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From the Gospel: When some [of the disciples] were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, Jesus said, "As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down."

 

Today we have gathered to celebrate All Saints’ Day.

On this day, we remember those saints who have gone before us.

We remember all of the ways in which they touched our lives, helped us glimpse the love of God in the ways that they loved and cared for us.

We remember with joy the times we shared with them.

And we experience sorrow that they are gone from this earth. 

Wouldn’t it be a delight to have just a few more hours with the ones that have gone before us—to say all of the things that were left unsaid, to see their smiles one more time?  To savor one more hug?

So today we remember them, our memories salted by our tears, and sweetened by our laughter.

But today is more than remembering the past.

Today is a day to consider the present, because we, too, are potential saints. 

How do we live as saints in the here and now?  In this moment?

We have the words of Jesus to guide us, the words we have just heard in our gospel today.

Hard words.

So hard that we dismiss them when we consider how ridiculous these demands are in living functional lives in today’s world. 

This passage from Luke, known as the Sermon on the Plain, has many similarities to the Sermon on the Mount that we find in the good news according to Matthew.

But Luke’s passage contains both blessings and woes. 

Blessed are you who are poor, who are hungry, those of you who weep.  Blessed are you when people hate you, exclude you, and defile you for my sake.

Woe to you who are rich, who are full, who laugh, woe to you when all speak well of you. 

Now all of these conditions—poverty, richness, hunger, fullness, sorrow, joy, being well thought of—all of these conditions are neutral in themselves.  None of them are better or worse than another in terms of our salvation or our blessedness. 

But it’s where we, the ones of us who want to be disciples of Jesus, who are  saints because of God’s grace—it’s where we put our single-minded focus that counts—

And that focus is on Jesus himself—and on what he asks us to do for one another, based on the example he set for us during his life, and what he did for us on the cross. 

Remember the story of the rich man and Lazarus that we heard several weeks ago?

The rich man was so focused on his riches that he was oblivious to the poor man who lay right outside his gate. 

The rich man was a sinner–not because he was rich, but because his focus was on himself and his wealth.  He was self-centered.

Jesus makes it clear that how we care for those who are the poor and the hungry and the unhappy among us in this lifetime really matters. 

Because what happened to the rich, full, and happy man who gave no thought to the poor man?    

He ended up being full of woe in Hades, having created a chasm between himself and the poor man so wide that it could never be bridged.

So if we want to be saints, then Jesus tells us—we must be focused on Jesus, and on his teaching, and then we must act accordingly. 

Yes, Jesus really does expect us to love our enemies,

To do good to those who hate us,

To bless those who curse us,

To pray for those who abuse us.

Jesus expects us to turn the other cheek,

To willingly part with our possessions,

To give to those who beg from us,

TO DO UNTO OTHERS AS YOU WOULD HAVE THEM DO UNTO YOU.

I hear these words, and I know that I cannot begin to follow any of these commands on my own. 

My only hope is to be focused on Jesus, and to put the rest of my life into the context of his love for me, his expectations for me, and his merciful judgment of me. 

Sounds great, doesn’t it?

To be focused on Jesus—which is what we are called to do if we want to be disciples of Jesus now, his saints here on earth.

So how do we do that? 

How we do that is our work for eternity—both in this life, and in the life to come. 

But for today, I think it’s useful to think of how we stay focused on Jesus in a Trinitarian sort of way—in our hearts, in our minds, and through our bodies. 

First, to stay focused on Jesus in our hearts, we must pray.

A disciplined, dedicated prayer life is essential if we wish to focus on Jesus. 

So many things demand our focus.  We wake up, and all of the things we have to do jump into our heads. Our days are already completely taken up before we even get out of bed.  Then we turn on the news and get caught up in that and frustrated by that.  

We are distracted by many things. 

But if we want to be transformed into saints, we will want to spend time with him in prayer, we will want to listen to him, we will want to open ourselves to his presence in our lives, –and we will make ourselves available to Him when we go to him in prayer.

That is why we must set aside time to pray, so that we can bring our unfocused lives into focus—by prayerfully placing ourselves in His presence.

Second, to stay focused on Jesus, we focus on him with our intellect.

We have the gift of scripture, his words right here in our hands.   In this book is everything we need to stay focused on God and Jesus so that we can love the Lord our God with all our hearts and minds, and to love our neighbors as ourselves.

And not only do we have scripture, but we have the incredible gift of the writings and thoughts of the great minds through the centuries who have grappled with scripture and with God through prayer, and have reflected on what they have learned. 

We have our own experiences; we have our traditions which we place in the context of scripture as we search for God’s will in our lives.   

God expects us to open our minds so that we can find God’s presence and direction for us in all that God has inspired. 

Third, to stay focused on Jesus, we must be present to him through our physical actions.

In the good news according to Matthew, Chapter 25, Jesus says to those who will inherit the kingdom—that is, the saints—

“For I was hungry and you gave me food.”

“I was thirsty, and you gave me something to drink.”

“I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”

“Naked, and you clothed me.”

“I was sick, and you took care of me.”

“I was in prison, and you visited me.”

We can’t just give lip service to what Jesus has asked us to do—

Jesus expects us to DO these things, to act on his behalf in our time on earth as we care for the physical needs of others,  just as he expects us to love our enemies, to do good to them who hate us, to bless those who curse us, and pray for those who abuse us.

These directions are not thoughts—they are actions.

Jesus himself lived this way, throughout his life, even through his humiliating death on the cross. 

And these caring actions are the expectations that Jesus has  for each one of us. 

So to stay focused on Jesus, to be saints on this earth, is to  open our hearts to him through prayer, to open our minds to him through study, and to act on his behalf by carrying out his commandments in all that we do in our time here on earth.   

And because we are human beings, none of us is  going to measure up in this lifetime, no matter how hard we try. 

And that is why we await his coming in glory. 

Ultimately, only Jesus can set us and this earth right.

Jesus is the one who will  bring us, the saints,  into that heavenly country where with all the saints who have gone before us, we enter into our everlasting heritage—the heritage of God’s love and mercy for each and every one of us, his sons and daughters.  

And that is why, today, as we remember the saints who have gone before us, and give thanks for them, and strive to become saints ourselves,

We will say these words during the Great Thanksgiving,  not only with our lips, but as we live out the rest of the days we’ve been granted—living out those days with our whole hearted focus on our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, through prayer, study, and action–

We, the ones who are saints and strive to be better saints, will say,

“We remember his death.

We proclaim his resurrection.

We await his coming in glory.”

Amen

Albert Einstein once said of himself that he had no special talents. 

“I am only passionately curious,” he said. 

Curiosity leads to new discoveries.

Bernard Baruch said that “Millions of people saw apples fall from trees, but only Newton asked why.”

Because of his curiosity, Newton developed the law of gravity, one of the fundamental sources of physics, a law which offers profound insights into the way in which our entire universe functions.

The story we have just heard from the gospel according to Luke is also a story about curiosity that provides us with some insights about God,

a story about the curiosity of a tax collector named Zaccheaus.

We know from the scripture that Zacchaeus was the chief tax collector in Jericho, which meant that he paid the taxes that had been collected from the Jewish people directly to the hated Romans, and that he was able to collect additional taxes to support himself, and to feather his own nest.   

As a result of his unsavory and unpopular profession, Zacchaeus was rich—rich at the expense of others.  

We also know from the scripture that Zacchaeus wanted to know who Jesus was. 

The crowd, jostling and shoving, full of fellow townspeople who already resented Zacchaeus, certainly would not have let him go to the front of the crowd.

So Zacchaeus climbed a sycamore tree in an effort to see who Jesus was.

Imagine this, a man running ahead of the crowd and climbing into a tree, which may have been no easy feat, depending on the size of the tree. 

I’m guessing that many in the crowd laughed at Zacchaeus and made fun of him, pointed to him up in the tree, whooped and hollered.

Zacchaeus risked looking like a fool because of his curiosity, and many in the crowd probably called him just that.

“Look at that fool up in the tree!” 

When Jesus passed by, much to the surprise of the crowd, he looked up into the tree, and rather than laughing he called out,

“Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.”

All of the people in the crowd grumbled. 

“He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.” 

What a letdown, what a shock!  

This man, the one they all despised, was the one person in Jericho whose home Jesus chose to enter.

The whole story of the good news of Jesus Christ is wrapped up in this one story of a curious man.

Jesus came to us to seek out and to save the lost among us.

All of us are lost, in one way or another, to something in our lives that has become more important than our focus on God, and we get so caught up in our lives that we lose our curiosity about God, if we ever had it to begin with.   

Here’s an example — a friend of mine was lost for many years, lost in the world of academics. 

This woman comes from a brilliant family of academics and writers.  Her parents are not believers. 

This woman is also brilliant, and no wonder academics became the focus in her life, her comfort. 

Now while she was working on her PhD in history at UVa, my friend spent quite a while in England, doing research for her dissertation, and it was while she was in England that she became very curious about why the church, if it was as meaningless as she had been taught, had survived for two thousand years.

So one day, she called a friend and said that she wanted to go to church.  Her curiosity got the best of her.  She had to investigate.

So she went to church that first Sunday with her friend.  And after that first Sunday, her curiosity still unsatisfied, she went back.

Here is what happened on the second Sunday, when my friend, still curious, went back to church again.  She has given me permission to use this quote.

“The second time I went, the next week, it was a communion service. I was there with a friend and he wanted me to go to the altar rail with him, but he told me to keep my hands down. This was the Church of England and at that time one needed to be confirmed to receive communion and I wasn’t even baptized. So I went to the altar rail, but I really didn’t want to be there; I was nervous; I didn’t really understand what was going on; I thought everyone would know that I did not belong there.

The priest came to me and put his hand on my head and blessed me, and in that moment my life changed. I felt the deepest peace I had ever felt, and I knew that I did belong there. It was as if I heard God say, ‘you do belong here and I love you’. It was really intense, and a complete surprise to me because I didn’t believe in stuff in that, in conversion experiences. But there it was. And for the next several weeks, I felt the presence of God all the time…it was a mystical experience that lasted. I would look at a tree and feel overjoyed knowing that God created that tree. I would look at people and want to say to each one, ‘do you know how much God loves you?’ I didn’t say that to anyone though; I just kept going to church.

My friend had the experience that Zacchaeus had—she experienced God calling to her–

“Hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.”

What about us?  Most of us probably have been Christians for all or most of our lives, and we might not have had such a dramatic conversion experience. 

Christianity is like the air we breathe, the water we drink. 

But we can be the most completely lost of all. 

Why?

We are the most lost of all because we are no longer curious. Our faith can become one of the things that we hold on to because it comforts us and fits into our lives in some pleasing way. 

For instance, here at church, comfort may take the form of familiar faces, a particular pew, hymns we love, a predictable service, and on a deeper level, a certain understanding of our beliefs and faith that is just, well, you know, comfortable.

And then, like the members of the crowd in our gospel story today, we grumble when Jesus looks past us, the ones with all the answers,  to the ones who are curious,

Those, who like Zacchaeus, want to see for themselves who Jesus is, and who are willing to look like fools in order to catch a glimpse of him.

What can we, the faithful, the righteous, the grumbling members of the crowd, learn today from this story of a little old man who wanted to see who Jesus was so badly that he literally went out on a limb to do just that?

We have to regain our sense of curiosity. 

We have to remember, especially when we think we have all the answers, and we’re comfortable in the crowd,

When we feel rich in our faith, and we think we have all we need because of our own efforts–

That’s the time to try all over again to see who Jesus is—

To ask, to seek, to knock, as we’re told in the gospel according to Matthew.

Ask, and it shall be given

Seek, and ye shall find,

Knock, and it shall be opened unto you.

And how will we know when Jesus is passing by, and sees us up in the tree, hears us asking, senses our searching, hears our knocking?

How will we know when Jesus is calling us,

calling you,

and calling me?

Our story gives us the answer.

We’ll feel joy!

Zacchaeus hurried down from the tree and welcomed Jesus with rejoicing. 

Zacchaeus gave up half of his possessions to the poor.  He promised to make things right with those he had cheated.

In the end, Zacchaeus lost the comfortable life he had constructed for himself, because he had been found by Jesus, saved by Jesus.

And because of our joy, when we’ve been found,  we’ll want to change our lives.  What has meant the most to us in the past won’t matter anymore.  What will be more important to us will be the needs of others, and our need to make amends for the wrongs we have committed for the sake of our own comfort. 

So today, if you dare, take the comfort you have worked so hard to find in your life and leave it behind when you go out the door today. 

Take with you instead, a sense of curiosity about God.   

Like Einstein, be passionately curious. 

I dare you to try to see who Jesus really is all over again.

I dare you to risk it all, climb a tree, go out on a limb.

Seek him,

And in God’s great mercy,

You may find one day that you too are filled with joy because Jesus is saying to you,

“Hurry and come down, for it is necessary for me to stay at your house today.” 

Amen

Today’s psalm, Psalm 84, is a celebration of sacred space.

The temple in Jerusalem was the sacred precinct, the space in which God was present.  No wonder the psalmist wrote,

“How lovely is Your dwelling place, O Lord of Hosts.”

“I long, I yearn for the courts of the Lord; my body and soul shout for joy to the living God.”   

The Jews longed for the courts of the Lord, for they felt that in the temple they would truly experience God’s presence. 

Even today, the Jewish people make pilgrimages to Jerusalem to pray at the Western Wall, which is sometimes referred to as the Wailing Wall—all that is left of the magnificent Jewish temple of New Testament times. 

This morning, we are within the walls of our own temple precincts, our own sacred space, this church, St Peter’s,

a space in which generations of people have experienced God, a space full of hopes, fears, dreams, dreads, this place of prayer—this place in which generations have worshipped, have been baptized, confirmed, married, buried. 

Churches are containers for the sacred.  St Peter’s holds our hopes and prayers, our worship. This space holds us, the Body of Christ, together.   Its walls retain all of prayers that have been prayed aloud or whispered, all of the hymns that have been sung, the music that  has been played.  The footsteps of generations, coming to this altar for solace, strength, pardon and renewal, echo in our ears as we too come to this altar each Sunday for God’s blessing and to share in the body and blood of Jesus. 

Sacred spaces offer God’s safe haven.  In this psalm, even the sparrow has found a home, and the swallow a nest for herself in which to set her young.  We come here for safety, reassurance, comfort. 

And  this sacred space will also transform us, if we come here not to seek God’s approval, but instead to seek God’s mercy.   

Jesus is intentional about setting his parable about the two men at prayer in the temple.  Both of them have gone up to the temple to pray, one a tax collector, and one a Pharisee. 

Now these two men have two differing understandings of the purpose of sacred space. 

The first man, the Pharisee, stands alone in his self-righteousness.  He has come to the sacred space because of his worthiness. 

Everyone can see that he is an observant Jew, and just in case God is missing the point, the Pharisee points out in his prayer that he is not like other people.

He points out that he is set apart, unique.   He fasts, and tithes, and he is certainly not a sinner.  Of course he is in the temple praying, expecting God’s approval. 

The second man stands far off.  This second man is a sinful tax collector.  He has come to the sacred space in spite of his worthlessness. He has come seeking God’s mercy.

And when this man prays, he asks God for mercy, because he is a sinner, just like the rest of the people who have gathered in that space. 

All of us are part Pharisee, and part tax collector, and we bring these pieces of ourselves into this sacred space each week when we gather to worship. 

So Jesus tells this parable to us, so that we can fine tune our prayer lives.

Here are the take home points. 

Prayer offers us the opportunity to examine our lives.

In our most fruitful prayers, we look deep within our own hearts, and instead of expecting God’s approval, we seek God’s mercy. 

Prayer helps us to see our lives as God sees them.

And if we’re honest with ourselves, we know that underneath all of the trapping of goodness that we rightfully wear, we are still sinners, just like everyone else. 

If we look within and examine our lives, we see that we are not able to change on our own, and that we NEED mercy. 

I don’t know about you, but I get stuck in the same sinful destructive patterns, year after year, especially when I don’t look within. 

These destructive patterns differ for each one of us, but we all have them.    

Ultimately, only God can transform us.

And so, if we are honest with ourselves, sooner or later we end up praying, along with the tax collector,

“God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”

The prayerful examination of our lives keeps us from getting stuck. 

When we leave our lives unexamined, immune to God’s intervention, we become stuck in our self-righteousness, like the Pharisee who stands alone, judging everyone else.   

In fact, this Pharisee reminds me of Lot’s wife, who turned into a pillar of salt when she looked back to see what had happened to all those sinners in Sodom. 

The Pharisee is very much like that pillar of salt, looking around at everyone else, believing that God is there to dish out  judgment and correction to those other poor sinners and approval for himself.

The tax collector, in contrast, having examined his life, and having asked for mercy,  is ready for a journey,

a journey of transformation that is possible because this tax collector, so aware of his own sinfulness, senses God’s strength, 

wisdom, truth, and love, the attributes that God wants to use on this sinner’s behalf. 

The apostle Paul was just such a man.

Remember how I said earlier that all of us have some of the Pharisee and the tax collector in us? 

That was Paul.  We first hear of Paul in Acts, stuck in his own certainty and self-righteousness, breathing threat and murder against the disciples of the Lord.

All he can think about is those wrong-headed Jews who belonged to the Way.  And he is going to use his own strength to bring them to justice.

But that was before God took Paul in hand, blinded him so that Paul could no longer look out at others.  He was forced to look within because he could no longer see to criticize those around him.

Paul, now blind, had to be led by the hand into Damascus.

And it was there, after having spent three days fasting and examining himself, looking within, that Paul received healing from God through the hands of Ananias. 

When Ananias laid his hands on Paul, something like scales fell from Paul’s eyes, he regained his sight, he was baptized, and he regained his strength, not his own strength, but God’s strength. 

God had mercy on Paul, and God had plans for Paul.  God said

“I myself will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.”

And so, no longer stuck, and having received God’s mercy,  Paul, having looked within and having examined himself, is free to go where God sends him, free to travel countless miles, spreading the good news of the Way,

the story of Jesus, the story of a man who was truly passionate, who suffered and died and rose so that we can all be free to live and move and have our being in God, 

so that along with Paul, and with the psalmist, we are happy to travel along the pilgrim’s way with the countless ones who have gone before us, the ones who travel with us now, and the ones who will follow in our footsteps. 

God calls us out from this sacred space, week by week, calls us out, like Paul, to be poured out like libations for one another. 

Calls us out, with God’s strength, not our own, to fight the good fight,

Calls us out to run our races,

Calls us out, to keep the faith. 

Calls us out of this sacred space of transformation

Into the sacred space of the pilgrim’s way. 

 

Amen

In his commentary on the gospel of Luke, Fred Craddock tells the story of an elderly black minister who reads the parable we have just heard and makes the following comment.

“Until you have stood for years knocking at a locked door, your knuckles bleeding, you do not really know what prayer is.” 

What locked doors are you hammering on right now? 

Many people in our country are currently either unemployed or under-employed or are having financial woes that they could not have imagined only a few years ago.

And we pray about it, and the days and weeks go by, and we don’t get a job, or a raise, or the month comes when we can’t pay our bills. 

The door to success or even to survival seems to be locked. 

Many others face family situations that are frustrating

—those of us who have cared for parents with Alzheimer’s have experienced this very sort of prayer

—knocking at a locked door as we pray for the person who continues to slip away from us into another world, a world that we can’t fathom, a world into which we cannot go with them. 

They go there alone, and we stand on the outside and peer through the keyhole as they go farther and farther from us, and all we can do is pray and hammer on that locked door.

We take the tensions in a marriage or with children to God in prayer, and find that year after year, we are knocking at a locked door.  Our knuckles get tired and bloody after a while. 

And yet Jesus tells the disciples about their need to pray always and NOT TO LOSE HEART. 

Because God will vindicate those who pray without ceasing—that is, God will  uphold, justify, exonerate and confirm those who long for God’s justice, and Jesus says that God will quickly grant justice to them.

And yet, those of us who have lived for a while know that God’s vindication does not happen overnight, and sometimes seemingly not at all. 

Our temptation is to give up on prayer, to turn away from the locked door, and go seek solace elsewhere—and maybe that solace is alcohol, or anger, or depression, or apathy. 

Why bother to pray when the door we’re beating on in prayer remains locked?

But the fact that the door IS locked is the reason that  Jesus tells us that we need to pray always and to hold on to hope.

The very act of praying itself is an act of hope.  When we go to God in prayer, we acknowledge that ultimately, we are not in control. 

We cannot change the problems and injustices in our lives on our own.

We need help.

But how do we pray when we are filled with despair? 

Jeremy Taylor, one of our great Anglican theologians who lived through the tumultuous despair filled 16^th century in England, says that for us Christians, hope makes prayer possible to begin with, even in our darkest times. 

That is, in the midst of despair, to try to focus on hope instead of despair is a really good idea. 

And hopeful prayer is focused on God,

On  God’s strength, wisdom, truth, and love.

God uses these attributes for us.

So when we pray in hope, we are praying that we can open ourselves to God in such a way that God’s strength, wisdom, truth and love will pour through us. 

And for Taylor, patience is a part of hope.

We continue to go through our lives patiently, dutifully and with diligence, even when we suffer through painful events. 

In a nutshell, in despair we do our best to focus on hope,

and we can focus on hope because we believe that God will use God’s strength, wisdom, truth and love on our behalf, 

in God’s time.

And if we focus on God, then we gain patience,

and we can go about our lives with diligence and persistence, instead of giving in to despair. 

For instance, the widow in the story that Jesus tells does not give into despair or bitterness or hatred toward her opponent.

Instead, she goes to the one who can grant her justice, and even though the judge in the story is a flawed character, this woman stays focused on the strength, wisdom, truth and love inherent in this man’s position.

Then she is persistent.

She doesn’t give into despair, but keeps asking until she finally receives justice. 

And what about our lives?

The following story illustrates how important the focus of hope and trust in God is in prayer when we go through desperate situations.

All of you know Charles, who was here with us last week as our celebrant.  And many of you may have known his wife, Maureen.

Charles has given me permission to use this story.

He has given me permission to use this story in my sermon. 

Maureen began suffering severe headaches, but she figured they’d go away, so she didn’t go to the doctor. 

Unfortunately, the headaches were the result of blood leaking from an aneurysm in her brain, and a few days later, the aneurysm burst.

Her family rushed her to the hospital, and Maureen went on life support and was basically given up for dead.

Now God has given us the gift of hope through the testimony of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.  We live in hope of resurrection.

And so, instead of giving into despair, the members of  St George’s prayed.

Our church posted a schedule, and people signed up for thirty minute blocks, and for weeks, the members of our congregation laid down their own schedules, spent a part of their day praying specifically for Maureen, and this prayer went around the clock.

We were hopeful, in spite of Maureen’s dire prognosis. 

We were hopeful, because we believed that in our prayers to God, God’s strength, wisdom, truth and love would pour through us in a way that would be healing for Maureen and her family. 

And we were patient.  As anyone who has ever suffered through a horror of this sort knows, results do not come overnight.  But all of us did our duty—that is, we prayed with persistence and diligence and did whatever we could that was useful to the family.

Time passed.  And miraculously, this woman who had been as good as dead was reborn into a new life—a different life, and in many ways a diminished life, but life. 

Over the next several years, we witnessed a continuing illustration of what it means to live a life of prayerful hope as our rector modeled for us what it means to knock with bleeding knuckles on that locked door that I talked about at the beginning of this sermon. 

In the face of Maureen’s diminished life, and in spite of, or maybe because of  all the  new cares and concerns that weighed him down, he knocked.

He knocked in hope, expecting God’s strength, wisdom, truth and love to help him do more than one man could humanly manage. 

He focused on God. He had no need to place blame.  None of us ever heard him blame the disease or the doctors, or give into despair,

because he stayed focused on God and he knocked on the locked door with hope. 

Eventually, Charles took early retirement from church and devoted all of his time to caring for Maureen.

He never stopped praying for her improvement, and while he prayed, he carried out his duties with diligence, and waited with patience.

Although she never returned to her old self, in the extra years that she was granted, Maureen made improvements that none of us could have imagined in our wildest dreams.    

God granted justice to Charles.

God upheld him, vindicated him,   and confirmed his life of patient duty in the face of this personal disaster. 

Recently, a woman in a similar situation prayed this prayer, and she gave me permission to share this prayer with you.   

 “God, I don’t understand why we have been given this situation, but I pray that you will continue to be present with us in it, and I thank you for the blessings you have given us.”

This is the prayer of the persistent widow—a hopeful prayer, a prayer without bitterness, a prayer that trusts not in her own, but in God’s strength and wisdom and truth and love, a prayer that is persistent, a prayer that waits thankfully and patiently through the rough times for the fullness of God’s time.

A prayer hammered with bloody knuckles against a locked door.

Amen.

People around the world are full of gratitude today for the impending rescue of thirty three miners in Chile who have been trapped deep inside the earth for two months.

Yesterday, rescue workers completed a tunnel over half a mile deep and finally broke through the rock to the area of the gold and copper mine deep underground where the miners have been anxiously waiting and hoping for rescue. 

As the drill broke through the last bit of rock, the sound of truck horns echoed up and down the valleys and alerted all of the families, friends and community members who have been praying and holding vigils, hoping for the rescue of these miners. 

or on a broader level, in our communities, in our nation, or particularly in our church, divided theologically in so many ways. 

So today’s story, about the leper who returned to thank God after Jesus heals him of leprosy,

has a great deal to say to each one of us in the current state of discontent in which we tend to live. 

At the beginning of the story, Jesus is walking through the area between Galilee and Samaria.

No observant, self-respecting Jew would associate with Samaritans, or want to be near them, because the Samaritans had a different theological understanding of worship than the Jews did.   

Jesus, as he frequently does, is walking where the self-righteous religious people of his day would not usually go.    

And as he enters a village, ten lepers approach him.

Now these lepers are no longer divided among themselves by their particular theologies as Samaritans and Jews. 

They have been brought together because they have been cast out by everyone else.

No one wants to be near them because they have a disease that is contagious and death-dealing.

So these ten lepers approach Jesus as skittish as stray dogs who’ve been run off again and again.

They call out to him from a distance—

No wonder the people are filled with joy and gratitude.

How easy it is to be full of gratitude when something dramatic like this happens.

These days, gratitude seems to be mostly isolated to positive outcomes in these dramatic life or death events.

In our daily lives, however, gratitude seems to be lacking, for any number of reasons, differing for each one of us, but the underlying theme of discontent seems to be something like this…..

”Things aren’t the way I want them to be,”

 and these things can be in our personal lives, 

“Jesus, master, have mercy on us!”

Jesus doesn’t single out the Jews in the group and chase the Samaritans away.

Instead he sees all ten of them as people in need of healing. 

He doesn’t touch them.  Maybe they don’t get close enough to him to let him do that. 

Instead, he calls out to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.”

And off they go. 

And along the way, they see the horrid sores on their bodies heal before their eyes, they watch their skin become clear again, and they feel the pain that has wracked their bodies burning off like the morning mist in bright sunshine. 

Can you imagine what this experience must be like? 

To be pulled back unexpectedly from the brink of death, to be spared a long torturous decline?

To return to the life that you have been separated from for so long? 

These ten people are now free to return to their former lives.  They can  go back to their villages, to their families, return to their work. 

Who can blame them for being excited? 

The story doesn’t tell us what happens to them, 

but nine are  in such a hurry to get back to business as usual that they don’t turn back when they see that they have been made clean. 

And yet, one man turned back. 

The one who turns back realizes that this healing is about more than the physical healing that will allow him to resume control of his life, here and now.

Yes, this healing does that, and that is a miracle within itself, but this man sees into the heart of the miracle. 

God’s very hand has touched him, and has brought him into a new life, beyond physical life itself, into a new relationship with the one who created him to begin with. 

This man now sees beyond the miracle of his new skin.

It is as if this new skin of his, his body, has become a transparent veil through which he can see into eternity,

see into the heart of the One who loved him, created him, and now has restored him.

Not only has this man been healed, he has experienced salvation.

And as a result, he is full of gratitude. 

He has experienced for himself what it means to be resurrected into a new life. 

And literally, he has turned away from the potential of simply returning to life as he knew it—

and that is why he is praising God,

because he is turning toward and entering into a whole new life of possibility and promise,

touched by God’s healing hand.

To put it simply, his focus is no longer on himself, but on God. 

So what does this story have to say to us,

the ones who in this day and age feel gratitude for the big things– but a nagging sense of discontent with most of our lives? 

First of all, this story reminds us to cultivate lives of thanksgiving. 

Throughout the Bible, both in the Old and New Testaments, we hear that we, as people of God, are to praise God and thank God. 

And to the extent that we can focus on God and offer God gratitude, we find that our discontent will burn away like that mist in the morning sunlight. 

My dear friend from college died from multiple myeloma.

No one who met Betsy could ever forget her, and the last years of her life, as she lived through this horrible cancer, were her most unforgettable. 

Betsy stayed focused on God during this horrible time, in which she was not healed physically,

and yet even as her body fell apart on her, she remained whole—

because she was full of gratitude for all that God had given her, and even when her body was wracked by pain, she just kept thanking God for the blessings all around her—

for the people who cared for her, music, her cats,  good food (when she could eat).

She painted.

She was up front about the grief she felt over dying so young,

and yet in the midst of her grief, she was grateful,

because for her, her disease became the transparent veil through which she could see into eternity,

and through which she could feel God holding her close as her body failed her. 

Betsy cultivated her life of thanksgiving even in her illness,

by focusing on God instead of on herself. 

So that’s the first thing this story teaches us as individuals,  to put our focus on God by cultivating lives of thanksgiving.

And the second thing that this story teaches us is that God wants us all to live lives of thanksgiving in the company of one another,

even when we differ from one another theologically.

Every Sunday, we come to offer praise and thanksgiving to God when we gather around the table that God has prepared for all of  us, 

to share the food that God has given to all of us.

Our word Eucharist comes from the Greek word that means thanksgiving and gratefulness.

As we share the bread of heaven and the cup of salvation, we do so with praise and thanksgiving.

No wonder the Eucharistic prayer that we use each Sunday opens in this way.

“Lift up your hearts.”  “We lift them to the Lord.”  “Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.”  “It is right to give him thanks and praise.”

And then the celebrant goes on to say, “It is right and a good and joyful thing, always and everywhere to give thanks to you, Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth…..” 

Just as Jesus made no distinction between the Samaritans and the Jews in the group of the lepers who called out for healing, but healed them all,

God makes no distinction between us and our theological views.  God does not pick and choose among us. 

God simply prepares the table, and hopes that all of us, in spite of our differences, will show up with hearts full of gratitude and thanksgiving, so that each and every one of us can receive God’s healing love, freely given.  

At the end of the story, in what has to be one of the most poignant moments in Luke’s gospel, Jesus stares down the empty road, and asks

—“Were not ten made clean?  But the other nine–  Where are they?

Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?”

When Jesus looks for you, who will he find?

Will you be one of the nine who has gone off in a rush to return to a familiar life that seems to under your control, leaving Jesus behind?    

Or will you be the one who turns back  to Jesus to offer praise and thanksgiving

because you’ve been resurrected  into that new life of healing and salvation that God has poured over every one of us so freely and generously? 

Amen

The book of Habakkuk opens as the  prophet stands at his watchpost, stationed on the ramparts, surveying from this height the violence, destruction, strife and contention that are playing themselves out in the distressing scene before him. 

And Habakkuk looks up into heaven and cries out to God. 

“Why do you make me see wrong-doing and look at trouble?”

“The wicked surround the righteous—therefore judgment comes forth perverted.”

“How long shall I cry for help and you will not listen?”

Have you ever cried out to God in this way?

God, are you really in charge?  Because if you are, why don’t you hear me?  Why aren’t you doing something about this world falling apart! 

Then God speaks, and we, along with Habakkuk, get our answer.

God promises Habakkuk that “There is still a vision for the appointed time!” 

This vision is God’s master plan for the restoration of the entire cosmos.

And what will that look like?  We find the answer a little later in Chapter 2—at verse 14. 

“The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.” 

So now Habakkuk has got an answer, but also a problem. 

What is he to do until this vision of the earth being filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord becomes reality?

Habakkuk is a man of God.

Shouldn’t Habakkuk jump into the fray, and do as much as he possibly can to bring the knowledge of the glory of the Lord to earth NOW? 

But God provides the answer to this question with three words. 

“Wait for it.”

In other words, be patient. 

“Wait for the knowledge of the glory of the Lord to fill the earth.”

…because only the Lord has the full knowledge of what the glory of the Lord will look like! 

And here’s how we are to wait for it—as the righteous, we are to live by our faith. 

What exactly does being righteous mean? 

To understand righteousness, we have to understand covenants. 

God made a covenant with the Israelites.

Now covenant relationships worked like this. 

They were agreements entered into by two parties who were unequal.

So the master in the covenant agreed to protect and provide for the needs of the weaker group who had entered into the covenant.

The job of the weaker group in the covenant was to obey the master. 

So when we say that God entered into a covenant relationship with the Israelites, the deal was that God would love and protect them and give them all they needed, and their job was to obey God and to follow God’s commandments.

And the Israelites who did that were called the righteous.

So we, if we want to be righteous, are to obey God and strive to follow God’s commandments.

That gives us a quick summary of what being righteous entails. 

Now, how would we define faith? 

John Calvin, one of our greatest Christian theologians, has this to say about faith.

“Faith,” Calvin writes, “is the firm and certain knowledge of God’s benevolence towards us,” that is  the knowledge that indeed, God has entered into a covenant relationship with each one of us because God loves us so deeply. 

Martin Luther defined faith in this way.  

“Faith is a living and unshakable confidence, a belief in the grace of God so assured that a man would die a thousand deaths for its sake.”

Simply put, faith is the response of a person to one he or she trusts. 

So as righteous people, living in a covenant relationship with God, we have faith—

that is, belief in God’ goodness,

a living and unshakable confidence in God’s grace,

and we respond to God in trust. 

Now in our current day, we too often find ourselves on the ramparts, looking out on a world filled with violence, strife, contention, sin.

This is not just a big view of the world, but we find ourselves often impatient and upset about these very issues in our own families. 

And we often find ourselves frustrated and upset about how we relate to one another in our work world, or even in our church family. 

And we have the same question that Habakkuk had.  What are we supposed to do while we wait for God to restore the cosmos? 

The disciples also had this question as well. 

We overhear the disciples having this very discussion with Jesus today in our gospel passage. 

How ARE we to relate to one another as disciples living with one another in community? 

According to what Jesus teaches in this passage, we cause one another to stumble, we rebuke one another, we repent, we forgive one another, and Jesus says that we forgive one another over and over and over.

This way of living faithfully in community is very hard,

So no wonder the disciples cry out, “Lord, increase our faith!”

And Jesus responds as he often does, and explains to the disciples how they are to live in such a way as to increase their faith. 

By telling a story about servanthood. 

Now in this story, the servant has worked hard in the field all day.  The servant has plowed the field, tended the sheep in the field, and then he has come home at the end of a long day, no doubt exhausted. 

Does this servant get to sit down at the table and eat food that someone has prepared for him? 

No, this servant now puts on an apron and serves the master while the master eats and drinks.

And the master doesn’t thank the servant.  The servant is only doing what is expected of him. 

And the servant doesn’t expect thanks. 

The servant simply lives faithfully, dutifully, serving his master.

Jesus also has some other things to say about faithful servants in two other stories he tells about servants in Luke’s gospel and we’ll  take a look at these two stories to help us to understand the story about servants in the gospel we just heard read today. 

So let’s look back into Luke, chapter 12:35-48.

This story has two parts. 

And the story also connects the idea of servanthood to the idea of end times—God’s restoration of the cosmos. 

In the first part of the story, the master has gone away, leaving his servants in charge.

The master returns and finds that the servants are expectantly waiting for his return.

And so what does this master do?  He has the SERVANTS sit down and eat, and he comes and serves them. 

In contrast, in the second part of the story, another master goes away, and he leaves a servant in charge of everyone else.

But this servant, rather than caring for those under him, tells himself that the master is delayed in coming back, so he begins to beat the other servants.

He eats and drinks and gets drunk.

The ending of this story is grim. 

The master returns unexpectedly and severely punishes the abusive and selfish servant.

Now let’s fast forward to the last story about servanthood in Chapter 22 in Luke’s gospel. 

Jesus has arrived in Jerusalem, and he and the disciples have sat down at the last supper they will share together before Jesus dies on the cross.

And can you believe it?  The disciples, even at this point, still have not figured out how to live with one another in community.  They are actually arguing among themselves about who is the greatest in the bunch! 

And Jesus says to them,

“Who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves?” 

And then Jesus says,  “I am among you as one who serves.”

The greater one is the one who serves. 

So….what do these three stories about servanthood tell us about how we are to live together as a community of faith today?

First, we have to remember that God has a plan, and we are to wait for God to fulfill that plan. 

Meanwhile, we are to live by faith.  

We are to carry out our duties as Jesus did, by serving each other,  

with a spirit of powerful service,

and with a spirit of love, carried out with self-discipline. 

“Lord, increase our faith!”

Increase our faith, so that we can serve God and one another,

just as Jesus did when he came among us, not to be served, but to serve.

Amen 

John Shea, in his commentary on Luke, suggests that in this story that we’ve just heard today, Jesus describes, not one, but two rich men. 

The first rich man is self-centered. His clothing is extravagant.   Every day he dresses in fine linen undergarments, and over that linen he places a purple robe.

This rich man feasts sumptuously every day.  Like those we hear about in Amos, we can imagine this man lounging on his couch, reaching the short distance to his table for yet another piece of that delectable roasted lamb. 

And we know that outside this rich man’s gate, a poor man lies, with nothing to wear but his sores, and with nothing at all to eat.  The poor man would be happy for anything that fell from the rich man’s table.

But this poor man, in such need, remains outside the rich man’s gate. 

The second rich man that Jesus describes in this story is Abraham. 

In Hebrew tradition, Abraham is frequently described as a man of great wealth who shows hospitality to everyone.

We find a story of Abraham’s generosity in Chapter 18 of Genesis. 

In this story, Abraham is sitting under the great oak trees of Mamre —Abraham looks up and sees three men there at the entrance of his tent.

These men are strangers, outsiders in Abraham’s world, but instead of retreating into his tent, Abraham welcomes the strangers.

Water is brought so that the tired and hungry strangers can wash their feet.  Abraham and Sarah prepare bread, and Abraham selects a young calf, tender and good, from his herd.  He also prepares milk and curds, and then the strangers feast on all of this good food as they sit in the shade of the oak trees.

And in the story today, when Lazarus dies, he is carried away by the angels to be with the hospitable Abraham.  

So Jesus gives us the example of the two rich men in this story, and their contrasting responses to the person who comes to them in need. 

In addition to describing the differing responses of the two rich men to Lazarus, Jesus also tells this story is to remind us that God is not only compassionate and merciful, but that God is also our judge. 

We have already heard from Jesus that God is like the father of the prodigal son, who welcomes us when we repent and go back home.

But Jesus, by telling this story,  also makes clear to us that God is indeed our judge—because God cares, very deeply, about what we do with what God has given us to use on this earth.

Our actions have consequences. 

Now,  by telling this story, what is Jesus asking us, as his disciples,  to do when we take his teachings on wealth into consideration?  What are we to do, here and now, based on this story?

The first thing that Jesus wants us to do is to be educated about our faith.

In the story, Abraham reminds the rich man that his brothers have all they need to live righteous lives.  They have the law and the prophets.

Jesus wants us to know what the law and the prophets have to say to us about the use of wealth and all that we have been given. 

Jesus did not come to replace the law and the prophets.  Jesus came to fulfill the law and the prophets, and as his disciples, we are to strive to live by that law. 

This week, I encourage you to spend some time with your Bible.  Review two central Old Testament texts about the law—Deuteronomy, Chapters 5 and 6, which contain the Ten Commandments and the great Shema, the prayer central to the Jewish tradition.

And another central text you can find is in Leviticus, Chapter 19, where God lays out some specifics about how to follow the Ten Commandments, about how we are to use our wealth and how we are to treat one another if we intend to keep his commandments. 

The second thing that we can do based on this story is to try to carry out the commandments of Jesus concerning wealth.   Jesus makes radical demands of us, even beyond the law and the

prophets.    Jesus expects us to use our wealth to practice hospitality and to welcome and care for one another, even the strangers and the aliens and the poor in our midst. 

The third thing that Jesus teaches us is what we need to do when we fail.    Jesus has given us two contrasting stories about failure and God’s response to our failures. 

The rich man, being tormented in Hades, still has no understanding of how his actions have brought about this punishment.  No remorse or penitence here—instead, the rich man has the nerve to expect Lazarus to travel from the bosom of Abraham into Hades and to wait on him.

 In contrast, the prodigal son, who squandered all he had and found himself starving as a consequence of his actions, repented and went home.  His father received him with mercy. 

So Jesus teaches us that if we are to expect mercy and compassion from God, then we will come to God with remorse and penitence when we have failed and ask for God’s forgiveness.   

Last of all, this story is a stark reminder that the choices we make every day about how we relate to one another have eternal consequences.  If our actions are like those of the rich man in this story, totally focused on ourselves, our comfort, our well being, if we are blind to others around us, we fix great chasms right here on earth, chasms that are hard to ever cross again—chasms between rich and poor, chasms between Christians and those of other faiths, chasms that can even separate those with differing perspectives.

The easiest thing to do when we meet someone different from us is to retreat into our safe spaces, whatever they may be, and to lock our doors behind us, to protect ourselves and what we have, and to live in a safe and splendid isolation, blind to anything and anyone but ourselves.

 And in these self-centered retreats, we construct chasms that separate us not only from one another, but as Abraham points out in this story, we construct a fixed chasm that also separates us from God. 

We have the audacity to call ourselves Christians.

 I dare each one of us then, to use all that God has given us, all of our wealth, to build bridges across the great divides that separate us from one another and ultimately from God. 

I dare all of us to practice hospitality toward one another—to unlock our doors and to welcome each other in. 

I dare all of us to examine our lives.

 I dare us to judge ourselves, to be honest with ourselves, to confess our sins before God and one another, to return to God in penitence –return to God who will judge us for the choices we have made and the choices that we will make. 

And to say, to God, as the prodigal son said to his father,

“I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your child.”    

And having sought God’s forgiveness,

I dare us to seek God’s mercy –by having mercy for one another.

Amen

 

Even though we live in the 21^st century, Americans still have a fascination with the Wild West and the characters that populated it back in the 1800’s.

The settlers, gold miners, cowboys, the sheriffs, and even the outlaws all had that spirit of individuality and determination and passion that Americans still admire today. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So it’s no wonder that the story of Butch Cassidy is part of our cultural heritage, a story that we enjoy hearing, because Butch Cassidy embodied individuality and a passion for life, and he just happened to be an outlaw, which makes his story even more intriguing.

In brief, Butch grew up in a Mormon family, and then as a teenager left home to make a life of his own, and eventually became a criminal who organized the Wild Bunch Gang.  This gang robbed trains and banks. 

Butch himself said this about his life of crime– “The best way to hurt the rich is through their pocketbooks.  They will holler louder than if you cut off both legs.  I steal their money just to hear them holler.  Then I pass it out among those who really need it.” 

Robin Hood in a ten gallon hat.

And we can’t help but find ourselves fascinated by this criminal’s life, even though we know that living a life of crime is wrong.    Jesus was also fascinated by human beings and their lives, which is why he told so many parables—and some of these parables included unsavory characters, because Jesus knew that those parables in particular would capture our attention. 

All of us, deep down inside, can relate to unsavory characters. 

The parable we’ve just heard about the dishonest manager captivates us and puzzles us in disturbing ways, because we find ourselves in this parable. 

Like the steward, all of us are concerned about having enough to make a living and to have what we need.  And many of us can relate to the steward’s worry about not being strong enough to dig and being ashamed to beg. 

Now certainly, we, especially those of us in this room, would not be dishonest about the ways in which we go about making our livings. 

We wouldn’t be caught dead being part of the Wild Bunch Gang, or holding up trains, getting into shootouts with the Sheriff.

We are respectable people. 

And yet, this parable is a great example of how dishonesty is often not so easily defined.  We can get caught up in dishonesty before we know it. 

When we read this parable, we think, “Was this steward really dishonest?  After all, he took care of himself, and made the lives of all of those people indebted to the master easier by cutting their debts in half.   So surely, what he did wasn’t so bad.” 

However, verse eight tells us that the master commended the DISHONEST manager.

And why would the master commend someone who was dishonest?

Because the master is dishonest too. 

He and the steward are both part of a system that keeps poor people enslaved economically.

These indebted people will always be in debt.

Now in the parable, the steward and the master both benefit from the steward’s shrewd action.

Because the debtors are happy that their debt has been cut in half,

The master benefits from their temporary joy.

And the steward has, with his shrewdness, saved his own skin and recovered the respect of the master.

So why on earth would Jesus tell this story as an example of how we should live as his disciples?

As anyone who was at our Wednesday Bible study knows, there are many, many answers to this question hidden in this parable, and we’d be here all week if I talked about them all.   So in the interest of time, I am going to focus on one answer to the question of how Jesus wants us to live as his disciples when he tells  this parable. 

Jesus wants us to live just as shrewdly as that manager did.

But we’ve got some hesitation about shrewdness,  because shrewdness is a word we use to describe that quality we so often attribute to those we’re not quite sure about, those who live in those gray ethical areas. 

Shrewd is the word we would use to describe Butch Cassidy, that Robin Hood in a ten gallon hat who carried out robberies in all sorts of shrewd ways.

Now let’s imagine for a minute that Jesus decides to lie in wait for Butch Cassidy at the favorite hangout of the Wild Bunch, a place called the Hole in the Wall. 

Butch comes galloping up on horseback, all out of breath after having just escaped by the skin of his teeth from his latest exciting train robbery. 

“Well, howdy, Butch,” Jesus drawls, sizing up this shrewd criminal.

Butch is suspicious, but Jesus says to him,

“Hey, Butch, I really admire your shrewdness.  As you might know, I’ve talked a lot about shrewdness to my disciples.” 

“I’ve told them stories about people like you, shrewd people, people as shrewd as you are, Butch.

The man who built his house on a rock, instead of sand, was shrewd.

And do you remember that story about the ten young women who wait and wait for the bridegroom to show up?

When the bridegroom finally gets there in the middle of the night, only the five shrewd ones had enough oil for their lamps.

They went on to the wedding banquet, and the other five missed out.”

“And one thing I’ve stressed to my disciples is to be as shrewd as serpents and as innocent as doves.”

Now Jesus has got Butch’s attention.

“Who is this crazy man?” Butch asks himself. 

But Jesus is talking right on. 

“Now Butch, you have potential.  But you’re using your shrewdness for your own fame and glory in spite of what you say about passing out what you steal to the poor.” 

Jesus looks deep into Butch’s eyes.  “I see that you’ve been worried for a mighty long time, anxious about having all you need.  I see, my friend, that you have let your desire for your own security lead you down a dishonest path.” 

Butch doesn’t know whether to hang his head in shame or haul off and slug this upstart stranger.  But Jesus keeps on talking, and Butch decides to keep on listening. 

“Butch, the only friends you’ve made through your life of crime are the members the Wild Bunch Gang.  All of you are constantly on the run.  You can never get any rest.  You’re  always having to look over your shoulder.  And you have to hide out in this Hole in the Wall.”

“But Butch, I’m here to tell you how to REALLY use your shrewdness to live a life of true freedom.

“Instead of seeking your own security through worshipping money and constantly stealing it, seek the Kingdom of God.”

OK, this guy is off his rocker, some God-fearing nut, Butch says to himself, but there’s just something about Jesus that is so compelling that he keeps listening. 

“Butch, I love who you as you are—Come on, put God first, and use all of that shrewdness of yours to seek after me.”

“When you head for my  kingdom instead of your hideout,  you won’t have to run from the law anymore. You will travel with hope and with joy.   And if you follow me, and choose to be my disciple, you will find that even as you head toward my kingdom, you are already at home.” 

Butch looked away from Jesus and stared out over the vacant landscape. 

Tempting words.

 “Seek my kingdom first with all of your shrewdness, and all of these other things will be added unto you.”

Butch stared into the distance.  “I’ll have to consider that offer,” he thought to himself.

And when he turned around, Jesus was gone.

Butch sighed.  The sun must have gotten to him. 

Sooner or later, Jesus will show up in our hiding places. 

He comes to us, loving each one of us just as we are. 

And he talks to us, just as he might have talked to Butch Cassidy that day in the Hole in the Wall. 

Jesus says to each of us—

“You’ve got potential!  You’re shrewd!

But  I can see that you’ve been worried for a very long time.   I can see that you are constantly on the run, that you never get any rest, that you are always looking over your shoulder—and  you’ve ended up seeking after other things instead of seeking after me. 

Your focus has been skewed. 

But I’m here to tell you that

I love you as you are, and I want you with me. 

So seek first my kingdom.

As that that shrewd poet, W. H. Auden says,

“Seek me in the Kingdom of Anxiety; you will come to a great city that has expected your return for years,”

That kingdom of God, that great city,  that awaits each one of us not only here, but also in the life of the world to come. 

Amen

Last week, we heard that Jesus talks to his followers about the need to pick up their crosses and to carry those crosses if they wish to be his disciples. 

In the reading from Luke today that we’ve just heard, Jesus continues teaching the crowd about discipleship.

We can imagine ourselves in this scene.  We are the people in  this crowd listening to Jesus –and this is a divided crowd—divided because some of us in the crowd are scribes and Pharisees, and some of us are sinners and tax collectors,

Divided because we’re pointing our fingers at one another.  

That’s the big issue in this passage—division.  How are we, as disciples of Jesus, supposed to handle divisions?

This is a question of utmost importance, because part of being human beings is finding ourselves constantly divided from one another,  whether we like it or not, in both big and little ways.

And right now we are living in times in which divisions among us have the potential to destroy the human race, and certainly have the potential to irrevocably divide our country.    The horrors of 9-11 are still fresh in our minds.  Some of us have children and grandchildren and friends who have fought or who are fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.  We listen to the news, the endless acrimonious debates over the burning of the Koran, and the building of a mosque near Ground Zero, the divisions that have brought our religious and political differences to center stage.

On a smaller scale, our communities, our churches, our families and even our own lives can be fractured by divisions and disagreements. 

So Jesus weighs in on this issue of how we are, as his disciples, to deal with divisions in our lives.   Jesus tells three stories, two of which we’ve just heard in the gospel reading today.

The first story is of the shepherd who has one hundred sheep and one gets lost.

The second story is about the woman who has ten silver coins, and she loses one. 

And the third story, which we didn’t hear today, but you have probably heard it, is the familiar story of the prodigal son.  A son demands his inheritance from his father, and then leaves his family and travels to a distant country.  This family is now divided because a member of the family has left and taken part of the family inheritance with him.    

All of these stories are about God’s response to division, separation and loss—God longs for wholeness in the face of division, separation and loss. 

And all of these stories are about how God wants and expects us, as disciples, to handle divisions. 

So today I want to talk about these two things:  first, God’s response to division;

and second, how we human beings are to handle divisions.

First, how God longs for wholeness!  Let’s go back for a minute to the beginning of the gospel according to Luke.  Many of us know the story of Jesus’ birth by heart—

“And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.  And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them, and they were sore afraid.  And the angel said unto them, Fear not:  for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to ALL people.

For unto you is born this day in the City of David, a Savior, which is Christ, the Lord.”

These glad tidings of great joy are to be to ALL people.

God is sending a Savior, not just to one group of people but to ALL people.

So right away, we know from Luke that the God who sends this savior to all people longs for the wholeness of humanity.   

God sends Jesus into this world to end division, and God also sent Jesus to help us move toward wholeness with one another. 

And not only does God long for wholeness, but God will work for wholeness in varied ways.   

Like the shepherd, God goes searching for the one sheep who gets lost from the rest of the flock, in spite of the fact that ninety-nine in the flock are safe. 

And when God finds the lost one, God picks that lost one up and lays it on his shoulders and rejoices! 

So we know that when we get lost, and it is so easy to get lost in our lives—lost to addictions, lost to depression, grief, lost from one another because of what we have or don’t have, or do or don’t do—

that God will come searching for us,

God will search for us just as carefully as the woman searches for her missing coin, because

like coins and other objects, human beings are also easily misplaced.

For instance, my father-in-law was estranged from his sister for most of his life.  As he got closer to dying, I asked him one day, “Would you like to talk to your sister?”  “No!” he said, “She knows where I am if she wants to talk to me.”

Eventually he died, and he never did talk to his sister.  His relationship with her had gotten misplaced over the years, and finally so lost that my father-in-law couldn’t even imagine searching for wholeness in that relationship.   

But God’s response is to search—like the woman in the parable,  God lights a lamp, sweeps the house and searches until that lost person is found.  God is persistent. 

And in the story of the prodigal son, God has great patience. 

Sometimes we intentionally run away from God and lose ourselves on purpose, go down a path that is sure to lead to trouble, we

demand and get what we can’t handle, and God, who is very patient, keeps on loving us while we go off and make our mistakes. 

And when we realize that we are lost and go back home, we find that God has been waiting for us with patience—not only waiting for us, but watching for us, seeing us while we are far off, and runs toward us, filled with compassion.   

So from these three stories that Jesus told to his would-be disciples, we know that God will search for us when we get lost, we know that God will be persistent in that search, and we also know that if we just keep running away, God will wait for us with infinite patience and compassion to return.

Now what can we learn from these stories about how God expects us, as disciples of Jesus, to handle division?

Jesus wants us to long for wholeness and to work for wholeness. 

And this wholeness that Jesus is talking about is true wholeness, not just an uneasy peace that masks the divisions among us.   

Sometimes the easiest thing is just to let divisions alone—maybe some sort of uneasy peace has been established and to work toward wholeness would create dissension and what would seem like more division.

A great example of this in American history is the whole separate but equal policy, the law of the land, upheld by the Supreme Court in 1896 in its ruling in the court case, Plessy vs. Ferguson.  This ruling upheld an uneasy peace that furthered the deep divisions between racial groups in our country. 

The people who longed for wholeness among the races in our country picked up their crosses and sought that wholeness, in spite of the dissension that resulted. 

The court’s ruling in the case of Brown vs. the Board of Education in 1954 reversed the separate but equal policy, and this ruling led to even more dissension and unhappiness all over the country, but the possibility of wholeness came to pass. 

As disciples of Jesus, we have to remember that he told us that he came, not to bring peace, but a sword.

Jesus will search for those who are lost, will search for wholeness for the whole human race, even when dissension and fighting are one of the results of that search. 

Sometimes the cross that we disciples carry as we search for wholeness is to practice patience and compassion, like the father of the prodigal son.    

St Francis de Sales was a good Catholic monk who was a contemporary of John Calvin at the beginning of the 17^th century.    The Catholic Church had irrevocably split apart and Geneva, Switzerland, had become a Calvinistic stronghold. 

Francis de Sales never stopped hoping for what he understood as wholeness—a return of the people of Geneva to the Catholic Church.  He did not take up arms against the Protestants in Geneva, but instead, he prayed throughout his life, with patience, and with compassion, that the people of Geneva would return to the Catholic Church, and of course this prayer was not answered in the way he expected it to be.

But I have to wonder—did all of those prayers of Francis de Sales contribute to the fact one of the things that bind the diverse people of Switzerland together today and have made it one of the most peaceful and richest countries in the world  is their longstanding policy of neutrality in wars?

Sometimes our patience and compassion and waiting in prayer bear results greater than those we could ever imagine from our limited perspectives. 

Finally, God wants us to be persistent in our search for wholeness, especially our inner wholeness.  Even within ourselves, Jesus hopes that we will work for wholeness.  All of us have lost pieces of ourselves over time.

Maybe someone has destroyed a part of us through physical or emotional abuse and we feel as if we will never be complete human beings again.

We think about what we’ve lost, and how damaged we have become.

But as disciples, our task, the cross which we may need to pick up,  is to apply that same  diligence that God has as we make the decision to go search for that lost part of ourselves, shine light on the things we’ve buried away that have kept us from wholeness and joy, to find ourselves again and bring those broken things about ourselves to God for healing.    

Last of all, how do we know when our discipleship and our seeking after wholeness is not out of our own will and desires, but that our discipleship is carrying out God’s will and desires? 

All three of these wonderful parables end up the same way.

They end in joy and in celebration—not the kind of joy we feel and the celebrations we have when our side wins and the other side loses, but joy and celebration because what was once divided has once again been made whole—and this celebration is one that includes not just our friends, who are like us, but also our neighbors.

Discipleship that restores wholeness within ourselves, within our community, and throughout our world brings with it joy, feasting and celebration! 

And not only do we human beings rejoice, but Jesus tells us that there will be joy in heaven, joy in the very presence of the angels of God, those same angels who came to those shepherds abiding in the fields

—the same angels who cried out these words with such joy, “For behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people!  Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace!”

Not an uneasy peace, that masks division and hatred, but the peace of God, which passes all understanding, the very wholeness that God wants for each one of us in the great human community.

So Jesus taught the tax collectors and sinners, the scribes and the Pharisees, sinners one and all. 

And so Jesus teaches us.

If you want to be my disciples, take up your crosses and go, seek wholeness.

Take up your crosses and rejoice on your way!

Rejoice, because we have a Savior who will go with us,

Who will redeem us,

And who will make us whole!

Amen