Uncomfortable Words: Sept 28

Year C, Pentecost 16                     Luke 16:19-31                                                                         It’s that time of the church year when many of the Gospel readings are confusing, depressing or distressing.  Last week’s was confusing.  This week’s seems clear as a bell, and a little distressing.  We are Episcopalians and we don’t typically talk about things like judgment and eternal damnation, which might make us reluctant to study this Gospel text.  But this reading from Luke is about the more than judgment and consequences.

The final line of our reading from last week was, “No slave can serve two masters for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”  After that, we have 5 verses that we skip before we come to our reading for today.  Those 5 skipped verses are important because they create a connection between last week’s reading and this one as well as providing some context.  Right after Jesus says that you can’t serve God and wealth, the author of the Gospel writes, “The Pharisees who were lovers of money, heard all this and ridiculed him.”  Bad move Pharisees.  Bad move.

            The Pharisees get a bad rap when we Christians talk about them. Sometimes it’s fair, but often not.  There were some good and devout Pharisees who cared for the poor.  There were others who didn’t.  There was one thing that all Pharisees had in common.  That was that they knew the Hebrew Scriptures—which for us is the Old Testament.  Chapter 28 of Deuteronomy says that if you obey the commandments, ^“The Lord will make you abound in prosperity, in the fruit of your womb, in the fruit of your livestock, and in the fruit of your land...”  You will vanquish your enemies.  You will be successful in all things.  Therefore, the Pharisees tended to associate obedience and faithfulness with wealth and prosperity. One can understand why they did.

            Jesus wasn’t contradicting them as much as he was attempting to deepen their understanding and he did that by setting an example in the way that he lived and the company he kept.  He lived with just what he needed.  He certainly spent time with the rich and powerful, but he spent most of his time with the poor and oppressed because that was who needed him the most.  Those were the people who were so often forgotten and ignored. 

            However, it seems his example wasn’t quite enough, so he did what he often did when confronted with a stiff necked audience, he told a story.  This is a fairly well known story. There is a rich man and a poor beggar who sits outside his gates.  The rich man feasts every day behind his high walls.  He is wrapped in the finest clothing.  He has everything he could possibly want.  But he ignores the beggar at his gate.  

There were no social safety nets back then.  The rich were the only safety net.  Many wealthy homes even had a bench outside the gate for the poor to wait for handouts. But this rich man didn’t even give away his leftovers to the poor soul who waited outside his home every day.  As the story goes, the wealthy man went to Hades and Lazarus went to heaven and was seated by Abraham (that’s a good seat in heaven).

            Many people think that Jesus is vilifying rich people with this story.  It is much more nuanced than that. Remember, he was talking to the Pharisees who (at least in this story) were lovers of money.  But they were also supposed to be followers of the law.  At the beginning of this sermon, I quoted Deuteronomy 28---about how those who obey God will reap rewards.  Chapter 15 of Deuteronomy says that “You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy, to the poor in the land.”  The Old Testament is full of passages commanding the faithful to take care of the poor, the widows, the orphans, and the strangers in their land. 

            So this put the Pharisees in a pickle. This rich man clearly was not obeying God’s law in his treatment to the poor.  How did he get so rich?  Maybe there isn’t a direct correlation between being successful and being faithful.  Maybe success and wealth can even insulate us and allow us to ignore certain needs of the community.

            What is particularly tragic about this rich man is that even when he is sent to hell, he still doesn’t learn his lesson.  He is still bossing Lazarus around asking him for some water.  He then demands that Lazarus sends a message to his brothers.  But here’s the kicker, he doesn’t even know what to say in the message.  He just asks that his brothers be warned so they don’t end up in hell with him.  To that Abraham responds, “They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.”   But no, the rich man says, if someone comes back from the dead, then they we will listen.  Abraham replies, “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.”  (A bit of foreshadowing there.)

            When we read and interpret parables, we often identify with someone in the parable.  Usually when I read this one, I find an uncomfortable familiarity with the rich man. I am not rich by many standards, but compared to most in our world, I definitely am.  I have passed by many people asking for money.  Sometimes I give them something, sometimes I don’t. 

            But I wonder if in this story, we are actually those 5 brothers who the rich man wants to warn.  When Abraham refers to Moses and the prophets, he’s talking about Holy Scripture-the Bible.  We have an Old and New Testament now. And in that New Testament is a story about a man named Jesus who told these wonderful stories, cured the sick, loved the unlovable, died a horrible death and then returned from the dead so he could prove that he was the Son of God and maybe, just maybe, so we would listen to what he taught.  We have more than we need to be disciples of Christ.  We don’t need someone coming down from heaven to tell us some great secret, because we have it all. And one of the most consistent teachings in the Bible is that we care for the poor, the hurting, the oppressed, the marginalized.  It’s in the Old Testament.  It’s in the New Testament.  And it’s definitely in the words and actions of Jesus.

            We can read this parable as one of judgment.  This is what happens when you are selfish and don’t help people.  Or we can put ourselves in the position of one of the brothers. We can read this parable as an opportunity to be better. Those opportunities never end.

 I am really proud of what the people in our outreach committee have done. They are making at least 2 meals a month for people who are in need. Cheryl has told me that there are different people volunteering every week and I am grateful that so many of you are committed to this work.  But I think there is more we can do and I am hoping that we as a church can discern the needs of the people who call our streets their home.  In order to do so, we have to allow ourselves to witness the suffering in our community, to be uncomfortable.  The problem with the Pharisees is that they were able to separate themselves and even use their faith to justify that separation.  Our faith should not give us excuses to separate, but inspire us to remove the chasms between us, to love deeper and seek God in all people.

 

Mercy is the Antidote to Violence: Sept 14

Year C, Pentecost 14                                       Luke 15:1-10                                                                                   It’s been a very rough week.  At the same time, given how the last few years have been, it feels far too familiar.  I was reading one article that said that political violence comes in waves.  It’s contagious.  What the author didn’t explain was how it was stopped. Some contagious viruses just run their course.  Others require an antidote, a vaccine. We saw that with COVID.      

On the same day that Charlie Kirk was gunned down, there was another shooting in a school.  The shootings were within minutes of one another, one in Utah, the other in the neighboring state of Colorado.  Fortunately the student in Colorado did not succeed in killing anyone.  He wounded two teens and then killed himself, which is also tragic.

I remember when the shooting at Columbine happened. I remember because it was the first mass school shooting (actually the first school shooting) I had ever heard of.  Apparently there was also one in 1966 on a college campus, but that was before my time.  That was 30 years before the Columbine shooting.  The previous mass school shooting was 200 years before that in the 1700s.  Now school shootings are far too common.  We expect them. That is the reality that our children live in.  

What is the antidote?    There is a lot that can be said in regards to public policy.  When we are more concerned about the right to bear arms than the rights of our children to live, we have a serious problem.  But I am here to talk about God and the readings for today.  While I think that sensible laws can help, I also believe that there is a deeper problem in our world that is spiritual.   The antidote to violence is mercy.

                We see several references to mercy in our readings for today.  We see it in our Old Testament reading when God relents and decides not to punish the people of Israel.  In our Psalm, we hear the Psalmist ask for mercy. Paul talks about the fact that God’s mercy had allowed him to change from a blasphemer and violent persecutor into an apostle of Jesus Christ.

                The Gospel reading is also about mercy, even though it doesn’t use that word.  Jesus tells three parables (only 2 that are included in today’s reading).  These parables are told in response to comments that the Pharisees and the scribes made.  They were grumbling and talking about the fact that Jesus welcomed sinners and ate with them. 

I realize it might seem silly to judge someone because they were eating with sinners, especially when we know that all of us are sinners to one degree or another.  These people weren’t sinners in the way that we are all sinners.  They were sinners who were known by the whole community as sinners.  We might call them notorious sinners.  What upset the Pharisees was not that Jesus was merely talking to these sinners, but that he was sharing a meal with them.  According to Jewish law, observant Jews were not supposed to eat with notorious sinners.  Jesus was not just an observant Jew, he was recognized as a leader in the Jewish community.  This act was scandalous. 

Let’s just assume these were the kind of sinners you wouldn’t want to be sharing a meal with.   Imagine someone you see in person or on the news and you think , those are just horrible human beings.  How can they live with themselves?  Imagine Jesus sharing a meal with those people.

In response to this criticism, Jesus tells three stories of things, animals or people who were lost.  The first was about a shepherd who left 99 sheep to find the one who got away. The second was about a woman who lost one coin and while she still had 9, she looked fervently for this one lost coin until she found it. When both the shepherd and the woman found the sheep and the coin, they called all their friends and had a party. They were so happy they had found the one thing that they had lost.  Jesus then says, “Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

Who was lost in this story? Was it the sinners who were eating with Jesus or was it the Pharisees and scribes who were judging them? I think it was both. They were just lost in different ways.  The difference between the two were that one group knew that they were lost and one group thought they had it all figured out. Jesus would have been overjoyed to be with either group, but one group didn’t think they really needed him and the other group knew they needed him, or maybe they were realizing that bit by bit.

Both groups deserved mercy.  Mercy is a word that we don’t use very often.  We use it in church.  It’s all over our liturgy.  But is that something you pray for…for yourself or others? It’s not something that I often pray for and I had to wonder why.  I think I associate mercy with what comes after punishment.  We really don’t like talking about punishment, do we? 

Since we had our annual dinner with Mikveh Israel this Wednesday, I looked up the Hebrew word for mercy.  It shares the same root as the Hebrew word for womb.  The idea is that God’s mercy towards humanity is like the protection that a baby has in the womb.  Mercy isn’t an alternative to punishment.  It’s divine protection.  It’s also more than divine protection.  It’s about how we protect one another, literally and figuratively.

I started the sermon by saying that the antidote to violence is mercy.  I don’t mean that God’s mercy literally protect us from bullets.  That’s not how it works.  What I mean is that God’s mercy and our ability to be vessels of that mercy can stop the virus of violence from spreading. 

I had never heard of Charlie Kirk before Wednesday.  Yet as soon as the news broke that he died it was like people were equipping for battle.  The right blamed the rhetoric of the radical left and even implied that it was someone on the radical left who fired the gun.  The left blamed it on the rhetoric of the right and some even blamed it on the words of Kirk himself.  And then the right and the left started judging one another on their reactions. Once the shooter was caught, people on the left could not help but mention that his parents were Republicans and gun owners. 

This seems to happen so often when we discover the identity of the perpetrators of these evil acts.  We dissect their lives until we can find that one thing that will align them with whoever is on the other side.  Lord have mercy.

Yet who does Jesus align himself with? The lost.  The sinner and the outcast.  We are all lost.  We are all sinners.  We are all cast out in some way or another.  The sooner we can see that, the sooner we can stop vilifying one another and actually work for a solution.  I would guess that the vast majority of people in this country do not support murdering our political opponents.  The vast majority don’t think our children should have to risk their lives to be educated.  Yet we can’t put down our differences for just a few days to come up with some solution?

Each one of us desperately needs God’s mercy.  But here’s the beautiful thing. Our need for mercy is also the source of mercy.  If we can clearly see our own need for mercy, we can more willingly provide that mercy to others.  If we can see ourselves as lost, then imagine how much easier it will be to find one another.

When Paul was Tactful: Sept 7

Year C, Pentecost 13                                                          Philemon 1-21                                                    

           In 1619, about 20 Africans landed on the coast of Virginia, about a mile from my previous church.  While slavery was not yet institutionalized in the colonies, these 20 individuals were enslaved, mostly in Jamestown.  The first recorded baptism of an enslaved person was William Tucker in 1624.  He was baptized by the rector of my previous church and many more baptisms of enslaved people followed. What we don’t know is how those baptisms happened.  Were they required? Did William Tucker’s parents want him to be baptized or was it the decision of the Christian who owned him?  We were still the Church of England in 1624, but the practice continued through the first 80 years of the Episcopal Church, until slavery was abolished. 

            I imagine that many of you can see the disconnect between baptizing a person into the Christian faith while still maintaining that the person can be owned.  Some might assume that the enslavers just weren’t thinking that way, as if it didn’t occur to them that baptizing enslaved people might then lead to different kinds of freedom.  Evidently someone was thinking that way because in 1667, the General Assembly in Virginia felt the need to pass an act that said being baptized doesn’t exempt an enslaved person from bondage. In other words, being baptized didn’t make you free, at least not if you were African.  The words that were used in the baptismal service was that the individual being baptized was “grafted into the body of Christ’s Church”[1] But according to lawmakers at the time, being a Christian didn’t give someone rights in this life— only the next. 

            Of course slavery wasn’t just in the United States.  It was happening during Jesus’ life as well, not quite in the same way.  At the time, slavery didn’t last a lifetime.  People were usually freed by the time they were 30.  In Paul’s letter to Philemon, we heard a little about slavery in the ancient world. Philemon is the 3^rd shortest book in the Bible…which means we have the rare opportunity to discuss an entire book of the Bible in about 10 minutes.

            The other unique thing about this letter is that it’s to a person rather than a community.  Why would a personal letter be included in our sacred text?  If you read the entire run on first sentence, you will see that it’s not just directed to Philemon and a few others, Paul included “the church in your house.”  At this time, it was common to worship in people’s homes.  There were no Christian churches, so new Christians organized around a home and family.  This letter was directed to an individual, but it was meant to be shared with the community, which meant it had wider implications than just a few people.  Paul knew that and evidently those who put together the canon of scripture saw that as well. 

Most scholars believe that Paul was a prisoner when he wrote this letter and that was possibly how he met a man named Onesimus who was an enslaved man who escaped.  During Paul’s time with Onesimus, he was converted to Christianity.  It’s not clear whether Onesimus was in prison with Paul or was simply helping  him while he was in prison.  Prisons at this time were truly horrible places and your needs (food, clothing, etc) had to be provided from someone on the outside.  Since Paul wrote about how useful Onesimus was, it’s possible that he was supporting Paul while he was imprisoned.  This letter is asking Philemon to forgive Onesimus (because he escaped) and possibly free him.

            Since Paul can often be rather offensive and unconcerned about the feelings of the person receiving the letter, I find the tone of this letter fascinating.  On the one hand, I want Paul to write Philemon and call him out as a hypocrite because he should obviously see why being a Christian and owning someone is wrong.  But Paul is uncharacteristically careful in how he handles this confrontation. 

He started how he often started letters, he told the receiver how he prayed for them and thanked God for them, in particular, “for your love for all the saints.”  When Paul referred to “saints” he was referring to all Christians.  He was reminding them of the compassion they already exhibited. He then went on to say, “though I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do your duty, yet I would rather appeal to you on the basis of love…”   What frustrates some modern readers, is that Paul never explicitly told Philemon to give Onesimus is freedom, nor did he condemn slavery as a whole.  Instead he asked that he should receive him “no longer as a slave but as more than a slave, a beloved brother.”

            The point might seem clear to us, but during the time when slavery was still around, slave holders used this text to defend slavery. They said, “Look, Paul wasn’t telling Philemon to free him, he was just asking that he not be punished for running away and that since he was now a Christian, he should be treated just a little better.” I think Paul was arguing for freedom. He later said, “So if you consider me your partner, welcome him as you would welcome me.”  Treat this man who was formerly enslaved as you would the apostle Paul…the man who was highly respected in this community.  Paul also later shared that Philemon became a Christian because of Paul, which means Paul would have been held in high esteem by Philemon and his family.

 Notice the familial language that Paul used.  He referred to Onesimus as his child. He said that Philemon should consider him a beloved brother.  You can’t enslave your child or your brother.  Paul didn’t appeal to Philemon’s humanity or sense of justice.  He appealed to his Christian faith, his compassion and understanding of what it is to be a Christian.  When we say that we are siblings in Christ, we mean that. 

Now you might thing I am avoiding the Gospel, but the truth is I really wanted to preach on Philemon. However, they are related. Here is the 30 second explanation of the Gospel.  Jesus was using hyperbole to get people’s attention.  He was not advocating for us to hate our family.  But he was saying that people should prioritize God, even over family.  That doesn’t mean we are taking love from our family, as there is not a limited supply of love. It means we are expanding who we can love.  All Christians are our family.  And if all Christians are our family, then we really need to consider more carefully how we treat one another…which is why Philemon is in the Bible…which is why the men who put together the Bible 1800 years ago thought, this one page letter needed to be remembered for a very long time. 

Now you might be thinking, what about people who aren’t Christians? Are we allowed to treat them poorly? No.  There are plenty of other places in the Bible that talks about how God loved people from all faiths.  But in Philemon, Paul is talking about how we can use our Christian faith to guide us in how we treat the people who are considered less than.  Just imagine for a second if we could just get Christians in the world to actually do that…even if Christians were just treating other Christians well.  That would be some serious progress.

Now the reason Paul’s tone in this letter matters is that it can guide us in how we make certain arguments.  It’s satisfying to label people as hypocrites and bigots.  But it never accomplishes anything.  Paul could have just told Philemon what to do, but he wanted it to sink in.  He wanted Philemon to know why he was freeing Onesimus and expanding his family.  Because then he could be an example for others as well.  The other thing that made a difference in this situation is that Paul already had a relationship with Philemon.  He even said at the end of the letter, please make up a guest room, because I am planning to visit.  Philemon knew that Paul was going to check on Onesimus.  Paul was showing him how committed he was to this situation with his words and actions. 

What makes this letter so incredible is that not only does it teach us how our faith informs how we treat others.  It also helps us talk to others when we are trying to help them see something that might be quite obvious to us.  Just like Paul wrote in his letter, we must appeal to others on the basis of love, not anger or righteous indignation. Love.

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[1] 1662 Book of Common Prayer