Sabbath Rest, Sabbath Power

Text: Luke 13:10–17 Other texts: Isaiah 58:9b–14

Last week, a man named Zhang Shuhong, a co-owner and manager of a small company in China killed himself on the third floor of his factory. He did so, people guess, because his was one of the companies that supplied toys to Mattel that were painted with paint that had lead in its pigment, which he had purchased from another company.

The man committed suicide. But he also was put to death. He was killed, yet no one was the killer. He was killed by circumstance, by the greed of the market to demand the lowest price, by the need of the toy maker to sell its wares cheaply, by our desire to be able to buy more of those toys. He was killed by fear, perhaps, that if he performed poorly he would lose his factory and the well-being of his family and his workers. In a worldwide competitive market, everything is on the margin. An infinitesimal incremental savings, or a tiny increase in costs, makes the difference between life and death. There is no slack. Slack is for losers. There is no rest. Those who rest fall behind or by the wayside.

The third or fourth commandment (Lutherans number them differently than most) is “Remember the Sabbath; keep it holy.” There are two versions of the Ten Commandments in the Bible, one in Deuteronomy and the other in Exodus. In both cases, the sabbath commandment is clear: The seventh day of the week is a sabbath. You shall not do any work. The commandment is the same in both cases, but the reasons given are different. In Exodus it says we must honor the seventh day because on the seventh day of creation, God rested. And so should we. And in Deuteronomy it says we must honor the seventh day because God freed the Israelite slaves and brought them out from the land of Egypt.

In one case, we take a sabbath day because we are creatures, not the creator. Creatures need rest. In the other case because we are free, not slaves. Free people are not bound by fear and greed. Creaturely rest and human freedom.

Like all the law, the commandments both protect and distinguish. That is, they both are good for us and for the world and they define us against the world. The Israelites, and the Christians who followed, are the people who observe a sabbath. The sabbath is both a means of grace and a mark that identifies us.

The sabbath is a gift of rest, modeled after God's rest. And as creatures, we need the rest. We cannot work nonstop. If we do, we go nuts. We get sick or worse, like the Chinese business owner. We harm others. We do stupid things and think weird thoughts. So we value the rest part of the sabbath.

But the sabbath is also a gift of power, modeled after God’s freeing power in Egypt. The sabbath is a shield against a kind of slavery. And we seem to have devalued the power part of the sabbath.

The sabbath is radical. It is radical because sabbath observance repudiates some the world’s most binding values.

The sabbath is a repudiation of constant work. Our faith says that no one can ask you to work all the time. No one owns all your days. One out of seven (that’s about fourteen percent) of the days is unavailable for sale or rent. The eighty-six percent left is plenty. The seventh day is God’s to give, and is given to you. No person has the authority to take it away. And even you don’t have the authority to give it away.

But the sabbath is more. It is a repudiation in some ways of the fruits of work. Not all fruits. God knows, Jesus says, that we need to eat, to have shelter and clothing, to be healed of our diseases. And Lutheran theology says that work is an expression of our love for God and for each other. But sometimes we work because we want a whole bunch more stuff. And sometimes we work because we are afraid that if we do not work hard we will be passed by and passed up. Or we will be defeated in life, commerce, or love by people who are willing to work harder and longer than we are. There are always such people. Sometimes we work because we are attacked by greed or by fear.

By observing a day, one whole day, of rest, we are denying the power of fear and greed. We refuse to succumb to those forces. We are saying that our longings and our worries are not going to jerk us around.

The sabbath is a repudiation of the notion that everything is up to us. We are creatures, and creatures made, it seems clear, to live with others. By observing a sabbath, we put part of our lives and welfare in the hands of others. And we put them in the hands of God. We acknowledge our vulnerability and dependence on beings other than ourselves.

We live in a time of commerce. Not just here in this country, but everywhere. We live in a time of competition. We live in cultures that demand hard work, excellence, and performance above all. Commerce is an idol, an evaluating judge. So Zhang was judged and found wanting, and he killed himself. This idol is not new. Isaiah speaks out against it.

The sabbath is a shield, our shield against the power of this idolatry. It is one of the few we have left. The sabbath gives us something beyond our own will and strength of character to resist. We observe a time of rest, a time without working, not because we are good or faithful or value “wellness,” but because we are told to.

I suspect we are letting the sabbath be taken from us. Or we are giving it up ourselves. I don't just mean Sunday, though that is our sabbath, but the whole idea of sabbath. Our culture seems to have concluded that sabbath is for wimps. But the preservation of the sabbath turns out to be hard work, and something worth working for.

We need some slack in our lives. Some room for downtime, and some room for error, for experiments that don't turn out, for things to be a little out of control. The sabbath is a place for all that.

Luther was said to have claimed to spit in the eye of the devil. The sabbath is a way of spitting in the face of greed and fear.

We should not put our shield down. We as Christians should not so easily give up the gift of the sabbath that God has provided and commanded. We are in danger of being overwhelmed by forces that are strong and tempting. We need to defend our lives and our freedom. We need the sabbath. Think of manager Zhang. It is a matter of life and death.

Dreaming

Text: Jeremiah 23:23-29 Other texts: Luke 12:49-56

Fantasy is great. In the Harry Potter books, people transport themselves instantaneously, which is a lot better than flying commercial airlines or driving from here to Chicago. Harry and his friends have a magical tent in which are bunk beds, a bathroom and kitchen, and a big soft armchair, which is a lot better than camping in the rain in the White Mountains. And the books also contain fantastic evil, personified and pure, without compassion or regret. But as Harry and Hermione and Ron get older, their lives become more complicated, just like real people. Not that they are beset by other-worldly troubles—which they are—but that they have begun to act like real people, complex creatures of friendship and jealously, courage and cowardice, love returned and love unrequited, hopes realized and hopes just as often frustrated. And the people they meet are both bad and good, strong and weak. In other words, just like in real life.

It is helpful sometimes to put ourselves in a fantastic world, different from our own. Fantasy is a kind of slack, a place known to be unreal, safe because the threats, no matter how dire, are phony. But it is not good for long-term solace. People know that, which is why eventually even in fantasy, reality intrudes as it does with Harry Potter. Even in the artificial computer world of Second Life, where people meet in the guise of avatars of their own making, as beautiful and powerful as they like, there is now advertising and commerce, winners and losers, the A-list and the rest of us.

“I have dreamed, I have dreamed,” said the false prophets mocked by God in Jeremiah. The dreams God speaks about are not visions of promise and hope, but fantasies. And the dreams that the people of Jeremiah’s time dream are the same ones that people have always dreamed. Dreams of power, dreams of wealth, dreams of security through strength, dreams of control, dreams of flawless love and beauty.

Sometimes these dreams are told by professional dreamers—people who have a stake in getting others to dream along with them, for commercial, political, or personal advantage and gain. But just as often we dream them ourselves, even against our own wisdom. I sometimes fantasize about owning a big house, forgetting the upkeep, taxes, maintenance, clutter; the moral shame of having more than I need; my own lack of interest and skills in carpentry and plumbing and furnaces. People dream of being their own bosses, or becoming a CEO, forgetting that they hate making decisions, or traveling all the time, or worrying about whether they can meet payroll. People dream of finding the perfect spouse or partner, forgetting that long-term relationships are built on promises and grow in the face of conflict and both unexpected joys and unwelcome struggles. Fantasy is great. You can go a long way on the force of your fantasies. But you cannot go all the way.

A prophet speaks about reality. Prophecy and dreaming—at least the kind we are talking about—are opposites. A prophet is a truth teller. A prophet is not sentimental. A prophet is anti-sentimental. It is tough job. Jeremiah did not want to be a prophet. No one would. In a land of dreamers, who would want to speak the truth? Prophets get into trouble. But getting into trouble is part of what it is all about. Being Christian, that is.

In the passage from Hebrews we just heard, the author lists what we might call Heroes of Faith. In the first half of the list are people who were strong, just, powerful, victorious. Gideon, Samuel, David. In the second half people—unnamed—who suffer, are persecuted, impoverished. There are not two lists here. All of these, it says, were commended for their faith. They all make up the “great cloud of witnesses.”

It is not an accident that the word for “witness” here is the same as the word for martyr. Clouds of martyrs living in faith. People who witness—that is, people who tell it like they see it—can get into trouble. It is important here to not confuse cause and effect. The scripture does not call us to suffer so that we might witness (that is, tell the truth about the world and God). It calls us to be truth-tellers, which in turn might cause us problems. Being a martyr—that is, getting in trouble on account of one’s faith—does not make one more Christian. It is not necessary or even desirable. And following Christ does not necessarily lead to conflict, but it probably will.

So when Jesus speaks about the division he brings, he is not promoting discord. This passage in Luke is descriptive, not proscriptive. If someone does what Jesus says to do—such as always placing people first before structure and power—then some folks are going to be bent out of shape. And fathers will be divided from sons, mothers against daughters, and all the other combinations—friend from friend, kin from kin. It is not inevitable, but it is likely. People will name those who follow Jesus as seditious, naïve, unrealistic, disloyal, geeky, arrogant, radical. Or they’ll do worse.

So Jesus speaks here to let people know what they are getting into—what we are getting into.

Christianity is not a faith of dreams, it is a faith of prophecy. We can take comfort in the presence of Christ in our lives, and in the intimacy of God in the affairs of humans, but ours is not a cushy faith. We are not called to take refuge in a religious fantasy. An opiate, as some have called it. Our God is not a God of fantasy but of reality. Of joys and difficulties. We are not avatars in an elaborate game of Second Life. We are real, complicated, people, and our God is a God of our lives as we actually live them.

In the psalm for today God speaks out for people who are weak, who are lonely, who are uncertain about what to do, who go hungry, who are at the mercy of others. In other words, just regular people like you and me who do regular things and have regular, complicated, sometimes great and sometimes difficult lives. A prophet reiterates God’s desire and guidance: that all care for the poor and troubled, and that all of us need care.

Our God may be an awesome God, but that does not mean we have to be awesome, too. God comes to us not in our dreams but in real life. Here. Now. In your life as it is. In this time. In this place.

Barns and Brains

Text: Luke 12:13-21

In its literal meaning “productivity” is making product. It is an economic measure. Increased productivity means that workers in a factory can produce more product now with the same amount of effort that they used to expend. Or produce the same product for less effort.

Not wanting to be too industrial, we’ve expanded the definition of productivity to mean useful or effective. A productive person is a person who keep his or her eye on the ball, nose to the grindstone, and ear to the ground. Productive has come to mean good, thrifty, hard-working. Productivity and success have become close cousins. The man who had a lot of stuff to put in his barns was a productive person as anyone could see.

He was effective, a word more in fashion. Maybe he followed the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. He got things done, evidently. Getting Things Done is now a copyrighted process, the subject of another how-to book. The book preaches a kind of salvation, a cure for stress in the lives we all lead.

One of the important foundations of Getting Things Done, the book, is the To Do list. I have a To Do list. I’ll bet that you have one, too. Or many ones. Some of mine are on little sheets of paper, and some on real sticky notes, and some on virtual sticky notes in my computer, and some in my calendar program, and some just rampaging around in my head, to pop out at 2:00 in the morning or to distract me when I should be relaxing, or having fun with friends, or when praying. I have all these lists because I need help getting things done. They must provide me some solace—but what?

Part of the pleasure of the story about the man and his barns full of stuff is the irony of it. The man thinks he is set for life. And so he is, but it is a little bit shorter life than he had imagined. So part of the lesson of this passage is that none of his possessions—many as they are—are worth anything in the long run, which happens to be the short run for him. Trusting in possessions is not super helpful, it turns out, because among other things they are not trustworthy. Luke paints a great picture. We can feel how comfortable the man is. How pleased he is with himself. In the story, he talks to himself: Self—which is perhaps a better translation of the word than “soul”—Self, he says, you have plenty of things. Enjoy, enjoy! But he is not able to.

But though the irony is a pleasure to read and to relish, it is not the main thing. If the man died three days later, there would still be a problem. Three weeks later, three years, three decades—it doesn’t matter. Not only is the man self-satisfied, he is also bad. I don’t mean morally bad, but he is meant to be an example of the wrong thing to do. It is not a good idea to grab all that stuff for yourself, to have so much that you have to find whole other storage space for it. The man is a super-consumer, and he has too much wealth, and instead of, for example, sharing it with the poor—which is what his religion told him to do—he got a bigger place.

I love this passage in Luke. I love it because the story itself is so well-constructed. But I love it more because I’m just like that man. I have a ton of stuff, and I worry about where to put it. But none of that stops me from wanting more stuff. I have too much, but I want more.

I’m sure I’m not alone here. It is the nature of our times that a lot of us are like that. And it seems to not matter, within reason, how much you really have. There is not one graph that has “I have too little” at one end and “I have too much” at the other. There are two different, unrelated graphs. It is possible to have too little and too much at the same time. To be hungry and stuffed at the same time. Strange but true.

But you know, this is all old hat. Everyone knows that too much stuff is a problem and that we probably shouldn’t do it, have and keep and get so much. But you know that; you don’t really need a Bible story to tell you that. It’s like “have less stuff” is on a lot of people’s To Do lists.

But it is not only our barns that are overstuffed. It is our brains, too. Our barns are full of things and our brains are full of To Do lists. Plus a bunch of other junk in there. [A parishioner] was amused the other day about a mailing from some Lutheran organization that proclaimed that “the truth is, your To Do list will never be finished.” Wow! Like that was a big discovery.

Our brains are full of what-ifs and worries. What if something bad happens? What can we do to prevent it? (Be sure to put it on the To Do list.) How can we make sure that life goes smoothly? How can we avoid feeling bad or doing bad? And possessions are just another kind of what-if and worry. We have them for lots of reasons, but a big set of reasons is to feel safe and in control. Not worry and not be a victim of what-ifs, of circumstances.

The lilies of the field and the birds that Jesus talks about a few verses on in the Gospel of Luke, they “neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn.” And they don’t have any brains, either. They don’t have insurance. They don’t worry about savings or retirement. They don’t have careers they are starting or relationships that they are developing or nurturing. They just are. God takes care of them, Jesus says. It is not that we can just sit around in the dirt like a lily. God knows you need food and drink, Jesus says. But we’ve replaced a few big basic worries with thousands of little worries, and we are not better for it.

The trouble with this is that it doesn’t work and it’s not fun. Just as gloating didn’t save the man with barns, so worrying, says Jesus, won’t save us. “Can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?” he asks. Can any of you? You might as well ask, “Can any of you by worrying add an inch to your height?” Some things—most things, actually, and a lot of important things—we can’t do much about. It is not going to work, this stuffing our brains with To Do lists. And besides that, it does not give us the joy we seek.

Is the point of life to be effective? Life is a gift given to us by God. It is not something we produced, something we extracted from the clay or carved from the rock and formed into ourselves. God did that.

We hear from Ecclesiastes that all is vanity. The word means “a puff of air.” A better translation might be “absurd” or “garbage.” All is garbage.

But that does not mean that everything we think, have, or do is stupid. We are not lilies, we cannot live on sun and soil, we have to do something to live. But there is no meaning in all the stuff that we stack up in our barns and the stuff we stack up in our brains. In one sense life is fragile and contingent. In another sense it is sturdy and graceful, and in it we may live rich toward God, as Jesus puts it. The meaning comes not from our programs of excellence, but from life itself.

Great Prayer

Text: Luke 11:1-13 Other texts: Genesis 18:20-32

You haven’t lived until you have watched a bunch of children dancing and gesturing and singing as loud as they can: G R E A T B — I B L E. Great Bible Reef. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen an equal number of adults, so called, doing the same thing, all singing and waving their arms. Singing: We’re gonna go where the word is, And the word is God’s love. We’re gonna dive into the ocean. We’re gonna swim in God’s love. And you really haven’t lived until you are doing that all yourself.

Faith held a great vacation Bible school last week. It was called the Great Bible Reef. G R E A T B — I B L E. It was amazing. It energized everybody who came and everybody who helped. Each day eight or so children and often their parents came for singing, dancing, hearing stories, making crafts, eating, learning about God’s love. At coffee hour today you’ll see all the decorations, which are still up, and a video of pictures of some of the events and people. It could not have been better. It was all we had prayed for.

I want to talk today a little about prayer, and about getting what you pray for. And about swimming in God’s love. And about trusting God.

If God is perfect and unchangeable and knows all that is going to happen, there is not much use to prayer. At least prayer that asks God for things. If God is already going to do what we pray for, then it doesn’t matter if we pray. If God is unchangeable, there is not much point in our asking God to change. If God knows all that is going to happen, then there is not much our prayers can do about it. But fortunately for us, this kind of God is not the God we read about in the pages of the Bible.

God appears to Abraham, according to the story we heard this morning from Genesis. God has some plans about the city of Sodom. God’s plans include destroying the city; sweep it away, as the text has it. But Abraham begins to bargain with God. What if there are fifty good people in Sodom, Abraham asks God, what about that? Will you destroy fifty good people, to “slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked?” God says to Abraham, No I guess not. For the sake of the fifty, I’ll save the city.

God has changed God’s mind. The plan was destruction, but because of Abraham’s plea, Abraham’s convincing prayer, God does something different. Something unplanned-for until Abraham spoke up. Abraham, seizing the moment, says: So what about forty people. Would you kill forty good people? God says, No, I guess not. Not forty. And so it goes: Not thirty, either. Not twenty, either. Not even ten. Abraham, maybe figuring he has pushed things far enough, stops there. But I sometimes think he could have gone on. How about five? how about one? How about none? Could Abraham have convinced God to not destroy Sodom at all? We’ll never know. But we do know that Abraham prayed in the certain knowledge that God would listen and that God might change God’s plans as a result.

Jesus prays to God as if he expects that he will be heard and his views considered. And Jesus advises his followers, his disciples then and now, to pray. In Luke, the Lord’s Prayer asks for a godly and good world, for food to eat every day, for sins to be forgiven, for freedom from being tested. And Jesus tells them, through a parable of a sleepy-but-in-the-end-willing host that first, God will pay attention and that second, we ought to be persistent and bother God a lot. And that we should expect favor for our prayers, for God loves us as a good parent loves a child.

You might argue that God does not answer all our prayers and in particular has not answered your prayers. You might argue that, but we are not really having an argument here. There are all sorts of explanations about this, none of which I personally have found convincing, but we are not explaining anything here. Nor was Jesus. Jesus is talking about the question: does God listen? does it make any difference? Jesus says the answer is Yes! and Yes!

Every Sunday we pray that God bring to this church people who will be nourished here and who will nourish this church. This is a prayer of hospitality and need. Providing nourishment—primarily in spirit but in fact also in body—to all who find themselves here is our reason for being and guides all that we do here as a church. Being nourished by those same people is how it happens. We borrowed this prayer from [a local pastor] of the [a local church] down on [street] Street. That church is a vital and energetic place, but it was not always so. And when I asked him what they did to become the church it is now, he said that they had tried all the sorts of things you read about in books about growing healthy churches. But none of them worked. So then they started to pray that God would bring people to the church to be fed. And so God did. As God has done also here at Faith.

We as a church had hopes for vacation Bible school. And we included those hopes in our prayers during the past few Sundays and in people’s personal prayers. We prayed that about ten children would come, and more than a dozen did. We prayed that children from the neighborhood who had never come to this church would attend, and three families did. We prayed that all the worshipping groups of the Community of Faith—the Eritrean fellowship, Calvary, and the Lutherans—would participate, and all did. We prayed that lots of members of Faith would help, and lots did. We prayed that everyone would have a great time, and learn something, and make new friends, and have an amazing experience, and it was clear that everyone did. Were these things answers to our prayers? I can not say for certain. I do know that that is what we prayed for. And that is what we got.

The Lord’s Prayer is like a conversation with God. In it we say hello, we ask for things we need, we talk a little about our hopes, we express our admiration in and trust for God, to whom we speak.

Prayer is a conversation. And not a trick conversation, like when you are chatting someone up to get something you want or to sell something. Like when someone calls you on the phone during dinner and asks “how are you doing today, Mr Stain,” it sounds like the beginning of a conversation, but you know it is not. It’s a transaction. Prayer is not a transaction.

The favorite song among the children at The Great Bible Reef was one called Trust the Lord. And it goes like this:

Trust the Lord, Trust, trust the Lord. Be strong and take heart, And wait on the Lord. Trust the Lord, Trust, trust the Lord. Sing alleluia, Sing alleluia, Trust the Lord!

It was a favorite of the adults, too. That should not be a surprise. Trust is the basis of prayer. Prayer begins in this trust. Trust is the foundation of a real conversation. Prayer emerges from trust. Trust emerges from the love God has for all us God’s children.

That’s the word. And We’re gonna go where the word is, And the word is God’s love. We’re gonna dive into the ocean. We’re gonna swim in God’s love.

Thank you, God.

Resurrection Life

Text: John 20.1-2, 11-18
Other texts: Ruth, Exodus

The motto of some one of our partner churches is “reformed and always reforming.” This is to make clear that though the church came out of the Reformation in the 1500s, God continues to work in the life of the church today and every day. God’s ongoing presence in the life of the institution of the church is a good thing to consider from time to time. But more immediately and closer to home is to consider God’s ongoing presence in each of our own individual lives and the life of the world. And when we do that, we might adopt the motto: “transformed and always transforming.”

In one sense, transformation is just a synonym for change. And we are always changing. Being adaptable sorts of creatures, we react to things around us, including especially people, and so change is built into us. About to cross the intersection, and noticing that the car barreling down the street at us is going to run the red light, we change our plans. But we usually mean transformed to mean changed in a big way, even a fundamental way. It is said of New England weather that if you don’t like it, wait a bit and it will change. You would probably not say the weather was transformed from cloudy to partly sunny. You might say, though, that if every summer day in New England was like yesterday, 72 degrees and not too humid—California weather—you might then claim that the weather had been transformed.

Change is common, but it is not always welcome. And transformation less so. We may not exactly like where we are now, but leaving here and going there is not something we automatically long for. And if something makes us do that—if change is from necessity and not from desire—then it makes us even more grumpy. Change can be great, and we can see it as renewal and life-giving. But people can see change as death as well as they see change as resurrection. Or, they can’t see it at all.

The passage today from the Gospel of John is the story of the discovery of an empty tomb that was supposed to be occupied by the body of Jesus. It was not what Peter and another disciple expected, and it was not what Mary Magdalene expected, either. But Peter and the other disciple, John, reports, “did not understand the scripture, that [Jesus] must rise from the dead.” And so “then the disciples returned to their homes.” Too much of a surprise for them to handle, I think. Time to go home.

But Mary hangs around the tomb. Good thing, it turns out. She sees a man whom she does not quite recognize. It is Jesus. We know that, but she thinks he might be the gardener. And she thinks they have carried Jesus away. She cannot fathom anything else. What would it mean if Jesus were not here because he had been raised from the dead? It is nearly impossible to contemplate. Hard to get your head around. What Mary sees is a mistake in procedure, and she offers to fix it: Tell me where the body is and I’ll carry it to somewhere more suitable. She must have been strong in body to consider carrying the dead weight of the corpse and strong in mind as well.

Sometimes change is welcome. Sometimes we long for a new life. For new health and a new future. When we are stuck in sorrow or grief, when we continually find ourselves doing the same old thing, but not wanting to, or not doing the thing we most desire. Then change is resurrection. The days ahead are never just today repeated over and over again. The future is not the same as the past. We can be given a new life no more trapped in old patterns, not destined for regret and shame, and not forever longing.

When Jesus calls Mary by name, she realizes that things are a lot different than she thought. A change that could be called a transformation. Something new has been revealed about life and death in general and about Jesus’ ongoing connection with Mary in particular. But not totally new. Jesus is not some alien from outer space or a spirit presence. This is Jesus, her friend and teacher. Rabbouni! She calls him. This name is a sign of affection as much as it is of respect. It’s like: “My dear rabbi,” to be old-fashioned. Or “It’s my man, the rabbi.” A greeting you might give to an old teacher or mentor, respectful but maybe a little familiar. Mary knows. This guy is Jesus.

Not totally new, but not quite the same, either. She goes to hug him. Not a good idea, he says to her. Something is different, something has changed. This is Jesus, but a transformed Jesus.

Our lives are rarely changed in an instant. Even an encounter with Jesus takes time to work its way through us. Healing and recovery unfold little by little. Renewal is both created in time and revealed over time.

For most of us, transformation starts with an encounter with another person. An encounter that is emotionally powerful. We are transformed when we are loved by someone. As Moses was changed in today’s reading from an abandoned slave child to a member of the royal family of Egypt. Moses was changed by the love given him by Pharaoh’s daughter. We are transformed when we love someone else. As Ruth was changed from a gentile in Moab to a Jew in Bethlehem. Ruth was changed by her love for Naomi.

And we are transformed by God’s love for us and our love for God. As Mary was, and the disciples were to be, and as I’m sure Jesus was. By his love for them and by their love for him, by his encounter with Mary, with the other disciples, and now with us.

Being a follower of Jesus changed the disciples as it changes us. Jesus becomes a lens through which we try to see the world and our actions in it, a guide when we try to decide what to do next, and a comfort when we need a human-sized God next to us.

Our theology says that the resurrection of Jesus changed the world. How it does that is something that the theologians can ponder. But it was the resurrection experience that powered the growth of the early church. It certainly powered Paul’s missions.

Mary was the first apostle, the first person to see Jesus after his resurrection. What the resurrection of Jesus taught her and the first Christians and us is not so much that Jesus in particular could be raised from the dead but that anybody could. Not that only Jesus could be resurrected, but that resurrection is a part of life, built into the human experience.

Christianity at its core is a religion of healing and restoration. There is no dead end. There is no end to renewal and rebirth. There is no end of possibility. We are a resurrection church. For followers of Jesus, transformation is not only possible, it is inevitable.

What Neighbor Am I?

Text: Luke 10:25-47 Other texts: Deuteronomy 30:9-14

When we pray to do God’s will, our prayer contains two parts. One part is that may have the courage, focus, and compassion to do God’s will. That is, that we are able enough. The other part is that we may know what God’s will is, that we may know what God wants. That is, that we have enough knowledge. Often, both parts are wanting. The Bible is as full of prayers saying “make me strong so I can do what you want” as it is full of prayers saying “tell me what you want me to do.”

The law, the law of Torah, the law referenced in the reading today from Deuteronomy, is a list of things God wants people to do. Such a list is one way of making sure we have God’s will straight. The law is a form of grace, meaning a gift from God to people to help them know what to do.

The lawyer who greets and tests Jesus is an expert in this law, this list. Of course, the list of things to do and not do is not always clear in every situation. The list is a code of law, and like the civil code of law that we live by, it needs to be interpreted. The lawyer would have known not only the code, but how the code had been interpreted so far, and would have speculated on how it might be interpreted in the future. When he comes to Jesus, he comes seeking an interpretation.

Both the lawyer and Jesus would have known the summary or the basis of the law. From Deuteronomy, Love your God with all your heart and soul and strength and mind. And from Leviticus, Love your neighbor as yourself. But what, asks the lawyer, does this mean? What does it mean for me? asks the lawyer.

The law, it says in today’s reading, is in your heart. But in many ways, relying on a code of law is easier that relying on the urgings of one’s heart. It is not that the heart is an unreliable guide. On the contrary. It is that the heart is a strict and stern judge. The heart knows when we are loving our neighbor, the heart knows when we are loving God. Or not. The scope of our heart’s critique is unbounded. Some things that we do that our hearts would condemn are just fine according to the law of the land. The letter of the law, as we say.

Though Luke says that the lawyer is testing Jesus, his question is not frivolous. The lawyer is not being a jerk here. The answer is important. Rules of culture and law define a society. They reflect back to us who we are. In our society, it is not OK to shoot someone, usually and it is OK to carry a gun. It is OK to limit highway speeds and not OK to limit the production of fast cars. It is not OK to drink in public and it is OK to pass by someone lying by the side of the road. These distinctions are not arbitrary, they reflect what we value. And laws change when cultures and conditions change.

The lawyer asks Jesus to help him define the boundaries of compassion. He wants to know in particular what people are outside those boundaries, people to whom he need not be compassionate. He is not trying to expand the envelope to include more people. He wants to be safe with God and with his nation, his people. The lawyer wants to know who deserves his compassion and, more important, who does not. Whom he can safely ignore when thinking of the law and its requirements of love. He wants to know not so much whom he should love but whom he does not need to love.

In response to his question, Jesus tells him a story. The story is an interpretation of the law that both Jesus and the lawyer agree is fundamental. You are familiar with the story of the Good Samaritan. I won’t repeat it. But there are two things that you should know. First, the characters who pass the man by—the priest and the Levite—are not meant to be seen as somehow lacking in character. These would have been the most respected and honored people. They are chosen not because they are the worst sort of people in the culture, but the best. Even the best pass the man by. And second, you should know that the man in the ditch and the Samaritan who helped him were deadly enemies. Samaritans and Jews had a history of violent strife that would match conflicts in our own time, with village-burning, mass crucifixions, and beheadings.

The Levite and the priest pass by the man who had been beaten and left for dead by the side of the road. For whatever reason, they did not stop to help.

But the Samaritan did. The Samaritan stopped to help. What makes the Samaritan different from the other two is what he did. Not what he believed, or what he figured out. He helped the man. The Samaritan first came up to the man, Jesus tells us. And by coming near the man, he then was moved by compassion, and his compassion led him to extraordinary service. Who cares what he believed? This story Jesus tells is about doing.

The lawyer wants to know who his neighbor is. Who qualifies as neighbor and who does not. Who deserves to be treated as neighbor and who does not. The story does not answer the question. Jesus does not tell the lawyer who his neighbor is. Instead, Jesus tells the lawyer what a neighbor does.

Who of the three, asks Jesus, is the neighbor to the man in the ditch? The answer is obvious. The man who helped him. The Samaritan. Do the same, Jesus tells the lawyer.

The lawyer’s question has a dark question inside of it. And that question, which the lawyer does not state but which he does imply, is Who is my enemy? But Jesus will not answer that questions, because he has already made it clear in Luke’s gospel. The answer is: Nobody. Love your enemies, he has said, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you. The lawyer wants to demonize a group of people—how far does love reach: where can indifference or hatred start—but Jesus will not indulge him. There is no such border.

The lawyer hopes in his question that Jesus will make the law clearer by enumerating cases. Your neighbors are the persons in your town, your church, your office, your nation, your race, your class, some grouping we can distinguish. But Jesus will not do so. The rules of law and culture limit some of the wickedness that we do. And they obligate us to do some good. But how we love God with all our hearts and souls and strength and mind and how we love our neighbors as ourselves cannot be based on limits or obligations. Our love for God and neighbor stems from our compassion, from our wise and knowing hearts. It will not do for us to be like the lawyer, seeking to be good by making lawful distinctions.

Show me your ways, prays the psalm. Teach me your paths. Lead me, prays the psalm.

We can get trapped as the lawyer does when we try to differentiate between love for one people and another. Whose suffering do we relieve and whose can we cause? Whose cries do we heed and whose can we be deaf to? Whom do we come near in compassion and whom do we feel comfortable passing by? We ask these kinds of questions all the time. But there is no answer to them from Jesus, our teacher and our lord.

The question we get an answer to is not: What kind of person is my neighbor? but: What kind of person am I? Not: what must my neighbor do for me to love him? But: What shall I do, having loved him? Not: Who is my neighbor? but: Who am I?

Holy Guests

Text: Luke 10:1-11

Holy guests. That’s what the seventy apostles were, the ones whom Jesus sent out into the world. At their best, that is what missionaries are. Holy guests.

When we gather at Faith, we are hosts. When people come to worship here for the first time, they are guests. We have cards labeled “Guest” in the pews as one way for guests to introduce themselves. After you have been here once or twice, you become one of the hosts. The job of the host is to welcome guests, to help put them at ease, to introduce them to others, to answer questions they might have, to let them tell you about themselves if they wish, to feel at home. When it is at your home, you are the host. In some sense you are in control, the initiative is yours. So people sometimes say about a church that it is hospitable, or we say we practice hospitality, meaning it is something we do actively. If you don’t do anything to welcome a guest, people say the church is cold, or inhospitable. When some members of Faith moved to the West, the first church they visited said not one word to them the whole time. The folks in the church just stared at the wife of the couple and made her feel, she said, like an alien creature. One would not call that church hospitable.

But when you go out into the world, as a Christian, you are the guest. And not the host. And you practice something else, where you are not in control and the home is not yours, but someone else’s.

This story in Luke begins as a training class, where Jesus explains to seventy new apostles what they can expect on their mission (they can expect danger, like lambs walking among wolves—wolves like to eat lambs). And explains to them how they should pack (they should pack very lightly). And explains to them how they should behave (they should behave like guests). You can imagine them carrying little laminated reminder cards: how to be a missionary for Jesus. On one side it says: Introduction: Ask permission first to enter. And on the other side, to be used if and when you have been welcomed, are three clear steps: 1. Eat what is put in front of you. 2. Heal those who are hurting. and 3. Leave them a gift when you go.

The introduction: ask permission to enter. The apostles are given a small protocol to start with. Say to the host, Peace to this house. And if the host responds in kind, proceed. If not, leave and try again somewhere else. Not everyone wants to hear what you have to say. Some people are downright antagonistic, and some don’t care, and some are just too busy at the moment. The protocol is a way of asking someone: can I speak to you now? People go their own way on a path to God, and your help may be welcomed or not, depending not on you but on them. Or maybe it does depend on you, and they just would rather talk to someone else. You are only a guest when the host invites you in. Then you can turn over the card and follow the steps.

Step 1: Eat what is put in front of you. When you a guest in someone’s house, you eat what you are served. Unless it’s a potluck, you don’t bring your favorite meal with you. You don’t see what they have and then decide to send out for something else. You don’t tell everyone how you hate squid or fried food or eggplant or whatever. And you don’t look over the guest list and decide to go home.

The host sets the context. When you talk about your faith with someone, it is in that someone’s context. It is the host’s ears, not your tongue, that makes the connection work. His or her history, prejudices, prior experience, hopes and fears, that makes it work or not. And words that make sense to the host, not words that make sense to you. You cannot start a conversation by giving someone a dictionary of the words you’ll use. And the people the host hangs with are the host’s friends. It is not the job of a Christian to separate people from their culture.

Step 2: Heal those who are hurting. The ministry of Jesus Christ is a ministry of healing. That’s what the word “salvation” means. To heal. The word “redemption” means to free. The apostles are welcome—at least at first—not because they have interesting things to say or are enthusiastic about their convictions, but because they bring comfort, relief from unbearable burdens, freedom from fear, peace to replace anxiety, health to replace sickness. People are affected by healing actions more than by convincing arguments. It is the generosity, compassion, and persistence in the face of fear that makes people admire Christians. And when Christian are vicious, vengeful, and greedy, people unfortunately notice that, too.

Step 3: Leave a gift when you go. A guest sometimes leaves more than a “thanks for the grub.” A gift says how much the guest appreciates the host’s time and anticipates an ongoing relationship. The apostles do have something to say. They bring good news and present it when they leave. The kingdom of God is not some fantasy, they say. The world will not always be a place of suffering and violence. Despair is premature. Underlying Christianity is the conclusion that the broken world can be fixed, and that the world will someday be as God had hoped in creation. Jesus’ ministry is a sign and a demonstration.

The apostles are sent as an advance crew for Jesus. And in that sense they go as representatives of God. They reflect the ministry of Jesus that we share: communities around a common meal, healing, and guidance in our lives. God the creator, redeemer, and comforter is represented in the actions of these holy Guests.

This story in Luke is unique in the Gospels. Though there are other stories of the twelve sent out (even such a story earlier in Luke), this is the only time when other, unnamed followers of Jesus are sent by him. These are not special people, not priests, not leaders. They are you and me, ordinary people who are trying to follow Jesus and to help bring about a renewed world. We are not missionaries by trade, but when we speak of our faith to others, we speak as those who were sent.

Christians can be evangelical without being arrogant or bossy. We model the God we serve, and in that model, it is God who serves. When we speak of our faith, we come to others not as hosts. Not as beneficent givers of truth. Not attempting to control what happens and what the outcome might be. We come listening, healing, and giving. We come as holy guests.