"Do Not Be Afraid! Are You Kidding? - Pentecost 9C

 

Genesis 15:1-6

Saint Luke 12:32-40

Jesus’ “Do not be afraid, little flock...” may be met in our day with a resounding, “Are you kidding?”

In his book, Facing the Future Without Fear, Dr. Lloyd Ogilvie, the former Senior Pastor at Hollywood Presbyterian Church and Chaplain to the United States Senate, claimed 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!1

Scholars have debated Dr. Ogilvie’s count with estimates varying from translation to translation and since it is summer I have less than no inclination to sit inside counting to see if Dr. Ogilvie is right or not.  It is one of those things about which my church history professor in seminary used to say: “If it isn’t true, it should be.”

Especially now, when there is so much to fear that we can become overwhelmed by it all.  You don’t need me to give you a list, all you need to do is open a newspaper; turn on the television; spend a moment listening to NPR and you’ll have more than enough reason to go back to bed and pull the covers over your head.  

So, maybe we need a “fear not” every day to help us to bumble and stumble our way forward through life.

“Fear not” and “are you kidding?” are continuing themes in Scripture.  

Abram is having this conflict – wondering if God was kidding – as he and Sari are growing older and the offspring that were promised have not yet materialized.  He is worried and fearful because he and Sari are still childless and, if something doesn’t happen, and happen soon, his chief servant Eliezer of Damascus, is going to inherit everything. 

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 project in the first place.

It couldn’t have been easy to give up everything and follow the call. 

Dr. David Lose, the amazing preacher at Mount Olivet Lutheran Church in Minneapolis reminds us:

Previously in Genesis – in the eleventh chapter, to be exact, which describes the first time God comes to Abraham – God says, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.” 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.2

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.      

I can imagine Sarah waking up at four in the morning, hearing the bustling noises of Abraham packing and Sarah says, “What are you doing, Abe?”  “Packing” “What for?” “Well, we’re leaving” “Where are we going?” “I don’t know.” “Why are we going?” “Because He told us to.”  “Who’s ‘He’?” “He didn’t tell me.”  And then I could imagine Sarah calling her father: “What am I going to do?” Her father says, “I knew you shouldn’t have married that nut.”3

Then Dr. Smedes continues wisely.

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.”4

Fear is beginning to set in as the years pass and today we have Abram asking God, “Were you kidding?”

And it is here that God does something lovely that calms his 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!”5 And Abram believes again.

We may think that Abram was an easy mark.  Show him some stars. Repeat a long-delayed promise and he’ll fall right into line, but Jesus did the same thing with his followers.  He does the same thing for us right before he says: “Do not fear, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”6

Before Jesus said “fear not” he took his disciples out on a little tour that actually fits better with his promise than the confusing hodgepodge of sayings that make up today’s Gospel. 

Jesus takes us out into the field and asks us to look at some things with him and think about them.

“Therefore, I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; nor about the body, what you will put on.  Consider the ravens, for they neither sow nor reap, which have neither storehouse nor barn; and God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds? Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. If then God so clothes the grass, which today is in the field and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will He clothe you... seek the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added to you.  Do not fear, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”7

The Lord told Abram to look at the stars. Jesus told us to consider the birds of the air and the lilies of the field.

Annie Lamont suggests that “a walk is a kind of prayer, and it changes you. Fields and woods are the kingdom. You don’t say, “Oh, there’s a dark-eyed junco flitting around that same old pine tree; whatever,” or: “Look at those purple wildflowers. I’ve seen those a dozen times. {P}rayer changes me. It breaks the toxic trance.”8  It breaks the cycle of fear.  It reminds us that God isn’t kidding.

Our minds can become bogged down in that “toxic trance” as 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 grocery store, a church, a synagogue, or school and shooting the place up?  Will the murder and mayhem ever end?

When we are ruminating about all these things and more, it is then, Jesus tells us, that God breaks in with a “fear not.”  It is just when our world seems broken beyond repair, and we would like to go back to bed and hide under the covers that God breaks in with a “fear not.”  It is just when we have screwed up so badly in our personal lives that God breaks in with a “fear not.”  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 with a “fear not.”

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 {or outside and look at a garden} and remember God’s promise to Abraham {and Jesus’ promise to us.}

Or, even better, when faith is hard, come here, to your church, and see some of those stars of the heavens {or flowers of the field or birds of the air} 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.9

Not being afraid in troubled times is not easy but 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, and it is the Father’s good pleasure to give it to us. 

“Have no fear. Lord, are you kidding?”  To which God replies more than 365 times a year in countless of ways, “Nope. Not kidding at all.”

________________

1. St. Luke 12:32. (NRSV) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version]

2. 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/.

3. Bill D. Moyers, Genesis: A Living Conversation (New York, NY: Broadway Books, 2002), 162-163.

4.   Op.cit., p. 160.

5. Genesis 15:5. (TLB) [TLB=The Living Bible (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers Inc., 1971)

6. St. Luke 12:32. (NKJV) [NKJV=The New King James Version]

7. Saint Luke 12:22-24; 27-28 and 32. (NKJV)

8. Steve Thierauf, “Anne Lamott Reflects on Prayer and Living,” (The Spirit of Life: A Catholic Community of Faith and Joy, July 11, 2022), https://www.spiritoflifecommunity.org/liturgy/pastors-letter/591-meditation-721 -anne-lamott-reflects-on-prayer-and-living-7-11-22.

9. Lose, loc.cit.

Sermon preached at the Evangelical Lutheran Church of St. Luke

7 August 2022

Video with sermon beginning at the 23 minute mark.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tguDDt78HzY

"The Man Who Mistook His Life for a Barn" - Pentecost 8C

 

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

Saint Luke 12:13-21

Last Sunday, at about this same hour, give or take a time zone, gunmen interrupted the Sunday morning worship at the Brooklyn campus of the Leaders of Tomorrow International Churches where the self-appointed Bishop, Lamor M. Whitehead, was preaching.  Fortunately, no one was injured but, because the whole event was captured on the Church’s live stream it made the local and national news. However, “the lead” was often buried. 

NPR reported that thieves made off with “more than $1 million worth of jewelry from him and his wife, according to the New York Police Department.”

I have absolutely no idea what the pay-scale is out here in Palatine, but I would be willing to wager a lot of money that if someone held up Pastor Joel and Annie the take would be far less than a million.  In fact, I would also be willing to venture a guess that if they took everything from everybody in this room that total too wouldn’t be even close to then what they got from the “Bishop” and his wife.

This was a high-end robbery because it was further reported that the thieves first “fled on foot before getting into a white Mercedes Benz.”  {If you’re going to be robbed, make sure that the thieves are classy enough to drive a BMW!}

In a Keystone Cops moment, the “Bishop” decided that he would give chase “on foot and then in his car.”  It should be noted that Whitehead has been known to tool around town in his very own Rolls-Royce. {Again, something worth noting when the subject of Pastor Joel’s car allowance comes up.  You might want to hide the video and text of this sermon from him.}  I have to confess that the sight of a Rolls chasing a Mercedes though the street of Brooklyn does engage my imagination.

Commenting on his appetite for fine cars, fine clothing, and flashy jewelry the “Bishop” said: "’It's not about me being flashy. It's about me purchasing what I want to purchase. It's my prerogative to purchase what I want to purchase. If I worked hard for it, I can purchase what I want to purchase.’"1

Jesus told a story about a guy like this once.  A guy who “mistook his life for a barn.”

The late, great Dr. Fred B. Craddock reminds us:  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.2  

He is a success, such a success that it becomes a problem.

He immediately moves into action (he has not become an agricultural success by just sitting back and waiting for things to happen). He starts making big plans to pull down his barns and build bigger ones to store all his abundant harvest.  With full barns and ample savings, he is well fixed to sail into a prosperous and happy retirement.3

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.

Why then does Jesus pronounce him to be a fool?  

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.4

In short, he mistook his life for a barn.

While we would give this guy the farmer of the year award Jesus says he is anything but because in “the Bible, the words ‘fool’ and ‘foolish’ are usually associated with [a] lifestyle or self-understanding that is godless.”5

We can tell this by the man’s inner dialogue.  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.’6

“He is a fool says the parable. He lives completely for himself, he plans for himself, he congratulates himself.”  There is no mention of God in his monologue.  He is talking to himself about himself.  He has “mistaken his life for a barn.”

Enter God who finally speaks with a word of prophesy, and a very important question. “Fool! Tonight you die. And your barnful of goods—who gets it?”8

Has he made any provision for the poor?  Has he left it in a will to a relative? Has he planned to do any good at all with his goods now that they have been safely stored away in his barn?  “That’s what happens when you fill your barn with self and not with God.”9

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?”10

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.”11

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.  It can all be gone as fast as it takes burglars in Brooklyn to steal 100K worth of jewelry.

{Is it any wonder your pastor took this Sunday off!}

It is left to me to give you an antidote to these two unhappy fellows from Scripture and I think that antidote is worship!  Yes! Worship!  

I think what we are doing right now reminds us that there is more to life than our possessions.  I think what we are doing right now reminds us that all is not vanity, not a puff of wind.  I think what we are doing right now is so counter cultural that many do not understand it.

Confessing that “we have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves” is pretty radical stuff.  And hearing that in this place, and may I add only in a place called church that, in Christ, you have received, “the entire forgiveness of all your sins” is even more radical.  

You're not hearing this kind of thing alone on your 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.

You're not hearing this jammed in with thousands of your closest friends to hear music on Chicago’s lakefront.  

But you will hear it here so that later in the week when, just when you need it most, it will come to you with all the force of a hint.  Because you heard it here.

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.”12

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 into our hands as we do the humblest of acts.

As we come forward and Christ comes to us and we hear those words “for you” we receive something worth more that silver or gold but in communion’s bread and wine, we receive a glimpse of eternity lived in God’s grace.  

It’s a barn full of grace.  

It is grace that is worth more than the finest of cars and the flashiest of outfits.  

It is “grace-a-paloza”! It's here now in the bread and wine that is Christ’s own gift to us.

So come to that place where Christ is our host, our gift and our guest and eternity will always be on your mind.

________________

1.  Bill Chappell, “A High-Profile Pastor Was Robbed during a Live-Streamed Service in NYC,” NPR (NPR, July 25, 2022), https://www.npr.org/2022/07/25/1113430654/bishop-lamor-whitehead-robbed.

2. Fred B. Craddock, Luke: Interpretation Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. (Louisville, , KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 163.

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

4. 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.

5. William H. Willimon, “Fools Like Us,” Pulpit Resource 41, no. 3 (2013), 21-24.

6. Luke 12:17-19. (NRSV) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version]

7. Craddock, loc. cit.

8. 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).

9. St. Luke 12:21. (MSG)

10. Ecclesiastes 2:17 (NRSV)

11. 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.

12.  Ecclesiastes 3:11.  (NKJV) [NKJV=The New King James Version]

Sermon preached at Christ Lutheran Church

Palatine Illinois

31 July 2022

Sermon video with sermon beginning at 15:15

https://clcpalatine.org/multimedia-archive/jul-31-message/

"Lord, Teach Us to Pray" - Pentecost 7C

 

Genesis 18:20-32

Saint Luke 11:1-13

In the first church I served after ordination they had a long-standing practice that the choir would gather with the pastors before worship for prayer.  The senior pastor always led those prayers and when he was called to another church the task fell to me as the DeFacto interim.

I had only been out of seminary less than six months, and I was full of ideas. One of those was that I thought it would be nice if a choir member, a lay person, led the prayer before worship.   So, one Sunday I sprung my ingenious innovation on the unsuspecting choristers.  

It was met with silence.  Not just a short silence but a long... dreadful... elongated silence.  You could hear crickets chirping and grass growing.

It was our first stand off as pastor and people.  They were shifting from one foot to the other while I was smiling broadly like I had just invented the idea of lay-driven prayer.  Our Quaker quiet time waiting for the “inner light” to dawn looked like it just might not arrive until Monday.

Fortunately, Mary Peterson, our wonderful organist piped up and announced that her prelude was five minutes long and it was already 1 minute before the hour.

I relented, prayed, and we all hustled to our proper places for the procession.

As you might imagine, Tuesday when I entered the office two of the more gracious choir members were waiting for me.  Because of their tact they had been appointed as spokespersons whose job it was to tell me that it was not that the choir was against prayer it was just that they didn’t want to lead it.

They weren’t comfortable praying outloud in front of a group and the thought of extemporaneous prayer frightened them to death.  I’m sure they prayed privately and maybe offered grace before every meal, but speaking a prayer in church was, for them, an entirely different matter.

I am glad to say that wisdom prevailed, and a compromise was struck.  The choir would appoint people who would say the prayer before worship.  They could write it out, find it in a book, or read the one in their morning devotional.  It also inspired a series of Adult Forums of the topic of public and private prayer.

If memory serves, and it is doing so less and less as I get older, we titled our studies, “Lord, Teach Us to Pray” after the request of the disciples to Jesus in today’s Gospel.

It will come as no small measure of comfort to you, I hope, that even a Baptist pastor, Travis Norvil, of Judson Memorial Baptist Church in Minneapolis didn’t emerge from the womb praying soul-stirring prayers but struggled with this.  He wrote:

When I was a teenager, I asked my parents how to pray. They replied, “Travis, just do it.” Since I didn’t know how to just do “it,” I asked my pastor. He looked at me with a suspicious side glance, like I was trying to trap him. He replied the same way as my parents did, “You just do it.” But I wouldn’t take that for an answer. He finally gave me a book on the topic of prayer that he had not read, but he thought it might help. It didn’t.1

The problem is that there are so many types of prayer for so many types of occasions. There is the formal prayer that we do here every Sunday which are well-written and well thought out.   There are prayers before bed, around the dinner table, and spare-of-the-moment prayers that rise up at moments of frustration, despair, or even anger.  

It is the angry prayers that give us the most trouble. We don’t like the idea of us, mere mortals, shaking our fist in God’s face, and telling God we are unhappy.  When these prayers fall from our lips, we may be uncomfortable and, maybe, even feel a little guilty. We prefer “thy will be done” to what is going on between God and Abraham in our first reading.  

Some are so uncomfortable with this scene from the Good Book that they don’t want to even call it a prayer, but in it Abraham is talking to God and God is talking to Abraham and it is one of those discussions that would make an eavesdropper want to say, “How about those Cubs?” just to relieve the tension.

Abraham is not even taking up a popular cause.  He is arguing with God on behalf of the twin sin-cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Clearly Abraham is not going to let God’s desire to destroy these places go unchallenged.  He is not going to “let God’s will be done” without some questioning.  Instead, he is going to storm the barricades on behalf of the city where his nephew Lot and his family lived.

The problem with the city is not as simple as who lived there and how they lived out their private lives.  The problem was is that it was ruled by mobs.  It was ungovernable to the point that any visitors or residents of the city could be the victims of murder, robbery and mayhem at any time.  It had become a madhouse.

God doesn’t see any other way out other than its complete destruction.  Abraham objects in a most strenuous matter.  His prayer is not “thy will be done” but rather “let’s make a deal.”  

Unbelievably to us moderns he enters into a bidding contest with Yahweh on the city’s behalf.  It is like an auction.  

Abraham starts the bidding with 50 righteous. If he can find 50 good people would Yahweh consider sparing the city?

The problem is he can’t, so he reduces the number.  “How about 45?  40?” Abraham bargains.  “35?  30?  25?  20?  Can I get a 15?”  What is this?  The “High/Low Game” on The Price is Right?  Finally, Abraham and the Lord settle on 10.

Violence has so overwhelmed the two cities that Abraham can’t even meet that quota.  He can’t find ten good people in two towns!  His prayers for the communities are going to go unanswered with only his nephew Lot and some of his family being sparred. 

Even after storming the barricades Abraham didn’t get everything he wanted but he did get what he really needed - the lives of his nephew and members his family except for Lots wife and for her disobedience became the first “salt girl.”

That is one model of prayer and is it any wonder why the disciples might have wanted another. What Jesus gives them and us is a prayer that invites us to trust God above all else for everything we need. 

We are to trust God for the big things like the forgiveness of our sins and the coming of the kingdom.  We are also to trust God for the everyday things like our daily bread.

That is a great place to be, but Jesus makes it even better.  He says that with God we can be like that neighbor who shows up in the middle of the night banging on the door and yelling, “‘lend me three loaves of bread. An old friend traveling through just showed up, and I don’t have a thing on hand.’”2

Jesus says that, unlike God, while we may grouch a little bit and yell back at our neighbor, “‘Please don’t ask me to get up. The door is locked for the night and we are all in bed. I just can’t help you this time.’”3

But “‘I’ll tell you this, ‘” says Jesus ‘if you keep knocking long enough, (your neighbor) will get up and give you everything you want—just because of your persistence.’”4

Abraham didn’t get what he wanted.  Sodom and Gomorrah were ultimately destroyed but Abraham got what he needed — safety for himself and most members of his family – because of his persistent prayer.

Every time I preside somewhere I always add this little charge to the benediction. It comes from one of my favorite preachers, Dr. Fred B. Craddock. 

“Live simply, love generously, speak truthfully, serve faithfully, pray daily and then leave everything else up to God.“  Remember?  

If this saying was original to Dr. Craddock, he should have copyrighted it because I have seen the words appear on plaques, coffee mugs, and numerous other tchotchkes in shops of towns both large and small.  

The charge always reminded me of this great story that was told by The Rev'd Adam Fronczek, Senior Minister of Knox Presbyterian Church in Cincinnati.

I have a minister friend who performed one of the most brilliant acts of parenting I’ve ever seen. When his son was four and going through a period of being fairly demanding about things, my friend taught his son some Rolling Stones lyrics. Every time little Michael demanded something that just wasn’t going to happen, his dad, said, “Michael, what do the [Rolling] Stones say?” And Michael would huff and puff and then would look at his daddy and say, “You can’t always get what you want.” And then [his father] would say, “What else, Michael?” And Michael would answer, “But if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need.”5

Remember you may not always get what you want.  

Your choir may never be able to offer “spare-of-the-moment” prayers right off the top of their heads.  

Or, like Abraham, you may come up two cities short in your quest to save the world. 

But, if you “Live simply, love generously, speak truthfully, serve faithfully, pray daily and then leave everything else to God” you’ll discover that, of all people, the Rolling Stones were right.  “You can’t always get what you want but if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need.”

________________

1. Travis Norvell, “Prayer Lessons,” Day 1 (Day1.org, July 20, 2022), https://day1.org/weekly-broadcast/62c8308e6615fb108200000a/travis-norvell-prayer-lessons.

2,.St. Luke 11:5-6.  (MSG) [MSG = The Message]

3. St. Luke 11:7.  (TLB) [TLB = The Living Bible]

4. St. Luke 11:8.  (TLB)

5. Adam Fronczek, ""Jazz at Four" Sermon" (sermon, 4 O'clock Worship, The Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago, January 20, 2013),  accessed July 27, 2019, http://www.fourthchurch.org/sermons/2013/012013_4pm.html.

Sermon preached at Trinity Slovak Lutheran Church

Chicago, Illinois

24 July 2022

"Dinner Party Dust Up" - Pentecost 6C

 

Saint Luke 10:38-42

Every once and awhile what we need most is a nice, quiet dinner party.  Something to take our minds off of all the chaos in the world – gun violence, partisan politics, divisions, inflation, recession, all those things that rumble around in our minds and cause no small measure of anxiety.  No commotion, no pandemonium, no visits from the paramedics, just a nice quiet party.

It can be an elegant feast with friends featuring fine linens, the best china, and a sumptuous entree with a perfect wine paring.  Or it can be just a relaxing time around a friend’s swimming pool with pizza and beer. 

Sometimes what we need is a party, a nice quiet party.

But all of us have experienced moments when the blissful gathering has come unglued because of something one of the participants did or said.

Like last fall when we were sitting enjoying pizza around a friend's pool in Palm Springs.  Some people there we had known for a long time while others we had just met at the resort at which we were staying. 

Things were going swimmingly (Pun intended!) when the conversation turned to “In-N-Out” burgers. Since these delicacies are only available in limited locations in California and the west but no further east than Colorado, they have become a required stop for many of us on any California vacation.

The hamburger patties are made in their own processing plants, never frozen, and delivered by their own trucks.  One can watch the French fries being cut in-house and, while I have never had one, it is my understanding that the shakes are second to none. 

Almost everybody gathered around the pool that night seemed to be in agreement that an “In-N-Out” burger was one of life’s true pleasures.

Everybody, that is, except one guy who said: “I would never eat at ‘In-N-Out.’  They put bible verses on their packaging.”

They do but only in very tiny print in hard-to-find places like the inner bottom rim of their cups and near the seams of the paper pouches the burgers are placed in and it is never the whole text it is only the biblical reference.  You have to look hard and risk spilling your drink on yourself or your friend or finish all of your fries in order to find them. 

As was noted by Snopes.com: “No overt explanation is given for the presence of the odd phrases or their meaning: they just quietly sit there, awaiting decipherment by those moved to do so.”1

On the soda cup is John 3:16. The milkshake cup has Proverbs 3:5, "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding."2

All pretty benign stuff. Who could be put off by the notion that God loved the world? Apparently, the guy at the party could, and it was enough to make him vow that he would never eat there because of the hard-to-find fine print from Scripture.

It was at that point, out of the corner of my ear, I heard a voice, a sarcastic voice, bellow: “Not Scripture! Oh no, not Scripture!  Anything but Scripture!”  

As I looked around the room the faces had silent stares with blank expressions that resembled the statues on Easter Island.  Some mouths were, as the Irish would say, a’gob.

Then I looked over at Lowell whose head was in his hands and, because I watch a lot of British mysteries, I deduced that the person who had bellowed, “Not Scripture!  Oh no, not Scripture!  Anything but Scripture!” was me.

The party concluded and although I don’t remember the guy ever speaking to me again, I thought the expressions on the faces had to be the same as when Martha came storming in and said to Jesus. “Lord, don’t you mind that my sister has left me to do everything by myself? Tell her to get up and help me!”

We don’t know for sure just how many people Martha wound up serving.  Artists have mostly depicted this as an intimate little gathering with just Mary, Martha, Jesus, and perhaps Lazarus.  However, some scholars think that Martha may have made a open invitation and Jesus’ disciples came along with him.  It that was the case Martha was no longer just making dinner, she was catering a banquet.  Either way things are not going as she expected.

There was work to do and she was doing it.

It was only natural when she heard that Jesus was coming to town that she would invite him to come to her home for a meal, and she wanted it to be a special meal, too. She had been at it all day, putting out the fine china, pressing the linen tablecloth, polishing the silver. Since noon she had been simmering pots of stock on the stove, tasting them from time to time, making sure they were perfect. It was no small undertaking. {Especially if Jesus had actually brought all his disciples with him! If that was the case, she would have had} to put an extra leaf in the dining room table and set the table in the kitchen for those disciples whose names no one could ever remember. But in that last hour before dinner things began to get a little hectic. She had too many pots going on the stove at the same time and not nearly enough help. She thought about her sister, Mary, sitting in the living room at the master’s feet, with that big, goofy grin on her face. The more she thought about it the madder she got, until finally she just wiped her hands on her apron and marched in there.4

And it is here that, for many, myself included, this little dinner party really begins to fall apart. 

The commentaries on this passage can be divided by male scholars and female scholars.  The guys seem to find absolutely nothing wrong with what Mary is doing.  She is listening to Jesus.  In fact, she is even being a little radical by sitting at the feet of a well-respected rabbi which was a place usually reserved for men.  “Mary is doing what we all should be doing.” say the boy scholars.  “She is sitting quietly listening to Jesus.”

I love the way Sally, a character in the novel The Lincoln Highway, sums up this notion.

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.5

Debi Thomas, a woman theologian, who grew up in a traditional South Asian community where “women’s work” carried less value than the men’s who “talked, studied, debated, relaxed, and feasted...wished that Jesus had done more.”

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. I wish he’d put each one of the boys to work, and then said, “Oh, in case you’re wondering: this domestic stuff isn’t a prelude to the sacred. This stuff is the sacred.”6

While I wish this was true too, I also have a frightening thought.  What if the disciples would have been no help at all in the kitchen?  What if they had burned the bread, rendered the fish unrecognizable, and sliced and diced the vegetables into a pulp a’la Ron Popiel?  What if all they did was get in Martha’s way and made her job ten times more difficult?

While I am at it.  Have you ever thought that maybe Mary is not helping because if she tried Mary would not be much help either?  Maybe Mary is one of those people who couldn’t boil an egg?  Maybe she couldn’t tell a cup from a carload?  Maybe if Mary was charged with preparing the meal, all they would have been eating Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches off of paper plates?

If we listen to Jesus, we might just discover what the real trouble in paradise was.

When Martha blasts him with: ““Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself?”7  He really doesn’t scold her but makes the astute observation that she is: “worried and upset about many things.”8

In the original text “worried and upset” isn’t even the half of it.  The unpronounceable Greek word used here literally means “to be pulled from all directions.”  

Martha has one eye on her guest and the other on the table.  She may have even been trying to listen to what Jesus is saying while at the same time listening for the tea kettle to whistle.  She may have been running herself ragged doing things to try and please Jesus while all she really wants to do, all he really wants her to do, is to spend time with him.

Admittedly, I come at this from a purely male perspective because I am a guy, but I’d like to think that after he calmed Martha’s anxiety about making everything perfect and assured her that it was already perfect, he took her by the hand and invited her to sit down too.  I think that, after the dust settled, they all sat together and had a fine meal with good conversation because Jesus loved and blessed them both.

A cheap, easy, characterization of these two wonderful women will invariably lead us down the wrong path.

“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.”10

The wisdom of the late, great Dr. Fred B. Craddock is most helpful in understanding this little dinner party dust-up.

If we censure Martha too harshly, she may abandon serving altogether, and if we commend Mary too profusely, she may sit there forever.  There is a time to go and do; there is a time to listen and reflect.  Knowing which and when is a matter of spiritual discernment.  If we were to ask Jesus which example applies to us, {Martha} or Mary, the answer would probably be Yes.11

There will be times when you will act like Mary and there will be other times when you will be like Martha.  The secret is not to worry or stress out over whether one is better or worse.  The secret is to be open to the deepest desire of God’s heart and let God come to you no matter where you are with this promise that can even be found on the wrapper of your cheeseburger in a jam-packed California drive-thru restaurant. 

“Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.”12

I like that idea.  The idea of sitting down with the Lord for a burger, a shake, and an order of fries is very appealing to me.  

And where did I get that idea?  Its Revelation 3:20 in Scripture!  The promise is in Scripture.  Yes!  Really!  Scripture!

________________

1. Snopes Staff, “Fact Check: Do in-N-out Burger Food Containers Include Bible Verses?,” Snopes.com, December 7, 2019, https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/in-n-out/.

2. Michelle Gant, “Why Does in-N-out Print Bible Verses on Its Cups and Wrappers?” TODAY.com, October 9, 2019, https://www.today.com/food/why-does-n-out-print-bible-verses-its-cups-wrappers-t164235.

3. St. Luke 10:40. (PHILLIPS) [PHILLIPS=J. B. Phillips, The New Testament in Modern English. (Collins, 1973).

4. James Sommerille, “The Worst Church Member Ever,” A Sermon for Every Sunday, July 12, 2020, https://asermonforeverysunday.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/The-Worst-Church-Member-Ever.pdf.

5. Gregory M. Franzwa, The Lincoln Highway (Tucson, AZ: Patrice Press, 1995).

6. Debi Thomas, “Saint Luke 10:38-42,” A Sermon for Every Sunday, July 12, 2022, https://asermonforeverysunday.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Debie -Thomas-6th-Sunday-after-Pentecost-7-17-2022.pdf.

7. St. Luke 10:40. (NRSV) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version]

8. St. Luke 10:41. (NIV) [NIV=The New International Version]

9. Brian Stoffregen, “Luke 10.38-42 Proper 11 - Year C,” Exegetical Notes - Luke 10.38-42 (Crossmarks), accessed July 16, 2022, http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/luke10x38.htm.

10. 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-i ts-all-in-the-timing-hyde/.

11. Fred Craddock, Interpretation: Luke (Louisville, Kentucky: John Knox Press, 1990), p. 152

12. Revelation 3:20. (NIV) [NIV=The New International Version]

Sermon preached at The Evangelical Church of St. Luke

17 July 2022

video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5EGZOFNCGM

"The Guy in the Ditch" - Pentecost 5C

Saint Luke 10:25-37

The flip side of all the sadness and despair of July 4 were the heartening tales of “Good Samaritans” who came to the aid if their neighbors in the aftermath of the carnage of the Highland Park Parade. 

The story of the little boy walking the streets, all alone, after his mother had been killed and his father died protecting him.  He was spotted by Dana and Greg Ring who tried  to get him to the police.  The cops Greg said, “looked like they were getting ready for war. I'll never forget. I pulled up, and I said, 'This is not our kid. It's not his blood; he's OK. What should we do?'

"And the cop said, 'We can't be babysitters now. Can you take care of him?'

"We said, 'Of course.'"1

And they did until Aiden, now an orphan, was reunited with his grandparents.  

Or the shopkeepers who, amid the mayhem just threw open their doors and hid people in their backrooms sometimes for hours.

Or, Karen Britten, who shortly after the pandemonium “was back in her home near the parade route making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and handing out old Beanie Baby toys to help comfort nearly 30 adults and children who took shelter in her basement.”2

“Good Samaritans” who rushed to the aid of people they did not know to offer comfort and support.  Jesus’ parable has been lived out among us at an excruciatingly painful level.  

The lawyer’s question was purely theoretical, but he wasn’t being a jerk.  Lawyers, rabbis, and other learned folk were always putting each other to the test by asking questions.  

Think about an ethics class in college where the students were asks to wrestle with some hypothetical situation until fifty minutes went by while they debated the issue.

Jesus and the lawyer don’t waste this kind of time.  He asks. Jesus asks. And the question is on the table.  Dr. Fred B. Craddock, wrote in his commentary:  

The lawyer knew the answers to his own questions, and in both cases, Jesus expresses full agreement.  Then what is wrong with this conversation?

Asking questions in order to gain an advantage over another is not a kingdom exercise. The goal of witnessing or of theological conversation is not to outwit another.  Having right answers does not mean one knows God. 

The problem with the lawyer, Craddock points out, is that he is “asking a question with no intention of implementing the answer.”3

So, Jesus launches into a little, but now famous, story about one the one who knew God and showed it by doing God’s will, but this story had a surprise ending and it was especially surprising for one group of listeners.

These stories always had a formula. First, they would expect that the half-dead guy in the ditch to be one of them.  Second, it would be no surprise to a Jewish peasant that the two who passed by were a priest or Levite.  

Just as today we hear the words “elite” or “woke” bandied about as if it were something vile.  “Given the upper-class status of the priest and the Levite ... an audience would look askance at the scandalous, merciless act of the priest and the Levite.”4  No surprise there.

The surprise comes when Jesus introduces a hero.  And who do you think were the most surprised people in the crowd when Jesus said that the hero was a Samaritan?

I don’t expect you to remember this but the last time we were together Jesus very own disciples had asked permission to burn a Samaritan village to the ground when they were not welcomed warmly.  Remember?

And he sent messengers on ahead, who went into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him; but the people there did not welcome him, because he was heading for Jerusalem.  When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, “Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?” But Jesus turned and rebuked them.5

They had to have remembered that rebuke.  It had to still be ringing in their ears when Jesus launched into this little story.  And while they were rebuked over their desire for violence the enmity between them and the Samaritans was probably not quenched by a simple scolding.  Samaritans were still their mortal enemies.

To make matters worse, if this story was true to form, they, “the good guys,” would be the heros.  They would be the ones who swooped in to save the day.

Instead, Jesus makes the hero a Samaritan (A Samaritan!) who the hearers expected to behave at least as badly as the priest and Levite, and probably worse. “Jesus does not introduce the Samaritan in order to dissolve his listeners’ preconceptions but in order to play off them.”

Again, another warning from Dr. Craddock:

Great care should be given in our culture to analogies to the Samaritan. Often poor analogies trivialize a text. Remember that this man who delayed his own journey, expended great energy, risked danger to himself, spent two days wages with the assurance of more, and promised to follow up on his activity was ceremonially unclean, socially an outcast, and religiously a heretic.  This is a profile not easily matched.7

Maybe we don’t even have to try to match it because maybe, we have been identifying with the wrong people in the story all along.  

We have all felt like the priest or Levite, haven’t we?  I have every time I have spent a lot of good money on tickets to the Lyric Opera and have to walk past while giving nothing to a Streetwise vendor because all I have in my pocket is the twenty I have been saving for my glass of wine and sweet treat at intermission.

And how I would have loved to be that Samaritan!  Rushing in and saving the day!  How I would love to be seen as a one-man Florence Nightingale or Mother Theresa. But I know I am not that.

So, who am I in the story?  Only a young person might see this.

Dr. James D. Howell is the amazing preacher and pastor of the Myers Park United Methodist Church who remembered teaching New Testament to some adolescents at a Catholic camp years ago. To get them thinking, I asked: “With whom in this story do you identify?  Instead of saying, not ‘just the busy dudes,’ or ‘not just the helpful Samaritan,’ they said, ‘the guy beaten up by the side of the road.’”8

Ever feel like him?  I am sure the people of Highland Park, and Uvalde, and Buffalo do.  I am sure the people of Ukraine do.  I’m sure that people in neighborhoods where gun violence is the norm do.

I am sure that you did too last week while preparing the brats, burgers, and potato salad for your annual Independence Day picnic when you turned on your television for a half-a-second and cried out, “Not again.”

We may have never thought of this before because we’ve always identified with the priest or the Levite or, at our very best the Samaritan but never thought of ourselves as the guy in the ditch.

The important thing to remember about him is that he didn’t care who rendered him aid.  He needed help and he accepted it from whoever it was offered.  When your broken and bloodied and scared out of your wits you really don’t care who’s by your side. This is not a time for pop quizzes or theological purity tests.  This is a time to accept the grace that is coming to you in whatever form it comes.

The shopkeepers and citizens of Highland Park didn’t ask a million questions before they let the frightened parade-goers in the door.  They didn’t ask if the person they were helping belonged to Trinity Episcopal or Immaculate Conception Catholic.  They didn’t ask if you were a member of North Suburban Synagogue Beth El, Highland Park Presbyterian or Galilee United Methodist.  They didn’t ask if you were a believer or a non-believer. They didn’t ask about your marital status or care if you were gay or straight.  They didn’t even ask if you were a Republican or a Democrat.  If you needed help, they gave it.

Still, said nurse practitioner Jacquie Toia,   “We did what we could to take care of the immediate needs, and that’s probably the real tragedy — we didn’t have enough hands to do what needed to be done.”9

There will never be enough!  There will always be a need for those who remember that there was a time when they were deep in a ditch but were helped by somebody who took the time to care.  

It shouldn’t but it often takes a tragedy to remind us of our needs and the needs of others.  

So, what is Jesus' word to the guy who thought this was all a game?  When it dawned on him that a neighbor was one who showed mercy, kindness, pity, concern no matter who the person in need was Jesus simply said, “Go and do likewise.” Go and do.

And that is his word for us this morning too. “Go and do likewise.” 

________________

1. Alisha Ebrahimji, “2-Year-Old Orphaned in Parade Shooting Was Shielded by His Father as the Wounded Man Lay Dying,” CNN (Cable News Network, July 7, 2022), https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/06/us/aiden-mccarthy-parents-highland-park-s hooting/index.html.

2. Person and Brendan O'Brien, Tom Polansek, “In Chicago Suburb, 'Guardian Angels' Sheltered Strangers under Attack,” Reuters (Thomson Reuters, July 5, 2022), https://www.reuters.com/world/us/chicago-suburb-guardian-angels-sheltered -strangers-under-attack-2022-07-05/.

3. Fred B. Craddock, Interpretation (NT): Luke (Louisville, KY: John Knox, 1990), 143.

4. Bernard Brandon Scott, Hear Then the Parable: A Commentary on the Parables of Jesus (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1989), 197.

5.  St. Luke 10:52-54.

6. Hierald E. Orsoto, “Commentary 2: Connecting the Reading with the World,” Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship 3 (Louisville: Westminister/John Knox Press, 2019): pp. 158-160.

7. Craddock, op.cit., p. 151

8. James C. Howell, “What Can We Say July 10? Pentecost 5” James Howell's Weekly Preaching Notions (Myers Park United Methodist Church, January 1, 1970), https://jameshowellsweeklypreachingnotions.blogspot.com/.

9.  Harm VanHuizen, “Amid Chaos, Some at Fourth of July Parade Ran toward Gunfire to Help,” MSN (The Los Angeles Times, July 9, 2022), https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/amid-chaos-some-at-fourth-of-july-parade-ran-toward-gunfire-to-help/ar-AAZp2WV?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=020060e5e 78540a180fd11db06fc4d80.

Sermon preached at Trinity Slovak Lutheran Church

10 July 2022

"Building Bridges" - Pentecost 4C

"Bad News and Good News" - Easter 2C

Galatians 3:23–29

Saint Luke 8:26–39

I‘ve got good news and bad news for you this morning.

The good news is that the primary election in the State of Illinois is only a week-and-a-half away.  The bad news is that the primary election in the State of Illinois is still a week-and-a-half away.  

The worse news is that the general election is not until November.

That means that we have at least five more months of grainy, hastily produced ads with voice-overs that sound like the announcer (man or woman) is whispering as if they are at a golf tournament after smoking three packs of unfiltered Camels and downing a couple of glasses of Jack Daniels.

All the commercials are the same.  You can always tell who the ad is for or against from the second it starts.  Ads that favor the candidate are in colour while ads that oppose are in black-and-white.  Outside of this the content is pretty much alike.  

Ads purchased by the candidate make them seem like they are a combination of Mother Teresa, Florence Nightingale, and Mahatma Gandhi.  Their candidate will bring safety to our streets; health to our communities, and, in one case prayer back to our schools.

{This, from a venture capitalist whose net worth is worth is estimated at being at least $1.5 million.1 With dough like, if he wants his kids to learn to pray in school, he should send them to someplace like our school, Saint Luke’s Academy, where we will not only teach them to pray but teach them the theology behind it.}

On the other hand, if the ad is from an opponent the candidate is portrayed as a spawn of Satan, who is in favour of all manner despicable things. He or she will raise taxes, cause crime to run rampant on our streets, roll back any progress in the cure for psoriasis, and cause a marked decrease Sunday School attendance.  There is no unsavoury thing this candidate is not capable of. 

The truth is that no candidate is perfect, and neither is anyone else. 

Not even saints like Paul have perfect records.  The same man who wrote the beautiful words we have before us today: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”2  And, who wrote that beautiful Ode to Love that is required reading at most weddings: “Love is patient; love is kind...”3 “And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.”4

The same guy who gave us those words also gave us passages from The Good Book from which has come much mischief.

Like this:  ‘Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church... Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.”5 How’s that one working out for you, fellas?

Or this: “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither the immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God.”6  

That list was so all-encompassing that it led the wonderful Roman Catholic Political Columnist Mark Shields, who passed away just yesterday, to memorably observe when tele-evangelists and others were using it as a cudgel to condemn. “If this is true, heaven is not only going to be sparsely populated it's going to be poorly decorated.”

And finally, this little tidbit that has kept and, in some cases, is still keeping women out of leadership rolls:   “Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says.  If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home.”7  I am reminded of our Lord’s words: “[I]f the blind leads the blind, both will fall into a ditch.”8 Jesus knew that being a male would not automatically make one the go-to-guy on matters of deep theology.  Think of how much talent was lost by the misuse of these words from Holy Writ.

The two sides of Saint Paul, the two sides of all of us, means that the distinctively Lutheran tenet that we are at the same time sinners and saints is most certainly true. That can be bad news for some, but the good news is that it means nobody, no one, is unredeemable not even the crazy, naked man in the graveyard.

This guy was not asking for help.  He is not asking for healing.  He is asking Jesus to leave him alone.

Perhaps that is where he has been all these years, alone.  Alone with his thoughts, his fears, his anxieties, his depression, as if they were a legion of soldiers stomping around in his head. It could have been a “mob” because of all the noise that was going on inside of him.  When he says his name is Legion, “the man had acknowledged that he no longer had any individual identity. He had lost his name. He had lost his individuality. All that was left was a boiling struggle of conflicting forces. It was as though a Roman legion was at war within him.”9

He also had lost his community who had devised countless ways to keep the poor fellow and bay and themselves safe.  They thought they had him under control.  They thought their chains would have been strong enough to keep him bound-up for at least a little while.  Yes, he would break loose but when he settled down, they would bring him back to the cemetery and to his isolation and have him under control again.  But that wouldn’t last and soon the voices in his head would get the best of him and he would be loose tearing through the streets and disrupting their lives.

The bad news is that they had all grown quite used to this.  Both the townsfolk and the man were doomed to this vicious “rinse, wash, dry, and repeat” cycle.  Until Jesus shows up and turns all of their worlds topsy-turvey.  At this point they can’t decide whether what just happened was good news or bad news.

The good news is that when Jesus heals the man, he solves one problem.  The bad news is that now they all have another. Pigs are running through the streets and flinging themselves headlong into the sea. The townsfolk must have been terrified and the pork-producers livid. “All this uproar for the freedom of one man.” they must have thought.  “The old ways may have had their moments of madness but at least we believed we had them under control.”  Now things are going to be radically different, and the people just aren’t sure just exactly what kind of news this is.  

Everybody, that is, except for the man who is sitting at the feet of Jesus “properly clothed and quite sane.”10 For him this was more than good news.  It was great news!  He was restored to himself, now he could be restored to his family, his friends, his neighbors, his community.  For him it was all good news.

Meanwhile, that same community, which should have been rejoicing, throwing a party over one who was lost being found, wasn’t so sure. I love the way Dr. Eugene Peterson, summed up their reaction perfectly in his paraphrase: “too much change, too fast, and they were scared.” 11

For them the news wasn’t so good, and their reaction was making it unbelievably difficult for the man to return to his hometown where he was so well known. People would be watching him carefully for a long time waiting for a relapse.  It would take a while for all that happened between them to be forgotten.

Is it any wonder that the man doesn’t just ask, he begs to go with Jesus.  

He wants to go with the one who healed him, the one who wasn't afraid to come near him, who didn't walk on the other side of the street. He wants to go with his new teacher and Lord and learn more about the kingdom of God. He's ready to follow Jesus.

To others along the way Jesus issues the invitation, "Come, follow me," but to this one he says, "Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you." 

Jesus does bid the man to follow, but in this case the following, involves staying rather than leaving. Jesus does not reject the man's application for discipleship but accepts it fully. I even have a first appointment all lined up for you, Jesus says from the boat. Your congregation is standing right behind you. No, go and tell....12

That is the man’s job and ours! And, of course, it is full of good news and bad news.

The crowds we face are just as tough, if not tougher, than the crowds the man faced.

The crowds we face seem to like, if not gravitate to, candidates that tear one another down rather than build their communities up.  The bad news is that negative political ads work!

The crowds we face idolize, to the point of idolatry, a leader so much that they would risk the Republic on his behalf. 

The crowds we face worship their guns more than God. 

And the worse news of all, the crowds we face may be indifferent to Jesus' message entirely.  

The good news is we can still tap into the God’s power to transform the painful brokenness of what is into the hopeful promise of what ought to and can be.

The Good News of God’s promise is still there when brave men and women stand up to the powers of this world that hurt, and disparage, and destroy and say, “that is not of God, and we will have none of it.”

God’s promise is still there when we stop thinking that the way things are so shall they ever be and come together to make the world a better place for Dawson and all baptized believers like him. 

God’s promise is still there to remind us that God loves our differences. God loves our diversity! God likes the idea that there are Jews and Greeks, males and females, gays and straights, bi’s and trans.  God promise is that the words of the old Sunday School song are true – “red and yellow, black and white, all are precious in God’s sight.”  

Understand this: “It’s not the division, it’s the rankings that are shattered.”13 No one person or group is better than anyone else in God’s eyes.  There are no deplorables or irredeemables and certainly no one who is righteous beyond measure in the eyes of God. 

And this most radical of all thoughts! That God’s promise is still there for Democrats, and Republicans, and Independents and can be seen in all of them when they don’t divide up into camps but work together for the common good.

God longs for the day when we are freed from our fears, restored to our right minds, and living out the promise of not only the Gospel but all of Scripture when all God’s of children are one united in God’s love.

May that day come soon for when it does it will be good news indeed.

________________

1.  Anish Dahal, “What Is GOP Candidate Jesse Sullivan Net Worth in 2022?,” Mixed Article, May 25, 2022, https://www.mixedarticle.com/gop-candidate-jesse-sullivan-net-worth-i.

2. Galatians 3:28.  (NRSV) [NRSV= The New Revised Standard Version]

3. 1st Corinthians 13:4 (NRSV)

4. 1st Corinthians 13:14 (NRSV)

5. Ephisians 5:22-24 (NKJV) [NKJV=The New King James Version]

6. 1st Corinthians 6:9-11.  (RSV) (RSV=The Revised Standard Version]

7.  1st Corinthians 14:34-35.  (NIV) [NIV=The New International Version]

8.  St. Matthew 15:14. (NKJV)

9. Martin Culpepper, “Luke,” in The New Interpreter's Bible (Nashville, Tennessee: Abingdon Press, 2005), pp. 187-188.

10. St. Luke 8:35. (PHILLIPS) [PHILLIPS=J. B. Phillips, The New Testament in Modern English (London: HarperCollins, 2000)]

11. St. Luke 8:37-39. (MSG) [MESSAGE=Eugene H. Peterson, The Message: The New Testament in Contemporary English (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 1995).

12.  Mary W Anderson, “Stay and Follow (Ps. 22: 19-28; Lk. 8:26-39),” Religion Online, June 10, 1998, https://www.religion-online.org/article/stay-and-follow-ps-22-19-28-lk-826-39/.

13.   James  D. Howell, “What Can We Say?  June 12  2nd after Pentecost” James Howell's Weekly Preaching Notions (Myers Park United Methodist Church, January 1, 1970), https://jameshowellsweeklypreachingnotions.blogspot.com/.

Sermon preached at

The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Saint Luke

Chicago, Illinois

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ce9oSQdbswM&list=UUbjrgh5qm2uH97AHPUiGTCA&index=20