PROPER 20, C

Amos 8:4-7

Luke 16:1-13

The parable from Luke that you just heard does not entirely make sense, no matter how closely you read it. The suspicion is that this has been amended, redacted, or otherwise messed with by people who were not the original author, in some vain attempt to make it make sense.

Knowing this is likely doesn’t really help a preacher trying to make sense of it. One thing I noticed is that if you take one statement of the Master as ironical, there is a certain sense to it. The Master says, “And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone they may welcome you into the eternal homes.” Think of what you might say to your young son or daughter who is hanging with a bad crowd. “Well, what kind of friends will they be when the chips are down? Are they going to give you the keys to the kingdom? I don’t think so!”

The valid criticism of this interpretation is that we seldom see Jesus using irony. Nonetheless we can try to understand the attached sayings, but to do so we need to remind ourselves of the economics of Roman –occupied Galilee. As Barbara Rossing puts it, “Rich landlords and rulers were loan-sharks, using exorbitant interest rates to amass more land and to disinherit peasants of their family land, in direct violation of biblical covenantal law. The rich man or "lord" along with his steward or debt collector, were both exploiting desperate peasants.”

While none of us can make sense of the parable itself, we could all agree on the final sentence of this reading. “You cannot serve God and wealth.” You cannot be a Christian if the central focus of your life is the accumulation of wealth rather than the pursuit of goodness or righteousness.

Jesus doesn’t say here that wealth is wicked in and of itself. Rather the issue is this: Do we spend as much time and effort on our spiritual growth as we do on our financial growth? What kind of person would I be today if I had even given them equal time? The answer is this: I’d be much further along in my journey to become a true child of God.

The Old Testament lesson from Amos gives us a clear and brilliant picture of what people who worship the accumulation of wealth become. They become people who prey on the poor rather than help them.

“Hear this, you that trample on the needy and bring to ruin the poor of the land..” These are people who can’t wait for the Sabbath to be over so they can get back to the business of making money. And how do they do that? Not only by buying and selling, but also by cheating.

“We shall make the ephah small and the shekel great and practice deceit with false balances…and selling the sweepings of the wheat.” The ephah was a small bowl used to measure an amount of grain. By denting the bowl, it could be made smaller to cheat the buyer of a small amount of grain. They could also cheat by using weights that were not correct and selling wheat that contained the sweepings from the threshing floor.

Each of us can probably think of similar scams from our own day. My first thought was about housing. While not so evident here in the Falls, in the big cities the actions of slum landlords parallels that of the merchants in Amos. I’m sure you’ve seen pictures or TV specials on city apartments that none of us would live in – with plumbing and heating that don’t work, halls that are filthy, rodents that are numerous and healthy. Yet the landlords often get substantial rent – equivalent to what we would expect to pay for a simple, but decent place to live.

If you’re at all like me, you can say to yourself “tsk, tsk” about people who behave this way – whether it’s landlords, or merchants, drug dealers or corrupt politicians – because that’s them – not me. I certainly don’t cheat people or do anything to ruin the poor.

Are you comfortable with that conclusion? I certainly was for many, many years. Then I moved to England. I noticed that prices for ordinary goods were much higher there than here (and this was not made up for by a comparable difference in salaries). In some parts of Europe, it was even worse. The European executives who worked for my company would travel to the US on business with empty suitcases, which they would fill with newly purchased items for the trip home. That’s how much difference there is!

I expected the relationship of prices and salaries to be different in the third world, but not in Europe, so I started asking questions and reading. The somewhat oversimplified answer is this: the US, both government and private enterprise, has so much money and buys so much of the world’s produce that we can demand lower prices. Sometimes we can even set the prices we will pay for raw materials or services. The European countries haven’t been able to do the same, although maybe the Common Market is changing this.

Let me give you a specific example. There’s a Gospel singing group of black women called Sweet Honey in the Rock. I’m going to read you the lyrics of one of their songs, written by one of their members and based on an article published by the Institute for Policy Studies. It’s called “Are My Hands Clean?”

“I wear garments touched by hands from all over the world, 35% cotton, 65% polyester. The journey begins in Central America in the cotton fields of El Salvador. In a province soaked in blood, pesticide-sprayed workers toil in a broiling sun pulling cotton for two dollars a day.

Then we move on up to another rung—Cargill, a top forty trading conglomerate, takes the cotton thru the Panama Canal, up the Eastern seaboard, coming to the US of A for the first time. In South Carolina at the Burlington mills it joins a shipment of polyester filament courtesy of the New Jersey petro-chemical mills of Dupont.

Dupont strands of filament begin in the South American country of Venezuela, where oil riggers bring up oil from the earth for six dollars a day. Then Exxon, largest oil company in the world, upgrades the product in the country of Trinidad and Tobago. Then back into the Caribbean and Atlantic seas to the factories of Dupont on the way to the Burlington mills in South Carolina to meet the cotton from the blood-soaked fields of El Salvador.

In South Carolina Burlington factories hum with the business of weaving oil and cotton into miles of fabric for Sears, who takes this bounty back into the Caribbean Sea headed for Haiti this time ( May she one day soon be free).

Far from the Port-au-Prince palace, third world women toil doing piece work to Sears specifications. For three dollars a day my sisters make my blouse. It leaves the third world for the last time, coming back into the sea to be sealed in plastic for me, this third world sister. And I go to the Sears department store where I buy my blouse on sale for 20% discount.

Are my hands clean?”

When I ask myself that same question, “Are my hands clean?,” the answer has to be “NO”. Nearly every time I buy so-called American goods these days, even at full price, I’m getting a discount at someone else’s expense. And their lyrics didn’t even touch on the child labor that goes into so many of our goods.

It’s all too easy to say – I can’t help this or change the system. It’s easy to ignore it and shrug. It’s easy to go for the bargain and forget the reality behind it.

It’s hard to acknowledge our own involvement in false balances or selling the sweepings, especially when we had no intention to harm anyone, and had nothing to do with designing the system, at least not in any conscious way.

It’s important to recognize that there are things we can do. We can find out which companies use child labor, or manufacture in sweatshops, or abuse their employees. We can refuse to buy their products. We can choose to pass up bargains that clearly pass the expense to someone else. Or we can buy all the bargain goods offered by the worst companies around and donate the difference to an organization fighting for human rights or fair labor practices abroad. We can write letters of protest. We can buy fair trade coffee, chocolate, or hand made items.

It seems clear that in both the Old and New Testament lessons we are being told that we are accountable for our actions, both large and small. We are responsible for choosing each day what actions we will take: how we will spend our time, our talent and our money. Our life as Christians is not just measured on Sunday morning, but on all seven days of the week.

This week I hope you’ll ask yourself two questions: What are my assets? – and not just in terms of money. How am I using them? This is not meant as an exercise in guilt, but rather an opportunity for growth. If you don’t like the answers you get, you can make changes. You might also ask yourself, seriously, if it is possible to be wealthy without having shortchanged someone else?

Several years ago I read an article by Sister Rita Steinhagen, who was in prison for protesting the School of the Americas, a federal facility that trained Latin American soldiers, who so often ended up acting as death squads in their home countries. She closed the article with this blessing prayer:

“May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships, so that you will live deep in your heart.

May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people and the earth, so that you will work for justice, equity and peace.

May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer, so you will reach out your hand to comfort them and change their pain into joy.

And may God bless you with the foolishness to think that you can make a difference in the world, so you will go forth and do the things which others say cannot be done.”

AMEN

PROPER 18, C

Deuteronomy 30:15-20

Luke 14:25-33

Spoiler alert: part of today’s sermon I have preached before, and part is based on comments by Karoline Lewis on the website Working Preacher.org.

In today’s gospel Jesus lays down the basic requirements for discipleship:

• Hate your family.
• Hate your life.
• Carry the cross and follow me.
• Give up all your possessions.

How do we reconcile this with the two great commandments Jesus gave us: to love God and to love our neighbor as ourselves? How are we to love our neighbor and hate our family?

As is so often the case, we can’t arrive at understanding without looking at the context. The reading begins, “Large crowds were traveling with Jesus.” Oh, so it wasn’t just the disciples traveling with him. Crowds of people were following him as he traveled toward Jerusalem. Remember that Jesus had said the crowds were like a flock of sheep without a shepherd.

I think he looked out over the crowd, reflecting on what awaited him in Jerusalem (he had said that no prophet could be killed except in Jerusalem), and he knew that most of that crowd would scatter at the first sign of trouble. So he warns them about the realities of discipleship. As in many other instances, Jesus speaks in hyperbole to make a point. He speaks harshly to get their attention.

But he also speaks the truth. John Pilch, a commentator I often use, says that the word translated here as hate, is more closely related to prefer, or the negative of that. So Jesus is saying that if you prefer your family to me, then you cannot be a disciple. This softens the tone, but does not make the reality any easier.

It does help clarify what Jesus means. If you are to be my disciple you must love me more than anyone or anything else (or to love God more than anything or anyone else). You must love enough and trust enough that you do not fear death. If you run away to save your life, you will loose it. If you have the confidence to risk your life for my sake, you will gain it.

Here again there is life and there is life. The first is mere life, while the second is life lived abundantly and richly, one lived in faith and without fear.

To carry the cross and follow Jesus means to live a life of service and sacrifice for others, to see yourself as servant and disciple. To give up all your possessions is to free yourself from all desire for “stuff”, all dependence on stuff. It also means that your self-esteem and confidence must come from who you are and/or who you serve, rather than from what you have, not easy in our culture.

The usual sermon title for this week is “The Cost of Discipleship.” Cost is what you give up, what you sacrifice. What if we changed this usual approach to “The Choice of Discipleship?” Choice is something we can do – or not. Choice is making a commitment. Committing to discipleship is choosing a life that helps bring the kingdom into reality, so that others can see and experience it.

Jesus makes it clear that such a commitment is not easy, but we can choose it and struggle to become a good disciple. When we think of discipleship as something we have chosen, rather than as something thrust upon us, I think it changes the way we view the problems and joys of following Jesus. The problems become challenges. What changes do I have to make to put God above everyone else? What does it mean to carry the cross? How many possessions do I have to get rid of? The joys of meeting these challenges are many, but the greatest is attaining the ability to live life full on without fear.

The other advantage of thinking of this in terms of choice has to do with how we interpret the meaning of the cross. “Take up your cross and follow me” sounds like you’ll have to bear a heavy load. Do you have to die for the cross? Is it all about Jesus dying for our sins and now we have to carry our sins around for all to see, or is it something else?

Maybe the cross we are called to carry represents the choice of life, of life lived abundantly, not only in the next life, but also in this life! And certainly of a life lived without fear.

Consider for a moment what fear does to us. Isn’t it fear that causes us to hate the stranger? Isn’t it fear that makes us refuse to talk to those who have hurt us? Isn’t it fear that makes us lock things up and hold on tight to all we have rather than being willing to share?

Consider what we heard in the lesson from Deuteronomy: “Moses said. . .I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life, so that your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him; for that means life to you and length of days. . .”

As human beings, none of us is perfect, and all of us have to struggle with doing what we know is right. Jesus holds up to us the ideal, that which we should be striving for, but we are already forgiven for our failure to attain perfection. The important thing is that we go on trying, that we consider the Gospel imperatives and try to incorporate them into our lives as best we can. If we choose to be disciples, this will be an ongoing process. God loves us whether we succeed or not, but that doesn’t let us off the hook of trying to be the disciples he calls us to be. Let us, everyone of us, choose life! L’chaim! AMEN

PROPER 19, C

Luke 15:1-10

The gospel message today retelling two of the three parables contained in what is affectionately known as the “Lost Chapter” suffers the curse of familiarity. Although not woven so deeply into our mental fabric as the following story of the Prodigal son, the parable of the Good Shepherd is only slightly less well worn in our consciousness – so familiar we stand in danger of missing its meaning entirely.

“Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?”

Well of course a shepherd would go after his lost sheep. Wait a minute, what? Leave 99 in the wilderness? Alone. No shepherd.

Nobody, Jesus. Not one of us. No one in his right mind would leave 99 frightened, defenseless, leaderless sheep to get scattered and eaten by wolves while he chased down the one sheep too clueless to stay with the flock. Nobody leaves behind 99% of their net worth to chase after 1%. No one leaves the 99. Except Jesus does…

“what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not …, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it?” That makes sense. More homes have been more thoroughly cleaned in the cause of finding lost keys or glasses or papers or phones or God-knows-what than in perhaps any other cause. “When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors” She throws a party – a party which likely cost the entirety of the coin she lost if not 2 such coins. Jesus…yeah. um. That’s insane, completely upside-down. Not to mention it’ll mess up the house worse than it was before. Nobody does that. Except Jesus. Jesus does that.

The Rev. Charles H Spurgeon, a renowned preacher in the 1800’s boiled down today’s Gospel message to this, “This man receiveth sinners”. I say boiled down – he goes on, “By that term we, in common parlance, understand everybody. It is in the present day quite fashionable for everybody to lie against what he believes, and to say he is a sinner, even when he believes himself to be a very respectable, well-to-do man, and does not conceive that he ever did anything very amiss in his life. It is a sort of orthodox confession for men to make, …They have no true apprehension that they are sinners at all.”

The good reverend goes on boiling down for another 7,000 words or so, but it amounts to this – if you are perfect, this message is not for you. If you are lost: if you know something about emptiness and visceral fear; about the restlessness of not-quite-right; about the choking squeeze of innate untouchability, about an artificiality surrounding your carefully constructed walls of respectability; if you are lost, Jesus leaves no corner unswept, no couch cushion unturned, no bluff unsearched – looking for you, rejoicing for love of you.

So today we hear stories of redemption – stories that put us on guard against our self-righteous, pharisee, rule following, status protecting selves and urge us fall into the searching, loving arms of Christ our Shepherd admitting our lostness turning our lives around. Yes. or…no. Could they perhaps invite us to become the loving arms of Christ in the world today?

In The Preaching Life, Barbara Brown Taylor claims “The parables are full of problems, not the least of which is they don’t seem to mean what Jesus says they mean. According to his explanations, they’re about heaven’s joy over one repentant sinner, but the lost sheep does not repent as far as I can tell and the lost coin certainly doesn’t. They are both simply found ‑ not because either of them does anything right, but because someone is determined to find them and does. They are restored thanks to God’s action, not their own, so where does repentance come in at all?”

Taylor says that, “If you are willing to be a shepherd ‑ then the story begins to sound different. …Repentance is not the issue, but rejoicing; the plot is not about amending our evil ways but about seeking, sweeping, finding, rejoicing. The invitation is not about being rescued by Jesus over and over again, but about joining him in rounding up God’s herd and recovering God’s treasure. It is about questioning the idea that there are certain conditions the lost must meet before they are eligible to be found, or that there are certain qualities they must exhibit before we will seek them out. It is about trading in our high standards on a strong flashlight and swapping our ‘good examples’ for a good broom. It is about discovering the joy of finding.”

Neil White was a businessman living well with his wife and kids. He lived well until he was convicted of bank fraud and sentenced to serve 18 months in a minimum-security prison in Carville, Louisiana. Carville housed not only minimum security prisoners, but also the last few living victims of Hanson’s disease, leprosy, in the US.

When Mr. White arrived at the prison he saw a man with no fingers, a woman with no legs, people with all variety of disfigurements of limbs and face – 130 or so souls marked with the ravages of leprosy. He was terrified, initially, then gradually filled with righteous anger at the enforced isolation these prisoners suffered. “I found myself standing in front of a woman who had been in prison for 67 years because she had contracted a disease. I was going to be there for less than a year for mishandling over a million dollars.”

A couple weeks before White’s release, the leprosy patients had a dance. A woman he had become close to asked him to the dance. White recalls, “the band started up, and I pushed Ella around the perimeter of the dance floor in her wheelchair. And I would push her the length of the dance floor and then back again, and spin her around in circles. And she would put her arms in the air, and it looked as if she were flying. … It was as close to dancing as we would ever have.

After dancing with Ella around the side of the ballroom, Smeltzer (ph), a leprosy patient who didn’t like [the inmates] … very much, he pointed to me and to two other inmates, and pointed what was left of his index finger and said you’re not invited. No inmates at our party.” The band stopped and the talking and the laughter stopped. The inmates turned to go. One of the other inmates turned to White as they slunk quietly away and broke the silence, “My God, did we just get kicked out of a leper dance?” (NPR interview, Snap Judgement)

We are lost and we are found, leper and prisoner, outcast and host. We can rest secure in the arms of our shepherd and still we can help the lame to dance, the prisoner to be free. We can be co-creators of love in this world (paraphrased from Fr. Richard Rohr), sweeping every corner for the lost, the lonely, the frightened – and all this because of the crazy, mixed up, insane, upside down abundance of life and joy that is God among us. Amen.

PROPER 17, C

Sirach 10:12-18

Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16
Luke 14:1, 7-14

The United States lags behind much of the rest of the world in the field of mathematics. We are tied with Italy for 28th in the rankings world wide. We lag behind not only technological powerhouses like Japan and Hong Kong, but also behind our neighbor Canada, and behind perhaps less expected rivals for high honors – Poland, Slovenia and Latvia. I’m not sure I understand why we don’t excel in this realm. We’re not at the absolute bottom – we place in the top third or so. Still, it seems that we should stand pre-eminent, premier in the field because we spend so very much of our collective time and energy – such a huge proportion of our lives – counting. Counting and comparing. Measuring and calculating. Computing the relative value of mine vs yours. Assessing the relative worth of social opinion, political power and wealth gradients.

We don’t, of course, count, compare, calculate, measure and compute out of pure dedication to the advancement of the study of mathematics. We count and recount, evaluate, appraise and re-calibrate to make sure that we have enough. Because there may not be enough. Sometimes people don’t have enough and we need Need NEED to be sure that we have enough. Everything surrounding us tells us we do not have enough – the television, the news, the politicians, the events. Never enough – Enough money, enough time, enough social standing, enough recognition, enough love, enough security, enough.

Author Stephen King has written 54 novels and over 200 short stories. His works have sold more than 350 million copies, many of which have been adapted into plays, movies, and miniseries. He has won over 60 awards for his written work including the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the Hugo Award, the Bram Stoker Award and the National Medal of Arts. If anyone has proven himself above comparison in his field, it is Stephen King.

In his memoir he describes an interaction between himself and his wife, a noted author in her own right. They were traveling by car with Stephen driving and his wife looking through something new Stephen had been working on. Stephen King describes the moment, “There are some funny parts in [the manuscript] it — at least I thought so — and I kept peeking over at her to see if she was chuckling (or at least smiling). I didn’t think she’d notice, but of course she did. On my eighth or ninth peek (I guess it could have been my fifteenth), she looked up and snapped: “Pay attention to your driving before you crack us up, will you. Stop being so damn needy!”

Stop being so needy. Stop counting. Stop comparing. Stop jockeying for position. Rather than offering us a lesson in table etiquette (Jesus ruined more dinner parties than I’ve ever been to – I don’t think etiquette was His primary concern), Jesus offers us freedom from the counting, a reassessment of relationship.

“The beginning of human pride is to forsake the Lord; the heart has withdrawn from its Maker.” The farther we withdraw from the heart of God, the more fiercely we battle our own neediness, lonesomeness, incompleteness – the more we insist on the counting, the proving, the assessing, the comparing – trying to fill the void.

Jesus offends His host and fellow guests, deliberately upsetting their sure knowledge of their place in the world, demanding they welcome at their tables the undesirable, the unclean, the ones unwelcome at worship. “Invite them to the table” says Jesus. Love them, echoes the apostle Paul. “Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured.”

There is a story of a pilgrim who sat in awe as a wise old monk answered questions. Comforted by the kind monk’s manner, the shy pilgrim finally braved a question, “Father, could you tell us something about yourself?” The old monk leaned back. “Myself?” he mused. There was a long pause.”My name…used to be…Me. But now…it’s you.” (Theophane the Monk, 1989 Tales of a Magic Monastery)

Which of us has not been a prisoner of our own pride, or fear? Which of us has not been tortured by our own diseased, devastating sin? I’m not talking about the big, almost unfathomable reality of belonging to the privileged part of vast global inequity. I’m talking about nitty-gritty personal sin. “Messy, relational, eruptions out of the underground shadows kind of sin. Why ever did I say that kind of sin. How the hell could I have done that because I know better kind of sin.” (Suzanne Guthrie) We count our way out of it, measure our way up. Or, Jesus offers – we can stop counting. Start living. Reach out to fellow prisoners, embrace our brothers on the margins, feed our starving sisters.

Central to our worship almost every week we re-create together the feast that Jesus hosted. This is not the Pharisee’s table. This is not our table. This is God’s table and Jesus is the host. All are welcome.

Day by day, we each travel our own individual journeys. Week after week we come to the table together. We abandon the grasping, the counting, the measures. We kneel or bow together, here in communion. We hold out our hands, hands which have grasped for so long for control of our lives, for constraint of our fears. We come. We loosen our desperate grip and hold out our hands, willing to receive what Jesus our host offers.

We come to the table. God gives us the bread of life,…, the food given to strangers, the food which transforms us from strangers into friends; from needy to replete, from pilgrims into hosts.

We return to our pews new people; refreshed and renewed, comforted and fortified. From our pews we are sent forth into the world to seek and serve and honor and love those who, like us, are seekers and strangers upon the earth. (Paraphrased from Delmer Chilton)

Do this, and you will be blessed. You will be blessing, and you will be blessed.

Amen

PROPER 16, C

Luke 15:10-17

Today’s Gospel story presents a clear example of the tension that exists between following the rules and compassion. It’s a dilemma that arises very frequently in the life of the church, but also in other parts of life.

Jesus is teaching one Sunday in the Synagogue, when a woman arrives who is severely bent over. When he sees her, he has compassion for her, so he heals her, and she praises God. The leader of the Synagogue is outraged because it is against the rules to heal on the Sabbath. Jesus is equally outraged by the lack of compassion implicit in asking the woman to wait. Isn’t 18 years long enough to suffer such indignity?

Well, you may say, what’s a few more hours after 18 years? Clearly there’s an argument to be made on both sides of this. After all, rules are important. What would life be without them?

It’s rules that allow people to live together in peace, like the 10 Commandments. It’s rules that prevent accidents and illness, like traffic laws and the FDA. It’s rules that teach us our own cultural norms, like “nice girls don’t do that!” or “shake hands firmly and look the other person in the eye.” All those things our families taught us.

The problems arise, when over time, rules become rigid and more important in and of themselves than the people they were created to serve. Do we look at girls from other cultures and label them “not nice” because they do do that? (whatever THAT is.) Do we complain when our young people come to church in clothes our parents would never have allowed?

As I have mentioned before, Pastor Irv commented some years ago that religion should be like a bowl that holds the spirit life and allows people to experience it. When the bowl becomes encumbered with rigid rules or traditions, it can no longer be a vessel for the holy. People end up worshiping the bowl instead of what it once held. This is idolatry.

And this also reminds me of Phyllis Tickle. She has talked about how the church has had to make great wrenching changes about every 500 years because the rules and forms of the religion have become rigid and static. We are in a period of time like that now.

Over and over again Jesus seems to be defying the rules of Judaism, which grew up for good reason, but have now become a barrier to experiencing the holy. There are a number of stories with similar content. Remember the Pharisees complaining because Jesus and his disciples picked something in the fields on the Sabbath to eat?

Jesus seems to be saying several things in these stories. One is that the rules are meant to serve people not the other way around. And they are not meant to serve the power of the establishment. And also clear in these stories is that people are more important than the rules.

The problem is in the application of what he seems to say. For instance, when a person acts like they are above the law and makes excuses whenever they are held to account, then it may be important to apply the rules! Consider a child molester or a big bank that sells fraudulent stocks. These are the people the rules are supposed to protect the rest of us from.

On the other hand, what about the rule that says a person who commits suicide cannot be buried in the church yard? The rationale is that the person was not absolved of his sin, taking his own life, before dying. Right. But can’t God do that? Who are we to condemn what God can make clean? And what provides compassion to the family of that person?

Take a more simple issue, maybe. A small child comes to the communion rail with her parent. When the priest gives Mom bread, the child holds out his hands too. We were taught that no one can have communion until they are confirmed. Certainly not if they haven’t been baptized.

As I struggled with this conflict between the rules and compassion, I thought about food and feeding, which made me thing of Thanksgiving. Do we invite friends to share Thanksgiving dinner but then tell the children they can’t eat because they aren’t old enough to understand Thanksgiving. No we don’t. They participate in the holiday and that’s how they learn what it means. At that moment I changed my mind about the rules around communion.

I know others may not agree, and certainly parents who don’t agree have the right to refuse communion for their children, just as children have a right to refuse it for themselves. I just don’t want to be denying a child who is clearly asking to participate.

I fully support the traffic laws that promote a safe flow of traffic on our streets. I don’t necessarily feel the same about all the new border restrictions. I think having to have RABC’s and Nexus cards in order to cross the lake to visit friends serves the bureaucracy, not the people. I wouldn’t mind, if I thought for one minute that it actually makes us safer. I just don’t think it does.

One of the things Jesus does is encourage people to stop behaving by rote and to think about the implications of what they do. He wants them to be mindful about what they see and do and believe. “But that’s so much work,” I whine. “Just tell me what to do.”

So think about the rules you set for your children or for yourself. When have you been willing to change those rules? Did you change them as new circumstances arose or as your children grew up? Did you change them soon enough?

We have had discussions on the team at times about the rules and when they can be, well, not so much ignored, as not applied. The key question has always been a pastoral one. When the rules force us to ignore the needs of people, we may let them slide. On the other hand there are some rules that never really slide. Murder is not OK just because it benefits a person. It’s not OK to consecrate wine and bread if you’re not a priest in this church even though someone may be in need of communion. That’s why we keep reserved sacrament in the church. However, it is OK to baptize someone in an emergency.

As in so many instances in life, the key is discernment, which requires first a certain level of mindfulness, and then the time and energy to give it careful consideration. This is difficult and so it may seem easier to just follow the rules.

This was not the way Jesus chose, and I’m afraid it isn’t the Anglican way either. We are expected to figure out which rules to follow and which to let go. Let’s try to thank God for that privilege! AMEN

PROPER 15, YEAR C

Jeremiah 23:23-29

Luke 12:49-56

“Is not my word like fire, says the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?”

So often we pass over the Old Testament lessons, but I’d like to pay attention to Jeremiah. The language is poetic and dramatic. What does it mean?

For the Jews the image of fire suggested judgement. To me fire also suggests intense heat and refinement or purification – fire that consumes all that is extraneous and reduces what it burns to its essential elements.

“Is not my word like fire, says the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?”

The image of a hammer, swung so hard it can break a rock is heavy, threatening. If we assume these images are about God’s judgment upon us, perhaps we dismiss them as typical Old Testament world-view, which we can ignore because Jesus brought a new message of love.

Don’t I wish! While judgment may be implied, it’s God’s word that brings fire and the hammer. What God tells us, what God teaches us, how God tells us to live and the lessons God provides are somehow like the fire and the hammer – dangerous and divisive because they demand change.

I’m asking you to pay attention to Jeremiah and consider what his words might mean because Jesus echos them. Jesus said, “I came to bring fire to the earth”.

Then he wishes it were already kindled. I take this to suggest that his death and what follows will kindle the fire.

“Do you think I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!”

These statements do not come from a namby pamby sweetness and light Jesus. These are tough words of warning to the disciples of what is to come. And let’s face it, consider what had already happened.

Can you honestly imagine that Peter’s wife was thrilled when he left home to follow Jesus? How do you think the father of James and John liked being left with the boat, the nets, and all the hard labor of fishing? Remember the time when members of Jesus’s family show up where he’s preaching and try to get him to come home? They think he’s lost his mind! And Jesus rejects even their relationship to him.

Think back for a moment on the early days of Christianity. What happened as the story of Jesus and his resurrection spread around the Roman world? By the time Luke was writing the Temple had been destroyed. Judaism was in shock. The center of their religion had ceased to exist. All that was left were the Synagogues. In those early days, the followers of Jesus, the followers of The Way, were often still worshiping in the Synagogues, but there was conflict between them and the Jews who did not follow Jesus.

Eventually the two groups shunned one another. Those who believed turned their backs on their unbelieving families, often even leaving them to live in Christian communities. Sometimes they had to run for their lives; they had to hold services in secret; some had to face the lions.

To be a Christian in the first 300 years after Jesus died meant being a subversive. Many gave up lives of wealth and privilege, taking Jesus at his word, recognizing that their possessions stood in the way of their relationship to God, and making their relationship to God the primary one in their lives.

Think of it this way. The teaching of Jesus brought a new paradigm into the Roman world. He taught peace, non-violence, equality for women and minorities. He ate with sinners, prostitutes, and tax collecters. He dealt with everyone as a child of God. He spoke truth to power, particularly to the power of Rome, but also to the power of the temple and the Hebrew elite.

If you consider the implications of this, you can see that such teaching is going to bring division. When that teaching began to spread and attract more followers the divisions increased. It’s much like what happened in our church when the whole issue of slavery came to a head. Or when we tackled the issue of women clergy. Those divisions are still with us in many ways.

When Constantine, the emperor of Rome, became a Christian, Christianity eventually became the state religion. Christianity became the religion of the rich and the powerful. In today’s language we might say that the radical new religious movement started by a Jew in Palestine was co-opted by the establishment.

When that happened, many of Jesus’ teachings became glossed over or interpreted in some new way. Certainly no one took seriously his teachings about giving away everything, least of all the Church itself.

In all my 70 years as an Episcopalian I never heard anyone take these words of Jesus seriously in a sermon until about 25 years ago, when I heard Steve Charleston preach in Minneapolis.

Steve claimed that Jesus meant what he said – that Jesus was serious – that he meant his words to be heard and believed. In different ways, the lessons of the last few weeks have given us examples of today’s Gospel: loyalty to Jesus and to his teachings should take precedence over the dearest loyalties we have developed in our lives –it takes precedence over our attachments to things like belongings and over our attachments to people we love or admire. To follow Jesus sometimes means standing alone. Sometimes it means standing against those we love and care for. Sometimes it even means standing against the Church.

Sometime during the coming week, take a few minutes to ask yourself: When has being a Christian caused division rather than peace in my life? When have I taken a stand because of my belief in the teachings of Jesus? When has being a Christian been harmful to me, or inconvenient, or even dangerous?

If you can’t find any examples, then ponder again the lessons we read today. Do not confuse being comfortable with the ultimate peace Jesus promises elsewhere in the Gospel. That ultimate peace is about a God who goes with us, so that we need not be afraid to face any difficulties.

“Is not my word like fire, says the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces? Jesus said, “I came to bring fire tothe earth. Do you think I came to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division”

If we take the Gospel seriously and act upon it, we will surely suffer division in our life here on earth. Expect it. Welcome it. Endure it. Because God will be with us. Amen

Proper 12, C, 7/24/16

Luke 11:1-13

Today’s Gospel describes the origin of the Lord’s Prayer. The disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray. He responds, “When you pray, say: Father, Hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial."

The form of the prayer would have been familiar to the Jews. It begins with acknowledgement of God as the Holy One. It then acknowledges God’s purpose, the bringing of God’s kingdom. Only after these do the petitions come.

I want to focus on the first petition – Give us each day our daily bread. In the past I’ve thought that meant give us those things necessary to daily life. At text study some years ago, Brian Wolfe gave us a short course on the original Greek, which did not support my assumptions at all. The Greek words used suggest something higher, daily sustenance in a spiritual sense, more like a calling for Sophia, which is wisdom or enlightenment.

Jesus goes on to say, “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.”

Taken by itself this might mean you can have whatever you ask for. I’ve heard people claim this – that if you pray hard enough all things are possible. Why not pray to find a parking place? Why not pray to win the lottery? We believe this shows the real danger of taking scripture out of context. Look at the last part of today’s reading.

“If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

Aha! Jesus is talking about asking, seeking, knocking, in search of the Holy Spirit, not worldly goods or happiness or some sort of advantage for the seeker or saving us from harm/disaster/grief in this life. Jesus is talking about what happens when we seek the Holy Spirit – when we seek to encounter the Holy in our daily lives.

Christians from day one have prayed this prayer daily or weekly, but as I was thinking about this interpretation, I wondered how prepared we are to have our prayers answered? Praying for a comfortable life is not the same as praying for an encounter with the Holy. Rather its’ just the opposite. How comfortable were the lives of those people in the Bible who were touched by the Holy Spirit? Why would it be any different today?

Here’s the problem. When you invite the Holy Spirit into your life, you are opening yourself up to change, because such an encounter demands a response. Many of us aren’t prepared for this. “Sure I’d like to see and experience the holy each day, but I want to go on living my life the same as now.” It’s just not possible!

One thing about change that I’ve noticed is that I’m much more interested in changing other people than I am in changing myself. If I don’t watch out that may even creep into my prayers – “Dear God, please help Anna be less critical, and take Henry’s anger from him.”

When it comes to responding to the Holy Spirit’s call to us, I’d rather support those who are doing than do it myself. I think of this as being a Good Samaritan from a comfortable distance. I don’t think that’s exactly what the Holy Spirit has in mind for us!

Think for a moment about any of the televangelists you have seen. They and some Christian churches teach that if you follow all the rules, God will take care of you and protect you. Then, when disaster strikes a family, the assumption is that they must have done something wrong, no matter what they claim. Our tradition accepts the reality that bad things happen to everyone, and that rather than praying for an easy life, we pray for the strength to endure. We don’t pray for a parking space, we pray for the presence of the Holy Spirit in good times and in bad.

Somewhere recently I heard a story about Mother Teresa. An interviewer asked her what she asked for when she prayed. She replied, “Oh, I don’t ask for anything. I just listen.”

“And what does God say when you listen?” the interviewer asked.

She replied, “Oh, God listens too.”

This is the path of the mystic. However, you can experience it too with a little practice of a kind of prayer called Centering Prayer. This is a form of prayer that consists of sitting and listening, not attempting to silence the world around you, but to just not paying attention to it.

There are other forms of prayer that are very different. About thirty years ago I led a workshop with a friend that related four different forms of prayer to the Meyer-Briggs personality sorter. It was fascinating to me, because it helped explain why some forms of prayers just don’t work for me, while others seem so meaningful. And all of us seemed to agree that there’s a connection between the type of prayer that works and one’s personality type.

I’ve always liked what Anne Lamott said about prayer. There are only two prayers that are necessary: one is “Thank you!” The other is “Help!”

However, the Lord’s Prayer strikes me as good for everyone. It is simple, straightforward, and sums up all our petitions into a short form. Maybe it is better to pray this way and leave out any specifics. Asking for specifics, sort of puts us in God’s place, doesn’t it? And asking for specifics is, as they say in the computer business, likely to produce unpredictable results. Not asking for specific results is also another way of saying, “Thy will be done.”

So consider carefully what you pray for this week. Try praying the Lord’s Prayer each day with this understanding, that when you pray for daily bread, you are praying for transformation. How does it feel? What do you fear? Can you leave your fears behind? The Holy Spirit is here, always ready to meet us. Can we greet her with open arms and accept with joy the changes that come after? With God’s help, we can. AMEN

PROPER 8, C

Galatians 5:1, 13-25

For a change of pace, I’m going to grapple with the reading from Paul, rather than the Gospel. After numerous readings of the same text in several translations, I’ve come to the conclusion that my problem is probably not so much with Paul as it is with the interpreters of Paul who use his words like weapons to beat up on people. In one form or another I’ve heard a lot of this and would guess you have too.

What I immediately reacted to in today’s reading from Paul is the way he separates the spirit from the flesh. To put it another way, he separates the soul from the body.

It’s easy to read this as an either/or approach, the implication of which is that all things of the flesh are evil and all things of the spirit are good. This understanding of the relationship of spirit and flesh is contrary to my theology. Here’s why:

· I believe that God is a good and loving God.

· I believe that God created us as we are – capable of choosing good or evil – and that what we are is good. (make mistakes, learn, get better – good, even if mistakes are bad)

· God created us as creatures of flesh and blood. God gave us these bodies. Therefore these bodies are good.

Do you recall a recent reading from Acts in which Peter has a vision of a sheet being lowered from heaven with all sorts of forbidden food on it. The voice of God tells him to eat and he refuses because of the Jewish law. God replies, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” As a result, Peter soon baptized some Gentiles, accepting them as followers of Jesus.

So, who are we to look at what God has given us and call it dirty or evil or wicked?

· Our bodies are miracles of complexity. We eat and breathe, urinate and defecate. Sometimes we belch and fart. These activities are necessary to maintain our health and well-being. Why do we all cringe when I say some of those words in church? Because we take Paul at his word?

· Sensuousness and sexuality come with the body God gave us. They are meant for our good, because, like our other bodily functions they are gifts from God.

Who are we to look at what God has given us and call it dirty or evil or wicked?

· I believe the flesh God has given us here on earth as a home for our spirit is good.

· I believe God has given us a world of abundance and calls us to live abundantly.

· Eating and drinking and laughing with friends, sexual intimacy with one you love, the joy of holding a baby in your arms or hugging a child, the pleasure of skinny-dipping – I believe these things are good and God means us to enjoy them – without guilt!

Who are we to look at what God has given us and call it dirty or evil or wicked?

Where evil, wickedness, harm and hurt come in, like always, is when we mis-use the gifts God has given us. We could take the list Paul gives us – from fornication to carousing – and all of them result from someone misusing one or more of God’s gifts. We could add to the list endlessly for we humans are creative in our use of free will, and the mis-use of God’s gifts abounds.

· Intelligence is not wicked or evil, is it? But using intelligence to dominate, to manipulate, or to put others down is.

· Eating, drinking, laughing, are not wicked. Doing so at another’s expense is. Doing them to excess leads to gluttony and drunkenness.

· Sexuality is not wicked. Using sexuality to dominate, to manipulate, to serve your own needs without regard for the other – these are wicked indeed.

What Paul calls the fruits of the spirit, come to us from the proper use of God’s gifts, and I would agree that the results are love, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

When reading Paul we must remember that what we are reading are letters, not theological formulations – letters to specific communities with specific problems. Sometimes Paul sounds a lot like a parent writing to a college student who has strayed a bit. So maybe he overstates things for the sake of making a point. For instance, Paul says, “What the flesh desires is opposed to the spirit and what the spirit desires is opposed to the flesh.” I just plain can’t agree.

Does the spirit desire that the body never eat? I don’t think so. To properly use the good gifts God has given us, the desires of the flesh must be monitored, guided, and informed by the desires of the spirit. In a life of love and harmony the two elements must work together. Isn’t this the essence of patience, generosity, and self-control?

Another issue to consider is this: our church, while influenced and guided both by the Bible and by tradition, is also guided by the findings of science and other advances in all areas of knowledge. Today we know a great deal more about psychology than people in 1st Century Palestine or Medieval Europe did. We know that to be mentally and emotionally whole, we must be an integrated person. We can’t split off part of ourselves and remain healthy. So to take Paul explicitly at his word would produce a very unhealthy person. Whether we deny the spirit or deny the flesh – either one will cripple us.

Spirit and flesh are physically bound together in this life. They both exist in the body we inhabit. I believe they must be integrated for a wholesome life. They have to work together to keep us in good health, so that we can we can live in harmony with God, with ourselves, and with our neighbors.

Let us rejoice and be glad for the gifts God has given us, so that we might do the work God has given us to do – to love one another. AMEN

PROPER 6

2 Samuel 11:26 – 12:10, 13-15

Luke 7:36 – 8:3

Today’s readings may have the best pairing of Old and New Testament lessons in the whole 3 year cycle! In the OT we hear how the prophet Nathan tricks King David into condemning himself for killing Bathsheba’s husband and then taking her as his wife. In the NT we hear Jesus do the same to a Pharisee.

Both Jesus and Nathan are speaking truth to power a dangerous thing to do, but an essential part of the job description for a prophet. King David, the one beloved by God, has been corrupted by power. The Pharisee, Simon, devoted to living by the law, has been corrupted by his devotion to the rues. Both have lost sight of mercy and compassion.

Nathan tricks David by telling a sad story about a poor man who owns one lamb that has become a pet. A rich neighbor, not wanting to kill one of his many animals to feed a guest, takes the poor man’s lamb, kills it, and eats it for dinner. King David is outraged and Nathan then turns the story into a parable about what David has done.

The Gospel story is a bit more complex because it’s unclear what the Pharisee’s motive was in inviting Jesus to dine with him. We know he didn’t greet Jesus with a kiss or wash his feet, as was customary when greeting a dinner guest. Did Simon see himself as so much better than Jesus that he did not need to welcome him? Did he invite Jesus just to test him and/or display him before the other guests? We just don’t know.

When the unnamed woman, who is known as a sinner, walks in and washes Jesus’ feet with her tears and drying them with her hair, the Pharisee immediately wonders why Jesus accepts her behavior. Doesn’t he “know” she’s a sinner and her touch will make him “unclean?”

So Jesus asks the Pharisee a question: “A creditor had two debtors; one owed five hundred denarii and the other fifty. When they could not pay, he cancelled the debts for both of them. Now which of them will love him more?”

Simon answers correctly: “the one for whom he canceled the greater debt.” Jesus uses this answer to contrast the woman’s treatment of him versus the Pharisee’s treatment of him. And then forgives her her sins!

At the heart of this lesson is this question: “who loves God more, a sinner who’s been forgiven, or a good man who hasn’t needed much forgiveness?”

This is a really tough lesson. For those of us who have spent our whole lives trying to mind the rules, staying put and working hard, this lesson is likely to turn sour in our mouths. Like the older brother of the prodigal son, we feel this as something unfair. God should love those best who sin the least! The Pharisee lives by the rules! This woman, who we only know has been guilty of many sins, is not only forgiven, but praised by Jesus for her signs of love to him.

Once again we are forced to acknowledge that God’s logic is not necessarily like ours. And if we look at it more closely, it may not seem quite so unfair to us. One thing we have to understand, whether we like it or not, is that God loves all of us, sinners and saints alike, and I suspect God loves us all without distinction. There’s the rub! We are all equal in His sight. That doesn’t mean God is blind to our sins, but rather that our sins do not erase or erode his love for us.

I think what both Nathan and Jesus are doing here, is showing a supposedly righteous person that they aren’t. They are pointing out that David and the Pharisee are hypocrites, at least in these specific matters. Hypocrisy is a kind of blindness to self, whether intentional or not. By that I mean, that humans often cover up or justify what they have done that they know is wrong rather than admitting it and asking for forgiveness. Sometimes we are just plain unaware of some of our sins. We don’t see ourselves clearly. Either way, hypocrisy is the result.

And once we get ourselves in that situation we often become much more judgmental of others as a way of projecting our own misdoing onto them. Any time we forget that judgment is God’s job and not ours, we put ourselves at great risk of hypocrisy.

One of the things we love about stories like this is that they show the rich and powerful brought low, but we must also remember that the lessons apply to us, the weak and lowly, just as well. Like the Pharisee we can be blind to our own faults and eager to point out the faults of others. Like David, we can do wrong in order to meet our own needs and justify it in any number of ways.

Jesus is calling us to see ourselves clearly, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Without that clarity there can be no repentance and forgiveness. We have watched one political figure after another brought low just like David, whether with glee or disgust, but we don’t always see the relationship of that to our own lives.

What about someone who lives their whole life as a rather dreadful sinner, but confesses on their death bed and is forgiven. I’ve heard people who express great outrage at the very idea that God would actually forgive them, and I suppose, save them, when good people have behaved properly all their lives. While such outrage is understandable in our way of thinking it also raises other tough questions.

Do we behave ourselves and do the right thing because we’re afraid not to or do we do it because we love God and love our neighbor as ourselves? That may have a lot to do with our introduction to God in childhood. If we’ve been scared into good behavior, we will surely resent those who haven’t been.

I suspect however, that if we act out of our own convictions, our own desire to leave the world a little better for our having lived here, our own desire to maintain our relationship with our creator, then we are free to join in the rejoicing at the return of the one who was lost. That return does not take anything away from us. As the father of the Prodigal son said to the older brother, “everything I have is yours. It was fitting to make merry and be glad, for this your brother was dead and is alive; he was lost and is found.”

What we have to remember is that everyone who is lost and then found is one more member of the Kingdom of God. And more, importantly, we have to remember that if we should get lost along the way, God will try to find us and return us to the fold, and that will also be a moment of great rejoicing. AMEN

Proper 5, C
1 Kings 17:17-24

Luke 7:11-17

Since we are talking about funerals and miracles this week, I wanted to share a story I read this story this week.

“Back yonder before the first World War your great Uncle Arrington was preaching a funeral over to the Primitive Baptist Meetinghouse in Dry Pond. The lady what died, she was like your grandma here, she had the arthritis so bad she was all scrunched up. Well, when this here lady died, they didn’t have no undertaker around to do things right, so they just stretched her out as straight as they could and then they tied her down with some good, thick twine that we used to use tie up to tobacco for curing.

Well, the day of the funeral come and the lady was laid out nice in the coffin and the lid was open of course – we didn’t used to shut it until we was ready to take the body out to the cemetery. Your Uncle Arrington got real hot in his sermon, talking about the resurrection day, and how we all need to be ready, and how we need to be ready anytime and anyplace, and about that bright morning when the trumpet will sound and all the dead in Christ will come right up outer the grave; and people were nodding and smiling and shouting “Amen, that’s right!” when, all of a sudden, that woman’s strings broke and her muscles contracted and she sat straight up in that coffin and Lord – people went wild. [They was crawling out windows, and piling up around the door, trampling on each other and pulling each other back whilst they was trying to get out.] And your [poor] Uncle Arrington, why he just crawled up under the pulpit and sat there and kept mumbling, ‘Not now, Lord. I didn’t mean now. I don’t want to go now.’” Adapted from Rev. Dr. Delmer Chilton
Today we have the Tale of Two Miracles – marvelous, uplifting stories of life in death – life for two sons and life for their mothers who would otherwise have lived in desperate poverty in addition to profound sorrow. Christianity, like many religions, places a great deal of emphasis on miracles. The stories provide inspiration, maybe; perhaps hope; maybe even a sort of internal tautological “proof” that we have placed our faith in the right quarter – See there, look what MY God can do.

In spite of that miracle emphasis, however, like Uncle Arrington and all the faithful congregants of the primitive Baptist Meetinghouse in Dry Pond, for the most part, we aren’t actually all that fond of the notion of miracles in real time. When it comes right down to it we simply aren’t, in our proper, predictable Episcopal way; in our modern, verifiable, seeing-is-believing way – we simply aren’t all that comfortable with the notion.

I see two main reasons that we have voluntarily, even thankfully, relegated miracles into the category of “Events That Happen to Other People From Other Times, Most Certainly Not Here, Not Now”

The first is fear – fear that the miracles won’t happen to us – that God won’t save us from disaster, won’t cure the cancer, won’t stop the terrorists, won’t Make America Great again, won’t save our job or insurance or child or health or home or sanity. And what does that mean? What does it mean if our God won’t do for us what the stories say God can do? Does that say something about us? About God?

If the first reason for our ambivalence about miracles is fear that they may not happen, then the second, perhaps more powerful and pervasive fear – is that they will. Like Uncle Arrington, like the faithful, good people of the Primitive Baptist Meetinghouse in Dry Pond, like the large crowd of funeral goers in Nain, we prefer our miracles in the scripture, in the past, in the abstract. Up close and personal we find the idea a bit upsetting.

Author Leif Enger, in his novel, Peace Like a River says,

Real miracles bother people, like strange sudden pains unknown in medical literature. It’s true: They rebut every rule all we good citizens take comfort in. Lazarus obeying orders and climbing up out of the grave – now there’s a miracle, and you can bet it upset a lot of folks who were standing around at the time. When a person dies, the earth is generally unwilling to cough him back up. A miracle contradicts the will of earth.
My sister, Swede, who often sees to the nub, offered this: People fear miracles because they fear being changed….

And that indeed may be, as Mr. Enger says, “the nub”.

Because there are rules, you see. The way things are. And while we may not be entirely satisfied with any particular one part or another of our world as it is, still we know it. It is stable, and understandable, and we know how to react.

But if you see someone raised from the dead; if you see a baby born; if you witness true healing in a life seemingly wrecked by poverty or addiction or abuse; if you see compassion in the midst of indifference, if you see blossoming islands of peace in the tumultuous seas of violence and hatred – these are things you cannot un-see. These are things that change us, change the world. Once our eyes are opened to the activity of God – the rules disappear and we are transformed. Because the miracles never were about the act, the event itself – they were and they are about the interaction of God and God’s creation, about compassion, about the in-breaking of the Kingdom.

Enger goes on:

My sister, Swede, who often sees to the nub, offered this: People fear miracles because they fear being changed – though ignoring them will change you also. Swede said another thing, too, and it rang in me like a bell: No miracle happens without a witness. Someone to declare, Here’s what I saw. Here’s how it went. Make of it what you will (p.3). (Thanks to David Lose for the quote and part of the concept)

That witness? That is you. And that is me. If we can live the compassion, and not the fear; if we can live into the disturbing activity of God, then we are the witnesses to the in-breaking of the Kingdom. We become part and parcel of the miracle. Make of it what you will. Amen.