We Need Each Other

Jesus...why do you present parables that are so hard?

The one about the Pharisee and the tax collector in Luke 18 ought to have been an easy one to preach. Y'know, don't be so self-righteous. It basically says that in the introduction. 

Except....there is more to this story...and it speaks to the moment we're in right now in our culture of the not-very United States.

There are those who have lots of money...and control of our government...tech bros, casino owners, and other billionaires who have joined with those who are simply sadistic people, the types that like to see other people suffer.

And they have coalesced in the Republican Party. There's just no other way to put it. One political party has become rife with greed and avarice. 

The Democrats aren't saintly...but they also aren't sadists.

As the government shutdown drags on and on...Congress is still getting paid. ICE terrror troops are still getting paid. A billionaire named Timothy Mellon (descended from railroad magnate Andrew Mellon) shelled out $130 milllion to pay our U.S. Military. Gotta wonder what he wants in return for that?

What does any of this have to do with the Gospel?

Well...typically we're expected to side with the tax collector in this parable. But how uncomfortable that was for the original hearers....and should be for us, too...when we remember that tax collectors are part of the Empire...and traitors to their own people.

Sure...the tax collector offers "thoughts and prayers" but we don't know that he's changed. Ugh!

The more I think about what's happening currently...the more I am convinced that as white people start to feel the pinch of tariffs...no SNAP benefits...higher healthcare premiums....maybe they'll start to realize that there's something not right with this picture.

Maybe it's time to understand that our enemy isn't that "other"...whatever "other" that is...but it's the greed and the evil behind it all that we should fighting...not our neighbors.

See what you think.

Text: Luke 18: 9-18 

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A Pharisee and a Tax Collector walk into a Temple to pray.

That sounds like a good set up for a joke.

And maybe that’s what Jesus had in mind by telling this parable…talking presumably to those who are following him.

People such as you and me.

Leave it to Jesus to give us a lesson in self-righteousness.

We who have done the right things…have fought the good fights of our days…have come together to pray for ourselves…our families…our communities…and our nation during a crisis of politics and posturing this morning.

And now here’s …Luke’s Gospel giving us Jesus…with a parable.

A story that on the surface we might think we understand…thanks to years and years of Sunday School.

The church has tried to make Jesus easier to take.

But if we take time with this story of the pharisee and the tax collector…if we think about it through the mind and understandings of the original hearers of the Gospel…we might realize Jesus is here to give us a sharp elbow to the rib cage.

Not out of meanness or hatred of us.

Out of love…and a desire for us to start seeing each other as God intended from the beginning

As we listened to this parable and the prayer offered by the Pharisee…what did we hear?

“God, I thank you that I am not like other people…” and then he lists out all the “others” including the tax collector.

He notes all the good things he has done…how he has kept all the right laws of giving…and fasting.

In our minds…we might be hearing this as haughty and sanctimonious.

It certainly sounds that way, doesn’t it?

And then there is the prayer offered by the tax collector.

“God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” as he beats his breast as if this were a perpetual Yom Kippur recitation of the litany of sins.

We then hear that the tax collector goes home “justified”….we might be thinking:

Yes…of course.

Afterall…he wasn’t like that Pharisee…acting all high and mighty.

That tax collector: he was humble before God…just as he should be.

Sunday School has taught us well.

We ARE to be humble before God.

AND we’ve been conditioned to think:

 “Pharisee: bad.” Any person opposite the Pharisee: good.”

Except…if we really dig into this parable…it gets a lot more complicated than that.

Tax collectors were collaborators with the Roman Empire.

They were not the good Jews.

They participated in oppression.

Likewise…the Pharisees were not bad Jews.

In fact…this particular Pharisee…confessing about his tithing and the way he keeps the fasts…he’s doing all the right practices.

These Pharisees…annoy ritual cops…they were the guys who kept the fire of their faith burning in the aftermath of the Roman Empire’s destruction of the Temple.

In terms of their social status…the Pharisee would likely have represented some middle management type.

Meanwhile…the tax collector would have been the one wearing the gold Rolex watch…and the finest robes…bought with the money he gained through illegitimate means at the cost of his fellow Jewish citizens.

So…if we heard this parable and thought…we’d much rather be like that humble tax collector than that haughty Pharisee….consider which side we’re choosing.

Because if you side with the tax collector…you’ve just put yourself in the shoes of an oppressor…a person inflicting hardship on others.

And…if we have chosen a side…. haven’t we then also become no better than that Pharisee…thanking God that we aren’t the Pharisee?

In truth…both characters fall short of perfection for different reasons.

The Pharisee offers a prayer that doesn’t have much to say about God’s goodness or his dependence on God.

He’s only thankful that he’s not like the people who he doesn’t consider “his kind of people.”

And while the tax collector’s prayer says all the right words and he submits himself to God’s mercy….we have no way of knowing from this parable if that the tax collector did anything to change his behavior.

Yes…he confesses he’s a sinner…but it doesn’t say that he’s going to change…give up making his money by ripping off people like the Pharisee.

And if there’s one thing prayer ought to do…it should lead us to become better versions of ourselves.

As the Letter of James reminds us: a faith that doesn’t produce action or lead us into doing the work of healing our world is dead.

If all he does is mouth the words and not follow through with a change of heart…and perhaps even a change of allegiance to Rome…then all the prayer in the world is just empty phrases going up to the heavens.

Perhaps we should not choose sides here.

Because if we are honest with ourselves…we have probably been both characters at one time or another…maybe even all at once.

In these times…when there is so much happening in our country to drive wedges between us…I think we’d be fooling ourselves if we didn’t acknowledge that we are drawn to look upon those we consider “on the other side” as terrible…horrible…sinners…’oh, thank God I’m not one of them.’

So…maybe we should think a little more critically of the translation we’ve been given.

Our English rendering of the Greek has Jesus saying that the tax collector “rather than” the Pharisee went down to his home justified.

But as New Testament scholar Amy Jill Levine notes, the phrasing could just as easily have been translated to read: “This man went down to his home justified alongside the other.”

You see…in truth…both men…in their perfect imperfection…need each other.

The Pharisee could stand to learn from the tax collector how to pray…admit he “ain’t all that” and be humble.

The tax collector could get more with the program of the Pharisee…fasting…tithing…actually taking the Torah more seriously…and reading how you don’t swindle people to enrich yourself.

And ultimately…wouldn’t that be an amazing thing for these two men in a Temple praying to see one another as brothers…rather than as others?

Refusing to allow the tyranny of Empire to make them enemies?

Wouldn’t it be a great improvement in our own culture and society if the children of God…whether they identify that way or not…come to realize that we are all in this life together?

Imagine what that might look like if white Americans could recognize themselves in the face of a Haitian immigrant and if the Haitian immigrant could find kinship with the Korean autoworker?

What if all of us could accept that unless our ancestry traces back to pre-colonial days on this continent…we are all immigrants?

At a time when there are those who want us to be separated from each other…and drawn apart over our differences of language…origin…gender…and identity…it is our task…as followers of Jesus…to take a prayerful stand in favor of unity  over division.

It’s up to us to live out our faith…based on the teachings of Jesus…to love God…and demonstrate that love of God by our actions of helping each other…supporting one another through our time…through our resources…and through our advocacy for those who are in need.

The Spirit of the Lord is upon you and me to pray for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven…as it happens…through us.

In the name of our One Holy and Undivided Trinity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Prayerful Persistence

 

No Kings 2.0 in Tallahassee

Things are heating up in the country and dissent is growing among the masses who are getting tired of the tariffs, the government shutdown, the occupation of cities with National Guard troops, and the illegal arrests and deportations of people who came to this country in hopes of finding a better life. 

We've had a raid in the middle of the night on a Chicago apartment building where federal agents swooped in on blackhawk helicopters, rousing families out of their beds, putting zipties on half-naked children...only to release them later because (shocker!) they were American citizens.

And then there has been the assault on the freedom of speech by the government to shakedown network executives...requiring them to pay millions to settle frivilous lawsuits and cancel TV shows and comedians...in order to win approval for corporate mergers. The once stalwart and respected CBS Evening News now has a "bias monitor" who pledges allegiance to this regime. Edward R. Murrow is probably convulsing in his grave.

All these things have been occuring in the lead up to what was the largest mass protest in American history: more than seven million people in large cities to rural counties in the country protesting and demanding an end to this abuse of power and authoritarian rule.

And the lectionary served up a doozy of a Gospel passage: the parable of the unjust judge.

See what you think.

Text: Luke 18:1-8

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There’s a powerful story about the night that the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Junior was sitting at his kitchen table.

It was January 27^th…19-56 about midnight.

He had just received an anonymous phone call telling him to get out of town in three days or someone was going to shoot him and kill his family by blowing up their house.

As Dr. King sat at the table gripping his coffee cup…he thought about his family.

His wife who he loved dearly had just delivered their first child a month earlier…a baby girl who was the joy of his life.

This new baby brought him hope amid all the struggles he was facing as he led a movement for freedom and justice against the Jim Crow laws of the South.

As those images swirled in his brain…King began to pray:

“Lord, I’m down here trying to do what’s right. But I am afraid … I must confess … I’m losing my courage.”

In the face of such ominous threats…we can understand this fear.

We can understand that King…only in his late twenties…and living far away from his parents…was turning to God in a prayer of desperation.

And in that moment…King recalls that he heard that still small inner voice within, saying:

“Martin Luther, stand up for truth. Stand up for justice. Stand up for righteousness. I will be at your side.’”

A bomb did blow up the King’s front porch three days later.

The threats to King’s life never stopped…and as we know…an assassin’s bullet did kill him in Memphis twelve years later.

But that kitchen moment in prayer had so grounded King that he felt a deep connection with the Spirit of God and he remained undaunted.

He held to his commitment to non-violence…wisdom he had gained from his professor…the theologian Howard Thurman.

Praying in that dark hour of his soul helped him overcome the efforts to rob him of his faith and imprison him in fear.

That’s the essential message behind this parable that Jesus is telling us in the Gospel of Luke this morning.

When things feel daunting and when we’re faced with the injustice of the world…do not lose heart.

Persist in prayer…which is our connection to God…because God’s justice will come.

The widow in Jesus’ story was a representation of the powerless facing off against an unjust system.

While we don’t know what the widow’s complaint was in the parable…we know that in the culture of First Century Palestine…widows and children were particularly vulnerable.

It was expected that the community would care for her…but clearly that isn’t happening.

And worse: the judge…the representation of the one who SHOULD be protecting this widow from whatever wrongs were happening to her…was clearly not doing his job…and really didn’t care that he wasn’t doing right by this woman.

And yet…as Jesus notes…he finally relents and grants her justice.

Because even those who don’t know God will eventually get it right.

But it took persistence…and an unwillingness to live with the injustice…that finally won the day for the widow.

And as Jesus notes…if an unjust…no good…blankety-blank judge…can provide the righteous remedy…then certainly the God of mercy…and love…will answer when our prayers knock…maybe even pound…on Heaven’s door.

Maybe the answer won’t come right away…and it could very well be that we don’t get exactly what we ask for.

Because praying to God isn’t like dropping a coin in the slot of a candy machine….put in enough prayers and-voila-there’s your Snickers bar.

But when we send up prayers…it’s an act of faith and trust in that power which is beyond our own selves and our understanding in the fervent hope that something will happen.

We are letting go of our ego-centric desire to control outcomes…in the aspiration that God is merciful…compassionate and just.

Just as the widow in this parable keeps raising her voice…we keep raising our pleas to God.

We do it with our words…and we also do it with our actions.

Again…I think about Dr. Martin Luther King and leading the march at the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma.

Joining with King was Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel.

He remarked that…in participating in this action…he felt his “legs were praying.” 

This was a prayer with the whole body…not just with saying words.

Heschel was a big believer in social justice and for him…prayer not only helps us to center in our own bodies but it propels us to engage with the struggles of the world.

It’s that idea of praying with your feet…and entering into the work of justice.

From our Christian perspective…praying with your feet is how we take on the work that Jesus is calling us to do….as we say in our post-communion prayer…”to love and serve God with gladness and singleness of heart.”  

Because our work in the here and now on earth is to keep encouraging one another so that we live into God’s dreamed reality for this world. 

A dream where all of God’s creatures know how to live with each other…so that life on earth might be more aligned with heaven.

Yesterday…here in Valdosta and in cities around the world…people prayed with their feet as they demonstrated for our nation…in the No Kings rallies.

I joined with thousands at the Florida state capitol to pray a prayer of hope for our country in this moment where we are seeing freedoms eroded and cruelty displayed against those already oppressed in our society.

And yet there are those in power who will insist we are a Christian nation even as we oppress the widow, the orphan, and the stranger.

I attended yesterday’s demonstration in my clerical collar…as I’ve done before.

I did it to stand with the people…those lifting their voices in shouts and song to say, “God bless America.”

God bless America with compassion.

God bless America with mercy.

God bless us with leadership that protects the vulnerable and doesn’t terrorize them.

God bless us with fair labor…and opportunities for people to make ends meet.

As I walked through the crowd…I saw young children resting on their parents’ laps…and old men…feebly and carefully moving through the crosswalks with their rollators.

I imagined this crowd was not unlike those throngs that surrounded Jesus on his fateful trek toward Jerusalem.

The common…every day…ordinary people…seeking someone to hear their cry for relief.

I don’t know that everyone there with me in Tallahassee believed in the God of love…but I do believe that God is hearing our prayers…both the silent ones of our hearts…and the prayers showed with our feet and legs.

Jesus asks, “Will he find faith on earth” when he comes again.

I think that’s really the big question for each of us to ponder.

When adversity happens…if life becomes more challenging…and if we continue to see state-sponsored cruelty celebrated as strength…will we remain faithful and persistent in prayer like the widow…or harden our hearts like the judge?

I pray that our faith will carry us…in the same way it has buoyed the spirits of many throughout the centuries.

The American writer and civil rights leader James Weldon Johnson provides us with a powerful prayer for these times in the closing verse of the hymn “Lift Every Voice and Sing”:

God of our weary years

God of our silent tears

Thou who hast brought us thus far on the way;

Thou who hast by thy might led us into the light;

Keep us forever in the path we pray.

Lest our feet stray from the places our God where we met thee;

Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget thee;

Shadowed beneath thy hand may we forever stand,

True to our God, true to our native land.

In the name of our One Holy and Undivided Trinity.

 

"Faith Enough"

One of the bonuses of having a seminarian working with us at St. Barnabas is that I do not have to preach every week!

It's not that I don't like preaching; it's that it is a lot of work to think, write, and refine a sermon week after week. And since I am still at the same congregation, I don't have the luxuary that some of my colleagues brag about when they tell me that they recycled a sermon from the same lectionary period three...six...or nine years ago. 

Given the extraordinary times in which we are living with the collapsing of norms and our American democracy...I find it hard to imagine that they can easily preach the same sermon from three years ago. Maybe six, but definitely not three. And besides: there are new things always happening. But I digress. The point is that I didn't have to preach on the 16th Sunday After Pentecost, nor will I be preaching on the 18th Sunday either. Yippee!

But I did have to preach on the 17th Sunday....and that was extremely hard given what had transpired in my life as a priest during the week.

The long drama that is the Diocese of Florida and their once bishop John Howard came to a most unsatisfactory conclusion. There was supposed to be a hearing (aka trial) on the matter of his discrimination against LGBTQIA+ people, especially those of us who are or were trying to become priests. Instead, Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe worked out an accord (aka settlement) in which Howard admitted no wrongdoing, but gave up his orders as a priest and bishop in the church. In the letter, which was sent to the diocese of Florida, ++Rowe referred to the hearings on discrimination and another one involving Howard's fiscal improprieties as a "significant distraction" taking away from all the good work the diocese was doing to become "healthy." 

After reading just a few paragraphs of his letter, I almost sent a message to my bishop resigning my position. Closing this matter with absolutely no real apology or allowing for the stories to be told by those of us who suffered under Howard's homophobia has only compounded the sin of silence that has plagued the diocese of Florida for decades. Once again, the Episcopal Church has failed to show up for me or for the others like me.

It is with that background that I needed to find a way to preach a sermon on faith. This is what I preached. 

See what you think. 

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I’m sure everyone here at some point…or maybe at many points in your life… have seen the 1939 classic film, “The Wizard of Oz.”

We probably remember that moment toward the end of the film…when the Wizard was going to personally take Dorothy back to Kansas in his hot air balloon.

Then Toto sees a cat and does what a dog does: he leaps out of Dorothy’s arms…she chases him…the balloon takes off…and there goes her one and only hope to get back to Uncle Henry and Auntie Em.

And as she’s moping… and her friends are consoling her…the pink bubble floats in and Glinda the Good Witch comes with her happy news that Dorothy always had the power to go home.

The scarecrow pipes up with “Then why didn’t you tell her before?”

And the ever-cheerful Glinda responds, “Because she wouldn’t have believed me. She had to learn it for herself.”

Dorothy’s power to go back to Kansas had been on her feet the whole time in the ruby slippers. But it wouldn’t have been much of a movie if she hadn’t gone through the many trials and tribulations to seek out the Wizard.

She needed to contend with apple-throwing trees…flying monkeys…and of course…the wicked witch of the west.

And she never would have found her three friends who also didn’t know that the things they yearned for were already innate within them.

And we wouldn’t have a tale that has become an iconic feature of our culture…with many spin-offs and parodies…and Halloween costumes…that speaks to this idea of trusting that sometimes the thing we desire is already with us.

In the case of the disciples in our Gospel… it’s about realizing that they already have all the faith they need as they turn to Jesus and beg him to “Increase our faith!”

I’m not sure why the lectionary diviners started our Gospel reading where they did.

By starting at verse five…they’ve dropped us into the middle of this conversation.

So let’s back up a little bit and fill in what happens before that prompted the apostles to say, “Increase our faith!”

Jesus has just given them another tough lesson.

He’s let them know that they’re faithfulness…is going to be tested.

There are going to be moments when they might feel as if it’s just easier to ignore what’s happening around them…focus on their own needs…seek the security of their family…basically fall away from this journey they’re on with him toward a showdown in Jerusalem.

But he cautions them not to give into those feelings and lead others to also break away from this mission they’re on.

“Woe to those types!” he says.

“It would be better for you if a millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea than for you to cause one of these little ones to stumble.”

That’s harsh. And he’s not done.

“If another disciple sins, you must rebuke the offender, and if there is repentance, you must forgive.”

Absolutely.

Even to the perfect seven times over and over.

I think it’s pretty easy to imagine then why the disciples were thinking, “Sheesh! Increase our faith!”

Up to this point…the lessons Jesus has shared…the parables about sitting at the wedding banquet…dishonest managers…rich men and Lazarus…have been challenging the disciples to re-examine the ways of the world against the way Jesus says is their reality in God.

Telling them that they will have to make choices that let go of a simple easy life…and demand making an acquaintance of suffering…none of this stuff is easy to hear…and harder to do all the time.

How many of us would relish these kind of demands?

So we might hear behind this ask of the apostles:

“Jesus… teacher…please: give us a word…a prayer…something so we are strong enough to meet the task ahead of us.”

 

Jesus looks at them. Some may think he’s rolling his eyes at this moment…but what if we imagine him looking at them in much the same way Glinda looked at the distraught Dorothy…and with a smile of reassurance…he tells them:

Even if you have the faith the size of a mustard seed…faith that is so small like one of those teeny little seeds…you have all the faith you need to do what you need to do…and more!”

To help them understand this a little more…he uses imagery that in our 21^st century context sounds harsh.

The history of slavery…and that culture of masters and slaves…conjures up an image for people in this country of the oppressive and brutal sins of our past…with Africans stolen from their homeland and brought here to be sold like livestock.

In the times of Jesus……masters and slaves were common place…but they were reflective of the classism and money of the ancient world.

Slaves in the Hellenistic culture could be anything from civil servants and workers in the temples to miners. They did not have rights…but they were not bound by chains either.

In the Jewish culture of Biblical times…people could sell themselves into slavery as a means of paying off their debts.  

Unlike the type of chattel slavery that we had in this country…the slavery in these times was often more like indentured servitude.

So Jesus uses this cultural reference to make his point about faith.

At first…he’s asking the disciples to think of themselves as part of the wealthy class…sitting down at the table for a meal.

Do the wealthy ask their slave…the one who has been out making all the goods that make them rich…working in the fields or the mines to produce more wealth for them…does this class of citizens then say to their underlings, “Come: sit down at the table and share a meal?”

The answer of course is “No.”

Then he makes them switch roles, and consider if, as a person who is a servant…toiling away and giving themselves…their bodies… to build wealth for the monied class, “Are you a less-than just because you did your job as you were supposed to?”

Again the answer is “No.”

“If I did what I was supposed to do…then I’m not worthless.”

It’s just too bad that Luke never has Jesus give us a wrap-up word or two to this brief teaching.

But if we think about it…and connect the dots…we might see that he’s again giving them a hard truth…but also reminding them of their own inner worth.

Nobody is going to give them an easy time…or lavish praise…for their faithfulness.

And yet their faithfulness…their willingness to stick with Jesus…and being ready to forgive those who return to them…hat in hand and with a sincere apology…is all they need.

Their faith will be increased…by doing the little acts of kindness…and showing mercy…compassion…and justice to those they encounter.

We could stand to have more of that right now, couldn’t we?

I caught only a short segment of a program on the radio this week…where the topic was about kindness.

What struck me most was listening to the voices of little children talking about the “kind” things that they had done for a sibling or a friend or even a stranger.

There was the one child who talked about giving people pieces of candy.

Such a simple gesture not only brought out a smile from the recipient but the child who was giving away the candy said that it made them feel “warm inside.”

The researchers on the show said that type of physiological response was exactly how such random acts of kindness not only create more positive feelings in the recipient…but the giver as well.

It’s those wise words attributed to St. Francis:

“It is in the giving that we receive; it is in the pardoning that we are pardoned.”

I would add that it is in our willingness to keep practicing these ways of Jesus…the motivation to give without expectations…that’s the way we can increase our faith.

And as our faith increases…we will deepen our relationship to God…through strengthening our connection to one another.

This is the type of countercultural work we need to combat the loneliness and the nihilism that is too prevalent in our society now…and is feeding the culture of hatred and fear.

We each have it in us to do these small acts that make a bigger impact…and can shift the energy around us.

This is how we can be the change we want to see…all made possible by our faith in God…no matter how great or small our faith is at the moment.

 In the name of our One Holy and Undivided Trinity.