Readings (Track 1)

We’ll start this morning by recalling the first part of today’s collect:

“Lord of all power and might, the author and giver of all good things: Graft in our hearts the love of your Name; increase in us true religion; nourish us with all goodness; and bring forth in us the fruit of good works…”

What’s worth noticing about this and many of our collects—the prayers that collect our thoughts and intentions at the beginning of our worship—is that it implies a story. There’s a past: God, “the author and giver of all good things.” There’s a future: “the fruit of good works” which have yet to ripen. We’re in the middle of the story. And who we are, what we should do, what we can hope—all of that is determined by what story we’re in the middle of.

We’re in the middle of a story. We’re not at the beginning, so there’s no question of starting with a blank sheet of paper. And we’re not at the end, which is why despair is never an appropriate response.

The “author and giver of all good things” in our collect also points to a theme that runs through our readings: gratitude and its proper expression.

Today gratitude is seriously under-rated as a virtue; we may even think of it as a sign of weakness. Other times and places got it right: The Roman politician and philosopher Cicero claimed “Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others.” The modern psychologist Abraham Maslow: “[The most fortunate are those who] have a wonderful capacity to appreciate again and again, freshly and naively, the basic goods of life, with awe, pleasure, wonder, and even ecstasy.” And Albert Einstein: “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”

The “author and giver of all good things.” If that’s who God is, if that’s what God has done, if that’s the story we’re in, then gratitude is the fitting response.

And, conversely, it’s the failure of gratitude that regularly gets us into so much trouble. Our first lesson, for instance: Israel had received so much from God: deliverance from slavery in Egypt, guidance through a trackless desert, a plentiful land. And Israel too often ignored it all, and set off to jury-rig their own story.

Creation invites us to gratitude. Many of our psalms give us words to express this. “All of them look to you / to give them their food in due season.” Or we can attend to the conversations in the hard sciences. It turns out that a good number of physical constants like the strength of gravity need pretty fine tuning for life to be possible. The fine tuning of our world is so improbable that to avoid thanking the Creator we have to postulate a virtually infinite number of universes, with us happily in the one that holds together. (Google “John Polkinghorne” and “anthropic principle.)”

Equally, as Christians God’s project of restoring all creation elicits our gratitude. From the First Family on, God has responded to our rebellion with ever more daring attempts at reconciliation, culminating in taking human flesh in Jesus.

The theme of gratitude runs just below the surface in our second reading from Hebrews. On the surface it’s about what worship is pleasing to God. If we think of worship as primarily what happens in the sanctuary, we’re surprised, because the text talks about what we do out there as worship: mutual love, hospitality to strangers, holding marriage in honor, contentment, sharing what we have. All this can sound rather much if we’ve forgotten what came before our reading: “since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us give thanks!” Gratitude.

Our Gospel reading: the lectionary prescribed verses 1 and 7-14, eliminating the man with dropsy in vv.2-6. The Pharisees would have been happy to eliminate him; with apologies to the lectionary editors I’ve left him in.

Jesus has gotten an invitation to eat with some leading Pharisees on the Sabbath. And “just then, in front of him, there was a man who had dropsy.” Today we use ‘edema’ rather than ‘dropsy’, swelling caused by the retention of fluid. There’s a predictable argument about what work is lawful on the Sabbath, and Jesus heals the man. Jesus then shifts the conversation to what he’s watched the Pharisees doing and starts giving them some unwelcome advice: don’t keep jockeying for the places of honor, stop limiting your invitations to those who can reciprocate. God’s in the business of humbling those who exalt themselves and of exalting those who humble themselves.

So we’ve got a healing and Jesus admonishing the Pharisees. Outside of it all happening at the same meal, is there anything else that holds it together? Turns out there is, for in that culture edema—various parts of the body all puffed up with extra water combined with an insatiable thirst—served as a metaphor for greed, the sort of behavior the Pharisees are exhibiting, the antithesis of gratitude.

Most groups have a pecking order: who defers to whom. We all learned this on the playground. As we get older, negotiating that pecking order gets more subtle, but rarely disappears. In 1^st Century culture, meals were prime opportunities to display the pecking order: who’s closest to the host? Who’s at the head table? So, predictably, a lot of jockeying takes place. Likewise, lunch and dinner invitations are a prime opportunity to cement and maybe even augment one’s rank. It’s very easy for it to become a form of greed, not for food or for money, but for status.

As you may have noticed, the man with edema is introduced abruptly: “Just then, in front of him, there was a man who had dropsy.” It’s surprising, and commentators wonder about how he got there. Well, once we realize that the Pharisees are suffering from their own form of edema, we can see that the surprise is intentional: we don’t expect someone who’s ritually unclean in the home of a leading Pharisee;
we don’t expect the Pharisees, spiritual athletes every one, to be so afflicted with greed for status. But there we have it.

The text as Luke’s given it to us is a gem. It turns out to be about what Jesus can heal easily and not-so-easily. Jesus can easily heal the man with the physical edema; he finds it harder to heal the Pharisees’ greed for status—they don’t think they’re sick. It turns out to be about what sorts of work are appropriate for the Sabbath. Healing, just like pulling a child or even an ox from a pit, is appropriate for the Sabbath; the work of jockeying for status is not.

The text is a gem, but there’s also a sharp pointy end to notice: “He said also to the one who had invited him, ‘When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.’” We usually think of gratitude as a sort of reciprocity: we receive something from someone; we reciprocate. Here Jesus breaks it open: don’t confine your generosity to those who can pay you back: include those who can’t pay you back.

That’s where Jesus’ vision of God’s generosity has been heading. God gives generously to us, but not to set up another closed circle! Recall Isaiah from a few weeks back: “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; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats” (1:11). God gives generously to us so that our gratitude is expressed in giving to others.

What we’ve got here is the logic implicit in Jesus’ joining of the two commandments to make the Great Commandment. “Love the Lord your God” alone can be—well, is often—misunderstood as setting up a closed circle: just me and Jesus. “And your neighbor as yourself” reminds us that loving this God is about creating open, ever-expanding circles.

So, to try to pull all this together! The story we find ourselves in has as its center a breathtakingly generous God, to which our proper response is gratitude. Because strong currents in our culture discourage gratitude, we often need to be intentional in nurturing gratitude. But—here’s the sharp pointy end—we’re not talking about generic gratitude, which can settle into a comfortable closed circle, but a gratitude expressed in generosity toward those who are currently in no position to reciprocate. As we prayed in this morning’s collect “Graft in our hearts the love of your Name; increase in us true religion; nourish us with all goodness; and bring forth in us the fruit of good works.” Amen.

Readings (Track 1; Psalm 72 used in place of Psalm 80).

If you think back to the last time you finally got all the pieces together for a grand project only to have it spectacularly fail, whether a project in the kitchen or the shop, at school or at work, you’ll be able to empathize with the Good Lord in the first reading.

In this case it’s been a centuries-long project: from those long journeys with the patriarchs and matriarchs, through the exodus, into the land flowing with milk and honey, and now the unbridled greed of the elites in the Northern and Southern kingdoms, forcing folk off their ancestral lands to make way for wheat for the cities, wine and olive oil for export. What was supposed to be a harvest of justice and righteousness: a harvest of bloodshed and cries.

Justice and righteousness. We’ve been hearing these words repeatedly during these last six weeks as we’ve listened to the 8^th Century prophets: Amos, Hosea, and now Isaiah. In today’s fractured discourse it’s often hard to figure out what ‘justice’ means, other than what the speaker happens to like. So it’s worth recalling what these prophets meant, fairness and a bias toward approximate equity. Fairness: the same set of weights and measures for buying and selling, the contents matching the labeling. A bias toward approximate equity: this has to do with what stories you tell. Israel lived between the great and ancient centers of Egypt and Mesopotamia (modern Iraq). In Egypt the Pharaoh was divine. In Mesopotamia the story was that first the common folk were created, and then the gods brought together the beautiful, the glorious, the mighty, and produced the king. Whichever of those stories you told, it was only right that the king and his court had all the goodies. Israel’s God had given Israel a different story: humankind as a whole bear God’s image. (In other words, until we deciphered the Egyptian and Mesopotamian scripts in the 19^th Century we weren’t in a position to know what “Let us make humankind in our image” was about, because we didn’t know what conversation—what argument—it was part of!) And if all of us bear God’s image, all of us have the right and responsibility to steward this good earth. The difference between king and commoner? Almost not worth talking about.

So the law given to Moses includes provisions that limit debt slavery, allow folk to periodically regain their ancestral lands (the Jubilee), etc. If all bear God’s image and have the right and responsibility to steward this good earth, then a legal code is just to the degree that it promotes this—not that arriving at a set of workable laws is any easy matter, then or now. Back in the 8^th Century BC, the problem was that the Israelite kings and their courts (both Northern and Southern Kingdoms) generally preferred the Egyptian or Mesopotamian stories. So, predictably, bloodshed and cry.

To get a sense of how it was supposed to work, look at Psalm 72, which we used a few minutes ago. “Give the king your justice, O God, and your righteousness to a king’s son.” The psalm focuses on three issues: the well-being of the most vulnerable, the fertility of the land, and the nation’s security vis à vis the surrounding nations. The division of labor is pretty clear: the king worries about the most vulnerable (vv. 2, 4, 12-14); the Good Lord worries about fertility and the king’s international enemies. The irony—well, the scandal—is the contrast between Psalm 72 and the 8^th Century BC elites. The irony—well, the scandal—is that with “In God we trust” on our currency we’re giving Psalm 72 about the same attention that the 8^th Century BC elites gave it.

Holding the Hebrews reading in reserve for the moment, on to the Gospel.

“Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!” Coming at Jesus’ words cold, it’s understandable if our first reaction is “Well, someone got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.” For texts like this, it often helps to look back to see what’s been happening earlier in the text.

Here, as Luke tells the story, it started with someone in the crowd: “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” So Jesus tells the parable about the rich man who ran out of storage space, the parable that ends with God saying “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you.” We heard that two weeks ago.

And Jesus stays with this theme, pointing us to the ravens, the lilies of the field, and reaching a crescendo with

“And do not keep striving for what you are to eat and what you are to drink, and do not keep worrying. For it is the nations of the world that strive after all these things, and your Father knows that you need them. Instead, strive for his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well. 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.”

We heard that last week. It doesn’t take much reflection to recognize that this message is a formula for division, not peace! “You want to do what with the family budget?”

And, having just heard Isaiah’s Vineyard parable, it doesn’t take much reflection to see that Isaiah and Jesus are working the same script. The problem with Jerusalem’s elites is precisely that they’re striving for what they’re going to eat, drink, wear, and are driven by fear, whether of their neighbors next door or next kingdom over.

And if we see this, we can perhaps understand Jesus’—well—impatience. “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed!” The Holy Trinity has been working this problem, seeking to cultivate sustainable justice and righteousness in Israel, for well over a millennium. And now the Holy Trinity has—as they say—skin in the game, Jesus’ skin, Jesus’ body, Jesus’ blood. Jesus’ body, Jesus’ blood: which will soon receive the full impact of the division he describes. Jesus’ body, Jesus’ blood: which we’ll be receiving in a few minutes.

Where do these readings leave us?

Please open a prayer book to p.305. At the end of the Baptismal Covenant the Celebrant asks “Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?” And the people reply… Readings like today’s readings help us hear this more clearly:

–Justice: not something one of the factions in the church slipped in, but central to God’s agenda;

–Justice: its meaning not determined by the speaker’s agenda, but deeply rooted in the Bible’s story: fairness and a bias toward approximate equity. Fairness, what we might call procedural justice. But that’s only half the story, for a bias toward approximate equity is equally important: all bear God’s image; all have the right and responsibility of stewarding this good earth.

–The dignity of every human being: particularly a challenge today with too many loud voices declaring many beneath this dignity.

–Peace: not always the immediate result of our striving, but given Jesus’ words and life, that’s par for the course.

And at the start of The Baptismal Covenant: “Do you believe in God the Father…maker of heaven and earth?” Jesus’ words, the words we’ve heard in the last two weeks leading up to today’s reading, spell out what this belief looks like:

–This Father knows what we need, and is generous—and believing that means letting it be the motor for our attention and actions

–So, parenthetically, Genesis 1 is in our Bible not so we can argue about evolution, but first to bring God onstage as a generous God whose creation has enough for everyone, and second (“humankind in our image”) to counter the recurrent claim of the elites that they alone ought to steward God’s creation.

–We grow our belief, our faith, as we work on throttling back our worry about what we need.

–We grow our belief, our faith, as we work on throttling back our fear.

And here the preacher’s with that distraught father in Mark’s Gospel: “I believe, help my unbelief!”

We return to the Baptismal Covenant at various points during the year because our calling as a community is to live together in a way that makes it easier for us to believe in this generous Father, easier for us to be generous, easier to engage in that striving for justice.

And we return to the Holy Communion every week because we need Jesus’ life coursing through us for this work, and Jesus’ story in the center of our consciousness.

How to close? The words from our Epistle give us the words. Let us read together the last two verses, Hebrews 12:1-2:

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.”

Readings (Track 1)

The working title for this sermon could be “The Rich Fool, Part 2,” since in Luke’s staging we’re still in the scene that starts with that guy in the crowd’s “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” Jesus responds with the parable of the rich fool, and in today’s reading lays out its alternative.

The fool had said to himself “relax, eat, drink, be merry.” Jesus has no problem with the “eat, drink, be merry” part per se. Jesus is the one of whom people say “’Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!” (Lk. 7:34). The prophet Isaiah: “On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear” (25:6). The problem is who isn’t participating—recall Lazarus at the rich man’s gate (Lk. 16:20). And as long as too many aren’t participating, “relax” doesn’t cut it.

There’s this to be said for the rich fool’s strategy: it provides a clear framework for organizing one’s life, measuring one’s progress. But, as Jesus argues in today’s reading, it’s doubly disconnected from reality. First, God is already generously giving what we can spend so much time stressing about. Why would God be less generous to us than to the ravens or lilies? Second, the rich fool’s strategy confuses precarious and stable wealth, a rookie mistake. Notice the contrast between these two verses: “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God” (12:21) and “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” (12:33-34). Nothing wrong with seeking treasure, but be smart about it.

Be smart about it. In today’s reading that means understanding that treasure is a byproduct of God’s kingdom (“strive for his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well”). And notice the interesting tension in the verbs Jesus uses: “strive for his kingdom… it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” It’s that tension that prompted the saying usually attributed to Augustine: “pray as if everything depends on God, and work as if everything depends on you.” I like what the Jesuit writer Jim Manney does with it: 

“’pray as if everything depends on you, and work as if everything depends on God.’ This means that prayer has to be urgent: God has to do something dramatic if everything depends on me. It also puts our work in the right perspective: if it depends on God, we can let it go. We can work hard but leave the outcome up to him. If God is in charge we can tolerate mixed results and endure failure.”[1]

So relax and strive are held in a tension that would make a Zen master smile.

What does that striving look like? Before continuing with our Gospel reading, let’s notice what the other readings contribute. Isaiah: “seek justice, / rescue the oppressed, / defend the orphan, / plead for the widow.” That doesn’t exhaust “strive for his kingdom,” but it’s an important part, and, as Jesus’ sheep and goats parable in Matthew suggests, one of the unexpected ways in which we meet Jesus (“’Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food… [Matt. 25:37]). The Epistle to the Hebrews reminds us of Abraham and Sarah: sometimes “striv[ing] for his kingdom” involves doing things the neighbors think really dumb, leaving the comfortable urban life in Ur for the middle of nowhere. Remarkable how often we people of faith end up using “It’s only stupid if it doesn’t work.”

But back to Jesus. Jesus’ parable gives us one picture of striving for the kingdom; let’s give it some time. “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.” We stay alert, we listen for Jesus knocking, we open the door. We can hear that parable, I think, as an invitation to respond to the opportunities God sets before us.

Recall Paul’s letter to Philemon. One of Philemon’s slaves, Onesimus, had run away, but had run into Paul and become a Christian. Paul could have simply sent Onesimus back without rocking the boat. Instead, he sees and takes the opportunity to remind Philemon that he and Onesimus are now brothers in Christ, and urges Philemon to pay attention to how that unsettles the owner-slave relationship.

Slavery. For centuries it was assumed to be simply part of how things are. Then William Wilberforce—an Anglican layman whose July 30 feast we just celebrated—and his colleagues saw an opportunity and—it was a long grind—got the slave trade abolished in the British Empire in 1807 and slavery itself in the Empire in 1833—with the exception of the territories held by the East India Company.[2]

That’s a telling exception. I like capitalism: wouldn’t want to part with my Honda, iPhone, or expresso maker. But capitalism, like any strong acid, needs solid containers—like “No Slavery”—or it does frightful damage. And we’re usually short on containers. Reuters reported record oil company profits at the end of last month: “Exxon, Chevron, Shell and Total returned a total of $23 billion to shareholders in the second quarter in dividends and share repurchases.”[3] Where might there be an opportunity to strengthen the distinction between fair pricing and price gouging?

Usually the opportunities are local. Your monthly gifts of resources to local charities are an important response. Jesus’ parable encourages us to continue to keep alert for further opportunities.

I love the banquet scene tucked in today’s reading. Early on in the scene we had the rich fool’s “relax, eat, drink, be merry.” Here, in Jesus’ parable “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.” That’s the banquet I want a seat at.

[1] https://www.ignatianspirituality.com/work-as-if-everything-depends-on-god/ (accessed 8/1/2022).

[2] See, conveniently, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wilberforce and links (accessed 8/1/2022).

[3] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/big-oils-q2-profits-hit-record-50-bln-with-bp-yet-come-2022-07-29/ (accessed 8/1/2022).

Readings (Track 1)

Between the reference to greed in the Epistle and its leading role in the Gospel, the preacher’s set up for a barn-burner of a sermon, perfect for Lent. Not perfect for this year, when the combination of the stock market’s year-to-date performance and inflation have too many of us just trying to keep our heads above water.

So, if not greed, what? We might start with the Epistle’s remix of baptismal language to describe our ongoing pilgrimage. “Raised with Christ” (v.1), “stripped off the old self” (v.9), “clothed yourselves with the new self” (v.10): that’s the language of baptism. The remix suggests—no, assumes—that this stripping off and putting on is an ongoing process, a process that the Epistle calls “renewal.”

Read in isolation, the Epistle’s language might suggest a process we direct—self-help on steroids. Our recent Gospel readings tell a different story. Recall what we’ve been hearing. Three weeks ago the lawyer asked “And who is my neighbor?” (Lk. 10:29), certain that the obligation to love applied to only to some people, and Jesus’ Good Samaritan parable blew that out of the water. Two weeks ago Martha wanted to talk about that love (“Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me” [Lk. 10:40]) and Jesus redirected the conversation to the one necessary thing. And today, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me,” and Jesus shifted the focus to greed.

The protagonists in these stories are confident in identifying their situations (What we need is a clear boundary between those who are and aren’t my neighbor. Mary needs to shape up! My brother’s cheating me!). And they’re confident that they know exactly what they need from Jesus, what help they need from Jesus. But Jesus in each case radically redefines the situation.

A modern writer (Anaïs Nin) put the very old observation succinctly: “We don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are.” If that’s the case—and our recent Gospel readings point us in that direction—we’re hardly in a position of direct our own renewal. We may be fervent in prayer (“Help me correctly identify my neighbor!” “Tell her to help me!” “Tell my brother to divide it with me!”), but the end result can be pretty much as described in our first reading: “The more I called them, the more they went from me; they kept sacrificing to the Baals, and offering incense to idols.”

So where does that leave us?

The crucial bit’s in the first reading. Faced with this crazy-making people, we hear the divine soliloquy: “How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? … My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. ⁹ I will not execute my fierce anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and no mortal, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath.” Well, what is the Lord going to do? There’s a pretty direct line from these words to the Incarnation: we’re going to make this work; we’re going to do this together. Jesus does not want us to stay stuck.

OK, but how does Paul—or whoever wrote Colossians—think that works? A full answer would hardly fit into one sermon, but here are some things we can notice in today’s reading and in the rest of the letter (since this is the last week the Lectionary has us in Colossians).

There’s a lot in today’s reading about, well, weeding. “Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly: fornication… [etc.]” A bit later: “But now you must get rid of all such things—anger… [etc.].” Weeding is important. But, recalling our recent Gospel readings, it’s the start, not the end of an answer, also because we can confuse flowers and weeds, and because an exclusive focus on weeding sets us up for pride and intolerance. So let’s keep reading.

“In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!” That’s not just a statement about who’s included in the renewal, but about how the renewal happens: throwing together—in Christ—folk who otherwise wouldn’t be associating together, let alone listening seriously to each other.

Because notice what follows in the next verse: “As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.” There’s that clothing language again, but now with precisely those dispositions that allow folk trapped in their own worlds (“We don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are.”) to learn from each other, to be transformed by each other.

Later the author turns to relationships within the household, wives and husbands, children and parents, slaves and masters. This part sometimes gets written off as undigested cultural commonplaces, but it looks like there’s more going on. Perhaps the most important is that each of the parties are addressed as responsible moral agents. They have choices, and their choices matter. In the context of our how-does-renewal-happen question, what’s interesting is that rather than giving any encouragement to “now I’m a Christian and all these earthly things don’t matter, the author pushes the readers—including us—to take these relationships more seriously. There’s a lot in these relationships beyond our control, and God, who’s out for our renewal, will use that. As one of the desert fathers observed, it’s not the challenges we take on but the challenges that show up uninvited that are often most decisive.

And behind it all, Hosea’s God (“How can I give you up, Ephraim?”), who is not content that “We don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are” be the epitaph for any of us.

The “new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator.” Can’t accuse the author of thinking small. Renewal, transformation: we like these words, despite the fact that both involve change (“How many Episcopalians does it take to change a lightbulb?”). So we’ll give the last word to a former Episcopalian, John Henry Newman: ““To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.”

Readings (Track 1)

Back in 1964 Bob Dylan sang “There’s a battle outside and it is ragin’ / It’ll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls…” Today, between the January 6 hearings and the recent Supreme Court decisions, we might wonder whether the 60’s were just the warm-up act.

So what’s our role as Christians? The parable in today’s Gospel is a key part to any Christian answer.

Recall what lead up to the parable… “But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?’” The question assumes that some are my neighbor, that some are not. This is likely a near-universal assumption. Consider our pronouns: What does “we” mean if it doesn’t contrast with “they”? Consider the role of language (accent, vocabulary, etc.): after a few words we’ve instinctively slotted the speaker as one of us or them. Clothing, zip code: so many ways of slotting people into us or them.

So: who qualifies as my neighbor? That’s the conversation the lawyer wants to have. And Jesus’ parable is designed not to answer that question, but to blow it out of the water. At least two elements accomplish this: First, the cast (Priest, Levite, Samaritan [The Samaritan the classic “Other”; “Be a good boy or a Samaritan will…”]. Second, Jesus’ closing: “Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?”

Now, if we pull back the camera, there’s an obvious question. A few weeks back we heard Paul say “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” Haven’t we just replaced these contrasts with “Christian and non-Christian” so that we’re back where we started?

A response to that question requires two hands. On the one hand, the NT is clear: saying “yes” to Jesus is fundamental. On the other hand, if that “yes” motivates anything other than love, it’s no longer Jesus to whom I’m saying yes.

Here’s the thing. Jesus’ “love your enemies” isn’t simply one element in his teaching; it captures his Father’s modus operandi throughout the Bible.

His Father’s modus operandi: we meet this in today’s first reading from Amos and repeatedly in the coming weeks with the Old Testament lessons from the 8^th & 7^th C. prophets. The Northern Kingdom (Israel) and Southern Kingdom (Judah) are turning their backs on God, oppressing the vulnerable. Those two actions are two sides of the same coin: I turn my back on God and—surprise—I’m no longer in solidarity with all those who bear God’s image, but with those who bear my image: same skin color, dialect, etc. Anyhow, Israel and Judah: they have made themselves God’s enemies. So for God all the good and easy options are off the table, and God struggles to find a way to stop the madness and to begin laying the foundation for a better future.

And it captures Jesus’ modus operandi. Two weeks ago we heard James and John offering to call down fire on a Samaritan village that—they thought—had not given Jesus a sufficiently enthusiastic reception. So Jesus finds himself for neither the first nor the last time among his enemies.

Any two-bit god can surround themselves with friends; Jesus’ God is constantly seeking out his enemies.

Our Eucharistic Prayer reminds us of this weekly. For example, Prayer A: “to reconcile us to you, the God and Father of all” or, again, “Sanctify us…and serve you in unity, constancy, and peace.”

To stay with our liturgy for a moment, every week there’s the Confession and Absolution. So the divide between Christians and non-Christians isn’t between friends and enemies of God. On our good days we Christians are allowing God to continue the life-long work of transforming us from enemies into friends.

In sum, that’s one thing the parable is doing, messing with our notions of “us” and “them.”

The other thing the parable is doing: highlighting compassion.

“But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity [compassion].”

Words matter. It turns out that in the New Testament the Greek verb translated ‘have pity/compassion’ is used exclusively for Jesus, the two exceptions being in Jesus’ parables. Compassion, the Gospel writers tell us, is fundamental to how Jesus navigates this world. And this, in turn, shapes their understanding of how we follow Jesus.

So, in the parable compassion is the turning point in the story. And if we read the parable as an allegory of the divine-human history, it is the turning point in that history: this Samaritan God finding us and caring for us on the Jericho road. We hear that turning point in our Eucharistic Prayers. What is the start of Eucharistic Prayer A if not an extended description of compassion?

“Holy and gracious Father: In your infinite love you made us for yourself; and, when we had fallen into sin and become subject to evil and death, you, in your mercy, sent Jesus Christ, your only and eternal Son, to share our human nature, to live and die as one of us, to reconcile us to you, the God and Father of all.”

Today so much undercuts and deadens compassion—and nothing more effectively than the us/them dichotomy.  We need this parable—particularly in an election year, in which the political parties are pulling out all the stops to motivate us, but usually not toward greater compassion.

What this sermon boils down to: an invitation to use Jesus’ parable as a lens through which to view the world we’ll encounter in the coming week. Us and them. Notice how often this gets encouraged, the subtle ways it can distort our identity. Look for opportunities to enact William Temple’s claim: “The church is the only institution that exists primarily for the benefit of those who are not its members.” Compassion. Notice all that deadens it. Look for opportunities, however small, to practice it.

Readings (Track 1)

Had we continued the Gospel reading for one more verse we would have heard this: “At that same hour Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, ‘I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.’”

‘I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants…’” In context, Jesus is thanking God for the work the seventy have just reported. These infants, not the wise and understanding who hold power in Jerusalem and the synagogues, are declaring and embodying the good news of the Kingdom. And these words identify a recurrent theme in our readings, and so serve as the backbone of this sermon.

Our first reading introduces us to Naaman: “Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Syria, was a great man with his master and in high favor, because by him the LORD had given victory to Syria. He was a mighty man of valor, but he was a leper.” Short of being king, he could not have greater honor. But his disease threatens all of that.

He learns of the possibility of healing in Israel. His king takes advantage of the situation: he sends Naaman to the Israelite king with a letter: “When this letter reaches you, know that I have sent to you Naaman my servant, that you may cure him of his leprosy.” He’s insured that Naaman will have access to whatever’s available in Israel: if Naaman’s cured, wonderful; if not, the Israelite king’s behind the 8-ball. The Israelite king responds by rending his clothes (his own, not Naaman’s). And the story could have stayed stuck there had not Elisha heard of it and told the king to send him Naaman.

We know what happens next: “So Naaman came with his horses and chariots, and halted at the door of Elisha’s house. And Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, ‘Go and wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored, and you shall be clean.’” Naaman, of course, is furious that Elisha has slighted him by not coming out himself. His servants find a way to spin the situation to maintain Naaman’s honor, so that he washes and is cleansed from the leprosy.

Elisha could have met Naaman at the door and followed Naaman’s script (“I thought that for me he would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the LORD his God, and would wave his hand over the spot, and cure the leprosy!”) That he did not is a clue that the story is not only about the Lord’s desire and power to heal—worth celebrating!—but also about the Lord’s hostility toward the human games surrounding honor. Elisha, the Lord’s prophet, refuses to play that game, and Naaman’s cure depends on his loosening his grip on it as well—even if only a little.

“The Lord’s hostility toward the human games surrounding honor.” Is that too strong a way of putting it? Maybe. Nevertheless, something like that is true, and explains, for instance, the Lord’s regular preference for the one who is not the firstborn: Abel, not Cain; Isaac, not Ishmael; Jacob, not Esau; David, not any of his older brothers. It’s part of what gives the edge to Paul’s “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28).

And, of course, it prepares us for Jesus’ words: “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants.” So what happens to the wise and understanding? Look again at what happens with Naaman: his salvation comes through folk considerably below him: that little Israelite maid captured in one of the Syrian raids, the servants who accompanied him to Elisha’s house. What gifts might God be trying to give us through people we regard as below us?

Paul’s words, in turn, are helpful for understanding how Jesus’ words might play out among the Galatians, and, by extension, among us. His discussion of walking according to the Spirit and not according to the flesh (the flesh: our humanity in rebellion against God) is not designed to give us a new way of playing the honor game, an additional way of ranking people. Rather, he encourages us to guard against letting concerns for honor get in the way of more important things, to look for ways to build each other up.

One test for how we’re doing in the honor/humility department is the way we respond to insults or slights. Some are intentional; others are unintentional, byproducts of our fallibility. It is our response to them that’s important. Abba Isaiah, one of the desert fathers, said “Nothing is so useful to the beginner as insults. The beginner who bears insults is like a tree that is watered every day”. Abba Isaiah is not encouraging us to water each other—that is something we do without encouragement. He’s encouraging us to see insults, slights, etc. as opportunities to grow in humility.

In addition to giving us a window on (or maybe a mirror for) issues of honor and humility, our first lesson provides an opportunity to notice something about the means of grace, the Sacraments and Scripture in particular. “Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them, and be clean?” It’s a perfectly reasonable question. Elisha’s command is quite arbitrary. There is the same sort of arbitrariness in our Lord’s choice of water to give us new birth in baptism or of bread and wine to give us his own Body and Blood, or of Holy Scripture as a privileged setting for conversations with our Lord. There are so many attractive rivers out there, so many promising strategies for healing and self-improvement, so many other places to be on a Sunday morning. We come to the water, the bread and the wine, the Bible, because that’s where Jesus told us to go, and that in itself requires a certain ongoing humility.

Of course, in this story Naaman has it easier: seven dips in the Jordan and he’s cured. The means of grace sometimes have this immediate and dramatic effect, but usually it’s a long-term process: water eroding our stony hearts. And so Paul encourages us: “So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up.” It is a matter of, as Nietzsche put it, “a long obedience in the same direction.”

Paul follows that encouragement with “So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all” and with that we’ll return to the first reading, to notice the people who were pivotal in the story, or, in Jesus’ language, the infants.

Notice, first, the little maid, captured in a Syrian raid, and now serving Naaman’s wife. She could easily have kept the information about Elisha to herself, and taken a sort of joy in watching the commander waste away. She could have seen it as a sort of justice, or even as punishment from her God. She’s near the bottom of the totem pole, but she has choices, and she chooses to give Naaman the information that saves him.

Then there are Naaman’s servants. Naaman’s response to Elisha’s non-appearance suggests that he had a short fuse, and his servants would have been the first to suffer from that. Never mind whether they thought Elisha’s instructions had any merit: they could have enjoyed watching their master stymied. They’re not much up the totem pole from the little maid, but they have choices, and they chose to deal gently and honorably with their master, and he is saved.

The little maid and the servants. Nameless, they’re the heroes of the story, Scripture’s story. Scripture plays many roles; the role noticeable here is that of providing a sneak preview of the Final Judgment. The story honors them, and in so doing reminds us that there is finally only One whose opinion/honor matters. So let us seek honor, but be careful to seek it from God, who alone is in a position to truly give it. And if we do as well as the little maid, or Naaman’s servants, we will have done very well indeed.