22nd Sunday after Pentecost
October 20, 2013

²²The same night he got up and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. ²³He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had. ²⁴Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. ²⁵When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. ²⁶Then he said, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” ²⁷So he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” ²⁸Then the man said, “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.” ²⁹Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him. ³⁰So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.” ³¹The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip. – Genesis 32:22-31

            We’d like to think of Jacob as a great hero of the faith. He is the first, after all, to receive the name of Israel, the name that persists to this day as a name of God’s people. He is one of the great patriarchs of the Bible. But like most heroes of the faith, he’s not all we make him out to be. Let’s recap his story for a moment.

He’s born not first but second, holding on to the heel of his twin brother Esau. He is named Jacob which means literally the one who grabs the heel, but idiomatically it means the one who deceives. He is the smaller of the two, the less adept at the task of hunting and providing. He is the one who deceived his aging father, tricking him with a grand plan to receive the blessing of the firstborn instead of Esau. Then he flees in fear. When he ends up at a well far from home and falls in love with an attractive girl, he follows Rachel home and works for years to earn the right to marry her. After being deceived and overworked by his father-in-law, and after he’s tricked into marrying Rachel’s older sister Leah before he can marry Rachel, he manages to deceive his father-in-law in return, working out a long-term scheme to defraud him of his best property. And then he flees there, too. When we meet Jacob again in today’s story, he is about to face his brother again for the first time since they parted under the threat of murder. Still it seems he is conniving a way to make himself look more sympathetic. Not exactly a hero of the faith, yet clearly the chosen one of God.

Does his story sound familiar? Do you know anyone who has messed up royally in his life? Do you know anyone who let self-interest guide her thoughts and actions? Do you know anyone who has a broken relationship with his own family? How about someone who would rather run away from her problems than turn and face them? Do any of those people you know who remind you of Jacob call themselves Christians? Are any of those people who remind you of Jacob actually yourself at one point or another in your life?

Maybe we haven’t done exactly what Jacob did – his story is what we might call a soap opera today. But I think we can relate to the complexity of his life and the frequent choice between bad and worse options. The desire to have the place of blessing when we see it going to others. The desire to be in a new place free from the problems that plague us in the moment. I think that all of us can find ourselves in Jacob’s story at one time or another. I hope you’ve heard me or someone say before that the characters we like to hold up as heroes from the Bible are often not the perfect people we imagine them to be. But they are called to be the people of God.

And that calling to be the people of God means a call to wrestle. It means a call that pulls those faithful women and men up out of where they were and plants them somewhere new. It means a call that will involve hard choices and difficult questions. It means a call that will draw them into situations way over their heads, like every faithful person called by God before and after them. This encounter that Jacob has in wrestling with this physical manifestation of God is no more difficult or bizarre than the way in which he has already been wrestling with God his whole life. Wrestling with his place in the community of  faith emerging from Abraham’s line and with all that came with it.

I know that some of you already understand this, but I don’t think we can say it enough, that faith is more about wrestling with questions, with engaging a relationship with God and God’s call to us, than it is about doctrines and beliefs. I don’t meet many people who believe every line in the creeds we say every Sunday every time they same them. But I meet a lot of people for whom that statement of faith ties them to a community of people past and present wrestling with who God is and what God calls us to be. A community of faith holding one another through difficulty and mistakes and fearful times.

But sometimes we are afraid to wrestle, scared to make demands of God, to take our open honest feelings to God. Sometimes we are hesitant to insist that God listen to us. Not just our happy joys and our deep concerns, but also our daily frustrations and our moments of weakness, anger, pride, and fear. All those things we try to shoulder on our own. You see, it is mighty difficult to wrestle with God or to pound relentlessly on the door like the widow if your hands are still trying to hold all those things yourself. It is hard to engage in that struggle when we try to bear even the little things we hold onto in our lives.

But even when we are able to free ourselves for the struggle, we do not walk away unscathed. When Jacob wrestles, he is struck in the hip. He is marked by God, perhaps for the rest of his life. With every step he will be reminded of what it means to wrestle with God. With every step he will bear the visible mark of the one who has loved him through all his errors, through all his striving, through all his hurts and disappointments, through all the trials that still lie ahead, marked with the reminder that he is one who wrestles with God.

But Jacob does not leave with only a limp because he demands from the wrestling a blessing. And the blessing that he is given comes with a new name. A name that wipes clean all the dark past that lies behind him. His first name described his struggling from his very birth – the one who grabs the heel. His new name does not change who Jacob is, but it gives him a name that communicates not his own weakness but God’s power. Jacob becomes Israel – one who prevails with God – a name that puts him in constant relationship with the one who struggles with him.

Jacob isn’t the perfect hero. And neither are most of the Biblical characters. Jacob’s renaming is a reminder for him and for us that the real hero of Jacob’s story and your story is the one with whom we wrestle. The hero is the one who has the power to call us, name us, bless us, and struggle alongside us.

For you have been called, and marked, and blessed and sent to be the people of God. You have been washed by the waters of baptism and marked with the cross of Christ forever. You have been given new names as the children of God and welcomed into the struggle. May you, like Jacob, come to know even more fully this one with whom we wrestle, that you might continue to live more deeply in the wonder and grace of that intimate relationship with God.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

 

Sermon for October 13, 2013

¹¹On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. ¹²As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, ¹³they called out, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” ¹⁴When he saw them, he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were made clean. ¹⁵Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. ¹⁶He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. ¹⁷Then Jesus asked, “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? ¹⁸Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” ¹⁹Then he said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.” – Luke 17:11-19

I’ll be honest. I don’t like this passage very much. Something just doesn’t sit right with me about it. And it’s because it feels like more of a moral tale than the kind of kingdom of God story that Luke has been so fond of in our lectionary readings of late. As hard as the kingdom of God stories can be, there’s a kind of excitement there. A hope of things that could be different.

But we tend to read this story as some kind of finger wagging. Be like the one and not like the other nine. Don’t forget to say please and thank you. Don’t forget to come back to God every once in while. Don’t be like those people who clearly weren’t raised with proper manners. Jesus likes those who come back and say thank you. As if maybe Jesus will move you up in line if you remember to come back. An extra jewel in your heavenly crown, whatever exactly that means.

And maybe I’m uncomfortable because I know I need that reminder. I know that I am not as grateful as I ought to be for all the blessings in my life. Every day there are things I take for granted. Sure sometimes I’m overwhelmed in a good way by some of them. And I pause and give thanks. But probably it’s a lot less than one out of ten times that I stop  and give thanks when I ought to. It’s probably less than 10 percent of the time that I am as aware as that one Samaritan of what it is that God has done for me. So we could end this sermon right here with a reminder to be thankful.

But I’m not sure I’m willing to leave the story there. And maybe it has to do with the little detail in this story about where this one man who gives thanks comes from. Luke writes his gospel in the midst of an ongoing church struggle to figure out who is accepted and who isn’t. He tells several stories about Samaritans, these people considered second class at best for their different way of worshipping, for their cultural and historical differences. In all of these stories, this included, Luke seems to be reminding us that it’s often the outsider who gets it first. It’s this man who is doubly an outsider, ostracized for his cultural-religious heritage first and his leprosy second. It’s that one who comes back to give thanks.

You see, it’s often the outsiders who are most aware of what there is to celebrate. Newly naturalized citizens of this country, take the rights and responsibilities of citizenship a lot more seriously than the average person born into citizenship here. New converts, no matter the religion, are usually among the most zealous of followers. Every time a new state extends marriage rights to same-gender couples, people line up in droves to take a legal step that had been previously denied them, often celebrating in the midst of long lines. At our own denomination’s recent installation of our first female presiding bishop, the celebration was visibly more than just the celebration of an individual called to that office. It was a celebration of all the pioneers who made breaking that glass ceiling possible.

So I wonder if some of the reason that we forget so often to give thanks is that we forget so often that we were once outsiders who have been brought in. Sometimes we miss the power of what God is doing to restore us over and over again. We miss that we are the Samaritans, the ones not worthy to be called inside. Yet Jesus calls to us and welcomes us in.

And it’s easy because there is so much that stands in the way. Our government is caught in a political battle that leaves innocent people hanging in the balance. People continue to abuse the earth despite ever-rising concern about the effects of our actions on our world. People are sick and dying all around us. Or we’re just caught up in being busy with lives filled with schedules and meetings and responsibilities.

Perhaps that’s what was on the minds of the other 9. They were, after all, only doing as they were told, going to demonstrate their newfound ritual cleanness in order to jump back into daily life that they had been missing for so long. Perhaps as their skin cleared on their walk to the temple, they begin to imagine all the wonderful things they had been missing. A good home cooked meal, the job they used to dread but have come to miss, all the things they would get to do again. Things that would be life-giving and God-pleasing. And well they should. But already they had leapt over the dividing wall from outsider to insider. Already they were in the midst of their daily lives again before they had even begun. They forgot to stop and celebrate what was happening. They forgot to pause and live in the moment.

I don’t know what made it different for the Samaritan, whether it was his status as a double-outsider, or whether it was a personality predisposed to contemplation, or if he just didn’t get caught up in the crowd and their excitement. But something stopped him in his tracks to help him revel in what it was that was happening to him. Something at least for moment made him realize an opportunity for relationship with Jesus apart from all that he could now go and do.

And that’s what God wants for us – the kind of wonderful recognition that for all we try to do things to please ourselves and each other and God, for all we try to be and do, we are loved and cherished by God every moment just as we are. Insider or outsider, sick or well, we are blessed by the healing relationship that God extends to us. We are called out of our corners and our isolation to be cleansed and set free. And 9 times out of ten or more we leap ahead without even realizing it. And perhaps God smiles and watches us leap.

But hear also the invitation that whenever blessings come as they surely will, we are invited to celebrate with God. And to help us we come here to remind one another of what it is that is really going on. We come to the table in worship with a dialogue. I say to you, “Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.” And you say, “It is right to give our thanks and praise.” We remind each other to pause and give thanks, and whether we feel much like it or not we pray and sing together in thanksgiving. We remind each other of the ways in which the bread and wine we are about to receive are an incredible gift to heal us, to set us free, and to make us part of the community again. Thanks be to God!

-Pastor Steven Wilco

⁷And war broke out in heaven; Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. The dragon and his angels fought back, ⁸but they were defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. ⁹The great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.
¹⁰Then I heard a loud voice in heaven, proclaiming,
“Now have come the salvation and the power
and the kingdom of our God
and the authority of his Messiah,
for the accuser of our comrades has been thrown down,
who accuses them day and night before our God.
¹¹But they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb
and by the word of their testimony,
for they did not cling to life even in the face of death.
¹²Rejoice then, you heavens
and those who dwell in them!
But woe to the earth and the sea,
for the devil has come down to you
with great wrath,
because he knows that his time is short!” – Revelation 12:7-12

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 10:17-20

When I say angel, I’m going to guess that most of us, even if we second guess it later, imagine first a human-like figure, dressed in white, glowing in a radiant light, probably with wings. Maybe you imagine Della Reese or Roma Downey from the 90’s TV show Touched by an Angel. Maybe you thought of the one time of year we spend a lot of time on angels, as we sing Christmas hymn after Christmas hymn that reference either the angel Gabriel’s appearance to Mary or the heavenly chorus that appeared to the shepherds. Maybe you thought of a cute cherub with wings. I think most of us, myself included, either avoid thinking much about angels at all because they don’t fit with our rational worldview or we sentimentalize angels, domesticating them to be sweet and comforting helpers. We don’t mention them much in the church outside of those few well-known stories and our Christmas pageants.

But the biblical witness we read on this festival of Michael and All Angels paints a slightly different view than the one most of us call to mind. The angel who appears to Daniel starts with the words that begin most angelic announcements: Fear not! We’re so used to that expression that we read over it quickly as if it is mere punctuation. But it seems that the angels are in fact terrifying to behold. The rare biblical description of angelic figures tends to sound a bit grotesque. They are fear-inspiring creatures with immense power, far outside our realm of the usual and ordinary. Not the kind of image you’re likely to see on a Hallmark card.

And in Revelation the archangel Michael defeats Satan and the powers of evil in a cosmic throwdown of epic proportions. According to this account, angels are beings who wrestle with the kind of evil that breaks into our world in ways that leave us powerless and speechless. And they win hands down. Powerful creatures! But if I’m honest, if I have to think about angels, I’m more comfortable with the familiar pictures of guardian angels and comforting cherubs.

We’ve done a good job in popular culture domesticating angels to our purposes. But this is nothing new. In Luke’s gospel, 70 followers of Jesus have been sent out, and when they return they are in awe of the power that Jesus has given them – “Even the demons submit in your name!” they say.  They give the credit to Jesus, but you get the impression they think they’ve managed to tame a realm of spiritual forces that is well beyond their understanding, harnessing the power of something they don’t even fully understand. Jesus smiles, and chuckles, as I think Jesus so often does, and tells them congratulations, but rejoice not that you have done this, but that God has already defeated the powers of evil in the world. In other words, rejoice that the things that are beyond your control are already taken care of.

I wonder if the power in our observing this festival of Michael and All Angels in the church is in the recognition of that which is beyond our control. So much of our time I think we try to domesticate not only angels, but God. We ask God for what we want, when we want it, the way we want it, expecting that as long as it’s a reasonable, God-fearing request, like health, safety, or even world peace that God will surely oblige. We often expect that our worship will comfort us, encourage us in what we already do, and confirm what we know to be true already, when sometimes what it does is make us unsettled and uncomfortable. We spend time and energy maintaining the institution of the church as it exists in current form fearful of how it might be changing. It’s human nature that we want to keep things in a nice neat box. Relegating God to the realm of sweet and comforting angels.

And that works for a while, because we manage to put boxes around other things in our world, too. We try to domesticate evil in our world by seeking to legislate it away, or by locking away in prisons people who commit evil acts, hoping that will solve the problem. We try to use our power and force to eliminate threats to national and international peace, as if we can tame world conflicts. That’s not to say we shouldn’t act for peace, but sometimes we forget our power is limited. We treat poverty as something we can alleviate with the occasional donation and afternoon of volunteering, because confronting the systemic problems in which we participate is more than we can wrap our minds around. Some of us try to plan and prepare for every emergency, to prevent anything that will pull us out of our comfortable space. But then we are confronted with evil greater than we have imagined before and we are stopped short, with problems we cannot solve, with a world that asks more of us than we know how to give, with burdens too hard to bear. The sweet, contained way we think of God works until we have to confront the unthinkable, until we come face to face in one way or another with evil, pain, and ultimately death, things beyond our control.

Then we, like the disciples, are forced to trust not in our own power but in the power of the one who has destroyed death. The power of forces beyond us that we cannot even name or depict, much less control. The power of the archangels who threw Satan down forever. We call out for divine intervention. Whether we call on God with the names of the angels or in some other form, we seek the sure and certain power of God they represent for us. We pray words like this extended prayer by Br. Andrew Colquhoun, using the Biblical names of the archangels to call forth God’s power and might:

“Michael, Archangel, we need you!  We need your righteous sword that will cast down injustice and war-mongering. Defy tyrants.  Stand in darkened rooms where children are [abused] and protect them. Raise your hand against [abusers] and bullies. Give power to the weak; strength to the afflicted.

“Gabriel, Archangel, who stood before the Maiden and announced a Savior, speak again!  Speak of the One who comes to dark and empty places in the human soul. Call us back! Proclaim the freeing Word that gives hope to the hopeless and joy to the mourners. Announce the coming of the One who restores and makes new.

“Raphael, Archangel, spread healing in famine ridden Africa and in Asia; and in our military hospitals, in half-way houses, and under the bridges where homeless people shelter. Fight for an end to endemic illnesses; bring nourishment to the people starving needlessly. Teach us to spend our resources on life not on death.

“Uriel, Archangel, you stand in God’s Presence where there is only Light.  Shine Light in our darkness.  This world is subsumed by the darkness of greed in business, in government.  Light must shine on the needs of the poor; on prisoners and addicts.”

The terrible things named in this prayer are beyond our human power to face on our own. They are not solved by our dependence on sweet and comforting spirituality. They cannot be rationalized away. And so we call out in terrible distress to a God who promises that the powers of this world have long since been defeated.

But when we call out, we ought to be prepared. Because in the Bible when angels appear, we know they induce fear. They call us to tasks that seem beyond what we are capable of. They lead us into places we might rather not go. They embolden us to join in the powerful work of God in this world. And yet they are also emissaries of the one who has promised us the defeat of evil once and for all, the one who has promised us life even in death, the one who speaks to us here and who comes to us in bread and wine in a meal that transforms us and the whole world with us as we sing Holy, holy, holy, along with angels and archangels and all the whole company of heaven. Amen.

Then 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.
¹⁰Whoever 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

Click play to hear Sunday’s sermon on this text:

Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. ²And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
³So he told them this parable: ⁴Which 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.
⁸Or 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

Have you ever seen the signs at large events or in large stores for “Lost Parents”? The traditional way to phrase that would be “lost children.” But I’ve seen more and more that put the emphasis on the parent being lost. Though it might more often happen that parents come there looking for children, children can come to that spot and someone will help them search for their lost parent. And let’s be honest, a parent that has turned around only for a second but has lost track of their child in a public place is feeling pretty lost. At least some children at certain ages are perfectly confident knowing where they are. They are not, in their minds lost. Whether it’s a young child who has found her way to the toy aisle in a store, happily playing with what she’s found or a teenager who’s taken the car keys and is happily out with friends, the young person is not feeling lost. But the parent desperately searching for that child, imagining all the worst possibilities, they are feeling pretty distraught. It’s really the lost parent.

And like any good parable, it’s worth flipping the title of the well-known parables we read today. What if instead of the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin, this was the parable of the lost shepherd and the lost woman. I think the titles work. For one thing, the sheep, though it might at some point realize it is lost, probably mindlessly and quite contentedly wandered away from the herd to follow a good patch of grass. And that lost coin? It certainly doesn’t know it’s lost and it didn’t do anything to lose itself. And it doesn’t know it’s been found either. It’s the one searching that’s feeling lost. The shepherd has such great love for the sheep that he’s gone crazy. The woman is so distraught she’ll do anything to find that coin.

Who among you, Jesus asks, if you had 99 sheep and lost one, would leave the others alone … in the wilderness vulnerable and at risk, just to find the lost one. Anyone? No. I thought not. The sensible logical thing to do is to calculate your odds, write off the one, and keep a closer eye on the 99. It’s just bad investment strategy to go off for the lost one. Now the, woman, is a little more sensible, I think. The coins aren’t going anywhere while she looks for the lost one. Who hasn’t turned the house upside down looking for something lost? But you know she’s gone crazy when she starts calling all of her friends, waking them up in the middle of the night to rejoice in a finding a lost coin. Maybe she even spends the very coin she spent hours looking to throw a party in sheer celebration. She’s lost her mind.

And that’s what Jesus tells his listeners, the religious leaders who are incensed by his eating with sinners. That’s how Jesus responds to the criticism by the ones who understand themselves to be righteous – the in-crowd, the goody-two shoes group, the 99 sheep who didn’t wander off in the first place. They are grumbling because Jesus is being ridiculous, eating with sinners – the bad crowd, the sheep who can’t seem to stay put when they’re told. Now Jesus could deny that it’s ridiculous, but why bother. Because it is ridiculous! Jesus laughs and tells them these parables. He says in response to their criticism, “You’re right, I am ridiculous! Isn’t it hilariously wonderful?!”

But, when we hear these parables, I don’t think most of us initially react to the absolute absurdity of them. What I think most of us react to most is the joy of finding and being found. We recall the image many of us have seen hundreds of times of Jesus the shepherd with the lost sheep around his neck, and we imagine ourselves held by the one who came to seek us out. But it’s not just a warm fuzzy feeling that Jesus intends to communicate here. Jesus is disarming the Pharisees’ calculated concerns about who ought to eat with whom by focusing on the finding and being found. Now I imagine some of them were still stuck. And at times we are, too. Sometimes we hear these parables as one of the 99 sheep who get left alone, left out when God goes running out after the lost. Hey, what about me?

We are a nation, in general, that wants to take care of ourselves and our group first and the lost and the vulnerable second. When we see God going off after the lost we worry about our own security. We worry about our jobs, and our taxes, and our security. Now all those things need to be considered, but I think even the best of us, no matter how much we try to live as people concerned about our neighbors react most strongly to protect our own. Our heads say all people are equal. Our hearts sometimes are willing to let one wander off as long as it’s not one of our own, to let Syrian lives, or Somalian lives, or Iraqi lives be lost without the same emotional connection as if just one of our own people’s lives is lost. It’s natural. We all need and want God’s love and attention. We all want the attention of that lost parent who comes wildly searching for us, embracing us with sheer joy at being found again. And sometimes we resent when it seems that the focus shifts to the lost, if the focus turns to the outsider, to people who aren’t us. Because frankly, it’s a little ridiculous.

But that’s the kind of God we have. The kind of God who promises that if we’re the one who gets lost, that we are never out of reach of the one who seeks us out. We are never left for dead, written off, or forgotten about. The kind of God who promises that the 99 are okay even when it doesn’t feel like it. The kind of God who knows that sometimes it takes witnessing the desperate parent and the return of the lost one for us to begin to identify the lost places in ourselves, so that we, too, will know the joy of being found.

Jesus tells us in these two short parables that God chooses not to be God without us. You see, there are no consequences for God if one of us gets lost. That is, God is unlike the shepherd who will be held accountable for the lost sheep. God is unlike the woman who is one coin poorer if she doesn’t find the lost one. God is still God if we get lost. But God chooses not to stop finding us and carrying us back. God refuses to stop celebrating now matter how many times we have to be brought back. God is that lost parent who has gone completely and utterly out of her mind with grief, searching for her child.

And God’s utter ridiculousness frees us to be a little ridiculous, too. It frees us to go off on wild goose chases to help the lost know the joy of returning to the fold. It frees us to celebrate with wild abandon at the joy of finding and being found. It frees us to be risk takers, because we know that when we wander off the path we’ll be brought back. It frees us to be people who aren’t afraid to eat with sinners. It frees us to say bold and eccentric things, like grace is free for everyone. Period. And things like God loves everybody, no exceptions. It frees us to be people who rejoice fully at the small moments. And it frees us to enter the banquet tables set before us. A feast more lavish than the cost of the coin that once was lost but now is found. Hosted by a God more generous than we merit or deserve. The lost are found – come and feast!

-Pastor Steven Wilco

 

 

¹⁰Now he 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

In today’s gospel text we have several people who are bent out of shape. The woman who has been crippled by an ailment of 18 years has been bent over that whole time. But when Jesus heals her on the Sabbath, it’s the synagogue leader who gets all bent out of shape. But then, it isn’t surprising is it? Don’t we live in a world where lots of people are bent physically or emotionally as a result of disease or trauma? Don’t we live in a world with communities and nations seemingly permanently bent on violence? Don’t we live in a world where people get bent out of shape over things healing on the Sabbath? Haven’t you caught yourself worrying more about rules for yourself and others than looking for the grace of God burst in on the broken and hurting?

Into all of this Jesus bursts in. This woman, whatever her story, appears at the edge of the crowd in the synagogue and Jesus interrupts himself to call her over and unbind her from her ailment. She is set free after 18 years! She had probably long since resigned herself to life being like that permanently. But all of a sudden she can stand up straight! I’m guessing that her joyful response even included some dancing!

Jesus does just that in our lives every week when we gather to worship. In bread and wine, word and song, Jesus interrupts our assumptions about the world giving us room for hope and possibility where we had been too bent out of shape to see it. Where have you witnessed God’s amazing grace burst in to give you hope and turn your hobbling into dancing?

-Pastor Steven

¹³Someone in the crowd said to him, “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

This Gospel reading is about a man who has so much grain that he must build bigger barns to hold it. However, it seems that somewhere along the way this man missed something very important. He missed that the goal in life wasn’t to get the most stuff.

We struggle with this all the time. We like stuff, most of us. Most of us wouldn’t turn down a higher salary or a bonus check. Most of us in this country wouldn’t give up our pensions or 401k’s in an attempt to live more fully in the moment. There’s nothing wrong with stuff – though sharing always makes stuff better and more enjoyable.

The problem is that sometimes our stuff starts to control us. When God comes to the man in the parable he says, “Tonight your life is being demanded of you.” While he probably means that this is it – you’re going to die and someone else will have your stuff. But what if we thought about the question in another way? What if it’s God pointing out to him that his focus on wealth was demanding his life away from him. Our wealth or lack thereof easily starts to command too much from us. Our time, attention, and energy pour into dealing with money.

So what’s in your barn? What is the thing that wakes you up at night demanding your life from you? Whatever that thing is, Jesus is coming to set us free from it. We can and should work in our lives to share more and to loosen the power that things like money, success, and pride have on our lives. But what Jesus ultimately says is that he is stronger than any of those things that try to grab ahold of our lives. Nothing can interfere with the claim God makes on us as children of God.

He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” ²He said to them, “When you pray, say:
Father, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
³Give us each day our daily bread.
⁴And forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
And do not bring us to the time of trial.”
⁵And he said to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; ⁶for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.’ ⁷And he answers from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.’ ⁸I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs.
⁹So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. ¹⁰For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. ¹¹Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? ¹²Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? ¹³If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” -Luke 11:1-13

Today’s readings are all about prayer. It’s supposed to be a wonderful gift from God. An opportunity to be in conversation with God anytime, anywhere. We’re supposed to feel free to take our whole lives, the good and the bad, to God. And yet, most of what I hear from people is their worry that they don’t know how to pray or that their prayer life is somehow inadequate in their own eyes.

We’re in good company. Jesus’ disciples ask him how they should pray. I think they wanted very simple instructions, a basic how-to video with 5 easy steps. What they got instead was what we now call the Lord’s Prayer. It’s a prayer that is way bigger than any of us can really grab ahold of. In this prayer we give up our own will in favor of what God wants (who is really ready to do that most days?). In this prayer we ask only for what we need today (not a little extra for tomorrow or with worry about yesterday, and not necessarily for what we want). In this prayer we acknowledge that we need God to deliver us from ourselves and from the world that is beyond our control (and some of us don’t do well with things beyond our control).

It’s a big prayer and it can make us feel small in comparison. It’s kind of like being a child trying on a father’s suit. We do it because we want to live into the life that we see modeled for us. And yet, we still have some growing to do to fit into it. But in the first line of the prayer that Jesus teaches us we pray “Our Father in heaven…” In those few words we are reminded that God claims us as daughters and sons through baptism. It is by the love of the Father, who loves us even (or especially) when we try on this challenging prayer, when we fumble around learning what it means to live a life of faith in conversation with God. Jesus’ command isn’t to get it right, but simply to do it. An invitation to be in conversation with God, boldly, earnestly, but also playfully and freely. Thanks be to God!

³⁸Now as they 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

Are you a Martha or a Mary? The story of these two sisters has been made popular in our culture because it presents two ways of living in the world – busy doing or sitting and being. Our culture tends to value those who accomplish much, who keep busy and fill their lives with all manner of jobs and roles. Yet Jesus points us back to Mary’s quiet listening, points us back to a focus on God.

One could just say that Jesus wants us all to be like Mary. But he doesn’t say that either. While he calls Martha back to a recognition of what her work is all about, he doesn’t insist that she sit at his feet. I can easily imagine Martha’s busyness shifting so that as she performs the necessary tasks of a host that she is mindful of the one for whom she performs those tasks.

The power of this story is that Jesus is a guest in their home. He sits in their living room, eating their food off of their everyday plates. Mary, having noticed the incredible gift of Jesus presence, sits to take it in. Maybe Martha is more comfortable being busy, but Jesus invites her to see the way in which Jesus is with her in her everyday life.

And Jesus has promised to be with us in our everyday lives, too. So my invitation to the congregation this week is to stop sometime this week as you do a mundane task like washing dishes or doing the laundry, and ask yourself, “Where can I see God in this?” It might be hard to answer, and the answer might just be that you become aware of God’s presence with you as you do what needs to be done. But perhaps the question itself can begin to transform our awareness to see Christ at the center of all things, permeating our life every day.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

6th Sunday after Pentecost
A quick reflection based on this week’s sermon:

⁵¹When the days drew near for him 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

 

Have you ever tried to follow someone through city traffic? No matter how hard you try, it’s easy to get separated, confused, and lost. Following Jesus is the same way. We can’t physically see Jesus leading us, and sometimes we fall short of our call to be followers of Jesus. In this passage there are three would-be followers of Jesus, two who volunteer and one whom Jesus calls. But instead of a warm welcome, each receives instead a warning about how challenging it is to follow Jesus. However, lest we despair, the context of these conversations is that Jesus is headed to Jerusalem. In spite of (because of?) the fact that we cannot follow, Jesus instead follows us – follows us into our humanity, our sufferings, and even our death. Rather than condemning us for our inability to keep up, Jesus comes to find us, giving himself for us that we might never again fall behind to be lost and confused. The passage is a good reminder for us that following Jesus isn’t easy. It is a wonderful and challenging task to be followers of Jesus. It’s worth facing the hard stuff and our inevitable failure, because walking the way of Jesus is a life-filled, grace-filled way of abundant blessing. And Jesus promises never to leave us behind!

Can you remember a time you weren’t able to follow Jesus in the way you wanted to? Can you remember a time you felt comforted and welcomed back after falling away?

-Pastor Steven Wilco