July 21, 2019 Luke 8:1-21

 Our gospel reading is a collection of teachings and I’m guessing your mind was drawn to the Parable of the Sower at the center of the reading.  And within the Parable of the Sower many people are drawn to the types of soil.  Many people find themselves wondering if they are the category of good soil which is productive.  This parable engages us because we know the temptations of the other types of soil. 

We all know the feeling of being the path where the seed is snatched away by the birds.  Indeed in our own lives we can probably remember times when we’ve chosen to ignore a truth that is inconvenient for us.  Preferring instead to believe a lie that we like.

We also know the feeling of being the rocky soil, where we may have a moment of joy in faith but it fades away in time.  I think of those who come to church when their lives are in crises, but then when they feel like they’re back in control they slip away.

Similarly we know what it is to be among the thorns.  Our lives are full of competing interests.  We don’t have time to do everything we want to do; even if everything is a good thing.  It is easy to let faith slip to the side and other things take over.  God just isn’t loud enough in the midst of all the rest of the world’s noise.  Even though we know we need God ultimately for salvation, we can just let the other demands control our lives.

And then there is the good soil – what we want to be.  It sounds simple enough, but seems all too hard.  We think it is the rare type of person who is super-religious, perfect; far too good for our failing lives.

But I’ve deliberately led you down a false path.  There’s an absurdity to this parable that we miss in our lives of abundance.  The absurdity is the actions of the sower.  And if we are the soil types, then the sower is God.  How strange indeed does this sower act!

I doubt any of us have actually gone out and sown seed by hand in a field.  However, many of us have sown grass seed in our yards.  We get the image.  If you have a small area you reach into the bag of seed with your hand, grab a handful; and it immediately starts trickling through your fingers.  It’s hard to keep a fist full.  And as it’s trickling out we pull our hand out of the bag and scatter it to the left or to the right.  Then we reach in for another handful. 

Or maybe if we have a big area to cover we’ll have one of those fun little broadcaster contraptions that you pour the bag of seed into.  Just start pushing, open the little door at the bottom, the seed starts falling on the spinner underneath and it does the broadcasting for you.

I don’t consider grass seed to be all that cheap, but you could hardly consider it to be expensive either.  And it isn’t hard to come by.  Just drive over to The Home Depot, or any number of other stores, and buy a bag… or several.

Here’s something I’m almost sure you’ve never done.  You’ve never harvested your own grass seed!  Imagine what it would be like if that’s how you had to get grass seed.  You’d have to let part of your lawn grow tall and go to seed – or you’re starting a new lawn from bare earth you’d have to have a friend or neighbor let some of their lawn grow tall and go to seed.  You’d have to let it die off and dry.  It would probably fall over and get pushed down in a tangle.  Then somehow you’d have to cut it gently.  It’s no job for a weed whacker, which would scatter the seeds everywhere.  No, it would be a job for scissors, or more likely a sickle or scythe.  I doubt you have either of those in the pile of unused junk that’s in your garage.  Unless, of course, you have one for your Grim Reaper Halloween Costume.

You would have to carefully slice off the dried grass, keeping the seed attached.  Then you’d have to gather it and carry it somewhere for threshing.  How often do you come across a threshing machine when you’re shopping for bargains at yard sales? 

So you’d have thresh the seed by hand- either literally by rubbing the grass stalks in your hands to loosen the seeds, or by attaching strips of leather to sticks and beating the grass to loosen the seed.

Now you have to separate the seed from the grass stalks.  That’s another laborious process.  Ever seen someone do that in your neighborhood?  Nope.  With a combination of rakes and fans you could scratch and blow to get the grass stalks and chaff separated.

And after all that work you’d have a couple handfuls of seed.

Now it’s time to sow it in your lawn!

How are you going to handle that seed?  Like it’s gold!  You’re not going to just throw it around willy-nilly.  You’re not going to scatter it such that it scatters over onto the sidewalk or the street.  You’re not going to scatter it on rocks thinking, “Well, what grows will grow and what doesn’t, doesn’t.”  And you’re not going to throw those seeds in a thistle filled patch of grass.  Before you put the precious seed in that area you’re going to get rid of those weeds!  You’re only going to put that seed where the soil is good and it is likely to grow and grow well!

That’s the part of the parable that we miss.  This seed is valuable!  You don’t scatter it willy-nilly everywhere.  Jesus does not have the sower in the parable go to The Home Depot and buy a bag of seed on sale.  This is valuable seed that came about through hours and hours of labor.

God the Sower is throwing the valuable seed of his love here there and everywhere.  God throws it where it is likely to grow and where it has no chance whatsoever, but God sows.

If possible, as a follower of Christ put yourself in the role of the sower from time to time too.  Consider it from God’s perspective of sharing goodness and hope in places where it is likely to flourish and places where it has no hope whatsoever.  Sowing grass seed in the street has almost no chance of growing.  But God sows it anyway, and we do too.

As you think about what kind of soil you are, keep in mind God’s perspective of sowing anyway.  Whatever soil you think you are, God is putting value into you whether it is likely to grow or not.

That’s easier to say than to believe.  Sometimes you want, want, want to be good soil.  You want to be productive.  You want to do good things.  But you just don’t feel like God is sowing seed at all.  The path, the rocks, the thorns can feel like all too likely.  But God is sowing anyway.

There’s something we have to remember about growing things.  It takes time.  A seed planted today does not produce tomorrow.  It takes weeks, months, maybe even years for a seed planted to become productive.

Perhaps a good example for us are the apple trees we planted I think it was four years ago.  They weren’t planted from seed.  They came as trees a few feet high and we put them in the ground.  Even so they grew the first year but didn’t produce anything.  They grew the second year and didn’t produce anything.  They grew last year and a couple of them gave a couple apples, but still not much.

This year they were fully in blossom and there are some apples.  There won’t be a lot, but there will be some.  Next year there will be more.  And it will continue to take time, but the produce will come.

Let us not put God’s growing schedule on our schedule.  Be patient with God.  Or perhaps I should say, be patient with yourself.  God does not sow bad seed.  God sows only good seed.  And God is sowing it into you constantly.  Give it time to root.  Give it time to grow.  Give it time to ripen for the harvest.  Some trees take over a decade to produce fruit.  We are far more complex than trees, why should we demand faster results. 

Don’t forget Jesus’ final words in the Parable of the Sower, “But as for the good soil, these are the ones who, when they hear the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patient endurance.” 

God’s not usually into quick fixes.  God is into lasting growth and productivity.  May you find the patience and endurance to see your life bear a harvest of abundance from God’s good seed. 

June 30, 2019 Luke 7:1-17

My father-in-law has a large collection of Lionel trains.  In his basement is a train layout where four trains can simultaneously travel around the train room.  He also subscribes to the magazine called Classic Toy Trains.  Each issue includes details of fascinating layouts that have been built by master modelers.  These layouts are often large, complex, and very detailed.  Some modelers work hard for realism; they make the structures look weathered, the locomotives look dirty, and even model weeds growing in drainage ditches.  Some create a scene where firemen are putting out a house fire, or a tow truck is responding to a car accident.

Nevertheless, these miniature worlds are still very simple.  Life is static for the miniature residents.  Clean people are always clean.  Dirty people are always dirty.  The whole world operates at the turn of a knob or the push of a button.  The world calamity that ever strikes is a train derailment.  And when that happens – from the perspective of the miniature people on the layout – a hand reaches from the sky and quickly puts all to rights again.

Many people see the real world working that way.  They want life to be simple.  They want things to stay the same and be predictable.  Then when a major calamity strikes they want a divine hand to reach down from the sky and put everything back into right order again.  But that is not the way the world works, nor is it the way God works.  God does not operate the creation the way a toy train enthusiast operates a train layout.

There are two scenes in today’s gospel and it is interesting to contrast them.  Both involve miracles but the circumstances are different.

From the first miracle you could get the idea that God does indeed run the world like a train layout.  The Roman centurion would have had charge of 100 soldiers.  He and his troops were probably stationed in the area to keep the peace and also let the locals know who’s really in charge.  Some Roman soldiers were harsh with the locals.  Others were not.  This particular centurion appears to believe that the best way to keep the peace was to be kind to the locals he oversees.  He has gotten to know them and is supportive of their religious needs.  It is an attitude that probably served him well. 

This centurion knows that many Jews would consider entering the house of a Roman something that could make them ritually unclean; or be ritually defiled.  That wouldn’t be the end of the world for a Jew, but it would mean they’d perform cleanliness rituals afterward to remove the defilement.

He has been paying enough attention to what is going on in the community around him to know that Jesus of Nazareth is considered a great healer; and that Jesus spends a lot of time in Capernaum.  When a beloved slaved becomes seriously ill, and the centurion learns that Jesus is in town, he asks for Jesus’ help.  But he does not approach Jesus himself.  Again, such  interaction could also potentially lead to.  Instead he asks some Jewish leaders to approach Jesus on his slave’s behalf.

Jesus, being who he is, decides to go to the centurion’s house.  Upon learning that the centurion sends friends to Jesus telling him he need not come.  The centurion believes Jesus can heal from a distance and asks for that.  Jesus’ praise for the centurion is about more than just his belief in Jesus’ healing power.  His praise is for the entire attitude the centurion brings to his life.  The centurion is strong but kind.

As if by remote control, Jesus heals the slave from a distance.

Many of the world’s religions, including Judaism and Islam, view God in this light.  God stays away from the earth and instead sends messengers or angels to interact with people.  But as Christians we believe something very different.  God does not stay away operating a simple and tidy world by remote control.  Through Jesus God has entered into the messiness of life.  He is not afraid to get his hands in the dirt, know first hand how people suffer, and even suffer and die himself.  Jesus would have had no problem meeting the centurion and going into his house.

The second scene proves just that.  A widow’s only son has died.  This son was probably her only real hope for survival.  In those days a woman needed a man in order to survive.  There were few legitimate jobs she could have and women weren’t allowed to own property.  This woman’s future was in serious jeopardy.

As Jesus enters the town he sees the funeral procession.  He has compassion for the widow.  From the previous scene with the centurion’s slave we know that Jesus could revive the woman’s son from a distance.  He could simply stand back and make the miracle happen.  But he does not do that. 

Jesus walks right up to the corpse.  While entering a Roman house or interacting with a Roman may or may not cause defilement, touching a corpse certainly does!  Yet the Bible makes it a point to tell us that Jesus touched the bier and probably the body as well.  As a clean upstanding Jew this was an act of defilement.  According to Numbers in the Old Testament Jesus would now have to go through a seven-day ritual of cleansing before being considered clean again.  Though not at all necessary, Jesus enters into that defilement to restore the man’s life.  Being close with people was more important to Jesus than being ritually clean.  In this case Jesus restores the man to life.

Life is complicated.  Life can be messy.  Sometimes the complexities and the messes seem to go on forever with no real hope for improvement.  We may wish for a divine hand to come from the sky and fix things.  That would certainly be nice, or so we think.  But God isn’t in the business of giving simple solutions to complex problems.

God knows how messed up things can get in the world.  And God is not afraid of those messes.

In the video course A Glimpse at the Spirit of Islam, a video created by the ELCA, host Dr. Doug Cox gives an example that shows that as he explains a difference between Christians and Muslims.  He suggests imagining that it’s dark and you’re lost in the woods.  You can’t find your own way out.  A Muslim believes that through revelations and writings God has given you a map of the woods, and maybe a flashlight too.  Using the map and flashlight you would then be able to get your own way out.

Christianity teaches something different.  Again, imagine it’s dark and you’re lost in the woods.  Again, the Bible could be seen as giving you a map and a flashlight to help, but you would not be left there alone.  In Christ we believe that God would join with us and accompany us on the journey.  We are not left alone and abandoned.  And it is not up to us to find the way out.  We are accompanied by God every step of the way.  God may not divinely rescue us.  God will work with us to get through.

There is no place too dark for God to go.  There is no mess too great that God will not wade into.  There is no hardship, pain, or heartache that is too great for God.  God is not afraid to get dirty to be with his people.

And if God can be in the difficult things, remember that God is also with us in the wonderful things.  God accompanies us in times of success and happiness and joy.  God is always with us as a companion and a guide.  God provides strength when we cannot find it.  And when we are truly down and out, unable to move at all, God’s strength alone will do the moving for us.  God will take us to his kingdom.

We are God’s no matter what.  Jesus didn’t have to touch the dead man, but he wanted to.  God doesn’t have to be close to us, but God wants to.  May we always feel God’s presence and know the joy that comes with it.

June 23, 2019 Luke 6:17-49

Have you ever had a friend who started to become embarrassing?  Maybe it was an elementary school friend who as you moved into middle school was awkward as you wanted to move in higher social circles.  If you’ve ever read any of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books or seen the movies you know exactly what I’m talking about.  You don’t want to break the friendship, but this person’s wants and desires seem silly or childish.  You fear association with this person is damaging your reputation.

Or maybe as an adult a high school friend starts telling stories about you that you wish could be forgotten.  Maybe someone you know is showing early signs of dementia or Alzheimer’s and he or she says or does things that are embarrassing.  You get tired of apologizing and don’t want to do things in public.

By all measures Jesus could have been the coolest guy in town.  Perhaps he didn’t have the most prestigious family of origin – Joseph was at best a laborer of limited skills – but Jesus’ abilities to perform miracles, speak well, and great knowledge surely gave him all the ingredients of great popularity.  He’s the sort who’d be voted, “Most Likely to Succeed.” 

But he didn’t live the way you’d expect such a person to live.  If you were here the last couple weeks you know that Jesus hasn’t been choosing his friends wisely.  Instead of picking those who could get him ahead in life he’s choosing the wrong sort: common fishermen, toll collectors, laborers, sinners.  None of these people were going to get Jesus anywhere in life. 

That is the exact backdrop the gospel writer Luke wants us to see when he gives Jesus’ great Sermon on the Plain – which is probably the same sermon in its more famous form in Matthew’s gospel called, “The Sermon on the Mount.”  Luke appears to have edited it down to one-third the length in Matthew. 

I like the way commentator Joel Green sets it up:

“Those who do not discriminate in their choices of table companions, those who do not fast, those who do not observe the Sabbath – such people are defined as outsiders, people of low regard in the system.  Jesus not counteracts those negative sanctions by doing nothing less than redefining the world, positing as the foundation of this world the Old Testament affirmation of the merciful Father and erecting on this foundation a new set of dispositions out of which will flourish new practices, perceptions, and attitudes.”  (New International Commentary on the New Testament, Gospel of Luke, Pg. 261) 

So, after tearing down the old ways of living in the last couple chapters, Jesus gives this sermon.  It is the sort of thing you wish politicians would do in their speeches.  Instead of just tearing down their opponents and their opponents’ agendas, also give a positive workable agenda as a replacement.

            The sermon starts off with some blessings that we probably know well – the Beatitudes; blessings that seem reversed.  Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.  Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.  Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh…” and so on. 

Then there are woes that are also reversals, “Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.  Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry.  Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep.”

These thoughts could make us plenty uneasy, especially if we look at our lives and find ourselves saying, “On the whole, I’m doing pretty well.”  But that is not what Jesus means here, and we should not worry.  There is no inflation-adjusted threshold of poverty or wealth that God uses to determine who gets blessings and who gets woes.  It’s about attitudes that accompany wealth and attitudes that accompany poverty.

Those who are rich tend to be lulled into a false sense of security.  They think their skills and resources will ensure their future success.  They know how to make it and they think it will continue like that always.  The poor, however, feel needy and insecure.  They’re looking for security outside themselves, which more readily opens them to understanding their need for God’s grace.

Along with rich and poor is weeping and laughing.  When Jesus says woe to those who are laughing he is not criticizing happiness.  The laughter is the laughter of the fool who is unconcerned about the priorities of God.  It is the person who is arrogant about his or her position or believed superiority. It is the one who laughs at others misfortune and struggles because he or she thinks they deserve it.

Jesus’ teachings in this sermon about behavior are quite radical.  The principles of justice that is the foundation of law can be traced all the way back to the Babylonian legal code – the code of Hammurabi.  You know it well – an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.  Many think that is biblical, and it is in the Bible.  But it did not originate there.  It is the Babylonian legal code used as a foundation for Jewish justice, as well as justice for many cultures.  Though it seems severe, I think we agree with the principles.  Said differently, let the punishment fit the crime.  Breaking the speed limit by 5 mph is not the same as embezzling a million dollars from a company.  And so the punishments should fit the crime.

But Jesus calls for something different.  Now he’s not making a statement intending for a nation to build a legal code around it.  He’s not saying that prisons should be emptied and bad people be allowed to run unchecked.  No, he is speaking in the background of a typical justice system.  His followers are not to be focused on, or worried about getting a fair shake, or getting revenge.  His followers are to be focused elsewhere – God’s work - knowing also that God will bring about justice to those who exploit, hurt, and destroy.  Basically he is saying don’t worry about it.  Justice for yourself is not your top priority. 

And yet, Jesus is also not calling for his followers to be passive and just accept abuse and mistreatment.  We are not to be doormats who get walked all over all the time.  He is actually calling for aggressive action to undermine hostility and violence.

If God is your source of self-worth; not your job or your possessions or your friends,

And if God is your source of true justice; not your ability to win a court case or your ability to get revenge or get back and someone,

And if you see God as gracious and loving of you, even despite your flaws,

Then you are ready to live in a way that is very different from the world around you.  Dr. Rick Carlson, my one seminary professor said that Christians aren’t to be counter-cultural.  They are to be anti-cultural.  If you think about it, almost everything you see on the news, and everything that is advertised to you, and just about everything most people build their lives around makes just no sense in light of God’s promises.

Jesus calls us to live those promises.  That does not mean being passive.  It means being assertive as we build upon the solid foundation God provides.

God does not want this life to be a waiting game for us until we die and then get to go to heaven.  Most of Jesus’ teaching about the coming of the kingdom of God are about his followers making the promises of God’s kingdom come alive here on earth.  That is what he means when he says, “The kingdom of God has come near.”

Let justice be God’s.  Let your worth lie in God’s hands.  And let your energy be focused on building up others and the community around you.  And you will be blessed now, you will laugh now, and you will have wholeness now.  That’s not a prosperity gospel, where God will bless you for being good.  That is the reality of those who are free from the world’s bondage to sin and death. 

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.