Disciples who are Desperate: June 26, 2016

Year C, Pentecost 6                                                               
Luke 9:51-62                                                                          

            People often struggle with this passage from the Gospel of Luke.  Jesus seems a little insensitive.  He’s not quite as insensitive as the disciples who want to command fire to come down from heaven and consume an entire city because they were inhospitable, but still insensitive.   In this story, he had three people who wanted to follow him.  The first person said that he would follow him wherever he went. Jesus did not say no, but his response was less than affirming.  He said, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”  The second person wanted to follow Jesus but wanted to bury his father first.  Jesus replied, “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the Kingdom of God.”  The third agreed to follow Jesus but wanted to say goodbye to his loved ones first.  To that Jesus essentially replied, “You can’t follow me when you are constantly looking back.  When proclaiming the Kingdom of God, you have to look forward.”

            The response that troubles most people is to the man who wants to bury his father. Anyone who has experienced the death of a loved one knows how important the grieving process is.  And even if we set aside the emotional needs, what about the very practical needs?  Someone has to make the necessary arrangements for a funeral.   It makes perfect sense that it would be the son who would do that.  Why would Jesus be so unreasonable as to not let someone bury his father?

            In order to answer that question, we need to take a couple steps back to the beginning of the reading.  “When the days drew near for Jesus to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.”  It seems like a benign enough sentence; but it was anything but that.  Remember what happened in Jerusalem: that is where Jesus was crucified.  For the author of Luke, this sentence marked a turning point for Jesus. If it was a movie, the music would have changed and the screen would have darkened.  There would be a close up of Jesus’ face and things might switch to slow motion, because slow motion always adds drama. This was Jesus’ walk to his death.  It is when things got very serious.  When the first man said that he would follow Jesus wherever he was going, Jesus knew that he had no idea what he was talking about.  Even the disciples who had been following him all along did not understand where this journey would lead them. 

            For Jesus, it wasn’t just that things got more serious at this point-- there was an urgency to his actions.  He could not wait for people to say good bye.  He could not wait for people to make funeral arrangements.   His task was to follow the will of his father.  Nothing else mattered in comparison.  Jesus understood the importance of his mission, the urgency of his journey, but it must have been difficult for him to convince others of that.  Even when he started talking to his disciples about his death, they did not really understand it.  They did not understand it until he was arrested.

            About five years ago, I was able to take a month long sabbatical.  I had been studying something called the Emerging Church for several years at that point.  It is essentially a movement in modern Christianity to revitalize the church and find new ways of being the church.  What I learned was that the roots of this emerging church were in England.  The Church of England had begun working on initiatives like this decades before and had even started funding the process long before the Episcopal Church even acknowledged that there was a need.  I was able to visit places in England that had been engaged in this kind of work. They had an entire facility devoted to all kinds of church revitalization. 

I sat down with one of the leaders of the organization as he described all of the things they were doing.  At one point I said, “I don’t understand why you are so far ahead of the American Church in this conversation.” He said, “We hit rock bottom before you did. The church over here has been in decline far longer than the church in America.  You just aren’t desperate enough yet.  However, it looks like you are getting there.”  This past year at General Convention, the church dedicated millions of dollars to exploring new ways for the church to grow and thrive in this day and age (essentially engaging in the very same things the Church of England has been doing for the last 10-20 years). It would appear that we finally got desperate enough. 

            Sometimes that is what it takes for there to be change in the life of a person or an institution.  There needs to be a sense of urgency and desperation.  We have to be prepared to make our faith and even our church a priority in our lives.  You can see it in the history of St. John’s as well. It was not until the church was in ruins after the Civil War when people discovered a renewed energy for the church.  The church had been in decline since the American Revolution, but it was only after the Civil War when people got serious.  The need was obvious as the building was complete rubble.  Our building is not in ruins, but our church is facing hard times in more ways than one.  There needs to be an infusion of energy and hope for it to have chance to make it to year 500, or even 420.  We can’t assume that someone else will do it, someone with more time and more money.  It is dependent on each one of us to make following Jesus our priority. 

Unlike Jesus, we are not marching to our death, but we should still be marching somewhere, with that same determination that Jesus had.  There comes a point in our lives when we have to decide what our priorities are---what really matters in our lives.  What we will see time and time again is that how we spend our time, points to our priorities.

            We don’t need to look very hard to know that the need in our lives and in our world for disciples of Jesus is urgent and desperate.  In our baptism we have been saved, but it is up to us become disciples, to live into that call.  There is no better time than now to commit to follow Jesus. 

Gratitude that gushes: June 12, 2016

Year C, Pentecost 4                                                               
Luke 7:36-8:3                                                                         

            Most of you are aware that my husband and I have a new addition to our family.  We have been in the adoption process for over 2 years.  However, a few months ago we got a call that there was an emergency placement and we had 1 day to get to the hospital where this baby was born (which was about day’s journey).  There was not a lot of time to prepare of even to think through things. The birth mother had chosen us that day.  We knew very little about her or the baby who awaited us.  In truth, the birth mother was just a name on a sheet of paper.  While we certainly felt a level of gratitude to her, it was nothing particularly overwhelming.  Then we met Joshua.  We saw this tiny and perfect baby and we were both overwhelmed with gratitude, not just to God, but to this woman who carried him in her body for 9 months.

            One of the small pieces of information we had about her was why she decided to choose adoption.  She wrote that she could not raise him and she wanted to “bless another family.”  Those were the words that she wrote on the form we read.  That was why she chose adoption.  At first she did not want to meet us.  Then at the very last minute she changed her mind.  It was probably good that it was the last minute or I imagine I would have gone crazy worrying about what to say and what to do.  Instead, we had about two minutes to consider our words.  We walked in and she smiled this huge smile and hugged us.  We thanked her profusely, but we were very aware of how inadequate those thank yous were.  She said that it was a blessed day because we were the people who were meant to raise this baby and she felt joy because of it.  We promised her he would be beloved by many and that we would spend the rest of our lives loving him.  Then with tears in our eyes we said good bye. 

            I thought of that moment when I read the Gospel for today.  The story is about a woman who was overcome with emotion.  We know that she was a sinner because Jesus refers to her many sins.  Some people believe that Jesus forgave her because she showered him with her tears and anointed him with oil.  She honored him in ways that displayed her love.  However, many people (myself included) believe that her outpouring of love was a result of the forgiveness she had already received.  In other words, she had already met Jesus.  She had already been forgiven and this was her way of showing gratitude for this forgiveness. 

            If she went in weighed down by sins, begging for forgiveness, I think things would have happened differently.  She would have been tentative and unsure of herself.  She might have washed his feet, but not with her tears. She had oil with her and that was not an uncommon way to honor people, but it was usually placed on the head, not the feet.  But her actions, washing his feet with her tears, drying them with her hair—these seem unplanned, unchoreographed.  I am sure there are some people who can cry on demand, but I doubt that’s what happened.  She was simply overwhelmed with gratitude.  For years she had been weighed down with sin. 

Given the critical reaction of the Pharisee, people knew that she was a sinner. However, because of Jesus, she was free.  Obviously most people did not realize she had been forgiven.  They did not accept that Jesus could free her of these sins.  But for her, it was not about what other people thought. She knew that she had been forgiven and she knew the person who had changed her life forever.  Perhaps she had a little speech prepared. She was going to go in this house full of respectable people and carry her head high.  With respect and decorum, she would thank Jesus, anoint his head and then quietly slip out.  Then she saw him and she was so overcome, she dropped to her knees and wept. There were no words that were adequate for the grace and love that she experienced.  Her tears were so numerous that they washed his feet. When she realized that she was soaking the feet of the man who had saved her, she dried them with her hair because she didn’t have a towel.   Every part of her mind, body and soul was dedicated to this display of love and gratitude.  Jesus was so moved that he pronounced forgiveness again so that everyone would hear.  Then he commended her on her faith in front of the pillars of the faith.

            For a long time, I thought I deserved to have a baby. I thought this is the natural order of things. You get married, you have kids.  This is what you do.  Everyone around me was getting pregnant.  I was praying--my whole family was praying.  Despite the fact that I had competent doctors and a supportive husband, my prayers were not answered in the way that I thought they should have been answered.  While my priest mind knew that nothing is really fair in life—that we should be grateful for what we have—that I already had more than I deserved, I could not get past this feeling that life was unfair, that I was being deprived of something that I deserved.  Yet in that hospital, looking at the mother who placed her child in my arms because she wanted to bless me, I realized that this was more than I deserved.  This was love and there was nothing I could say, nothing I could do to properly express the gratitude that she deserved and that God deserved. 

For the first time in my life, I understand what this woman felt.  I even understand what Simon the Pharisee felt to some degree.  He went through life expecting things. He didn’t think he needed forgiveness. He had been good his whole like. He was the one who showed other people how to pray and how to worship. Because of that he could not appreciate this woman’s dramatic display of love. 

I have been the Pharisee in that I have not fully appreciated the grace and love that I have been given. I thought I had earned things fair and square.  I am sure that I will continue experiencing elements of the Pharisee’s entitlement and the woman’s gratitude. I wish that I could have learned this lesson without receiving this amazing miracle.  But I guess that’s not the point.  The point is that when we do find ourselves receiving these expected and unexpected miracles, we remember who deserves our thanks and praise, and we remember that every day. 

Most of us see our lives through a lens of scarcity.  We see what we do not have and what we deserve to have.  Instead, perhaps we could consider those little miracles and gifts that we receive every day---those things we barely notice.  Then when we identify those things or those people, we allow ourselves to gush a little. I pray that we can all find that raw place in our lives that gushes with gratitude---the kind of gratitude that leaves polite people uncomfortable.