A Good Day for Healing

While researching today’s gospel reading I happened upon a scholarly article published sometime after 1962 in The Evangelical Quarterly, written by Dr. James Wilkinson, a Scottish minister and medical missionary in Kenya for nearly 30 years.  In the article Dr. Wilkinson examines the details of the today’s passage to determine if the healing of the woman bent over should be considered an exorcism or not. 

Wilkinson directs the reader’s attention to when Jesus indicates the woman is “bound”; a verb he notes is in a tense denoting an action beginning at a specific point in time and continuing on through the present.  This leads him to consider whether the woman’s eighteen-year condition is the result of a progressive ailment or a traumatic injury.  Given that the text states the onset of woman’s suffering was the result of a “spirit” (and some texts translate this word as “spirit of weakness”) rather than an accident, Dr. Wilkinson holds her condition begins at a definable moment not caused by an accident and has continued to progress. 

He goes on to consider possible medical diagnosis that might explain a condition resulting in spinal rigidity; one path stemming from infectious diseases, the other from diseases that are degenerative.  After a lengthy evaluation, he concludes the woman most likely suffers from spondylitis ankylopoietica, an infectious disease closely related to rheumatoid arthritis involving the fusion of joints, beginning in early adulthood.

Once determining this, Wilkinson goes on to compare the elements of this story with other accounts of exorcism in the gospels; making the case the details of this story do not mesh with them:

· The woman is permitted in the Synagogue – something not likely if people thought her to be possessed.

· She is not described as being unclean.

· The word spirit does not necessarily imply demon.

· Jesus speaks directly to the woman, never to an evil spirit.

· Jesus heals her by laying his hands on her, rather than by commanding a demon to leave her.

Wilkinson concludes the text suggests “spirit of weakness” does not refer to a spiritual being such as a demon, but rather to a state of mind.  As such, her physical weakness is causing the woman’s spirit to suffer, a spirit is not the cause of her weakness.   Wilkinson states, “The result of a long period of physical weakness was a state of profound mental depression.”

Even if the woman’s suffering is not the direct result of possession, it is worth noting Jesus states she has been “bound by Satan” for eighteen years.  This express indicates that for Jesus any suffering, any affliction, anything diminishing the possibility of human flourishing stands apart from God’s desire for us.  What God desires for all people is health and wholeness and soundness of spirit.  Jesus’ life and ministry make the case for this as strongly as possible.

I like Wilkinson’s journal article, in part, because it spotlights the woman Jesus heals.  It is her story, or at least it should be.  Sadly, the focus and force of the account moves quickly from her plight and her deliverance to criticism of Jesus’ action and timing.  The report, which does not even include the name of the woman, is transformed into a tale of confrontation between men as local religious leaders contend Jesus should not have done on the Sabbath what he did.

I suppose to us this seems like an arcane squabble about religious taboos we can no longer imagine or take seriously.  After all, we are so far removed from the “Blue Laws” most of our younger members don’t even know what this term references.  The “Thou shalt not on Sundays” is a thing of the past.  But in Jesus’ day this cultural concern was every bit as energizing and contentious as burning the American flag in protest or kneeling for the National Anthem is in ours.  Through the public act of extending his hands and uttering a prayer of healing Jesus knowingly puts himself in the eye of a cultural storm.

We might want to ask why.  Why would Jesus do this?  Was he itching for a fight?  Did he come as a prophet to criticize unjust and inhumane structures?  Or is there something else behind his actions?

Howard Zinn’s book A People’s History of the United States challenged the way we look at the past.  Zinn contends we teach history by telling stories about leading figures – presidents and generals and the like – but he looks at the American story by gleaning first-hand accounts from the letters and journals of everyday people, such as foot soldiers and teachers.  Zinn’s point is valid.  While big, sweeping events and the leaders behind them merit attention, so too do the people and lives impacted by them.  So, for example, you can learn something of the Episcopal Church by examining the journals of the General Convention as well as by listening in on a table conversation at our Coffee Hour after the service.  One approach focuses on the big picture while the other values the individual’s experience.

This distinction helps us to understand what motivates Jesus.  Did he wake one Sabbath morning and say to himself, “Today, I think I will take on the powers that be” or did he encounter the plight of a particular person and decide in that moment to bring her eighteen years of suffering to an end? 

By throwing the emotional weight of the action behind the confrontation, today’s reading makes it so very tempting to think the former is the case.  The way the story is told tends to make the woman’s role incidental.  She could have been any person with any need just so long as it presented itself on the Sabbath in the presence of religious authorities.  The gospels, as they are written, seem to be concerned with the bigger question of who exactly is Lord of the Sabbath – Jesus or tradition.

But I believe in the moment, at that time, on that particular Sabbath, in a synagogue of an unnamed town, for Jesus it was all about one particular person who had suffered much in her life.  It was about her need and his desire to express something dwelling deep in the heart of God.  It was about her agony and God’s empathy.  It was about her weakness and God’s strength.  More than anything else, Jesus wanted to bring together this woman’s condition and God’s compassion.  Everything that boils over after this is ancillary.

It strikes me as worth noting the woman does not present herself to Jesus, as is the case with many of the gospels’ healing stories.  Rather, Jesus notices her and calls her to come to him.  She has suffered for so long it appears she no longer has hope for healing.  Jesus notices her and is filled with pity and kindness.  He does something for her she neither asks nor expects.  For Jesus, every opportunity is a time for healing and every day is a good day for healing, especially the Sabbath.

St. Paul’s is truly blessed to have several people who are dedicated to the ministry of healing.  Practically every Sunday one of them is available to pray with you during the administration of communion.  They do so not because they possess magical powers, but because each senses a call from God to this ministry of compassion and care.

And I am pleased the Vestry, at its January retreat, identified enhancing our Ministry of Healing as a goal for the year.  We have taken several steps, most notably adding A Service of Public Healing in the Chapel after the late service on the last Sunday of each month.  The liturgy is powerful, but not off-putting.  It looks and feels nothing like you may have seen from some evangelists on TV.  The liturgy remembers that God cares and hears and knows our need.  It is a reminder that those gathered care too.  And somehow, through God’s grace, something happens to make the experience beneficial. 

Each of our lives is marked by tremendous need.  No one is immune.  Imagine if I invited every person here to stand if you carry in your heart some kind of special burden for yourself.  Imagine if I then asked to stand those who carry a burden for a member of their immediate family.  How many people would be left sitting?  None, I dare say, if I broadened the circle to include extended family and close friends bearing a burden. 

There is not a person here this morning who does not carry personal concerns or the needs of another in his or her heart.  You may think you are alone in this, but you are not.  I trust through today’s service you will sense Jesus notices you and, as he did with the woman bent over, calls you to come near.  Today is the Sabbath, is a good day for healing.

A Journey Called Discipleship

The English writer G.K. Chesterton famously observed it’s not that Christianity has been tried and found wanting; it’s that it has been tried and found to be difficult.  This may seem like an odd statement given over 2.2 billion people around the world subscribe to the Christian faith and in our country alone there are over 1,200 Christian denominations.  But then you read one of Jesus’ teachings like we just heard and you begin to understand what Chesterton was driving at.

“I have come to bring fire, not peace, and from hence households will be divided: father against son, mother against daughter, and in-law against in-law.”  Imagine if this morning we sent our youngest members off to Children’s Chapel and drilled into them the literal implications of this teaching!  I suspect in short order our families would begin looking for another church to attend.

And it is not like today’s teaching is some kind of outlier.  Just last Sunday we heard Jesus admonish his followers to sell all their possessions in order to give alms to the poor.  Again, if we pressed these teachings here at St. Paul’s it would create a boon for other churches in the area.  The truth is Jesus put forward many instructions that, when tried, prove to be difficult. 

What are we who claim to be followers of Jesus supposed to do?

Well, one option is to pick and choose from his teachings, selecting to pay attention to what we want to do while ignoring what we do not.  The degree to which we do this often says more about us than it does about Jesus.  I mean, isn’t it wonderful when Jesus agrees with something we hold dear!

In meditating on a particular passage of Scripture I often ask myself a question: if this was the only teaching of Jesus’ we had what would Christianity look like?  Of course it is a false question, but its value lies in the way it takes seriously what each part of the bible says or teaches.  So, if today’s reading was all we knew about what Jesus said, how would our faith and practice be different?  Well, for one thing, Christians would not be as consumed with “family values”.

Family values is a term pertaining to the structure, function, role, beliefs, attitudes, and ideals related to a family.  It is often associated with the make-up of a “traditional family”, which consists of a bread-winning father, a homemaker mother, and their biological children.  In 1980 61% of all children were raised in a home by their married parents.  By 2014 this figure had fallen to 46% - a minority.  The percentage with a stay-at-home mother is even lower.

Given this decline, is it any wonder some Christians are concerned about the deterioration of the traditional family?  But the surprising truth is Jesus himself spoke very little about the matter.  He denounces the frivolous nature of divorce in his day, citing the theology of two becoming one flesh and being concerned a divorced woman often was left financially bereft.  But, as a subject, the Gospels record the teaching only once. 

More on Jesus’ mind were the demands of discipleship and the pressing need for people to do the work of the kingdom.  He understood how leaving your home and job, selling your possessions, and forsaking the faith of your upbringing would put tremendous pressure on a family unit.  Jesus’ own mother and siblings confronted him publicly on several occasions and actually thought he was out of his mind.  This reality gives us a context for understanding today’s reading.

For Jesus, the call of discipleship trumped family values as some talk about them today.  Add to this how St. Paul held believers should remain single in order to be free to do the work of the Gospel and allowed marriage only grudgingly for those who are too “weak” to live on there own.  While the family unit is important to be sure, it simply is not a major focus of Jesus and the New Testament compared to the emphasis some Christians place on it. 

Rather than the composition of a particular family, Jesus seems to be much more concerned about the values and virtues expressed within every relationship.  Is the relationship marked by honesty, mutuality, truthfulness, loyalty, industry, self-giving, and a determination to live out the imperatives of the Gospel?  Being in a traditional family does not guarantee this will happen while being in a non-traditional household does not mean it cannot. 

Well, this example raised by today’s reading is just one of many I could cite to demonstrate how we domesticate the demands of the Gospel by bending it to support what we believe or to attack aspects of our culture not to our liking.  Chesterton’s famous quip provides the best insight I know as to why we do this.  Quite simply, Christianity – when lived authentically as Jesus taught it – is no easy task. 

If I take an honest look at what Jesus teaches and compare it to my actual practice, well, I come up wanting.  It is not just that I lose my temper or think bad thoughts or indulge in a little bit of gossip now and again.  It is not so much that I am a “bad” person.  It has more to do with the way I shy from the demands of Christian living: forsaking material possessions, helping others no matter what the cost, forgiving unconditionally… the list goes on and on.

I wonder if the most important virtue in the Christian faith is humility.  Acknowledging your own shortcomings has the benefit of taking one’s focus off the shortcomings of others.  Jesus talked about this when he wondered why religious hypocrites fixate on the speck in a neighbor’s eye while completely ignoring the log in their own.

John Newton, the one-time slave-trader and composer of the hymn Amazing Grace, is remembered for saying, “I am not what I ought to be, I am not what I want to be, I am not what I hope to be in another world; but still I am not what I once used to be, and by the grace of God I am what I am”.  I like this.  Each of us is on a journey toward holiness.  Some start father afield than others and we certainly are not all at the same place or moving forward at the same pace, but we share one thing in common: we are all on the journey. 

This is what I think about when I meditate of a reading like we heard this morning.  The journey to follow Jesus is not easy – not for anyone.  I rejoice in progress, find amazement in how good things once impossible have become ingrained habits, celebrate God’s unmerited love, and do my best to extend grace to everyone I meet because, like me, they too are on a journey called “discipleship”.

Paying Attention to Life's Treasures

I first began to attend an Episcopal church in my hometown shortly after I graduating from college.  Recognizing my immense potential, in quick order they offered me a position as a youth minister for the princely sum of $500 a month.  I was assigned to report to Jim, the third priest on the staff who was… let’s just say… an interesting – read quirky – fellow.  His multiple idiosyncrasies never failed to amaze and entertain. 

On day I found him in his office reading the financial pages of the local newspaper.  A broker friend had encouraged him to invest in the stock market and recommended CVS pharmacies as a can’t miss opportunity.  Every day thereafter I was treated to an update on how it’s stock was preforming: up ¼ today, down a ½ tomorrow.  Jim’s daily mood trended in synchronized harmony with the fortunes of his investment.

We went to lunch once or twice a week.  “Where would you like to eat?” I asked him one day.  His answer was sharp and clear, “Wendy’s”, which was curious because we had never eaten at a Wendy’s before.  As I was placing my order he enthusiastically encouraged me to upsize my selection: “You should get a frosty to go with that!”  And then a minute later he chastised me for taking too many packets of ketchup and salt.  You have probably figured it out by now – Jim had bought stock in Wendy’s.  He actually believed our eating there was going to inflate his investment.  Conversely, he feared a copious helping of condiments would negatively impact his portfolio.  Now, some of Jim’s passion and pestering was in jest, but not all.  Once he put some money in the market he developed a passionate interest in its performance.

That was the first time I understood something Jesus knew and taught: Where your money is, there your heart will be also.  It is a fact of life.  It is human nature.  If you are old enough to remember the movie Caddyshack perhaps you recall the scene where Chevy Chase’s love interest discovers dozens of his uncashed six-figure checks laying around his cluttered home and he feigns no interest in them whatsoever.  Well, that movie is a work of fiction.  We care about money and all tangible manifestations of wealth.  There is a spiritual connection between it and us.  This is neither a positive or negative reality.  It is just reality.  What you do with it, how you harness it, and how you are driven by it is what matters.  When people ask me how much they should give to the church, I think back to Jim and lunch at Wendy’s and I respond, “Give until it gets your attention.”  How much treasure do you need to invest in something before you care about it?

I want to thank each of you who brought donations for the Food Pantry in the month of July.  The drive was a tremendous success.  I learned something by participating in it.  I was excited the first week as I walked up and down the aisles of the grocery store scouting for something I felt good about offering.  It had to be a food item I would want to eat.  And I had to think through how I was going to get it to church – would I be able to carry it down the street on Sunday morning, or was it so bulky I would I need to bring it my car?  And all of this got me to thinking about church on Saturday.  It worked in a small way to prepare me for Sunday services. 

This got me thinking about so many of you who put time and effort into some facet of our experience here this morning.  The choir comes prepared to offer a musical selection.  Our Coffee Hour hostesses come armed with food, decorations, and hospitality.  When you donate the flowers you come expecting to add to the beauty of our worship space while sensing a close connection to those you love but see no longer.  Teachers come with lessons.  Ushers come expecting to greet, to welcome, and to be helpful.  The Altar Guild comes trusting the polished brass conveys something of God’s glory.  Our Junior Warden comes in the spring excited to see the colors created by the bulbs he planted last fall.  All of these offerings and more require some mixture of time, talent, and treasure – the basic ingredients of Christian stewardship – and they serve to remind us how our hearts are directed toward the places where we invest them.

I was disappointed in myself on the second Sunday of the month because I forgot to pick up something for the Food Pantry, an oversight I corrected later in the day and did not repeat it in the weeks to follow.  I found myself excited not only to offer the food on Sunday, but also to see it distributed on Monday evening.  I anticipated our clients being excited to select an item I provided, much as I suspect choir members look for to singing a piece of music they know will be meaningful to us who listen.  Creating joy for even one person is deeply rewarding.

This, in turn, helped me to understand more fully what Jesus means when he says, “Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven.”  It has nothing to do with ‘earning’ your way to a greater reward and everything to do with the fact some things in this life matter greatly, but cannot be tracked like a stock’s performance.  If money influences the direction of our hearts then we have a tremendous opportunity to channel ourselves toward non-monetary treasures.  If money is all that matters to you then you can use it to lead your heart right back to more material wealth.  Or you can use your money (and your time and your talent) to draw your attention toward other things for which you hold a passionate, Christian devotion. 

You won’t receive a penny for ringing in our handbell choir, but moving people to a deeper sense of worship is its own reward.  At most you will get a thank you for taking an elderly lady to the store and helping her carry the groceries inside to her kitchen.  Read a story to a child and your reward will be a look of wonder and a question or two born of newfound curiosity.  Plant some flowers and you will be responsible for bringing an element of beauty into this world.  Share a cup of coffee with someone you do not know well and you just might find the presence of Christ in an entirely new way.  Block off even five minutes in your schedule for quiet reflection and you might detect the holy in the midst of the hectic.  Prepare a meal and deliver it to someone who is overwhelmed by life and your compensation will be the knowledge you helped to ease a burden and served as a conduit for God’s grace.  Bake some chocolate chip cookies for the rector and you will hear me say, “You have made my day!”

Perhaps this week you can be more attentive to all the things that hold value but are not measurable on a monetary scale; those things that are heavenly treasures and gifts from God making this life rich and meaningful, both for others and for you.  Perhaps you can spend some time pondering how you might store up more experiences like these, blessing others while at the same time making your life feel a little more heavenly.

Information, Wisdom, and Waiting

I remember the first time I was a part of a conversation when, as a group, we did not know the answer to a question and one person pulled out a smart phone and through a web search discovered the answer.  I thought I had witnessed a combination of magic and witchcraft.  Today such occurrences are commonplace.  Classroom students do not take notes as much as surf the web to learn more about a particular point of interest in a professor’s lecture.  Preachers are advised to remember sermons are being fact-checked in real time.  And yes, everyone searches on-line for information and answers.

As a part of my copious sermon research I googled a completely random question: Who invented the Ping-Pong ball?  Here is what I learned in a matter of seconds:

· Table Tennis was invented in the 1860s by a group of aristocrats seeking after dinner entertainment on a rainy English night.  Books set on end divided a table in half and cigar box lids served as paddles to bat a champagne bottle cork back and forth.

· The name “Ping-Pong” was coined by an English firm in the late 1890s and later trademarked by Parker Brothers.  Before this the game was informally known by several different names, including “whiff-whaff”. 

· While on a trip to the United States in 1901, the Englishman James Goode purchased a celluloid ball he thought would be ideal for the game.  Up until then golf balls, rubber balls, and balls of tightly wound string were being used.

I learned all of this and more in matter of seconds.  On an unrelated note, my computer screen is now littered with pop-up ads for ping-pong tables! 

We have come to expect instant access to information.  The answer to any question, no matter how trivial, literally is at our fingertips.  There is a reason we call this time the Information Age.  But information, while important, is not the same thing as knowledge and it most certainly is not wisdom.  Knowledge takes time.  It involves knowing information and context and how each relates to the other.  Wisdom is something altogether different.  In part, it recognizes the limitations of both information and knowledge and finds a way to be at peace with not having all the answers, especially answers to life’s deepest questions.  Wisdom involves living with ambiguity, nuance, and shades of subtlety.  I define wisdom as “learning how to live gracefully and humbly without having all the answers.”

Today’s readings from the Old Testament and Gospel are grounded squarely in wisdom, as I define it.  The writer of Ecclesiastes (a word that means preacher or teacher or literally the assembler, as in the one who assembles wisdom) says he has given his life first to pleasure, then to productivity, and finally to despair.  After it all he concludes everything he pursued is nothing but vanity – literally vapor dissipating into the air.  Jesus, in refusing to settle a financial dispute between two brothers, tells a parable of a man who sets out to build barns big enough to accommodate all the grain he is able to grow.  Jesus calls the man a “fool” (one of the harshest words in the bible) because unbeknownst to him he will die that very night.

Both lessons do a great job of calling into question some basic assumptions we make about life.  Neither lesson resolves the conflict it creates by supplying us with an answer.  We are left hanging.  If we approach what the assembler and Jesus says here as if we are googling for information what we get back is a blank screen.  Today’s readings don’t supply answers.  All they do is raise questions.

I suspect many preachers today are standing in the pulpits of many churches wrestling with these same readings because so many of us use the same common lectionary.  And I guarantee every one of us is facing the same temptation to manufacture an answer to the questions raised in these passages.  Somehow there has got to be a way to wrap all of this up in a neat, tidy, tenable package.  Isn’t this what preachers are supposed to do?  After all, don’t we point to the bible and say all of life’s answers are in here?  Well, here is my answer:  sometimes it is important to live for a while with the questions. 

The most famous passage from Ecclesiastes says,

There is a time is for everything,

and a season for every activity under heaven:

a time to be born and a time to die,

a time to plant and a time to uproot,

a time to tear down and a time to build,

  a time to be silent and a time to speak.

What we read this morning falls under the category of a time to uproot, a time to tear down, and a time to be silent. 

We are so used to having answers come quickly, perhaps dating back to math drills in early elementary school (“1+1=2” and “2+2=4”).  The faster the answers come to us the greater our reward.  Never are we taught some questions do not have answers or for some questions the answers come only after a long period of silence and unknowing.

I have told you before about the counseling relationship I entered after my marriage ended in 2002.  Most sessions left me with a question to ponder. I resolved some on the way home while others took a day or two to think through.  I will never forget the question my counselor posed at the end the very first session.  He listened patiently to my litany of woes – everything from the end of my marriage to the frustration I felt when my girls wouldn’t keep their rooms clean.  On and on and on I went until he said, “Why do you think it is that things don’t work out the way they are supposed to?” 

I lived with this deceptively simple question for the better part of two years, unable to come up with an answer.  And then one day it came me: Why don’t things work out the way they are supposed to?  Because they don’t!  I don’t get to control everything.  And this realization has changed my life.  Maybe the counselor knew the answer on day one.  Maybe his answer was not what my answer turned out to be.  Had he told me the answer on that first day I would not have been able to receive it.

What I needed was not information about how life works or knowledge about how to operate better in my harsh new reality.  What I needed was wisdom.  I learned wisdom is not as much an intellectual pursuit as it is an emotional one.  What the head may know the heart may not be ready to embrace.  Sometimes, what the head says to accept the heart will reject.  Sometimes the only thing that will bring the head and the heart together is time…

…and courage.  It takes a tremendous amount of courage not to run for the cover of certainty and easy answers.  I think about the many times I have sat with a person who was in the midst of a difficult experience, facing challenges raising deep questions about life and meaning and God and faith.  More often than not, all I could say in response was this: “You are asking all the right questions and I admire how you are doing it.  It takes a lot of courage to hold your loss, your pain, your fear, and your anger and wait.” 

And yet, in life there are times when this is exactly what we must do.  The assembler of wisdom knew it and Jesus knew it.  Through their teaching today they tear down and leave little or nothing in its place.  Life is like that sometimes.  And knowing that the Holy Scripture contains sections of pointed questioning where no answers are supplied tells us when we are in a place like this we are in a place that must be named as faith, not doubt.  It is faith when we ground these moments in a trust God will not lose hold of us.  It is faith when we hope one day to understand or to accept or to be strong again.  It is faith when we do not run away from uncertainty.  Doubt manifests itself when we accept as safe harbor cheap answers and false certainty.  The truly wise turn away from such things and wait.  The wise wait with a peace passing all understanding. 

Brain McLaren, in his book A Generous Orthodoxy, observes there are four stages of faith development:

· Simplicity – a time early on in life when we are comfortable seeing everything as black and white.

· Complexity – a time when we realize everything is not as neat and tidy as it appears.

· Perplexity – a time of deep questioning when we know not how to make sense of it all.

· Humility – a time when we let go of it all and find our rest in God. 

Today’s readings are grounded squarely in perplexity.  The degree to which you open up yourself to life’s big questions and the degree to which they are thrust upon you, is the degree to which you are on the cusp of making the most important pilgrimage of the spiritual life: letting go of what you absolutely know to be true and letting go of what you absolutely cannot figure out in order to let God be God… a God who loves you beyond words, beyond thoughts, beyond beliefs, but not beyond knowing.  Such an experience births wisdom beyond what I can describe, but I can assure you it is real and it will come to you… in time.

Being Shaped by the Lord's Prayer

Congratulations!  You all have been enrolled in my Bible 101 class.  Relax, you do not need to take notes and there will be no test.  The best case scenario… you will be able to answer a question or two on Jeopardy. 

Each of the four Gospels originally existed as independent works and copies of each circulated throughout the early church.  The Gospel of Mark was written first.  Scholars have long recognized Matthew and Luke get much of their material from Mark, although they often employ it with subtle changes.  There are instances when Matthew has material Luke does not and vice versa.  Such accounts are said to be original to the author.  There are also times when Matthew and Luke share material not found in Mark, leading scholars to hypothesis the existence of a now-lost gospel dubbed Q, the first letter in a German word meaning ‘source’.  John’s Gospel was the last to be written and is wholly unlike the others.  While the evangelist most certainly is aware of the other three works (or four) he does not draw on them in the way Matthew and Luke draw from Mark and Q.

The Lord’s Prayer is recorded in Matthew and Luke, but is not found in Mark or John.  This leads scholars to conclude it was originally included in the Q work.  Matthew places the Lord’s Prayer in a bundling of Jesus’ teachings known as the Sermon on the Mount, found in chapters 5, 6, and 7.  One section of this sermon compiles some of Jesus’ teachings on piety and prayer.  In it he instructs his followers to keep charitable acts private – “When you give do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.”  He advises not to make a public display when you fast.  And he counsels his followers to pray privately, unlike the religious leaders of the day who make long prayers in front of others to impress them.  It is in this context in Matthew’s Gospel that Jesus teaches his followers how to pray, using the words we now refer to as the Lord’s Prayer.

Luke’s presentation differs slightly from this.  He does not include it as a part of his version of the Sermon on the Mount, which is much briefer than Matthew’s.  And rather than include it as part of a more expanded teaching on prayer, Luke has it as a response to a specific question:

Jesus was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.”

This introduction raises more questions than it answers. 

First, where was this certain place Jesus was praying?  The previous chapter places Jesus at the home of Mary and Martha and while it is possible he is still there, the text appears to suggest he is somewhere else.  It also does not record the subject or the content of Jesus’ prayer.  And while Luke mentions John the Baptist taught his disciples how to pray, he does not tell us anything about its content.  Finally, Luke chooses not to identify the disciple who makes the request, “Jesus, teach us to pray…”  Perhaps the disciple is one of those minor figures in the Gospel who never seems to merit a mention.  It is equally possible this disciple is a woman because, as a whole, the Gospels tend to downplay their involvement in Jesus’ ministry whenever possible.  Regardless, we are deeply indebted to this person because without his or her request it is possible we would not have the words for what is arguably the most significant, meaningful prayer in human existence. 

Let’s shift gears from Bible 101 to Liturgy 101.  We Episcopalians are big on liturgy and there is a very good reason for it.  It is called lex orandi, lex credendi, a Latin phrase which roughly translated means “praying shapes believing.”  If, as we do in our worship, you pray the same words over and over again, week after week, eventually it has an impact on who you are and what you believe.  The words sink in.  You become them and they become you.

In our home when I was growing up we said a grace before dinner every night.  The act of saying grace said something important about life – before we eat we need to thank God – and the prayer itself formed in us a core theology:

God is great, God is good,

Let us thank him for our food.  Amen.

Lex orandi, lex credendi suggests the habit of offering this prayer helped to lay the foundation of what I believe about God and life.  So let’s take a few moments to consider how our faith is shaped by the daily act of saying the Lord’s Prayer.

“Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.”

The first thing to notice is the prayer begins with several words we no longer use in daily conversation – art, hallowed, and thy.  This, in an and of itself, is bad liturgy because ever since the introduction of the first prayer book, the service has always be written in the language of the people.  Yes, there is a contemporary form of the Lord’s Prayer in the prayer book, but lex orandi, lex credendi – we have be shaped by a version dating back to the Elizabethan era and no modern adaption has yet to supplant it.

The beginning of the prayer shapes our belief in several ways.  Referring to God as Father tells us God is personable – someone we can know and someone who knows us.  And while some struggle with translating to God their own experience of a less-than-desirable human father, most of us associate God as Father with qualities such as compassion, care, wisdom, and strength.  Abba is the Greek word in the text translated as Father and it indicates an extremely close and loving relationship.  It could well be translated as ‘Daddy’ or ‘Papa’, and while we don’t normally use such intimate language to address God, due to the influence of the Lord’s Prayer, this I suspect is how most people experience God’s nature.  Countering this cozy familiarity is the petition “hallowed be thy name”.  It reminds us there is something great and sacred about God – something completely beyond us.  “Art in heaven”.  This suggests God lives or dwells in a place different from us.  Heaven is not earth.  It is something other and something different. 

“Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

This place where God dwells operates differently than how things go here on earth.  There is a different way of behaving there.  Kingdom is another one of those words from the past that does not correspond to anything we experience today.  I don’t think speaking about God’s government quite gets at it.  Maybe it is best to think of kingdom as being God’s society.  As such, the way things operate in heaven’s society serves as a template for how things should operate in ours.  God’s society is oriented toward living out God’s will.  The prayer states ours can be oriented this way too.  Pray it enough and you will come to believe it.  You will be dissatisfied with anything on earth not reflective of what it is like in heaven.

“Give us this day our daily bread.”

While our society is built on a foundation of self-sufficiency, the Lord’s Prayer states we are in a position of dependency.  We depend on God for sun and rain and recognize all of creation is a gift not of our making.  But even more, in this day and age we depend on one another in ways we seldom recognize.  I went a grocery store two days after Hurricane Irene made landfall in Virginia and was stunned to find mostly empty shelves due to the disruption in our distribution and delivery networks.  It reminded me, as the prayer book says, “our common life depends on each other’s toil.”  Very few of us could make it on our own.  The Lord’s Prayer reminds us we are dependent on God and dependent on one another.

“Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

This prayer affirms we do things that hurt one another, that offend God, that damage God’s creation, and that mare the image of God within each of us.  Henri Nouwen said, “Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly.  The hard truth is all people love poorly.”  Learning to love and learning to forgive are intricately related.  Learning to be loved and learning to be forgiven go hand-in-hand.

“Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

This final petition has been in the news of late because Pope Francis has approved a new version that says, “Do not let us fall into temptation”.  He argues God does not direct us toward detrimental enticement.  No matter what you think about this change, the thrust of the petition Jesus teaches focuses on God’s guidance in our lives.  We rely God to lead us to those places that are good for us and away from those that harm. 

The more you say the Lord’s Prayer the more you will come to believe it.  And the more you believe it the more you will be shaped by it.  You will recognize God’s closeness while acknowledging God’s sacred holiness.  You will determine not just to wait for the life to come, but work to make it present here and now.  You will affirm our need for God’s goodness and for each person’s contribution to the common good.  You may struggle to forgive, but you will always recognize it as the goal.  You will put your life in God’s hands and trust in the Holy One to guide you to green pastures and still waters.  Lex orendi, lex credendi – this is how the Lord’s Prayer shapes us.

The 11th Commandment

I did something out of character when I turned 55.  I threw a birthday party for myself.  Some of you even attended and a few of you, sensing I was in way over my head, pitched in and helped.  John Rector grilled burgers and I remember Wanda Rector and Cindy Cowan at the kitchen sink cleaning dishes.  Much of the rest of the 3-hour gala was and remains a blur.  It went by so fast and it felt like all I did all evening was say hello to a guest and then move on to another and then another and then another and then it was over. 

After the dust settled and after I recovered from the trauma of it all – which took several days and not a little bit of therapy – I asked different people if they had similar experiences when they hosted a party.  Did they feel run ragged greeting people and making sure everything was going smoothly?  To a person the answer was yes.  And how about you?  How many of you find hosting a party to be a lot of work?  I find the author Richelle Goodrich’s insight to be spot on: “Announcing [you intend to throw a party] is kind of like issuing a hurricane warning!”  I turn 60 in just a few months, but don’t worry about saving the date!  I don’t sense another party is in the offing.

Today’s lessons invite us to ponder the Christian virtue of hospitality – in these readings, at least, ones arising more spontaneously than my planned effort at 55.  Paul writes to the church in Colossae, a small, close-knit group of family and friends who welcomed the Apostle into their homes during his missionary journeys.  The Gospel reading finds Jesus a guest in the Bethany home of Mary and Martha, which is an easy day’s walk from Jerusalem.  Along with their brother Lazarus, the sisters appear to be some of Jesus’ closest friends and most ardent supporters, although the biblical record tells us very little about how they met and bonded.  Still, several times when Jesus is at the Holy City he visits and/or stays with them.  In our first reading, set centuries before this, Abraham is establishing a new home in Mamre, thirty-some miles west of the Dead Sea, when three mysterious figures appear in front of his tent.  Abraham and his wife Sarah go to great lengths to welcome the trio and extend every kindness to them.

Hospitality is one of the most important virtues and values in the bible.  It is so vital that if there was an 11^th Commandment it most likely would address treatment of a stranger.  Here is just a small survey of teachings from our sacred texts:

 

• Among the initial commands given to Moses is this: “You must not mistreat or oppress foreigners in any way. Remember, you yourselves were once foreigners in the land of Egypt” (Ex. 22:21).  It harkens back to what I said in last Sunday’s sermon about the ability to empathize being at the core of all morality and ethics.

• The Old Testament book of Leviticus develops this theme with specific examples: “You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God” (19:34).  “You shall not strip your vineyard bare, neither shall you gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard.  You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner: I am the Lord your God” (19:10).  This commandment takes me back to the sermon when I told you about the people who were arrested in Arizona for leaving food and water in the desert for migrants.  As their defense they cited the right to free expression of their religious beliefs.

• The prophet Isaiah speaks for God: “Is not [the fast I desire] to divide your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into the house?”  (58:7)

• Among the things Job lists to defend his righteousness is this:  “HospitaliThe alien has not lodged outside, for I have opened my doors to the traveler.”  (31:32)

• Jesus teaches we are to invite the poor, the hungry, and the needy into our homes – those who do not have the ability to repay us – because in so doing we will find ourselves blessed and in addition will be recipients of the same in heaven (Luke 14:14).  For Jesus, the more down and the more out a person is, the more you are to extend every welcome.

• The author of the Letter of Hebrews, building on a tradition established in today’s lesson from the Old Testament, writes, “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.”  (13:2)

• The story of Abraham’s visitors does not end with today’s reading.  They leave his home and go to the village of Sodom where they meet Abraham’s nephew Lot.  Like his uncle, Lot extends the hospitality of his home to them.  But the men of the village gather at night outside the door and demand the visitors be given to them so that they can have “relations” with them.  This evil kindles God’s wrath and the town is destroyed.  The story has been cited as evidence the bible condemns all forms of same-gender relationships.  But Scripture itself interprets the violent, aggressive actions of the Sodomites differently.  The prophet Ezekiel writes this: “Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.”  (16:49).  In short, the sin of Sodom was the absence of hospitality

These few verses constitute the briefest of surveys of the bible’s teaching related to hospitality.  And while I do not recommend inviting complete strangers to stay in your home, each of us is called to ponder what it means to be open to the person who is “other”.  What does it mean for our church to be open and hospitable?  For our neighborhoods?  Our community?  Our nation?  What does it mean to have a heart open and hospitable toward the stranger and the alien?  It goes without saying, these are not just theoretical questions.  They are at the very heart and soul of the most current and pressing events in our national life. 

When the Episcopal Church is at its best, one of the hallmarks of our ethos is we do not tell our membership how to vote or which stance is the “Christian” one in political debates.  At our best, we lift up the biblical witness and encourage each person to come to an informed and faithful position.  It is up to you to determine how biblical mandates are to be interpreted in our day and it is up to you to determine how much weight you will give to them. 

I didn’t choose today’s readings any more than I chose the tweets making headlines this week.  Still, one speaks to the other.  I’ll let you decide how and determine what you will do with it.  I’ll close with a bit of good news: as you ponder the biblical witness of hospitality you will find nothing in it to suggest you are required to come to my house and wash the dishes!

Empathy, Ethics & "Inheriting" Eternal Life

St. Jerome, writing in the 4^th Century, referred to the twenty-mile passage from Jericho in the Jordon Valley to Jerusalem as the Red Way or the Bloody Road; such was its notorious and dangerous reputation.  Beginning well below sea level and rising to the heights of the Holy City, a traveler climbed almost a mile in elevation during a day-long journey.  When Tom Coxe and I were there last September our bus strained at times with the grade even though we were on well-paved roads. 

There isn’t a single path from Jericho to Jerusalem, but many.  We walked a portion of a downhill trail following a ridgeline.  It was an easy decent, but we did not go as far as the end where there is an impossibly steep descent into the Jordon Valley.  The land itself is little more than a series of unimaginably barren, deep, deep ravines.  There is no way to image the dry, rocky landscape until you see it.

The path we walked most likely is not the route Jesus would have taken.  He, like most people of his day, walked up and down the Wadi Qelt, a dry streambed winding its way through the bottom of a ravine.  We could see for miles and miles in all directions from our vantage point at the top of the ridge, but down in the wadi, with its twists and turns, a traveler would have no idea what waited beyond the next boulder or bend. 

At the beginning of our walk our group was ambushed by a small band of locals hawking various wears.  In Jesus’ day the Bloody Road earned its name because of the countless number of ambush points it afforded for those who meant harm.  Those who sought to sell us a kufiya headdress or leather belt were a far cry from the bandits who preyed on people passing by on their way to or from Jericho.

In today’s Gospel reading a person approaches Jesus with a question: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”  The text indicates his motive in asking is not entirely spiritual.  He wants to “test” Jesus.  Jesus, in turn, asks the person what he reads about this in the law.  “You must love God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind and you must love your neighbor as yourself.”  “Correct,” says Jesus.  “Do this and you will live.”

The questioner could have followed up by asking Jesus to elaborate on what it means to love God completely, but instead chooses to inquire about the other stipulation: “Who is my neighbor?”  Jesus responds by telling what is perhaps his best-known parable.  Even if you do not know the story or the source, the phrase “Good Samaritan” still stands in our day for a person who reaches out to help another in need.

Jesus sets his story in the Wadi Qelt.  Those listening know instantly this is a place of potential danger.  The robbers who fall upon the traveler may be the bay guys in the story, but they are not the villains.  Like the wadi, they are there to set the stage for the action that follows. 

The parable has four main characters – the victim, the priest, the Levite, and the Samaritan.  Although it is a small detail, it is important to note each is going “down”, meaning each person has left Jerusalem and is headed to Jericho.  They were moving from the sacred and holy to the secular and ordinary.  Today we might tell this part of the story by saying, “A certain person was on his way home from church when he was attacked and others who were on their way home from church passed him by.”

Far from being uniformed, morally bankrupt, or under-resourced, as a demographic priests and Levites are solid, educated, middle-class professionals who either work in the church or attend it on a regular basis.  They are upstanding people and solid citizens.  In a very real sense, they are not much different from you and me.   

They may have had legitimate reasons for passing by the victim.  Perhaps they had important business to attend and could not afford to be delayed.  Some note interacting with the injured person ran the risk of making them ritually unclean, thus rendering them unable to fulfill religious obligations until undertaking an elaborate process to address their defilement.  It is possible they are afraid of being attacked themselves and scurry pass to avoid trouble. 

A perceived threat has a powerful way of shaping a person’s ethical perspective and response to a situation.  It activates in us an ancient response for self-preservation at the expense of all else.  It diminishes our ability to recognize humanity and nullifies our ability to be compassionate. As fear saturates our spiritual being we become more and more self-concerned.  And as this happens we want our religious environment and teachings to validate our actions. 

Religion, at its worst, is a tool in the hands of those motivated mostly by self-interest.  How can I justify the things I do?  Where can I find happiness and peace?  What must I do to inherit eternal life?  From Jesus’ parable we learn he believes deeply devout people can and do use their religion to shield and shelter them from what matters most.  The tale-tell sign of such a person is his or her indifference to the suffering of other people.  When this kind of indifference becomes widespread it works is way into our political debates and even becomes a part of our social fabric. 

I sense in me a numbness to human suffering because I am incapacitated by its magnitude.  The priest and the Levite invite our scorn because they sidestep a person in need.  Our modern world makes us aware of so much more than the human suffering at our side.  We see need in our neighborhood.  We hear about it in our region.  We know about it throughout our nation.  We are aware of it around the globe in a way the people of Jesus’ day never were.  It is easy to understand why we want to build around us a wall of reasons and rationales to keep us from being overrun by the suffering of the world.

When Jesus tells a parable he invites us to see the world through the eyes of each character in it.  In the priest and in the Levite we recognize who and what we are not to be, and yet in them we see much of ourselves.  There are times when we engage the world as the Samaritan and through selflessness and self-giving become a conduit of amazing grace. 

How do we act and react more like the latter than the former?

Jesus invites us to see the world from the perspective of the victim.  He invites us to ask a simple question: If I was in his position how would I want to be treated?  Some may say by traveling alone he was asking for trouble and he got exactly what he deserved.  This may or may not be accurate, but as he lied there injured and bleeding I doubt he was hoping someone would come along to tell him why he was to blame for all his miseries.  Plain and simple, if any one of us was the victim in this story we would want someone – anyone! – to stop and help us. 

The ability to empathize – to put oneself in the position of another in order to see the world from his or her perspective – is at the heart and core of all morality and ethics.  And, according to what Jesus teaches in today’s lesson, it represents one half of what is required to “inherit” eternal life.  We fulfill the law as our thinking and actions shift from how a person’s situation impacts us and our life to imaging what the other person needs, wondering how we might be a part of the answer, and then acting upon it.