Month: August 2022

Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost: Jeremiah 2:4-13; Psalm 81:1, 10-16; Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16; Luke 14:1, 7-14

God is angry with the House of Jacob and the families of the house of Israel, Jeremiah tells us. “I brought you into a plentiful land to eat its fruits and its good things. But when you entered you defiled my land, and made my heritage an abomination.” This image of environmental degradation is followed by an account of how they have abandoned their Lord for other gods. And all for nothing. They have abandoned living water, and dug their own cisterns, which are cracked. A cracked cistern will not hold water, so vital in the desert. Without water, they will die.

The Psalm continues this theme. I am the Lord who brought you out of Egypt, but “my people did not hear my voice, and Israel would not obey me.” If they would listen, I would defeat their enemies, and feed them “with the finest wheat”. They suffer now, but if they would listen to God, they would not.

If our readings from the Hebrew scriptures focus on the outcome of abandoning God, the readings from Hebrews and Luke make it clear that following Jesus involves behavior that goes against what is expected. Paul asks us to remember prisoners as if we were in prison with them, those who are tortured as if we are being tortured with them. If such empathy might be reasonable, Paul’s instruction to “keep your lives free from the love of money” is definitely counter-cultural! If we do these things, however, the promise is that Jesus will always be with us.

Luke’s parable of the wedding feast proposes another counter-cultural approach: put yourself at the bottom, because it’s better to be moved up than to be moved down. Jesus is explicitly telling his followers not to be caught up in the hierarchies of the day, but to go against them. And then his advice to his host is more surprising: don’t invite the fancy people, as if you expect reciprocity. Offer hospitality to those who cannot give back: “the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind”. Repayment is not now, but “at the resurrection of the righteous”.

It is not surprising that the people of Israel failed to do what they were expected to do. We do too. It is one reason we say the confession on a regular basis. We live in a world that expects us to honor worldly hierarchies, where concern for money is considered a good. It is easier to worship worldly gods than to follow the Lord. Those of us with money and homes keep the hungry and the poor at arms length: we might help at a communal Thanksgiving, but we don’t generally invite the hungry and homeless into our homes.

But just because we fail a lot, it doesn’t mean we fail all the time. Here’s what everyone who has entered into relationship with the poor, or prisoners, or the hungry has come to know: we may start out thinking we are helping them, but if we enter into relationship and make ourselves vulnerable, we are served as much as we serve.

Actions have consequences, we teach children. But that is true for good actions and bad ones. The challenge to us is “hear the voice” of the Lord, to move outside our comfort zone, to enter relationship with those who are outside our worlds, and to let ourselves be changed. And as the psalmist and Paul both tell us, when we do that, God will be with us.

Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost: Jeremiah 1:4-10; Psalm 71:1-6; Hebrews 12:18-29; Luke 13:10-17

The woman appeared, bent over by a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She cannot stand up straight. Jesus sees her, and calls her over. “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.”

My first reaction on reading this week’s gospel is to think about the pain of the woman. Eighteen years! It must have been so hard. But as I read it over, I was increasingly struck by Jesus’ response. He calls her over, and does what is needed. He doesn’t make a big fuss, he just does it. And then he defends his actions (healing on the Sabbath) by reminding his critics of what they do for their animals on the Sabbath. Why not help a human, let alone a “Daughter of Abraham”?

What really strikes me is that this is a direct response with little fuss. There was no committee or study group, no resolution. Just a need and a response. That is rare in the world today. Our congregation has run out of the yellow bags that we used to give out, but one of the things that I liked about having them was the availability of a direct response to need. If you’re hungry, I have food for you. We can’t always do this: I don’t always have food with me, or money. And many needs, from housing to immigration issues to health care, cannot be dealt with so easily.

We may not be able to act so directly, but when thinking about “what would Jesus do”, thinking about how to make our response to the many needs of the world as straightforward as possible is a good first step.

Tenth Sunday after Pentecost: Isaiah 5:1-7; Psalm 80:1-2, 8-18; Hebrews 11:29-12:2; Luke 12:49-56

There are weeks when I read the lessons for Sunday and would like to wish them away. The lectionary doesn’t allow us to do that. We begin with Isaiah’s account of how the house of Israel will be destroyed because it has not been faithful to the Lord; we end with Jesus’ promise of division: “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!” No sweet kumbaya resolution here.

What is this division, though? Why? Jesus is not promising division for its own sake, but because of choices that people have made. If we choose to follow Jesus, we will go against the world in some things. Jesus brings division because he asks for choices. He asks us to be ready, to act as if life could end at any minute. And most of us don’t, most of the time.

This lesson appears as part of a long series of teachings. Many of the stories Jesus tells are about being ready to answer for your behavior. Jesus has ended his previous story focusing on the responsibility of his followers: if you know what is needed, then you are more at fault for what you do not do. “From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required, and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded.” (Luke 12:48)

I suspect I am not alone in being uncomfortable with such apocalytic language. But as is so often the case in the Bible, these descriptions of conflict and punishment reflect not what Jesus wants, but what happens. If we follow Jesus, we will be divided from some of those around us.

The gospel reading ends with Jesus asking us to pay attention to the signs, and be ready to respond. What signs do we see that ask for a response? An obvious one is climate. Here in Merced, we know about drought and global warming. If we see these signs of potential climate catastrophe, what does it mean to respond as followers of Jesus? We think about those most vulnerable: that’s what it means to love our neighbors. So we use less water and drive more efficient cars; we might put solar panels on our houses to save electricity costs. But such care for creation is controversial: there are still those who do not think we need to act to slow the warming of the planet. Loving all our neighbors may divide us from others.

In her hymn celebrating the impending birth of Jesus, Mary sings of God’s work: “He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty.”

We live, as did Jesus, in a society where power has accumulated in the hands of the wealthy. Jesus called his followers not to follow the hierarchies of the world, but to love everyone. We are called to do the same. When we see signs, we need to pay attention. And we need to respond in ways that reflect the love of Jesus.

Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 14: Isaiah 1:1, 10-20; Psalm 50:1-8, 23-24;
Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16; Luke 12:32-40

Isaiah’s vision is dramatic: “What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?
says the Lord; / I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams / and the fat of fed beasts”. The rituals of the Hebrews are not effective: prayers, assemblies, incense, you name it, God has no use for it. Instead, God wants action.

cease to do evil,
learn to do good;

seek justice,
rescue the oppressed,

defend the orphan,
plead for the widow.

Form without content, God says in Isaiah’s vision, is of no use. The people of Israel have to change. Change is hard. Those in power in particular will suffer. But this is what is necessary. If they are “willing and obedient”, they will “eat the good of the land”. The warning is stark however: “If you refuse and rebel,/ you shall be devoured by the sword”.

This tension between form and action, faith and works, articulated by Isaiah, is one that has remained in the Christian tradition. It is a tension, though, not a battle: we need both faith and action. The Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century focused to some extent on this tension: Martin Luther thought that the ceremonies of the Church were not the path to salvation. But Protestants expected faith to lead to action. In the early 1600s, the very Puritan town of Dorchester in England provided education for children, health care, and housing for the elderly and infirm: they showed their faith in action.

Paul emphasizes this. Faith, he tells us in the familiar line, “is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen”. But he goes on to tell the story of Abraham, who did not just have faith, but followed commands: he left home, he lived in tents. He did all this in the hope of “a better country, a heavenly one”. We may have faith in things unseen, but the results of faith are (or should be) visible.

In the Gospel, Jesus promises his followers the kingdom. But first, they are to-in an echo of Isaiah-sell their possessions and give alms. As he said in last week’s Gospel, we put our energy where we put our treasure. “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

None of this is easy. Isaiah makes that clear. The people of Israel are following the rules. Paul reminds us that Abraham took huge risks with his faith. Jesus knows that selling your possessions is not exactly what we are taught to do. most of us do not do it. But we can ask about how we live, and how we balance the world and our faith. Where is our heart? Where is our treasure?