It Starts with Thanks and Praise

Text: Luke 17:11-19 and 2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15c

In most Lutheran churches the readings for the day are listed in a lectionary. The first reading and the Gospel reading are supposed to be related in some way. Sometimes the connection is obvious. But sometimes it seems they are hardly related at all. And sometimes it seems like they are related by only trivially, by some common word. And sometimes, like today, they are related in a deep way.

The first story is about Naaman, commander of the army of King Aram, who defeated the Israelites in battle. But Naaman is sick. He is sent to Elijah the Israelite prophet. He has what is described as leprosy, which is probably some skin disease, but not what we’d call leprosy today. The second story is similar. Some men who come to Jesus because they are sick; they have leprosy, too, another skin disease that is also not what we’d call leprosy. In both stories, the sick are cured. In both stories the healing is done at a distance.

But that is not what connects these two passages. There are lots of stories in the Bible about sick people getting cures. What strikes us in both these two particular stories is that they both reveal moral defects. We are shocked at the behavior of Naaman in the first story and the nine men who walked away in the second. They seem to be arrogant and entitled. They are oblivious to what is going on. And, at least for a time or at least for some, they are ungrateful.

There is a persuasive power to ideas. That’s sort of by definition. Any idea worth its salt changes things in people. But some thoughts, some of the time, in some people, cause a kind of blindness. We do things based on what we think things should be instead of what they are. Prejudice is a common example. Our thoughts about people blind us to the real people in front of us. Disappointment is another, where our thoughts about how things should go turn out blind us to the gifts that we are receiving. This idea-blindness influences everything from what we do and say in relationships, to how we vote, to how we do our jobs, to how we walk down a city street, to what we wear, to how we view God.

Naaman comes to Elijah the prophet with expectations—which is an idea in which “what should be” replaces “what is.” Naaman expects that because of his stature, his rank, his value to the king who is in power over Israel, and probably even his character and goodness—Naaman expects something appropriate will happen when he visits this Hebrew prophet. He expects deference. But Elijah does not even greet the great commander. Instead, he sends Naaman some stupid instructions by messenger, the email of his day. Naaman gets angry. “I thought,” he says, “I thought at least Elijah would come out and stand and call on the name of God and wave his hand over the spot and cure me.” Very particular and detailed expectations. Though Naaman is offered the gift of health, he nearly refuses it.

Naaman is not alone. In the portion of the passage that the lectionary skips, Aram sends the king of Israel a gift of 750 pounds of silver, 150 pounds of gold, and some fine clothing. Rather than pleasing the king, it makes him frantic. He has an idea that Aram is making demands on him and he is afraid he will fail. “Look” he says, “Aram is trying to pick a quarrel with me.” Though the king is offered the gift of a fortune, he nearly refuses it.

Our expectations of the way things should be blind us to the gifts that God has given us. Rather than feel blessed we feel deprived. Rather than feel surrounded by much good, we feel shortchanged. Rather than feeling joy, we feel fear. And because we do not see the gifts, we do not see the giver. All we see are situations and transactions and conditions—all lacking somehow. God becomes invisible.

Ten people come to Jesus for a cure. Jesus sends them all away. And as they go, they are in fact cured. What a scene that must have been on the road. We do not know what nine of them did. But we do know what one of them did. He comes back. He throws himself at the feet of Jesus and thanks him. This is not mostly a story about a miracle cure. The cure itself takes place off-stage. We do not see it. But we do see the man returning. As we see Naaman returning. Both men are transformed. Not only transformed in health but also transformed in sight. They both see God where they did not before. God has become visible to them. They return in thanksgiving. And being thankful, they see God.

Thanksgiving is the foundation of faith. Hallelujah—hooray!—says the psalm. I give thanks with my whole heart and mind. Thanksgiving is the fruit of the creation story in Genesis, whose story line is essentially: what a great world God has made! Thank you, God. God’s work, says the psalm, is full of splendor and majesty and marvels. This sense of awe and wonder and mystery is a form of thanksgiving. Thanksgiving to God creator and provider of all things. God who gives us life—amazing in itself—and that we are able to take pleasure in it. Even more amazing.

To be thankful is not a chore, but a joy. Not law, but grace, Lutherans might say. Naaman and the man come back to Elijah and Jesus not because of social obligation or guilty consciences, but because they are overwhelmed with gratitude. Praise God! they say.

Writing about the story in Luke, one scholar asks “Who actually would enjoy the thought of owing everything good and worthy in his or her life, indeed life itself, to someone else, to confess that we are definitely not self-made but—quite the opposite—created beings? Who would claim that leading a life of thanksgiving is the reason for and foundation of personal and communal joy?”

Wow. I read this and thought: I would. And I think that many of you here would, too.

Thanksgiving is the center of Christian worship. What we do here is by and large gratitude expressed in ritual. Let us give thanks to the Lord our God, begins the Great Thanksgiving of the Lord’s Supper. The word for the Lord’s Supper, for Holy Communion, is Eucharist. That word, letter for letter direct from the Greek, means thank you. It is the word the leper uses to thank Jesus. The church and worship is like a workshop for thanksgiving, a bench, tools, instructions for living a grateful life. What would worship be like without thanksgiving? A dismal expression of sacrifice and fear.

I am a little concerned for the world these days. What I see is a stinginess of character. Rather than generosity of spirit. A sense among many people that they are not getting what they expected. That they are deprived. It makes people sour. Gratitude is a basic human need. We need to be grateful much as we need to eat. Naaman and the man get a double gift: they get health and they get to be grateful. But we are starving for gratitude.

C. S. Lewis wrote that gratitude and praise—its verbal expression—seems almost to be inner health made audible. But more often it works the other way around. Expressing thanks promotes inner health. When we are feeling hungry, we need to eat. Likewise, when we are feeling deprived, we need to give thanks.

The psalm says: God calls God’s wonders to be remembered. Therefore we pray: Remember when we get up in the morning and when we go to bed at night. It is good to give God thanks and praise.

Being Faithful

Text: Luke 17:5-10
Other texts: 2 Timothy 1:1-14

You cannot plant a bush in the sea. Jesus does not suggest you can. Or that you should. This is a not a story about super powers and impossible feats. The disciples asked a silly question. Jesus gave them a silly answer in return. Disciples are students. Jesus is the teacher. This is a way he teaches. He is mocking them. Just a little. In a nice way.

The disciples want more faith. What does that mean? Faith is not something you can put in your pocket. Faith is not something you can store in a drawer. Faith is a gift, as it says in the Second Letter to Timothy that we just heard. But it is not something you would get in a package. It is not an infusion you can put in your tea or a coat you can wear on your back. It is not a thing at all. You cannot get more of it. As one Bible translation says of this passage: “the Master said, ‘You don't need more faith. There is no “more” or “less” in faith.’ Faith is not something you have. It is something you do. People say of their especially faithful friends: you have so much faith. They mean: I see by what you do that you have a close relationship with God. I see that you are tight with God.

The disciples asked a silly question. But it was not a stupid question. The disciples need something from Jesus. There is something missing in them that they ask Jesus to supply. There is some void in them that they are asking Jesus to fill. Jesus, help us!

What do they want? What is it we want in a faithful relationship. What do we mean when we say someone is faithful? A faithful spouse, say. Or a faithful friend. Or a faithful employee.With people we can say what a faithful relationship means. What being in a faithful relationship gives us, why it is valuable, and why we seek it out, and even why it is so tragic when it falls apart. Or feels like it is about to. And when, in that case, we cry out: Give us more faith. Something is not working. Help us. That’s how it is with God, too.

A faithful relationship gives us at least three things. First, it gives us courage in the face of an uncertain future. The future is both exciting and scary. We both rush into it and we hesitate. No one knows what is going to happen. The disciples have hooked their wagon to this star that is Jesus. What an adventure! What a risk! God did not give you cowardice, it says in Timothy. But we are all cowards. Another translation says: God did not give you timidity. That’s easier to take. We are all timid. A faithful relationship—with God, with someone you love—gives us courage.

And second, it gives us the humility not to feel we have to do everything ourselves. We need partners in life that we can count on. We do not have enough time, energy, or even skills to do all the important things we have to do. In the world, in our families, our jobs, in our selves. Who can give us a hand? Someone who knows us well enough to do what we hope for. Someone who loves us well enough not to intentionally hurt us or betray us or let us down. Someone who will let us put aside our protective pride and to whom we are willing to hand things over a bit. A faithful relationship—with God, with someone you love—gives us humility.

And third, it gives us the satisfaction of wholehearted engagement with someone else besides us. We are often alone, tentative, private, and careful. We have to do that, but it does not mean we like to. We long to be totally present for another, to be present for them. Probably satisfaction is too weak a word. Maybe thrill plus contentment would be a better way to describe it. Fulfillment would work. And engagement: maybe entanglement would be better. A faithful relationship—with God, with someone you love—gives the thrill plus contentment of wholehearted entanglement.

These gifts of a faithful relationship are ours because we count on the faithfulness of another and have in turn promised our own. The word for that counting-on is trust. It is not a coincidence that the word for faith in the Bible is exactly the word for trust. What the disciples want to know is whether they can trust Jesus. They want to know—in the face of all the hardships and hard work that following Jesus entails—whether they should stay with Jesus or leave him. They see the gifts of faith. They are asking Jesus whether they can trust him to be faithful. And they are asking themselves whether they can be faithful to Jesus.

The Second Letter to Timothy has been called practical ecclesiology. That is, a letter about what churches and church goers should do. It is unlikely that the letter was written by Paul, but it certainly shares some of Paul’s concerns. And one of Paul’s most pressing concerns was the health and future of the churches that he started. You can detect in this passage a worry about whether Timothy is going to hang in there. So it, like the passage in Luke, is not so much about theology as about how to live. Timothy and the disciples know what to believe—they no doubt believe the right things—they are just not sure they can do the right things. The writer says to them: You can.

In Luke, the disciples ask for more faith and Jesus tells them about service. Our doubts, questions, and demands do not diminish our faithful relationship with God. They strengthen it as much as our prayers and praises and song and thanksgivings do. Just as in relationships with people. Our call as Christians is not to win arguments with others or even with ourselves. It is, as Jesus taught in a few verses earlier in Luke, to forgive others seventy times seven times. To love our neighbors and our enemies as ourselves. To act justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with God.

Help us! cry the students of Jesus. They—we—are advised in Timothy to rekindle the gift of God which is within you. To rekindle the flame. That’s a good word for relationships. Rekindling the flame is a modest task that keeps relationships faithful in times of trouble and doubt. With God and with those you love. It is task that requires only patience, delicacy, and attention. Not even belief or hope. Start small, protect the flame and nurture it, give it space and air, fan it when it becomes more robust. That’s how it goes with God and with people.

There is no need for superpowers. Instead, remember, it says in Timothy. Remember what it means to be faithful. Remember the one in whom you trust. And who trusts you. And keep up the good work.

A Land of Two Stories

Text: 1 Timothy 6:6-19
Other texts: Luke 16:19-31

There is a struggle going on in our hearts. It is a struggle of beliefs, of convictions, of trust, of the source of our hope. It is a struggle of two stories fighting for our souls.

On one side is the story of abundance. This is the story of the first chapter of Genesis, in which God gave us the world and all things in it. It is good, it is good, it is good, God says in Genesis. It is the story of God’s care for us revealed in creation and in beauty and in the pleasure we take in things. It is a story of God’s compassion for us and God’s provision for God’s creatures. It is the story of Psalm 104: God opens God’s hand and the world is full of good things. And it is the story of the psalm for today: God who brings freedom, and food, sustenance. It is the story that Jesus is—generously coming here—and the story that Jesus tells. Do not worry, you can trust God, he says. It is good.

But on the other side is the story of scarcity. This story is in Genesis, also. It is the story of famine in Egypt, of being prudent, cautious, and storing things up for the future. It is the story of being hungry in the desert, when the Israelites longed for the cook pots filled with food they no longer had. It is the other story in Pslam 104: God hides God’s face and creation withers and dies. And in today’s psalm: in the end we perish, and our thoughts go with us.

These stories are in us, competing to guide us and to be the story that we use to make sense of the world. Oddly, both stories describe the world. But they are not equal. The story of abundance is the foundation of generosity and satisfaction and hope. The story of scarcity is the foundation of fear and worry and isolation. The question is: are we blessed or are we deprived? Thankful or wretched?Which story do we believe most?

All of us know which is better. It is better to feel satisfied by abundance than to feel harassed by scarcity. But I look at myself and I look at people I know, and I know that we feel harassed at least as often as we feel satisfied. I do not like it.

Luke, the writer of today’s Gospel reading and also of the book of Acts, spends a lot of time talking about money. How we think about money has exactly to do with which story we most believe. That is one reason why we talk about it so much. That is the reason Jesus talks about it so much, too. More so that any other single topic. That’s because it reveals to us how we feel about God and about our relationship with God and mostly about whether we trust God or not.

The early Christian church—just like the modern church—worried a lot about money, too. The first letter to Timothy, today’s second reading, is a guide to Christian behavior. And in today’s passage, which concludes this letter, we learn about how to behave with money. Or at least get a critique about it.

The writer of this letter warns against people who love money. Lovers of money, Luke calls them in the Gospel reading. This word (it is just one word in Greek)—this word, lovers of money, appears only in this passage in Luke and in the letter to Timothy. It could mean just people who love money—like it a lot. But it would be more useful and more accurate to think of it as people who are having a love affair with money. They are money’s lovers. Because it is being money’s lovers that gets us all in trouble, in both Luke and in Timothy. Having an affair with money.

Our relationship with money can be exciting, energizing, transforming. But like an affair, loving money is a betrayal of our love for another—God in this case, and other human beings—and a promise that we formally made, not coincidently, in baptism. And it plunges, as it says in Timothy, it plunges people into ruin and destruction. “People” meaning not only the lover, but the many who are harmed by the action of the lover. As Lazarus, for example, was, by the rich man’s inattention. And as many in the world today likewise are.

Money is like any addiction. One person described the process of addiction as: First, fun; then, fun plus problems; and finally, just problems. The love of money is like that. What we hope from money is what we hope from love. Strength for life, wholehearted trust, and partnership. What we get as money’s lover, however, is the opposite. Futility, betrayal, and a cruel master. Money is not effective or reliable, and it demands more from us than it gives.

What we seem to want from life, it says in Timothy, is godliness and contentment. Contentment and abundance are cousins of each other. The word contentment here means satisfaction. Having a sufficient amount. It means having enough. Not a skimpy amount, but sufficient to be strong enough to prosper as creatures. If we have food and shelter, it says, then that will be sufficient. This letter is not a call to poverty. It is an encouragement to find what is enough. And enough, in this meaning, is not just enough for each of us. It includes enough for helping others, too. Enough to protect us against the elements and to help others. And also from Genesis: enough for sabbath, enough for rest.

Nonetheless, we fall into temptation, it says in Timothy (and as we know it to be true). It is easy to get trapped, it says, by many senseless and harmful desires. Having more than enough. We can call this greed, but it comes from fear. It comes from listening too much to that story of scarcity. From thinking that we must rely on ourselves to get enough. From having to control all the world, as the rich man tries to do, even in death.

We in this country and everywhere are telling the story of scarcity more and more. That scares me.

There is not much room for God in our lives in that story of scarcity. If there is nothing given—if we are not the recipients of graceful abundance—then perhaps there is no giver. Or maybe it is the other way around. If we are not sure there is a giver, then we cannot trust that we will be given what we need. If we cannot rely on God, then we are right to turn to money, to ourselves. But the end of that way is sadness. For experience teaches us that neither money nor our own efforts are reliable. Nor do they work. And if we cannot trust money and we cannot trust ourselves and we cannot trust God, then we are in the soup.

How can we be sure that God will provide for us? For one thing, we have scripture—Moses and the prophets, it says in Luke. And the teachings of Jesus, who tells us over and over not to be afraid and not to worry. But that was not enough for the rich man. He wanted a more certain sign. Something 100% believable. He thinks a visit from dead Lazarus would do it for his brothers. But of course, they’d just say it was not really Lazarus, or that he hadn’t really died, or that it wasn’t really a message from their brother, or that it was, but who cares? There is no certain sign.

We trust God because we when we do—amazingly, when we are very generous and forgiving and easy-going—good things happen to us and our friends and our world. Strange, but true. And even stranger, the reverse is also true: when we act as if we trust God—acting as if we were generous and forgiving—then we find we trust God. Trusting God is a consequence more than a cause of how we live our lives. Trust, like love, takes practice.

This story in Luke and this exhortation in Timothy are not moralizing tales. That is, they are not telling us that we had better shape up because God wants us to. When the rich man is being tormented in Hades, Abraham takes no pleasure in his fate. Even in this “I told you so” story, Abraham seems sad and moved with compassion.

Being in love with money is a trap, it says in Timothy. In the trap is a life of many piercing pains. The words of the Gospels and the teachings of Jesus help us escape the trap. Be generous, be forgiving, be ready to share, love people more than you love money.

When we are baptized, two things happen. First, we resolve—or someone does on our behalf, as they did today for [child baptized today]—we resolve to take a side in the struggle of our hearts. To listen hard for the story of abundance (and to retell it) and as much as we are able, to cover our ears and shut out the story of scarcity. And second, we are given some necessary help, in the form of the Holy Spirit and in the support of the community of Christians. And when people affirm their baptism, as folks did today, both they and the community renew that resolve and reliance.

Quiet the story of scarcity that brings you fear. Repeat to yourselves every day the story of abundance that brings you contentment. Baptism is the symbol of a new life. Take hold, as it says in Timothy, of the life that really is life.

Jesus, the one, and the many

Text: Luke 15:1-10

As he often does in the Gospels, Jesus makes a little joke.

The Pharisees are unhappy with Jesus because he eats with the riffraff. He also eats with the Pharisees, but we don’t hear from the people who don’t think Jesus should do that. I’m sure there were some. “How come you, Jesus, a man of the people, consort with those fancy snobs?” But the voices of the tax collectors and sinners are rarely heard, in the Gospels as in real life.

I sometimes have a feeling that the Pharisees amuse Jesus. He is always getting their goat. And when they make stupid pronouncements, he embarrasses them. When they try to catch him making a mistake, they find that it was they who erred. You would think that after a while, they’d give up.

The Pharisees really don’t like it that Jesus stretches the bounds of what is permissible. There is a way you are supposed to act, and many times Jesus does not act that way. Some of their objections are social and some legal. Tax collectors were scum, working for the man, meaning Rome. Sinners were law-violators. They did what God said not to, or did not do what God said to. Neither were, in the Pharisees’ eyes, fit company for a rabbi, a teacher, like Jesus. Jesus did the wrong thing, set a bad example, and was rousing the rabble by his teachings.

To answer their complaint, Jesus, as he often does, tells a parable. A parable is a wicked little story that makes you think. He tells two. The first one is about some sheep. “Which of you,” he asks them, “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?”

Would you leave ninety-nine sheep in the wilderness? All you who would leave those ninety-nine sheep to fend for themselves, those good and faithful and wise sheep who did not wander off recklessly, to search for that idiot sheep who seems clueless and endangers all the rest, all you who would do that, raise your hands.

The answer to Jesus’ question is: no one. It makes no sense. That’s the joke. No one would. To risk the many for the sake of one. It goes against the theory of the greater good. Which says that better for one to suffer so that the many might not. It it the reason behind much of the way societies work, from things as diverse as torture and triage and scapegoating.

It is the way we work, but it is not the way Jesus works. Jesus seems much more concerned—and it gets him into trouble all the time—more concerned about the particular than the general. The theory of the greater good compares the actual, present, and particular suffering with a hypothetical, future, and general good. An individual suffers now for some predicted suffering of many. Jesus seems to care more for the person who is really suffering now than he cares for the potential or even likely future.

The Pharisees are rightly worried about the rule of law and the stability of culture. So when Jesus does what he does—heals on the Sabbath in the face of a law against it, or lets his disciples glean food then, or touches and cures the hemorrhaging woman, or hangs around with the illegals—he acts in favor of persons over principles. And also, he seems to see the particular person and his or her particular situation instead of what that person represents. Some real person that you can sit down and share a meal with, not a drunk or an illegal or an alien or a tax collector or a sinner. So in the parable, the shepherd seeks to find the one sheep that at the moment is actually lost at the risk of a possible, but not actual, danger to the many others.

What makes things lost is that someone misses them. People can feel lost emotionally, of course, but what makes the lost sheep and, in the second parable, the lost coin be lost is that someone wants to find them. Even when people say that they feel lost, they mean that they are searching for some other version of themselves that they once knew or hope to know. The shepherd wants to know: where is my sheep? The woman wants to know: where is my coin? What makes the single coin and the single sheep special is that they are desired, wanted, sought out.

The Pharisees grumble that Jesus welcomes the sinners, the reading says. But the word the Pharisees use really means to seek out. To go looking for. The action is on the part of Jesus, not the sinners. The action in the parables is on the part of the seeker, not the sheep or coin that is sought. God looks for each of us. We are looked for by God. God comes and gets us.

Sometimes we say we lose our faith. When people say that, they mean that they have lost the conviction that they have been found. That is, that they are like the sheep and the coin, apart from God and apart from any center in which their souls may take rest. But worse, it also means that they have lost the conviction that anyone is even searching for them. They feel not only separated but abandoned, which is a whole other thing. They feel like people who have suddenly fallen out of love, or children who are estranged from their parents or someone who has lost another to death. Not even missing, because they feel that no one even seeks them.

The Pharisees complain that Jesus eats with sinners. These people are not lost to the Pharisees, who are not seeking them but rather wish they were gone. How much better, they think, if the people who annoy or threaten us were just to disappear. But the sinners no doubt see things very differently. Jesus makes them appear. He seeks them out, making them not invisible but missing. That is, they are longed for.

Jesus writes that there is more joy when a sinner repents than when ninety-nine righteous persons do. But this is the second joke Jesus tells in this passage. For it would be hard to find even one sinless person much less ninety-nine in a crowd of one hundred. As Lutherans are taught, we are all saints and sinners. We are all in this sense separate from the source of our being and life. We are all missing; God is seeking out each one of us. We are not the ninety-nine virtuous souls who never wander. It is good for us that God is unreasonably looking for us.

When the Pharisees are unable or refuse or are too timid to see the sufferings of flesh-and-blood individual people, when they are willing to sacrifice them for the vague and the general, when they wish to wish them away—when the Pharisees do that, they turn their backs on the pleasure of a divine grace. They deny themselves the joy that concludes both these parables of Jesus. For these parables are less about repentance and more about joy. That is the direction in which their plots move. The high point of these stories is the joy of the finder. A joy even angels in heaven share, says Jesus. These stories do not call us sinners to repent. They invite those of us who think we are righteous to join the sinners, who are also us.

The Pharisees evidently think that they are favorites of God and that the sinners are not. And the sinners—well, we don’t know what they think. Some probably agree with the Pharisees and others think the opposite.

All have hopes and fears. Jesus says that ninety-nine were left. We like to imagine—it suits us to imagine—that they are a bunch of well-organized, well-balanced, good sheep. But Jesus does not say that.

It is more likely that all one hundred sheep are wandering around. It is a big mess. No one knows what’s going on. Some feel secure and some feel condemned. But each one is lost. The most arrogant Pharisee and the most humble sinner are all lost. Each one is frightened and clueless. And walking in our wilderness, there is Jesus, the shepherd. Missing every one of us, wanting each one of us, seeking us out.

The Worth of It

Text: Luke 14:25-33
Other texts: Deuteronomy 30:15-20

Here is our story up to now. This is what Jesus has done so far in this one chapter—chapter 14—in Luke.

First he tells some fancy dinner guests that the last will be first and the first—meaning them—will be last. Then he tells them that instead of inviting their family and friends to dinner, they should have invited poor and sick people. Then he tells a parable of another feast in which the original guests offer lame excuses and so the are replaced by street people. Then, today, he tells us who can and cannot be his disciples, and it seems a little rough. His followers might have wondered what they were getting into.

You might find Jesus to be a little cranky in these stories. Or at least forceful. But I hear in the voice of Jesus and in the stories he tells in this section of Luke a deep sadness. The things that go with being a disciple of Jesus are hard and upsetting sometimes. And he knows, I’m sure, that most people will find them so.

You cannot be my disciple, he says three times. These verses are littered with negatives. There are thirteen occurrences in the Greek of the word “no” in these eight verses. These are not happy sayings, and they are not encouraging ones. Jesus knows that being a disciple, a follower, is hard. He is not commanding us here, or threatening us, or laying down admission requirements. He is telling us how it is, how it will be.

In today’s reading Jesus presents three choices. Or better to say, Jesus makes three offers. He presents to us three attributes of the life of a follower of Jesus. They are allegiance, risk, and poverty. It is as if—as he teaches us in the two parables—the one about the tower and the one about the king—as if he wants us to know what’s up before we sign up.

First, allegiance. To whom do we turn for blessings? To whom do we turn for safety? And who calls us to responsibility? In other words, what is the source of a life that is prosperous, secure, and good? Those things to which, or to whom, we turn are the things that command our allegiance. The list is long for most of us, and includes things like our own skills, our close friends, our loving families, our possessions, the rules of our culture. When we say that we must attend to these things, then they have our allegiance. Sometimes these things deserve it, and other times not. But no matter what, Jesus says, they are secondary to what God calls us to be and do.

If you do not hate your parents, your spouse, your family, Jesus says, you cannot become his disciple. And not only that, but if you do not hate life itself, you cannot become his disciple. Jesus is not talking about degrees of love here. He is not mostly talking about emotion. The word “hate” is the opposite of the kind of love that we have for our neighbors and our enemies. We don’t have to like our enemies and we don’t have to dislike our family and friends and life.

But we should not soften what he says too much. He is saying that his followers disavow the things that—in the time of Jesus and in our time—command their allegiance. He is saying that his followers put all those other people on notice. If there is a choice between God and them, the choice goes to God. Not to their families, not even to the preservation of their own lives.

Jesus is describing a way of life. That’s what makes this so shocking, so hard, and so potentially rewarding. He is not describing a way to slightly adjust things. He is saying that to be his disciple one must live with God always in mind. We must ask when taking some action: does this action I’m taking align me with God or not? When making some decision: in this decision that I am making, am I thinking about God or not? And, practically, if not then is there some other way I can act or other decision I can make?

Second, risk. Jesus was tried and executed for his teachings and his actions. All this about making the first people be the last, about disavowing your family, about not honoring the sabbath, about loving your enemies, about turning the other cheek—that made people angry. And if the followers of Jesus do what he did and do what he said to do, people will be angry at them, too. And disown them, and imprison or exile them, and maybe harm them.

Jesus proposes a new way of living, but to proclaim that and then to actually do it is a risky endeavor. The cross is not a pleasant symbol. Christians celebrate the resurrection of Jesus in spite of the cross, not because of it. The cross was a means of violent and hateful death. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple, Jesus tells the crowd. It is a risk-filled path. Jesus warns his followers.

And third, poverty. In our culture, we are at least as distracted by possessions as we are by relations. To acquire and protect our possessions, to house and maintain them, distracts us from God’s call to us to love God and to love our neighbor. We are tempted to love God and neighbor less than we love our stuff. We are willing to harm our neighbor and ignore God’s commands for the sake of our stuff.

This is not news. In the parable of the feast in Luke, the invited guests fail to show up because they have been diverted by what they own or wish to own. I’m sorry, one says, I just bought a new house (he really says land, but it’s the same thing) and have to go look at it. I’m sorry, the other says, I just bought a new car (he really says oxen), and I want to try it out. People like stuff and are unwilling to let it go. It was just reported that the wealthiest top 1% of people in this country receive 23% of the all the income. They are holding on to that money. Thirty years ago it was 9%.

Jesus says that none can become his disciples unless they say farewell to all their possessions. Not give up, as the words in our Bible have it. But: say farewell to. Not a loss, but a separation from possessions. A dis-attachment.

The things that Jesus places in opposition to being a disciple of his are all entanglements. They are things that we get stuck to. Family. Safety. Possessions. They take effort and energy away from God. That is, we are unable to respond to God’s calls—calls to care for all others, to refrain from violence, to give freely, and to be grateful.

There are always multiple calls on our time and work. We are always managing our attention and care. A parent caring for a difficult child might shortchange his other children. A person caring for a sick parent might shortchange the rest of her family. A doctor spending hours caring for his patients might shortchange his spouse. It is harder to turn our backs on our responsibilities than it is on our possessions. But if something has to be shortchanged, Jesus says, it is our entanglements, not God.

When Jesus says that people cannot be his disciples, he is not judging them. He is not condemning them for their ineptitude or their inabilities. He is talking physics here, not morality. To lose weight, eat less or exercise more. To move an object at rest, apply a force in the direction you hope for. There is no should here. It is the way things are.

Now, this all seems pretty grim. The things Jesus wants us to let go, to say farewell to, are things we like. Things that sustain us, even, like our network of family and friends. If that’s what disciples of Jesus do, is it worth it?

It is a hard question to answer. If it were easy, we wouldn’t be hearing about it in Luke’s Gospel. If it were easy, it wouldn’t be upsetting to contemplate. A rule of thumb in reading scripture says that if someone in the Bible talks about how people should do something, it means that they were not doing it. Moses tells the people of Israel to obey the law of God, to choose life over death, because they have not been and probably don’t want to. If it were easy to choose life over death, Moses wouldn’t be talking so much about it. When Paul tells the people of Corinth not to be so snooty about sharing the Lord’s Supper, it is because they have been. When Jesus tells the crowd that they must carry their cross, it is because they are reluctant to. For many in that crowd the consequences of discipleship are just not worth it.

But for others … What the crowd—a large crowd, Luke says—what the crowd sought from Jesus was a new life. For one reason or another—it doesn’t say—they were lost or tired or confused or unable to cope or unsatisfied. They listened to Jesus—people listen to Jesus now—because they—because we—hope to hear about a new way to live. They need to get out of themselves and the patterns of their lives. Patterns that are tiring, boring, dangerous. They need to be freed from what John Calvin called “the deadly pestilence of love of strife and love of self.” It goes beyond being a good and responsible person—they want to be a new person. That’s what Jesus is talking about. That’s is why people are willing to consider what he has to say, as hard as it is to hear. That is why they are willing to follow Jesus.

This transformation of our being is, for most of us (but not all of us), a long process. It happens in a lifetime rather than in a moment. And, for most of us, it requires the support of a community of other people looking for something similar. Moses was speaking to all of the Israelites, but what happened did happen because of what each person did. Discipleship is a communal activity that is implemented in the decisions that each one of us makes over time.

I have set before you life and death, Moses says. He is asking them to love God with all their hearts and souls and minds and to love their neighbors as themselves. This is not about emotions and feelings, even though emotions and feelings come from it. To follow God, to follow Jesus, is a rational and decisive act. Or better: many rational and decisive acts, one after the other, in different circumstances and over time. In those places and times, as much as you are able, choose life.

I set before you life and death, says Jesus. Choose life that you may live.

Pride was not made for humankind

Text: Luke 14:1, 7-14

I’d like to talk today about quantum mechanics and Ramadan and how they help us think about discipline and humility. Which is what Jesus talks about in this parable today in Luke. These four things are both familiar and odd to us. And that’s how it is with parables, too. When Jesus tells a parable, he uses familiar situations to present what are, to his listeners at least, odd conclusions.

So, for example, the familiar notion of a meal shared with friends and neighbors. You invite the people you like. If it is a formal meal, you also invite the people who count. If it is a very formal meal, you make sure that the people who count sit in the right spots. In a wedding, who sits with the bride and groom. Who with the parents. Who has to sit with all the old folks. Being at the head table was then and is now an honor to be valued and coveted. No one wants to sit at the last table.

But Jesus makes this odd by telling folks not to rush for table number one. To hold back, to be humble, to ask for less, to expect little. Why does he say that?

What is odd is that we mostly don’t find this parable to be odd. It is the kind of thing Jesus says all the time. You know, the last shall be first kind of stuff. The one who loses his or her life will save it. We are so accustomed to hearing this kind of talk from Jesus that it is not shocking. But it should be. Jesus intended it to be.

Partly what has happened is that we are no longer disturbed by what Jesus says. There is a little rule in our heads: Jesus is good and kind. We follow Jesus. We therefore approve of what Jesus says. Sometimes without paying too close attention. Or feeling under any obligation to do what he says. It doesn’t shock us because, you know, it is our Jesus. Doing his Jesus thing.

And partly what is happening in this story is that we modern western people have ambivalent feelings about social and financial inequality and stratification. We admire the poor but don’t want to be poor. We approve of the people who sit at the lowest place but we ourselves neither want to nor expect to sit there. People who are wealthy have too much power, money, and arrogance. But we would love to have that much ourselves. We want to be ordinary but special.

The role model for many is the underprivileged and passed over person who gets lucky or who is discovered and becomes famous and wealthy. A kind of American Idol or Slumdog Millionaire or Sarah Palin variant. We like ordinary people who become celebrities. So when we hear this parable, we think: right. The ordinary person who is assigned the lowest table is discovered by the host and brought forward to sit at the head table in a place of honor. It is the American dream, and right there in scripture.

One problem with this is that we know it hardly ever really happens. In the world, most poor people stay really poor. The last stay last and the first stay first. Or more so. It is a joke when Garrison Keillor says “all are above average” because we know that that is as socially unlikely as it is mathematically impossible. There is only room for one number one.

So if we want to sit at the top table, we had better go for it. Waiting around for someone, for the host, to see us languishing and to come invite us forward—it’s just not going to happen. We believe in competition. We think it is natural. We think it is inevitable. And we think it is admirable. We might resent those who in the banquet rush to be seated in the best spots. But at least we understand them and give them credit. As for those who sit meekly, who stand about, who accept less—they are pitiful. This parable of Jesus—it’s not realistic. That’s not how things work around here.

But it is how God works.

When we say that all are saints and sinners, when we say that God forgives us our sins, when we say that Jesus loves you, when we say we are all God’s children, we are obliterating the distinctions that normally seem so active and obvious. One of us does not have to crowd out another. It is like quantum mechanics, an equally unintuitive and odd way of thinking about the world that allows, if I understand it right, for many things to occupy the same spot at the same time. The advances of some of us do not undo the position of others. Someone else’s gain does not have to be matched by your loss.

It is not easy to believe this in our hearts. It seems unnatural. It goes against our fears. To not push forward is therefore a discipline. That is, it is something that we have to practice. It is a spiritual practice. Spiritual practices are things that turn out to be good for you to do but that are often difficult to do.

As you know, we are in the middle of Ramadan, for Muslims a month-long time of fasting and alms-giving or acts of charity. It is a spiritual discipline similar to what Christians used to practice and sometimes still practice during Lent. No one thinks it is fun to skip food and drink all day and few people think it is fun to give away money and time to others.

Disciplines like those of Ramadan and Lent are exercises in humility. In being humble. In doing exactly what Jesus talks about in this parable. Of standing back, not pushing up to the front. Of being little, of not trying to be so grand.

Krista Tibbet is a radio interviewer who gets people to speak about matters of faith, and usually about their own faith. In a recent interview with newly-converted young American Muslims, she asked about their experiences with the discipline of fasting and charity. What was remarkable was that they rarely spoke about the difficulty of the discipline. What they spoke about was their joy. The joy of being humble. They used words like: mindfulness, peace, surrender, trust, contentment, holiness.

This is what we seek as Christians and as humans. To be present in our surroundings and to others. To be at peace. To give up our worries to God. To know contentment. To feel blessed.

The benefits claimed of a competitive life, a competitive culture, are wealth and security and power. Are these what we really most want? Is this what we were made for? Is what we hope from life? Don’t we long instead for the blessings that seem to come with humility? As often, Jesus is not commanding us. He is making us an offer.

At the end of this parable, Jesus gives us some advice. He speaks to us as hosts this time, not as guests. Our roles are reversed from before, and we are doing the inviting. But as before, the scene is familiar and the conclusion odd. Invite the most unlikely and perhaps unlikeable people to your house for dinner. People you don’t want to see. Who maybe make you nervous. Whom you don’t want to be seen with, either. You will be blessed, says Jesus. The message is similar to the parable: taking pride in yourself, in this case because of your nice friends, is not what Jesus is talking about.

One of the suggested alternative readings for today is from Sirach, a book from the apocrypha. (These are books in some Bibles that Martin Luther said were not “equal to the Holy Scriptures, but are useful and good to read.”) The reading speaks about pride as the beginning of sin. And at the end, it says “Pride was not created for human beings, or violent anger for those born of women.” [We should put those words on a plaque and hang it in our houses.]

There is a lot of pride, anger, and general self-aggrandizement going around in the world. I cannot see this stuff fitting into the teachings of Jesus, who walked, after all, humbly to the cross. We are not designed for it. It does not suit us. It is making us ill, and it is making us crazy.

Jesus is a healer. He says odd things—like the blessings of being humble in an arrogant and self-centered world—he says odd things that shock the world. By this, he offers the world another way to be and think and live. By this, he offers a healing way.

Good Matters

Text: Luke 12:13-21
Other texts: Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14, 2:18-23

On the one hand: what is this guy’s problem? He has so much stuff that his barn is bursting. His garage is full of junk, power tools, and yard furniture. His house is full of art, books, and electronic gear. His barn is full of food from years of fortunate harvests. Rather than sending some to Goodwill, or putting it out on the street like good Cambridge people would do, or selling it on Craigslist or posting it on Freecycle, or sending it to the Food Bank, he thinks he’ll tear down his barn and build a bigger one. That way he can keep all that is his, safe and ready.

On the other hand: what is the problem with this guy? It is prudent to save for the future. It is always good to have a nest egg, something to fall back on. In the Bible, Joseph saved the Egyptians from starvation by storing excess grain, just as the man is doing, for years. You can’t depend on Social Security. Save what you make and put it into a retirement account. Don’t be a burden to your children.

There is no question that there is a problem here. There is no question that the man is supposed to be an example of something bad and wrong-headed. Even to Lutherans, who value planning and prudence, who are save-for-a-rainy day kind of people, the man seems a glutton and cold-hearted. Jesus uses him as an example of greediness, not thriftiness. Is it just a question of balance? If he had been a little more generous, would it have been okay? If seemed less gleeful, more humble, more thankful, would it have been okay? Is there no room, as someone asked, in God’s economy for building bigger barns? Or are these even the right questions to ask of this passage?

The narrator in the first reading from Ecclesiastes and the man with barns have some things in common. For one thing, they spend a lot of time talking to themselves. And for another, as a consequence, they spend a lot of time thinking about themselves.

And what they are thinking about and talking about is this: how should a person live in the face of certain death? How should a person live knowing that we are mortal and that our years are numbered (we just do not know what the number is)?

For the Teacher (the narrator) in Ecclesiastes, the answer is: why bother? Nothing we do lives beyond us, so in the end our work is trivial and meaningless. “It is an unhappy business that God has given to human beings to be busy with,” he says. It is a lot of chasing the wind. And whatever you gather, it is not yours to keep; it goes to fools and villains to squander or ruin. Or even to wise persons, who might still do the same. Or to anyone, who will enjoy the fruits that you so labored for. For the Teacher, mortality invalidates the days of our lives.

For the rich man with barns, the answer is: why not? The hour of our death is in the unknown future. We will not live forever, but we might live a long time more. We must be cautious that we will have enough to last. Though mortal, what matters is the life we are now living and that we are able to live it well.

Eat, drink, and be merry, says the rich man with barns. Celebrate life while you have it. But the Teacher says: you quoted that verse from Isaiah wrongly. It goes: eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. All we do is in vain.

We do not live forever. In almost every scheme of things, by almost every measure, our time is short. In the two millennia between us and Jesus, there have been about 100 generations. In that time, cities and nations and peoples have risen and fallen. All of human history spans an amount of time equal to 100th of 1 percent of the age of the dinosaurs. The universe is vast and old. In its lifetime planets, suns, and galaxies have come and gone. We are not much more than nothing at all.

And yet our actions matter. We are not alone. We are entwined with others in a way that Luke could never have guessed possible. Not only do we share language, culture, dreams with other people; not only do we share creaturely behaviors and desires and stories with other people; we share parts.We are beginning to realize that we are made up just as much—if not more—of other organisms, bacteria and virus, as we are of human cells. Our DNA contains pieces of ancient viruses. Our lives are part of the lives of the history, present, and future of this world.

On the larger scale of spirit and thought, what we do makes a difference. When Jesus tells the story of the man with barns, his audience knows that the man’s riches come at the expense of others who are poorer than he is. Our modern notion that a rising sea raises all boats—that wealth is elastic and indefinitely expandable—would have been thought ludicrous in the time of Jesus. Wealth was fixed and limited. Among the followers of Jesus, being rich was a form—even if culturally okay—being rich was a form of stealing.

The man with barns and the Teacher and we all share a vain myth. The myth is that our good legacy lives on and benefits the world and that our bad legacy dies with us, without fault to the world. The Teacher whines that the good he does is enjoyed by others. But he does not mourn—or even acknowledge—the evil he might do and the effects it might have after him. And the man with barns has not a clue.

For whatever reason—the economic doldrums, environmental disasters, the creation of nuclear waste that lasts longer than history, rafts of trash in the oceans, the destruction of species—whatever, we have begun to wonder about what we are leaving to our children. Not the riches of the Teacher and the man with barns, but with the stuff we have denied. Is progress real? We are suddenly not so sure. And if it is, can we control and sustain it? For the first time in a long time in this country, people say their children will have a harder time of it than they have had.

There is a symbiosis in Christianity—some call it a tension—between the individual and the community. For some, the point of Christianity is personal piety. A relationship one on one with God. For others, the point is sanctification, living a holy life. And for still others, the point is to guide the community of the world into being more like the kingdom of God. Thus we have monasteries and missions and churches and soup kitchens. Thus: spirit, joy, reverence, and service—the motto of this congregation. Christians have always known that reverence leads to service. And the other way around, too. Individual lives of faith are nurtured in and nurture the community of humans.

Christians are not like the Teacher or the man with barns. We do not embrace any kind of notion that we are alone in the world. Or that we can act as if we were, leaving it to some other persons or some other force, some invisible hand, to correct imbalances or inequities. Or to some future technologies to make up for our dispassion.

We as Christians do not embrace any kind of notion that what we do does not matter. It is true that we are all saints and sinners both. And it is true that we depend on the grace of God to smooth the rough edges of our sins. But these two theological foundations of our faith do not let us off the hook. We cannot say that God will fix things all up, so why should we. Nor can we say that God knows all things, so what difference does it make.

We follow Jesus, who spent a lot of time telling people how to live. Telling us how to be good. It matters that we be good.