Where are YOU participating in the life giving and life changing work of God? A sermon on Luke 16:19-31

Grace, peace and mercy are yours from the Triune God.  Amen

Jesus the masterful storyteller strikes again.  We have been in the middle of quite a few weeks in a row of parables from Luke’s Gospel.  We have heard stories of banquets and lost sheep and coins and dishonest managers.  Today we hear a parable of wealth and poverty and life and death.  In the parable that we hear in today’s Gospel, Jesus is making his way ever closer to Jerusalem and on the way, stops to tell a story to some Pharisees.  We hear that this parable is directed to “lovers of money” and these are some of the harshest words in all of scripture.  Let us set the scene for this parable as if we are preparing to watch a play…the lights go up and the curtain rises…

We see a rich man who is dressed in purple and fine linen, and who feasted sumptuously every single day.  This man has a ridiculous abundance of food surrounding him at all times. His table is set with silver cups and overflowing plates of fruit. He never wanted for anything.  He lives in a fine home with a gate to keep out the undesirable people. But our scene cuts to the drama just outside the rich man’s gate.  We also see the poor man Lazarus on the ground, covered in sores and dressed in tattered rags, his only comfort being the stray dogs who surround him, and is so hungry that he hopes for just the crumbs that fall from the rich man’s table.  Death the great equalizer comes, and both men die.  The rich man is buried and Lazarus is carried away by the angels to be with Abraham.  

Then in the sort of reversal that we see so often in Luke’s Gospel, Lazarus is comforted by Abraham after death and we hear about the rich man in agony as he cries out for Abraham to send Lazarus to bring him cool water in the midst of flames that threaten to consume him.  Abraham refuses, saying that the rich man received all his good things in life and besides, a great canyon has been fixed between the two men that cannot be crossed.  It’s as if Abraham was saying, “Too late, sorry.  You have already used up your allotment of good things, now it is your turn to suffer.”  And in his only act of compassion in the parable, the rich man asks Abraham to send Lazarus back to the world to warn his five brothers to change how they live so that they might not end up in this same place of torment. Abraham refuses, saying that those on earth have Moses and the prophets and their writings, the law, from which to learn.  And the rich man pleads, saying, “They will repent if someone comes back from the dead.”  Abraham ends the conversation by saying, “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone rises from the dead.”  And like a great drama on a stage, the lights go dark and the curtain drops and the crowd is left in silence to ponder what they have just heard and seen.   

This parable seems to be tailor-made to preach about what we SHOULD be doing. There is a villain, the rich man; an underdog hero, the poor man Lazarus; a plot line, plenty of drama and a seemingly obvious moral of the story: Do good in this life and you will be rewarded in the afterlife.  Do evil things in this life and you will be punished in the next life.  So be good and pay attention and you will be saved. This is the clearest example of how good intentions and expectations convict us that I have ever seen.  This is the law, because no matter how much we wish it was not so, we cannot save ourselves despite our best efforts.

Furthermore, this scripture text from Luke sounds painfully familiar.  In today’s gospel we hear about an insurmountable chasm between the rich man and the poor man.  Between the haves and the have-nots.  Between those who have their needs comfortably met and those who do not.  The reason this story sounds familiar is that we hear it all the time in the news. Just last week I read a news article, which outlined how the chasm between the wealthiest Americans and the poorest Americans is the largest that it has been since before the Great Depression. How disparities in education, healthcare, and employment have caused this chasm to be nearly insurmountable.   It feels impossible, it feels hopeless.  The problems seem so big and we seem so small.  And it doesn’t seem like there is anything that we can do to fix it, so we often keep living life behind our own gates oblivious to what, or who, lies just outside them.  

But what if the story does not end with someone rising from the dead, but rather starts from that promise?  And it has nothing whatsoever to do with our ability or decision to believe it in order to be saved?  Jesus died on a cross and rose from the dead and took all of that decision making right out of our hands.  When we start from that promise of freedom, where might we go?

When we are freed from the bondage of sin and self, what Luther calls “incurvatus se” or a turning in on one’s self, we are naturally turned outwards to see our neighbor.  Without the promise of Christ on the cross we might only hear this story as a command to do good works to avoid suffering in the afterlife.  But with this promise made for each of us, we are freed. Martin Luther writes that God does not need our good works, but our neighbor does. So we are indeed commanded to serve our neighbor, but this is out of pure love for the Christ in each one of us.

But the reality is that this is very hard.  The problems seem insurmountable, the chasm cannot be crossed.  It is sometimes painful and it definitely puts us outside our comfort zones.  In today’s Gospel text the rich man isn’t evil, he is just oblivious.  He fails to NOTICE Lazarus outside the gate. Many of you know that before I started seminary I spent several years in human services work.  I entered ministry because I wanted to be able to offer hope in the midst of suffering by way of the Gospel, and be a part of a collective whole working for good in this broken world.  In my work, what I heard over and over again, from men and women just like Lazarus, was that the greatest pain they experienced was feeling invisible.  Eye contact and a simple greeting made a world of difference.  So who lies just outside your gate and how can you begin to notice them? 

And where do we start in bridging this chasm? We start by proclaiming the Gospel truth that God in Christ rose from the dead and continues to be active in our broken and beautiful world. God is already among us working to lessen that great chasm between rich and poor.  We acknowledge that our world is broken, but we also proclaim that God lives among us and continually redeems us.  God is already working to overcome these divisions between us, between rich and poor, old and new.  We live in the old world now, and eagerly await the coming of the new.  Three weeks ago we marked the 25^th anniversary of the formation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America with a day of service that fulfills our denomination’s mission statement, “God’s Work, Our Hands.”  I cannot think of a better analogy for our lives as Christians.  So where are you participating in the life-giving and life-changing work of God?

One of my favorite entirely random biblical characters: Jael

Credit N. Bolz-Weber

The story of Jael can be found in Judges 4.

Sermon on Luke 14:1, 7-14

Jesus doesn't play by the rules of Midwestern hospitality: A Sermon on Luke 14:1, 7-14

Photo: Flickr/peapodsquadmom - Creative Commons

Luke 14:1, 7-14

Grace, peace and mercy are yours from the Triune God.  Amen.

About a month ago there was an anecdotal story making its way around the internet, on religion blogs and social media sites, about the new pastor of a mega church who reportedly dressed up as a homeless man and showed up at his new congregation the day he was to be introduced.  According to the story, the disguised pastor was shunned by the congregation and made to sit in the back.  When it came time to introduce the new pastor, everyone was stunned to find that the unfortunate “homeless” man was actually their new leader, who recited a passage of scripture that urged Christians to help the unfortunate, the poor, hungry, needy and so on, among them as Jesus would do.  It turns out that this story is the stuff of internet folklore, neither this pastor nor his mega church actually exist, but it has been used time and time again as a lesson on hospitality.   The moral of the story is that we should always be welcoming and gracious because the Bible commands us to welcome and host those who are in need.  Which would be well and good if we were capable of following through on that command all of the time.    We believe that we already know the moral of the story in today’s Gospel.  We know that we are called to welcome the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind into our communities.  We know that Jesus commands us to be welcoming hosts.  We know how hard it is.  How uncomfortable it can be. And we have all heard this preached a time or two before. 

It’s one thing to think about being the gracious host who extends the hospitality.  We are comfortable in this role.  Those of us who live in the Midwest have refined this to an art. When someone brings us a casserole or a Tupperware filled with cookies, we feel compelled to return the dish with some baked goods of our own.   We keep track of the weddings to which we have been invited in order to invite those same people to our children’s weddings a decade later.  We thank one another for thank you cards. We have agreed upon these mutually unspoken expectations of hospitality. We see ourselves in the role of the host because then we can CHOOSE to be gracious. Hospitality becomes another thing that we do in order to be good.  It makes us “nice people.” We get to see ourselves as humble, gracious hosts.  And whether or not we are willing to say it out loud, we, like the host of the wedding banquet in today’s Gospel parable, expect that our invitation will be returned…that our kindness will be reciprocated…that we will get something back for the effort that we put in to our hospitality.

How many of our social interactions are built upon creating relationships that might be beneficial for professional networking, or amassing friends so that we might be well-liked, or even just creating a favorable image for ourselves in the eyes of others?   And doesn’t Jesus drive right at the heart of this issue when he tells his host, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid.  But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind.”  He goes on to say, “And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”  When Jesus speaks these words, he is speaking to us.  We view the hospitable acts we do for others as a way to advance our own social standing.  And if we get to be humble while doing it, even better! 

What does it mean to be humble?  To have humility?  Culturally, we appear to have defined humility as a something that we do by always putting others first and by thinking less of ourselves.   Humility itself can become destructive and yet another means by which we convince ourselves we are unworthy.  It can become a way that we lose sight of our identity as beloved children of God.  By being humble, by showing humility, we hope that we will be seen as good people.  We use humility as another way of earning our place of honor at the table.  We are gambling on the idea that our own actions might redeem us.

We instinctively place ourselves in the role of host.  We are comfortable there.   It is something entirely different to be the one who is hosted. Think about when you were shown abundant hospitality.  Has a friend ever come over to your house in a blizzard to jumpstart your car?  How about a late night ride from the airport?  Or the friend or family member who spent a day with your children so that you might have some time off?  How does that feel?  I imagine you want to attempt to pay back that person in some way or another as soon as possible. It is humbling to receive such overwhelming hospitality.  It is even unsettling. We want to feel like we are deserving of the hospitality that is extended to us.  We have been taught since we were children that “There is no such thing as a free lunch” and we are suspicious that someone might want something from us.  And in the midst of all of this over-thinking, a simple act of generosity becomes another way in which we are bound up.  Another way in which we calculate what is right and what is wrong. Another thing we think that we should be doing better. 

We, like the guests at the wedding feast in the parable in today’s Gospel, view our social exchanges as currency for securing our place at the table.  In society.  In the kingdom.  If we somehow talk to the right people, reciprocate these invitations, and do all the appropriate and nice things, we will be secure.

But what if humility is not what we think it is?  What if humility is not an action that we do or something that we might become, but rather, it is a willingness to receive? 

What if we are the ones who are being extravagantly hosted? This feels uncomfortable.  We feel vulnerable. As if we are not good enough.  What if instead of seeing ourselves as the host who is gracious enough to invite these less-than-perfect people to a banquet, we are actually the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind being invited by the most gracious host of all, God? 

Brothers and sisters, in today’s Gospel text Jesus is not talking about throwing a festive luncheon.  He is talking about the kingdom of God.  He is talking about throwing wide open the doors of heaven to invite in the tax collectors, and sinners, and all the broken people.  WE are those people.  In today’s Gospel reading we hear about a God who doesn’t play by the rules of our world.  We have a God who came to earth in the person of Jesus Christ to break the bonds of sin and death and poverty and all those walls that we put between ourselves and others. Those who are perceived to be “less than” are exalted, and those who exalt themselves in this world will tumble down from their positions of power. Our place in the kingdom of God is not dependent on what we do or what we have or who we know. It is solely dependent on the fact that we are beloved children of God. Yes, we are to be gracious hosts to our neighbor.  But we are also extravagantly hosted.  God neither expects nor demands anything in return from us.  There is nothing that we can do that is good enough to deserve this blessing, and there is nothing that we can do that is bad enough for it to be taken away.  And this promise changes everything. We are free. 

At the bottom of the social ladder Jesus invites all of us in to eat.  To share in a meal with God and with one another.  And we do not have to wait for our time in a far away heaven to share in this meal.  We do this every week when we partake in the Eucharist. We bring all the broken, messy, painful parts of ourselves to the table.  We are accepted, we are called by name.  This is pure gift.  Come and receive. 

The Division Between Old and New...a sermon on Luke 12:49-56

Yeah, this is not the Jesus we hear about in Sunday School

(Preached at Hope Lutheran Church-St Paul and Humble Walk Lutheran Church on Sunday, August 4, 2013)

Luke 12:49-56

Grace, peace and mercy are yours, from the Triune God.  Amen

Wow.  The Jesus we hear about in today’s Gospel is most definitely NOT the gentle Jesus we see depicted holding lambs and greeting children in frames on Sunday School classroom walls.   This is Jesus on a mission, with a singleness of purpose, who has “set his face towards Jerusalem.”  In the first part of today’s Gospel we hear Jesus describing this mission to his disciples.  There is a decided tone of exasperation,

“I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!  I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed!”

And it gets even more unnerving,

“Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth?  No, I tell you, but rather division!”

He goes on to describe how households and families will be divided.  So if we take this text at face value, we hear about a Jesus who appears to be downright stressed out, ready to light a massive fire to consume the earth, has no desire whatsoever to bring peace, but instead has made it his personal mission to divide families…and this is not really a Jesus that I have a desire to know or spend much time with. And it seems to be in direct opposition to the Jesus that we hear about elsewhere in Luke’s Gospel. 

We hear readings in Advent from the first chapter of Luke when the birth of Jesus is foretold by Zechariah when he says that Jesus will “guide our feet in the way of peace.”  On Christmas, we hear the story of how the angels heralded the birth of Jesus saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth, peace among those whom he favors.”  Throughout the rest of the year, we hear stories of Jesus healing the sick, casting out demons, and keeping company with sinners.  Along the way he scolds his disciples or would-be followers for having slightly skewed priorities, like Martha cleaning the kitchen instead of listening to Jesus like her sister Mary, or when the disciples argue about petty things among themselves such as who is the greatest.  But overall, the Jesus in Luke’s Gospel up to this point appears to be a pretty nice guy.  So what in the WORLD is going ON in today’s Gospel?! 

Do we really even know Jesus?  His birth was supposed to bring peace to all the earth.  Jesus was supposed to bring people together. It does not sit so well when we hear him saying that he came to divide father against son and mother against daughter. This claim causes a sort of existential dread when we re-live all the times we were cut off from our loved ones.  When we entered into a relationship with someone that our families did not like.  When the cherished son came out as gay to conservative parents.  When the daughter who always seemed to have it together succumbs to the ravages of alcoholism.   When we need to sever ties with our families of origin because of abuse.  These divisions hurt. We do not like this idea of Jesus bringing division because we are importing our own sense of who is in and who is out and we have all been on the painful side of human divisions before. Whether rich or poor, old or young, liberal or conservative, gay or straight, and so on. 

We react to texts like these because we know what it feels like to have others claim God for their own purposes, such as Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church, or Pat Robertson explaining natural disasters as God seeking revenge.  Or those who say the election of a certain politician was “God’s will.”  If our human brokenness causes so much division already, why would we want to have a God who causes an even deeper rift? 

But what if Jesus is not actually making divisions between people and in families at all?

The household that Jesus describes in today’s Gospel is not what we imagine.  When we hear the word “household” we think about parents and children neatly ensconced in a four-bedroom house on a quiet tree-lined street.  But in first century Jerusalem, a household was the primary form of social organization and served as a microcosm for all of the social order.  It provided space for raising children, but also provided for maintaining a certain system of power and privilege that ensured that some people would always remain on the margins, such as the slaves who served that household. 

When Jesus asserts that he comes to bring division, he is boldly stating that he has not come to validate human structures of who is in and who is out, who has power and who is powerless, but rather, to initiate God’s radical will.  The harsh sayings in this text remind us that Jesus has not come to validate the divisions we have set up.   Jesus has not come to perpetuate the status quo!  This is not business as usual. The Jesus that we hear about in today’s Gospel, as he is making his way ever closer to Jerusalem and to the cross, only has an agenda of compassion, mercy, and justice. When Jesus appears exasperated and angry in today’s text, he is naming the tension between the vision that God wants to see for all of creation and what is actually happening now in the old creation. 

And this baptism that Jesus refers to is not one with water in the Jordan River. No, this baptism refers to his own death!  Baptism is not merely a cozy ceremony in which we welcome children or adults into a congregation, it represents the dying, the drowning, of the old self and through this dying, explains how we share in the resurrection of Christ and become a new creation. Jesus is an apocalyptic prophet who is pointing with his own outstretched arms on a cross to a new future.   We get nervous about things that sound judgmental because we are afraid that we will be judged to be on the wrong side.  But what is actually revealed here is God’s own passion for justice for all people.  This is not an angry God who delights in dividing families; this is a passionate God who wants the whole world to be redeemed through radical love. 

The last portion of today’s Gospel has Jesus admonishing the crowds, “You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?”  He is chastising them for their inability to see the divine activity happening in their midst.  The people miss his message all the way up until his death on a cross.   We need to see God in Christ as seen on the cross because we cannot always see him walking beside us. 

Jesus came to testify to the in-breaking of God to do a new thing in all the earth.  Over and over in Luke’s Gospel we hear about the reversals of social order.  Jesus is disruptive.  The Kingdom of God is disruptive.  This is not going to feel like good news if we feel safe and secure in our present location.  But for those imprisoned by circumstance, this disruption comes as the best news possible.   Jesus makes it clear that he is unabashedly for the weak, lowly, broken, poor, and sick.  And furthermore, this is all of us in one way or another.  But human systems of power do not favor those on the margins.  We do not value our elders in the way they deserve.  We dismiss the ideas and energy of our young people.  We let skin color or ethnicity or disability get in the way of real relationships.  We let money make our decisions for us and put it between ourselves and our neighbors in need.

Jesus came into the world to disrupt all of this.  

In today’s Gospel Jesus is upending the social structure that humanity clings to in order to put its trust in something…in anything…and instead have us turn towards a loving God.  Jesus has not come to validate the divisions we make for ourselves, rather, he has come to destroy them and show the deep and abiding love of a God who wants to redeem the whole world.  The division is between old and new creation.  The old creation where we are sinful, broken, oppressed and oppressing and the new creation where we are redeemed, freed and loved.  God is jolting all of us out of the places where we have gotten too comfortable.  God is pulling us through the waters of baptism and into new life. 

But for all of this talk of division and destruction of the old and the rising of the new, we are still both sinner and saint in the same broken body.  The Kingdom of God is now and not yet.  Jesus came to divide us from our old selves and the old creation, and while we arise as a new creation each day in the image of the risen Christ, we live in the tension of both/and, now and not yet.  And we eagerly anticipate God’s future in which this division will be no more.  Amen.