Thompson's Blog

Another Teachable Moment

Luke 13:10-17

10 Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. 11 And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. 12 When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” 13 When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. 14 But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.” 15 But the Lord answered him and said, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? 16 And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?” 17 When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.

I think some of you saw the picture on my facebook page of the mattress strapped on the back of my truck as we set out to take Lucas’ large items to his apartment in New York City. Some of you might even have seen the second picture we took after my brother-in-law topped off the mattress with a small rocking chair – which seemed particularly fitting. You could almost hear bluegrass music playing in the background. It’s no small undertaking to deliver a mattress 1250 miles. I’m particularly aware of this because I once lost a mattress as I was driving down a freeway.

It was at the end of my first semester in seminary and I was in the process of moving. The last thing I needed to relocate was a mattress. It was getting late in the day and rain was on its way and I only had some lightweight twine on hand (ok it was kite string, but it was strong kite string). What came to my mind was that image of the small Liliputians keeping the huge Gulliver tied to the ground with many tiny ropes, and I decided to utilize that same concept. I know it’s a fictional story, but the cartoon version of the story looked entirely plausible. I had a small Chevrolet LUV pickup with a camper cover on the back, so I put that mattress on the top of the camper, and I ran that kite string back and forth over the top of it many times.

It was right at dusk as I took off, and it had begun to sprinkle as I got on to the freeway between Durham and Chapel Hill. I was moving at a pretty good pace when this car pulled up beside me and started pointing to the rear. I instantly knew what they meant, and when I looked in my mirror I saw my mattress over on the shoulder of the road. I don’t always make quick decisions, but I don’t even think I slowed down when I saw that the mattress was at least off the road.

That’s what you call a teachable moment. I immediately realized I had made a huge mistake. I should have cut my kite string in to about 25 pieces and tied each piece independently of each other. That’s how the Liliputians did it. Instead, I just went back and forth with the same continuous line about a dozen times and when that line broke in one place the whole system collapsed.

Some would say there’s another lesson I should have learned, and I did. I did not use kite string to tie the mattress on my truck as we struck out on our trip to New York. I’ll see a mattress on the side of the road every once in a while, and when I do I always wonder if someone found that experience to be as instructive as I did.

I hate teachable moments – at least when I’m on the learning end. Of course we all need them, and teachable moments are actually good things. Educators speak of teachable moments as those moments in which a unique, high interest situation arises that lends itself to discussion of a particular topic. Good teachers are always trying to find those special moments when their students might be the most open to understanding a new concept.

There was a high-school math teacher in Queensbury, New York, who was always trying to show the actual relevance of math in life, and he realized he had a very teachable moment when Oreo came out with their Double Stuf Cookies. He had his students measure and compare the amount of white cream filling in a regular Oreo Cookie with the amount of white cream filling in a Double Stuf Cookie, and in the process they unearthed a scandal. They determined that an Oreo Double Stuf Cookie doesn’t have twice as much filling – it only has 1.86 as much white cream filling as a regular Oreo Cookie!

I don’t know if they changed their advertising or their formula, but the results of their findings got reported in the Wall Street Journal and on NPR – which is where I heard it. This turned out to be a teachable moment for those students and for Nabisco. If you are going to claim something you better make sure it’s the truth. We’ve got a lot of fact checkers in the world today and they all have twitter accounts.

Teachable moments are great – and horrible. They are great if you are the teacher, and you see an opportunity to help your students grasp a new concept. They are horrible when you are the one who has come to discover that you only thought you knew what you were doing.

I think what we have in this morning’s scripture is a snapshot of a teachable moment. The very first verse in this morning’s scripture says that Jesus was teaching in the synagogue on the Sabbath, and I’m thinking that one of the reasons God prescribed a Sabbath day for the people of Israel was to enable ongoing learning. God wanted to establish a regular teachable moment in the life the Jewish community. We generally think of the Sabbath day as a day of rest, but it also involved this tradition of coming together for learning. And I think we all do our best learning when we take a step out of what we are doing every other day of the week and to take a good look at ourselves.

If you never stop you never contemplate how you might do things differently or dream of how things can be better. Asking large questions is an exercise that requires some leisure – some stepping out of the work mode. Of course good things almost always turn in to far different creatures than what they were established to be, and this seems to have been the case with the keeping of the Sabbath Day. It had become more of an institutional requirement than a day set apart for spiritual development. It had become so fiercely regulated it probably generated far more distress in people’s lives than it created the opportunity for reflection and rest.

Jesus was trying to teach, but he was probably having a hard time getting people to understand what he was saying until he saw an opportunity to show what he was talking about. When he saw this poor woman who had been crippled for eighteen years he realized he had a teachable moment. By using his power to repair the life of this woman who had been so limited for so long he was able to reveal what it is that God wills for all of us.

The act of healing this woman was not just an act of benevolence for one person – it was an action designed to heal the sickness of the community. And this was a sick community. They didn’t understand what God’s intentions really were. The religious leaders of the day thought God intended for them to simply maintain traditional rules at the expense of human life and dignity. This was a very teachable moment for the leaders and the community. It wasn’t as pleasant for the leader of the synagogue as it was for the people who were hungry for relief from their religious oppressors, but it was good for everyone.  We don’t know if the leader of the synagogue was set free from his crippling teaching, but when Jesus asked him whether he would untie a donkey and lead it to water on a Sabbath I’m guessing he felt the sting of the truth.

The point of this passage isn’t hard to get. It’s a clear portrayal of the way in which religious institutions and religious people can be at odds with the source of their faith. Speaking as an official religious leader I must say that this passage grabs my attention. In fact it sort of grabs me by my religious collar and gives me a shake.

I don’t think I’m a person who is overly legalistic about insignificant matters, nor do I think that’s what our church represents, but we’ve got some religious regulation conflict brewing in our denomination.

I’m guessing most of you know that our denomination is undergoing some significant institutional stress. The battle line is over our policies regarding human sexuality, and it’s very likely that our denominational structure is going to get reshaped within the next few years – and when I say few years I mean 2 to 4 years.

Nobody knows what this means, but it’s hard for anyone to see the way in which we can maintain our current structure. On one side, there are people who are offended by people who blatantly violate the rules within our Book of Discipline. And on the other side there are people who find those rules to be untenable. A commission is currently being established to produce recommendations for how we can move forward.

I don’t say this to create alarm about what’s going to happen, but I think you should be aware of what’s going on. I also think it’s important for all of us to be aware of how we deal with people who have different opinions about what God intends. This passage reminds me that the primary intention of God is to repair our brokenness, and I’m thinking one of the great temptations of our current denominational conflict is to demonize whoever it is that we happen to disagree with. It’s so much easier to establish blame than to seek understanding, and I think this is the case regardless of what you think is right or wrong. I think this same tendency can be seen playing out within our national political situation.

I’m not saying it’s wrong to have opinions about what needs to happen in any giving situation. I even think it’s important for people to engage in the work of advocacy for what you think is right or wrong. It’s good to care about what’s going on in our world and in our community, and in our denomination. And it’s important to work for what you think needs to happen, but none of us should ever be surprised when we end up on the learning end of a teachable moment.

Sometimes we find opportunities and ways to help someone else see some truth that had formerly escaped them, but we all have our blind spots, and it’s always good to get exposed to the truth – even when it lands like a blow to the head.

Fortunately, none of us as individuals are charged with fixing the United Methodist Church, but we are all engaged in our own truth/untruth struggles. We are all called to be advocates for the truth and lovers of God, and I dare say that is a significant challenge for each of us. None of us are always going to get those things right, but God will always provide us with new opportunities to see what’s right. Teachable moments will never stop coming our way, and if we are more interested in being faithful than right, we will continue to grow in our knowledge and love of the One who Jesus Christ so perfectly revealed.

Thanks be to God!

Amen

The Blessing of Discomfort

Luke 12:49-56

12:49 “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! 50 I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! 51 Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! 52 From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; 53 they will be divided: father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.” 54 He also said to the crowds, “When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, ‘It is going to rain’; and so it happens. 55 And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat’; and it happens. 56 You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?

Bear with me on this passage of scripture. This isn’t a particularly comforting passage, but I think I can point out some things that will leave you feeling good about it.

This world is such a strange place. The range of human experience on this planet is just more than I can get my mind around. I’m dumbstruck by the extent to which some people suffer and other people prosper. It seems that there is no limit to the pleasure or the pain that this world can provide, and in some significant ways the pain and the pleasure are doled out in a seemingly random fashion.

I think our inclination is to believe that things will go well for us if we eat right, do right, exercise, and say our prayers, and there certainly is some truth to this, but this isn’t the way it always works. Good people suffer. Selfish people prosper. This seemingly random nature of the way in which our lives are torn or propelled would be incredibly distressing to me if it wasn’t for this odd twist that Jesus so clearly taught and demonstrated. What Jesus revealed and what we know to be true is that some of the most painful things in our lives are the very things that bring us richness.

I think it’s in light of this reality that our scripture lesson this morning makes the most sense.  Jesus was painfully aware of how badly things can go in this world. At this point in his ministry he was on his way to Jerusalem where he anticipated rejection, prosecution, and crucifixion. He also knew how crossed up we can become with the most important people in our lives – even when we are doing exactly what God is calling us to do.

We don’t always end up at odds with our loved ones when we seek to align our lives with the truth of God. Prosperity can be derived from faithful living, and people who engage in devilish behavior often get what they deserve in a timely fashion, but as I say – these results aren’t guaranteed. You can’t be guided through life with simple formulas. This is a complex world, and it’s not unusual for us to suffer in ways that we would never expect. The trials that we face are often more difficult to navigate than we could ever have imagined. We don’t just experience challenges from the people we expect to be opposed to us – our most challenging adversaries can be our friends and family members.

I’m not trying to stir anything up if you are getting along with everyone right now, but Jesus had a clear understanding of what goes on in this world and within our very families, and he didn’t want us to be surprised by the things that come up. He also wanted us to keep an eye on ourselves. I think he wanted us to be aware of the ways in which any of us can become aligned with the wrong things and at odds with the truth.

Jesus was facing some real stress, and he didn’t keep his thoughts to himself. He was about to undergo great suffering and death and that moved him to turn up the heat on his followers. He said he didn’t come to bring peace but to cause division. He said he came with fire and some people were going to get burned, and he wasn’t talking about the afterlife – he knew that the course he was following and advocating was going to generate some extreme interpersonal conflicts in this life. He didn’t take pleasure in the conflict, but he knew that the truth would be very painful for some people to hear.

Jesus didn’t just come to play nice – he came to reveal deception and to expose the truth, and that doesn’t go over so well with people who are in love with distorted images of God and unjust patterns of existence. When Jesus spoke these words he didn’t have much time left, and it generated a new level of clarity to his message. He knew he was about to become the target of some misguided religious zeal, and he didn’t want his followers to be surprised when they found themselves in similar situations.

Jesus clearly didn’t offer us a painless journey, but the pain we encounter in life can be very fruitful. The suffering we experience can very well be the source of our redemption.

I’ve recently become quite a fan of a writer named Richard Rohr. Father Rohr is a Franciscan monk who has written several books on the subject of spiritual development. I find his perspective to be powerfully refreshing and inspirational, and in an essay I recently read he identified the way in which there are two things available to every one of us that provide us with access to union with God. One of those things is love, and the other is suffering. There are no words that can do what love and suffering can do for us. There are no teachers who can provide us more access to truth than love and suffering. Unfortunately, not everyone has easy access to people who touch them with great love, but there’s never any shortage of suffering to go around, and as surely as we can be spiritually transformed by the power of great love – suffering can open that same door.

Of course spiritual development isn’t the only avenue that’s available to us when we suffer. You might say there are two ways to go when you encounter great suffering in life. When you face circumstances that leave you in pain and without any control you can go in one of two directions: you can move in a direction that leaves you bitter and hurtful to others, or you can allow your suffering to soften your heart and to expand your compassion. Richard Rohr doesn’t say that it’s easy for our suffering to lead us in to that place of unity with God and compassion toward other people, but he believes that suffering is truly an avenue to a form of wholeness that you can’t find in any other way.

He also believes that people who have great love in their hearts will experience great suffering – which is what I think Jesus is pointing to in this passage. People who have great love are people who don’t insist on their own ways and who in significant ways relinquish control of their lives. To have great love for other people is to give yourself to others, and such profound giving can be profoundly painful.

I think the inter-familial stress that Jesus spoke of creating is rooted in the way in which he was calling for people to expand their love beyond the boundaries of family life. This is not to say that Jesus didn’t think it was important to love our immediate family members, but it’s not unusual for people’s lives to be defined in very narrow ways by their families. Families can be very restrictive with their love. People rarely fit in to the mold that the family expects, and it can be very disruptive for a person to say no to the life that is expected by their family structure.

There’s a whole school of psycho-therapy built around the way we are affected by our family systems, I won’t inflict my shallow understanding of that upon you this morning, but what I know is that we are always better off seeking to hear the instruction of the Holy Spirit to instruct our lives than we are to simply assume the role that is expected of us by our families. I’m not advocating the abandonment of our families, but I do believe our highest calling is to live in response to the greatest love of all. We are called to live in unity with the family of God.

There are so many stories of the ways in which children had to leave their family in order to do the thing they were called to do. Bruce Springsteen, one of my favorite rock musicians, once said that there were two things unwelcome in his father’s house – him and his guitar. They had a very stormy relationship, and Bruce Springsteen said it was best for the both of them to stay away from each other for an extended period of time.

It can be an act of love to not do what is expected of you in order to step in to that more mysterious relationship with God. And such steps can be very painful, but I heard an interview on the radio last week with a man who spoke of the way in which we are inclined to grow when we are in places of discomfort. This man had left home at an early age and moved to a city where he had to be very resourceful to survive, and he attributed his success as a writer to that decision to step in to a place that was very challenging to him. He considered his discomfort to have been a great teacher to him. As he said, You learn to swim when you experience the discomfort of drowning.

Of course the other option is to drown. Suffering doesn’t always produce a softened heart and a more authentic life, but suffering is always available to us as a teacher. It’s not the teacher that we prefer, and we often take actions that we think will enable us to avoid the harsh lessons that we get when we aren’t able to be in total control of our lives, but none of us are able to keep that severe instructor away forever. And what Jesus wants us to understand is that we can have access to something more satisfying than comfort if we are willing to trust and embrace the love of God.

Jesus didn’t want us to confuse having a comfortable life with having abundant life, and I think he was frustrated with the people who were surrounding him because they seemed to be more concerned with their immediate circumstances than they were of their eternal lives. They were more inclined to predict the weather than they were watching for what God was doing in their midst.

Jesus was worked up because he doesn’t want us to be content with the comforts of this world and to ignore the joy of abiding in God’s kingdom. Jesus wants our attention, and I believe the more attention we give to what he taught and how he lived the more likely we will go down that road that leads to unity with God and compassion for our neighbors.

The truth is that none of us really have to go out of our way to encounter discomfort and suffering. You don’t have to leave the house in order to find it. It finds us, and it’s important for us to know how to handle it. Suffering doesn’t come to us as a cheerful companion, but it can guide us to a happy place. God is with us in our times of trial and by the grace of God we can be transformed by our difficulties and brought in to greater unity with God and our neighbors.

The journey Jesus made to Jerusalem wasn’t easy, but by doing what he did he revealed to us the true picture of God’s enduring love. The image of Jesus on the cross isn’t a pretty picture, but it’s the most powerfully transforming picture we will ever have. It’s a perfect portrayal of both love and suffering.

This is a confusing world. It’s hard to know what to think of much of what goes on in this world, but there’s one thing that doesn’t change, and that is the nearness of God to us when we encounter our times of trial. Thanks be to God for this enduring truth, and regardless of what may be swirling around us or within us there is this ongoing opportunity to find our way in to the calm of God’s eternal love. Thanks be to God.

Amen.

Unconventional Wisdom

Luke 12:13-21

12:13 Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” 14 But he said to him, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” 15 And he said to them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” 16 Then he told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. 17 And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ 18 Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19 And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ 20 But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ 21 So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

One of the wisest things Jesus demonstrated on more than one occasion was the importance of not getting drawn in to the middle of a family conflict. Jesus was fearless in the face of armed and malicious adversaries, but he was very careful when it came to getting enmeshed in a family squabble. He refused to get enlisted by Martha to shame Mary in to helping with the dishes, and here we see him bolting from the request of a man who wanted him to resolve a family property issue. Those situations can get ugly fast. Jesus preferred to deal with people who actually hated him than to get between a couple of brothers or sisters.

So if you have a problem with one of your family members don’t go looking for Jesus to help you get what you want – you’re better off getting a lawyer. Jesus isn’t going to touch it.

But Jesus did have a few things to say about how we are to deal with abundance. And what he had to say can be pretty challenging to us. This is one of those passages that serves to remind me of how difficult it is to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. Because what Jesus taught doesn’t conform to the way we generally think. Jesus was not what we would call a successful financial planner. Jesus was a perfect spiritual director, and he was wise about material things, but what he taught takes us in a far different direction than the one we would choose if our only interest is in accumulating financial wealth.

But it’s not a simple problem. We don’t just get to decide if we love God or money and consequently go in one direction or the other. As we all know, life is much more complex than that. Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, was virtually homeless and he didn’t have any dependents. This is not to say that his teachings on money aren’t relevant to our lives, but it is to say that our relationship with money is more complicated than his was. If you don’t have to pay rent or a mortgage and provide for the needs of children you don’t have to worry as much about money.

The church I served before coming here hosted a breakfast each Sunday morning for anyone who needed a free meal. It had some other food ministries as well, but that event was a powerful part of my Sunday morning experience. I would go down each Sunday and visit with the servers and the attenders of that meal. I became acquainted with a man who I knew as Mr. Irvin, and I often invited him to say our blessing before the meal. Mr. Irvin was a very devout Christian. He spent most days in the public library reading and studying the Bible.

Mr. Irvin came to Little Rock from New Orleans when he became displaced by Hurricane Katrina, and he had been homeless for a couple of years, but he told me that the move had been a blessing for him. Mr. Irvin was homeless, but he wasn’t desperate. He had figured out how to live on the streets of Little Rock. He didn’t like sleeping in the shelters. He had slept in a vacant boxcar for a while, but he said he usually stayed in a parking garage. He generally wore clean clothes, and he told me it’s not that hard to find clothes or decent food. He generally looked very well kept, and when I asked him where he kept his stuff he responded by saying, In my pockets.

Mr. Irvin had what I would call a very vibrant relationship with God, but he didn’t have a lifestyle than many of us can relate to. He had lost contact with his family, but from what I could tell he wasn’t very unhappy about that. I consider Mr. Irvin to have been a person with a good heart and a rich spiritual life, but there aren’t many of us who can keep all of our stuff in our pockets, and I don’t think Jesus expected us to live like that.

I think the thing I learned from Mr. Irvin was that desperation is something that we can either overcome or be afflicted with regardless of the level of our wealth. I certainly encountered a lot of desperate people who came to that Sunday morning breakfast, and I never could have had enough money to solve some of their problems. I also believe there are some wealthy people who are tormented by their need for more of something that their riches are unable to meet.

Balancing our need for money with our need to be dependent upon God is one of the great challenges of life for those of us who have the good fortune to have well-paying jobs, nice homes, children and grandchildren. Where exactly do we draw the line between providing for ourselves and our families in a world that’s increasingly expensive and being rich toward God?

There are preachers who can give you an exact figure. In fact I’ve been instructed in more than one workshop that we are to be enthusiastic advocates of the tithe. There are people who think God has instructed us to provide the church with 10% of our incomes. I’ve never heard God declare if that’s before or after taxes. In fact I’ve never heard God be so clear about the number. Certainly there are some verses in the Old Testament that talk about bringing the first fruits to the Temple, but I’ll never be convinced that Jesus wants us to give an exact figure of any kind.

What I hear Jesus say is that we are to give our whole selves to God. We aren’t to give a slice of ourselves and a correspondingly similar percentage of our income. I believe that in a profound way we are to give ourselves entirely to God – to be ridiculously generous toward God. And at the same time we are to manage our assets in a way that we provide for the needs of those to whom we are responsible.

I may be wrong about this. In all honesty I may be so compromised by the assets I have at my disposal that I’m providing us all with justification for not reducing ourselves to the most moderate level of existence possible and being an absolutist about giving 10% — before taxes. But I don’t believe Jesus was legalistic in this or any other way. I think Jesus understood that this is a challenge for us. Jesus didn’t give an exact instruction on what we are to do. He told us we are to love God and we are to love our neighbor, and I assure you this does mean we are to be generous, but we’ve got to figure out what it means to not be as spiritually foolish as was this man in our text this morning.

It’s not easy for us to embrace the unconventional financial wisdom of Jesus. We are challenged by Jesus to do be wiser than this man who couldn’t think of anything to do with his good fortune than to create more financial security for himself. I believe what this story primarily exposes is the foolishness we are inclined to practice if we don’t make an effort to hear the alternative wisdom of God. This man only seemed to have consulted his own store of wisdom, and he hadn’t bothered to store up much of that. He didn’t give thanks to God for his bountiful harvest, he didn’t seek guidance from God on what he should do with his abundance – he only: … thought to himself, what should I do …

He didn’t think long or hard about what he should do. He did what many people might have done – he did the thing that was most advantageous to his selfish soul, and he went on to congratulate his soul for providing himself with such an ample supply of grain. A supply of grain that was of no use to him when his life came to a sudden end.

It may be that the real curse of money is the way in which it can deaden our imagination. It’s not that money is evil, but if we aren’t careful it can become the thing that rules us.

There’s a very tragic movie that came out a few years ago called: Into The Wild. It’s the true story of a young man who had become very disillusioned with life, and he disappeared from his family and friends. Following college he took the money his family had set aside for him to attend law school, and he gave it away to a charitable organization that sought to eliminate hunger in the world. He set out for Alaska, but before he did he drove into the desert, abandoned his car, and burned his credit cards as well as the remaining dollars he had on him.

He was both disturbed and noble. He worked a few different jobs as he made his way to Alaska, and after he worked at one job for a while he built up a bit of an account. It would have gotten him pretty far along in his journey, but he ended up giving a big chunk of it away to a new friend. In a letter he wrote that accompanied the gift he said, Life is more exciting when I don’t have any money.

And there’s certainly some truth to this. Part of the problem with an abundance of money is that it can be very dulling to our wits. If you can afford to buy whatever you want you don’t have to be very resourceful or creative. An abundance of money can put distance between people and it can put distance between ourselves and God. It’s not the only thing that can get between ourselves and other people and God, but it’s not uncommon for it to get in the way. Unfortunately the lack of money didn’t resolve the problems of the young man in the film. He remained very isolated and his isolation contributed to his untimely death.

Gaining more money doesn’t generally solve our most pressing problems, but getting rid of it won’t automatically fix things either.

Certainly greed is a terrible obstacle to our spiritual development, but there isn’t a good formula for eliminating that spiritual obstacle. Greed can afflict someone without enough money as well as someone with too much. Our only hope is to seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit in our lives, and to be diligent in our efforts to love God and our neighbors more than anything else.

People who nurture love in their hearts for God and for their neighbors aren’t just going to consult themselves on issues of money. Money can cause any of us to do foolish things, but it’s power over us diminishes when we work to allow the unconventional wisdom of God to replace those automatic plans that pop in to our heads when money rules our lives.

Money isn’t an easy thing for any of us handle. It’s probably one of the most universally challenging things we have to deal with. It can be used to do a lot of good for ourselves and for others, but it can lead us down some foolish paths. We all need help as we seek to navigate those dangerous waters of wealth and want, and there is help.

Thanks be to God that we aren’t alone in this treacherous journey, and by the grace of God we will find ways to use what we have to bring joy into our hearts, peace into the world, and glory to God.

Amen.

The Language of Prayer

Luke 11:1-13

1 He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” 2 He said to them, “When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. 3 Give us each day our daily bread. 4 And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial.” 5 And he said to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; 6 for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.’ 7 And he answers from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.’ 8 I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs. 9 “So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. 10 For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. 11 Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? 12 Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? 13 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

A preacher appears at the pearly gates. He knocks on the door and is greeted by St. Peter in a cordial manner, but he’s told to take a seat in the reception area, and that there would be a short wait before he could see the Lord. While he’s waiting, he hears a knock at the door, and when St. Peter opens the door he sees St. Peter give this guy a big hug and he ushers him straight into the mansion. The preacher is a bit put off by the situation, and he can’t help but say something to St. Peter. He points out to St. Peter that he had spent his entire life doing his best to preach the gospel, and he doesn’t understand why the other guy was welcomed with so much more enthusiasm. St. Peter assures him his good work has been acknowledged and that he has a room in the big house, but he points out that his preaching had a tendency to put people to sleep, while that New York City taxi driver had consistently moved his riders to pray with great urgency and sincerity!

The necessity and the mystery of prayer – that’s what we’re thinking about this morning. The disciples themselves weren’t entirely clear about the practice of prayer, and that’s what moved them to ask Jesus about it. What they asked is sort of amusing to me. They seem to be feeling a little deprived. Apparently John the Baptist had instructed his disciples on how to pray, and they wanted Jesus to do the same for the them. We don’t know what John was teaching his disciples about prayer, but Jesus responded to their request in a clear but brief manner.

He gave them a straight answer, and he included an illustration to emphasize God’s interest in relating to us, but Jesus isn’t very instructional. I wish they had come back at him with a few follow up questions. Does it matter how we sit? Does it matter where we face? How long? How often?

Jesus offered some basic instruction about how we are to direct our hearts, but he didn’t get specific about the technique of prayer.

On another occasion he told his disciples not to pray like the guys who made great productions of their prayers, but Jesus didn’t really elaborate on how we should practice prayer. Jesus responded to this request for instruction by telling his disciples what they should desire. He didn’t talk about prayer as if it is a skill to be acquired. Jesus spoke of prayer as if it is a language that we are to learn. It’s as if prayer is the language that proceeds from our hearts, and he provided us with instruction on what it is that our hearts should be saying.

This is difficult business if you ask me. It’s not that hard for me to control what comes out of my mouth, but it’s not so easy for me to direct the impulses of my heart. Of course Jesus didn’t preface his answer by saying that it was easy. Jesus just gave them an answer, and then he gave an illustration of how important it is to be persistent in prayer – which is probably a way of saying that it takes a lifetime to learn to pray.

This is not to say that there isn’t some practical advice in the instruction that Jesus provided. The brief way in which Jesus said to address God is probably in contrast to the elaborate way that devout Jews of the day were taught to address God. In that day there was a prayer called The Prayer of Eighteen Petitions, which devout Jews were instructed to pray three times a day and it began with the phrase:

Blessed are You, O Lord our God and God of our fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, the

great, mighty and revered God, the Most High God who bestows

loving kindnesses, the creator of all things, who remembers the good deeds of the patriarchs and in love will bring a redeemer to their children’s children for his name’s sake. O king, helper, savior and shield.

Now that’s a beautiful phrase, and it’s one that devout Jews continue to pray three times a day, but you might say Jesus was eliminating a few layers between us and God when he instructed his disciples to just say Father.

This “Prayer of Eighteen Petitions” not only uses many words to address God, it uses many words to address every circumstance that humans find themselves in. It certainly was a sign of devotion for people to recite the prayer a couple of times each day, but Jesus was doing something significant when he taught his disciples a prayer that you can just about say with one breath. I’ve moaned a little bit about the lack of specifics Jesus provided in regard to technique, but it’s very clear to me that in a significant way Jesus was trying to eliminate the burden of many words when he gave this instruction in regard to prayer.

The prayer that Jesus taught condensed many words into a few essential phrases. What we have in our scripture today is an abbreviated form of what we call and recite as the Lord’s Prayer. It’s even a bit different from what we find in the Gospel of Matthew, but there aren’t significant differences. What we have here is the most condensed form of the prayer that Jesus taught, and here is what he seems to be saying that we should train our hearts to express:

When we say:

Father, hallowed be thy name: We are to think of God as being more intimate than exalted. God wants to be loved more than revered.

When we say:

Thy kingdom come: We are to have reverence for God and desire for God’s order to be established on earth. It’s God’s kingdom that we should pursue and we need to be careful not to confuse our own selfish pursuits with God’s kingdom.

When we say:

Give us each day our daily bread: It’s not unreasonable for us to desire the necessities of life, but we don’t need to be overly concerned with laying up treasures on earth.

When we say:

And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us: We make mistakes, and we do harm to others, but by acknowledging our mistakes we can be forgiven. We also must learn to practice forgiveness toward those who have caused us harm or have somehow become costly to us.

When we say:

And do not bring us to the time of trial: It’s not unreasonable for us to seek deliverance from those things that cause us trouble or do us harm. And it’s important for us to avoid putting ourselves in positions that cause harm to our bodies, minds, or souls.

I love the way in which Jesus condensed the essentials, and what we have here is what Jesus considered to be the critical issues of life. It is as if Jesus was saying that these are the desires that should fill our hearts and be reflected in our lives.

It’s a simple prayer, but it’s not so easy to train our hearts. There are some substantial and fundamental obstacles to this heart-training business, but I’m not without hope because we aren’t without help.

God is there for all of us, and God can do for us what we can’t do for ourselves. God wants to open doors for us and fill our hearts with redeeming desires.

I’m wishing Jesus had given us some kind of special technique for accessing the wisdom and power of God to transform our lives and repair our wounds, but there isn’t any kind of secret prayer sauce. Jesus didn’t reveal any kind of hidden code, but he did tell us what we need to do if we want to live in communion with God, and it’s very simple. He told us to pray with persistence.

It’s not complicated. If we want to gain access to the riches of God we need to spend time opening our hearts to God. This is not to say that there’s some kind of formula for getting what we want from God. Jesus didn’t include that clause in the prayer that he taught. He didn’t say we should ask God to grant us whatever we want. He told us to love God. He told us to seek sustenance. He told us to ask for forgiveness and to forgive others, he told us to pray for deliverance from the time of trial, and he told us to be unrelenting in this exercise of prayer.

I don’t believe God grants us whatever we want if we are persistent in our petitioning of God, but I believe our efforts to pray are always rewarded by God. Knock, and the door shall be opened – what’s behind that door is likely to be different from what you want or expect, but it will be good. I believe the more we make ourselves available to God the more in tune we become to the will of God. I believe the blessing of prayer is the blessing of becoming closer to God.

In some ways I don’t think we can keep ourselves from praying. As someone once said, As long as there are math tests there will be prayer in school,! But there’s a way of praying that’s much more fruitful than sporadic outbursts of immediate needs. Jesus sought to give focus to our time of prayer. Jesus wanted us to learn the language of spiritual growth. He wanted us to learn what to seek for ourselves and for others. He didn’t teach us magic words, but he pointed us in the direction of life, and the more we align our lives with those words the more we become aligned with God.

The good news is that we aren’t alone in this world. We have a God who cares for us more than a loving parent. God isn’t as easy to touch as a living parent, but the love of God remains when those we love the most pass away. This is a hard world, and none of us are immune from the pain of live. Jesus never said we would avoid suffering if we would follow him, but what he offered can sustain us in those times of great pain and loss. In fact it’s in such times that the love of God can become the most evident.

God speaks a language that is more mysterious than we can ever fully learn, but the more we get quiet and seek to hear those loving words the more we are able to discern what God is saying. God has a profoundly good message for all of us, and by the grace of God we will get quiet enough to hear it.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

Unitasking

Luke 10:38-42

38 Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. 39 She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying. 40 But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.” 41 But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; 42 there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”

I’m not sure when the concept of multitasking became a common way for us to describe the way many of us are inclined to behave, but I think it has become a familiar concept. We’ve sort of accepted it as a legitimate form of behavior, but is it possible to watch a movie, send and receive texts, do homework or office work, and shop online at the same time? It used to be that you had to be in one spot to watch a movie, you had to have a pen and some paper to write a message to someone, and you had to get in the car to go shopping, but that is not the case anymore. You can watch a movie, communicate with friends, and order anything in the world without getting off the sofa. Luckily, the combination of texting and driving is becoming as taboo as drinking and driving, but we do a lot of device manipulation while we’re driving, and I’m as guilty as anyone else when it comes to multitasking.

If my wife didn’t stand up and shout amen, it’s a testimony to her incredible personal restraint. She’s not as convinced of my ability to do two or three other things as I drive as I’m inclined to be, and I think this may be the one area where she’s right.

I think there’s probably a lot of mythology about multi-tasking. I read one person describe the phenomena of multitasking as less of an ability to take care of several things at once, and more of an exercise in giving partial attention to several different things. Multitasking isn’t a form of extra-efficient behavior. Multitasking is the practice of providing continuous partial attention.

And while our amazing new electronic devices have opened up tremendous new opportunities for multitasking, the truth is that it’s always been possible to provide partial attention to a variety of different things. You haven’t always been able to watch videos of grandchildren during slow sermons, but it’s always been possible to split our attention between what we want to be doing and what we aught to be doing.

This is not to say that there aren’t some good reasons to do more than one thing at a time. I can tell you that the parsonage yard is much more likely to get mowed on a regular basis because I can listen to a book while I’m riding a mower and operating a weed-eater. Multitasking has made some tasks much more bearable, but one thing I have learned is that I can’t think and listen at the same time. If I’m engaged in any kind of activity that requires me to figure something out – I have to hit the pause button on my book. If I’m listening to my book I can’t add or subtract, and if I find myself thinking about what I’m doing I lose track of what’s going on in my book. I can only listen to a book when I’m engaged in some kind of mindless activity, and there is evidence that I spend a lot of time engaged in mindless tasks. There is no telling how many hours of listening I’ve engaged in over the past few years.

I’m pretty sure my brain pretty much does one thing at a time, but it can jump from one thing to the next with remarkable agility. My attention level can be pretty shallow, and I don’t think I’m alone in this way. In fact this is clearly an old problem. What we see so well illustrated in this story from Luke is this problem of being distracted by many things – of being overly focused on the wrong things and oblivious to the most important thing.

This is what Jesus identifies as Martha’s main problem. Martha was a multi-tasker – she was trying to be a good host, and she was probably trying to listen to what Jesus was saying, but she was primarily thinking about how irresponsible her sister was being. And she built up enough righteous indignation about what she thought her sister should be doing that she actually tried to enlist Jesus to join her in her criticism of her sister. I guess this story is a perfect portrayal of the way we can be so wrong about what is most important. And it serves to remind me of how wrong we can be about what we think other people aught to be doing.

Last week’s story of the Good Samaritan emphasized the need for us to spring into action at the right moment. This week’s story reveals the importance of knowing when it’s time to sit down and do nothing but pay attention. This business of following Christ is tricky. Sometimes we need to take action. Sometimes we need to stop and listen. We probably don’t ever need to insist that our siblings behave in a particular way.

I don’t know about you, but it’s much easier for me to identify with Martha than with Mary. I’m much more familiar with the problem of being distracted by many things than I am with the joy of engaging in the one needful thing. I’m not so much like Martha in that I get worked up about what the other people who are close to me aught to be doing – I’m usually too confused about what I should be doing to be overly clear about what anyone else needs to do. But I share in Martha’s tendency to be distracted from what’s most important. I rarely have the clarity she had for what her sister should be doing, but I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out how I should spend my time and energy, and this usually turns in to some form of multitasking – of giving continuous partial attention to many different things.

One of the joys of that bicycle ride I made to the east coast two years ago was the opportunity to be single-minded for an extended period of time. For twelve days I didn’t have to think about doing anything other than how I was going to get myself from one spot to the next. My job was to keep my body operating, to stay on the right road, and to watch for cars. It wasn’t perpetually joyful – there was a little misery and tedium, but it was so nice to step out of my multi-tasking routine. I didn’t have to check email or answer the phone if it wasn’t someone I wanted to talk to. I had these automatic responses that said I was out of pocket for a period of time and I would get back to them when I returned.

I felt so released from all the different things to which I gave partial attention, and I was focused on one thing. It wasn’t exactly the one needful thing that Jesus talked about, but it was a spiritually enriching experience. I wish I could say I came back from that trip with an entirely new way of approaching life. I wish I could say it put me in touch with perfect focus on that one needful thing, but it didn’t fix me. Maybe I’m a little better. Maybe I only give continuous partial attention to 25 things instead of 50 things, but Jesus invites us to keep our focus on the one needful thing.

I think this story is far more challenging to all of us than the story of the Good Samaritan. In fact, I’m thinking many of us are pretty good at the Good Samaritan thing. We United Methodists are good at being good neighbors. I dare say we United Methodists are as good as anyone when it comes to being good neighbors. We take care of people. When somebody is in trouble we’re pretty good at stepping in and doing what needs to be done. I’m proud of our neighborly reputation, and I don’t want to belittle the value of what we do to help other people, but in some ways it’s easier to be a good neighbor than it is to be a Mary.

This thing Mary did was amazing.

Of course we don’t really know what Mary did. It appears that she really wasn’t doing anything, but Jesus said: she was doing the one needful thing. What is it that Mary was doing?

What Mary was doing is more mysterious than what the Good Samaritan did. What Mary was doing is something less tangible than reaching out to someone in need. What Mary was doing takes equal courage and commitment, but it takes more sensitivity to the presence of God. What Mary did was to override the expectations of her sister, and of her society, and of her peers, and to do what God was calling her to do. Her primary focus was on the expectation of God, and Jesus could see that in her. He could see that she was doing the one needful thing.

It’s hard to say how we can train ourselves to be more sensitive to the presence of God, but it’s not so hard to see how it is that we desensitize ourselves to God’s presence in this world. It’s easy for me to believe that the umpteen things that we fill our days pursuing serve to keep us oblivious to the one thing that could actually satisfy us.

This is not to say that we are hopelessly lost or that our time and place is particularly out of sorts with God. The one needful thing was as illusive to Martha as it is to us. It’s always been hard for people to see through the clutter of their day to the genuine presence of the Holy Spirit, but we do have our challenges. The easy thing is not to be focused on the one needful thing. The easy thing is to maintain partial focus on many different things – including the presence of God in our lives. It’s easy to give God a little bit of attention and to think this is good enough.

And it is good enough if you want to live like Martha – who was someone that Jesus seems to have appreciated on some level. But Martha didn’t really get Jesus. She was so clueless she thought Jesus would join with her in getting Mary to leave what she was doing. Martha wasn’t a bad person, but she wasn’t able to see what Mary could see, and she wasn’t focused on the most important thing.

As I say, I don’t know how we can train ourselves to see what Mary could see and do what Mary knew to do, but I do believe we can become more conscious of how we use our time and to what we give our attention. I don’t believe it’s helpful for us to maintain continuous attention to many different things. I think that probably serves to keep our hearts and minds trained to be distracted.

I also believe God seeks to get our attention. I believe God is present in this world in a way that jumps out at us every now and then, and if we aren’t so distracted those experiences can touch us in compelling ways. There isn’t one way of living that’s necessary. God isn’t calling us to either be quiet or busy. What I believe is that if we are focused on the claim of God on our lives it doesn’t matter if we live as secluded monks or fast-paced executives. I believe if we are focused on the one needful thing we can carry that in to whatever it is that we do in life.

It’s not that there is only one way to live, but there is only one needful thing, and our challenge is to maintain continuous full attention on the source of true life. Our challenge is not to become better multi-taskers. Our challenge is to become committed unitaskers – people who are able to see and embrace that one needful thing.

We can, and by the grace of God we will!

Amen

Touched By A Neighbor

Luke 10:25-37

10:25 Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 26 He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” 27 He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” 28 And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.” 29 But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” 30 Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. 31 Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. 32 So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. 34 He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. 35 The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.’ 36 Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” 37 He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

A Jewish Rabbi went to get his hair cut one day and when he stood up to pay for the haircut the barber said, No, you are a man of God and this is my contribution to your good work. When the barber got to work the next morning there was a bag of fresh bagels at the door and a note from the rabbi expressing his gratitude for the nice haircut the man had given him. Later that day a Catholic priest droped by for a haircut and once again, when the priest went to pay the barber said, No, you are a man of God and this is my contribution to your ministry. When the barber arrived for work the next morning there were a dozen warm donuts at his door and a note from the priest thanking him for the fine haircut. Later that day a United Methodist minister dropped in for a haircut, and once again, when he went to pay the barber said, No, you are doing God’s work and this is my contribution to your ministry. So, when the barber showed up for work the next morning there were a dozen United Methodist ministers waiting for him to arrive.

I apologize if I’ve told that joke here before. It’s my favorite preacher joke. I’m sure you could substitute a lot of other denominations and professions with the United Methodist minister, but there’s a lot of truth to this suggestion that we United Methodist ministers are highly sensitive to financial matters.

Being a cheapskate isn’t the worst form of in-hospitality, but I think this morning’s lesson focuses our attention on the importance of being extra-hospitable. This passage of scripture isn’t hard to understand, but it may be one of the most difficult lessons to actually follow. What this passage reveals is how Jesus saw no justification for treating anyone with anything less than total respect and compassion. Who is our neighbor? Everyone! There isn’t anything complex about this passage of scripture. In fact what it reveals is how empty our excuses are when we operate with anything less than authentic concern for those we encounter who are in need. And it’s a particularly Godly thing to reach out in concern and service to someone who is outside of our comfortable social circle.

The contrast between the inaction of the religious men who should have reached out to the man who was in need and the action of the man who was the least likely to behave with compassion is unforgettable. The message in this story is clear. If you want to be in touch with the abundant life that God offers we have to live with compassion and understanding toward those we have been trained to distrust and disregard.

In light of the events of this last week I don’t guess there’s a more important message for any of us to hear. What we seem to have seen last week are examples of people acting on their instincts of prejudice and dehumanization, and it’s easy to use those events as opportunities to reinforce our own prejudices and our inclinations to dehumanize members of other ethnic communites. This is a critical story for us to hear because it reminds us of how holy it is to disrupt our divisive traditions. This is not a time for any of us to increase our defensiveness toward people who are somehow other than ourselves – this is a time for us to find new ways to eliminate barriers that traditionally divide us. This may be some of the hardest work anyone ever does, but it’s probably the most important work we ever do. Our calling is to see the humanity of people that our society has trained us to see as others.

After my father died, my sister and I were cleaning out this space he used as his office, and we came across a group of letters in one of the drawers of his desk that were addressed to my grandfather. There were five letters from four different German men who had been prisoners of war at a camp that had been set up in Wynne. I guess there were a number of POW camps set up within the United States during WWII. We actually haven’t been able to read one of them because it’s written in German, but the other letters reveal an appreciation for the kindness and generosity of my grandfather as well as an appeal for him to help them. The letters were written after the war had ended and the men were back in Germany and living under very harsh conditions.

I’m going to read one of the letters to you because I think it represents the spirit of neighborliness that Jesus sought to generate. I’m not saying my grandfather was a champion of human rights and unprejudiced thinking in every way, but I was touched by the way in which he treated an official enemy with some basic humanity. (But here’s a short disclaimer – this letter was written during a time when the sharing of cigarettes was considered to be a symbol of hospitality and not the nasty avenue to all kinds of cancer and death that we now understand them to be – so children, please keep in mind that I am in no way advocating the use of tobacco!)

March 12, 1948

Dear Mr. Murray!

When you get this letter you will be much surprise and don’t know of whom it is. Though I introduce again at first. Once I was a prisoner of war and lived at the camp in Wynne for about a years time. The last two months of my staying in Wynne I worked for you, sometimes in your big garden for picking strawberries or cleaning the field of your farm and sometimes working by your pond where the ox frogs quacked with their dry voices. Yes I remember very well too this things when you brought us Coca Cola and other refreshments and food for dinner. And still today I hear your words saying we have done a good days work. I am the blonde fellow who worked together with Hans Keindle, the only fellow who spoke English, if you remember. The last work we have done for you was to build the weekend house on the hill near the spring. But in the meantime a lot of years have gone. And I think you cannot remember to me.

When we left America we thought we would sail to Germany. No, in the contrary, we were unloaded in Liverpool.  There I stayed for another 19 months and in January of this year I was discharged after a long time as a prisoner. Now I am in Germany and at home. I haven’t had a good life as a prisoner, but when I saw the conditions in Germany where I live, I would like to go back to America at once. Because it is no life here it is a starvation. Maybe you don’t believe the story I tell you, but it is true and if it doesn’t change nobody knows what and when the end is and how it looks. There is nothing to buy and less than nothing to eat. When I came from England I had no suit and no shoes to find just the battle dress I wore on my body. The things I had before the war were taken. The time I lived in Wynne we didn’t get a lot to eat at the camp. But everyday I worked for you you brought us a good meal sometimes made by your wife and cigarettes.  You always had a nice word or a joke for us and we could be laughing once again and you helped us over some bad hours of our prisoner life.

But now I am no prisoner and all the same and I ask you for a favor. I told you the present conditions and I think you will help me now too. I will be very glad and thankful to you if you could send us something. I use everything because I have nothing. Mainly food, cigarettes, tobacco, clothes or other things you would like to send. If you can disperse with anything I would never forget it.

Please excuse my bad English, but I am just a beginner. I hope you can read my writing. With the kindest regards and with best wishes for you and your wife.

Yours,

Werner Lohr

I’m really proud to read you this letter. It makes me feel like my grandfather was able to see beyond the false boundaries created by nations and see neighbors, but primarily what this letter does is remind me how God endlessly provides us with opportunities to step out of ordinary life and to touch eternal life.

Every time we come face to face with a person who is struggling in life we are presented with an opportunity to find eternal life. This is what the lawyer wanted to know from Jesus – how do we find eternal life? And to answer that question Jesus told him this unforgettable story.

These are challenging times for us. It’s hard not to live with deep distrust of people who we are inclined to think are different from ourselves, and certainly there are always people who behave in ways that reinforce our preconceived notions of those we consider to be other than ourselves, but Jesus calls us to disrupt those traditional ways of thinking and acting.

This is hard to do. I don’t think we are called to simply provide for every need that we ever come across. I certainly don’t do that and I don’t expect anyone else to behave in that way, but we must be forever sensitive to the needs of others and to the opportunities that other people provide for us to live as the kind of neighbor that Jesus described.

It’s not easy to live as a neighbor in a world that trains us to be faithful to our own particular interest groups, but that is what Jesus calls us to do if we seek the gift of eternal life. Jesus calls for us to exceed the level of hospitality that our peers might expect and to show the kind of hospitality that disrupts the world and pleases God.

It’s not easy, but the Lord knows we need to, and by the grace of God we will! Thanks be to God.

Amen.

Equipped With Christ

Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

10:1 After this the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. 2 He said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. 3 Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. 4 Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road. 5 Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house!’ 6 And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you. 7 Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the laborer deserves to be paid. Do not move about from house to house. 8 Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; 9 cure the sick who are there, and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ 10 But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, 11 ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.’ 16 “Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.” 17 The seventy returned with joy, saying, “Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!” 18 He said to them, “I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning. 19 See, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing will hurt you. 20 Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”

There’s an interesting contrast between the nature of this morning’s teaching and the spirit of the national holiday we will be celebrating tomorrow. While our original declaration of independence was an exercise in striking out on our own without all of the resources we needed to make it as a nation, what we have become is arguably the most powerful nation on earth. We certainly aren’t totally independent, we cooperate with many other nations to get what we need to function, and we have the means to get what we need. We have our vulnerabilities, but we aren’t what you would call a vulnerable nation. We don’t rule the world, but we are autonomous, and we like it that way. You might say we exited from Europe a long time ago, and we haven’t looked back.

That was a good thing that we did. Independence has worked out well for us as a nation, but Jesus doesn’t want us to forget the importance of dependence. It seems to me that the instruction Jesus gave to this group of followers we are looking at this morning was that they were to set out in an intentionally dependent manner. So welcome to church, it’s the place where our natural instincts are perpetually challenged by the One we call our Lord and savior.

Jesus told this group of followers to go out with less than they needed for conventional safety or sustenance, but they weren’t going out without anything. In fact, what they had was incredibly valuable and powerful, but not in an obvious way. These original missionaries set out without anything but a message, and they engaged in some life-altering-world-changing work!

Now as a guy who now drives a four-wheel drive truck with a well-stocked tool box in the back, I am clearly someone who understands the value of being well-equipped. I don’t leave the house without a hat to protect my head, and I’m much more inclined to wear boots than sandals – even in the summertime. I like to feel protected and equipped, and while this is somewhat sensible on my part, it isn’t the strategy Jesus was using when he sent the seventy out to share the good news that they had experienced through Christ. He sent his people out with less than they needed.

I’m not apologetic for liking to be well equipped. It can be a useful thing for me and people around me, but I recognize that my affection for feeling prepared can get in the way of something Jesus wanted us to understand. It isn’t that he didn’t want his followers to be useful, or that he wants us to be needy, but he wants us all to understand that God’s power works in unconventional ways. We gain access to the healing power of God when we are the most vulnerable. The power of God was revealed when people accepted each other without the expectation of conventional payment or reward. The power of God is revealed when people treat one another in genuinely hospitable ways.

Jesus didn’t send his followers out with the guarantee that they would be well received. He anticipated that there would be villages who didn’t want to hear what they had to say, but Jesus sent people out with the best opportunity for a powerful relationship to develop. This instruction to go out without the means to support themselves didn’t insure success, but it did assure that there would be interaction and that people would hear what Jesus had to offer.

In those days, Jesus was not a name that impressed everyone, so Jesus prepared the disciples for the fact that his name wouldn’t open every door that they approached, but his name was all that they were to rely upon.  Jesus was a name that had great power, but the power of his name wasn’t obvious to everyone.  The name of Jesus would mean nothing to people who were oriented around the more visible forms of power, but to people who were open to this new message about the living God the name of Jesus was a life-altering gift.

This story is actually pretty intimidating to me. I’ve never returned from a missionary venture with the joy of having healed diseases and cast out demons with nothing but the use of Jesus’ name.  This is beyond the realm of my experience. But I don’t think we are to compare our results with their results.  Jesus didn’t get excited about their accomplishments — Jesus was happy about their willingness to get involved in the sharing of the good news of God’s love and nearness.  We aren’t judged by the result of our work.  The important thing is for us to do what we can to share what we know to be true about Jesus.

This story caused me to think about the people who attracted me to the church, and what it was about them that made me want to be a part of the church.  I’m sure that my attraction to the church began at a very early age, and it came through a number of different relationships I had with people who extended the grace of Christ in significant ways.

But one of the earliest influences on me was the pastor of our church when I was very young. Brother John McCormick died a few years ago, but there are a lot of people who could tell you of vivid experiences they had with Bro. McCormick – and most of them would be positive. As I say, I was very young when he was the pastor in Wynne, so I don’t remember a thing that he ever said in a sermon, but

I do remember how he made me feel when I was around him.  He acted as if it was the greatest thing in the world for me to be in the

church. He would say things to me that made me feel noticed and welcome.  There was a graciousness within him that spoke to my young heart.

I was probably ten years old when he left Wynne, and I didn’t see him much after that, but I spent a memorable evening with him many years later. It happened while I was on my first big bicycle adventure. During the summer after my sophomore year in college I rode from Wynne to Fayetteville and back. I didn’t communicate with anyone in advance of my trip, but I sort of planned my route through places where I thought I knew people. I had decided I would stay in Harrison on the third night as I made my way to Fayetteville, and I had hoped to stay in the home of a friend that I had made at the Wesley Foundation in Fayetteville.

I hadn’t bothered to get her number in advance, and I found no trace of her family’s name in the phone book when I got there. It was late in the day, and I was feeling pretty unsettled about where I was going to stay that night. I really was a lot like one of the guys Jesus sent out without everything they needed, and I can testify that it moves you to reach out to people in ways you wouldn’t normally exercise. As I sat in the Harrison town square with darkness approaching I was racking my brain for people I might know in Harrison I suddenly remembered hearing my parents talk about Bro. McCormick being the pastor of a church in Harrison, and it wasn’t hard to find his number.

Bro. McCormick wasn’t someone I had seen him in a long time, but I called him, and fortunately he acted like he remembered who I was. It certainly wasn’t a call he was expecting to get, and he was pretty surprised by the situation, but the Queen of England wouldn’t have been treated with more hospitality than I was that night.

After I became a pastor I would see him at Annual Conference, and every time I saw him he would recall in great detail how much food I ate that night. That evening wasn’t miraculous in any way, but it served to remind me of how good it is be to be in this community that we call the church.

The church is a community that is founded upon radical dependence and hospitality. Our calling and our instruction is to offer the peace of Christ to anyone that we have the opportunity to get involved with.  Grand miracles don’t happen all the time, but it is always a redeeming thing when people are motivated by the love of Jesus to be gracious and open to each other.  I don’t guess I’ve ever seen Satan falling from the sky like lightening, but it’s something I might see if I spent more time being vulnerable and open to people who are battling with devilish problems in their lives.

What I do know is that there’s hardly anything that feels better than to make connections with other people that’s rooted in this formula of extending and/or receiving the hospitality of Jesus Christ.

I think most of us prefer to be in the role of providing for the needs of others, but in order to fully appreciate the nature of God’s power as it was revealed in Jesus I think it’s important to be the one who is in need every now and then. We Americans love our independence, but as followers of Christ we need to have an equal amount of love for dependence. Jesus doesn’t want us to have an overabundance of trust in our trucks and our tools and our amazing communication devices. Jesus knows what we primarily need to have is deep trust in the power of God. Such trust doesn’t guarantee that we will always be well fed and highly regarded, but it does provide us with the kind of hospitality that extends beyond this time and place.

Jesus has invited us to become citizens of a community that extends beyond the borders of our nation. We are very fortunate to live in a place that enjoys as much independence as we do, but we don’t need to place an overabundant amount of trust in the basic stability of our political situation. Our primary allegiance needs to be with the kingdom that Jesus Christ so beautifully revealed. The church isn’t the perfect embodiment of that eternal kingdom, but sometimes we get it right, and we are always called to keep trying. We are to continue this work of stepping out with nothing but trust in the name of Christ and of extending the hospitality of Christ in new and gracious ways.

Jesus knew he would never change the world with a conventionally equipped army. He sent his troops out with nothing but trust in the power of his name, and the revolution he began continues to change the shape of this world and the state of our hearts.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

Our Heavenly Home Companion

Luke 9:51-62

9:51 When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. 52 And he sent messengers ahead of him. On their way they entered a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him; 53 but they did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem. 54 When his disciples James and John saw it, they said, “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” 55 But he turned and rebuked them. 56 Then they went on to another village. 57 As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” 58 And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” 59 To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” 60 But Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” 61 Another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” 62 Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

This is not a particularly endearing passage of scripture that we’re looking at this morning. These aren’t the words people generally choose to read at weddings, funerals, or other significant moments in life. These words are sort of low on comfort and assurance, and frankly speaking, they aren’t particularly inspirational – but they aren’t insignificant. These words don’t stir great emotion or remind us of how glorious it is to be a follower of Jesus Christ, but they express something we need to know. These words reveal what it’s like to be a follower of Jesus Christ on a hot and dusty summer day as you leave a village where you were not well received. It’s not a pretty picture, but it reveals something critical about who Jesus was and who we are to be.

The tone of this passage somehow reminds me of that iconic radio show, A Prairie Home Companion. You may or may not be familiar with the show, but it’s been around for the 42 years. It’s the brainchild of Garrison Keillor. He’s the host of the live show that weaves together comedy and music in a manner that is largely unduplicated. Garrison Keillor incorporates clever banter with the musicians, comedy skits full of exaggerated sound effects, advertisements for their fictional sponsors, and a weekly update on the news from Lake Wobegon – which is the fictional homeplace of Garrison Keillor. A place where the women are strong, the men are good looking, and the children are all well above average.

Like the scene in today’s scripture, Lake Wobegon is not a glamorous place, but it’s a place where people go about the daily business of life. He talks a lot about the local Lutheran Church, where Pastor Liz deals with the ups and downs of her mediocre congregation. You’ve got Darlene the waitress at the Chatterbox Café, who is largely satisfied with her job. You’ve got a number of different individuals and couples who are generally of Scandinavian descent who deal with the various trials of life in both wise and foolish ways.

I’m not a committed listener to the show, but I’ve been listening to it off and on for the last 30 years. It’s a lot like a soap opera in the sense that you don’t have to listen to the show every week to understand what’s going on in Lake Wobegon. You can miss a year or two and still know what’s going on. This show has gotten some attention lately because the last episode with Garrison Keillor as the host will be aired next Saturday night. It’s on a lot of public radion stations, but its not on KASU. I’m sure you can find it on the internet if you are so inclined. I’m not saying it’s something you should do, but I’ve always loved the way Garrison Keillor can create an atmosphere and a situation with his voice. It amazing the way he has generated this fictional location and shared with us the various personalities that populate it and how they’ve navigated the various dilemmas they face. You might say he gets in to the listener’s head in order to let you know what’s in the head of his various characters.

Garrison Keillor functions as the guide to this fictional town set somewhere on the prairie of Minnesotta. As the name of the show indicates, it’s our prairie home companion. And what he does in this show helps me understand what it is that Jesus does for us. Just as Garrison Keillor enables us to understand and to be amused by the things that go on in Lake Wobegon. I believe Jesus did what he did and said what he said to enable us to understand and abide in the Kingdom of God. You might say that Jesus is our heavenly home companion. Jesus wants to get in to our heads and enable us to understand how things operate in the Kingdom of God.

In the news from Lake Wobegon I’m often amused by the difference between what a normal person would do and what one of the residents of that town has chosen to do, and I think there’s a similar gap between what a normal person would do in life and what Jesus would have us do. The residents of Lake Wobegon aren’t normal, and neither are people who are guided by the the ethics of heaven.

A normal person suggests to Jesus that he use his extraordinary power to rain down fire on the residents of the town that treated them in a less than hospitable manner. And Jesus rebuked that kind of normal thinking. Our heavenly home companion wants us to live our lives in a new and more loving way than what is normally expected.

Others came to him with what they considered to be high ideals and big plans, but Jesus didn’t respond to them with open arms, and that’s actually sort of shocking to me. I’m a person who generally likes to both receive and extend what we might call southern hospitality, and that’s not what came from Jesus.

Regardless of what somebody thinks of me and my ideas I like for them to act like they impressed and I that’s how I usually treat other people. But that’s not the way Jesus operated. Jesus didn’t just want people to treat him like he was a nice guy, and he didn’t just want to be thought of as a nice person. Jesus wanted people to understand what the Kingdom of God was all about, and he didn’t want anyone to be mistaken about what it takes to abide in the Kingdom of God.

Jesus didn’t just want to be nice. Jesus wanted to get in to our minds and our hearts and to enable us to see what was in his heart and mind, and as I say – it’s different in there! The Kingdom of God doesn’t operate in a normal manner. You don’t just make slight adjustments in order to abide in the Kingdom of God – you approach life in a completely new way.

This passage reveals the stark contrast between the way we normally operate and the way we operate when we understand the heart and mind of Jesus. Jesus had some tough words for all of the people who approached him in this particular passage. He rebuked the disciples for wanting to rain down fire on their cultural and religious rivals. He dampened the enthusiasm of the man who said he would follow him wherever he went by saying that he was more homeless than a fox or a bird, and Jesus was un-accommodating to the men who said they wanted to follow him as soon as they attended to their familial obligations.

These aren’t easy words for me to hear, but I think they are good words for us all to hear. We don’t need to think that it’s as easy as we want it to be. What Jesus had to say is shocking to our systems, and sometimes our systems need to be shocked.

That being said, I really don’t think Jesus has a problem with people who love and care for their families. In this day in which there are way too many children raised in homes without loving and attentive parents I don’t the proper take-away from this text is to think that we don’t need to concern ourselves with the demands of family life. Jesus wasn’t making a blanket statement about the unimportance of family relationships. I think Jesus might well tell aspiring followers today to go home and take care of the people you love who need some attention. I don’t believe Jesus was an advocate of disregard for family ties, but he said what he said to the people who approached him in order to reveal the absolute reorientation we all need in order to abide in the Kingdom of God.

Jesus didn’t want people to continue to be defined by the role they played in their very traditional family situations. And he didn’t want people to follow him with the expectation that they were going to gain great positions in the new administration that he was going to establish in Jerusalem. I believe Jesus was short with these people who approached him because he didn’t think they understood who he was and what he was about. He didn’t let people down easy, and he did that because he didn’t want people to think it would be easy to go with him.

Jesus didn’t make it easy to follow him, but that’s not to say he doesn’t want us to follow him. Jesus wants us to get close, but he also wants us to understand that it requires conversion – it requires us to change our normal ways of thinking. It doesn’t mean that we are to quit thinking, but Jesus wants us to think about life in a new way. He wants us to approach all of our relationships in new ways and to allow our hearts and minds to be guided by a heavenly way of thinking.

These aren’t easy words for us to hear, but they are good words. Jesus was challenging to people because he believed that we can change and become more heavenly oriented. Jesus was challenging to the people who came to him with their normal minds and concerns, but he didn’t tell them to go away. Jesus wasn’t necessarily nice to them, but sometimes the loving thing to do is to challenge our normal ways of behaving and thinking.

Jesus is our heavenly home companion, and like any good guide, he isn’t just wanting to give us good instruction – he’s wanting us to internalize his approach to life. He’s not just wanting us to cheer him on – he’s wanting us to be like him. Even on hot dusty days when things aren’t going exactly the way we want them to be.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

The Etiquette of Christ

Luke 7:36 – 8:3

7:36 One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee’s house and took his place at the table. 37 And a woman in the city, who was a sinner, having learned that he was eating in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster jar of ointment. 38 She stood behind him at his feet, weeping, and began to bathe his feet with her tears and to dry them with her hair. Then she continued kissing his feet and anointing them with the ointment. 39 Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw it, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what kind of woman this is who is touching him–that she is a sinner.” 40 Jesus spoke up and said to him, “Simon, I have something to say to you.” “Teacher,” he replied, “Speak.” 41 “A certain creditor had two debtors; one owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. 42 When they could not pay, he canceled the debts for both of them. Now which of them will love him more?” 43 Simon answered, “I suppose the one for whom he canceled the greater debt.” And Jesus said to him, “You have judged rightly.” 44 Then turning toward the woman, he said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. 45 You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not stopped kissing my feet. 46 You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. 47 Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.” 48 Then he said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.” 49 But those who were at the table with him began to say among themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?” 50 And he said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” 8:1 Soon afterwards he went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. The twelve were with him, 2 as well as some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, 3 and Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their resources.

I’m reminded of a story that Mark Twain once told about how he was able to recover from lumbago. I didn’t bother to google lumbago to understand what kind of medical condition it is – or if it actually is a medical condition. For my purposes it doesn’t matter. Mark Twain claimed that he once had it and it confined him to bed for days.

The doctor came to see him and said that he couldn’t help him unless he would moderate his consumption of coffee, tobacco, and alcohol. Mark Twain said he couldn’t moderate it, but he said he would cut it out for a few days, and he did. He said he didn’t consume anything other than water for two days and he got better. The lumbago left him, and with a powerful sense of thanksgiving he took to all of his delicacies once again.

Not long after that he encountered a woman who wasn’t feeling very well. She felt run down and no amount of medicine was giving her any relief. Having recently experienced his own remarkable recovery he said he knew how to help her. The woman was greatly encouraged by his words, and she said she would do anything he said if it would enable her to feel better, so he told her if she would stop swearing, drinking, and smoking for four days she would feel like new.

She said she couldn’t do that because she had never done any of those things. Upon hearing that, Mark Twain declared that there was no hope for her. He didn’t know how to help someone that had neglected their habits.

Mark Twain probably wasn’t a Methodist. I wish we could claim him, but 19^th Century Methodists were sort of known for their moderation. But I think he could have been a United Methodist – gratefully the church has become a bit more tolerant of people who don’t neglect their habits.

The practice of religion is funny business. I think it brings out the best and the worst in people. In fact what we see in this dinner party at Simon the Pharisee’s house a perfect example of the best and the worst of religion. You might say that Jesus was the very embodiment of the best of religion. Jesus was religious, and he practiced his religious faith by being loving and forgiving. And because he practiced his religion so beautifully other people experienced forgiveness and transformation.

I’m guessing many of you have heard someone say that they are spiritual but not religious. I used to hear people claim that as a reason for not going to church, but I don’t hear that as much as I used to because most people don’t go to church anymore. You don’t need an excuse to stay away from church – it’s become normal. Now I’ve never challenged anyone who used their spirituality as a reason for not being involved in a church, but it seems to me that the greatest spiritual leaders always come out of religious traditions. Certainly you don’t need to be involved in an organized religious community to be a God-loving and gracious person, but I don’t believe religious practice and spiritual development are hostile to each other. Jesus was a practicing Jew. His involvement in that flawed community didn’t get in the way of his perfect love for God and the world.

Of course religious communities are never perfect, and some people do a good job of embodying those imperfections. I’m thinking that Simon the Pharisee is a perfect example of the unfortunate way in which some people practice their religion. They aren’t motivated by their faith to reach out in loving ways to their neighbors but they are moved to become harsh critics of the failures of others. The practice of religion moves some people to become intolerant and judgmental. Religion can become an avenue to arrogance and it can lead some people to think they are far better than other people.

We’ve certainly got some terrible examples in the world today of the way in which a decent religion can become twisted in to something grotesquely hateful. (I wrote and preached this sermon prior to my knowledge of the hate inspired shooting in Orlando. I’m not exactly sure how I might have adjusted my words, but I didn’t know of the horrible act prior to preaching this sermon. I’m sure I would have had something additional to say about that.) I’m not well versed in the Muslim religion, but I do not believe that the people who are motivated to engage in horrible acts of terrorism in the name of Muhammad are being true to what he taught. I believe the true followers of Muhammad are as offended by those acts of terrorism as the rest of us. In fact they are probably more outraged by the way their faith has been hijacked and distorted by some of their twisted leaders.

I don’t know enough to say much more than that, but my understanding is that the focus of that religion is upon obedience to the one loving God of us all. I’m sure there are some verses in the Koran that some people seize upon to justify their hateful behavior, but Jews and Christians have done the same thing. As I say, religion can bring out the best or the worst in us, and this text that we are looking at today is telling us to take note of this possibility. It’s so easy to go down that ugly road of self-righteous religiosity.

I’m mindful of what transpired one Sunday after church when I sat down to dinner with my parents. I was home from college one weekend and I was at the peak of my understanding of ultimate truth. We had gone to church that morning, and in my opinion we had heard a ridiculous sermon. I knew my mother was no fan of that preacher’s rhetoric, so I was able to get her going on his obvious shortcomings. I’m sure none of you have ever engaged in that kind of conversation, but I have been known to go down that road. It was particularly easy for me to go there when I was younger and knew everything. So my mother and I were having a pretty good time highlighting the emptiness of the morning’s sermon, and I asked my father what he thought of the sermon. My father said, You know, when I go to church I think of it as a time when I can be quiet and not have to answer the phone or do anything. He said, I can sit there and think about whatever it is I want to think about and that’s what I do. If I don’t care to hear what the preacher’s saying I think about something else.

My mother and I didn’t think he was very much fun at that point, but that was a great thing for me to hear. My father didn’t let the preacher get in the way of the practice of his religion, and that’s probably the secret to being a good United Methodist.

It’s an amazing thing that we haven’t completely destroyed the truth that has come to us from our ancient spiritual and religious ancestors. This is a testimony to the resilience of the truth because it has been passed through a few hundred generations of faulty vessels. I dare say the truth has been challenged in every religious generation, but every generation has seen the truth revealed as well. Certainly the conflict between the truth of God and the lesser agendas of self-deceived leaders was in full display on the night that Jesus went to dinner at the home of Simon the Pharisee.

Our inability to contain the truth was embodied by the man who professed to know the truth, but our ability to carry the truth was revealed by the woman who wasn’t invited to dinner, but who came anyway – bearing an alabaster jar of costly ointment that she was determined to share with Jesus. She wasn’t qualified to be the one who knew the truth, but she understood something that the religious professionals had overlooked. She wasn’t just the bearer of a precious ointment, she was the bearer of the most valuable thing we ever encounter – the redeeming truth of God. She was the bearer of truth and the recipient of grace. She was healed, and through her we are reminded of what God’s love really looks like.

In some ways, our practice of religion is a lot like the rules of etiquette. We don’t really know why many of our rules exist, but you can bet that they are rooted in some kind of practical expression. Rules of etiquette help us get along nicely with each other, but we don’t refuse to let people eat if they don’t know how to hold a fork properly. The practice of religion is at it’s best when it helps us get in touch with the love of the living God. It’s at it’s worst when we use it to justify our rejection of people who don’t meet our expectations of righteousness.

The Pharisees weren’t necessarily evil men, in fact they were usually highly disciplined individuals who were doing their best to abide by all of the religious regulations that had developed over the centuries, but as Mark Twain would say, there was no hope for them. They had neglected their habits – they were blind to their own frailties and failures and it cost them their compassion.

It’s not a bad thing to practice proper etiquette, but we need to take our lessons on etiquette from Christ – the one who understood how to practice his religion in a way that redeemed people and not rejected them.

One of the saddest stories I ever heard was from a man who lived for many years as an alcoholic. He had a terrible pattern of behavior, and he hated the way he lived, but he couldn’t shake it for a long time. He said he often wanted to pray to God for help, but he said he was afraid to pray because he didn’t want God to know where he was. He had grown up in a church that had given him an image of God that was intolerant of any kind of misbehavior, and he thought his only hope was to keep hidden from God.

I’m happy to say it wasn’t a United Methodist Church that had given him such an image, but it isn’t unusual even in a United Methodist Church for people to believe that God loves us more when we look right.  The truth is that God loves us, period.

Jesus Christ didn’t abide by the proper etiquette of his day. If he had, he wouldn’t have let that woman touch him. Jesus wasn’t bound by propriety, he had a clear understanding of the unbounded love of God, and he felt free to share the love of God with people who had been told that they didn’t qualify for a relationship with God.

This passage ends with a description of the band of people who traveled about with Jesus as he shared the Good News. Included in that group were women who had been healed of several diseases, Mary Magdalene who was known for having seven demons driven out, and one was the wife of an officer in Herod’s army. These were not the kind of people that would have been welcome at Simon the Pharisee’s house, but these were the people who Jesus trusted the most to assist him in the divine work of transforming hearts. These were the kind of people with whom there was hope.

The truth is there’s hope for us all – even those who have neglected our habits. Thanks be to God.

Amen!

The Intersection of Life & Death

Luke 7:11-17

11 Soon afterwards he went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went with him. 12 As he approached the gate of the town, a man who had died was being carried out. He was his mother’s only son, and she was a widow; and with her was a large crowd from the town. 13 When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to her, “Do not weep.” 14 Then he came forward and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, “Young man, I say to you, rise!” 15 The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. 16 Fear seized all of them; and they glorified God, saying, “A great prophet has risen among us!” and “God has looked favorably on his people!” 17 This word about him spread throughout Judea and all the surrounding country.

It’s important to take note of the movement that’s going on in this passage. We’re told that Jesus and the crowd that was accompanying him was moving toward the city as this funeral procession was coming out of the city. One group was moving toward the place where people lived and the other group was moving away from that place. One group was filled with great expectations – the other group was agonizing over the loss of possibility. Life was moving in one direction. Death was moving in the other. And when they met a miracle occurred and life prevailed.

What took place on that road was a powerful portrayal of the life-giving power of Jesus, but as we all know, you just don’t run in to the miraculous power of Jesus every time you leave the house. Clearly the events of this story were extraordinary, and they raise our expectation level of what Jesus is able to do, but we need to glean the right message from this story. It’s important for us to keep in mind that Jesus didn’t bring back to life every only son of every grieving widow, but there’s something we can learn about Jesus from this story, and there’s some hope for us all to be found in this story.

I wish I could say this passage provides us with a clear formula for the way to experience miraculous healing and restoration of life when we are in the midst of devastating illness and loss. I wish I knew where to tell you to go in order to gain access to the miraculous touch of Jesus, but it’s not so simple. As we all know, inexplicably painful things happen and relief is usually slow in coming. I’m not saying there isn’t such a thing as instantaneous restoration. Life is much more complex and surprising than I know to describe, and miraculous things continue to happen, but unfortunately they don’t happen on demand.

In some ways it’s sort of frustrating to read how someone’s pain was instantaneously removed. It’s hard not to want that kind of relief for ourselves or the people we know who are living with deep pain, but that’s not what generally happens, and that’s not the message we should extract from this story.

I think one of the important messages for us to gain from this story is the importance of not counting on Jesus to fix all of our problems. When you hear what Jesus did for someone it’s hard not to want that for ourselves, but Jesus never was one to perform a miracle on demand. I think this story of what happened as he came near to the city of Nain stands in stark contrast to the story of what happened when he returned to his hometown of Nazareth. We don’t know much about Nain, and that’s probably the most significant thing about the place. It was unknown. Unlike the residents of Nazareth, the people of Nain had no idea who Jesus was or what to expect from him.

Jesus didn’t respond well to people who expected to be granted the favor of God – Jesus was the most responsive to nameless people who had no expectation for relief. This is not to say that those of us who love Jesus and seek his grace are disqualified from receiving his attention, but the healing grace of Jesus is not something we should ever expect to receive – it always comes as a gift.

Jesus was guided by nothing but compassion, and this is a good lesson for us all to remember. Not only was the man who perfectly embodied the love of God motivated by compassion – he revealed how powerful compassion can be, and this is good news for us all. Compassion is always powerful medicine, and sometimes it changes everything!

One of the podcasts that I will occasionally listen to is a show called Snap Judgement. It’s a show that highlights stories that involve life-altering events or decisions. One of the most memorable stories I’ve heard on that show was told by a woman who’s life was altered by the arrival of an injured cat. She shared the story of how her son was brought to life in a significant way by their experience with this stray cat.

This story was told by a woman who never intended to have a cat because her mother was a nut about cats. She said her mother kept nearly 30 cats in their house when she was a child and she felt like her mother cared more about her cats than she did her children. So when this woman got out of her mother’s house she never wanted a cat.

But she had a baby, and this baby was troubled. He was a miserable baby and he couldn’t bear to be touched. He never smiled and he would never even look at her. She said the only time she could caress him was when he was in a deep sleep. He never spoke, and at some point the doctors diagnosed him as having a form of autism. That was good information, but it didn’t help in regard to communicating with him. It was a hard situation, but she came to accept George for who he was and she dealt with it the best she could.

She spoke to him all of the time, but he never spoke to her until he was 7 years old and this injured cat came in to their yard. She told George that they needed to help the cat, and as she was reaching down to get this bloody cat George said, “Baboo”. And he just kept saying it. “Baboo, baboo”. This woman called her mother and other family members to come over, and they did because they couldn’t believe that George was saying anything. They thought maybe she had lost her mind, but they were all amazed at what they saw and heard.

George and his mother nursed the cat back to health, and that cat became George’s first and constant playmate, who he named Ben. He would speak to the cat and he would tell his mother what the cat wanted. And of course the mother would give them whatever they wanted just to hear her son speak.

One day George noticed the cat rubbing up against his mother’s legs and he asked why he did that. She told him that that was how cats showed affection to their mothers, and George began doing the same thing to his mother. That was the first affection George ever gave to his mother. On another day George told his mother that they wanted a trampoline and she said Ben the cat would get on the trampoline along with George, and that was the first time she ever heard her son laugh.

There is more to this story, and it’s documented in a book called The Cat Who Came Back For Christmas. As the mother told her story there was no mention of Jesus, but I think this story is very connected to the healing power of Jesus because this story illustrates the power of compassion. The first obvious act of compassion came from the mother and her son toward the poor bloody cat, but that act was connected to the years of love that the mother had shown toward her troubled son, and it was an act that opened up so many other opportunities for them all to show their love for each other. That simple act of caring for the cat woke something up within George, and the way in which he learned to interact with the cat and his mother was nothing short of a miracle.

Sacrificial love doesn’t always produce documentable miracles, but I do believe acts of compassion always touch people in healing ways. The exercise of self-giving love doesn’t always change things immediately, but I believe that such love always pays off in profoundly good ways. I think it’s worth noting that this child was 7 years old before this cat came in to their yard and transformed their lives. But George’s mother had been deeply caring for her child for years and she had been agonizing over the deathly condition that seemed to hold him hostage. Miracles are rarely quick to arrive.

There was a retired man in my previous church who was the unpaid superintendent of the building. That building was in perpetual need of repair and I was always amazed at what Karl was willing and able to do to keep it operational. He was also known for his sayings, and one of the things I heard him say more than once was that he could take care of hard things quickly, but miracles take a while. Miracles do take a while. Most of us are still waiting for one.

But it helps to know that things can and do change. I don’t believe any of us need to sit around hoping for a miracle to drop in our laps, but I believe there is this possibility of encountering life-restoring experiences in our own lives. It’s rarely automatic – they usually happen while we’ve been on painful paths for longer than we think we can bear, but that’s where we generally encounter the saving grace of God. Sometimes they occur when we are too devastated to take another step, but as long as we can I believe it’s important for us to do what we can to help ourselves and to help others.

Jesus encountered the grieving woman on the road. She was devastated, but she was doing what she needed to do, and that’s what we all must continue to do as well as we can. It helps to believe that things can change. If you don’t believe that anything can change you aren’t inclined to do anything that will bring about any kind of change.

It also helps to trust in Jesus. Jesus doesn’t provide us with any kind of magic potion. At least he’s never provided me with any of it, but one of the messages I get from this story is that good things happened to people who encountered Jesus. The woman who was on the road toward the grave of her son had no idea who Jesus was – she wasn’t looking for him, but she very fortunately encountered him, and that changed everything for her. We might not have the good fortune of serendipitously running in to Jesus on the road, but we have the good fortune of knowing who he was and what he offered, and this is a great gift for us.

What we know is that we have a God who loves us so much that we are never removed from the possibility of new life on earth or the promise of more abundant life beyond this small planet. What Jesus did by restoring life to the son of the woman who had lost everyone who was most important to her was to reveal the desire of God to provide all of us with hope.

The circumstances of life can become unbearably hard. It’s not unusual for our troubles to multiply and our hope to wane. It’s not unusual for us not to get what we think we need when we think we need to have it, but the message in today’s story is to trust that we do have a God who hears our cries.

It’s a horrible thing to be on the painful road away from the place where life is known to happen, but that’s the very place where we may very well encounter the life-restoring touch of our living God. You can’t expect it to happen when you want it to happen or predict how it will happen, but you can trust that God will provide a way for it to happen. We may never fully understand the extent of God’s love for us as we go about our lives in this world, but one day we will all be at the intersection of death and life, and that is where we will fully encounter and celebrate the power that Jesus Christ has over the empty grip of death.

Thanks be to God! Amen