Spirit of Grace

Sunday 1 December 2019
The First Sunday of Advent

Romans 13:11-14

There were two men in a village, a tall man and a short man; they were neighbors. This was many years ago, before electricity. If people needed heat, they relied on a wood stove. If they needed light, they had to burn candles. Candles, though, were rather expensive, so people tended not to use them unless they had a good reason.

One evening, the tall man looked out his window and saw the short man’s house lit up brightly. It was already well past sundown, so it was quite dark. It also happened to be a new moon, which made the rest of the night even darker, everything except the short man’s house.

The tall man wondered to himself what could possibly be going on at the short man’s house. It was far too late for anything reasonable to be happening. It bothered him. His neighbor must be up to something, thought the tall man. And as he thought about it more and more, it bothered him more and more.

Finally he couldn’t stand it any longer, and he decided to take action. It was a dark night, he knew. There was no moon. So he would sneak out of his house and creep over in the darkness to see what was happening at the short man’s house. He had to be up to no good. But what kind of mischief was it that the short man was getting up to? The tall man made up his mind and went. He put on his coat and his hat, quietly opened the door, and stepped out into the cold night air, silently shutting the door behind him.

He had been right: it was very dark outside. Not only was there no moon, but much of the sky was covered with clouds so that there were hardly any stars. There were, of course, no street lights, no headlights, no porch lights. The only light that could be found was the light streaming out of the short man’s windows.

The tall man moved slowly and quietly in the dark, step by step toward the short man’s house. As he got closer, he began to question what he was doing. If he went up and looked in the short man’s window, surely he himself would be spotted. Maybe this wasn’t the best idea, he thought to himself. But he just had to know what sort of evil the short man was getting up to inside his house with all that light at this late hour. He decided that he had to risk it. It was his duty, after all, on behalf of the whole village, to find out what was going on. Whatever the short man was doing, it was probably something dangerous, the people of the village had a right to know what it was.

Just then, he noticed that light wasn’t only coming out of the windows, but it was also shining out of a small hole in the door. It was the keyhole. This was back in the days when keyholes were big enough to see through. Perfect, thought the tall man, I can sneak up to the door and peak through the keyhole. That way I can find out what the short man is doing, but I won’t have to worry about him seeing me through the window. So he tiptoed up, all the more quietly, making sure that he wouldn’t be heard from inside the short man’s house.

Now, the tall man was very tall. But the keyhole was quite low, just at the perfect height for the short man to open his door. So as the tall man approached the house, he realized that he would have to bend down in order to see into the keyhole. He carefully creeped up the steps, across the creaky porch, and ducked his head down in order to look through the keyhole. Now he would finally see what the sneaky short man was up to.

But the tall man was too tall. He could not bend over enough in order to see through the keyhole. He would have to get down on his hands and knees in order to see. So very, very carefully, trying his best not to cause the loose boards on the wooden porch to squeak, he got himself down on all fours. Now all he had to do was to lean his head forward a little bit and put his eye up to the keyhole, and he would finally be able to find out what that sneaky little short man was up to with house lit up so late at night. He would figure out what sort of mischief the short man was created and let the whole village know.

The tall man leaned his head forward. He closed his left eye and brought his right eye up even with the keyhole and began to look inside.

Suddenly, the door opened. The light from inside came pouring out through the open doorway, lighting up the night. And as the light came out, it revealed the tall man, hunched over, there on his hands and knees on the short man’s porch, looking like a fool, with one eye clenched and one eye open, peering directly into the short man’s belly.

Things that happen in the dark are hidden; they can’t be seen. When the tall man thought that he was in the dark, he behaved in a certain way, because he thought that he could not be seen, that what he did would be a secret. But once the door was opened, and the light shone out, his actions were no longer hidden, they were revealed. And he himself was revealed to be a busybody, a snoop, and a muckraker. He had intended to cast guilt upon his neighbor, the short man, while keeping his own scurrilous actions a secret. But when the light was shined, when darkness became bright, when night became day, the tall man was exposed as the ne’er-do-well he actually was.

In his letter to the Romans, the Apostle Paul talks about the difference between the works of darkness and the works of light. Many of us have been taught that light means good and that dark means evil. In the old western movies, you can always tell who the good guys are because they wear white hats. And you can always tell who the bad guys are because they wear black hats. White is good and black is evil.

This interpretation has often been misused to argue that all things light are good and all things dark are evil. In particular, our cultural heritage tells us that people with light skin are good, pleasing, beautiful, and people with dark skin are evil, dirty, or ugly. Think about the story of Snow White as an example. What is she known for? She is the fairest in the land. That is to say, she has the lightest skin and is therefore the most beautiful. Whiteness is used as a synonym for beauty. It’s explicitly racist language, but it is so deeply rooted in our culture that we don’t even notice it. You’ll have not trouble finding Snow White on the toy shelves next to the other Disney princesses.

But the stakes are higher than fairy tales though. The language of light and dark has been used explicitly to deny the humanity of non-white peoples. It was used to justify the enslavement of African people, the genocide of Native Americans, and the subjugation of peoples around the world.  Even when this argument is not explicitly stated, it often works silently in the background to uphold the status quo of prejudice. Whether we want to or not, our culture has taught us an implicit bias against people of color. And using the language or light and dark for good and evil is a part of that bias.

I want to be absolutely clear that that is not what Paul is talking about here. When he talks about light and dark, he is not talking about black and white. In fact, he is not talking about color at all. He is not talking about pigmentation, he is talking about illumination. He is talking about precisely what we learned from the story of the tall man and short man. The difference between light and dark is not about color, it is about exposure.

In the dark, everything is hidden. In the dark, we can get away with things because no one can see that we are doing them. In the dark, we can hide all of our secret, we can do the things that we would rather people didn’t see, we can say the things that we would rather people didn’t hear. In the dark, we can act as if the way that we act doesn’t matter.

That’s why many people prefer to live in the darkness. Chances are that each and every one of has something hidden deep down that we would rather the world didn’t know about. And as long as we can stay in the darkness, then we never have to worry about being exposed.

But Paul has a message for us. He says, Remember what time it is. By that, he means that a new age has begun. The world had been in an age of darkness. But by the power of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the age of light is dawning. We have not yet come into the full brightness that will only arrive at the end of the age, but through Jesus Christ, the dawn is breaking.  Hope is breaking through. The light is shining, and it is overcoming the darkness.

And so, we have a choice. We can continue to live in the darkness, trying to hide all of the things that we are ashamed of, trying to get away with everything that we can. Or, we can live in the light. We can live as if the Kingdom of God is already here in all of its glory. We can put on the armor of light and face the darkness unafraid. We can live every moment as if everyone could see us, to glory of our God, who sees us in the light or the dark. We live as a people of hope who share the hope of Jesus Christ with the world.

You know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near.  Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us live honorably as in the day.

Sunday 10 November 2019
The Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 32C

Haggai 1:15b-2:9

I have been in the church my entire life, for forty years now. And for that entire time, people have been talking about how the church is dying. I have never been a part of a church that didn’t think it was dying. I have never been a part of a church that didn’t feel like it had somehow fallen from something that was bigger, better, healthier, more impressive that had come before. I know some of you have read Paul Nixon’s book, I Refuse to Lead a Dying Church. I have literally never been a part of a church that did not operate under the nagging fear of an impending death. If I had a dollar for every church meeting I have been in that someone made references to rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, I would be a wealthy man.

And that’s true for a lot of people my age. Even in congregations that are pretty healthy, even in congregations that are growing, we all know what the trends are. In 1950, the constituent parts of The United Methodist Church had 9.7 million members in the United States, representing 6.5% of the US population. Up until that point, it had experienced more than 10% growth every decade since 1800 except one, and outpaced the growth of the US population in every decade except one. Ten years later, in 1960, there were 10.6 million United Methodists, but the growth was no longer keeping up with population growth. Membership stagnated in the 60’s, and by the 1970’s it was falling. In 2010, it was 7.8 million members, a decrease of 28% from it’s highest point. In that same time, The UMC has gone from being 6.5% of the US population to being 2.5% of the US population. I wasn’t able to find similar statistics for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, but similar trends of decline since the 1960’s have been experienced by all mainline churches.

And church decline has been the guiding narrative of how we understand ourselves for at least the last 50 or 60 years. I remember being a youth and hearing over and over that it was our job to shake up the church to make it more interesting and inviting for young people like us. We needed to bring young people back to the church. We needed to be the saviors of the church, otherwise it was going to die. And I remember going to seminary and being told that we needed to become the leaders for a new kind of church. If we didn’t make a cultural change within the church, then it was going to die. And I remember being a freshly minted pastor and hearing similar things. Oh, you’re a young pastor, so that means that young people are going to want to come back to the church. We used to have so many kids and so many youth, and we just need a young leader who can excite people and bring them back.

And then I go to Annual Conferences, to Synod Assemblies, to Bishop’s Convocations and District Colloquy and Order of Elders Retreats and Clergy Cluster gatherings, and we talk about the same things. We need to do something different or we are going to die. The world is changing. If we’re going to stay relevant, we’re going to need to be bold. We’re going to need to be transformative leaders who can solve this problem, who can make the new church for a new age, but always to do so within the established frameworks of how we do church. Our failure to grow is a failure of imagination. Our failure to grow is a failure of boldness and creativity. Our failure to grow is a failure of our leadership. Our failure to grow is because we are not in tune with the Holy Spirit, doing the new thing that God is doing.

I don’t remember the glorious time in the past. I was never there in the good times, when church was working how it is supposed to work. I never saw the good old days. In my experience, the church has always been looking backward in regret, but the glorious past is just a story to me.

This morning we heard words from the prophet Haggai. Before about a week ago, I didn’t know anything about Haggai. I’ve never preached from this book before. I’ve never studied it. I knew it was one of the minor prophets, but that’s all. I had to use the table of contents to find it in my bible.

So I’m guessing most of you don’t know very much about Haggai, either. It’s a short book. It has six separate prophecies in it. Very unusually, for the Hebrew Bible, each of the prophecies is precisely dated. This one starts out this way: “In the second year of Darius the king. On the twenty-first day of the seventh month.” That means we can say the exact day when Haggai spoke these words. In our calendar, it’s September 21st, 520 BCE. That’s crazy, right?

And we know what was happening in the world, then, too. I’m going to give you a few dates; just remember that since we’re in BC or BCE, as we move forward in time, the number of the year gets smaller. At the end of the 600’s, the Kingdom of Judah was under threat from the growing Babylonia Empire, based in what we now call Iraq. They started paying tribute to the empire in 605, and some of the Jewish people were deported to Babylon. In 598, King Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Jerusalem, which led to a second deportation of Judean people to Babylon. In 588, Jerusalem was laid siege again, and this time the Jewish temple was destroyed. Again, many Judeans were moved against their will to Babylon. Most of them, and their descendants, were in captivity in Babylon for at least 70 years. Many never returned.

However, in 539 BCE, 48 years after the destruction of the Jerusalem temple, the Babylonian Empire was conquered by the Persian Empire, based in what we now call Iran. The Persians started to let Jews return to the land in 538, 49 years after the destruction of the temple and 18 years before our scripture this morning from Haggai.

By the time of Haggai in 520 BCE, there were many returned Jews living in Jerusalem, along with the Jewish people who had never left. But at the center of the city, Merced atop Mt. Zion, there was nothing but ruins. The temple had been destroyed 70 years before. It had created a major crisis among the people, because their entire practice of religion had been focused on the temple. For seventy years, that had been unavailable to them. They were left with no way to practice their faith as they had known.

Haggai gathers the people together on the site of the former temple, along with their leaders, and he shares a word with them. “Who among you is left who saw this house in its former glory? How does it look to you now? Does it look as nothing to you?” He’s asking them how many people are there who are old enough to remember the temple before it was destroyed. Do you remember back in the 80’s when we used to have a beautiful temple? Do you remember how people used to come from hundreds of miles to visit it? People came from around the world to visit the temple. They came with all kinds of offerings and gifts. Even people who weren’t Jews would come to see how beautiful it was. Do you remember? We were the talk of the world. But that was almost 70 years ago, and look at us now. No one comes on pilgrimage here any more. It’s not like it used to be.

Sound familiar at all? Do your remember 70 years ago when people used to come here to worship all the time? We could hardly handle all of the people who came to worship.

Like our churches today, the people of Jerusalem were dispirited with what had become of them. They had all heard the stories of their glorious past. Not all of them could remember it, though. Only a few had been alive long enough to have actually seen the splendor of the former temple, but everyone carried the image of that resplendent house of God in their minds.

In the midst of their discouragement, Haggai speaks God’s words to them. “So now, be strong, Zerubbalel, says the Lord. Be strong, High Priest Joshua, Jehozadak’s son, and be strong, all you people of the land, says the Lord. Work, for I am with you, says the Lord of heavenly forces. As with our agreement when you came out of Egypt, my spirit stands in your midst. Don’t fear.”

My spirit stands in your midst. Don’t fear. Haggai is trying to encourage the people to build a new temple, and he is ultimately successful. The second temple was not nearly as impressive as the first temple had been. It was not until Jesus’s lifetime, when King Herod commissioned a massive remodel, that the new temple would become the architectural match of its predecessor, and then it only lasted a couple of decades before it was destroyed again, never to be rebuilt.

Haggai was looking back to the old temple, trying to return to the way things were before. And while they did build a new temple, Jewish religious practice never returned to the way it was before. Jews had been spread all over the world because of the conquests of successive empires, and many lived much too far away from the temple for it to be a part of their regular practice. Instead, something new developed. This is the period when the use of scripture began to explode. Much of the Hebrew Bible was first written down in this period. The experience of the destruction of the temple and the deportation of the people meant that things could never go back to how they used to be.

But the story of God and God’s people did not end, it simply entered a new chapter. A new religious practice was born for a new age. No one knew that’s how things were going to happen. It wasn’t an intentional choice to increase the emphasis on written Scripture and to decrease the emphasis on a temple and burnt offerings. Over 4 billion people today worship the God of Israel. Almost none of them perform any kind of animal sacrifice like what used to happen in the temple. All of them read, study, and pray the sacred scriptures. We still worship the same God, but our practice and organization has been completely transformed.

We are in the midst of another significant cultural change. To us, right now, it seems like decline. And it is true that the institutions and patterns that we have known are in decline. Things aren’t going to go back to how they used to be.

But the story of God and God’s people is not over. God’s spirit still stands in our midst. We do not know what will emerge in the next phase of this millennia’s long story of God and God’s people. But we know that even if things change, the story will continue. We may not live long enough to see what emerges. There is no way to predict where that change will come from. And that can be hard for us, not knowing what is coming next or how to prepare for it.

But it is not our job to design the way the church will be a hundred or two hundred or five hundred years from now. God’s spirit is standing in our midst. God’s spirit will make the change. It may not even be our job to be a part of that new thing, though we may be a part of its beginnings.

In J. R. R. Tolkein’s The Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo tells Gandalf that he wishes he did not live in such a time of danger and change. And Gandalf replies, “So do I, and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

Our job is to be faithful in the time that we are, in the place that we are. Not to try to get back to the 1960s. Not to think that it is up to our creativity to save the church. Our job is to be faithful right now, to listen to what God is speaking right now, to answer the spirit’s call right now.

Because we know that even now, God’s spirit is standing in our midst. When we can’t see the road ahead, God’s spirit is standing in our midst. When all we see is decline, God’s spirit is standing in our midst. Even though the world may change, God’s spirit is surely standing in our midst. The story is not over. God will continue to lead God’s people. Gospel will still be preached. Grace and forgiveness will still be offered. God’s spirit is standing in our midst. Thanks be to God.

Sunday 27 October 2019
Reformation Sunday

Luke 18:9-14

We are trained to think that Pharisees are bad people. Jesus and his disciples encounter Pharisees numerous times in the gospels and in Acts, and they are almost always the bad guys, the villains, the people who are opposing Jesus. So when we hear that word, Pharisee, we immediately have a negative reaction. We expect a Pharisee to be up to no good.

But that’s not really the way that people would have thought of Pharisees in Jesus’s day. In general, Pharisees were pretty highly regarded. They were people who placed a special emphasis on holy living. They took their religion seriously, didn’t just pay lip service to it. And they tried to make their religious practice relevant to real life. It wasn’t just for the priests in the temple. Religious practice should be something that everyone can do, as part of their daily life. That’s what the Pharisees taught. That’s what they practiced. They took the Bible seriously, and they tried to live it out as best as they could.

In Jesus’s time, they weren’t really the religious establishment, either. That was the Sadducees. They were the one’s who were priests and religious officials. They were the well-connected and well-to-do. The Pharisees were well-educated, but they were much closer to the ground than the Sadducees, much closer to the people. By the time the gospels were being written, things had changed a bit. Once the Jewish temple was destroyed in the year 70 CE, the entire religious structure had to be reimagined, and it was the Pharisees who took the lead in the new order of what would become Rabbinic Judaism. That’s part of the reason Pharisees are so often cast as the bad guys in the gospels, not because they were such a threat to Jesus, but because they were a threat to the early church a few decades after Jesus. But in Jesus’s own time, Pharisees would not have been universally despised, like the gospels seem to suggest that they were.

Tax collectors, on the other hand, really were despised. It’s not just that they collected the taxes, it’s that they collected the taxes for Rome. They were agents of an occupying empire. They were collaborators. They helped the empire to keep its control. And, in general, they put pressure on the ordinary people to pay their taxes much more than on the elite. The elite had all sorts of ways of getting out of paying taxes, but the poor had few ways to resist. And so tax collectors were despised because they squeezed money out of their neighbors in order to prop up the very system that oppressed them.

So when Jesus’s audience hears the beginning of his parable, they aren’t expecting what we’re expecting. “Two people went up to the temple to pray. One was a Pharisee and one was a tax collector.” They would hear that introduction and know who was good and who was bad. Of course the tax collector is going to be the bad guy. Of course he is going to be the villain. And of course the Pharisee is going to be the upstanding moral figure. Of course he is going to be the holy one. That’s the expectation when Jesus introduces a Pharisee and a tax collector.

And if you don’t already expect for the Pharisee to be the villain, he doesn’t immediately seem that terrible. Here’s what he says, “God, I thank you that I’m not like everyone else—crooks, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week. I give a tenth of everything I receive.” He maybe seems a bit arrogant, but not terrible. The first thing he does is give thanks to God. He doesn’t take credit for the holiness of his life. He gives God the credit for it.

And the things he says about himself are pretty good. He isn’t thieving. He doesn’t cheat other people. He has no record of financial irregularities. He can be trusted in financial dealings. That’s a good thing, right?

He isn’t unjust. That means he treats people right. He’s fair. He’s virtuous. He’s ethical. That’s a good thing.

He isn’t an adulterer. He’s faithful. He doesn’t have any record of sexual misconduct. No MeToo issues. That’s a good thing.

And he’s not like a tax collector. That is to say, he hasn’t sold out his own people. He hasn’t sided with the empire that is keeping everyone down.

If we put those things together, we’ve basically established that the Pharisee can pass a background check. No financial malfeasance. No sexual misconduct. Generally trustworthy. This is the kind of person that we would want to be involved in ministry.

So those are the things that this Pharisee isn’t. What about the affirmative things that he does? He fasts twice a week. Fasting isn’t something that Protestant Christians tend to do very much these days, but historically it is an important part of the faith. John Wesley typically fasted twice a week, on Wednesday and on Friday. One of the things I had to promise when I was ordained is that I would recommend fasting, both by precept and example. It’s a spiritual practice that is meant to help us learn to live with less and to be thankful for small things. It helps to curb our greed and to keep us in balance. It shows and builds spiritual maturity. All of that is good.

And the last thing about the Pharisee is this: he gives a tenth of everything he earns to God. He tithes. That’s what I’m supposed to be encouraging all of us to do, isn’t it? That is the Old Testament standard for giving. That is what most of us are striving for. I say it’s the Old Testament standard, because the New Testament actually has a higher standard. Jesus says that his disciples need to sell all of their possessions, give the money to the poor, and follow him. I think most of us are happy to stick with the Old Testament on this particular topic. And that’s the standard that this Pharisee lives up to. He is generous, more generous than most people, both back then and today.

So when we really look at him, this Pharisee is a pretty good guy. He’s the kind of guy you would want in your church. He’s the kind of guy you might want on your city council. He seems to be generally a stand-up citizen. He does just what you would want someone from your faith community to do. He seems to be quite virtuous. He is admirable. He is a good role-model. By all visible standards, he is precisely what we would want in a follower of God.

But that isn’t the point that Jesus is trying to make here. Like he does so often, Jesus upsets our expectations. Jesus flouts our normal standards of decency. Because this upstanding Pharisee is not going to be the hero, the model of virtue at all.

Jesus introduces a second character: the tax collector. We’ve already established that he is in many senses a traitor to his people. He is a Jew who works for the Romans, who brutalizes his own people so that Rome can get paid. In his prayer, he doesn’t thank God for anything. But he doesn’t say anything good about himself, either. He simply identifies himself as a sinner and he asks for mercy from God. That’s it. He doesn’t repent of his sin. He doesn’t promise that he will do better in the future. He doesn’t quit being a tax collector. He just asks God for mercy. He asks God not to punish him for the wrong things that he has done.

And Jesus say, “I tell you the truth, the tax collector went home justified by God, but the Pharisee didn’t.”

I’ve got to tell you, this a hard one. Because, in general, I would encourage people to be more like the Pharisee, not more like the tax collector. Be honest, don’t cheat people, be faithful to your spouse, practice spiritual disciplines, give generously, tithe even. The only thing that this Pharisee seems to do wrong is that he looks on himself more highly than other people. But even that he only does in his heart. It’s not like he goes around town saying that he’s better than everyone else. It’s just in this silent prayer to God that he rates himself as better than people who are obvious sinners. Do none of us ever thank God that we aren’t like obvious sinners: that we aren’t caught up in crime, that we don’t abuse others, that we are regular church attenders? If you’ve spent your whole life living on the straight and narrow, it’s pretty hard not to be thankful that you haven’t had to deal with all of the natural consequences that go along with living an obviously sinful life. If that’s his greatest vice, I don’t know that I have any ground to fault him.

And then look at the tax collector. Certainly it is good that he admits his sin and asks God for mercy. There’s no doubt about that. But I wouldn’t encourage people to look at him as a model for prayer. If you spend all of your time in prayer just beating up on yourself, that doesn’t seem particularly healthy. There’s is definitely a place for acknowledging one’s own sin, and sometimes that’s going to lead to really strong feelings of regret and remorse, sometimes even a kind of self-loathing. But I wouldn’t want anyone to stay there, to stay in a constant state of self-hatred. That’s part of what Martin Luther was trying to escape. He spent so much time focusing on his own sin, confessing over and over, punishing himself, that he could never accept God’s grace, he could never move forward. His great breakthrough was in accepting that God’s grace is more powerful than any of our sins, that God has the power to work good even out of very flawed people. But I don’t see any of that kind of realization in this tax collector. I don’t really see any repentance or any acceptance of God’s grace.

But this isn’t a competition over who is living the most holy life. Luke tells us exactly why Jesus told this parable. “Jesus told this parable to certain people who had convinced themselves that they were righteous and who looked on everyone else with disgust.” Jesus told this parable to certain people who had convinced themselves that they were righteous and who looked on everyone else with disgust.

Of course we should strive for holy living. Of course we should strive to be honest, faithful, virtuous, pious, and generous, like that Pharisee. Of course we should. But that should never give us an excuse to look on others with disgust. That Pharisee did so many things right, but when he went to the temple to pray, he thought he was so much better than everyone else that he didn’t need anything from God. The tax collector just asked God for mercy. And God is merciful. It is part of God’s nature to be merciful. What Jesus says is absolutely right. Only one of those men went home from the temple justified by God. Only one of them asked God for mercy and justification.

We are saved by God’s grace alone. That is the message of the Reformation. It is not anything that we do that makes us holy in God’s sight, it is God’s own act of grace in us. And it is only by God’s grace that we are justified, only by God’s grace that we are sanctified. God’s grace embraces us before we even know to look for it. God’s grace sets us free and heals us when we are in the depths of hurt and sin. God’s grace shapes and molds us so that we can be better disciples of Jesus. None of us have any room to boast. None of us has graduated past a point so that we are no longer in need of God’s grace. And none of us has fallen so far that we are beyond the reach of God’s grace. Thanks be to God, who never looks on us with disgust, but is always overflowing with grace and love.

Sunday 13 October 2019
The Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 28C

Luke 17:11-19

The Gospel of Luke tells the story of two Samaritans. There is the story here in chapter 17 about a group of lepers who were healed by Jesus, and one of them was a Samaritan. And there is the more familiar story, back in chapter 11, about the so-called Good Samaritan. For understanding either of these stories, it’s helpful to have some idea of who the Samaritans are.

Both Jews and Samaritans consider themselves to be the true children of Israel. The division between the two groups goes back more than 600 years before the time of Jesus. Historical accounts vary. After the time of King Solomon, the people of Israel were divided into two kingdoms. The northern Kingdom was called Israel, and the southern kingdom was called Judah. The Kingdom of Israel had its capital and its temple in Samaria, while the Kingdom of Judah had its capital and temple in Jerusalem.

Both Kingdoms were subsequently conquered by large empires. The northern Kingdom of Israel fell first to the Assyrians in 722 BCE. Many Israelites were forcibly moved to other parts of the empire, and other peoples were moved into the land. The Babylonian Empire began deporting Jews from the southern Kingdom in 597 BCE, and the Jerusalem temple was destroyed in 588 BCE. Jerusalem was wrecked, and everyone of consequence was carried into captivity in Babylon.

When Jews started returning to the land 70 years later to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem, they found Samaritans living in the land, worshiping on Mt. Gerizim. Both communities built temples, one on Mt. Zion and one on Mt. Gerizim. Both communities thought their place of worship was the one true place to worship God. Both communities had versions of what we call the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible, the Samaritian version consisting mostly of the first five books of the Bible. Both communities claimed Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as their ancestors. Both communities thought they were the true children of Israel. Both communities thought the other was not quite right with God, that they were perverting the ways of God, that they were heretics, unclean, unorthodox.

So Samaritans and Jews did not associate with each other. They were not friends. They avoided each other. They shared a tremendous amount in common. They lived very close to each other. They were, in many ways, siblings. But as in any family feud, closeness did not lead to greater understanding, but to greater division.

It is hard to come up with a modern analogy for the relationship between Jews and Samaritans. Maybe Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland. If you were trying to imagine who would be like a Samaritan to you, maybe think of the politician you despise the most.

Like I said, Luke introduces two different Samaritans in the course of the gospel. This is the second of them. Jesus is traveling in the border area between Galilee and Samaria, when he encounters ten people who have contagious skin diseases. According to biblical law, these people had to keep themselves separate from the rest of the population. They were excluded from the social life of the community for as long as they were still symptomatic. Just like they are supposed to, they keep their distance when Jesus comes near, but they yell out to him, asking him to help them.

Jesus tells them simply to go and show themselves to the priests. He doesn’t do anything to explicitly heal them. Nevertheless, while they are on their way to the priests, they are healed and made clean. Jesus sending them to the priests makes more sense than it might seem at first. In order to be released from their quarantine, the priests have to verify that they actually are well.

However, one of them doesn’t follow Jesus’s instructions. He doesn’t go and show himself to the priests. Instead, he turns around and goes back to Jesus. As he goes, he yells out praises to God to anyone who will listen. He bows down at Jesus’s feet and thanks him. It’s only then that the narrator reveals to us that the one person who returned to praise God and to thank Jesus is not a Jew, but a Samaritan. Then Jesus asks why no one else came back to praise God, only the Samaritan. And he tells the man, “Get up and go. Your faith has healed you.” Your faith has saved you.

That raises several questions for me. It seems a little strange that there are both Jews and Samaritans in the same group of lepers. But perhaps the stigma of suffering from a skin disease was worse than the antipathy that Jews and Samaritans had for each other. Maybe if they were excluded from the rest of society, then they were happy to have any companions they could find, even if that companion was a Samaritan.

Also, it’s nice that the Samaritan came back to thank Jesus and to praise God, but he also disobeys Jesus to do so. Jesus told them to go show themselves to the priests, and the Samaritan doesn’t do that. Now, that may not be too surprising. Presumably Jesus means that they’re supposed to go to the Jewish priests in order to get themselves checked out, and a Samaritan man cannot present himself to Jewish priests. Since he can’t do what Jesus has asked, why not go back to Jesus to praise God? The strange thing is that Jesus seems upset that no one else came back with him. Why would he be upset that everyone else followed his instructions and went to the priests? I still have never been able to figure that one out.

Nevertheless, the message seems clear. We have a group of ten people who all receive the grace of Jesus. For nine of them, that act of grace does not lead to any special praise of God. However, one of the people who receives healing grace from Jesus does return to praise God. But the hero of the story is the last person the audience would suspect. The hero of the story is a despised Samaritan. Sometimes Jesus offers grace to people we wouldn’t suspect. And sometimes the people we wouldn’t suspect end up being the best examples of faith.

It’s not unlike the story of that other Samaritan in the Gospel of Luke. It’s a story that Jesus tells. He has told one of his detractors that the greatest commandments are to love God and to love your neighbor. Jesus’s detractor asks who his neighbor is, then, and Jesus replies with the parable of the Good Samaritan. A traveler is beaten and robbed, lying near death on the side of the road. A priest passes by and does nothing to help. Another religious authority, a Levite, passes by and does nothing to help. But when a despised Samaritan comes by, he takes the man, gives him medical attention, and provides him with housing and continuing care at a local inn. “Which one of them acted as a neighbor to the man who had been robbed?” Jesus asks. It’s a story that is meant to shame the audience. Even a heretic Samaritan can offer help and hospitality to someone in need, but the most religious of people cannot be relied upon to do the same.

Back in the 1970’s, researchers conducted an experiment with seminary students. You might have heard of it before. The seminarians were told they needed to go from one building to another to complete a task. Some of them were being sent to give a talk on the Good Samaritan. Others were sent to do another task. Some were told they were already late. Others were told that they had a little extra time to get there. For all of the students, there was someone in their path, on the ground, who looked like they might be injured or needed help. Some of the seminarians stopped to help, and others didn’t. As you might expect, the ones who were in more of a hurry were less likely to help. Interestingly, though, the ones who were in a hurry to talk about the Good Samaritan were no more likely to help than the ones who were in a hurry to complete another task.

I mention this to you this morning because I preached the Parable of the Good Samaritan earlier this year. And while I was hurrying in to get ready for worship, I encountered someone who needed help. It was on the day that I was preaching the story of the Good Samaritan that I met [Jane] and [Brittany] for the first time, parked with their motorhome near the house out back where we used to have the church office. And by the grace of Jesus, my heart was opened to help.

Most of you probably know that [Jane] and [Brittany] have been staying in a couple of rooms in the old office for a little while now. It’s come to my attention that some of you have some questions about that. So I talked with [Jane] earlier this week to ask what parts of their story I could share with you. She said I could share this and that she’d be happy to talk more with those of you who might have more questions

[Jane] and [Brittany] fled their home in Alaska one year ago because of a domestic violence situation that put them in fear of their lives. Because there are no roads in or out of the town where they lived, they weren’t able to bring much with them. At first they tried to stay with some family in California and then with some friends in Eastern Oregon, but both of those situations ended up being unsafe as well. They came to Hood River because here is where they were able to find a domestic violence shelter with an opening. But no one can stay in the shelter indefinitely, and affordable housing is difficult to find. As they were leaving the shelter, they were able to find an old RV, and they lived in it for a while, parking wherever they could find for as long as they dared.

Both [Jane] and [Brittany] have serious medical issues that require specialist care. [Jane]’s condition, in particular, is aggravated when she overexerts herself. That’s what happened when she was taken to the Emergency Room a couple of weeks back. They were highly motivated to stay in the area, because they’ve managed to establish care here, and a move would mean an interruption in their care. I’ve spoken with their DHS worker, and they are receiving a number of services and have applications in for others, including transitional and affordable housing.

[Jane] and [Brittany] came to us at just about the time that we were preparing to move offices out of the old house. When many of you met them, you expressed a desire to help. A couple of you mentioned that you wished that the master bedroom in the old house was still set up as a bedroom because then they could stay there while they searched for other housing.

I prayed long and hard about the situation, and I got the unmistakable response that we needed to do whatever we could. I proposed to the Board that, since we had no immediate plans for how to use the house once the offices were moved out, that we try to prepare a place for [Jane] and [Brittany], that we use them as a test case for providing medium-term transitional housing, and that once they have found a more stable situation, that we reevaluate whether to continue to use the house for transitional housing, whether to use it for something else, or whether it needs to be removed from the property. After reflection and prayer, they agreed. This is not what we are doing permanently with the house, but it’s what we’re doing right now. I’m checking in with [Jane] every week or two as we work to get them into more stable housing. For her part, she has been eager to help out with anything that she can.

I cannot help but think that we are like two Samaritans. This church has had grace to stop and help and offer hospitality. And [Jane] and [Brittany] have had the grace to return with thanks and praise to God. This is what it means to love and serve our neighbors. I am as proud of this as I am of anything this church has done while I have been your pastor.

Answering Jesus’s call to discipleship is not without risk. Loving our neighbors means acting with grace even when we cannot see the final outcome. But answering when Jesus calls always leads to a blessing. We are blessed with the relationships we form when we love our neighbors. We are blessed with Christ’s presence among us. We are blessed with a vision of the Kingdom of God. I thank you for your grace in offering shelter and hospitality, and I pray that God will continue to open all of our hearts to respond with joy whenever and wherever God calls.

Sunday 15 September 2019
The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 24C

1 Timothy 1:12-17

In the Cemetery Tales next weekend, I’m portraying Major League Baseball player and Christian evangelist, Billy Sunday. He was the most famous evangelist of the early 20th century, traveling from town to town for a week at a time, attracting huge crowds. There has been a fair amount of joking about me playing this role. After all, I am a preacher, and he was a preacher. He even preached at Asbury Methodist back in the day, and here I am as pastor of the church that continues Asbury’s legacy. But our styles are quite different. Billy Sunday sounds like this: “This old God-hating, Christ-hating, whiskey-soaked, Sabbath-breaking, blasphemous, adulterous, grafting, thieving, pleasure-loving, racketeering, socialistic, modernistic world is going to hell so fast, she is breaking the speed limit!” I don’t sound like that.

I was talking with someone about it this week, and they said, “You know, I think most of them sounded like that back then.” And that’s probably true. There has been quite a shift in styles over the years. And not for no reason, either. People got pretty burned out on that kind of fiery preaching. After generations of beating people over the head with their own sinfulness, the message of fire-and-brimstone preachers began to lose its effectiveness. People stopped thinking of themselves as mostly sinful.

Especially in light of liberationist movements, Christians started to recognize the kind of damage that sinfulness preaching had caused. That message was disproportionately wielded against women, people of color, sexual minorities, and the poor. The powerful used the message of sinfulness and the need for Christian humility to keep down the powerless. Those on the margins of society were constantly reminded to consider their own sinfulness and their need for repentance, to stay in their place. Women were reminded that sin came into the world through a woman, through eve. People of color were labeled as children of Satan. All the while, those at the center of power were quite free to continue as they were, assured of their privileged places in God’s Kingdom.

And so, it made sense that we made a shift in our focus. Sinfulness had become such a powerful concept that many people could not or were not allowed to experience God’s love and grace.

Even centuries before, this message had become problematic. Just think of the founders of our two denominations: Martin Luther and John Wesley. Luther’s early life was completely dominated by extreme feelings of sinfulness and unworthiness, feelings that were cultivated in him by his family and his church. As a monk, he would go to confession every day. He spent so much time confessing that the priests he came to complained about it. Today, we would say that he suffered from anxiety and depression, and it was grounded in his sense of sinfulness. It was only through a truly radical experience of God’s grace that Luther was able to overcome his overwhelming sense of sinfulness.

The same was true for John Wesley. In his early life, no matter how hard he tried, he could not escape his feelings of sinfulness and inadequacy. He could not accept God’s grace for himself. It took a long time for him to develop a sense of grace that was strong enough to allow him to accept that he truly was loved by God. Today we would probably diagnose him with obsessive-compulsive disorder, and all related to his sense of sinfulness.

Eventually, and none too soon, Christians began to wonder what would happen if we stopped raising children to think that they were worthless, wretched sinners, broken under the condemnation of God’s righteous judgment, and instead raised them to believe that they were loved by God, created in the image of God, gifted by God, and standing in God’s abiding grace. It’s not a new gospel, but it is a distinct change in emphasis. Rather than leading with sin and judgment, we now lead with grace and love.

I think that’s a good change. I don’t want to go back. I’m glad that Christians can build a positive self-image grounded in God’s love. I’m not interested in trying to convince people of their abject worthlessness.

However, there is a trade-off. We no longer drown people in an awareness of their own sinfulness, which is good. But the side-effect is that sometimes we don’t consider our own sinfulness at all. In fact, the very word “sin” has become almost unspeakable. We seem to reserve the word sin for only the most grievous of offenses against God. And even then, we often don’t use the language of sin. Instead we talk about crimes. Sometimes that means that the only time we use the word sin is when we are referring to something that used to be considered sinful but is now regarded as mostly unproblematic. So we might talk about dancing being sinful, or card-playing, or tattoos. That is to say, we sometimes treat the concept of sin as outdated altogether.

But we miss something when we do that. Because even if we don’t usually call them sins, we do still make mistakes. We still miss the mark. We still come up short. We still end up hurting people, sometimes by accident and sometimes on purpose. We still fail to treat others as well as we could. We make mistakes. We miss the mark. That’s all that sin means, anyway, is to miss the mark.

So if we make mistakes, but we don’t call it sin, then what do we do with it? We have a remedy for sin. We have confession and forgiveness. But what do we do with a mistake that we don’t call sin?

For the most part, we have one of two reactions. We either deny that we have made a mistake, or we feel guilty about making a mistake. Sometimes we do both at the same time. It is hard to actually admit to our mistakes, to admit to our weaknesses, to admit to our failings.

In this age, most of us have to not only live our lives, but we have to be the public relations manager of our lives. We have a life in the real world that we experience, but that is ephemeral. But we also have an online, a life that lasts forever, never goes away. And especially for younger people, that online life has to be carefully curated. You have to put the best possible spin on your life. You have to cultivate an image, a brand of yourself. Because that online life is accessible to the whole world, and it never, ever goes away. In a way, it is more real than real life. And Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram don’t forgive. If you don’t want to fall out of favor, then you constantly have to be hiding and erasing the less savory parts of your life. You need to be hiding your mistakes.

Even if that experience doesn’t seem familiar to you, you can recognized the pattern in our celebrities and pubic figures. Admit nothing. Deny anything that looks bad, even if it is clearly the truth.

For most people—for everyone who has a conscience—that double-life carries a heavy emotional and spiritual cost. We are constantly aware of the ways that our whole lives don’t live up to the life that we project to the world. And that hypocrisy and secrecy breed feelings of guilt and anxiety as well as a sense that we are little more than frauds. But there is no solution. There is no clear remedy.

The author of 1 Timothy, who writes in the name of the Apostle Paul, says this: “This saying is reliable and deserves full acceptance: ‘Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners’—and I’m the  biggest sinner of all.” That’s a very different attitude. I’m the biggest sinner of all. Paul spoke against Jesus, he persecuted the church, and he was full of himself. And yet, God took that broken and sinful life, forgave it, and transformed it into the life of the most prolific apostle. He was the first among sinners, and so it was first to him that Christ showed patience and forgiveness.

It’s hard to admit our faults. It’s hard to claim our sins. And yet, Paul demonstrates that doing so is precisely what is most needed. Because it is not in our strength, but in our weakness that God is most manifest. It is not in our triumphs, but in our failures that God is most present. It is not in our obedience, but in our sins that God’s grace, God’s mercy, God’s forgiveness, God’s transformation becomes visible.

It’s good that we no longer preach sin so strongly that everyone feels always like a horrible, unloveable wretch. But in our world, that sometimes means that we have a hard time admitting our own faults, at least admitting them to the world. And so we end up in an inescapable prison of guilt, not sure what to do or where to go.

There is a tremendous power in admitting our wrongs and asking for forgiveness. It’s a counter-cultural thing to do, but there is great power in it. It is the only way that we can truly heal.

The translation we read this morning says, “Christ came into the world to save sinners.” However, it would be just as easy to translate it “Christ came into the world to heal sinners.” To me, that small change makes a bit of a difference. Being saved from sin seems like I just don’t get punished by God. But being healed is more than that. Being healed changes my wellbeing for the better. When I acknowledge my mistakes, when I ask forgiveness for what I have done wrong, when I do what I can to make things right, then there is not only forgiveness, there is also healing and transformation.

And that indeed is why Christ came into the world. Christ came into our human condition, our brokenness, our strife. Christ came into our world to save us, to heal us, to make us whole. Thanks be to God.