.

Leviticus 21 gets pretty explicit: “no one who has a blemish, is blind or lame, has a mutilated face or a limb too long, has a broken foot or hand, a hunchback, a dwarf, a man with a blemish in his eyes or an itching disease, scabs or crushed testicles may approach the altar.” And the chapter ends, “So keep my charge… and do not defile yourselves: I am the LORD your God.”

All the people Jesus tells the Pharisees to invite are unclean and to be near them makes the Pharisee unclean. These guests make the house unclean, the dishes the wine goblets, the mat and chairs on which they sat: all unclean. A priest would have to follow the rituals of purification. All would have to be washed and would be unclean until evening. Clay pots would be broken. Examining these purity laws helps us to understand better why the priest and the Levite passed by the beaten man in the parable of the Good Samaritan. There would have been consequences.

We see the poor here in Charlottesville, but not many blind, lame, or crippled. If I set out to invite “the least of these,” my guest list might include: a racist, a homophobe, an anti-Semite, a misogynist, and someone who lives in unending complaining negativity.

Jesus said to invite such people and we could share a meal, but in stony silence? What would we say? I’m certain that all of us would have something to say, something unpleasant, something disagreeable, somehow left unsaid. I can’t think of anything I might say to give insight to the homophobe or the racist. I might simply sit and wait for the meal to end. But that would be a waste, it would not be living the Gospel. If I could let go of my fear and anger and just be able to “be” there, that would be a start. Someone might join me—or I them. No one’s going to have “a come to Jesus moment,” but I can see how the stony silence might change to wordless quiet. There are always possibilities with God.

Can we create community without speech? Of course we can. Can we make change without words? Of course we can. St. Francis knew it, “Preach the Gospel at all times,” he said, “Use words if necessary.”

Wondering what the Pharisee and his unclean guests might talk about, I realized that it wasn’t just the conversation that Jesus was after, it was community. Creation or restoration of community. Each time Jesus healed or revived, community was restored, and this is no different.

In challenging the purity laws we might be tempted to think Jesus is getting rid of some parts of the Law, but that’s not so: He’s changing our relationship to the Law. He’s turning things upside-down. He’s taking us deeper into the dream of God.

A few weeks ago we heard Jesus tell the Pharisees that it’s what comes out of the body that defiles, not what goes in. So today, it’s not the presence of the unclean that defiles, it’s what’s in the mind and heart of the Pharisee that defiles him.

Jesus’s words today reinforce all the times he’s spoken of the first and the last. Giving a banquet for the “unclean” supports Matthew 25 when Jesus said, “to invite the poor, crippled, lame, the blind,” That anyone holding a banquet for those they don’t know are welcoming the stranger who might be an angel.

There is so much learning to take home today. Humility. Be yourself. Why meet Jesus as someone else? Take the lower place. Give your place to one who needs it. Welcome the stranger. It’s what comes out of us that defiles. Throw a party for those you don’t know, who can’t repay you. You will be richer.