Nov. 10, 2013, 25th Sunday after Pentecost

Luke 20.27-38

20:27 Some of the Sadducees came to him, those who deny that there is a resurrection. 20:28 They asked him, “Teacher, Moses wrote to us that if a man’s brother dies having a wife, and he is childless, his brother should take the wife, and raise up children for his brother. 20:29 There were therefore seven brothers. The first took a wife, and died childless. 20:30 The second took her as wife, and he died childless. 20:31 The third took her, and likewise the seven all left no children, and died. 20:32 Afterward the woman also died. 20:33 Therefore in the resurrection whose wife of them will she be? For the seven had her as a wife.”
20:34 Jesus said to them, “The children of this age marry, and are given in marriage. 20:35 But those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage. 20:36 For they can’t die any more, for they are like the angels, and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. 20:37 But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed at the bush, when he called the Lord ‘The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’* 20:38 Now he is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for all are alive to him.”

 “God Of the Living”  

It is dwarfed minds which want answers rather then vision; specifics rather then promise.

The Sadducees trap question reveals how small of mind they are.  They want to know in human terms what cannot be put in human terms - it is too big to be made so small.

When we try to put the mysteries of heaven in human terms  - trying to put all the pieces of the puzzle together in logical sequence, or throwing up our hands and saying it can’t be done so it doesn’t exist - we end up with nothing worth anything.

If we try live too much for heaven we will not live for today.  If we live only for today we have no hope for tomorrow.

The key is to live with a loving God today letting tomorrow be in God’s loving hands.  This is the source of our sure and certain hope.

Eternal life cannot be reduced to conditions of temporal life.  We are in God’s loving hands.
God of the living and of the dead; God of yesterday, today and forever.  We live in love and with love waiting for the day when all things will be new and only love will remain

“God Of The Living“(Part 2)

Jesus is running up against - again - the religious who were of a different kingdom.  They didn’t want him to be the final answer;  they wanted to be the final answer.  They wanted to keep God in the box of their own making, so God would not ask of them more than they were willing to give.  Jesus didn’t fit in their Kingdom!

Just as Mother Teresa didn’t fit for the ‘religious’ man who spoke these words when confronted with the possibility that Mother Teresa was close to what Jesus taught.
“Someone should tell Mother Teresa about triage.  In battle the medics don’t work on what they judge to be hopeless cases.  They work on the ones who have a chance to make it.  Mother Teresa is impractical.   Think how much better it would be if she helped people who were going to live and taught them a skill that would enable them to earn a living and maybe even help others.  She needs some business training.”

The Kingdom of God as seen in Jesus (and those who follow him) is impractical.  Yet it is what Jesus was all about and what we are to be all about - being  merciful as our God is merciful!

Do we dare believe that who we are, what we do, say, give, and how we live and treat even the least can be a part of God’s impractical, unexpected, and creative acts at work in our world through which God’s Kingdom does come on earth a small bit as it is in heaven?  Then we will be impractical, yet loving as we have been loved!
Our religion will not be in our rituals, but in our living!

Nov. 4, 2013, All Saints Sunday

Luke 6:20-31

 20 Looking at his disciples, he said:
   “Blessed are you who are poor,
   for yours is the kingdom of God.
21 Blessed are you who hunger now,
   for you will be satisfied.
Blessed are you who weep now,
   for you will laugh.
22 Blessed are you when people hate you,
   when they exclude you and insult you
   and reject your name as evil,
      because of the Son of Man.
   23 “Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their ancestors treated the prophets.
   24 “But woe to you who are rich,
   for you have already received your comfort.
25 Woe to you who are well fed now,
   for you will go hungry.
Woe to you who laugh now,
   for you will mourn and weep.
26 Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you,
   for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.

27 “But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. 29 If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. 30 Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. 31 Do to others as you would have them do to you.


“Good Hearts”

“Blessed are the pure of heart, (those who have opened their hearts to the redeeming goodness of God’s love) for they will see God.”(Matt. 5:8)
And they will be a blessing.  It will be said of them “He/she had a good heart!”

All Saints Sunday has to do with our hearts.  The Sermon on the Plain (Luke 6:20-49)) and the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) both speak to issues of the heart.

Heart.  The word appears 872 times in the Bible.
It is an all inclusive word which captures all that we are -body, mind, spirit and means everything we are, the very center our our being, the very soul of our existence.  In the O.T. as well as new and even today, “the ‘heart’ is at the center of a person’s motivations and actions.  It is the deepest fiber and sinew of the human willpower”
John S. McClure

As Jesus says a bit further in the sermon on the Plain:
“The good person out of the good treasure of the heart produces good, and the evil person out of the evil treasure produces evil; for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks.”  Lk. 6:45

How is it with your heart?
Believe it or not, want it or not,  God would, through Word and Sacrament search us, cleanse us, call us, equip us, change us, enrich us, forgive us, so that from the heart we might “be merciful, just as (our God) is merciful.”  Mt. 6:36

Jesus words to his disciples and to us call us to be open to having our hearts touched by the grace which blesses us and challenges us to live as those who, rich or poor, know we are blessed beyond human understanding.

The irony of life is that the deepest blessings sometimes come out of the deepest hurts - for the hurts open our eyes to see what is really important in life and if we will let them,  they tenderize our hearts so that we become more alive and more sensitive to the grace of God at work in our world.

It makes all the difference in the world when our hearts are turned towards God and God’s grace is at work in our hearts and lives, taking the worst which happens to us and making it a blessing; and taking the best that happens to us and making that a blessing too - for others who need to know they too are loved by God.

Then we too are numbered with the Saints for a Saint is someone with a “good heart”;  a heart which has been captured by the awesome love of God!

Oct. 27, 2013, 23rd Sunday After Pentecost

Luke 18:9-14

9 To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: 10" Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee stood up and prayed about[a] himself: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. 12I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.'
    13 "But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, 'God, have mercy on me, a sinner.'
    14"I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted."

“IT’S ALL GRACE!”

This parable seems to be simple, black or white, right or wrong.
But it isn’t.  And we have to see ourselves in both men; take the good with the bad.

For there is good and bad in both.  The pharisee is everything we might wish to be in terms of religious commitment and dedication.  But it carries him to self righteousness, the last thing we want to be.  The Publican is everything we don’t want to be in terms of life style yet his prayer of the heart is the best he or we can pray.

Both need God’s grace; neither deserve it; both get it.

The parable is to wake us up to the truth that “nothing, nothing, nothing I can bring can earn, deserve, be worthy of, or pay off my debt, - it is all grace.”

Grace is not reserved for those who are close to God; grace is for all and those who admit they need it are the first to receive it.

Grace is not about a nice God being nice to nice people.  It is about a loving God being gracious to hurting people, no matter who. It’s about receiving what I do not deserve and never can deserve no matter how holy I become.

To live in God’s grace is to never stop praying the prayer of the tax collector even as I live with the zeal of the pharisee - knowing that a God of grace will never let me down, never let me go, nor never let me off.

Oct. 20, 2013, 22nd Sunday After Pentecost

Luke 18:1-8

1 Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. 2 He said: "In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared about men. 3 And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, 'Grant me justice against my adversary.'
    4"For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, 'Even though I don't fear God or care about men, 5 yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won't eventually wear me out with her coming!' "
    6 And the Lord said, "Listen to what the unjust judge says. 7 And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? 8I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?"

“Always Pray And Do Not Lose Heart”

This parable is not about God and how God answers prayer.  It is about us and how we pray.  It is not about God and what God will do for us if we beg him long and hard enough;  it is about us and what we can do to not lose heart, when all around us goes smash.

We can pray!  And keep on praying until something good happens!  And it will!

It may not be a healing: it may be the strength and faith to match the burden.
It may not be a solution to a problem, solving it for us; it may be the strength and insight and determination to solve the problem ourselves.
It may not be a bolt of lighting, like Martin Luther; but it may be a gradual awareness of a pull and tug towards God’s will for our lives which will not stop until we go with it.

Something happens when we pray.  Our faith is strengthened, our hope is encouraged, and we do not loose heart.  It gives a sense of balance and perspective to our lives.


 “Will He Find Faith?”

This parable is about the faith which is behind persistent praying.  The faith which will not give up, give in, throw in the towel no matter how impossible things seem to be.

The faith which is able to hang in there, persisting in God’s goodness, justice, fairness, love, mercy and kindness even when there seems to be no evidence that God even exists!

As it was for Elie Wiesel and many other Jews in Nazi Germany.

“There were many periods in our past when we had every right in the world to turn to God and say, ‘Enough.  Since You seem to approve of all these persecutions, all these outrages, have it Your way: let Your world go on without Jews. Either You are our partner in history, or You are not.  If you are, do Your share; if You are not, we consider ourselves free of past commitments.  Since You choose to break the Covenant, so be it.”

“And yet, and yet...We went on believing, hoping, invoking His name...We did not give up on Him...For this is the essence of being Jewish; never to give up--never to yield to despair.”  A Jew Today, p. 164

This is also the essence of being a Christian!  To never give up no matter how bad it gets, to confess with the unknown person in a cellar in Cologne during the bombing of WW II,

“I believe in the Sun even when it is not shining;
I believe in love even when I feel it not,
I believe in God even when He is silent.”

The point of this parable is that God is much more then the unjust judge.
(It is, in the Hebrew way of thinking, an argument from the lesser to the greater.)

If this unrighteous judge can be moved to act, how much more will God respond to our persistent prayers with not just justice, but grace and mercy as well.
For God is a God of grace whose steadfast love endures forever!
This we can count on no matter what!

Oct. 6, 2013, 20th Sunday After Pentecost

Luke 17:5-10

  5 The apostles said to the Lord, "Increase our faith!"
    6 He replied, "If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and planted in the sea,' and it will obey you.
    7 "Suppose one of you had a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Would he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, 'Come along now and sit down to eat'? 8 Would he not rather say, 'Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink'? 9 Would he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? 10 So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, 'We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.' "

Three distinct messages for us from these words:
1.  The life of faith demands avoidance of actions that may harm others, and forgiveness of others whose actions harm us.
2.  Faith is not only conciliatory; it is also daring, risking, doing big things with little resources.
3.  Servants are called to selfless performance: getting the job done           the master wants done, with little concern for getting the credit.
 “There is no limit to what a good person can do if they don’t care who gets the credit.”  We are called to be servants not celebrities.
And to be thankful that we can be Jesus’ servants.

“Only Done Our Duty”

When we have done every thing we can do we have only done our duty, and even then we are not worthy to be called children of God.  We are never good enough to be worthy of that!

It is our duty to do what God calls us to do - to forgive as we have been forgiven!

“Those who live by forgiveness must in fact live by it.”

That means we don’t just receive it; we pass it on.

Grace brings duty; duty becomes grace.

This is what the Kingdom of heaven is all about, and those who are servants of the Master are duty bound to be faithful instruments of grace.

Sept. 29, 2013, 19th Sunday After Pentecost

Luke 16:19-31

19 "There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. 20 At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores 21 and longing to eat what fell from the rich man's table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.
    22 "The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham's side. The rich man also died and was buried. 23 In hell,[a] where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. 24 So he called to him, 'Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.'
    25 "But Abraham replied, 'Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. 26 And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.'
    27 "He answered, 'Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my father's house, 28 for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.'
    29 "Abraham replied, 'They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.'
    30 " 'No, father Abraham,' he said, 'but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.'
    31"He said to him, 'If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.' "

“Faith Is For Living”

The parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus does not tell us it is a crime to be rich.
Or that those who have a good time of it here will get their suffering in eternity.

It sounds like it does, but it doesn’t!
Nor does it give us a clear picture of the way it is in heaven.
Anymore than our jokes about heaven do.

“To use this story as warrant for a doctrine of a brimstone hell, or to deduce from it the dogma of the absolute and irrevocable separation of the good and the bad hereafter, is to transplant it violently from its native soil of parable to a barren literalism where it cannot live.”
Parables of Jesus, Geo. Buttrick, p. 140

The point of the parable is that life is to be lived, not evaded.  The rich man was guilty of evasion; running away from real life into his pretend world where he didn’t have to see Lazarus - really see him.  He was afraid of the smell of poverty and used his riches to evade facing the poverty all around him.

Like it or not, we are the rich man.  We too run away from life, evading those places and people where our God has chosen to meet us, even as God meets us in the man Jesus who said, “What so ever you do for the least of these, you do it unto me.”

Living in the Kingdom of God is not a matter of having heaven all figured out; or the mysteries of death and eternity solved.  It is a matter of loosing oneself in life, giving oneself away, hurting with those who hurt, weeping with those who weep, laughing with those who laugh, and discovering that life comes not by evading but by jumping in.

This takes faith; faith which comes by hearing the Word of God, and doing it.
Faith is for living, not just for dying.


“Live For More Than Being Rich”

The parable of The Rich man and Lazarus is about indifference and idolatry; about how easily we ‘miss the mark’ for which life and possessions are intended.

We prize winning, having, owning, possessing, controlling, dominating, enjoying, yes,even wasting.  With Tivia we “wish I were a rich man” and live the illusion that money will solve all our problems.  Yet nothing could be more false.  For, “the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.”

The purpose of life is NOT to acquire wealth; the purpose of life is to “pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness.  To take hold of eternal life, to which you were called and for which you were made.”  I Tim 6:11

That is, do something which makes a difference in the Kingdom of God; not just makes a buck.

The rich man lived his whole life for the wrong reason.  He became an indifferent, cold hearted man who couldn’t see or hear God’s call through Lazarus to live for more then being rich.

Jesus is challenging our indifference which leads to idolatry which leads to a whole life of wasted energy, of missing the mark, or living for the wrong reason.

Jesus is calling us to live by grace; that is, to live, as Mother Teresa says, not doing great things, but doing ” small things with great love”.

Sept. 22 2013, 18th Sunday After Pentecost

Luke 16:1-13

  1 Jesus told his disciples: "There was a rich man whose manager was accused of wasting his possessions. 2 So he called him in and asked him, 'What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your management, because you cannot be manager any longer.'
    3 "The manager said to himself, 'What shall I do now? My master is taking away my job. I'm not strong enough to dig, and I'm ashamed to beg— 4 I know what I'll do so that, when I lose my job here, people will welcome me into their houses.'
    5 "So he called in each one of his master's debtors. He asked the first, 'How much do you owe my master?'
    6 " 'Eight hundred gallons[a] of olive oil,' he replied.
    "The manager told him, 'Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it four hundred.'
    7 "Then he asked the second, 'And how much do you owe?'
      " 'A thousand bushels[b] of wheat,' he replied.
      "He told him, 'Take your bill and make it eight hundred.'
    8 "The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light. 9 I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.
    10 "Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. 11 So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? 12 And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else's property, who will give you property of your own?
    13 "No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money."

“Shrewdly Graceful”

The master praised the dishonest servant
“because he acted shrewdly”

“sharp-witted, perceptive, smart, wise, savvy, clever, canny”

This is the bite of the story!  But because I fear you are still caught in the
seeming inconsistency of the story coming from Jesus lips let’s try guess what might be behind the story - had it actually happened.  And perhaps it did.

It is possible the master was just as dishonest a man as the servant.
It is also possible that what the servant did was cut out his commission from the amount owed to the master so the master really didn’t loose much.

It is also possible these were dead beat accounts and the master was glad to get what ever he could, and perhaps this was the start of the problem - the servant had allowed these accounts to get out of control or were not good accounts to start with.

We can only surmise what might be behind the scene in the story to try make sense of it. But when all is said and done -  as interesting as it may be - it will never come out right until we see it as a call to live shrewdly graceful.

What Jesus is dramatically laying before us is that we are to be as shrewd and cunning as those who don’t care - and we are to do it as those who do care, because we have a God who cares.  As those who live by grace and know it is the only way we can make it - in this life or the life to come.

As children of the light we are to work hard at being  shrewdly graceful - in how we live to forgive.  In how we live with the priorities of God’s Kingdom deeply imbedded in our heart, soul, mind and being. How we live with faith as “a power and passion in authority among the powers and passions of life.”  A power and passion born of grace which means we live not to get even but to forgive;  not to judge and condemn but to be compassionate as our God is compassionate!

“The point of the parable is not to approve what the steward did wrong, but to applaud how rightly he did it.  We are to do rightly what is right, even as he did rightly what was wrong.”
 

“Money:  Idol or Servant”

“This is the most difficult of all parables and no interpretation is wholly satisfactory.”

To discover its meaning we have to risk being wrong.  Or at best only partially right, as we do the best we can.  The key is not the man who is  a negative moral example.
The key is money - which plays such an important part in our lives.  Does it use us or do we use it?  The first clear point of the parable is that money is to be used!  Used to make friends!  That is what it is really for; to be used in ways which bind us together and deepen our trust and friendship.

This is not to say we can buy friendship;  it is to say that money can create genuine friendship, deepen relationships, and strengthen love and trust.

Money is a powerful tool to be creatively used to build life’s relationships.
There are times when I can’t afford to not spend it.  (How’s that for a double negative.)
I can use it to draw people to me and I even have to risk using it to help when the results
are not sure.

“Our pocket books can have more to do with heaven and also with hell, then our hymn books.”  Helmet Thielkie

“If a purely materialistic child of the world like the dishonest steward can manage on his level to compel money to serve his own ends and thus give it its relative importance, how much more - and at the same time, how differently - should the children of light do this on their level.”  Thielkie, “The Waiting Father”  p. 101