Category Archives: Luke

The Life that Really is Life

Luke, Year C, , , ,

Year C Proper 21
1 Timothy 6:6-19
Luke 16:19-31

I believe in God, the Father almighty. We come here every weekend to worship. One of the great joys of our communal worship life here is how carefully, lovingly, and prayerfully composed our worship service is. In our worship, music and scripture; one of the most common ways to refer to our Creator, our one, holy and living God is Father. Our Father, who art in heaven. God as a parent is a beautiful image. A healthy relationship with a parent (or parent-figure) is grounded in love – love that supports and nourishes, that offers wisdom and affection. Love that nurtures. But as any parent or anyone who has ever been the adult-in-charge knows, healthy love has healthy boundaries, and those boundaries can includes saying words like “No.” The healthiest relationships we have aren’t the ones that pay us lip service; they’re the ones that have a deep enough love to be honest with us – and to challenge us to be the best version of ourselves. That’s an important thing to remember, when we get scripture readings as challenging as the ones we just heard today. Today, we need to trust in God’s love for us, and out of our love for God, be open to talking about some difficult stuff, and trust that at the end of the conversation, our God is still going to be the God who loves us, forgives us, and calls us to the best way to live – forever.

Let’s start with the difficult stuff. What’s the hardest part of these readings? Personally, I think the most challenging verses come from the beginning of Paul’s letter to Timothy, and I encourage you to pull out your bulletin and follow along

“But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith…”

That’s a bear….Let’s look closer at the words. The problem is not in the money or riches themselves. The temptation is in the desire for riches – not the riches themselves. The pain is in the eagerness to be rich – not the richness itself. The evil is in the love of money – not the money itself. The money itself isn’t the problem. Money is merely an object, a resource, a gift. What brings us closer to or further from God is what we desire, who we love, where we focus our attention. How we use and think about this money – this object –  is the issue! It’s easy to want to focus on the certainty of the things we see with our physical eyes, and reach out for comfort to touch with our hands. But as disciples, we are called to walk by faith, to be grounded in what we know in our hearts but cannot touch with our hands – all that is seen and unseen. How do we focus our time less on the objects of our earthly life, and more on the relationships that connect us to eternal life?

Today’s gospel passage illustrates this very point. In today’s passage from Luke, we hear the story of an unnamed rich man and a poor man named Lazarus. In his earthly life, the rich man lives comfortably. In his comfort, however, he never stops to show compassion to the poor man, Lazarus, who sits just outside of his gate. Scripture leaves room for interpretation here; perhaps, he never even sees Lazarus. It is also possible that he sees and ignores and neglects Lazarus daily. The parable doesn’t tell us about the extent of their interaction. Either way, the gate is an earthy barrier that the rich man maintained in his earthly life that represents his limited earthly focus. In death, this barrier became a chasm – an uncrossable void that divides them. All of this could have been avoided if the rich man had opened the gate All of this could have been avoided if he’d opened his eyes to see the gate and been guided by his trust in God.

There are so many things clamoring for my attention every single day, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels that way. We’re all struggling to balance so many different things. How can we keep our focus on the right one? How can we focus our actions on the good?

Today’s readings challenge us in glaring, up-close-and-personal ways, but now that we’ve talked about those challenges, let’s go back and look at that hope. There’s more here than a caution against temptation; there’s a reminder towards all the goodness God calls us to – the goodness God promises Paul writes to Timothy, “Take hold of the eternal life, to which you were called” Once we get past the challenge in the first part of the reading from Paul’s letter to Timothy, the focus of the message completely changes. When Paul tells Timothy to take hold of eternal life, Paul says it in present tense. As in, this eternal life is already here, and if we focus our energy on richness of good works – works like gentleness, generosity, love. Then, we will have the kind of treasure that allows us to “take hold of the life that really is life.” This is the assurance that brings me back every week, and it comforts me to know that we are all striving towards this together, fighting the good fight of the faith together, for the life that really is life right now – and for the life of the world to come.

A key part of Paul’s power as a leader is his own story of redemption. When he cautions us against sinfulness – when writes these challenging passages – he does it as someone who’s experienced taking the wrong path and struggles right alongside us to see and stay focused on the right one. Paul speaks as someone who’s experienced God the Father’s grace and forgiveness the same Grace and Forgiveness we seek and find here every week, as we continue together on this journey of faith. You know, part of Paul’s letter is even worded to be like a Creed: God, who gives life to all things and Christ Jesus, who has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light. Paul’s warned Timothy what not to do, now he reminds of what acts he should focus on: faith, love, endurance, gentleness, generosity, goodness. These are the qualities of our Creator, God our Father, who we come back week after week to worship and whose path we strive to follow.  This is the God we confess our faith to in the words of the Nicene Creed! Our God’s – our Father’s – path leads us to take hold of eternal life – the life that is really life – right now. That’s a God I will declare my faith in, over and over again. How about you?

 

 

Jesus is… Nuturing

Lent, Luke, , , , ,

 

Year C Lent 3
Luke 13: 1-9
Preached at Christ Church Christiana Hundred, “Jesus is…” series

“No, I tell you.” Jesus says these four words twice in today’s gospel passage. Throughout the gospels, when Jesus says he’s going to tell us something: it’s important. It’s even more urgent than his usual wisdom. What is the context for these four words today? Today’s gospel opens on a scene of a group of people sitting around, discussing something that some Galileans did and how they are now facing a terrible punishment. Suddenly, Jesus says, “No, I tell you.” He calls on those around him to listen to the context of what this means in God’s kingdom. The Galileans ugly death, which is so casually referenced, is not a result of some bad seeds they had sown. Our God is not a God of “just desserts” and “getting what’s coming to you.” Our God is a God of grace! Regardless of any struggles these Galileans faced, any weaknesses they had, or bad decisions they made; their misfortune is not an invitation to us to judge them. Their mistakes are not an excuse for us to elevate ourselves above them. On any given day and at any given moment, we are all equally capable of losing our way.

What is it that makes these little moments of judgement so dangerous to God’s kingdom? Jesus teaches us that when we judge each other, we not only limit the power of God’s extravagant grace in our own lives, but we deny that grace to our neighbors. Because when we judge, we are limiting our own ability to receive God’s grace. Our act of judging wastes space in our hearts where the holy spirit could be working in us! When we have less space to receive grace, then there is less grace in our hearts to pass along to our neighbors and to the world that always can use it. To illustrate this point and the importance of compassion, Jesus tells us the parable of the fig tree: a story about a vineyard owner, and a gardener as they debate the future of this struggling tree.

The first person we meet is the vineyard owner. He’s had the fig tree for about three years, and it still has no fruit on it. When we first meet him, he’s rather grumpy. On my first read, my first impression of him on my first read is that he’s definitely the villain. He’s frustrated, and he’s impatient. He’s ready to give up on this tree. Ultimately, he is terrified of failing. Come to think of it, I can relate to those things! I’ve acted out of fear of failure. I’ve grown impatient waiting for the right time for something. I’ve had things that I have wished, and hoped, and dreamed for, and then, I’ve nurtured those dreams, only to have them not go quite according to plan. Then, I’ve found myself just slamming my head into a wall. Who hasn’t? Things don’t’ always go as we plan or on the timeline we plan. Sometimes it’s as simple a frustration as running out of patience, and sometimes it’s as utterly desperate as running out of hope. There’s this whole spectrum in between the two, and with the limited information in this parable, we don’t know where the vineyard owner falls on this spectrum. Honestly, it doesn’t matter. That part is not the key to understanding what Christ is trying to teach us. What matters is that wherever the vineyard owner’s inability to nurture this fig tree is really coming from his inability to nurture himself. How can he pass on what he himself cannot receive?

Enter: the gardener. Before we talk about what the gardener does see, let’s talk about what he doesn’t see. He looks at this fig, and he doesn’t see fault. He doesn’t see failure, inferiority, or hopelessness. Instead, the gardener sees an opportunity to make a choice for hope, grace, and love. In his response to the vineyard owner, it seems that the gardener is asking himself, “Has this tree really been given its best possible chance?” When the gardener pleads the case of the fig tree to the vineyard owner, we can hear that he is grounded in God, whose grace can bring new life to any situation. Our God is a god of resurrection! The Gardner ensures the tree’s best possible chance by committing to giving his best to the tree. At the end of the parable, we never learn the fate of the tree, but Christ does this on purpose. The tree’s fate does not impact how we are called to action. The gardener’s commitment to love and nurture that tree is never worthless! Our God loves us with the same committed, relentless, grace, and this is the model that Christ is calling us to strive for! We need to remember that whatever happens to this tree, it was given it’s best possible chance by the love and grace of a faithful gardener.

In the gardener, we are reminded to strive to be loving and nurturing while showing compassion to everyone we meet. In the vineyard owner, we are reminded that we are constantly tempted by stress, impatience, fear, and hopelessness, and that when we give into these temptations, we are divided from God by our own judging. How can we as disciples be gardeners as often as possible? The answer lies in the final piece of this story we should all identify with: we are all also fig trees!

The fig tree hasn’t born fruit in three years, and depending on what your most recent season of fruitlessness was, three years can seem like a short time or a long time. Maybe this tree wants to bear fruit and doesn’t know how. Maybe all it needs is a little strength from its neighbor. Maybe the fig tree was meant to be planted somewhere else – or become something else. We all need the nurturing love of our God and of Christ made manifest in our neighbor; this is the love that supports and sustains us through our fruitless, struggling, seasons. Think about any acceptance speech for any accolade you’ve ever heard: the speaker always thanks the people who supported and nurtured them along the way – the people who helped ensure that they had their best possible chance. In my fig tree seasons, I’ve leaned heavily on those people.

In a gospel that started out with a casual chat about the latest happenings, we end up with a profound lesson on compassion and the extravagant, nurturing grace that our God gives us and calls us to give each other. There’s no place in God’s kingdom for us to judge each other.

Out in this beautiful world, we will meet people who look at us like the vineyard owner looks at that tree, and we can’t control that. We can control how we respond to those people. We can control our own choice to approach others with love, grace, understanding, and the best of whatever we can give in that moment. We’ve been praying for that for a long time and we continue to pray that every time we say the Lord’s Prayer, praying for God’s kingdom to become manifest on earth: Thy kingdom come. When we say that prayer, we are praying to help manifest a kingdom that is a place of second chances, extravagant grace, and relentless nurturing. Amen.

Sing!

Advent, John, Luke

Year B Advent 4
Luke 1:26-38
Preached on Sunday, December 16 at Christ Church Christiana Hundred in Wilmington, DE

Sunday Sermon – December 17, 2017 from Christ Church Christiana Hundred on Vimeo.

May my soul proclaim the greatness of the Lord and my spirit rejoice in God my savior.

 

The song of Mary is my all-time favorite passage of scripture. In it she proclaims love, faith, and joy – with no sign of fear in the face of the change that God is calling her to. Her words set to music appear in our hymnal – S186[1] – one of my all-time favorites. Today’s gospel passage is just a few verses before her song.

What prompts a song to begin with?

One of my recent leisure activities has been to rewatch one of my favorite shows from my teenage years called Roswell. It’s a typical teen drama, but with healthy splash of science fiction: think 90210 but with aliens. In the past week or so, one of my favorite scenes came up. In this scene, a few of our heroes, human and alien alike, decide to throw a silly, impromptu dance party and rock out to some late-nineties pop music. One of the reasons that I like it so much is that I can picture my friends and I engaging in this exactly activity. Whether we were ten-year-olds and wanting to be Spice Girl, fifteen-year-olds and in the thralls of high school crushes, or thirty-year-olds and trying to deal with the crazy rush hour traffic near the construction merge on 141-North, there is always a song to belt out and dance to break into for every occasion as my hundred iTunes playlists further attest

Today’s gospel gives us the occasion for Mary’s song. We hear the story of Gabriel visiting Mary and delivering news that changed not just her life but all our lives. In the face of a message from God that redefined her world, Mary saw that this was not the end, chose faith overe fear, and found her song. Just before she burst into song, she proclaimed; “Here I am the servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word.”

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.[2] Our lives our full of beginnings and ends: births and deaths, new jobs and graduations, falling in and out of love. In our efforts to live as best we can, we dream dreams and make plans to achieve them. I imagine Mary had a plan for her life, too, before Gabriel showed up with all of his fanfare, and we know Joseph was a part of her plan. The world Mary lived in can feel far away to us, but within it, I’m sure Mary’s plans had the same bottom line as our plans do: Mary sought to build the best possible life for herself, and for whatever risk that might include for her, she sought to keep herself and those closes to her safe. One straightforward way to stay safe for her, and every other woman of her time, was to avoid getting pregnant outside of marriage, something considered a crime in her world. The punishment for this crime was death by stoning, a painful way to meet one’s earthly end. Gabriel’s message brought an end to the plan Mary had had. All the laws that the governed our human world and that science has determined about human life told Mary that God’s new plan was impossible, but Mary chose faith. Mary stayed true.  Mary didn’t tell Gabriel to go find some other young woman. Mary said yes. To paraphrase REM, for all the ways that it’s the end of Mary’s world as she knows it, and she feels fine. So fine (and faithful!), that she cries out “Here I am. The servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word.” She accepts that God has a new beginning for her and bursts into song.

When the changes and chances of our lives and the winds of the Holy Spirit sweep in, it’s so easy to fall prey the fear that creeps in in the midst of all our grief as our lives are upturned, but as Ruth told on the first Sunday of Advent, the Greek word “apocalypto” actually means “to reveal, to uncover, to disclose.” After Gabriel greets Mary and before he delivers the message to her from God, the angel sees that Mary is perplexed and says “Do not fear.” But when we’ve been hurt along the way – knocked to our knees more than once – it can be hard to trust.  It can feel like the safer route is to prepare ourselves for all of the bad possibilities out there rather than to have faith and choose to hope for the good ones.

Let me say that again: It can feel like the safer route is to prepare ourselves for all of the bad possibilities out there rather than to have faith and choose to hope for the good ones.

What God calls us to – and what Mary models for us in today’s gospel passage and in her song– is to choose hope. Perfect love casts our fear.[3] Last week, Stephen told us that when we are struggling to find the new beginning – the new life – that follows each ending, we are called – in our struggle – to strive to be found by God at peace. Being faithful means choosing hope, and choosing to believe in the endless possibilities of God gives us the peace we need to choose hope in the midst of the unknown. When Gabriel says to Mary “Do not fear” and reveals to her God’s plan for her life, Mary chooses faith in God over fear of the unknown and just before she bursts into song, she cries out “Here I am. The servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word.”

We have songs for dance parties and songs for broken hearts. In the age of iTunes, there can be a playlist for every occasion, every emotion: for striving to choose hope and for rejoicing in that hope from God. There’s a reason we take care in selecting the songs for our first dance, our senior prom. Music can take us to moments or great feeling with people through whom we experience God’s love so deeply. Our songs have great power. There is a song on all of hearts that we go to when we jump for joy. In the words of a band called the New Radicals, “Don’t let go; you’ve got the music in you.”[4] And the music gives us hope. There is a song on each of our hearts to proclaim our love for God and to sing hope rather than fear. In this season of Advent, we are preparing for the coming of Christ – for the light of the world to come in the midst of the darkness.[5] Because Mary said “yes” to God.  Mary had faith that in God all things are possible. She showed us what it looks like to choose hope in a world of fear, and just before she burst into song, she proclaimed “Here I am, the servant of the Lord, let it be with me according to your word.”

Here we are, the servants of the Lord, let it be with us according to your word.

 

 

 

 

 

[1] The Hymnal 1982

[2] Semisonic “Closing Time”

[3] 1 John

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DL7-CKirWZE

[5] For the voice to cry out in the midst of the wilderness