“Shrewd! Very Shrewd!” - Pentcost 15C

Saint Luke 16:1-13

If there is one thing that all of us in this room know it is that life is full of uncertainty.

We may try to be optimistic people who are a pleasure to be around but sometimes it is hard, very hard, when we don’t know what will come next.  It’s difficult to be optimistic in those times when we don’t know how things are going to work out. 

Remember the first time you  fell in love?  Perhaps it was in high school or college.  You thought you had found your partner for  life.  They were more than you could ever ask for, dream about, and then they dumped you.  At this young age you were probably devastated and came to the conclusion that Dionne Warwick was right as you sang sadly to yourself:  “I’ll never fall in love again.”

Or, perhaps it was when you were older and you found that the one you thought you was going to spend the rest of your life with decided in the words of the poet/philosopher Meat Loaf that “if they had to spend another minute with you they didn’t think they could ever survive.”

Maybe it was the time when the company you had spent years working for downsized and you were going to have to find a new job later in your career.

Uncertainty can come while you wait for a report about your health or the health of a loved one.

Everybody who has ever lived past adolescence into adulthood knows the perils of uncertainty.  We also know that the course of our lives is determined by how we handle any uncertainty that comes our way.

The example that Jesus gives of the crooked manager in today’s parable is almost a reverse angle look at someone who had a very creative way of facing his uncertainty.  Jesus is being so creative with his story that it has puzzled scholars from the very moment Saint Luke included it in his gospel.  Almost everyone that I read described this parable as leaving them baffled.

I, on the other hand, think it is deceptively easy.

What we have before us a crook who got caught.

If you read the business section you know all about him and his kind.  They are the ones who overinflate the earnings of their companies.  They make the profits seem bigger and the loses smaller than they really are.  They have no second thoughts about “ginning the books.”

Then the day arrives when the audit committee shows up!  Somebody is going to come in and try to add up figures that don’t add up.  Outsiders will try to reconcile books that cannot be reconciled no matter what kinds of Voodoo accounting practices are used.  Instead of rolling in dough they will find out that the company is actually drowning in debt.

We know these types of managers and if their shenanigans have affected the bottom line of our pension plans we don’t like them very much.  However, the guy Jesus is telling us about has a certain endearing quality to him.

To his credit he is exceedingly self-aware.  He knows his limits and they are many.  He says of himself: “I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg.”1  He frankly and honestly assesses his skills and determines that he doesn’t have any.   He is fast becoming like the guy who is pictured above looking at a chart of his business potential and seeing an arrow pointing ever downward. 

At this point he has two choices: He can stare at that chart forever or he can do something, anything. The manager decides to do something. 

“Ah, I know what I’ll do so that when I lose my position people will welcome me into their homes!”2

At this point you are either going to be aghast or your going to smile.

The manager calls his master’s debtors in, one by one, and begins to go over their books. 
But instead of bad news the only thing he has for them is good news.

“Listen!” he says to the first.  “We’ve been going over the accounts and there has been some mistake.” You can feel the tension rising.   “It says here you owe $100,000 but I think someone has programmed in too many zeros.  It can’t be that much!  Let’s make it $50,000.”  The tension is gone as suddenly there are handshakes all around.

The next guy comes in and it is the same story.  “I’ve been looking over your accounts and that statement we sent you is all wrong.  That $50,000 you owe us should only read $25,000.  That’s it!  That’s all you owe!  Look for me  at the pub and buy me a drink.  Winks and nods this time because everybody knows what is going on.

So it goes as one by one people come in and find their debts being magically reduced.  Before long the whole town owes the conniving manager a favor.

The unseemly steward is handling his uncertainty by making certain that, at the end of the day, if he hasn’t made a few real friends at least he’ll have more than a few people  who will owe him big time.
From little on we have been told that parables are earthly stories that have a heavenly meaning but this one seems to have a lot of ungodliness thrown in.

We expect that when the rich man found out what his manager was doing the police would be called, a grand jury would be impaneled, and the manager would be indicted.  There would be handcuffs for the man and maybe even a perp-walk but, much to our amazement, this isn’t what happens at all.

When the manager is finally called on the carpet he discovers that his boss has rolled out a red one.  His boss says:

“You, you business genius you!  I wish all these priggish sons-of-light in this company showed as much individual initiative, worldly wisdom and commercial creativity!  You are one shrewd operator.  I’m moving you up to the front office.”3

What?

Wait Jesus that is not how parables are supposed to work and they usually do but this one doesn’t. 

This time Jesus leaves us confused and so shall we ever be if we think this little story is only about money.  This is about much more than how we handle our finances it is about how we handle any uncertainty than may come our way.

When the auditors  showed up, the manager’s future was uncertain.  He didn’t know what he would do but instead of wallowing he got to work.  In an often overlooked part of the parable he helped out his neighbors by reducing their debt load. 

Some politicians of our day know very well the benefits of offering people a free everything and they like to do it with somebody else’s money.  The crooked manager did that too.  He was giving away his master’s money as if it were his own and in so doing he was making the rich man look benevolent.
Listen to me very carefully now otherwise you are going to miss something very important.

Those people downstream who were receiving the write-off didn’t know who it was coming from.  We know it was the steward but they didn’t.  For all they knew he was acting at the behest of the boss.  So, the rich guy got credit too.

All of a sudden, as he walked around town where once there were scowls now there were smiles.  Now, when he strolled down the street instead of hiding from him people were coming up to him to thank him for his kindness. 

No wonder he was so positive toward his crafty manager!  The rich man had gone from being a miserly pariah to being the “toast of the town.”  It cost him a ton of money but the goodwill he received in return might have proved to be worth it.

The people benefitted, his boss benefitted, and the steward benefitted because he got off with a commendation rather than incarceration. 

We good God-fearing folk misunderstand this parable because we want it to be a good, god-fearing story about money.  It isn’t.  It is about something more and what this something-moreness is can be found in the concluding sentence.  J.B. Phillips paraphrases it this way: “For the children of this world are considerably more shrewd in dealing with their contemporaries than the children of light.”4

Dr.  Thomas G.  Long  said “what Jesus wanted them—and us—to get out of this story [is that he wished] the people of God  . . .  were as shrewd for the gospel as the wheeler-dealers out there in the world are shrewd for themselves.  In other words, there are people out there in the culture who get up every morning scheming for a buck, focusing every ounce of energy on feathering their nests, working in overdrive to save themselves and to scramble to the top of the heap.  ‘I wish God's people,’ Jesus says, ‘would be just as focused and energetic for their beloved community.’"5

Some of us “children of light” when confronted with any uncertainty like to play it safe.  We like to act prudently.  We don’t like to spend what we don’t have or commit ourselves unless we know that we are going to succeed.  We like to be certain before we act.

But the “children of the world” know how to look after themselves. 

In Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase, The Message, the passage says this about these “streetwise people”:

They are on constant alert, looking for angles, surviving by their wits. I want you to be smart in the same way—but for what is right—using every adversity to stimulate you to creative survival, to concentrate your attention on the bare essentials, so you’ll live, really live.6

The reason so many are confused by this parable is that they think it is all about money.  In the parable money is only a tool.  Money here is only a literary device.

What is key to understanding is to watch how the steward reacts to the most uncertain time in his life.

He doesn’t just stand there waiting for the bottom to completely fall out.  He takes action!  He uses the only thing he knows how to use for not only his own benefit but for the benefit of his boss and even the entire community.

The steward takes the only thing he knows how to use and uses it.

So the question for us is what is the one, two or three things we do really, really well?  What are the tools in our toolbox that we go to most often when we are uncertain?  What are the gifts we have been given?

Find them!  Use them. 

And in the end we just might hear words that we never thought we would ever hear from the lips of our Lord: “Shrewd!  Very Shrewd!”

 _____________________

1.  St. Luke 16:3c.  (NRSV) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version]

2.  St. Luke 16:4.  (PHILLIPS) [J. B. Phillips, The New Testament in Modern English.  (London: HarperCollins, 2000.)]

3. William H.Willimon,  “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.” Pulpit Resource. vol. 41, no. 3 (2013): 49–52.

4.  St. Luke 16:8.  (PHILLIPS)

5.  Thomas G. Long, “Making Friends,” Journal for Preachers, vol. 30, no. 4, Pentecost 2007, 55.

6.   St.  Luke 16:8-9.  (MSG) [MSG=The Message]

"Lost and Found Department" - Pentecost 14C

Exodus 32:7-14
Saint Luke 15:1-10

In the midst of what was a misty morning last Sunday thousands gathered on Northerly Island, the site of the former Meig’s Field, to do church.  Kind of.

Most of us  missed this.  I didn’t know about it until I saw the screaming headline in the Sun-Times on Monday.  It said: “Thousands See Kanye West Perform ‘Sunday Service.’”

“Sunday Service” is an outgrowth of something that began early this year in the home of West and his socially media savvy wife Kim Kardashian when they invited some of their “A-list” friends over to do church in a very different Hollywood way.   It is so different that all those attending this invite only “church” have to sign non disclosure agreements even though they readily share moments on Instagram.

“There’s no praying,” Kardashian told Jimmy Kimmel, on his late-night show. “There’s no sermon. There’s no word. It’s just music, and it’s just a feeling.”1

A very pricey feeling. 

According to The Chicago Tribune some of the free tickets given away by a local radio station were being listed on “Craigslist  . . .   with prices ranging from $100 to $300.”2 (We should be doing as well!)

Grace in this case was neither free nor was it gospel.

In a segment on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” The New Yorker Magazine’s Jia Tolentino said of West at a similar event: "He is the church . . .  he is the text of the sermon. It's his songs. He is the worship. He is creating a church in himself and selling it.  There's always this sense ... that he might worship God but never serve him. It's always seemed like God, in the end, would always serve him.”3

That kind of stuff will get you in trouble as it did for the Israelites when they we’re waiting for Moses to come down from the mountaintop with the Ten Commandments.

They had no idea what Moses was doing at the top of Mount Sinai they only knew that he was taking a long time to do it.  So they took off all their gold jewelry, melted it down and made it into a calf worthy of worship.  If the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob wouldn’t serve them they would find one that would.  They would create their own god.

They decided to turn their back on God who took them by the hand and led them out of slavery in the land of Egypt.  They decided that there had to be a god somewhere that would provide better provisions than just bread and birds.  They decided that they could make a god for themselves that would respond quicker to their needs.  They wanted a better god than the one they had so they made one.  And they worshiped it!

The real God is justifiably miffed and decides that the only thing that can be done with this stiff necked people is to wipe them out.

It is at this point, “Moses becomes a public relations agent for the divine.  ‘What will the Egyptians say about you, Lord?’ he wonders aloud to the Almighty.  It is as if Moses suggests that God has a reputation to keep, and destroying Israel would look bad”4 especially to the Egyptians.

I think the biggest temptation for God, in the midst of human rebellion, is to throw up God’s hands in despair and say: “All right then!  I will leave you alone!  I will leave you to your own devises.”

When that happens, we may look like the guy in the Lost and Found booth on today’s bulletin cover.  We’ll be sitting there with our initiative, our innocence, our perspective, our sense of humor, our capacity to change and even our strength to go on, all lost.  It isn’t a pretty sight when that happens.  And it almost never happens all at once.

Michael Yaconelli, in his book, Dangerous Wonder: The Adventure of Childlike Faith, tells the story of a farmer who tried to explain to him why cows sometimes find themselves lost in the middle of another farmer’s field.

A cow is nibbling on a tuft of grass in the middle of a field, moving from one tuft to the next.  Before you know it, she ends up at some grass next to the fence.  Noticing a nice clump of grass on the other side  . . .  the cow stumbles through an old tear  . . .  and finds herself outside.  “Cows don’t intend to get lost,” the farmer explained, “they just nibble their way to lostness.”5

The good news is that God never does leave us alone.  We may think God has.  We may feel God has.  However, even with the stiff-necked Children of Israel bowing down before a golden calf – a god of their own making – God decides to keep coming after us never willing to leave us all on our own.

The reoccurring story of the whole bible is about God who keeps looking for us when we “nibble our way to lostness.” 

That’s what Jesus is trying to get across to those who grumble in today’s gospel. 

They complain that Jesus is breaking bread with “sinners and tax collectors” two groups that the religious would just as well tell to “get lost.”  They had no use for these people.  Not only would they wouldn’t eat with them they wouldn’t even talk to them. 

Jesus is telling them that these are exactly the people God wants because God never gives up on any – including Pharisees or scribes – who wander away.

Jesus underscores this by casting as the heros in his story two groups that were especially looked down upon by his society – a woman and a shepherd. 

Shepherds were generally considered to be poor social outcasts.  Women [were thought to be second  class citizens] relegated to the margins of society.  So Jesus is illustrating the nature of the kingdom of God with two persons from the margins.  People who work hard to find one sheep or one lost coin are probably poor people ... who search for that which is lost with a kind of desperation.6

Now that’s an image of God.  God doesn’t give up but God searches in desperation!  God is like a shepherd who will search over every hill and valley looking for any of us when we go astray.  God is like a woman who will sweep every corner of her house until what she is looking for is found.

And when we are found God doesn’t just lead the sheep back into the fold but God throws a party out of all proportion.  God doesn’t just throw the coin into her loose change bowl but invites her neighbors and friends to a party that would make even the Hollywood elite jealous.

We might make God as angry as the Children of Israel with their gold cow, or the shepherd at the sheep, or the woman at herself for losing the coin  but God doesn’t stop there.  God never stops looking.  

Speaking of those who go searching for God at a Kanye West “Sunday Service”Gia Tolentino says:

"There's so much ambient hunger and desperation in so many aspects of our culture right now. The need, I'm sure is sincere. What kind of made me sad about watching it was it's just, 'Is this the thing that will fill it?' I'm not sure. It seems like the incorrect answer to an extremely real hunger."7

There had to have been a real hunger among those who ventured out on a misty and cold morning to attend a “Sunday Service” led by and for Kanye West.  

What West and his like tries to convince us that we can live our lives on our own, the authors of our own fate and the creators of our own gods.  That leaves us lost in the “lost and found department.”

Jesus, on the other hand,  portrays God lovingly reaching out, seeking, intruding, and saving us from ourselves.

When we are embraced by Jesus we discover that we are no longer lost but have been found by the very one we have been looking for. God has been looking for us all along and we have been found by none other than Jesus Christ our Lord who declares that, as far as he is concerned, we don’t have to visit the lost and found department ever again.

May this be true not only for all of us but for all of God wandering children.

____________
 
1. Gia Tolentino. (2019).  “Kanye West's Sunday Service is Full of Longing and Self-promotion.” The New Yorker. [online] Available at: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/kanye-wests-sunday-service-is-full-of-longing-and-self-promotion [Accessed 14 Sep. 2019].

2. Jessi Roti. “Kanye West Brings His Gospel to Northerly Island.” The Chicago Tribune, September 9, 2019, Morning edition, sec. 4. http://digitaledition.chicagotribune.com/html5/desktop/production/default.aspx?&edid=a5a127e3-f02c-4747-a3eb-3df69b78a108.

3.  Audie Cornish and Cala Christina. “At Kanye West's Sunday Service, 'He Is The Church'.” All Things Considered. NPR, April 25, 2019. https://www.npr.org/2019/04/25/717219251/at-kanye-wests-sunday-service-he-is-the-church.

4. Joseph L. Clifford,“Exodus 32:7-14. Commentary 1: Connecting the Reading with Scripture.” Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship 3 (Louisville:Westminister/John Knox Press, 1989), p. 304–5.

5. Michael Yanconelli, Dangerous Wonder: The Adventure of Childlike Faith. Colorado Springs, CO: Navpress, 1998.

6. William H. Willimon, “More God Than We Want.” Pulpit Resource, vol. 32, no. 3 (2001): 45–48.

7, Cornish and Christina, loc.cit.

"Give It All" - Pentecost 13C

Saint Luke 14:25-33

Agnus was born on 26th day of August 1910 in Skopje, the current capital of the Republic of Macedonia.  Her father, depending on the source, was either a grocer, a general merchant, or a construction contractor, who died when she was eight.

“Although by no means wealthy, [her mother] Drana Bojaxhiu extended an open invitation to the city's destitute to dine with her family.  ‘My child, never eat a single mouthful unless you are sharing it with others," she counseled her daughter.’”1

At the age of twelve the congregation to which she belonged made its annual “pilgrimage to the Church of the Black Madonna in Letnice, and it was on one such trip  . . .  that she first felt a calling to a religious life. Six years later, in 1928, an 18-year-old Agnes Bojaxhiu decided to become a nun and set off for Ireland to join the Sisters of Loreto in Dublin.”

In 1937 she took her final vows and six weeks later she would sail to India to become a teacher in Calcutta.   Nine years later, in 1946 Agnus, “experienced her “call within a call,” which she considered divine inspiration to devote herself to caring for the sick and poor. She then moved into the slums she had observed while teaching.

“In 1952 [she] established Nirmal Hriday (“Place for the Pure of Heart”), a hospice where the terminally ill could die with dignity. Her order also opened numerous centers serving the blind, the aged, and the disabled. Under [the nun formerly known as Agnus’] guidance, the Missionaries of Charity built a leper colony.”2   And New York City’s first clinic for people with HIV/AIDS.

By now you probably have figured out “the rest of the story” and that Agnus is Mother Teresa.  Now St.  Teresa of Calcutta whose feast day was last Thursday.

I don’t know what you feel like when you hear  about someone like a Mother Teresa, or a Ghandi, or a Nelson Mandela, or any of the martyrs for the faith but I will tell you what I feel like.  I feel like a schulb.

At twelve I was probably playing Jarts in the back yard with my uncles.  At 18 I was probably having a difficult time deciding on where I would go for summer vacation much less  deciding on a vocation for my life’s work.  I look at the lives of the famous religious figures or the saints of the church and say to myself.  “Wow!  I could never have done that.”

They really did,  as the old hymn says, turn “from home and toil and kindred. Leaving all for his dear sake.”

Then, to make matters worse, along comes Jesus in today’s gospel and says I’m supposed to follow in their footsteps.  I’m supposed to give up everything to follow him.  At the end of the day I am supposed to be standing like the guy who went bankrupt in Monopoly with pockets empty and no worldly good to show for my efforts.

What is Jesus doing to us here?  We’re no Mother Teresa!

Jesus doesn’t even care that for many churches in America this is “Get Connected Sunday.”  A day for those, as one website describes, who are “looking to meet new people.  Build a community? Grow in faith? Engage in learning and conversation? Share your gifts with others?   We have a host of opportunities” the website went on to say “ with which we’re eager to connect you!”3

Jesus doesn’t seem to be interested in any of those opportunities.  If you put him in charge of “Get Connected Sunday” the website would ask: “Are you looking to ‘hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself’ by carrying your cross?”  rather than “we have a host of opportunities with which we are eager to connect you.”
 
I’m not sure that there would be that many left who would be eager to be connected.

Jesus doesn’t seem to understand that every church in America is trying to attract new members rather than push them away with this “cross carrying” stuff.  We don’t want to talk about “hate.” As a matter of fact, we’re against it. 

Its not our job to bring about divisions within a family.  Mostly families are pretty good at doing that all on their own.  They don’t need us to remind them that they can’t stand their Uncle Donald because he is always acting up. 

No Jesus, we are about happy families and attracting big crowds.  We need Mother Teresa not the mother of all battles.!

What makes this even more puzzling is that at this point in Luke’s Gospel Jesus seems to have what we want.  He has  big crowds.  Huge crowds.  Large crowds are trooping behind Jesus. 

This has to be a validation of his ministry.  By all standards he is a success but instead of celebrating the growing number of followers Jesus confronts them with some tough talk about the cost of discipleship.

In what has to be the understatement in all biblical commentaries Dr.  Lynn Japinga of Hope College wrote: “The text does not report whether this sermon thinned the ranks of followers, but it must have diminished some of their superficial enthusiasm.” 4

You think!

As Dr.  William H.  Willimon wrote of this moment.

Jesus is on a roll and, despite the attempts of his publicists to put a good spin on this PR disaster, nobody can stop him.  “Another thing, if you won’t carry a cross,” then you can’t walk with me.  Anybody who begins to build a tower without counting the cost, runs the risk of looking stupid when he runs out of brick and can’t finish the tower.  Any king who goes to war without first considering whether or not he has the troops to win ... may look dumb when he begs for peace.  Count the cost. 5

For many the cost was just too high. 

They wanted a savior who could heal their divisions not cause them.  They wanted a savior who could unify their communities not divide them.  They wanted a savior of ample supply not shortages.  They wanted a savior who was, most of all, a winner.  They wanted a savior who comes without a cross.

That’s what many wanted then and still want now.  This may be what emptied our churches. 

It may not have been the differences of the ‘60's between waging war or making peace.  It may not have been having to make the choice between being successful and ethical.  It may not have been any of those things.  It may have been Jesus!

It may have been his message that emptied the place out but at least you couldn’t say he was guilty of false advertizing. 

With the Jesus we have instead of the Jesus we want it’s a wonder that anybody shows up on a Sunday morning. 

At this point you may be  tempted to give up and go home too. 

Lest you think that Jesus’s demands are excessive, lest you dismiss his teaching by saying, “Jesus has now raised the bar too high. Nobody can love Jesus more than family. Nobody would willingly sign up for crucifixion,” allow me to point [that]:  Down through the ages, there have been a few, not many, certainly not a “great crowd” who have taken Jesus at his word and have done just what he demands. They have let go of all their possessions, risked all, counted the cost and, even with a cross looming before them, have said, 'Here am I, send me.'"6

That’s one way to do it and it is the way of those who have been called Saints.  While  “Jesus did not want his followers to think that discipleship was easy ... neither was it open only to spiritual overachievers.” 7

That leaves room for the rest of us. 

Those who didn’t give it all away at once but daily in some small way did something because they were a follower of Jesus.

Those who didn’t listen to today’s gospel and say, “Whew!  That’s too demanding.  I can’t be a follower with those kind of conditions attached” but who kept following, kept listening to Jesus, kept pondering the cost of discipleship and then still bought in.

It worth remembering one last thing about people like Mother Teresa, followers of Jesus who are now called Saints.  They too had their struggles and even their doubts.

The website for the Missionaries of Charity admits this about her:

But there was another ... side of this great woman that was revealed only after her death. Hidden from all eyes, hidden even from those closest to her,  was her interior life marked by an experience of a deep, painful and abiding feeling of being separated from God, even rejected by Him, along with an ever-increasing longing for His love. She called her inner experience, “the darkness.” The “painful night” of her soul, which began around the time she started her work for the poor and continued to the end of her life.8

Even the greatest followers have their doubts and “painful nights of the soul.”

But they kept following and so do we.   We keep following until the end when we just might discover that we really did do what Jesus asked and little by little, bit by bit, we too had given our lives for to him and for him.  Much to our surprise we “gave it all.”  

May that surprise some day in the distant future be true for everyone of us.   That we really did “give it all.”

Thanks for listening.
___________

1.  2019. “Mother Teresa.” Biography.com. A&E Networks Television. August 26, 2019. https://www.biography.com/religious-figure/mother-teresa.

2.  https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mother-Teresa

3.  Website of the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago.

4.   Lynn  Japinga, “Luke 14:25-33. Commentary 2: Connecting the Reading with the World.” In Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship, 3:301–2. Louisville, KY : Westminster/John Knox, 2019.

5. William H. Willimon, “Spin City Jesus.” Pulpit Resource 32, no. 3 (2004): 41–44.

6.  William H. Willimon, “What's in It for Me?” Pulpit Resource 47, no. 3 (2019): 31–33.

7. Japinga, loc. cit.

8.  Biography. Accessed September 7, 2019. https://www.motherteresa.org/biography.html.

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

St.  Luke 14:1, 7-14

Most of us in this room will remember the famous line from the Miller Lite commercials spoken by Bob Uecker who  has been the play-by-play voice of the Milwaukee Brewers on WTMJ radio for 49 years.  Uecker is in the broadcast wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame and probably could score excellent seats in any ballpark in America.

Uecker also has made a career of making fun of himself so in the commercial as he is taking his place in the stands he says to the person next to him.  “Great seats!” 

An usher approaches, looks at Uecker’s ticket and says: “You’re in the wrong seat, buddy.”   At this point Uecker utters that famous line to those around him: “I must be in the front row!”  As you know, he is not.  Instead he finds himself all alone in the highest deck of Dodger Stadium.

Uecker and the Brewers have gone along with the gag to the point of having Uecker seats in the last row of that team’s uppermost level. 1

For the hall-of-fame broadcaster and his team being in the front row has become a joke.  For those dinner guests at the party Jesus was attending it was not.

Generally the Pharisees relationship with Jesus is antagonistic so we can only surmise that the reason he was invited to this one was so that they could watch him carefully.  He didn’t run in the same social circles as they did and so he was an outsider for whom the welcome was cool at best and adversarial at worse.

While they are watching him, he is watching them.  What he sees may have amused more than infuriated him.   He sees them jockeying for the best positions at the head table and for good reason.  

The Ancient Near East was a culture predicated on honor and shame,  and this meant every move people made was calculated  to increase their honor and decrease their shame.  This was especially true about dinner parties. 

Who you invited and who got to sit where were big deals,   and these details dictated the guest list and the seating chart of the next party.  Everything was a quid pro quo and pay to play.2

Every interaction was calculated to provide maximum reputational benefit.

You have probably seen this yourself.

A person comes into a room without assigned seating with the clear desire to be in the front row.  They want to get as close as possible to the honored guest.  Maybe the desire is to go home and say to their friends: “You know who I was chatting with last night?”  As if they and the guest-of-honor were best friends.

At a social event for one of the cruises I was on a fellow passenger was trying to impress me.  He took great pains to tell me that he studied music at Julliard, sang at some of the great opera houses throughout the world and even performed here in Chicago many years back at the Lyric. 

“Where you there at the same time Ardis Krainik was the General Director?” I asked.

“Oh yes.” he replied.  “He was really difficult to work for.”

Knowing now what I had expected long before I said simply.  “He?  Ardis Krainik was a woman!”

Any chance this guy had of making my front row were gone.  As far as I was concerned he wasn’t even going to be the dining room but eating his meal next to the trash can in the kitchen.

That is just one of the great things about being retired.  No longer do you have to suffer fools gladly (As if I ever did!)  but title and place have less and less importance. 

We who are retired know that we no longer have to build our resume to impress people.  We know that we no longer have to puff ourselves up to feel important.  Most of all, we know that it is the same food for those on the dias as for those in the center of the room.  We all get the same dinner!

The only difference is that if you are in seated in the crowd no one will notice if you dribble soup on your shirt.

Jesus is not only offering a lesson on humility he is telling us how things are and should be for people who claim to be members of the Kingdom of God.

Then, Jesus goes on to suggest that “instead of playing by the usual rules of privilege and status and honor, his dinner companions try something unusual, even radical:   go outside the circle of influence and patronage  by inviting people who can never return the favor,  who could never – at least by cultural standards –  adequately express their gratitude.

Which is why this story Jesus tells is still relevant today. In it, Jesus suggests a radical restructuring of  the political and social order by calling us to do more than just   exchange favors with those who can offer us  something of equal value or greater.  Jesus tells us to reach out to those who have been  pushed to the margins, those we think could never return the favor.  

When we do, Jesus suggests, we imitate God, who, in every moment,  extends the benefit of totally undeserved mercy and love  to every single one of us. 3

This is an act of compassion that none of us can repay, except by paying it forward.

What might this look like? 

I think I saw it one Sunday afer worshiping at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. The church is located in the Nob Hill section of the city an area that has both rich and the poorest of the poor in its demographics.

It is the third largest cathedral in America behind St.  John the Divine in New York and the National Cathedral in Washington.  It has great preaching, a magnificent pipe organ, and wonderful choirs all of which paled to something that happened at coffee hour.

Because of its climate and culture, San Francisco has close to 10,000 homeless people.  About a dozen or so had congregated on the cathedral’s plaza before worship.  One man in particular looked especially disheveled. 4

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 front row at a royal banquet.

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!”

The man pulled back just as the woman continued.  “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!”

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 then, Jesus says, everyone will have a place “in the front row,” “at the head table” in God’s good kingdom.

May it be so for all of us.

Thanks for listening.

____________

1. “Brewers Broadcasters.” MLB.com, n.d. https://www.mlb.com/brewers/team/broadcasters.

2.  Amy Starr Redwine. “The Urgancy of Now.” A Sermon for Every Sunday, August 26, 2019. https://asermonforeverysunday.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Amy-Starr-Redwine-the-Urgency-Now.

3.  ibid.

4.  Benjamin Oresekas,  “San Francisco Homeless Count Goes from Bad to Worse, Jumping 30% from 2017.” Los Angeles Times, July 9, 2019. https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-san-francisco-homeless-count-increase-20190709-story.html.

__________

"Wheelchairs In Heaven?" - Pentecost 11C

Saint Luke 13:10-17

All of us know that, more often than not, things are not what they appear to be at first glance.

Anybody who has taken their car in for what looks like a simple repair and have emerged $900.00 poorer knows this.

Anybody who has had any home maintenance done knows that it takes three times longer and is four times more expensive than originally thought.

And all of us know how perilous a trip to the doctor can be.  You go in with one ailment and you come out with ten more you didn’t even know you had.

So we might take comfort from today’s gospel.  At least here we know what is going on and what to expect. 

The characters are all well cast. There is the bent-over woman in desperate straights.   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, we must be careful with this.  In light of Anti-Semitism and the violence 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 was led to 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,” 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

That paragraph gives us an idea about what 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.  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 for them.

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 God.  Jesus shows us that God 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

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?

Mattlin 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 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?  Mull that one over for a while.  I still am.

___________

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

“Healing Our Divisions” - Pentecost 10C

Saint Luke 12:49-56

It is a rare thing when a single sentence has an effect on anything.  Most of us say things we do not mean and our friends just brush it off because they understand enough to know that nothing was meant by it.

Sometimes however, a single sentence can have a powerful effect on an entire life.

Such was the case on April 23, 2014.  It was not a day that will live in infamy but it is a day that changed the life of one woman.

Peggy Kusinski was a sportscaster for channel 5 and NBCSports Chicago.  All who saw her work with the Bulls, Blackhawks, Sox, Cubs and Bears knew that she was very good.

On that fateful day in April she was under a lot of stress. 

She was grieving the loss of her sister who had become the matriarch of the family after the death of their mother.  She had only taken a week off after her sister’s death before she was back on the Blackhawk beat covering their Stanley Cup playoff series with the Saint Louis Blues.

On that fateful day, April 23, 2014, Patrick Kane scored halfway through the first overtime period, giving the Hawks the victory and tying the series at two games apiece.
In the locker room scrum after the game - where reporters jostle to stick a microphone in the star-of-the-games face to get the perfect quote which is often nothing else than another sports cliche - Kusinski heard herself ask: “Patrick.  Was this your first overtime game winner?”

Let me remind you that up until the time of the ill-fated question Patrick Kane already had numerous games winning goals in the regular season and two overtime game winning goals in the play-offs including the one against the Philadelphia Flyers in 2010 that gave the team their first Stanley Cup in 40 years.

Kane was classy with his answer.   He “looked up to see who it was, and after a short pause chuckled and offered playfully, ‘I'm going to have to check that. I think I've got a couple.’"

When Kusinski got home that night, she realized that she was being vilified on social media. 

Just in the past few weeks she broke her silence to tell Barry Rozner of The Daily Herald “some of the trolls on Twitter were horrible. Hawks fans were the worst. Any time after that -- for years after that -- that I posted anything about the Hawks -- stuff from the locker room -- they would say, 'Did you ask Patrick Kane if he had any game-winners?'”

Then she went on to reflect.  Work done well “doesn't matter to the underbelly of society, the part that spends its days and nights searching for someone to ruin on social media, incapable of experiencing happiness or pleasure, living only to destroy someone or something.  And civilization dies a little bit every day, a few hundred characters at a time.”1

It is much easier to become divided from each another today than in Jesus day but sill he warns that divisions will come whether we want them to or not.

The divisions Jesus warned about were major ones that split families and divided communities. 

Social scientists tell us that as important as families are in our day they were even more important in Jesus’.

A person's place in the family conferred both personal identity and a place in the community.  People knew who you [were], because they knew your father and mother.  The family also provided a support system in a world without public welfare programs.  To divide a family is to leave its members on shaky ground socially and economically.  It is hacking at the very roots of the social structure.2

Divisions hack at the very roots of society and our relations with one another.  Tweets are so easy yet they can be mean spirited.  Tweets can be used to divide one group from another.  Words can divide fragile communities when they are not carefully used.  They can be used to correct but they also can be corrosive when they are used as threats. 

This whole business is so dangerous because we are so easily divided over matters as trivial as a question after a hockey game.  Jesus was talking about the divisions that come from following him.

For us that is a “ho hum” matter.  Tell somebody you are a Christian or a practicing Jew and quite likely you will get no response.  Say you’re some Sikhs, or a Buddhist, or a Baha’i and you might garner some interest but you will also find a disinterested acceptance.  But, tell somebody you are a Democrat or a Republican and a war will break out.

The sin of humankind is that we will always be looking for ways that divide ourselves one from another.  We’ll always  look for the character flaws - real or imagined - in a person or group that will set them apart.  We will always find something that will allow us to say, “we’re not like that.”

We may believe that we are more divided than ever before.  We may come to believe that the only thing people care about any more is not that their side wins on the basis of ideas but that the other side loses on the basis of personality.  

Columnist Jonah Goldberg invites us to take a deep breath.

In 1958, according to the Brookings Institution, 44% of whites said they’d leave if a black family moved in next door. In 1998, only 1% did. In 1990, according to the Pew Research Center, 63% of non-blacks expressed dismay at the prospect of a close relative marrying a black person. By 2016, that number had dropped to 14%. In 1967, only 3% of Americans married outside their race or ethnicity. Today, nearly one-fifth do.3

Pew Research continues this theme reminding us that “in 2004, Americans opposed same-sex marriage by a margin of 60% to 31%.”

And today, support for same-sex marriage remains near its highest point since Pew Research Center began polling on this issue. Based on polling in 2019, a majority of Americans (61%) support same-sex marriage, while 31% oppose it.4

That shows progress but there is still work to do.  The problem comes when we try to rush this work along.

We too might long for the fire Jesus promised to bring to come and consume those whose opinions we do not share but that is not how God works.  It wasn’t the way God worked for Jesus and it isn’t the way God works for us.  God will separate the good from the bad in God’s good time and we can’t rush it, or plan it, or even help it come to pass.

In the meantime all we can do is respond like Peggy Kusinski. 

Eventually she quit the daily grind of sports reporting and retreated into a private life.  The closest she comes to a microphone now is a pod cast with one of her seventeen-year-old twins.  Now, it was reported, “Peggy Kusinski takes deep breaths and long walks, enjoying time with her husband and three children in the Western suburbs.”5

She has left behind those who would sow divisions and destroy our peace 280 characters at a time. 

Maybe the way out of our divisiveness is to stay out of the fray. 

Ignore any meanspirited talk whether it comes from the occupant of highest office in the land or the lone hockey fan in his basement wanting to make a sportscaster’s life miserable.
Maybe the best way  is to follow the advice of Chasten Buttigieg, husband of South Bend mayor and presidential candidates Pete Buttigieg, who wrote in, of all things, a tweet:

So here's the thing. You can look at that tweet . . . that really nasty tweet. The gross, homophobic tweet. The blatantly racist tweet. The "fires you up with fake outrage" click-bait news article tweet and just say "nope."

Scroll away.  Don’t engage.   Adios gross tweet. Not today.  

Just be kind to your heart. Take care of others. Let hate sit alone.”

Take a deep breath. Be kind.  Take care.  Most of all let hate sit alone. 

And - this may be the hardest part of all - wait for God to take care of our divisions which God will do if we don’t stoke the fires of our own discontent.

Thanks for listening.
 

__________
1.  Rozner, Barry. "Rozner: Whatever Happened to Peggy Kusinski?" Daily Herald. July 31, 2019. Accessed August 17, 2019. https://www.dailyherald.com/sports/20190729/rozner-whatever-happened-to-peggy-kusinski. 

2.   Richard Donovan, "Peace on Earth," Sermon Writer: Making Preaching More of a Joy, July 31, 2019, accessed August 16, 2019, https://www.sermonwriter.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/2019-08-18-Proper15C.doc.

3.  Jonah Goldberg, "Commentary: Yes, We Have Problems, but Let's All Take a Breath," Chicagotribune.com, August 09, 2019, , accessed August 17, 2019.  https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-opinion-guns-racism-bigotry-jonah-goldberg-20190809-ioufik4wqfcgfdksihrhjk7amm-story.html.

4,  "Changing Attitudes on Same-Sex Marriage," Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project, May 14, 2019, , accessed August 17, 2019, https://www.pewforum.org/fact-sheet/changing-attitudes-on-gay-marriage/.

5.   loc.  cit.

"Have No Fear! Are You Kidding" - Pentecost 9C

Hebrews 11:1-3 & 11-16
Saint Luke 12:32-40

About this time last summer Lowell and I were driving out to Iowa to see his mom.  She lives about 7 or so hours directly west of here in Cherokee, Iowa.  It is a straight shot on I-80 to US-20 whose scenery - except for the area around the Galena Territories - is mostly corn and soybean fields. 

Because I had something for work we didn’t get started until mid-afternoon.  As the miles wore on Lowell’s foot must of become heavier and heavier until we were stopped less than a half-hour from our destination by red lights whirling on the car behind us.

The bad news was we were getting a speeding ticket.  The good news was that the officer was one of the nicest people you could ask for to do such a deed.  He was soft-spoken, unfailingly courteous, and almost apologetic about having to issue us a citation.

What struck me was that he was alone.  It was just the three of us in the dark on an Iowa interstate with the nearest house a mere speck of light on the horizon.  During the course of the paper work - licence, registration, insurance, you know the drill - I became afraid for him.  What if we were crazed lunatics armed to the hilt instead of two old goats driving fast so that they could reach Cherokee before their bedtime.  I’ve thought of that lone officer a great deal this past week. 

We know that stopping cars for speeding on a dark road at night has an element of danger to it but so apparently does going out for a drink in Dayton, Ohio; or to a Garlic Festival in Gilroy, California, or to a Walmart in San Antonio, Texas; or to a bible study at church; or prayers at your synagogue; or even to school.  Who would think that we would have reached a time when doing such mundane things might get you killed.

It can cause a perpetual state of fear and it does.

Not so long ago we were sitting in a movie theater and we had been assigned two seats in the front row of the balcony.  I honestly thought to myself, “If anything happens we’re sitting ducks here.”

Before mass-shootings there was a quick glace to see where the nearest exit was just in case the building caught fire.  Now I am plotting how I can get there in a hail of gunfire. 

Before anyone get their hackles up thinking this is going to be a sermon about gun control, it is not.  What we are talking about is the fear that seems to permeate all of our lives that can leave us paralyzed.

When Jesus suggests that we “have no fear” after the last months and especially last weekend it is hard not to respond with a “Are You kidding?”

One way we can face our fears was the way the British did during the bombing of London. Historians tell us that the citizens saw every daily activity as an act of defiance.

They would look up from their tea and see an amazing display of fireworks as the Luftwaffe began their bombing raids.  A trip to work was an event and a trip to the theatre came with the warning that patrons who became nervous during the performance should leave quietly. 

There would be good reason to be on-edge.  A solo would be sung over the din of explosions.  A dancer’s pirouette would be punctuated with loud bangs coming from outside. 

It was estimated that 177,000 Londoners camped out in the Underground each night.  (40,000 less than the current population of Aurora.)  They cued up early toting mattresses and rugs, then spread themselves out on the cold dark concrete platforms [where] people found comfort in the companionship.

Londoners played cards and joked and made dates to meet at the same curve in the tunnel wall, as if it were a corner pub.  There, they found camaraderie and freedom from the harsh light of reality at street level.1

Maybe you are feeling that way too?  You who have had the chaos of a mass shooting less than a mile from this place may feel this cuts close.  Maybe you are not in immanent personal danger but every time you open a newspaper, turn on a television, or check the newsfeed on your i-Phone your stomach churns a little.  Maybe, like me, you find yourself actually listening to the pre-flight instructions on airplanes that all of us can say by heart. 

The antidote to this fear, Jesus says, is trust.  Trust that God is powerful enough to sustain you.  Don’t worry about any of the things anyone in their right mind, then or now, worries about from day to day.  Trust that once you have done everything you possibly can believing that God will take care of the rest.

Somehow the list of people who put their faith in God against all odds got left out of this mornings letter from Saint Paul.  It is a catalog  of people of faith about whom a little sermon could be preached.

It was by faith that Noah constructed an ark.  It was by faith that Moses and the Children of Israel marched through the sea from bondage to freedom.  It was by faith that Joshua gave the order, the trumpet blew, and the walls of Jericho collapsed.  

“I could go on and on,” (Saint Paul wrote,)] “but I’ve run out of time.”  (And so have I!) There are so many more—Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, the prophets. . . . Through acts of faith, they toppled kingdoms, made justice work, took the promises for themselves.”2

 Paul makes special mention of Abraham who we studied last Wednesday over hot dogs on the porch. 

Scholars tell us that there is one more interesting thing about his and Sarah’s story that I had not known before.  Sarah and Abraham’s story may have been written down during the Children of Israel’s  long period of captivity in Babylon. 

Away from their home the “community was in danger of losing confidence in the promises and power of God.  The purpose [of the story] was to offer hope to this community by reminding them that God made promises ... to the ancestral couple ... at a time when the fulfilment of those promises seemed unlikely.3

It is then, we are told, when God breaks in.  It is just when our world seems broken beyond repair and we would like to hide in a dark tunnel somewhere that God will break in.  It is just when we have screwed up so badly in our personal lives that God will break in.  It is in those middle of the night moments when we toss and turn over something that we have done or left undone that God breaks in.

Not having fear in troubled times is not easy. 

We may be at such a moment now when we wonder if things will ever be right again.  Will we ever get a handle on the violence in our streets?  Will we ever be able to stop weapons designed for war from falling into hands of people with evil intent?  Will we ever stop the personification hate and bigotry from walking into a Walmart and shooting the place up?  Will the murder and mayhem ever end?

For such a time as this we may do well to heed the words of Dr.  David Lose, Senior Pastor of Mount Olivet Lutheran Church in Minneapolis:

Sometimes, faith in God’s promises is easy. When that’s true for you, come here, to your church, in order to give thanks and to let your faith shine as bright as a star in heaven and encourage those around you. Sometimes, though, faith in God’s promises is hard. And when that’s true, feel free to go outside and look up at the stars and remember God’s promise to Abraham. Or, even better, when faith is hard, come here, to your church, and see some of those stars of the heavens now scattered throughout this congregation. God has given us to each other, you see, precisely so that we can remind each other that, while it sometimes may take a long time, God always keeps God’s promises.4

 It just may be that the “Kingdom” Jesus is promising us is not some place afar off but the very presence of God right here, right now.  All is asked is that we keep awake and ready to receive it when it comes to us even in life’s darkest moments.

 May it be so for all of us always.

____________

1.  Peter Jennings and Todd Brewster, The Century. (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1988).  p.  225-226.

2. Hebrews 11:32-38.  (MSG) [MSG=The Message]

3. Ronald J. Allen, "Genesis 15:1-6. Connecting the Reading with Scripture," in Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Teaching, vol. 3, Year C (Louisville, KY: Westminister John Knox Press, 2019).  p.  218.

4. David Lose, "The Call of Abraham," A Sermon for Every Sunday, August 5, 2019, , accessed August 10, 2019, https://asermonforeverysunday.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/David-Lose-Call-of-Abraham.pdf.