October 2019

sermon-9-22-01

September 22, 2019

The Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost E. Bevan Stanley
September 22, 2019
Proper 20, Year C, RCL, Track 1

Jesus said, “No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.” In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

This parable and the following saying are about as confusing as Jesus gets. At the risk of sounding like whining on the part of the preacher, I invite you to consider what he says. In the parable the hero is a manager, or steward, or chief executive who is stealing from the master. When he is dismissed, he tries to buy himself some friends by cooking the books and reducing the amount some of the master’s clients owe. He is a thief twice over. Then the master commends him for being so smart. This says volumes about the character of the master who values crafty greed over honesty. The first conclusion Jesus draws is that the children of this age, we would say those whose values are set by our secular culture, are more shrewd in dealing with secular matters than are the children of light, that is those whose values are aligned with God’s values. Then Jesus draws another conclusion: “Make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.” It seems that Jesus is advising us to buy friends with money here in this life, so that these purchased friends may welcome us when we get to heaven.” The whole things seems pretty sleazy.

Then in the next paragraph, Jesus says, “Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own?” Now he is talking about being faithful, not about stealing. It makes sense, but it seems to be the opposite of the lesson of the parable he just told about the man who was not faithful, but betrayed his trust.

Finally, he concludes with, “No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other.

While it is certainly true that there is much in Scripture that is true at a level that is deeper than our understanding, God does expect us to use the minds God gave us as far as we can. Therefore, I invite you to go with me and see if we can make some sense of this passage. This will be a kind of Bible study.

First, it is possible that these are in fact three different sayings that Jesus uttered at different times, and which Luke, the author of this Gospel, chose to put together, because all three deal with the topic of money. If that is so, then we don’t have to see a logical or causal relationship among the three. Indeed, the first part, the parable of the dishonest manager, if taken alone, could be read as not really amount money at all. Maybe in its original form when Jesus spoke the words, it ended with the phrase, “The children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.” Then the only point of the parable would be to contrast two different ways of being the world, the way of the world based on self-interest, self-protection, and fear, and the way of the Kingdom based on trusting God, generosity, and vulnerability. The moral of this parable could be understood as how two different people respond to crisis. The unrighteous manager faces a crisis when he is called to account. His solution is shrewd. The children of light or members of the faith community also face a crisis in the visitation of God’s prophet. Are they responding as shrewdly to their crisis as the manager is to his?

Why don’t we start with the easiest to understand, and the hardest to live: “You cannot serve God and wealth.” The biblical word is Mammon. It is not just money, but the whole idea of wealth as the source of security, worth, and power. Indeed, it is the name of an idol, the personification of wealth. This is very much like last week’s saying about having to hate one’s family in order to follow Jesus. It is not that either wealth or family are bad in themselves. In fact they are good. The Bible is clear that both are forms of blessing. The problem is when they compete in our hearts with that place which is rightfully God’s. We can enjoy wealth and use it for all kinds of good. This is what we mean by stewardship. Wealth may be a blessing, but we must not worship it or rely on it to be the source of blessing. Only God can be the source of our blessings.

St. Augustine articulated a very sound moral principle, when he said that every human being should be treated as an end and not as a means. That is, one must never treat a human being simply as the way to achieve some goal of one’s own. We must never use another. Jesus is saying here that exactly the opposite is true of money. Money must never be the goal or end, but must always be used as a means, or a tool. The very odd parable of Jesus’ first saying this morning makes that point. Money used for the good of others, can be an investment in one’s own soul. When we act generously, we become generous. What we sow here in this life, we will reap in the next—and may be in this life as well.

So, what is the bottom line here? (Since we have been talking about money and accounting, I guess it’s appropriate to use a financial metaphor!) The point to take home is simple—it usually is. We are to worship and serve God, and not money. We must never confuse the utility of money—for it is very useful—with the bounty of God. Money is a tool, a means of exchange. It is a way of storing the product of present labor for future use. It is a means to accomplish good for ourselves, our families, our neighbors, and our world. But we do not work, or labor, or give our lives to get money. We work for God’s mission of reconciliation in the world, and give our lives to that great purpose and adventure. Along the way, God may see fit to entrust us with money, or talents, or other resources to use for God’s purposes. Just as love, peace, joy, family, honor, and respect are to be enjoyed when they fall from God’s generous hand, so is money. Nor can any of these can be pursued as ends in themselves with out having them turn sour or become addictions.

So, my take on this odd passage is simply this: Jesus is often telling us in effect to keep our eye on the ball. Remember who God is and our relationship to God as beloved children. Then enjoy all God’s blessing, including money, as resources for God’s purposes. If we do that, we shall experience joy in both this world and the next.

Hurray for money! It’s great stuff. But it’s a tool not a master. And it can’t hold a candle to God. 

sermon-9-15-01

September 15, 2019

The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost E. Bevan Stanley
September 15, 2019
Proper 19, Year C, RCL

Jesus said, “There will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous person who need no repentance.” In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Welcome to the lost and found department! When we are lost, God finds us. We all know how it feels when we think our wallet or purse is missing and then find it. The movement from frantic anxiety to relief and joy. The one prayer I say that is always answered is, “Lord Jesus, help me find my keys.” Many of us have also known the even stronger feelings that go with the loss of a friend or a love. And if there is reconciliation, the immense and awesome joy of having found that friend again.

The two parables we have heard in the Gospel lesson this morning are among the most well known and most loved.

  I wonder what it feels like to be that sheep. Sheep are notoriously stupid animals, so the lost sheep may not even know that it is lost. Here I am just munching away on some grass, totally oblivious to the cliff I’m about to stumble over or the wolf that is about to eat me. I’m just enjoying this grass.  All of a sudden this hand comes down, grabs me by the legs, and heaves me into the air. Thump! I land across the shepherd’s shoulders with a jolt to my stomach. Then bounce, bounce, bounce. You know (bounce) this really isn’t (jolt) all that much fun (oomph). Oh! Here we are back to the rest of the flock. Gee, I hadn’t even realized I had missed you guys, but you know, come to think of it, I had been pretty lonely and it is good to have some friends again. Now where’s that grass?

We need not discuss the minimal thought processes of the coin!

Neither of the New Testament readings this morning suggest that we do anything to get back to God.  I doubt if the lost sheep was looking very hard for the flock. Certainly the lost coin wasn’t doing anything but lying in the dirt. Paul was even blaspheming and persecuting the Church. You know, I’m sure glad I’m not like any of them!

These readings are not about our doing anything. That is, except the hardest thing of all, trusting God. They are about grace. They are about God.

The Apostle Paul annoys some of us at times in his letters by what sounds like arrogance. Imitate me, he says. But in today’s lesson from the first letter to Timothy, we get a better idea of what the Apostle of Grace has in mind. “I am the foremost of sinners; but I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience for an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life.” What Paul is an example of is God’s grace working in an ordinary, imperfect life. “Look at me,” says Paul, “This is what God can do for a sinner, this is what God can do for you. This is what God wants to do for everyone. I am only going to boast in what God is doing in my life.”

We are so silly. We want to know what we need to do to get close to God. We want to know what we need to do to please God. We want to find God. But these two stories from the Gospel show us the truth. It is not I who must find God, as if I had misplaced God like my car keys. God is not the one who is lost, wandering around not knowing which way is home. No, I am the lost sheep or coin, and God finds me. Although created by God and belonging to God, somehow I wandered away, I ended up in the wrong place, I strayed from the flock or rolled off the table, or something. The proper relationship was broken. And then God comes looking. I did not, when I was lost, nor do I usually now, when I am lost, do anything about it. God does. And what God does is to come after me, to hunt, to search, to pursue, to woo, until God gets me back. God is as relentless as the Hound of Heaven in Thompson’s famous poem, and as persistent as the mother rabbit who pursues the Runaway Bunny in the children’s story of the same name. God’s love is so fierce that it will allow nothing to stand in its way. And when the lost is found, there is rejoicing. In these parables Jesus shows us what it looks like from God’s point of view. God enjoys finding us and getting us back. There is rejoicing in heaven. That’s what makes the Son and the Father rejoice and dance around with the Holy Spirit and say hurray! What fun! We got another one back!

When the Pharisees criticize Jesus for hanging out with disreputable people, Jesus simply says in effect, “Hey, Jesus is the name, finding lost people is my game. Get used to it.”

The question I have this morning is: whom do I think I am the most like? Am I like the Pharisee, the person who has gotten pretty good at religious practices, and who is uncomfortable when these people of low character get too close? Am I like the coin, just lying in the dirt waiting to be saved but not even conscious? Am I like the sheep who was rescued but it was a pretty bumpy ride? Am I like Paul who sees his own life as an example of God’s power to forgive and renew? Am I like Jesus who is so excited about bringing another person back into fellowship with the Father that he will go through death and back to accomplish it?

Wherever we see ourselves in these lessons today, whatever word the Spirit is speaking to our hearts right now, in whatever way we were lost, now we are found. The lostness is our doing, but the finding is all God’s. And God is very, very happy to have us back. Every time. Always. Whatever it takes. There is rejoicing in heaven, and we get to join in joy here on earth.

sermon-9-8-01

September 8, 2019

The Thirteeenth Sunday after Pentecost E. Bevan Stanley
September 8, 2019
Proper 18, Year C, Track 1
Jeremiah 18:1-11
Philemon 1-21
Luke 14:25-33

From the Gospel: Whoever comet to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

This has got to me one of the most difficult sayings of Jesus for us to accept. It is so harsh that we immediately put up our defenses. Jesus commands us to love, not to hate. Our families are where we learn about love. Surely this is a mistake. Maybe we can just ignore it. What are we to make of it? Let me say up front that I cannot explain it to you in a totally satisfactory way. Instead, let’s make some observations about the text and see if we can get some insight into what is going on.

First let’s look more closely at the entire passage we just heard and its context. I am sorry if this may seem more like a lecture than sermon, but I can’t think of a better way to unpack this difficult passage. This a case when scholarship is actually helpful.

For a few chapters here in Luke we get a whole series of stories, parable, and sayings of Jesus as he travels towards Jerusalem. The piece we heard this morning starts a new section. But there are really four different parts. There is the part about hating family members to be a disciple. Then he says we have to take up the cross and follow him to be his disciple. There follows two parables about counting the cost of an enterprise before starting it—one about building a tower, the other about going into battle. Then he returns to the cost of discipleship, but now he is not talking about hating family members, but about giving up all one’s possessions. This whole piece is in Matthew as well as Luke but not in Mark. Only the line about taking up our cross is in Mark. It has long been noted that the first three Gospel—Mathew, Mark, and Luke are very similar to each other, and very different from the Gospel of John. Because of this similarity, they are called the Synoptic Gospels.  To explain why there is some material that is shared by Matthew and Luke but not in Mark, scholars have hypothesized that there may have been a document that has been lost that was a source for Matthew and Luke, but which Mark did not use. This material is mostly sayings, with no narrative connecting them. Sort of like a dictionary of sayings or Bartletts Quotations. Some of the sayings may have been organize similarity of idea or even just of words.

Perhaps that’s what we are looking at here. Fours sayings of Jesus that he may have said at different times in different contexts. They were remembered and written down. Then Matthew and Luke take these free floating sayings and put them into the narrative frameworks of there accounts of Jesus’ ministry. Three of these sayings are connected by the idea of the cost of being a disciple. The other two are there  because of the idea of estimating the cost before starting. If this is how these sayings came to be clustered together here in Luke, then we have no idea what situation caused Jesus to say these things in the first place. In what conversation, would Jesus be provoked to say that disciples should hate their families?

Another aspect of scholarship is that there has been much work done in recent decades an analyzing the rhetorical forms and devices of the languages in use at the time of Jesus. It is common in the semitic languages to use extremely sharp contrasts to make a point. Dark and light. Holy and an abomination. Love and hate. It would be typical of the Aramaic that Jesus spoke to use this sort of strong statement to emphasize a point that we English speakers would express far more moderately.

Having acknowledged all this, we are still beset with these very difficult sayings about hating members of our families, taking up the cross and giving up our possessions. The first and third can be dealt with by the idea of detachment. We should not let our affections, desires, or comforts get in the way of our relationship with Jesus. Jesus illustrates this in another place when he is speaking in a house and is told that his mother and brothers are outside. He replies, “Who are my mother and brothers? Those who do the will of God are my mother and brothers and sisters.” The urgency to pursue the Kingdom of God relativizes all other agendas. The requirement to take up the cross is clearly urging us to imitate Jesus even in his most difficult and painful challenges.

Very briefly the other two readings also flavor this scriptural stew. Jeremiah speaks of the need for Israel to changer there ways. In using the metaphor of the potter, though, he says that we are in God’s hands. God can destroy us or make us, and more hopefully, God can re-make or re-shape us.

In Philemon we see a very tender side of Paul, who is concerned about a slave named Onesimus. He is sending him back to his owner, Philemon, urging Philemon to free Onesimus and change the relationship from owner and slave to brothers in Christ.

So taken all together what do we have? Paul envisions a new kind of community that he often calls the Church or the Body of Christ. This new community is the beginning of the Kingdom of God on earth. In this community there is equality and love. This is the same Kingdom that Jesus proclaimed as breaking into human history now. This is the same community of justice and mercy that Jeremiah was urging the Israelites of his own time to inhabit.

Since the word as it is is not the world as it should be, establishing this community that is the beginning of the kingdom of God is hard and risky. It may involve breaking down the structures of the kingdoms of earth, other ways of structuring society that are hindrances to establishing the Kingdom of God. Clearly Herod, the religious hierarchy and the Roman government all felt threatened by Jesus proclamation of this new order of justice and compassion. Those of us who want to continue the millennia long work of making the Kingdom of God a reality on earth should expect resistance, misunderstanding, defensiveness and even retaliation.

To my mind Jesus is saying, “This is going to be tough. If you want to join me in this divine work of rebuilding the world understand that it will be risky and costly. And only you can decide if it is worth it. It reminds me of the Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton, who recruited his team of sailors and explorers with this want ad in the news papers:

MEN WANTED for Hazardous Journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return, doubtful. Honor and recognition in case of success – Ernest Shackleton.

He received 400 applications for 27 spaces.

Jesus invites to join him in the greatest work, the greatest adventure of all time. It won’t be easy, but can you think of better cause on which to spend your life? What do you say?

sermon-9-1-01

September 1, 2019

The Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost E. Bevan Stanley
September 1, 2019
Proper 17, Year C

From the Prophet Jeremiah: Be appalled, O heavens, at this, be shocked, be utterly desolate, says the Lord, for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and dug out cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns that can hold no water. In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

I’m back! I can’t tell you how good it is to see all of you again. The sabbatical leave was everything I hoped. There was time for family, for retreat and writing, for travel, and for recreation. It is sometimes called a “refresher leave,” and I am refreshed. You may be sorry.

The Gospel reading this morning contains advice about dinner parties and importance of humility. I think you are already good about parties and inviting everybody and not being presumptuous. At least at the level of social engagements. However, the Prophet probes at a much deeper spiritual issue: Do we trust God?

“Be appalled, O heavens, at this,
be shocked, be utterly desolate,

says the Lord,

for my people have committed two evils:
they have forsaken me,

the fountain of living water,
and dug out cisterns for themselves,

cracked cisterns
that can hold no water.”

The prophet points out that the People of God have committed two evils that are closely related. They have forsaken their God who is the source of all their blessings and in place of God have tried to provide those blessings for themselves. The metaphor is water. God is the fountain of living water, always bubbling up. They don’t even need to draw it up in a bucket from a well. This is the same metaphor that Jesus used when speaking to the woman at the well. God wants to give us living water that bubbles up inside us always. So, they have this spring all the time, but instead of using it, they make cisterns to capture rain water when it comes, then store it for months while it gets good and scuzzy during the dry months. It is really stupid.

And yet that is always our temptation. We don’t like depending on God. You can’t see God. God doesn’t do things the way we would. You ask for one thing and you get another. One of the greatest blessing in my life is my wife, Alinda. Often, she offers to do something for me. Yet instead of saying, “Thank you,” I am more likely to say, “No, I’ll do it myself.” Why do I do that? I tell myself that I don’t want to be a bother to Alinda, but that’s a lie. I just don’t like not being self-sufficient. I would rather reject kindness. Since love is a series of exchanges of kindnesses, by rejecting the kindness, I am rejecting love. And by rejecting love, I am rejecting Go.

In the case of God, the stakes are higher. “What wrong did your ancestors find in me
that they went far from me,

and went after worthless things, and became worthless themselves?

They did not say, “Where is the Lord
who brought us up from the land of Egypt,

who led us in the wilderness,
in a land of deserts and pits,

in a land of drought and deep darkness,
in a land that no one passes through,
where no one lives?”

I brought you into a plentiful land
to eat its fruits and its good things.

God is not just the source of nice gifts. God is the one who saves us when we are desperate, when we are about to get killed. God is the one who saved us from Pharaoh. God is the source of our life.

So here I am back from my sabbatical. Here is where I hope to put my energy. I want St. Michael’s to be a place, no, not a place, but a community, in which God is at the center. I want us at St. Michael’s to be a group of people who depend on God. We will remember all the good God has done for us. We will drink from God’s spring. We will not depend on our own puny abilities to create and maintain life. We will drink for the spring of God’s love and power, and playfulness and freedom. We will be agents of God to spread love, power, playfulness and freedom all over Litchfield, and all over the world. We will be part of the Jesus movement that opposes every force that would limit or diminish love, power, playfulness and freedom among the human family.

In our time in Scotland, we worshiped in the place where St. Columba built his monastery. I read a book about St. Brendan the Navigator. We traveled through the lands evangelized by St. Ninian. In Orkney we learned about St. Magnus. All of these were people who simply depended on God. They saw all that happened to them as God’s work. They saw all as God’s gift. They let go of their own agendas. And they left a legacy that has endured for a millennia and a half.

I want to experiment with a variety of forms of prayer and worship that we have not tried much before. I want to figure out how we can take our message out beyond these walls to those who are not inclined to cross our threshold. Most of all I want to do all we can to be a people so loving, powerful, playful, and free that everyone will say, “I want to be like that.” We will drink from God’s fountain, and everyone will say, “Whatever they’re drinking, I want some of that.”