Sunday, September 18, 2016
18th Sunday after Pentecost

Listen to the gospel reading and sermon here:

1Then Jesus said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. 2So he summoned him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.’ 3Then the manager said to himself, ‘What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. 4I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.’ 5So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ 6He answered, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.’ 7Then he asked another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He replied, ‘A hundred containers of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill and make it eighty.’ 8And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light. 9And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.
  10“Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. 11If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? 12And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? 13No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.” -Luke 16:1-13  

Parables are notoriously brief, even terse, often intentionally leaving us hanging, wondering, still dwelling in the story. This one, I think, is particularly troubling in not telling us the end of the story. The steward, that is one who manages what is not his own, has not done his job. We’re not sure how or why, whether from ineptitude, laziness, carelessness, or circumstance. But he’s about to lose his job when the owner finds out. Realizing he also hasn’t stewarded his relationships in the community, he calls in some people who owe the owner and cancels some of their debt. 50 jugs of oil here, 20 containers of wheat over there, hoping he’ll fall into their good graces and have a place to land when the owner finishes kicking him out. The owner finds out what the steward has just done and he sits back and chuckles at the scheme and commends him for his shrewdness.

But then what? I can imagine a couple of scenarios. Maybe, just maybe, the commendation of the owner is enough to make him reconsider the pink slip he’s just handed the steward. Has the steward’s shrewdness been enough to save him, to save his livelihood? Or Maybe the owner chuckles, shakes his head at the ingenuity, and kicks him out anyway. And then the question becomes, has he forgiven enough debt that someone will take him in? Has he managed to create a soft landing for himself or is he out of luck? Has he done enough?

I wonder if we could dwell there for a minute, in that place where the parable leaves us wondering. Has the steward done enough? As good Lutherans, you’re probably ready to quote me the verse from Romans that says we are justified by faith and not by works. You’re right. But I have to tell you, we say those words, but we sometimes live as if we are trying to do enough to get in the good graces of someone, anyone, God included.

What is good enough discipleship? Because that’s who Jesus is speaking to in this parable – he pauses in his storytelling to the Pharisees and others who have been heckling him to say these things to his closest followers. Jesus tells this story to teach them something about being disciples. How do we know we’ve followed Jesus well enough? How do we know how the story ends?

When it comes to money and discipleship, it’s clear that we can’t serve God and wealth. But can we be wealthy and serve God? I’d like to think so, but how? What demands does wealth make on our discipleship? When we talk about money in the church it’s all too often about how much money we give to the church, which is important, don’t get me wrong, but if this parable suggests anything it’s that God notices and cares about what we do with all our money and not just what we give to the church. As a disciple of Jesus it matters how we steward the wealth we’ve been given in terms of how much we spend and where, how we manage it in relationship to the needs of the world, and how much power we give it in our lives. Like the people in the prophet’s rebuke in the first reading, we can be quick to pause to take care of our religious obligation while waiting eagerly to get back to the business of making money.

But it’s not just money we hold onto, of course. If we want to make the parable symbolic, which admittedly can be somewhat dangerous territory, we mismanage all kinds of other things. We mismanage the forgiveness we have been granted, failing to extend to others what has been gifted to us. We fail to steward our relationships with the grace, care, and love that we know we ought, squandering the gift of caring one for another. We fail to take seriously the call in the reading from first Timothy to pray generously for all including our leaders, whether we support their political positions or not.

And sometimes, like the steward in the story, something in our life goes awry and we have opportunity to pause and notice that we have not been the kind of steward we ought to be. Something that makes us pause and take stock. To pause and contemplate whether we are living the way in which we would want. But because we’re human, sometimes we mess that up, too. We run around worried about making sure we have a soft place to land instead of owning up to hard changes and fixing what’s gone wrong in our journeys as disciples of Jesus.

And that’s just the trouble. It’s not just that we are broken people who get discipleship and everything else all messed up. It’s that sometimes our attempts to fix it when we realize it are just as messed up as the problem we’re trying to fix. We use the techniques that we’ve learned from the world around us. We use money, power, and control to fight our way out of tough situations that we never should have gotten ourselves into to begin with.

But the beauty of the parable is that it’s not an allegory, where every piece matches something else in the real world. Rather it’s a story that invites us to step inside of it and marvel at its complexity. And if, as we climb into this story, we find a mirror that reminds us of our faults, perhaps we might find here, too, the God whose grace we know and trust.

For who else tells a story about a messed up steward who can’t get himself together, makes more of a mess when he’s confronted about it, and still gets praised by the one whose stuff he’s been managing. So maybe we find here a God who sits back and chuckles with disbelief and admiration at our scheming and conniving, who affectionately ruffles our hair and gives us a hug despite our ridiculousness.

And who else would tell a story about someone who just can’t be bothered with bookkeeping whether of money or power or success, and when confronted about it just starts forgiving what’s owed without regard for cost? Maybe here we find a God who slips us notes of forgiveness for debts we never could have managed to repay. And we didn’t even have to ask for it.

And who else would tell a story where the premise is that even the messed up guy in middle management will be welcomed in when he’s down on his luck, fresh out of a job, and not a penny to his name. Maybe here we find a God who gathers us in, lost, confused, flat broke, and still scheming to get in someone’s good graces.

And maybe here in this convoluted story full of twists and turns we can recognize ourselves as we struggle to figure out what it means to be disciples of Jesus and maybe then we can sit down for a meal, graciously spread before us, pulling up a chair alongside the landowners and the people with debts they can’t pay, beside the messed up stewards and beside Jesus himself, and maybe at this table we can recognize again God’s holding our own convoluted story in tender embrace.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Sunday, September 11, 2016
17th Sunday after Pentecost

1Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to [Jesus.] 2And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
  3So he told them this parable: 4“Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? 5When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. 6And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ 7Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.
  8“Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? 9When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ 10Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” – Luke 15:1-10

Imagine this scenario: A parent loses a child in a crowd. The child was there one minute holding the parent’s hand, the next minute pulled away by the push of people or a delightful distraction, the child is gone. So the parent calmly thinks through multiple options. The parent decides to go to the security desk, but there’s a line. So the parent waits patiently until there is an opportunity to discuss the missing child. The parent then waits patiently until the child is found. At no time does the parent panic or imagine all the worst possible scenarios. No?

Imagine this scenario: A parent loses a child in a crowd. The child was there one minute holding the parent’s hand, the next minute pulled away by the push of people or a delightful distraction, the child is gone. So the parent immediately starts screaming, not screaming for the child but at the child. Ready to punish the child for wandering off, the parent storms around angry that the child could do such a thing. How could they be so thoughtless? The parent imagines all the ways they will try to teach the child a lesson. No?

Not that some people can’t helpfully find calm in emergencies and not that a parent hasn’t ever gotten angry with a child, but it’s hard to imagine either of these scenarios because our image, and perhaps for parents and others who have cared for children your actual experience, is that when a child is lost a parent goes nuts trying to find them. Not calmly, not angrily, but with a desperation born out of deep love and affection. A desperation only to lays eyes on the child again, to lift the child up and carry them home.

But how often have we imagined God to be like the parent in these made-up scenarios? Though perhaps not many of us in this context imagine the angry God out for vengeance, it’s an image the lurks in our cultural understandings not just about religion but about right and wrong and who’s in and who’s out. Perhaps more subtle, but I think much more pervasive is the idea that God just has everything all worked out such that when we go missing, God just calmly puts some plan into action, some calculated part of some larger purpose – a distant God, one who cannot relate to our panic and fear.

But that’s not the image that Jesus presents to the scribes and Pharisees. They are grumbling because Jesus eats with sinners, eats with the people they have decided to condemn, with the people who they think don’t deserve a place at the table, the people about whom God doesn’t get all worked up over when they get lost. So Jesus tells these two stories, three actually, because right after this is the story of a son lost and come home again. And in these stories, the one who is searching is neither calmly distant nor angrily plotting punishment, but desperately seeking reunion with what is lost that all may rejoice together.

The iconic image, of course, is the shepherd story, the lost sheep being returned on the shoulders of the shepherd. But truth is, my favorite of the two is the lost coin. Because there simply is no way to rationally blame the coin for getting lost. It doesn’t even have the capacity to innocently wander off. And no one assumes the coin is waiting, longing, yearning to be found. And truth be told most of us don’t always recognize that we are lost. And we don’t always want to be found either! The one who experiences lostness in that story is the lone, searching widow. It is the searching one who is really lost. Perhaps even in the sheep story the lone sheep has yet to get hungry or be threatened by danger or realize its lostness. For there, too, the searching one is at wit’s end with the loss.

We know that lostness in searching. Losing a child in a crowd is a particular level of panic. But it only takes a misplaced set of keys when we are already running late to send us into a frantic search. And we experience so much worse in our world. We experience the loss of home and community when we move to a new place as students here in town for the first time or as our beloved brother and sister in Christ to whom we bid farewell today as they make a new home in a new place. We sometimes experience the loss of our hopes and dreams, feeling as though we may never get where we wanted to be or that at least the path will look very, very different. Today we commemorate the 15^th anniversary of the September 11^th attacks. We remember first responders who, at much risk to themselves spent days desperately seeking survivors and many more days seeking those who had died. We remember perhaps being glued to the news coverage as we sought answers, sorted out how to respond. We still feel the loss of that day in years of wars begun in the aftermath. Searching for answers, we grieve our own losses – the things we may one day find and the things that can now only be found held in God’s tender embrace. In our searching – our searching for answers, for home, for comfort, for peace – we discover just how lost we really are.

But we are not alone. Because even though we have a God who has won victory over all that brings us loss, even though we have a God who sees the arc of the universe bending toward justice, even though we have a God who holds past, present, and future as one, we have a God who joins us in our lostness. A God who is where we are in the moment – in pain, in longing, in anxiety, fear, anger, hurt, or sadness. And a God who scrambles like a shepherd boldly leaving behind all else for our sake and like a lone widow who turns her house upside down to find us. We have a God who, frankly, goes a little bit crazy to seek us out and bring us home that we might together, and only together, rejoice.

Though through baptism we are forever tethered to God, we have a God who when we experience being lost and adrift comes to find us, sometimes when we haven’t even yet realized we’re lost. We have a God who is so deeply invested in us that all anger and even all rationality flies out the window when we are lost, alone, or afraid, such that there is room only for profound joy and our being scooped up again, held close, and celebrated with a grand feast for everyone, lost and found, and even the ones who started all this with their grumbling. Come, eat at this table, for God is with us now in our searching, in our longing, and in our joy at being found.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

September 4, 2016
16th Sunday after Pentecost

15See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity. 16If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I am commanding you today, by loving the Lordyour God, walking in his ways, and observing his commandments, decrees, and ordinances, then you shall live and become numerous, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to possess. 17But if your heart turns away and you do not hear, but are led astray to bow down to other gods and serve them, 18I declare to you today that you shall perish; you shall not live long in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess. 19I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, 20loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him; for that means life to you and length of days, so that you may live in the land that the Lord swore to give to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. – Deuteronomy 30:15-20

25Now large crowds were traveling with [Jesus;] and he turned and said to them, 26“Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. 27Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. 28For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? 29Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, 30saying, ‘This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.’ 31Or what king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand? 32If he cannot, then, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace. 33So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.” – Luke 14:25-33

See also Philemon 1-21

Listen to today’s sermon here:

            When I was 5, I wanted a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles tabletop hockey game for Christmas. I didn’t watch that much TV, but in the time I was allotted in any given week leading up to Christmas I repeatedly saw the commercials advertising this very special Christmas gift. Everyone in the commercial was having so much fun. I, too, if I got this game for Christmas would be having as much fun as the kids in the commercials. And all my friends would come have just as much fun. My parents knew the fun would be short-lived, but I really wanted it, so they found it for me. And on Christmas I was so excited to start all that fun. But it was a cheap plastic toy that didn’t work that well to begin with and broke soon after I started playing with it. I was devastated. Not so much because the fun was over, but because I had been lied to. They, whoever they were, had promised me happiness. It was an early lesson in truth-in-advertising, and perhaps more importantly a lesson in how stuff doesn’t really make you happy.

And yet, that’s a tiny example of what we all do all the time, isn’t it? We are always longing after things that don’t actually bring us genuine happiness. We inevitably make bad choices that lead to disappointment and brokenness, because someone, somewhere along the way told us those choices would lead to something better.

So in the midst of all our possible choices, our Old Testament reading lays out a simple invitation: I have set before you life and prosperity or death and adversity. Walk in the ways God has laid out for you. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live. It’s meant to be an obvious choice. Life or death? Prosperity or adversity? Well, hmm…let me think about that. Okay, you got me. I choose life.

Except we don’t. I don’t. We confessed at the beginning of worship silently and aloud the choices we make that do not lead to life. With as much eagerness as a 5 year-old yearning for a cheap plastic toy on Christmas, I make choices that were advertised to me as being fulfilling but which I know will not be. I sometimes think that money and stuff will make me happy. I sometimes think that getting my own way will make me happy. When God asks if I want life or death, prosperity or adversity, I say I want life and prosperity but I make choices that bring death and adversity.

We all make those choices. We choose to contribute to the use of fossil fuels even though we know it contributes to climate change because we live in a world that has developed a complete dependence on them even though it is literally killing us and our planet. We make choices which fail to feed and clothe and shelter our neighbors even when we know that people are literally dying because it requires more than we want or feel able to give in the moment. We make up reasons not to share our time and wealth so that others may experience life because we mistakenly think that keeping it to ourselves will give us the life we desperately long for. And we end up disappointed when we do not find the life and prosperity that has been promised to us.

We read today Paul’s letter to Philemon about a slave or servant who has had some kind of disagreement with his master. Because this and other passages have been used over the centuries to justify slavery, we criticize Paul for not bucking the entire social order and calling for an end to the nonsense of owning other people. He does entirely transform what the relationship is between master and servant on account of Christ, but he doesn’t go as far as we want or need him to. Jesus clearly says to follow him give up all your possessions, which surely includes for the God of liberation and freedom any people you are trying to own. And yet we as a society condemn with words but largely accept by our actions the economic injustices that keep some people subservient to others, and we may be vaguely aware that actual slavery still exists in our world and even in our own communities, but we fail to drop everything to do something about it. We make choices that do not bring life and prosperity for the whole community.

So, just “choose life” is easier said than done. And then here comes Jesus. He doesn’t even bother with seductive advertising. He doesn’t paint a picture of how much fun we’ll have as disciples. He just suggests we choose death right off the bat. Pick up your cross and follow me, he says, all the way to the crucifixion. Disregard your father and mother and brothers. Give up all your possessions. No, really. Everything. You can’t win this war. If you’re counting costs, then it costs everything. Won’t you come and join me?

I’m not signing up for that. I know my choices don’t always lead me to deep and lasting satisfaction, joy, and wholeness, but it’s not the cross. It’s not forsaking everything I know for something I can’t imagine. Although I have to admit, there is something intriguing about this all or nothing invitation from Jesus – something intriguing in its absurdity if nothing else.

If we look at what carrying the cross means in Luke’s gospel, so far it has meant releasing people from the circumstances that bind them, inviting the poor and hungry to your banquet tables, bringing healing to those who have been forgotten and isolated. It’s meant teaming up with the most unlikely of people and sending them out with nothing on their backs to preach good news of God come near. Some days I can do it. It isn’t always pretty, and it isn’t always easy, but there are days I choose that life, days I choose the cross for the sake of the world. Days I choose to live in a way that sets others free and which in turn frees me, too.

But even on my best days I’ve failed to entirely transform the prisons that bind us, that bind me. I’ve failed to carry the cross all the way to the end. I have failed to go so far as to give up my life that there might be more abundant life in the world. Like Paul, I’ve suggested ways that Christ’s hold on our lives can transform the social structures we live in, but I’ve failed to upend the structures themselves. I’ll choose life, but only so far as my own life isn’t in question.

But someone does follow this absurd advice all the way to the end. There is someone who chooses life for the world at the expense of his own, who counts the costs and decides that giving up everything is worth it. Jesus picks up what we cannot, gives up everything including his very life. And what we find, is what God has been holding out to us all along – the promise of life even in death. What we discover is God’s power to resurrect us when we follow the way of the cross, when we choose the way that leads to the life of the world even to the point of our own death. But what we also discover is that God has the power to resurrect us even when we choose poorly to begin with, when we choose the things we know will not bring us the life we long for. When we find ourselves dead inside from the choices we’ve made, when our own folly leaves us languishing, when we give in to false promises from the vices that ensnare us, and when our bodies finally fail us, too, what Jesus’ journey to the cross and empty tomb assure us is that God’s resurrection is waiting there for us.

So friends, choose life. Choose the things that genuinely make you feel alive deep in your being. Choose to let go of the things that will keep you and all creation from that sense of being fully alive. But know this, we cannot choose right every time. And it’s in our failure to do so that God will be waiting for us with the life we were seeking all along. Because God has already chosen life for us. Amen.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

 

 

 

 

Sunday, August 28, 2016
15th Sunday after Pentecost 

1On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the sabbath, they were watching him closely.
  7When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable. 8“When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; 9and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, ‘Give this person your place,’ and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. 10But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher’; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. 11For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
  12He 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. 13But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. 14And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” – Luke 14:1, 7-14

Know your place.

Imagine a cold winter day in Milwaukee, though it could be taking place in any number of cities across America. A woman and her two children are standing on the curb with their few possessions in trash bags, having been hauled there by the eviction movers. For those of you reading our book club selection for tomorrow night’s conversation, this may sound familiar. This is not their first eviction or probably their last. She will spend the next days in emergency shelters or crashing on the floor with friends, calling and visiting landlords, until maybe on the 70^th or 80^th try someone will finally give her a chance, because her place is at the bottom of the list. Even though she doesn’t have a home, she knows her place. Her darker skin limits her to the north side, and not the near south side in the Latino community, or the farther south side in the white community. Her eviction record puts her lower on the desirable list. She may or may not have a criminal history that places her above or below others in the housing search. In the upside down world of urban housing her children put her farther down on the list. In the jumble of searching for stability and a home, she will be grateful for any roof over her head regardless of the drug dealing neighbors, the stopped up plumbing, or the non-functioning kitchen. She knows her place – ahead of some, below many others.

But in the many stories of despair in that book, there are stories of hope. There are people who take others in at their own risk, there are agencies that manage to break through the red tape, and cycles of addiction, and sheer bad luck to help someone find a stable home. It’s like over the roar of voices telling them to be satisfied with their place there is a persistent voice trying to drown them out. A voice that sounds a lot like God’s voice, saying, “You have a place at the table.”

A scene from another book I’ve been reading this week, this one a novel but one based in the author’s life experience: It’s the cotton harvest in rural Arkansas. The Korean War is taking place, geographically on the other side of the world, but never far from their minds. It’s hot and dry, rarely a cloud in the sky. Everyone is needed for the sunup to sundown work of picking cotton, but don’t think for a minute that means everyone has equal standing, that people don’t still know their place. No one says it, but everyone knows it – the land-owning white farmers are at the top. Men first then women and children. Then farmers who rent their land. Then the poor migrant workers from the hills are next. The migrant workers from south of the border after them. Everyone is needed to harvest the plants that are the livelihood of them all, and those given the highest position aren’t necessarily the best pickers of cotton, but there are harsh social consequences for those who transgress the boundary of their position in the pecking order. No one has to say it out loud, everyone knows their place.

But even in this ordered social world something breaks through. It’s a small thing, but two of the characters in the book make sure that when food is picked from the garden that everyone in walking distance has enough food to eat, and that when the Sunday dinner of fried chicken and mashed potatoes are served every person, liked or disliked, inivted or not, high or low has a full plate of food. It’s not all that is needed, but God will use what we offer to speak out above all the other voices, God’s persistent cry, “You have a place at the table.”

In a recent New York Times piece and the invited reader responses, people talked about how they came to know their place when they were faced with a disability. One reader writes, “As an adult I became a wheelchair user, and the world changed around me…it surprised me how sitting down and using a mobility aid changed the way others viewed me. I’d gone from being a well-regarded professional to a marginalized and oppressed member of a minority group. When my workplace refused to build an accessible toilet, I had few options available to me…People looked at me differently as though I was not one of them.” Plenty of buildings won’t even allow wheelchair users in the front door, while others relegate them to space in the back row once they get in. Ask anyone who is developing dementia how they get treated differently and given a place on the sidelines. Ask anyone whose illness keeps them from the community in a place apart. Ask an HIV+ person what it’s like to be kept at arm’s length, sometimes literally, when people find out. Ask anyone who has been given a diagnosis of mental illness how often their place in the world is defined by that diagnosis. Sooner or later almost everyone has a disability of some kind even if only for a short time. And spoken or unspoken, people know their place by the way we order everything from our buildings to our institutions to our social interactions.

But the point of the editorial was that it’s long-past time for a pride movement among those with disabilities. The responses described challenges but many described their reclaiming a place among everyone else, stories of demanding a place and finally breaking through. This time the voice of God was on the lips of those who were being shut out – “Everyone has a place at the table.”

As Jesus references some Old Testament wisdom about places of honor at the table, it can sound a little strange to our modern ears. His words are aimed at those with inflated sense of self-importance who need a little dose of reality. And we need to hear that rebuke, all of us at times. But what Jesus ends up describing is a banquet where the low are lifted up and the high are brought low, a theme Luke’s gospel has been explaining since the still-pregnant Mary sang about it in chapter one. In a world where we know our place, whether by class, education, ability, race, sexual orientation or gender identity, age, or anything else, Jesus describes a banquet where the usual order of things is upended and one in which the those experiencing poverty and physical disabilities, the ones forgotten and the ones intentionally ignored are invited as guests of honor. Whatever the world says your place is, Jesus says you have a place at the table.

It’s the same voice that calls us forth from the baptismal waters. The voice you, people of God, echoed for Lucy this morning: “We welcome you into the body of Christ and into the mission we share: join us in giving thanks and praise to God and bearing God’s creative and redeeming word to all the world.” You, Lucy, have a place at the table.

Sometimes that voice comes from the places we least expect it, sometimes it will feel like only a faint whisper over the shouting of the world, sometimes the church fails to be that voice, but God will not stop until everyone is seated: “You have a place at the table.”

And until that happens the voice will also through those same baptismal waters be calling us along with our newest baptized child of God to host just such a table. To continue setting forth the bread and wine to make that feast a reality in our lives. To continue setting this table in order to drive us into the world to set other tables: to invite the people who have no home to find shelter, to stand in places of injustice and demand that the proud and privileged give up their seat, to go out from our banquet halls and sanctuaries and parish halls to find the people who have been kept from the building and the community to make sure they hear that voice, too, that they know something besides the all-too-familiar order of things in this world. Because, wherever you came from, whatever messages you heard from the world about where you belong, whether proud or humble, strong or weak, you, fellow children of God, you have a place at this table. And the feast is ready to begin.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

14th Sunday after Pentecost
August 21, 2016

Listen to today’s sermon here:

10Now [Jesus] was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. 11And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. 12When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” 13When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. 14But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.” 15But the Lord answered him and said, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? 16And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?” 17When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing. – Luke 13:10-17

Eighteen years is a long time. It’s a long time for anything, but especially for a debilitating illness. A long time to feel pain, to worry about one’s body, to wonder whether you have any future at all. We too often write off those who have disabilities and diseases in our own culture, but I dare say it was worse in first century Palestine. For the woman in the gospel reading who has been bent over for these eighteen long years it might as well have been forever.

To her the very idea of Sabbath rest must have seemed a cruel joke. There was no rest from her crippling ailment. There was no rest from the likely poverty that often accompanied long illnesses then and even still today. There was no rest from her isolation, no rest from her pain, no rest from her gaze being fixed down at the earth. There hadn’t been a Sabbath for her in eighteen years. Maybe that’s why she wanders into the synagogue a little late to hang at the back of the crowd, to stand at the fringes wondering if these people have any idea what she is going through.

We, too, have our own long-term ailments, things that have been going on so long that it seems like forever. If not ourselves, I think all of us know someone who lives with a chronic mental or physical illness, or someone who whether in recovery or not lives with a lifelong addiction, or someone who bears a wound of grief that will always be a part of their life. There is no Sabbath rest from that, no day that goes by that it isn’t at least in the back of our minds.

Wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria all part of conflicts going on much longer than eighteen years with no clear end in sight. The rare ceasefires barely constitute a break in killing much less an ease of tension. Israel and Palestine continue their tense relationship that goes back decades, though truth be told it goes back much farther. Not even Mosques on Friday or synagogues on Saturday or churches on Sunday are immune to the violence. We tried for a while in our own country to believe the myth that we were living in a society that had finally dealt with its racism, but we’ve finally been reminded that it hasn’t gone anywhere. Our own racial biases take no Sabbath, and those at the receiving end of those biases get no respite. Hunger and poverty and homelessness do not take a day off even when meal programs and housing authorities do. Many even in our own community labor without a day to rest and still lack the money to make ends meet.

As Christians, I think we live with a certain tension as we gather for worship Sunday after Sunday. We gather to proclaim Sabbath, not just a day of rest from work and a day for religious observance, but we proclaim the possibility of healing, the power of transformation, the end of oppression, the freedom from captivity and the beating of swords into plowshares. But the tension is that while we take a moment to rest in that vision, so many hurting people stand at the edges and call that proclamation into question. If we do not gather for worship, I do not know how else we can stay connected to that message of hope and freedom. But when we worship, we must also acknowledge our long-hurting world and our own deep personal pain, so that this hour together does not ignore the hurt and pain that take no Sabbath rest.

If worship embodied in this local assembly does not connect us to the world, if it does not send us out again for service, if the very real needs of the world are not woven throughout our liturgical practice, then we risk this hour becoming a cruel joke to those who have not seen relief from their suffering in so many years that it seems forever.

This is the essential tension of this gospel story. It would be easy to demonize the synagogue leader for his chastising of Jesus. What kind of person gets cranky at miraculous healing? For a moment, though, let us consider what he’s standing up for. He is standing up for all that the Sabbath means. He’s standing up for maintaining the gift of rest built into their understanding of the created world, that day in the poem of creation in Genesis 1 where God has looked at all things, called them very good, and rests in the glory of it all. This leader sees the Sabbath as the proclamation that the world can once again be very good, whole and at peace. This leader is holding on to the gift that day of rest is to a people who lived under slavery in Egypt, who once worked day after day without a rest. The leader is holding on not to some arcane law but he is there to proclaim the incredible gift that God had invited them into that they might take rest even when they lived as they did again in Jesus’ time under oppression and occupation. And this Sabbath rest, a promise of the Sabbath rest for all creation, is bigger than this one woman and her ailment. To compromise the Sabbath day was perhaps for him to let go of the vision of new life for all the world.

I wonder if this man had simply become so accustomed to speaking of this hope and seeing it unrealized despite their gathering week after week that he failed to make room in his Sabbath observance for God to actually fulfill the promise he was trying so desperately to proclaim. Perhaps he was so accustomed to proclaiming the transformative power of God in religious services and going back to the “real” world where cycles of violence and disease and pain repeat with no Sabbath rest, that he simply could not make room in his mind in this moment for the encounter with Jesus making Sabbath rest where there was none. So focused on the big picture he failed to see God bringing it about before his very eyes.

And so it is that Jesus comes to us. In our gathering of bodies bent over and minds emptied of hope, in our gathering of people who have proclaimed God’s kingdom for so long in a world that has yet to know a true Sabbath full of peace and justice, in our gathering of people who sometimes forget to expect God to change anything at all, Jesus appears and dwells among us. The redeeming one comes to stand in that tension between our hope for a new creation and the reality of the broken ones in our midst. And with Jesus our words and our sometimes empty hopes become something more. Our objections and our disbelief are met by the making of Sabbath rest before our very eyes. And our worship becomes about more than proclaiming hope, more than an imagined reality against some “real” world, it becomes instead God’s making us whole again. In the work we do together as a worshipping assembly, Jesus comes among us and makes us into the beginning of Sabbath rest for the whole world. This hour together isn’t a break from the world’s deep pain but an hour set aside to be transformed again into Sabbath people.

We do not have to believe every word of it. We do not even have to like it. But here in water, bread, and wine, we are transformed, despite the very real pain that continues within and around us, into God’s people, into Sabbath people. And from here God leads us out not just to speak about that coming rest, but to be that very rest for the world. Bent-over ones and skeptics and curmudgeons alike, what God does for us here in this our community’s Sabbath rest, makes us again the people of God, healed, redeemed, restored, and sent again to be God’s hands in healing the world.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Sunday, July 31, 2016

Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-23

Colossians 3:1-11

13Someone in the crowd said to [Jesus,] “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” 14But he said to him, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” 15And he said to them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” 16Then he told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. 17And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ 18Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ 20But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ 21So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.” – Luke 12:13-21

            We spent an inordinate amount of time on our recent trip to Iceland staring down into large holes in the earth. Canyons carved out by rushing water over millennia, craters formed by magma erupting from the earth, steam vents blasting water, mud, and sulfuric gases from far beneath the surface of the earth, valleys created by the pulling apart of tectonic plates. Beautiful, grand, amazing, but to be honest it was a little nerve-wracking to be standing on the edge of them. Signs repeatedly warned us about the dangers of being on the edge of such cavernous places. Everything from wordless signs with stick figures tumbling off a cliff edge to a rather blunt sign that said, “A fall from the cliff edge is fatal.” Don’t worry we approached all dangerous cliff edges with appropriate caution.

In our gospel story, two individuals find themselves at the edge of a great cliff. First the man who asks Jesus a question from the crowd – so estranged from his brother that he calls him out in a crowd of people to demand a share of the inheritance. Divided from his brother by a canyon of resentment and greed. Then in the story Jesus tells as a response, another man finds himself at a dangerous cliff edge. This is a man who is so estranged from his connections with others, so separated from his community that all he can think to do with his abundant harvest is to build bigger barns and store it up for himself. No one to share it with, no one, perhaps, to call to great feast to celebrate God’s generosity. He stares, it seems, into a deep and empty hole in his life and can only think to fill this emptiness with his riches. And that very night he stands at the edge of perhaps the largest abyss there is when his life is demanded of him and he realizes that his desperate attempts to fill the hole with something, with anything, have left him with nothing secure to stand on in the face of death.

We, too, find ourselves sometimes on the edge, sometimes facing a great and dangerous emptiness in our lives. Sometimes we are teetering on the edge of the emptiness left by one who has died. Other times on the edge of starting a new life adventure wondering if we will fly or fall. We stand on either side of a deep divide one from another, wondering how we might make a first treacherous bridge to meet the one from whom we have been estranged, or the one who is different. Our communities pull apart, leaving gaping holes, as it seems our nation is at risk of doing in the midst of a challenging political year. Our own congregation I think feels the rupture of change as we say goodbye this summer to members of our community even as we today and other days welcome new people among us. We come today perhaps to be anointed for healing as we feel the power of the emptiness in our lives or the fracturing of our bodies, our relationships, and our hearts.

We face many options at the edge of these cliffs. One option is to follow in the footsteps of this rich man, to fill up our barns and try to fill the gaps in our lives with our riches, our power, our credentials, our self-importance. It doesn’t go particularly well for this man, nor I think does it usually for us. We can lash out and blame others. There’s been plenty of that – blame placed on people of certain races and religions for terrorist attacks around the globe and for the violence in our own streets. We can lash out at the ones we care about and know are safe, anything to avoid staring down into the emptiness we feel. We can fill the holes with substances or work or sex or other addictions. So many choices we know aren’t healthy for us and yet we make them over and over again.

How is it, then, that we can stand on the edge of so much pain and danger and fear in our world and manage still to be rich toward God? What does that even mean? Here we turn to the wisdom of our other two readings. A well-known line from Ecclesiastes, “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity!” A recognition not that nothing matters but that all our striving, all our attempts to fill the emptiness with things which do not come with us come one day to the edge of an abyss we cannot avoid falling into – ultimate despair, or deep pain, or death itself. And it is then, in the recognition that all our attempts to fill the gaps comes to nothing, that we can truly hear the words of Paul’s letter to the Colossians – you have put on Christ in baptism. Through baptism our lives are hidden in Christ. Having died already, having joined our lives with Christ, we are held by the one who from the cross finds us tumbling into the pit and carries us to life again.

So here we are, dear friends, in a world that feels on the edge, in lives that leave us staring into the emptiness or in which we feel we are falling and wondering what will come of us next. And on the edge of the cliff we hold here a feast. In Christ’s promises to us we find an embarrassment of riches that we celebrate together on Sunday morning. We take a moment together to recognize that abundance, to give thanks for it, to offer a part of our own personal abundance for the life of the community. And then we set those offerings here on this table, where our treasures are shared with everyone until all are fed. We share our cans and boxes of food with those who do not have enough and our money with those who struggle for shelter and who long for community and who yearn for peace. We pray for one another and anoint our heads with oil to remember God’s baptismal promise bringing healing for our gaping wounds and our empty hearts. We sing together to celebrate the embarrassment of riches poured out for us on this table. And in receiving a piece of bread and wine from that treasure we learn again what it means to share abundance with others, and that what it means to be rich toward God is to live out of God’s richness to us and out of the promise that even in the face of the worst we can imagine, we are held by God.

So as we continue to live on the edge we trust that when we find ourselves falling, when our overflowing barns keep us isolated from our neighbors, when our pain causes us to blame or shame or make demands of others, and when our very life is demanded from us the one who established the earth we stand on will be our foundation, and we will find our life held firmly in Christ forever. Amen.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

 

 

 

 

  Sunday, July 17, 2016

38Now as [Jesus and his disciples] went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. 39She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying. 40But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.” 41But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; 42there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.” – Luke 10:38-42

Listen to today’s sermon here:

Oh, Martha.

We know how it feels…to be bustling around in the kitchen with no one to help and no one taking notice. We know how it feels when the cares of the world are channeled into anxious energy. When we keep ourselves busy to keep from being present to things that are outside of our comfort zone. When we bang the pots and pans, run faster than we need to, and make a flurry of activity to passive aggressively indicate to others around us that we need help. No? Just me?

Jesus’ meal at the home of Mary and Martha might very well have been Christmas dinner with my extended family growing up. There are some who consistently do the cleanup work and others who at least many years found respite in the other room. Though complaints were sometimes made about those who weren’t helping, truth is only so many people could be in the kitchen and none of us who were there were about to give up our spot. And though I shouldn’t speak for others I suspect those who weren’t as much in the kitchen were often more present to relationships and keeping company others who were feeling left out. But over the years it became about proving something. Identities became ingrained. The Marthas were the doers and the Marys were too in the moment to be bothered.

Churches, too, like our families, are full of Marys and Marthas. There’s this often-quoted statistic that in a lot of volunteer organizations, especially churches, that 20% of people end up doing 80% of the work. I don’t know how true that is or how you define what the work of the church is in a quantifiable manner. The fact is no matter how healthy a congregation is, people engage at different levels and in different ways and often live out their faith in ways we never see as a community. But what if we paused at that statistic and instead of trying to fix what is we gave thanks for it instead. Thanks for the people who work hard on behalf of the congregation, people who don’t work as visibly but who are drawn to the presence of Jesus in this place and come to participate. Thanks be to God for a community of people who serve with different gifts. A Mary-like pause to recognize the presence of Jesus in our community.

The thing is there’s nothing wrong with hard work. There’s nothing wrong with providing generous hospitality which requires pushing around a few pots and pans and stepping away from some of the good conversations. But when Martha triangulates Jesus into their long-standing sisterly argument about who does more around the house, his suggestion that Mary has chosen the better part is not so much about seated mediation at the feet of Jesus always being better, but that she has found in the present moment the way she might connect with the presence of the divine. Jesus might very well have invited Martha to do the same from the kitchen, to find in her work of hosting the presence of Jesus with her.

Today is not so much about working vs contemplating, nor as many churches have used it about not spending enough time in Bible study or prayer (not that many of us couldn’t probably use more of those). I think it’s about what Abraham and Sarah recognized in the three visitors to their tent – the presence of God visiting us in our homes and in our daily living, in the ordinary things of life, like water, bread and wine.

Like Martha we are much distracted from that presence by the cares of our world. We continue to be overwhelmed by the tragedies we cannot help but grieve for on the news. I wonder that we don’t sometimes keep overly busy because we cannot take in the presence of evil, hurt, and pain in this world. Just in the last month has been Orlando, the killing of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile and others, the retaliatory attack on police, now another major tragedy for France, the third in 18 months, instability in Turkey, violence worsening again in South Sudan and Congo. Add to that our own pain and grief over devastating losses, I wonder if it isn’t easier to channel that energy into busy work or anger against our brothers and sisters, easier to be a Martha in order not to have to bear the pain of that.

This is the time for action in response to a world falling apart, though the world has always been falling apart from the beginning. But to take action without an awareness of the presence of divine love risks our action becoming one more way to set up an us vs. them dividing line. The good vs. bad just like Martha vs. Mary. I think for our action to stand on solid ground, to be productive and helpful, for our action to be capable of being sustained over the long-term and for it to be generous toward our neighbors and ourselves, for it to build connection rather than creating enemies, we must pause before, within, and after our work to recognize what is always true whether we recognize it or not: the presence of the divine in our midst, the way in which Jesus stands among us, the way that God holds us and our worries, holds our friends and our enemies, holds us living and those who have died. Whether we are prone to keeping our hands and feet busy or whether we are capable of finding frequent pauses for meditation and contemplation, Jesus has promised to be present with us through the waters of baptism and through the power of this meal we share.

And because I suspect too many of us have strong Martha tendencies, because we live in a Martha world, because our broken and hurting world needs action that is rooted in a deep awareness of divine love, and because we desperately need a deeper awareness of God’s presence here in this place and with us always, I invite you now into a Mary-like pause, a few moments now to sit at the feet of Jesus before we go on to the hymn of the day, to honor the presence of Christ, our guest at this meal we are about to share. I will offer some guidance that you may follow or not, followed by a time of silence:

Find a comfortable seated position for yourself, perhaps with both feet solidly on the ground that supports you. Close your eyes if you feel comfortable doing so.

Take a moment to become aware of your body. The feel of your back against the pew, the air on your skin, the feel of your clothing.

Bring awareness to your breathing. Notice the movement of your whole body as your lungs fill with air and empty again. You can slow and deepen your breath if that is helpful.

Imagine a place where you feel safe and comfortable. Notice what is around you, how it looks, and feels, and sounds.

Bring an awareness to God’s presence with you in that place. Perhaps you can see it, or hear it, or feel it but trust that it is there.

As you become distracted or worried allow those thoughts to come and see if you want to lay those things down at the feet of Jesus allowing them to be held there until you need to pick them up again.

And hear God’s invitation to stillness and silence in the words of psalm 46:

Be still and know that I am God.

Be still and know that I am.

Be still and know.

Be still.

Be.

[Silence.]

Amen.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

8th Sunday after Pentecost
July 10, 2016

25Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 26He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” 27He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” 28And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.”
  29But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” 30Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. 31Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. 32So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. 34He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. 35The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.’ 36Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” 37He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.” – Luke 10:25-37

Listen to today’s sermon here:

 

Wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

Jesus replied: There are men and women lying dead in the street. Your neighbor is Trayvon Martin. Your neighbor is Michael Brown. Your neighbors are Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, Freddie Gray. Your neighbors are Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. Your neighbor is even Emmet Till, who died many years go, and your neighbors are so many before and since who have been left for dead.

The teacher of the law asked, “Who is my neighbor?” and Jesus honestly didn’t have to finish the story. He could have stopped at the first sentence, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him for half dead.” That’s the answer to the man’s question. The person in need is your neighbor. It’s not that the priest and the Levite and the Samaritan and the robbers on the road aren’t your neighbor. It’s not that all lives don’t matter. It’s that the answer to the question about who is your neighbor is first the person who has been forgotten, who is in need, who is oppressed, ignored, and left for dead. It’s that though it shouldn’t have to be said, we do have to say it: Black Lives Matter and Muslim Lives Matter and Latino Lives Matter.

The rest of the story merely reinforces the point. Jesus drives it home that we all too often find ourselves in the role of the priest and the Levite. When this story is told they are often touted as too preoccupied with religious purity or their own self-importance to do anything about the situation…Maybe… But I was struck in studying this passage with people in the Jewish tradition that no one considered that as a possibility and found the suggestion of it a bit odd. Perhaps instead this priest and Levite are far more like everyday people in our community than we’d like to admit.

It could be that they are simply worn out from helping, overwhelmed by crisis after crisis flooding the news cycle. Maybe they’d already helped someone find housing in the morning, served a meal at the shelter at lunchtime, assisted a lame man make his way along the road, written a donation check to an international sustainable development agency, and were headed to a community meeting in Jerusalem about how to address violence in the streets. In other words, maybe they were doing all the right things that we who are mostly comfortable, well-off people tend to do when we see problems: we address them from within our own comfort zone. We love our neighbor from a place of comfort and safety. And I’m not suggesting we stop doing the kinds of things I just mentioned, because that’s all a part of systemic change.

But I’m uncomfortable hearing this story this morning because more often than I’ve been the Samaritan or even the innkeeper, I’ve been the priest or the Levite. When I first heard about the violence in Orlando several weeks ago while news reports were still unfolding, my first thought was, “Well, another shooting, but this one doesn’t sound that bad.” And I went on with my day. Though it got more emotional as the scope and nature of it became clearer it’s only been a few weeks and it’s already drifted out of consciousness.

When I saw the news about Alton Sterling and Philando Castile I was appalled, and when I saw the violence turned around on police in Dallas by one man in a crowd of peaceful protestors, I was outraged. Sick to my stomach at the videos and the reports and the names and the images. And I thought, “I just don’t know what to do about it.” I shed some tears. And I went on with my day.

When I heard about last Sunday’s bombing in Baghdad that killed 200 people, yes that happened this week, too, I was appalled that anyone would do such a thing, and especially in Ramadan. But it was so far away. What could I do?

I passed someone begging near the entrance ramp to I-91 last Sunday. I had just been to church. I had just heard the love and challenge of the gospel. I had eaten at the table where we proclaim the kingdom of God for everyone. And I averted my eyes and I went on with my day.

Wanting to justify myself, I ask Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” And often to my discomfort Jesus answers over and over again: the people whose lives have ceased to matter to society or at least whose lives are somehow deemed less worthy for their skin color, religion, or economic circumstance. It’s the people who are pulled over for driving while black, the people followed in the store because they are Latino, the people who are mistaken for terrorists because they are Arab or Muslim or both, the people from whom we avert our eyes because we can’t take it all in.

In the parable it’s the Samaritan who is neighbor to this man in the ditch. And Jesus doesn’t just invite, he commands the inquisitive teacher of the law to “Go and do likewise.” It sounds simple enough, but this is not news to the man who wants to feel justified. It is not news to the priest and the Levite. It is not news to me or probably to you, either. But to go and do likewise requires something more than we often give.

What it requires is climbing into the ditch with the wounded man. It means messy hands binding up wounds. It means putting aside what we are busy doing to be neighbor. It means intentionally walking the dangerous road, not to kill the robbers, but to transform the ones in the ditches and to transform the whole community by being neighbor the person who needs it the most. I am still mostly at a loss about exactly what actions to take, but I know that doing something to transform this broken world is going to involve going uncomfortable places, putting other plans on hold, having conversations where we confront our own prejudice, putting whatever power and privilege we have in that ditch alongside the wounded ones where it will be vulnerable to those who wish to rob and destroy and tear down.

Last week’s reading commanded us to go and do this with nothing in our bags to weigh us down. But this story suggests to us the tools we might begin to use in our work water for washing, oil for binding up wounds, bread and wine to restore our bodies hungry for food and our souls hungry for justice. The tools of the Samaritan to heal the man left for dead. The tools the church uses for baptism and healing and Eucharist. Here in this place we are transformed by God’s grace and gifted with the call and the capacity to proclaim the kingdom of God for our neighbors. For all our neighbors. We are here washed and anointed and fed and restored to life. “Go and do likewise,” Jesus says.*

I do not know what the lawyer who asked the question did, but we do know that Jesus followed his own advice. He goes and does likewise. Jesus gets in the ditch with that half dead man. Jesus was in the car dying with Philando. Jesus was held to the ground dying with Alton. Jesus was standing protecting the peaceful protesters and fell to the ground by a sniper’s vengeance. Jesus is weeping with families longing for loved ones murdered. If we are looking for Jesus in this week, we have plenty of places to see him. We are always and every day an Easter people, but today the good news is Christ joining us on the dangerous road and dying with us in despair and dying with all those we’ve named just now and the many more who have gone unnamed. Christ is there bringing the kingdom of God to the place of abandonment and despair, transforming it to be the road to resurrection. And Christ is calling us there. Now, go and do likewise.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

*Credit again goes to Frederick Niedner for his so eloquently stating the connection between the tools of the Samaritan and the tools of the church. Though he is not quoted here, he deserves credit for the essential idea in this paragraph.

7th Sunday after Pentecost
July 3, 2016

Listen to todays sermon here:

1After this the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. 2He said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. 3Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. 4Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road. 5Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house!’ 6And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you. 7Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the laborer deserves to be paid. Do not move about from house to house. 8Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; 9cure the sick who are there, and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ 10But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, 11‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.’ ” 16“Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.”17The seventy returned with joy, saying, “Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!” 18He said to them, “I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning. 19See, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing will hurt you. 20Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” – Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

I tend to overpack. I get better the more I travel, but I still get the largest possible carry-on bag allowed and I get it with the expanding zipper so that I can either smoosh stuff in tighter or squeeze it into an overhead bin. I mean you never know when you might unexpectedly need to be dressed up or you’ll get drenched in a downpour and need an extra set of clothes or you’ll be stuck in an airport for hours on end with nothing to reador whether all the drug stores will suddenly go out of business at your destination and you need to have a full stock of toiletries at the ready. I realized just how much I had packed when on a recent trip the retractable handle on my rollerboard broke on the way to the airport and I had to carry the bag the rest of the trip. I realized lugging this bag through the airport how encumbered I was by my need to be overly prepared.

But I’m beginning to feel like it’s not just extra clothes and books that I need to pack, but perhaps body armor as well. With another airport attack at a major international airport this week, more bombings in Afghanistan, hostages killed in Dhaka, a constant stream of gun violence headlines including one that crossed my Facebook feed this week of a deadly shooting of teen near my old neighborhood in Philadelphia, I’m beginning to feel like I need to be more prepared every time I leave my house, like I need to be ready for the worst.

But into this world of wolves, into an inhospitable, often violent world, Jesus sends his sheep with nothing but the clothes on their back – no purse, no bag, no sandals, no food, no change of clothes, no map, no spare reading material and most certainly no weapons of any kind. 70 unnamed women and men, people who had been following Jesus, at least enough that he thought they were ready to go out as his messengers of the kingdom drawing near. They luckily didn’t have to contend with guns and bombs, but there was threat enough from robbers and dishonest folk on the road. There were plenty of inhospitable people and otherwise unpleasant situations to encounter.

Why? What is Jesus trying to prove? That his followers are fit contestants for one of those TV shows where they drop you in the wilderness with nothing but a match and piece of twine? Or maybe just to teach them some kind of lesson about God’s provision and the futility of their own preparations? Maybe there’s a piece of that at play here. It’s not a bad lesson for us to learn – to travel light, to let go of our real and figurative baggage, to remember that our plans, our efforts, our ingenuity and creativity are not what bring in the kingdom of God. It’s especially a good lesson for those of us in a wealthy nation where we tend to accumulate things around us even when we might try to do otherwise. And if Jesus is teaching a lesson, at least one reasonable application in our current climate is that one thing we don’t need to pack for the kingdom of God is more weapons for the purpose of killing other human beings. Whatever they are, letting go of our deep attachment to the things we think will keep us safe would be a lesson worth learning.

But though good lessons come along the way, Jesus isn’t primarily in my mind a teacher of lessons. Jesus doesn’t instruct us with clever tricks to put us in our place. Instead Jesus is about bringing the kingdom near to the messengers and the towns that welcome them and even the towns that don’t.

If we want to see what Jesus is doing by sending his sheep out empty-handed, perhaps we should take the lead of professor Fred Niedner and look at the stories Jesus tells about people who go on journeys and end up with nothing but the clothes on their back, and here I quote Niedner’s brief retellings of the parables of the prodigal son and the rich man and Lazarus: “like the one about the young man who traveled to the far country carrying his whole inheritance with him. He would never be dependent on anyone. His purse was full! Until it wasn’t, and he ended up with pigs at dinner as companions. Only then, the story says, did that young man ‘come to himself,’ or find himself, and in that moment he knew that somewhere there was still a place he belonged. He had to go back to the arms of his father, even if only as a servant.

“Or we might recall that rich man in another parable found only in Luke, the one who feasted sumptuously every day and dressed in fine linen, who soon enough took that longest of journeys, and found himself with nothing, or nothing but thirst to be more exact. Only then did it dawn on him that he might benefit from actual contact, some face time, with that poor fellow who used to lie on his doorstep back when the two of them dwelled in space and time.”*

The stories Jesus tells are stories about people who only discover the kingdom of God present for them when they have been emptied of everything else. Yet Jesus doesn’t stop at just telling stories about how emptiness brings us into the kingdom, Jesus lives it out. Not that Jesus was traveling with much to begin with, but on this journey to Jerusalem, he will lose his traveling companions, his freedom, the clothes off his back, and in the end his very life. Even to the end Jesus still had something to offer – words of comfort to the women who wailed on the streets, welcome for the criminals hanged with him, and forgiveness for the soldiers who drove the nails. And there at the cross, Jesus says, is the heart of the kingdom of God. Not in the stripping away but in the discovery of who and whose you are apart from everything else. In finding in our utter emptiness, our defenselessness, our pain, our confusion, that we are children of God, an identity that cannot be stripped away.

This isn’t some kind of game that Jesus plays to teach us to live lightly, but an invitation to approach the feast of all creation with open hands and hungry bellies, an invitation to be fed and nourished. We cannot feast and we cannot serve others at the feast if our arms are stuffed full of our baggage. It’s hard to sit down at the table lugging a heavy suitcase filled with our possessions. It’s hard to sit down at the table carrying our hatred for others. It’s hard to sit down at the table laden with armor and weapons and fear of the next terrible act of violence. It’s hard to sit down at the table already filled with the confidence that we have it all figured out already on our own. And what Jesus wants more than anything for these seventy men and women, and for the people they will encounter, and for you and for me is to invite us to the table that we might both feast and serve one another with unencumbered hands. That we might there receive the promise again that names our identity that cannot be stripped away. Come to the table, children of God, the kingdom has come near!

-Pastor Steven Wilco

*These are quoted from materials shared by Professor Frederick Neidner at the Institute of Liturgical Studies, 2016, with additional thanks to his sermon on these texts for inspiring the overall focus of this sermon. 

 

 

Sunday, June 26, 2016
6th Sunday after Pentecost & Worship on the Lawn

51When the days drew near for [Jesus] to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. 52And he sent messengers ahead of him. On their way they entered a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him; 53but they did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem. 54When his disciples James and John saw it, they said, “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” 55But he turned and rebuked them. 56Then they went on to another village.
  57As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” 58And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” 59To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” 60But Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” 61Another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” 62Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” – Luke 9:51-62

Where are we going, Jesus? The call to follow God, God’s appointed leader, or, in the case of today’s gospel reading, the call to follow God’s own son, is found throughout the stories of God’s people. Follow me! But rarely is that invitation followed by clear directions. It would be entirely reasonable to ask where we are going, what we should pack for the journey, how long we’ll be gone, what task we are being asked to do. No one who isn’t absolutely desperate would take a job from someone they just met with no explanation of what it is, where it is, and how it will work. One doesn’t just do that without being really, really desperate. And yet that’s exactly what Jesus asks of the people he meets now that he has set his face toward Jerusalem, set his face towards the cross, to the final trajectory of his own calling.

We know, of course. We know the end of the story. Jesus forgives more sinners, feeds more hungry people, heals more hurting people, and raises more of the dead, until the authorities can’t handle it any more and they crucify him, alone, humiliated, in pain. Yes, he rises again, but it’s an ugly journey. So maybe that’s why I can related to those who have excuses. Because I’ve read the end of Jesus’ story. I know in general terms what following Jesus will eventually mean. And while it sounds very noble, I have a lot of things I’d like to take care of before I go down that road, before I set my face to the cross with Jesus. And I don’t even kid myself into thinking that I’ll run out of excuses. To be honest I don’t know that I’ll every figure out how to give my whole life over to Jesus and to the work of the kingdom.

Soren Kirkegaard said something to the effect that Jesus is looking for followers not admirers – people who will give it all up for the kingdom of God, no questions asked, no looking back. Jesus isn’t building a fan club, but rather a group of people willing to follow all the way to the cross.

And yet, despite the impression today’s readings can give, Jesus isn’t dismissing what happens on earth. One could read the harsh responses from Jesus and Elisha’s literally burning up of his entire way of life as he prepares to follow his call [a reference to the 1st reading: 1 Kings 19:15-16, 19-21]– one could read those as a dismissal of our earthly lives, a condemnation of many of the things we hold dear, a dismissal of the creation that surrounds us today in worship. But this journey to the cross that Jesus has now set to with renewed determination is one that takes many detours to express the kingdom in terms of our everday lives and which pauses repeatedly to care for people in all their physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual need. It’s a journey that engages the world , that intentionally challenges the problems of the day, disrupts the centers of power, and transforms communities. The call to follow, our call to follow is not to some ethereal heaven or to some speedy martyrdom, but to engage the depth of brokenness in our world so deeply that people throw us out of town and fire us from our jobs and ignore us on the street.

My brothers and sisters in Christ, we have been called to follow Jesus through the waters of our baptism. We have been called to follow the way to the cross. I cannot answer the question we began with. I cannot tell you to what Jesus is calling you or where your journey to the cross and to resurrection will lead you. I cannot even tell you where my call to follow will lead me. But I do know we are living in a world with deep pain and deep anxiety. There are many directions a call from Jesus might take us to engage the world.

Maybe your call will resemble that of a group of United Methodist pastors in the Philippines who were harassed and attacked by the authorities for sheltering peaceful protestors being attacked for their request for access to food.

Or maybe your call will resemble that of an Austrian priest who has refused the government permission to continue a fence through their church property, leaving an open way in a barrier meant to keep out refugees crossing the border from Hungary. Maybe your call will demand of you to open space in your own sphere to make a way for the lost and the needy.

Maybe your call to follow will demand of you to put yourself on the line for a solution to the problem of gun violence in the world. There have certainly been people putting themselves out there this week and risking maybe not their lives but their jobs and reputations. Maybe your call to follow will demand you make a sacrifice to counter the xenophobia that has been driving so much political conversation in our own country and notably this week in Great Britain, as well. Maybe your radical hospitality for those in need will jeopardize your own security. Maybe, like several clergy in Massachusetts of late, your call to follow will put your security on the line for the sake of the creation which groans under the weight of our misuse and abuse, an issue that often doesn’t get big news stories, but which looms always under the many other issues we deal with threatening our existence on the planet.

Or maybe it’s something else, some other way you are being called to leave behind the safety and security of what you know to follow Jesus, to live out your baptismal call to journey toward the cross. Maybe it’s as simple as living your faith in all kinds of small ways in the midst of your daily vocation. But in some fashion you are called right now to this kind of following, this engagement of the kingdom of God. God is nudging you, calling your name, asking the nearly impossible of you.

I wish I could say that Jesus doesn’t really mean it. I wish I could say Jesus just wants us to try hard and give it a go and pat ourselves on the back at the end of the day for trying our best. But I think this call is very real and very serious. And yet I don’t know anyone in the history of Christianity who has done it entirely successfully. There have been notable heroes of the faith along the way who have literally died fighting for justice or who have given up family, home, possessions, and security to serve God. But even they haven’t managed every day to follow with the kind of devotion that Jesus is asking of us.

But what I do know is that God keeps issuing the call. Jesus doesn’t give up when person after person fails to be ready to give everything. God doesn’t stop calling us when we only commit a part of ourselves to God. The waters of baptism as much as they call us to leave everything behind and follow also wrap us together with Christ who walks the way ahead of us and with us, who stays connected to us when we lag behind and make excuses. It’s a crazy God we have who asks everything of us, but only after having given God’s very self for us first. So, where are we going? I don’t know, but God has promised that we go there in the company of Jesus and that the end of the journey is resurrection. Thanks be to God.

-Pastor Steven Wilco