Sermons

Seeing and being seen: A lesson in community

October 31, 2010 by Playing in the fields of the Lord ...

Luke 19:1-10

Almost half my lifetime ago, I left my newspaper editor’s job in cold, wintery Bismarck, N.D., to serve overseas as a Peace Corps volunteer. I ended up in Kenya, in Eastern Africa, where Peace Corps, at my request, trained me to become a water technician.

For the first 10 weeks in Kenya, I lived in the central part of the country, attending classes every day, with the greatest focus on cultural and language training. At the end of that time, I was fairly proficient in KiSwahili, the national language. And then Peace Corps, in its wisdom, sent me out to the western part of the country to live and serve among the Luo peoples.

I wasn’t in my village but a few days before I realized that the Swahili I had labored so hard to master wasn’t quite the same Swahili the Luos spoke. I had learned classical KiSwahili; the Luos spoke something I later learned was called “dirty Swahili.” The former is highly technical and intricate; the latter is very simple and ignores all rules of grammar.

Which meant that my training, which had led me to believe that I could live and move and have my being among the Luo, was insufficient at best, a barrier at worst.

Kenya

All this became crystal clear to me within my first week in my village. Wherever I went, whenever I spoke Swahili, people looked at me in confusion. I couldn’t communicate that well, despite my high score on my language exam.

Worst of all, I could not properly greet people.

And greeting people, in Africa as in much of the world, is a very important part of life. Whether you greet them … how you greet them … even if you are just walking down the street (or the dirt path, if you live in much of the developing world) … all of those things place you in society. So if you can’t properly greet people, you really don’t have a place … you don’t know where you belong … or even whether you belong.

One morning, as I was walking down a dirt road, an old woman – and I mean, an old woman, with frizzy little tufts of grey hair on her head and a face filled with wrinkles and dark, dark eyes that peeked out from between those wrinkles – one morning, this woman greeted me on the road.

“I see you,” she said.

I was so startled that she spoke to me in English that I didn’t respond at first. I simply while I thought, I see you? What kind of greeting is that?

So I responded in kind.

“Um, I see you?” I replied, questioningly.

The woman smiled at me and stood there and waited for me to go on.

“Um, how are you?” I asked, not knowing what else to say.

“I am here,” she said.

OK, I thought.

“I am here, too,” I replied, thinking, Isn’t that obvious? We’re standing in the middle of a dirt road, face to face. Of course you’re here. Of course I’m here!

“It is good to be seen,” she said.

And then we began to talk, mixing Swahili, the version I didn’t really know well, and DhuLuo, the tribal language that I really didn’t know yet, and English, which she didn’t know well, and somehow she managed to teach me that in her tribe, as in much of Africa, a proper greeting begins with, “I see you.”

The proper response is, “I am here. I see you.”

The one who began the conversation concludes the greeting with, “I am here. It is good to be seen!”

In much of Africa, this greeting is what gives people life and builds community. You don’t walk down the street and ignore people – you see them. And by seeing them, you do more than acknowledge their presence in the same piece of earth that you occupy. You acknowledge their whole being. You grant them meaning. You name them as part of your community.

As we parted, she in her direction and I in mine, I realized: I had just been introduced to a whole new way of being.

I was seen.

Therefore I belonged.

And I saw.

Therefore the other person belonged as well.

Yes indeed, it is good to be seen!
• • •
Seeing and being seen is what today’s Gospel lesson is all about.

We have Luke’s story of Zacchaeus, the wee little tax collector who was so anxious to see Jesus that he climbed a sycamore tree in order to see over the people in the crowd.

Now most of the time, the focus for this story is on Zaccheus giving away half his fortune and paying back four times what he might owe to people because he had defrauded them. That focus centers on Zaccheus’ conversion and subsequent repentance for the wrongs he had done.

But this story is not so much about repentance as it is about inclusion. Or, more accurately, about God’s wild, radical, inexplicable inclusion of all of God’s beloved children, no matter what the world might think of them or how the world might treat them.

Zaccheus and Jesus

Zaccheus, remember, was the chief tax collector in Jericho; therefore he was:
(a) Rich. Luke says so;
(b) Despised. Tax collectors, as all who witnessed this event knew, were employees of the oppressive Roman government. Any Jew who worked for the Romans was considered a traitor. Any Jew who collected taxes for the Romans, thus keeping the Romans in power, was a double traitor; and
(c) Pretty much an outcast in his own society. See (a) and (b) above.

So when Jesus calls Zaccheus down from the tree – where he really had no business being, since he was both a grownup and a powerful man – Jesus was setting, yet again, another example of God’s incredible love, even for those whom society does not love.

Jesus teaches us, yet again, that God’s love trumps society’s hate. You see, society would have preferred that Jesus ignore that little traitor up in the tree, and society expected the Jesus would never have gone to that little traitor’s house, much less eaten with him.

But Jesus never paid much attention to what society wanted, did he? Instead of letting society dictate to him, Jesus dictates to society. He declares who is good, who is worthy. He determines who belongs, who is part of the community.

So what if society despises this wee little man? Jesus doesn’t.

So what if society has judged this tax collector and found him wanting? Jesus doesn’t.

Instead, Jesus declares that Zaccheus is a son of Abraham – a beloved child of God!

Jesus saw Zaccheus and declared him good.

Take that, society!

Jesus demonstrates to and for us an in-your-face, I-really-don’t-care-what-society-thinks radical hospitality that declares, once and for all, that all of us – that each of us – is a beloved child of God. That all of us and each of us belongs to God. That our community is in and with and through God – because God said so!

How many times have we declared that someone is not welcome in our community, is not one of “us”? We’ve all done it – we decide that because someone is different, looks different, sounds different, smells different, that he or she cannot come in to our community.

And how many times have we been told that we do not belong, that we can’t come in, that we are not welcome in a community? That has happened to all of us as well.

But both stances – saying no and being told no – violate the very image of God in which we are created.

We are created in God’s image of love, because we are not necessary to God (God was before we were and will be after we are, so we can’t possibly be necessary), and God’s image of community (God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, always together). Since God created us in God’s image, God gets to decide who’s in and who’s out. And since God never votes anyone off the island, and God never says, “You I love; you … eh …” we are called to do the same. To include people.

To see others – really see them …

… and to be seen.

I see you, Jesus said to Zaccheus

I am here. I see you, Zaccheus replied.

I am here. It is good to be seen! Jesus said.

Zaccheus’ story is a lesson in community – in God’s community, and how God wants us to be in community. It’s a reminder that we don’t get to make the rules; God does.

God sees each and every one of us, welcomes us into the household of God, makes room for us, sits down and eats a meal with us.

And then God asks us to do the same. God asks us to see each other not for what we think they are, but for what God knows they are: God’s beloved children.

It indeed is good to be seen!

Amen.

A sermon preached at Epiphany Episcopal Church, Richmond, Va., on the 23rd Sunday after Pentecost, 31 October 2010, Proper 26, Year C.

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Filed Under: Blog Articles, Sermons Tagged With: Community, Household of God, Image of God, Kenya, Zaccheus

Do not lose hope – we shall have new life

October 24, 2010 by Lauren Stanley

Joel 2:23-32

On Friday afternoon, about 4 p.m., Immanuel Chapel at Virginia Theological Seminary burned down. Within minutes, the entire chapel was on fire. Within an hour, it was gone. By nightfall, the walls were all that remained standing – although the fire department warned that they could yet collapse.

The historic Great Commission window in the VTS chapel, before the fire.

Most of the windows, many given by graduating classes, are gone, from the great stained glass depiction behind the altar with the inscription Go Ye Into All the World and Preach the Gospel, which inspired thousands of worshippers and had its Robert E. Lee-look alike St. Peter, to the great Tiffany window of St. Paul testifying in chains. Some windows melted, some exploded. All that is left are jagged openings from which many of us watched water pour as the firefighters fought the two-alarm blaze. On Saturday, we learned that apparently, the six-toed Jesus at the back did survive after all.

The altar rail that was sent from Liberia in the late 1800s is gone, as is the altar table and the organ, which seemed to burn for hours.

Everything in the sacristy was destroyed, from the patens and chalices and old, time-worn prayerbooks to “Anna Baptist,” the baby doll that thousands of us used to learn how to baptize children.

Gone, too, is the pulpit, from which were spoken great soaring sermons meant to inspire us and not-so-great sermons given by preachers who were literally quaking in their boots, and which many of us thought would collapse a few years ago on Martin Luther King Jr. Day when Bishop Michael Curry of North Carolina pounded and swayed and called us yet again to realize the dream not of Dr. King but of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Immanuel Chapel, the home in three-year cycles for thousands of seminarians for the past 129 years, the place that nurtured us and then sent us into the world to preach the Gospel, is no more.

This is a time for great mourning among the Seminary community. It is a time of great sadness.

But already, the community is giving thanks.

Thanks that no one was in the chapel at the time and thus no lives were lost. Thanks that none of the dozens of firefighters were injured. Thanks that none of the surrounding buildings were damaged. And yes, thanks that the great cross still towers above the ruins.

And already, it is a time for the community to dream.

To dream of the new chapel that will rise from those ashes. To dream of better access and better bathrooms. To dream of the unknown possibilities that make up those dreams, and that inspire us to new heights, not just of how to glorify God through our worship, but how to glorify God with our lives.

It is as though the prophet Joel were writing this morning just for those of us who loved that Chapel.

“Then afterward,” Joel wrote – meaning after the great calamity which in his day was famine brought on by an invasion, either of real locusts or of the locusts known as Babylonias – “afterward,” the Lord says, “I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions.”

VTS Chapel after the fire.

In other words, God says to us through the prophet Joel, despite the calamity of your life, do not lose hope.

In other words, God says, do not let the tragedy overcome you. Overcome the tragedy instead, because I the Lord am pouring out my Spirit upon you, because your young are prophesying and seeing visions, and your old are dreaming dreams.

Even in the midst of despair – over an economy that will not get its feet back under itself, over wars that are claiming thousands of lives, over injustice and oppression in Sudan and Congo and Zimbabwe, over enduring desperation and a sudden, deadly outbreak of cholera in Haïti, over hatred in the Middle East and oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico, over stubborn unemployment and devastating housing foreclosures – even in the midst of all that can send us plummeting into the pit of despair, we are not to give up. We do not lose hope.

Because God’s spirit is pouring over us, and because we are prophesying and dreaming and seeing visions, and therefore, we shall overcome. We shall have new life. That is where God’s Spirit, which is being poured out abundantly over us, leads us: to new life.

But only if we live into those prophecies, those dreams, those visions.

My friends, let’s be plain here: This is our calling in life. To take the gifts God gives us in the Spirit – the prophecies, the dreams, the visions – and to make them happen.

We – who are the beloved children of God – we – who are created in God’s image of love and community – we – who are created to live in love and in community – we are the ones who are especially called to make God’s dreams for us come true.

This is not someone else’s call … it is not up to someone else to work on God’s behalf.

It is our call.

It is our mission.

It is, in fact, why we were created.

• • •

I need you to know that I am a missionary. For the last five years, I have served as your missionary in both Sudan and Haïti. I have been an Appointed Missionary of the Episcopal Church, which means I represented you and the entire Episcopal Church wherever I went, whomever I served.

And because I am a missionary, mission is important to me. But I tend to define “mission” a bit differently than most people, because for me, mission is not simply about going into the world, it is not merely about doing things.

For me, “mission” is a way of being.

It is how we live our lives as beloved children of God.

“Mission” encompasses every aspect of our lives, every action we take, every word we speak, even the thoughts we think.

Our mission in life is the result of God creating us in God’s image, and declaring us the beloved.

You see, when God created the heavens and the earth and the birds of the air and the fishes of the sea and the animals of the land, God brought forth man and woman in God’s very own image. God did so not because God needed us, but because God wanted us. Remember, we are not necessary to God – and we know that, because God was before we were, and God will be after we are, so we can’t possibly be necessary to God. Which means that God loved us into being. So the image of God is that of love. And because we are Trinitarians, believing in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, always together, never apart, God’s image is that of community.

So we are created in love and community to live in love and community.

The dance of the Trinity

All of which means that each of us is and all of us are God’s beloved children. I’m a beloved child of God. You are a beloved child of God. And you. And you. And you. And you. You are the beloved. We are the beloved.

Our mission, therefore, is to love. Not just the people and the things we like. Not just the people and the things we know. But all of God’s creation. As fully, as wildly, as radically, as inexplicably, as eternally as God loves us.

We want to make those prophecies and dreams and visions, the ones that come from God and are God’s gift to us … we want all those things to come true?

We have to start with love. And we have to always act as God’s beloved. And we have to always remember that everyone else also is God’s beloved.

If this is how we live our lives, if we always begin and end in love (no matter how hard that is), when tragedy and calamity hit, we will be fine. Not because we are immune – for we are not. But because we know how to move forward. We know that God loves us, and because God loves us, God gives us the prophecies, the dreams, the visions we need to continue bringing God’s love to the world.

God who loved us into being is pouring out God’s Spirit upon us. As the beloved, we have the prophecies, we are dreaming the dreams, we are seeing the visions.

Our job, our mission, is to bring those prophecies and dreams and visions to life. To make them happen. God doesn’t give us everything we need so that we can ignore it. God gives us everything we need so that God’s dream for us can come true.

That seminary chapel that burned down on Friday? The one where I was formed as a priest, where I learned to baptize (with dear Anna Baptist, that unregenerate baby doll), to celebrate and marry and bury people? It is gone now. But the love that built that place, the love that made it a holy place of God? That love remains. And because the love remains, the community will move forward.

We are God’s beloved.

Don’t ever forget that.

Amen.

A sermon preached on the 22^nd Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 25, 24 October 2010, Year C, at Grace Episcopal Church, Goochland, Va.

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Filed Under: Blog Articles, Sermons Tagged With: Beloved, Chapel fire, Community, Dreams, Hope, Joel, Mission, Trinity, Virginia Theological Seminary

God is depending on us

October 17, 2010 by Lauren Stanley

Luke 18:1-8

There are times when our Lord Jesus Christ is trying to teach us something and to do so, he tells us a parable – and then he pretty much leaves us to figure out what the parable means in all its aspects, and we often end up … confused.

This morning is one of those times.

The parable of the Widow and the Unjust Judge is one most of us have heard before. Jesus tells his disciples to pray always

The Widow and the Unjust Judge

and not to lose heart, and then illustrates that command with a parable that at first blush seems to back up his instructions.

But then we take a deeper look at it, and we think, “Wait a minute.”

Are we being told that God doesn’t answer our prayers unless we storm the gates of heaven, that God pays no attention to the first time, the second time, the third, the fourth, the fifth time we pray?

Are we being told that God is like this unjust judge, who only gave in to the widow because he didn’t want a black eye (that’s the literal translation from the Greek of “wear me out”)? That God only answers our prayers in order to avoid being publicly embarrassed (as if that were even possible)?

At first blush, those do seem to be the points of the parable.

Thankfully, the parable is about neither of those points.

We do not need to storm the gates of heaven repeatedly, hoping that eventually, God will pay attention. (God hears us the first time we pray.) And we do not need to worry about whether God is just or unjust. (We know God is just, because if God were not just, God would not be God.)

This parable, my friends, is about the kingdom of God on earth. It is about God’s will being done. It is about God’s justice reigning in this world.

Only by turning this parable over and focusing on the widow and what she does in the face of great injustice do we figure that out.

You see, in the days when our Lord Jesus Christ walked the earth, widows had nothing. They had no rights – no right to speak in public, no right to property, no right to testify in a court of law. Everything their husbands owned went to the husbands’ male relatives. If those relatives didn’t like the widow, or were greedy and wanted everything for themselves, they could throw the widow out on the street, and there was little the widow could do about it. Because widows had no rights. They had no one to speak for them. No one to stand up for them. No social safety net. No women’s center. No pro bono lawyers – no one.

The widow in this story? It’s obvious that she was all alone. There was no one was standing up for her. She wasn’t getting any justice from her husband’s family … that’s why she was going to the judge repeatedly. No one was taking her side – that’s why she argued before the judge alone. But even when that fool of a judge – and he was a fool, because he wasn’t even smart enough to fear God and he had no respect for anyone in the community – even when he refused repeatedly to hear her case and give her the justice that God demands, the widow refused to quit.

She knew her rights, this widow, the rights that came directly from God. She knew that from the beginning and to the end of time, God was on her side. Throughout the Torah, the Law of Moses, God places special emphasis on caring for widows, orphans and strangers.[1] Eleven times in Deuteronomy alone, God commands his people: Take care of the widows, the orphans and the strangers. So this widow knew: God was on her side. And no foolish judge was going to stop her from getting what God said was hers.

And therein, my friends, lies the real lesson of this parable:

Do not quit.

Even when the odds are against us, this parable teaches us that we are not to stop working for God’s kingdom, for God’s justice, for God’s love, for God’s hope.

Even when the kingdom seems out of reach, when there seems to be no justice in sight, or love to embrace, or hope to cling to, Jesus tells us to keep trying, to keep pushing. Because one day – one day – when enough people focus on God’s kingdom – and not their own; on God’s justice – and not society’s; on God’s inexplicable, eternal, wild, radical love – and not humanity’s limited, short-sighted, mean-spirited imitation of the same; when people embrace God’s incredible hope – and reject humanity’s hopelessness – when all that happens, God’s justice will roll down like waters and righteousness will flow like an ever-flowing stream.

No matter how hard it seems, Jesus is telling us, no matter how hopeless it seems … do not quit.

So why does Jesus tell us this in the context of a command to pray always?

Because in Jesus’ scheme of life, prayer is more than simply asking for something. Prayer is about doing something. It’s about doing those things for which we pray!

The Statue of Reconciliation, by Josefina de Vasconcellos. It sits amid the ruins of Coventry Cathedral, which was destroyed by German air forces during WWII. A replica of this statue was donated by the people of Coventry to the peace garden of Hiroshima.

It is not enough to simply ask God for peace in this world. If we want peace, Jesus says, we’re going to have to work for it. We don’t have peace in this world because there are far too many people who reject it. Those of us who want it, who pray for it, Jesus says, are going to have to work for it.

It is not enough to simply ask to God to watch over those in need this day. If we want people to have enough – not everything, but enough – we are the ones who are going to have to give them enough. This day!

Jesus tells us this parable so that we can understand: We have to actively work for that for which we pray, even when it seems hopeless. Because in God’s scheme of life, there is always hope. There is always justice. There is always love.

I know this. I have witnessed this.

For four years I served as your missionary in Sudan, a war-torn nation where more than 3 million people have died in the last 40-some-odd years of war, and another 5 million people have lost their homes. At one point in Sudan, someone was dying – either in civil war or as a result of civil war – every 6 seconds.

Every day, the people pray for peace. They’ve been praying for peace for decades. But they don’t simply ask God for peace and then sit around passively waiting for it. They work for it! Like the widow in today’s Gospel, they refuse to quit. The odds are against them, the world is pretty much ignoring them, their enemies are salivating over the chance to annihilate them. But they won’t quit working for peace.

Right now – facing yet another civil war that is threatening the lives of nearly 10 million southerners in that divided land – they are working for that peace they so desperately desire. This very day, the Archbishop of the Episcopal Church of Sudan is in this country, seeking the help of the U.S. government and the United Nations, so that they don’t face yet another genocide come January, when South Sudan will vote on whether to become an independent nation. Every day, our brothers and sisters in Christ in Sudan, who are related to us not by the blood of their birth but by the waters of their baptism, not only pray for peace. They work for it.

And this is our mission, too.

This is the mission of the Church:

To actively work for that for which we pray. Even when the world tells us it’s never going to happen. Even when the world conspires to stop us.

Our mission is to never give up.

Whenever we see an injustice, whenever we are encounter hatred, whenever we feel hope slipping away, Jesus says to us: do not quit. Do not give up.

We are supposed to be like the widow in today’s Gospel: Always striving for God’s kingdom, for God’s justice, for God’s love, for God’s hope.

God is depending on us.

Amen.

A sermon preached on the 21^st Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 24, Year C, 17 October 2010, at St. Anne’s Parish, Scottsville, Va.

[1] Exodus 22:22; Deut. 10:18, 14:29, 16:11, 16:14, 24:17, 24:19-21, 26:12-13, 27:19.

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Filed Under: Blog Articles, Sermons Tagged With: Gospel of Luke, Hope, Justice, Kingdom of God, Love, Perserverance, Reconciliation, Righteousness, Unjust Judge, Widow

Leaps of faith

September 26, 2010 by Lauren Stanley

Luke 16:19-31

I am a rich person.

I know this because I looked it up on globalrichlist.com, where I entered my income from last year and discovered that I rank in the top 13.74 percent of the wealthiest people in the world.[1]

U.N. wealth-per-capita chart

According to this web site, I am the 824,785,999^th richest person in the world, this out of the approximately 6.8 billion people now living.

That is an amazing ranking, isn’t it? I was astonished when I found out how rich I am, when compared to the rest of the world.

At the same time, I also am a poor person.

I know this because I looked in the Census Bureau’s Poverty Report that was released a few weeks ago.

According to that report, I am incredibly poor. I am so poor that I inhabit, according to the Census Bureau, something called the “poverty universe,” along with more than 40 million other Americans.

One report says I am rich. The other says I am poor.

Let me clear this up for you a bit: For the last five years, I have been an Appointed Missionary of The Episcopal Church. I served for four years in the Diocese of Renk of the Episcopal Church of Sudan, and for about one year in the Diocese of Haiti. During that time, I was paid, by The Episcopal Church, $6,000 per year. $500 per month. I raised money during that time to help support me, so for both of those reports I consulted, I raised my income to $8,000 last year.

On a worldwide scale, I am rich.

In the “poverty universe,” I am poor.

Census Bureau Poverty Index

Somehow, I have managed to span the great chasm between rich and poor, the chasm of which Jesus speaks as he tells the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus in Luke’s Gospel.

The story he tells is not a new one. It is, in fact, much older than Jesus himself, coming out of the Egyptian tradition. But regardless of its age and provenance, the story Jesus tells is an important one, not just for the disciples and Pharisees who are listening then, but to us now.

Let’s get something straight right off the bat: Jesus – God – has no problem with wealth. We know that because the Bible tells us so. In this very story, Lazarus, the poor man who had been abandoned outside the gates of the unnamed rich man, is sitting next to Abraham, the patriarch of the people of Israel and indeed of the three great faiths of the world. Abraham was a very wealthy man, far beyond simply being rich. He had land, animals, money … By reading that Lazarus, a poor man in such bad shape that he was covered in nasty sores, so weak that he was licked by dogs (that most despised of animals), simply by reading that Lazarus is sitting in paradise next to Abraham, we know that wealth in and of itself is not a bad thing in God’s eyes. By hearing Abraham tell the rich man, “Sorry, you’re out of luck, Lazarus can’t help you,” we know that in God’s eyes, Abraham the wealthy man is also Abraham the exalted man.

So wealth is not the problem that Jesus is highlighting in this story.

The Rich Man and Lazarus

What Jesus is focusing on is the great chasm between wealth and poverty, between those who have, and those who do not have.

For it is that chasm that gets in the way of God’s will being done in God’s very good creation.

I know a lot about this chasm. I knew a lot about this chasm before I went online and found out that I am simultaneously rich and poor. In my time as a missionary, I have lived among some of the poorest people on earth. I have seen the poverty, and I know what it is like to be on the wrong side of the chasm.

In South Sudan, I lived in a mud hut, with no running water, very little electricity, lots of disease, limited food to eat. And I lived a life of privilege in Sudan, compared to the average person, who lived in a hut made of grass, who had no electricity ever, no clean water and no way to clean the water she had, frequently far too little to eat and no way to make enough money to ensure her children could grow up healthy and strong. I once had to explain to some U.S. government officials who wanted to learn what life was like in South Sudan that, no, there really was no functioning economy there, that most people were poor beyond belief, that there was never enough of anything, and no hope of getting any more. The Americans simply shook their heads in disbelief.

In Haiti, I lived in the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. The area in which I lived was surrounded by terrible slums, where people had very little, and even less hope of getting any more, while at the same time they were surrounded by people of wealth. Compared to my life in Sudan, my life in Haiti was full of riches. But when my colleagues saw where I lived, and how I lived, they could only shake their heads and ask me why. Why didn’t I have electricity all the time? Why did I haul water up three flights of stairs? Where was my air conditioner? My TV? (Hint: No electricity, no AC, no TV.)

So I know something, quite a bit, actually, about the poverty that Jesus is attacking in this story we call “The Rich Man and Lazarus” but which one commentator says more accurately should be called “The-Indifferent-Man-Who-Could-Have-Listened-to-Moses-and-the-Prophets-and-Followed-God’s-Way-of-Life-and-Been-Welcomed-Into-Paradise-by-Father-Abraham-But-Chose-Not-To and Lazarus.”[2]

The rich man, who is given no name in this story, knew what he was supposed to do. The Torah, the Five Books of Moses, told him: Care for the poor, the sick, the widows and the children. Leviticus says to love God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength. Deuteronomy says to love your neighbor as yourself. You cannot do the former if you do not do the latter. The Prophets who came after Moses said the same thing. Micah asks, “What does the Lord require of you, o mortal, but to do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8) Proverbs say that “If you close your ear to the cry of the poor, you will cry out and not be heard.” (Proverbs 21:13) Isaiah quotes God thundering, “What do you mean by crushing my people, by grinding the face of the poor?” (Isaiah 3:15) followed by a promise from God to never forsake them. (Isaiah 41:17) Jeremiah laments: “For the hurt of my poor people I am hurt, I mourn, and dismay has taken hold of me.” (Jer. 8:21), then asks, “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why has the health of my poor people not been restored?” (Jer. 8:22) Ezekiel proclaims: “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.” (Ezek. 16:49)

Moses and the Prophets continuously spread God’s word: We are to care for the very least among us.

In telling the story of the rich man and Lazarus, Jesus continues in that same prophetic vein:

You see someone in need, you help him.

You feed the hungry. Give water to the thirsty. Make the lame leap for joy, the blind see, the deaf hear, the mute speak. Visit the sick and those in prison. Clothe the naked.

Lord knows – and it is true, God truly does know – that there is a great chasm in this world between the rich and the poor, between the have’s and the have-nots. You and I know it, you and I have seen it, some of you and I have lived in it.

But just because it exists does not mean we can’t do something about it.

Rich or poor – or both, if you are like me – we can cross that chasm – in this life – and we can do something about it, if we so desire. In this country alone, more than 44 million of us inhabit what the Census Bureau now calls the poverty universe. More than 85 percent of the world inhabits that same universe.

Is that what we want?

Is that what God wants?

The real question we have to ask ourselves this morning is this:

Are we willing to cross that chasm ourselves?

The only way to answer that question is to figure out what exists in our lives that keeps that chasm there, and keeps us from crossing it. We may not want to cross it because the poor are too much like Lazarus, covered in ugly sores, so weak that the dogs – the dogs – are able to lick his wounds without hindrance.

We may not want to cross the chasm because to do so would mean leaving our comfort zones, and we are afraid.

We may not want to cross the chasm because we may feel, in our deepest secret places, that sometimes, the poor deserve what they have, or rather, what they don’t have. We may feel that far too many of the poor are poor simply because they refuse to work.

(But know this: In this story that Jesus tells, Lazarus is so far gone that he didn’t go to the rich man on his own to beg. He was placed there because he was so far gone that the people who put him there knew the rich man was his last hope. So in this telling, Jesus is quite clear that he is not talking about people who refuse to work; he is talking about people who cannot help themselves.)

Whatever reasons we may have for not wanting to cross the chasm, we have so many more for doing so.

It doesn’t take much to become poor; we all know that. The economy in this country and around the world went from riding high to sinking like a lead balloon almost in the blink of an eye. We all know someone – and generally more than one someone – who lost their jobs, and then their savings, then their homes. Going from being a rich person to poor, which is so often outside our control, is frighteningly easy. In other words, one very personal reason for crossing the chasm is that because we could have been, and still might be, the ones on the far side, the ones who need help.

We know, too, that while there is nothing wrong with being rich – however you define that term – there is something wrong, in God’s eyes, with not using our wealth to help others in need. We may not be in a position to join Warren Buffet and Bill Gates and all those other billionaires who are giving away half their fortunes, but surely we are able to give something to those who have less.

And we may not be the ones who are called to work directly with the poor. Our call may be to use our wealth – however big or small – to help others help the poor. There is nothing wrong with that – each of us has different gifts, and some people’s gift is to fund the work of others.

Whatever our gifts are, the important question we always have to consider is this: Do we want to cross the chasm?

Because that surely is what Jesus is calling us to do today.

To make the leap of faith and cross the chasm.

Are we willing?

Amen.

A sermon preached on the 18^th Sunday after Pentecost, 26 September 2010, Proper 21 Year C, at Christ Church, Millwood.

[1] cf www.globalrichlist.com

[2] The Rev. Dr. George Hermanson, “Paying Attention,” on David Ewart’s www.holytextures.com,

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Forgiving extravagantly

September 22, 2010 by Playing in the fields of the Lord ...

The Dishonest Steward

Luke 16:1-13

Jesus is in the middle of telling a series of parables about finding that which once was lost – parables of the lost sheep, lost coins, a lost son, all of which were easy to understand and cause for rejoicing – when he launches into yet another story, this time about a rich man’s steward caught with his hand in the till, and once again, we are set back on our heels and left to wonder:

Did he really just say what we think he said?

Did Jesus really just lavish praise on a thief, on a crooked manager, on a cheat?

And did he really just instruct his disciples – did he instruct us – to live by sly cunning in order to get ahead?

When you listen to Luke, it sure sounds that way.

The Parable of the Dishonest Steward – that’s what this story is called. It’s also called one of the most problematic parables in the Gospels, because the message is mixed and makes us feel … uncomfortable.

It’s the story of a steward, a manager of a rich man’s estates. The rich man hears that the steward was cheating him … we don’t know exactly how, other than the fact that the steward was squandering his master’s property. The rich man is royally upset by these reports – for who wants to hear that someone you trusted, somebody you put in power, is wastefully throwing away your money?

Squandering, remember, means to be wasteful … reckless … decadent. But its first definition is to be extravagant … which can be both positive and negative. As we hear this story, we need to remember: The main charge against the steward is that he is extravagant …

At any rate, when the rich man learns of this, he hauls the steward in and says, a la Donald Trump, “You’re fired! Give me an account of all you’ve done, and get out.”

The steward reacts as any of us would, with great dismay and extreme worry. “What am I going to do?” he asks himself. “I can’t dig (like all those poor people over whom I’ve had authority for all these years). And I refuse to beg – that’s too just too shameful.”

So the steward thinks for a while, and then he goes right back to what he’s been doing all along: He becomes extravagant again.

He calls in all those who owe money to the rich man and asks, “How much do you owe my master?”

[Now here’s something to think about … why would the steward, the man charged with keeping the accounts, not know how much each person owed? Could this be the reason he’s being fired? Not because he’s stealing, but because he’s stupid? A good steward should know these things off the top of his head … he should at least have some books, an accounting … he should be ready for an audit, at the drop of a hat. That’s what good stewards do … they do more than keep an eye on the business. They run the business. But not this steward. He’s been so extravagant with the master’s business that he doesn’t even know what’s going on!]

So he asks the first person he calls in: “How much do you owe?” The peasant says, “One hundred jugs of olive oil.” Now, my friends, you know that olive oil is expensive, right? Good olive oil runs up to six times what regular vegetable oil costs. So if this man owes 100 jugs of olive oil – gallons and gallons of it – he’s probably in hock to the master for the rest of his life! He’s an indentured servant and owes everything – every teeny, tiny thing of his life – to the rich man. There’s no way he can get out of this debt – because that’s how the system was designed.

And what does the steward do? Does he demand payment? No. Does he threaten the man (which is probably what the peasant was expecting; after all, this steward is the rich man’s representative, which gives him life and death power over the peasant …)? So does he do that? No.

Instead, he says, “Write down 50 jugs …” Half of what you say you owe. Which suddenly makes the debt reasonable. Which gives the peasant hope that one day, perhaps, he can get out from under this brutal debt, meaning his children and grandchildren won’t have to suffer from it as well …

Every person the steward calls in finds their debt cut … some by half, some by one-fifth …

In order to make his own life better, in order to make the peasants who probably have feared him forever now think better of him, perhaps even like him, the steward acts extravagantly, forgiving their debts by slicing them down to size.

Oh, he doesn’t erase the debts. That would be going too far – if he did that, the rich man would come back and say, “No way. I won’t stand for this.”

But by cutting each person’s debt to a reasonable size, by forgiving the outlandish portions of those debts, the steward makes the rich man look good. He makes himself look good. His own future suddenly looks good again, too – remember, the rich man ends up praising the steward.

All because, in sheer desperation, out of unbridled terror and unremitting pride, the steward forgave debts.

It’s important here to step back a bit and examine what this means to Jesus. Before Jesus told his disciples this parable, he taught them how to pray. In what we now call the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus teaches us to say, “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who owe us.” Translated another way: As we forgive everyone who is indebted to us. This is not how we translate the prayer. In the King James Version, we say, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” And in the so-called “modern” translation, we say, “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.” But neither translation is accurate, for in both Matthew and Luke’s gospels, Jesus says, “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who are in debt to us.” Jesus balances our sins against others’ debts … So Jesus is telling us, right in the prayer he taught us, that we are to forgive debt. Which is exactly what the steward did: He forgave debts.

• • •

I have a friend, a theologian, who spent more than a year working with this text. She thinks that the key to today’s Gospel is forgiving those who owe us.*

It doesn’t matter, Dylan says, how the steward got to that forgiveness, or even why he forgave. It doesn’t matter that he was only forgiving a portion of the debt, or that the debt wasn’t even owed to him.

What matters is that he forgave.

Forgiveness

That is what Jesus wants us to do: Forgive.

Jesus tells this parable, and praises this steward because, even though the steward did it for all the wrong reasons, he still showed mercy. He still forgave people.

And forgiveness is key to how we are called to live as disciples of Jesus. Not to hold on to debts, but to let them go.

How many times have we been in situations where a little forgiveness would go a long way … and we didn’t do it? And the situation got worse?

How many times have we been in situations where we didn’t feel in the least inclined to forgive, but we did so anyway, even just a little, with only half our hearts, and life was better, for us and for the people we forgave?

Jesus is very clear about this: We are called to be extravagant in our forgiveness. To squander our forgiveness. To scatter it hither and yon, when we want to, and when we don’t want to.

It simply does not matter how we get to forgiveness.

It does not even matter why we forgive.

It only matters that we forgive …

… the big things that get in the way of us living our lives fully devoted to God and God’s beloved creation: those times when our loved ones hurt us … when our friends fail us … when we are forgotten … when we are not appreciated …

… and the little things as well which, taken on their own may not mean much, but put together with all those other little things – squeezing the toothpaste from the middle … tossing our clothes on the floor … leaving dirty dishes in the sink … when those things combine to suddenly make our lives seem like nothing but an uphill struggle …

… all of these things and more …

… we are called to forgive.

Extravagantly.

With as open a heart as we can muster, at that given moment, with that particular person.

There’s a reason Jesus tells this particular story; there’s a reason Jesus showers praise on the steward.

Not because he was the best example out there.

But because even though he was a lousy example … he was dishonest, he wasn’t paying attention, he squandered his boss’ money … even though he wasn’t someone we want to emulate ourselves, he still managed to forgive.

Extravagantly.

And if someone as incompetent and dishonest as this steward can manage to do this, Jesus says, how much more can we – we who are his disciples, we who are children of the light – how much more can we forgive?

If the steward can be extravagant in his forgiveness, for all the wrong reasons, how much more can we be extravagant in our own forgiveness, for the right reasons?

“It boils down to the same thing,” my friend Dylan the theologian says. “Deluded or sane, selfish and/or unselfish, there is no bad reason to forgive. Extending the kind of grace God shows us in every possible arena … can only put us more deeply in touch with God’s grace.”

Even in the darkest of times, we who are children of the light are always called to forgive, and to do so extravagantly.

That’s really what Jesus wants to teach us today.

Amen.

* I am deeply indebted to Sarah Dylan Breuer’s exegesis, found sarahlaughed.net, http://www.sarahlaughed.net/lectionary/2007/09/proper-20-year-.html, and http://www.sarahlaughed.net/lectionary/2004/09/proper_20_year_.html.

A sermon preached on 19 September 2010, Christ Church, Millwood, Va.

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Sometimes we are called to hate

September 5, 2010 by Playing in the fields of the Lord ...

Luke 14:26

It would be so much easier this morning if we were listening to Matthew’s Gospel, wouldn’t it? The Gospel where Jesus, pretty much in the same setting, says, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me”?

But we don’t have Matthew this morning, with its emphasis on love. No, we have Luke. And in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus is not as gentle, not as nuanced, not as loving.

For in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus says: “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.”

Whoever … does not hate …

At best, when we hear Jesus say this, we cringe. At worst, we ignore him. Because hate is not something that we associate with Jesus.

When I work with children and youth, I always stop them from using the word hate. You know how kids can be: I hate … broccoli. Or I hate my teacher … or that TV show … or that song. Kids use the word hate all the time. And when they do, I stop them. “You can’t use that word,” I tell them. “Jesus doesn’t tell us to hate things, so you can’t hate. You can despise. You can even severely despise. But you cannot hate. God did not create us to hate. God created us in love to love,” I tell them.

Which is true.

We are created in God’s image, and that image is, first of all, one of love. We know that because we are not necessary to God. God is necessary to us, but we are not necessary to God. And we know that because God was before we were, and God will be after we are, so therefore we simply cannot be necessary to God. So God must have created us because God wanted us, God desired us. Which means God created us out of God’s love for us.

Which is why we simply can’t go around hating things, hating ideas, hating people. It simply is not how or why we were created.

But then we come to Luke’s version of Jesus’ saying, where Jesus is not gentle, not nuanced, not loving.

Jesus has just finished dining with a leader of the Pharisees, has just finished instructing the people to take the lower seat at the table, to feed the poor, the lame, the blind, the sick. Now he turns his back on that town and begins traveling, with “a large crowd following him.” And suddenly he turns to them and out of the blue says:

“Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.”

What brought this on? Where did this come from?

Well, I’ll tell you: I think Jesus has had it.

I think he’s tired of explaining to people – high and low – what it means to be a disciple.

I think he’s tired of having large crowds follow him, without making any commitments.

I think Jesus knows that far too many people in the crowd were just along for the ride, wanting to see what would happen next with this young, itinerant rabbi from Nazareth who preached a radical message of God’s love and hospitality.

Remember, these are people who have been waiting for a Messiah for centuries. They wanted another David. They wanted Israel and Judah restored. They wanted the Romans out, their glory restored, their freedom back. Not that they were planning on doing anything about it. That’s simply what they wanted. So when Jesus showed up in their neighborhood, they followed him, just in case anything happened.

And I think, by this point in his ministry, Jesus has had it. He’s fed up with the freeloaders.

So he lays it on the line for them:

The only way to be my disciple is to hate everything else.

Now, to be clear, the way Luke uses the word hate is somewhat … slightly … different from the way we use that same word these days. And here I’m not talking about how some people use the word hate, like the kids in Youth groups do when they say they hate broccoli, or that TV show, or that song.

I’m talking about the kind of hate that is visceral, and emotional, and comes deep anger … the kind of hate that is the result of irrational fear … the kind of hate that nine years ago this Saturday flew into the Twin Towers in New York, slammed into the Pentagon, and brought down a plane in the Pennsylvania countryside, killing nearly 3,000 people … the kind of hate that tears apart the lives of people all over the world today: Israelis and Palestinians, Afghans and Taliban, Shi’a and Sunni Iraqis, Sudanese Arabs and Sudanese blacks … the kind of hate that is used to threaten people of faith here and around the world …

That is not the “hate” that Luke is describing in today’s Gospel. What Luke is talking is the disruption of the family in first-century terms. Hate here means disconnecting from everything that has previously defined a person: family, friends, genetics … As one commentator describes it, when Jesus says to hate your family, he means to turn your back on the old ways of life, the old world as people in those days understood it, so that the new ways, the “new world of God,” can come into being.

So, you see, Jesus looked back and he saw all those hangers-on, all those free-loaders who were just along for the ride, who were following him to see what would happen next, but who would do nothing to make that next thing happen … he saw them, and he cut loose.

If you want to follow me, he said, be prepared. Following me is not easy. It comes with a cost. You want to be my disciple?You want to love God with all your heart and mind and soul and strength? You’re going to have to give up something. In fact, you’re going to have to give up a lot. Your family – which doesn’t want you to follow me. Your friends – who’d really rather have you come out and play with them. Your place in society … perhaps your job … your home …

Because nothing – nothing! Jesus says – can come between you and God.

That’s what it means to follow me.

Not just traipsing across the countryside, waiting to see what happens next. Not just showing up when I preach, or coming to me when your need is great and you want to be healed.

No. You want to be one of my disciples? Jesus says.

Put God first. Every moment. Every day. In everything you do.

Jesus is being very clear: We are not created to be freeloaders in our faith. We are not created to simply follow along, so that we can see what happens next.

We are created to make the next thing happen.

We who are created in God’s image, out of God’s love, are the ones who are called to love in return. To feed the hungry and care for those in need … not “God on high,” not the “other guy around the corner” but us. It is up to us to make the next thing happen through our love … like your food pantry yesterday … and the Stop Hunger Now program this coming Saturday … and the FISH clothing bank this whole month.

We are the ones who are called to see the world’s needs about us, and do something about it, to change it … like this discussion that you are having about the possibility of nursery school here for that 40 percent of the children in this county who never have a chance to go to preschool.

This is what it means to be a disciple of Christ: We have to turn our backs on everything old, everything that defines us by society’s limited and often self-serving standards, so that everything new, everything that is God, can come into being.

And the only way that is going to happen is if we refuse to be the hangers-on and the freeloaders, just along for the ride, and instead actively decide to put God first … in every moment and every part of our lives.

Jesus is stunningly clear: Discipleship is not easy. Discipleship is not cheap. Being a disciple means that we have to be brave and stand up for what God wants, regardless of what society tells us.

And it means that sometimes, yes, we are going to have to hate, just as Jesus said – not in the visceral, evil way that we encounter so much in today’s world, but in the back-turning, decision-making, world-changing, radical way of which Jesus speaks in Luke’s Gospel.

Because that is the only way we can change the world.

Amen.

A sermon preached on the 15th Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 18, Year C, by The Rev. Lauren R. Stanley at Christ Church, Millwood, Va.

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Our day of liberation

August 22, 2010 by Lauren Stanley

Luke 13:10-17

This morning’s Gospel passage from Luke may be a new one for many of you. Oh, it’s not something that was recently added to the canon, but it is one that for many years, until quite recently in fact, we never heard on a Sunday morning.

Luke today tells us the story of the woman bent over for 18 years. A woman condemned by some ailment to shuffle along in life, probably needing a stick to keep her balance, certainly condemned by those around her who believed that those who suffered were being punished for their sins.

The woman’s story is what author Mary Ellen Ashcroft, in her book The Magdalene Gospel, calls one of the “muffled whispers” of the Scriptures. It is muffled because the focus here is on a woman, an unnamed woman, and like so many other stories about women in the New Testament, it is briefly mentioned, if at all, and then all too often quickly forgotten.

But if we skip this story entirely, as the lectionary did for so many years, or pass over it too quickly, as we might be tempted to do, we miss not only who God is in our lives, but how God is acting – right now, today – in our lives. If we don’t pay sufficient attention to this woman and what happened to her in that synagogue 2,000 years ago, we might miss yet another chance for us to learn something important not just about God, but about ourselves as well.

Luke tells us that this woman was so crippled she could not even see the sky, that she could not look another person (at least, not another adult) in the eyes. He uses the word panteles – all (pan) complete (teles). It is a word with eschatological – with end-time meaning (telos usually refers to the “consummation of the universe”).[1] One commentator says that Luke used this very descriptive word to “suggest that this woman was unable in any sense – physically, spiritually, psychologically, eschatalogically – to raise herself up.”[2]

Imagine what it must have been like for this woman … to be bent over, neck stiffened, staring at the ground, at the dirt, all day long. The only way she was going to see the sky was if she laid down on that ground in broad daylight! The only way to look another adult in the eye was to have that person lay down on the ground in front of her! She spent her days … bent over … looking down … at the very dust to which the serpent was sentenced to spend its life after deceiving Eve and Adam.

In her book, Ashcroft takes the stories of 10 women who followed Jesus and imagines them gathered together on the first Holy Saturday – after the crucifixion but before the resurrection. The 10 women are women we know from the Gospels: Mary, the mother of Jesus; Mary Magdalene; Mary and Martha, the sisters of Lazarus; Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward; Susannah, Salome and Mary Clopas, who are mentioned by name, but only in passing; the woman who bled for 12 years; and today’s woman, who was bent over for 18 years, but is given no name, which is true for almost everyone who was healed by Jesus. They, too, were not identified by name, only by their ailment.

As these 10 women sit in Mary and Martha’s house in Bethany, restricted there by the commandment to keep the Sabbath holy, and by all those other commandments that grew up around that one – the commandments that said they couldn’t light a fire, couldn’t cook, couldn’t walk beyond a certain distance, couldn’t gather wood or wash clothes or really, do much of anything, except honor the Lord – they comfort each other. They mourn the loss of their Lord, and they begin to share their stories of how they first met Jesus, of how Jesus healed them, how he set them free, and how, as a result, they left everything to follow him.

Ashcroft gives the woman bent over for 18 years a name, Rhoda, and she gives her a voice, a voice that tells us (through Ashcroft’s imagining), what her life was like:

Her life was normal for a girl child and then a young woman who lived in the days when Jesus walked the earth: She cooked, she cleaned, she spun wool, she care for children. But then one day, she woke up and her body was twisted, like her life. She kept on doing what she had done before, because she had no choice. What was she to do? There were no doctors who could heal her, and her prayers went unanswered. Eventually, even the children for whom she cared grew up, and jeered at her over her head, and called her names. Eventually, people stopped talking to her and instead spoke only over her, over her crooked spine and bent neck.

For 18 years, Rhoda says (as Ashcroft imagines), she could see no sky, no planets in their courses, no faces of other people. Her life, she says, was one of dust and dirt. I never talked to anyone, looked at anyone, touched anyone. I began to wonder if I were really human.[3]

Can you imagine a life like that? Because that’s what Ashcroft, the author, wants us to do. She wants us to imagine our lives lived like that – alone, separated by an ailment, spoken to most often in a jeer, condemned to study the dust and the dirt.

And then one day, Jesus comes to town, and Rhoda decides she wants to hear – not to see, but only to hear – this man about whom people say such great things. So she goes to the synagogue – hobbling there, dusty step after dusty step, sun beating on her back[4] — and has to push her way in because so many others are there. But there is no space; no one wants to make room for her. She is about to leave, filled with sorrow because she could not be there, when Jesus calls her forward … her, the woman no one pays any attention to, the woman no one looks in the eye, the woman who felt more like a beast of burden than a full human being … Jesus stands in the front of the synagogue, where only men are allowed, and calls her to him.

And when she gets to that hallowed space, Jesus says to her:

“Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” He laid his hands on her – as Ashcroft imagines, this was the first time in a very long time that anyone touched her with love and tenderness – and immediately she stood up straight – straight! able to look Jesus in the eye! – and began praising God.

Now, don’t you just know it, the whole freedom thing, the whole praising God thing, get overlooked by the leader of the synagogue, who is more concerned with doing things the right way, on the right day, who is so bound up by the commandments to make holy the Sabbath, that he misses the whole point of who Jesus is and what Jesus is doing!

“There are six days on which work ought to be done” – healing somebody in need, setting that person free, is work?!? – “come on those days and be cured and not on the Sabbath,” the leader shouts (and you know he had to be shouting by this point, because everything about this healing was wrong, wrong, wrong according to the commandments: the healing, the woman coming forward, the woman speaking in the synagogue …

Not only does Jesus not care about those commandments, he schools the leader in the Torah as well: For Jesus is the one who remembers that the commandment to keep holy the Sabbath (from Exodus) is there not only to get people to rest, but also so that the people will remember – will never forget – that they once were bound up – in Egypt! – and that God set them free from their bondage and then declared (in Deutoronomy 5, for those who wish to look it up) that they were to use the Sabbath as a day of celebration! The Sabbath, God makes clear – long before this particular healing took place – the Sabbath is supposed to be day of freedom, the day of liberation!

God set the people free, God sets us free, and by God, we are never supposed to forget that!

That was Jesus’ argument: God has liberated us, and what better day to liberate a woman bound up by an ailment than on God’s holiest day!

And then, to really make his point, Jesus sets the woman free again! In front of everyone, standing there at the front of the synagogue, where women don’t belong, Jesus calls this woman a “daughter of Abraham,” a term never before and never again used in the Scriptures or in any other writings about the chosen people of God. He calls her a “daughter of Abraham,” giving her the same rights, blessing her with the same inheritance, that all men, all the “sons of Abraham,” had.

Jesus not only sets this woman free from her ailment – the one that had condemned her to a lesser place in that society – he sets her free to stand up before the Lord, to see God face to face, to look God in the eye, as a full human being, unrestrained by commandment after commandment that kept her quiet, that kept her in the back of the synagogue, that denied her the education, the blessing, the beauty of the Torah.

Jesus sets this woman free not once, but twice.

“Woman, you are set free.” And she responds by praising God loudly, right there, in front of everyone, despite the fact that she wasn’t supposed to be right there, in front of everyone, and despite the fact that she was not supposed to speak in the synagogue. She rejoices! She praises God! And eventually, after listening to the argument between Jesus and the leader of that synagogue, so do the people. Because right there, in their sight, freedom has come.

Do you see now why this story, which for most of the Church’s history was not told on Sunday mornings in church, do you see now why this story is so important for us?

It’s not just a story about a woman bent over for 18 years.

It is a story about liberation – our liberation! A story about us being set free. A story about how God comes into our lives and removes our ailments and allows us to stand up straight before the Lord, to see God face to face and look God in the eye and rejoice in our own liberation!

Jesus is standing right here with us, right now, in this place, offering to lift us up, to remove our burdens, to heal our ailments.

Jesus is right here with us, touching us with loving hands, assuring us that we are not alone. Jesus is lifting us up, helping us to stand up straight, telling us that we have been set free!

This is our day of liberation … and by God, we ought to celebrate that!

Amen.

A sermon preached on he 13^th Sunday after Pentecost, 22 August 2010, Proper 16, Year C, at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Arlington, Va.

[1] John Petty, http://progressiveinvolvement.com.

[2] ibid.

[3] Mary Ellen Ashcroft, The Magdalene Gospel: Meeting The Women Who Followed Jesus.

[4] Ibid.

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Filed Under: Blog Articles, Sermons Tagged With: Liberation, Luke, Mary Ellen Ashcroft, The Magdalene Gospel, Woman bent over

Haiti, get up!

April 25, 2010 by Lauren Stanley

The Fourth Sunday of Easter, 25 April 2010, Year C, St. Jacques le Juste, Petion Ville, Haiti

Today’s reading from the Book of Acts is actually a parable about Haiti. It is a parable that speaks of who we are and what is happening in Haiti right now. I know that might not make sense, but bear with me and you will see: The story of Tabitha is our story.

In Acts, we are told the story of a disciple of Jesus named Tabitha, a woman who did many good works and who cared for those in need. Tabitha took ill, and then she died. As was the tradition in her culture, she had to be buried before sundown. So her family took her body, washed it, laid it out on a table, and then they sent for Peter, who was nearby. Come quickly, they said. Tabitha has died.

Peter came, made everyone leave the room, prayed over Tabitha and then said to her, “Tabitha, get up!”

And she did. She opened her eyes, saw Peter and got up. Because of her resurrection, we are told, many people believed in the Lord.

This story is a parable our own lives right here and right now because it is so similar to everything going on in Haiti. The earthquake came; many died; more were injured. The world saw this and said, “Ah, Haiti is dead.” Many in the world rushed here to help; others gave generously. But still, there was the thought, a thought sometimes said aloud, that Haiti was dead.

I know this. Bishop Duracin has me working in both the United States and Haiti, so I hear what is being said and I read what is being written. There are many who believe that Haiti cannot recover from this tragedy. There are some who say that Haiti should become a commonwealth of the United States. That the government of Haiti should be removed. That the constitution should be rewritten. There are those who claim that Haitians cannot direct the recovery, that “they” know better what needs to happen, that “they” should be in charge.

These people – they don’t know Haiti. They don’t know Haitians.

Because what they are saying is not true! Haiti is not dead!

It is not dead because Haiti and its people are listening to God, to the Good Shepherd who knows them each by name, and whose voice they know. Haitians are paying attention to the one voice that is calling to them.

And what is God, what is the Good Shepherd, saying to us here?

“Haiti, get up!”

“Get up!”

• • •

Three weeks ago, the Diocese of Haiti held its Synod, the Synod that had been delayed by the earthquake of Jan. 12. Many of us went – priests, deacons, lay delegates – and at the Synod, we were given a message by Bishop Duracin:

“Haiti, Leve Kanpe Pou Ou Mache!”

“Haiti, Stand Up and Walk!”

Haiti, get up!

And we are getting up and we will get up, because we do listen to the voice of God. Haiti is one of the most God-fearing countries I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been in a lot of countries. Haitians are Christians. They know God. They love God.

So when God says to us here in Haiti, “Get up!” that’s what we need to do.

Get up!

No matter how hard it seems, no matter the difficulties we encounter.

And yes, there are difficulties.

The Psalmist this morning speaks of walking through the valley of death. That is certainly true here right now. Just look out the door. Look at your own homes, at your own lives. Every single person in this room has lost someone, many of you have lost many people, more of you have lost your homes. You are walking through the valley of death.

But the Psalmist also is clear: We have no need to fear evil, because God is with us.

God is the one who is calling us, who is telling us to get up.

God, the Good Shepherd, the one we all know by name, the one whose voice we have heard before and are hearing now and will hear forever, is speaking to us right now.

Haiti is not dead.

Haiti is alive, and its people are alive, and its faith is alive.

Those of you who are here to help Haiti are here because you, too, hear God calling to you: Get up! God says.

That is our mission now: Not just to get up ourselves, but to help Haiti get up. The Church is leading the way, but we can only do so if we listen to the voice we know best, the voice of the one who loves us.

Get up!

Get up!

Get up!

Amen.

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Filed Under: Blog Articles, Featured Story, Haiti, Sermons Tagged With: Book of Acts, Easter, God, Good Shepherd, Haiti, Recovery, Tabitha

God says to YOU

January 27, 2010 by Lauren Stanley

My sermon on Haiti, preached the Third Sunday after the Epiphany at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Hot Springs, Va. I have preached here many times on Sudan and this parishes partnership with the Renk Theological College.

Au nom de Dieu unique, Pere, Fils, et Sainte Esprit. In the name of one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

My brothers and sisters in Christ, on behalf of the Bishop of the Diocese of Haiti, the Right Reverend Jean Zache Duracin, on behalf of the people of the Diocese of Haiti, and on behalf of the people of Haiti, I say to you this morning, Mesi anpil. Thank you very much.

It has been twelve days since a 7.0 earthquake hit Haiti and devastated our land and our people; it has been 12 days without food and water and proper medical care; it has been 12 days in which we have buried as much as 100,000 people, we now believe that over 250,000 will be eventually be declared dead, but we will never know.

The Church in Haiti has been devastated. The Roman Catholic Archbishop was killed trying to escape from the Cathedral of Notre Dame; the assistant bishop was killed. The Diocese of Haiti, your sister diocese, a full member of the Episcopal Church in Province II, the largest diocese of the Episcopal Church of over 200,000 members, has been devastated. Our cathedral is gone. Our senior secondary school, College St. Pierre, is gone. The Holy Trinity Music School, which houses the national symphony orchestra and has the only concert hall in the country, is gone. Holy Trinity Primary School is gone. The University of the Episcopal Church of Haiti is gone. The Musee d’Art, the only museum of art in Haiti, which is run by the Episcopal Church, is gone. To the best of our knowledge, 100 of our 254 schools are gone. We know of several of our churches out in the provinces that are gone.

But I can tell you today, having spoken with Bishop Duracin yesterday, we are still a strong diocese. We are still a strong people, because we have the people of God. Bishop Duracin was offered the chance to be evacuated either to another city in Haiti or to a city in the United States, and he told me, “No, I will stay with my people.” In the immediate aftermath of the earthquake he set up the refugee camp on the soccer field, which is nothing more than a sandlot between the College Saint Pierre and the seminary which is totally damaged and is probably gone, and within two days he had 3,000 people under his care. The Saint Vincent Center for the Handicapped, where indeed the Scriptures were fulfilled in your hearing every single moment of every single day, is gone. The majority of our 170 children were rescued and have been in the refugee camp and will be moved soon to safer quarters.

Paul tells us in his letter today that when one member of the Body suffers, we all suffer. And I can tell you that a portion of your body, of our body, is suffering right now. Haiti has been a nation of suffering since 1492 when Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue and landed in what is now Les Cayes. From the moment that Westerners arrived in this land, the people have been abused, they have been used. The native Haitians are now gone, many of whom decided to die rather than to submit. Our own leaders in Haiti have abused us, and used us, and oppressed us. But in the last few years, with the help of the Western world, particularly the United States, Haiti has been making great strides forward. Our government is stable, our people are beginning to be cared for; we actually raised the minimum wage in Haiti from $2 a day to $3.50 a day, which doesn’t sound like much to you, but take your wages and raise them by that proportion and tell me you’re not happy with that pay raise. We were beginning to make progress and then in August and September of 2008 four hurricanes struck within three weeks, and so we had to take a major step back. We were beginning to make real progress recovering from those four hurricanes in 2008 when the earthquake struck, the largest earthquake in more than 200 years. Most of us in Haiti had no idea that we sat on a major fault line. We did not know that there could be earthquakes. Our land is devastated. Our government is devastated. Our people are suffering. And these people are your people.

I’ve told you this before when I’ve spoken to you about your Sudanese brothers and sisters in Christ, and what I’ve told you about them I tell you exactly the same about your brothers and sisters in Christ in Haiti: they are related to you not by their blood of their birth but by the waters of their baptism. They are members of the Body of Christ and those people are hurting. And we are asking for your help. Because the Scriptures tell us that when one member of the Body suffers, the whole body suffers. This is not a remote thing that happened to strangers far away; this is a disaster that has happened in your own body, and we know that you feel our pain. We have seen the outpouring of support. We have received your words and your prayers, and we are immensely grateful; and Bishop Duracin has instructed me to say to you over and over again, mesi anpil. Thank you very much.

I want to tell you a little bit about this diocese about which so few people know. I want to tell you how the Scriptures have been fulfilled in you sight and in your hearing. I want you to tell you about we have done in the past because I want you to know: We will do this in the future. The blind do see in the Diocese of Haiti because we are the ones who run the Saint Vincent Center, the only full school for the handicapped. We teach them to read in Braille. So in our cathedral, which is no more, at every festal service at which the bishop is present, one of the many girls would come over from St. Vincent’s and she would stand in front of us with the reading in front of her, and she would run her fingers across the Scriptures and proclaim the Word of God. The blind were made to see.

The lame were made to leap with joy because at that particular school we are the ones who made the prosthetics; and not only did we make the prosthetics for those who need them, we matched them to the color of the skin of the person who is getting it. And let me tell you, that is not the norm in the Third World; most of the prosthetics in the Third World come from the First World where the majority of the people are white. Can you imagine being black and losing your leg and being given a white leg to replace it? Not in Haiti. We will match to the color of your skin and you will leap with joy and I have witnessed it. And I can tell you right now that many of our handicapped people, children and adults, are sitting in that tent field that Bishop Duracin set up, and they do not have their prosthetics with them because they were destroyed in the earthquake.

We made the mute to sing with joy by teaching them music at our music school where we have the finest, the finest musicians in the country. We allow the deaf to hear by teaching them sign language in French and Creole. We have been fulfilling the Scriptures in Haiti for 150 years, since the founding of the Diocese.

Right now, we have nothing left. Bishop Duracin has publicly proclaimed, “I have lost everything. I have nothing left.” When he says “I have lost everything,” he is telling you his house is gone, his office is gone, his car is gone. But when he is telling you there is nothing left he is not talking about his personal belongings, he is talking about his diocese, about everything that for the past 16 years under his leadership and for the 20 years prior to that as a priest of the diocese that he helped build up. Everything in his diocese is gone. But we have the most important asset: We have the people of God.. The people of God in Haiti are strong.

We have an expression in Haitian Creole, and it is not the official motto of the Church but by God it should be: “Bondye di ou: Fe pa ou; m’a fe pa’m: God says to you, ‘you do your part, I will do mine.’” In Haiti for 150 years the people in Haiti have done their part. They have always trusted God and God has always done his part and right now God will continue to do so because God promised it, and the people of Haiti know that.

Just as we believe in that in Haiti, I say to you now, “Bondye di ou: Fe pa ou; m’a fe pa’m: God is saying to you, ‘you do your part, and I will do mine.’” And your part, because this is your body, is first to pray, because Jesus said first to pray, and pray always, and Jesus promised to answer our prayers. And second, to pay attention. Americans, who are the most generous people in the world–statistically I can prove that to you–tend to have short attention spans. Already Haiti has moved off the front pages of many newspapers and newscasts. Please don’t forget your brothers and sisters in Christ; please don’t forget your kin. We need the abundance of your hearts. We didn’t have a whole lot before the earthquake struck, and we don’t have anything left now. Please give generously. I know that if all you can afford is a dollar and all you give us is a dollar, that dollar means the world to us because as you give a dollar and you give a dollar and you give a dollar and we put it together as the Body of Christ, we will indeed be able to do what God is calling us to do, to do our part. And when the time comes–please God, do not come now, Bishop has said do not come–but when the time comes we will need the skill of your hands and the strength of your backs and the sweat of your brows to rebuild so that our people do not have to live in tents during hurricane season and do not have to drink water out of the street and eat food that God knows when that animal was killed. We need you to do our part. We need you to realize that we are doing ours.

I want to put this tragedy into perspective because it doesn’t quite resonate otherwise. Haiti is a nation of 10 million people. One third of them live in Port au Prince and the area that was affected at the epicenter: that’s 3 million people. If this were to happen in the United States, that would mean that proportionately 105 million Americans would have been at the epicenter. As of yesterday we have buried approximately 72,000 people, the majority of whom we do not know their names. If this were in the United States that would equal 2.25 million Americans buried without name. On top of that, to make this come home to you, destroy the federal government, destroy the state government, destroy the county government, destroy the city government. That is what happened in Haiti.

There is no word in any language that describes this adequately. The portion of the Body that is suffering in Haiti is suffering terribly. We know, and we have faith, that the rest of the Body of Christ will be right there with us, that you feel our pain, and that you will help to alleviate it. God says to all of us, “Do your part, and I will do mine.” And when we are faithful to that, my brothers and sisters in Christ, when we are faithful and do our part, then indeed, the Scriptures are fulfilled in our sight and in our hearing on this day. Amen.

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Filed Under: Sermons Tagged With: Diocese of Haiti, Epiphany, Haiti, St. Paul, Word of God

Seeing and being seen: A lesson in community

Do not lose hope – we shall have new life

God is depending on us

Leaps of faith

Forgiving extravagantly

Sometimes we are called to hate

Our day of liberation

Haiti, get up!

God says to YOU

The Rev. Lauren R. Stanley

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