Pentecost 12C - "Must Be in the Front Row"

 

Proverbs 25:6–7a

Saint Luke 14:1 & 7–14

Last Sunday’s Chicago Tribune featured an article about Leo Burnett who, in the midst of the great depression, started an ad agency. People scoffed, wondering about “the waste and extravagance of advertising,” in the midst of the biggest economic downturn of the 20th century.

Burnett ignored the skeptics and over the years gave us some of the most memorable commercials in the history of television. Tony the Tiger’s proclamation that Frosted Flakes were “Great!” came from them.  The creative minds at Burnett made the Minnesota Valley Canning Company into a household name by posing their mascot “smiling broadly and holding a corncob like a barbell” like a very happy green fellow and eventually re-branding the entire corporation, The Green Giant Company.

For me the best of the best was the Miller Lite, “more taste lest filling” campaign whose drummed up controversy lives on until this very day.   And of those commercials one stands out as a classic.  It is Mr. Baseball, Bob Uecker's “I must be in the front row commercial” for Miller Lite! 

The premise is simple and begins with Uecker claiming that one of the best things about being an ex-big leaguer is getting freebies to the game.  “All I did,” he says pulling a ticket out of his pocket, “was call the front office and bingo.”  

Almost as soon as he sits down an usher approaches and informs him, “You’re in the wrong seat buddy.” to which Uecker says, “I must be in the front row.”

In the next scene we see him in the upper, upper deck of Dodger stadium about as far away from the action as one can be and still be in the ballpark. 

In real life Bob Eucker was an unassuming, humble guy who made constant fun of his lack of ability as a player, once saying, “Sporting goods companies pay me not to endorse their products.”

Eucker and the Milwaukee Brewers went along with the gag to the extent that there are two statues erected in the honor of their long-time broadcaster. One statue is in a prominent place outside of the ballpark and the other is way up there “behind the last row of section 422 in the upper deck.”

In getting a place of prominence and a place of humility, it seems to me, the Brewers said that while he may have always wanted to sit in the front row Eucker was still perfectly happy sitting in the back.

Jesus attended a dinner party once where it looked like a lot of the people there thought they 

deserved to be in the front row.

We might be feeling pretty good about ourselves remembering that Jesus “lived in an honor/shame society where everything someone did was to accrue honor for you and your family’s name and avoid shame.  At whose house you were eating and in which particular spot you were sitting mattered a [great] deal. Honor only meant something if it was publicly recognized; that is, if other people saw you do something honorable or witnessed honor conferred upon you. Likewise, shame was so damaging precisely because everyone else agreed that you were of less value.”1

There can’t be anybody here who thinks this practice has died out.  Just try organizing a wedding banquet and discovering that the only places left for the people the bride calls Aunt Bertha and Uncle Hermann, but who are really third cousins twice removed, are at the very back of the banquet hall near the swinging doors to the kitchen at the back of the hall. Do this and one must gird themselves and be ready for the dear couples wrath at being embarrassed like this “after all we’ve done for you.”

Jesus sees and notices, but Dr. Fred Craddock warns:

The human ego is quite clever and, upon hearing that taking a low seat may not only avoid embarrassment but lead to elevation to the head table, may convert the instruction about humility in a new strategy for self-exaltation. Taking the low seat because one is humble is one thing; taking the low seat as a way to move up is another. The entire message becomes a cartoon if there is a mad competitive rush for the lowest place, with ears cocked toward the host, waiting for the call to ascend.2 

Jesus does not offer a divinely approved way for a person to get what he or she wants.

Jesus is not offering a lesson on humility, or how to finagle you way into the front row, he is telling us how things are and should be for people who claim to be members of the Kingdom of God. Jesus is telling us that the secret for those of us who want to proclaim the reign and rule of God is to let everybody in and don’t worry about where they or we sit.

Go out into the streets, Jesus says, and "When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you...”3

Make those people who are worried about who they are sitting with and where they are sitting, Jesus seems to be saying, if I hear him correctly, dine with everybody and anybody who wants a little lunch.  Maybe they won’t come. Maybe they will choose to stay home and pout or complain about the quality of the feast, or that they have to eat with the riff-raff from the wrong side of the tracks.  That’s their problem not yours, Jesus says, because they will be missing something.

Unfortunately, the today’s Gospel reading ends one verse too soon.  It leaves out the punchline!  For Saint Luke goes on to tell us that Jesus’ little admonitions triggered a response from one of the guests: ‘How fortunate is the one who gets to eat dinner in God’s kingdom!’”4

That’s us! We’re the fortunate ones who have been invited to the feast!  We’re the ones who Jesus has called to gather around his table!  We are not onlookers anymore because we all have been invited to dine with Jesus in his good rule and reign.

We’re not the ushers who are checking tickets to see if one person is not in their proper place, but neither are we the disinterested bystanders in the little dust up between Jesus and his hosts.  

We’ve been invited to the feast!  We are the fortunate ones!  We are the ones who are the recipients of God’s great grace. What we do with our good fortune is up to us.

I  know I have told you this story before and I also know that I have told you that when a preacher starts to repeat himself or herself too often they have been around too long but this is too good to resist because I think I might have seen this gospel being played out in some small way while worshipping one Sunday at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.

The cathedral is, as one might expect from the Episcopalians, a first-class operation.  It has a history of great preaching, magnificent music, and liturgical pageantry that even on an ordinary summer’s Sunday would put most church’s worship on festivals to shame.  In other words: They process in everybody and anything that is not nailed down.

They also have a strong commitment to social justice and social outreach that feeds the poor, lobbies for the oppressed, and seeks to serve the least, the lost, and the lonely.

All the pageantry paled to something that happened at coffee hour following church when I caught a small glimpse of their care for everybody in person.

On the Sunday I was there about a dozen or so of the unhoused had congregated on the cathedral’s plaza before worship.  One man in particular looked especially disheveled.

 

After worship there was a coffee hour on the plaza for the people who had attended.  The usual was offered: coffee, tea, coffee cake, cookies, and juice for the children.

When things were winding down the bedraggled man slowly approached one of the tables as if he were working his way to the head table at a royal banquet or trying to sneak into the front row of the ballpark.

He started to reach for a piece of the well picked-over coffee cake when the well-dressed, well-coiffed woman serving said to him.  “Oh!  No!  No!  No!”  

I gasped and the man pulled back but then the woman continued.  “No! No! No!” she said again.  “Those have been out far too long.  They’re a little stale.  You don’t want those.  Let me get you some that are fresh.”

She reached behind her and grabbed another full tray of treats.  She unwrapped the cellophane and placed the tray right in front of the surprised man.

“Take as many as you like.”  She said.  “We always have plenty.  Enough for everybody!”  

He filled his hands and even put some in his pockets for later.  The woman smiled, so did I, and I must admit I felt a tear run down my cheek.

When the well-healed serve the downtrodden.  When the outcasts and the insiders feast together.  When it doesn’t matter who you know.  When a homeless man is treated as well, and maybe even better, than the wealthiest person in the congregation. When all are welcomed, it is then, Jesus says, everyone in the great and promised kingdom “must be in the front row.”

________________

1. Philip Martin, “The Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost,” A Sermon for Every Sunday (asermonforeverysunday.com, August 23, 2022)

2.     Fred B. Craddock, Luke: Interpretation Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville, , KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 177.

3. St. Luke 14:12-14. (NRSV)  [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version]

4. St. Luke 14:15. (MSG) [MSG=Eugene H. Peterson, in

\The Message: The New Testament in Contemporary English (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 1995

Pentecost 11C - "Wheelchairs Where?"

Saint Luke 13:10–17

The cover of our bulletin is a painting called “Christina's World” by Andrew Wyeth and depicts a woman crawling through a field to a farmhouse in the distance.  

The woman in the painting depicts a real person Anna Christina Olson who whose parents had befriended Wyeth and allowed him to use one of the spare bedrooms to paint.  

On this particular day Wyeth saw Christina crawling across a large field toward home.  She was on her hands and knees because she was afflicted with some condition, perhaps polio, that left her unable to walk.  Christina, art historians tell us, was firmly against the use of a wheelchair so she crawled everywhere she went.

  

The painting is iconic and evocative especially for those who are physically able, because it leaves us to wonder just how difficult it must have been for Christina to get anywhere -- from room to room in her home but even more so to cover such a long distance that she would have to cover in the painting to reach her home.

As great art is known to do, it draws us in, just as does today's gospel.

The characters are all well cast. There is the bent-over woman in desperate straits.   There is Jesus the Rabbi and healer.  And appearing as the villain is the leader of the synagogue.

As I have continually pointed out in our Bible Studies, and here in sermons, we must be careful with this.  In light of Anti-Semitism, and how we might feel about the occupation of Gaza and the calamity it has brought, broad generalizations about any group can get us into very deep and turbulent water.

To make matters a little more difficult (And more fun!) what if this story about Jesus is one of those things that aren’t what they seem at first glance?

I was pretty much on the glide path to an easy, breezy sermon until I came across the Wyatt painting of Christina and an article by Ben Mattlin who graduated cum laude from Harvard at 21, is the author of several books and, as a freelance financial journalist, has had articles published in numerous newspapers and magazines.  Mattlin is a husband, father of two daughters and a quadriplegic from birth.

His article, “A Disabled Life Is a Life Worth Living,” along with the painting may give us new insights into the woman and the best gift Jesus gave her in today’s Gospel.

Mattlin writes:

Growing up with a disability, I often became isolated. Feeling devalued by my peers, with no confidence in my future, I experienced intermittent but profound depression. One can take only so many surgeries, so many bodily betrayals, so much rejection, before wanting to give up. Even today, I can pivot from utter terror over an itch I can’t scratch or a bite of food I can’t quite swallow, to almost unbelievable joy if I manage to clear my throat unassisted or zoom my motorized wheelchair through a crowded street. As disabled people, we are endlessly buffeted by circumstances beyond our control.1

The article and the painting give us a real glimpse of the frustration the the disabled woman in the synagogue was feeling and it wasn’t good.

The words we heard to describe her today were that she was plagued by “a spirit that crippled her for eighteen years.”2 Other translations of this passage try to diagnose from a distance saying (and I am not making these up) she was bothered by: “arthritis”3 or, as J. B. Phillips suggested in his paraphrase: “some psychological cause.”4

We all know what it’s like when we are suffering with anything.  It doesn’t matter if what is bothering us is physical or psychosomatic.  When something is wrong, it can bend us low in body and spirit.  And most of all, as Mattlin points out it can leave us feeling isolated.  We can feel this way in the midst of a crowd or even when we are surrounded by friends and family.

The point is that Jesus sees her.  He interrupts his preaching and gets to healing.  Jesus not only sees her but calls her forward - which she probably hated because it drew attention to her infirmity.

When she has made her way through the crowd straining to look up but mostly seeing only ground, feet, and sandals she comes to Jesus.   I don’t think he was towering over her as the others were but rather, he stooped low and became as bent over as she was so that he could look her in the eye and see her face. 

Maybe for the first time in what seemed like forever she was eye to eye with another person and then this person touched her.

“‘Woman, you’re free!’” he said and then.  “He laid hands on her and suddenly she was standing straight and tall, giving glory to God.”5

The place goes wild and so does the religious leader. Religious leaders then and now have a tendency to be set off by the smallest things.  His complaint is that this could have waited.  This is the Sabbath!  The woman’s disease was not life threatening.  Neither she nor Jesus would be heading out of town before sundown because travel was forbidden and after dark it was dangerous.  They would both be  around tomorrow.  Couldn’t this have waited?

Of course it could have! 

They all could have reconvened at the same time the next day when the leader put the keys in the synagogue doors to open the place up but there were too many variables.

What if the woman went home and thought about how her life would change if she was healed and somehow decided for the status quo?  What if her family had become so used to her the way she was that they talked her out of going back?  What if her friends told her she had taken up enough of the rabbis’ time and wasn’t worthy of any more attention?

No!  There were too many other options and all of them were bad! For Jesus there was no time like the present!

Besides, he points out that if could lead their ox or donkey to water on the Sabbath.  “So, ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound—- think of it -—for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath?”6

Here is what I think embarrassed the people the most. 

Jesus knew that the wealthy among them could keep from disobeying the rules by being able to hire someone. They could afford to employ some outsider to do their work for them.  Light a candle.  Make a hot dinner.  Take care of all their chores.  They could pay someone to do it.

While the poor - which were most of the people present that day - could not.  If they needed a hot dinner, or a candle lit, or one of their animals fed and watered they had to do it themselves. 

They may have tried their best but more often than they wished necessity trumped legality.  They probably disobeyed strict Sabbath rules every week, not because they wanted to but because they had no other choice.

So, why not do this good work now?  Why not restore this woman to her rightful place in her community at this very moment?  Why wait?  Act!

That is how it is with Jesus who is always acting on our behalf, but it may not be in ways that we think.

Ben Mattlin continued in his article:

Indeed, some people find life after disability more intense, more deeply appreciated than it was before. My lifelong experience, with disability, has made me a creative problem-solver, and, ironically, perhaps, a diehard optimist, if only because I've had to be. It's taught me a great deal about patience, tolerance and flexibility. My disability is part of who I am.7

 Just as it was a part of who Christina in the painting and the woman with Jesus was. But Jesus tells us that our shortcomings do not have to define us which is what people do all the time. 

Good, well-meaning people have read this story and preached this story and come away with the conclusion that only a touch from Jesus will do the trick.  Let Jesus touch you and you will be healed. 

But what if this isn’t about Jesus’ healing? What if this is about Jesus’ acceptance and restoration to being a part of the community from which you have been separated?

In an interview with NPR Mattlin tells of attended a funeral for another quadriplegic friend where the young minister (It could have been an old minister too) said that his friend was "a free spirit, trapped in an unresponsive body. Now that spirit is truly free." 

We were told he'd gone to a place where he could walk again. His dad added "Walk? He's probably playing basketball in the nude.” The words stung. Mourners need to believe their loved one has gone to a better place. Yet what was the message here? Death sets you free and cures disability? Was he better off dead than disabled? I realize I'm biased. I have never ridden a motorcycle or done half the other physical things my friend used to love, but I do know one can live a pretty full life with a disability.

How limited is this vision of life, and of the afterlife? Are there no wheelchairs in heaven? I'm not buying it. For me, if there is a heaven, it's not a place where I'll be able to walk. It's a place where it doesn't matter if you can't.8

How about that for a liberating idea for Christina, for Mattlin, and for all of us?

How about that for an idea?  What if this isn’t about keeping the Sabbath laws but rather Jesus telling us that there is a place where we all are welcomed no matter what?  Wheelchair or no wheelchair, infirmity or no infirmity, we will be welcomed.   In the Kingdom of Heaven and in our community on earth it doesn’t matter what you can or can’t do Jesus wants all to be welcomed.

Wheelchairs in heaven?  Crawl into that idea for a moment. Mull that one over for a while.  Believe me when I tell you — I still am.

________________

1.  Ben Mattlin, “A Disabled Life Is a Life Worth Living.” The New York Times, October 5, 2016. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/05/opinion/a-disabled-life-is-a-life-worth-living.html.

2. St.  Luke 13:11. (NRSV) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version]

3. St.  Luke 13:11. (MSG) [MSG=The Message]

4. St.  Luke 13:11.  (PHILLIPS) [PHILLIPS=J. B. Phillips, The New Testament in Modern English. (London: HarperCollins, 2000. )

5. St.  Luke 13:13.  (MSG)

6. St.  Luke 13:16.  (NKJV) [NKJV= The New King James Version]

7. Mattlin, loc.cit. 

8. Ben  Mattlin. “Valuing Life, Whether Disabled or Not.” NPR Morning Edition. NPR, December 7, 2005. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5042181.

 

Pentecost 10C - "'Have no Fear.' What!?!?"

Genesis 15:1-6 and Saint Luke 12:32-40

 A running gag in comic strips for almost ever is that of “monsters under the bed” and no one did it better than Bill Watterson in his Calvin and Hobbes creations.

Calvin, as you remember, is an only child with a vivid imagination and Hobbes is his stuffed tiger who comes to life only for Calvin but cannot be heard by anybody else.  Calvin’s imagination leads him and his tiger on many adventures such a Spaceman Spiff, time travel in an old cardboard box, and in another cardboard box which Calvin calls his “Transmogrifer” which is able to turn him into anything or anyone he wants to be.

Sometimes Calvin’s imagination turns on him when he hears, or thinks he hears, a strange sound in the middle of the night and immediately determines that there must be a monster under his bed.  The thought leaves Calvin and Hobbes frozen.  Sometimes the battle the “monster” leaving their bedroom in a shambles and other times they yell for Calvin’s mother. In one of those strips Calvin calls out for water claiming to his mother that he can get it himself because of the monsters. So she appears with a classic case of bed-head hair that looks like she combed it with a balloon, a beyond sleepy face, a hastily thrown on nightgown, and a scowl that could stop a clock.  She turns on the light. Calvin takes one look at her and, as his eyes become as big as his face, screams.  

There is a whole volume devoted to such antics in the Calvin and Hobbes collection called Something Under the Bed is Drooling.

Calvin and Hobbes embody the idea behind the classic prayer “From Ghoulies and Ghoosties, long-leggety Beasties, and Things that go Bump in the Night, Good Lord, deliver us!”

Now, lest you think I read only these kinds of comics one of my other favourites appeared in The New Yorker.

The sketch pictures a man in bed late at night. He's sitting up, scribbling on a note pad, and talking on the phone. In the caption he tells his friend, "When I can't sleep, I find that it sometimes helps to get up and jot down my anxieties." Every square centimetre of the bedroom walls is covered with dozens of scribbled worries — war, recession, killer bees, aging, calories, sex, balding, radon gas, and so on.1

His worries have it all and so do ours as do the things that wake us up into the middle of the night that may not require so much as the slightest bump.

Into this scene comes Jesus who says: “Do not be afraid, little flock...” and before he finishes the sentence we are saying: “What! Are you kidding?”

This is one of those assertions that may or may not be true, but some have claimed that there “are 366 ‘Fear nots’ in the Bible, one for every day of the year, including Leap Year! God doesn’t want us to go a single day without hearing his word of comfort: ‘Fear not!’”2

I fear that summer is washing away far to quickly for me to spend anytime indoors counting but I will grant that “fear not” and “What! Are you kidding?” are reoccurring themes in scripture.

They certainly were for Abram and Sari who are growing older and the offspring that were promised have not yet materialized.  There may be snow on their roof and fire in the old furnace but, as yet, it sure looks like God was kidding because the nursery is still vacant; the baby furniture has years of accumulated dust on it, and Abram is beginning to feel like a bigger fool than he did when God got him into this whole business in the first place.

One day, seemingly out of the blue, the LORD speaks to Abram and says: “‘Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.’”3  “And then the story continues with four words that are as remarkable as they are few: ‘And so Abraham went.’ No doubt, no questions, no conditions. God promises, and Abraham simply trusts, obeys, and goes.”4

The late Dr. Lewis B. Smedes, leaving his imagination to go wild, invites us to consider that not everybody might have thought this fearless faith in God was such a good idea.      

Well, if he were my neighbour, and he said, “God came to me last night and told me to go out to the Los Angeles airport and that he would tell me which airline and which destination to go to, and I’m never coming back,” I would say to him, “Either you’re crazy, or God is doing something very peculiar.”5

 Monsters are beginning to appear under the old couple’s bed and all the Post-it note on their wall read: “Where is the baby?”

So, the LORD has to calm him down and reassure him that everything is going to be all right. He takes Abram outside and tells him:  “Look as far as you can see in every direction, for I am going to give it all to you and your descendants.” And I am going to give you so many descendants that, like dust, they can’t be counted!”6

So Abram, again, does what he is told. Abram is living, stuck really, between a hint of a dream and its full realization but, even so, he is becoming increasing frustrated.

Dr. Elizabeth Arnold of the Candler School of Theology reminds us at this point.

Let’s don’t judge Abram harshly. I don’t think he is in the wrong. Abram has consistently obeyed God each time that God issued a promise, while God has not yet delivered. In a relationship of trust, both parties are allowed expectations for promises to be kept.7

 And it is here that God does something lovely that calms Abram’s fears.  I’d like to think that God takes Abram by the hand, leads him out of his tent, shows him the night sky, and simply repeats the promise.   “Look up into the heavens and count the stars if you can. Your descendants will be like that—too many to count!”8 And Abram believes again.

I never noticed one aspect to this story before.  All along I thought Abram was just an easy mark. Repeat a long-delayed promise and he’ll fall right into line.  But this time things are different.  Before Abram was looking at what he had, the abundance which he has procured for himself: carpets and cushions, clothes and coffeepots.  He’s looking around and then he is looking down when he is promised that his decendents will be as numerous as “the dust of the earth.”9

Dust of the earth!  Dust is that stuff that gathers under our beds!  Dust is something we try to get rid of and, in my case, fail miserably.  In order to see dust we have to look down.

This time the LORD is inviting Abram to look up.  Counting specks of dust will only remind us what bad housekeepers we are, but looking up at the stars will cause us to marvel at the wonders of creation.

Astronaut James Lovell died this past week at 97. He was the one who took was has come to be known as the “Earthrise” photo that showed the “Earth peeking out from beyond the lunar surface as the first crewed spacecraft circumnavigated the Moon.”10

On Christmas Eve of 1968, on that same mission Lovell, and fellow astronauts Frank Borman and William Anders with “only the instruction to say something ‘appropriate’ decided to read from the creation account in the Book of Genesis”11 which concludes with the words: “Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good.”

If I read today’s gospel correctly what Jesus is trying to get us to do is to look up from under our beds and keep awake for when we do we just might be surprised to find not a thief busting in in the middle of the night or even our mom, half-asleep with hair askew but a master with robe adjusted and ready to serve us.

It will be as surprising as if on Downtown Abbey we found Lady Violet Crawley, The Dowager Countess of Grantham, known for her acerbic wit, downstairs in the servant's quarters, serving tea and cakes to her manservants and maidservants.

That where Jesus tells us we find in him if we only look up and trust.

Rummaging around in my very dusty library one day I found a book originally belonging to my Aunt Eve.  It was called A Man Called Peter and is the biography of Peter Marshall – not the host of the “Hollywood Squares” – but the former chaplain of the United States Senate and preacher at the Washington’s New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in the 1940's.

In one of his sermons Dr. Marshall wrote:

When you are weary and sit down in a chair, you do not sit rigid, expecting the chair to collapse beneath you.

When you lay down on your bed, you do not lay like a poker — tense, rigid.  You trust the bed to hold you.  You do not worry about the bed collapsing and depositing you on the floor.

You don’t lie there all tense ... listening for the sound of a burglar at the window ... or the crackle of flames from the basement ... or the trembling of the earth in a possible earthquake.

If you did you would not get much sleep.  You trust your bed. You trust your precautions against burglars. You trust the police force, and the fire brigade, and you trust yourself to sleep, which is another way of saying you trust yourself to God.12

Trust in him, Jesus seems to be saying and maybe, just maybe, there won’t even be any monsters under your bed. 

______________

1. Dan Clendenin, “‘Don’t Worry About Your Life’: Jesus Speaks to Our Fears and Anxieties,” Journey with Jesus, August 8, 2010, https://journeywithjesus.net/essays/3637-20100802JJ.

2. Lloyd John Ogilvie, Facing the Future without Fear: Prescriptions for Courageous Living in the New Millennium (Ann Arbor, , MIchigan: Vine Books, 2002).

3. Genesis 12:1–2.  (NIV) [NIV=The New International Version]

4. David Lose, “‘Previously in Genesis’ ,” A Sermon for Every Sunday (asermonforeverysunday.com, July 29, 2022), https://asermonforeverysunday.com/sermons/c37-ninth-sunday-after-pentecost-year-c-2019/.

5. Bill D. Moyers, Genesis: A Living Conversation (New York, NY: Broadway Books, 2002), 160.

6. Genesis 13:14-17. (TLB) [TLB=The Living Bible {Carol Stream; Tyndale House Publishers, 1971}]

7. Elizabeth Arnold, “Go Outside and Play,” episode, Day 1 (Atlanta, Georgia, August 10, 2025). P. 3

8. Genesis 15:5.  (TLB) 

9. Genesis 13:16. (NRSVUE) [NRSVUE=The New Revised Standard Version Updated edition.]

10. James Lovell, “Apollo 8: Earthrise,” NASA, December 23, 2020, https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/apollo-8-earthrise/.

11. Jonah McKeown, “Jim Lovell, NASA Astronaut Who Read Genesis from Lunar Orbit, Dies at 97,” National Catholic Register August 8, 2025, https://www.ncregister.com/news/astronaut-jim-lovell-dies-at-97-0ezqfaos.

12. Peter Marshall, “Sin in the Present Tense.” in A  Man Called Peter: The Story of Peter Marshall  by Catherine Marshall. (New York, NY: McGrow Hill, 1951), 305-306.

Pentecost 9C - "The Man Who Mistook His Life for a Barn" {Updated Edition}

Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-23

Saint Luke 12:13–31

One night, not so long ago when I probably couldn’t find a sporting event or one of the “cozy mysteries” on PBS I was doing what most guys do when they are bored and staring at the television.  I was channel surfing.

I had surfed so long that I was up into the high numbers that the folks at DirecTV have now assigned to the religious broadcasters when I came across some old guy playing the piano. 

Please understand that I use the term “old guy” advisedly because sometimes when I see a person either on TV, in the movies, or on stage I wonder to myself, “Is that person still around.  They must be 1,000 years old!” However, when I Google them, quite often they turn out to be younger than I am now.

While I recognized the old guys face, I more fully recognized him by his piano playing.  It was the mixture of Gospel and honkey-tonk that made him one of the most popular televangelists of the 1980's.  

It was Jimmy Swaggart, whom CBS newsman Dan Rather once called “the country’s greatest speaker.”1

He was something! A real force of nature!  He was an unashamed Pentecostal “whose  preachers excelled at rousing audiences’ ardour, and Swaggart commanded the stage better than most. He paced, pounced and poured forth sweat while begging listeners to turn from sin and accept Jesus.

In 1982, Newsweek magazine noted his musical chops, naming him the “King of Honky Tonk Heaven.” 

Swaggart’s on-stage charisma powered the launch of a television ministry that would reach millions within a decade. Viewers were captivated by his soulful tunes and fire-and-brimstone sermons. At its height, Swaggart’s show was televised in 140 countries, including Peru, the Philippines and South Africa.

His ministry also became the largest mail-order business in Louisiana, selling books, tapes, T-shirts and biblical memorabilia. Thanks to the US$150 million raised annually from donations and sales, Swaggart lived in an opulent mansion, possessed a private jet previously owned by the Rockefellers, sported a yellow gold vintage Rolex and drove a Jaguar.2

 His lifestyle was heavenly while he was sending all sorts of other folk to the fires of hell "as he denounced what he called “‘cults,’ including Catholicism, Judaism and Mormonism ... warning followers about the evils of abortion, homosexuality and godless communism.”3

It all came crashing down when he was caught in a dalliance with another woman who was not his wife.  (Believe me! I worked long and hard to make that last sentence palatable to a church audience.)  Confessing his guilt “Swaggart delivered an histrionic apology before 7,000 parishioners.  Through copious tears, sobbing and shouting, Swaggart abased himself, stirring the crowd into such a frenzy that some began speaking in tongues.”4

Upon his death on the 1st of July at the age of 90 (Gee! He was older than me!) what led off the announcement of his passing was not his preaching or piano playing it was his tear-stained confession.  

“I have sinned against You, my Lord. And I would ask that Your precious blood would wash and cleanse every stain, until it is in the seas of God's forgetfulness, never to be remembered against me anymore.”5

“Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity... and a chasing after wind.”6

 

One could certainly say that Swaggart gave into his vanity. Calling out the sins of other’s he thought his would never be found out.  While he could have been remembered as, in Dan Rather’s words, “one of the country’s greatest speakers” upon his death he was remembered in one headline as being “the sobbing preacher who imploded in a scandal.”  His vanity caused him to look more than foolish.

Jesus told a story about a foolish guy once.

Only with the guy in Jesus’ story, Dr. Fred B. Craddock reminds us in his commentary on Luke; there is no hint of scandal. There is nothing here of graft or theft, there is not mistreatment of workers or any criminal act. Sun, soil, and rain join to make him wealthy.  He is careful and conservative. He is not unjust.7

In fact, we “honor these people in our yearly roundup of ‘the most successful’ and the most famous’ in our celebrity magazines. 

Here is a prudent, productive man whom we might call a success. He is not only a success in farming but he is also a wise manager. He builds great secure barns to hold all of his grand harvest. We might give him the “Farmer of the Year" award.8

 With full barns and ample savings, he is well fixed to sail into a prosperous and happy retirement.

Here we have the fabled American Dream, work hard, be prudent, save wisely, put things aside today for security in the future.  Then sit back, relax, and enjoy the fruits of your labor.9

As one of my pastors, the always insightful Dr. Lucy Foster-Smith wrote in a devotional:

It is that this dude is living out his life for himself: he talks to himself, he makes all of his plans for himself, he is so proud of himself, he probably would have had a portrait of himself on every door of the barns. His life shrunk inside as his possessions expanded exponentially. Jesus says he was a fool. In amassing it all for himself, he filled his life with things and crowded out his very life.10

In short, this guy mistook his life for a barn.  His life was all about him and his possessions.  

“Jesus takes us inside his head for an intriguing little chat.”11  By my count ten times in three sentences, he uses “I” or “my”.  If you run them together, he sounds rather full of himself.

‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’

“Just as he’s plotting bigger barns, he drops dead. God isn’t punishing him for his plans, or for his productivity. God isn’t punishing him at all. His time simply is up.”12

In the parable God finally gets a word in edgewise with a very important question: “Your barnful of goods—who gets it?”13

He would have done well to heed the warning of the writer of Ecclesiastes. “I hated all my toil in which I had toiled under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to those who come after me —and who knows whether they will be wise or foolish?”14

The author of this bit of the Good Book is the exact opposite of the self-absorbed landowner.  The one thing the landowner has going for him is that he is, at least, positive. The author of Ecclesiastes  is a bit of a downer.  The New Revised Standard Version uses the word, “vanity.”  In the Hebrew the word means “vapor,” “mist,” or “whisp.” It’s all meaninglessness or triviality.”15

Both these authors are totally self-absorbed.  One has so ignored his mortality that he has forgotten to write a will while the other is worried that his beneficiary might be a bozo.  What is left out of one’s exaltation and the other’s lamentation is God.

Without God life is an unhappy business.  Treasures mean nothing.  Life is meaningless.

What we can be left with this morning is two examples of “precisely the sort of person you should not become, and exactly the foolish behavior you should avoid at all costs.”16

I think we know that.  

I think Jimmy Swaggart knew deep down in his heart of hearts that he was becoming the kind of person he had taught others what they should avoid being at all costs.  I think he knew that when he was “a $30-a-week itinerant Louisiana preacher”17  but fame, and glory, and money, and power caused him to forget. 

It is so easy to forget.  It is so easy to put our faith in what we have and what we have built.  It is so easy to mistake our life for our barns.

That’s why we need this place and places like it.  It is where we go to be reminded that is something more to life than we think there is.

We’re not hearing this kind of thing alone on our Sunday morning run unless you are remembering where you’ve heard it and deciding to pick-up the pace so you can hurry back to the place where you will hear it again.

We’re not hearing this at Lolapaloosa jammed in with thousands of our closest friends to hear music on Chicago’s lakefront. 

But we’ve heard it here so that later in the week when, just when we need it most, it will come to us with all the force of a hint. 

Later on in the book the author of Ecclesiastes will get the hint.  After moved by the spirit to write those couplets made famous by Peter, Paul, and Mary: “a time to be born, a time to die...” The author hints at what I have been trying to tell you when the words appear: “{God} has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, He has put eternity in their hearts.”

Here in this place, we have been reminded that there is something more.  That our life in more than a barn filled with goods.  That it is not all vanity.  That eternity can come into our hearts, and hands, and hearts, and minds.

Its here now in song, and word, and in the bread and wine all of which is Christ’s own gifts to us.

  

Here we receive a barn full of grace.  Its grace that is worth more than a barn-full of goods.  It “grace-a-paloza”! 

Embracing this grace, living out this grace, when our time comes maybe just maybe we’ll be remembered as someone who was “rich toward God” and in that way as someone who was rich indeed.

________________

1. Diane Winston, “Jimmy Swaggart’s Rise and Fall Shaped the Landscape of American Televangelism,” The Conversation, July 11, 2025, https://theconversation.com/jimmy-swaggarts-rise-and-fall-shaped-the-landscape-of-american-televangelism-260377.

2. https://dornsife.usc.edu/news/stories/jimmy-swaggarts-rise-and-fall-shaped-the-landscape-of-american-televangelism/

3. Winston,. loc.cit. 

4. “The Televangelist Who Imploded in a Sex Scandal,” The Week, July 18, 2025, 35.

5. Michael E. Eidenmuller, “Jimmy Swaggart - Apology Sermon (21 Feb 1988),” American Rhetoric, February 21, 1988, https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/jswaggartapologysermon.html.

6. Ecclesiastes 1:2 & 14.  (NRSV) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version updated edition]

7. Fred B. Craddock, Luke: Interpretation Bible Commentary  (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1990), 163.

8. William H. Willimon, “Wise Up,” Pulpit Resource, Year C, 35, no. 3 (July 1, 2025): 25–28.

9. William H. Willimon, “Wise Up,” Pulpit Resouce 21, no. 3 (2022): pp. 15-17.

10. Lucy Foster-Smith, “Luke 12:13-21,” Devotion for Saturday, July 30, 2022. Fourth Presbyterian Church (Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago, 2022), https://www.fourthchurch.org/devotions/2022/073022.html.

11. James C. Howell, “What Can We Say August 3? 8th after Pentecost,” James Howell’s Weekly Preaching Notions, 1AD, https://jameshowellsweeklypreachingnotions.blogspot.com/.

12.     ibid.

13. St. Luke 12. 20. (MSG) {MSG=The Message. Eugene H. Peterson, “St. Luke 12:20.,” in The Message: The New Testament in Contemporary English (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 1995).

14. Ecclesiastes 2:17. (NRSV)

15.    Eli Lizorkin-Eyzenberg and Nicholas Schaser, “Is Everything Vanity the Hebrew Meaning of Hevel,” Is Everything Vanity The Hebrew Meaning of Hevel (Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality!  December 8, 2021), https://www.patheos.com/articles/is-everything-vanity-the-hebrew-meaning-of-hevel

16. Richard Lischer, Reading the Parables (Louisville, , KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2014), 36.

17.    The Week, loc.cit.

Pentecost 6C - "Dinner Party Does and Don'ts"

Saint Luke 10:38-42

 I‘ve always had two recurring nightmares when it comes to dinner parties.

The first is one that I am hosting where the guests more than make themselves at home.

The moment they walk in the head directly for the liquor cabinet where they help themselves to the “top shelf” items that I have been saving for more special occasions than this one.

Well satiated they sit down to dinner where they eat everything but the drapes.

Dessert is consumed so quickly that if one took the time later to ask them what it was, they wouldn’t be able to remember.

When they have had their fill, it is time for after dinner drinks which, of course, they consume with great gusto.

Spotting a pool in my backyard and feeling a little flushed from all the alcohol running through their systems they ask if they can go for a swim.  Gracious, but now oppressed host that I am, I say yes.  

Much, much later the guests emerge from the water only to announce that they are too tipsy and too tired to drive home and ask if they can stay the night.

They spot the spare bedroom – which now I know I should have turned into a walk-in closet – and retire for the night.

They wake the next morning looking for breakfast...then lunch ... then another round of drinks, dinner, swimming and sleep and before I know it, in my nightmare, they are petitioning the aldermen on my behalf to build one of those granny-flats over my garage.

I usually wake at this point and check the house to make sure that Aayu and I are alone.

My second reoccurring nightmare includes being invited over to the home of Mary and Martha for dinner.  

These two sister’s personalities are polar opposites.  They are a family feud ready to happen. They are as far apart emotionally as two people can be.  They shouldn’t be sharing the house let alone a table with each other. In fact, they are so different that one can wonder if they belong together on the same planet.

Yet, here is Jesus with them in one of his many encounters, accepting their invitation and finding himself in the midst of a confrontation he unwittingly and unwillingly participated in.

I‘ve always felt funny preaching about Mary and Martha because, in case you haven’t noticed, I a guy, and I don’t think guys have any business opining about what was like to be a woman in the first century or in the twenty-first century.  

One of the life-commandments my Uncle Herb gave me as a child was: “It’s one thing to have an opinion and it is quite another thing to have an informed opinion.”

So, let me start with a Sally, a character from Amor Towles wonderful best seller The Lincoln Highway.

I am a good Christian. I believe in Jesus Christ… But I am not willing to believe that Jesus would turn his back on a woman who was taking care of a household. From a man’s point of view, the one thing needful is that you sit at his feet and listen to what he has to say, no matter how long it takes, or how often he’s said it before. By his figuring, you have plenty of time for sitting and listening because a meal is something that makes itself. Like manna, it falls from heaven. Any woman who’s gone to the trouble of baking an apple pie can tell you that’s how a man sees.1

 And that seems to be the difficulty.  I don’t know what Mary’s life was like and I don’t know what Martha’s life was like.

So, I take very seriously the warning issued by Dr. Fred B. Craddock in his commentary on Luke’s Gospel.  He says:

We must not cartoon the scene: Martha to her eyeballs in soapsuds, Mary pensively on a stool in the den and Jesus giving scriptural warrant for letting dishes pile high in the sink. If we censure Martha too harshly, she may abandon serving altogether, and if we commend Mary too profusely, she may sit there forever.2

 “If we’re not careful, we’ll get a picture of Martha who always sits at the dinner table sideways, ready to leap into action every time somebody needs something from the stove. And Mary will be so lazy she doesn’t even stoop over to tie her shoes.”3

 But there we are with Mary sitting and Martha steaming. 

Neither Jesus nor Mary have picked up on the commotion coming from the kitchen until the moment when Martha blasts into the room and, at this point, won’t even speak directly to her sister but goes to Jesus and says “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”4

To which Jesus replies: “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things, but few things are needed—indeed only one. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”5

Oh, yes!  That was helpful!  I’m sure that calmed everything down immediately.  But, as I said, I’m a guy, and a Ben Dunholm, another guy, wisely wrote in a Christian Century article.  “I have yet to meet an overworked male who felt implicated in this story...”6

But for women scholars this little confrontation over dinner could have, should have, gone in a whole different direction.

Joy Douglas Stome, retired Pastor of Lakeview Presbyterian, wished that “Jesus had said something different: ‘You’re absolutely right, Martha. What was I thinking? Why don’t we all come into the kitchen and help with the dishes and talk while we work?’ One twist of phrase and the Mary-Martha struggle could easily have been sidelined while Jesus’ main point was still made.”7

But Debbi Thomas was in full Martha mode when she wrote:

I wish Jesus had done more.  I wish he’d rounded up his (male) disciples, ushered them into the kitchen, and directed them to bake the bread, fry the fish, and chop the vegetables — all while Martha took a much-needed nap.  I wish he’d said, “Peter, you wash the dishes.  James and John, you put away the leftovers. Judas, get the beds made.  Andrew, you’re on sweeping and mopping duty, and the rest of you: go ask the women what else they need done.  Oh, and in case you boys are wondering: this “girlie” stuff isn’t a prelude to the sacred.  This stuff is the sacred.”8

And that is a point well made.

Painfully, through the years, Martha has been made out to be the one who has not chosen wisely – preferring kitchen duty to sitting at Jesus feet.  And Mary, she’s been our example of the life of a good Christian.  Just sitting and listening to Jesus, listening to Jesus, listening to Jesus. 

As someone who sees themself as being neither particularly pious and certainly not profound, if I had to choose, I would rather be a Martha than a Mary.  And it should come as no surprise that I gravitate toward people who are neither pious or profound. 

I rather be serving up a burger and a beer rather than trying to wow people with my knowledge of the bible and theology and the good news of this story is “that if study is your thing, by all means sit at the young rabbi's feet. If caring through cooking is your thing or cleaning up or serving the poor or getting things done—do the same”9 because I think if we asked Jesus if we should be a Mary or a Martha his answer, surprisingly, would be, “Yes. But, without all the carping.” 

______________

1.  Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2023).

2. Fred B. Craddock, Luke: Interpretation Bible Commentary  (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1990), 152.

3. Randy L. Hyde, "Sermon, Luke 10:38-42, It's All in the Timing," Sermon Writer, July 08, 2019, , accessed July 20, 2019, https://www.sermonwriter.com/sermons/new-testament-luke-1038-42-its-all-in-the-timing-hyde/.

4. St. Luke 10:40. (NIV) [NIV=The New Internation Version]

5.  St. Luke 10:41. (NRSV) [NRSV=The New Revised Standand Version Updated Edition]

6. Benjamin J. Dueholm, “Marthas Without Gender,” The Christian Century, July 15, 2013, https://www.christiancentury.org/blogs/archive/2013-07/marthas-without-gender? 

7. Joy Douglas Strome, “Kitchen Relief: Luke 10:38-42,” The Christian Century, July 10, 2007, https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2007-07/kitchen-relief-0.

8. Debie Thomas, “Only One Thing,” Journey with Jesus, July 14, 2019, https://journeywithjesus.net/essays/2282-only-one-thing.

9. Elizabeth Myer Bolton, “Martha’s Problem: What Is the ‘Better Part’?” The Christian Century, March 8, 2011, https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2011-02/martha-s-problem?=0_-31c915c0b7-86361464.