Month: July 2022

Eighth Sunday after Pentecost: Hosea 11:1-11; Psalm 107:1-9, 43; Colossians 3:1-11; Luke 12:13-21

“One’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions”, Jesus proclaims in today’s gospel. The Gospel gives us a Jesus who is very counter-cultural, both for the first century and the 21st. Certainly modern American capitalism wants our lives to be focused on possessions: consumer spending is a major driver of the economy. The messages that surround us value our income and our spending. One year my Lenten discipline was to not look at any of the catalogs that clog my mailbox; it became really very clear how need was manufactured. Absent catalogs, I did not want new clothes, or a new kitchen gadget, or garden furniture. I had enough.

Jesus in the Gospel is not necessarily telling us to get rid of things, but not to fixate on them. They are not what matters. We should not “store up treasures” for ourselves on earth. When we die, they don’t come with us. The Psalmist tells us that God “satisfied the thirsty, and fills the hungry with good things”. Jesus refers to those who are “rich toward God”. What is the value we put on our relationship with God?

One clue comes in the letter of Paul to the Colossians, where he asserts that in Christ our superficial differences are gone: “there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free”. If Paul were writing today, he would undoubtedly talk about rich and poor, white and Black, immigrants and farmers. One way to think about being rich toward God is ensuring that we are breaking down barriers, not building them up.

Being rich toward God is not just about the barriers in the world we do or do not put up. It is about our minds and hearts. Paul tells us to “put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly”. It is as much about what’s in our heads as what we do. One of the things I learned during my Lenten fast from catalogs was that it wasn’t just that I bought things-I usually didn’t-but I thought about them. I fantasized about life with this chair, or desk, or briefcase, which would magically make me a new person.

We live on earth, so the odds of fully ridding ourselves of things that are earthly, in our lives or our hearts and minds, is remote. But the process is important. These readings make us ask questions. Do I have enough? What is enough? If I am to break down barriers, what do I need to do? What does it mean to be rich toward God? What do I need to do to be rich toward God?

Seventh Sunday after Pentecost: Hosea 1:2-10; Psalm 85; Colossians 2:6-19; Luke 11:1-13

There’s a lot in our readings today. The Gospel gives us the Lord’s prayer. We say the prayer at least once a week, many of us daily. We know it by heart: it is, in many ways, written in our hearts. But it’s good from time to time to stand back and think about it, and think about the context in which it appears.

Jesus is teaching: his friends asked him to teach them to pray. And he starts the prayer with the word “Abba”, which has been translated as “Father”. But scholars note that Abba is a familiar word: some think it’s like “Dad”, others “Friend”. But it’s a prayer to someone you know and someone you can count on. This is underlined by Jesus’s first story: “Suppose one of you has a friend…”. So it is a friend to whom we pray.

Jesus tells us more about this friend: this is a friend who will respond. Maybe not immediately, but if we’re persistent. Or, this is an adult who will try to satisfy a child’s requests. Who, Jesus asks, “if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion?” If we know how to give “good gifts” to children, “how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him”. This is quite a promise!

Paul’s letter to the Colossians adds to the sense of intimacy Jesus suggests. Paul reminds his readers that in Jesus “the whole fullness of the deity dwells bodily”. Since we are now part of Jesus’ body (the body of Christ), “God made you alive together with him”. He “erased the record that stood against us with its legal demands”. Our trespasses are forgiven. Paul ends by saying there are no other rules: you don’t have to have visions, or worship angels, or anything else. You just have to stay rooted in Christ.

Some of this is hard. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that God may answer my prayers, but not always the way I want them answered. This friend image is helpful. If God is a friend, we know that sometimes our friends can’t do what we want when we want it. Sometimes they tell us that something we’re thinking of doing is not a good idea. A real friend will is not just a candy store giving us what we want.

It’s not that bad things won’t happen. They will . Right now I’m watching the Oak Fire and its destructive rage. But when bad things happen the promise is that Jesus, our friend, is with us.

Diane Butler Bass, in her book Freeing Jesus quotes Rev. Dr. Eric Elnes recommending to his congregation:

I have a suggestion for the next time you approach God in prayer. I invite you to imagine that your very best friend is before you-someone who is no less loving or gracious, or endearing, or wise than your very best friends on earth. If you will treat God like your very best friend, you will eventuall ycome to know the God whom Jesus and Abraham knew as a friend.

We should try it. I know I will.

Sixth Sunday after Pentecost: Amos 8:1-12; Psalm 52; Colossians 1:15-28; Luke 10:38-42

Some weeks, I think the organizers of the lectionary have it in for me. Our readings start out with Amos, decrying those whose only goal is to make more money, resenting the times they could not sell, using false weights to cheat the poor. My first thought was that he was talking about the US today, not ancient Israel.

We move to the Psalm, which begins with railing against a tyrant who “boasts of wickedness . . .love all words that hurt”. The righteous shall, instead, laugh at him who “trusted in great wealth and relied on wickedness”. They trust instead in the mercy of God.

Paul’s letter to the Colossians provides a summary of the faith, and proclaims the saving work of Jesus. In Jesus “you who were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled”. You’ll be all right, he says (in effect) as long as you continue “steadfast in the faith”.

We end with the familiar story of Martha and Mary: Mary sits and listens to Jesus, while Martha does the work of the household. Martha wants help, and asks Jesus to get Mary to do so. And Jesus responds that Mary, by listening to him, “had chosent the better part”. True confessions: I dislike this gospel. I’m a lifelong Martha, stepping in to do what needs doing. I am angry at Jesus’s response, which seems oblivious to the fact that the meal for him and his disciples requires someone to work. Every time I read it I think, “Only a man would say this”. Why do we need to make one way better than the other? We need Marthas.

We live in a society which primarily values all the things that these readings tell us to avoid. We admire those with money, no matter how it is made or what they do with it. Oh, you lied? Weren’t you clever! You don’t like what someone has said? Use social media to organize an attack. And we value the Marthas of this world, the ones who get things done. Perish the thought that you sit and listen, doing nothing! Busy-ness is a badge of honor. The church is not immune from this: we take what we learn in our day jobs and apply it to the church, valuing the big budget, grateful for the volunteer Marthas who keep things running.

Yet if we need Marthas, we also need Marys. These readings present a warning not to get carried away with the ways of the world. Money, and busy-ness are not the be-all and end-all. We should not be busy for the sake of being busy. We need to stop from time to time: to think about where we are going and why, to let ideas percolate, to attend to the voice of God. We need to make time to listen.

The psalmist describes themselves as “a green olive tree in the house of God”. An olive tree sits there and produces fruit. Like Mary, it is not consumed by meeting needs, real or imagined. Yes, there is work that needs doing, and we are glad that Martha has done it. But we also need to listen to God’s voice, and consider where we are called. It is as necessary as our work. Not better, but necessary. We each need to be both Mary and Martha.

Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 10: Amos 7:1-17; Psalm 82; Collosians 1:1-14; Luke 10:25-37

The story of the Good Samaritan is one of the most familiar of Jesus’ parables; the term “good Samaritan” has even entered the language to refer to those who help us, especially when traveling. Like all the parables, it is open to multiple readings: not only has what I see in it changed over time, but so is what I think is most important.

The story begins with a question: how do I inherit eternal life. Jesus sends the lawyer to the law. He correctly answers: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” Like a good lawyer, he has a follow-up question for Jesus: who is my neighbor? The parable is Jesus’ answer.

As a child in Sunday School, the message was simple: be kind to people, help them. Some years later, I learned to interpret some of the code. The priest and the Levite were leaders of the community, who knew the same law that the lawyer had cited, but failed to act. The Samaritans on the other hand, were outsiders, and generally not respected by the Israelites: it was important to the story that the person who helped was not one of the ones who might be expected to help, but the outsider.

A few years ago, I realized that Jesus made being a neighbor was not a noun but a verb, not something you were, but you did. “Who was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” That being a neighbor was how I responded to the man sleeping in the doorway or the woman panhandling, as well as the nice people who actually live next door.

But today, I think the question of “who is my neighbor” is most important. This is a question that we need to ask indivially and corporately, locally and globally. It is at the center of our political divisions. Who belongs? Who is a real American? To whom do we have obligations of neighborliness? Is it just the people in our street, no matter how difficult? Or is it some broader neighborhood, or even the city of Merced? How do we-as a parish, a city, a nation-welcome and incorporate newcomers?

One way we fail as neighbors is through the policies of exclusion we support or allow in our name. Do we write zoning rules that make it harder for poorer people to live near us? Do we design school districts that keep our children with the children of “other people like us”? How often are we, deliberately or inadvertantly, like the priest and the Levite on the road?

Jesus is pretty clear here: we can’t draw lines and create barriers for who is our neighbor and what we do for them. The Samaritan tells the innkeeper to spend what was needed. You can argue today as to whether that help should come from indiduals or congregations or the state, but the help should be there. This is hard: the needs of the world are overwhelming. This is why it is useful to think about the collective as well as the individual response. We do not have to do it all, but we cannot just cross to the other side of the road and ignore those in need.

Go and do likewise, Jesus tells the lawyer. It’s hard not to imagine his sinking heart as he received these instructions. Like us, he knows what he is supposed to do. Like us, he always knew. Now he had to do it. So do we.

Fourth Sunday after Pentecost: 2 Kings 5:1-14; Psalm 30; Galations 6:7-16; Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

“The Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go.” He told them, “Go on your way”.

I’m a good Episcopalian. I don’t like to knock on doors, and the idea of traveling without a purse and expecting strangers to put me up? I don’t think so. Furthermore, we are a community that was without a building for 10 years, and the loss of our building was painful. So this is not a gospel that I find comforting. It is instead very challenging. And let’s face it: it’s not just me. Most churches are tied to buildings. Even if you knock on doors, you do so to invite people to a building.

I’m currently traveling in England, and this morning I attended the local parish church. It was, it turns out, celebrating 150 years since the church was dedicated. The church is famous for liturgy and music, so it was a splendid service, with a musical setting commissioned for the occasion and the Bishop of London presiding and preaching.

This, needless to say, put front and center in my mind the tension between us in our buildings and the Gospel. Yet maybe it’s not as much of a tension as I initially thought. As Bishop Sarah Mullaly reminded us this morning, what happens in our buildings supports us when we go out into the world. The church is both the building and the people. When I remember the churches I have been a member of, it is not primarily the buildings I remember, but what happened in them: how the people of God did God’s work where they were.

And it doesn’t always have to be complicated. In our reading from 2 Kings today, Elisha agrees to heal Naaman of his leprosy. But Naaman is disappointed because Elisha did not come out himself, but sent a messenger with the message that he should wash in the Jordan seven times. Why didn’t Elisha come out to him? Why wasn’t there some drama, calling on the Lord, or some complex ritual? If he just needed to wash in the river, what was so special about the Jordan? He eventually goes along with it, and is indeed healed.

Do we, like Naaman, sometimes make things more difficult than they need to be? I know I do, when I panic about Jesus sending his disciples out. If I remember that I am sent out to do my work, not the imagined work that I think it should be, then it is manageable.

In the week ahead, may we see ourselves living our lives, bringing the good news, not by knocking on doors, but through how we live our lives. What does it mean to live as if we are going out, as Jesus commands, to do God’s work?