On the Other Side of the Gate

Amos 6:1a,4-7 

Luke 16:19-31 

Jesus is not finished with the subject of money yet. 

And we might think that what he he has to say is controversial.  Controversial because he speaks of wealth disparagingly. And this seems to contradict a common belief, based on some of the Hebrew scriptures, that God’s blessings show up in the abundance we receive in this life – abundant property, abundant crops, even an abundance of children all mean that God is smiling on you. 

And there are great reasons why this is not only appealing to our hearts and minds, but also seems to make sense. Abundance of the things we need in life will give us a sense of well-being and security. 

Years ago I was talking with some people about what the Bible says about wealth. We had just read a passage from Luke where Jesus says, “Woe to you who are rich.” We wondered if he really meant that. Because, is it really that bad being rich?

One woman in the conversation said this. “There was a time when I was poor, but now I am not. I thought about money a whole lot more when I was poor than I do now.” It is a privilege to not have to think about money all the time. You might still want to think about it. But you simply aren’t forced to think every day about whether you have enough to buy the food you need, about how you will juggle paying your bills so you won’t bounce a check or have the water turned off at your house. These are difficult and stressful matters to have weighing on you every day. It is a privilege to have enough so that you do not have those worries.

Most of us are privileged in that way. But today I am suspending that privilege and, once again, asking you to think about money, along with Jesus and the Pharisees. Let’s begin by setting the context.

At the beginning of this chapter Jesus told the Parable of the Dishonest Manager to his disciples, which was overheard by the Pharisees and scribes, sinners and tax collectors. We know they heard him, because immediately after he finishes the parable, ending with the words, “you cannot serve God and wealth,” the Pharisees ridicule him.

The Pharisees heard a lot from Jesus that day. They heard the Parable of the Prodigal, where the younger son went out and squandered all the wealth his father had given him, and then the father had to decide how he would respond to that son’s return.

They overheard the Parable of the Dishonest Manager. Jesus directed this one toward his disciples, a story about a manager who squandered his master’s wealth, and then hatched a scheme to save himself – a scheme that also served to enhance his master’s reputation.

In the first parable, Jesus shows his listeners the way God’s amazing grace will bring us into the fold when we humbly seek forgiveness. In the second parable Jesus encourages his listeners to be shrewd about distinguishing the lasting things from the things of this world, which are passing away. And when he hears them scoffing, ridiculing him, Jesus turns to the Pharisees and essentially says, “Here’s one just for you, guys.”

There is a rich man who lives in a great house, wears fine clothes and eats sumptuously every single day. And there is a poor man named Lazarus who lies outside the rich man’s gate. Lazarus, covered in sores, starving, suffering even the indignity of the dogs licking his wounds. He is quite a sight to behold, but Lazarus remains unseen, uncared for by the rich man, who steps over Lazarus’ broken body as he walks through his gate on his merry way. 

Lazarus died and was carried by the angels to be with Abraham. Then the rich man died and descended to Hades, where he was tormented by flames. 

The rich man was high, but he was brought low. Lazarus was low, but he was raised up high. There has been a complete reversal of their situations.

The rich man complains; he demands a better room. This one is too hot. But it is clear there will be no relief for the rich man. “There is nothing to be done now. A great chasm has been fixed between us,” Abraham tells the rich man.

It is really a haunting scene. I don’t try to draw any particular ideas about the exact details of heaven and hell from this story, but I cannot help but hear in it a clear condemnation of certain kinds of choices we make, certain types of behavior we engage in here on earth. And Jesus is building momentum.

We see Jesus raising the stakes as he moves from parable to parable: from the joy of being embraced by the forgiving arms of God (in the prodigal son); to the strong suggestion we turn our eyes to the kingdom that is coming and put all our resources into preparing for it (in the dishonest manager); and now to the stark and sobering vision of how it might all play out in the end for those who choose to ignore the messages they have already heard.

But perhaps because of the sequence of these parables, I firmly believe the message of this one is not all about the afterlife. Rather it is about the choices we make in this life. In particular, a choice to see or not to see all that is around us.

The real problem here is the rich man’s refusal to see Lazarus, to see his suffering even though it was taking place right outside his gate. And make no mistake, it is a choice. The rich man knew Lazarus was there – he even knew his name, we discover – but he chose to not acknowledge him. He chose to not care.

This poor man, Lazarus, was right outside his gate, such that the rich man could not come and go without encountering him. But he did not want to encounter Lazarus. He enjoyed the beautiful things, the pleasures of life – his fine clothes and his sumptuous feasts. Lazarus was not beautiful to behold. Lazarus actually made him uncomfortable. Lazarus, he decided, was to be ignored.

God wants us to see one another. God wants us to care for one another. 

I know this is a hard thing for us to do. There is, in this life, something like a great chasm between us and the suffering poor. A chasm that may prevent us from having compassion for them. A chasm that may even prevent us from regarding them as real human beings like us.

We are actually blessed to have the opportunity every week to see the poor and homeless ones right outside our door. Any Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday, you cannot come into the church without seeing them. It is a highly valued mission of this church, but I hope we all know that the ministry of HOPE offers invaluable benefits to us as well. Because it gives us a chance every week to share space, even share fellowship, with the Lazarus in our midst.

There is a story in the Gospel of Matthew where Jesus says to his disciples, “You will always have the poor with you.” On one level he meant that there will never cease to be poverty on earth. But on another level, he meant that because we are his followers we will never put too much distance between ourselves and the needy. Followers of Jesus will never abandon those in need. We will see them. We will know them. We will care for them.

I know, it is still a tall order. It is a challenge, and perhaps feels overwhelming. But let me share with you one story that illustrates this model of Christian compassion.

I was in Washington DC with two other women. It was a hot day and we had been doing a lot of walking around the city on the hot cement. We were on our way to the metro station to begin our trip home. We were walking through one of the many squares in the city and passed by a bench with a man sitting there. He looked tired. He looked beaten by the world. He looked homeless.

We were chatting as we walked, and I barely saw this man. I walked right past him. But then I noticed that one of my companions stopped. She approached the man and politely asked him for directions, although we didn’t need directions. He replied. Then, smiling and still looking at him, she asked, “Are you hungry? Would you like a sandwich? An apple?” And she pulled a sandwich and apple out of her bag. He accepted them. Then she asked, are you thirsty? Would you like some water? When he said yes, she pulled a bottle of water from her bag and gave it to him.

She then thanked the man, for the assistance he had given her, and we continued walking.

Two of us failed to see this man. But one of us really, authentically saw him and crossed the great chasm. One of us bore the image of Christ in the city that day.

In the end it is a matter of seeing another as a human being. Lazarus was a fellow human being. And the question is: what can you do for one human being?

In Praise of Squandering

Luke 16:1-13

Through my years in ministry I have noticed that there are a couple of parables people really love. One of them is the parable of the good Samaritan and the other is the parable of the prodigal son. This parable of the dishonest manager is not one that is ever mentioned as anyone’s favorite.

As a category, the parable is an artful literary form. There is always some friction in a parable, and that is by design. We could even say that the parable is shrewd that way. You see, the point of the parable is to make you react, and then think about why you are reacting. 

So, in the parable of the prodigal son, there are some elements that cause friction. For example, many people are disturbed by the way the prodigal gets a free pass, so to speak, from the father. There are some of us who would perhaps agree with the older son – the “good” son – and say that the prodigal deserves to be punished, banished even, but not celebrated when he returns home with his tail between his legs. I know there are some “good” sons and daughters who feel that way.

But it still remains that the church loves that parable, because in the character of the father we see the immeasurable grace of God. Yes, we see the father as God, and perhaps we see something of ourselves in the son who is feeling the pain of his mistakes. In this parable we see love and grace.

You might be wondering now why I am talking about the parable of the prodigal. Is it just to avoid talking about this miserable parable we have before us today, the parable of the dishonest manager? A parable about which there is universal agreement: it is the worst. But I am actually talking about the prodigal son because there are some remarkable similarities between it and this parable of the dishonest manager.

The similarities are not immediately apparent. The subject matters are very different. One is a family setting; the other is in the context of business. In one, the father, or lord of the household, is a benevolent, loving, grace-filled figure. In the other, the lord, or the master, is a businessman, simply trying to make good, prudent business decisions.

But in both parables, there is one character who squanders wealth. This is the word we hear in both parables: the prodigal son traveled to a distant region and there he squandered his wealth in dissolute living, the wealth his father had bestowed on him. And likewise, the manager, it has been said, is squandering the rich man’s property. Whether by carelessness, ineptness, or downright thievery, we don’t know. 

And in both parables, the squanderer comes to a moment of reflection when he realizes he is in a jam. In both cases, the squanderer comes up with a plan that will, he hopes, offer him a way out. 

And in both cases, it works.

We see the similarities. Why, then, are these parables so different? Why do we tend to love one and hate the other? That really isn’t hard to see.

Take the character of the father of the prodigal son. He acts in a way that seems perfectly God-like. And while we, ourselves, might not be as forgiving and generous and loving as he is, most of the time we are glad that God is so forgiving, generous, loving. The son did not deserve to be welcomed home, but that is what grace is all about. By grace we have been saved, too, so on balance it’s a pretty good story. A comforting story.

Now take a look at the rich man in today’s parable. 

So, what do we have to say about the rich man in this parable? Does he seem God-like? Not particularly, I might say. But Luke would say, no way! You see, Luke does not have a high opinion of rich men. Again and again, we see the rich man skewered in Luke’s gospel. Not because wealth is inherently bad, but because in Luke’s telling, being rich is equivalent to loving money more than he loves God. You might argue that Luke’s rich man is actually a straw man, but Luke is making a point about choosing the values of this world over the values of God’s kingdom.

And yet, it is our instinctive response to hearing this parable, again and again: We want the most powerful character in this story to be the voice of God, and we want everything he says and does to be trustworthy. Yet, this powerful man got played by his manager. And he commended the manager for his shrewdness. 

All of this is not sitting well. It happens to me every time this parable comes up – it makes me uncomfortable and perplexed. So, we need to reassess our assumptions about it – perhaps even take a step back and reassess our assumptions about parables in general. Sometimes a master is not the Master. Sometimes a lord is not the Lord.

And sometimes a shrewd move is, well, impressive.

The manager has been caught in his squandering, and he recognizes he has limited options. And so he hatches a plan to cut a deal with every one of his master’s debtors. “How much do you owe? 100? Adjust your bill and make it 50. Again and again the manager negotiates the debts down, not by a little. We don’t actually know if he is forgoing his own commission, or if he is cutting into the master’s profits. But he is taking care of business in a way that we might assume is benefitting both his master and himself. His master, because he is getting something rather than nothing. Himself because, as he says, “when I am dismissed, people may welcome me into their homes.”

And his master, perhaps grudgingly, agrees.

So that is the story, for better or worse. You know that old saying about trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear? Let’s not try to do that. The story has some problems. I don’t like any of the characters. I don’t exactly want to be like the manager, and I don’t want God to be like the rich man. This isn’t exactly one of those “go and do likewise” situations. I’ll say it just once:  Don’t be a dishonest manager. Full stop. 

So what, then, to make of it? Well, at this point in the text Jesus weighs in with his own thoughts. So let’s go there.

The first thing he says at the end of the story is: The children of this age are more shrewd than the children of light. Jesus commends this quality called shrewdness, and he only wishes his own, the children of light, could be as shrewd as these children of the world. Yes, that’s what he said. Jesus wants us to be shrewd.

I am afraid that the word shrewd has taken on negative connotations in our times, but it doesn’t necessarily carry that meaning in the Bible. Shrewdness is not inherently good or bad. It simply means sharp judgment and practical intelligence. It can be used for harmful ends or for beneficial ends, and Jesus just wants his followers to know that he wishes they would use more of that shrewdness for God’s purposes. Be shrewd for the Lord! Amen?

Because if we did that –

We would recognize that the things of this world are finite, they are ending. The riches you pile up on earth will be worth nothing in the world to come, so be shrewd, my friends!

In other words, know that you have a choice:

You can be like the man who builds bigger barns to house his enormous and ever-growing stash of goods,

You can be like the servant who buries his talent in the ground because he is afraid to take any chances,

You can be like the rich man who never saw poor, hungry Lazarus as he stepped over him and went merrily on his way,

You can be like the man who has a neighbor thrown into debtor’s prison because he is unable to repay his debt to you – 

And I think we all need to be very honest with ourselves about when and how we have, indeed, been like these characters – 

You can be like them.

Or, you can be a shrewd child of the light and begin to understand the extraordinary beauty of squandering.

Admittedly, that word has nothing but negative meanings. It’s wasting, misusing, losing, throwing away. And we are pretty good at judging one another for squandering when we see it. But what if the stakes are higher that we realized? 

What if it’s not about losses and gains in our stock portfolios or bank accounts, but rather about the building up of God’s kingdom by populating the world with acts of compassion and healing, justice. What if it’s about being repairers of the breach.

That is a phrase we find in the book of Isaiah, chapter 58. This is what he says:

If you loose the bonds of injustice and let the oppressed go free; if you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil; if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness. Your light shall break forth like the dawn. You shall be called the repairers of the breach.

We need repairers of the breach in this world. We need children of light who can shrewdly see the difference between the values of this world and the values of God’s kingdom, where what might have seemed like wasteful squandering begins to look like grace…justice…generosity.

Where squandering becomes grace. Like the father who squandered his love on the prodigal son – no one could tell him it wasn’t a worthy pursuit.

Let us be shrewd in using the resources of this world in ways that prepare the way for the new world. Let us be faithful in the small things and the big things, knowing that as this world passes away we will have already been at work seeding the kingdom to come. Let us know the choice and choose the way that is built on the teachings of Jesus, the love of God. 

Let us dare to be squanderers for the right reasons. 

And may all of our squandering be done in service to the one who created the world and everything in it, who squanders beauty and love in breathtaking ways, the one who is our very life and being.

A New Way of Being

Philemon 1-21

Luke 14:25-33

There was a bit of weird news last week from the U.S Open. A player, after winning his match, went over to greet his fans. In the midst of signing autographs, he gave a hat to a young boy in the stands, it’s on video. But immediately, a man standing next to the boy snatched the hat out of the boy’s hand and quickly tucked it in his bag. The boy can be seen asking the man to give it back, but the man turned away, ignoring him. The tennis player had moved on and apparently didn’t see any of that.

The man who stole the hat was identified as the owner of a Polish paving firm. So the headline became “CEO steals hat from child.” It was not a good look.

It was all over the internet, TV news, and newspapers. 

The first I heard of it was an online news site that shared a statement which supposedly came from the CEO after the event. The statement said, “Yes, I took it. Yes, I did it quickly. But as I’ve always said, life is first come, first served… If you were faster, you would have it…”

My jaw dropped when I read it. This takes jerkiness to a whole new level, I thought.

The statement was shared on a couple of internet sites and the comment sections blew up with people pouring their contempt out on this man.  

But here is the interesting thing: We were all ready to believe it, even though we know there is a lot of untrue stuff out there, and this website looked kind of shady. We were ready to believe this man would say something so outrageous, because the statement reflects a way of living in the world which we have seen before. 

We know, whether or not this CEO actually said these words, this is an attitude which is not uncommon: get whatever you can by whatever means necessary and call it survival of the fittest. Give yourself a pat on the back for being a winner.

This kind of thing, which we hear every day, makes it pretty hard for us to accept the things we hear Jesus say. It just doesn’t seem possible that both ways of being can co-exist.

Here we are in this moment in the gospel where Jesus has hordes of people following him around. He is a first century rock star. And instead of handing out autographed tunics and throwing his sandal to the crowd, he turns to them with this:

“Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”

We hear these words and we honestly don’t know what to do with them. How to reconcile hate for father and mother with the commandment to honor your father and mother? How to reconcile “carry the cross” with “my yoke is easy, my burden light?” How to reconcile “none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions” with “ask and it will be given to you?”

Someone asked me the other day, “where do you draw the line on this stuff?” and the only answer I have is that Jesus wasn’t really big on drawing lines. He tended more toward painting pictures.

That is to say, Jesus really did say what he meant to say. But he also intended for these things to always remain an open question for us. He wasn’t drawing lines in the sand; he was showing us a whole new way of being in the world.

And he fully realized that the things he was suggesting seemed unthinkable to his listeners. They still do. 

It is unthinkable to hate your family. It is unthinkable to give up all your possessions. It is unthinkable to willingly surrender to the cross. Nonetheless, Jesus asks us to think about these things. All for the sake of discipleship.

Jesus turns and says these things to the huge crowd of people who are following him like a bunch of groupies. He says whatever it is you think you are doing, whatever fantasies you might have about this whole venture, you need to carefully consider this decision. He is not trying to hide anything in the fine print. He wants us to go into it eyes wide open. Jesus hopes we will say yes to following him, even knowing the cost.

And all he is really asking is this: if you are going to be my disciple I will demand that you care for others in the same way I do. And whatever it is that binds you up and prevents you from caring, be ready to let go of it.

Because, honestly, from a faith perspective, it is unthinkable to allow these ties to prevent you from loving others. If you are so beholden to family that you are unable to build relationships with others, that is a problem. If you are so beholden to your stuff that it defines who you are, that is a problem.

The gospel message is a message about letting go of things that keep us bound. The passage from Paul’s letter to Philemon shines a strong light on it as well. 

In this short letter, Paul writes to his friend Philemon encouraging him to free Onesimus, a man he holds as a slave. Paul is extraordinarily artful in his approach, because he needs to be. You see, for Philemon, the idea of letting his slave go free was unthinkable.

Think about that for a moment.

If we think about this whole question, we will see that what may seem unthinkable in any particular place or time, can change. Perhaps we can open our eyes to see that the way of being we are accustomed to seeing in the world is only one option – perhaps a very sad option at that.

The CEO who stole a hat from a boy certainly fit the framework for a certain way of being in the world – a way that leads to worldly riches, no question. But, this is not the only way, is it?

A couple of days after I read the news about his statement, I saw other news articles that put the matter in a somewhat different perspective. He made a public statement expressing his regret for acting the way he did at the tennis match. He took full responsibility for his hurtful actions. He also claimed he never said those words about “first come, first served.” And he returned the hat to the boy.

And so in these words and actions he displays a different way of being in the world – accepting responsibility for the harm he did, trying to make amends. And about the vile first statement that he may or may not have said, I will take his word on that.

Jesus urges his would-be disciples to look at their possessions and their commitments from a different perspective. Don’t let the things you have define who you are. Let these things go and let Christ be your identity.

A Place at the Table

Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16

Luke 14:1, 7-14

There is a film that came out in the 90’s called Four Weddings and a Funeral. It’s about a group of young adults who are in that stage of life when all their friends are getting married, so the film is one wedding after another.  In one scene, the main character, Charles, arrives at one of these wedding receptions, and he picks up his place card. He takes note of which table he will be seated at, then scans the room to find his table. And when he sees it, there is a look of dread that comes over his face.

Pretty soon, we understand why. He takes his seat at the table and says hello to everyone, and as the conversation proceeds, we realize that Charles has been seated with a number of women he has dated in the past. The women chat, comparing notes about what kind of boyfriend Charles had been, while Charles slumps lower and lower in his seat, looking miserable, wondering when he might be able to escape.

Charles had ended up in the seat of shame. Did the hosts do this deliberately, or was it just an unlucky coincidence? We’ll never know. But clearly it was not a happy event for Charles.

Most of us do care, at least a little, about where we are seated at a dinner table. It mattered a lot when we were in high school, when perhaps you knew there were some tables where you were not welcome. And there may have been some tables where you would rather have gone hungry than sit there. There was a lot of status consciousness in high school, as I recall. 

When we grow up and mature, we get a bit more relaxed about these matters. But it is still true, no matter how mature we are, that our egos can make us a little sensitive about where we get to sit, to what events we get invited, where we are welcomed.

We don’t know why Jesus was invited to so many dinners at the homes of Pharisees. They didn’t seem to like him very much. But maybe they prescribed to the old adage, “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” And that makes sense, given what Luke tells us in the first verse: They were watching him closely.

They are watching Jesus closely. Jesus is aware that they are watching him closely. And Jesus is watching them closely.

He takes notice of how these men seat themselves at the table. From what I have read, this was probably a U-shaped table, with two rectangular tables parallel to each other and a third table connecting the two at one end. 

The seats of honor would have been in the connecting piece of the table. The host or the guest of honor would be in the center seat, and the seats nearby would be the coveted seats of honor. 

And while the men are watching him, and he is watching them, he notices how they are jockeying for the best seats at the table, the seats of honor. And so, Luke says, he began to tell them a parable. Unlike many of his parables, this one was very straightforward. It is right on point, such that it would be hard for them to miss the message.

When you are invited to someone’s home – or wedding banquet – do not go directly for the seat of honor, presuming it is yours. Because what if it turns out the host wanted someone else, someone of a higher rank, to have that seat? How awkward this would be for your host. How humiliating this would be for you.

Jesus tells them it would be so much wiser for them to choose the seat of least honor. And then maybe the host will call to you and say, “Come sit closer to me!” Then you would have the utter delight of being called by name and getting up and moving to a seat of honor as all the other guests looked on. How fabulous that would be.

Such advice would have sounded pretty savvy to these guests. Practical. Yes, they would have said, quite right. In fact, it was very likely something they had heard before. Jesus was paraphrasing a proverb:

Do not put yourself forward in the king’s presence or stand in the place of the great, for it is better to be told, “Come up here,” than to be put lower in the presence of a noble. (Proverbs 25:6-7)

What he had said to them, they knew already. But his next lesson probably sounded downright wacky.

He turned directly to his host: When you give a dinner do not invite your friends. Do not invite the people who will invite you back, or the ones whom you might want a favor from. Instead, invite the poor, the lame, the blind, the crippled – all the misfits. Invite the people who don’t even have a table to ask you to sit at. Do this, and my, how blessed you will be.

There used to be a famous restaurant in Birmingham Alabama called Ollie’s Barbecue. They say it was the kind of place where everyone was equal. It might have been their religious convictions that made it this way. The walls were covered with Bible verses. The owners handed out religious tracts to their employees. It was a place that felt welcoming to all. Plumbers and electricians sat side by side with bank presidents and doctors. They were all the same at Ollie’s. That is, if they were white.

If you were black, you could walk in the door and step up to the counter. You could order a meal, then stand there and wait. You had to be careful about how you waited. No looking around. Just keep your head down, and when they hand you your sandwich, get out of there.

If you were black, you could work there, too. Many of the restaurant’s servers were black. But they would not have been able to sit down at a table and be served, even on their day off.

In 1964 the federal government banned that sort of discrimination. But Ollie and his family objected, all the way to the supreme court, where they lost their case. Ollie, Jr., who worked alongside his dad, told a journalist about 50 years later that he still thinks the court got it wrong.

So Ollie’s grudgingly began serving black customers when the law told them they had to. But in the years that followed, there weren’t too many black people who took advantage of that. After all, they knew they weren’t really welcome there.

And it’s a little mystifying. Ollie and his son, Ollie Jr., were sustained by a deep and abiding Christian faith, this was clear. And their faith inspired them to create a place where all white people could feel good enough, feel truly welcome, no matter if they got up in the morning and put on a suit and tie or a pair of coveralls. They knew at Ollie’s place they would be treated with dignity.

But if the two Ollies read the words of Jesus in Luke 14, “when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed,” it’s clear they weren’t hearing their black neighbors as being included in the list. 

And to be honest, the Ollies – both father and son – weren’t very different from most of us. When it comes to welcoming people at our table, we all have a line we don’t like to cross. Most of us know there are some people we are not comfortable with, people we would be very unlikely to invite to our banquets, as Jesus suggests. I would only hope that, when we realize it, we can admit that it is our own shortcoming, not the fault of anyone else.

Getting back to Charles’ disastrous wedding reception dinner. I kind of think it might be a foretaste of the feast to come. What if, at the heavenly banquet, we pick up our place cards and discover we will be dining with all the people we have wronged somehow in our lives. It will be uncomfortable, yes, but it will be our opportunity for reconciliation. 

Because how could it be heaven otherwise?

Let this precious life we have been given on earth be our practice for the heavenly banquet.

Photo credit: Lana Foley

Time to Heal

 

Luke 13:10-17

There is a story by Alice Hoffman called Seventh Heaven. It’s about a suburban community in Long Island, near Levittown. It’s the kind of community that popped up all over America after World War II, like Levittown. Tract homes, affordable for first-time homeowners. Streets that never go straight, winding around in loops to make sure you won’t drive too fast. Sidewalks everywhere for strollers and tricycles, to keep the kids safe. All the houses look alike, so newcomers driving into the neighborhood get confused about where they are. Neighbors can walk into each other’s homes and know just where everything is, because it is exactly the same as their own house.

The story takes place at the end of 1959 and the beginning of 1960, a time when the world is on the verge of change. And the people in this community are beginning to feel a little confused.

They are confused because they have always followed the rules. They have done what they are supposed to do. They got married, had two or three kids. The men work hard at their jobs and the women work hard at home. The children watch TV, but not too much TV. The men drink an occasional beer together, but not too much beer. The women chat together during the day over coffee – about the kids, about PTA business, about recipes. And they don’t bother each other once their husbands get home from work. Everyone does their part.

But problems start to come to the neighborhood and they can’t figure out why, because they have always followed the rules. Now they think they are being punished for something, but they just can’t figure out what, because they have always done what they are supposed to do. What could they have done wrong?

In the neighborhood, there is a woman named Donna. She has a husband and three kids. She does everything she is supposed to do, just as she has for the eight years of her marriage. Her family always has clean and mended clothes, nutritious and tasty meals. Everything has a place in her house, and she makes sure everything is in its place. She goes about her work quietly, so quietly that no one really sees her anymore. Her kids, her husband, even her friends. They don’t see her. Which is interesting, in a way, because somewhere along the line Donna started eating for comfort. Emotional eating. She has been doing it for a number of years, and she has grown quite large. But she keeps her head down and she tends to her work.

One day the washing machine breaks down and she calls a repairman. Something extraordinary happens. This stranger, the repairman, he sees her. He has no inappropriate intentions, but he looks at Donna and says, “I can tell you work hard. You’re somebody who really cares.” And Donna cannot remain the same after this, because she knows she has been seen. And because now, for the first time, she realizes that no one else sees her.

And slowly, quietly, Donna begins to break the rules. She can no longer live within the confines of these rules because she sees now that it is slowly killing her spirit.

It was Donna I thought of when I read the story about the crippled woman in the synagogue. Because I wonder what that woman had been thinking for 18 long years. Had she always assumed, without question, that being bent over, unable to stand up straight, was just her place in the world? Had she learned through experience that her bent posture was the role she was born to play? Did everyone in her community expect this of her?

For 18 years she had been bent low by this spirit. 18 years, during which 6 out of 7 days are not the sabbath. However, no one offered her release on any of those days. No one really saw this woman. For 18 years she has been invisible.

She has, perhaps, filled some role, just like Donna filled the role she had been given, keeping groceries in the Frigidaire, meals on the table, clean laundry in the dresser drawers. Perhaps there were certain expectations of this woman in the synagogue, and as long as she met them she remained virtually invisible.

No one saw her. until Jesus saw her.

When he called her over to him, I wonder how she felt. She might have felt afraid; after all, the religious authorities were all around, watching everything. It was already abundantly clear that they disapproved of Jesus. What would it mean to them if she walked over to him? What would happen to her if she publicly associated with a renegade?

She might be risking the community’s scorn, if she walks across the room, forcing everyone to see her affliction.

But sometimes breaking the rules is important. To make the world look at something they don’t want to look at. And sometimes faith means being willing to break the rules.

Jesus breaks the rules now, as he has done before, and calls her over, bringing attention to this woman’s pain. He places his hands on her and says, “Woman, you are set free.” Or in the familiar words of the King James, woman thou art loosed. And at that moment she stands up straight, giving thanks and praise to God.

And we know that, once again, Jesus has done something dangerous.

The act of freeing this woman is a dangerous act, and we need to understand that it doesn’t really matter what you call this affliction she suffered. It doesn’t matter if it is a physical disease of the bones or if it is a kind of spiritual or psychological affliction. It doesn’t matter, because we need to understand that when the scriptures speak of Jesus’ healing, it is speaking of every kind of affliction. We need to know that in Jesus, by the power of God, we may be made well. Period.

The act of freeing this woman in the synagogue is dangerous, as every healing act he performs is dangerous, because it threatens to free all God’s children, from the chains that have held them in their appointed roles. The woman bent over, the slave in shackles, the immigrant in the shadows. The addict bound in addiction, the abused and battered bound in abuse, the poor in poverty. How many ways might we keep people bound by afflictions, because we are uncomfortable seeing them – really seeing them? How many ways might we neglect people bound by afflictions because it is inconvenient to see them?

Jesus frees this woman of the affliction and in the same instant he lets loose the forces of opposition. The leader of the synagogue shouts to the crowds that it is not the day for healing. It is the sabbath day. He cries out to them, “If you came here for healing, then leave now. Come back another day, for today is not the day for healing.”

But if this day, the sabbath day, is not the day for healing then no day is the day for healing. And, yes, that does appear to be the unspoken message. The authorities of this place do not approve of healing, of freeing people from the afflictions that bind them.

But let us not look so critically at the first century religious authorities that we avoid looking at ourselves. Because isn’t it true of 21^st century religion as well, that we are uncomfortable looking at our own and others’ afflictions? Isn’t it true that we are a little afraid of admitting that there are all kinds of pain sitting in our sanctuary, that we might ease a little bit just by seeing one another with compassion? That there are all kinds of afflictions that might be loosed a bit?

The writer of the book of Hebrews says, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Things not seen in the ordinary course of this world, but faith gives us eyes to see as God sees.

When faith sees people suffering, faith must stand with the suffering, no matter what it means – even in the face of opposition. And there will be opposition. As people of faith, let us affirm that in faith, and by the power given to us by God through the Holy Spirit, we will use this power the ways that God intends for it to be used. We must affirm that, as the church we will stand where the Lord stands, in the words of the Confession of Belhar. The church must stand where God stands, and that is with the afflicted, the downtrodden, the vulnerable stranger in our midst. The church must stand with the suffering, with the weak, the lonely, the hurting. Which is all of us.

When Jesus called that woman to him, he showed us where the church is meant to stand. Right there in that spot where he was standing. And the woman, when she walked over and stood before him, showed us the courage each of us is called to have. To stand with Jesus, to offer up our wounds to be healed, our chains to be loosed, our spirits to be freed.

In faith, we know that the time for healing is not some other day. The time for healing is always now.

Reading the Signs

Luke 12:49-56

In the beloved story by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince falls from his home planet to earth, where he is a stranger in a strange place. In his wandering, he encounters a fox. The prince tries to pet the animal, but the fox warns him to be careful. “I’m not tame,” he says.

Something Jesus might say as well. “I’m not tame. I won’t play nice for the sake of your comfort. I may even shock you and disorient you for the sake of the truth.” He won’t bite like the fox, but his words sometimes have a bite.

This is our third consecutive week in Luke’s chapter 12, and perhaps you are ready to move on. There is a growing dis-ease to the tone of it, a growing sense of urgency Jesus brings to his words. They serve to bring our attention to the same urgency, the same dis-ease, that exists in our world right now – all around us.

He says he came to bring not peace, but division, which will create tension among people. These words might make you do a double take. Isn’t it true, back in Luke’s Chapter 2 the angels sang out, “Glory to God in the highest heaven and on earth peace among those he favors.” But we have to acknowledge, anyone who is going to bring the kingdom of God crashing into this world is undoubtedly going to create some tension along the way.

And that is just what Jesus is doing – creating tension. He is urgent. He is disruptive. He challenges many of the things we hold dear. And so we can be sure – without a doubt – he will get some pushback.

The word of God always gets pushback. And Jesus anticipated that.

He said, Read the signs, people. You know how to do that. Open your eyes; read the signs and you’ll see. 

This is true for us as well. Jesus invites us to open our eyes. Read the signs. 

Read the signs Jesus, himself, provides – his words and his actions recorded in the gospel. We know what they say. We know from the gospel that Jesus lived his life close to the margins. Born far away from home, his parents displaced for the interests of the emperor. And when the emperor became insanely violent, Jesus became a refugee, carried by his parents into Egypt for safety. 

As an adult he was itinerant, walking from one place to another, depending on others, often strangers, for food and shelter. 

He said once, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” He was homeless. Read the signs.

Now read the signs in our world. Notice the suffering, the need. The many people who live in fear for what might happen to them.

Read the signs. And when we do, what do we see? Do we see any tension? Any pushback?

We see plenty of that, don’t we? This week in our nation’s capital we have seen the federal government used to push back the ones who are homeless. Wednesday night signs were posted around a homeless encampment announcing that everything was to be removed immediately. Some of the people living there, with help from many volunteers, began to pack up their few possessions in shopping carts or whatever they had, and then go in search of another place to live. Our government said they would provide places for them to live, but no one seemed to have any answers about what alternatives the government was offering. 

Thursday morning, 12 hours after the signs went up, they began to forcefully remove those who were still there. Crews came in with heavy equipment to tear down all remaining tents and personal belongings and dispose of them. One person who was watching all this was a 67-year-old man named David, who had been living at the encampment for several months. He told a news reporter that it made him think of a Bible verse, something Jesus once said: “Whatsoever you do to the least of these, you do to me.”

It wasn’t clear what would happen to this man. Vague promises of shelters or treatment. Clear threats of jail. In any case, we know from our own experience here in Salisbury the challenges of meeting the needs. There are not enough shelter beds for all who need them. There is not enough effective addiction treatment available for all who need it. There are not enough affordable housing units available for all who need them. I’ve been told that in our county there is a three-year waiting list for subsidized housing. 

We know from our experience here at this church that the need is always present. There are volunteers who prepare and serve meals out of our kitchen on Tuesdays and Thursdays for HOPE clients, and also prepare sandwiches to be served on Wednesdays when HOPE is open for limited services. I go to the kitchen some afternoons to check in with them, see how they’re doing. They are always doing. They are energetic, kind, creative with their resources, and busy. No one who volunteers to help in the kitchen will find there is not enough for them to do. 

The need is significant and it is steady – it can become overwhelming. And we wish it weren’t so. We might wish, as our president did, that we did not have to see these signs – signs of homelessness, signs of suffering and need. I get that. I have walked on city sidewalks where I had to watch every step so I wouldn’t trip over a homeless person. I have been where the encampments are under the overpass, right in the middle of town, so full of people that they are verging on spilling into the roadway. And I wished they weren’t there. 

But herding them up and pushing them out of sight doesn’t solve the problem. It only serves to pretend that the problem doesn’t exist.

We are pretty good at not seeing things we don’t want to see. But Jesus is telling us to read the signs. See what we don’t want to see.

He laments. “I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what constraint I am under until it is completed!” A baptism of fire. The suffering he will undergo in his body. The humiliation of his spirit. The end of his life. 

Perhaps his followers couldn’t see that cross at the end of Jesus’ road – not yet. But could they see the signs that were clear around them? 

Can we?

The better question is, are we willing to read the signs? Will we reject the lies, or accept them because they seem to make our lives easier? Will we try to live into the kingdom Jesus speaks of, bringing it closer to this world, or will we just be a part of the problem because we don’t know how to interpret the present time? 

Because we fail to read the signs.

It is not a happy subject. This is not a particularly happy moment in Jesus’ life. But the reason we can look at these hard things is because we have hope.

Even in his darkest moments, Jesus gives his followers signs of hope. It was only a moment ago he said to his followers, “It is your father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom of heaven.” In the midst of the tension and division, the suffering and the cruelty, we are called to keep our eyes open and read the signs – including both signs of warning and signs of hope. 

Look for the signs of hope, like the news that the Hands and Hearts cold weather shelter received the funding they need to open this winter. 

or the beautiful vegetable garden growing at Anne Street Village, a transitional housing community here in Salisbury, providing delicious and nutritious food for the residents.

or every time I see a new face volunteering with HOPE, in the kitchen or in their offices. My heart is lifted in joy when I see that a member of this congregation has heard the call and said yes.

When we open our eyes and read the signs, we will see the unmistakable need, and we will also see the ones rising up to respond. We will ask ourselves how we can also help, and then we will see opportunities opening up before us. 

And while we hold on to the hope that there will come a day when there is the political and cultural will to make a change, and there is enough affordable housing for the need, in the meantime we are invited to continue the work we have begun, faithfully, encouraging one another on the way. Feeding, caring, and seeking to make our community – our nation – better. 

Open your eyes. Read the signs. But do not lose hope. Do not be afraid. For this is the way to the kingdom.

Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash

Lasting Things

Luke 12:32-40

Let’s try a little experiment. Close your eyes and conjure a picture of Jesus. What does he look like?

For many of us the first image that will come to mind is the famous Warner Sallman painting of Jesus, the one that has hung in homes and Sunday school classrooms for close to a century. You know the one: Jesus has wavy light brown hair, smooth skin, very white-European features. It’s called The Head of Christ.

This image has influenced so many of us, as well as many other artists who have created their own version of it. We see blond-haired, blue-eyed Jesuses galore – images that appeal to many Americans. But, of course, it is very unlikely that Jesus looked anything like that. Jesus was a Middle Eastern man, who certainly would have looked like other Middle Eastern men.

But this is only one way that people have, over the course of two millennia, modified the image of Christ. Jesus has been subjected to a lot of makeovers.

There is Christ the Victorious, who wears a suit of armor and crushes a snake with his foot. This was a popular image in the early church to emphasize the belief that, through Christ, God has defeated evil.

Then there is Gentle Jesus, cradling a lamb or sometimes surrounded by children. This is a man you can trust. There has also been Calling Jesus, the man who knocks on your door with a hopeful look on his face, like a Fuller Brush salesman.

There is Laughing Jesus, one that was pretty popular for a while. This one bothered a lot of people who weren’t sure Jesus ever laughed, and it seemed, possibly, sacrilegious. 

But sometimes Gentle Jesus seems too gentle. Sometimes the guy who politely waits at your door doesn’t seem forceful enough. Sometimes the Jesus who laughs doesn’t feel serious enough for all the problems we have in this world.  So we also have Ripped Jesus, who looks like he’s taken all the steroids and he’s ready to get into the ring with the heavyweight champion of the world. And the expression on his face is mean. 

There are a lot of different Jesuses. We have a tendency to look for the Jesus we think we need, at any given time.

I am sure there isn’t one single image of Jesus that fully captures who he is, just like there is probably not one single image of you that would tell us everything there is to know about you. Jesus is, like us, fully three dimensional, a complex human being – and even more when you factor in his divine nature. So it is appropriate that we have many different images of Jesus. 

Perhaps the challenge for us is to discern which are true images and which are not. By “true” I don’t mean to suggest there are any that look just like him. Because, of course, we don’t know that. What I mean is that there are some images that reflect his true nature, while there are others that do not. 

And the gospel is our best guide for discerning this.

In this chapter of Luke’s gospel we hear Jesus talking to us about treasure. What are the things that hold real value, and what are just passing things, worthless things? 

In last week’s reading, Jesus told his listeners, “Your life does not consist in the abundance of your possessions.” And sometimes we need to get out from under the mountain of our possessions to begin to know that. 

He told them a parable about a man who was living his life, trying to manage his stuff, and then out of the blue was told he was a fool for doing that. “Your life is being demanded of you this very night.” There is a message of urgency here, the urgency of setting our priorities straight, adjusting our vision appropriately. 

And as he was speaking, maybe Jesus looked into the faces of the people who were listening to him and saw fear. Because they recognized themselves in that man – the “rich” man. Maybe they, themselves, were not rich, but it is what they were striving for: to have enough. Always, in this world, it is about having enough. 

Maybe Jesus saw the fear in their eyes and he felt compassion for them. I say this because his next words are, “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear.” There is comfort in his words now. 

He asks them, can you not see how much God values you? But perhaps they could not see that. Perhaps their expressions still held uncertainty. Confusion. Fear.

Fear. Because every day of our lives we know that we might lose what we have. Every day, when we look around we see scarcity. We see threat.

If we are employed, we could lose our job. And if we lose our job we probably lose our health insurance. So we could also lose our health. 

If we are self-employed, so many things could happen: an accident, a lawsuit, a downturn in business, tariffs, a supply chain problem. There are so many hazards.

Inflation causes us to worry about making our dollars stretch far enough and worry about how much worse it might get. Bad days on the stock market cause us to worry about the size of our savings and whether we have enough. 

We can lose anything and everything, including our life, and so we take measures to protect ourselves, like the man who built bigger barns to store all his grain. But, still, we know nothing is guaranteed, don’t we? And so we worry. We worry about being caught short, just as the ones who stood listening to Jesus that day worried.

As he saw their worry, he softened his tone a bit more. “Do not be afraid, little flock. For it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” He wants them to really believe this, to shed their fear and know how much God cares, and so he does the thing Jesus does best: he tells them another parable.

“Be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks… (the master) will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them. If he comes during the middle of the night or near dawn and finds them so, blessed are those slaves.” 

This is where we see the importance of recognizing Jesus. Of all the images of Jesus we might have seen in our lives, which one do we see now? 

He stands at the door and knocks. When he enters the room, we see that he has brought the banquet with him – a feast of rich foods and well-aged wines, as the prophet Isaiah described it. Then he hoists up his banquet robes, cinches his belt to hold them so they won’t get in the way of his work. Because this master is going to kneel before us and serve us. 

This is the image of himself that Jesus provides for us. Blessed are those who are alert to see him and receive him. You see?

If the one you are looking for is the guy with bulging muscles who busts down the door with fury, you might not recognize Jesus when he comes to you.

Because Jesus does not conform to the world’s values. Jesus is an alternative to the world’s values. I think we all know this; it’s just that we forget it sometimes.

Remember all the times he said things that seem to turn our world upside down. Remember the times he said, “the first shall be last and the last shall be first.” “Let the little ones come to me, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” “Anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will not enter it.” and “Whatever you did for the least of these you have done for me.”

The question for us is will we recognize this Jesus when we see him?

It is an urgent question that we must consider. Because, as Jesus goes on to say, there is a thief who would come and break in the house. A thief who would steal everything of value, destroy the Master’s house.

You and I know that the Master’s house is this place: the church. And there is a thief who wants to take it.

The church has always had enemies, there is no question about that. From the earliest days when the followers of Jesus were thought to be dangerous to the Empire, because they would not worship the emperor as they were expected to, to the days of the German church in Hitler’s Reich, where those who would not bend the knee to the fuhrer were persecuted, and those who wanted to avoid persecution were forced to get behind Hitler’s programs. And, to tell the truth, there were certainly some in the church who liked Hitler’s programs, and didn’t need to be forced. But even so, we must know this: Jesus has always stood against the destructive powers of this world.

This is an urgent message for the church, when there is a thief lurking around the house. It is essential for us to be able to recognize the thief, just as it is essential that we know who Jesus is, always has been, and always will be. 

We know who he is:

He is the one who feeds people simply because they are hungry.

He is the one who heals people of their illnesses even if they don’t have health insurance or a job.

He is the one who welcomes the strangers, even if they look like immigrants, even if they don’t have papers.

He is the one who cares for the prisoners; the one who says, ‘love your enemies, not only your friends.’ That’s one that seems to get harder and harder for us all the time.

The followers of Jesus must know who he is. And we must not ever confuse the law of the land with the law of God. We must take care not to let the thief in the house and turn it into something else, something that no longer resembles Jesus. The church must, when necessary, reject the priorities of this world and stand up for the Jesus we know and love.

 

There have always been lots of different ways of envisioning Jesus. Some are wild distortions of the man from Galilee, and they should pass away like the grass that withers. Look for the ones that are real. Look for the ones that will last.