Measuring Faith

Luke 17:5-10

There’s a story about a woman who goes into a coffee shop for a little afternoon break.  She goes to the counter and gets her coffee and a package of cookies, then looks for a place to sit.  The shop is crowded, so she is forced to take a chair at a small table already occupied by a man reading a newspaper.  She’s not looking for company, but she sits down with her coffee and package of cookies, gives him a quick smile and nod, then buries herself in her book.  

She notices out of the corner of her eye that the man reaches out and takes a cookie from the package on the table.  Rude, she thinks, but tries to ignore it.  She reaches out and takes a cookie for herself.  Pretty soon she sees his hand sliding across the table and taking another cookie out of the package.  This time she looks up at him, really giving him a look.  He just smiles at her.  She takes another cookie out of the package and goes back to her book, but by now she is quite distracted by this man’s behavior.

This goes on, he takes a cookie, she takes a cookie.  She is beside herself with rage, but too polite to say anything to him.  Finally, with two cookies left, he takes one and pushes the package toward her, inviting her to take the last one.  She gives him a hard glare and takes the last cookie. 

When she leaves the shop, she opens her purse – there lies the package of cookies she bought, unopened.

Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, and sometimes we bring them upon ourselves, don’t we?  I often find myself praying that God will make me a better person; or, increase my faith.  

I don’t know what to think about this “faith the size of a mustard seed” comment.  A mustard seed is very tiny.  And so the contrast between something so very small having the power to uproot and replant trees, in the sea, no less – this is huge.  And if faith that small can do things that are virtually impossible, then what does my faith look like?  Too small to even be visible.  

And then I begin to wonder what faith the size of a pumpkin seed could do.  That’s a lot larger than a mustard seed, so it would seem that it could do even more astounding things.  But I have no idea what those things could be, because he has already taken me beyond the realm of comprehension with the mustard seed analogy.  

Clearly, I am in way above my head.  How does one measure faith?

Before I went into ministry I had a career in educational testing, and I know how to measure all kinds of things, but I still wonder how to measure faith.  Can we measure it by outputs, as Jesus’ words here suggest?  So maybe I can’t move mountains or mulberry trees, but can my faith move something smaller, like dandelions, perhaps?  

It’s easier to measure material things, but it might be more realistic to consider the impact of our faith on nonmaterial things, like whether my faith can move someone to be more loving.  But still, I don’t know.

Perhaps our faith, all together, can move something.  Maybe our combined faith can move our community toward greater peace or wellness.  Do you think our faith could do that?  Still, it’s a tricky thing to measure.

Honestly, I don’t know if faith is something that can be measured.  I am not sure that was really the point Jesus wanted to make.  Because when we start measuring our faith it becomes all about us.  And when we start measuring our faith, we begin comparing ourselves to others to see if we are greater or lesser than they are.

He follows that strange comment about faith with a strange parable about masters and servants.  And again, he uses the old “which one of you” technique.  Which one of you would say to your servant coming in from working in the field, “Come and sit at the table with me”?  which one of you would thank the servant for merely doing what he was told to do?

It seems cold, doesn’t it?  It strikes us as entirely undemocratic – which, of course, it is.  Jesus did not live in a democracy.  But there is another aspect of the story that you might not notice right away: the disciples, or apostles as they are called here, were not wealthy men.  They did not have servants to order about – especially now, that they have walked away from everything to follow him.  How strange to ask them to think this way.  They might more readily identify with the servant than the master. 

And at the next moment he has switched perspectives, and he does ask them to see themselves as the servant.  “So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’”  And, of course, they know that this is the way things work.  Servants do their duty and their reward is a job well done.

I imagine this parable is a lot harder for us to deal with than it was for the disciples at his side, because it reflected the world in which they lived.  And while we might still protest that such an oppressive and hierarchical social system is not a good system, that democracy is far superior, it may help us to take a step back – remembering that it is a parable – and reflect on what he is trying to teach.  We might reflect on what it says about our relationship with God.  Because, sure, equality among all people is good – even godly.  But when we begin to assume we are in any way on an equal footing with God, we are in trouble.

Well, hold that thought for a moment.  Let’s get back to the question of faith.  How do you measure faith? Or, do you measure faith?

Perhaps you don’t measure faith after all.  Perhaps faith is something you either have or don’t have – the size of it is immaterial, hence, faith the size of a mustard seed is plenty.  And the way you have faith is by being open to receiving it.  Faith begins with God’s actions toward us, and then our openness to receiving it.

We can only receive what is offered.  Any attempts to demand something different will only get in the way.  Our master offers us good gifts – indeed, all that we have is a gift from the master!  Opening our hearts and our hands to God, there is no need that cannot be answered.  

When we assume God owes us something, this will keep us impoverished.  We will be as pitiful as the woman who mistakenly assumed those were her cookies sitting on the table.  The blessings are more than abundant when we are simply open to receiving what is so graciously offered.  

Getting our relationship with God ordered rightly is the key to the riches of faith.

Photo by Nana Lapushkina: https://www.pexels.com/photo/food-wood-coffee-dark-10479058/

RE:think Happiness

1 Timothy 6:6-19

Here is the question: What is something that makes you happy? Don’t overthink it. There are no wrong answers, this is not a test. What comes into your mind when you think of something that makes you happy? It might not be the thing that brings you the most happiness of all, but it is something. 

Did you think of something? I hope you did; I hope you thought of many things that make you happy. Everyone should have happiness. Who ever said, “There is too much happiness in the world?” No one. Ever. Except maybe Scrooge.

And the good thing is happiness is, at least to an extent, under our control. If watching a “Die Hard” movie makes you happy, great. If it doesn’t make you happy, don’t watch it. If sitting on the beach getting all sandy and sweaty doesn’t make you happy, then don’t do it. If eating ice cream doesn’t make you happy, then don’t eat ice cream – but, seriously, if eating ice cream doesn’t make you happy then I just don’t know.

The point is, it serves us well to know what brings us happiness and what doesn’t because knowing can help us increase our happiness. Maybe.

And maybe not. Because sometimes happiness seems elusive. Just out of our grasp. 

In our scripture today we are eavesdropping on a conversation between two friends. Paul, the older apostle, and Timothy, the young man, apostle in training. And we don’t necessarily know why they are having this particular conversation. We don’t know who they might be talking about – perhaps there are other preachers in Ephesus whom Paul does not hold in high esteem.  We can only make inferences from the fragments we have – but what I think we are hearing in these words gives us something about the secret to happiness. 

During this whole month we have been working on a reboot, as we examine certain aspects of life that we all share in common and, with the help of the epistles, wonder how we might approach them differently. We took a look at the question of reconciliation. And, if we have been in the habit of walking away from old relationships that have gone bad, is God perhaps calling us to seek reconciliation?

We took a look at the matter of regrets. It doesn’t really serve us well to say we have no regrets if we have not ever examined our failures in any honest way. But once we have been honest with ourselves and God about our particular failures and shortcomings, and we have followed God’s urgings to make amends in some way, then we might truly be able to say we have no regrets. Until the next time, anyway.

We looked at the practice of prayer in our lives and wondered what the purpose of prayer is for us. We often approach prayer as a means to change our circumstances or change other people. But how often do we see prayer as a way to be transformed ourselves?

And honestly, transformation is what this whole reboot has been about. When I reboot my computer I want to it go back to being perfect. Which it probably won’t, I know. I also know that we won’t either – become perfect. Perfection won’t be found on this side of the mirror. But with a reboot, perhaps that mirror will become a little less dark, our vision a little less dim.

And if we find that our vision grows clearer, the light grows a bit brighter, might we then discover a growing sense of happiness? 

Or, contentment, as Paul puts it in this letter to Timothy. Contentment – which is kind of like happiness that sticks around.

So, how do we get this happiness that sticks around? Is there a secret to it?

I took a family psychology class once and we were presented with some research on happiness. The researchers asked people at random times of the day to rate how happy they were. And they found in this study that parents of young children were significantly less happy than other people. Based on their own responses, in real time.

I was the working mother of a young child at that time. So the results didn’t surprise me at all. I knew that if someone stopped me at any random time of the day or night and asked me, “Are you happy right now?” I might not respond with a smiley face. I knew this was true. But I knew that wasn’t all there was to it.

My sense of happiness in the moment, in the daily grind of parenting and working, was in no way a reflection of the deep happiness inside of me that came from the love I experienced in this life I was living.

This was a secret that I was just beginning to know, but about which I had a whole lot left to learn. It is possible no one else in my class knew it even a little bit, yet, because they were all young single people who were free to do whatever they wanted whenever they wanted. People who, after hearing these research findings probably began to develop a bit of healthy fear about the prospect of becoming a parent. As one should. In any case, what I was beginning to suspect was this: The secret to happiness might be that it is hidden underneath unlikely things. And this happiness that sticks around might be found in surprising ways. Just listen to this story Eric Law tells about his own family life.

Eric grew up in a family of Chinese immigrants, people who were not at all rich in material things. Each night at the dinner table, the family would sit down to dinner – and there were usually guests at the table: relatives, friends, people who worked with them.  They weren’t rich, but they made it go around.  The dishes were passed, and everyone filled their plates. Of course, no one would want to take the last piece – we all know how that is.  So inevitably, at the end of the meal there would be one piece of something left – meat if they were lucky – sitting on the platter in the center of the table.  After some silence, while they all looked at the food, one person would speak.

“Grandma, why don’t you take that last piece?  You’re the oldest; you should have it.”  And Grandma would say, “Oh no, I don’t need it.  I’ve been eating that stuff all my life.  The children should have it because they’re growing.”  And Grandma would look at the youngest child and say, “Why don’t you take it?”

And the youngest child, having been taught well, would say something like my stomach is too small, and turn to an older sibling and say, “You have an exam tomorrow, you should take it.”  Then this older child would play his part in the ritual and offer it to someone else who was more deserving.  This went on until everyone had offered it to someone else; everyone had affirmed another’s worthiness in the family.  And the last piece of food would still be sitting on the platter.  It would be put away to be made into something wonderful the next day.  It was a ritual that made this family appreciate the abundance they shared.

Paul said in another of his letters, “I have learned to be content with whatever I have…I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need.” (Philippians 4:11-12). Could it be that the secret to finding happiness is to finally stop seeking your own happiness?

When we use our wealth to serve ourselves, it will always seem like not enough. But when we let the riches God bestows on us become a means to serve others, then we will feel really rich.

When we live for ourselves, our lives will be very small, but when we live for someone else, we find, in Paul’s words, the life that really is life. 

RE:frame Prayer

1 Timothy 2:1-7

I have been asked recently to think about prayer. Our presbytery is beginning a program called Vital Congregations, and in preparation, I was asked to contribute my thoughts on prayer resources, practices, and such. But one of the questions in particular has kept me thinking for days. That is, how has my thinking about prayer changed over time?

The assumption, of course, is that it has changed. This is true. No longer are my prayers as they were in childhood. When I was young, I was taught, as so many of us were, to recite short little rhyming prayers – at the dinner table, at bedtime. We might learn to make up our own prayers within certain frameworks – like thank you, God, for lemonade and hula hoops; and God bless mama, daddy, and Tatters the dog.

But with maturity comes more freedom and responsibility in all things – including prayer. Not only who and what we pray for but how we pray. How is the hardest part of it, because when we turn to prayer we almost always have our own agenda.

So much of the time, spontaneous prayer begins with something like, Dear God, please…

Please make the cancer go away.

Please let him be safe.

Please let me get this job.

Please, God, help me out.

Please, God, make the problem go away.

A very distraught woman called me in tears to tell me her desperate situation. There were practical and concrete steps that could be taken – and would be taken. But in that moment, I suggested that she pray. She said to me, “I already tried that, and it didn’t work.”

When we turn to prayer, we almost always have our own agenda.

When it seems as though our prayers have not been answered, we find ourselves in a difficult place, unsure where to turn or what to think. What is prayer for, if not to help us through the turbulent waters of life? What are we doing other than asking for divine strength to carry us through the rough spots?

Praying for oneself is something almost everyone does, even nonbelievers. Prayer is something that seems to spontaneously arise from our center when we know we are in need. And for people of faith, praying for others comes almost as naturally. We keep lists of individuals, groups, nations, that are somehow in need of prayer. And very often we feel we know exactly how to pray for them. For comfort, for strength, for peace, for safety.

When it seems as though God hasn’t answered our prayers for others, in the way we wanted or expected, what then? We might throw up our hands because there seems to be nothing more we can do. We might even be angry that we fell for what was presumably a trick of some kind.

One Sunday when I offered a prayer for peace in the Middle East, someone stepped up to me after the service and said, “Boy, you are a dreamer, aren’t you?” As if to say, Grow up! Get real.

Yet, we are told, we are assured, that we can make our prayers for anything. We pray for what we need, and God welcomes our prayers. And the truth is that these prayers are good prayers. We may always pray for what we feel we need.

But the truth is, also, that these prayers are not enough in themselves. When we pray according to our own agenda, we are accepting a very limited view of God. God invites us to pray in other ways that involve entering more deeply into the mystery of God.

Hence, Paul urges Timothy to pray for those who hold high power. This is essential, Paul writes, because God desires for everyone to be saved. Everyone. God’s spirit is magnanimous.

And while this might sound like a really nice idea, generally speaking, we have certain objections when it zooms on the particular. God wants our enemies to be saved. God wants people in the other political party to be saved. God wants the people who cheat and get away with it to be saved. God wants the people we love to be saved, but also the people we don’t love. The people who, we know, don’t deserve it.

And this is so hard for us, that God’s spirit is much more generous than ours.

In the Episcopal Church book of common prayer there is included a prayer for elected leaders – for the president of the United States and the Governor of our state. For Congress and the State legislators. If you are in church when these prayers are being made, you may very well hear these individuals prayed for by their given names. For our Governor, Larry. For our President, Joseph. It makes the prayer feel very personal.

But it can be challenging, even for those congregations who make of regular practice of this. If a leader is elected who is very polarizing, if members of the congregation have a strong emotional reaction to the very thought of him or her, there might well be strong resistance to continuing these prayers.

I have seen some of that resistance in Presbyterian congregations. The idea of praying for a high official whom you resent in certain ways can seem a very tall order. We might even reject the notion altogether, thinking, “Let other people pray for him or her. Leave that to the people who voted for them and who actually want them to succeed, not me.”

Still, in this letter, Paul tells Timothy that it is essential to pray for kings and others who are in high positions. This is for the sake of our own godliness and dignity. But it is also for the sake of the ones for whom we pray, because, Paul says, it is God’s desire for everyone to be saved.

When we pray according to our own agenda, we will eventually hit a wall. When we ask God to assist us in our own plans for our lives or other people’s lives, we will at some point be disappointed. But what if we respond to this disappointment by asking God, “What then, Lord, would you have of me?”

Eventually on our walk of faith, we might discover that prayer is much more than making our requests of God. That God is so much more than a divine butler or a genie in a bottle, ready to serve our desires and needs. God is waiting, always, for us to be ready to listen. God is inviting us to change.

Scripture uses the image of a potter fashioning a vessel out of clay to say that we are malleable in the hands of our Creator. Our God desires to mold us into a form that is more holy, and the way this is done is through prayer. When we set aside our agenda and we invite God to show us something new, then we might learn to think the way God thinks.

God’s intention for us in prayer is to draw us closer. We know that when a mother holds her children tightly in her arms, they are not only close to her, but they are close to one another. In this way, we know, God draws us nearer to all of God’s creation. God’s desire for us in prayer is to show us how connected we are to everyone and everything else in all creation because God is our parent who loves us. God wants to open our hearts and our minds.

And so God asks us to pray for everyone – our leaders, those who are in positions of power, whether we like them or not. They, too, are God’s beloved.

God asks us to pray for the neighbor who annoys the heck out of us. They, too, are God’s beloved.

God asks us to pray for the young man who walks into a school or a church or a supermarket with a gun, intent on doing damage. Because he, too, is God’s beloved.

God asks us to pray for the ones who need it. And that is everyone.

God asks us to pray, because God knows that prayer is the way to transformation. Prayer will change our hearts and form us more fully into the image of the one who made us and loves us.

In your prayer life, where are you feeling resistance? Perhaps this is precisely where Christ is leading you.

Photo by Milada Vigerova on Unsplash

RE:imagine Regret

1 Timothy 1:12-17

What do you say when someone asks you if you have any regrets? Some people will say no. I regret nothing, as Edith Piaf famously sang. But is it really true?

When someone asks you if you have any regrets, it feels like they are asking, “Will you tell us about your failures?” But I don’t really want to talk about my failures, do you?

Really, though, don’t you have some regrets?

If pressed for an answer, you may be tempted to turn it around and make it about someone else, such as, I regret that my kids haven’t turned out the way I wanted them to. Or I regret that the people I have tried to help have not been willing to accept that help. Making it all about someone else’s failures. Not helpful.

There is an organization called Failure Lab, which describes itself as being all about taking a deep dive into failure. Sound fun? They do a lot of different things now, but this is how they started. They would invite someone to get on stage before an audience and simply describe something they did that went wrong, some way they failed. They have to do it without any embellishments, without laying blame anywhere else, without telling the audience that it really turned out okay, and that they learned something valuable from the experience. They just have to lay the failure out there in all its fail-ish-ness. 

It is uncomfortable for the speaker. It is perhaps even more uncomfortable for the audience. But people participate in it because it is surprisingly helpful. Acknowledging the failure in this way is surprisingly freeing. 

We can see that the Apostle Paul knows that sense of freedom. He doesn’t even wait for someone to ask him about his regrets. He freely, even joyfully confesses his sins, his failures. He writes it down in these letters, he sends them out to all the churches he knows, he wants them to hear it: I was a total screw-up. An epic failure. And I write to you now as the foremost example of the Lord’s mercy and grace, patience and love. Not as someone who has surmounted his difficulties, but as a beneficiary of the grace of God.

Do you have any regrets? Could any one of us honestly say we have none? But how do you begin to confront them?

There are different ways. In our worship we confess our sin every week. When we do this, we are confessing on behalf of the church as a whole as well as ourselves personally. Sometimes it feels peculiar. People ask me sometimes why they should have to confess to something they didn’t ever do, and I say that we are confessing as the Church for the sins of the Church. But other times it feels extremely personal, and at those times you know it’s about you, intimately.

Yet some will say that the act of corporate confession, which is what we do, is not really enough, because each one of us needs to own up to our personal failures, by telling them to another person. 

Don Miller wrote a book called Blue Like Jazz about his experience of being a Christian at a very secular university. It was a place that felt rather inhospitable to organized religion. An odd place to find a community of Christians, but he did. And this little group began to help one another grow in their faith, holding one another accountable, giving one another space to explore faith and doubts.

From their vantage point, they could see clearly many of the ways the church had failed. And so they decided to do something weird. They set up a confessional booth.

During the college’s annual festival, which was one big bacchanalian party, they decided they would set up a confessional booth. But it would be like this: they would not hear confessions, they would offer confessions. They would speak to the church’s failures to care for the hungry and the poor and the downtrodden, they would confess the church’s failure to be loving in the ways Jesus was loving; they would apologize for the crusades and for televangelists that take people’s money. They would confess to not representing Jesus well. They would make it personal. 

Don describes what happened. A party-goer stumbled into the booth, in very high spirits, we might say. He sat down and grinned at Don, said his name is Jake. Jake says, “So what’s the deal, man? I’m supposed to confess to you all the juicy stuff I’ve been up to here?” 

Don said, “Well, not exactly. Actually – our group – we want to confess to you. We were thinking about all the ways Christians have wronged people over time. You, know, the Crusades and stuff.”

Jake said, “Well, I doubt you were personally involved in any of that.” And Don said, “Right. But it’s just that, as followers of Jesus, we know we haven’t done a really good job of representing him and the things he stood for. We’ve failed at that.” 

As Don was saying these things, Jake suddenly saw this was no game. It was serious to Don. Jake said, “You don’t have to do this.” Don said, “Yes, I do. Actually, in this moment I feel very strongly that I need to tell you how sorry I am for everything.”

And so he began. Confessing that he hadn’t done much to help the poor; that he had not loved his enemies, really, at all; that he had let his own personal agenda influence how he lived his faith. And when he finished, Jake had tears in his eyes and he said, “I forgive you.”

And so it went for the next couple of hours. One by one, party-goers would stumble into the booth not really knowing what to expect. And Don sat across from them and began again to confess the ways he had fallen short. And they listened. Many people wanted to hug him. They were all gracious and grateful.

As much as he had dreaded this beforehand, by the time it was done Don was a changed man. And he felt the ones who heard his confession were changed as well. 

For the many young people who stepped into the booth, people who had perhaps been hurt by the church, who only saw the failures of the church, it was a healing experience. And for Don and the others who confessed truths that had previously been easy to ignore, they were, to their own surprise, changed by it.

For anyone who ever thought they had to get their life together first and then go to church, 

For anyone who ever felt too embarrassed or ashamed to admit their failures, their regrets,

For anyone who ever believed they had to hide the crises of their family and personal life from the people who are supposed to love them most – their brothers and sisters in Christ,

Which is most of us,

Please hear this: 

We are all broken. We are all failures in various ways. We are all full of regrets, every day if we are honest, and in need of love and care and support. We all need to be able to share our stories, as they are, unpolished and unfinished, with someone else who, we know, will still love us.

I said to you last week that anytime there is a barrier between you and a brother or sister in Christ there is a barrier between you and Christ. The same is true of our regrets. When we hold them inside, trying to hide them from the world, we are distancing ourselves from the community of Christ in the way we most need it.

If you are not inclined to confess your regrets to a bunch of total strangers – which I am most certainly not inclined to do – there is another option. 

John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Church, believed that Christians all need a small group of fellow disciples, with whom they can feel trust and love, and with whom they can ask and answer: How is it with your soul?

If you take the step, find a group, learn to give and receive trust, perhaps you will find the value, the hope, in sharing your stories, as they are happening, to know the grace and mercy of God when you most need it.

We all know we are a work in progress. I don’t think any of us would say that we have reached perfection. We yearn to be better, in a word, in our secret hearts, but we will always have difficulty with that if we are not able to share our stories truthfully. 

There is a reason this Christian life is set in community. Each of us is incomplete on our own; it is our communion with each other and Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, that makes us complete.

Let this be your invitation for the week: is there someone you trust, someone who loves you? Perhaps this is someone to whom you can confess something that weighs on your spirit. Some way that you, personally, have fallen short. This is a good place to start.

And if you are ready for the next step, perhaps you would consider making a partnership, with someone, or a few, who can ask you, “How is it with your soul?” Someone to whom you would tell the truth. 

When we bury our regrets deep inside, we remain trapped in our past. When we are honest about our condition, we will become free. And when we share it with others, fellow travelers on this journey of life, we might soar.

Photo by Kindel Media: https://www.pexels.com/photo/close-up-photo-of-crying-woman-8172862/

RE:concile Relationships

Philemon

I have boxes and drawers filled with piles of letters. Some of them may not be worth keeping, but for others there is no doubt. For example, I have a couple of letters my mother received from her father when she was in college. His words of encouragement to her are a part of our family story that we cherish.

If letter-writing is a lost art, that would be a tragedy. Because even though they are set in particular times and circumstances, the subjects of letters are often timeless. I am so glad my mother saved those letters from her father, making them a part of our story. And I am so glad the church saved this letter from Paul because it is an important part of our story.

Unlike most of his letters, this is one that sounds almost like a letter we would write. It is not written to a church, but to an individual, a friend. It is short – only a couple of pages long. It is personal – very personal.

Paul is writing to an old friend, Philemon. He is writing about a third person. Onesimus, a man who has been held in slavery by Philemon.

We don’t know why Onesimus is with Paul. Paul is currently imprisoned – something not all that unusual for Paul. And Onesimus is with him in his prison cell, although not a prisoner himself.

It is possible that Onesimus has been sent there by Philemon. Perhaps to care for Paul. Prisoners in the Roman empire were sometimes permitted to have servants. It is also possible that Onesimus was sent with a message, and then didn’t want to return to Philemon. And it is possible that Onesimus had run away and came to Paul looking for sanctuary. In fact, Paul hints in the letter that Onesimus may have wronged Philemon in some way. Indeed, running away would be considered a grievous wrong.

But whatever the circumstances are that brought Onesimus to Paul, it is quite unimportant. The letter Paul has chosen to write to Philemon is concerned with looking not backward, but forward, to reconciliation.

And the shape of this reconciliation Paul wants is for Philemon to regard Onesimus as a brother in Christ, equal and free.

His request of Philemon is peculiar for the time and place. Slavery was so common. It was not restricted to one particular tribe or race. It was simply what powerful people did to powerless people.

We know that the people of Israel were enslaved by the Egyptians for hundreds of years before they were led out of slavery by Moses.  And we know that the people of Israel, once they were established in their own land, also practiced slavery.  We know this because the law of Israel addressed it – not as a question of “if” it was acceptable, but “how” it was acceptable.  

We know that in the Roman Empire slavery was normal.  Some of the stories in the book of Acts talk about it, such as the woman who had a spirit of divination and was used by her owners quite profitably.  Some of the epistles have instructions pertaining to how the enslaved should behave, and from this we see that at least some Christian households “owned” other people.  All of this seems far away and strange to us.  And that is why it seems odd to us that Paul treads so delicately around the question.

But treading lightly and artfully was probably the only way for Paul to approach the matter if he wanted to be heard. 

He chooses his words carefully.  He is complimentary; he is encouraging, humble, and threatening, all at the same time.  Paul is using whatever he has at his disposal to bring about the result he is bold enough to ask for.

It would be easy for him to ignore the problem, like so many others have done. Slavery was so much a normal part of life, they failed to notice that it is in glaring contrast to the gospel of Jesus. It was a convention so ingrained in their day-to-day activities that they chose to remain blind to a problem that would be so very, very hard to change. 

We don’t have to go back too far to know this is true. In our nation, founded on principles of freedom, slavery was a critical part of our culture and our economy for a long time. Most Christians were comfortable enough with the contradiction between slavery and gospel. Some helpfully identified scripture verses that could be used to support the institution of slavery.

In recent decades, in the fight for equality for the LGBTQ community, we have become familiar with the term “clobber” verses, a small set of scriptural citations that some folks have used to argue against equal rights. Back in the days of legal slavery in our nation, supporters of slavery had a set of such verses, too, that they could use to clobber the enslaved into submission.

And most of the rest of us remained silent. Because we have decided conflict is not nice, perhaps not eve the Christian thing to do. In its stead, we have been placated by a false sense of peace.

So there’s outright conflict and there’s false peace. A tough choice. But reconciliation usually requires something else – a third way.

Listen to the way Paul speaks to his friend Philemon. He speaks with authentic love – for both Philemon and Onesimus. He does not shy away from truth – even though it will provoke Philemon to anger. He states clearly what he would wish to see Philemon do – while he never presumes to force it. If Philemon is going to take any steps toward reconciliation it must be done freely.

But the most profound move Paul makes is one that we might not even see. He is asking Onesimus to go back.

Paul is asking his dear friend, new brother in Christ, Onesimus, to freely walk back to the man who claims to own him, and has the power to oppress him, to enslave him.

And when I see this I don’t know what to think. I am shocked that he would ask such a thing. I am angry that Paul would do this to his beloved brother. I am afraid for Onesimus, that he might be in grave danger. I am wary and suspicious of Philemon’s intentions, for we know absolutely nothing about where he is in his faith and his thoughts about slavery. Will he be able to hear his brother Paul with an open heart? Or will he allow this matter to become a barrier between him and the gospel of Christ?

When it comes to reconciliation, Paul is showing that everyone must be willing to take a risk. Philemon will have to take a risk – possibly to be impoverished, if freeing one person leads to freeing all the persons he might hold in slavery. Paul will have to risk his reputation and friendship with both Philemon and Onesimus because of what he is asking. Onesimus, even, will be asked to take a risk, the biggest risk of all.

In reconciliation there is always a risk of losing something. But in reconciliation there is the gain of everything.

As Paul wrote in another letter, “Whatever gain I had, I count as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”

It’s like this: Any barrier between you and a brother or sister in Christ is a barrier between you and Christ. Paul is calling on you and me to reboot, to reconcile for the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus.

Photo: ChurchArt.com

Your Place

 

Luke 14:1,7-14  

There is a book called The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois, a remarkable story about slavery and race in America through the centuries. Near the end of the story, an elderly man, Uncle Root, explains to his young niece why he took his wife’s name when they were married in the mid-20^th century, instead of asking her to take his name.

Born at the beginning of the 20^th century, Uncle Root lived for most of his life on the plantation where his ancestors had been enslaved. And during that long period of slavery, it was not uncommon for the master of the house, and other white men, to take advantage of the powerlessness of the enslaved. It was known that many enslaved children were fathered by the master of the house, although they would never be able to call him father. And often these individuals were given the family name of the master, although they were never recognized by the law or by the community as members of the family. Everyone knew their place was among the enslaved.

In fact, this is why we so often find that there are both black families and white families in the south who have the same name. Yes, they are related.

Even after legal slavery was abolished, this sort of behavior continued, and Uncle Root’s father was a white man. But Root always knew that if he ever claimed that name in the community where he was born and raised, he would be scorned and ridiculed. Root was fully aware he did not have a place at the table in the white man’s house.

The table where you are invited to sit tells something about you and the people around you. The table where you choose to take a seat says even more about you.

Jesus seemed to go wherever he was invited. He ate with Pharisees as well as tax collectors. He did not flinch if a prostitute approached him while sitting at the table. He belonged everywhere.

He was fully aware that the tendency of humans is to segregate ourselves at the table. We invite people we want to be with, people whom we aspire to be like, people who might be able to do us some favor. When we invite others to our table, we usually reach up, not down. The ability to invite others to your table is often used as a power play.

And It was a kind of power play on the part of the Pharisees that day when they invited Jesus over for dinner. But not the kind you might expect. It appears the Pharisees wanted to put Jesus in the hot seat. They wanted to watch him. Closely.

But Luke tells us, Jesus was also watching them. Closely. As he usually did, he paid attention to their actions, and then he told a parable that was especially fitting. 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. But his next lesson probably sounded downright wacky.

He said 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.

Of course, they didn’t want to do that. And there are so many reasons we, like the Pharisees, don’t want to do that. I don’t have to tell you we are the most comfortable with other people who are like us. We choose our friends among people who are of similar social and economic stations, even political persuasions. We feel the most comfortable with people who understand us and agree with us – and vice versa.

So, when we serve a meal at the shelter or the soup kitchen, we might believe that these people are not at all like us. and we keep a barrier between us and them. We decline any invitation to sit at table with them and enjoy the meal and conversation, because we are too different, we believe.

Jesus’ advice to invite the ones at the lowest rungs of society into our homes and to a seat at our table makes us feel uneasy. There is too much distance between us and them. We make choices to keep it that way.

We want to ensure that our place is as far away as possible from their place. But this is a problem, if we take to heart what Jesus says to the people around this table. It is a problem.

I think the problem stems from our forgetting that we are all, and always, the guests.

We are guests of others who are, or have been in the past, generous with their time and their possessions. And more significantly, we are guests of God from whom we receive all things. We are guests in life, invited each day to participate and enjoy this marvelous gift – along with all of God’s other guests.

We make a serious mistake when we forget our place as guests, assuming instead that we are ever and always the host. When we assume that we have a place of honor because our station in life allows us to play host as well, no matter what table we are at. We make a mistake when we assume that we are the ones who give, forgetting that everything we have is a gift from our creator, our host.

Then we hear Jesus’ advice, his parable, saying we should take the lowest seat – assume humility – lest we be humiliated by our grasping nature. Assume the lowest place, he says, and you will always know where that place is: it is among the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.

Jesus says to us: this is where you belong, because this is who you are: You are poor, needing God’s provision in everything. You are crippled, you are lame, so dependent on God’s mercy to take you where you need to go. You are blind, too often unable to see what you need to see, but with the help of the Holy Spirit, you will see.

On the plantations of the old south, there is no place at the master’s table for the slave, for the man, woman, or child, with dark skin. A belief so fixed in the culture that it persists to this day in some homes.

In the story I mentioned earlier, the master of the house became very fond of one of his illegitimate sons, although his place was, of course, in slavery on the plantation. Still, because of his love, the master wanted to make the boy’s life as easy as he could and so he directed that the boy should be given fine clothes and easy work in the master’s house, rather than to work in the fields.

But the boy, for his own reasons, begged to be sent out to the fields. He did not want there to be so much distance between himself and all the others who were enslaved. He chose the lower place, which was something his father could not understand. But this boy knew that to sit at the table among the enslaved, this was the welcoming table. And that welcome gave him more comfort than easy work and fine clothes.

May you hear the words of Jesus that turn our understanding of the world upside down.

May your love overcome your human pride.

May you know your place among God’s beloved and welcome all your kindred – the poor, the lame, the crippled, the blind – to sit there too.

 

Some Kind of Order

 

Luke 13:10-17

One day years ago, over coffee, a friend and I came up with a youth ministry program that we thought might be great. It would use music as a means of gathering kids together, but the method would be to let them self-organize. We were thinking about all the kids we knew who were in bands, or who aspired to be in a band, and would love to have a place where they could gather together and play around with their music. These kids were at a vulnerable stage, trying to figure out who they were. A safe, stable, and caring community that encouraged and affirmed them in their creative endeavors was what they needed, we firmly believed. Neither my friend nor I was a musician, but we were hoping we could just provide the safe place to gather and the freedom to play and learn from each other.

My friend was the Christian Education Director at the church where we both worshiped, so we put the proposal out on the congregation’s newsletter, and just waited to see if we would get a reaction. We got a reaction.

The Church Music Director hit the ceiling. She was furious that we had done this without even consulting her – which we should have done. She was, after all the Director of Music. This was her domain, and she felt deeply wounded that we had done things completely out of order.

So a meeting was called with the pastor, the music director, the organist, my friend, and me. We apologized for what we had done. We had been blinded by our enthusiasm and felt terrible about the mistake we made. The music director wanted to handle any new program that might come about, and she had some ideas about how it should be done. My friend and I said, yes, please do. We want to do things in an orderly fashion. We never meant to break the rules. We would be so grateful if you would take this on.

So that’s where we left it. And that was the last we ever heard of it. Nothing. Ever. Happened. But at least we can say that nothing was done out of order, right?

Honestly, I have no idea if we would have had any success with that plan. I don’t know if it would have brought kids together in any kind of meaningful ministry. But it always did bother me that things were handled the way they were. It seemed to me like excuses were made in place of actually doing anything, and in the end, nothing was done.

And that is how I feel, too, about this synagogue leader. 

“There are six days on which this type of work can be done,” said the leader of the synagogue.  There are six right ways to do this, and some people insist on choosing the wrong one. 

He directs his disapproval to the crowds, in case any of them came expecting Jesus to heal them on this day when healing is, evidently, prohibited. 

There are a lot of things we don’t know about this incident.  We don’t know if this bent over woman was a regular at the synagogue – if she came every day or if she just happened to come this day.  We don’t know if there was a crowd of people who were there specifically for the intent of asking Jesus to heal them of their sickness and brokenness.  We don’t know what town they are in or how long Jesus and his disciples have been there.  All we know is they are in a synagogue, it is the Sabbath, and there is at least one person there in need of healing. 

The gospel tells us that she was afflicted with an evil spirit that kept her bent over.  What could that possibly mean?  It might have been arthritis; someone who suffers from arthritis might agree that the term “evil spirit” is a fair description.  Her affliction might have been osteoporosis; it might have been the result of a bad accident years ago that never healed properly.  It could have been many things.  But no matter what the precise diagnosis, one thing we can be sure about: she was suffering. 

They are in God’s house, there is a clear need, and there is someone who has the ability to help.  What is to stop him from this act of mercy?  The rules.

The basis of this particular rule is the 4^th commandment: remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.  But the interpretation of the commandment was built on layer upon layer of secondary law, spelling out every one of the possible activities that might be classified as work and therefore prohibited on the Sabbath.

Healing certainly can be classified as work, a vocation for many people. But healing is also an act of mercy, and the healing Jesus practiced was a means of showing the glory of God – something which is kind of the point of synagogue worship. So where does one draw the line between work and glorifying God?

The synagogue leader erred on the side of the rules, perhaps because that felt safer to him. But in doing so he may have broken another commandment, the one about idols. Because I want to say he turned the rules into an idol.

We all have to deal with these questions at times, figuring out the best solution when we are faced with two competing values. We don’t know what the fallout might be if we bend or break the rules. We don’t know what opportunities will be missed, what sins of omission might be made if we choose to stick by the rules.

This is not only a problem that faced first-century Judaism, it is a problem that plagues the organized church because we all have rules. Presbyterians, particularly, are quite fond of rules. We wave the banner of decency and order. We spend tremendous amounts of resources of time, energy, and money tending to our rules – debating them, refining them, updating them, testing them.

The rules are good. You’ll not hear me trashing Presbyterian Church polity because I believe that our rules go a long way in helping us be the best we can be. We need to have order, certainly. But don’t we also need to also make sure our order is always accountable to the gospel?

For example, when we are presented with an opportunity to do some kind of ministry, something new, something that might take us beyond our comfort zone, we might say, “Well, what about the liability? If something happens we could be sued.” And then we drop the whole thing, as though the question of liability were the trump card. When we do that, are we holding our order accountable to the gospel? or are we making the gospel accountable to our order?

Have you ever been in a situation when someone argued that we cannot do some potential ministry because of concern about the rules? Something that would serve the ones in need – feeding, healing, sheltering them – but would not happen because of the rules?

Can we hold our rules lightly enough to allow the Holy Spirit to break through?

At the General Assembly that took place earlier this summer, there was an instance of this. At the General Assembly there are Young Adult Advisory Delegates. They are affectionately called YAADs. The YAADs are elected to participate with voice but not vote. They are there to learn how participatory church governance works, and also to help the church hear the voices of their generation.

There was a story I read from one of the participants that involved a question of the rules. It was about 10:00 pm one evening, about halfway through the 9^th plenary session, and the assembly was debating a motion regarding the church’s response to gun violence in our nation.

One of the YAADs was acknowledged to speak. But when he stood to speak, he asked the moderators to recognize another person – another YAAD whom he felt had something to say that should be heard.

The moderators explained to him that the rules did not allow for him to yield his time to someone else. To do so was out of order. Why? I have no idea. That could have been the end of it, and for a lot of people I think that would have been fine. It was late, they were tired, they wanted to go to bed. Let’s let the rules save the day. But the moderators decided in the moment to ignore the rules and allow the young woman to speak.

She spoke from her personal experience, from her heart. She spoke to the hearts of all who were gathered, and when she sat down the assembly was shaken. The moderator, sensing the Spirit in the room, led the group in prayer.

And this, I believe, was just the kind of order that was needed in that moment.

I’m no anarchist. I like rules. But God help us if we allow our rules to shut the door on the Holy Spirit.

Perhaps we should conduct our activities in such a way that we say these are the rules we will follow, unless God has a different plan.

When Jesus was asked what is the most important rule, of all the hundreds of rules God had given them, we know what he said. There are two. The first is to love God. The second is to love your neighbor as yourself. In fact, he said, you really cannot separate these two rules from one another. They are really one and the same.

Love God. Love your neighbor. Care for the ones in need in whatever ways you are able to care for them. Let this be the foundation of our order.

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