Sermon for 10.11.09

Scriptures for Today:

http://www.io.com/~kellywp/YearB_RCL/Pentecost/BProp23_RCL.html

Annie Dillard in “Teaching a Stone to Talk” writes this about faith: “Does anyone have the foggiest idea of what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews."

If we thought for a moment that Jesus was nothing more than “Gentle Jesus, Meek and Mild,” – this week’s gospel should put that notion to rest. Because if we’re paying attention, this has to be one of the scariest gospel stories there is. Even in a recession, those of us who have 2 or 3 meals a day, solid roofs over our heads and electricity and running water that won’t make us sick to drink – we are unimaginably wealthy by the world’s standards. And here is a young man with many possessions – and let’s be honest, even most of us who are anxious about our financial state have many possessions – so here is someone like us who comes to Jesus, only to have Jesus tell him that to have eternal life, he must sell everything he owns, give it to the poor and come, follow Jesus. And Jesus follows it up with a bombshell: it is harder for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone like him to enter the kingdom of heaven.

As my Oklahoma grandpa would say, “Jesus has quit preachin’ and gone to meddlin’.”

Now let’s explore a little what happens in this story. Jesus is traveling around the countryside, accompanied by a whole entourage of disciples and others who have left everything to follow him. The disciples include people who have left families and thriving businesses at least one tax collector who gave away all his ill-gotten wealth; and some wealthy women who travel with Jesus and provide for the crowd out of their personal funds. These people have had a deep conversion experience that makes them believe that no matter what else the world holds, it is nothing compared to the treasure that Jesus holds out to them: so they leave everything and follow him.

In one town, a rich young man approaches him. This man has done everything right in life – a good man – an upstanding citizen – a law-abiding churchgoer – he has everything going for him. But there is something in him that says that life is incomplete – something in him that yearns for more – something that says that there should be a deeper, more fulfilling, more spiritual dimension to life, and he wants to find it. Paul Wadell writes: “He is restless, and unsatisfied, and in spite of his riches, he is needy, for he stands in need of what matters most, the thing that he can't count or accumulate or achieve or take credit for. And yet the treasure he needs and hungers for is the one thing that matters most, the one thing that is secure in this life: God's grace.”

Unlike Jesus’ other questioners, there’s no hint that he wants to trap Jesus or trip him up or oppose him – you might say he is a genuine seeker. And you could say that he is like a lot of churchgoing people – good people who do everything right – but who wonder if there isn’t something more – people like us, people searching for a deeper connection to God. After all, that’s why we come to church – we come hoping to meet Jesus.

But look what happens when this man meets Jesus: Jesus, looking at him, loves him. So Jesus, in his love, tells him the truth. Jesus says, put on your crash helmet, lash yourself to your seat, because this solid law-abiding churchgoing lifestyle isn’t enough. If you really want to find the kingdom of God, if you really have a deep hunger for spiritual connection, if you really want a relationship with the Lord of life and the Creator of heaven and earth, if what you’re after is this thing called “eternal life” – being good isn’t enough of an answer. What is required is a radical transformation, an upending of all your priorities, a reversal of everything you have ever put your trust in – possessions, family, social status, education – everything. And he tells the man to sell everything, give it to the poor, and follow him.

Jesus, in his love for the man, looks at him and sees exactly what the problem is: he is possessed by his possessions; he is a prisoner of his own lifestyle; and it will take God’s love to free him, because he is unable to free himself. But the man goes away grieving – he can’t do what Jesus is asking – so he goes back to the possessions that hold him captive, the very life that he has found unsatisfying up till now. Grief indeed, to be sentenced to a lifetime of emptiness, chained to his riches.

Put on your crash helmets, find a life preserver, Jesus is here.

Now I have to tell you that this gospel troubles me, and it always has. Because I haven’t sold all my possessions and left my family behind to follow Jesus, and I’m not going to take the responsibility of telling you to do that either. But I also am not going to be able to give you a reason why that command applies to that man but not to us – I’m not going to try to justify it or explain it away – because what Jesus is doing here applies in some way to all of us. All I’m going to be able to do is talk about it with you, and help all of us to begin to think about what Jesus is asking of us.

I think it’s important for us to recognize what we have in common with this man. We have possessions, we have position in the community, we are good people who generally do the right thing, and we are here to meet Jesus. And Jesus, looking at us, loves us. Jesus loves us. It is the most important thing that any of us will ever know about Jesus.

So let’s look at what Jesus does here; a man comes asking about eternal life. But Jesus turns his attention away from eternal life – the issue for this man’s soul is not eternal life but temporal life: Jesus tells him he needs to think about this life right here and now. Give everything to the poor, says Jesus, and come follow me right here and now.

Jesus basically says: Love God and love your neighbor in practical, tangible ways: with your possessions, with your time, with your heart and your hands. Eternal life isn’t only some spiritual thing far away in the sky, for him or us. Eternal life begins right here and now, with practical, tangible things we do.

Does that mean that we’re supposed to sell all our possessions and give to the poor?

There are some very prominent Christians who have done just that. We like to think of St. Francis of Assisi as a gentle sort of man who spent all his time talking to animals. But we conveniently forget that he started his ministry by taking off all the expensive clothes his wealthy father had given him and leaving them, and everything else he owned, behind as he started a new life, and changed the world.

Of course, that was in the 13^th century: what about now? Well, there’s an Australian couple who run an orphanage in Veracruz. They came for a short-term mission trip and found that they couldn’t leave – so they left their life in Australia behind and moved to Veracruz to minister to the orphans.

Does that mean we are all required to do this? I hope not – I haven’t done it. But does it mean that God is asking a lot of us? I think it absolutely does. I think God asks nothing less from us than radical transformation of life, turning things upside down, committing ourselves totally to the way of Jesus.

We’re luckier than the man in the story – we maybe have more time. Jesus isn’t standing in front of us, ready to walk on to next village without us. If we come back to church next week, Jesus will still be here, so we can afford to respond to his call with small steps. But I do think Jesus is asking each of us for a response. I do think Jesus wants us to start asking ourselves some questions.

What is separating us from our commitment to him? What is holding us prisoner in our lives? Is it possessions, job security, status, lack of time? Whatever is holding us back, Jesus is looking at us, loving us. And Jesus is doing more than loving us as Gentle Jesus, Meek and Mild. This is Crash Helmet Jesus, who is also challenging us to let go of the things that are holding us back, and to come and follow him.

This means that we have to examine every part of our lives:

· how we spend our time – is God an add-on extra if we don’t have something else scheduled for Sunday morning, or is God the center from which all the rest of our life radiates out?

· What we look for in our occupations – are we spending our lives on something that deepens us spiritually, allows us to use God’s gifts to enrich the world, love God and love our neighbor (which, by the way, you can do in any occupation) – or is it something that actually deadens us spiritually and makes the wrong things our top priorities?

· How we use our possessions – are we holding on so tightly to our possessions that they possess us? Or are we using them to love God and love our neighbor, contributing to the mission of the church and the care of the needy in our world?

I am not making this up – it’s in the gospel – and it’s what Jesus asks of us – head-to-toe transformation that affects every part of our life.

There’s nothing I can do to make this an easy or comfortable gospel, and there’s nothing I can do to make Jesus any less than what he is. Jesus is the savior who claims every part of us. Jesus is the one who loves us, deeply and personally, and knows what it will take to set us free from the things that imprison us. And Jesus is the one who calls us to eternal life, through life transformation that begins right here and now.

Put on your life preservers, lash yourself down and commit yourself to eternal life: With God all things are possible – even for us. Thanks be to God.

Sermon for 10.4.09

This week's lessons are here: http://www.io.com/~kellywp/YearB_RCL/Pentecost/BProp22_RCL.html

SERMON NOTES FOR 10.4.09

For all the arguing we do in the church about sexuality, you would think that Jesus spent all his time talking about it. Actually, today’s gospel is one of the few times he addresses questions of sexuality. But he does it in a way that throws a bombshell into our culture, where so many Christians have been divorced and remarried. Looking at what is going on in this gospel helps us figure out how to approach social issues, and it helps us learn how to do Biblical interpretation.

I burned dinner the other night. In Jesus’ time, this could have been grounds for divorce.

That is, according to one school of thought (the conservative view – follows the letter of the law in Deuteronomy 24:1). The other school of thought said that divorce was allowed only for adultery (modifies the literal interpretation of Scripture, therefore this is the liberal view).

The Pharisees really aren’t interested in Jesus’ opinion on divorce. What the Pharisees are interested in is catching Jesus expressing an opinion. Whatever he answers – it’s sure to make enemies. Jesus is now on the road to Jerusalem – on the way to the cross. All that’s left is for his enemies to come up with an excuse for the cross.

Set this story in context and see the clever way Jesus avoids the trap. The Pharisees ask about divorce and Jesus turns the question around and talks about marriage instead. He explains the ideal of God’s hope for human marriage: faithful, monogamous, lifelong commitment. Yet the fact is that that ideal did not persist for long given the realities of how humans relate to each other – polygamy and divorce were common by the time of the Old Testament patriarchs and matriarchs.

Jesus understands this reality, and says the reason for the law in Deuteronomy is hardness of heart – human sin – and watch what Jesus does here. He appeals to an older, broader Scripture – the creation stories in Genesis 1 & 2. He puts scripture in conversation with scripture. In a conflict in interpretation between two Scriptures, Jesus says the broader ones carry more weight. The way Jesus reads it, scripture is far more than a narrow book of laws and regulations; scripture is a narrative of God’s true, lived relationship with people who are continually imperfect, continually falling short of the ideal for which God has created them.

To understand why Jesus would have answered the question the way he did, we need to ask ourselves: What was the context of divorce in Jesus’ time? Only men could decide to divorce – women had no such option. Men could divorce on a whim, and send their wives away. Children were left behind as property of the father– mothers had no rights. Women whose birth families wouldn’t take them back were left to begging or prostitution to keep themselves alive. Divorce was therefore an injustice perpetrated against the weak by the powerful. Jesus speaks against this injustice by appealing to the broader purposes of God: respect, equality, love that honors the other above oneself, a marriage covenant that means a lifetime commitment.

Therefore, this story gives us a picture of Jesus making the first move in Bible interpretation: understand the context of the time.

The second move in Biblical interpretation is to understand our own context and how the Scripture might apply. In our time, divorce is all too common, and divorce happens for a variety of reasons. There are divorces that happen for good reasons, such as abuse or infidelity that can’t be repaired or differences that are truly irreconcilable. And there are divorces that happen for not-so-good reasons, partly because people don’t take the commitment seriously when they make it. The course of an all-too-typical American romance is what I call a “Cinderella” story: we feel romantic, like it is a quarter to midnight and we’re dancing at the ball with the prince or with Cinderella. But the minute that feeling of romance fades, the minute we’re confronted with the daily reality of sharing your life with someone else, we think that something is wrong. If we’re not careful, we read that loss of the romantic, “Cinderella” feeling as a loss of love.

Which begs the question: what is love, really? The Christian answer is, love is not a feeling but an action – day in and day out. In the movie Fiddler on the Roof: Tevye asks his wife, “Do you love me?” – and she answers, “For 25 years, I’ve washed your clothes, cared for your children, etc. – if that’s not love, what is? Well, yes, that IS what love is! Love is a series of actions, day in and day out, that put the welfare of the other person in front of your own.

Understanding more about what love is helps us understand marriage. Christian marriage is a covenant, not a contract. A contract is a legal thing, and it is null and void if one provision is not met. A person enters into a contract for his or her own benefit. And if marriage were a contract, it would mean when we lose that pleasant infatuated feeling, we might as well leave. From a legal sense, our society sees marriage as a contract.

But from a Christian standpoint, marriage is not a contract but a covenant. A covenant is unconditional, entered for the other’s benefit. In a covenant, we commit to love the other more than we love ourselves. This is the covenant God has made with us (which the Scriptures call a marriage covenant!); this is why Jesus lived and died for us; this is the love he asks us for in marriage – a love that puts the other first.

Does this mean that divorce is not allowed for Christians? No – Christian tradition is about release from bondage to sin – not trapping people in lifelong bondage to sin. Here are the Episcopal church requirements:

CANON 19: Sec. 1. When marital unity is imperiled by dissension, it shall be the duty, if possible, of either or both parties, before taking legal action, to lay the matter before a Member of the Clergy; it shall be the duty of such Member of the Clergy to act first to protect and promote the physical and emotional safety of those involved and only then, if it be possible, to labor that the parties may be reconciled.

We also recognize the validity of remarriage after divorce; one overarching theme of Christian tradition is the possibility of forgiveness and grace. If a divorced person comes to me wanting to be remarried in the church, my responsibility is to make sure they have learned from their previous mistakes, provided for former spouses and children, and healed enough to make a serious recommitment; then I can remarry them with permission of the bishop.

Christian marriage commitment does not require a person to put up with a lifetime of abuse–physical, verbal, addictions, infidelity; and it allows forgiveness, healing. But it does require a high standard of grace, forgiveness and commitment. Dear Abby’s question: “Are you better off with him or without him?” is not a high enough standard: a covenant relationship requires us to ask: is this relationship fulfilling God’s purpose for us as human beings?

So … what is God’s purpose for us as human beings? Look at how Jesus interprets Scripture here. Faced with a text that some people of his time interpret literally, with devastating consequences for the weak and powerless in society – Jesus appeals to an older and broader Biblical tradition. Jesus here treats Scripture not as a collection of hard-and-fast rules to be taken literally, but as a narrative of God’s relationships with human beings and a revelation of God’s desire for how humans should live. He looks God’s desire in creation: God looks at creation and says it is good (Gen. 1). But immediately: God looks at the human creature and sees that something is not good – not good for the earthling to be alone. (Gen. 2).

To grow in full humanness, human beings must grow in relationship. Learning to love another person, over a long period of time, with the opportunity to experience each other’s flaws, to be in conflict and to reconcile, to compromise and to learn to put the other’s welfare before our own – this is the single most difficult challenge that any of us will ever face – and it is the single most important thing that any of us can learn to do as Christians. There is a good reason that the letter to the Ephesians describes God’s relationship with us as a marital relationship. The love we experience in a lifelong, monogamous, covenantal commitment to another human being is the closest personal experience many of us will ever have with the kind of love God offers us. It is certainly not true that each person must be married (Jesus was single). But we must live in covenant community, and we must struggle together to overcome our sinfulness and brokenness – our hardness of heart – to become the full human beings God created and willed us to be.

In the case of divorce: is forgiveness available? Of course – this is the good news that Jesus brings to us. Is new life, new hope, new beginning possible? Yes, God can bring joy and hope out of despair and failure (the message of the cross!), and we rejoice in the healing that remarriage after divorce can bring.

Interpreting the Bible on Social Issues

• Understand the original context
• Understand our own context and how the principles might apply
• Discover what our own hardness of heart inclines us to believe
• Consider whether there is a broader purpose or design revealed in Scripture
• Give enormous respect to the place of Scripture and its authority
• Spirit-driven interpretation of Scripture is only undertaken with respect for the text, respect for differing opinions, and a long process of consensus-building on the part of the whole church – Christ’s body on earth