Year C - Proper 24 - October 20, 2013

The Rev. Kenneth H. Saunders III
Trinity Church
Towson, MD

Year C - Proper 24 - October 20, 2013

Scripture Readings

We live in a world of instant gratification… from the human desire to have immediate pats on the back for a job well done, to the microwaves oven sitting on our kitchen counters. In the world of our rushing around to find the source of that instant “feel good” – an unhealthy sense of urgency has taken over our culture. It is displayed in our culture by the fast paced trading on the stock market – causing our stocks to rise and fall in a matter of seconds.

 

It is even seen in commercials on TV… We are told that we need everything from instant weight-loss to those work from home businesses that will make us instant money… I even went to staples the other day… They are actually selling the “easy” button that is so popular on their TV commercials… You have probably seen the one, where when you press the big red button, and what you want from their store instantly comes to you. And those state farm commercials where you sing the jingle and get instant service… The images in our society of this “instant” need will make your head swim…

 

The internet is a direct result of this need for instant gratification… It is an instant source of knowledge – to can know what the weather is here or in Katmandu, what the current news issues are here or in Katmandu, and it even gives us the real time sports scores… I remember in the course that I took this past June it was common for us to look up facts on the internet concerning what the instructor was talking about, and then cut and paste them into our notes…

 

This need for instant gratification and spontaneous reward has even worked its way into our prayer life… When we pray to God, we want instant results… It is somehow that we want the Almighty, Omnipotent, creator of heaven and earth to be reduced to our easy button. We think that if God doesn’t give us instant answers, then we believe that we are somehow not good enough, or deserving of God’s infinite graces.

 

We fall into that rut again of thinking our faith is quantitative and not large enough or our prayers are not sincere enough… We think that God isn’t listening… It is then that we often either give up, or feel defeated… Jesus tells us a parable this morning about a widow, and a judge… The widow has a need for justice in a time and place when widows did not rate anything in society. They were on the bottom rung of the ladder and had no rights and they were often exploited and oppressed. Unlike today, widows were not even allowed to inherit their husband’s estate, and if they didn’t have any sons to take care of them, they were often forced to return to their father’s family.

 

Interestingly enough… The Hebrew word for widow (almanah) means “one who is silent” or the “one unable to speak” So this widow, who was not even allowed to speak in society on her own behalf, is pleading with a judge for justice… She knew the judge… he didn’t respect anyone or anything, not even God, do you think he had the time or even the desire to spend a second discerning the appropriate justice for this widow?

 

The widow is persistent in her pleading and doesn’t give up… It almost seems like she gets a bit feisty in her pleadings because there is some language in the scripture that indicates the Judge may have thought she would become physical… 

 

So the judge takes action and grants her justice… almost as if to brush her off or somehow get rid of her. But Jesus takes this image and puts God’s love for the faithful in contrast… If this Judge, who doesn’t respect anyone, not even God, grants justice to the persistent widow…  How much MORE will God do for us… us who cry out to God?… How much will God bless those who are persistent and faithful with their prayers?

 

Over the past few weeks, we have really started to fill our tool box for discipleship…  fill it full of useful equipment that we will need   in our ministry to others as we seek to proclaim the kingdom of Jesus Christ to the whole world. We have learned to be moving forward, and mission focused… Jesus has made sure that we know how to receive others with radical hospitality, and how to serve them without prejudice… We have loaded up our tool box with prayer, love, and faith… We even learned a couple of weeks ago, that if we had faith the size of a mustard seed, the tiniest of seeds, then we could do tremendous things like move mountains.

 

Today, Jesus adds to the metaphor of the mustard seed of faith, and teaches us about persistence. Yes, we must have faith, but our faith requires persistence… Persistence to keep close to God, even when it seems to us that God is far off… Persistence to keep praying even though it seems to us that God may not listening… The scripture indicates that we should to show our faith in God through the persistent actions in our life.

 

This parable often gives folks the false impression that we can somehow conform God to our needs for instant gratification. That we can somehow “wear down” God and get God to do what we want God to do by our persistent prayers… But – that’s not the point at all… Our persistent prayers to God are NOT a means of controlling God… God is not some genie in the sky that grants us wishes. God will not be controlled like that…

 

Our prayers to God are the mechanism that guides our hearts and minds… that causes changes in our life as we grow to be formed, informed, and transformed by God’s love for us and God’s will for our lives. Our prayers to God are the way we all grow and are formed in our faith.

 

This is how our minds focus on and how our soul connects with the One who created us. It is the way we know who we are and who’s we are… As our Prayer Book says prayer is our response to our God with or without words. In faith, we keep praying, and in faith, God keeps listening. We show our faith by the fact that we are even praying at all. Trusting that our God hears us and will respond to us…

 

When we pray, there are rarely any instant answers or even any instant gratification. There is no easy button that will automatically give us what we desire… But we keep on praying with persistence hoping and trusting that God will deliver to us what we need.

 

We know God is always faithful. But we also know that God will always acts in God’s own time, and if we are paying close attention, we may even recognize it.

Year C - Proper 23 - October 13, 2013

The Rev. Kenneth H. Saunders III

Trinity Church

Towson, MD

 

Year C - Proper 23 - October 13, 2013

 

Scripture Readings

 

I hate to say it…  It is sometimes too easy for us to forget God… Have you ever noticed that when good things happen, God is rarely – if ever – given any credit? At the same time, if something bad happens, God is the first to be blamed… Even the folks that say they don’t believe in God, give God all the blame for everything bad that happens to them… I have heard folks blame God for everything from the Earthquakes in San Francisco to the World Trade Towers to Hurricane Katrina and most recently to the Boston Bombings…

We live in a materialistic, individualistic, narcissistic society.  We think it’s all about us and our stuff, but we often forget the ONE whom we owe everything… all that we have – all that we are.  The God in whom we live and move and have our being…

In our Gospel story this morning, death and the cross are still before Jesus as he continues on his way to Jerusalem.  We learn today that Jesus has made it to a place between Samaria and Galilee, where he happens upon 10 men sitting on the outskirts of town. They were on the outskirts of town because they had leprosy.

People were scared to death of leprosy in those days. Governments even regulated how close they could get to other individuals. They were required to yell out, “unclean, unclean” if someone approached.  These 10 guys knew the rules, so they kept their distance… But they didn’t call out unclean, unclean… They recognized Jesus and his caravan. So they called out…  “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!"

Jesus’ reputation preceded him… The men with leprosy knew of him and called out to him by name. They even referred to him as “master”… “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” They were not asking to be healed…  they were more than likely seeking pity from him in the form of alms because they were forced to beg for a living because of their condition.

Jesus has compassion for them and Jesus has mercy on them, but the story doesn’t say that Jesus gave them any alms… The scripture does say that Jesus told them to present themselves to the priest… See, we forget sometimes that Jesus is a good Jew and he follows the law of Moses… Some of us may remember that it says in Leviticus that only a priest can certify that the person is no longer contaminated with the disease of Leprosy.

The miracle that follows is hard to understand because so much is left up to our imagination. We can imagine that the Lepers were obedient and did exactly what Jesus asked them to do. They started out on their own journey south to see the priest… They didn’t ask Jesus what the expected consequences or even the outcome would be…  but they were obedient, none the less.

We can picture them possibly talking to each other along the way… What would they do when they got to the priest? Then, on the way, they start to feel themselves change! They became aware of changes in their skin, and perhaps felt their ugly rash disappearing. When they turned and looked at each other, they could not believe their eyes. One of them feels the gratitude bubbling up inside of him….

The former leper immediately turns around and runs back… He knows that what is happening to him is good, and he knows that the source of that goodness is not ahead of him in Jerusalem, but it was behind him with the one who responded to his cry for mercy… So He runs!

The 9 Jews probably don’t even realize that the Samaritan is no longer with them. They have been restored to their own health and restored to Jewish society, they would have been just as glad to see him gone. The Samaritan runs back and throws himself at the feet of Jesus, laying prostrate – a position of complete submission praising God and thanking Jesus…

So what do we learn from this story?

Some folks have suggested that it is a story about how right it is to “give thanks.” To borrow words from the prayer book “While it is meet and right and our bound and duty – that we at all times and in all places give thanks” to our God, Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth…  I don’t think that the fact that the Samaritan was “thankful” was the actual point of the story.

This story for us today is a deep look into the restorative power of God… Of how God restores the faithful, and delivers and heals those who are obedient to his will. God is always eager to re-new creation… and it is only God who brings order and wholeness out of our chaos and destruction…  Out of all that WE have contaminated or deteriorated, God is able to heal and bring new life In ways that we don’t expect or by means we couldn’t even imagine.

Jesus heals 10 lepers – and only one returns… It is not a Jewish man that returns – the scripture plainly tells us that this man was a Samaritan, a stranger, a foreigner. And Jesus tells him that by his faith he has been made well…

When the restorative power of God touches our lives, this story reminds us not to make light of the graces and healing that we have received… We should never take God’s blessings for granted. In response to the restorative power of God, the Samaritan overflows with gratitude… Like the Samaritan – we feel grateful to God for the many things that God does for us, has done for us and continues to do for us… This fills us with the need to praise God by our thoughts, words, and our actions…

When we cry out for mercy, God through Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ always hears us and responds to our cry… The choice of how to respond is left up to us… What we do with the many blessings that God has provided is ultimately our choice and our responsibility… We can choose to let God in…  let God in to restore us and heal us and then give thanks where thankfulness is du; like the thankful Samaritan who was restored to health and given a new lease on life… Or like so many in our society do we can choose to continue along on our own way and ignore God and forget that God had anything to do with it.

The choice is ours, and we should all choose very wisely… Our ability to flourish in faith depends on it.

Year C - Proper 22 - October 6, 2013

The Rev. Kenneth H. Saunders III

Trinity Episcopal Church

Towson, MD

RCL Year C - 20 Pentecost (Proper 22) - October 6, 2013

Scripture Readings

 

When we come to church, we hear a lot talk about faith. We read about faith in the Bible and we even sing songs about faith… But what is Faith? I have often heard people mistakenly say that faith is the opposite of doubt. But we know that the opposite of doubt is certainty… So, what is Faith?…

 

In today’s gospel story, Jesus’ disciples made what would seem to be a logical and obvious request… “Increase our faith!" We can just picture them there on the road… prepared for discipleship…  carrying with them all the stuff they needed to build up the kingdom of God…  They were ready for mission, and have packed wisely for the journey… They were welcoming the stranger in their midst, and they were even eating with tax collectors and sinners… Jesus taught them well… He taught them how to be steadfast followers, and how to use all the money and stuff that they were entrusted with to glorify and build up the kingdom of God…

 

I get the image of the young rookie football player, all suited up in a new uniform, helmet on…  looking right in the coaches eyes… We all expect him to say “put me in coach, I am ready to play.” But instead, the young player is saying… “help me please...  what if I get hurt?, what if the others don’t block for me?...”  "What do I do if…  and his worries go on and on and on…

 

The disciples are prepared…  Jesus knows they are because he was the one who prepared them… But with all the preparation, the disciples still don’t get it, they still don’t trust that God will be with them… So they ask Jesus for and increase in their faith…

 

They think they can top off their tank with “faith” and be ready to continue the journey. Sort of like a “fill-er up” with super holy octane! Jesus’ response to his disciples relates directly to the power of faith itself… The power so strong that even the smallest bit of it could prove to be a tremendous force… Then Jesus takes the discussion to the unexpected level.

 

He basically says, to do the Job I have given you to do… to be my disciple… isn’t going to require very much faith at all. All we need to do is obey God and do our duty… Jesus then depicts each of the disciples as a humble servant, who’s duty is to be hardworking, not expecting to be thanked.

 

He says that this… This is what faith is… Our duty within the relationship to our God… I think, most simply, when we say that we have faith, it means that we trust God to be God. Sometimes, most often where people are ill, folks will say, “if you have faith, you will be healed.” Or worse yet, “your faith isn’t strong enough.” We assume that if Jesus says that our faith can move trees… then if we had any faith at all, we would certainly be healed…

 

I think that we fail to realize that this means we would be manipulating God…  In other words, we get hung up in the world of, “If I have enough faith, then God has to do exactly what I want God to do!” That’s not what Jesus is saying at all!

 

Jesus makes it clear that we are expected to have faith… it is part of being a follower of Christ, just like serving is part of being a servant… Our faith doesn’t require God to do anything. God does not heal us because we have faith. God heals us because God is God. God loves us simply because God chooses to love us...

 

God is active and present in our everyday lives, and gives us more than we could ever ask for or deserve… Neither our faith nor our actions can earn us God’s favor or  salvation! (which is another misconception and another sermon in its entirety)…

 

I heard a story the other day about an example of faith… you may have heard this before, so bear with me… One day, a little girl got lost in the woods on a farm near where she lived. The farmer who owned the land found the little girl and said to her, "Don't be afraid; I'll take you home."

 

The little child looked up at him with a smile, said, "I'm not afraid.

I knew you would come; I was waiting for you."

"Waiting for me?" said the man. "What made you think I was coming?"

 "I was praying that you would." she said.

"You were praying?" the farmer asked.

"When I first heard you, you were just saying 'A B C D E F G.'

What was that for?"

 

She looked up again and said, "I wasn't sure exactly what to say, so I was praying all the letters of the alphabet and letting God put them together the way God wanted them. See... God knew I was lost and God knew how to put the letters together much better than I do." She had faith that God loved her and cared for her. She had faith that if she asked God to help her, God would.

 

How much faith is enough?  

Do we need to have a lot of faith,

or will just a little bit do?

The answer may surprise you.

 

The followers of Jesus said to him, "Increase our faith." Jesus answered them, "If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and planted in the sea,' and it will obey you." When we have faith in God, our faith isn’t quantitative… it isn't a question of how big or small our faith is, it is qualitative…  it is a question of how powerful our God is, and with God all things are possible!

 

As we approach the holy table this morning to receive by faith the body and blood of the Lord our Savior Jesus Christ, my prayer is not to ask God to give us more faith. It is simply to ask God to help us use the faith that we have, and trust God to do the rest.

Year C - Proper 21 - September 29, 2013

The Rev. Kenneth H. Saunders III

Trinity Episcopal Church

Towson, MD

 

RCL Year C - 19 Pentecost (Proper 21) - September 29, 2013

 

Scripture Readings

 

A few weeks ago, I spoke about living in a paradox…  The tension we find in our lives between good and bad, right and wrong, normal and not normal, rich and poor…  Once again we are confronted with a paradox.  The lections this morning speak to us a lot about the rich and poor. Last week we learned about misused wealth, and called it the “unrighteous mammon,” and how, if chose to serve that unrighteous mammon, we were not serving God.

In Amos, there are woes presented to those who think that they are better than everyone else because they have security in there beds of ivory, anointing themselves with the finest oils, and drinking wine from bowls…

In Paul’s first letter to Timothy, Paul warns Timothy about the uncertainty of riches, and that because everything comes from God, he should be rich in good works and create a good foundational practice that will lead him to “take hold of the life that really is life.”

Jesus tells us a parable this morning...  a story about a rich man and a poor leper, and the consequences that surround their circumstances…  as I said last week, wealth was a serious issue during Jesus’ time... The rich often got rich on the backs of the poor. Their "riches" and “richness” was typically the only thing that mattered to them…  How they horde the money they have, and the scheming ways to make more, dominated their lives.

Their greed separated them from others, and even from God... Jesus’ parable was contrary to what they thought…  Back then (and sometimes today), folks think that their richness was a direct result of God’s blessing on their lives, and that the poor somehow deserve what they get – because of some ill they have done. Jesus takes some more time this morning to unravel this wrong thinking…

Jesus presents us with the parable of the Rich man and Lazarus…

The rich man is as pompous as the folks we hear about in Amos… He is dressed in the fine purple linen that was often reserved for royalty – this was even mandated by Roman law. We get a clear picture in our head of him prancing around with that “everybody look at me” attitude.

The poor diseased man, Lazarus, sat outside the gates of the rich man’s home, longing for something to eat. We can imagine that the rich man passed him every time he left his home to go somewhere. Jesus’ parable tells us that they both eventually died, and the rich man went to the torment of Hades while the poor man was carried off by angels to be with Abraham.

Even from the depths of Hades, the rich man still doesn’t get it…

He thinks that he can appeal to Abraham and have his agony relieved. He pleads with Abraham to have Lazarus sooth his ailment, but Abraham reminds him that he already been rewarded with good things, but despite warnings by Moses and the prophets, he chose not to honor God in his life by caring for his neighbor Lazarus. He even begs Abraham to send Lazarus to his fathers house so that his brothers won’t suffer the fate that has taken him and Abraham tells him that the fate of his fathers house is up to them… If they don’t listen to Moses and the prophets, it won’t do them any good to hear from someone that comes back from the dead.

One would immediately jump to think that this parable is about heaven and hell… Perhaps thinking that the poor get in but the rich don’t… But this parable it is more about life, and what we do with what we have in this life, and how we use it to directly honor God.

There is a story about a preacher that had been assigned to a new congregation… He had never met the congregation. Before the Sunday church service, this preacher dressed in the shabbiest rags he had, marked up his face, and rolled around on the ground and got all dirty.  Just before the congregation was to arrive, this preacher laid in the walkway at the entrance to the church. The parishioners started coming in, dressed in their Sunday finest, and walked right by him laying there. Some even stepped over the preacher as they tried to enter the church.

Some pretended that they didn’t even see him. No one tried to help him at all, no one even stopped to see if he needed medical attention, they just walked by. After they were all in the church, the preacher jumped up and walked in the church – right down the center isle to the front, where he started to preach –

He preached on the ills of being comfortable, of not wanting to be bothered by someone that they saw as a “lesser” human being.

That is what these readings are about... In Jesus' story, the rich man has it all, what more else could he want?  He walks right by Lazarus every day, and doesn’t even have the decency to throw him a crust of bread. He didn’t want to be bothered by this “lesser” human being. The sad part to the story is, that only in death does he realize what he really should have done, then it is too late.

Jesus continues to upset the social order as he travels on his way to Jerusalem. So far this season, we have heard what he teaches about what it means to be a disciple, to move forward in mission and minister to those that don’t have the gracious abundance that we have. We have heard about what it means to be a neighbor, to reach out in hospitality to everyone that you receive, and to be humble.

Now Jesus is warning us about our stuff and our money. He doesn’t want us to give up everything that we have worked for. But he does warn us that our obsession with stuff and with money will make us loose sight of the kingdom of God…  If we become comfortable with how we think that God has blessed us, if we do not live out the Christian witness in our lives by serving the “least” among us…  If we give honor to the “unrighteous mammon” in our lives…  Then we are in danger of loosing sight of the kingdom of God and possibly our souls.

It is said that the famous humanitarian, theologian, and later doctor Albert Sweitzer, after hearing a sermon on this parable decided to give up his day – job.  He had a vision that the western world, in all of it vast riches was the rich man in the parable, and Africa’s poor was Lazarus… He spent the remainder of his life dedicated to a medical mission that he founded in Africa, feeding the hungry and curing the sick from Malaria, and Leprosy… His life was one of the main triumphs of the twentieth century, and it took its direction from his study of Christ.

Those of you that know me, have heard me comment on the Apostle Paul before. While I may personally feel that Paul has his own struggles and issues that he is working through – Trying to live in the ancient world while spreading the good news of Jesus Christ, Paul always stays true to his message.

In his pastoral letter to Timothy, Paul reminds Timothy to tell the rich not to be self-important, and snooty – not to bank on the “unrighteous mammon” in their lives… but to rely on God, be generous with what they have, and build a foundation for the future and take hold of life that really is life. Paul hits the nail on the head… some may say "this sounds like works righteousness," but it is works that are a result of the love and joy we have for Christ… It is our witness to the gospel.

So – are we honoring God with our life in how we use our stuff and our money? Are we witnessing to our love of Jesus in our daily actions? Our challenge this morning is to look inwardly – to examine our own lives and our mission as a people of God…

We should think to ourselves, are we like the rich man who “passes by” Lazarus laying out by the gate? Are we the church goer that “steps over” the vagrant laying in our pathway?  Or are we honoring God with our lives, achieving justice, healing and peace… and witnessing to the love of Jesus Christ with our thoughts, our words, and our actions?

Year C - Proper 16 - August 25, 2013

The Rev. Kenneth H. Saunders III

Trinity Episcopal Church

Towson, MD

 

RCL Year C - 14 Pentecost (Proper 16) - August 25, 2013

 

Scripture Readings

What bends us out of shape???  Why is it, when we don’t get our way, our first instinct is to act like kindergarten children and get bent all out of shape? Bent out of shape because we don’t want to do something, or we don’t think that we need to do something…  We contort ourselves and grimace at the mere thought of accepting something that we don’t personally like.  Why is it so hard for us to unbend from the old “norms” – the way things have always been done, and bend in ways that help give new life and vitality into our community. We get all bent out of shape at the most unlikely sources… but as we know, it’s not God that twists, it’s us that do the twisting…    it’s not God who destroys, it is us that are self destructive.  Our God saves…  no matter how bent out of shape we get, no matter how shaken we get, when we reach out, God is right there to make it right…   to heal us, to restore us and to give us new life.

 

Last week, we heard the passage of Jesus, longing to bring fire to the earth, and “getting things cooking.” I have often used the idiom that I “shake” the snow globe. If we think about it, that’s one way to keep it going. I had a snow globe as a child, you know, one of those glass balls with a winter scene inside and water and flecks of white that looked like snow.  I would keep it on my night stand, and before I went to bed, I would shake it! And if I woke up in the middle of the night, I would shake it again!  It was a way of keeping it going…  of keeping the snow falling…  So the snow would fall, and then the scene in the globe would be complete.

 

See, we are all part of the scene… The scene that God created for us… And I will admit… I do things in order to “shake” the snow globe sometimes, to keep the things going that Jesus started. To make us feel a bit uncomfortable with the way things are, and make us think about the way things could be. Shaking the snow globe is a wonderful process of examination and reexamination… of shaking up and loosening the insecurities that we hold on to that are of this world and not the next…  After the shaking it up we see the solid eternal things that are of God that remain. What remains is that grounded and steady truth of God… the root of the power of relationships and community… the love of God that binds us all together. The problems is, whoever is doing the shaking… that sometimes folks don’t like the way the snow globe has been shaken, and they get upset for one reason or another.  This can cause us to get all bent out of shape.

 

Jesus is teaching in the synagogue on the Sabbath. The scripture says that a woman with a crippling spirit has been bent over and not able to stand up straight for 18 years… Without her asking, in one word and a laying on of hands, Jesus heals her from her ailment and restores her to perfect health… She immediately stands up straight and begins praising God.  But in doing that one profound act of healing and mercy, Jesus shakes the snow globe of society and disrupts the status quo.

 

The leader of the synagogue gets all bent out of shape and accuses Jesus of breaking the law because he healed on the Sabbath. But, like people so often who get bent out of shape, he doesn’t come to Jesus and confront him directly, he keeps saying to the crowd – accusing Jesus – sort of like going behind Jesus’ back. But Jesus sets it right, comparing his actions to simply giving water to a donkey or ox.

 

Jesus restores dignity and gives new life to the woman, setting her free from her disorder, from the demons that torment her and bend her out of shape. When we get bent out of shape about something, our tendency is to grimace, and contort our faces to show people that we are not happy, we talk behind backs and accuse wrongly, especially if we think that our way of life is being challenged or disrupted…  especially if we think our snow globe is being shaken.

 

When this happens, there is only one answer… to let the eternal love of our Lord Jesus Christ reach out to us and touch us and heal us… and help us loose our grip from whatever demon it is that is tormenting us and so gravely holding onto us… We need to allow Jesus to show us a way of trust in God and the eternal solid things that should be the focus of our attention.

 

It is our only way to keep things going…  Jesus “got things cooking” by bring the consuming fire to the earth last week. Now it’s up to us to keep things going.

 

The way I see it, we have 2 choices: either we act like the crippled woman and let ourselves be healed and restored stand up straight, and praise God…   Or we can be like the Synagogue leader and get all bent out of shape, accuse, and talk behind peoples backs, and complain about others and the way things are… 

 

It is when and only when we surrender ourselves to Christ's Lordship, and completely give ourselves over, and live for Him that we begin to see the things that bend us out of shape are really meaningless.

 

So, will we accept Christ as he attempts to mold us and form us into his image, restoring us and making us whole?  Or will we reject Christ and think we have it all figured out by ourselves and continue to walk around all bent out of shape?

Year C - Proper 15 - August 18, 2013

The Rev. Kenneth H. Saunders III

Trinity Episcopal Church

Towson, MD

 

RCL Year C - 13 Pentecost (Proper 15) - August 18, 2013

 

Scripture Readings

 

I have talked before about us living in a world of paradox.  In the stress and tension of everything, we live in paradox.  Life as we know it is a paradox:  Good and Evil, War and Peace, “Normal” and “Not Normal.”

 

We could even carry it further:  Rich and Poor, the “Haves” and the “Have Nots,” Heretic and Orthodox, Straw and Wheat, Heaven and Earth, Truth and Lies…  Our contemporary culture defines paradox as a riddle without an answer; a problem without a solution; or a tension that cannot be relieved.

 

We all live in this tension of a paradox – and it is extremely difficult.  Within the paradox, we must make decisions to govern our lives; who to follow, how to act, and even what to believe.  We long for everything to be spelled out for us and we wish that someone would just hand us an instruction book that we could follow.

 

Even with all the knowledge, skills, and abilities that we have acquired through social developments, new discoveries, and even technological advances, we often make mistakes living within the paradox…

 

But, we DO need to give ourselves credit sometimes…  because sometimes we make the right choices and get it right.  But we know that sometimes we just fail!  No matter how hard we try, sometimes we just lay a big ole’ egg…

 

When we get into a real mess, we wish that we could prophesy and tell the future, thinking that if we somehow know the outcome, that it will be that much better for us.  But we can’t – so we have to live within the mess that we have made for ourselves.

 

The word paradox even makes us uncomfortable until we realize that even the Holy Scriptures, (the New Testament in particular), is full of paradox.  

 

Jesus has been teaching us a lot these past few weeks, in the season following Pentecost, the time when Jesus is on his journey of ministry, on his way to Jerusalem…  We have learned about how to be a better disciple, we have been sent out into the muck of our lives to try to live the good news of our salvation.  We have been taught to greet others with hospitality and love them – thereby being Christ to them.  We have even been called to show greater commitment to eternal things by giving, sharing and living in our community and growing in our common life in our relationship to one another.

 

This morning, it seems like, all of a sudden, Jesus changes gears on us and throws us into sort of his own paradox.  We go from Jesus calling for intense following, loyal devotion, and urgent mission - to Jesus speaking of fire, division, and prophecy.  These word are scary and hard to hear, especially after last week’s message of “don’t be afraid little flock.”

 

Jesus doesn’t use his normal tone that we have been getting used to over the past few weeks.  It isn’t the faithful following, mission, and hospitality that we have been hearing about.  Where are the comfortable words that Jesus has been giving us in the previous 42 verses of Luke’s Gospel?

 

Therefore we have the paradox that Luke presents us with this morning.  And we need to look for the answers in the tension of the paradox between what we have been learning (about what it means to follow Jesus as Lord and savior) and what we are presented with this morning.

 

Jesus says that he came to bring fire to the earth and he wishes that it were already kindled.  To us today, this seems harsh, like Jesus is wanting to impose some kind of harsh judgment. A judgment like we would expect in the end of times when the whole world is to be judged.

 

However, if we read this passage with the same urgency of mission that Jesus has been presenting to us all along, we can put some of the language that he uses in its proper context.  We can start to understand that Jesus is actually teaching us in the way he has been teaching us all along.

 

In Jesus’ time, the word they used for their outdoor oven was the same word that they used for earth.  So, when he says he came to bring “fire” to the “earth.”  It is an idiom for getting things started or as we would probably say today, “let’s get cooking!”  So, Jesus wanted to “get things started” and Jesus knows that getting things fired up with any kind of urgency is going to cause some real social problems for his followers…

 

This was a REAL problem…  Family and social status was all they had, it was their source of livelihood, and most often the difference between their life and their death.  Back then, you were alienated from your family or clan by associating with what was considered to be an inappropriate social relationship (the folks on the “other side” of the tracks, the wrong crowd that your mamma warned you about)…  in this case, it was Jesus!

 

You are putting everything at risk:  your wealth, inheritance, your social status…  everything that meant anything!  You would move very quickly from being a “have” to being a “have not.”  The consequence of that kind of involvement would be enough to cause so much tension and stress that it would pit family against family, son against father and mother against daughter and divide the household completely.

 

We cannot make a commitment to Jesus Christ as Lord and savior without it affecting the way we relate to each other, the way we relate to our friends or even to our family members. As we have learned over the past weeks, our commitment to Christ shapes our values, our priorities, our goals, and our behaviors.  It causes us to change the old patterns of our lives and makes us face difficult choices in our commitment to the gospel.

 

And our decision to follow Jesus sometimes is faced with opposition from others.  So, we opt to live into the tension of the paradox in the choices we must make.  When we set out to follow Christ, and do what we perceive to be the good, moral, and right, we are doing something counter-cultural…  The theologian, H. Richard Niebuhr, calls this dilemma Christ and Culture in paradox.

 

Jesus himself knew the devastating consequences that the choice to follow Him could have.  So, he warned his followers to be prepared to encounter the same hardships.  As followers of Jesus Christ, we must look at our own lives, through the lens of the paradox.

 

What do we pay close attention to…  and to what do we turn a blind eye?  What claims our closest attention?  Fluctuations in the stock market?  Evidence of our social standing?  Our grade point average?  Opportunities to look good before our superiors at work?  What things do we watch with the same close attention that the Palestinian farmer paid to changes in the weather?  Jesus’ sayings this morning challenge us to examine the paradox and the tension that exists between what gets our attention and what is neglected in our own lives.

 

We should consider whether the inconsistencies in our lives reveal a pattern of prioritizing “insignificant” things while jeopardizing those things that could have the greatest value and importance.

 

We could ask the questions of ourselves…  Have we given as much attention to the health of our church as we have to our retirement plans? or Have we given as much attention to the maintenance of our spiritual disciplines as to the maintenance schedule for our car?  Where in the scale of our attention to detail does our devotion to the teachings of our Lord rank? 

 

Jesus says that we may be able to interpret the weather by looking at the dark clouds in the sky! (channel 14 could probably learn something here…), but why do we remain blind to what really is going on in our lives??

 

As we approach the holy table this morning, and partake of the bread and wine which is the bond of communion that we share with each other…  It is our unity, it is what unites us…  and our belief that Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior…

 

We receive it and are nourished with the spiritual food that is his alone to give…  In our community of faith, we have made the conscience decision to continue the work of our Lord Jesus Christ.  The question for us this morning is what are we doing to “get things cooking?”

 

Are we doing what he commanded as we live through the struggles of discerning our path together?  We live in the paradox, so let us remain focused on why we are here and what we are doing…   That way, and only that way, we can make the effort to move forward in the mission of our Lord together.

Year C - Proper 12 - July 28, 2013

The Rev. Kenneth H. Saunders III

Trinity Church

Towson, MD

 

RCL Year C - 10 Pentecost (Proper 12) - July 28, 2013

 

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When was it when you first learned how to pray?…  I can remember one of the first prayers I ever learned… “Now I lay me, down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep…  If I should die, before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take…

 

God Bless (and then I inserted everyone and everything from my next door neighbors to the cat)…  Amen!”  Now, I bet those of you that were paying attention to the readings this morning thought that I was going to tell you about the prayer that Jesus taught his followers… In due time… in due time…

 

Like you probably did, I learned the “Now I lay me” prayer at a very young age…  I may not have totally understood what I was doing, but I knew I was praying – and that something exists that is bigger than I am, bigger than even my mom and dad,  or even bigger than my Pop – my grandfather (who was the biggest guy I knew at the time).

 

This was my first formational experience with prayer… You probably can remember your parents or someone significant in your life teaching you how to pray in a very similar way…  The church teaches us that prayer is “responding to God – with or without words”…  So our prayers are our response to God and our recognition of God and how God works in our lives…

 

I can remember, one of the things that I learned many years ago in Sunday School about prayer… Some of you probably remember being taught this too…  It’s called ACTS  A – C – T – S… A stands for Adoration (or love of God), C for Confession (or confessing to God – and release from the guilt of sin), T for Thanksgiving (or giving thanks to God), and S for Supplication (or prayers that we say on behalf of someone else).  We would put these letters on our fingers A C T S --- then the thumb was always pointing back at me…  Then I was supposed to remember to pray for myself…  

 

Today, we heard the lesson, from the Gospel according to Luke, of Jesus teaching his followers to pray, using what we have come to know as “The Lord’s Prayer.” One of them said “Lord, teach us to pray…”  Teach us to pray! 

 

They were reaching out for a deeper understanding of what it meant to pray to God.  They were asking Jesus, “Teach us that connection that you have to God…  teach us how to respond to God, with or without words!”  Jesus didn’t make them put letters on their fingers, nor did he sit patiently on the edge of their bed and have them kneel there night after night.  He didn’t go through all the resource books that he acquired in seminary and pull off the one off the shelf called “Prayer for Dummies…”  But very elegantly, like so many other things Jesus did, took the opportunity to remind them that they already knew how to respond to God…  After all, most of his followers were faithful Jews, and they had been praying to God since they could talk. 

 

But his disciples recognized a special connection between Jesus and God and they wanted in on that secret…  They thought that he was doing something different from what they had learned as children…  So Jesus reminded them, “when you pray say:  Father, hallowed be your name…” 

 

Within one swoop, Jesus converts a menagerie of thought and images about God and who they thought God to be into a very simple language and direct statement…  He calls God “Abba” or Father with a familiar intimacy – teaching them that God is approachable, but yet remains set apart from the ordinary (therefore holy or hallowed)…  Jesus’ teaching continues… 

 

Your kingdom come – Calling for immediate order to the chaos here on earth this echoes Jesus’ announcement throughout the Gospels for the coming of the kingdom of God.  This statement implies an urgency for this announcement, similar to the story we heard a couple of weeks ago where we heard that WE are to proclaim to others that the kingdom of God has come near…

 

Give us or daily bread – the vital necessities that we need to sustain our bodies…  Bread back then, as it is today, is the difference for some folks between living and starving to death.  If we dig deeper into the original language of the Greek text, the word doesn’t necessarily mean to “give,” (as a once for all) but quite literally translated it means, to “keep on giving.”  So this portion of the prayer in today’s language could actually mean “continue sustaining us, providing for our daily needs like you did for the Israelites in the wilderness, we fully rely on You – Our GOD – to do that for us.”  He goes on…  

 

Forgive us our sins – Jesus knows that all human kind is sinful, and that we miss the mark from time to time when living out our daily lives.  He reminds us to use our prayers to acknowledge our wrongfulness and ask for relief from the burdens of sin that only God can give us

 

And do not bring us to the time of trial – ask God to keep us out of the trouble of temptation and our own desires that bog us down…  

 

Jesus uses the simple rhythm of what we know as “the Lord’s Prayer” to remind us how we should pray.  How to connect to God and how to respond to God with or without words…

 

Many folks criticize the Episcopal Church for the multitude of written prayers that we have in that little red book in our pews, our Book of Common Prayer.  Some of them say, you don’t know how to pray – you have them all written down for you…  prayer needs to be spontaneous & extemporaneous… 

 

I don’t know about you, but when I am confronted with this, I say…  “The book is great! Sometimes I get so caught up in trying to express myself with words that the true expression gets lost in the search for proper articulation…  I am very thankful that I have learned and read some of the beautiful expressions of prayer that have lasted over the centuries.”

 

But the only prayer I really need is the one our savior Jesus has taught to remind his disciples, for me it is the foundational reminder of how we are to respond to God with our lives…  Of how we relate to God and how we depend on God for our needs, our forgiveness and direction”

 

Whether we learned “the Lord’s Prayer” from our parents or from the church…  We still say it every Sunday…  It is foundational and takes the central position in our liturgy…  It is the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples to help them remember how they should respond to God…

 

I even know some folks with dementia or a diminished mental capacity that cannot remember how to form a simple sentence in a discussion.  But, they still remember the Lord’s prayer…  We respond to God with or without words in prayer…  and when we use words, we don’t need a bunch of flowery ones to help us talk to Our Father in heaven…  It doesn’t matter what denomination the Christian claims, most of us all know “the Lord’s prayer,”  It may have not been the first one that we learned, but for those that grew up in a Christian home, it was taught to us at a very young age…  And we all know it very well…  Pray it with me…

 

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name…  Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven…  Give us this day, our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil for thine is the kingdom and the power, and the glory… For ever and ever…  Amen!

RCL Year C - 9 Pentecost (Proper 11) - July 21, 2013

The Rev. Kenneth H. Saunders III

Trinity Episcopal Church

Towson, MD

 

RCL Year C - 9 Pentecost (Proper 11) - July 21, 2013

 

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When I was growing up, my mother once told me the story of “stone soup.” I don’t know if you have ever heard the story of stone soup, but it goes something like this…

 

Once upon a time, after a great war… there was a famine throughout the land. There was a town where all the people were very hungry because no one had enough to eat and people of the town even hid food from each other, and they wouldn’t share.

 

There was a soldier that came though the town. He was tired after traveling the long way back to his home from the war. He knocked on one man’s door, when the man answered, the soldier explained to the man that he was traveling through and needed a place to stay for the night and something to eat.

 

The man explained to the soldier that there wasn’t any room, and an extra mouth to feed would be absolutely impossible. There wasn’t even enough food for the family and the folks in town, let alone a stranger.

 

The soldier said, “that’s ok I have a tent that I can pitch, if you think that the town wouldn’t mind could I pitch it here in your front yard?” The man agreed to let the soldier pitch his tent in his front yard. After the tent was pitched, he asked the man for a pot of water.

 

The man asked him what he was going to do with the water. The soldier produced a large stone, and explained that he was going to make “stone soup.” The man thought this was absolutely ridiculous, but agreed to get the soldier a pot of water.

 

After setting the water to boil, the soldier exclaimed, “stone soup is wonderful by itself, but it was even better with cabbage.” The man, hearing him, came out with cabbage that he had been hiding. The soldier said, “wonderful! Now if we only had some onion. Stone soup with an onion and cabbage is simply marvelous!” Someone else in the town said, “I think I may have an onion,” and went to get an onion out of his hiding place.

 

This went on for a while - carrots, potatoes, celery, corn, beans, etc… were brought forth from their hiding place until almost everyone in the small town contributed a small amount of food. Soon the whole town feasted on the big pot of the stone soup.

 

Everyone in the town was amazed that it was so good. They claimed that the stone must have been magic. They begged the soldier to let them buy the stone, but the soldier said that it wasn’t for sale, and that the already had everything the needed to make stone soup for themselves.

 

The town was amazed!

 

The stone soup story is really a story about hospitality, but not just about individual hospitality – it is about communal or community hospitality. It’s about a community coming together – Coming together in community is one of the most powerful things that we can do, and it has deep spiritual roots in our faith. Interestingly enough, both of our scripture lessons this morning are about hospitality.

 

In the Old Testament lesson, we have a story about three men that are passing through a town. We don’t know yet where they are going, but later we find out that they are on the way to Gomorrah. This is the town where Abraham and his wife Sarah lives.

 

This story is much different than the “stone soup” story. In this story, Abraham runs out to greet the strangers and calls them “Lord.” He doesn’t even know these guys… They are just passing through, yet he shows them deep respect and welcome. Abraham goes to great lengths to greet these three, and treat them as if they were his best friends.

 

He goes and gets water for their feet, the finest grains for Sarah to make them bread and then he goes out to his field to get the best calf to prepare for them… Hospitality was in Abraham’s nature, it was who he was – it was a very common part of his culture and necessary to his survival. This is MUCH different from the lack of sharing that we get in the stone soup story.

 

The three men are on a journey... they had been traveling a long way, and Abraham tends to the stranger’s every need… he even washes their feet. Abraham showed Hospitality.

 

Hospitality…  It is interesting that in Greek, Hospitality is “philoexenia.”  This word in Greek can be literally translated as “love of the stranger.”

 

In our gospel lesson, Jesus is still on his journey toward Jerusalem. Even though he is a stranger in the area, Jesus is invited into the home of Mary and Martha for dinner. These two sisters receive Jesus and his caravan followers into their home.

 

Now Martha knocks herself out in the kitchen, running around rapidly working hard to show Jesus and his group proper hospitality. However, Mary is mesmerized by what Jesus is teaching, and hangs onto his every word… seated at his feet.

 

Martha then gets pretty irritated by this because she thinks Mary should help her… Martha’s complaint would be viewed by others as legitimate because at that time and in that place the cultural expectation was for the female to manage the household and Mary seemed to be acting like a male. Jesus tells Martha that Mary has chosen to do the proper thing for her. 

 

Some of the power message in this story is what Jesus doesn’t say. People always give Martha the bad rap and condemn her for her overactive busyness… But Jesus NEVER tells Martha that she is doing the wrong thing.

 

At that time, Mary needed to listen to Jesus, and Jesus knew it… she was drawn to him, she wanted to learn… She was being spiritually fed by his words, lingering on every one of them… And as irritated as Martha was, she was doing the right thing too because she was looking out for the needs of their visitors and Jesus. Jesus says to Martha that Mary was doing the right thing…  she was sitting at the foot of Jesus, paying attention to him…

 

So, we actually learn something of the spiritual aspects of hospitality this morning… When we receive a stranger into our midst, we are to look out for them, join together and provide for them, and we work real hard and do the active stuff very well…

 

But we also need to be attentive to the stranger in other ways. We should pay attention to the example of Mary in today’s gospel. Mary didn’t go to great measures to fix something for Jesus to eat, but she does pay keen attention to him, and she learns a great deal from him. Mary also provided hospitality.

 

As a community of faith, we show hospitality in many ways… When there is a stranger in our midst, we pay attention to them, we welcome them into our community, help them through the liturgy, and we invite them to eat with us at the Lord’s Table… Through our attentiveness and action, we let them feel the spiritual presence of Christ through us.

 

This is the same idea that St. Benedict had… Benedict is considered the founder of Western Monasticism… (his feast day was just a couple weeks ago on 7/11). He wrote the rule to govern monks who were living in Christian community under the authority of an Abbot. In his effort to make sure that hospitality was done right, he made sure to include a section on how strangers were to be received in the community. He wrote, “all guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ” who said, “I was a stranger, and you welcomed me.”

 

This is a good thing to keep in mind when thinking about Christian hospitality. We should be mindful to welcome the stranger as if he or she were Christ himself. We don’t hide our food, and wait for a soldier to show up and teach us how to come together to make stone soup…  We have everything that we need to be a hospitable people, right here.

 

Hospitality for the Christian should be a spiritual discipline, it is how we can show Christ and the way to salvation to others. However, we get all-tied-up with the busyness of life, and we fail sometimes to be attentive to what is right in front of us. Christian hospitality needs to be both active and attentive.

 

We are show them the love and compassion that Christ showed to us through action, but we also need to listen to the stranger and to learn from them about their journey. We need to have things ready… and we need to be prepared to welcome the stranger in our midst, regardless of who they may be.