No Room for Greed in God's Economy: A Sermon for Proper 13C

 

I haven't posted anything more about the Lambeth Conference. I am waiting until they've dropped the metaphorical hanky before I say anything more. Needless to say, everything remains in flux, and conservative Global South bishops are behaving as they have before. When women first arrived as bishops in 1998, male bishops from the Global South refused to participate in the Eucharist. 

When +Gene Robinson from NH was in England but not at Lambeth in 2008, they refused to go to the rail again because there were supporters of +Gene still allowed inside the Episcopate Clubhouse. 

Now, because the LGBTQ+ bishops are allowed to come to Lambeth (but their spouses are specifically excluded), they're sitting in the pews at Eucharist, pouting and putting out statements demanding Lambeth be a legislative body instead of a gathering of prayerful, faithful purple-shirted people. 

It's ridiculous. It's tiresome. And it's infuriating. The bishops have another week to figure out what's what. 

But their refusal to receive the body and blood of Christ because of the presence of LGBTQ+ bishops made my own presiding at the table today all the more meaningful for me. And all the more sad that those who are in the position of bishop would likely hoard the wafers and wine rather than share it with the LGBTQ+ faithful out of some man-made construct called "orthodoxy." 

A bit like the landowner in Luke's Gospel...

Text: Luke 12: 13-21; Hosea 11: 1-11

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My drive here to Valdosta from Tallahassee takes me past lots of farmland.

Mostly it’s dairy farms, but there are also plenty of acres of cotton and corn.

And certainly I’ve found myself patiently following behind a combine driving from one field to the next.

Farming is a way of life around here…and so a Gospel story involving a farmer enjoying a year of bumper crops shouldn’t be hard for us to understand.

What might be challenging is how Jesus describes God’s response to this prosperous man and his fantastic crops.

The man’s carrying on about how much abundance he has and God bellows out—You fool!

A fool? Because he wants to save up for a rainy day?

A fool? Because he wants to enjoy having a bounty of plenty?

I think probably the toughest thing for many of us when we encounter these texts week after week is trying to understand the way God responds in any given circumstance.

And this one could easily bring us up short especially since we are immersed in a culture which encourages acquiring and stockpiling.

I’m not an economist, but from listening to all the reporting on what’s been happening here and globally with inflation, it seems COVID sparked a case of “cabin fever frenzy buying.” So many people all buying things at one time… that our spending has outpaced the supply.  

Add to that the goods stuck on boats out in the Pacific… lack of truck drivers… plants shut down for unsafe conditions… and there’s a major kink in the supply hose.

What little I did retain from my college economics course is that when demand is high and supply is low, the prices go up. And we’re certainly living in a time when everything is costing more.

So why is God calling this man a fool?

According to our economy, this man’s only doing what he ought to do to keep himself safe…stocking up.

And there’s the beginning of his foolishness.

He is a supplier. He has what others might need or want. But rather than make it available… he’s taking it off the market.

If we pay attention to this man’s words…

“What should I do, I have no place for my crops, I will pull down barns and build larger ones, I will store my grain and my goods…”

“I…My…it’s all about me.”

This man is not just a fool; he’s a narcissist.

He’s placed himself at the center of his universe. He even has a conversation with himself:

“Soul, you’ve worked so hard; let’s kick back and have a drink”

“Yes, that’s a great idea, soul! What’ll you have: wine or beer?”

“How ‘bout champagne!”

“Perfect!”

There’s nothing wrong with the man having a bumper crop.

But God’s hanging out there on the periphery saying, “Hello? How ‘bout showing me a little love for the rain and the sun and the earth that helped you get this harvest.”

What’s more, this man apparently already has plenty, enough that his barns are already full. So it isn’t that he needs to save anything.

Just as Jesus has told the parable of what it is to be a good neighbor… here’s an opportunity for this man to see what has come his way as a blessing… and then bless others because he already has enough.

God is calling out this man for disrupting God’s economy, an economy that revolves around giving thanks to God for the abundance and then recognizing the interconnectedness of humanity that leads us to earn and then share.

We have a tangible sign of that here at St. Barnabas.

The basket that’s been out in our nave for the past few weeks is overflowing with canned fruit. These will get paired with the many cans of tuna we collected in June.

Next month…we’ll be taking up another collection…this time for pork and beans… to provide needed legumes and protein.

Inflation hasn’t stopped us from picking up that one extra item at the store for our feeding ministry.

This is symbolic of the heart of this community that we continue to look for ways to meet the needs of others even when we’re in difficult financial times.

It reminds me again of the question Jesus posed last week about the child seeking to get a fish.

Good…loving…caring parents don’t hand such a child a snake or a scorpion.

Even as good and loving a parent as God is to us… it seems we humans fall into a pattern of self-centeredness, stubbornness and rebellion.

Jesus knows this well. I think that’s one of the reasons he didn’t want to be dragged into the middle of a family dispute at the start of our Gospel reading. He would have known the words of Hosea that we heard in our first reading this morning… one’s that I think any person who has ever raised a child could identify with.

Here’s God…remembering the better days when God was like a parent to a newborn...

“I taught Ephraim to walk…I took them up in my arms… I led them with cords of human kindness and bands of love…I bent down to them and fed them…”

This time…the “I, the me, the mine” is God.

But the difference here is the way of God is not about selfishness and hording.

God is about empowering and strengthening Israel…getting the people up on their own two feet. Making them a people who others see and turn toward to find life.

That’s the love that is the currency in God’s economy. 

But in the same way that Luke’s rich man mistakes his good fortunes as purely his own achievement and something to be horded… Hosea wants us to know that Israel has forgotten who made the way for them to be free from tyranny in Egypt…and allowed them to flourish…and grow.

Israel and the rich landowner show us how becoming self-absorbed, and enamored with how much we have and how much we have done and so focused on self not only cuts us off from God… it leaves no room for anyone else.

 But there is good news.

Hurt and angry as God might be in this Hosea passage… God isn’t like us.

When we get hurt… we might cry. We might retaliate.

God declares that even as tragedy…and in this case it’s the coming invasion by Assyria … God isn’t going to turn away…but keeps coming toward God’s people.

Even though the rich man may be a fool… God doesn’t give up on him.

Even though Israel is running away…God remains compassionate.

God keeps calling them and us…and keeps beckoning them and us to invest in God’s economy and reap its benefits.

An economy where the sole currency is showing love and mercy toward one another.

An economy where we work toward building each other up… and making our society one where all people know they are included and appreciated… and everyone has what they need.

We are called to make that the real reality for our community. That’s what we mean when we pray:

“Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

In the name of God…F/S/HS

 

 

 

 

Lambeth Calling*

 *This is not one of my sermons but reflects my response to all-things Anglican. Read on...

One of my favorite hymns in The Hymnal 1982 begins:

Christ is made the sure foundation,

Christ the head and cornerstone,

chosen of the Lord and precious,

binding all the Church in one;

holy Zion’s help forever,

and her confidence alone.

Upon this stanza of Hymn #518, I would hope, I would think, I would pray that all of us who call ourselves followers of Jesus could agree. I would especially think that the bishops gathered from across the Anglican Communion could accept these lyrics and live into this understanding. 

How we get there is not as important as the fact that we do get there and see this as the essential truth from which we can live and move and have our being.

If only this were the only work of the bishops at Lambeth to make Christ and our commitments to walk in the way of Jesus, and love as Jesus taught us to love each other. Maybe we could all get along.

But that is not what is happening. And while I am saddened, I am not surprised.

The last time there was a Lambeth Conference it was 2008. Then Archbishop Rowan Williams invited all the bishops to England… except for one: Bishop Gene Robinson of my home diocese of NH. He was too outwardly and unashamedly gay for this gathering. Bishop Gene went to England and did a bunch of fringe events. But he was not allowed to go to tea with Queen or participate in the Indaba listening sessions because bishops from the Global South would have been uncomfortable with his presence.

So there was listening, and talking, and praying, and sharing about LGBTQ+ Christians, but the one figurehead of LGBTQ+ Christianity was not included in the official conversation.

And while the bishops did their best to keep things controlled, the Holy Spirit continued to blow through the provinces of the Communion, moving and shaking things up. Another attempt to control the Spirit came in the form of the Anglican Covenant, a document that aimed to put into a type of ecclesiastical time-out those Churches which discerned the valuable gifts brought to the Church from the LGBTQ+ community, including supporting our right to be married. The Covenant failed miserably, most notably in the Church of England where it had originated with Archbishop Williams. Shortly thereafter, the Archbishop announced he was going back to what he was better at: being a theological scholar.

In the meantime, over the past decade, The Episcopal Church in this country, the Canadian Anglican Church, Scotland, Wales and a myriad of other Churches in the Anglican Communion had all arrived at a place of seeing that LGBTQ+ people could form loving, covenantal relationships. We could preach the Gospel. We did belong in the church and fighting over such matters was a distraction from the main point: to love and serve God and one another.

By this time, we had already had our nasty, bitter break ups with those who didn’t accept LGBTQ+ Christians and they had already formed their own cathedrals and Towers of Babel under the “Anglican” Church of North America and GAFCON. ACNA had tried to get The Episcopal Church voted off the Anglican Communion island and had failed. The Lambeth Conference stalled; the GAFCONites held their own rival global meeting in Jerusalem. And then COVID hit, and the Lambeth Conference was forced to delay meeting until this year.

That’s a summation of the past fourteen years of what I call the “Anglican Angst.”  With a new Archbishop, Justin Welby, there would maybe be a chance for the bishops to get back to Christ as the sure foundation and reason for the Church to exist. Groups of bishops have been meeting with each other over Zoom. All seemed to be going well.

Then there was the news that while LGBTQ+ bishops would be allowed to attend Lambeth (yay!) their spouses were explicitly excluded (boo!) Again, this was to accommodate the comfort level of those bishops from the Global South who don’t accept marriage equality. A small step for Lambeth; a trip and fall for humankind, but whatever. 

The decision of many of the Episcopal Church bishops was to go and continue to stand for “all the sacraments for all the baptized.”

But then…as so many of them were boarding airplanes to Europe… a 58-page document dropped from the Archbishop of Canterbury titled “Lambeth Calls.” It covers ten subject areas. The bishops were to read it and be prepared to vote either “Yes” or “Yes, but with more study” to the various “calls.” Under the title “Human Dignity” there were statements condemning colonialism and past imperial actions of the church…and…oh, by the way, “the Anglican Communion is of one mind” that marriage is for a man and a woman and that homosexuality is not compatible with Scripture.

Remember: the bishops are only allowed to say, “Yes” or a “Yes, but.” There is no “No” or “Hell NO!” option.

The language of this proposal comes straight out of a 1998 resolution called Lambeth 1.10. Our Episcopal Church, and others, have rejected this stance and, in fact at our recently concluded General Convention in Baltimore, we have moved decidedly in the direction of full inclusion of LGBTQ+ people in the church. So to suddenly have this dropped on our bishops for a "Yes" or "Yes, but" vote is offensive and wrong.

And the plot thickens: one of the members of the group that helped draft the Human Dignity Lambeth Call is the openly gay and married Bishop Kevin Robertson of Canada. According to a post he put out on Facebook, his study group never discussed Lambeth 1.10 as they crafted that particular call. Imagine the shock and betrayal he must have felt to discover this tucked away on page 31 of a 58-page document.

If the working group of bishops didn’t know it was in there, then who did?

Did someone let Judas into the printing press?

I am a black-shirted priest, not a purple-shirted bishop, serving a small congregation in Southwest Georgia. But unless there is a means for bishops to raise objections and get that language amended out, I would hope our diocesan leaders and Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church would consider their peace returned to them, shake the dust of this dirty deed off their feet, and refuse to participate any further in this conference.

Lambeth may have called. But the province they have reached is no longer interested in debating human sexuality.

Teach Us to Pray: A Sermon for the 7th Sunday After Pentecost 12C

 

This passage from Luke, with a much more concise and shortened version of "The Lord's Prayer" seemed like a great opportunity to touch on a topic that always seems to come around: teaching people how to pray. Episcopalians, including me, tend to lean heavily on the use of a book to pray and if we don't have a book, we panic. So discussing what prayer is all about and why we do it felt like the thing I needed to preach about this morning. 

It's also necessary for me to remember the importance of prayer as the delayed-Lambeth Conference is set to begin. And, as if we're opening a time capsule, the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby decided to drop a 58-page document on the bishops as they were en route to Scotland and England. In this document--called "The Lambeth Calls"-- +++Welby and other male bishop friends decided to stick in a call to reaffirm Lambeth 1.10, which states that the "one mind" of the Anglican Communion believes that marriage is between "a man and a woman" and rejects the ordination of LGBTQ+ people. This throws the group back to 1998, ignoring the sea change in many parts of the Anglican Communion on the acceptance of LGBTQ+ people and the blessings of our marriages. It also is an ambush of bishops who are attending since they were led to believe this conference was not going to ask them to take votes on anything, and that they would focus on points of agreement rather than pick up old fights from Lambeth Conferences past. 

This morning, I had instructed our parish to pray for the bishops at the Lambeth Conference. Knowing that I have a number of people unfamiliar with the Episcopal Church, let alone the Anglican Communion, I did a very short and benign explanation of what the conference is, similar to the short explanation I gave about our General Convention which just finished meeting a couple weeks ago in Baltimore. I did indicate that there is a clear need for prayer for what is happening at Lambeth, especially for the bishops from the United States. God help them to pass through things temporal while not losing sight of the eternal! 

Needless to say, prayer was a timely topic! 

Text: Luke 11:1-13

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One of the courses I took in seminary was a class called “Teaching Others to Pray.”

It was in my first year, and it was taught by two of the brothers from the Society of St. John the Evangelist out of Cambridge, Massachusetts.

My classmates and I had completed our first two terms of seminary, managing to survive courses in Biblical languages and the fire-hosing of reading and writing and reading and writing some more for our courses in Old and New Testament and Church History.

This one-week-long course with Brothers Keith and Luke was a chance to get into something a little less academically intense…although we did have to read and write for their class as well.

I remember entering the room in the Academic Building and seeing these two men in their brown robes standing at the front of the class. There was a mix of seminarians from all three years, talking and taking our seats at the tables arranged in a “C” shaped structure.

The Brothers didn’t speak. They stood quietly, shifting from one foot to another, as our nervous energy kept percolating in the room.

And then…almost as if something was whispered in our ears…we quieted down and were ready to begin.

As each of us shared our reasons for wanting to be in the class… a common theme emerged. This room full of future priests all expressed the feeling that seminary had upended their own prayer life.

We were all so busy doing the work of seminary that we didn’t have time for being in seminary. There was frustration and lamenting and feeling parched and dry.

While nobody said this specifically, the truth was we needed to learn how to pray.

And what a gift to have two brothers from SSJE… an order steeped in prayer… to guide us.

As that week went on and the course unfolded, I found myself feeling a bit like a flower. I had been closed tight… a bud waiting for some sun and rain to help me grow. The brothers began with a simple enough question for us to answer: who taught us to pray. For me it was my parents, especially my mother. We went into the various ways in which we pray.

Do we sit?

Do we stand?

Do we move?

Slowly, my little bud self could feel the rays of sun and cool waters on my soul…as my soul started to open and bloom.  

I was especially taken with the way Brother Luke talked about the physical nature of prayer and incorporating our whole bodies into praying. Coming into seminary with a massage background, I was so grateful that…finally…someone was making that connection between our wonderfully knit-together human bodies and the divine.

Even a simple connection between noticing our breath…and the movement of the rib cage as our lungs fill with air…as that reminder of the movement of the Holy Spirit.

In preaching classes… I remember doing breathing exercises…and the sound of a room full of people doing an in-take of breath…and releasing it back out through their open mouths. That sound…Ru…ach….the Hebrew word for “Spirit” can be the starting point of quieting down our minds…and beginning the conversation with God.

And that’s so much of what prayer is. It’s about making the space and the opportunity to be in conversation and relationship with God. And if seminarians were having a hard time making that a priority, how much more so is it for the people who aren’t taking vows to regularly study the Holy Scriptures?

So I’m not at all surprised that the disciples were looking longingly at Jesus, a man who clearly made prayer a regular practice, and asked him to teach them how to pray…”Y’know, like John taught his disciples."

We don’t know exactly what John taught his followers out there by the Jordan eating locusts and wild honey.

But as we see in the Gospel…Jesus gives them a simple formula. A formula based on the idea that the one to whom they are praying…God…is so intimate and loving that he is “Father”…”Abba”…”Aveinu.” A trusted parent who will listen. It begins with praise, and then moves to the needs of giving comfort and shelter in daily bread, being merciful and so we can let that forgiveness flow to others, and please offer protection from danger. Those are the basics…and we have since codified this into what we call The Lord’s Prayer, probably the one prayer ever Christian knows.

But I think it’s the next several lines of the Gospel that are probably the more important. Because Jesus seems to be saying that there’s more to prayer then occasionally bowing our heads and repeating well-rehearsed lines. Prayer is also about perseverance and commitment.

I am struck by the words “Ask” “Search” and “Knock.”

Whenever we ask for something, there is a hope that the ask will be answered. We don’t know when or how. But there has to be a level of trust that when we go to a person and make an ask, they’ll hear us and respond.

Jesus gives a couple of examples.

He talks about the friend who shows up in the middle of the night searching for bread to help feed some unexpected guests. At first, the owner of the house is like, “Dude: it’s midnight. I’m in bed. Are you serious?” But even groggy with sleep and probably more than just a little annoyed, the owner gets up, gets some loaves of bread and gives it to his friend.

He also talks about the parent and child. The child is seeking out a fish from the parent. Do we think the parent would give the child a hissing snake instead? I mean, is that what a loving parent would do?

The same is true for God. When we pray, we put up our ask in the fervent hope that God is hearing us.

When we are in the middle of a dilemma…big or small… we search for God hoping that the blinking beacon of our prayer will get noticed in the vast ocean of petitions.

And then there is the knock. Jesus says that if we knock, the door will be opened.

It may take some time for that knock to be answered. We might even feel as though we must pound on the door. But the encouragement is to keep knocking and don’t give up or give in to despair. Persistence also requires patience.

And the answer we receive is spiritual. God is not like some angelic gumball machine that we place our quarter-sized prayer, turn the handle, and—et voila—prayer answered!

The change that comes with prayer is a shifting in us, our outlook, and our approach to life. It comes because we call upon the Spirit to be present in and around us.

Sometimes, we may find that we need new ways to ask, search and knock.

The author Ann Lamott has two basic prayers: “Help Me! Help Me! Help Me!” and “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!”

Here at St. Barnabas, the members of our Daughters of the King have been working on a set of Prayers of the People for our Sunday service that represent the Prayers of our People, and not just the preset forms in our prayer book. We’ll be using those starting next month.

Maybe our prayers need to be less about words. Maybe we go back to that breath…the ruach…and give in to the Spirit to intercede on our behalf “with sighs too deep for words” (Romans 8:26).

These days, “prayer” has taken some hits in our popular culture in large part because of that phrase “thoughts and prayers” every time something tragic happens. It’s unfortunate because prayer really is our means for making time and space to develop and grow the relationship that we have with God, so that we can withstand the challenges that come at us daily.

Prayer practices…whether it is slow walking meditation…sitting and studying a passage of Scripture… dancing like King David before the ark… or singing praises like the psalmist… all of it can help to strengthen and deepen our connection to the Divine.

The more we come into a relationship with God… the more likely we are to receive that gift of the Spirit that helps us to keep things together in our lives. And the more grounded we are in love…the better equipped we are to be in relationship with each other.

In the name of God….F/S/HS.

 

 

Martha, Mary, and Getting Grounded for Service: A Sermon 6th Sunday after Pentecost 11C

We're starting to hit those few moments in my very young priesthood that I am preaching on texts that I have actually preached before. I remember three years ago, I shared some of my research into the story of Martha and Mary with my sending parish, St. Thomas in Thomasville. So many of them were moved by a more feminist theologian look at this text that I thought I should impart the same information to my folks at St. Barnabas. No, I didn't just pull out the same sermon again. This is all new and even contains some extra information I garnered in doing more digging. In looking up the original article I'd found by Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, I found an exegesis paper that gave some more insight into the Roman Empire. And while I refrained from drawing a line between our current cultural environment and that of ancient Rome....I think some discerning listeners and readers might see some uncomfortable similarities between the two. It makes this Lukan Gospel passage stand out even more. 

Text: Luke 10:38-42

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I want to begin this sermon with a quick quiz. There are no right or wrong answers. Y’all have already earned A’s…

How many of you have heard this Gospel story of Martha and Mary before?

It’s another of the very well-known Gospel passages from Luke.

OK…and how many of you have been told…or even referred to yourself…as a Martha?

Now…how many of you have heard this Gospel story and felt a negative reaction to Martha?

In my experience…a lot of women in the church have either been called a “Martha” or have in some self-deprecating way…referred to themselves as a “Martha.” The church…from about the time of the Reformation more than 500 years ago…has been presenting Martha in a bad light, as a nag pre-occupied with ‘things’ instead of being like her sister Mary, quietly sitting at the feet of Jesus. Mary is doing everything right; Martha is doing lots of things.

I remember when I read “The Cloud of Unknowing,” the seminal text on contemplative Christianity, the anonymous author used the story of Martha and Mary as an allegory for the tension between those in the early church who were about words and actions in prayer as opposed to the “better part” of sitting in contemplative silence with the Divine. The author was clear that Mary not only chose the better part; she was the better disciple.

It’s not unlike the Gospel of Luke to have two characters who seem to represent dual and diametrically opposed ways of being.

But I want us to consider these two sisters in a different way, especially poor Martha who I think has been unfairly…and wrongly…ridiculed.

Jesus is on a mission…he’s on his way to Jerusalem. For whatever reason, he has stopped at this house in the village of Bethany. We read that he was welcomed into Martha’s home.

Right there…we need to pause.

Even though Lazarus isn’t mentioned here, Martha and Mary are the sisters of Lazarus. Yet this is not Lazarus’ home; this place is identified as belonging to Martha. That’s a tip off to us that this woman is someone of means and must have some status.

The next thing we hear is that Martha has “a sister named Mary who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying (10:39).”

Wait---what??

Stop the presses.

Mary…a woman…sat at Jesus’ feet?

To our ears…neither Martha’s status, nor Mary’s desire to listen and learn from Jesus, is all that shocking.

But this is where Luke’s context and what life was like in the days of the very early church becomes important.  

If we do a little research…we’d see that the Roman Emperor Augustus, the one in power in the days of Jesus, promoted religious practices that advocated for chastity, childbirth, and forced remarriage of widows and divorced women.

Men and women were expected to be married by a certain age…and any religious cult that didn’t promote marriage and childbirth was viewed as hostile to the Empire.

Even after Augustus…the Roman Empire would continue to push women to take subordinate roles in society.[i]

Luke is showing us two very independent women in both Martha and Mary that run counter to their day. And Jesus decides to stop in at Martha’s house on his way to the cross, confirming his affinity for their countercultural behavior. Mary, sitting at Jesus’ feet, means she is placing herself on par with any of the male disciples.

We see that she’s a renegade woman.

But what about Martha?

I was having a conversation with one of my friends recently and when I mentioned this story of Martha and Mary, she told me how she has always identified with Martha. She understood that Martha was doing what women did in those days, showing hospitality, working in the kitchen. In other words, doing all the traditional female roles, right?

Except…if we look closely at what Luke has here on the printed page…Martha is not in any kitchen.

Our translation says she was distracted “by her many tasks.” The word used for this in the Greek is diakonia …the root word for “Deacon.” This is the term for “service.”

Jesus will use this root word again later when he tells his disciples that it is the one who serves who is the greatest among them (22:26). Martha’s not banging pots and pans in a kitchen; Martha is serving…preparing for table worship.

To get an even fuller sense of Martha as a disciple…we need to go to another Gospel. If we look at the Gospel of John, Chapter 11, we get the story of when Jesus goes to the grave of his friend Lazarus. Remember that Lazarus is the brother of Martha and Mary, and Martha is the first one to meet Jesus at the tomb.

“Martha said to Jesus, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise again.’ Martha said to him, ‘I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.’ Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this? She said to him, ‘Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.’” (John 11:20-27).

 

“I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”

Those words came out of Martha’s mouth…from her soul, her head, and her heart.

Martha’s statement about the identity of Jesus is as rock solid as the profession Peter makes about Jesus…Peter…that rock of the church!

What Luke has given us in this Gospel is a chance to see the two roles of discipleship in the sisters Martha and Mary. These roles run counter to the surrounding Roman Empire’s definition of what role women are to play. And yet…even Luke’s portrayal has been used to place boundaries on women in the church.

The disciple Martha’s diaconate has been ignored and ridiculed.

But even Mary gets sidelined when we praise her for being seen at the feet of Jesus, but not hearing her prophetic voice.

When the women finally do get heard…as the first witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection…the male disciples don’t believe them and dismiss their good news as “idle talk.” (24:11).

So how might we see these two women as fully followers of Jesus?

I think it starts with the fact that Jesus made a point of showing up at Martha’s house on his way to Jerusalem.  

The Son of God has shown he has high regard for this disciple and what she means to his mission and ministry.

I think we see it in that Mary is engaged with Jesus as her teacher and that nothing of this opportunity and experience is going to be taken away from her.

Finally, I think the way Jesus addresses Martha…”Martha, Martha”…that repeated use of her name, can be heard not as a rebuke and a scolding, but as an invitation.

“Yes, Martha: your service…your diakonia…is important.

But service without grounding in the teaching…that “better part” …leads to worry and distraction.”

We can see that in the structure of our own worship.

Before we prepare for the Eucharist…we are immersed in the Word of the Lord…both from our ancestors in the words of the Hebrew Scriptures…as well as the Epistles and the Gospels. We take that time to start with grounding in music and prayer…and fix our minds on what we hear that God calls us to do and to be in the world in which we’re living. And then…with those lessons still in our minds…we are ready to approach the table and once more…through the bread and the wine of the Eucharist…renew and recommit ourselves to the service we do in our communities. Not just inside the walls of St. Barnabas. Out there. Wherever we live and move and encounter that person who may or may not be having their best day.  

Not only does the church need Martha and Mary. We need to embody and embrace Martha and Mary’s boldness in the face of a culture that would want to limit them…and us. God knows we need to have some more people grounded in Jesus’ way of Love to be the face of Christ people see in the world.

In the name of God…F/S/HS.  

 

---

[i] From a paper citing Ben Witherington, III. Women in the Earliest Churches. (Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1988).

Who is Your Samaritan? A Sermon for 5th Sunday After Pentecost 10C

 

Parable of the Good Samaritan by Vincent Van Gogh

I'm baaaaack!

I've been out for two weeks thanks to the blasted COVID variant that is running rampant in the United States. Because I am a priest in Southwest Georgia, it is nearly impossible for me to find a priest who could fill in for me when I was sick, especially at the last minute. I was very fortunate to get ahold of the woman who had been serving my congregation once a month for about a year before I got there, and she was able to lead a funeral that had been planned for about three months. Otherwise, the people of St. Barnabas had to go with lay-led Morning Prayer in my absence. Not ideal, but the only thing we could do. 

Now that my oxygen levels are back to normal, my fever down, I'm not coughing, and I have tested negative for COVID, I am back in the pulpit and behind the altar again in Valdosta. 

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Texts: Amos 7: 7-17; Luke 10:25-37

 

Prayer: There’s a wideness in God’s mercy like the wideness of the sea; there’s a kindness in his justice, which is more than liberty. May we come to experience God’s unfailing love, mercy, kindness and justice in the hearing of God’s word. Amen.

 

The parable of the Good Samaritan is so well-known. It’s one of the few Bible stories that I remember from my Sunday School days in the basement of Christ Church Exeter. I recall the way the teacher told the story and said with such great reverence the line: “But a Samaritan while traveling came near him…” (Lk.10:33a).  

We all want to identify with the Samaritan. We all want to believe we’re that “good person,” the noble one, the one who goes to the aid of another. Certainly, that was the way this story was passed down to me in Sunday School.

A funny thing happened as I was preparing this sermon.

I just couldn’t shake myself from thinking about our first reading and the prophet Amos who doesn’t want to be a prophet.

Amos was happy enough tending sheep, minding his own business.

But God had other plans and needed a shepherd such as Amos to do the difficult and hard task of talking truth to power.

And the powerful don’t want to hear what Amos has to say.

The priest Amaziah has a good gig going as basically chaplain to the king. He has the “right” beliefs, does all the “right” practices.

And so when Amos shows up to tell him that Israel is doomed, he dismisses him in the most snarky way.

He basically tells him, “Go away, little man, and go bother somebody else with your words.”

Amaziah is so full of his own self-worth, and self-worthiness based upon his status, that he is willing to ignore the words God has given to Amos to speak to the northern kingdom of Israel.

In fact, the reason Amos is having to speak such a terrible prophecy to Israel is because the people and the leaders have failed to live into being the people of God they were supposed to be. Full of themselves, they have left no room for God.

In that way, I can see the same issue at play here with the lawyer who wants to test Jesus.

If we look at what he asks, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” this is not really an honest question.

He already knows…and Jesus knows he already knows…the legalistic answer to his question.

When Jesus says, “What do you think?,” the lawyer rattles off the Shema…the highest commandment to love God with your all-in-all and love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus gives him a thumbs up and tells him to go on about living into that commandment. This confirms his self-assuredness, his self-worthiness.

But then the lawyer…in his haughty puffed-up state…decides he now wants a legal answer to a Gospel question: “Who…precisely…is my neighbor?”

Like the same self-assuredness of the priest Amaziah, this lawyer, this oh so clever lawyer, doesn’t really want to be bothered by what Jesus has to say. He already is well-convinced that he has the specific answer to his question already in his head.

But Jesus doesn’t want to play head games.

Jesus gives a Gospel answer to this desire for legalistic specifics.

Not only are there no boundaries as to “who” constitutes the neighbor; the neighbor is an “other,” a despised person, the Samaritan.

It’s significant that Jesus names the Samaritan as the one who goes near the person left for dead in the ditch. If we can remember to the Gospel a couple of weeks ago (and I am so sorry I wasn’t with you to actually talk about this point at that time), but Jesus has “set his face to go to Jerusalem” (Lk 9:51).

This is a major turning point in Luke’s Gospel.

Jesus has become resolute, determined, and there’s no going back.

He’s headed toward Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and has no use for anyone wishing to challenge the status quo. Jesus knows this is a road of danger for him. To get to Jerusalem, he goes through Samaria, not around it.

And Samaritans and Jews do not get along at all.

He’s taking a dangerous trip through a dangerous territory.

It’s not that Samaritans and Galileans are so different. But the Samaritan Jews are the ones who have descended from those left behind during the years of one conquest after another and exile of the Jewish people. They had intermarried with Assyrians and come to form different ideas about worship and didn’t regard Jerusalem as the great holy site that the exiles believed it to be.

The Jews of Jerusalem, which is Jesus’ band of followers, didn’t like this “mixed race” of Samaritans and the feeling was mutual.

As they traveled through Samaria, Jesus and James and John found the Samaritans to be less than welcoming.

They didn’t care about Jesus’ message of God’s love.

They didn’t want any of Jesus’ healing power.

The Samaritans sneered and told Jesus and the others to just keep moving. John and James, being the devout Jesus followers that they were, wanted to reign down fire from heaven on the Samaritans, but Jesus told them to back off and leave them alone. This isn’t a time for retribution. His face is set toward Jerusalem, so keep moving.

Now, here is Jesus using a Samaritan, someone who hated Jesus, as the exemplar for this Jewish lawyer of what it means to love your neighbor as yourself.  

One who rejects Jesus and Jesus’ teachings is the hero of his parable of love.

This is so shocking to this lawyer, this man so concerned with his self-preservation, that when Jesus asks him who was the neighbor to the man beaten and left for dead, the lawyer could only mumble, “The one who showed mercy.”

He can’t even say the word ‘Samaritan.’

In my experience…and what I remember from Sunday School about the way the church presents this story…we’re encouraged to see our selves in the person of the Samaritan.

The Good Samaritan is supposed to be the model of what it means to be “a good Christian.”

But if we go that route, casting ourselves in the hero role, I think we miss the real power of what we can gain from the parable.

The Biblical scholar Amy-Jill Levine encourages us to not see ourselves in any of the major characters of the lawyer, Jesus or even the Samaritan.

Instead, what if we see ourselves in the position of the person beaten and discarded in the ditch?

I’m sure we have all had that experience of feeling as though life, the world, circumstances have smacked us down and left us languishing. We’ve been robbed, either literally or figuratively. And we’ve been passed by when we desperately needed someone to notice us, pay attention to us, care for us.

Who would be our Good Samaritan?

Is it the Mexican immigrant?

A person in a Black Lives Matter T-shirt?

A white guy in a MAGA hat?

When that person, that one who shows mercy, is moved with pity to come near us, to bandage our wounds, how do we respond? Will we see God at work in them?

We can’t know or predict who will be our version of the Samaritan. But just as God uses a shepherd such as Amos to speak truth to power, we must be prepared to be surprised by who God moves and sends to show us loving kindness.  And when they tend to our woundedness, can we look into their face and give thanks to God?

Such a simple Gospel story. Such a challenge for us in our day.

In the name of God…F/S/HS.