Sunday, October 23, 2016

Pride and Prayerfulness

"Forgive Us Our Trespassing" by Banksy
October 23, 2016
Luke 18:9-14
9Jesus told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: 10"Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, 'God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.' 13But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, 'God, be merciful to me, a sinner!' 14I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted."


Sermon:  “Pride and Prayerfulness”

A businessman needed a million dollars to close an important business transaction. He went to church to pray for the money.
He knelt and started praying next to a man who was praying for the hundred dollars he needed to pay an urgent debt. The businessman took out his wallet and pressed the hundred dollars into the other man's hand.

Overjoyed, the man got up and left the church.

The businessman then closed his eyes and prayed, "And now, Lord, that I have your undivided attention..."

Our prayers reveal much about who we really are.  Take the Pharisee and the tax collector in our Gospel reading this morning.  The former heaped up lots of words:  “God, thank you that I’m not like thieves, rogues, my political opponents and,” with a sideward glance to the tax collector next to him, “this guy.”  Then he started listing his pious assets to God (as if God needed to hear it): “I fast (and then have a nice lamb dinner), and I give a solid 10% of my income (and not one denarius more).”
 
The tax collector didn’t seem too offended, because he was at the temple to pray, not to get the approval of others.  He hung his head with humility, and prayed the most true and authentic prayer there is, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”

What do we pray, I wonder?  Do we approach God with humility and reverence, or as just another entity we need to prove our worth to?  How we pray says everything about who we are.  It also says who we believe God is.

Prayer is the bold act of asserting the truth that God is God, and we are not.

This means we do not get to speak for God.  We do not get to choose whom God favors and doesn’t.  We don not even get to bend God to our will so we will have financial or societal success.  Instead, we come, before the Creator of all that is and ever will be, and we wait, with complete humility.  We recognize that, because we are not God, we are not perfect, and no amount of our striving and self-righteousness will get us there.  We all sin.  All the time.  (I think I’m getting a spiritual high-five from John Calvin about now.)

We all should try to pray the prayer of that faithful tax collector:
God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”

But this powerful prayer isn’t just about sin.  It is also about mercy.  For just as sin is part of the human condition (that when given the choice, we will often choose the selfish path), so is grace part of the divine condition (that, when given the choice, God will always choose to forgive).

God is merciful, not because we impress God with our fancy words or spiritual gold stars.  God is merciful because that is who God is.  Mercy and grace are woven into the very character of God, and so when, like that tax collector, we cry out for mercy, God listens, and acts, in extraordinary and everyday ways.

Mercy comes, sometimes how we least expect it.  Forgiveness is given.  Repentance is realized.  And we become better human beings.  Not perfect, not gods, but better, more humble, versions of who we are. 

Can you imagine what the world would be like if we all practiced such humility?

What if we saw someone who angered us greatly, and instead of praying to God for judgment on them, or vindication for ourselves, we prayed, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”

What if we responded to great need in our community not by saying “there but by the grace of God, go I,” but instead, God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” and let acts of gratitude grow out of the mercy we receive from God?

What if we found ourselves in a heated political or theological debate, and instead of shoring up our battle lines, paused and admitted that none of us are perfect or have a monopoly on the truth, and prayed, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”

What if we approached the world, not with national superiority or inflated pride, but instead named our complicity in ecological, economic and humanitarian crises, saying, God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”

What would this world look like if we all prayed like that humble tax collector?  I think it might become a planet saturated with the mercy of God.

And, let us remember that God’s mercy is no small thing.  God’s mercy can spare children from violence.  God’s mercy can bring slaves freedom.  God’s mercy can make even broken powers and principalities agents of healing. God’s mercy can make stones of hatred fall to the ground, emptied of their destructive power.  God’s mercy can make strangers become family.  God’s mercy can make an instrument of state death an instrument of hope and salvation.  God’s mercy can make a tomb a place of resurrection joy.  God’s mercy can grow a tree with leaves that heal the nations, and a river whose waters bring life, not death, wherever they flow.

As Pope Francis said[1], “God’s mercy can make even the driest land become a garden, can restore life to dry bones…Let us be renewed by God’s mercy, let us be loved by Jesus, let us enable the power of his love to change our lives too, and let us become agents of this mercy, channels through which God can water the earth, protect all creation and make justice and peace flourish.”

Thanks be to the God whose name is Mercy, to the Savior who forgave even his executioners, and to the Spirit who helps us pray, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” and then change the world with the mercy we receive.  Amen.




[1] Pope Francis’ Easter Urbi et Orbi message on March 31, 2013.

Sunday, October 16, 2016

A Town Called Welfare

October 16, 2016

Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7
1These are the words of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the remaining elders among the exiles, and to the priests, the prophets, and all the people, whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.

4Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: 5Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. 6Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. 7But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.

Sermon: “A Town Called Welfare”

I met the prophet Jeremiah last Wednesday evening, after chime rehearsal, in Vass.  Ok, so his name wasn’t Jeremiah and he wasn’t a “he,” but still, there she was, Jeremiah, right off the pages of scripture.

I first encountered this Jeremiah (whose name I never found out) at the Dollar General as I bought laundry detergent.  She was in front of me in the check out line, with a friend.  The friend appeared to be in old pajamas.  She wore tattered capri jeans, old sandals and a dirty t-shirt.  I could see that she had a hard time standing, as her ankle was red and swollen-looking.  Both she and her friend had something of a dazed look in their eyes.  I’ll admit that my first thought was drugs.  I’m not proud of that.  I was to learn later they were under the influence of something else: trauma.  We didn’t speak, but God wasn’t done with my Jeremiah interaction, and so when I went to Valenti’s to pick up food for my dinner, in walked Jeremiah.

She hobbled a bit, was friendly with everyone, and told the woman next to me her story.  She was from Lobelia, and had been evacuated by a loud speaker waking her from sleep and telling her to immediately leave her home.  The ankle injury happened as she hopped into a friend’s boat, twisting it badly.  She had no idea when she could go home.  It’s possible she’s still not home.  She looked totally exhausted, a shell of a person.

And yet, as she turned to me, her face lit up.  “You look awfully familiar,” she said.  “I just saw you in the Dollar General,” I replied.
“No, it’s not that…what’s your name?  You look just like a friend of mine from high school.”  We figured out I was not that friend, but smiling all the time, she told me I looked “all demure and put together sitting there” and complimented my outfit.  These were not words of envy; they were filled with kindness.

And as she left, hobbling out with her food, she called back over her shoulder to me, “God bless!”  Her first instinct was to be a blessing to me, even in the midst of her trauma.  I regret that mine was not: I didn’t even think to check that she and her friend had a safe place to stay that night until she was already gone.  

That was the last I saw of Jeremiah.  I call her the prophet Jeremiah because they have so very much in common.  Jeremiah was in exile from his home; so was she.  Jeremiah had first-hand witnessed destruction and disaster, not of his own making; so had she.  Jeremiah had no idea what the future looked like or what would happen next; the same was true for her.  And, most importantly, Jeremiah spoke words of hope and kindness, even when glassy-eyed from trauma; so did she.  Jeremiah called for exiles to seek the welfare of the city in which they were exiled; she did just that, spreading kindness and blessing wherever she went.

So often, the book of Jeremiah, especially this chapter, is used as a pop-Christian culture promise of God’s provision, sold at Hobby Lobby on artfully painted, expensive wall hangings, “I know the plans I have for you, plans for a future with hope” they read.  But these words were never meant for people who could afford to buy them as inspirational art for their walls.  These words were meant for a people who had no walls, a people in exile who didn’t know if the meager home they called theirs would still be standing when they finally returned. 

My former professor, Kathleen O’Connor, captures Jeremiah’s powerful vision best, writing, “…Jeremiah promises a future beyond the death of the nation, a future that is open-ended, uncertain, and just over the horizon.   That future will come because God, whom they thought had punished them, failed them, or left them, was still there, still loving, and still yearning for them. 

Jeremiah does not explain suffering in any satisfactory way, at least to me (no biblical book does), but the book pledges that God will make a future and points the way towards it.  The tears of Jeremiah, God, the people, and the earth itself, flow across the book, promising to awaken hearts turned to stone by brutality…Jeremiah is a book of resilience, a work of massive theological reinvention, a kind of survival manual for a destroyed society.”[1] 

That survival is found in one thing – seeking the welfare (shalom, peace, wholeness, and completeness in the Hebrew) of the city where exiles live.  The Jeremiah I met in Vass embodied this in such a remarkable way: she was angry at being displaced, and rightly so.  She was exhausted, emotionally and physically.  She was bewildered, not knowing what might come next.  And yet, in that place of trauma, she saw a stranger (me), and said something kind to them.  Hurricanes may rage, waters may rise, dams may breach, trees may fall, power may fail, but kindness remains. 

So my friends, my challenge for us all in the wake of our own disaster is just that: add some kindness to the world and our community.  Help someone, not because you have to or because you earn special favor from God, but because it’s the right thing to do. 

Another prophet, Presbyterian pastor Fred Rogers, (who you may have known as Mr. Rogers) reminds us of the need to be a helper, saying, “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping."  To this day, especially in times of "disaster," I remember my mother's words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world.”

Let us all be helpers.  Let us seek shalom and welfare, especially for the exiles displaced by hurricane Matthew.  Donate. Volunteer. Rebuild. Pray.  And never think that our troubles are so much that we cannot help another person.  We will limp if we have to, the Jeremiah I met certainly did, but we will spread shalom all the same.

Because as both Jeremiahs show us, in the midst of disaster and trauma, God is building a town called Welfare, where resilience and kindness show up in the most everyday of places, even in Valenti’s.  Amen.


[1] O’Connor, Kathleen, Jeremiah: Pain and Promise, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2011.

Sunday, October 2, 2016

Feasting on Onion Sandwiches

Image Source
October 2, 2016 - World Communion Sunday
Exodus 12:1-13, 13:1-8

The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt: This month shall mark for you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year for you. Tell the whole congregation of Israel that on the tenth of this month they are to take a lamb for each family, a lamb for each household. If a household is too small for a whole lamb, it shall join its closest neighbor in obtaining one; the lamb shall be divided in proportion to the number of people who eat of it.

Your lamb shall be without blemish, a year-old male; you may take it from the sheep or from the goats. You shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month; then the whole assembled congregation of Israel shall slaughter it at twilight. They shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. They shall eat the lamb that same night; they shall eat it roasted over the fire with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roasted over the fire, with its head, legs, and inner organs. 10 You shall let none of it remain until the morning; anything that remains until the morning you shall burn.

11 This is how you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it hurriedly. It is the passover of the Lord. 12 For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike down every firstborn in the land of Egypt, both human beings and animals; on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord. 13 The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live: when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.

The Lord said to Moses: Consecrate to me all the firstborn; whatever is the first to open the womb among the Israelites, of human beings and animals, is mine.
Moses said to the people, “Remember this day on which you came out of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, because the Lord brought you out from there by strength of hand; no leavened bread shall be eaten. Today, in the month of Abib, you are going out. When the Lord brings you into the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, which he swore to your ancestors to give you, a land flowing with milk and honey, you shall keep this observance in this month. Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, and on the seventh day there shall be a festival to the Lord. Unleavened bread shall be eaten for seven days; no leavened bread shall be seen in your possession, and no leaven shall be seen among you in all your territory. You shall tell your child on that day, ‘It is because of what the Lord did for me when I came out of Egypt.’

Sermon: “Feasting on Onion Sandwiches”

One of my favorite places on earth is our family hunting camp less than 100 miles from the Mexican border in Texas.  We call it “Mac County” because it’s in McMullen County.  My great-grandfather purchased the land, and the family legend goes that he was hoping the railroad would come through and lead to great financial success.  The railroad ended up many miles away.  But that land is priceless to us.

Mac County remains a rustic camp for my family.  What’s lacking in terms of running water and electricity is made up for in innumerable stars and domino games.  Everything is cooked over an open fire, and you’d be surprised at what delicacies can be concocted in that way. 

But on one particular trip when I was a teenager, the menu was…different.

My parents and I were making a quick trip to ready the camp for deer season, and it was an especially warm fall South Texan day.  I came expecting a meal of grilled steak and potatoes or something delicious.  What my parents brought was a loaf of bread and an onion.  The menu?  Onion sandwiches.  I cannot overstate my dismay at such a lunch.

Ever the foodie, even then, I connived to redeem that simple fare.  It was too hot for a fire, so I borrowed a lighter and got to work “toasting” my onion.  It was a tedious effort, and the result was a lukewarm onion with the distinct undertones of butane.  Yum.

The food we eat reveals so much about us.  Or put another way, you are what you eat.  The Saga of the Onion Sandwich revealed that: 1. It was a hot day.  2.  We were in a hurry.  3. We didn’t want to bother with an ice chest or a campfire.  4.  My parents are frugal, and 5.  I can be a little fussy when it comes to food.

As we enter into the story of the Passover in Exodus, we find the same to be true: the food the Israelites ate revealed much about them.  We have incredible detail in the institution of the Passover, not because God is a fussy foodie, but because each and every detail matters, as a window into the story and life of the people of Israel.

A lamb must be used for each household – symbolizing purity and unblemished innocence.  But justice and compassion are woven in, because if a family cannot afford a whole lamb themselves, they can join up with other families and share one.

The blood of this lamb is a precious thing, adorning the doorposts of their homes because these are a people who have bled.  Their suffering is remembered, not just through words or stories, but through blood.  This is not meant to be a feel-good meal.

Dennis Sanders[1] helps us understand their sorrow mirrored in the particulars of this meal, saying, “The preparation of the meal was incredibly specific. They eat bitter herbs as a reminder of their suffering. They use flatbread or bread without yeast because they had to eat in a hurry. The lamb was not to be eaten raw or boiled. Why did it matter if the meat was boiled? Because the waters of Egypt were the places where the Hebrew male infants were drowned at the Pharaoh’s command. The water brought death and this lamb could not come in contact with a reminder of the evil inflicted upon them.”

These refugee people are told that doggy bags are not an option: they are to eat their fill, and then destroy what’s left.  There is no hoarding for tomorrow.  (After all, hoarding is an Egyptian ethic, and they are fleeing enslavement from that gluttonous society of haves and have-nots.)  They must rely on God’s sustenance each new day, taking life one precarious, precious day at a time. 
They are what – and how – they eat.

Now, I could turn the tables here and ask how you ate your breakfast this morning (if you ate it at all).  Whether you were standing at the kitchen sink, rushing like those Israelites, which says you might have a habit of lateness or over-sleeping.  Whether you had the same breakfast as every day of your life, which says that ‘change’ might not be your favorite word or activity.  But today, I don’t want us to talk about your breakfast table.  I want us to talk about another Table.

On this World Communion Sunday, I want us to think about the particulars of this meal, and what it says about who we are, and who we hope to become.
We begin this meal with a welcome, not from me, but from Jesus Christ.  The welcome is essential, because it is the hardest for us to accept.  Sometimes, we don’t feel we’re worthy to be welcomed by God; God welcomes us anyway.  Sometimes, we don’t feel others are worthy of our welcome; God calls us to welcome them anyway.  It all begins with a welcome.

And then we bless one another: “The Lord be with you…” I say (and you say “and also with you”).  We call each other to lift our hearts to God, and to give God thanks, and then we do that: praying together.

The words change but the prayer is essentially the same: we remember the story of our sacred text, we sing of God’s grace, we remember the person and work of Jesus, we confess our trust in him, we remember that Pentecost wasn’t a one-off event, and we ask for the Spirit to make this meal a holy one. 

I don’t pray for the bread and the cup to become Jesus’ body and blood, because I as a minister can’t really command God to act on cue (I am not a minister of magic).  Instead I pray that the bread and cup would be “for us” Christ’s body and blood, that is a sign and a seal of the grace we receive through his body and his blood, given once, for all.  So, I pray not for God to transform this bread and this cup in that moment, but for God to transform us, however long that may take.

Then I say the words you may know by heart, that on the night Jesus was betrayed, he gathered with his friends in a upper room and took bread, giving God thanks for it, and broke it, giving it to his disciples and saying, “Take, eat, this is my body, broken for you.”  I tell you how did the same with the cup, saying “this is the cup of the new covenant sealed in my blood, drink of it all of you for the forgiveness of sins.”  I then add, “for as often as we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim the saving death of our risen Lord, until he comes again.  He will come again.”

I finish by saying all is ready, and all are welcome.  All.
Now, this puts me in a bit of tension with traditional Presbyterian practice, which says all “who are baptized and confess Jesus as Lord” may come to this Table.  But knowing our Book of Confessions and Book of Order are always secondary sources to scripture, I read Jesus feeding his betrayer Judas as an invitation to the faithful and the faithless, the follower and the betrayer, and to everyone in between.  So I say all are welcome, because I believe that there are no prerequisites to an encounter with the grace of God, and I believe that, as a minister, I am a steward of the sacraments, not a gatekeeper to them.  You can see I’ve given this some thought!

Then, we eat the bread and drink the cup, today by intinction as you come forward.   On this World Communion Sunday, you will hear the words “the body of Christ broken for you, the blood of Christ shed for you” in another language, reminding you of this global Table we are a part of.

The elder(s) serving and myself eat last, because we have a call to serve you first in all things.  And then we pray, asking that this tiny taste of the kingdom will nourish us to leave this Table better, more peaceful people.

We celebrate the Lord’s Supper to remember who Jesus was and what he did, just as those Israelites ate the Passover to remember who they were and what Yahweh had done for them. 

But we also do this to claim who we hope to be, a people who do not re-enact the sacrifice of Jesus once a month (which is why do not call this an Altar but a Table), but who daily sacrifice ourselves by feeding the hungers of this world, with God’s help.

We are what (and how) we eat.  So let us come to this holy Table today, and feast on the stories of our faith, finding our place and call within them.  Let us come to this holy place, and celebrate the bountiful goodness of our God, who feeds and sustains this world each new day (even with onion sandwiches).  Amen.