The Invisible Ones Proper 21C

 

The Invisible Ones

In the early days of Covid, when the gyms all closed, I went to the parking lot outside my gym and like Forrest Gump, I began running. I had it all to myself, except once in a while when a truck driver parked his rig in the lot over-night. Sometimes he would run as well. When the gym reopened, and some of the other businesses that had offices in the same industrial park were back, I recall one morning as I finished a couple of miles, a voice behind me called out, “Man, you have lost a lot of weight!” I immediately thought, “I’ve been seen!” I turned to find a total stranger, a gentleman who, as it turned out, worked for an environmental group that does the dirty work most of us would like to avoid, e.g. asbestos abatement, lead paint abatement, demolition work, etc. I said, “Thank you,” and introduced myself. I learned that he’s from Guatemala, and he and others have worked here for something like 18 years. I went home, hopped on the scale, and sure enough. I had dropped over 10 pounds. I would have never known but for the fact that someone saw me and cared enough to get to know me. 

People from certain minority groups these days talk about not “being seen.” Some on the Autism Spectrum. Some from the LGBTQ+ community. Women, African-Americans, immigrants, refugees, trans-people, those Veterans holding signs at busy intersections. People whom we often just drive by instead of stopping to say, “Hi, how can I help you today?” Had it not been for my new friend, I wouldn’t know how much it means to otherwise invisible people in our society to “be seen”. Notice, that “being seen” means more than just seeing; it means getting to know the “other,” much as my new friend who had been observing me for weeks. He could see that exercising out in the fresh air everyday had made a difference; had changed me. I was deeply touched that of all the people who now had re-populated the parking lot, some of whom must have remembered me from the gym, it was only my new friend from Guatemala who had really seen me. To others I was invisible. I was one of those “others,” someone not quite like the rest of us. We all want to be seen, really. 

We often talk about these invisible ones without really knowing them. Without really knowing even one of them. And we come up with so-called solutions we think they need without really consulting them. They have become so prevalent in our society, in our towns, in our country, that blues-musician Charlie Musselwhite has penned a song about them which goes in part:

But you don’t see us/You don’t really try

We’re the invisible ones/Left outside

We are the invisible ones/The invisible ones

You’d let die/You’d let die/You’d let die

   -Invisible Ones by Charlie Musselwhite 

It turns out that long ago, Jesus gave invisible ones a name: Lazarus. Lazarus, and all the Lazaruses, are among the “every human being” we promise to treat with respect and dignity in our Baptismal Covenant. Lazarus lies in the street just outside “a rich man’s gate,” with a dog licking his sores. Lazarus is like the Syrophoenician woman Jesus insults, calling her and her people “dogs.” [Mark 7:24-30] Like her, Lazarus would settle for a few crumbs from the rich man’s table. Alas, the rich man does not see him. Only a stray dog seeks to comfort him by licking his sores. [Luke 16:19-31] The rich man has no name. But Jesus has made it his custom to know these “others;” to know these “invisible ones.” As the story goes in Luke, the rich man dies, and so does Lazarus. Lazarus was carried away by angels to Father Abraham, while the rich man ends up in Hades where he “is tormented” to the point of great thirst. He looks up and sees Lazarus, now for the first time in “the bosom of Abraham,” and begs for just a drop of water off of the Invisible One’s finger. The roles are now reversed. The first are last and the last are first. 

Now the rich man knows what it feels like to have been Lazarus in this life. He is now the beggar, asking for mercy from Abraham. Abe says, in effect, you had your chance. You enjoyed good things. “Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.” I have five brothers, says the rich man. Please send Lazarus to them to warn them. Nope, we cannot do that, says Abraham. Besides, they have access to the wisdom of Moses and the Prophets. They should listen to them! He said, `No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.' Abraham said to him, `If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead." Curtain. 

Now few of us are as rich as the rich man, and few of us are as poor as old Lazarus. Though some of us may feel as invisible as Lazarus, and some of us, like the rich man, may pass by the invisible ones in our world without them a thought. But all of us are very much like the five brothers – there’s a chance we might change our evil ways. There’s a chance we might see ourselves in this parable and, dare I say, wake up to a full understanding of what Moses, the Prophets, and Jesus really mean when they urge us to love our neighbors. Who urges us to recognize that the man or woman on the corner, or outside the supermarket, with a cardboard sign in their hands is our neighbor. Is the “least of my sisters and brothers,” and that whatever we do for them, whatever we don’t do for them, is what we do to Christ – because Christ is in them. They are Christ, holding the sign as a mirror in which we might, if we are fortunate, see ourselves for who we really are. 

I see my friend from Guatemala almost every morning now. His fellow workers all say good morning. We have a short chat each day. Then I look to the news and hear someone like Stephen Miller telling me I ought to be afraid of these immigrant workers; that I should be happy that we, our government who represents us all, that “we” now round up all the folks we can find like them and lock them up, and try to send them out of the country. That somehow this will make America great. Again. We don’t even know who rounds-up all these people on our behalf because they all wear masks. Ironically, they make themselves invisible, on purpose. I don’t use my new friend’s name so as not to identify him to these anonymous gangs who roam our land. 

We read this story of Lazarus and the rich man every three years in church. But do we hear what Jesus is saying? Jesus, who in the previous chapters of Luke tells us in no uncertain terms not   only to see the invisible ones, to see all the Lazaruses, but to invite them to sit at our table to share a meal with them. And yet, as Dionne Warwick sings, we continue to walk on by. We drive on by. We hit the accelerator and pass the invisible ones as fast as we can. Because we are frightened by what we see. To see what is being done on our behalf. To realize who we have become. All Jesus wants us to do is to see “others.” All others. Really see them.  Get to know them. This is how we begin to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. It turns out it is the only way to enter the gates of heaven. It’s the only way into eternal life in God’s kingdom. Here and now. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow. When we see one another, truly see and know one another, it makes all the difference. All the difference in the whole wide world.

“Nobody gets into the kingdom of God without a letter of reference from the poor!” Proper 20C

 “Nobody gets into the kingdom of God without a letter of reference from the poor!”

This was a favorite axiom of The Reverend James Forbes, one time pastor of the historic Riverside Church in New York City, and my Homiletics Professor at Union Seminary. Which is to say that the Prophets like Jeremiah, Amos, Hosea, Isaiah and others had made careers out of proclaiming this message to the religious and political leaders of Israel for over 800 years before the time of Jesus. And they were descended from earlier prophets like Elijah and Elisha who had identified the unjust practices of the wealthy and powerful who were, to be kind to them, blinded by their desire for power, prestige, and money at the expense of the general population of the people they were appointed to serve. Without question, Jesus picked up the mantle and tradition of Biblical prophets, most of whom were poets writing what today we might describe as Op-Ed pieces calling for society and its leaders to pay more attention to the plight of those they were meant to serve. The prevailing Biblical economic understanding was that money needs to remain in circulation to the benefit of all the people. Whereas, to accumulate great wealth made it impossible for the majority of the population to survive. As followers of Jesus, as his modern-day disciples, we are called to turn away from society’s obsession with wealth and material goods, and turn towards the hunger and needs of the communities, nation, and world in which we live. This is the “repentance” to which Jesus continually, every day, calls us to live. 

Though some degree of mercantilism existed in the more urban centers in First Century Israel, the vast majority of the “people of the land,” the “am ha’aretz,” were agrarians – usually tenant debt-ridden farmers working for land owners who had bought-up farms that had gone into foreclosure and bankruptcy. The owners would send managers to collect what were unusually high rent, taxes, and at least a tithe, ten percent, of the produce, leaving little chance of the local farmer making any kind of profit, thus going further in debt every year. Not at all unlike what is happening to American farmers today who have seen long-standing contracts with other countries voided due to a tariff-driven trade-war, the cost of farm machinery, fewer farm workers as they are swept up for deportation, and a lack of affordable capital to keep family farms going from one generation to the next. 

Against such a background, and having already been sneered at by those in power for spending too much time with the poor, women, immigrant laborers and tax collectors, Jesus tells a parable, a story, so odd, that for centuries really, scholars have reached little agreement on what the story could possibly mean. Even at the time Luke was assembling his gospel, it appears that he, or others, appended a few sayings to try to make sense of it themselves, and fit it into the longer narrative in Luke and the Book of Acts. 

Most often it is called The Parable of the Unjust Steward, which is immediately suggestive that the principal character is not to be trusted. He is the manager for some farms owned by a wealthy land owner. A group of tenant farmers go the rich man to present charges that the manager is “squandering his property.” [Luke 16:1-14] Yet, the Greek text does not support such an understanding, as it reads, “This one (the manager) was slandered to him (the owner) as spreading his property around.” That is, those bringing “charges” are unjust, as is the owner who keeps the farmers poor. Not the manager who cheats the owner. 

The owner calls for an accounting of his holdings before he intends to fire the manager, who, if it is true that he is spreading the wealth around, is actually compliant with the vision of Torah (the first five books of the Bible) and the prophets. The quick-thinking manager goes about the farms and reduces their charges significantly – 20% and 50% reductions of what the farmers owe the owner! We are told he believes that the farmers will take care of him when he loses his position. “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. 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…You cannot serve God and wealth. The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all this, and they ridiculed him.” 

If as usual we believe someone in the parable must represent God or Jesus, we would do well to note that no one in this tale is righteous, just, or at all an exemplary character: the owner is rapacious and keeps the farmers in debt, the manager cheats the owner, and the farmers are unjust slanderers. How does one “make friends with dishonest wealth” so that one day we might be welcomed into “eternal homes”? I will be bold and suggest that this refers to the original “slander” against the manager: find ways to improve policies such that wealth gets “spread around” on behalf of what used to be “the common good” for all people. That is, the manager became, out of necessity, a manager of “unjust” or “dishonest” wealth, spreading the owner’s money to the advantage of the farmers who faced continual foreclosure and debt. 

This is what Luke has in mind. The addition in the comments that seek to make sense of the parable sets out a choice: one can serve God, or you can serve wealth. One cannot serve both! And in chapter 2 of the Book of Acts Luke portrays the emerging church serving God, not wealth: “Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.” [Acts 2:43-47] 

Note, church growth is tied directly to the management of wealth, money and possessions so as to meet the needs of the poor: resources are to be pooled together to make sure the needs of all people can be met. This weekend, musicians from across the country are gathering in Minneapolis, Minnesota to raise money to assist the farm bankruptcies which are already outpacing those in 2024, and, according to Illinois Farm Policy News, matching the record numbers seen in 2018 and 2019. [i] You cannot serve God and Wealth to get the letter of reference. 

Our prayer for today says: Grant us, Lord, not to be anxious about earthly things, but to love things heavenly; and even now, while we are placed among things that are passing away, to hold fast to those that shall endure.” Those heavenly things that shall endure includes the Bible’s economic “policies” which value the common good over the increasingly obscene accumulation of wealth among the billionaire and soon to be trillionaire class. The only way forward so as not to be anxious about earthly things is to become managers of unjust and dishonest wealth, which in turn necessitates choosing leaders at all levels of local, national, and church leadership who are willing to serve God over the service of wealth itself. I may be wrong, but I doubt it. I believe this is what Jesus, in this most unusual of his parables, is calling us to do. As the saying goes, “No one gets into the kingdom of God without a letter of reference from the poor.”  Amen.

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[i] https://farmpolicynews.illinois.edu/2025/07/farm-bankruptcies-this-year-already-exceed-2024-levels/

I Know Gun Trauma Proper 19C

 I Know Gun Trauma

I have witnessed gun violence in the face of my colleagues The Reverend Mary Marguerite Kohn and Brenda Brewington. I know what gun trauma feels like. Each time there is yet another mass shooting in this country, there is an uncontrollable reaction deep inside of me that has yet to go away since that tragic day at Saint Peter’s Episcopal Church, Ellicott City, MD: Thursday, May 3, 2012. Call it PTSD, call it Gun Trauma. It’s real. I spent much of the following couple of days by Mary Marguerite’s bedside in Shock Trauma as she was kept alive until organs could be harvested for transplantation. I spent Friday evening gathering our congregation to begin the grieving process and comfort one another. I struggled to find the words on Sunday morning that might help us all to make sense of what had happened in the church office a few days before:

“We will never understand it. We will never understand it no matter how many reports come out of the Howard County Police Department, who have served us all faithfully and well, we will never understand it. But we do understand this. We come from love, we return to love, and love is all around. Brenda and Mary Marguerite have returned home. They have returned to the heart of Love, the eternal center of God’s very Being.” 

I have lived with the knowledge that on any other Thursday afternoon, I too would have been in that office. It was only a random scheduling change that kept me somewhere else until shortly after the shooting had been reported. I learned quite soon that, yes, there is something real about Survivor’s Guilt. Like the trauma itself, it never really goes away. I’m only here because I wasn’t there. 

The events at Utah Valley University triggers all of this like a slow-motion instant replay in an NFL Sunday game. I had already planned what I might say on this 14^th Sunday after Pentecost which greets us with the words of two poets, one called Jeremiah, the other an unknown Psalmist:

"For my people are foolish,

they do not know me;

they are stupid children,

they have no understanding.

They are skilled in doing evil,

but do not know how to do good." [i]

 

“The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’

All are corrupt and commit abominable acts;

there is none who does any good.

Every one has proved faithless;

all alike have turned bad;

there is none who does good; no, not one.” [ii] 

Wisdom going back over 2,600 years describes how many feel about things today. It appears that retributive and redemptive violence has been with us all for as long as we can imagine. The “foolishness” expressed by our poets is kidding ourselves that we can stand on our own. We can keep a stiff upper lip. As one commentary observes, “Our culture considers autonomy one of the highest virtues. To be a functioning adult, one must be self-sufficient, self-directed; and the goal of life is often understood to be self-fulfillment, or self-actualization… namely, we don’t need other people, and we don’t need God! Such a conclusion does not deny the existence of God, but it does effectively eliminate God as an essential, functioning aspect of our daily reality. For us, in effect, “there is no God” [iii] It’s the gospel of Ayn Rand and the Marlboro Man that has so infected much of the heart and soul of America. Rugged Individualism reigns in a land that often pretends that we are a “Christian nation,” which would mean that we love God and love our neighbor – with Jesus defining neighbor as everyone, everywhere, all the time, no exceptions. 

This week I am grateful that ours is an Episcopal Church – which simply means we have bishops – from the Latin episcopus, and the Greek episkopos. The 12^th Bishop of the Diocese of Utah has responded with words of faith and wisdom that hopefully help us understand “understand” just who we are, and whose we are, and where we find ourselves here, in America, today:

Episcopal Diocese of Utah Reacts to Shooting of Political Commentator Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University September 10, 2025 SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH —

The Episcopal Diocese of Utah stands in alliance with all who deeply lament the shooting that occurred today just north of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church at Utah Valley University in Orem. Twenty minutes into an event, conservative political commentator Charlie Kirk was shot, and was later pronounced dead at a nearby hospital. 

Our prayers are with Mr. Kirk’s family and friends as the shock of this news settles upon them. We hold in our prayers the victims of emotional trauma who were present at today’s event and the entire Utah Valley University community. We give thanks and ask for protection for all law enforcement and first responders. 

Christ stands with the victims of violence and challenges us to build a society rooted in compassion, dignity, and justice. As people of faith we believe Jesus Christ calls us to confront injustice and ideological differences with integrity and truth but never through the use of physical force or intimidation. Violence is an unacceptable response to disagreement. 

“We often say that we will pray for the victims and their families, and pray we must. But our faith demands more from us. We must guard the hatred in our hearts and on our lips; it is hatred and righteous indignation that leads to violence. Jesus said plainly, ‘it is that which is on our lips and in our hearts that defiles us.’” said The Rt. Rev. Phyllis A. Spiegel, 12th Bishop of Utah. 

As followers of Jesus Christ, we hear again his commandment: “Love one another as I have loved you” (John 13:34). In this love our prayers were not ever intended as passive vessels, but active. We are called not only to intercede for those affected but also to stand together against violence. 

As the Episcopal Church of Utah, we recommit ourselves to the way of Christ: praying fervently, speaking truthfully, resisting violence, and strengthening communities across differences. When we tolerate rhetoric of division or language that turns neighbors into “others,” we erode the bonds of community and create conditions where violence becomes a part of the narrative. 

We as a church, and as a society, must change the narrative.

Faithfully,

The Rt. Rev. Phyllis Spiegel,

12th Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Utah 

As a Rabbi, Hillel, living around the time of Jesus famously said: If I am not for myself, who is for me? If I am for myself alone, who am I? And, if not now, when? 

May our Christ and Savior Jesus, the Father, and the Holy Spirit, bring us back into communion with the household of Love that is the very heart of God, so that we might this day forsake our foolish ways and bear the very image of God we have been created to be so that we might represent God’s love to all the world: to every person, every creature, and all of creation itself. If not now, when? Amen.

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[i] Jeremiah 4:11-12

[ii] Psalm 14

[iii] McCann, J. Clinton Jr., Texts for Preaching: Year C (Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville KY:1994) p.510

Seating Charts and Invitations Proper 17C

Seating Charts and Invitations

Jesus is invited to share a Sabbath meal with a group of Pharisees. You would think they would know better, as Jesus frequently is a truly different kind of dinner guest – and often assumes the role of host wherever he goes. A man in need of healing appears from out of nowhere. Before healing yet another person on the Sabbath, Jesus challenges the Pharisees present as to whether or not they think it would be all right to heal someone on the Sabbath. They say nothing. He heals the man and sends him off, reminding the Pharisees that if they have a child or ox who falls into a well on the Sabbath, they would rescue them. Meaning, “I am on a rescue mission for all of humanity, all creatures, and God’s Green Earth itself! Even on the Sabbath!” 

Then, to put a fine point on rescuing all of humanity, not just one favored group, and why inviting Jesus to dinner is risky business, he goes into a strange rant on seating arrangements and who to and who not to invite to your dinner table. By now it should come as no surprise, we are to invite the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame ahead of family, friends, and neighbors. That is, the Son of God wants everyone at God’s table – which by the time Luke is relating this episode, the dinner table is all that is left of an Altar in in Jewish life since the Altar and Temple forever have been reduced to a pile of smoldering ashes. That is, the dinner table is where we are to meet God. And all humanity is to be represented. There is no longer Jew or Gentile, Israelite and Greek, male and female, slave and free, straight or gay, black, white, yellow or red. People are people. All are created, male and female, in the image of God. Jesus has been sent to remind us that God his Father wants everyone represented at the table. 

He then recounts a banquet parable. The usual guests are invited: those who are familiar and are in a position to reciprocate – who are affluent enough to invite you in return to their dinner table. Or, wedding feast. Or, birthday party. Or, Passover meal. Or, the Holy Eucharist. One after another, however, those invited are too busy to come: I’ve just bought out another farm and need to go see my new acquisition, says one. I just purchased a new team of oxen and need to try them out, says another. I just got married, and, uh, well you know, says yet another. When the host hears that everyone is too busy, he is disappointed, and angry, and tells his servant, “Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.” They all come, and yet, there is still room for more! So, the Host instructs the servant, “Go out into the roads and lanes, and compel people to come in, so that my house may be filled. For I tell you, none of those who were invited will taste my dinner.” 

Of all the stories Jesus tells, I suspect this one appealed to Luke more than any other. Because Luke’s gospel, and his second volume, The Acts of the Apostles, is about how the young Church, the Community of God’s Love in Christ, will incorporate all people everywhere into the world Jesus the Son of God imagines it ought to look like – the kingdom of God. Will it exist as a small group of First Century Jews? Or, will it welcome and even invite a broad spectrum of all kinds of people as Jesus implies in this parable he shares with the Pharisees who have invited him to share a meal with them – their cozy little group of People of the Way who want to desperately follow God’s Way to every jot and tittle of the 603 commandments issued all the way back in Torah, the first five books of the Bible. 

Jesus’s proposed invitation list and seating charts must sound simply bizarre to them. Invite the great unwashed and unclean to our club? After approximately two thousand years, look around and it will be evident that the Church, capital “C”, has not done a particularly good job of opening the doors, and the Eucharist, to everyone everywhere without question or qualification. We think you need to be baptized to witness the power and the mystery of Christ’s Body and Blood. We think you need to be of a certain age. Or, somehow need all kinds of teaching and training to feel the Love of Christ Jesus that emanates from a truly open, welcoming, inviting Community of Christ’s Love. We sing, “There’s a wideness in God’s mercy like the wideness of the sea; there’s a kindness in His justice which is more than liberty. There is welcome for the sinner, and more graces for the good; there is mercy with the Savior; there is healing in His blood.” Then we tend to narrow God’s mercy even though this hymn by Frederick William Faber (1862), and Jesus’s parable, both suggest a kind of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is to be fundamental to make-up of Christ’s One Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church? Turn to the Book of Acts and Luke tells story after story of the early church accepting Africans, Eunuchs, female Entrepreneurs, Gentiles and Foreigners of all kinds into the fellowship of the Community of Christ’s Love. Just how many congregations look like the Apostolic Church Luke describes and documents? 

And now there emerges something called White Christian Nationalism in America. The early church had few, if any, white Europeans among them. And as the depiction of Pentecost documents, people from all kinds of nations and cultures were invited, and gathered into the emerging Church from its very beginning. There is to be nothing white nor nationalistic in a community that claims to be a forerunner, a vanguard community, of a world committed to the reign of God’s mercy, forgiveness, and love – what Jesus calls the kingdom of God, to which he calls us to accept and live here and now. 

What ought we do or say as we watch citizens of color systematically removed from our midst and sent, we know not where? When we see women systematically removed from leadership positions? When we witness health care being reduced or even withdrawn from the very people Jesus says we ought to be welcoming, sustaining, and supporting? When we see food and meals, withdrawn from nourishing those who do not have the resources to secure more than one meal a day, if that? What do we say? What do we do? What do we think as we reflect on the foundational texts of the Biblical Tradition? How are we to treat those Jesus calls us to love: Resident aliens, strangers, prisoners, the lame, blind, and poor? How often do we go into the “roads and the lanes” and “compel people” to come to the feast of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ? What Jesus describes and works for every day and night is “true religion” that identifies and seeks to meet the needs of all people, no questions asked. All means all. Not just “white” people, not just “Americans.” Invitations and Seating Charts in his Father’s kingdom need to be inclusive of every single kind of human being that walks this Earth. 

These are just a few of the questions the fourteenth chapter of Luke raises. Jesus is insistent: Now is the time to act. Now is the time to include all those he cherishes into the mainstream of our daily life. Just how wide is God’s Mercy? Just how kind is God’s Justice that is more than Liberty? What are we to do or say? 

In our opening collect we pray today for God to: Graft in our hearts the love of your Name; increase in us true religion; nourish us with all goodness; and bring forth in us the fruit of good works. If not now, when?

 

Repentance: New Life in The Reign of God Proper 16C

 

Repentance: New Life in the Reign of God

As chapter 13 of Luke opens, Jesus is asked about Galileans whose blood Pilate mingled with their sacrifices – murdered in an act of sacrifice and worship, quite possibly seeking God’s forgiveness (Luke 13:1-9). Jesus knows what is on their mind, and replies, “Do you think those Galileans were worse sinners than any others? No, and unless you repent you will perish as they did!” Then he references others living in Jerusalem who died when a tower crashed down on them? Were they too greater sinners than anyone else in Jerusalem? No, and unless you repent something like that may happen to you as well. 

Then like any good rabbi, he tells them a story: A man had planted a fig tree in his vineyard. After three years it still had produced no figs. He orders the gardener to cut it down. “Why should it be wasting the soil?” The gardener intercedes on behalf of the fig tree. “Let me dig around it, place some manure in the ground, and let’s give it one more year. If it bears fruit, well and good. If not, you can cut it down.” It’s a story of forgiveness, grace and repentance, as those terms are understood throughout the Old and New Testaments of our Bible. 

To be in covenant with God our Creator, the story says, is to be in a relationship with the One God who wants to remain in relationship with us, even when we stray from God’s ways. God repeatedly calls Israel and individuals to repent. Repentance in the Bible means we have turned away from the Way of God, and therefore need to turn and turn until, as the Shaker hymn tell us, “we come down right,” walking in God’s Way again, not ours. The man who owns the vineyard and the fig tree is only concerned with profit and seems to have forgotten: as it is with God, so it is with us, and so it also shall be for the fig tree, a stand-in for all of creation. That is what is called arguing from the greater down to the lesser. 

Jesus then reverses the argument as he is teaching in a synagogue on the Sabbath (Luke 13:10-17), when suddenly a woman who has been bent over for 18 years comes in to worship with the community. I tried walking around the house bent over for just a few minutes. All one sees is one’s own feet, and just how dirty the floor is. If you are in a garden, you might see flowers that are low to the ground, but miss the large bushes of blue and white fluffy Hydrangeas, or majestic Oak and Sycamore trees. It is a limited view of the world and of life itself. With no prompting, Jesus immediately calls her over and proclaims, “Woman, you are set free from that which binds you.” And she stands up and praises God. The leader of the synagogue repeatedly tells anyone who will listen, “There are six days upon which you may work, come on those days to be healed, not the Sabbath.” Jesus then argues from the lesser to the greater, saying, “But on the Sabbath you untie your animals and lead them to get a drink of water. And ought not this woman, a Daughter of Abraham, bound by Satan for 18 long years, be unbound and set free on the Sabbath?” Everyone in the synagogue rejoiced at all the wonderful things he was doing. For the woman and everyone had re-turned to living life in the reign of God! 

“The wonderful things he was doing.” When one hears the good news, “Repent, for the Reign of God is at hand,” it is just the beginning. After hearing the good news, it is not what we think or believe that is of any importance – it is what we do that counts. Jesus demonstrates this by taking the initiative to remind everyone that Sabbath is a kind of repentance, a re-turning to the realm of God’s reign and God’s will. And that every day, especially on the Sabbath, God’s main concern is the well-being of all people, because God loves all people having created us in God’s own image. To liberate someone who has been bound by Satan for a long time trumps all other practices and rituals associated with keeping the Sabbath day holy.  It is not whether we keep the Sabbath day holy, but how we keep the Sabbath day holy that matters. Do we limit ourselves to “how we have always done it before”? Or, as Jesus and God his Father, through all of holy Scripture show us, we are to take the risk to perform surprising and daring deeds to free others from whatever binds them, whether it be exile, occupation, or random dangerous events. God forgives us and God loves us. Jesus was sent to remind us of this simple truth. So that repentance is not an act of contrition or confession, it is a turning away from business as usual and re-turning to the way of God – which Way is to love God and love our neighbor – all neighbors. 

In his book, The Good News of Jesus, William Countryman sums it up like this:

“Hearing the good news is a beginning. The rest of our life forms our response. To trust that God has loved us in this surprising way, to hope that God will go on loving us in this way, to love the one who has sought our love and to love ourselves for our own newly discovered or rediscovered loveliness, to love our world and our neighbor for the same reason – these acts of love form the bones, the skeleton, of life in the good news. We flesh them out in our daily experience of living in faith, hope, and love. As the good news shapes our lives, we and our world will begin to grow rich with the delight that God has intends for us…

“We learn to stay in conversation with one another and with our forebearers in faith. We learn to value the fixed points of sacraments and Scripture as well as to prize the surprises of life in the Spirit. We discover with delight that, however old we may be, we go right on growing and changing and maturing by the power of the good news. This is what the good news makes possible! You don’t have to earn your way by being perfect. You don’t even have to pretend to be perfect. God has chosen you in love, just as you are. All is forgiven.

“A new country lies before you. A new citizenship is yours. The frontier is open. The border guards have been reassigned. No one needs a visa anymore.

“Now take risks. Accept your new citizenship. Make a new beginning with God, with yourself, with your world, and with your neighbor. “ [i] 

The new life of the good news is like this: As we all were preparing for Holy Communion one morning at Trinity Episcopal Church, Wall Street, NYC, the Celebrant and two chalice bearers standing on the pavement before the communion rail, suddenly a visitor came in the door and all the way down the aisle – skipping the whole way. He stops and asks the priest, in a loud voice, “Is that the Body of Christ?” Yes, it is, said the priest. And pointing at a chalice the man who had skipped down the aisle asked, “And is that the Blood of Christ?” Yes, it is, replied the chalice bearer. “Then, I’ll have me some of that!” he said. With that, the priest gave him the bread, and a chalice bearer offered him the wine. The man then turned around, and skipped all the way back up the aisle and out the door with a satisfied grin on his face, ready to see the world in an entirely new light. The light of Christ. No one asked if he was baptized. No one questioned how he approached Holy Communion, or his behavior, or challenged any aspect of his appearance that morning. As citizens of the good news and the reign of God, we all seemed to remember that Jesus had given his life for the life of the world – the whole world. And that the man who skipped down the aisle was our neighbor. And that we had just made a stranger, a strange one at that, very happy, judging by the look on his face and his exuberant departure. And that’s how we make a new beginning with God, with ourselves, with the world, and with our neighbors!

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[i] Countryman, L,William, The Good News of Jesus (Cowley Press, Cambridge, MA:1993) p. 108-109

Are We Acting in Faith? Proper 15C

 Are We Acting in Faith?

The Bible is unflinching in challenging us to interpret the world we live in. Thus, we find Jesus, in an already difficult and disturbing outburst, asking this most pivotal question of faith: Why do we not know how to interpret the present time? For those of us living in the United States today, this is undoubtedly the most challenging task facing our public life. It divides not just the country whose name begins with the word “United,” but as Jesus declares in Luke 12:49-56, the divisions are upending families and households: “Father against son, and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.” As it is with the present time in a dangerously ununited United States, so it was a mere three generations into the life of what came to be called the Christian Church when Luke was writing a Gospel and The Acts of the Apostles. 

In fact, in a few weeks we will hear the tone sharpened when Jesus announces, "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. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” [Luke 14:26-27] All his speech about kindling a fire, a stressful baptism, carrying a cross, becoming a disciple, is framed as a response to “the present time.” Jesus has read, marked, and inwardly digested the warnings of the prophets of Israel: God is not impressed by worship, sacrifices, and prayers that are not backed up with action. Which action is meant to counter the unjust, and therefore ungodly, actions of a society that ceases protections for its most vulnerable citizens, often described in the coded biblical phrase, “widows, orphans, and resident aliens.” 

When the Poet-Prophet Isaiah describes Israel as God’s personal vineyard [Isaiah 5:1-7], we hear the interpretation of the present time is that of everything falling apart: instead of producing fruits worthy of becoming fine wine, the vineyard yields only wild grapes. Why? Because where the Lord asked for there to be a just society, one sees only bloodshed; where the Lord asked for righteousness – mercy, forgiveness of debts, love of neighbor – one “hears only a cry.” It is a judgement issued more out of sorrow and disappointment than anger. Instead of a community that cares for the well-being of all of society, to include even those nomadic resident aliens seeking safe refuge, one sees the people driven into debt, ancestral farms foreclosed and usurped by predatory urban “despots,” and the cry of a people who have lost their homes, and many snatched off the land and carried off to foreign lands to be slaves and servants of other nations. 

As he interprets the present time, Jesus sees these historic injustices and lack of support for God’s people compounded by the occupation of the vineyard by a brutal and resource devouring Empire centered in Rome, overseen by the emperor-god, Caesar. Jesus warns those who respond to his call to “follow him” in all his attempts to restore justice for the debt-ridden and poor, to dismantle the rapacious systems of governance and taxation, and somehow drive out the foreign legions to restore the vineyard, to restore Israel as God’s own people and land, and to reestablish a just and free society for all. He warns that the path toward a restored and productive vineyard will be met with conflict and resistance before justice, mercy and peace has any chance of being restored. To put it bluntly, to be a disciple of Jesus, one must be willing to be kindled into a fire capable of dismantling and burning to the ground all systems of injustice that seek only to consolidate the wealth and resources of the land in the hands of the few, the affluent, and a politically-repressive leadership. 

As one searches for the good news one needs to hear Jesus’s assurance to those who choose to leave the comfort of social and family ties and trust in the assured outcome: “Truly, I tell you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, who will not get back very much more in this age and in the age to come eternal life.” [Luke 18:29-30] His is a bold claim, but a claim rooted in Jesus’s people’s history. 

Enter the treatise called Hebrews, which is believed to have been addressed to a struggling Christian community rooted in the very heart of the prevailing darkness, Rome. And it is this treatise called Hebrews that reviews the history of biblical faith. “Now faith is the reality of things hoped for, the proof of things not seen.” Rather than a claim about personal belief, Hebrews makes the highly provocative claim that faith itself moves in the direction of the realization of those things that are presently beyond demonstration, but nevertheless are real. 

Hebrews examines the lives of Abel, Enoch, Noah, Sarah and Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as those who face difficult times, and yet acted out of faith and changed the life of human civilization. Hebrews goes on to say, “By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as if it were dry land, but when the Egyptians attempted to do so they were drowned. By faith the walls of Jericho fell after they had been encircled for seven days. By faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient, because she had received the spies in peace. And what more should I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets-- who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword, won strength out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Yet all these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better so that they would not, apart from us, be made perfect. “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.” [Hebrews 11:29-12:2] 

All of which is to say, what we do now, as we interpret the needs of the present time, has eternal consequences, whether or not we see the fruits of our labor. Walter Rauschenbusch, a Baptist pastor and American theologian observed, “The man who wrote this little treatise…saw the history of humanity summed up in the life spirits who had the power of projection into the future. Faith is a quality of the heart which sees things before that are visible, which acts on ideals before they are realities, and which feels the distant city of God to be more dear, substantial, and attractive than the edible and profitable present. Hebrews 11 calls on Christians to take up the same manner of life, and compares them with men and women running a race in an amphitheater packed with all generations of the past who are watching them make their record. But he bids them keep their eye on Jesus who starts them at the line and will meet them at the goal, and who has set the pace for good and fleet men and women for all time” [i] 

This great cloud of witnesses watches us now, in this present time. What do they see? Are we interpreting the present time and acting accordingly? Are we ready to pick up our crosses to follow Jesus and all those who came before him into the reality of God’s reign? 

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[i] Rauschenbusch, Walter, The Social Principles of Jesus (The International Committee of the YMCA, London:1916) p.189

Faith, Worship, & The Christian Life Proper 14C

 Faith, Worship, & The Christian Life

Faith. It’s a word that gets thrown around. And it is, writes the author of the treatise known as Hebrews, central to a God centered life. As I write that, it seems quaint. Almost unheard of, that a person would live a God centered life rather than the more modern and more popular self-centered life as advocated by Ayn Rand and her disciples among Libertarian and Conservative political movements. 

Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16 tells us: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Not to get into the weeds of translation and the Greek text, but the argument has been made, persuasively, that it ought to read more like, “Now faith is the reality of things hoped for, the proof of things not seen.” [i] By striking a contrast with the customary understanding of this verse, in which it asserts the obvious truth that faith involves confidence about things that cannot presently be verified, what Hebrews actually asserts is that in faith the believer already anticipates the final outcome (the reality) of what is believed. That is not to say that believing makes something true or that whatever one actually believes will happen, but that faith itself has a kind of eschatological power. Similarly, “conviction” speaks to a personal belief that something may happen, whereas the Greek means “proof” that it will happen. Rather than a claim about personal belief, Hebrews makes the highly provocative claim that faith itself moves in the direction of the realization of those things that are presently beyond demonstration.[ii] 

The originating example of this movement of Faith, the originating story of the Bible, concerns Abraham and Sarah – who are moved by faith to leave everything behind them – home, family, friends – and journey toward two promises of a new home and nearly infinite progeny! As we all know, they never see either one.Bbut faith moves their unlikely progeny, (astonishingly so given their advanced ages – “and he as good as dead!”), become twelve tribes who multiply for generations in Egypt, and another two generations in the wilderness before the proof of those two promises is a reality. Jesus does not see the fullness of the kingdom of God he proclaims, yet, as it was for Abraham and Sarah, so will be the future fulfillment of the kingdom of God. 

In all the examples marshalled in Hebrews, God is the object of Faith. And as the First Letter of John (4:7-21) reminds us, God is Love: “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. … Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.  No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us, and his love is perfected in us.” 

Faith is God’s love moving in us, through us, and all around us. Just as important as it is to know God and God’s love as the object of Faith, we need to know what the opposite of Faith is. Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor, author, and teacher asserts that the opposite of love is not hate, but rather indifference. It was the indifference of neighbors who saw the evil that was happening throughout Europe that allowed the Nazi driven Holocaust to happen. There was no significant uprising until it was too late. In his memoir, Night, Wiesel writes that those in the camps believed that even God could not know what was happening. Yet, when they were released from the camps, they learned that the whole world had known. And in particular, the US State Department had hard evidence of what was going on, and chose to do nothing until Japan eventually drew us into the war. 

The subject of Faith is God/Love. The Opposite of Faith, therefore, is indifference. Love is a verb, not a noun, not a feeling or belief, but what one does! It is in faith that we act in the direction that God and Christ call us to prove what will be the ultimate reality for all people – a world of mercy, love and justice. 

Worship. The poet-prophet Isaiah explores the connection of faith with worship. Specifically, the Temple worship in Jerusalem. Isaiah announces that God is not happy with the sacrifices at the Temple: “What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the Lord; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats. When you come to appear before me, who asked this from your hand? Trample my courts no more; bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination to me.”( Isaiah 1:1, 10-20) There is also a harsh word for the people’s prayers, “When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood.” Thus, the expression, there is blood on our hands – not only for what the people do, and what is done on our behalf by our leadership, but for what the people of God and our leadership are not doing. 

Why this condemnation of worship and prayer? Because both tend to be self-centered. We often  use worship, sacrifices, and prayers to manipulate God to do what we want. Which is backwards. We are there in the Temple, the synagogue, the church, to learn just what it is God wants from us. What God wants us to do. And for Isaiah, it is all quite simple: “Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.” We are to love our neighbors – to love those who are vulnerable, and in need of a helping hand. 

In Luke 12:32-40, just after the story about the self-centered man whose sole concern is to build more, bigger, fuller barns, Jesus puts a fine point on it: “Sell your possessions, and give alms.” And later in Luke Volume 2, The Acts of the Apostles, we see a community living in Jerusalem doing just that: “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.  Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts,  praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.” (Acts 2:42-47) 

That is, worship and prayer are not a means by which we manipulate God to do our bidding. Worship and Prayer are the means by which God seeks to change us – to lead us in the Way of Love. The Way of Faith. And Worship and Prayer are the means by which we give thanks – Eucharistia – that God invites us to be those people who proclaim and live out of God’s Love for all persons, all creatures, and all of creation. The invitation to “sell…and give” in Luke, together with the call “to be dressed and ready,” suggests that our use of financial resources is inextricably related to our conviction that the future and our destiny lies ultimately with God. Then living our of our Faith about the future affects how we live in the present. 

When we allow worship and prayer to help us become those who trust in God’s reign, makes possible that our lives will be God centered with love for all our neighbors. Amen.

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[i] Newsom, James D., Texts For Preaching: Year C (Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville: 1994) p.465-66

[ii] Ibid, Newsome