St. John's Episcopal Church

The Holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to Luke (14:1, 7-14)

On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the sabbath, they were watching him closely.

When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable. “When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, `Give this person your place,’ and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, `Friend, move up higher’; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

He said also to the one who had invited him, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Is it just me, or does our Gospel text seem like the sort of advice you might read in a Dear Abby column? And I say that with all respect. I mean, this is good advice. Hopefully all of here can recognize that. Hopefully we all know the wisdom of modesty when at a dinner party or banquet. We all know that there are certain things you just don’t do—particularly if you don’t want to appear to be someone who thinks a little too highly of himself. It just seems strange, it seems more like etiquette than Gospel proclamation.

Of course, even if this text is etiquette, it is at least Godly etiquette. That is, the text has a lot in common with the Wisdom tradition in the Hebrew Bible. After all, Jesus is almost quoting Proverbs 25:6–7, where the Teacher of Wisdom advises, “Do not put yourself forward in the king’s presence or stand in the place of the great; for it is better to be told, ‘Come up here,’ than to be put lower in the presence of a noble.” As Wisdom literature, this text makes sense because Wisdom literature is an important part of our Biblical canon. Wisdom literature is all about guiding us on how to live wisely, about knowing how to act in certain situations. Most wisdom literature is stuff you should know. And I imagine that many would hear this text from Jesus and take it as that, as pure Wisdom, and find that to be enough.

In this line of thinking, then, Jesus is talking about good manners, about proper etiquette, about the way you should act when you are invited somewhere. You shouldn’t take the best seat, instead take a bad seat because it’s better to be invited to one better than to be asked to move. Of course it is. Similarly, we all know that you shouldn’t throw a party with the expectation that someone will repay you. You should offer the party as a gift. Naturally there are social expectations about gratitude and that sort of thing, but the most important social rule is that if you are hosting, you are hosting as a gift with no expectation of getting something in return. Of course this is the case.

Yet, Luke seems to think this text is about more than clarifying a few points of social etiquette, whether for his first century audience or for us twenty-first century followers of Christ (who sometimes still forget these rules of behavior). It’s even more than the Wisdom tradition of God’s people. Luke says in verse 7 that these two scenarios are a parable. We’re familiar with parables, particularly some of the more common ones like the parable of the Good Samaritan. Parable is a word that literally means to “throw alongside.” It’s a word that describes stories of everyday life which Jesus throws alongside the kingdom of God to cast light on what that kingdom is about. So if we see this text this way, not just as wise advice for everyday living, but wise advice which is then cast alongside the kingdom, what will we see?

Perhaps we’ll see how this text sheds light, how it illuminates, other texts about eating and drinking in the New Testament. We’ll see how Jesus’ advice here illuminates his choice often to eat with tax collectors and sinners. We’ll perhaps see how this text illuminates what Jesus says elsewhere about the importance of the poor in the kingdom. And when Jesus says that the humble will be exalted, we’ll see how that illuminates his life from his birth among the poor to his crippling death on the cross. We’ll see how Jesus’ whole life was a self-giving offering for others. And perhaps a little conversation about proper matters will illuminate that self-giving should permeate our entire lives, even the seemingly small interactions we have every day.

I think we’ll also see how the Pharisees had begun to misunderstand the true nature of their religion—and even where that misunderstanding came from. The Pharisees are a group that was deeply concerned with purity and ritual cleanliness, particularly as it related to table-fellowship. With Judaism under the Roman boot in the first century, the Pharisees had increasingly focused on ritual purity, even importing temple ideas of purity into every day life. That is, feeling the press of the Gentile Roman Empire upon their people, the Pharisees do what most any group would do: they seek security and a sense of some control over their lives by enforced purity around them. They use their religion as a way of setting themselves apart and they use their meals as places to codify that distinction. Finding security in commonality and meals, they come to dinner and try to find the best places. They host dinners and invite those who will fit their guidelines and preconceived notions. And for all of this, for this approach to table-fellowship, they are condemned.

The common line of thinking when it comes to questions of table-fellowship in the Bible is usually how difficult it is for us to understand what it’s all about. And that might seem to be the case. It might seem like all of the obsessive regulations about who you eat with and how you ritually cleanse yourself, even the question of where to sit and who to invite, that all of that is just from a time that is outside of our own cultural relationships. It might seem like that.

But, of course, it was not too long ago that it was a dangerous act for someone to eat at the wrong lunch counter. Still today, the people who we sit down to eat with often look an awful lot like us. This is true whether it is those we gather to eat with in our own homes or whether it is those who we gather with at the Eucharistic table. Sunday morning is, after all, the most segregated time during the week. And even in our own community, the demographics of churches in Grand Haven swing significantly more white than our population, with many Hispanic members of our community, for example, choosing to go to Holland to worship. A significant point that Jesus is making in this text from Luke is that the kingdom reaches out to all people and so we should reach out to all people. We should perhaps even find our hearts convicted by our own practices of table fellowship. And yet, reaching out to others is a real challenge.

But I think it’s also a blessing. It’s a blessing because we need to remember that just as Jesus ate with sinners and tax collectors, with all of those people others would generally avoid, Jesus also at with the Pharisees. Even the Pharisees, it seems, are invited to the table in the Kingdom. And that makes me kind of hopeful. Because if the Pharisees are invited, then you and I—whose behavior is sadly sometimes not much better than the Pharisees—then you and I are invited as well. We are challenged, make no mistake, we are certainly challenged like the Pharisee in our text. We are challenged to pay attention to the traditions of Wisdom, to better pattern our lives after the demands of the kingdom. We’re challenged…. but we’re not turned away.

So, Jesus tells us, you who are invited despite your prejudices, despite your tendency to stick to those who look like you, when you throw a banquet, don’t invite your friends. Invite the poor. Invite the crippled. Invite the lame. Invite the blind. This isn’t about simple charity, however. Jesus is using these groups as shorthand for those his society ignored. And though our society is not much better, it would be an error to think that the groups Jesus mentions are the only ones he’s calling us to reach out to. Jesus is calling you to reach out to any of those groups you are separated from. The kingdom of God is about recognizing that God often speaks most clearly through those whom society deems less important, those whom our community would prefer remain invisible. The kingdom of God is about recognizing that God speaks most clearly through those whom we deem less important.

And in this day and age, where the communication explosion that has come with the internet has resulted in a plethora of cable channels, niche blogs, and online discussion forums, where all of this means that we never have to have a conversation with someone with whom we disagree because we can always retreat to be around those who agree with us, this lesson from the Gospel is important. Because Jesus is saying that we shouldn’t just talk to those who disagree with us, we shouldn’t just have good dialogue with those with opposing views or in different groups. We should invite them to dinner. And in that action, Jesus suggest, we’ll find a foretaste of the heavenly banquet, a banquet where everyone is called to feast around God’s table.

Now it’s tempting to take all of this and to try to do better about engaging others, but still to miss one key point. Even though you and I often think of ourselves as those with a right to be here, as those who Jesus may be calling humbly to invite others to the table, this text is about more than us trying humbly to invite those whom we would rather avoid to our banquet. We must always remember that, as Gentiles, our inclusion at this table was a gift. The early church spent a significant portion of the first century fighting about whether God wanted us to be a part of this kingdom. And in the end, we were allowed in. We must remember that in this heavenly banquet, you and I are the poor who did not expect to be invited. Our invitation here is a gift for which the early Christians fought. It’s not our banquet.

And yet here we are. You and me. Sometimes Pharisaical in our desire to look right, certainly struggling in our ability to share a meal with those we dislike, but most importantly, Gentiles who have been invited in. Here we are, invited right up to the best place in the room, at the altar, where Christ becomes present, welcoming us all. Here we are.

When you recognize this, when you recognize your invitation as a gift, you are just grateful to be here. You are just grateful to be here, rubbing elbows with the crippled and the lame, with the Pharisees and the Zealots, with the Republicans and the Democrats, the Gay and the straight, the citizens and the immigrants, the proud and the broken, all of us invited nonetheless to join in this feast.

And if we can see this vision, if we can see this vision of the Messianic banquet where we find ourselves, despite our doubts and fears invited nonetheless, if we can see this vision, then perhaps we will look around us and ask, “Who is God calling me to invite to dinner?”

Lord of all power and might, the author and giver of all good things: 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; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever. Amen.

The Holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to (Luke 13:10-17)

Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.

But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.”

But the Lord answered him and said, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?” When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Last week, in the reading from the Gospel, Jesus talked about how he had come to bring division instead of peace, about his yearning for apocalyptic fire. It was a text that was a bit uncomfortable to listen to. Indeed, the idea of the divisive nature of the Gospel rang hard on our ears. It forced us to push past our preconceptions in order to discern, within that apocalyptic language, the Good News that God has come to bring peace to all—not just to some. That was last week’s text.

This week’s reading from the Gospel is much less unnerving. In this week’s reading we sort of breathe a sigh of relief as Jesus returns to what we think of as “business as usual.” We see him teaching in the synagogue, healing a crippled woman, and arguing with the religious leaders of his time. All seems to be as it should be. We hear this week’s text and we smile at its beauty. We relax when hearing such a powerful concrete story about the Gospel made real in a person’s life as the woman is healed from her infirmity. And we applaud Jesus’ teaching, we applaud him for having the courage to stand up to the synagogue leader’s rules regarding the Sabbath. After all, how could one day be so important to him that a miraculous healing would be a sin?

Now, of course, the Sabbath was not just an important day for the synagogue leader or for the religious leaders of the time. The Sabbath was an important day for centuries of the people of God. Over and over again we hear in Scripture how God’s people should rest on the Sabbath. God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh, so we also should rest on Saturday, the seventh day of the week. And the rest commanded by Sabbath laws in the Bible is more than a modern American’s typical Saturday off. There is no mowing the lawn or running errands and doing tasks that have been waiting all week. No, God commanded God’s people to rest on the Sabbath, to remember that none of our life depends upon our toil. God’s people are commanded to rest so that they may step back and see that, despite what they (and we!) might sometimes believe, the world is able to continue to exist without our work.

The problem Jesus confronts in our Gospel isn’t the Sabbath: it was the synagogues leader’s approach to the Sabbath. The synagogue leader’s vision had become obscured, no longer did he look to the Sabbath and see the meaning behind obeying God’s command to rest. He didn’t see how the Sabbath commands are part of God’s larger work of refreshing a weary world.

The synagogue leader had forgotten to remember the words of the prophet Isaiah, words we heard towards the end of our first reading. In that section of Isaiah, God, speaking through the prophet, warned the people against seeing the Sabbath as a way to serve their own interests, as a way to pursue their own affairs. The synagogue leader looked at the Sabbath day and saw his own interest in it, he saw only his religious tradition. He didn’t see the way that the Sabbath, the way that any religious practice, should be a discipline that heals that which is broken within us. And so, when he saw a crippled woman healed, he didn’t see the way her ailment caused her work, the way her ailment made it impossible to enjoy the same rest he could on the Sabbath. He saw only the practice violated, he saw only work being done. He didn’t realize that this work of healing would enable this daughter of Abraham to truly rest for the first time in eighteen years.

I think the Gospel reading from this morning is perhaps a bit more challenging than we might expect because I think the Gospel reading from this morning pushes us to consider our own vision. It forces us to ask what we see. We’d like to stand on the sidelines of the story and simply applaud Jesus for a job well done for the kingdom, but we must first be willing to look closely at the synagogue leader and ask if we ourselves if we see any resemblance. Do we see ourselves in him? When we consider our own customs, our own religious preferences, even our own piety, do we see them as disciplines which reveal God and further the healing of the world? Or, perhaps, do we see our own religious customs, the way we’re used to doing things, as cords with which we can wrap and wrangle a world which seems beyond our control. To wit, does our practice of religion free the world or does it bind the world?

Because in the Kingdom of God, Jesus is interested in loosing bonds. In Luke 1, the Ever-Blessed Virgin Mary declared that God is raising up the weak and is rescuing Israel from her captivity. Later in the same chapter, Zechariah declared that the coming Messiah would save us from those who would harm us, that we’d be rescued from their hands. Jesus had already delivered the demoniac who had been bound by his community. Throughout the Gospel Jesus has gone about proclaiming a kingdom of justice and he’s also gone about enacting that kingdom, teaching, healing, and working wonders: to raise up the weak and to set people free.

The tradition of Judaism understood the nature of the Sabbath. The actual tradition of Judaism even understood the importance of loosing bonds on the Sabbath day. The tradition of the rabbis, as Jesus pointed out to the synagogue leader, had long allowed that since beasts depend upon their owners for water and food, even on the Sabbath it was not work to loose the ropes which held them and to lead them to water. And Jesus, as a faithful Jew who knew the tradition, was aware of the heart of the Sabbath. He knew Sabbath was not just about rest for us: it was about the slow work of inviting the world into God’s rest.

So when Jesus saw the woman in the synagogue, bent over and crippled for eighteen years, he knew that this was a moment for loosing bonds. He knew that a religious tradition can never be an excuse for failing to free those who are pressed down upon. Ignoring the decorum of the synagogue, he addressed her, he invited her to come close, he touched her and told her that she was set free from her infirmity. Interestingly enough, in that declaration he actually used the same root Greek word used for loosing anything, for untying something. He used the same word he uses later when he talks about untying or loosing the bonds of an animal so it may drink. He touched her and told her that she was loosed from her infirmity. And while the religious leader blusters over his supposed broken tradition, the woman sees rightly that God is at work and joins with Mary, the Shepherds, and others in the Gospel of Luke who have seen the Kingdom come near and she praises God.

In the verses before where this morning’s reading from Isaiah begins, the Lord speaks to the people of Israel. He sees that their practice of religion had become so turned inward that they only saw what was in it for them. They could not longer see how the practice of their religion should shape the world in which they lived. And so, in verse six of chapter 58, he says, “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?”

If we returned to the question from earlier in this sermon, if we returned to the idea of examining our own religious practices, I wonder, would we see them as acts of binding or loosing? Of course, religious practices are important. They nourish our faith, they help us remember our place in the world and enable us to see God more clearly. But seeing God more clearly should always result in seeing God more clearly in those around us as well. And anytime we are tempted to use our religion as a tool to exclude, anytime we are tempted to take it and use it as a tool with which we beat those around us who think differently (something those on the left do just as well as those on the right), whenever our religion stops setting people free who are imprisoned by the unjust systems of this world… then our religion has ceased to be the religion God chooses. Then we turn into the red-faced religious leader pointing our finger at someone doing something we don’t like, completely unable to see God trying to be at work.

“Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?” This is the question of God which springs from our reading from Isaiah and which permeates the story from the Gospel of Luke. How is the practice of your religion loosing the bonds of injustice? How are you speaking and working, how does the way you choose to live your life, work to undo the injustice in our world? How is the practice of your religion undoing the thongs of the yoke? All around us every day are people who are weighed down by guilt or pain or anxiety or loneliness. How is the practice of your religion lightening that burden? How do even small things you do, like the sort of tip you leave the server at your Sunday lunch, how does that loosen bonds?

Who knows, maybe the person sitting right next to you right now is weighed down by a burden you cannot even see. Maybe the person across the church from you is weighted down by a burden you cannot see. Maybe you are sitting here weighed down by a burden. Have you heard the Good News? Christians see Sunday, our holy day, as a day for loosing bonds. And at the altar of God we are reminded, nourished by the Body and Blood of Our Lord, that none of us loosen those bonds alone.

The Holy Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ, according to Luke (12:49-56):

Jesus said, “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided:

father against son
and son against father,
mother against daughter
and daughter against mother,
mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law
and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”

He also said to the crowds, “When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, `It is going to rain’; and so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, `There will be scorching heat’; and it happens. You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?”

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Every now and then something takes hold of our culture, some Christian—I suppose some would say quasi-Christian—book or TV or movie will come out and speak deeply to millions of Christians while also capturing the imagination of many others in our communities. And when this stuff comes out, there are always some rather high-minded Christians who sort of turn up their nose at it, who declare that it’s not really what Christianity is all about. Apparently some people just have more discerning taste when it comes to pop culture and Christianity.

I apparently do not. A lot of the time when this stuff comes out, I think it’s terrific—or at least great fun. I mean, I loved the novel The Shack. I thought it was fantastic and I was delighted to lead a Lenten book study on it last year… only to discover that it is apparently rather bad writing and that many people didn’t think much of its theology either. Before that, it was Mel Gibson’s movie, The Passion of the Christ. Once again, I thought it was a powerful and moving movie, but I heard the reviews as it was disparaged by all sorts of people. Even when I was in high school I will admit that I absolutely loved the Left Behind series. I thought it was fascinating and great fun even though over the years it has been increasingly panned both by critics and many theologians and preachers.

Now, in hindsight, I often eventually do come to understand and sometimes even agree with many of the criticisms of these pop-Christian phenomena. I still love The Shack, and I still think The Passion of the Christ displays an important part of the Christian tradition, but I can also hear the importance of some of the criticisms. This is particularly the case with the Left Behind series. It may still have the merits of an adventure, sort of like a Dan Brown novel, but at the end of the day it is rather light on revealing what the church actually teaches. I don’t know if I’d still enjoy the Left Behind series if I read it now, but I think I probably wouldn’t. The way it transforms the church’s teaching on Jesus return into a blockbuster action story is actually rather problematic.

But perhaps most unfortunate is the way that Left Behind and all other types of “end times” theologies out there have made mainline Christianity rather allergic to any apocalyptic literature. Someone says “Jesus is coming soon” and people in the parish hall start sneezing and looking away from this character, afraid of what’s coming next. The problem, however, is when the person talking in this apocalyptic language is Christ himself.

So we read our Gospel from this morning and we hear Jesus talking about how much he wants a fire to be kindled, about how he has not come to bring peace but division, about how the kingdom will divide father against son and mother against daughter, and we want to look away. Jesus proclaims that we must learn to interpret the signs of the times and its tempting to take a close look at the page, thinking that maybe some strange Christian sect has inserted words into the mouth of Our Lord that don’t belong there. We see all of this and we want to look away.

We have a bit of history doing that, don’t we? We have a bit of a history looking away. Jesus’ disciples did a lot of looking away. Most of the time they had no clue what the kingdom was about—they all knew what they thought the kingdom should be about—like almost any church family, everyone had an opinion—but they were very rarely right. And when Jesus would start to tell them why he came, when he would proclaim the heart of the kingdom and tell them about his impending death… well, then they preferred to look away.

And sometimes you and I do the same thing. Jesus talks about the coming of the kingdom, and we like bits of it. When he talks about justice and peace, we get excited. When he talks about welcoming sinners to the table, we feel profoundly when those sinners are us… though noticeably less grateful when those sinners those who have sinned against us. But still, we get it, we understand. Just like the disciples, there are parts of the kingdom that we like, but there are some other parts from which we’d rather look away.

The kingdom of God is near. This text shouts that message loud in clear in language which unsettles and unnerves us. And though a part of that message is indeed about Jesus return at the end of the ages, it’s rather important to remember that the kingdom coming near in the Gospel of Luke was going to be experienced on a lonely cross set up on a hill outside the city.

These several chapters in Luke’s Gospel that we’re in the midst of are a collection of sayings and parables set during Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem. They are all shaped by what will take place once the disciples get there, when Jesus will be rejected by those in power—both in the church and in the state—and will be put to a shameful death. The arc of the Gospel story bends towards the cross.

And even that is something we’re sometimes uncomfortable with. If we didn’t like the parts of this text that were about the end-times, then we don’t like the ones about Jesus’ death much more. We still want to look away. We like what the kingdom is going to bring to the world, what it will bring in each of our lives, but we want to look away because we’re uncomfortable with the cost. But our unwillingness to see the fire, to see the pain and division which is at the heart of our faith makes us like someone that goes out on Lake Michigan, watches the sunset or feels the wind and accurately predicts what the weather will be….but who doesn’t recognize the days in which we live, who doesn’t see that the kingdom of God is all around them, aching to be realized, that the kingdom is aching to break out all around in the lives of those followers of Christ who are willing to share this cross.

In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus is looking for a faithful vigil. He will return, and he wants his followers to look to the eschaton, the end of the ages, when all things will be drawn together in God. But he wants their vigil to be faithful. He wants them to be like the servants in our Gospel reading last week, who were ready and “dressed for action” as they waited for the Master’s return. Faithful vigil, for Jesus, is always centered on discipleship, it is always centered on doing the deeds of the kingdom in this age, in this moment, of working so that the redemption for which all of creation groans, for which Our Lord says he yearns, so that redemption might be realized.

Because that fire Jesus says he came to bring is not just the fire of judgment, rather it is also the fire of Pentecost, wherein God’s spirit will burn through us, through our communities and through our families, insisting that the most important thing in the world is the work of the kingdom in drawing all people to God. It’s a fire that burns, but it’s a fire that saves as it burns.

We remember early in the Gospel of Luke, when the promise of Jesus’ birth was close at hand, the angel choir proclaimed that his birth would bring peace. But we must remember that Jesus has come to bring real peace: not false peace. The fire of God reveals that the peace which was promised in those infancy narratives is only true peace if it also touches the lives of those on the margins. That is, bringing peace to the world is going to require the pain and division of those who have personal peace at the expense of others, perhaps it will even require that we be willing to forego some of our own personal peace in the work of bringing that peace to those who are without it.

The question of this Gospel text is this: Can you interpret the signs of the time? If you look around you, can you see the places where the kingdom is working to break out? If you look around you do you, like Jesus, feel a deep yearning for a better world? Do you see the cost of bringing true justice, mercy and peace to all people? Do you see what it may cost you? Can you interpret the signs of the time? Can you see that our salvation is working to be realized, that our salvation is caught up with that of all those in the world who struggle and suffer? Can you see that and still be willing to walk this journey, to be unwilling with any peace, with any justice, with any mercy which only exists for a privileged few?

Jesus is coming soon. May we have the courage, each of us, to be a small coming of Christ in this broken and hurting world. Amen.

A reading from the book of Hebrews (11:1-3, 8-16):

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Indeed, by faith our ancestors received approval. By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible.

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he stayed for a time in the land he had been promised, as in a foreign land, living in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he looked forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God. By faith he received power of procreation, even though he was too old– and Sarah herself was barren– because he considered him faithful who had promised. Therefore from one person, and this one as good as dead, descendants were born, “as many as the stars of heaven and as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.”

All of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them. They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of the land that they had left behind, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, he has prepared a city for them.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

“My father was a wandering Aramean.” When Jewish people celebrate the Passover Seder, there are several powerful points of deep beauty wherein they tell their faith’s story using first person verbs. “We went down to Egypt.” “God rescued us.”. One of the most powerful comes from Deuteronomy 26:5, when the person bringing an offering to the temple recites a short version the salvation history of God’s people, beginning with the phrase, “My father was a wandering Aramean.” The “wandering Aramean” is, of course, Abraham, who was called by God to leave his homeland and sojourn. It calls to mind all of those in the story of the people of Israel who spent time wandering and sojourning, including Isaac and Jacob, Moses and Joshua. These same verses from Deuteronomy are picked up in modern Jewish celebrations of the Passover Seder, as to this day Jewish people still gather together to tell their story, beginning, “My father was a wandering Aramean.”

Christians don’t often think of the story of our own faith in that way. We don’t see our religion as a religion of wanderers. Generally we think of our own history as establishing things. The early church established churches and went out and established more churches, until Christianity covered a significant portion of the Western world. We carve dates on our cornerstones, marking when we establish something new, another permanent location of faith. Episcopalians are particularly good at this, we are people who found things, who establish commissions to put plaques on as many things as possible. But even outside of our own tradition, Christianity for many is about finding something, it’s about knowing that you’ve arrived, that you’ve reached a place where you can grow, a place where you can locate yourself. Jewish families gather together at Passover Seders and say, “My father was a wandering Aramean.” Episcopalians gather together at church gatherings and say, “My father gave the altar set that started this parish.”

We don’t do wandering.

Or do we?

I wonder perhaps if our unceasing desire to establish and form and memorialize, if our desire to etch something permanent on the face of the earth, really betrays our own fear at the tenuous nature of life. After all, we do live in the twenty-first century, when the idea of living in the city where you grew up is a bit of an abnormality (I’ve long known I’m an abnormality, now I know another reason why.) In this day and age, most of us move around several times throughout our lives, the average person changes career fields six or seven times. Gone are the days when you lived down the street from your parents and your grandparents. We are a dislocated people, our only rooted place being perhaps our Facebook page.

And perhaps as Christians we are even more prone to wandering than we realize. It is increasingly the case the most people in your average Episcopal church were not raised as Episcopalians. Some people say that Christians today change denominations like they change cars, and while that may be true, it’s perhaps because they’re struggling to find anything holding them to one group. I imagine each and every person in this parish could come and share their own story and it would be a story of wandering, a story of searching and of finding new homes in unexpected places. And this constant dislocation, our constant lack of a rooted place, comes with a cost. It’s painful to search for a city or a church to call home and at the end find yourself once more on the road.

Maybe our father really was a wandering Aramean. And that’s good news in the Book of Hebrews. Hebrews eleven is a chapter that recounts the story of our salvation. It’s version from Deuteronomy that we’ve been talking about. After proclaiming at the end of chapter ten that we are saved by faith, the author goes on to clarify what faith is, saying, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” And lest we think he’s just talking about believing in a God we cannot see, he goes on throughout the rest of chapter eleven telling the stories of the great heroes of faith: Abel, Enoch, and Noah, Moses, the people who escaped Egypt, Rahab the prostitute who cared for the spies. Then in verse 32 he says, “And what more should I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jepthah, 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….” And on and on he goes, like a preacher at the climatic moment of a sermon, articulating the faith that sustains the story of our salvation.

And so, of course, he talks about Abraham and Sarah. He talks about how they lived as foreigners in a strange land, believing that God’s promise would come true, the promise we heard in our first reading that they would have descendants like the stars, and also the promise that they would have a home in the land of Canaan. But after them, Isaac and Jacob also lived as foreigners, as people without a permanent home. We always seem to forget that part of the story, the part where the land of Canaan was a place filled with other people, and where the great heroes of our faith lived as strangers. And the author tells us in verse 13 that “all of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them.” They died as strange people in a strange land, only able to see in the distance the realization of that for which they had hoped.

The original audience of this book would have understood that. Christianity had been around enough to get unpopular in a few places, and the author of Hebrews believes his audience is tired. He talks about their drooping arms and fatigued spirits, as some of them wonder whether the promises of Jesus for a new kingdom of justice and peace would ever come true. Perhaps they resonated with the feelings of the “resident aliens,” the strangers in their own cities scattered throughout the Roman Empire, people who had no citizenship status and who certainly weren’t treated equally, people who also were looking forward to something better someday.

And maybe even you and I, who have been so many places before we wound up here, in this church this morning, maybe we also know what it’s like to feel out of place. Maybe you know what it’s like to feel tired, as though it’s always just one thing after another. Maybe you know what it’s like to read the newspaper and wonder if God’s kingdom of justice and peace will ever come. And maybe you even know what it’s like to sit in a room filled with people and still wonder where your home really lies. The author of Hebrews looks out over his audience, he looks out over us, and he acknowledges, “You do indeed desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one.” He tells us he knows that means where we are now feels awfully painful sometimes. He looks at all those who have felt the pain that it is to be a wanderer, and he says with words which pulse with conviction: Therefore God is not ashamed to be called your God. Indeed he has prepared a city for you.

Faith, we are told in Hebrews, is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. It’s interesting, the word used in verse one, translated as “assurance” is hypostasis. It’s a word that also means substance. Faith is the substance of things hoped for. It’s the same word the author used in chapter one of Hebrews to describe how the Son is the expression of God’s hypostasis, the substance of God. It’s a word we read in translated form every time we recite the Nicene Creed, saying that Jesus is of one “Being” or one “Substance” with the Father. It’s a weighty idea: faith is the substance of things hope for.

The author of Hebrews wants us to hear the story of the heroes of our faith, he wants us to remember that they all wandered too and that many of them died before seeing the fulfillment of their hope. He wants us to remember them so that we’re not afraid to hope for a more lasting city, so that we’re not afraid to hope for a kingdom of justice and peace. But he also wants us to know that faith is the substance of things hoped for. That’s why he makes it clear that all the heroes of our faith who hoped for things they didn’t see also acted on that faith. Abel offered sacrifice, Noah built an ark, Abraham left his home, Moses led the people…. Because it is true that faith sustains us in our wandering and in our struggles, it does because it gives us something to hope for. But faith is also the substance of those things. It is both an inward and an outward reality. As one author has put it, “Faith as an inward reality sings ‘We Shall Overcome.’ Faith as an outward reality marches at Selma.”

Which leads me to wonder. If you know what it’s like to feel like a stranger and a wander and yet to discover that God loves you, welcomes you, is not ashamed of your wanderings, but is working through them to create something lasting… well, would the substance of that look like? All the things you hope for in this world, how would you describe their substance? Who do you know in your life, in our community, in our church, who is wandering? And what story can you tell them? How can you put substance to their faith, to their hope that God perhaps even has a place for them? Because in the end, we are all wandering children of wandering parents, waiting for someone to show us something more substantial. To what is God calling you, oh wandering child?

The Holy Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ, according to Luke (12:13-21):

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

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

There are a handful of texts in the gospels that have always bothered me. Maybe three or four that all my life I’ve read, scratched my head, and sort of said, “What?” Often it happens when a certain character in the story is portrayed as “the bad guy,” but who really, to me, doesn’t seem all that bad. Or it also happens when a type of justice is displayed that sure doesn’t look too terribly just at all. Perhaps you’ve even had this experience. Perhaps you’ve arrived to church on a Sunday, stood to receive the Gospel reading, wondering what word of God you will hear today, only to hear something that seems overly harsh or too far removed from the type of justice, the
sort of world, we believe in.

I don’t know about you, but this morning’s Gospel reading has always been one of those for me. It’s the parable Jesus tells that really gets me. This farmer works and works, he labors under the sun and with the soil, creating a living by the sweat of his brow. He has several years of good harvest, the text tells us the land “produced abundantly.” So he does what I would imagine any farmer would do: he builds some bigger storehouses to store the grain and crops in. Then, when it’s all stored, he says to himself, “You have ample goods laid up for many years, relax, eat, drink, and be merry.” To be honest, it sort of sounds like what I’ve always been taught is at the root of good stewardship and personal finances. In short, the farmer seems to be preparing well for his retirement. He’s worked hard, been smart and saved, so that he can now relax and enjoy his golden years. And God calls him a fool? It doesn’t make sense to me.

Now, Jesus seems to help us out a bit with this in the set-up for the parable. He declares that we should be on our guard against all kinds of greed. Oh, greed! Well if that’s the problem, if what’s really going on in this farmer’s life is that he is just greedy, then I can buy into the parable, then it makes sense to me. After all, we all know that greed is wrong, we all know that greed is a real sin. We’ve been taught since we were children that we should not be greedy. Admittedly, upon first reading, it seemed to me that the farmer wasn’t greedy, he was just accumulated what he needed to retire well. But Jesus says that his accumulation was really based on greed, so that makes more sense. I suppose Jesus knows better than I what was going on in that farmer’s head (Jesus invented the character of this farmer after all!). And if the farmer is greedy, well then we can agree with Jesus, shake our head at this farmer’s covetous nature, sort of wag our fingers at him, and really feel much better about the whole thing. After all, we’re not greedy…

But then we back up a bit more and we read the first verses of our story and it begins to hit a little closer to home. Someone in the crowd calls out to Jesus, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me,” and Jesus denies the request for arbitration, asking, “Who made me judge or arbitrator over you?” Tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me, the man in the crowd asked.

Have you ever watched a family squabble over an inheritance? Have you, perhaps, been in a family that has fought over what those who have died left behind? If you have, then you know that it can become a painful and ugly sight. One brother insists he wants one thing, but the other one wants it too. Furniture, jewelry, china, mementos, cars, they all become something that the family grasps and grasps after. And it’s hard to watch from the outside, it sort of makes you grimace. But it’s so abundantly painful to experience from the inside, when all you want are a few things to remember this person by and everyone else seems determined to take it from you.

Because that’s what so many of those fights over inheritance are really about, the desire to hold on to a person. Sure, sometimes those family battles really are just a matter of plain greed and money. But a lot of the time the heart of the battle is a desire to hold on to some small part of the person who has died… because we think the possessions they left behind is all we have left of them. And if we don’t have some part of their possessions, then we won’t have some part of them. And then they may truly be gone from our lives for ever. And that is a pain we don’t think we can bear.

I think that’s why I imagine Jesus’ voice in verse 15 of chapter 12 to be a gentle voice. I don’t imagine him castigating this man in the crowd for his greed. Rather I imagine him gently whispering to him, warning him about the danger of this particular road, warning about what can lie ahead if this continues unchecked. “Take care, be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” Be careful, there are all sorts of paths to greed out there. Remember, your parents’ life did not exist in the abundance of their possessions. And holding onto their possessions won’t let you hold onto their life.

The sin of greed is by its very nature all-consuming—it always wants more and more. In fact, the Greek word used for Greed is pleonexia. It comes from pleon, which means “more.” Plutarch, a Greek historian and philosopher who lived just after the time of Jesus, said that “pleonexia never rests from acquiring to pleon,” Plenoxia always wants to pleon. The desire for more always wants more. Jesus tells us there are all kinds of greed, all kinds of wanting more. We always think of greed as wanting more money, but it can be wanting more possessions, more power, perhaps even more of another person. But the desire to accumulate as much as we can, even the desire to always want one more thing to remember someone by, can grow until it is insatiable, until it destroys us.

It’s not that possessions are bad. It’s not that money is bad. It’s not even that inheritances are bad, as though there was something wicked about wanting something that was important to someone important to you. It’s the pleonexia that’s bad, it’s the ever-increasing desire for more. That’s what Jesus is warning against when he says, “Be on guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” Because within that ever-increasing desire for more, we find the mistaken belief that the answer to our problems is found in an abundance of something, in more of something. And that idea that the answer is found through abundance is an idea that can grow and grow until you cease to be the one consuming and become the one who is consumed.

The person in the crowd who wanted his share of the inheritance was entering dangerous territory and so Jesus wanted to warn him to take care, this path doesn’t always end well. The farmer, who foolishly thinks that by creating an abundance of something he can thereby have complete control over his future, has misunderstood the real nature of life. And perhaps even you and me, who are so anxious over our own lives, and who sometimes also foolishly believe that by accumulating for ourselves we can control everything, perhaps we are in need of hearing Jesus’ caution. Because at the end of the day all of the abundance of things we believe will give us what we want turn out to only stoke our desire for more. And even seemingly innocent desires for more can turn us in on ourselves, they can destroy our ability to be content, they can destroy our ability to trust in God, they can destroy our ability to see where our life actually exists: that our life does not exist in the abundance of possessions, but it is rooted in the grace and faithfulness of God.

The kingdom of God in Luke’s gospel calls us to cease grasping for more of everything. Because though we may think we need more of this or more of that, in the kingdom of God as discover that we really do have enough. In fact, in the kingdom of God, even that which we do have is not for our own use, it’s not there for our own personal comfort, or our own personal security. In the kingdom of God, Mary sings out in the Magnificat in Luke 1, it is the poor who will be filled with good things and the rich sent empty away. And so in the kingdom of God you and I are called to look for the poor, to look for the hungry, and to fill them. We are called to cease from stock-piling and start looking for those who really don’t have enough. In the kingdom, we cast our vision away from storehouses which only provide a false sense of security and we look towards those who lack, those who struggle. And we can do this, because in the Kingdom we know that we exist because of the love and grace of God. So instead of looking for ways to get more, we are able to rest in the abundant grace of God, and without fear to respond to God calling us to be willing to find grace, even perhaps the grace of having less.

For those interested, my book, Safeguarded by Glory: Michael Ramsey’s Ecclesiology and the Struggles of Contemporary Anglicanism is now available to order on Amazon.com—it even has a cover image!

Here is the blurb from the back,

In this exhaustive study of Archbishop Michael Ramsey’s doctrine of the church, Jared C. Cramer creates a picture of a modern Episcopal church that seeks to continue Ramsey’s vision of the ministry of Christ. Ramsey was perhaps the most respected articulator of Anglicanism for the twentieth century. Central to Ramsey’s approach to theology was the gospel of Jesus’s life, death, burial, and resurrection, which he believed revealed the very nature and glory of God. He felt that it influenced Christian theology at every level, from theological reflection to institutional structures. Cramer explores the full implications of “glory” in Ramsey’s theology and applies this theology to current developments and issues in the Anglican Communion.

Cramer shows how the profound changes in both practice and ethical beliefs within the Anglican Communion in the last fifty years have been used on all sides of the debate to further disassociate the different Church factions from one another. By constructing a systematized doctrine of the church from Ramsey’s writings, Cramer offers a different lens through which these changes may be viewed and suggests that the glory of God in Christ still safeguards the church.

You can order your copy from the link below…

I’m a member of a group of Anglo-Catholic clergy in the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada called the Society of Catholic Priests. We’ve had a rather stirring discussion the past couple of days about the doctrine of the Assumption of Mary.

The Assumption of Mary is the idea that she was bodily assumed into heaven. Some shy away from it because it is one of the recent (i.e., within the past hundred years) infallible doctrines of the papacy. However, since at least the 4th century there have been stories circulating about Mary’s assumption. It has been argued by theologians throughout the centuries as diverse (and yet deeply respected) as St. Melito of Sardis, Dionysus the Areopagite, John of Damascus, Gregory of Tours, and Modestus of Jerusalem. Generally, Roman Catholics believe her assumption occurred just before her death where as Eastern Orthodox believe it occurred just after. But even on that question, the actual dogma in the Roman Catholic Church is open, saying only “having completed the course of her earthly life.” In Anglicanism, it falls under the category of “pious doctrine.” That is, it is an article of belief that a Christian may hold without being contrary to the foundations of the Christian faith, but it is not an article of belief that any Christian must hold as a foundation of the Christian faith.

So why am I talking about it here and right now?

Well, one of the clergy who is a part of the discussion on the SCP listserve, made the statement, “”I would give my right arm to be able to successfully explain to a street hooker with a heroin needle sticking out of her just how it is that Mary’s bodily assumption into heaven can be of help, but I know I can’t.” The question reveals a common assumption these days that discussions of doctrine and dogma in some ways preclude the ability to speak with clarity and fidelity to the ills of this world.

I reject that idea whole-heartedly.

And so, as an exercise in faith, I tried to figure out what I think the Assumption, if one does choose to believe it, might say to “a street hooker with a heroin needle sticking out of her.”

This is what I said.

It is so abundantly important to remember that at the end of the day Mary was first and foremost a teenaged girl, pregnant under somewhat dubious circumstances. When she speaks out on behalf of the poor and oppressed in the Magnificat, she does so because she is one of them. She is one of the small people, one of those this world finds it so easy to ignore, just as easy as the junkie on the street. Yet, though she was one of the small people, she chose to bow to God’s will in her life, choosing a path of obedience even when—particularly when—she didn’t understand it. And it was this small girl who had the courage to say yes and give her own human nature to the Second Person of the Trinity.

Many in the church have taught for a long time Mary was bodily brought into heaven. Some think it was before she died, some after, in the end we really don’t know. But the Assumption itself, the idea that her body was brought into heaven, proclaims boldly that what Christians believe when it comes to Jesus being raised from the dead does not apply only to Jesus.

That is, beloved, Jesus is not the only one to rise.

Mary, one of the small, one of the easily ignored, was assumed into heaven. And when we see Mary in heaven, whether in icons or in art, we should see a small bit of ourselves also in heaven. And her bodily assumption means that it wasn’t just her mind or her spirit, it was all of her, all of her body. In the assumption we see God reaching out to redeem all of us even our bodies, we see that God is reaching through our addictions, through our pain, through our emotional hurt and does not just destroy all those bodily things about us. Instead, God gently takes it and pulls it toward resurrection.

And so you are not powerless. Your are not incapable of change. And this church right here, or that agency over there, wants to help you say yes to God’s will, to get help, to get clean, to break free, and to begin walking towards the resurrection God has already foreshadowed in the assumption of Mary.

A reading from the Book of Genesis (18:20-32):

The LORD said to Abraham, “How great is the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah and how very grave their sin! I must go down and see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me; and if not, I will know.”

So the men turned from there, and went toward Sodom, while Abraham remained standing before the LORD. Then Abraham came near and said, “Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city; will you then sweep away the place and not forgive it for the fifty righteous who are in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked! Far be that from you! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?” And the LORD said, “If I find at Sodom fifty righteous in the city, I will forgive the whole place for their sake.” Abraham answered, “Let me take it upon myself to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes. Suppose five of the fifty righteous are lacking? Will you destroy the whole city for lack of five?” And he said, “I will not destroy it if I find forty-five there.” Again he spoke to him, “Suppose forty are found there.” He answered, “For the sake of forty I will not do it.” Then he said, “Oh do not let the Lord be angry if I speak. Suppose thirty are found there.” He answered, “I will not do it, if I find thirty there.” He said, “Let me take it upon myself to speak to the Lord. Suppose twenty are found there.” He answered, “For the sake of twenty I will not destroy it.” Then he said, “Oh do not let the Lord be angry if I speak just once more. Suppose ten are found there.” He answered, “For the sake of ten I will not destroy it.”

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

When we last saw our hero, Abraham, he was on the cusp of receiving the long-awaited (and many-times promised) child, a child who would be the source of blessing so that through Abraham and Sarah all the families of the earth might be blessed. When we last saw our hero, last week, three men had appeared and announced this child’s impending birth to Abraham, now a hundred years old. His wife, ninety, thought the idea of giving birth at her age was worth a laugh. But the child, the text seemed certain, was coming soon.

Now here we are, just 5 short verses after the conclusion of last week’s reading from Genesis, and the territory has changed dramatically. Gone is the weighty, but in the end joyful and beautiful, story about call and impending promise. Now we are entering the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. The music has changed, the lighting has dimmed, and I’d imagine a few of those who know this story are preparing to avert their eyes from the scene which is about to play out.

When I was in elementary school, I decided I was going to read through the entire Bible. I didn’t get very far, Numbers proved to be my downfall (as it has to so many others who have tried the same feat). But early on I came across this story of Abraham and Lot, of Sodom and Gomorrah. I remember reading it as a 7 year old and then coming to my mom, utterly confused by the things I was reading. She took the Bible from me, read a bit of these chapters, grimaced, and suggested that perhaps I wait until I was a little older to read the Bible all the way through.

Let’s face it, she was probably right. If Genesis is ever made into a movie, it would certainly be a “R” rated one. The moment that the words “Sodom and Gomorrah” hit our ears, it’s rather likely that all our minds go to one place. We know the story that is ahead, about fire and brimstone from heaven, Lot’s attempt to escape, his wife looking back and being turned to salt… and, above all, we know that these cities were wicked. The very phrase “sin of Sodom” evokes contemporary debates about good and evil, about morals, ethics, and sexuality. We hear “sin of Sodom” and it’s like this story is intruding on our otherwise nice summer. We want to shut our ears and close our eyes, to think of better things, and we hope beyond hope that we‘re not going to have to talk about something like this on a Sunday morning.

But to ignore this text would be a mistake. We cannot ignore the importance of this text in the story of Abraham, located as it is right smack in the middle of the climax, after the final promise of the child but right before the child is actually born. We cannot ignore the importance of this moment in the Book of Genesis, the Hebrew Bible, and the broader Christian Scriptures.

In the verses between last week’s reading and this week’s, there is this wonderful inner dialogue, wherein we overhear the Lord talking to himself, saying, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, seeing that Abraham shall become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him?” We’d like it if the answer was yes, please hide it, but the Lord goes on, “No, for I have chosen him that he may charge his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice.”

Then, immediately following that line in Genesis, our text from this morning begins, as God decides to reveal the lesson of Sodom and Gomorrah to Abraham, saying, “How great is the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah and how very grave their sin.” The Lord is going to use this situation to teach something. He doesn’t want to hide it from Abraham, he doesn’t want t hide it from us. He wants us to learn from it, to learn righteousness and justice. As one commentator says, “The vocation of Abraham contrasts with the viciousness of Sodom, and provides occasion to ask about Yahweh’s righteousness.”

So what is the “very grave” sin of Sodom and Gomorrah? What is the stark contrast between that city and the righteousness and justice of God? Well, in the story two angels come to Sodom and Lot invites them to stay in his house. The townspeople come out, however, and demand Lot produce the visitors so they can “know them.” Lot, in a moment of profound wickedness, offers his own daughters instead. The men of the cities refuse and when they charge the house, the angels strike them all blind, protecting Lot’s family. The family narrowly escapes before God destroys both cities entirely, apparently there were not even ten righteous people.

Now, there’s a lot of sin going on here and it raises the question of what exactly was the great sin for which God intended to destroy the city. The best place to look for an answer to that question is likely within Scripture itself. How does the Hebrew Bible interpret this story? In Ezekiel 16, the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah is portrayed as excessive food and indifference to the needy. The first chapter of Isaiah insists that the sin was injustice and urges those who would learn from Sodom and Gomorrah instead to “learn to do good, seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.” Many theologians and commentators sum up the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah as the lack of hospitality. The problem, however, is that lacking hospitality seems like a minor thing to us. Given this story, it seems quite the understatement.

Sex, that’s a much more serious sounding sort of sin. Thus these days it’s an unfortunately popular answer to the question. Indeed, some people mistakenly conflate all same-sex relationships with what we read about in these chapters in Genesis. But if sex is a part of this sin of these cities, it is because it is attempted rape, not because of the genders of the people involved. And even that—seeing only the attempted rape—fails to understand the true depth of the depravity of these cities, cities that were so wicked that God and Abraham think the question of finding even ten righteous citizens is doubtful.

I think a significant clue to the answer of this perplexing question regarding the “sin of Sodom” is found in what the men of the city say to Lot. They say, “This fellow came here as an alien, and he would play the judge!” He came here as an alien. That is, this man is just an immigrant, why would we listen to him. The word “alien” is a theologically significant word in Torah, particularly in the first five books. The word “alien” evokes the commands of Torah, particularly in Deuteronomy where over and over again God’s people are commanded to care for the alien in the land. They were also once aliens in a strange land, God reminds them, and so they should care for the alien.

Beloved, hospitality in Scripture is about much more than “playing host.” Hospitality is about more than setting out tea and cookies for someone who drops by, it’s even about more than offering someone a room for the night. In the Torah, hospitality is based upon the teaching that every human being has worth, that we are all dust into which has been blown the very breath of God. Hospitality understands that all of us are strangers somewhere and therefore each of us should be especially intentional about caring for the strangers here.

Because when we stop caring for the strangers among us, we do violence to the image of God pressed upon the soul of each and every human being. When we stop caring for the strangers among us, we run the risk of missing Our Lord Jesus, who taught us that he is present in the weak and the hungry, in the alien, stranger and immigrant—perhaps even in the illegal immigrant. And the failure to see the inherent worth of each stranger can turn in on itself, resulting in an ability only to see my own needs and desires, a sinfulness which is ugly and vicious… and we see in it fullness in the people of Sodom and Gomorrah.

When we last saw our hero, last week, we talked about call. We talked about how Abraham’s whole life, his whole purpose, was shaped by the call to be a blessing to all the families of the earth. But we have to remember that Abraham and Sarah’s call to be a blessing to all the families of the earth assumes that God really does want to bless all the families of the earth, that there is no human being we can meet who does not bear God’s image, who does not deserve God’s blessing. And so we should treat every single person with great care, particularly those who are on the margins of society, particularly those who have no one to care for them, those who have no one who ever stands up and says: this person matters to God, this person matters to me.

The story of Sodom and Gomorrah was supposed to teach Abraham a lesson in righteousness and justice, it was supposed to display what happens when we stop seeing God in those we encounter, when we stop caring for those who are easy to ignore. But this story also displays mercy. It displays a God who will save a wicked town for a handful of good people. It shows a God who rescues even Lot, despite his despicable actions.

And maybe, if we look close enough, we’ll see that even our own salvation is not because of our own doing, or our genes, or our citizenship, or our skin color. Rather, we’ll discover that in caring for the alien, in offering hospitality to those whom society would rather ignore, our own salvation is realized. We’ll discover that even we are saved, not because of ourselves, but because of the weak around us in whom Our Lord is so very present, if we have eyes to see. Amen.

O God, the protector of all who trust in you, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy: Increase and multiply upon us your mercy; that, with you as our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal, that we lose not the things eternal; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

A reading from the Book of Genesis (18:1-10a)

The LORD appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day. He looked up and saw three men standing near him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent entrance to meet them, and bowed down to the ground. He said, “My lord, if I find favor with you, do not pass by your servant. Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree. Let me bring a little bread, that you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may pass on– since you have come to your servant.” So they said, “Do as you have said.” And Abraham hastened into the tent to Sarah, and said, “Make ready quickly three measures of choice flour, knead it, and make cakes.” Abraham ran to the herd, and took a calf, tender and good, and gave it to the servant, who hastened to prepare it. Then he took curds and milk and the calf that he had prepared, and set it before them; and he stood by them under the tree while they ate.

They said to him, “Where is your wife Sarah?” And he said, “There, in the tent.” Then one said, “I will surely return to you in due season, and your wife Sarah shall have a son.”

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

This morning’s reading from the Book of Genesis is a climatic moment in the story of the people of God. God has appeared once more and promised that the child of the covenant, the promised child of Abraham and Sarah, will be coming very soon. In fact, the three men in our story say the child will before they return. And everything about the story indicates that it is a significant moment. There is the dramatic appearance of the three men, Abraham’s hurried actions throughout the first nine verses, providing the unexpected guests with the hospitality common in the Middle-East. And the confidence of these strangers in declaring that Sarah will have a son is mysterious and exciting. All of this indicates that something significant is afoot.

And yet, in the verses following our text, right after the lectionary ends the reading, we find that when Sarah heard this declaration, she laughed. She is eighty-nine and her husband is ninety-nine and the idea that they will now after almost a century be parents is something that brings laughter to her mouth. Sarah’s laughter echoes the laughter a chapter ago when God had told the same thing to Abraham and he had fell on the ground laughing at the idea of bearing a child at his age. Abraham and Sarah hear the promise and they laugh… and who can blame them? After all, Abraham and Sarah have been waiting for a long time.

It only seems like a couple of chapters in the book of Genesis, but it has been twenty-four years since Abraham first heard God speak to him in Haran, back when he was still known as Abram, telling him leave the land where he and his family lived, promising that God would make Abraham into a great nation. And Abraham and Sarah, his wife, believed God and went, bringing their family with them. They journeyed all the way to Canaan, where God reiterated the promise of offspring. But no offspring came. Instead a famine struck the land and Abraham and Sarah went down into Egypt to survive. The famine subsided and they came back up to the southern parts of Canaan, in the Negev desert and once again God reiterated the promise. But the offspring didn’t come. Kings came and went, wars were fought, but Abraham and Sarah remained childless. God appeared again, making a covenant with Abraham, giving Abraham signs that this covenant was trustworthy. But still, no children. Abraham tried to solve the problem on his own, fathering a child with one of his wife’s slaves, and though God loved and blessed that child… God said that that child was not the child. And then, at ninety-nine years old, God appears again and reiterates the promise to Abraham and Sarah. Three men visit Abraham and Sarah and tell this old couple that they’ll return again and that when they return, Sarah will have born a child… and perhaps we can understand Sarah’s laughter just a bit.

If you have ever waited for something in hope, only to find that what you hoped for never came, perhaps you understand Abraham and Sarah’s laughter too. In fact, you probably know that Sarah’s laughter is not full of mirth and humor, but is the hard laugh of someone who for decades had tried to believe one thing only to have it never come to pass. In some ways the past twenty-four years almost sounds like a story of the failure of promise. It sounds like some huckster had fooled these old people into believing one thing and that amazingly enough had been stringing them along all this time. Abraham and Sarah wanted a son, they wanted a family of their own, but that desire seemed even more beyond them now than it had even twenty-four years ago. I know I wouldn’t blame them for laughing.

Do you know what it’s like to wait for something that never seems to come? Do you know what it’s like to live in what was supposed to be an “in-between space” but that has now somehow become permanent, sort of like FEMA structures in the golf coast, temporary housing set up for those who lost everything and which became permanent housing for too many. If you know what it’s like to wait for something, to hope for the arrival of a dream or to long for the change of a circumstance, to believe what you believed was God’s will for something only to be left empty-handed and the same at the end of it all, perhaps older but not feeling much wiser… if you know what that’s like then, yeah, I’d imagine you understand the laughter of Abraham and Sarah at the idea that God’s promise was going to come true this time.

But this story from Genesis, thankfully enough, is not really just a story about a promise. It looks like it is, it looks like this whole story is about the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham. But if we go back to the original call in chapter 12 of Genesis, we read, “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” No, this is not just a story about a promise. Sure, there is a promise involved, but the promise only exists for the call. The call, that’s the real key to this story: the call that Abraham and Sarah will be used by God to bless all the families of the earth.

And who knows, maybe Abraham and Sarah’s laughter, though instigated by the repeated promise of a child, was really laughter at their own sense of call. Perhaps it was laughter at the idea that at this point in their life they could still be used as vessels of blessing. Perhaps our own anxious laughter at God comes from a similar place, a similar doubt that we can be vessels of blessing. We feel anger, grief or confusion at promises never realized, but an even deeper pain is that felt when we wonder whether or not God really can use us for anything… whether God really wants to use us for anything. And so Abraham and Sarah laugh. Perhaps you and I even laugh a bit. But we know that all of our laughter at God’s promises, all of our laughter at the thought that God might be able to use us, is intermingled with tears of pain and grief, doubt and confusion.

Abraham and Sarah laugh. And you know what I love about this story? God doesn’t smite them. God doesn’t take away the promise. God doesn’t rebuke them for lack of faith. In fact, throughout the story of Abraham and Sarah, we’re almost constantly seeing Abraham fearfully doubt the promise and protection of God. He has moments of great faithfulness but also moments of great foolishness. And yet in the midst of it all God is always there. God always comes back. God always returns to Abraham saying, “I will use you to bless all my children.”

Abraham and Sarah laugh, but the promised child comes nonetheless. And if Abraham and Sarah (and you and I) didn’t understand the promise of God when it didn’t come, it’s almost just as perplexing when the promise arrives, when Abraham and Sarah hold that small baby in their arms and perhaps remember God telling them that through this family God would bless all the families of the earth, when they hold that baby and remember their call.

After Sarah laughs, one of the three men responds by asking, “Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?” It’s a question that’s asked throughout Scripture, “Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?” And I think we hear echoes of the answer in chapter one of Luke’s Gospel, when another emissary from God announces another impossible pregnancy, this time to a teenager named Mary, an annunciation that ends with the statement “For nothing will be impossible with God.”

The idea that nothing will be impossible with God is not a statement that God is going to give us everything we want in our lives. It’s not even a statement that we’ll have what we need for a happy and comfortable life. Rather, it is a declaration that God wants to use each of God’s children as vessels of blessing. It’s an insistence that not even our own doubt, our own failures, not even our own laughter will stop God from graciously working through us to be blessings… if we will but receive. It is an insistence that God looks deep within each and every one of us and see potential for mission, that God sees us all as possible avenues of blessing for this world, whether we see it or not.

And Abraham and Sarah’s son Isaac eventually becomes known as Israel, father to a nation who God called to reveal God’s just and loving purpose in the world.

And you? What is it that you are tempted to laugh at? What is it that you wonder about when it comes to your own calling from God? Laugh if you must, but also know that God will continue to heal our world whether we laugh or not. Laugh if you must, but know that God speaks to your deepest heart, calling you to join in that healing. Amen.

Almighty God, the fountain of all wisdom, you know our necessities before we ask and our ignorance in asking: Have compassion on our weakness, and mercifully give us those things which for our unworthiness we dare not, and for our blindness we cannot ask; through the worthiness of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

The Holy Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ according to Luke (10:25-37)

Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.”

But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, `Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.’ Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Today is a big day in the life of the Church. It’s a big day because today we will baptize Griffin Bissell Corbat into the church. Today Griffin will be marked by the Holy Spirit, sealed as God’s own for ever. And who doesn’t love a baptism? I know they are one of my favorite parts of church. And true, some may grumble that they make the service run a bit long (it seems like when people know a baptism is coming the early service tends to get a bit of an attendance bump) but still, I’d imagine most people here really enjoy the beauty and power of Christian baptism. It is from baptism that the tradition of holy water comes from. Holy water is not some magic solution blessed by a priest, but rather it is water that has been blessed to be for us a reminder of our baptism. Whether it is sprinkled over the assembled worshipers at the beginning of a liturgy, or placed near the doors so that the worshipers may touch it and cross themselves as they enter, the church creates all these small acts, these small rituals, to remind us of our baptism.

The Gospel story for this morning is almost equally smile-inducing. Just like baptism, it’s familiar, it’s one that many people know quite well. It has seeped into our culture, so that all over there are reminders of what it means to be a good Samaritan. In fact, Samaritan in our culture has almost come to be simply interchangeable with someone who is good, someone who helps others. And so when we hear this Gospel story, it’s rather easy to smile, sort of pat the story on its head like a recently baptized child, and to say, “Yes, that’s nice, be good to people.”

Of course, in the first-century, this story would not have been nearly as “smile-inducing.” Samaritan was a loaded category for Jews in the first century. Samaritans were the descendants of a mixed population. When the majority of the people of Israel were carried off into exile by the Assyrians in the 8th century BC, those who were left intermarried with races in the land. Then, later, in the 6th century BC, when the Babylonians destroyed the temple in Jerusalem, the Samaritans created their own place of worship on Mount Gerazim, where they believed Abraham had offered his son Isaac in sacrifice.

Decades later, the Jewish people came back from exile in Babylon and didn’t see the Samaritans as their long lost relatives. Rather, they saw the Samaritans as “half-breed,” a word that in the twentieth century brings up painful memories of the not too distant past in our own country when inter-racial relationships where a source of significant controversy. Samaritans were only “half-Jewish,” and for many of the Jewish people Samaritans would have been better viewed even if they were regular Gentiles. The space the Samaritans occupied in between Jew and Gentile was despicable. And when you add to the ethnic differences the Samaritan approaches to worship, they became even more distasteful to the Jewish people. As one scholar has clarified, to those in the first century who heard the story Jesus tells in Luke 10, “Samaritan” meant detested half-breed, despised defiler of true religion, abhorrent distorter of the precious heritage of faith, loathsome perverter of covenant community. Nobody would have dreamed that “neighbor” included Samaritans.

But we don’t see that. We hear Samaritan in this story and we struggle to understand the Jewish hatred for the Samaritan people. In fact, we can even hear the history of Jewish and Samaritan relations and sort of scratch our heads a bit, not quite understanding why the Jews disliked the Samaritans so. And, interestingly enough, our failure of vision takes the wind out of the sails of this parable, it removes the power of the punch that it would have had in the first century. “Who is my neighbor?” the lawyer had asked. And Jesus’ answer, pointing to the Samaritan, would have been shocking to his audience. Even within the Gospel of Luke, just one chapter ago when Jesus came across a Samaritan town the Samaritans there rejected Jesus’ message. So Jesus’ choice of the Samaritan for the main character is a choice that would have hit close to home, even for him.

If we want to hear, if we really want to hear, this story from Luke’s Gospel, we need to ask ourselves who the Samaritan is in our own lives. We need to place ourselves into the middle of this story, broken at the side of the road, in deep need of help, and then ask, “Who would I NOT want to come and help me?” If I was broken down at the side of the road, who would I hope doesn’t pull over. If I was in need of assistance at some point at my life, who would I not want to show up. Who is the Samaritan in your life? What group do you find to be devoid of good? What party within the church do you believe to be corrupting the very nature of Christianity? What political viewpoint in our country do you believe is destroying the fundamentals of what it means to be an American? Who is it that you would be thrilled not to be here, never to be near you? Who is that person for you?

Now we are getting close to what it means to know what a good Samaritan really is. Now we are seeing why the call to love your neighbor, when that neighbor is clarified by Our Lord as being the one whom we dislike the most, now we see why that call is so profoundly challenging. And if you’ve ever treated someone according to a stereotype, if you have a memory of harsh words said against a certain viewpoint, if you’ve allowed another human to simply be absorbed into a faceless group that can be easily rejected and not taken seriously… then perhaps the call to see the Samaritan as your neighbor is a bit uncomfortable.

But Jesus pushes even beyond that. Even the Jewish lawyer recognizes the punch to this story, acknowledging that the Samaritan was the neighbor. Sure he can’t bring himself to say Samaritan and so says, “the one who showed mercy,” but his uncomfortable response betrays that he gets the shocker that this answer is. However, recall the question that he originally asked Jesus. Jesus had affirmed the importance of the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself. “Who is my neighbor?” the lawyer had then asked, “Who must I love?”

And it would have been a shocking enough message for Jesus to tell the lawyer that he should love the Samaritan. But the parable shifts the person of the neighbor, in this parable the Samaritan is not the object of pious religious love. Rather, the Samaritan is the subject. That is, the Samaritan is the one doing the loving while the helpless Jew receives. As one author has put it, “For the lawyer to hear the parable as an answer to his question, it was necessary for him to see himself in the person of the Samaritan.” For the lawyer to know what it meant to inherit eternal life he had to do more than condescend to love a Samaritan, he had to be willing to see God’s love through that Samaritan, he had to look to that Samaritan for a sign of his own salvation.

Who is your neighbor? In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus makes us hesitant to even ask the question, afraid of what the answer might be, but still it persists. Who is your neighbor? Who is the person you would not want help from? This parable calls you to see that person or that group as the hero, to see her or him as a possible avenue of mercy. The parable calls you to see what they can teach you, how they can heal you. This story is not just a calling to do good, it is a call to change our very paradigms about just who is good, just who really is a neighbor.

And perhaps like the story of the Good Samaritan, which at first glance appeared moving (but in the end rather harmless), Baptism is also equally (and surprisingly) challenging. After all, it is our baptism that moves us outside of ourselves, it is our baptism which declares that we are no longer neighbor to those who look like us, who sound like us or think like us. No, it is our baptism that moves us into a way of life wherein there is no longer an Other. For the baptized, there is no Samaritan, there is no outsider. Rather, in baptism we find ourselves saved by those who we might have rejected, in the Christian life we hear the Gospel from the lips we’d rather ignore.

In a few moments we will reaffirm our own Baptismal Covenant, our own promise to renounce the Powers which corrupt and destroy any of God’s creatures, our own promise to seek in serve Christ in all persons… including those in whom we’d rather not see Christ. And we reaffirm our Baptismal Covenant, not as a smile-inducing moment, but as an act of penitence. We reaffirm our Baptismal Covenant, once again acknowledging that we have indeed failed in living out these vows.

And so when we touch holy water, when it hits us at the beginning of an Easter liturgy or we touch it at the doors of the church, we do so as an act of penitence as well. But we also do it as a reminder of who we really are now. We touch the water and cross ourselves to remind us that we now have no membership in a particular group, that we no longer only trust those who look like us, or talk like us, or think like us. Rather, baptized into God’s family, we are called to reach out in mercy to all people.

The font we’ll use in this baptism will remain where it is after the baptism takes place, in the center of the aisle. And I’d invite you, if perhaps you could use a tangible reminder of your baptism, to touch that water. Because the other reminder we find in that water is that God has first reached out to us, that our prejudice may at times keep us from recognizing our salvation, but that it comes nonetheless, if we only have the courage and humility to receive it once more. Amen.

O Lord, mercifully receive the prayers of your people who call upon you, and grant that they may know and understand what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to accomplish them; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.