Thompson's Blog

The View From Above

Luke 21:5-19

5 When some were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, he said, 6 “As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.” 7 They asked him, “Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the sign that this is about to take place?” 8 And he said, “Beware that you are not led astray; for many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and, ‘The time is near!’ Do not go after them. 9 “When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for these things must take place first, but the end will not follow immediately.” 10 Then he said to them, “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; 11 there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven. 12 “But before all this occurs, they will arrest you and persecute you; they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name. 13 This will give you an opportunity to testify. 14 So make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance; 15 for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict. 16 You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, by relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to death. 17 You will be hated by all because of my name. 18 But not a hair of your head will perish. 19 By your endurance you will gain your souls.

When I read a passage of scripture like this it helps me understand why churches aren’t exactly packed with people. This passage isn’t a pretty picture! Jesus overhears his disciples talking about how beautiful the temple was, and it prompted him to explain how utterly it was going to be destroyed. And then he told them to expect all kinds of wars and natural disasters, but before all that took place he said his followers would be arrested and rejected by friends and relatives and some would be killed, but not to worry. Jesus didn’t see such things as terrible tragedies – he saw such occasions as opportunities for people to gain their souls. I’m not saying that people don’t have any interest in getting in touch with their souls, but Jesus doesn’t offer an easy path to that glorious reward.

Jesus isn’t in the business of helping us avoid our worst nightmares – Jesus just wants us to navigate those hard times in ways that will nourish our souls. Don’t worry about the economy or the national debt or global warming or your job or the people who hate you or even your own life. Just pay attention to the state of your soul and you will be fine. This isn’t a message that’s easy to sell to your average American, but it’s not a bad message for us to hear.

I guess we had an election last week, and on some level I think it was a referendum on what we value in our nation. Actually I think most Americans value similar things, but we had an opportunity to choose the people we think can best obtain those things we value. And our presidential election felt a whole lot like a Rorschach Inkblot test to me. That’s the test where they hold up these random and obscure inkblot formed images and you have to decide what it looks like. Some people can look at an inkblot and see an angel in the clouds while someone else can look at that same image and see a vampire bat with blood dripping from it’s fangs. Of course we had actual human images to ponder, and we were given about a year and half to study the images, but last Tuesday we had to say who looked like the right person to occupy what we tend to think of as the most significant position in the world.

I’m describing last week’s presidential election as a Rorschach test because it’s pretty amazing how vastly different those two candidates were viewed by the American people. More people in the right electoral states saw Donald Trump as the person who is best suited for the job, but as we all know that’s not the feeling his image elicited in everyone. We Americans saw amazingly different things when we looked at these two candidates, and that’s what makes last week’s election feel so much like some kind of a psychological experiment.

I don’t want to engage in too much pseudo-psychology about why we as a nation underwent last week. I’m just saying I think it’s pretty interesting that average Americans can look at the same people and come away with such different feelings about them. These two candidates evoked powerfully different reactions, and I think we can all testify to the psychological drama that it’s put us through.

So some people have come to feel like the world has been put back on course, and some of us are feeling like we’ve been knocked off our foundation. Yes, I was one of those who thought Hillary looked like the person for the job. Probably not much of a surprise to anyone. I didn’t feel like it was my place to be very revealing about my political leanings from the pulpit, but I don’t see much harm now in owning up to being a secret member of the pantsuit nation. In fact I can’t help but bring this up because I feel profoundly affected by the election. In all honesty, election night put me in a deep sense of political despair. And I’m still feeling some pain about it all, but that isn’t such a bad thing for me. The experience of losing something that felt very precious to me has put me in touch with the amazingly comforting message of this passage of scripture.

I don’t want to be melodramatic about the situation, but the election of Donald Trump left me feeling like some of the beautiful stones of the temple were starting to fall. I’m sure some of you had the opposite feeling last Tuesday night. Clearly for many Americans, Tuesday night was a great night and a turn of events that reveals great promise for our nation, but that’s not how it left me feeling, and I was in a terrible state of mind until I was reminded by these words from Jesus that I should never allow the events of this world to knock me off my spiritual foundation.

Now please don’t hear me saying that I think either of these presidential candidates rise to the level of a savior or an anti-christ. I don’t believe we are perched on the edge of the apocalypse or that Hillary’s election would have fixed everything, but I think we all know that these two candidates represent remarkably different agendas and frankly speaking Donald Trump scares me on some level. He may govern beautifully, but I’m not confident that he will. I’m still very anxious about the situation, but what I hear Jesus saying is that I really don’t have to worry about that. What I need to worry about is the condition of my soul, and the state of my soul should never be jeopardized by what’s going on in the world.

This is an incredible oversimplification of the situation. We all know it’s impossible not to worry about current events, and anyone who isn’t affected by what’s going on in their house, or their neighborhood, or our nation, or the world is probably out of their mind, but Jesus is offering some nice perspective in this passage of scripture. And what I hear Jesus saying is that regardless of what’s swirling around us we must always remember to protect the most valuable thing we have been given. As Christians, we are to be more concerned about our souls than anything else.

Of course it’s impossible to live as perfect spiritual beings. We are physical as well, and I don’t know how anyone can live without having some concern for these powerful forces and events that occur in our lives, but it’s so helpful to remember what our lives look like from God’s perspective. The question isn’t what’s going on, but how we are responding to those things that are going on. God doesn’t care what the Temple looks like – God cares about the soul that abides in the temple that each of us represent, and how well life is being preserved within those temples. This isn’t to say we shouldn’t care about our neighbors and our world, but we should go about our work of caring for one another with profound trust in the benevolence of God.

What I’m hearing Jesus say in this passage of scripture is that the condition of our souls is not something that’s under the control of anyone other than ourselves and our God. The president of the United States can’t save or destroy this most precious thing that is within each of us. Difficult circumstances can jeopardize our souls. We can allow hard times to harden our souls, but that is not what will happen if we will trust in these gracious words of Jesus.

And what I hear Jesus saying is that when hard times happen, our souls can actually become more anchored in the source of true life.

I asked Andrea if the choir could do the song: Precious Lord, because it’s a song that was born out of tragedy. It was written by Thomas Dorsey, who was an African American musician and songwriter in the early 1900s. As a young man he had a career as a house musician in some of the great nightclubs in Chicago. But he gravitated toward gospel music, and he is actually known as the Father of Gospel music as we know it. But this grand title didn’t come easy.

Many people didn’t like the way he turned the rhythms of nightlife in to songs for Sunday morning. He was slow to be accepted in to many churches, but it slowly caught on, and he was helping with a large revival in St. Louis when he got a telegram that his wife had died in childbirth. They were living in Chicago, and he immediately went home. She had given birth to a son, but then the child died the next day, and as you can imagine this threw him in to a deep despair.

He was inconsolable for an extended period of time, and he could hardly bring himself to play any music, but as he was sitting near a piano at a friend’s house one day he found the tune and the words to this song, Precious Lord, playing over and over in his mind, and it became the avenue for his recovery as well as a source of tremendous comfort for many others who’ve had to deal with great pain or loss.

The good news of Jesus Christ is that the most essential aspect of our lives is not under the control of anything that transpires on earth. The most essential thing is the condition of our soul and that isn’t something that can be improved or destroyed by a president, a natural disaster, an enemy, or a friend. Yes, terrible things happen. Calamity and humiliation land on the heads of good people. Chaos and violence are rampant in this world. The truth is masked in profound ways, and death touches all of us. In many ways it appears that God has nothing to do with the way this world operates, but in fact God is present to us in all of the moments of our lives.

We probably aren’t as inclined to look to God when things are going well for us, and that’s probably a mistake on our part, but we make up for it when things go badly. God doesn’t generally resolve our problems for us, but I believe God does provide what we need to endure the difficulties that this world presents to us, and the way God does this is a beautiful thing.

God is involved in our world and in our lives, but God doesn’t move us in or out of harm’s way. What God does is to provide our spiritual lives with sufficient grace to flourish regardless of what our worldly selves are having to endure.

A soul is a mysterious thing. You can’t go on the internet and find a credible diagram of one, but Jesus considered it to be the most essential part of who we are. And he wanted us to understand that the most trying times on the surface of life can be the most fertile times for our souls.

I think we’ve all heard someone say that the things that don’t kill you will make you stronger. I don’t know that’s always true. Sometimes terrible experiences simply leave people wounded on deeper levels, but our message today is that God is with us in our trials, and God always provides a way for our souls to thrive – even if our bodies don’t survive.

I don’t want to romanticize suffering. And speaking as a person who is currently experiencing the pain of political defeat I can testify that it’s not a desirable position to be in. Nobody likes to lose, but I can also say that I find a certain sweetness in these words of Jesus that I’ve never really tasted before. His words remind me, that the only real disaster in life occurs when we fail to watch out for that eternal element that God has placed within each of us.

It’s a precious thing to have a soul. And our precious Lord provides us with the grace we need to keep it alive at all times and under every circumstance. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Some Things Do Change

Luke 20:27-38

27 Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to him 28 and asked him a question, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. 29 Now there were seven brothers; the first married, and died childless; 30 then the second 31 and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. 32 Finally the woman also died. 33 In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her.” 34 Jesus said to them, “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; 35 but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. 36 Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. 37 And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. 38 Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.”

Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor is a gifted Episcopalian preacher, writer and educator. She tells the story of a parishioner she once knew who had been diagnosed with a terminal form of cancer. While this woman only had months to live her husband died very suddenly from a massive heart attack. While at the graveside, a well-meaning friend attempted to console her by saying, at least you’ll be together again soon. After the service, Rev. Taylor dropped by the woman’s house where she broke down in tears and said, I’m never going to get away from him, am I?

I don’t know what Barbara Brown Taylor said in response to the woman’s despair, but I’m sure it was some reassurance that she would not continue to endure whatever pain that relationship brought into her life.

I believe the primary message that we are to glean from the resurrection of Jesus Christ is that we will not continue to suffer the same pains in the world to come that we experience in this one.

Unfortunately there are some things that never seem to change in this world, but in God’s great cosmic design — some things do change! The enemies of Jesus were able to have their way for a day, but by bringing Jesus Christ back to life, God was proclaiming to the world that the bullies aren’t in charge. Hatred and violence haven’t departed from the planet, but these are not the most powerful forces in the universe. It’s the love of God that prevails, and that is good news for all of us.

Who knows how that woman’s husband made her life miserable, and clearly she had to endure that pain for too long, but there’s only one relationship we are bound to maintain upon death, and that is our relationship with the Lord of Life. I like to think we will enjoy the company of all the others that we have loved, but Jesus indicated in this very passage that in the kingdom of God we don’t have to abide by earthly protocols.

One of the most satisfying aspects of this morning’s scripture reading is how small of an impact the Sadducees had on the course of Jewish history. We don’t know that much about the Sadducess because it’s a sect that died when the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 AD. The Sadducees were aristocratic Jews who considered life to end upon death. They were generally very wealthy and powerful, and they had no regard for what would happen after death. They only recognized the authority of the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, and that led them to be primarily focused on maintaining the Temple and their own well being. So when Emperor Nero destroyed the Temple they pretty much lost the focus of their attention, and upon their death there was no resurrection of their way of thinking.

My impression is that this was a pretty self-satisfied group of people who approached Jesus with their question about the resurrection – which was not really a question. They thought they were setting a significant intellectual trap for Jesus. They thought they could get him with this question of who would be married to who in the case of a woman who had been legally married seven times, but Jesus showed that you can’t skirt around the truth of God by appealing to legal technicalities. And he did it by using a passage of scripture that they considered to be authoritative. He went straight to the formative experience of Moses himself, who heard the voice of God in the burning bush who announced that he was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – men who continued to live in the eyes of God.

You might say Jesus answered their question with a bit of a legally technical response, but it had enough ring of truth to keep them from asking him any more questions. I often wish Jesus would have elaborated on what we might expect in the world to come, but I guess I should be grateful that he said as much as he did about the way our lives in this world intersect with the world to come. And one of the good things that he seems to be saying in this passage is that eternal life isn’t just the continuation of our mortal lives.

Death is actually the end of many things for us. Our debts don’t follow us in to the afterlife. Some people will carry student loans to their last breath, but even those get cancelled upon death. It’s likely that there will be some accounting of some kind when we die, but we will be free from all our earthly contracts. Marriage is an earthly contract, so the woman who was married seven times won’t have to worry about taking care of seven men. The woman who’s husband made her life a living hell was free from him upon his death, and these are good things. But love is a bond that’s made in heaven, and it’s easy for me to believe that the loving bonds we create on earth somehow remain in the world that is to come.

Jesus doesn’t exactly say what it takes to become one of the children of the resurrection, but those Sadducees seem to represent the opposite of what it takes to be such a person. I like to think we all have an avenue to resurrected life, but it also seems to matter how we live. Jesus spoke of those who are worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection of the dead, and that word, worthy, is a little unsettling to me. Jesus seems to be saying that there are ways in which we can defy God’s gracious offer for new life, and he used those Sadducees to illustrate what it looks like to not be a child of the resurrection. Jesus wants us to see that we aren’t just residents of earth, but there are ways of becoming profoundly stuck in this world.

I don’t share the attitude of the Sadducees, who refused to believe that anything extended beyond this life, but I’m pretty sure there are ways in which I can behave a bit like a Sadducee. I don’t consider myself to be as self-satisfied as they were, but it’s pretty unnerving for me to consider all of the ways I seek to preserve my life on earth at the expense of my eternal soul. Like most reasonable Americans I probably pay more attention to the funds in my pension plan than I do to the treasures I’m storing up in heaven.

So I’m a little unsettled by what Jesus meant when he spoke of those who are worthy of the resurrection. But I can’t believe God measures our worthiness in an unforgiving way. As I’ve said on more than one occasion, I believe God loves us all in an unconditional manner. I don’t believe we can prevent God from loving us, but we can create a lot of interference between ourselves and God. We certainly can harbor attitudes that prevent us from living in a relationship with God as we go about our lives on earth.

Today is the Sunday we remember those who have ended their time on earth who we trust have truly experienced resurrection. This is a mystery that we can’t explain, but it’s a concept that can profoundly inform the way we live our lives. It’s a concept that can give us confidence to live without regard for the way things typically operate on earth. We don’t have to be guided by conventional earthly wisdom. We don’t have to worry so much about being successful in the ways of the world. People who believe in resurrection only need to be concerned with being guided by love because it’s the work of love that God allows to stand the test of time.

We remember many of the things that our loved ones who have died did for us, but I dare say the best thing that any of them did for us is to touch us in loving ways. It’s love that somehow gets to us more than anything else. Love is the fuel for resurrection, and when we live with love we are being successful at living – regardless of how things turn out in the short term.

This world is a messy place, and it’s easy to get caught up in tedious matters that have very little consequence. We often pay more attention to matters of earth than to those of heaven, and we are often confused about how to be as loving as possible. I dare say the person who tried to comfort the terminally ill woman who’s husband just died with the assurance they would be together again soon was trying to be a good friend. She didn’t mean to strike terror in the heart of her friend.

But the good news is that the power of resurrection is not in our hands to botch or to stifle. We can sort of complicate matters sometimes, but we can’t stop God from doing what God wills to do for all of us. And God can use our mistakes to create opportunities for new understandings. Had that woman not said what she said about her friend being reunited with her husband soon, that woman might not have broken down and shared her despair with someone capable of offering a new perspective. Had those Sadducees not been so obstinate we might not have gotten these assuring words about the reality of resurrection.

Unfortunately, some things never seem to change in this world. People continue to behave badly, the truth gets masked, and fear prevails. Wrong things occur and death happens. This world isn’t an easy place to be for people who love God and seek the truth, but Jesus wants us to know that we don’t have to live in despair of the ways things often go in this world. We are invited to live with trust that God can take death and turn it in to life. It takes a lot of courage to live as a child of the resurrection in this material world, but this is the gracious offer that our resurrected Lord has made to us.

We have been invited to live in a profoundly new way, which is to trust in the resurrecting power of God. It’s a beautiful offer because in the kingdom of God some things do change.

In the kingdom of God, the forces of death and destruction do not have the last say. The people who rule this world are not in charge of the next one. The things that are most valued in this world are of no use in the next. The failures that haunt us in this world will not be there in the next. The tormentors of this world disappear in the next, but the bonds of love remain.

The message of the resurrection isn’t so good right now for people who love the way things are, but one day we all will benefit from this gracious design. No doubt we will all come to see the ways in which we have denied some uncomfortable truths, and there may well be some pain involved in that realization, but the largest truth that we all will come to see and experience is how perfectly we are loved by our creator, redeemer, and resurrector. The God of Abraham, Moses, Jesus and us!

Thanks be to God!

Amen.

Spiritual Climbing

Luke 19:1-10

1 He entered Jericho and was passing through it. 2 A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was rich. 3 He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. 4 So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way. 5 When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.” 6 So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him. 7 All who saw it began to grumble and said, “He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.” 8 Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.” 9 Then Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. 10 For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.”

I think there are many of us who learned a song about Zacchaeus when we were children. You know the song. Feel free to sing along with me if you remember it: Zacchaeus was a wee little man, a wee little man was he. He climbed up in a Sycamore tree for the Lord he wanted to see. And as the Savior came that way, He looked up in the tree, And he said, “Zacchaeus, you come down out of that tree, for I’m going to your house today.” It’s a memorable song, I’ve remembered it for about 50 years now, but that song doesn’t explain what this story is all about.

This is a story that requires more of a nuanced interpretation than a children’s song can capture. You have to read between the lines in order to extract what’s going on in this story, so I’m going to fill in what isn’t exactly stated. I may be wrong, but there’s nothing new about that.

I think it’s worth noting that Jesus had clearly become the object of a lot of attention at this point in his ministry. The word had gotten out about the amazing things he had been doing, and people were turning out in huge numbers to get a glimpse of him. This wasn’t exactly what we would think of as a political rally, but it’s close to being one, and I don’t think it’s inaccurate to say that there were people thinking Jesus was the one who could make Israel great again!

The fact that this was going on in Jericho is also significant. Jericho was a city with lots of meaning for Jews. Jericho was a city that had fallen to the Jews early on in the conquest of Israel – you probably remember that song also “Joshua at the Battle of Jericho”. I’ll spare you my performance of that song, but it’s important to keep in mind that Jericho had deep roots in Jewish identity, and you can bet it was a place where people harbored a good amount of resentment toward their Roman occupiers and the local people who cooperated with them.

Zacchaeus was considered to be an official sinner by his peers because he had the job of extracting tax from his fellow Jews to give to the Romans. He wasn’t the one who designed the system, but he was the point-man for a system that was very offensive to the Jews.

We’re told that Zacchaeus was of short stature, and that’s why he had to run ahead and climb a tree to see Jesus, but I think we can also imagine that there was a universal lack of hospitality toward Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus was affluent, but he wasn’t appreciated. In fact he was probably despised, and that makes Jesus’ decision to go to his home for dinner an unexpected turn of events. This is not what the town leaders had in mind.

Instead of going to the home of the person with the most religious status, Jesus announced that he was going to the home of the most official sinner, and this caused the crowd to grumble.

Jesus was what you might call an equal opportunity offender. Jesus was relentless in his portrayal of the truth, and this put him at odds with powerful individuals and groups at every turn. Last week, we read the story of Jesus identifying the lostness of the Pharisee who was much too proud of his righteousness. Jesus was often critical of the official leaders of the Jewish community, but in this story, Jesus seems to have annoyed average citizens.  This story calls in to question the root of the enthusiasm that the people had for Jesus.

I’m not exactly sure what this crowd expected of Jesus, but his decision to go to dinner with the man who took their money and gave it to the Romans was not something that went over well with this crowd that had gathered to greet him. I don’t think Jesus was unsympathetic to the values and traditions of his fellow Jews, but he had no interest in responding to enthusiasm that felt misplaced to him. Jesus often found it necessary to defy the will of a crowd because he didn’t trust that what they wanted was what they needed. People often confused their nationalistic dreams with their allegiance to God, but Jesus didn’t have such confusion.

This isn’t as quaint of a story as that children’s song might lead you to believe. Jesus stepped in to what might be called a Jewish Nationalist Rally, and he responded to their enthusiasm by choosing to have dinner at the home of a notorious Roman collaborator. You don’t really pick up on the scandal of this situation on this when you sing that song.

But the other thing that’s worth noting about this story is the way in which Jesus responded the behavior of Zacchaeus. It’s remarkable that Zacchaeus had made an effort to get a look at Jesus. Why would Zacchaeus even want to have an encounter with Jesus? Things were going well for Zacchaeus. He was rich, and it would be of no advantage to him for Israel’s relationship with Rome to be disrupted. It’s not easy to understand why Zacchaeus had joined the crowd to gain access to Jesus.

It’s worth noting that it wasn’t going to be in his best business interest to show up in support of Jesus, but Zacchaeus knew that he needed something other than wealth. Zacchaeus wasn’t needy in a financial sense, but he knew he needed something, and he knew to look to Jesus for help.

You might say everyone who turned out to see Jesus that day was looking to Jesus for help, but many of the people were looking to Jesus for the wrong thing. Many were looking to him to change the system they thought was the cause of their troubles. Certainly there would have been people who were needing healing or relief from other personal problems, but behind the group mentality was the desire for Jesus to repair the oppressive political situation that they were living under, and Jesus never encouraged people to be more critical of others than themselves.

Zacchaeus wasn’t sick or impoverished, but he was living as an officially unrighteous person, and I think that made him more conscious of his need for the kind of help that Jesus actually came to bring. Jesus came to heal all forms of personal brokenness, and he also sought to repair the people’s misunderstanding of who God is. Certainly Jesus aspired for the world to be properly ruled, but he was not out to change the world through political revolution.

This is not to say I don’t believe God grieves over our broken political systems. I fully believe God intends for us to work for justice in this world, but we should never confuse our own partisan political  interests with the agenda of God. And as he had said once before, it’s important to get the logs out of our own eyes before we reach for the specks in other people’s eyes.

I don’t doubt that those good Jews who were lining the road as Jesus came to Jericho had good reasons to be upset about the way they were treated by the Romans. There’s no doubt that they were the victims of a terrible political system, but it’s never very helpful to think that God is as upset with our political rivals as we are. It never helps our souls to demonize anyone. I don’t pretend to understand how involved God chooses to be in the political dynamics of this world. There’s a good amount of evidence to show that God is not closely involved the way power is accumulated and utilized in this world, but it never seems to go well when we think God wholeheartedly endorses whoever or whatever it is we are endorsing. It’s so easy for us to confuse our own personal needs with what we perceive God to be seeking.

And Jesus was so good at identifying this conflation of personal agendas and righteous causes. Jesus is so good at seeing who we really are what we really need. Jesus knows our actual needs before we do, and he always responds well to those actions we take to step out of our normal way of seeing the world in hope of seeing who he really is.

Maybe Zacchaeus was accustomed to climbing trees, but I’m guessing that this was not a normal thing for him to do. I may be wrong, but in order to get a good look at Jesus, Zacchaeus stepped out of what we might call his comfort zone, and by stepping in to such a different place he was able to have a powerful encounter with Jesus. I don’t think the primary lesson from this story is that we should spend more time climbing trees, but I’m pretty sure there is a lot of value in stepping in to places where we aren’t fully familiar. It’s so easy for us to grow accustomed to viewing the world in our own familiar and favorite ways, and that causes us to develop an unfortunate form of blindness.

You would think that with all of the information we have at our fingertips we would all be well and widely informed about all the things that are going on in the world, but in some ways we have developed some selective misinformation. There is this tendency to develop what you might call a silo mentality. As you all know, a silo is a really tall narrow structure that can be filled with a single type of grain, and sometimes that’s the way we accumulate information. We fill ourselves with an abundance of a very narrow viewpoint.

This might be our modern way of erecting the tower of Babel – we build ourselves and our causes up as high as we can without bothering to take in to account the inconvenient information someone else might have. Mass media is a great new tool for us, but if we aren’t careful about the way we use it we can become as hardened and inflexible as concrete silos.

Zacchaeus could easily have harbored a silo mentality. He was doing a job that needed to be done, and I’m sure he could have justified his abundant income by the difficulty that his position put him in. I’m sure there were tax collectors who didn’t care what people thought of them or how ostracized they were from the faith community, but Zacchaeus wanted more than what he had. He didn’t want more money, he wanted a new relationship with God and with his neighbors. He wanted to see things differently, and he did the only thing he knew to do – he climbed a tree to get a better glimpse of Jesus.

Maybe we all just need to go climb a tree every once in a while. I know that’s not an option for all of us, and that’s clearly a bit of an oversimplification of the text, but I don’t think it’s wrong to say that we would all do well to find ways to see the world from a different perspective. Zacchaeus didn’t let his pride keep him from doing what he needed to do to get a good look at Jesus, and neither should we. Climbing a tree might be a good thing to do, but it would probably be more helpful to change the channel every now and then.

We all have our own particular forms of blindness and obstacles that we need to overcome. We have all been given some understandings that we would do well to release, and there are things we can all do to get new views of who Jesus is. It’s not easy to be a disciple of Jesus Christ, but as Zacchaeus has demonstrated, it’s a glorious thing to run a little ahead and do what we can to get a glimpse of his gracious presence.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Graceful Falling

Luke 18:9-14

9 He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: 10 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ 13 But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ 14 I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”

Personal exaltation has never been a big issue for me. It’s not that I’m actually humble, but self-promotion isn’t my style of sin. I certainly harbor an inordinate amount of pride, but I’d rather hear other people expound on my virtues than to enumerate them myself. Of course if I was as meticulous as this Pharisee about fasting and contributing I might be more inclined to lift myself up as an example of righteousness, but I’d rather not call attention to the actual details of the spiritual disciplines I practice – you’re more likely to be impressed by the illusion than the reality.

Of course humility isn’t a foreign concept for me. If you looked through my school pictures you would see that I was well acquainted with the need for humility at an early age and for an extended period of time. And like many people, I’ve always been equipped with an ample supply of self-incrimination. In fact there’s a condition that was identified by Catholic priests many centuries ago that I think I probably have – it’s called scrupulosity. These priests discovered that some of their parishioners had an inclination to confess far more than was necessary.

People who have scrupulosity are compelled to be overly judgmental of themselves. Of course people can be saddled with various degrees of scrupulosity. Some people are marginally troubled by nagging thoughts of perpetual misdeeds while those who have a strong case of scrupulosity have a hard time making any kind of decision in fear of committing a sin. What those early Catholic priests identified as scrupulosity is probably what psychologists now call Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

I’m not sure how far on to the OCD spectrum that I make it, but I would identify myself as having a degree of whatever you want to call it that causes us to be a little obsessive about our personal operations. I suspect many of us church-goers have been conditioned to keep close track on how we measure up on the righteousness scale. I don’t have enough scrupulosity to actually keep me perfectly perched on that straight and narrow path, but I know I’ve got this internal meter that reminds me of how far off of it I am at any given moment.

I don’t think this is all bad. A little bit of scrupulosity can keep you from being overly proud of yourself. People who harbor some scrupulosity understand what this poor tax collector was feeling about himself. We know we aren’t good enough.

And that’s not such a bad thing, but a little bit of scrupulosity can get you in trouble as well because it can put you in touch with what you might call, Pharisaism. Speaking as a person who engages in a good amount of self-judging, I can testify that it’s not that hard to identify the shortcomings of other people as well. I know I’m not doing everything within my power to glorify God and ease the burdens of my neighbors, but at least I’m not as self-serving and conniving as I suspect some other people are that I know.

When you think the objective of our faith is to live as a perfectly motivated and activated person it’s hard not to engage in an unhealthy degree of criticism of yourself and others.

Fortunately, the gospel of Jesus Christ does not require us to live perfectly crafted lives. Living in relationship with God isn’t dependent upon our ability to meet a clear set of expectations. Our relationship with God is primarily dependent upon how open we are to the grace of God, and in this parable it is the tax-collector who has the most spiritually fertile attitude. The self-righteousness of the Pharisee served to sort of seal him off from being touched and redeemed by the grace of God.

I don’t believe the point of this parable is to encourage us to go about our lives with a sense of groveling before God, but it is an essential thing for us not to think it’s our virtues that give us access to God’s love. I believe God created us to live with a sense of dignity and self-respect, but the truth is that we aren’t capable of living flawless lives. We make mistakes. We take wrong paths. We make bad choices. We pursue false idols. We serve unholy masters, and we find ourselves in ugly places.

You might think these are the things that would disqualify us from living in relationship with God, but these are the very things that can soften our souls and put us in touch with the grace of God.

I think I may have mentioned this writer before, but I’ve recently become enamored by the writings of Father Richar Rohr. The book I’m most familiar with is entitled, Falling Upward, and I think the primary point that he identifies in that book is the way in which we have the most vivid experiences with God during those times when we are the most vulnerable and needy. He points out that it’s not so much when we are at our peaks of performance that God is most present to us. He argues that it’s often when we fail that we experience the purest form of God’s love and grace. And he illustrates this point with the way in which God is portrayed in the Bible. Bad things happen to people in the Bible, and people do bad things, but God doesn’t abandon people during those times. In fact, God becomes most visible during those times.

And Jesus didn’t chastise the official sinners of Israel. Jesus got upset with the people who thought they were living such exemplary lives. This is the very point of this parable. Jesus doesn’t even say that the tax collector repented and left the temple with the conviction to change his ways and become a humble shepherd or engage in some other less scandalous profession. Jesus didn’t condemn the tax collector’s behavior – Jesus simply honored his attitude of knowing that he wasn’t a perfect person.

Father Rohr says that in God’s kingdom, in what he calls: the economy of grace, sin and failure become the base metal and raw material for the redemption experience itself. And what that means to me is that God isn’t as interested in our ability to live perfect lives as God is interested in our ability to be open to God regardless of what’s going on in our lives. The interesting thing is that the times that we generally find to be the most painful often turn out to be the experiences that provide us with access to the sweetest forms of grace.

This is the most beautiful thing about our faith. What this says to me is that there’s nothing that we can do or that can happen to us that God can’t redeem. God doesn’t expect the world to go perfectly, but God is there for us when those terribly imperfect things occur and cause terrible disruptions. And the only thing that can truly separate us from God is for us to harbor attitudes that eliminate our need for God.

The Pharisee was untouched by God because he didn’t think he needed anything from God. He was perfectly self-satisfied with himself, and that’s fine. Anyone who has no need for God in their life is welcome to live their life in that way, but it’s delusional to think you are somehow living in relationship with God while you harbor the attitude that you have no need for the grace of God.

This means a lot to me because there was a time in my life when I thought my relationship with God WAS dependent upon my ability to be good enough for God. I would say that as a young man I had an equal amount of love and fear of God. I loved God, but I was also very fearful of what God would do to me if I didn’t live up to all of the standards that I imagined God had of me.

And that’s not all bad. That probably motivated me to behave pretty well during my early teenage years, and I was basically a happy person for the first eighteen years of my life, but there came a point when my life experience called for a more compassionate understanding of God. Meeting all of the expectations that I assumed God had of me became harder and harder to accomplish. In fact I think I became clinically depressed by my inability meet all of the expectations that I understood God to have placed upon me. My scrupulosity became a bit pathological.

I won’t burden you with the extended version of my current understanding of my former psychological profile, but it wasn’t pretty. I was a terribly unhappy young adult, and something had to give. And it did give. I broke.

Luckily I didn’t break in a tragic way. I don’t have a dramatic story of wayward living followed by a return to Christ and a newly redeemed way of living. But I was upside down for a while. I think I would characterize that period of time in my life as a time where I didn’t understand anything. And I knew I didn’t understand anything. I was confused, and it was dark, but I wasn’t alone. I think that was a time when God was particularly attentive to me.

It was also a time when I came to meet some new people, and I came to appreciate some people who I might formerly have seen as unworthy of my attention. I moved from thinking that God expected perfection from me to believing that God embraced me with compassion, and that changed everything for me. It reduced the pressure, and it increased the pleasure of seeking to live in relationship with God.

None of us like to fall down. We like to think of ourselves as always knowing what we are doing and of having the capacity do what we think we aught to be doing, and we all do our best to hold those things together. It’s great when everything is going as we want it to and we are living up to the expectations of ourselves and of our neighbors and maybe even of God, but it’s hard to keep all of that going for long. Some people might be able to keep all of that going for a good amount of time, but most mortals have some trouble along the way.

Breakdowns happen. And breakdowns are terrible. Breakdowns are painful and humiliating and costly and distressing. Breakdowns are the worst times of our lives. And they can also be the best times of our lives. It’s during those moments in our lives when nothing seems to be going right that God can miraculously let us know that we are ok. In fact it’s often during those times of profound self-doubt and failure that God enables us to understand how perfectly we are loved.

It’s hard to shake our tendencies to judge ourselves and other people. I’m thinking I’ll probably go to my grave with an overabundant amount of concern about the ever-present list of things that I have failed to get done. I’m sure I’ll also have some pride about how much shorter my list was that some other people that I know. But I thank God for not letting me live my entire life thinking that God expected me to live like a Pharisee.

I tried to be as good as a Pharisee, but I failed, and I’m so grateful to God for preventing me from being so successful. I failed to be the kind of religious person that I thought God expected me to be, and I’m so happy about that. God succeeded in showing me the value of compassion, and for that I’ll forever be grateful.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

The Gratitude Attitude

Luke 17:11-19

11 On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. 12 As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, 13 they called out, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” 14 When he saw them, he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were made clean. 15 Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. 16 He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. 17 Then Jesus asked, “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? 18 Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” 19 Then he said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”

I don’t know what went wrong with this group of people who were miraculously and graciously healed when they made their appeal to Jesus. According to the Pareto Principle, there should have been 2 people to return to praise God and give thanks to Jesus. The Pareto Principle is also known as the 80-20 rule or the law of the vital few, and it identifies this remarkably predictable pattern that occurs within many events where 20% of the people account for 80% of the outcome. The Pareto Principle is named after Vilfredo Pareto, who made the observation in 1906 of how influential 20% of any given population is to the outcome of any situation.

He took note of the fact that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the people and he knew he was on to something when he realized that 20% of his pea pods were responsible for producing 80% of his peas.

This 80-20 distribution of cause and effect has been reinforced by a number of different statistics. Many businesses report that:

• 80% of a company’s profits come from 20% of its customers
• 80% of a company’s complaints come from 20% of its customers
• 80% of a company’s sales come from 20% of its products
• And 80% of a company’s sales are made by 20% of its sales staff^[9]

In addition to these business statistics, criminologists report that 80% of crimes are committed by 20% of the criminals. A sociologist created a study that showed how 20% of rats in a given population will dominate 80% of the rest. I don’t know if our budget is supported by 20% of our constituents, but I’m grateful to everyone who supports this church on any level. It’s just sort of interesting that there is this pattern of behavior that seems to stretch across many different platforms.

There seems to be something true about this Pareto Principle. And if statistics ruled in matters of faith, there should have been two of these ten healed lepers to return to Jesus to praise God and to give their thanks. But statistics seem to go out the window when it comes to faith. People of genuine faith and divine gratitude are more rare than highly productive pea pods. But as Jesus identified in the mustard seed story last week, the smallest amount of faith can go a long way. It doesn’t take 20% of the people to change everything. One person with genuine faith can have more impact than any number of oblivious souls.

On one hand, this morning’s story is sort of dismal. Only one person out of ten seemed to understand the magnitude of the situation and returned to Jesus to acknowledge this great gift. You would think this amazing transformation would have moved these men to exceed the standard Pareto Priciple parameters. You would think at least three of the men would have thought to return to the One who had changed their lives so thoroughly.

But the Pareto Principle isn’t the only predictor of human behavior. There is also the Herd Mentality to take in to account. It’s not easy to go against what everyone else is doing. And while we don’t know if this Samaritan man who returned to Jesus was the only Samaritan in the group, but if he had been, it’s easy to see why nobody else came back with him – good Jews didn’t associate with Samaritans – unless they were lepers. Leprosy was a very leveling condition.

It didn’t matter who you were if your skin was infected – you weren’t welcome. The only people you could associate with were other lepers and Jesus, but the bonds that existed between fellow lepers weren’t so strong. Nine of out ten of these men who were healed of their leprosy didn’t look back. When they got their clean bill of health stamped by the priest and they were ready to forget their former associates and to reestablish their place in society.

I can imagine myself doing the same thing. Nobody wants to be cast outside of the standard group. Nobody wants to be seen as different. I know a little bit about that. I had a face full of freckles when I was a child. I guess I still have them, but wrinkles, whiskers, and decades of weathering have pretty much masked my natural spots, but I was really self-conscious of my freckles when I was a child. Grandmothers thought they were cute, but I wanted to fit in with 4^th graders. I hated my freckles. I felt different, and that was a terrible feeling.

Of course that was a small burden compared to what many people endure as children and as adults. I don’t know if there’s anything more painful than being considered different – or even worse – to be considered unacceptable. I’ll be having my 40^th high school reunion in a couple of weeks.

I know it’s hard to believe that someone as young as I am could have graduated from high school in 1976. But that seems to be the case. I’m not sure who will be showing up for our reunion, but I know one person who won’t be there. Our classmate Lyndon Smith won’t be there. He took his own life soon after we graduated. In all honesty, I don’t know what transpired in his life that caused him to be so desperate, but what I know about Lyndon is that he never quite fit in. He was an incredibly shy person, and I also think he was a very sensitive person. I’m really sorry to say that I don’t really know what happened to him because I didn’t know him very well. In fact, I didn’t know anyone who knew him very well.

This world can be a terrible place for people who don’t fit in. Being labeled as a leper in the region of Galilee and Samaria in the 1^st century was an unbearable condition. It meant you weren’t welcome in anyone’s house. I don’t know, but I’m guessing that this is how my former classmate might have felt. It’s a terrible condition for anyone to be identified as someone who is unacceptable, and we need to take note of the fact that Jesus treated such people with compassion.

Jesus certainly wasn’t controlled by herd mentality, nor by the Paretto Principle. He was not moved to do things by statistical predictions or by popular expectations. Jesus functioned as a person who was sensitive to the will of God, and that caused him to operate in a totally unique and redeeming manner.

It was a huge thing for Jesus to respond to the plea of this group of lepers to have mercy on them because they were the object of scorn by everyone else. What Jesus did for them was nothing a respectable person would ever have done. He treated them as if they were worthy of respect. This is not something an official religious person would ever have done, and it restored them in the community.

Being acceptable to the community is such a huge thing. I doubt if my classmate would have taken his life if he had felt accepted by the community. I don’t know what caused him to be so aliented, but it makes me sad to think about him and all the other people who are identified as too different to fit in. There’s an important message here for those of us who have the seal of approval of the acceptable community – we need to be sensitive to those who feel pushed to the outside.

But there’s another message here as well. And it’s a message for all of us. The message is that we are all fully accepted and loved by God, and the proper response to this incredible gift is gratitude. I know that it’s not always easy to be in touch with the attitude of gratitude, but because of the way in which we are always regarded by God, this is always an appropriate way to feel.

I don’t want to diminish the real pain that we all feel about the different things that happen to us. Bad things happen, tragedy occurs, suffering can consume us, but we should neve see any of these things as a form of abandonment by God. Jesus was particularly sensitive to those who were considered to be the vicims of God’s wrath because he didn’t want us to associate misfortune with divine punishment.

Certainly there are forms of misfortune that are created by irresponsible and hateful behavior. Social ostracism are often the consequences of wreckless and godless undertakings, but we are never seen in the same way by God as we are by our peers. God loves us regardless of how awful we behave. God wants us to be restored regardless of the things we may have done. Our God is full of forgiveness and our God longs for us to become reconciled with ourselves and with other people. God wants us to understand who we really are and how we can move forward in a new and loving way.

And one of those lepers got it. One of those lepers not only realized what had happened to him but who who was responsible, and he came back looking for Jesus. That one man knew that he didn’t just want to be free to connect with the world in the same old way. This one man knew he wanted more out of life than freedom to visit the marketplace. This one man knew he wanted more of what Jesus had offered him. He recognized that he had been provided with some abundant life, and he was grateful!

Our challenge in life is not to live by the Paretto Principle or the Herd Mentality, our calling is to want to be more than respectable or acceptable. Our calling is to join with what appears to be about 10% of the people in this world who live with genuine gratitude to God and love for others. Actually I have no idea what percentage of people live with such affection for God and their neighbors, but that is who we are invited to be. That is the avenue to abundant life, and while it’s not the easiest path to go down it is the most rewarding. When you are touched in a loving and healing way by Jesus Christ there is one proper response – to live lives defined by gratitude and love.

I’ve heard it said that it’s hard to be hateful when you’re grateful, and I think that pretty much sums it up. It’s not the most common way to live – it’s the most divine.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

The Power of Faith

Luke 17:5-10

5 The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” 6 The Lord replied, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you. 7 “Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here at once and take your place at the table’? 8 Would you not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink’? 9 Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? 10 So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, ‘We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!'”

I was fortunate to hear a good story one day last week about a woman who went from pretending to be a radio announcer in the one bathroom of her overpopulated childhood home to become the owner of one of the largest media companies in the country. She became the first African American woman to own a publicly traded company, and it all went back to when she was 8 years old and her mother gave her a small transistor radio. I heard this story on National Public Radio, and it was told by a guy who has a podcast that highlights the way people turn ideas in to businesses.

Cathy Hughes is the woman’s name, and the most interesting thing about her story to me was the way in which she acquired her first radio station. She had been working in radio for a few years and she had developed a very successful music program in the Washington, DC area. She was hired by another station to help them improve their programming, and they wanted her to help recruit new investors. She said she would do that, but she said she wanted to be compensated with some stock in the company. One of the owners of the company said in an offhanded way that if she was smart enough to own her own company then she should get one of her own.

She took his words to heart and that became her pursuit. She found a station that was in trouble, and she went in search of a loan. She was denied by 31 banks, but the 32^nd bank was willing to loan her the money, and she made it work. At one point, she and her son had to live at the station, but she turned it around and that became the first of her 58 radio stations.

Jesus wasn’t offering business advice when he told his disciples of the power of a mustard seed amount of faith, but I think the way Cathy Hughes built her company is a clear portrayal of the power of faith. She believed in herself and in her idea of how to run a radio station. Her faith enabled her to remain focused on what she believed could happen regardless of the way things seemed to be going.

I’ve heard faith defined as the ability to put your whole trust in something and to act on it. That’s what Cathy Hughes did, and it clearly paid off for her. I consider her exercise of faith to be inspiriational and instructive, but it isn’t a perfect portrayal of the kind of faith that Jesus was talking about. The faith that Jesus revealed and encouraged is the rarest form of faith there is, and it’s never been easy for any of us to get our minds around the kind of faith Jesus wanted his followers to exhibit, but it’s real and it’s powerful.

I may be reading more in to this exchange between Jesus and his disciples than is there, but I’m hearing some exhasperation in the voice of Jesus when he responds to the disciple’s request for him to increase their faith. The disciples asked him for more faith, and Jesus responded by saying what they could do if they had a miniscule amount of faith. I may be wrong, but it sort of sounds to me as if Jesus was saying that if their faith was increased it might then become the size of the smallest seed in the world – which of course turns out to be a powerful amount of faith!

I think the gospel writers often used the disciples to illustrate the wrong way to think about matters of faith, and this is one of those occasions. I think the mistake the disciples were making was that they were confusing faith with power. Jesus responded to their request for more faith as if they were asking for more ability to do amazing things.

Jesus didn’t want to underestimate the amazing things that could transpire if they had faith, but he didn’t want them to be confused about the way powerful things unfold. Amazing things could happen if they would learn to exercise faith, but that is a far different thing than just having the power to do what they wanted. I think it’s easy for any of us to understand their request for more ability, and I’m sure they felt like they were asking for a good thing, but this is tricky business. The desire for more power can lead people to become less attentive to the power of God – to have less faith in God. The more we trust in our own ability the less dependent we can become on God to do the transforming work that needs to be done.

Jesus wants us to know that when we have faith in God we are engaged in an endeavor that can change the world in powerful ways, but he didn’t want us to get caught up in some sort of power trip. Immediately after telling his disciples how the smallest amount of faith could enable them to speak with unimaginable authority – he went on to tell them how subservient they were to remain.

What a contrast! In one breath Jesus told his disciples that their faith would provide them with the authority to speak in ways that would change the face of the earth. And in the next breath, he tells them that they are to see themselves as servants who are only doing what is expected of them when they work endlessly for nothing.

This endeavor of living with faith is tricky business. It is an undertaking that puts us in touch with the root source of true power. The smallest amount of faith is incredibly empowering – world changing. But we are never to assume we have any authority whatsoever.

There’s a tricky balance to obtain here, for I believe that God wants us to fully engage in the work of making this world a more hospitable place for everyone. We are to do everything we know to do to enable all people to experience fullness in life, but we can never assume that we have the ability to change anything. We are to be fully engaged and relentless in our efforts, but we don’t need to think too highly of ourselves and our capacity to get things done.

Cathy Huges didn’t go to bank after bank assuming she could make them give her a loan, but she wasn’t going to quit asking until there wasn’t anyone else to ask. There’s a certain power that comes to us when we have faith, but it’s an illusive form of power. It’s not the kind of power you have when you hold a powerful office or have access to tremendous resources, but in a significant way the power that accompanies faith is the most transformational form of power that exists.

To have faith in God is to have an absolute form of trust that things are going to turn out right regardless of the way things seem to be going. The image of the servant or slave not counting on getting a break seems sort of harsh, but I don’t think Jesus was wanting us to think of God as a heartless master. I think the point Jesus was trying to make was that we are to maintain an attitude of perfect diligence in our effort to serve God.

Jesus wants us to understand that remarkable things can occur when people have the tiniest amount of faith, but having faith is not just an internal spiritual exercise. Our faith is to be connected to our feet. God places concerns on our hearts, and we are to go where that internal voice tells us to go for as long as necessary.

Cathy Hughes didn’t go to 31 banks in search of a loan because she knew that she would one day create one of the most significant media companies in the country. She got up day after day and did that because she was empowered by an idea that wouldn’t die.

As followers of Christ we have been granted access to the greatest idea that has ever been conceived, and the idea is that there’s nothing more eternal and powerful than the love of God. According to this idea, our wellbeing only depends on how well we can allow the love of God to flow through our lives. It’s sort of a simple idea, but if we trust in this truth it will define everything that we do. We don’t need more faith. We just need to have faith in the right thing, and if we will do that then there’s nothing that can stop us from doing the world changing work that God will empower us to do.

We have no idea what can come of our efforts and we shouldn’t ever think we know what can come of our work. Our only charge is to do what we can to show our love for God and our neighbors. There’s really no telling what can come from such work, and that’s the most beautiful thing about this relationship we can have with God. It’s bigger than we can imagine.

Our challenge is not to seek more faith. Our challenge is simply to have some faith in this beautiful message that Jesus Christ brought us. We are to trust that God’s love is the most powerful force in the universe and to somehow share this good news with everyone we encounter every day for the rest of our lives. That’s all we have to do — then we can rest.

Thanks be to God for this truly empowering idea.

Amen.

Spiritual Shrewdness

Luke 16:1-13

1 Then Jesus said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. 2 So he summoned him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.’ 3 Then the manager said to himself, ‘What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. 4 I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.’ 5 So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ 6 He answered, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.’ 7 Then he asked another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He replied, ‘A hundred containers of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill and make it eighty.’ 8 And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light. 9 And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes. 10 “Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. 11 If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? 12 And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? 13 No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”

It’s not easy to see what Jesus was trying to reveal when he told this parable of the dishonest steward.  The parables that Jesus told were never designed to reveal all aspects of the kingdom of God, but with this parable you have to make an effort to convince yourself that there’s anything in here worth understanding. Neither the master nor the steward have characteristics that are obviously redeeming. On the surface it appears that a questionable character is commended for altering the books and generating a soft landing for himself.

The conclusion of this entire passage is pretty clear and easy to embrace. I think we all can see the value of not dividing our allegiances, but the parable that sets up this conclusion isn’t so easy to grasp.

And there’s another thing that compounds the confounding nature of the parable. There is some commentary attached to the parable that is worth noting, but it doesn’t help us understand the parable itself. The actual parable seems to end midway through the eighth verse with the master expressing pleasure with the behavior of the steward. I want to focus on the actual parable, and I think it’s helpful to hear the parable without the commentary that follows, so here’s what it sounds like by itself.

Then Jesus said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. ²So he summoned him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.’ ³Then the manager said to himself, ‘What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. ⁴I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.’ ⁵So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ ⁶He answered, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.’ ⁷Then he asked another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He replied, ‘A hundred containers of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill and make it eighty.’ ⁸And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly;

Now as we think about what this may mean I think it’s helpful to remember that Jesus didn’t tell this as an anecdote in a business ethics workshop. Jesus isn’t functioning as an instructor in a management seminar. Jesus is being more like an EMT who’s trying to administer a proper shock to the heart of a dying patient than as a teacher in continuing education class. What we know about Jesus is that he was perfectly distressed by the absolute lostness of the religious leaders of his cherished faith, and he was trying to disrupt the false teaching that had been going on.

Jesus was out to expose the lostness of the religious leaders of his day and to reveal the mysterious truth about our God. And one of the tools he used in his effort to transform the way people were wrongly thinking of God was to tell these shocking tales with odd twists.

This is a strange parable without an obvious lesson, but one of the things Jesus was doing when he told this parable was to totally contradict the teaching of the scribes and Pharisees in a shrewd manner. He didn’t just stand up and proclaim that they had no idea what they were talking about, he told a story that revealed an opportunity for those who had been doing the wrong thing to behave in a new way and to reestablish themselves. On one level I think this parable is an invitation for the Pharisees and scribes to see themselves in a new way and want to change their ways.

This may be a stretch, but I think if I had been in the role of a Pharisee, and if I heard Jesus tell a story of a person in a management position who had been caught squandering the goods – I think I would have leaned in to hear what he was saying. And I think I would have liked what I heard. Because this manager who knew he hadn’t been doing things quite right didn’t react defensively. This manager made an honest assessment of the situation and he responded creatively. He found a way to provide for himself in a clever manner, and he was commended by the master for his ingenuity. It’s not an ethical business model, but I think it was a way for Jesus to invite the dishonest managers of Israel to see our God in a new way.

The one redeeming characteristic of the dishonest steward was that he recognized the authority of the master. He had taken advantage of his position in the absence of the master, but when he was confronted with this accusation he didn’t even try to pretend that this was not the case. He didn’t consider trying to make excuses for himself. He didn’t even try to promote the illusion of propriety. He knew that he was seen for who he was, he made an honest assessment of his situation, and he did what he could to preserve his lifestyle.

He knew the gig was up, and he knew that he wasn’t going to reestablish a relationship with his master under the same circumstances. He had no illusion about his ability to continue to defraud his master, and he did something that provided him with some new options.

This is an interesting parable (to say the least), and it’s important for us to make a distinction between the immorality of the steward’s behavior, and the cleverness of his solution. We aren’t to imitate his dishonest behavior, but we are to take note of the whole new life that he established for himself. He reveals what it looks like to serve one master or the other, and it calls for us to identify in an equally clear manner which master we have chosen to serve.

The behavior of this steward isn’t a good thing if you are trying to understand what it looks like to actually serve God, but it sheds some clear light on the difference between serving one master or the other. This parable provides us with a lesson on the value of self-understanding, and the importance of seeing who it is we seek to serve.

We don’t generally see shrewdness as a spiritual characteristic because when we exercise shrewdness it’s usually done in a self-serving manner. I think we often associate shrewdness with people who see clever investment opportunities, and we generally think of shrewd investors as those who find ways to make lots of money for themselves. It’s not a bad thing to be a shrewd investor, but I think we would all agree that shrewd investing is not a spiritual endeavor – it’s an economic endeavor. Some people are inclined to think if you make a lot of money at something you have been favored by God, but that’s not anything that Jesus ever taught. I think what Jesus was trying to teach with this parable is that there’s more than one way to be shrewd, and if it’s God that we want to serve we need to engage in some spiritually shrewd behavior.

I think the point of this parable is to encourage us to see who it is we seek to serve, and to ask the question of how diligent and creative we are being in our effort to develop that relationship. I don’t think it’s news to any of us that the most satisfying experiences in life are the ones that enhance loving relationships with other people and draw us closer to God. And if this is what we want we need to understand if that’s what we are working for or against.

I’m advocating that we engage in some spiritual shrewdness, but I don’t want you to hear me saying that we’ve got to be as clever and conniving as this dishonest steward was in order to gain God’s attention and favor. I’m absolutely sure that it’s not through our own creative efforts that we find ourselves in the company of God, but I do think we’ve got to be pretty shrewd in order to see through our own illusions of ourselves. We aren’t just good as presenting nice godly images of ourselves to other people, we’re pretty good at keeping ourselves from seeing who we serve and what we love more than anything else.

The best thing that ever happens to any of us is for us to have those experiences where we come to realize the gig is up, and we understand ourselves to be perfectly exposed as the frail, flawed, misguided, and confused individuals that we all have known ourselves to be. I’m not actually wishing that on anyone next week, but there’s something beautiful that happens when we encounter personal failure. There’s something redeeming about seeing ourselves as incredibly limited human beings in need of the love of God and our neighbors.

Sometimes those experiences are foisted upon us. On a show last week on CNN I heard Mitt Romney talk about how it feels to lose a presidential election. One of the most memorable illustrations of the emotional cliff you fall off of when you lose such a race was when he talked about being on the world stage one week and being in line to check out at Costco the next week in order to restock their empty refrigerator. Personal failure happens, and that’s a terribly painful experience, but it can put you in a beautifully redeeming place. Often God’s love becomes the most clear to us when our illusions of personal accomplishment have been stripped away.

But I don’t think we have to experience public disgrace in order to put ourselves in such spiritually rich places. I think the kind of shrewdness Jesus was calling for us to have is simply for us to develop yearning for the truth. We should want to see ourselves for who we are, and to see God as God really is.

When Jesus told this parable I think Jesus was offering an opportunity for some terribly misguided people to wake up and see how wrong they were about him, about themselves, and about God. It was an odd invitation for them to serve the one true master. But it wasn’t just for them. We all need to recognize the ways in which we squander the true master’s goods, and give ourselves fully to false gods.

It happens to all of us, and such temptations never cease, but neither does the love of God. Opportunities for redemption continue to come our way, and by the power of the Holy Spirit we sometimes find the wisdom and the courage to step in to that beautifully searing light of truth.

Thanks be to God. Amen

The Strong Language of Christ

Luke 14:25-33

25 Now large crowds were traveling with him; and he turned and said to them, 26 “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. 27 Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. 28 For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? 29 Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, 30 saying, ‘This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.’ 31 Or what king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand? 32 If he cannot, then, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace. 33 So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.

Something I enjoyed about my time in campus ministry was getting to hear fresh slang. Of course by the time I tuned in to it, it wasn’t necessarily fresh anymore, but there was one student in particular who liked to say things that he knew I wouldn’t quite understand. I remember hearing him refer to a girl he knew as a hater, and what I knew about that situation was that he was a lot more interested in her than she was in him, and that clued me in to what it meant to be a hater.

I don’t know if young people still use that language. I found it to be an entertaining use of the word. Haters aren’t necessarily hateful people – they just don’t do what somebody expects them to do. And I actually think that use of the word is pretty close to the way in which Jesus used the word. Certainly Jesus wasn’t advocating for people to treat other people in a hateful way when he said that we must hate our closest relatives and even ourselves if we want to follow him, but I do think he meant that we shouldn’t let anyone or anything get between ourselves and God.

On a significant level you’ve got to be a hater if you want to follow Jesus. If you want to say yes to God you’ve got to say no to some others. If you said no to someone in 2008 that turned you in to a hater, and I think that’s the kind of hate Jesus was talking about in this passage of scripture.

Jesus used this strong language in order to describe the high cost of following him.  Jesus wanted us to know on the front end that following him is not a matter of tagging along on a sentimental journey. Some churches probably do a better job of highlighting the cost of discipleship better than we do in the United Methodist Church, but I’m not unhappy that we are as agreeable as we are.

Jesus says you can’t follow him unless you hate your family and give up your possessions, but we encourage family life in the United Methodist Church and we celebrate economic success – when it’s done in an ethical way. I’m not saying we should ignore what Jesus had to say about the spiritual perils that are posed by our most cherished relationships and our fortunes, but like most matters of the heart – it’s not so simple. It might be that we err on the side of reason at the expense of some commitment, but I like to think we United Methodists do a good job of encouraging people to integrate their faith with their family life and for people to allow their faith to inform their economic decisions.

I didn’t see the episode, but I understand that the comedian, Jon Stewart, once said that becoming a United Methodist is a lot like getting an online degree from University of Phoenix. I don’t know if any of you have a degree from the University of Phoenix, but if you do I hope you find it to be as helpful as it is to be a United Methodist.

I know that what Jon Stewart said is true on some level. We make it easy to join our body, and we aren’t very demanding of one another in regard to the way we live out our discipleship, but I don’t like the alternative. It seems to me that when churches become overly restrictive and highly judgmental they become hateful in a way that Jesus didn’t intend. Some say we United Methodists have more questions than answers and to that I say Amen.

We don’t pretend to have all the answers, and that makes it possible for a lot of us to embrace this community of faith. Our lack of hardline positions on various issues may make for an element of confusion, but I’ll take confusion over fundamentalism anytime. There’s an element of humility that goes with not knowing everything, and anyone who thinks they know exactly what it takes to be a disciple of Jesus Christ hasn’t paid close attention to what Jesus had to say.

I find this morning’s passage to be particularly humbling. I’ve indicated that I think there is some hyperbole involved in what Jesus had to say, but what I also believe is that Jesus is all but impossible to follow in a perfect way. The cost of following him in a totally committed manner is more than most of us are willing to give. Few of us would say that we wouldn’t give everything we have to take care of a child or a parent or a spouse, and I dare say we all aspire to live in nice houses. Who can give what Jesus seems to be asking?

Who is qualified to be a disciple of Jesus Christ? Who has made the kind of sacrifices Jesus seems to be requiring? I know I haven’t. I don’t know the inner life of anyone else, but on a significant level I can see what it costs to be a follower of Jesus Christ and I don’t measure up. To use his language – I don’t have enough raw materials to build the tower, and I can see that my army is no match for my enemy. I guess I could use this as an excuse to forget the whole thing, but I can’t. I’m guessing I’m like a lot of people in that original crowd who continued following Jesus on the day he uttered these words. They found what he had to say too hard to hear, but they couldn’t turn away.

Jesus was uncompromising in what he knew to be true about the path to true life – that it costs far more than we can imagine being willing to give, but that doesn’t mean that we aren’t welcome to fall in behind him. Jesus didn’t want us to be misinformed about how difficult it is to find our way in to the bright light of a truly holy life, but he only wanted to put off those who expected it to be easy. What Jesus wanted us to understand is that there isn’t a shortcut to the life of spiritual abundance. Nor did he want us to think that pursuit was going to provide us with the kinds of treasures that we generally go after in this world.

Speaking as the United Methodist that I am, I fully embrace the idea that it’s possible to be a fully engaged member of society who gets the kids to school and goes to work every day in an economic system that is far from perfect, and who also pursues life in the kingdom of God. I don’t believe it’s essential to renounce all that we generally hold dear in order to be a serious follower of Jesus Christ, but I don’t think we need to ignore how difficult it is to live in this material world and to seek a spiritual life.

We need to understand what we’re up against. Self-understanding and authentic spirituality are not encouraged by the socioeconomic systems that surround us, and it’s hard to resist the claims of these systems on our lives. To live a spiritually authentic, creative, and obedient life is to recognize the ways in which we are being lured in to serving false masters, and one way that this is manifested in our lives is our tendency to want to separate our material lives from our spiritual lives.

One of the great challenges we face is to resist the temptation to create dual lives – to think that our internal spiritual life is somehow separated from our external material life. With this kind of thinking there is this tendency to think that if we can somehow please God with our gestures of spiritual obedience through acts of worship and devotion we can turn around and conduct business in whatever manner will provide success – and that God will somehow reward our godless efforts. In some ways I think this is the primary characteristic religious life in our day and age, but that isn’t what Jesus taught, and that isn’t what we should expect. I believe what Jesus invited us to do is to engage in one pursuit. Our challenge is to live in this world as a disciple of Jesus Christ, and that means more than asking Jesus to bless whatever it is we choose to do. It means saying no to some of those powerful systems that expect us to be fully accommodating.

It’s hard to break out of powerful systems, and when people do break free from established systems their actions can be interpreted as forms of hatred for the people they were supposed to love and respect. We live in a confusing world, and it’s not easy for us to see the ways in which we are living those dual lives of loving God and serving godless systems, but that is what we are called to do.

I’m convinced that one of the great challenges that we face in life is for us to simply understand the double lives that we live. I believe we are conditioned to believe that this is the way God designed the world to be, but that’s not the way that Jesus saw it. Jesus made this strong demand for us to hate the claims that worldly institutions place upon us. He wanted us to see the way that godless systems shape our lives. He wanted us to understand how they not only define who we are, but they define who God is as well. In many ways our greatest challenge is to reject the way that God is primarily defined in this world. Our challenge is to understand God as Jesus did – which is not necessarily the way that any of us have been conditioned to understand God.

I’m speaking in some very general terms, but what I’m trying to say is that Jesus didn’t want us to sleepwalk through our lives. Jesus said some downright alarming things because he wanted us to wake up and pursue the truth. I mentioned how easy it is to be a United Methodist, and how I’m not unhappy about that, but being connected to a church is not exactly the same thing as being a disciple of Jesus Christ. The church is sort of like a clubhouse – it’s the place where we find refuge and encouragement, and where we get organized to do some things that serve our vital cause, but following Christ is a very personal journey. It’s good that we have this community of support, but following Christ is an individual enterprise.

The best we can do is to try to understand the challenges and the obstacles that stand between ourselves and our God. It’s not easy, but it’s a beautiful opportunity. It’s not just difficult to follow Jesus – it’s also the best thing that we can ever do.

Jesus spoke some difficult words to us so that we would not be inclined to think that things are as they should be. Jesus wanted us to remain hungry for the truth for our entire lives, and he didn’t want us to settle for an incomplete understanding of God.

The good news is that none of us are alone in this difficult journey of following Jesus. We are not alone in this challenge to move from where we are to where Jesus is calling us to be. The United Methodist Church is full of people who fall short of fulfilling the call of Christ to hate everything and everyone that stands between ourselves and our God. You’re in good company if you have some sense of not measuring up to what Christ calls for you to do.

But we not only have good companions on this difficult journey, we have access to the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus didn’t just have hard words for us to hear. Jesus had genuine love for us, and he is with us on this journey. Jesus loves us, and Jesus wants us to continue to grow in our understanding of ourselves and of God. Jesus wants us to see the truth about this world, and Jesus wants us to understand how we can more fully integrate life in this world with life in the kingdom of God. It’s hard, but it’s the way for us to fully experience the greatest sense of belonging and to obtain the greatest treasures. The only thing Jesus really hated was our ignorance of God, and he loves us so much he did all he could to expose us to the truth.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

Mr. Manners

Luke 14:1, 7-14

1 On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the sabbath, they were watching him closely. 7 When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable. 8 “When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; 9 and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, ‘Give this person your place,’ and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. 10 But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher’; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. 11 For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” 12 He said also to the one who had invited him, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. 13 But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. 14 And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

My 40^th high school reunion will be taking place in October. I was in the Wynne High School Class of 1976. There are two notable things about that year. It was the bicentennial year of our nation and the peak year in popularity for men’s pastel-colored polyester leisure suits. These things made me feel like it was a very special year to graduate from high school. I don’t know what came of my baby blue leisure suit, but I so regret not being able to pull it out for the event.

I sent in my registration for the reunion, and there was a bit of questionnaire included in it. I was asked to provide some basic biographical information about my family and my work and my interests. And that wasn’t too hard to pull together, but there was one question that sort of stumped me. On one line it said: Notable accomplishments. And then in parenthesis it said: (Please be brief).

I wasn’t really expecting this request, and I struggled to decide how to respond to it. I really didn’t know what to say, and it’s not that I was trying to figure out how to keep it brief. I couldn’t really think of anything that rose to the level of a notable accomplishment, so I responded by saying: Yet to be determined.

Of course the truth is that I greatly value the appearance genuine humility, and I take great pride in my ability to seem unconcerned about my lack of notable accomplishments. I feel very successful at that. Vanity and self-serving behavior can assume many different forms, and I have chosen to excel in the field of false modesty. I have the amazing ability to shield my raging ego behind the façade of a humble person. They wanted me to keep it brief, so I chose not to explain how masterful I am at appearing to be comfortable with my modest level of accomplishments.

You however, are not so fortunate. I am here to testify that spiritual deficiency can manifest itself in many different ways. There is this temptation to believe that arrogance and self-important indulgence only manifests itself in the kind of behavior that was exhibited at the dinner Jesus attended at the home of the leader of the Pharisees, but it’s not. Spiritual poverty doesn’t always take the form of aggressive self-assertiveness. It can emerge in any number of ways.

Of course it’s not uncommon for pseudo-spirituality to turn in to unbridled self-promotion, and such behavior was on full display when this large group of well-positioned men attended the dinner at the home of the leader of the Pharisees. There wasn’t any false modesty on parade that night. What Jesus witnessed in that house was raw self-promotion and he was disturbed by it. He was troubled to find that these men who were in positions of spiritual guidance for the people of Israel were totally oblivious to the nature of true spirituality.

We’re told that Jesus told them a parable, but in some ways this story doesn’t fit the formula for a parable. Generally speaking, parables were fictional stories that went in odd directions in order to illustrate a particular aspect of the kingdom of God. A good example would be the story of the good Samaritan. That story took a turn that served to disrupt commonly held feelings about a group of people that they generally considered to be spiritually unfit. It was designed to be provocative and unsettling.

What Jesus told the Pharisees wasn’t as much of a fictional story with a startling conclusion, it’s more along the line of straight advice on how to behave, but the advice rises to the level of a parable because it’s such unexpected advice. The intention of a parable is to enable a person to see a situation in a new manner, and that’s exactly what this story does. What Jesus had to say to the people who were in attendance at that dinner was shocking advice, and in so doing he was trying to help them see God in a new manner.

The advice columnist, Ms. Manners, came to mind when I read this passage of scripture. I’m really not sure if she’s still dispensing wisdom about etiquette, but what Jesus did was similar to what she did and may still do. Only Jesus gave his advice in person and it was unsolicited, which is probably something Ms. Manners would advise against. And the instructions Jesus provided don’t exactly fall within the guidelines of the traditional rules of etiquette.

Traditional rules of etiquette are useful to understand on some level. It’s not good to be known for the sounds you make at the dinner-table or to be remembered for the manner in which you grab the salt. There is a good amount of consideration built into the rules of etiquette. But the traditional rules of etiquette aren’t just about training people to be considerate and respectful. There is another purpose of these traditions, and it is to distinguish between people who know how to act in proper society and those who don’t. The rules of etiquette are designed to reflect polish and refinement, and it’s essential to exercise proper etiquette if you want to fit in with people who live in nice places.

And you might say Jesus was trying to do the same thing, but instead of trying to be pleasing to people who live in nice places on earth, Jesus was instructing people on how to behave if you want to be at home in the kingdom of God. The Pharisees were trying to figure out how to impress one another, Jesus was talking about the way we should live if we want to make an impression on the saints in heaven.

After giving his unsolicited advice about where to sit, Jesus then shared some unconventional thoughts on developing the guest list for an important social event. It comes across as odd advice to invite people who are unable to return the favor if you are oriented around your social standing in this world, but it makes perfect sense for a person who is oriented around the Kingdom of God. There is a sense in which Jesus assumed the role of Mr. Manners at this dinner party, but his advice was not on how to navigate through society in a graceful manner. He gave his advice on how to act when you want to gain entrance in the Kingdom of God.

The fact that Jesus engaged in this critique of the guests at this dinner party was an odd turn of events, because Jesus was the one they expected to scrutinize. Jesus had been invited to this dinner so the most powerful people in the community could make an assessment of who they thought he was. They were wanting to take a good look at him, and they weren’t just wanting to see if he knew which fork to eat his salad with. Jesus was suspected of leading people astray — of doing things that defied their rules of religious etiquette.

The Pharisees recognized that Jesus was a person with a growing amount of power and authority. He wouldn’t have been invited to this high-powered dinner if that had not been the case. But the Pharisees didn’t approve of the way in which Jesus used his power. He touched people who they considered to be defiled. He didn’t observe the Sabbath in the way they thought it should be observed, and he didn’t say nice things about powerful people. Jesus didn’t do things that would endear him to those who were in high places, and that fueled their suspicion of him.

They were right to eye him with suspicion, for he was interested in turning people away from their way of thinking. When Jesus told them where they should sit when they attend a wedding banquet, he was revealing the radical difference between the attitude and activity of a person who wants to be faithful to God and the attitude of those who live to serve themselves.

And he was talking to us as much as he was talking to them. It’s always been easy to confuse our own personal agendas with what we consider to be righteous behavior. It’s not always easy for us to see the way in which we do this, but it was obvious to Jesus, and Jesus wants us to avoid that most profound form of humiliation. Arrogant behavior can feel very satisfying to our fragile egos, but in actuality, the ways in which we try to assert ourselves over other people can be detrimental to our souls.

Jesus spoke of what it takes to be at home in the Kingdom of God, and the manner in which the Pharisees lived placed them on the outside of that community. When Jesus spoke of the Kingdom of God I’m convinced he was speaking of a community that is both in this world and beyond. It isn’t just a community that we enter upon departure from this world – I believe we can step into it while we’re still in the flesh. I think Jesus experienced it among the people who were cast out of the official religious community, and this is why he advised inviting such an unusual group of people to dinner. I think Jesus saw the Pharisees as living apart from that holy community, and he doesn’t want us to make that same mistake.

Jesus said that when we find ourselves in the position of hosts we shouldn’t invite people who can somehow repay us, but we should reach out to people who have more needs than resources. His advice to invite victims of various infirmities wasn’t about charity, it was about getting in touch with people who understand true dependence on God. It was about associating with people who actually live without pretense. It was about getting a taste for life in the Kingdom of God.

To abide in the Kingdom of God is to live with values that are opposed to that which is generally valued on earth. Jesus’ advice is that we seek to satisfy God and God alone. Jesus wanted us to know that we are not receiving the best reward if we’re only going after the stuff and the status.

I sort of hated that I didn’t have a few powerful awards and titles that I could have listed as notable accomplishments for my high school reunion. It’s hard not to want to be measurably successful, but I think we all know that the most powerful things any of us accomplish are largely immeasurable in our worldly ways.

Our faith doesn’t require us to somehow live in a manner that’s disconnected from the operations of this world, but our calling is not to be defined by the standards of this world. It’s not a bad thing for us to consider what we would list as our notable accomplishments. In fact it’s probably a good thing to assess where we are and what we are seeking to do. It’s also good to know that much is yet to be determined for all of us, and by the grace of God we will continue to grow in our understanding of what it will take to actually accomplish great things for the kingdom of God.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.