What Pastor Jon Preached on Sunday, August 22nd, 2010

Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Lectionary 21C)
Isaiah 58:9b-14 • Psalm 103:1-8 • Hebrews 12:18-29 • Luke 13:10-17

Now [Jesus] was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, "Woman, you are set free from your ailment." When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, "There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day." But the Lord answered him and said, "You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?" When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.

For eighteen years, life had been a living torture chamber. I don’t know if anyone can understand what it felt like to be in that much pain for that many years. For so long, I thought being bent over was simply the way I had been cursed to live. I had accepted my weakened state as my fate, my lot. All my women friends kept telling me there was nothing I could do about it, that I just had to accept it. I knew this wasn’t true, that this was not how I wanted to be known. This was not who I really was.

I can remember the first day the pain began so clearly, even after all these years. It began as a minor ache and pain I got in my back after carrying my first child around the village. After a while, the pain became chronic, and as hard as I tried to sit up straight, and to sleep correctly, and oh, how I prayed for it to improve, nothing changed. Soon I couldn’t help but hunch over, it was the only thing that eased the pain a bit, but I hated how it made me stand out from everyone else who was walking around looking so tall.

I especially noticed how much I stood out when I went to church. No one else was bent over like I was except those much older than me. I didn’t know where I fit in. And I didn’t know why it was I was coming to church anymore. Why do we come to worship? I hadn’t asked the question until Jesus showed up. For so many years I had come because my parents told me, and then as a young wife because I thought I “had to”, because it was “the right thing to do.” After coming for so long, it wasn’t that I wanted to be made well, I just wanted others to notice me. With the stares, the looks, the distance so many kept, I began to wonder if my reasons for going were all selfish. Was this God’s way of telling me I was only looking for what I could get out of Sabbath worship? Was that why I had become the hunchback, this “black sheep” of the church?

One day there was a rabbi, Jesus, who came to teach at church, and he changed all that. He showed me what Sabbath was about. He showed me what coming to church was all about. It was about relationship, about reaching across boundaries that were supposed to keep us apart. Boundaries were supposed to keep me separate so that the “demons” that possessed me would not harm anyone else. But for the first time, someone at church reached out to me, and it was Jesus with his hands. At first when he called out to me, I wasn’t sure if he was speaking to me—or to someone else. No one had addressed me so directly, so authoritatively before. And when he spoke, he didn’t call me what everyone else did—“lame”, or “crooked”, or “sick”. He called me the name I knew I was meant to be called, that God had given me: “woman”, “daughter of Abraham.” What he did after that wasn’t special: he told me I was free from what had ailed me, and he touched me with his hands. But that was all that was needed for healing to take place. That was all that was needed for the power of this Jesus, this Savior, to do more in that church than 18 years of coming every week, had ever done for me.

What was so amazing was that Jesus had the courage to break all the rules that were supposed to be kept on the Sabbath so he could reach out to me. He had broken so many rules that day: he wasn’t supposed to touch a woman in church; he wasn’t supposed to touch a demon-possessed person; and that kind of healing wasn’t supposed to happen on a day of rest. But he saw that the rules the church keeps sometimes have to be broken. It wasn’t that Jesus wanted the commandment of Sabbath rest to be abolished all together. What he wanted was to restore integrity to Sabbath, not as a day of rigidity, but as a day when God could be allowed to show up, whether God came through healing, whether God came in connecting with another person that day, whether God spoke through being able to rest from our labors.

If anyone had obeyed the rules, and “kept the Sabbath” well, it was me. I could barely move; it was easy for me to rest! Many say obeying that fourth commandment, to observe the Sabbath day and keep it holy, was the hardest one. Desiring to live a more holy life usually meant doing something extra, adding more to do. But saying “no”, to stop working, to rest, does not add prestige, or add an item to the to-do list. I remember hearing the rabbis recall Moses’ teaching about the fourth commandment when they read from the Deuteronomy scroll in church. Sabbath reminds us, they said, that although we were a people once enslaved in Egypt—enslaved to our work, to a lack of time, to our addiction to being busy—God gives the gift of a day of rest so we can know who we are is more than our work. God Sabbaths us to restore us to holy, right relationship with each other and with God. The rabbis said Jesus had wrecked the Sabbath that day. But I knew that Jesus had given the Sabbath life again, for me and for all of us at church that day who saw Jesus’ power at work.

So why is it that we come to church? For me, it has something to do with the all the praising and rejoicing that took place that day. It has to do with our worship of Jesus who had come to bring life back not just to me but to our church. I now come not because I have to, but to remember I am free. I come to remember that I am part of a community that has been given life by Jesus. I come to be here for my neighbors, even if I don’t feel like being here. Why we come may be one or all of these reasons. But we all came because we have been called a name by Jesus that is the name God sees in us. We keep Sabbath not because we have to, but because that worship and rest have been earned by Jesus, not by us.

Since that day I have never been the same. People who knew me before ask me what happened, and I don’t ever tire telling them about what he did for me. My story is so dramatic, but I see how Jesus’ hands have reached out to touch more than me, and has made so many other lives stand tall again through my witness. I wonder what it would be like for others to share their story as eagerly as I can. So many people are alone, hungering for a community. So many are living their lives in shame, maybe not hunched over on the outside, like I was, but hunched over on the inside. Many people think they are not welcome in church because of things they’ve done, or because they don’t know what “rules” there are to follow. But that’s not why we’re all here, we’re here because Jesus has broken the rules to touch us. We want to remember we do not have to be ashamed or fearful. We are Sabbath community that together can walk tall no matter who we are, or what we’ve done. When Jesus calls us by our true name, and reaches out and heals us, can we share that story? When we do, we will not only never be the same, but Sabbath church will never be the same either. Thanks be to God! Amen!

What Pastor Jon Preached on Sunday, August 8th, 2010

Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost (Lectionary 19C)
Genesis 15:1-6 • Psalm 33:12-22 • Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16 • Luke 12:32-40

[Jesus said:] "Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. "Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks. Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them. If he comes during the middle of the night, or near dawn, and finds them so, blessed are those slaves. "But know this: if the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour."

There is a story that’s told about three people who climb to the top of a mountain, seeking escape from an enormous flood. The waters are raging and rising rapidly, and they are struggling to go up higher and higher. Soon it becomes clear they are not going to make it—the waters are coming up too fast. One person says, “We are going to need a miracle to survive this!” Another calls for the three of them to repent and confess their sins to prepare for imminent death. The third, however, says that what she thinks they are going to need to do is to learn how to live under water.

Many of us have been learning how to live—maybe not under water—but how to live with water that brought damage to our basements and homes. Excessive rain dumped more than eight inches of water on the Oak Park area in a matter of a few hours about two weeks ago. Water heater lights went out, boxes of treasured belongings were damaged, and appliances once counted upon to clean clothes and keep food cold now sit on curbs waiting to be thrown out. As much as we would wish we did not have to deal with this water’s damage, and as our first response may have been to pray for a miracle to take away what happened, we are counter-intuitively learning how to live with the power of waters that rose more quickly than we could have ever prepared for.

Our confusion at the notion of “learning to live under floodwaters” echoes our confusion in what we hear Jesus say to the disciples as he seeks to give them words of assurance that actually seem to produce more anxiety than comfort. “Do not be afraid, little flock…” sounds quite nice and reassuring. But then Jesus says something that does the opposite of comfort us: “Sell your possessions, and give what you have to the poor.” I don’t know about you but going and selling everything I own sounds about as fear-inducing a thing as I can imagine! How could having no possessions or savings decrease our fears about survival, about having shelter, having enough food and clothing, let alone having enough invested for retirement? But at the same time, have not these waters filling up our basements reminded us of the temporal nature of what we own, and that there is something more essential, more valuable in lives than our stuff, than what we can see?

It’s important for us to note that what comes between these two commands not to fear and to give away what we have makes both of them possible. Jesus gives us a promise: “…for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom…” God’s intentions for us are to give to us as a parent would want to give to their child the gift of the kind of world they wish them to grow up in. Jesus promises that although the “right now” may not look like the kingdom, what is “not yet” seen will become reality soon. It is God’s good pleasure to give us a glimpse of what God’s reign over and against all that gives us cause for despair looks like. When Jesus says “Do not fear, little flock”, he knows that hope in the kingdom of God can drive out any fear, any despair. Jesus knows that what we need is an image to hold on to that is not yet seen, but that our mind’s eye can see. The hope of the coming kingdom lies beyond the reality we see around us, and Jesus knows what we need is a vision of that kingdom—to see what is around us with different eyes—so that we can learn to live underwater.

This past week I had the honor and privilege of traveling with a group from our church to Iowa to see the hope of people who are putting Jesus’ words “Do not be afraid” into action, and betting on hope winning out over fear. Our group traveled to Cedar Rapids, Iowa where in 2008 a flood came that went beyond even the five hundred year flood plain, destroying homes and businesses, and causing one of the top five worst natural disasters in America’s history. As the community seeks to take shape again after the flood, what has often happened has been that someone is blessed enough to have their home repaired, with their own funds, or through volunteers—but when they move back in, they are the only person living on their block. The Methodists saw this and began a program called “Block by Block”, a program our group volunteered with, where a whole block agrees to sign a covenant where homeowners promise to let the church come in and fix up the homes of owners who are still there, and to also fix or demolish the abandoned homes, and sell the refurbished properties at an affordable rate; and then the profits from that sale go into investing into the next block. What happens is that not just single homes are getting rebuilt, but the whole community is being brought back.

How is this kind of community-building possible? Fear says that it would be impossible for all the neighbors to reach agreement and sign a covenant, but that’s exactly what has happened in more than twenty blocks that have signed on. Fear says each homeowner should care more about themselves than their neighbors, but the residents are saying they are building meaningful relationships with people on their block they had never talked to before. Fear says it would take too much work and too much time and too many volunteers to make such a program happen, but hundreds of volunteers have come, and there is more than enough money to keep the program running for at least two more years. How is it possible? Because of hope in God’s good pleasure to give not private ownership of possessions, but a community—a place where the dreams called the kingdom of God can be made reality.

“Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” What is it we fear, coming here this morning? Is it fear about job cuts; fear about our Earth being beyond repair from global warming; fear of the kind of future in store for our children? Jesus gets at the root of our fears by flooding us not with some kind of promise of material well-being, with purses of treasures that will wear out. Jesus gets at the root of our fears by flooding us with the love of God’s hope that is bigger than our biggest fears. The promise of the kingdom is not the promise of the absence of fear, but that fear will not keep God from bringing the kingdom to us. The eyes that keep the kingdom in view are the eyes that have faith to leave anxiety behind, eyes that have a faith that frees us to be generous, eyes that have faith in a future not secured by our own achievements but only by God.

Some might say that hope in God’s kingdom is simply being optimistic. But there is a key difference between optimism and hope: optimism originates with us; hope originates with God. Optimism is the choice to choose to look away from what’s negative or fearful, to “keep our eyes to the sunshine so we cannot see the shadows” (Helen Keller); but hope is God’s gift to us to see suffering and despair, violence and injustice, and to see the opportunity for new life where the kingdom of God is just waiting to be built. We could say today that Jesus turns us not into optimists, or believers in the “power of positive thinking”, but rather Jesus turns us into people of hope, who trust in “the power of hopeful imagination” , an imagination that equips us with all we need in this time and this place to watch, prepare for and seek the promised kingdom.

As God’s people, we stand at the intersection of all that gives us fear and all the promises of God that give us hope. This is an intersection that Jesus meets us at on the cross. Jesus embraces us with the words, “Do not fear”, so that we can be free to hope in the future God has promised for us, and have the courage to look around at the waves and floods of despair in the world, and still see hope that God’s kingdom can come through us, we who can still learn how to live underwater, we who have been drenched with the forgiving waters that make us inheritors of God’s good promises, we who with the eyes of faith can see the openings all around us in which this city of God is waiting to be built not by someone else, but by us. Amen!

What Pastor Jon Preached on August 1st, 2010

Tenth Sunday after Pentecost (Lectionary 18C)
Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-23 • Psalm 49:1-12 • Colossians 3:1-11 • Luke 12:13-21

Someone in the crowd said to [Jesus], "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me." But he said to him, "Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?" And he said to them, "Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions. Then he told them a parable: "The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, 'What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?' Then he said, 'I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, 'Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.' But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be? So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God."

Several years ago, when I was serving as a Jesuit Volunteer in St. Louis, I had this grand idea. I was going to find some way to help the homeless people I was working with to truly feel valued. Without a home, without work, and without hope, the homeless clients at St. Patrick Center, Missouri’s largest non-profit serving the homeless, are the forgotten ones of society. How could I help them remember they were truly beloved children of God? How could they remember that just because they did not have any possessions or any home to call their own, they still had dignity?

My idea was: let’s bring them to St. Louis Symphony Hall for a concert. That was something they never would usually get to experience. The music would inspire them, make their jaws drop, make them see what working people did for enjoyment. So I wrote the symphony and asked for some tickets, and they gave us a whole set of them, and one cold December night I met about ten of our homeless clients at the gorgeous stone edifice called Symphony Hall. As we walked in to the atrium, it was as if the Peanut Gallery had arrived in the middle of cocktail hour. Amidst the suits, sweater vests and evening gowns, these folks looked like total misfits. But they didn’t seem to mind. Their eyes were too busy looking at all the chandeliers, the woodwork and the red-carpeted stairways to notice the gawkers. When we made our way to our seats, I thought, hey, they are really getting in to this…all this opulence…they dig it!

So the concert was about to begin, and I was teaching them about not clapping in between movements…and this violinist plays a beautiful rendition of a Rachmaninoff Violin Concerto—and they love it! They’re cherishing this moment like I hoped they would! Or at least I thought. Then the second half came around…and within a few minutes, I looked over and near everyone was….asleep! No! I thought. Are they bored? What did I do wrong? Do they not understand what’s going on?! Do they know how rude it is to snore during these concerts? I was furious with them and with myself. And I looked up at this big barn of a hall that surrounded us…this enormously beautiful space and thought…this was a mistake.

But then…the symphony the orchestra began playing a slow movement…a long, drawn out beautifully soft piece…and the last remaining few who weren’t sleeping closed their eyes. And I realized that no, I was wrong. They did get it. They totally had all they needed. What they needed that night was not this big barn of a place to dazzle them. It turns out all they needed was a warm, comfortable place to rest, and lay their weary heads. That was enough. And on top of that, they had a lullaby! That was all they needed to be valued. As they walked out that night, I bet there was no one more satisfied and refreshed than those ten people.

That big barn—Symphony Hall—was indeed awe inspiring…but such a big barn wasn’t necessarily what was needed to make these people feel rich and important. The barn they needed in fact was tiny…small…in comparison. A roof was enough.

Jesus says in today’s parable from Luke that being rich does not necessarily mean we are rich towards God. Being rich in our IRA’s, our bank accounts, our home values, having the corner office…is not what makes us rich with God.

So what does make us rich? If wealth, success or stuff isn’t the answer then what does make us truly valued? God sends that priceless treasure to us relentlessly and unceasingly in the person of Christ! In Christ, we become as one theologian puts it, “more than enough people.” We become full with all that we need and more. Gifted by Christ, we become a people who have the body of Christ all around us, who have relationships with God and neighbor…relationships that bless us with a treasure that does not lose its value over time. Christ comes to dwell in relationship…in his fullness of life…in us! And so our relationships, rather than our stuff, become the channels of the treasure of Christ given to us by God. That is the source of the good life, the meaningful life, a life made rich towards God. As “more than enough people”, we receive our whole lives not as something to keep to ourselves, but gifts to be cared for and given away…in community.

The poor folk, sitting at the symphony, fast asleep, may not seem to have been rich, but they truly were made rich that night! They did not need a big barn called Symphony Hall. All they needed was a barn…a roof over their heads…a place of comfort and safety and rest.

That struggle that the poor fight daily to find that treasure is one that we are told in America is a struggle they can win if they work hard, and play by the rules…that’s the American Dream: the self-made, self-maximized individual. But these myths forget that none of what we own or possess is ever truly ours…everything is a gift from God.

So the question then for us is, as people made rich towards God in Christ, as people who live in a more than enough economy, will we hoard that gift and instead build an economy of accumulation—of building bigger and bigger barns for ourselves? Or, will we invest our treasure in God’s economy, where the need for “more” gives way to open hands that give away all we have that are gifts from God. In God’s economy, all do not necessarily have the same amount…but all have enough.

The suffering of some while others can say to themselves, “relax, eat, drink [and] be merry” challenges us to let go of our pride and our individualism…and to seek a more just world that reflects God’s economy. Will we have faith in that economy of being rich towards God, or in the world’s economy? Faith in the god of the free market depends on the existence of a poor working underclass to serve the needs of the wealthy. The Gross National Product, a number that measures the annual amount of goods sold, is one number that helps measure the health of our country’s economy. But things like make us rich towards God don’t count in the GDP: things like volunteering at church or in our community, like taking time away from work to be with a dying parent, like serving on our local school or village board. In fact, investing time in these decrease GDP! Faith in God’s economy means a total dependence on God to provide. Faith in God’s economy sees everyone as our neighbor, as people God counts, as people living under the same roof as us. In God’s economy we take what Roman Catholics call a “preferential option for the poor”, and protect against the growth of economic injustice. Faith in God’s economy trusts that having riches is not a sign of blessing, but of our challenge to give as we’ve been given, and to believe in the value of the common good over my private good. Faith in God’s economy means there is enough to go around, and then some.

God has made us rich in Christ, and placed us in God’s economy, where Christ fills us with the fullness of God’s own loving and grace-filled life. Will our trust in the promise of this richness in Jesus lead us to protect it, or share it? Will our trust in this gift of God so orient and direct our lives that faith in God’s giving will shape our lives as givers rather than consumers? Will the cries of the poor ring in our ears as warnings against the dangers of building bigger and bigger barns for ourselves, and as cries of neighbors who long to build relationship with us?

The music of lives shaped by faith in God’s abundant life given in Christ will not be played by us. We will be the instruments of God’s own song that revives the dead to new life, that brings love out of fear. The music made in God’s economy may sound dissonant to us—as the snoring of those brothers and sisters at Symphony Hall did, providing their own little accompaniment to the orchestra. But that is the kind of music God makes when the treasure of Christ is shared—when there is plenty to go around. Amen!