Monthly Archives: March 2019

LENT IV

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The Prodigal Returns Home – Robert Barnum

The Pharisees believed that keeping the law would earn them God’s presence and love.  Jesus told them that they had it backwards. God is already present and he already loves you.  God’s love makes possible keeping what of the law is worth keeping.  This made the Pharisees very unhappy with Jesus.  The Pharisees, bless their hearts, are the sort of folks that would turn a party into an exercise in etiquette. 

The truth is that you can only get into the kingdom because of grace.  Getting your tickets punched will never get you in. In fact it can keep you out!  To make that very point Jesus told a series of parables ending with today’s Gospel reading, which we call the prodigal son.

LITTLE BROTHER LEAVES HOME.

A man had two sons.  The youngest said give me my inheritance now, a request which in essence says I want you dead.  In fact the father did just what his son asked him, he legally dropped dead on the spot and probated his own will, giving his younger son his inheritance.

  • Little brother liquidated his assets and skipped town with his pockets full of cash.  He settled in another country and set out to make a name for himself.  Just imagine it:
  • He bought a candy apple red Lamborghini racing chariot.
  • He had a penthouse apartment exquisitely decorated with original art in the best zip code in town.
  • He had long three martini lunches and always picked up the tab.
  • He threw lavish parties and had lots of friends.
  • He vacationed at ski resorts on Mt. Hermon.
  • He got interested in the NASCAR-chariot race circuit and even raced himself for a while.

The bank kept calling but he never returned the calls. Then one day a registered letter arrived.  He had been spending the principle for a long time.  The letter informed him that he was flat broke.  His friends wouldn’t return his phone calls and his girl friend took up with a fellow better equipped to keep her in the manner to which he had made her accustomed.

So he had to go to work.  The college education his Daddy had paid for and that he had played for didn’t qualify him for much.  Just then the economy took a nosedive toward depression and the bears ate the market. 

Things were bad.  He finally was so desperate that he took a job slopping hogs. This is the worse thing a yuppie Jewish boy could wind up doing.  It’s the sort of fate that strikes fear into the hearts of Jewish mothers.

Little brother was in the pigpen, reduced to eating pig feed.  But then He came to himself, which in the original language describes something like awakening from a dream.  He said to himself, “Self, what is wrong with this picture?  Back home even the hired hands have more than enough to eat.  I know what I’ll do.  I’ll go to my father and say, ‘Father, I’ve sinned against heaven and against you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of the hired hands.’”

So rehearsing his speech he went on toward home.  His daddy had been watching for him, as an old black preacher put it, “the old man had been watching for him with his nose pressed to the window pane.” He had compassion on him, his heart went out to him.

Now an aside about compassion: compassion should not be confused with pity.

The question to ask is: “Can you celebrate with the people you are helping?”  If you can’t it’s probably pity and if you can it’s likely compassion.

Pity focuses on the differences between people. Pity is being sorry for one who is weak and inferior. Pity is done from a safe distance, preferably from above the one pitted. Pity separates us from the one pitied.  Pity ends in the “giver” feeling good about themselves across the divide between the pitying and the one pitied.  I not sure that pity has much divine content.

Compassion knows that human beings are more alike than they are different.  Compassion on the other hand, moves us toward the one in trouble and says, “We are in this together.” Compassion is the flow and overflow of the fullest human and divine energies.  As Paul writes the Christians in Corinth, “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given the ministry of reconciliation to us.” Compassion is always consummated in celebration!

THE FATHER’S RESPONSE:

Now back to the story at hand. The father felt compassion and that energy overflowed into reconciliation as he ran, embraced and kissed his son.  The son then began to get his ticket punched, begins his well rehearsed speech, “I’ve sinned against heaven and before you.  I am no longer worthy to be called your son!”   —- But notice he doesn’t even get the part about going to work as a hired hand at minimum wage out of his mouth, cause his father shushes him and starts giving orders to the servants.  The old man says, “Go and get:

  • A robe – the best one – he is to be dressed as an honored person.
  • A ring – a signet ring with the family crest – his status as a son is restored.
  • Shoes – few people had shoes – bare feet indicated poverty even slavery. Shoes give safety and power. The old spiritual expresses this exactly, “All of God’s chillun got shoes.  When I get to heaven I going to put on my shoes; I’m going to walk all over God’s heaven.” Shoes are for sons!

See the restoration:

  • the robe of honor,
  • the ring of inheritance, and
  • the footwear of prestige!
  • AND if that wasn’t enough –  for sheer delight (which is one of the things God does best of all).
  • kill the fatted calf = eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!  And they began to celebrate.

Remember that compassion overflows and brings us together which leads to celebration.

[Simon Tugwell says that the last temptation of the younger brother was to insist on being a hired hand.  If his father won’t punish him he will do it for him.  Which is what we do when we let someone convince us that we are no good  and not acceptable].  The boy can’t really come home and be a hired hand.  He has to be a son or nothing.  AND THE SAME IS TRUE FOR US:  IT’S SON OR DAUGHTER OR NOTHING.  NO HIRED HANDS HERE THANK YOU VERY MUCH!  

So they had the mother of all parties.  Everybody who was anybody was there and as the society writer for the local paper put it, “a good time was had by all!”  WELL NOT QUITE.

THE ELDER BROTHER’S RESPONSE.

The elder brother was in the field looking at the crop of cabbages. As he came close to the house and heard the strains of the local dance band he thought, “What is this, music and dancing and it’s a week night? What is going on here?  So he spied one of the boys who worked on the place and the boy explained.  “Your brother has come and your father has killed the fatted calf because he has got him back safe and sound!”

The elder brother was in the field looking at the crop of cabbages. As he came close to the house and heard the strains of the local dance band he thought, “What is this, music and dancing and it’s a week night? What is going on here?  So he spied one of the boys who worked on the place and the boy explained.  “Your brother has come and your father has killed the fatted calf because he has got him back safe and sound!”

[Robert Farrar Capon says that if you are looking for the Christ symbol in this story look no further than the barn.  The Christ image here is the fatted calf who is just waiting to drop dead so there can be a party.  Behold the Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world.]

Even Biblical illiterates remember the Fatted Calf

FATTED CALF!  We can’t really comprehend what a big deal this was.  We think nothing of having steak any time we choose to haul out the grill. In the ancient world eating meat was a rare experience. In the first century people who could afford it kept a calf, and fed it real good so that it got really fat. When they killed it they had a huge party and ate the whole things there being no way to preserve meat for long.  A fatted calf was barbecued only on occasions of surpassing importance.  The old man kills the fatted calf as an act of wanton joy!

Big brother, hereafter to be known as Bubba, was so angry that he stayed outside.  He wouldn’t dignify this nonsense with his presence. His father came outside and pleaded with him.

 [Simon Tugwell describes the elder brother as, “a good man in the very worse sense of the word, the kind of goodness that if you insist on it will cost you your soul.”] 

Bubba begins his tirade, “Listen, all these years, I’ve been working like a slave.  I’ve never disobeyed your command; yet you have never even given me a goat that I might have a goat-roast, and celebrate with my buddies.  But, this trifling no-account son of yours comes slinking home, the very one who has devoured your property with harlots and you have killed the fatted calf!”

PROSTITUTES? Who said anything about prostitutes?  Nowhere does it say that little brother hung out with prostitutes.  Even if he had, Bubba couldn’t have known about it.  But what we can say with certainty is, that we now know what Bubba would have done if he had gone!  You can’t not tell your story.

Bubba was good, earnest so busy getting his ticket punched that it never even occurred to him that his father had already divided the property between the brothers.  Bubba already owned the plantation.  He could have killed the fatted calf himself if he had wanted to, let alone settle for goat burgers.

His father said to him, “Son you are always with me and all I have is yours.  But we had to celebrate and rejoice because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life, he was lost and has been found.”  Bubba’s response is not recorded.

WHAT IS JESUS TELLING US?

  • The criteria for entering the Kingdom of God is being lost and dead  and  knowing it. By the end of the story almost  everyone is dead:
  • The father is legally dead because he has probated his own will.
  • The younger son is dead to the old of being – he died to it back in the pig-pen.
  • The fatted calf is dead so there can be party.
  • The only one who is alive is Bubba, who is so busy being alive on his terms that he misses the point entirely.

Who’s really alive?  As Jesus says two chapters later in Luke 17, “Those who try to make their life secure will lose it, but those who lose their life will keep it.” [Luke 17:33]

Like the elder brother we can do NOTHING to earn God’s love.

Like the younger brother we can do NOTHING so terrible that we can lose God’s love.
All we to do is reject or accept God’s love.  That is what God has given us in Christ Jesus. As we look toward Holy Week and Easter,

REMEMBER: the gift of eternal life begins now not later. God is throwing a party in our honor. We are the only ones that can keep us out.

Amen.

LENT III

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Have you ever wondered who chose the lessons for the lectionary and why do they group the readings as they do? 

The readings in Lent are chosen to prepare the community to prepare the community for the yearly remembrance of the passion and resurrection of Jesus the Christ and the implications for life since then.

  • The Gospel readings are stories in the life of Jesus which point toward the Passion, the Cross and beyond.
  • The Epistles are reflections on the meaning of the Cross, or the believer’s participation in salvation by baptism.
  • The reading from the Old Testament tell of the events from Israel’s salvation that are seen as “types” that “prefigure” the Easter event.

In the reading from Exodus, we one of the great events of salvation history.  It is so powerful that it has entered the popular expression, “having a burning bush experience.” How did Moses, the adopted son of Pharaoh’s daughter come to be in the Sinai wilderness?  Moses killed an Egyptian who he caught beating a Hebrew slave.  When this became known he had to leave town in a hurry. He left the Nile valley and wandered in the wilderness. There he found a wife, the daughter of Jethro, a name more familiar from the “Beverly Hillbillies” than scripture.  It was there in the wilderness that it happened.

Moses has joined the sheep-herding business of his in-laws and was minding the sheep one day when he came to Horeb, the mountain of God.  The angel of the Lord appeared in a flame in the thorn bush.  Moses saw that the bush was burning but yet it was not consumed, so he burned aside to see this strange thing. 

At this point, Moses displayed the one thing required to serve God: RECPTIVITY.  Instead of saying, “Isn’t that strange,” and going on about his business, he stopped and to investigate.  Then a voice spoke from the bush and Moses did not run away; he simply said, “Here I am.”

Moses has joined the sheep-herding business of his in-laws and was minding the sheep one day when he came to Horeb, the mountain of God.  The angel of the Lord appeared in a flame in the thorn bush.  Moses saw that the bush was burning but yet it was not consumed, so he burned aside to see this strange thing.  At this point, Moses displayed the one thing required to serve God: RECPTIVITY.  Instead of saying, “Isn’t that strange,” and going on about his business, he stopped and to investigate.  Then a voice spoke from the bush and Moses did not run away; he simply said, “Here I am.”

The voice tells Moses that God has a mission for him.  He is to go to Egypt and bring the children of Israel out of slavery to Pharaoh.  Moses was not thrilled with this assignment.  He said, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”

Moses did not have a great self image.  He had no confidence.  He had a speech impediment and was terrified of public speaking, let alone, gently break the “good news” to the God-King of Egypt that Yahweh, God of the Israelites instructs him to free the children of Israel.  “Who, me, I don’t think so,” he said.  Moses wouldn’t be our choice for such a project. 

In the book, “The 776 Stupidest Things Ever Said,” Philip Steifter, superintendent of schools in Barrington, Rhode Island is quoted, “After finding no qualified candidates for the position of principal, the school announces the appointment of George Smith to the post.”  To paraphrase Mr. Steifter, “After finding no qualified candidate for the position freeing the slaves, I announce the appointment of Moses to the post.”  Could God not do better than that?

That, of course, is precisely the point.  God does not have to do better at all because this is not about the chosen, but about the chooser!  Martin Buber in, Moses: The Revelation and the Covenant (p. 47) – “Moses said to YHVH (Yahweh), “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and that I should lead the children of Israel out of Egypt?”  YHVH provides the assurance “Indeed I shall be present with you,” and he promises Moses a “sign” which at first seems strange to us.  The sight is that when the people come out of Egypt they will worship YHVH at the mountain.  In other words, what is now only existent in words will take on real existence.” 

Then God makes the promise that echoes down the millennia since, “I shall be,” I shall be present, assuring Moses that He would remain present amid his chosen, …” God promises to be present with those chosen by Him, to remain present with them, to assist them.  … I am and remain present.  YHVH is not like the Gods of Egypt that must be invoked, begged, and coerced.  It is superfluous to invoke YHWH because He is already there before He is called.

Moses continues, “If I show up in Egypt and say the God of your ancestors sent me, they are going to want to know who/what I am talking about.  Then God said, “tell them that, I AM WHO I AM, sent you.”  What does that mean?  Buber continues, (p. 51) “This is usually understood to mean, “I am that I am” in the sense that YHVH describes Himself as the Being One even the Everlasting One, the one unalterably persisting in His being.  … the very in the Biblical language does not carry this particular shade of meaning of pure existence.  It means, happening, coming into being, being there, being present, being thus and thus; but not being in the abstract sense.”

This is the ground of Exodus the Gospel reading for today grows.  Is God the enemy of those people that bad things happened to?  Those who the tower fell on or the Galileans who Pilate killed in the Temple.  Were they the worst people I town that this happened to them?  Jesus said, “no, they were no worse than anyone else, and besides that is not the point; but if YOU do repent you will perish as they did.

Then he told the parable about the unproductive fig tree.  The owner wants to cut it down but the gardener asks that it been cultivated and fertilized and given one more chance.  If at the end of that year there is still no fruit on it cut it down.

The call is there. The call is always there.  As God said to Moses, I AM He who shows up and keeps on showing up.  The question is not  how reliable is God, but rather how willing are we?

A story is told of Innocent of Alaska, an early Russian Orthodox Bishop in Alaska.  A deacon asked him, “If God is infinitely merciful, how can he deprive anyone of his heavenly Kingdom?  “And why do you keep twisting your head about from side to side?”  Innocent countered, “Why don’t you sit still?”  “Because the sun keeps hitting me right in the eye and just won’t leave me in peace,” the deacon replied.  “There. You’ve answered your own question,” the bishop laughed.   “God doesn’t deprive his heavenly kingdom from sinners who do not repent.  They themselves simply can’t bear its light – any more than you bear the light of the sun.”  St. Innocent of Alaska 1797-1897

The Lord will give a second chance, and third, and a fourth.  In the parable there is a definite limit to what may be done for the fig tree.  If it still fails to produce, even the gardener who cares about it will agree to its removal.  God’s patience is infinite, but we are free to refuse it forever.  The day of grace will someday come to an end.

God has promised to show and to keep on showing up.  However, He will not force us, because He created us genuinely free.  The same steadfast love of God was finally displayed on the cross and manifested by the resurrection of our Lord.  God is everywhere, with us in whatever we are in.

“A pagan once asked Rabbi Joshua ben Qarehah, ‘Why of all things did God choose the humble thorn bush as the place from which to speak with Moses?’  The Rabbi replied, ‘If He had chosen a carob tree or a mulberry tree, you would have asked me the same question.  Yet it is impossible to let you go away empty handed.  That is why I am telling you that God chose the humble thorn bush — to teach you that there is no place on earth bereft of the Divine Presence, not even a thorn bush.’”

The same God who promised Moses that He would show up and keep on showing up is still showing up.  In the first century, He showed up in the person and ministry of his Son, Jesus.  Since the day of Pentecost, He has been showing up in the person of the Holy Spirit.  That same Spirit is here today in you and me and in the sacrament of bread and wine.  The question is, will we show up?  That part is up to us.  The good news is that when we do show up God is already there! 

Amen.

LENT II

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Today’s Gospel is about judgment.  People have a hard time dealing with judgment, at least people have a hard time being on the “judged” end of judgment.

Paul Ricoeur in his book, The Symbolism of Evil, explores the cluster of experiences that make up the experience of sin and judgment.  They are: DEFILEMENT, ANXIETY, SHAME AND GUILT.

  1. DEFILEMENT:

Something happens and we feel violated, dirty, angry AND we have done nothing wrong.  It is the feeling when you realize that your house has been burgled.  You enter the house and what had been home is suddenly alien and you feel like you need to take a shower.

In the Peanuts comic strip, Snoopy, the beagle, used to kiss Lucy on the mouth, just so he could see her spit and yell about “dog germs.” I had a similar experience with my sister when she was little. One day the family dog kissed her on the mouth. She got hysterical over the “dog germs” and  could not be pacified until I gave her a slug of Listerine which tasted so bad that she just knew that the germs were dead.  In reality a dog’s mouth has less germs than a human one, but she “felt” defiled.

  1. ANXIETY – EXISTENTIAL:

One day when I was a young child, mother was going to the barn to milk the cows.  The milk bucket was face down on the well curb where it had been left to drain.  When she picked the bucket up a copper-head snake was coiled under it.  To this day I remember instant anxiety that produced.  It is no accident that the symbol of evil is not an elephant.

Existential anxiety is the realization that, “We won’t always be here!”  The day finally comes when the truth occurs to us that not only do other people die, but so will we.  Much of this anxiety is unconscious and becomes  “bound.”  Or in other words the society is deeply anxious and looking for a quick fix that usually promotes anxiety rather than cures it.

  1. SHAME:

Feeling of being “bad” – painful feelings of having lost the respect or regard of another person.  This may or may not be the result of behavior.  It is inner directed.  It feels like a stain on ones sense of self. Often shame is given as much as it is earned. 

  1. GUILT:

These are the rules.  If you keep the rules you are ok, if you break the rules then you are a bad person and must be punished. We often resist that being true so that we do not have to feel the pain.  But all of us have done things years ago that trouble us even today. 

  • Defilement – Anxiety – Shame – Guilt ­= sin, alienation from God, ourselves

and each other.  Nothing WE can do will fix what is wrong. — All of which leads to JUDGMENT. 

It is very hard for people to hear the bad news of judgment, even if it is true.  It is human nature to believe the worst about others and to deny our own  brokeness and sin.  One of the consequences of sin is that rather than being in God’s image, many of us have made God in OUR own image.

Our image of God is as if he was an old man at the top of a very long ladder waiting for us to get near the top, make a mistake/sin/break the rules so that he can hit our fingers with a hammer so that we lose our grip on the rung and drop like a rock into hell.

When I was in my early years of college there was a Dean at my university that would go over the senior’s records with an eye for graduation requirements that had been left undone.  He never let on about the deficit until they were standing in the graduation line, in cap and gown.  Then he came along, pulling people from the line, telling them that they would not graduate that day.  He enjoyed it.  

We can only hear judgment from someone who loves us!  Only then can it become insight. Because of the love, our defensiveness is overcome, and we hear the truth.  When we are loved we have the courage to peep through our fingers and admit, “Yes that is true.” 

This is “being brought up short”– the moment when we have the insight that things are not as they should be or could be.  Then we are left with a choice, what are we going to do?  Which leads us to the good news of judgment, namely, grace and forgiveness!

  • JUDGMENT, GRACE AND FORGIVENESS:

The good news is that there is grace available to us for new life.  We do not have that new life because we do not ask for it. The question then is, “do we trust Jesus or not?”  In the Gospel reading for today, Jesus grieves over Jerusalem, “How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gather her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”

Robert Farrar Capon says this about judgment.

“If he (Jesus) has already done it all for me already, why shouldn’t I live as if I trusted him?”  If he has already reconciled both my wayward self and my equally difficult brother in law, or children or wife/husband – why shouldn’t I at least try to act as if  I trust him to have done just that and to let his reconciliation govern my actions in those relationships.”

            When we die we lose whatever grip we had on our unreconciled versions of our lives – And when we rise on the last day, the only grip in which our lives will be held will be the reconciling grip of Jesus’ resurrection – He will hold our lives mended, cleaned and pressed in his hand, and he will show home to his Father.  Sin is not something the human race has any choice about.  None of us will  ever avoid that trust in ourselves and that distrust of anyone else that lies at the root of the world’s problems.”

“It’s about progress rather than perfection.”

Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous

Lent is about judgment/insight/being open to grace.  The new life begins and continues – begins and continues over and over.

Frederick Buechner says this about judgment.  “We are all of us judged every day.  We are judged by the face that looks back at us the bathroom mirror.  We are judged by the faces of the people we love and by the faces and lives of our children and by our dreams. Each day finds us at the junction of many roads, and we are judged as much by the roads we have not taken as by the roads we have. The New Testament proclaims that at some unforeseeable time in the future God will ring down the final curtain on history, and there will come a Day on which all our days and all the judgments upon each other  will themselves be judged. The judge will be Christ.  In other words, the one who judges us most finally will be the one who loves us most fully.

God is not our enemy!  He is trustworthy and merciful. As the reading from Exodus? for today says, “Abram believed the Lord, and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.”  He wants more for us than we can ever want for ourselves.  “The one who will judges us finally will be the one who loves us most fully.”  That is good news indeed.

Amen.

Jesus didn’t die for a Business

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“The church began as a movement in Jerusalem. It became a philosophy in Greece, an institution in Rome, a culture in Europe and, when it came to America, it became a business… a highly profitable business. But God is coming back for a movement. (author debated).

LENT I

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The Old Testament and New Testament are mirrors reflecting the other.  Early Christians found in the Old Testament figures that pre-figure the new revelation in Jesus.  • Adam is the first man who blew it and Jesus was the Second Adam who regained what the 1st Adam lost.  = number with meaning

TEMPTATION ONE : Cyril of Alexandria – Adam fell because he ate food not his to eat and Jesus overcame because he depended on God to provide his needs. He fed others by his power but not himself. Deut. 8:3

TEMPTATION TWO: Cyril of Alexandria – The devil has taken the world by fraud. Christ restores the world back to proper authority through his obedient suffering. Deut 6:13 The OT story where the early church found parallels to Jesus temptation was the story of Esau and his birthright.

TEMPTATION THREE: Devil now uses Scripture. He gave his angels charge …Psalm 91:12
Origen, the student and successor of Cyril at Alexandria – Homilies on the Gospel of Luke ‘The evil one says, “He gave his angels a command concerning you that they should raise you up in their hands, lest perhaps you strike you foot against a stone.’ See how crafty he is, even in the texts he quotes. For he wishes to diminish the Savior’s glory, as if the Savior needed the help of angels. It is as if he would strike his foot unless he were supported by their hands. The devil takes this verse from Scripture and applies it to Christ. Yet it is written not of Christ but of the saints in general. Freely and in confidence I contradict the devil. This passage cannot be applied to the person of the Christ, for Christ does not need the help of angels. He is greater than the angels and obtained a better name than they by inheritance. ‘God never said to any of the angels, ‘You are my Son; today I have begotten you.’”

CONCLUSION
Austin Farrar, an Anglican priest writes, “Temptation is what distracts us, beguiles us or bullies us off the path! Temptation is what makes real life different from the world of our dreams. We dream a world which is wax under the molding of our ambitions or of our aspirations; we meet a world which faces us with trials we have not the character to surmount, and with seductions we have the virtue to resist.”

That is true because of the First Adam BUT there came a Second Adam: Jesus…