Be Bold and Courageous

Message from LaVerne Biel

Sunday, August 25, 2013

Some of you have known me a long time and some of you a couple years or less. Kent’s and I have always known that we like to squeeze and stretch ourselves personally, professionally, or spiritually whenever possible.

This last year God, Kent, and others challenged me in new and different ways. Now I see these challenges were really opportunities in disguise. One opportunity was to leave my home and possessions to strangers. In reflection this taught me to hold onto things lightly.

The next encounter was to run for political office. I really never saw myself as a political person. I held my beliefs closely. In fact I guarded them. What was the first thing I had to do? Field a question about my stand on abortion. Okay, I’m not sure how that relates to serving on City Council but I knew I had to answer the question truthfully. From there everything was a free fall. I ran as an Independent. For those of you who don’t know, running for political office consumes every waking moment of your life. From May until the primary August 6^th I had knocked on 7,000 doors, participated in two debates, talked to the press, raised campaign money, and met lots of new people from all walks of life. I missed family dinners, and reunions only to lose the primary election. However, I didn’t feel defeated. I still don’t! I really believe that I followed God’s leading. When I think back to what I was doing or where I was at in my life. I was complacent and content. Right after the election God told me that moving forward I was to be “bold and courageous” (which is the opposite direction from complacent and content).

Joshua 1:1-9 has provided me with a guideline on how to be bold and courageous which I’ll share with you. I found three words that outline Joshua 1:1-9, Promise, Possession, and Persistence.

(My paraphrase is in quotations)

Let’s read: 1. After the death of Moses the servant of the Lord, the Lord said to Joshua son of Nun, Moses’ aide: 2. Moses my servant is dead. Now then, you and all these people, get ready to cross the Jordan River into the land I am about to give to them – to the Israelites. 3. I will give you every place where you set your foot, as I promised Moses. 4. Your territory will extend from the desert to Lebanon and from the great river, the Euphrates – all the Hittite country to the Great Sea on the west. 5. No one will be able to stand up against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, So I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you. 6. Be (bold) and courageous, because you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to their forefathers to give them. 7. Be (bold) strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the laws my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it (as a republican) to the right or (as a democrat) to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go. 8. Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it Then you will be prosperous and successful. 9. Have I not commanded you? Be (bold) strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.

I found this a story: A philosophy professor was known to give difficult tests. Her next exam was going to influence a quarter of the grade and her students were nervous and apprehensive the morning of the exam. They quietly and reverently sat down at their desks. Sitting on their desks was a single piece of paper face down. The professor asked them to flip over the paper and start their exam. The exam was a single question. Many students fidgeted in their seats and stared at their paper. One student tapped his pencil on his desk a few times, scribbled something down. Got up and handed his paper to the professor and left. He got an A. The question was: What is courage? His answer was: This is!

Back to the passage of Joshua 1:1 – 9.

In verse 1 we read about the passing of Moses. Joshua was Moses’ replacement and I’m sure that the Israelites were apprehensive about Joshua’s leadership abilities. They knew that Joshua was Moses’ minister, a great military leader, and that he had already seen the promise land. However, knowing what we know about our natural tendencies, I’m sure there was lots of lamenting and grumbling. What did God do to quiet them? God spoke directly to Joshua to reassure him that God was going to fulfill his promise to Moses and to the descendants of Abraham. God’s promise is a gift not an obligation.

The promise listed in Deuteronomy 11:24 “Every place where you set your foot will be yours: Your territory will extend from the desert to Lebanon, and from the Euphrates River to the western sea.” God revealed this promise in Deuteronomy after the 10 Commandments and after a beautiful description of the promise land. We can estimate that there is a distance of at least 50 years between these promises. God comforts Joshua with this Deuteronomy scripture word for word. However, God’s word required some action from him. He had to extend himself. He had to be “all in”! Again, the passage reads, “where you set your foot” will be yours. Your foot! God made it personal. No horseback, no chariots, no decrees, no letters, no phone, no internet, no Facebook, and no Twitter. He was pretty clear that to take possession of the land then it required personal commitment and sacrifice. God tells Joshua that He will be with him and never forsake him while he stepped in an unknown territory.

God states this pretty clearly if you intend on possessing this land it’s going to require engaging your body, mind and your heart. It’s going to take your whole being. Verse 6 states “be (bold) strong and courageous. The Hebrew word in this passage for strong is “châzaq” (Khaw-Zak’) means obstinate, to bind, or restrain. To be obstinate is to be bold. The Hebrew word for courage is âmats (aw mats’). A primitive root: to be alert; physically or mentally. Why does Joshua need to be alert? This was necessary to lead them toward their gift and take possession of the land. Verse 7 again states to be (bold) strong and courageous by being careful to obey the Ten Commandments to be successful wherever you go. My best example of success was my grandfather. He was a farmer/machinist by trade. A jolly man who liked to play practical jokes, loved to horse trade, and was passionate about his faith and what he believed. I saw him treat every person that crossed his path with kindness and humility. When my grandfather died my dad talked to me about how my grandfather was successful. I have to admit at the time I didn’t see him as that. I remembered a man who gave me unconditional love. My dad pointed out that when he died all his bills were paid and he had $300 dollars left over. He gave his life to serving others to direct them toward God. God possessed his heart. He was successful. In order for God to possess our hearts we must be persistent in our faith.

Persistent faith permeates our thoughts. It consumes us. How can this happen? Verse 8 states that we are to speak the Book of the Law continually and to meditate on it day and night. I don’t know about you but this would require me to turn off the TV, stop playing computer games, and put down the novel I was reading. It sounds to me that persistence takes practice! I’m to shut off the outside noise, the events of the day, our culture, and focus on God by diving headfirst into His word and prayerfully mediate. In Verse 9, read for the third (for reinforcement) time God tells Joshua to be (bold) strong and courageous to not lose heart because God was going to be with him wherever he went. Persistence pays off by having God with us wherever our feet, heart, and mind are directed. It certainly sounds like a recipe for success.

Joshua fought his own battles with friends, enemies, and different cultures. In the end he knew he had to restate and clarify what the Israelites already knew. Joshua 24:15b, “As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”

The truth is that all too often what we experience can take a seriously negative toll on our hopes and dreams. Feeling let down by our faith community may turn us away from God’s vision for our own lives. Reality is that the consequences of institutional injustice, racism, and the personal and social sins that harm us can’t be avoided, not by us or interestingly enough, by God. Even when we are doing our best to follow God there are no guarantees that our path will be productive or easy. The wisdom that Bruce Epperly gleaned from four passages of scripture is that if we remain awake to sacredness of this present moment we discover hope beyond conflict and failure.

Our passage from Isaiah describes a love story gone wrong. The lover has given the beloved everything possible to flourish, but the beloved turns away from the love that gives life and fecundity. Saddened by the beloved’s wildness, the lover has no choice but to let the beloved suffer the consequences of turning away from love. Love never compels.  It seeks to heal and transform. Even love has its limits. It must contend with the freedom of the beloved.

Isaiah 5: 1-7 Let me sing for my beloved my love-song concerning his vineyard: My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. 2He dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; he built a watchtower in the midst of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it; he expected it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes. 3And now, inhabitants of Jerusalem and people of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. 4What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it? When I expected it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes? 5And now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will remove its hedge, and it shall be devoured; I will break down its wall, and it shall be trampled down. 6I will make it a waste; it shall not be pruned or hoed, and it shall be overgrown with briers and thorns; I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it. 7For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the people of Judah are his pleasant planting; he expected justice, but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry!

God cannot compel the world to reflect God’s vision. When we turn away, God’s vision gets distorted; limited God’s possibilities can even appear negative to those who have turned away from divine love. Our actions have consequences for ourselves and for God. The good news is that love never gives up in its quest for life abundant for us and others.

Psalm 80: 1-2, 8-19 continues the image of a vineyard to describe God’s relationship with Israel, the world and us. The vineyard has been ravaged and may become a wasteland. The Psalmist cries out for divine deliverance. The Psalmist asks God to return again, for apart from God the vineyard is lost. Regardless of the source of the vineyard’s current condition, the Psalmist cries out to God to bless the nation once more. But, will blessing restore a people who refuse to repent?

Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock! You who are enthroned upon the cherubim, shine forth before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh. Stir up your might, and come to save us! You brought a vine out of Egypt; you drove out the nations and planted it. You cleared the ground for it; it took deep root and filled the land. The mountains were covered with its shade, the mighty cedars with its branches; it sent out its branches to the sea, and its shoots to the River. Why then have you broken down its walls, so that all who pass along the way pluck its fruit? The boar from the forest ravages it, and all that move in the field feed on it. Turn again, O God of hosts; look down from heaven, and see; have regard for this vine, the stock that your right hand planted. They have burned it with fire, they have cut it down; may they perish at the rebuke of your countenance. But let your hand be upon the one at your right hand, the one whom you made strong for yourself. Then we will never turn back from you; give us life, and we will call on your name. Restore us, O Lord God of hosts; let your face shine, that we may be saved.

The author of Hebrews 11:29-12:2  goes to great lengths to tell us that persons of faith are not guaranteed success or safety in this lifetime. The author takes faith seriously, but there is always an “in spite of” element to faith. Hebrews critiques prosperity gospels that promise to provide a slick road to success along with “how to” messages for turning your faith into riches and power. Our hopes are never complete in this world. We must trust that God’s ultimate intent for creation will be realized in the future, even if we do not experience it ourselves in our lifetimes.

By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as if it were dry land, but when the Egyptians attempted to do so they were drowned. By faith the walls of Jericho fell after they had been encircled for seven days. By faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient, because she had received the spies in peace.

And what more should I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets— who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword, won strength out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Women received their dead by resurrection. Others were tortured, refusing to accept release, in order to obtain a better resurrection. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment.

They were stoned to death, they were sawn in two, they were killed by the sword; they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, persecuted, tormented— of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground. Yet all these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better so that they would not, apart from us, be made perfect.

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

On the pilgrim way, our salvation and hope is found in looking to Jesus, the model of faith and source of healing and transformation. We are surrounded and sustained by a cloud of witnesses, whose lives and intercessions shape our lives. We cannot predict or insure the success of our endeavors but we can trust God with the final word for our lives, and that word is grace. In the meantime, Christ’s spirit guides us through dark valleys and challenging situations, promising a horizon of hope and healing.

Luke 12:49-56 asserts that our responses in obedience to Jesus’ message will lead to polarization and conflict. In this passage Jesus is a provocateur not a peacemaker. Jesus’ vision of the world as it should be is so radical, and so threatening, that will many turn against his followers. By living with integrity Jesus sees the possibility of martyrdom emerging from the violent actions of fearful and self-interested people.

49“I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! 50I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! 51Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! 52From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; 53they will be divided: father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”

54He also said to the crowds, “When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, ‘It is going to rain’; and so it happens. 55And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat’; and it happens. 56You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?

We are not alone as we struggle with diversity of opinion, lifestyle, worship, and politics in our Meeting. We need to ask ourselves what radical visions lead to polarization in our Meeting. Dare we pursue potentially polarizing courses – perhaps related to global climate change, racism, economic injustice, inequalities in education, health care, and due process in the legal system? Can our meeting be both brazenly prophetic and empatheticaly pastoral? This Gospel passage is clear. A cost will be demanded regardless of whether we pursue a prophetic spirituality that challenges or a pastoral ministry that aligns itself with institutional injustice. Similarly there will be a price to pay for embracing destructive cultural norms or challenging destructive personal and interpersonal behaviors.

Jesus’ words suggest that the source of conflict will be found in the various ways we interpret our present time. What do we notice as we view the “signs of the times?” What is amiss in our culture, our economics, and our politics? In our congregational lives what are the things to which we are oblivious? Do radically different visions need always to lead to schism and conflict?

From the recent focus on Paul’s letter to the Romans we are called to live with our own integrity which may call us to prophetic obedience to Christ’s call on our lives. But it also requires of us that we acknowledge that though different from ours’ the course another is called to follow requires of them the same level of integrity and obedience we expect of ourselves. The source of unity, rather than schism and conflict, is grasping Paul’s notion that each one of us has to be faithful to the call of our own master who alone is in the position of evaluating the rightness or wrongness of our service.

Yes, we need to be aware of the many factors that create each moment of experience for ourselves and others. Faithfulness requires us to keep our heart, soul and mind open to see God at work in own life and in the lives of those with whom we worship. Are we attending to the highest divine possibilities for our own lives and the communities around us? God’s vision is always both local and global, and corporate and personal. God’s intentions are for the highest possibilities for this moment. Stay awake then. Strain your eyes toward God’s messages hidden within the unfolding of history and our personal and corporate lives.

As a community Spokane is truly blest to have Riverside State Park right in our back yard.  It is Washington State’s largest State Park. It offers two rivers, three campgrounds, an Equestrian Area, an off the road vehicle area, Cultural and Historical sites, swimming, access to boating, kayaking, fishing and paddling, miles and miles of mixed use trails with stunning scenery and views at every turn and disc golf.

You can hammer in your tent stakes and unroll your sleeping bag in a primitive camp site or uncoil the electrical pig tail of your Class A diesel motor home and watch the Mariners loss another game while sitting in front of your on board fire place.

And to use the camp sites there are rules with which you must comply or they will kick you out.  I’ve consolidated them. The first one isn’t even one of the eighteen listed. That rule is that you are required to report to Park Rangers those who are in non-compliance with the rules.

As a camper you must display the Discover Pass which testifies that you pay your fair share. You have to be in by ten p.m.  Quiet Hours are from 10:00 p.m. until  6:00 a.m. and must be observed. Those with engine driven electric generators must shut them off by 9:00 p.m. and can’t run them again until 8:00 a.m.  You can’t stay for more than ten or twenty days depending on the time of year. You can’t have more than eight people on your campsite. Removing or damaging any wildlife, plants, park buildings, signs and tables and other structures a prohibited as is feeding animals.  Pets must be on leashes not more than eight feet long.  Horses and alcohol are allowed but only in designated areas. Fireworks are prohibited as is smoking inside park structures. Pets, glass bottles and metal cans are not allowed on swimming beaches.

Now that’s just for a  temporary stay in the park.  Here in Spokane we can have three chickens but not roosters at our home.  We aren’t allowed to have open fires or discharge weapons. And folks get even more demanding of each other as residents in a condominium or a gated community.

So why is that important for us today?   The reading from the Epistles for today is Hebrews 11:1-16.

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Indeed, by faith our ancestors received approval. By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible. And without faith it is impossible to please God, for whoever would approach him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. 

I’m going to drop down to where the author writes of Abraham::              By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he stayed for a time in the land he had been promised, as in a foreign land, living in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he looked forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.

From the very first phrase in this chapter the writer encourages us by writing that trust in God, or the conviction that God is good and that God will perform that which God has promised, though not visible to our senses, is literally the foundation upon which we construct our lives.  The words not are a definition of what faith is but what faith does.  Faith gives to things a future which as of yet are only hoped for.  Things future and things unseen must become certainties to our mind if we are to live a balanced life.  Faith mediating between us and the supersensible is the essential link between ourselves and God.

The word of God is an invisible force which cannot be perceived by sense. The great power which lies at the heart of all that is does not itself come into observation; we perceived it only by faith which is ‘the evidence of things not seen.  There exists an unseen force that does not submit itself to experimental science, and that is the object of faith.

Yet as strangers and foreigners we desperately want the security of a city that has foundations but what we are able to construct can never secure us firmly to bed rock.  It’s our upside down equivalent of the Tower of Babel.  Rather than trusting God compulsively we codify rules and seek to build palpable structures   and expect everyone within our community to comply.

It’s like we worry about devising ways to anchor our double wide mobile homes to the earth. And we feel so secure that within our mobile home park we compose and seek to enforce covenants that control what our neighbors can and can not do. But despite our most sincere efforts the changing winds of life blow our dwellings off their fragile pads.  We are more like Abraham, Isaac and Jacob than we want to believe, imagining we have constructed foundations only to learn that our lives are really about tent stakes.   We have no deed for our double wide despite how luxurious we’ve made it, we have no foundation.

I was saddened this weak as I read, and then re-read,  “A Progress Report from Northwest Yearly Meeting Board of Elders”.  Clearly it written to defend themselves against the charge of being ‘unconcern or weak’ made against them for not more quickly censuring a local Friends Meeting that conscientiously and intentionally placed themselves “out of compliance with Northwest Yearly Meeting Faith and Practice’.  They have chosen to welcome into their faith community and persons who live in committed same sex relationships.

In the report the Elder’s reminded the readers that in response they had decided to reiterate the ‘historic stance’ in the “Our Witness to Human Sexuality” portion of the Yearly Meeting’s Faith and Practice and that they had formed a sub-committee to draft language that ‘upholds that stance while seasoning it with grace’. During Yearly Meeting sessions sufficient unity was not found to accept the more gracefully stated  statement as having had its first reading toward adoption.

Attached to the Progress Report was a draft proposal for a formalized multiyear and multi-step  legal process for adjudicating charges of noncompliance intended to assure  adherence with the language of Faith and Practice or if “reconciliation” is found to be impossible severing the non-compliant local church’s relationship with the Yearly Meeting, “with property issues handled with grace”. For me, reconciliation supposes movement on the part of both parties.  Such would entail a serious revisiting of the intent of Faith and Practice which is not contemplated.

Through out human history those who have stood against acknowledging truth when it has contradicted their fondest notions have been characterized as ignominious.  For instance, the Gospel is for all, not just Jews. The world is round, not flat. The Sun, not the Earth, is the center of our solar system.  Creation can’t be dated to 4004 B.C.  Native Americans who were here before most of us and the Afro-Americans we brought here are neither children of

Satan and obstacles in the way of our manifest destiny nor sub-human tools for our use.  People who suffer mental illness or physical deformity deserve having a life rather than being hidden away.  Women are equal to men.

I think it is an extreme imposition to charge someone with defending the language of a document as if it were a perfectly complete foundation for faithfulness.  Those who have been put in such a position have consistently been marked by disgrace, shame or humiliation.

The Religious Society of Friends has for 370 years sought to avoid such inquisitions. For himself, Jesus, in Luke 12 asks: “My friend, who set me over you to judge or arbitrate?

The Letter to the Hebrews reminds us that such statements which pretend to being foundational for faithfulness are at best tent stakes which mark where we are in our faith pilgrimage and the holes left from where they are pulled up when we move on are quickly filled in by the sand which had held them.  We are wilderness wanderers and the appropriate role for our Elders is to point a way forward through a constantly changing landscape, not defend where we most recently erected our tents.

Despite our comforting prejudices Paul in his letter to the Romans says that in God’s sight we are all equals, saved not by our adherence to doctrinal orthodoxy or our compassionate witness but by grace – alone. Maybe Paul’s advice in Romans 14:22 needs to be taken to heart. He writes: “If you have some firm conviction, keep it between yourself and God.”  We are obliged to accept one another.  In the 15^th Chapter he penned that we are to accept one another  as Christ accepted us.  He wrote: “ …do you think lightly of his (God’s) wealth of kindness, of tolerance and of patience, without recognizing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to a change of heart.”  Paul pleads in the 14^th chapter of Romans: “Let us therefore cease judging one another….”

Following charges of insider trading being brought against a large hedge fund company and some of its employees the chatter on the financial blogs this week was deafening.  Small and medium sized manufacturers and small investors decried what they called crony capitalism.  Some doubted the offenders would get jail time and were livid over the multi-billionaire owner not being charged.  The big issue for some was the lack of morality in contemporary economics.  Others argued that the financial markets couldn’t be considered moral or immoral, they are amoral.  Adam Smith argued the philosophical notion that self-interest would lead to moral behavior as perhaps a replacement for Christian morality. Was he right?

In our Gospel reading of today, when Jesus was asked to intervene in a family squabble over the distribution of an estate he carefully avoided taking a position but he didn’t miss a teachable moment.

Luke 12:13-21

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.”

By this time in his ministry, Jesus had developed a reputation as one who helped others. Luke says that he not only healed people but he went around teaching and proclaiming the kingdom of God. Reports of his activity circulated as early as Luke 4.  People came to Jesus in droves This 12^th Chapter of Luke begins saying that many thousands had gathered around him. But the motivations with which they came were probably as numerous as the needs they felt. Some came out of desperation, hoping for a cure for their servant or child. Some came to challenge him or justify themselves. Others came to Jesus with a complaint. It’s not that hard to imagine someone who felt that an injustice was being done would try to get Jesus to intervene on their behalf.

Jesus’ parable doesn’t warn against money, wealth, or material abundance. He warns against greed, about the insatiable feeling of never having enough. He said: “watch and be on your guard against excess”. The word Luke uses is the same word Plato uses to describe people that are gorging themselves and living in excess. The farmer’s problem isn’t that he’s had a great harvest, or that he’s rich, or that he wants to plan for the future. The farmer’s problem is that his good fortune has distorted his vision so that everything he sees starts and ends with himself.

Abundance brings problems. We often think that if we just had a little more, or if we were “swamped” with business, that all would be well with us. The story gives no indication that before the outstanding harvest the man was a greedy person.  But the presence of abundance made him a greedy person. Perhaps that is the way for us. Abundance may “trigger” in us the “greed gene,” a gene that is, for the most part, dormant and should remain dormant, but which can be triggered by overexposure to too much abundance. In a TED talk  (TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design)  Jim Fallon, a neuroscientist, spoke about his discovery of a psychopathic killer gene, that interestingly enough he learned that he carried himself.  He says that its lies dormant in a child unless something truly traumatic happens.  We’ve seen this in our own family.  So maybe this notion of abundance triggering the greed gene isn’t all that unrealistic.

So, triggered by his newly experienced affluence, the farmer decides to build bigger barns. Again, this sounds like a reasonable course of action. But then the text says that the man decided to gather into these new barns not just the grain from the harvest but “my goods” (v. 18). He is now calculating how to maximize his wealth. But in Jesus’ parable, it is as if he is killing his soul by the expansion project.

Listen again to the conversation he has with, not a spouse or friend or parent or neighbor, but only with himself: “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. And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’”

Do you see what I mean? It is an absolutely egocentric conversation, even including a conversation with himself inside the conversation he is already having with himself! This is why he is a fool. He has fallen prey to the notion that life, and particularly the good life, consists of possessions, precisely the thing Jesus warns against.

Of what, then, does the good life consist? Read the rest of what Jesus says across the gospels and it becomes pretty clear: relationships — relationships with each other and with God. And, as you inevitably discover while reading, these two can’t really be separated. Hence Jesus tells stories like the parable of the Good Samaritan that invite us to think more broadly about who is our neighbor.  He preaches sermons that extol caring for the poor, loving our enemies, and doing good for those in need. Not once does Jesus lift up setting up a retirement account or securing a higher-paying job as part of seeking the kingdom of God.

Which doesn’t mean these things are bad. Really. Money can do lots of wonderful things — it can provide for our families, it can be given to others in need, it can be used to create jobs and promote the general welfare, and it can make possible a more comfortable life. It just can’t produce the kind of full and abundant life that each of us seeks and that Jesus promises. So it’s not about the money, it’s about our attitude towards the money and those around us.

Truth be told, I think most of know and believe that what Jesus says is true. We know that money can’t buy happiness. The thing is, even though we know this, most of us struggle to live this way. That is, most of us are seduced by the same message that captures the soul of the farmer in Jesus’ parable.

Which isn’t really all that surprising. Our culture inundates us with the message the farmer bought into. Advertisements are designed to exploit our insecurities. Inadequacy marketing identifies and exaggerates something about which we feel insecure — our breath, our body, our status, etc. — then it offers us something to buy — mouthwash, a weight loss program, a bigger car, etc. — that will remedy our concern and make us acceptable again.

What is the one distinct advantage that our addiction to affluence has over the abundant life Jesus extols: it is immediately tangible. Relationships, community, purpose — the kinds of things that Jesus invites us to embrace and strive for — are much harder to lay our hands on. We know what a good relationship feels like, but it’s hard to point to or produce on a moment’s notice. And we know that wonderful feeling of being accepted into a community, but it’s not like you can have Fed-Ex deliver it to your front door.

So we substitute material goods for immaterial ones because, well, they’re right there in front of us and we’ve got a whole culture telling us that this is the best there is.

All this teaching suggests the importance of proper priorities regarding possessions. They are a stewardship, not to be hoarded selfishly but to be used to benefit those around us. Jesus is not saying possessions are bad, but that the selfish pursuit of them is pointless. When the creation is inverted, the value of possessions is distorted. Those who climb over people or ignore them in the pursuit of possessions will come up empty on the day God sorts out our lives. What a tragic misuse of the gift of resources this man had gained! What could have been an opportunity for generosity and blessing became a stumbling block to his soul.

If we are not going to pursue material things, then how do we deal with our physical needs? You are not going to like Jesus’ answer to this question.  It is really fairly simple but by an large most of us have already rejected it as irresponsible and irrational: “Trust God.” Using creation as the example, Jesus points to the tender care of the heavenly Father and asks people to consider how gentle God is. If God can care for his other creatures, he can care for you.  From the beginning of this longer passage of Luke’s gospel, it’s basic exhortation is Do not worry. Given God’s care, we can be generous with the things God provides. The contrast between Jesus’ attitude here and that of the rich fool could not be greater. Jesus’ concern is with food and clothing (v. 22), the basics of life. His exhortation begins with a call not to worry and he explains his call away from worry by noting that life is more than food or clothing. The deepest dimension of life is relationship with God and with others. In 10:25-28 Jesus made it clear that real life has to do with relationship. Living is more than having; it is being in relationship with God and relating well to others. Placing concern for our daily needs in God’s hands is part of what it means to have relationship with God.

We can begin to see why Jesus warns his disciples, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God…. But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation” (6:20b, 24).  The image which Jesus paints in his parables about the use of money and our attitudes toward possessions is complex. Jesus does not glorify poverty; it brings “evil things”—illness and perpetual hunger.  So having wealth is good and enables good living. But wealth itself is transitory. What the farmer assumes he is putting away for a comfortable future, on the night he dies, ends up going to others. The point is clear: “money, possessions, and the good life that they bring with them are at best ephemeral in character and in the end completely untrustworthy.”  Affluence can obscure our moral vision.  The possessions of the rich farmer have closed his eyes to the world around him and obscured his vision of people in need. Wealth creates chasms between people. The inability to see others becomes an impassable barrier that separates people one from another and prohibits meaningful interaction, but most of all Jesus said: ^21”So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”.

Following charges of insider trading being brought against a large hedge fund company and some of its employees the chatter on the financial blogs this week was deafening.  Small and medium sized manufacturers and small investors decried what they called crony capitalism.  Some doubted the offenders would get jail time and were livid over the multi-billionaire owner not being charged.  The big issue for some was the lack of morality in contemporary economics.  Others argued that the financial markets couldn’t be considered moral or immoral, they are amoral.  Adam Smith argued the philosophical notion that self-interest would lead to moral behavior as perhaps a replacement for Christian morality. Was he right?

In our Gospel reading of today, when Jesus was asked to intervene in a family squabble over the distribution of an estate he carefully avoided taking a position but he didn’t miss a teachable moment.

Luke 12:13-21

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.”

By this time in his ministry, Jesus had developed a reputation as one who helped others. Luke says that he not only healed people but he went around teaching and proclaiming the kingdom of God. Reports of his activity circulated as early as Luke 4.  People came to Jesus in droves This 12^th Chapter of Luke begins saying that many thousands had gathered around him. But the motivations with which they came were probably as numerous as the needs they felt. Some came out of desperation, hoping for a cure for their servant or child. Some came to challenge him or justify themselves. Others came to Jesus with a complaint. It’s not that hard to imagine someone who felt that an injustice was being done would try to get Jesus to intervene on their behalf.

Jesus’ parable doesn’t warn against money, wealth, or material abundance. He warns against greed, about the insatiable feeling of never having enough. He said: “watch and be on your guard against excess”. The word Luke uses is the same word Plato uses to describe people that are gorging themselves and living in excess. The farmer’s problem isn’t that he’s had a great harvest, or that he’s rich, or that he wants to plan for the future. The farmer’s problem is that his good fortune has distorted his vision so that everything he sees starts and ends with himself.

Abundance brings problems. We often think that if we just had a little more, or if we were “swamped” with business, that all would be well with us. The story gives no indication that before the outstanding harvest the man was a greedy person.  But the presence of abundance made him a greedy person. Perhaps that is the way for us. Abundance may “trigger” in us the “greed gene,” a gene that is, for the most part, dormant and should remain dormant, but which can be triggered by overexposure to too much abundance. In a TED talk  (TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design)  Jim Fallon, a neuroscientist, spoke about his discovery of a psychopathic killer gene, that interestingly enough he learned that he carried himself.  He says that its lies dormant in a child unless something truly traumatic happens.  We’ve seen this in our own family.  So maybe this notion of abundance triggering the greed gene isn’t all that unrealistic.

So, triggered by his newly experienced affluence, the farmer decides to build bigger barns. Again, this sounds like a reasonable course of action. But then the text says that the man decided to gather into these new barns not just the grain from the harvest but “my goods” (v. 18). He is now calculating how to maximize his wealth. But in Jesus’ parable, it is as if he is killing his soul by the expansion project.

Listen again to the conversation he has with, not a spouse or friend or parent or neighbor, but only with himself: “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. And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’”

Do you see what I mean? It is an absolutely egocentric conversation, even including a conversation with himself inside the conversation he is already having with himself! This is why he is a fool. He has fallen prey to the notion that life, and particularly the good life, consists of possessions, precisely the thing Jesus warns against.

Of what, then, does the good life consist? Read the rest of what Jesus says across the gospels and it becomes pretty clear: relationships — relationships with each other and with God. And, as you inevitably discover while reading, these two can’t really be separated. Hence Jesus tells stories like the parable of the Good Samaritan that invite us to think more broadly about who is our neighbor.  He preaches sermons that extol caring for the poor, loving our enemies, and doing good for those in need. Not once does Jesus lift up setting up a retirement account or securing a higher-paying job as part of seeking the kingdom of God.

Which doesn’t mean these things are bad. Really. Money can do lots of wonderful things — it can provide for our families, it can be given to others in need, it can be used to create jobs and promote the general welfare, and it can make possible a more comfortable life. It just can’t produce the kind of full and abundant life that each of us seeks and that Jesus promises. So it’s not about the money, it’s about our attitude towards the money and those around us.

Truth be told, I think most of know and believe that what Jesus says is true. We know that money can’t buy happiness. The thing is, even though we know this, most of us struggle to live this way. That is, most of us are seduced by the same message that captures the soul of the farmer in Jesus’ parable.

Which isn’t really all that surprising. Our culture inundates us with the message the farmer bought into. Advertisements are designed to exploit our insecurities. Inadequacy marketing identifies and exaggerates something about which we feel insecure — our breath, our body, our status, etc. — then it offers us something to buy — mouthwash, a weight loss program, a bigger car, etc. — that will remedy our concern and make us acceptable again.

What is the one distinct advantage that our addiction to affluence has over the abundant life Jesus extols: it is immediately tangible. Relationships, community, purpose — the kinds of things that Jesus invites us to embrace and strive for — are much harder to lay our hands on. We know what a good relationship feels like, but it’s hard to point to or produce on a moment’s notice. And we know that wonderful feeling of being accepted into a community, but it’s not like you can have Fed-Ex deliver it to your front door.

So we substitute material goods for immaterial ones because, well, they’re right there in front of us and we’ve got a whole culture telling us that this is the best there is.

All this teaching suggests the importance of proper priorities regarding possessions. They are a stewardship, not to be hoarded selfishly but to be used to benefit those around us. Jesus is not saying possessions are bad, but that the selfish pursuit of them is pointless. When the creation is inverted, the value of possessions is distorted. Those who climb over people or ignore them in the pursuit of possessions will come up empty on the day God sorts out our lives. What a tragic misuse of the gift of resources this man had gained! What could have been an opportunity for generosity and blessing became a stumbling block to his soul.

If we are not going to pursue material things, then how do we deal with our physical needs? You are not going to like Jesus’ answer to this question.  It is really fairly simple but by an large most of us have already rejected it as irresponsible and irrational: “Trust God.” Using creation as the example, Jesus points to the tender care of the heavenly Father and asks people to consider how gentle God is. If God can care for his other creatures, he can care for you.  From the beginning of this longer passage of Luke’s gospel, it’s basic exhortation is Do not worry. Given God’s care, we can be generous with the things God provides. The contrast between Jesus’ attitude here and that of the rich fool could not be greater. Jesus’ concern is with food and clothing (v. 22), the basics of life. His exhortation begins with a call not to worry and he explains his call away from worry by noting that life is more than food or clothing. The deepest dimension of life is relationship with God and with others. In 10:25-28 Jesus made it clear that real life has to do with relationship. Living is more than having; it is being in relationship with God and relating well to others. Placing concern for our daily needs in God’s hands is part of what it means to have relationship with God.

We can begin to see why Jesus warns his disciples, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God…. But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation” (6:20b, 24).  The image which Jesus paints in his parables about the use of money and our attitudes toward possessions is complex. Jesus does not glorify poverty; it brings “evil things”—illness and perpetual hunger.  So having wealth is good and enables good living. But wealth itself is transitory. What the farmer assumes he is putting away for a comfortable future, on the night he dies, ends up going to others. The point is clear: “money, possessions, and the good life that they bring with them are at best ephemeral in character and in the end completely untrustworthy.”  Affluence can obscure our moral vision.  The possessions of the rich farmer have closed his eyes to the world around him and obscured his vision of people in need. Wealth creates chasms between people. The inability to see others becomes an impassable barrier that separates people one from another and prohibits meaningful interaction, but most of all Jesus said: ^21”So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”.

Teach us to pray like John’s disciples  Luke 11: 1-13

Our text for today, Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer, is not as well known to us.  We’ve heard messages based on it all our lives.  It presents several quite different approaches to prayerToday I’m going to ask you to suspend some of what you’ve come to think that it is all about and listen with new ears to this gospel passage. The first of three sections begins:

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. 3 Give 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.”

In responding to the request of the disciple to teach them to pray like the disciples of John the Baptist Jesus quotes the opening of the Qaddish, one of the oldest and most used prayers in Jewish piety. This would be nothing really new to Jesus’ hearers – it is like taking a page from the Jewish prayer book. Its popularity in pre-Christian Palestine is attested by numerous echoes in late biblical, apocryphal and early rabbinic sources. It is regularly used with slight variations several times during morning and evening Jewish worship services.  The interesting thing is the unique addition Jesus makes.  This is how the Qaddish begins:

Heightened and hallowed be his great name in the world he created according to his will. And may he establish his kingdom in your life and in your days and in the life of all the house of Israel, very soon and in the coming season.
–And you say: Amen!
Blessed, praised and glorified, raised, lifted up and revered, exalted and lauded be the name of him who is Holy, blessed be He! Although he is high above all blessings, hymns, praised and solace uttered in (this) world.

To offer some light on what is going on here Scott McKnight points us to Mark 12:28-32. In that passage Jesus expands the traditional Shema to include Leviticus 19:18′s command of loving your neighbor. It reads: One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, “Which commandment is the first of all?” 29Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; 30you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ 31The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

The Shema, from Deut. 6:4-5, is the fundamental text of Jewish monotheism, and devout Jews continue to recite it twice a day. Jesus broadens the fundamental command of Judaism to include not only allegiance to and love of God, but also love of neighbor – the basic duty of life extending both vertically AND horizontally. The inclusion of both love of God and neighbor is mirrored in the two sections of the Lord’s Prayer, and McKnight argues that Jesus is essentially doing the same thing with the Qaddish that he did with the Shema – expanding it to include dimensions of God’s glory and of his kingdom and also of life together based on love of neighbor in a community dedicated to living God’s kingdom as reality.

Are you aware of just how subversive and even revolutionary are each of the petitions of the Lord’s prayer: God is not distant but he is our Father; it is his name that should be exalted on the earth and not the name of any other ruler or power; his reign when manifest in this world, displaces the reign of other would-be lords. These fairly jump out at us from the page, but the petitions in the “love your neighbor” section are equally evocative.

To pray for our daily bread echoes the experience of Israel in the wilderness as God provided manna – just enough for each day, with no hoarding possible, no way for anyone to gain greater influence or power through God’s gracious gift. This undermines the nature of an affluent culture by declaring trust in God, not accumulation, as basic to our way of having needs met. To pray to be released from our debts as we release those in debt to us is an outworking of the principle of Jubilee that subverts a society based on debt and unequal economic power relations. To pray to be not lead into temptation but delivered from evil stands as a bulwark both against the tendencies of an oppressive society to call those who could to join the oppressors as well as the tendency of the oppressed to undertake violent revolution.

This is fascinating insight into what John the Baptist and Jesus brought new to the spirituality of contemporary Judaism. It echoes the voices of the Prophets in having both verticle and horizontal implications. It reforms what has been a narrowly focused faith and makes it inclusive. But Jesus wants more of his disciples than that.

In the blog The Hardest Question Russel Rathbon pushes the envelope of our comfort zone much farther. He points out that we are pretty comfortable with the first part of this text which has gotten a great deal of attention but, he says, it is the rest of this passage that causes us to scratch our heads.

5And (Jesus) 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. 9“So 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.

We’ve been taught to understand the parable of the reluctant neighbor as an admonition to be persistent in prayer. “… 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.” The neighbor doesn’t want to give his friend any bread, but grudgingly he finally does — not out of love but irritation. Is this how Jesus wants us to think of God and of prayer? So if you ask a lot and search unceasingly, and knock relentlessly, finally and grudgingly you will receive, find, and have the door opened up to you? I know some who carry a heavy burden that their prayers were not answered because they believe they failed the persistence test. But this interpretation turns God into a miserly, hard-hearted “friend” who won’t give what is asked for until we have sufficiently begged and pleaded. Who needs a friend like that? Who needs a God like that? Jesus evidently wished his followers would have a different understanding of God.

There is another place in Matthew 6 where Jesus instructs his followers how to pray. 7“When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. 8Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

God’s response to our needs and desires cannot be based on our tenacity, our ability to harass God, or even our ability to ask for the right things in the right way. In his Small Catechism Luther dismissed that notion out-of-hand saying instead, “Of course, God’s name is holy in and of itself; Truly God’s Kingdom comes by itself, without our prayer; Truly, God’s good and gracious will is accomplished without our prayer.”

Jesus shifts metaphors and says: 11 Is 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? And we want to say something like: Come on Jesus, what are you trying to do?—everyone knows we all give bad things to our children all the time. They want love and approval, but sometimes we give them insecurity and shame. They want our time, our presence, and our attention, but sometimes we give them distance and fear. What is the point of rubbing our noses in our parental failures with the sarcasm?

And then Jesus amazes us with this :13 If 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!” It stops us cold. Were we talking about the Holy Spirit? I didn’t know we were talking about the Holy Spirit. Maybe it is just assumed that when this disciple asked him about prayer he was really asking him about the Holy Spirit. But that’s not what Jesus was asked. Listen carefully. “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” I would think that Jesus would have been relieved that finally his disciples are becoming teachable instead of assuming they know, or not even listening. But Jesus doesn’t seem relieved, he seems irritated.

What is it that irritates Jesus so much? Or, if it’s not that why all the negativity? Could it be what lies behind the request from the disciple? The disciple didn’t ask Jesus to teach them to pray, he ask Jesus to teach them to pray as John taught his disciples. It’s like the disciples want something John’s disciples have that Jesus is not providing them. Is it that they want a formula for their spiritual discipline while Jesus wants them to seek the unpredictable, unquantifiable movement of the Holy Spirit?

Up till now, it’s all been about bread and forgiveness and not being tested and asking and seeking and knocking. Up till this point who has said anything about asking for the Holy Spirit? But now all of a sudden it’s about the Holy Spirit. What are we to make of this? Luke offers no further clarification.

I’m thinking back to Luke 4:1-13 where Jesus, “full of the Holy Spirit returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness.” It is the Spirit that helped Jesus endure the 40 days of fasting and the 3 testings by Satan – including the one about satisfying his hunger by turning stones into bread.

So I’m thinking that what Jesus is saying is that whatever the concrete specifics of our prayers may be, the crucial thing is to pray that our hearts be aligned with God’s heart, and that what we seek as the “answer” to our needs be inwardly formed by the Holy Spirit.

Martha, Martha

Luke 10:38-42

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.”

Martha whines to Jesus, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her to help me.” Jesus responds, “Martha, Martha”.  Can you imagine Jesus shaking his head in bodily language telling her that she just doesn’t get it?   He says “There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part.”   I can almost see Mary stick out her tongue at Jesus. The meaning is clear: don’t be distracted by the mundane tasks of everyday life; instead, sit with Jesus and listen to him, for he has the words that lead to eternal life. The problem is that the meaning sitting on the surface of this text can be an enabler for some of us who aren’t very rigorous in our personal discipline and can make us feel good about being just plain sloppy housekeepers.  It  can help us rationalize not being distracted by the everyday tasks like mowing the lawn, cleaning the bathroom that I use or helping with the laundry.

Is Jesus really calling people from their domestic duties in favor of a life of contemplation at his feet—to meditation on his words? That seems to me a reading for the privileged. A single parent,  a subsistence farmer or a caregiver to a dependent loved one is very distracted by the work of everyday life. Not only distracted, but harried, overwhelmed, and exhausted. Someone has to feed the kids.  Someone has to make sure there are clothes to wear. If you can just sit at Jesus’ feet and not worry about who is putting the meal on the table, that means someone else is doing it for you. I think Jesus must be responding to something else here.

What a contrast this is to the story which immediately precedes it in Luke’s Gospel.  He tells the story of the good Samaritan. The preface to the good Samaritan story reads: Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” ^26 27He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.”²⁸And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.”

In this parable Jesus tells his followers that living the Gospel is all about doing.  He castigates the religious and righteous for being so heavenly minded that they were of no earthly good when it came to caring for someone in need.  And of course he is illustrating the point that the neighbor whom we are commissioned to love as ourselves is, as we sang last Sunday, “anyone who has a need”.  And, of course, to make the pill even harder to swallow he makes the hero of the story an undocumented alien, a foreigner and immigrant traveling in Jewish territory.

So I’m convinced that the message of this Sunday’s gospel is not that study with a rabbi or minister always trumps housework. It’s not that women’s work is inferior to men’s. And, as one woman wrote of this passage, you’d have to be smoking something very potent and probably illegal to think that it’s that gender roles were established by God and are blurred at our spiritual peril. The message, I think, is that this spiritual pilgrimage we are on isn’t as simplistic as we are sometimes led to believe.  There seems to be two pieces that have to be balanced, and we find it in Luke’s gospel immediately before the Good Samaritan story.  He told his followers: ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind” part and the “and your neighbor as yourself” part.

In this text Martha and Mary are being treated as disciples of Jesus. They are not two from the crowd of Jesus’ followers but part of his inner circle.  I don’t find it any different than when Jesus was teaching James and John in private.

Just a couple of weeks ago we read something quite similar from Paul’s letter to the Galatians.  He wrote: “The only thing that matters is faith working through love.”  I guess I’m saying that only things – one thing that always trumps another is a dangerous path to take.

At different times, in different circumstances we all may be and often are called to tryout different roles, identities, patterns of behavior some of which feel “tried and true” or even immutable not only for the sake of growing in our own discipleship, but to invite others — even or especially others who may seem perfectly happy with a privileged role they’ve got — to become more fully who they are in Christ, and to live more fully into the ministry to which Christ calls them.

How do we find a balance that embraces the needs of Mary and Martha?  Two things brought that home to me this morning during unprogrammed worship.  First there was a man calling from the back door “Is there anyone here?”  He had the keys to the Family Promise van and needed to hand them off to someone.  Then a bit later one of the worshipper’s phone must have vibrated – disturbing only its owner – but it required her to leave the Meeting Room for a few moments.  Both incidents reminded me that as wonderful it is to be fully absorbed in worship, at times the world will break in and call us to respond to the need of another.  For Martha the task was overwhelming, not so for Mary.  But we need to find both the Martha and the Mary in ourselves.

A wonderful, shocking, life-giving truth is that flexibility in our discipleship often yields more blessings than we know how to gather — blessings so rich they must be shared.

A preparative message for our community discussion on the meaning of membership.

Galatians 6:10. So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all, and especially for those of the family of faith.

We’ve been led to believe that Eskimos have at least 52 words for ice, over 180 words for snow and as many as a thousand words for reindeer. Those who have studied the languages of the Inuit culture tell us that’s quite an exaggeration. But never the less, like the Inuit who live in a world of ice, snow and reindeer we too need expressions to make distinctions between things and experiences in our lives that are quite similar.

There is the great old story of the little girl from a plain Quaker background who after visiting a cathedral in a great city was heard to say that she now knew what was a saint.  It is one, she pronounced, through whom the light shown.  Since the middle ages the world has been blessed with the artistic beauty of art glass windows and it’s easy to forget that along with their beauty they taught stories from the Bible of the Church to a mostly illiterate population.

Though we often speak of such pieces of art as “stained glass” they are more correctly ‘art glass’.   Stained glass is the result of an artist’s hand painting faces, hands and even text on glass and baking it in a kiln to set the stain.  Art glass is the medium used to create patterned window panels.  It is an art form in itself.  Out of sheets of glass selected for their color, texture and opacity pieces of a design are cut, their edges ground and smoothly fit together with copper, lead or silver, cleaned and polished to form a panel to last for lifetimes.

What the little girl saw in that cathedral was light streaming through patterned art glass panels that bore the likeness of biblical characters and saints of the Church.

Most of the glass we use today is transparent. It is, in fact, a modern miracle. It transmits light so that objects or images on one side can be seen on the other as if there were no intervening material.  If television commercials have it right, this is a nightmare for birds and cats.  It allows us to watch fish in their bowls or watch raging winter storms and stay warm and dry.   We use it in our homes, cars, computers and every hand held device that has a screen.

To make the earliest commercial glass strong men stood on a raised platform and after dipping long poles into vats of melted sand they spun them until a large circle of the melted material congealed and set.  They broke the circle of transparent glass from the pole and cut it into a shippable form.  .

Last week I noticed that windows in the Glover Mansion are made of the center cores which remained from the glass making process. Because of their form they’re not transparent, they’re translucent.  They diffuse the light that they transmits in a way that objects beyond cannot be clearly seen.  In modern ways we intentionally make glass to do that, let light through but not to be able to clearly make out what’s on the other side.  Shower Doors for shower stalls are one obvious example.  Doors for kitchen cabinets are also typical.  Only in rare occasions would translucent glass be used in a patterned art glass panel.   

It is the quality of opalescence that is essential to beautiful “stained glass” windows, a milky, iridescent appearance of a dense glass medium when it is illuminated by sunlight.  Opalescent glass is a different product entirely than commercial window glass.  Instead of being manufactured to stringent standards of clarity and uniformity this glass is still made today  one sheet at a time. It is the product of experimentation with a wide variety of minerals that when added to the glass mixture results in glass that the light, as it passes through it, transmits all kinds of color.  Cut to the shape of parts of a larger design, ground, wrapped and joined with other pieces of the design it becomes a masterpiece of beauty and presentation.

As the little girl described, light passing through the art glass panels in a great cathedral teaches and inspires. Of course Quakers are the first to want to talk about the meaning of Light.  We speak of the Light of Christ, the Light within.  Even the revered old liturgical hymn Holy, Holy, Holy  has us singing of the light eternal which fills us with power, love and purity. 

My thought is that as much as we value transparency in commerce and communication in human interchange it is an questionable if not impossible goal. I rather like the idea that it is all the extraneous materials, the impurities if you like, which when added to melted sand turn crystal clarity to milky opalescence and which add colors to the glass.   And then, of course, it requires pieces from many colors and textures of hand thrown and rolled sheets of opalescent glass, cut, ground, wrapped and held together by a bonding of metals to create the extraordinary image that when light passes through draws us to reverence.       

The text from the Epistles suggested for today is Galatians 5:1, 13-25.  It is a beautiful passage.  It begins: For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

Starting at the 13^th verse Paul waxes eloquent in talking about freedom – not license to anything anyone wants to do – but how through love people within the community become slaves to one another.  Like Jesus before him, Paul quotes Leviticus 19:18 “You shall love your neighbor as yourself”.  He ends the passage with a listing of the fruit of the Spirit.  He writes:  the fruit of the Spirit There is no law against such things.

And, he makes it clear that exhibiting these attributes can’t be manufactured, fabricated. The text reads  ²⁴And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Well, he says it better than can I:  ²⁵If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.

Obviously I’ve turned the passage around abit because earlier he wrote: ¹⁹Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness,²⁰idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, ²¹envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.  It’s interesting that these are the very things the Law was supposed to help us avoid –And he had just said: ¹⁸But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not subject to the law. You could imagine that being free of the law we are free to live unbridled lives.  No longer is the Law our chaperone – it is by belonging to Christ, having, as Paul wrote: crucified the flesh with its passions and desires that our lives will exhibit the Spirit’s fruit and that we will know in ourselves love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness,²³gentleness, and self-control.

In verse two through twelve Paul loses some of the ‘self control’ of which he had just spoken.  There was a real issue– one group within the churches of Galatia were adamant that Jewish rites of initiation were required of Gentiles.  Paul thought that in his discussion with the leaders of the Jerusalem church issue had been resolved but here it was again, legalism, raising its ugly head, confusing, frustrating and dividing the Galatians.  His words to those who demanded following the Law rather than following the Spirit were, well, cutting.  ²Listen! I, Paul, am telling you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no benefit to you. ³Once again I testify to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obliged to obey the entire law. ⁴You who want to be justified by the law have cut yourselves off from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. ⁵For through the Spirit, by faith, we eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. ⁶For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything ⁷You were running well; who prevented you from obeying the truth? ⁸Such persuasion does not come from the one who calls you. ⁹A little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough. ¹⁰I am confident about you in the Lord that you will not think otherwise. But whoever it is that is confusing you will pay the penalty. ¹¹But my friends, why am I still being persecuted if I am still preaching circumcision? In that case the offense of the cross has been removed.¹²I wish those who unsettle you would castrate themselves!

Now that is pretty rough, to say the least.  But there, beneath Paul’s broadside against those who demand compliance to their set of rules we find an absolute jewel.  Paul writes: “…the only thing that counts is faith working through love.” It is almost breath taking.  “…the only thing that counts is faith working through love.”

From our perspective, 2,000 years into the age of the church, does that still apply? What about things like the Apostle’s Creed, which legend holds, on the day of Pentecost the 12 Apostles contributed one line each to this statement of faith.  Scholarship asserts that it was a confessional statement from the second half of the 5^th century in southern Gaul.  The Catholic Encyclopedia says that it wasn’t in Gaul but in Rome that the creed assumed its final shape.

What about the Creed from the Council of Nicea?  On the 19^th of June in the year 325, Emperor Constantine opened the first Ecumenical Council making his entry into this gathering of Bishops wearing a gold oriental robe covered with precious stones, made an address expressing his will that religious peace should be established and the theological rancor cease and took his place in a golden chair.  Politically driven the church devised a new creedal statement, exiled the Bishops who wouldn’t agree, resolved the controversy over the date of Easter,  and burned the books of Arius.

Well, for Quakers, would Paul’s sentence cover the Richmond Declaration of Faith?  What about George Fox’s letter to Barbados, the list of our Yearly Meeting’s core values or what Britain Yearly Meeting considers the essentials of Quakerism?  It seems that Paul encouraged the Christians of Galatia to set aside things which by their very nature divide.  His line was “…the only things that counts is faith working through love.”

It reminds me of the movie City Slicker. Curly the quintessential cowboy asks: Do you know what the secret of life is?  The city slicker Mitch answers “No. What”.  “This” Curly replies simply holding up his index finger. To which Mitch responds “Your finger?”  Then Curly says: “One thing.  Just one thing.  You stick to that and everything don’t mean ‘nuthen’.”  “That’s great” Mitch replies. “But what’s the one thing?”  Curly says “That’s what you’ve gotta figure out.”

Paul figured it out for the church.  It is faith working through love.

Last week we discussed what Paul meant by faith.  Faith is not mental assent to a set of beliefs.  Faith is not being a strong spiritual warrior resisting the darts of temptation, that’s Old Testament faithfulness. For Paul ‘the faith’ of Christ means trusting God in a very radical and absolute way.  When we are tempted to trust anything other than God that’s idolatry.  That means placing our trust in the political process or free enterprise or even in our own efforts because we know that no one will do what ever needs to be done right, at least according to Paul, we have stepped outside of our relationship with God.  But even this faith, the faith, this trusting God can’t exist in the abstract.  Paul actually addresses two distinct graces.  There may be intense faith without love.

Paul says the one thing that is important is that our trusting God becomes real through love.  For Paul a good understanding of love was crucial for a Christian life. Love is the atmosphere within which faith should be exhibited.  Paul rarely spoke of a believer giving love to God, but a concrete response toward others is significantly mentioned.  In Paul’s writings loving God means loving others.  Paul wrote that the command of God was to love others.  Paul wrote that a theology of love was faith in Christ and love for others.  The very source of love is a believer’s faith in Christ, so Christ was the source of believer’s love.  Love is not an attained virtue in itself, but is part of a life transformed, filled with the spirit of God and united with the body of Christ.

In Paul’s day some within the faith community had determined that the life and death and resurrection of Jesus meant that God had done all that was necessary for their salvation. That meant that no one had to try to earn their salvation by any kind of works—how freeing.  But as in most cases where people get a taste of freedom for the first time, they have a hard time figuring out what it means to be truly free.  I’ve got stories from my family about after emancipation when people who had been slaves were released from their bondage.  Violence and the economy had left the plantation in ruins.  After a few weeks of freedom, when those who had title to the land could hardly feed themselves, those who had been slaves returned seeking shelter, food and work.  Under the rules of reconstruction they had to be turned away.  Freedom makes great demands.

The true meaning of love is found in the freedom to give yourself away. True freedom is what you get when you live your life in loving service to others. But I would say that it’s not so much a vicious circle as it is a paradox. The only way to truly find freedom is to give yourself away in love, and the only way to truly give yourself away in love is when you are free.. Augustine said it this way: “love, and do what you will.”[7] I think he was saying that if you truly love God and truly love others, then you are free to do whatever you want, because what you want will be—in so far as it is humanly possible—an expression of love toward God and others. And as St. Paul said it, there is no law against that!

What the Apostle Paul wanted the people of his day and ours to know is that it is only our relationship with Christ that enables us to explore what it means to have the freedom to love others in a community of people who are also free to live and to love.  That’s the one thing or has Paul puts it “…the only thing that counts is faith working through love.”

Peter Kreeft, a Roman Catholic scholar says that one of the tragic ironies of Christian history is that the deepest split in the history of the Church, and the one that has occasioned the most persecution, hatred, and bloody wars on both sides, from the Peasants’ War of Luther’s day through the Thirty Years’ War, which claimed a larger percentage of the population of many parts of central Europe than any other war in history, including the two world wars, to the present-day agony in Northern Ireland — this split between Protestant and Catholic originated in a misunderstanding.  It certainly doesn’t look like a misunderstanding. It looks like a flat-out contradiction: the Catholic Church taught that we are saved by faith and good works, while Luther taught that we are saved by faith alone (sola fide).

For one thing, even if the two sides did disagree about the relationship between faith and works, they both agreed that faith is absolutely necessary for salvation and that we are absolutely commanded by God to do good works. Both these two points are unmistakably clear in Scripture.

When terms are ambiguous, the two sides may really agree when they seem to disagree because they agree on the concept but not the word or the two sides may really disagree when they seem to agree because they agree only on the word, not the concept.  Kreeft’s argument is that when Luther taught that we are saved by faith alone, he meant only the initial step, justification, being put right with God. But when the Council of Trent said we are saved by good works as well as faith, they meant the whole process by which God brings us to our eternal destiny and that process includes repentance, faith, hope, and charity, the works of love.

For that reason it may be important to see it we can get a handle on what Paul meant in Galatians 3:23-29  when five times he uses Greek words all of which we translate as ‘faith’.  Galatians 3:23-29 ²³Now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed. ²⁴Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith.²⁵But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, ²⁶for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. ²⁷As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. ²⁸There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. ²⁹And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.

The whole of Galatians has often been called “the Magna Carta of Christian liberty” and most especially these few verses have the character of liberation about them.  When in 1215 the King of England was forced to sign the Magna Carta we are led to believe that it was about freeing the people. That’s backward.  It was about limiting the powers of the King. I’ve found it interesting how many of those who have commented on this book, in the name of Christian Liberty, declared how it establishes a new rule of law, a discipline for the Christian community.

Martin Luther wrote: “The Law enforces good behavior, at least outwardly. We obey the Law because if we don’t we will be punished. Our obedience is inspired by fear. We obey under duress and we do it resentfully. Now what kind of righteousness is this when we refrain from evil out of fear of punishment? Hence, the righteousness of the Law is at bottom nothing but love of sin and hatred of righteousness.”  Paul characterizes living under law as an incarceration. He says … before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed.

Paul begins speaking about the position of the true children of God before the coming of Christ.  He illustrates it by saying it was like living in bondage to the Law. And this bondage was like the watchful love of their Heavenly Father, who provides shelter and guidance just like an earthly father places his weak, inexperienced and young children under the charge of household servants.

There is no English equivalent for the word Paul uses to describe this entity. Less like a schoolmaster or tutor the word comes closer to that of a Spanish duenna or chaperone. This person doesn’t instruct, isn’t invested with authority to control – this person was a slave to a young master.  The appointment was to attend the child, to safeguard, to report to the child’s father disorderly or immoral conduct on which the father might find it necessary to place a check.  So the Law for the Israelites existed to regulate outward habits, enforce order and decency and maintain a certain standard of morality.   The Law didn’t address itself to the consciences, like did the Prophets, nor did it claim spiritual authority over the person but to impose a check on open tyranny of evil, to enforce on the community a higher standard of morals, and so foster indirectly the growth of spiritual life.  He said  ²⁴Therefore the law was our disciplinarian, our chaperone,  until Christ came.”

He speaks of a time  “before faith came” and  “until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith” and then he says “now that faith has come”.  Unfortunately most of our English translations of this passage fail to pay attention to the article preceding the word we translate as ‘faith’. Faith has been around for an awfully long time. It didn’t just show up with Jesus.  It was and still is the most conspicuous virtue of the Jewish religion and Abraham is the first of many splendid examples. But this isn’t just ‘faith’ to which Paul points – he speaks of ‘the faith’.  There is a huge difference between faith in the abstract and what Paul details as – the Faith of Christ.

In the context of a person’s relationship to God the verb form of ‘faith’ always implies personal conviction and trust arising within direct personal relationship.  In the New Testament there are two aspects to faith exercised.  It is confident reliance on God.  It is the act by which one lays hold on God’s offered resources and becoming obedient to what God prescribes, and, abandoning all self interest and self-reliance, trusting God completely.  This is the meaning Paul implies for the noun ‘faith’. This isn’t Old Testament faithfulness – where one who exercises faith is made firm and reliable. That is relying on one’s own determination which, interestingly enough could be seen as ‘good works’.  Faith is utter reliance on God.

When the children of Rome reached a certain age they graduated from toga praetexta for the toga virilis and were then considered a citizen.  This is the change of dress to which Paul points in the 27^th verse of this passage.  At the turn of the last century, iIn our own country, young boys wore short pants most of the time.  Even in winter they wore short pants.  They were called ‘knickers’. It was a big deal when you got long pants.  In Catholic families you got your long pants when your Baptism was confirmed.  Having long pants meant you were grown up.  You were a “man.” In Greek culture, through family gatherings and religious rites, a great deal was made of this occasion when the youth put on the clothing of an adult. Once subject to domestic rule now the person was admitted to the rights and responsibilities of citizen and took their place beside their parent in the councils of the family.

So Paul employs the practice the rite of passage of a dependent to the independence of the grown up to describe maturity in the life of faith.  Paul speaks of being clothed with Christ – a spiritual coming of age before which we had been bound to obey the rules fulfill definite duties.  In our new status we are set free to learn God’s will from the inward voice of the Spirit and discharge the heavier obligations incumbent on a citizen of the Kingdom of God.  This, according to Paul is the passage to spiritual maturity, spiritual adulthood, It is emancipation from bondage to an outward law. It is enfranchisement!

All distinctions of creed, race or gender are incompatible with membership in Christ’s kingdom.  Legal and social barriers which separated slave from owner, natural divisions of gender and family,  distinctions between orthodox and heterodox disappear in the presence of the all-absorbing unity of the body of Christ.  The Galatians were a living witness to the power of the Gospel to make of all people one in Christ.  Their meetings were gathered out of the most diverse elements, Jew and Gentile, slave and free, male and female.  Each contributed to the composition of the body of Christ. People who had been aliens and adversaries to each other and, like Paul himself, once a firebrand in opposition to the people of God, are wonderfully transformed into members of Christ.

²⁵But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, ²⁶for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. ²⁷As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. ²⁸There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. 

We are all robed in Christ and drawn together into oneness. That oneness doesn’t take away our differences, it means a new way of seeing and behaving. Baptized into Christ, as Paul says, makes us one and gives us the potential of seeing one another, regardless of differences, as brothers and sisters, all baptized into Christ. We all live in Christ, and Christ lives in us all. I found it fascinating that one non-Quakercommentator wrote: “’The Christ in thee meets the Christ in me,’ the Quakers say.”  What changes would happen in us individually, in our meeting, even in our Yearly Meeting if we really let ourselves see that way?

Christ will not be divided, and as we draw closer to the heart of Christ, we begin to feel Christ’s own longing for unity. We who live in Christ learn that we belong together, and there is an ache in our hearts whenever we are separated from one another. To know the truth of oneness, to long for unity is painful. It is tempting to retreat to our cliques of people who are just like us, where we can be safe and comfortable. But Gal 3:28 compels us to be together, to live as one with those who are most radically different from us, even those we believe to be most distant from God’s embrace. Living that oneness in Christ is not just doing what is politically correct, nor is it practicing the non-discrimination that the law requires; rather, it is to have a change of heart. Living that oneness means confessing that we are sometimes the barrier builders and the weapon wielders. It sometimes means allowing ourselves to get close to those who are most difficult for us to love. It sometimes means bearing the consequences of the pain of those who were relegated to the outside. It sometimes means listening and listening and waiting and waiting until trust can be restored. It means entering into the hard work of reconciliation.

If we were to allow ourselves to feel Christ’s own longing for unity, Christ’s own aching over our separations and divisions, what difference would it make in the way we behave toward one another?

Living with oneness in Christ leads to working for more unity in the world. This is how Christians find themselves standing in solidarity with those who are most vulnerable or least powerful. This is how Christians find themselves becoming advocates for those who are oppressed or shut out. This is how Christians find themselves exposed to the attacks of the world for living with integrity, living as mature citizens of the Kingdom of God.

In the patriarchal world of the Book of Numbers women had virtually no property rights. Widows didn’t inherit from their husbands but were dependent on their sons or the generosity of other heirs. Childless widows were the legal responsibility of their husband’s oldest brother—if he had one.

This is why I said last week that when someone in the Bible is describe as a “widow” we are to understand that this person is one of the most vulnerable of the vulnerable, one of the ‘least of these’.  A widow was outside the traditional system of household economy.  They were the object of pity, and hopefully charity.

All of us, but women most especially, have suffered huge consequences for the failure of the Hebrew Bible to have a considered discourse on the dynamics and implications of human sexuality.  Unfortunately this vacuum has been filled by Hellenistic ideas of dualism, cultic theories of sacrifice and Rabbinic notions of paternalism.  These have had an enormous impact on the development of Western religion and civilization which has continued well into our day. In a discussion of 18^th century women’s property rights there was one line, one bright spot, I’d like to share with you.  It reported that British and American Quakers were unique in that among them women were equals.

In Biblical law, like in ancient Near Eastern social policy, a woman’s subordination to the dominant male in her life is simply assumed. Legal concerns about women’s sexual activity primarily had to do with relations between men. In Leviticus for instance a man is executed for having intercourse with another’s wife not because he violated the woman but because he has committed a crime of theft against another man.  In Deuteronomy we are told that it is not a crime that a man rapes a virgin.  It is a question of what man “owned” the rights to the women’s sexuality.  At most the culprit is expected to pay a bride-price to the father.

Despite that the Bible makes it quite clear that God is especially concerned with those who are powerless, indigent and oppressed.  Through Elijah in the ninth century BC and through Jesus in the first century we have two demonstrations of God’s desire to save the most marginalized of ancient peoples, including the widows of the world.

The women in both our stories today are found to be in a worse condition than being dead. I’m reminded of two tee shirts our girls had years ago.  One said “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle”  the other said “Better to stay home and raise cats than marry a worthless man”.  Those sentiments may speak our minds today but they would not have fit in either the ninth century B.C. or the first of the Christian era

Let’s look at Elijah’s story first.  You’ll recall from last week that in a time of severe drought God sent Elijah to the home of a Lebanese widow who kept him alive until the drought broke.  This is the same widow in today’s reading. 1^st Kings 17:17

After this the son of the woman, the mistress of the house, became ill; his illness was so severe that there was no breath left in him. ¹⁸She then said to Elijah, “What have you against me, O man of God? You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance, and to cause the death of my son!” ¹⁹But he said to her, “Give me your son.” He took him from her bosom, carried him up into the upper chamber where he was lodging, and laid him on his own bed. ²⁰He cried out to the Lord, “O Lord my God, have you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I am staying, by killing her son?” ²¹Then he stretched himself upon the child three times, and cried out to the Lord, “O Lord my God, let this child’s life come into him again.” ²²The Lord listened to the voice of Elijah; the life of the child came into him again, and he revived.²³Elijah took the child, brought him down from the upper chamber into the house, and gave him to his mother; then Elijah said, “See, your son is alive.” ²⁴So the woman said to Elijah, “Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is truth.”

Elijah is accosted by this widow when after providing him hospitality her son dies.  According to best estimates she wouldn’t have been more than 33 years old.  Her son became so terribly ill that there was no breath left in him, that it, he was dead.  In her grief she shouts at Elijah that he had entered her house not to help her at all, but to “bring my sin to remembrance, and to cause the death of my son”.  She imagines that something she did earlier in her life was such an awful deed that the death of her son was the consequence.  What a monstrous notion. Unfortunately we can still hear it echoed today.

And things get even more twisted.  Elijah takes the child’s body and, this time shouting at God, prays:  “O YHWH, my God, have you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I am staying by killing her son?”  What’s he saying: “Look, God. You sent me to this widow in the first place, and now she blames me for this child’s death when in fact it is you who have killed him?”  God spends divine time evaluating human behaviors and doling out nasty punishments even to the death of innocent children? No.

Stretching himself on the dead child three times Elijah demands that God bring the child back from the dead. And God obliges.  The prophet announces to the widow, “Look! Your son is alive”. And the widow in response to the miracle adds her benediction to this theological mess. “Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of God in your mouth is truth”.  By bringing the child back from death Elijah has proven himself to be a man of God and all he utters can be trusted to be true.  The story and the characters in it haven’t told the truth about God.

They have created a characterization of God that needs to be rejected completely. This isn’t a God I recognize.  God is not in the business of finding ways of punishing human sin by slaughtering loved ones. God doesn’t send messengers to announce such terrible claims.  It is far past time for us to give up these absurd notions about a God who rewards and punishes our human actions in cruel and sadistic ways. Too many have gone down that road.  It is a road that leads only to needless pain and useless explanations about the difficulties of our human lives.

The Common Lectionary suggests a somewhat parallel story in Luke. It’s important for us to see the difference.  Elijah in Jewish tradition is supposed to return to usher in the messianic period. Matthew and Mark both identify him with John the Baptist. Luke drops the link between Elijah and the Baptist and shows Jesus fulfilling Elijah’s role.

Luke tells us that Jesus and a large retinue are entering the city of Nain.  As they do they encounter a large funeral procession trying to leave the city through the same gate.  This makes for a rather large crowd of witnesses made up of a pilgrimage of life and a procession of death.

¹¹Soon afterwards he (Jesus) went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went with him. ¹²As he approached the gate of the town, a man who had died was being carried out. He was his mother’s only son, and she was a widow; and with her was a large crowd from the town. ¹³When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to her, “Do not weep.” ¹⁴Then he came forward and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, “Young man, I say to you, rise!”¹⁵The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. ¹⁶Fear seized all of them; and they glorified God, saying, “A great prophet has risen among us!” and “God has looked favorably on his people!” ¹⁷This word about him spread throughout Judea and all the surrounding country. Luke 7:11-17

Widows were the victims of a cruel economic system which provides them few ways to survive. According to Biblical law a widow finds herself at the mercy of her neighbors. Certainly, she grieves the loss of her child.  But in our story today Jesus confronts the economic systems of his own time and provides an unexpected kind of healing. As I read this story it occurred to me that Jesus sees in this woman his own mother who in the death of Joseph was left a widow.  He understands.  The text says ‘His heart went out to her’. No one asks Jesus to do anything.  She doesn’t beg for Jesus’ intercession.  The text just says that Jesus was moved to compassion.  Anticipation heightens for us as we read that Jesus says to her, “Do not weep.” Then he comes forward and touches the bier while the bearers stop in there trek to the place of burial.

Disappointing to some is the fact that there is no discussion about the widow’s faith or belief.  “Young man” Jesus says speaking up to the platform on which the boy is laying, “I say to you arise.”  Jesus restored him to his mother.  This is simply and clearly a story of resurrection – not just of the son but of the widow.  In that culture she was dead – and everyone in that funeral procession knew it to be so.  In this event she is restored to life.

She is the one that is healed in this story; she is the one that is brought back to life. Jesus reaches out to her in her sorrow. and hopelessness.  He sees in the widow’s tears a cry of anguish God has long promised to heed, and boldly brings her from death into life. For Luke resurrection is not just the resuscitation of a dead body it is awaking us in our faith community to God’s call to righteousness and justice.

It makes me wonder how we treat the so-called “deserving” poor. About the ways people in poverty are expected to jump over our hurdles and negotiate our obstacles, fail means tests while we demand drug tests before releasing their welfare checks or propose cutting supplemental nutritional assistance to families whose children aren’t succeeding in school.

A recent Pew poll revealed that four in ten households rely primarily on the income of women. On one hand this is good news. New opportunities are allowing women to be the primary bread-winners.  Maybe our efforts toward gender equality are bearing fruit. On the other hand a significant majority of those women whose households rely primarily on their income are single mother households living in poverty or near-poverty.  What if Jesus were to encounter today not a grieving widow but a single mother on the edge of poverty courageously leading a family? What life-giving message might he share with her? We have the evangelist’s mandate as the followers of Christ to embrace compassionate ministry to the poor in Jesus’ name.

Resurrection, the restoration to life is a mark of the Messiah’s coming, a necessary piece of the Kingdom of God.  It can be witnessed in small acts of compassion.