Readings (Track 1)

One of Madison Avenue’s favorite words is ‘instant’. This is not new; I grew up on commercials with jingles like Alka-Seltzer’s “Relief is just a swallow away.” Over time, these shape our expectations of how things should work, even of how God should work. Our increasingly urban environments don’t help, where milk is something you get at Quiktrip (notice the name) rather than from a cow whose health requires long-term care. But today’s lessons: they give us multiple opportunities to recalibrate our expectations. Let’s walk through them.

The first reading from Jeremiah is an excerpt from the collection of announcements of salvation in chapters 30-31. Of the three announcements in today’s text, the third, the one about the new covenant, is probably the best known.

Prophecy often blends God’s long-term and short-term intentions—like here. “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts.” That sounds like some sort of spiritual surgery, something that contrasts with continual teaching. Many usually discerning readers have read it this way. Gerhard von Rad in the last century: “in the new covenant the doubtful element of human obedience …drops out completely.” But if that’s the case, whatever we’ve got now, it isn’t the new covenant, as Paul’s instructions to Timothy in our second reading remind us. Better, I think, to hear “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts” as the goal of a rather long process.

It’s no accident, I think, that it’s precisely in this book that we find Jeremiah’s anguished complaints: what is God up to? What does it mean to be the servant of this God? These complaints are, I think, one of our clearest pictures of what putting the law within them, writing it on their hearts looks like.

In studying any text it’s useful to ask how the text was subsequently heard. In the case of this text, what we encounter are individuals and groups claiming that text: yes, this is what we want! So, subsequently in a text that is now part of Isaiah:

Listen to me, you who know righteousness,
you people who have my teaching in your hearts;
do not fear the reproach of others,
and do not be dismayed when they revile you. (Isa 51:7 NRS)

And we encounter this in the Psalter, particularly in Ps 119, a portion of which we read this morning:

Oh, how I love your law!
all the day long it is in my mind.

In other words, God’s people, hearing Jeremiah’s words, understood that their role wasn’t simply passive, and were actively claiming those words, with all the continued reflection that Ps 119 implies.

“I will put my law within them;” “Oh, how I love your law!” In both cases the word in question is tôrâ, which can as properly be translated by ‘instruction’ as by ‘law’. And that points us toward the description of “the sacred writings” in Paul’s letter to Timothy:

“useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.”

And here our, well, addiction to the instant tempts us to hear this text saying we read Scripture once, and, having learned what it says, go on to other issues. The word we’re gliding over is ‘training.’ So in both the Jewish and Christian traditions our engagement with Scripture is ongoing.

The easiest way of unpacking this is to recall Anaïs Nin’s “We don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are.” As God succeeds in healing us, transforming us, changing us, what we see in both Scripture and the world will change, and we have new questions, or new ways of coming at old questions. “What does it mean to live humanly?” Hopefully I keep getting better at answering that question. And, note, the question isn’t answered in the abstract but in my daily choices as I interact with the folk around me. Jesus saves! OK, what does he save me/us from? What does he save me/us for? Hopefully our answers to those questions haven’t ossified!

By the way, this is not a call to stay up-to-date with the current shibboleths of either the left or the right. One of the lovely things about Jesus’ teaching is how he normally cuts diagonally across the entrenched positions. Taxes to Caesar or not? Well, whose head’s on the coin? Stone her or not? Well, who here’s without sin? It takes serious training to even see the diagonals.

Bottom line, God’s work is more interesting, more life-giving, than I can imagine, and God desires that I be increasingly free to appreciate it. (That passion for our freedom is the motor for the training Paul highlights, and is picked up in the chorus of our closing hymn: “Let my people go!”)

So, at the center of what Cranmer was doing in the creation of the Book of Common Prayer in the 16^th century was sketching out a form of parish life so that “everyone who belongs to God” could daily drink from the deep wells of Scripture. Those multiple monastic offices for hearing Scripture and prayer? He reduced them to two so that everyone in the parish could participate—and put them at the beginning of the book.

So while the recovery of the Holy Eucharist as the weekly Sunday celebration was one of the positive gains of the 1979 BCP, that the dirty pages start there is not a sign of parish health. In sum, it’s too easy for us—also the clergy—to assume that we know what we need to know and simply need to get on with it.

“Relief is just a swallow away.” Hard to find a clearer contrast with that than today’s Gospel, with that widow who finally wears down the unjust judge. Jesus is talking about prayer, and his parable assumes a noticeable period of time between when we make our requests and when we receive an answer. The wicked judge is simply no match for this persistent widow. If that judge responds to the widow, how much more will God respond to those who pray!

What is remarkable about the parable is that Jesus is uninterested in defending God’s justice. That’s something Israel periodically wondered about. It’s something the psalms regularly complain about. We wonder and complain about it. Jesus leaves that question on the sidelines and responds pragmatically: be like the widow, keep praying. And this is a classic Old Testament response. Recall Isaiah:

You who remind the LORD,
take no rest,
and give him no rest
until he establishes Jerusalem
and makes it renowned throughout the earth. (Isa 62:6b-7 NRS)

“Be like that widow” isn’t the only take-away from our text; the other is more subtle. There’s an inherent tension between Jesus’ “I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them” and the set-up, the “need to pray always and not to lose heart.” If we experience God acting quickly, then losing heart isn’t an issue. And having introduced the tension, Jesus does nothing to resolve it.

What’s in play here is, I think, the logic of friendship. Each of us is different, and friendship requires accepting that difference, not trying to ignore or remove it. The Bible thinks what we’re invited to is friendship with God. “Thus the LORD used to speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend” (Exod. 33:11). Jesus to the apostles: “I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father” (Jn. 15:15). And from the Wisdom of Solomon: “in every generation she [Wisdom] passes into holy souls and makes them friends of God, and prophets” (7:27). And one of the obvious differences in this friendship is our experience of time. This God does time differently, so part of friendship with this God is living with that difference, a difference that can be periodically profoundly unsettling.

Now, with Paul’s words about Scripture and Jesus’ “be like that widow” we’re looking at the two main elements in Cranmer’s Morning and Evening Prayer, the daily offices. So while this sermon didn’t start out to be an invitation to use these weeks before Advent starts as an opportunity to explore these first hundred or so pages in our prayer book, here we are.

So, two things, briefly. If you work with your smartphone as happily as with the printed page, if you aren’t using it already, check out the Mission St. Clare website whose address is in the bulletin. It has apps for both the iPhone and Android systems that insert the scheduled readings into the various offices automatically, so no page turning! If you prefer the printed page, remember the single-page condensations of the offices on pages 137-140 of the BCP.

Listening regularly to this Friend, talking regularly with this Friend: nothing instant about it, but if we want freedom we’ll make time for it, and, as often as it gets stale, change it up.

Readings

Last week we were in Lamentations, mourning the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonian armies in 586 BC and all that went with it: the destruction of the temple, the sacrament of God’s presence, the end of Davidic rule, the end of what was left of national sovereignty. Today, fast forwarding, we’re with that group of survivors who’d been escorted to Babylon.

Those survivors: so vulnerable to con artists and false prophets. “The Lord’s going to smite Babylon and bring us back this week. Don’t unpack.” And their vulnerability, rather like ours. Recent decades have us going through profound changes: the non-Hispanic white population percentage is shrinking; the Census Bureau estimates it’ll be around 44% in 2060. The path that by-passed college for long-term employment and a secure middle-class life has pretty much disappeared. This has hit men—used to being the breadwinners—particularly hard: David Brooks writes “Men account for close to three out of every four ‘deaths of despair’ — suicide and drug overdoses” (NYT 9/29/2022). Con artists and false prophets who promise a return to an increasingly imaginary past, who stoke our fear of the “other”? Yup, we’re vulnerable.

So Jeremiah’s letter to these exiles—prompted by these false prophets—is one we might want to listen to.

“Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem.” The exiles are still in the hands of the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel. God isn’t AWOL.

“Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce.” They’re (we’re) going to be here for a good while. Unpack. Put down, continue to put down roots.

And equally important: “But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” The temptation’s very strong to hunker down, self-isolate. Centuries later Jesus would pick up this commission: “You are the salt of the earth… You are the light of the world” (Matt. 5:13-14). Seek, pray. We often don’t have the slightest idea what to pray for; the problems seem so intractable. The good news is that God isn’t limited by our imaginations. Rowan Williams has suggested simply holding the problem and God in the same frame: Lord, be present here. “But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”

In situations like this it really helps to have the Exodus as your central story. As today’s psalm put it, “He turned the sea into dry land, / so that they went through the water on foot.” So folk like Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, and, later, Esther, followed this God through the waters. And in such different ways! Daniel and his companions stayed as far away as they could from Gentile food; Esther gave banquets for the king and selected guests. So the Jewish community in Babylon thrived for centuries. The central text for rabbinic Judaism:  the Babylonian Talmud.

In situations like this is really helps to have the new Exodus, Jesus’ cross and resurrection, as your central story. Really hard to defeat someone who doesn’t stay dead. So Jesus’ followers—some of whom are in our calendar—have shown us many ways to seek the welfare of the city. In October we remember folk like Wilfred Genfell, who “built the first hospital of the Labrador Medical Mission in 1893, eventually opening boarding schools, hospital ships, clothing distribution centers, and the Seaman’s Institute at St. John’s, Newfoundland” (Holy Women, Holy Men). Vida Dutton Scudder, who helped found Denison House in Boston to provide social services and education to the local population, and organized unions, and Alfred the Great (9^th Century), who turned back the Danes and sponsored translations of classics in history and theology into English.

Following this God, seeking the welfare of the city: we can empathize with Thomas: “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” And Jesus’ response: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” The way, the truth, the life: the wonder of that is captured in a poem by W. H. Auden:

He is the Way.
Follow him through the Land of Unlikeness;
you will see rare beasts and have unique adventures.
He is the Truth.
Seek him in the kingdom of Anxiety:
you will come to a great city that has expected your return for years.
He is the Life.
Love him in the World of the Flesh:
and at your marriage all its occasions shall dance for joy.

We’ll use that poem for our offertory hymn.

In closing, today’s Gospel provides a lovely P.S. to Jeremiah. Following this God, seeking the welfare of the city: sounds like it could be a pretty lonely quest. And then there’s that unexpected Samaritan, the one of ten lepers who returns to give praise to God. As Elrond said to Frodo as the nine left from Rivendell: “you may find friends upon your way when you least look for it.” Who knows what allies we might discover if we ignore the many voices seeking to divide us?

Readings (Track 1)

This Sunday our readings go in quite different directions, so we’ll look first at Lamentations and then at our Gospel.

Lamentations. Since Pentecost our Old Testament readings have had us listening to the prophets’ warnings: if you continue to turn away from the true God and continue to oppress the vulnerable (who, like you, bear the image of that true God), things will turn out badly. In last week’s reading the Babylonian army had Jerusalem surrounded, and soon after that were inside. But rather than a triumphant “I told you so,” what Scripture gives us are five powerful laments.

If you look at them in the pew Bibles, you’ll notice that chapters 1, 2, 4, and 5 all have 22 verses, and chapter 3, 66 verses. Why? The Hebrew alphabet has 22 letters, so we’ve got five acrostic laments, each verse beginning with the next letter in the alphabet, giving voice to grief from A to Z, and then back again. Chapter 3, the centerpiece, devotes three verses to each letter, so 66 verses total.

Grief over the loss of the beloved city, or—poetry is open-ended—a loved one, or a cherished dream: Lamentations knows that that’s hard work, but necessary work, and work in which there are no short-cuts. It’s part of being human. So, grief from A to Z, and then again, as often as needed.

Mercifully, the Bible doesn’t end with this book. There is an “after,” and the Bible explores what this “after” can look like. I could sketch out this exploration, but that might give the impression that grief is something to be moved past to get to the important part. No: grief is just as important as any other part, and we’ll know when we’re ready to wonder about that “after.”

We never want to be in a situation in which we need that book, but it’s there when and as often as we need it.

Deep breath. Our Gospel reading. Today’s reading comes directly after the rich man and Lazarus story we heard last week. That story was part of Jesus response to the Pharisees. Verse 14 in that chapter: “The Pharisees, who were lovers of money heard all this, and they ridiculed him.”

How do we speak truthfully about the Pharisees? It’s clear from the Gospels that Jesus had much more in common with the Pharisees than he had with the Sadducees, the Herodians, the Zealots, etc. When God looked for someone to spearhead the mission to the Gentiles, God drafted Paul the Pharisee. And, pulling back the camera, we acknowledge with gratitude the beauty and holiness that rabbinic Judaism, child of the Pharisees, has continued to produce over the centuries. What drove Jesus’ opposition to the Pharisees was the twofold recognition that (1) too many of their leaders were not successfully resisting the temptations of power, and simply stuck, and that (2) his own disciples were too often not even recognizing that these were temptations to be resisted! The Gospel accounts of Jesus’ opposition—written decades later—have more to do with the conduct the church leaders should avoid than with what the Pharisees were doing.

So how is Jesus instructing the disciples?

Don’t be the cause of someone else stumbling. You’re responsible for each other.

If another disciple sins, rebuke. If that disciple repents, forgive—as often as necessary.

Following these instructions isn’t a matter of having more faith/trust. As Yoda put it “Try not. Do or do not. There is no try.”

If you’ve followed these instructions, don’t give yourself airs. You’ve just done what needed to be done. (By the way, we don’t want to misuse that “worthless slaves” as a starting point for our self-definition. Jesus is happy to use hyperbole to help us avoid fatal mistakes, as in the prayer that starts “God, I thank you that I am not like other people…” [Lk. 18:11])

OK. Jesus probably doesn’t get the warm-and-fuzzy award for these words. And as we look at these instructions, I think we see that Jesus is envisioning a more cohesive—and, frankly, riskier—community than we often settle for. The “safe” way of doing community is through a general hands-off pact: I’m OK, you’re OK, and we’ll leave it at that. “If another disciple sins, you must rebuke the offender.” But rebuke only works if through experience I know that the person rebuking me is doing so out of concern for me, not as an exercise in one-upmanship. That is, Jesus’ vision of community is of one that’s nurtured over time, not one that comes into being overnight.

A community that’s nurtured over time: that’s also behind “And if the same person sins against you seven times a day, and turns back to you seven times and says, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive.” We’re slow learners. Sometimes my first “I’m sorry” is “I’m sorry I got caught out,” then, later, “I’m sorry that my action didn’t produce the result I intended.” Hopefully I eventually get to “I’m sorry that I even thought that was a good idea.” So seven times a day may be at the low end of the possible scenarios.

Pulling back the camera, how well have we attended to Jesus’ instructions? Too often, not very well, with results that periodically go sideways very publicly, the abuse scandals being simply the latest example. “She weeps bitterly in the night, / with tears on her cheeks…” We have Lamentations also to grieve over these failures.

So why does Jesus even bother? There’s a new world to be created. And God/Jesus, ever hopeful, who prefers to redeem rather than replace, doesn’t choose folk well-suited for the task, but folk like the disciples, folk like you and me, folk like Paul.

Speaking of Paul, what does our second reading contribute to all this? Perhaps this, that Paul really cares that Timothy get it right. It matters to Paul. And so, in a bit, when we pray “joining our voices with Angels and Archangels and with all the company of heaven,” we’re not talking about a crowd that doesn’t care how the game goes, constantly at the concession stands or doing the wave. They care and intercede, and, supported also by their care and intercession, we’ll again go forth to “love and serve the Lord.”

Readings

The Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross: how might we join in this feast’s celebration today?

We might start with that scene at the end of Genesis. Joseph, sold into slavery by his brothers, is now second only to Pharaoh, and he’s been providing for his family in Egypt. But their father Jacob has just died, and the brothers fear that Joseph will now settle some scores. Here’s Joseph’s response:

“Do not be afraid! Am I in the place of God? Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as he is doing today. So have no fear; I myself will provide for you and your little ones” (Gen. 50:19-21).

You intended to do harm; God intended it for good. This is likely one of the primary uses of that divine sovereignty celebrated in our first reading and psalm. Human intentions aren’t the only ones in play. And the Holy Cross is one of the most potent symbols of that. When it came to Jesus, the cross did not accomplish what the Romans and religious authorities intended. For all their use of it, the Romans weren’t even able to control what the cross means—as a visit to any jewelry store will attest.

So, with Joseph “Do not be afraid!” The Holy Cross—what God has done with that cross—just might unsettle our assumptions about what deserves our fear.

But this is perhaps to get ahead of ourselves, as does, I suspect, the collect for today’s feast. “Mercifully grant that we, who glory in the mystery of our redemption, may have grace to take up our cross and follow him…” Well, yes, of course. But moving immediately to “take up our cross and follow him” is perhaps to encourage us to run while we’re still trying to get the hang of walking.

So I really appreciate Paul’s choices about when to speak of the cross in our second reading. The Romans with their endless supply of crosses haven’t gone anywhere. Earlier in the letter he speaks of some of the readers suffering, but that’s not where he speaks of the cross (“Jesus bore his cross; you bear yours.”) Rather, he speaks of it in the context of the conflicts that are normal in communities and parishes: “be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit…” And what he wants them—us—to see is the cross as the expression of Jesus’ “mind,” Jesus’ way of approaching things, Jesus’ way of making decisions. “Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.” That’s Jesus’ “mind,” and the motor for the story Paul retells. Had Jesus looked to his own interests, “equality with God as something to be exploited” would have been just the ticket! But Jesus looks to the interests of others, and so begins a story that bottoms out on the cross, and results in the healing and restoration to which all creation had been invited. From today’s Isaiah reading: “Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth!”

Put differently, we might hear the collect’s “grace to take up our cross and follow him” in dramatic or heroic terms. Paul’s “Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others” reminds us that most of the time looking to the interests of others is where taking up the cross starts. Not at all dramatic or heroic, but perhaps even more difficult given my standing—but never articulated—assumption that my interests, my perspectives really do deserve to be first in line.

“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.” OK, preacher, how does Paul think we’re supposed to do that? Well, three things that we might observe.

First, this “mind…that was in Christ Jesus,” this way, is at once Jesus’ way and our way. “Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others” is not something to file under advanced forms of Christian spirituality for those who are into that sort of thing, but core to our Christian identity. This doesn’t answer the “how” question, but does tell us we’re not dealing with something optional.

Second, elsewhere in the letter Paul reminds his hearers of how Timothy, Epaphroditus, and Paul himself have embodied this way in their dealings with the Christians in Philippi. “I am hard pressed between the two”—writes Paul—”my desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better; but to remain in the flesh is more necessary for you.” The point is to pay attention to the folk in our lives who’ve looked “to the interests of others.” That just might nourish our desire that this way be more central to our identity.

Third, toward the end of the letter we hear “I urge Euodia and I urge Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord. Yes, and I ask you also, my loyal companion, help these women, for they have struggled beside me in the work of the gospel…” (Phil. 4:2-3). This looking to the interests of others—not easy, and we need each other’s support.

Let’s pull the camera back. Joseph: “Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good… So have no fear; I myself will provide for you and your little ones” Jesus, from our reading a few weeks back: “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Lk. 12:32). This “mind…that was in Christ Jesus” rests of Jesus’ trust that God has Jesus’ back—so Jesus can attend to other’s backs. As Paul describes it, it turns out to be a virtuous circle: as I trust that God has my back I’m freer to attend to others’ backs. As I attend to others’ backs, I find it easier to trust that God has mine.

The Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross: an invitation to enter into the mystery of our salvation as captured in Morning Prayer’s collect for Friday:

“Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified: Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord.”

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.

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[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).