June 16, 2019 Luke 5:27-6:16

It has long been said that you cannot legislate morality, but many people have tried.  We certainly see that in our gospel reading today.  Over and over again Jesus gets into conflict with the Pharisees about what he or his disciples do on the sabbath, and about whom Jesus spends time with – most notably the tax collectors and sinners.  The religious leaders thought it was necessary for people to behave in a pure and righteous way in order for God to love them.  The thought that if pure and righteous behavior was part of the legal code then it was more likely to be observed.  The problem is that legislating morality can take some bizarre turns.  We see that in the examples Jesus gives.  But let’s not just stay in the first century and Palestine with this.  Let’s also realize this in something closer to home.

Recently when I was waiting in the barber shop I looked at the pictorial history book Canandaigua published as part of the celebration of being designated a city for 100 years.  Puzzling to me has always been why a hundred years ago Canandaigua wanted to change its government form from that of a village to that of a city.  I always thought cities were big and villages were small, but New York State doesn’t determine whether a municipality is a city or village based on population.  It is an act of the legislature.  So, why do it?  There must have been some benefit.

Apparently there is no clear as to why, but the book raises the reason most cited by historians.  It was early in the 20^th Century and women didn’t have the right to vote… yet.  But the handwriting was on the wall that women would soon have that power.  It is important to remember that the biggest opponents of the women being given the right to vote was not men, but other women.  The New York State Association Opposed to Women’s Suffrage was a women’s group with a branch in nearby Geneva.  The National Association Opposed to Women’s Suffrage was also a women’s group with hundreds of thousands of members.

However, in the sweet little village of Canandaigua it was the men who had an issue rather important to them on their minds.  It was the hot button issue of the time.  It was a key moral issue that many were pushing to have to become law.  For, of course, many felt the laws of the United States must enforce the morality that God expects.

The issue, and this issue was being strongly pushed by the women of the nation, was the abolition of alcohol.  The Eighteenth Amendment, which outlawed alcohol, wasn’t ratified until 1919.  So in 1913 when Canandaigua becomes a city, alcohol was still allowed nationwide, but many women were hoping to make the village of Canandaigua dry.  The men didn’t want that to happen and they feared that when women got the right to vote they could make the village dry.  But if Canandaigua was a city, not a village, that decision wouldn’t be made at the local level.

So, what is the real reason Canandaigua become a city?  In order keep the bars open!  It’s all very silly.  I bring it up to remind us of a nearby example of how legislating morality can quickly turn into a huge mess with many spin-offs.

Judaism in Jesus’ day was in just such a mess.  Many Jewish religious leaders firmly believed that proper adherence to the law would make God happier with the nation and God would then be more likely to rescue them from Roman occupation.  For the religious leaders this was not about everybody being prim and proper.  This was about national morality that would save them.  It was deadly serious, and a famous traveling preacher like Jesus who ignored all those expectations was a big problem.

But let’s not go so far as to say that Jesus’ attitude was that anything goes.  Not so.  Jesus does not attack good morals, in fact he upholds them, but he is rooted in the heart of relationship with God and not technical following of rules.

Notice what Jesus does when he meets Levi the tax collector.  Although perhaps we’d be better not to call Levi a tax collector but a toll collector.  Critics of the gospels note that the biblical authors do not make the distinction that existed.  Direct taxes were collected by tax collectors employed by the Romans.  While tolls, tariffs, and customs fees were collected at toll houses by toll collectors.  This is the group we often encounter in the Bible described as “tax collectors”.  Toll collectors paid in advance for the right to collect tolls, so the system was open to abuse and corruption.  The toll collectors were often not natives of the area where they worked, and their wealth and collusion with the Roman oppressors make them targets of scorn.

Levi was certainly one of these toll collectors, and Jesus meets him while he is at his tax (or toll) booth.

Again, notice that Jesus does not support what Levi is doing.  He does not say, “Levi, what you’re doing is okay so keep up the good work.”  Instead he says, “Follow me.”  He invites Levi to leave the line of corrupt work and start a new life.  In response Levi gives a great banquet and invited Jesus.

Later when the Pharisees were complaining about Jesus being at the banquet Jesus says, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance.”

There’s the key piece – sinners to repentance.

We make a mistake if we think of Jesus as a hippie flower child who said silly stuff like, “Why can’t we all just get along?”  That’s not who he was.  There was real power, real corruption, real enslavement, real hurt going on all over the place in those days.  Just like it goes on in the world today.  Tell someone who is the victim of a crime, “Why can’t you just get along” with their attacker and you’ve just insulted their pain.

Jesus calls people to repentance.  But not repentance from technical breaking of the law, like healing on the sabbath.  He’s calling for repentance from participating in corruption, like Levi was probably doing.  Jesus called for people’s hearts to truly be in line with God’s will.  There’s no way to legislate that, or turn it into a series of rules.  Levi the toll collector got it, and he changed.  Jesus gave the same call to the Pharisees, but they did not get it.  Convinced of their righteousness before God by their own will power they rejected him.

When Jesus talks about patching an old garment with new cloth, or putting new wine into old wineskins, or old wine being better than new, these are all sayings to affirm that you can’t just patch a little new morality into an old system and call it good.  Jesus’ teachings require a whole orientation of life.

Are you really honoring God if you’ve technically followed the law but neglected human need?  We need to take initiative to restore those who are hungry or sick to wholeness and health.  The life of a disciple is never one where you look at something and say, “I’m righteous according to the law.  I’ve done my part.  Now it’s up to somebody else.”  No.  Faith is demonstrated with works of goodness.

Our gospel today ends with the list of the twelve apostles.  Luke likes to give people’s names and credentials.  He talks about Caesar and Herod and Quirinius and Pilate and all sorts of high-power people.  But no such person is among the list of the twelve.  These hand-picked closest followers of Jesus are not the brightest and best in the world.  They are a mix of misfits and nobodies.  But they are the ones who have responded to Jesus call to repentance.  And though they will not get it for quite a while, through their struggles they do grow to understand the righteousness God calls us to.  It is not the righteousness that gets lots of praise and recognition.  It is the righteousness of those take up a task, albeit imperfectly, and move it forward.

May we all have the same righteousness; not seeking God’s favor through the following of a moral code.  But the living out of the importance of others in our every day lives.

June 9, 2019 Pentecost Luke 14:1-14

In the not too distant past the church was a cultural driving force.  It was the center of morality.  Most everyone, whether they actually were members of a church or not, knew the basics of a church.  Not so anymore.  You can’t assume anything.  Here’s an example. 

As many of you know there is a Geocache hidden under one of the benches in our outdoor chapel.  Geocaching is a worldwide game of hidden containers – or caches - that can be found with GPS.  Ours is very popular, especially for people with kids; and that’s probably because it’s large and filled with toys to trade.  When people find our geocache they almost always write something on the online log about it; something like, “Nice find,” or “Thanks for the cache.”  Here’s a log entry from late April that says too much, but it reveals an interesting perspective on many people’s understanding of church.

“I pulled my motorcycle up to the corner parking lot and resisted the urge to ride right up to ground zero and instead, parked next to a grounds maintenance truck in the otherwise empty lot.

A short walk across the grassy field and I came to the site of some kind of ceremonial stage. I thought this might be related to Easter or some kind of summer sermon or something.”

When someone calls an altar in a worship space, “some kind of ceremonial stage,” you know this person is not acquainted with spiritual spaces!  This is just antidotal but it is becoming the norm. 

With the significant decline of the church is also coming a significant decline in the foundational voice of our society’s morality.  When I say morality I don’t mean things like issues around human sexuality, or whether a behavior or substance is legal or illegal.  I mean something much deeper.  And let’s get at that by looking at the gospel reading.

Jesus has been invited to a meal at a religious leader’s house on the sabbath.  This is probably a formal meal and Jesus is a special guest.  He challenges some religious laws about what is or is not acceptable to do on the sabbath and then gets into something much deeper.  He notices the way guests are seating themselves.  In those days meals were important social ceremonies.  Little was left to chance.  People noticed where one ate, with whom one ate, and where one sat to eat.  All of these things determined one’s social position. 

First Century lawyer Pliny the Younger recorded this criticism about the discriminatory meal practices of his host in one of his letters: “Some very elegant dishes were served up to himself and a few more of the company; while those which were placed before the rest were cheap and paltry.  He had apportioned in small flagons three different sorts of wines; 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.  One was for himself and me; the next for his friends of lower order (for you must know that he measures out his friendship according to the degrees of quality); and the third for his own freed-men and mine.”  (Pliny, the Younger, Letters 2.6)

Jesus’ message about all of this was nothing new.  He is just citing Proverbs 25 when he says that at a banquet you should take the lowest seat and wait to be invited higher rather than taking a high ranking seat and be asked to move lower.  In and of itself that is just good advice to avoid embarrassment, but we realize he meant something more when he goes on to instruct the religious leader who invited him, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid.  But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.  And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you…”

This advice is more than just being charitable, it is somewhat scandalous.  The crippled, the lame, and the blind were explicitly excluded from many things, especially religious service, and in some communities not even allowed in religious worship services.  Yet Jesus says these are the very people who should be invited.

Today we do not have the strict social rules that they had in Jesus’ day about meals, but we all know that we still have social stratification.  And underneath that also exists what Jesus was really attacking – the desire to move up higher.  It seems like in every culture and every nation people have strategized ways to get ahead; and devoted their lives to it.  I don’t think we overtly endorse it as Americans, but we still do it in very subtle ways.

We’ll be celebrating confirmation soon and even our confirmands are well acquainted with how it all works.  Let’s say they enjoy playing soccer and want to improve.  Can you really expect to be a significant player on the team if you just sign up at the beginning of the school’s soccer season and show up for the first practice? 

No!  You’ve probably been playing for years already.  Almost all have done soccer camps and travel teams; many playing soccer year round.  Now the school’s coaches aren’t going to tell you that you can’t make the team unless you do all these extra things, but if you don’t you’ll probably never develop enough skills to make the team.  If you want to be on the team it becomes a multi-year, and year-round strategizing of teams, camps, and clinics.  And it’s not just soccer.  I see the same thing with youth in baseball, softball, basketball, lacrosse, and others.

And it’s not just sports.  It’s academics too.  I’ve had parents give me advice about strategies to make sure my kids can get in the National Honor Society.  And it goes for music too, often private lessons are used to get a higher seat in a school musical ensemble.

If you have a passion for something, and you truly love doing it, and you just want to become as good at it as you possibly can, then I have no problems.  I encourage it.  But whenever something becomes a strategy to get ahead of others the church’s teaching have a problem with it.  That is where the foundation of the church’s morality and the foundation of society’s morality are seriously parting ways. 

When the confirmands make their affirmation of faith with the Apostles’ Creed and make other promises to continue to live in the covenant of their baptisms I’m not concerned about their beliefs about church doctrines, or how they interpret Bible stories, or even if they’re going to call a worship space, “some sort of ceremonial stage”. 

My focus, and what they are really doing, is making a public statement that they will not live their lives according to the growing social morality, which is to strategize to get ahead in life and get as high as you can.  Rather, they will live by Jesus’ teachings, which are that that sort of thing is misguided.  You’re wasting your live and your energy if you’re driven to be the person on top.  There’s always going to be someone else who want that role.  And even if you do succeed in getting there – and you’ve probably walked over lots of people to get there – sooner or later someone else is going to take you down.

Commentator R. Alan Culpepper says, “[Jesus’ teachings] are liberating word that can free us from the necessity of succeeding in our culture’s contests of power and esteem.  They free us form over-under relationships and the attitudes and barriers they create, so that we may be free to create human community and enjoy the security of God’s grace.” (New Interpreter’s Bible, Volume 9, Pg. 287-8)

To our confirmands, and to all of us, the nation’s morality is changing.  The foundation that used to be there is largely gone.  To affirm that you will live your life according to Jesus’ teachings of God’s goodness is increasingly counter-cultural.  But it is something we do because we know the other way to be a lie.

Let us live with confidence, and let us live so that our faith is not just about our own fulfillment, but so that we can witness to others the same moral foundation which leads to such fulfillment. 

May 26, 2019 6th Sunday of Easter Luke 20:45-21:4

            It is said that if money is the root of all evil then why do they always ask for it in church?  That’s a silly question, however a good one!

            No matter how you righteous you want to be, just about everything does revolve around money.  It, more than just about anything else, is necessary for your life.  You must know how to navigate with money if you’re going to survive in this world.  You may want to buy a farm in a remote area and become a self-sufficient all-organic homesteader, but you still need to make enough money to pay for taxes and insurances.  Our choices and lifestyles are largely determined by money.  Economic viability is key.  If it can make money, or be economically sustainable it can survive.  If it can’t it disappears.  That’s the foundation of all economic systems, everything from unbridled capitalism to totalitarian socialism.

            I remember reading an article some time ago about the things major snack food companies do to increase sales.  They hire psychologists to help develop snack foods that are addictive so that you want to eat more.  I know exactly what they mean.  I love chocolate.  I love peanut butter.  They are each a food group of their own!  But despite how much I love them I can’t eat all that much of them.  My taste buds become saturated, or I am satisfied and I stop.  However, give me a bag of potato chips and a bowl of some sort of sour cream dip and I’m hooked.  I’ll eat the whole bag, empty the bowl of dip, be stuffed full and want more!  If you’re trying to sell snack foods that’s what you’re aiming for – something that people can never get enough of. 

            Snack food companies only focus on healthy snacks when there’s money in them.  Let’s say two people own snack food companies.  One decides it is the company’s moral obligation to only produce things that lead to health, better cholesterol, lower blood sugar; and that sort of thing.  The other decides to focus on producing what people crave and will buy a lot of.  Which of the two companies will survive? 

If you’re going to stay in business you have to do everything to stay on top.  If you’re a snack food company and your competition is hiring psychologists to develop products that sell you’d better do the same.  You can stay high and mighty all you want, but you’ll lose market share.  You’ll go out of business and eventually you’ll be replaced by someone else who also develops products with psychologists!

            The world of money also knows how to use the saying, “Out of sight, out of mind.”  Since we grow strawberries in the church garden many years I’ll use that as an example.  If you go into Wegmans a quart of strawberries costs $3.99.  Now think about that.  That quart of strawberries was grown in California taking up space, nutrients, and water.  The plants were planted, grown and tended.  Someone had to pick them, handle them, and package them.  Then the were loaded into a refrigerated tractor trailer, probably operated by Leonard’s Express in Farmington, and driven over 2600 miles here.  Wegmans employees unload them, store them briefly and put them on retail display shelves. 

From growth to store shelf strawberries take a tremendous amount of labor.  There are no commercially operating robotic pickers out there.  And then you have to remember that Wegmans probably nearly doubles the price to all the operating costs Wegmans incurs in running a retail store.

            While bulk processing and economies of scale can keep costs remarkably low, do you really think there is any way for every person in that chain to be reasonably paid, and everything done responsibly, for you to get two pounds of strawberries for under $4.  No way!  But all we the consumer sees this time of year is a shelf in a great grocery store with strawberries at a good price.  We think if we buy it we have been part of a fair transaction.

            I don’t say any of this to make us feel guilty.  But I do want us to use it as a way of understanding what Jesus meant when he saw many successful people making large donations to the temple while a poor widow put in a few cents.

            And before we go any further, let’s notice something very very important.  Miss this point and you’ve gotten Jesus’ point entirely wrong.  This is not a story about generosity.  Jesus DOES NOT praise the widow for putting in everything she had.  If you come away from this thinking that Jesus is pleased when people give their every last penny to religious institutions and charitable causes you’ve missed the point!

            Jesus does not praise the widow.  He simply makes a point.  The system of religious expectations required all that she had, and it shouldn’t have been that way.  As Luke tells the story of Jesus this is a turning point.  Immediately after this scene Jesus goes on to predict the destruction of the temple; symbolically God’s rejection of it.

The religious and political leaders – those whom Jesus watched put in large sums – were required by the religious laws to maintain fairness and integrity in the economic system.  Obviously they weren’t or they wouldn’t have so much and the widow so little.

I’m not an expert in ancient economies, but I believe the Bible’s economic laws are unique in the world’s nations.  We read the heart of it in our first reading from Leviticus.  While it was overall what we might call capitalism, it had one very unique twist.  That had to do with land ownership.

The Jews were told that there was no such thing as private ownership of land.  All the land belonged to God.  People were stewards of it.  Each family was allotted a portion of land.  That was passed on for generations in perpetuity.  It was a subsistence living agricultural economy.  Having land meant that you could survive.  Without land you really couldn’t.

If all the land belonged to God and it was held in perpetuity in a stewardship arrangement that also meant that land could never really be bought or sold.

However, there was what we might call a long-term lease arrangement that could be made.  You could rent land from someone else up until the Year of Jubilee.

The Year of Jubilee occurred every 50 years.  On the year of Jubilee all slaves were set free and all land was returned to its original family.  Thus the amount of a land lease would be largely determined by how many years it was until the next Year of Jubilee.  If it was 49 years till the next one you’d pay more than if it was 2 years.

The whole point of the system was God’s way of ensuring wealth never became concentrated and poverty never became too deep.  It wasn’t a welfare system.  There was no welfare system!  If you wanted to eat you had to grow your own food.  And as long as you could never be permanently locked out of land you’d never end up in abject poverty.

It is important to remember that populations stayed relatively stable in that era.  There weren’t exploding birth rates.  And there would have to be ways to deal with situations when families died out and when some family was consistently growing.

Do you see however, that the Jewish legal code was designed by God to provide for basic sustainability of the whole population.

Unfortunately there is no record that the Year of Jubilee was ever celebrated.  It appears to have never happened.

When Jesus gets upset about the Jewish leadership not following the Law of Moses I expect this is some of what outraged him the most.  At the very core of their society was a guarantee of safety.  But what happened?  The rich got richer and the poor got poorer.

It is not possible for us to opt out of our economy – I suppose we could become street people, but that’s not what God is calling us to either!  Instead, I think we need to remember some key things from the gospel and from Leviticus.

First, all things are God’s.  In some sense there is no such thing as private ownership.  Second, foundational to Jewish faith was, and Jesus’ expectation is, that we would not participate in systems of exploitation.  From the poor widow we learn that just because something has a good price, and we can afford it, does not mean that we can ethically buy it.  There are lots of things our society and our economy says are okay that are not.

God wants us to live in such a way that we use the power of our money for good.  That certainly involves charitable giving.  But it is mostly using your money as a consumer who directs your power to create and maintain systems of fairness and opportunity for all.

A challenge that I have for myself, and that I give to all of you, is that before you buy something know where it comes from.  Know the process by which it came to you.  If it seems unfair then consider a different product.

We do not want to be those whose lives are easy based upon the exploitation of other people; who are also created in God’s image.  For if we exploit them, we are actually tearing down God’s own work.

With money comes power and obligation.  Use it as a part of who God calls you to be.

May 19, 2019 5th Sunday of Easter Luke 20:27-44

            Every time I read the gospels’ account where the Sadducees confront Jesus with this hypothetical situation of this woman who has husband after husband after husband die, I can’t help but think this woman must be putting something in the Jello.  I mean, to have seven husbands die – all within her childbearing years.  You gotta wonder!

            This is the only time in Luke’s gospel that we meet this Sadducee faction within Judaism.  We should remember that there appear to be five major factions, or denominations, within Judaism at that time.  Four of them show up in the Bible.

The Sadducees were closely aligned with the aristocratic and priestly classes.  They left no writings and little is known about them.  Let’s call them a conservative movement in Judaism.  The only writings they recognized as scripture was the Torah: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. 

They held that the only proper place for worship was the temple in Jerusalem.  Thus, not surprisingly they were centered there.

Another group we often hear about are the Pharisees.  For lack of a better word, let’s call them a more liberal branch of Judaism.  They accepted the whole of what we would call the Old Testament as scripture.  While they maintained that the central place of worship was the temple in Jerusalem they also had lots of other houses of worship called synagogues.  Jesus was almost certainly one of the Pharisee faction.

When the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in the year 70 the Pharisees survived.  Jerusalem wasn’t essential to them like the Sadducees.  I would argue that all modern day Jews come from the Pharisee sect.

Another group we may not be as familiar with, but do show up in the Bible is the Herodians.  As their name suggests, they supported the rulership of the Herod family.  You’ll remember that the Herods were not actually Jewish.  They had cooked up some creative genealogy to make themselves look Jewish.  It was good enough for the Romans, but most Jews didn’t buy it.  For all their incredible corruption the Herods were capable of bringing about good for some Jews from the Romans.  So, despite their faked family tree and incredible abuses of power, some Jews supported them.

When the Romans finally had had enough of the Herod family, roughly the same time they destroyed Jerusalem, the Herodians also died out.

The least mentioned faction of Jews mentioned in the Bible are the Zealots.  These often militaristic people wanted to kick the Romans out by force.  Obviously the Romans weren’t fans of the Zealots.  When the Romans destroyed Jerusalem they took out the Zealots as well.

And finally there were the Essenes.  Little is known of this reclusive group although the Dead Sea Scrolls are probably one of their libraries.  They rejected Jerusalem as the center of worship.  They felt the religious leaders were corrupt.  They didn’t spread out like the Pharisees but stayed in reclusive communities; perhaps like many religious communes.  Some people suggest John the Baptist was an Essene.  Some scholars see Essene influence in Jesus’ teachings as well.  Whatever the case, the Essenes ceased to exist as well.

In Jesus’ last week before the crucifixion the gospels record him having run ins with the Pharisees, the Herodians, and the Sadducees.  Regardless of their religious and political views, no one wanted Jesus!  We see the Sadducees turn today.

With only the books of Moses and scripture the Sadducees did not have any belief in eternal life or the resurrection.  Luke tells us as much.  For them the only way for a person to live on was through one’s offspring.  And so, their question about marriage.  According to Deuteronomy 25, the way to assure offspring in case a man died was for his brother to “marry” his widow.

The woman herself had no say in the matter.  So I suppose if you’re dating a guy you’d better check out his brother too, just in case something went wrong.  And as for the brother, well, if he’s already married, his wife doesn’t get a whole lot of say in the new woman who moves into the house!

Actually the guy could reject his brother’s wife.  According to Deuteronomy if this happens the widow is to summon the elders, pull a sandal off the guy’s foot, and spit in his face, thereby showing she is free from any further obligation to her husband’s family.  That’s certainly different from the way people break up today!  Thereafter the house would be known as “the house of him who sandal was pulled off.”  So, it was really expected that the guy would take his brother’s wife.

The Sadducees intend to trap Jesus with his Pharisaic view of resurrection, for the Pharisees did believe in eternal life.  Jesus teaches that eternal life is not bound by the limits and expectations of this life.  Especially, if the whole point of marriage was to have children so as to continue after one dies, then if there is eternal life the necessity of having children is removed.  And thus, marriage in eternal life is no longer relevant.  He’s showing the failings of their arguments.

And Jesus does something subtle, but very important.  Jesus is not going to quote from the scripture the Pharisees recognized.  He does that elsewhere when talking to Pharisees.  No, here he will quote from the scripture of the Sadducees.  If Moses is all they accept then he’ll quote from there.  I think it is very much worth noting how well Jesus knows his opponents.  He doesn’t just spout things at them that he thinks are worthwhile.  He engages them with things they think are worthwhile.  He calls their attention to the familiar story of the burning bush.  There Moses speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. 

The logic of this argument hinges on the idea that God is not of the dead but of the living.  Therefore, the patriarchs – Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – must be in some sense alive to God or in God. 

What does that actually mean?  What does is resurrection, or what is ‘life after death’?  We make a mistake if we try to glean too much about eternal life from Jesus’ words to the Sadducees, but there are things that come from it.

First, I think we do well to understand “life” as not so much the biological activity between the moment of birth – or conception – and when the chemical processes we call being alive cease at death. 

Life is something more.  Life is God’s creation – God’s gift.  Life is dynamic, growing, and changing.  Don’t mistake me here.  I’m not trying to make a statement about existence before birth or life after death, I’m just saying that life is God’s and it is not confined to the limits of time and space.

We do well to remember the mystery of the unknown that we face, much as we want to know.  There are very serious limits to our understanding.  A child cannot grasp the complexities or the pleasures of adulthood.  What child finds a quiet evening on the back porch talking and watching the sun set more enjoyable that running to catch fireflies or playing hide and seek in the dark?  St. Paul wrote, “When I became an adult I put an end to childing ways.  For now we see in a mirror, dimly.” (1 Corinthians 13:11-12) 

We are all but children when it comes to understanding resurrection and eternal life.  The God who created life sustains it beyond the bounds of what we understand.  Life is God’s gift.  Our understanding of it has serious limits, but those are not God’s limits.

As R. Alan Culpepper says in the New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary (Volume 9, pg. 390), “There is nothing in or of the human being that is naturally or inherently immortal.  If there is life beyond death, it is God’s gift to those who have accepted God’s love and entered into relationship with God in this life.” 

 The core of Jesus teaching is not to reveal what it will be like after you die, but to draw you into a life-giving relationship with God now.  Live that day to day and moment to moment.  Do not do it as a strategy to get to heaven and stay out of hell.  Do it as a way of being connected to the source of all life.  And let that guide you.  Let that remove your fears of failure.  While I will not go so far as to say it will completely remove your fears of death, it will take the edge off such fear.   It will give you strength in the face of hardships and confidence in the face of anxiety.

Life is God’s gift to you.  It is God’s promise to you.  It is God’s will for you.  So whether it be short or long, simple or complex, easy or hard, it is the gift of relationship that will take you into forever.

May 12, 2019 4th Sunday of Easter Luke 20:1-26

There is a topic about which almost everyone has declared themselves to be an expert.  And that is highway design.  I remember my professor for the highway design class I had in college saying that everyone thinks they can design roads better than the experts.  They say things like, “They should have built this ramp longer.”  Or, “This turn should be wider.”  Or, “They should put a traffic light here.”  And on and on it goes.  Everybody has a solution to a problem.

            My expertise was never in highway design but I did a couple co-op semesters in the design division of the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.  Indeed there is much that goes into designing a highway that few people are aware of.  If more people knew that they’d understand why things were done the way they are; but everyone thinks they can do better than the engineers. 

            Now, I will say there are plenty of truly bone-headed designs out there, and the engineers should have their sanity tested.  What were they thinking?  It was before my time, but I suppose the “Can of Worms” is an infamous local example.

            Still though, whatever our jobs or expertise may be, we don’t like it when outsiders come in and tell us how to do it better.  They just have no idea!

            Keep that idea in mind and put yourselves into the role of the religious leaders in Jerusalem when Jesus comes to town for Passover.  You, the experts understand the complexity of things.  You’re studied in the Law and the history of how it has been applied.  You have first hand experience with the temple and all the logistics involved in making it work.  You also know the Romans are breathing down your neck to keep the peace.  It’s a tricky arrangement to keep the Jewish faith alive at all under Roman oppression. 

For example, the Romans considered the Jews to be lazy because they wouldn’t work on the sabbath.  Romans wanted work seven days a week.  You’ve also used your skills and expertise to make the best of some bad situations.  Another example, Roman coins all have graven images of the gods and emperors on them.  They are an offense to God.  But Hebrew currency isn’t legal tender throughout the empire.  So, you’ve struck a compromise.  Jews can use the money they have to use to live day to day, but for religious purposes they are to use Hebrew coins.  Money changers are set up in the courtyards outside the temple building in order to help people change currency.

            It’s all complex.  Times are stressful.  But, as best you can, you’ve created something that works and is as faithful as possible.

            And then you have these nit-wit self-proclaimed religious experts and zealots who show up from the countryside from time to time.  They threaten everything you work hard to achieve.  One particular one is this charismatic preacher from Nazareth and his bunch of uneducated followers, all of them having various states of ill-repute, and they show up at the biggest holiday of the year and cause a ruckus.  Some crowds welcome this Jesus guy with a parade.  That’s okay.  They can have their hometown hero.  But then when he overturns the tables of the money changers and starts challenging everything you’ve worked for years to develop you have serious concerns.

            The religious leaders question to Jesus that began our gospel reading is a very legitimate one: “Tell us, by what authority are you doing these things?  Who is it who gave you this authority?”

            From our Christian perspective this is a very offensive thing to ask the Messiah.  But stay in the perspective of the Jewish leaders.  They are basically asking Jesus for his credentials:  What college did you go to for undergrad and graduate work?  What board and legal certifications do you have?  What school of thought, or great leader are your ideas coming from?

            Maybe think of it this way.  If you went to college, how would it be if you turned in a research paper with no works cited, no bibliography?  You just said that you were your own authority, you knew what you were talking about because you have determined you are an expert, and the professor better just accept it.  What grade do you think you’ll get?

            Or how about this, it’s Mother’s Day.  If you’re a mother how do you feel about getting parenting advice from a person who never changed a diaper, dealt with a temper tantrum, or took care of a sick kid?  Yet from the perspective of the religious leaders that’s exactly what Jesus is doing!

            In order to understand this passage, and the ones we have coming up in the next two weeks, we need to put ourselves in a very uncomfortable place - the role of the religious leaders - and then we discover some very very important things.  We discover that their words are not the words of evil people opposed to God’s will.  Their words are the perspective of people with credentials, wisdom, experience, and education.  They know what they’re talking about. 

Who is Jesus?  By all human standards he’s a nobody.  At most people would call him insightful; for an uneducated man.  But certainly not someone who has any claim to authority.

What we have here is not so much what we would consider to be a conflict between good and evil.  It is a conflict between human logic and God’s grace.

Logic says the forms of religion, and the temple, and the rules that keep it orthodox, and the unavoidable compromises that have to be made in life all have to be taken into account in order to preserve and grow faith.  Grace throws all that out the window.

And sadly, orthodox and faithful as the religious leaders thought they were being, they missed essential things.  In their logical work of preservation they missed the deeper call to love.  Jesus hadn’t come to attack them, but to witness to something deeper.  Nevertheless, good order came before caring for people.  Success came before mercy.  Maintaining the status quo became central.

Let’s not let ourselves off the hook, for do we not do the same things?  What would happen if we decided to cancel this worship service and just have one at 8:30?  Would you still come?  What if we moved weekly worship to Tuesday evenings?  What would attendance be like?  Or if we sold the building and rented space in a storefront on Main St? 

All of these things would be stupid by human logic.  Attendance and income would decline.  Perhaps the church would close.  Many would attend a church who held worship at the proper time – Sunday mornings. 

Yet isn’t that the same as the temple, and keeping the Romans happy, and making sure all was in good order?  You see, we discover a good deal of ourselves in the Jews of Jesus’ day.

God’s grace sounds really great until you really start to apply it.  Then everything can go to chaos.  If there is grace, what are the expectations?  What is to create order?  How do you keep faith from turning into people just following the most charismatic leader of the day?   These are all questions the earliest Christians had to work through.  St. Paul’s writings that made their way into the Bible helped a lot.  But grace is always a challenge.
            I don’t think Jesus was being mean with the parable of the wicked tenants that we read.  You’ll remember that the tenants rejected the owners servants sent to collect the rent.  Eventually he sent his son, who was then killed.

Jesus was just telling a truth.  Humans like to claim and take and keep.  It seems to be deep in our nature.  We just don’t trust God.  And God may not exactly reject us, but we can become so set in our ownership of our own lives that we just leave no room for God to work.

Let’s keep our hearts and minds open.  God will call us to new and unpredictable things.  They will be challenging!  Sure, there will be established things in our lives that will change.  And there will surely be risks.  And some things will seem stupid.  But there is also the joy and delight of seeing God’s grace at work.  There is refreshment when all is turned over to God.  There is freedom when you are not limited by conventional expectations.  And there is joy when God’s kingdom – God’s ways of being – take shape in our lives.

May 5, 2019 3rd Sunday of Easter Luke 24:36-53

Have you ever imagined what it would be like to have Jesus visit your house for dinner sometime?  I’m sure I’d be a nervous wreck.  Even though we know Jesus sees and knows everything I’d still want to make everything as perfect as possible.  The house would be scrubbed clean like never before.  Absolutely everything would be put away and perfectly tidy.  All those little tasks that I’ve been meaning to get to but keep putting off would get done.

            As for food, I don’t know what I’d want to have.  I’d probably be heading to the organic and whole foods section at Wegmans.  I certainly wouldn’t be putting out Twinkies for dessert!

            And then what would I actually say and do?  I mean, he knows everything, right.  So there’s no point in trying to hide anything, but shouldn’t I at least try my absolute best?

And I’d be nervous about what he’d say to me.  What sinful practices do I have that he would call me out on?  Would he find anything to praise me for?  And what things am I unknowingly doing wrong that he will want to correct? 

And what, oh what, would I do if he looked me squarely in the eye and said those most fearful and dreaded of all words, “Go, sell all that you have and then come, follow me”?

I think we all live with a limited knowledge of what God wants for our lives, and we take comfort in that.  We tell ourselves that since we can’t be sure, maybe what we’re doing now is okay and therefore we’ll keep doing it.  We avoid doing anything extremely different from anyone else around us.  After all, why risk embarrassment or being called a religious weirdo if God really is okay with us as we are?  We just tell ourselves that we’re good people as we are, and when it comes to judgment day we hope we can use the argument that we tried our best, and hope it’s good enough.  Yet all of us has at least a little feeling of fear and guilt because we know we don’t really try our best for God’s kingdom.  We just hope God’s grace will get us through anyway.

But if Jesus comes to visit – face to face – from then on there’s no denying what he tells us to do.  And we’ll certainly run into that uncomfortable position of telling ourselves that since Jesus knows what’s on our minds that we should think only good, healthy, wholesome thoughts.  Of course the moment we tell ourselves to do that we can’t help but think of the meanest, ugliest, or naughtiest, or most inappropriate thoughts possible.  It’s just like going down a hallway with a bunch of blank doors on either side.  You could care less about what is behind any of them until you get to one that says, “Do Not Enter.”  Of course you’re immediately filled with curiosity and want to do just that!

In our gospel reading Jesus shows up with the disciples.  It’s still the evening of the resurrection so it’s all pretty new to everyone.  He arrives completely unannounced so they have no chance to prep ahead.  And if anyone deserves criticism it’s the disciples.  They all -not just Peter- promised to stay faithful to him no matter what.  Then they all failed abysmally.  They fled at the first sign of hardship.  And crucifixion was just beyond anything they could comprehend.  Perhaps they thought Jesus would get a reprimand or maybe some sort of a penalty; but not death and certainly not crucifixion.

Sometimes critics of Christianity say the disciples just made up the whole thing about Jesus, or that there was no resurrection and the disciples just created myths that there was.  These critics have no idea what crucifixion was really like.  It was not only a painful way to die but it was the ultimate shame.  No one wanted to be associated with a crucified person.  It would do damage to your family honor for generations if someone had been crucified.

Crucifixions themselves were horrific – gory, loud, and raucous.  There would be fighting and screaming and vomiting.  You’d have nightmares for a long time afterward.  There is no way a religious movement could have begun out of a crucifixion.  No one, absolutely no one, would join a movement based on a crucified leader!  The only way Christianity ever got off the ground is through divine help.

Anyway, the point is that the disciples truly deserve an upbraiding from Jesus!  They should be shaking in their shoes to see him.  They have failed, failed, failed.  You’d have nothing to worry about what Jesus would say if he visited your home for dinner compared to the disciples.

And indeed they are terrified when they see him.  Of course they really think he’s a ghost – some evil specter from the grave come to haunt them.  But he’s not a ghost.  He’s real flesh and blood.

Is he mad at them?  Is he ripping into them for their failings?  Is he warning them that they’d better shape up or he’ll be sending them to hell?  No.  There’s none of that.

Commentator Joel Green points out that Jesus says to them, “It is I myself!  It is really me!”  (NICNT, 854)  He seems happy, delighted even, to see them.  He goes out of his way to prove to them that he’s real flesh and blood.  He lets them see him and touch him.  He eats in front of them.  This is truly him, truly and completely resurrected!

            The remarkable things continue.  Not only are they forgiven but he continues to equip them to do what they have been failing at all along.  He opens their minds to explain the scriptures, he explains why what happened had to happen, and he promises they will be receiving power to do the work ahead.

            God is truly amazing and awesome.  Think about it – God lives a lifetime for us, then dies at our hands (we kill our only hope), but God is still not condemnatory in return.  Instead God forgives and still wants to empower us for the future.

            If you look over the gospels you see that Jesus does challenge his followers.  He points out their flaws and he does push them to do better.  But his greatest criticism is not for those who fail.  It is for those who think they are right already and have no need to improve.  In other words, his criticism is for those who think they are righteous.  It is the religious leaders, those who consider themselves to be legally righteous, those who think they know what God is and is not up to that really receive Jesus’ harshness.

            The fact that we’d probably all be nervous to have Jesus have dinner at our homes because we know we are falling short of what is required of us by God is probably the exact attitude we should have.

            What would Jesus really say to us?  I don’t know.  It would vary from household to household and individual to individual.  Indeed we should always be examining our lives and seek ways to improve, for all of us can be better as disciples.  But more importantly, I think we should recognize the delight that Jesus has in us.  He loved his disciples – not love in a mandatory and grudging way – but love in an ‘I like you’ sort of way.  The remaining eleven disciples, the women who were followers, and the others who were close were all friends.  These were people who enjoyed hanging out together.

            While God is all-powerful and aloof and frightening to approach, God is also filled with smiles and joy and delight in us.  God loves to see us grow and flourish.  God loves to see us succeed and have happy times.  Certainly God gets disappointed in us and probably frustrated with us, and even angry with us.  But God’s chief interest is to find delight in us, his creatures whom he made in his own image.

            I hope that your faith is not a burden in your life, but a source of joy and happiness.  I hope it is a connection you can use for comfort and support.  And I hope the future that God calls you to is filled with brightness and possibility.  This world is important.  You are important.  God died for it all, and like the disciples God invites you to share in that so that God’s kingdom can abound.