With the end in mind. October 16, 2022. The Rev. David M. Stoddart

Luke 18:1-8

The late Nobel laureate and holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel once recounted an incident that happened when he was 15 years old and a prisoner at Auschwitz. One day a group of his fellow prisoners who were also Jewish scholars put God on trial, accusing him of being indifferent to the suffering of his people and failing to save them. After much discussion, they reached a unanimous verdict: chayav, guilty. After pronouncing it, Wiesel said, there was a minute or so of silence – and then they all said evening prayers together. What a striking, even shocking juxtaposition: God doesn’t care . . . Let us pray.

 Consider with me for a moment: why do we pray? Maybe we just go to church on Sundays and say grace before meals because it’s a habit, something we think we are supposed to do. Or maybe we pray every day that God will bless the people we love. Maybe we ask God for particular things, like getting a new job or being healed of some disease. Maybe we just pray when we feel desperate and don’t know what else to do. But if we have prayed at all, then we will probably be able to sympathize with those Jewish scholars putting God on trial. We are not, thankfully, in a concentration camp — hopefully none of us here has ever experienced something so horrific — but many of us here have no doubt prayed for things that we did not get: healings that did not take place, blessings that never materialized. And perhaps we also felt that God was indifferent to our prayers, or at least nonresponsive. S0 we might well ask ourselves: why do we pray?

 Jesus tackles that question in the Gospel today, but I don’t think his message is as simple and straightforward as it might at first appear. He tells this parable about a widow who relentlessly hounds an indifferent judge until he finally gives in and grants her request. If a sinful judge like that will respond to such pleas, Jesus says, how much more will a good and loving God respond to us: And will not God 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 problem is that we know God does not always respond quickly to us. In many cases, God never seems to respond at all. And Jesus knows this. He tells this parable while the Roman Empire is oppressing the Jewish people in an occupation that has already lasted decades and will go on for many years to come, even though they are praying for deliverance. Jesus knows that when the Israelites called out from their captivity in Egypt, they remained slaves for some four hundred years. In John’s Gospel, he encounters a man who has been ill for 38 years. Will he delay long in helping them? Well, yeah, he will. People have faced long delays in the past; they continue to experience long delays in the present.

 And since Jesus clearly knows this, the problem must be with our interpretation. A simplistic, transactional understanding of prayer – “tell God what you want, and God will give it to you fast” – just won’t suffice, even if we add the caveat, “you gotta tell God a lot.” It just doesn’t work that way. I think the only way we can understand this teaching, and the way I think Jesus meant us to understand it, with the end in mind, the final consummation of all things. It’s only then that God’s justice will be fully established, only then that God’s love will fully prevail. And while that may seem a long ways off to us, in the light of eternity it will come quickly. We know Jesus is thinking along these lines because he says:  And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth? He’s referring to his coming again at the end of time. Will people persevere in prayer until that time, even when they receive no immediate reply? Will you and I persevere?

 We might say, “What’s the point? Why pray when we don’t get instant gratification?” But prayer is not about instant gratification. Prayer is not transactional at all. A few moments ago I asked, why do we pray? But that was a trick question: Jesus actually tells us why at the very beginning of the passage: Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. People, we pray so that we don’t lose heart. What matters in prayer is not the outcome: what matters is the connection. When we pray, we stay connected to God’s presence and grounded in God’s love. That is the beginning and end of all true prayer, and the source of tremendous strength and endless hope.

 But here’s the amazing thing about God’s economy of salvation. If we adopt a tit-for-tat idea of prayer – God, I’ll say these words if you’ll give me what I want – our prayer will probably not be productive at all. But when we love God, love others, and love ourselves in prayer and through prayer, then the Spirit moves and our prayer often does produce visible results. When our focus is on loving and not losing heart, then God’s power is unleashed and good things happen, things that lead to greater justice, greater healing, greater peace. We can’t control how that happens, nor should we try: we don’t have the wisdom for that. But consciously staying connected to God’s presence and staying grounded in God’s love changes the world and gives us all we need until God’s kingdom comes in all its fullness.

 Let me end with a story. Years ago, when I was serving a parish in Rhode Island, one of my parishioners had liver cancer. The prognosis was bad from the beginning. Praying for the cancer to go away did not work: the cancer continued to spread. Feeling powerless, all I could do was to pray for God’s love to enfold him and all who were close to him. One day, towards the end, I visited him and prayed with him. But right as I was about to leave, he did something he had never done before. He took my hands and said, “Now I want to pray.” And he thanked God for his wife and his children, for his church and for me, and told God how much he loved God and all of these people. It was a holy moment. He died not long afterwards. Did our prayer work? He lost his battle with cancer, but he did not lose heart. Nor did I. I know that I will see him fully alive and healed in the world to come, along with everyone else I’ve ever cared for. And until then, I keep on praying, with or without visible results. I have experienced the reality of God’s love – and that is reason enough to pray and never to lose heart.

Pause to recognize. October 9, 2022. The Rev. Kathleen M. Sturges

 

Luke 17:11-19

Ten lepers cry out to Jesus to have mercy on them and Jesus heals all ten. But only one returns to give thanks. Hopefully it's a familiar story to many. It certainly is to me. And yet I'm struck at how different it sits with me in the year 2022 versus three years ago when we last read it in church together - and I last preached on it. Because back in 2019 what caught my attention and what I ended up talking about was gratitude. How it does us well on so many levels to regularly practice being thankful to God. And that’s still true. But the last three years of life has added several layers to experiencing this story. Because we all now know firsthand what it's like to be afraid of an unknown illness. Some kind of virus that we aren't exactly sure how it is transmitted. We now know what it's like to look at other people, strangers and friends alike, and wonder if they are dangerous in some unforeseen way - that they might infect us or those we love or even be carrying something that could impact an entire community. And because we know all that, we also know what it’s like to live in isolation. The toll it takes on our lives and wellbeing. Life especially during the worst of Covid-19 was hard on everyone.

 It was in May of this year when I tested positive for Covid. Thankfully my symptoms were very mild, but it meant that for ten days I completely isolated myself from others. Now for some that may sound like a vacation, but for me, an extrovert, it was torture. And during those long ten days I thought about lepers of Jesus’ time. Forced by law to live away from their community and to call out, “Unclean! Unclean!” to anyone who came near - not just for ten days, but sometimes for their entire lives. Their loneliness, their isolation, the flatness of their lives must have been excruciating. Likely worse than anything that actually ailed them because back then leprosy was a catch-all term for a host of skin issues -  psoriasis, eczema, athlete's foot, or any other minor skin disease, all the way up to and including actual leprosy. So when we hear that there were ten lepers, we don’t really know what they actually had or how contagious they really were - and neither did the people of their time. But because of that unknowing and the fear around it, what we do know is that all who were deemed leprous were cast out of their homes and considered unclean.

 Now the priests were the keepers of cleanliness in all realms of Jewish life which included but was not limited to physical health. We could think of them as the ancient equivalent to the Centers for Disease Control. If someone back then was lucky enough to recover from some sort of leprosy, the priests were the ones to certify that recovery, and only then with that certification could a person reenter their community. It was a system intended not to victimize, but simply to prevent the spread of disease. However, it came at great cost to the sick.

 So here in our reading from Luke’s gospel we have ten lepers. Likely they banded together in order to create their own mini community. And as Jesus comes near one day they stand at a dutiful distance crying out of the pain of their disease and the depths of their isolation, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” And Jesus does. He tells them to go and show themselves to the priests. And as they go they are made clean. In that moment of healing what they receive is really two gifts. They are physically cured, but likely even more wonderful than that is that they are given back their lives. What overwhelming joy they all must have felt. They could go home. They could hug their family and friends and be hugged. They could be a part of all the normal, everyday things again. All the everyday things that likely they had taken for granted - just as we took for granted what was normal and every day before the pandemic.

 Ten were cured but only one paused in the midst of their joy to return to Jesus with thanks. And in doing so, Jesus says, your faith has made you well - well in the fullest sense of the word. And likewise we become more well, more whole, more complete when we pause to recognize all the ways that God has blessed us with life, with love, with each other. It is a gift that we can gather here again in this sacred space. That we can touch and hug each other, if we so choose. That we can be fed with bread and wine, the body and blood of Christ. There is so much to rejoice in. Living a life of faith with gratitude to God in community with God’s people does make us well. 

 But that is not the only message contained in this story. Because what might feel like the kicker actually doesn’t come until the end. And that is that this band of ten lepers are not all equal. One, we eventually learn, is a Samaritan. An outcast of outcasts. Despised and shunned by Jews - leper or not. Yet Jesus makes no distinction between those in need. Everyone in the group who asks for help receives assistance. Only after the cure is granted are more details revealed.

 In addition to the Samaritan - status of one, another detail is where Jesus encounters these ten lepers. The gospel specifically tells us that they are existing in a region between Samaria and Galilee. It’s a border place - which makes me think about our own borders where countless people exist crying out for mercy and help. It seems to me that they are a type of modern-day lepers and outcasts. For various reasons we want to keep our distance from them or for them to keep theirs from us so that we might feel more safe and secure. Yet as we seek to follow Jesus and love our neighbors, surely I’m not the only one who struggles with how we are to respond to such people - God’s beloved people - who are flowing to our borders desperately seeking some form of relief. Now some would say that they ought to be turned away and forced to return to their homelands. However, in looking at Jesus's response to those who are in need when he was at the border perhaps we should follow his example: help first, deal with the details second.

 As faithful followers of Christ we must ask ourselves how we can show compassion to the outcast foreigners and offer relief from the disease of tyranny. As the hands and feet of Jesus in this land there must be a response that includes the same manner of kindness extended to the lepers. While the decision of what ultimately happens to asylum-seekers and others is made by public officials, God implores his followers to, at the very least, care for our neighbor while they are here. For the love of Jesus makes no distinction of nationality or clan as he seeks to provide comfort and mercy to a hurting world. As Jesus cares for all his people – the lepers, the outcasts, and the foreigners – so should we. And as we do, it is then that our faith will make not just some of us, or most of us, but all of us truly well.

Faith is something we do. October 2, 2022. The Rev. David M. Stoddart

 Luke 17:5-10

Growing up I went to an Episcopal school, St. Mark’s in Dallas. It’s a K through 12 school, but I attended from seventh through twelfth grade. When I was a senior I took a religion class, taught by the school chaplain. As part of the class, we had to do a final project. But when I went to see this chaplain and talk about possible projects, he gave me a surprising choice. He told me I could do a research paper — or give a talk at middle school chapel. Without hesitating, I said, “I’ll take the paper.” Without hesitating, he said, “No, you won’t.” I really resisted the idea of a chapel talk, but he pushed hard for it. And he was a man I respected and looked up to: he was an important figure in my spiritual story. So with great reluctance I agreed to do the talk. The prospect terrified me, and when the day arrived I felt like I was going to throw up. But somehow I got up in front of 200 middle school boys and said something. I have no memory of what I said: I just know I managed not to throw up and I was beyond relieved when it was over. It was the first homily I ever preached, but that’s not why it’s important. I’m sharing it with you because I think it was probably the first time I remember consciously acting on faith. And it taught me a truth that I continually need to relearn: faith is not something we have. Faith is something we do.

I would define faith as trusting in God: trusting that there is a God, trusting that God loves us, trusting that God is always working for our ultimate good. When I gave that talk I trusted that God would give me the strength to do it and somehow use it for good. But while trusting is a verb, it is very tempting to think of faith as a noun, as a thing we have or we don’t have; a lump we have a lot of or a lump we have little of. But that kind of thinking can inhibit us because we might feel that we have to acquire or build up a certain amount of faith to do something: we have to have x amount of faith to be kind to someone we don’t like, say, or we have to have x amount of faith to invite someone to church. And if we don’t think we have the right amount of faith, we just won’t do it. And the disciples seem to feel this way in our Gospel today. Jesus asks them to do lots of hard things. Immediately before our reading today, Jesus said to them: And if the same person sins against you seven times a day, and turns back to you seven times a day and says, “I repent,” you must forgive. So the disciples say, “ We need more faith to do that. Increase our faith!”

And Jesus’s response . . . is so Jesus. As he is wont to do, he uses hyperbolic language and a seemingly absurd image to make a crucial point: If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, “Be uprooted and planted in the sea,” and it would obey you. I do not believe we are meant to take this literally, and that we are supposed to somehow measure or quantify how much faith we have, and then act based on that. If I have the faith size of a mustard seed, I can uproot this tree. So if I have faith the size of a watermelon, I can uproot a whole forest of trees. And if I have faith the size of a minivan, I can redirect an asteroid. I’m pretty certain the point here is that we should not assign any size to our faith at all. The disciples are asking for the wrong thing. It doesn’t matter how much faith you have. What matters is actually exercising faith and trusting in God.

If we had to use a physical metaphor for faith, I would liken it to a muscle. If we want to grow more muscle, we have to use the muscle we have. If we want to get stronger, we have to do things that require strength. Growing in faith does not mean passively waiting for God to fill us with more of this mysterious substance we call faith. It means using whatever faith we have, because whatever we have is enough. It’s the doing that matters.

So in light of that, let me pose a question. Can you think of a time in the past week when you exercised faith? When you did something consciously trusting in God? Maybe you can think of a dozen times you did that; maybe you didn’t do it at all. But if we are going to follow Jesus and grow in faith, that will demand that we act with faith, that we do things that push us beyond our comfort zone, things that require us to trust in God. What are those things? Well, of course that will vary from person to person, depending on our circumstances, on our spiritual maturity, and on God. The Holy Spirit is continually calling each of us personally to exercise faith by taking the next step in our own spiritual journey, whatever that may be. For example, maybe we don’t pray much, and we feel tugged to devote some time each day to praying and connecting with God. Doing that would involve some sacrifice, maybe getting up earlier or having less free time in the evening. But doing it would be acting in faith, trusting that God will be there in that prayer and that God will use that time to bless us. God won’t give us that faith first: showing up to pray will be our faith. Or perhaps we feel called to get involved in an outreach ministry, like serving dinner at the Salvation Army. But we feel uncomfortable about doing that: we aren’t used to soup kitchens, maybe, or feel uneasy dealing with the people who come to the Salvation Army for food. We can’t wait for God to give us faith to do that: actually doing it is faith. And it doesn’t have to be a churchy thing at all: God can call us to exercise faith in all sorts of ways and all kinds of circumstances. 

But always what matters is not storing up faith in advance, because that’s impossible. It’s not a thing we can bank. What matters is following Jesus, trusting God, and answering the call of the Spirit in our lives at any given moment. Because doing that is faith. And whether we think our faith is great or small, it is enough.

By being here. September 25, 2022. The Rev. Sam Sheridan

Psalm 91:1-6, 14-16 | Luke 16:19-31

It feels good to be home.

The nature of churches is such that I actually don’t know all of you, but Church of our Saviour sent me to seminary. This is my home. This was my church for most of thirty years. Baptized, Confirmed, bell choir, acolyte, two different occasions where I was asked to run into a service screaming dressed as John the Baptist… I’ve spent most of my life here. Who I am is very much because of who you are. This is where I learned to be a person, a Christian. If you’re new… stay for a couple decades, because this is a special place with deeply loving people gathered in the name of the Lord. I have missed this place, and often longed for here, for home.

Longing for home is a familiar refrain. In the modern era, more people than ever leave where they were born and settle down somewhere else. But this longing isn’t modern. There are mass migrations, exiles, refugees throughout history. Yearning for the home we’ve left, or the home that no longer exists is an ancient experience the people of God know a thing or two about.

This morning in Psalm 91, we see the dangers and fears of a people without a home. Calls for dwelling, shelter, refuge, and deliverance are intertwined with allusions to the protection we yearn for when we are displaced. The comfort of the Lord pitted against the hardships of the world. 

The psalms, these prayers Christians have used for as long as there have been Christians, are chock full of fear and rage set against blessing and thanks. That is their design. Most psalms are originally music, but they are collected as a prayer book. And throughout, the poetry is either Lament…prayers of pain, confusion, and anger, prayers beseeching the Lord to intervene… Or Praise… the prayers of joy and celebration retelling the wondrous works of the Almighty. If you lay out 150 psalms, you see the beginning thick with lament, slowly building toward greater, more fervent, praise. A gradient from the pit of despair, where the world is, to the New Jerusalem, the promise of God’s salvation.

The context of many of these poems, their particular situation, is lost in the fog of time. What was going on when someone wrote Psalm 91 in particular? We don’t know. What we know is that the whole book of Psalms was compiled in exile. Solomon’s Temple was destroyed, God’s home-on-earth laid to waste, and, without it, the world of God’s people totally collapsed. So those with no place to worship God created a book of prayers to be the temple. You could carry it around. You could read it. You could memorize it and have it always with you even if the soldiers came, ripped you from your home, and carted you off into Assyria.

This is the relevant context. This is how we should read the Psalms. People without dwellings singing of dwelling in the shelter of the Most High. People for whom the world collapsed, their kingdom fallen, saying, He shall cover you with his pinions and you shall find refuge under his wings. We are bound to God in love. When we call, God answers. When we are in trouble God will be with us. It’s a 3000 year old prayer I’ve needed in every desperate moment of my life. 

We’ve a lot of catching up to do over five years away from home. But Episcopalians skip breakfast on Sundays or something because we really do not want long sermons. So instead of five years, I’ll tell you about five hours from this summer where Psalm 91 was among my many, many, prayers. 

Mary Margaret and I went to an appointment for a 36 week ultrasound and were told you can't leave, we gotta get this baby out immediately. The doctors believe her preeclampsia and dangerous swelling were Covid complications. After a grueling two days of induced labor and hours of fruitless pushing, our child was finally delivered with the help of drugs and horrifyingly large forceps. For about a minute we held Mac and the world was still.

 A minute is not very long. 

My wife began to seize and couldn’t be stabilized. She and Mac had different medical teams working in different parts of the room… and both survived. They’re healthy, happy; no lasting complications. I am very blessed. But for a few hours, two dozen people in this hospital are telling me either of them could die. 

I’ve never been so powerless or desperate. 

And all I had in the whole world, as my wife and child fought to live, were the things you gave me. 

I prayed. Like I have never prayed before. It wasn’t beautiful, or academic, like the fancy books they make you read at seminary. It was Psalms. It was the Lord’s prayer. It was Job, As for me, I know that my redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. In the hardest, most terrifying moment of my life… and my religion wasn’t a club I’d joined. It wasn’t a set of intellectual principles to which I’d assented. It was just the only foundation I had to stand on in a world that had totally fallen away. 

And I don’t think it all worked out because I prayed. We’ve all prayed for things that then did not work out… I had something of God’s love and presence in the praying, before I knew it’d be okay. It was all I had. It was what you gave me. 

By being here. By being home. By teaching me how to live, pointing me in the direction of God’s love, and showing me that it matters. Our culture treats Christian witness as this deeply personal thing… and it ain’t. All this is about relationships—it’s about community. I’ve got good parents. I turned out alright because of Martha and Joe too…but they brought me here. They said we’re a people who go to church, look here’s these other people who go to church. And that was y’all. 

You coming to church matters. You being here matters. You teaching Sunday School, leading Youth Group, being in the choir, packing backpacks…this community can’t happen unless someone shows up—it matters not just in the moment of whatever thing you’re doing. It might matter 35 years later in Inova Loudoun Hospital when because of you I had a God, a faith, a redeemer to turn to! 

And we been stringing God’s love along like that, one relationship at a time, weaving it into every generation, for thousands of years. That’s how this fear, hope, and praise all wound up in the psalms. Jesus tells this very weird, kinda uncomfortable parable of the rich man and Lazarus, and the rich man’s like yo, you gotta send someone to tell my brothers because they’d live differently if they knew… and Abraham replies, dude they already know, they’ve got Moses and the Prophets. 

And we have Moses and the Prophets…and the psalms, and the Gospel, and the Eucharist, and the saints and martyrs, and countless witnesses to God’s love revealed in Christ both living and dead. We have each other. I had you…in the most desperate moment of my life. Because someone came to church here and taught me. 

Because someone showed up when they didn’t feel like it, didn’t have the time, weren’t even sure if they really believed. They showed up—you showed up—and it’s changed my life. I became a priest. I'm out there weaving God's love into other people's lives, y'all ain't even met, but what they get from me I got from you! 

God will be our refuge and our stronghold. The Holy Spirit will steer and guide this world. And at the last, Christ Jesus will stand upon this earth….

And you are part of Him. 

By His Baptism and His Eucharist, you are part of God’s love revealed in Jesus here on this earth, in our time. It is a blessing and a solemn obligation to live lives worthy of that love. For some of the people you encounter, you might be the only way they’ll know God loves them, whether you ever get to see what that means for them or not. 

Longing for home is a familiar, ancient, refrain. Yearning for shelter, protection, salvation while we are sometimes literally, sometimes figuratively, exiled—lost and alone—is a very normal part of human life. But God’s people have an answer. 

And the answer is the love of God, of Christ. 

And it is the privilege, blessing, and obligation of our baptism that if we show up… we can be that love for more people than we will ever know—whether we ever get to see the impact of how we loved one another or not.

Desperately in need. September 18, 2022. 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 primarily from the subject matter, which was deciding whether Louis Malle’s movie The Lovers was obscene or not. The Court ruled it wasn’t, but they couldn’t agree on why it wasn’t. Four different opinions were issued, and the most memorable one was 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 in our popular culture. Jesus always looks like he just came from the hair salon — he is assumed to have a full head of hair, of course, and it’s long and flowing. He is lily white: his mother, his disciples, his enemies are all lily white, even though they are all Judeans and Galileans. They’re 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 dangerous and dirty and difficult. It’s a world where lepers have bodies that are horribly disfigured and prostitutes have bodies they have to sell in order 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, possibly commits fraud, and is praised for it.

 All of Jesus’ parables are meant to unsettle us, and today’s is no exception. For one thing, the manager is accused of malfeasance, but 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. The only thing the master cares about is amassing more wealth, one way or another.

That 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. The point is not that he applauds bad behavior: the point is that he cares about all who are desperately in need.

 We are all, unfortunately, 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: children in developing nations working long hours in horrific conditions for pennies a day; nurses’ aides providing intimate and essential care for our loved ones in nursing homes at minimum wage; people working two jobs and not being able to afford health care; families having to choose between rent, food, and medicine; women getting paid less than men for doing the exact same job. There is no way to read the Gospels without seeing very clearly that Jesus is on their side, as he is on the side of unemployed coal miners and immigrants scrambling to find a better life and all those struggling just to survive.

 There are many people who are struggling. 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 some money, resources, and power. His words may offend us, but they are not words of condemnation but rather 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 may be tainted by economic injustice, but at least we can 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 great to use our wallets and our bank accounts to further the Kingdom and to help the poor and the powerless. Our Lord will use the tools at hand. And we should not be too delicate or too blind to see that and work with God, for the sake of love.

We are all sheep. September 11, 2022. 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 ninety of something that they already have for the sake of one that they may or may not find?  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 is on. 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 again move on.

 Because that’s the way the world works. Eventually we give up the search. But that is not the way that God works. Jesus isn’t asking these questions in order to poll us for 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 condemned, 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 whom we pray for, who are struggling, who are suffering, who are living in the dark. God will not fail them either. God will relentlessly pursue them with love until they too 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 most likely would have identified with being lost. Rather Jesus is talking to the Pharisees and the scribes, people who aren’t lost by the standards of society. People who consider themselves to be relatively good. 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 and  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. 

 But that’s the point. Jesus is talking to the Pharisees and the scribes, those who outwardly seem to have it together, people who are relatively good, people like you and like me because we need to be challenged. Challenged because we have a tendency to judge. I know I do. I don’t mean too and I preach this stuff. Even so 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.” But when we think along those lines, 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 some type of self-punishment getting mired in 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 we are found by the great love of God we repent by turning towards that love, that grace, that mercy, that forgiveness, and 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. Belonging to the God of the lost who welcomes sinners and even eats with them. The God 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.

 

 

 

 

Ordering our loves. September 4, 2022. The Rev. Kathleen M. Sturges

Luke 14:25-33

Back in 2004, the BBC reported that an 80-year-old retired man was seeking adoption. Widowed for 14 years and lonely, Giorgio Angelozzi placed an ad in his local Italian newspaper, searching for a family willing to adopt him as a grandparent. The response was overwhelming. Families all over Italy, along with some as far away as New Zealand, were willing to take him up on his offer. In time, Angelozzi chose the Italian Riva family because, he said, the mother had a melodious voice that reminded him of the voice of his wife. And the Rivas said they hoped that the elderly man would fill a gap for their children, whose grandfather had recently died.

 Now this would be a sweet story if it ended here - a lonely old man with a new family to love and a family with a new grandfather. But I’m sorry to say that it doesn’t. About a year later, Angelozzi was in the news again. It turns out that the blended family never really bonded. Angelozzi was authoritarian and the children were not that interested in him. Then there were his irritating habits. The old man  followed the mother around all day long. He stuck chewing gum under the furniture. And worse than that he ran up a large bill with the family dentist after the Rivas had already paid for new glasses and an operation. When the Rivas told Angelozzi he would have to settle things with the dentist, he skipped town. Eventually the police located him in a rest home and along finding his location uncovered a history of fraud, theft, bitterness, and alienation from his original family.

 Shortly thereafter Angelozzi died. There were no flowers, no cards, no phone calls. Not a single relative even offered to claim his body. But in the end, his adopted family, the Rivas came through. They organized a funeral and covered the cost. The mother, Marlena, was quoted as saying, “How can we ask God for forgiveness for our sins one day if we do not pardon [Angelozzi]?”

 Seems to me that that is a very Christ-like response. And yet in our gospel reading from Luke, Jesus seems to be saying quite the opposite when it comes to family. “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters… cannot be my disciple.” Tough words. Who is this Jesus? Isn’t he the one who commands us over and over and over again to love? So what is all this hating about?

 Well, it’s about using hyperbole to get our attention, which Jesus is prone to do now and again. So let’s pay attention - and let’s also know that when Jesus uses the word “hate,” he’s not talking about hatred as we may think of it. He’s not talking about despising anyone or denying someone love. Because, in fact, this type of hatred has nothing to do with emotions or feelings. For Jesus, hating is about priorities. It’s about making sure that relationships and loyalties are ordered in the best way possible.

 Because, you already know this, Jesus isn’t anti-family. But he is “anti-” anything we put in place of total commitment to God. And here, when he is saying that we must hate various family members, he is highlighting to us the truth that loving one’s blood family wrongly—meaning giving your family or anything else a higher priority than God —will not do.

 Now for some, the idea of cutting a branch off the family tree may come as welcome news. It has been said, “Happiness is having a large, loving, close-knit family… in another city.” But even to those of us who are lucky enough to have healthy family ties, Jesus tells us that even those relationships need to be subordinate to our relationship with God. That we need to love God more. And that’s not for God’s sake, but for ours. Because it turns out that loving God first in our lives is actually good news for us and for all those we love.

 Good news because God is Love and is the source of all love. So when God comes first - when God is at the center of our lives - we experience a transformation that enables us to love others, including our family, more perfectly. Because more often than not, the way we love, or at least the way I love, is far from perfect. I get frustrated with the ones I love. I can lose my patience or seek to control them or sometimes even say hurtful things. My love isn’t always pure. It can be mixed with a need to be loved back or a desire to feel secure. I try my best, but on my own, my love all too often is imperfect - and probably yours is too.

 But when we start with the source, when we seek to love God first - or really what it is is getting in touch with how much we are already loved by God, loved and treasured unconditionally - then we are filled with that perfect love and better able to love others. And this isn’t just pop psychology. St. Augustine, one of the early Church Fathers, writes extensively about ordering our loves. How our lives get out of sync and disordered when we put someone or something that is created above the creator in our hearts. But when we love God first and foremost everything else falls into place. It’s a bit ironic, but when God comes before all others we can actually love everyone and everything better - without agendas, anxieties, and demands - but rather with delight and generosity and appreciation and gratitude.

 But how do we love a God whom we can not actually see or hear or touch? Well, certainly by loving others with a generous, merciful love, but also, as the writer C.S. Lewis puts it, “[by chasing] the sunbeam back up to the sun.” In the sense that we can love God first by tracing the things that we love in this world back to their source in God. For all of creation is made up of these streams that flow to us from the fountain of God’s uncreated and unending goodness. As we are reminded in the book of James, “...Every good gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights…” (1:17).

 By seeking to love God first in our lives we are, as Moses puts it in our Old Testament reading, choosing life. Life for us. Life for those whom we love. Life that lets God's perfect love flow. From all reports it seems like the Riva family, the family who ended up being burned by the conniving would-be grandfather, did their best to let that love flow. May we do so as well - not by hating, of course, but by loving - loving God first so that we might love others well and live.