May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)
SEASON: Pentecost 17
PROPER: 21 C
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: September 27, 1998
TEXT: Luke16:19-31 - Parable of The Richman & Lazarus
ISSUE: There are two possible considerations of this Parable of the Richman (Dives) and Lazarus. One aspect deals with the insensitivity of the Richman to those in need around him. He can never quite get what it means to care for the suffering, other than the crumbs of bread that are thrown out the window. It is also a parable about an abundant grace of God. The poor Lazarus has no merit of his own. He is the fallen. He is his society's outcast. He is even thought to be the cursed of God. Out of no merit of his own, Lazarus is lifted up into the bosom of Abraham. Like Christ, he is the one who suffers and through faith is lifted up. The richman goes on manipulating and struggling for success. He can't get it, any more than his brothers will if someone goes to them from the dead.. It is in seeing ourselves as Lazarus, fallen humanity, do we recognize through faith our need of God's love and have the hope of resurrection.
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The parable of the Richman (often referred to through tradition as Dives) and Lazarus the poor man is another one of those great reversals that we find in Luke. The richman has it good on earth, while poor Lazarus lives in misery. But both of them die in the story and there is the great reversal of the Richman in Hades, the Judean concept of living in the shadows after death, and is tormented, while Lazarus resides in the comfortable bosom of Abraham. According to the surface understanding of the story, each one gets their just reward. At first we may be led to believe that this parable was told by Jesus to get people to be more sensitive and compassionate to the poor. For some it makes a good Stewardship Parable. Can't we all get to be a little more giving, or you had better watch out! When you die, you'll get yours!
Let's first get a handle on this parable in terms of what it may have meant in Jesus own time, as he told it. Prior to where this parable begins, Jesus has noted that the pharisees are lovers of money, and that they made themselves look good in people's sight, but God knew well what was in their thoughts. (Luke 16:14f) In Jesus' time to be rich was considered suspect. Rich people were thought of as greedy. In a society with no middle class, the rich simply had more than their share. It was believed that to be rich was in a sense was to be a thief. There were limited goods to go around in this society. To have a windfall or to have an abundance meant that you were supposed to share with others.
In the parable the richman is clearly affluent. He was the picture of success and achievement. He dressed in royal purple and had fine linen underware. He feasted sumptuously daily. He was also separated from the rift-raft and the poor of the world by the gate. The richman may well have been a symbol of the pharisees. While they may not all have been rich and affluent, they were considered the successful men of God. Outside the gate in sharp contrast is the poor Lazarus. He is one of the outcasts. He gathers up left over bread thrown out to the dogs. He is cripple and covered in sores which would indicate that he is cursed by God, according to the beliefs of the time. His sores are licked by unclean animals, wild dogs, which enhances the picture of his terrible poverty and depravity. He would have been banned from the temple, and hearers of the parable would not have had much respect for this poor Lazarus who does nothing to reclaim his honor, so much as even begging.
In the story, both men die, even the successful one. Much to the great surprise of the first listeners of Jesus' parable, the poor man resides in the bosom of Abraham, while the rich go to Hades, a place of torment, modeled on the burning garbage dumps outside the city walls. In death, the richman asks Abraham to send Lazarus with some water to cool him off. Even in death, the richman still thinks of himself as a hotshot worthy of having Lazarus serve him. Abraham will not buy into the richman's manipulation, and says that there is a great chasm that cannot be crossed. The richman still trying to be the hotshot, and still seeing Lazarus as a servant, tells Abraham to resurrect Lazarus and send him back to his five brothers to warn them to shape up and help the poor. The richman still, even in his misery, can't get it through his head that his behavior has been reprehensible and he has no clout with Abraham. Furthermore the brothers have the Scriptures which are full of teachings about caring for the foreigner, the poor, the widows and orphans. (Exod. 22:21-22; Deut. 10:17-19; Amos 2:6-8; Jer. 5:25-29) Even if someone came back from the dead, these obsinate pharisees would continue their merry way, just as the richman himself continues to see the poor Lazarus as his assigned lackey.
The parable has real shock value. The idea that Jesus saw the poor Lazarus, outcast and miserable sinner, as worthy of being in the bosom of Abraham over the pharisees was really shocking and humiliating. It was a shocking condemnation of the condescending abundantly righteous affluence of the pharisees. The very ones who think by virtue of their bountiful righteousness that they have an "in" with God, and who are so insensitive to the poverty around them are really hopelessly the real outcasts and are too dumb to see it. They are the spiritually derelict. They know better and can't grasp what it means to be the caring people of God. They are the ones who are really the spiritually poverty stricken and worthless.
Now we can see this parable in a merely moralistic way. Luke may well have had that in mind as he preserved the story for the early church. It vividly calls for compassion for the poor and the out cast. In an affluent country, and in an affluent community and church, we might well consider what kind of givers we all are, and the kind of stewards we are. We might in our own righteousness and conservatism be as insensitive and discompassionate as the hopeless pharisees. We might want to reconsider our stewardship and generosity lest we need a drop of cool water on our tongues.
Yet, I think, there is another whole side to appreciating this profound parable. We are inclined to identify with the richman in the parable. We are the ones who live and strive for affluence and success. All we have to do is remember the poor old Lazarus' and make sure they get some bread, and we will carry on. We just have to keep on plugging and working, and being busy, and occasionally remember the poor, and pass on a token of our success. But how many people like the richman in the story who keep on plugging without ever really changing anything are particularly happy? We live in affluent society that has a great deal of personal misery and unhappiness. There is often a great deal of personal dissatisfaction and the constant persistent struggle for more and more things to keep us happy. Yet nothing changes. We still live with the hassle of the needs of the poor, the threat of violence, terrorism, fear of the future and what the stock market will do or not do. Trying hard to stay alive and on top we only give way eventually to death.
The other character in the story that we fail and resist identifying with is Lazarus. Lazarus is a Christ-like figure in the story. He is the outcast, the suffering figure. Yet living out his life he is the one who is lifted up into the bosom of Abraham. You see, to try to avoid the world of Lazarus and take good care of ourselves we in fact set ourselves apart from real life and the hope of renewal and resurrection. Lazarus lives only in the hope of God. Lazarus accepts his falleness, his inability to achieve and through his dying is resurrected. Without any work of his own, the saving grace of God is freely given. God's love is feely bestowed upon the broken, bruised, and fallen. The pharisees could not grasp this fact. They could not appreciate the ways and teachings of Jesus as one who lived among, and loved the poor, the broken, the least, last, and lost. He suffered with them and entered into their way of life.
The rich man won't accept death and his falleness. As a result he assures the deepening hell of his life. Lazarus in his poverty is able to be raised. In order to live we have to die. We have to let go of the old life, the old concepts, the old notions that we can live alone without God and on the basis of our own abilities to achieve and be successful. Adam and Eve's notion they could make it on their own was their curse. Ancient Israelite leaders who abandoned God, knew only the devastation of their country. Jesus' understanding of entering into the Kingdom of God was a matter of dying to live. "Whoever tries to save his own life will lose it; whoever loses his life will save it." (Luke 17:33) The whole life and ministry of Jesus who came to accept humaness and lived a humble accepting life, who died on a cross, was the very one to rise again.
This parable certainly has its moral implications. But it is also a parable that expresses the enormous and profound grace of God. It also teaches that in accepting our spiritual poverty we live and are raised up by God. Seeing one another in our shared falleness, we all participate in a brotherhood that lifts one another and carries one another to the presence of God's blessing. We don't send a lackey.
Sunday, September 27, 1998
Sunday, September 13, 1998
Pentecost 15
May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)
SEASON: Pentecost 15
PROPER: 19 C
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: September 13, 1998
TEXT: Luke 15:1-10 - Twin Parables of The Shepherd's Lost Sheep and The Woman's Lost Coin.
"Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost."
ISSUE: The poor, the lost, the least, and many outcasts are coming near to Jesus. His ministry is one which raises them up as worthy of God's acceptance and redeeming love. The pharisees on the other hand grumble at his daring ministry. In the parables, Jesus calls for a rejoicing over the recovery and the restoration of the lost to the community. The church was wrestle today with its grumbling over change and renewal and rethinking, and the utter rejoicing over reaching out and recovering the lost and those different.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Over the past several weeks now we have been dealing with some of the great reversals of Jesus as he challenged the culture of his time: The last shall be first and the first last. The proud shall be humbled and the humble shall be exalted. If any one does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters. . . he cannot be my disciple. Rather than living comfortably, one takes up a cross. Rather than accumulating, one gives up all possessions in order to be a disciple. Jesus teachings come across as counter cultural, the reversal of trends.
Today in the Twin Parables of The Lost Sheep and The Lost Coin we have another reversal of trends and of the culture. It was basic common religious belief in Jesus' time that good upstanding righteous people were not to associate with sinners. According to John Pilch (The Cultural World of Jesus C) there was a rabbinic teaching: "Let not a person associate with sinners even to bring them near the Torah." Sinners were people who conducted themselves in an immoral fashion. Bad conduct. Sinners were those who had occupations that often led them to an immoral life, such as tax collectors who meddled in unclean freight, or were subject to being involve in extortion. Shepherds were unclean not keeping the law, and were often separated from family, and considered to be perhaps bawdy and an unclean folk. The outcasts were the sick, the blind, the lame. These were people excluded from the Temple because they were believed to be the cursed of God. Interestingly enough it was praise worthy to feed the poor and sinners. But you did not associate with them.
In Luke's story today, Sinners are coming near to Jesus. They are approaching him, and his ministry was undoubtedly one that associated with the so called sinners of this time. This conduct on Jesus' part was considered to be outrageous by the Pharisees and religious leaders. Jesus bucked the system. For all we know, Jesus himself may have been a pharisee and he was demanding a change in this religious group, or at the very least showing another way that he perceived as a more Godly way.
So the sinners are coming near, and the pharisees are grumbling and outraged at Jesus' association with them. He then tells them an outrageous, if not an insulting, two parables. The first is that of a shepherd going looking for a lost sheep. The parable is not outrageous to us in 1998, but it sure was to the pharisees in the first century. Jesus makes a sinner the hero of the parable. Shepherds were despised, and considered unclean. In effect he is saying even sinner-shepherds know more about mercy, forgiveness, and compassion than you pharisees. What shepherd who has a flock of an hundred sheep when he loses one does not go in search of the lost one. A flock of 100 was a very large flock, and probably represented the flock of several shepherds, of a community. In any event the shepherd goes in search of the one that is lost. He finds it, and brings it home rejoicing, not grumbling.
A woman, and we know that Pharisees prayed thankfully that they were not born a woman. as the hero of a parable would also have startled the pharisees. Women were like sinners in that they could not hold office or be witnesses in legal proceedings. Even a woman says Jesus who loses a coin from her jewelry lights a lamp, sweeps the house, and searches carefully sifts through a dirt floor until she finds the lost coin. She then calls in the neighbors for a party. She doesn't grumble. She searches, seeks, finds, and rejoices that the lost is found.
It shouldn't surprise us that the Parable of the (Loving Father, Two Sons, Prodigal Son) follows and is linked to these twin parables. Two sons humiliate their father. One wishing his father dead by wanting his inheritance takes it and squanders it away. The other son humiliates his father's compassion in public by grumbling and refusing to come into the party. Yet the father slaughters a fatted calf so the whole community can rejoice that the sinner son that was lost is now found.
Jesus intentionally develops a ministry of compassion and mercy. It is one of explicit forgiveness and welcome to the (repentant) lost, least, last, and little. A signficant issue here is not so much his compassionate mercy, but the call to rejoicing. Both men like the shepherd and women like the woman who lost her coin are called together in a solidarity of rejoicing in the mission of Christ in finding, welcoming, and restoring the lost to the community. The pharisees found this hard, difficult to accept, but Jesus needled them with his challenging parables.
A truly fascinating aside is the reading from Exodus (32:7-14) this morning. Moses had gone up on Mt. Sinai to be with God to g et the commandments. He was gone for quite some time and the impatient people under the leadership of Aaron decided to take on the ways and worship of the culture. They collected all the gold and melted it down for a golden calf. Thus, they chose, you see, to worship in the Cult of Baal a non-moral religion based largely on fertility worship. After God had finished with Moses, and learns what the Israelites have done, he is angry, grumbling, and furious. His fury shall burn hot against them. But it is Moses, like Jesus, who says no to God. Hold on God, remember the agreement you made with Abraham. Don't destroy them. You promised that you would make for Abraham and nation that would multiply your descendants like the stars of heaven. Moses pleads for God to turn away from his wrath and restore his community and rejoice in the mission of redemption. What Jesus is doing is like that and he reminds the men of Moses, the Pharisees so intent on keeping the Law, that they should rejoice in the mission of the restoration of all of the people of God.
This concept of mission and restoration of the poor and the lost was a difficult concept for the righteous people of Jesus' time. It's hard for us too. It is praise worthy for us to collect a few bucks and give it to the poor. It is very different for us to be able to reach out to, and to live with and and among and to welcome the poor, the sinner, the outcast, and those who are different from us. We resist putting up a well lighted welcoming sign that will be welcoming to a growing community. We resist involvement with associating with the poor and those who are difficult to communicate with, and are challenging to our way of life and thinking.. We resist handicap access that confronts us with the brokeness and the frailty of our humanity and humaness. We are inclined to value only the strong, and resist rejoicing in and with the weak and the frail. Today we face many changes in our world, which requires significant adjustments in our thinking if we are to continue to be the church of Jesus Christ in that world. It is easy enough to be a grumbling crowd about how awful the world is, and how everyone else is different from us and has it all wrong. It is more difficult for us to rejoice in being open and welcoming to different kinds of life styles.
There are now many kinds of family styles. There's the traditional family of mother, father, and children. There is also the single parent family that needs finding and welcoming into the church. There are the same sex families that need finding and welcoming. There are the blacks, the hispanics, the poor and the non-affluent; there are the handicapped and disabled that need to be found and welcomed. There are the immigrants and people of differing cultures that need to be able to feel welcomed into the family of God. Women struggle and continually need to be able to be seen and found as valid candidates for ministry in all ministries in the church. An isolated and exclusive church in this world will die and fall away regardless of its endownments. It may go on and on, but it becomes spiritually dead as a community of grumbling righteous folk. The issue of these parable today is whether or not we can learn to rejoice in mission and with Christ to search and welcome the the lost, the little, the least, and the last. It challenges and dares us to associate with them as real neighbors and friends.
In the Epistle today, Paul rejoices that he was in his righteousness dead and lost. But by the marvelous grace of God was found and converted to a meaningful and joyful life in servanthood with Christ. We, in our love of being the powerful and the righteous, our love of the traditional, our affluence, our exclusiveness, our abilities to be quickly condemning and grumbling may also at times, perhaps many times in our lives, need some startling and needling bright light to call us to our senses and to a profound conversion, that we too, may learn to rejoice in the call to a servanthood mission as the people of God in Christ's church.
SEASON: Pentecost 15
PROPER: 19 C
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: September 13, 1998
TEXT: Luke 15:1-10 - Twin Parables of The Shepherd's Lost Sheep and The Woman's Lost Coin.
"Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost."
ISSUE: The poor, the lost, the least, and many outcasts are coming near to Jesus. His ministry is one which raises them up as worthy of God's acceptance and redeeming love. The pharisees on the other hand grumble at his daring ministry. In the parables, Jesus calls for a rejoicing over the recovery and the restoration of the lost to the community. The church was wrestle today with its grumbling over change and renewal and rethinking, and the utter rejoicing over reaching out and recovering the lost and those different.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Over the past several weeks now we have been dealing with some of the great reversals of Jesus as he challenged the culture of his time: The last shall be first and the first last. The proud shall be humbled and the humble shall be exalted. If any one does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters. . . he cannot be my disciple. Rather than living comfortably, one takes up a cross. Rather than accumulating, one gives up all possessions in order to be a disciple. Jesus teachings come across as counter cultural, the reversal of trends.
Today in the Twin Parables of The Lost Sheep and The Lost Coin we have another reversal of trends and of the culture. It was basic common religious belief in Jesus' time that good upstanding righteous people were not to associate with sinners. According to John Pilch (The Cultural World of Jesus C) there was a rabbinic teaching: "Let not a person associate with sinners even to bring them near the Torah." Sinners were people who conducted themselves in an immoral fashion. Bad conduct. Sinners were those who had occupations that often led them to an immoral life, such as tax collectors who meddled in unclean freight, or were subject to being involve in extortion. Shepherds were unclean not keeping the law, and were often separated from family, and considered to be perhaps bawdy and an unclean folk. The outcasts were the sick, the blind, the lame. These were people excluded from the Temple because they were believed to be the cursed of God. Interestingly enough it was praise worthy to feed the poor and sinners. But you did not associate with them.
In Luke's story today, Sinners are coming near to Jesus. They are approaching him, and his ministry was undoubtedly one that associated with the so called sinners of this time. This conduct on Jesus' part was considered to be outrageous by the Pharisees and religious leaders. Jesus bucked the system. For all we know, Jesus himself may have been a pharisee and he was demanding a change in this religious group, or at the very least showing another way that he perceived as a more Godly way.
So the sinners are coming near, and the pharisees are grumbling and outraged at Jesus' association with them. He then tells them an outrageous, if not an insulting, two parables. The first is that of a shepherd going looking for a lost sheep. The parable is not outrageous to us in 1998, but it sure was to the pharisees in the first century. Jesus makes a sinner the hero of the parable. Shepherds were despised, and considered unclean. In effect he is saying even sinner-shepherds know more about mercy, forgiveness, and compassion than you pharisees. What shepherd who has a flock of an hundred sheep when he loses one does not go in search of the lost one. A flock of 100 was a very large flock, and probably represented the flock of several shepherds, of a community. In any event the shepherd goes in search of the one that is lost. He finds it, and brings it home rejoicing, not grumbling.
A woman, and we know that Pharisees prayed thankfully that they were not born a woman. as the hero of a parable would also have startled the pharisees. Women were like sinners in that they could not hold office or be witnesses in legal proceedings. Even a woman says Jesus who loses a coin from her jewelry lights a lamp, sweeps the house, and searches carefully sifts through a dirt floor until she finds the lost coin. She then calls in the neighbors for a party. She doesn't grumble. She searches, seeks, finds, and rejoices that the lost is found.
It shouldn't surprise us that the Parable of the (Loving Father, Two Sons, Prodigal Son) follows and is linked to these twin parables. Two sons humiliate their father. One wishing his father dead by wanting his inheritance takes it and squanders it away. The other son humiliates his father's compassion in public by grumbling and refusing to come into the party. Yet the father slaughters a fatted calf so the whole community can rejoice that the sinner son that was lost is now found.
Jesus intentionally develops a ministry of compassion and mercy. It is one of explicit forgiveness and welcome to the (repentant) lost, least, last, and little. A signficant issue here is not so much his compassionate mercy, but the call to rejoicing. Both men like the shepherd and women like the woman who lost her coin are called together in a solidarity of rejoicing in the mission of Christ in finding, welcoming, and restoring the lost to the community. The pharisees found this hard, difficult to accept, but Jesus needled them with his challenging parables.
A truly fascinating aside is the reading from Exodus (32:7-14) this morning. Moses had gone up on Mt. Sinai to be with God to g et the commandments. He was gone for quite some time and the impatient people under the leadership of Aaron decided to take on the ways and worship of the culture. They collected all the gold and melted it down for a golden calf. Thus, they chose, you see, to worship in the Cult of Baal a non-moral religion based largely on fertility worship. After God had finished with Moses, and learns what the Israelites have done, he is angry, grumbling, and furious. His fury shall burn hot against them. But it is Moses, like Jesus, who says no to God. Hold on God, remember the agreement you made with Abraham. Don't destroy them. You promised that you would make for Abraham and nation that would multiply your descendants like the stars of heaven. Moses pleads for God to turn away from his wrath and restore his community and rejoice in the mission of redemption. What Jesus is doing is like that and he reminds the men of Moses, the Pharisees so intent on keeping the Law, that they should rejoice in the mission of the restoration of all of the people of God.
This concept of mission and restoration of the poor and the lost was a difficult concept for the righteous people of Jesus' time. It's hard for us too. It is praise worthy for us to collect a few bucks and give it to the poor. It is very different for us to be able to reach out to, and to live with and and among and to welcome the poor, the sinner, the outcast, and those who are different from us. We resist putting up a well lighted welcoming sign that will be welcoming to a growing community. We resist involvement with associating with the poor and those who are difficult to communicate with, and are challenging to our way of life and thinking.. We resist handicap access that confronts us with the brokeness and the frailty of our humanity and humaness. We are inclined to value only the strong, and resist rejoicing in and with the weak and the frail. Today we face many changes in our world, which requires significant adjustments in our thinking if we are to continue to be the church of Jesus Christ in that world. It is easy enough to be a grumbling crowd about how awful the world is, and how everyone else is different from us and has it all wrong. It is more difficult for us to rejoice in being open and welcoming to different kinds of life styles.
There are now many kinds of family styles. There's the traditional family of mother, father, and children. There is also the single parent family that needs finding and welcoming into the church. There are the same sex families that need finding and welcoming. There are the blacks, the hispanics, the poor and the non-affluent; there are the handicapped and disabled that need to be found and welcomed. There are the immigrants and people of differing cultures that need to be able to feel welcomed into the family of God. Women struggle and continually need to be able to be seen and found as valid candidates for ministry in all ministries in the church. An isolated and exclusive church in this world will die and fall away regardless of its endownments. It may go on and on, but it becomes spiritually dead as a community of grumbling righteous folk. The issue of these parable today is whether or not we can learn to rejoice in mission and with Christ to search and welcome the the lost, the little, the least, and the last. It challenges and dares us to associate with them as real neighbors and friends.
In the Epistle today, Paul rejoices that he was in his righteousness dead and lost. But by the marvelous grace of God was found and converted to a meaningful and joyful life in servanthood with Christ. We, in our love of being the powerful and the righteous, our love of the traditional, our affluence, our exclusiveness, our abilities to be quickly condemning and grumbling may also at times, perhaps many times in our lives, need some startling and needling bright light to call us to our senses and to a profound conversion, that we too, may learn to rejoice in the call to a servanthood mission as the people of God in Christ's church.
Sunday, September 6, 1998
Pentecost 14
May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)
SEASON: Pentecost 14
PROPER: C
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: September 6,1998
TEXT: Luke 14:25-33 - Jesus said, "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 disciples. . . . . So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions."
ISSUE: Each of the lessons today are about making decisions. The Gospel reading is particularly startling in the call to hate family, take up the cross, and give up everything. It calls for a radical decision and transformation to accept the ways of Christ first. Embracing the Lord, we are then able to serve and love our family, friends, the world in a whole new way that is meaningful and gives hope to the world.
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Each of the readings this morning deal with making important decisions. Moses in a farewell speech tells his people just prior to their entrance into the Promised Land, that if they remain faithful to God they shall be choosing life and a long term inhabitance in in the Land. If, however, they choose other gods and ways contrary to what god has offered them, they will be on their own and have to suffer the consequences.
In Paul's personal Epistle to Philemon, which incidentally is the only personal letter left existing written by Paul, He urges Philemon to take back his run away slave, Onesimus. Paul had encountered the slave Onesimus in prison, and Onesimus under Paul's tutelage had accepted Christ as Lord. While neither Paul, nor the early church confronted the issue of slavery, Paul does urge Philemon to takes his slave back as a brother in Christ, and as one useful to their ministries in the church. For Philemon to set aside the punishments bestowed on runaway slaves and to accept Onesimus as a brother in Christ would have been a significant decision to make.
The really attentiion getting passage comes from Luke's account of the Gospel, when he says that there comes a time of decision when you must hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, take up a cross and give away all you possess. This passage sure flies in the face of all the talk we hear these days about recoving family values. It comes across as another one of those dramatic great reversals: "The last shall be first and the first last, . . . the one who exalts himself will be humbled and the one who humbles himself will be exalted . . . and now, hate rather than love your mother, father, wife, children, brother sister!
In Jesus time families were your life line. All of your existence was dependent upon family. Family determined your wife, your education, you economic stability. Family was first and foremost. Without a family you were in big trouble. What's more families were very exclusive. The person you married was often one of your first cousins. Sons remained with their fathers. There was a great deal of control by the father. They were very tight knit, and perhaps even very stifling, controlling, and suffocating. There was not much room for creativity and freedom in the 1st century family. Jesus dare to challenge that cultural institution in his words calling for hatred of this kind of family. His words were most daring.
There is the belief that when Jesus uses the word to hate that it was a Jewish idiomatic expression which meant actually to prefer less. To hate meant to prefer something over another. To hate did not have the emotional meaning that we give to the word. Hatred was also thought to be a detachment. Thus, the call of Jesus to hate your family could have meant to prefer Jesus and his teaching first over family. But, mind you, that in this time, even the idea of embracing Jesus' life and ministry over family was still a revolutionary concept.
To become detached from family and its controls and the security that they offered was extremtly dramatic change. To make that kind of decision was and awesome decision. To take up the cross was, of course, another way of saying be ready to fac e death. The cross in Jesus' time was a common symbol of death. The Romans crucified people without much thought. To leave one's family behind, to be detached from family could mean your death. Remember the prodigal son who abandons his family and ends up starving in the pig sty.
Jesus uses two parables related to counting the cost of making this dramatic decision. The man who plans to build a tower in the vineyard had better be sure he counts the cost. If he begins and can't finish he'll look like a fool and be shamed. The king who with ten thousand men plans a battle against another king who has twenty thousand men, had better think twice, and send for terms of peace. Otherwise, he'll be defeated, remembered as a fool and shamed. You see to give up family was a tremendous cost. It was to take up the the cross, to risk death. It was to give up all of your possessions. To have no family in this period was to have nothing.
What's going on here. Well, there were large crowds traveling with Jesus. These crowds were defined as curious as opposed to committed. Their understanding and focus was effected by divided allegiances. They were still steeped in their cultural traditions. Jesus real impact was the challenge and the exhilaration and freedom to leave the old behind and to face the uncertainties to be in a new kingdom, or a new family of God. It was what we might call today a surrogate family. It was still a momentous demand however you interpret it. It was a real cost. Just to be curios about Jesus, to enjoy his stories and parables, to relish his healings was not the issue. To be a real follower meant a genuine and real sacrifice that effected your whole life. It was to search for new identity and to be transformed, and to take on new attitudes. To be with Christ, to walk with him was no mere curiousity. To be a disciples was to transcend birth, class, race, gender, education, wealth and power. You became totally removed from exclusive elitism.
When St. Paul tells Philemon to take back his slave Onesimus back as a beloved brother, it was as a brother in the new family of God. It was the new family of servanthood and unity with Christ, and oneness with God. Paul with Christ is calling the people of God to being totally culturally changed into a servanthood family of God. Onesimus ( name which means "useful one" shall be useful to the family of God.
We have to wrestly with what all this means for us today. We do not live in the 1st century. Furthermore, we do not take these writing literally, as they were probably not even ointended by their authors to be taken literally. What is at the heart of this passage is the need we all have to put God and God's call to us first in our lives, even above our families. You see, I'm not really sure a man can love his wife, or a wife love her husband without first knowing what real love is. We must first long to attach ourselve, to prefer first, our Lord, to gain a deep appreciation of what love of a family is. God so loved the world that he gave his son. His Son gives his life on a cross so that the world can vividly and dramatically see his servanthood even to death. The whole meaning of his life as it effects everyone, and as it is extended to everyone comes out of that sacrificial servanthood of love. Love in family is not merely a father and or a mother working, and doing things. It is an intimate self-giving and self-surrender that comes from Christ. It is a being there with family; it is the total life surrendered to the well being of the others. Appreciating what the love of Christ as first and foremost is all about puts a whole new dimension on honoring father and mother, and loving your wife or husband. Husbands and wives are often brought together through the romantic and erotic aspects of love. But unless there is a growth and appreciation of servanthood and sacrifice for and willingness to be changed for one another, we find ourselves in trouble and create a great deal of unhappiness. Godliness, Christ-likeness needs to be first in our lives and that must be our first genuine focus. Out of that focus on love comes forgiveness and compassion, because we are first loved, forgiven and receive the compassion of God through Christ.
What this passage means for today is that we need to be very cautious about our business and the demanding lifestyles that some of us lead. There are many people very busy, in very demanding jobs, and who are raking in the bucks, but who are miserable. Do not situations like these make us stop to take notice that there may have to make a dramatic change in our lives. Human beings, especially Americans, become so self-absorbed, so trapped in worldly demands, job demands that we miss other joys of humaness that give real quality to life like caring for others, like stopping to appreciate beauty in life in friends, in nature, in art, and poetry, in music, in the wonders of the universe that call us to focusing upon the joy and wonder of God. In failing to do this, we fail to pass on joy to our children and perpetuate the misery. To take up the cross in this context meant to risk a dramatic change, it meant dying to old traditions, ways, and demands to discover new life with quality to it.
One of the really great examples of this dramatic change was in the life of St. Francis. Francis is largely known among people as the great bird-feeder. What a terrible image and misinterpreation of this profound man. Francis was the child of a man who had great wealth. But touched by God and embracing Jesus Christ, Francis took on the life of a servant. He renounced, "hated" - preferred less his father's ways - he detached himself from his father's world. Befor his bishop and his father he stripped naked casting off his past, and dared to mingle and touch lepers and embrace the lost, the last, the least. Only then did his life take on great meaning, and he became renouned as one of the church's greatest and most beloved saints. Christ became first and foremost and he lived into that way of life.
Obviously we are not St. Francis. He indeed was a profound example of giving up all his possessions. But in that we are not Francis, and God does not call us to such a dramatic calling, we are still not excused from the calling of Christ to renounce worldliness and to enter into something new and challenging and life giving. What might that be for you and me, for this church? So many of us older churches become so traditional and set in our ways that it is hard for us to break away from what is comfortable and a casual curios acquaintance with Jesus Christ. We can have hoardes of people on the church roster, but without a defined and specific mission, with out taking up the cross of uncertainty and change, and giving up all the old possessions are we truly communicators and revealers of the one we claim to serve?
By now you all may be aware that we will inherit a yet undetermined amount of money from the estate of Paul David White. I wonder if you all and the Vestry have really begun to pray for a discernment of how we might serve Christ and be servants of Christ best with this gift. Will it be used in creative servant hood, or as a means to self-preservation of tradition and maintenance in the preservation of a musty old self-serving place?
It has been argued that we have to take care of ourselves. We have to have a place where we can teach and instruct our children in the faith, rather than being too giving beyond ourselves. But this kind of thinking is thinking as the world would have us think. What we teach in this case to our children is we must take good care of ourselves for prosperity. It seems to me that to embrace Christ is to be a generous serving community of people that teaches children that giving and sacrifice and servanthood is in fact what it means to be in Christ Jesus and to put him first.
Decisions, decisions, decisions. Life is full of them. There is no greater challenge to us as Christians than the challenge of Jesus Christ who dares us to let go the stuff and the demands we think are so important and to enter into a transformed life and way of thinking. Today is call to another great reversal. Is it goodnews or not? Is the good news a matter of maintaining things the way they are, and playing it safe. Perhaps goodnews is to keep things they way they are. Maybe musty and dusty, or doing and keeping things decently and in order, is what is comfortable and good. This plan may be the best for hoardes of curious observers. But then again, maybe the Good news is to be liberated from the past, its stifling aspects, and bekcome renewed alive and free in the inclusive servanthood of Christ.
This passage concludes (altho not read in the lectionary) that if Salt loses its zing it is worthless. Our lives without the zing of Christ in the first and foremost becomes useless and good for nothing, not even the manure pile.
SEASON: Pentecost 14
PROPER: C
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: September 6,1998
TEXT: Luke 14:25-33 - Jesus said, "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 disciples. . . . . So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions."
ISSUE: Each of the lessons today are about making decisions. The Gospel reading is particularly startling in the call to hate family, take up the cross, and give up everything. It calls for a radical decision and transformation to accept the ways of Christ first. Embracing the Lord, we are then able to serve and love our family, friends, the world in a whole new way that is meaningful and gives hope to the world.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Each of the readings this morning deal with making important decisions. Moses in a farewell speech tells his people just prior to their entrance into the Promised Land, that if they remain faithful to God they shall be choosing life and a long term inhabitance in in the Land. If, however, they choose other gods and ways contrary to what god has offered them, they will be on their own and have to suffer the consequences.
In Paul's personal Epistle to Philemon, which incidentally is the only personal letter left existing written by Paul, He urges Philemon to take back his run away slave, Onesimus. Paul had encountered the slave Onesimus in prison, and Onesimus under Paul's tutelage had accepted Christ as Lord. While neither Paul, nor the early church confronted the issue of slavery, Paul does urge Philemon to takes his slave back as a brother in Christ, and as one useful to their ministries in the church. For Philemon to set aside the punishments bestowed on runaway slaves and to accept Onesimus as a brother in Christ would have been a significant decision to make.
The really attentiion getting passage comes from Luke's account of the Gospel, when he says that there comes a time of decision when you must hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, take up a cross and give away all you possess. This passage sure flies in the face of all the talk we hear these days about recoving family values. It comes across as another one of those dramatic great reversals: "The last shall be first and the first last, . . . the one who exalts himself will be humbled and the one who humbles himself will be exalted . . . and now, hate rather than love your mother, father, wife, children, brother sister!
In Jesus time families were your life line. All of your existence was dependent upon family. Family determined your wife, your education, you economic stability. Family was first and foremost. Without a family you were in big trouble. What's more families were very exclusive. The person you married was often one of your first cousins. Sons remained with their fathers. There was a great deal of control by the father. They were very tight knit, and perhaps even very stifling, controlling, and suffocating. There was not much room for creativity and freedom in the 1st century family. Jesus dare to challenge that cultural institution in his words calling for hatred of this kind of family. His words were most daring.
There is the belief that when Jesus uses the word to hate that it was a Jewish idiomatic expression which meant actually to prefer less. To hate meant to prefer something over another. To hate did not have the emotional meaning that we give to the word. Hatred was also thought to be a detachment. Thus, the call of Jesus to hate your family could have meant to prefer Jesus and his teaching first over family. But, mind you, that in this time, even the idea of embracing Jesus' life and ministry over family was still a revolutionary concept.
To become detached from family and its controls and the security that they offered was extremtly dramatic change. To make that kind of decision was and awesome decision. To take up the cross was, of course, another way of saying be ready to fac e death. The cross in Jesus' time was a common symbol of death. The Romans crucified people without much thought. To leave one's family behind, to be detached from family could mean your death. Remember the prodigal son who abandons his family and ends up starving in the pig sty.
Jesus uses two parables related to counting the cost of making this dramatic decision. The man who plans to build a tower in the vineyard had better be sure he counts the cost. If he begins and can't finish he'll look like a fool and be shamed. The king who with ten thousand men plans a battle against another king who has twenty thousand men, had better think twice, and send for terms of peace. Otherwise, he'll be defeated, remembered as a fool and shamed. You see to give up family was a tremendous cost. It was to take up the the cross, to risk death. It was to give up all of your possessions. To have no family in this period was to have nothing.
What's going on here. Well, there were large crowds traveling with Jesus. These crowds were defined as curious as opposed to committed. Their understanding and focus was effected by divided allegiances. They were still steeped in their cultural traditions. Jesus real impact was the challenge and the exhilaration and freedom to leave the old behind and to face the uncertainties to be in a new kingdom, or a new family of God. It was what we might call today a surrogate family. It was still a momentous demand however you interpret it. It was a real cost. Just to be curios about Jesus, to enjoy his stories and parables, to relish his healings was not the issue. To be a real follower meant a genuine and real sacrifice that effected your whole life. It was to search for new identity and to be transformed, and to take on new attitudes. To be with Christ, to walk with him was no mere curiousity. To be a disciples was to transcend birth, class, race, gender, education, wealth and power. You became totally removed from exclusive elitism.
When St. Paul tells Philemon to take back his slave Onesimus back as a beloved brother, it was as a brother in the new family of God. It was the new family of servanthood and unity with Christ, and oneness with God. Paul with Christ is calling the people of God to being totally culturally changed into a servanthood family of God. Onesimus ( name which means "useful one" shall be useful to the family of God.
We have to wrestly with what all this means for us today. We do not live in the 1st century. Furthermore, we do not take these writing literally, as they were probably not even ointended by their authors to be taken literally. What is at the heart of this passage is the need we all have to put God and God's call to us first in our lives, even above our families. You see, I'm not really sure a man can love his wife, or a wife love her husband without first knowing what real love is. We must first long to attach ourselve, to prefer first, our Lord, to gain a deep appreciation of what love of a family is. God so loved the world that he gave his son. His Son gives his life on a cross so that the world can vividly and dramatically see his servanthood even to death. The whole meaning of his life as it effects everyone, and as it is extended to everyone comes out of that sacrificial servanthood of love. Love in family is not merely a father and or a mother working, and doing things. It is an intimate self-giving and self-surrender that comes from Christ. It is a being there with family; it is the total life surrendered to the well being of the others. Appreciating what the love of Christ as first and foremost is all about puts a whole new dimension on honoring father and mother, and loving your wife or husband. Husbands and wives are often brought together through the romantic and erotic aspects of love. But unless there is a growth and appreciation of servanthood and sacrifice for and willingness to be changed for one another, we find ourselves in trouble and create a great deal of unhappiness. Godliness, Christ-likeness needs to be first in our lives and that must be our first genuine focus. Out of that focus on love comes forgiveness and compassion, because we are first loved, forgiven and receive the compassion of God through Christ.
What this passage means for today is that we need to be very cautious about our business and the demanding lifestyles that some of us lead. There are many people very busy, in very demanding jobs, and who are raking in the bucks, but who are miserable. Do not situations like these make us stop to take notice that there may have to make a dramatic change in our lives. Human beings, especially Americans, become so self-absorbed, so trapped in worldly demands, job demands that we miss other joys of humaness that give real quality to life like caring for others, like stopping to appreciate beauty in life in friends, in nature, in art, and poetry, in music, in the wonders of the universe that call us to focusing upon the joy and wonder of God. In failing to do this, we fail to pass on joy to our children and perpetuate the misery. To take up the cross in this context meant to risk a dramatic change, it meant dying to old traditions, ways, and demands to discover new life with quality to it.
One of the really great examples of this dramatic change was in the life of St. Francis. Francis is largely known among people as the great bird-feeder. What a terrible image and misinterpreation of this profound man. Francis was the child of a man who had great wealth. But touched by God and embracing Jesus Christ, Francis took on the life of a servant. He renounced, "hated" - preferred less his father's ways - he detached himself from his father's world. Befor his bishop and his father he stripped naked casting off his past, and dared to mingle and touch lepers and embrace the lost, the last, the least. Only then did his life take on great meaning, and he became renouned as one of the church's greatest and most beloved saints. Christ became first and foremost and he lived into that way of life.
Obviously we are not St. Francis. He indeed was a profound example of giving up all his possessions. But in that we are not Francis, and God does not call us to such a dramatic calling, we are still not excused from the calling of Christ to renounce worldliness and to enter into something new and challenging and life giving. What might that be for you and me, for this church? So many of us older churches become so traditional and set in our ways that it is hard for us to break away from what is comfortable and a casual curios acquaintance with Jesus Christ. We can have hoardes of people on the church roster, but without a defined and specific mission, with out taking up the cross of uncertainty and change, and giving up all the old possessions are we truly communicators and revealers of the one we claim to serve?
By now you all may be aware that we will inherit a yet undetermined amount of money from the estate of Paul David White. I wonder if you all and the Vestry have really begun to pray for a discernment of how we might serve Christ and be servants of Christ best with this gift. Will it be used in creative servant hood, or as a means to self-preservation of tradition and maintenance in the preservation of a musty old self-serving place?
It has been argued that we have to take care of ourselves. We have to have a place where we can teach and instruct our children in the faith, rather than being too giving beyond ourselves. But this kind of thinking is thinking as the world would have us think. What we teach in this case to our children is we must take good care of ourselves for prosperity. It seems to me that to embrace Christ is to be a generous serving community of people that teaches children that giving and sacrifice and servanthood is in fact what it means to be in Christ Jesus and to put him first.
Decisions, decisions, decisions. Life is full of them. There is no greater challenge to us as Christians than the challenge of Jesus Christ who dares us to let go the stuff and the demands we think are so important and to enter into a transformed life and way of thinking. Today is call to another great reversal. Is it goodnews or not? Is the good news a matter of maintaining things the way they are, and playing it safe. Perhaps goodnews is to keep things they way they are. Maybe musty and dusty, or doing and keeping things decently and in order, is what is comfortable and good. This plan may be the best for hoardes of curious observers. But then again, maybe the Good news is to be liberated from the past, its stifling aspects, and bekcome renewed alive and free in the inclusive servanthood of Christ.
This passage concludes (altho not read in the lectionary) that if Salt loses its zing it is worthless. Our lives without the zing of Christ in the first and foremost becomes useless and good for nothing, not even the manure pile.
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