Made Clean

Luke 17:11-17

October 12, 2025

 

            My mom was a stickler for manners. My dad was a polite person as well, but my most vivid memories about learning to “mind my manners,” came from my mother. Phone manners were a big deal. If she overheard me calling one of my friends and asking for that friend like this, “Is Marci there?” or “Can I talk to Marci?” she would stand behind me and firmly correct me saying, “May I speak to Marci please?” I would roll my eyes and repeat those words begrudgingly but in the end they stuck because my mom did this as many times as it took to make them stick.

            We also had to abide by table manners. Elbows were not welcome on the table. To this day, if I catch myself putting my elbows on the table while I’m eating, I take them off as quickly as possible hoping that my mom did not see it – even from Heaven. And while we were at the table, you didn’t just reach across the table to get the dish you wanted, you asked for it to be passed to you. Mom didn’t like us to use what she called a “boarding house reach.”

            There were manners connected to sharing. Woe be to me if I pulled out a piece of gum or candy in front of my friends and didn’t offer to share with them. If I didn’t have enough of something to share with everyone, then the gum or the candy needed to stay out-of-sight and out-of-mind.

            Then there were the basics. I was drilled in my use of the “magic words,” otherwise known as “please” and “thank you.” “Please” and “thank you” were not reserved for home use only. I was expected to use them with every person I met. If an adult spoke to me, I was expected to respond politely. If we were in a restaurant, I was expected to speak politely to our server or anyone else we encountered. If I failed to mind my manners – which I did – I heard about it. And if my mom or dad were not around to remind me about manners, another adult would not hesitate to speak in their stead.

            As a kid, I hated hearing the words, “mind your manners.” I remember vowing to myself that if I ever had children I would not do the same thing to them. Then I had two children and guess what? I did the same thing to them. My children were also drilled on phone etiquette and sharing manners and the use of the “magic words.” I didn’t do this to my children because I wanted them to be mindless automaton Stepford children. It’s just that when I became a mom I finally understood why my mom pushed manners so hard. It isn’t about being the etiquette police. Manners are not about conforming to social norms. But teaching my kids to speak respectfully also taught them about being respectful. Teaching them to say, “thank you” taught them about gratitude. I wanted them to know that manners gave them the power to make others feel included and welcomed, that they could turn an awkward moment into something joyful, and that two simple words – thank you – could be transformative.

            Thankfulness is the outward theme of this story from Luke’s gospel, although I suspect there is more at the heart of this passage than meets the eye. Jesus encounters ten lepers, heals them of their leprosy and out of those ten only one turns around and says “thank you” to Jesus for his healing.

            This isn’t the first time in Luke’s gospel or in any of the other three that Jesus meets people with leprosy or who are unclean for whatever reason, but the idea of giving thanks to Jesus for healing is unique to this passage. I doubt Jesus healed someone, and then prompted that person with “what are the magic words?” But in this story, we are told specifically that out of the ten who were healed, one of them turned around, returned to Jesus and gave thanks. And this one was a Samaritan.

            I’ll be honest, Jesus’ statement about this makes me uncomfortable.

            “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?”

            Except this foreigner. As one commentator wrote, it seems that Jesus is speaking over the Samaritan, not to him. Jesus is speaking as though the Samaritan were just an object, a lamp or a bowl, rather than a living person, which feels awkward and distinctly unmannerly. But I think that Jesus is speaking to his disciples, pointing out to them that it was not the healed children of Israel who returned to him to give thanks, it was the Samaritan, the foreigner, the one who was specifically “other.”

            Jesus’ words may very well have made the disciples uncomfortable too, but not because his statement lacked manners. It would have made them uncomfortable because once again Jesus made it clear that no one was too “other” to be outside of God’s love and grace, no foreigner, no stranger, no enemy, not even a Samaritan. I’ve preached before about the enmity between Jews and Samaritans. The animosity between them was pronounced to say the least. The Samaritans were the “others” in the eyes of Israel, and I imagine that the reverse was true for the Samaritans.

            But leprosy seems to have been the great equalizer because these ten people were together, even though one of them was a Samaritan. Lepers were some of the leading outcasts of this culture. Not only was leprosy – and there were many kinds of leprosy – considered to be a physical ailment, but it was also thought to be a spiritual calamity as well. Like other illnesses, it was believed to be a spiritual punishment brought on by the disregarding of the Law by the leper’s parents or an infraction or sin on the part of the leper himself or herself.

            Lepers created their own colonies because they were forced to live outside of the main community. When clean people approached their “space,” lepers were required to call out “unclean, unclean!” This warned people to keep their distance. Yet charity from other people was their only means of survival, so despite their uncleanness, they would sit near major traffic ways and beg for alms.

            But even living as others and outside the larger community did not seem to have kept the news about Jesus from these ten. They have heard about him. They clearly have heard about his acts of healing. When they see him approach, they keep their distance but call to him.

            “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.”

            Jesus sees them and tells them to present themselves to the priest. This was required by the Law. When someone was healed of leprosy, they had to show themselves to the priest. The priest would declare them clean and they could return to the larger community. When Jesus tells them to do this, they obediently turn and make their way. As they were going, they were made clean. But it was the Samaritan who sees that he has been made clean. He sees his skin healed and unblemished. He sees the transformation on his skin and I also think he realizes that a larger transformation has occurred as well. He sees, so he turns around and goes back to Jesus. He prostrates himself before Jesus. He, the Samaritan, thanks him.

            Did this happen because the Samaritan’s mother was a stickler for manners just like mine was? Was the Samaritan just more polite, or did he realize that his otherness had been overcome. The Samaritan, the foreigner, probably understood better than the others, that his otherness came from more than just the disease that ravaged his skin. He was a foreigner, a stranger, an other. But this Jesus, healed him. This Jesus made room for him. The lines that would have been drawn between them in other circumstances were not merely unimportant, but they were also erased completely. This man, this foreigner, this other, sees that he has been healed, and maybe he realizes that he has been seen as well. He has been seen as a child of God.

            Maybe that’s what Jesus was pointing out to the disciples and anyone else who witnessed this. Maybe that’s what Jesus wanted them to see and understand. This outsider, this foreigner, was more than just the labels he bore and more than the disease that plagued him. He was a child of God. But maybe it was his status as an “other,” as an outsider, a foreigner that helped him to see in ways that the “insiders” could not. Maybe it was because he was a foreigner that made him grasp the import of being healed, and so he turned around and he gave thanks.

            Once again, we are being reminded vividly that God’s kingdom is upside down. It is the reversal of all we think we know and understand. Every category we create, every label we bestow means nothing in the kingdom of God. We may not use the word “unclean” today, but if we’re brutally honest there are people we think of as being just that. They are unclean for their beliefs or unclean because of their status in society or unclean because of their politics or unclean just because they are different. And the truth that really gets to me is that there are people who think the same of me. In some people’s eyes, I am the other. I am the foreigner. I am the stranger. I am the outsider. We all make categories and rules to help us navigate a world that is chaotic more than it is calm. But the kingdom of God, the kingdom that Jesus proclaimed is now in our midst, does away with all of it. No category is left standing. No label is not overthrown. The kingdom of God turns everything upside down and on its head.

            And when we can see this, really see it, see our transformation and see the “others” in our world in the same way, we may just want to turn around, fall at the feet of Jesus, and give thanks. Thank you, Jesus, for healing us. Thank you, Jesus, for loving us. Thank you, Jesus, for turning our categories and our labels and our lines and our walls upside down. Thank you, Jesus, for making us clean. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you.

            Let all of God’s children say, “Alleluia.” Amen.

Increase Our Faith -- World Communion Sunday

Luke 17:5-10

October 5, 2025

 

            Spoiler alert: I’m about to mention the end of the movie The Wizard of Oz. Since the movie premiered in 1939, I am assuming that most of us here and most who may be watching from home know the movie and know its plot. If you don’t, I apologize for spoiling it for you, but as I said, it premiered in 1939.

            Dorothy finds herself in the strange land of Oz, trying to find her way back home to Kansas. She begins a tumultuous journey from Munchkin Land to see the wizard who resides in Oz, to ask for help in getting home. Without even meaning to, she defeats not one but two wicked witches. She befriends a scarecrow, a lion, and a tin man. She faces flying monkeys – which were the part of the movie that always terrified me when I was a kid. And finally she comes face-to-face with the one person she most wanted to see – the Wizard himself. Only it turns out that the Wizard isn’t so much a Wizard as he is an old man, who was also stranded in Oz, and made the best of it by pretending to be a great and powerful Wizard.  

            All Dorothy wants is to go home, and she hopes that the Wizard will be able to help her. Even though he isn’t really a Wizard, he still believes he can return her to her home and her loved ones, but that plan goes awry at the last minute, leaving Dorothy in despair of ever getting back to Kansas. But just when Dorothy and the rest of us think that all is lost, Glynda the Good Witch returns to help. Glynda tells Dorothy that she has had the power to go home all along. That power is found in the ruby slippers on Dorothy’s feet; ruby slippers that became Dorothy’s when her house landed on the Wicked Witch of the East. All Dorothy has to do is tap her heels together and repeat,

“There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.”

It works! Dorothy wakes up back in her bed, back in her house, surrounded by her family and friends. It is a happy ending, one that I accepted without question as a child. But as I grew older, I started to ask one question that may or may not be answerable. Why didn’t Glynda tell Dorothy that she had the power to go home from the very beginning? Why didn’t Glynda clue Dorothy in about the power of the ruby slippers from the get-go? Dorothy asked to go home, a straightforward request, and Glynda’s response seemed evasive at best.

I won’t claim that Jesus was being evasive in his reply to the disciples at the beginning of our passage from Luke’s gospel, but I will say that his response seems impatient and just plain strange.

The apostles said, “Increase our faith!” This is an imperative statement meaning that they are not just asking for more faith, they are demanding it. Increase our faith, Jesus! Now please! This demand may seem as though it comes from a place of entitlement and superiority, but I think it more likely comes from anxiety and fear. If we were to read the first four verses in this chapter, that anxiety would make sense. In chapter 16, Jesus was addressing the pharisees, but now his words are directed once more to those closest followers. He tells his disciples that they bear a tremendous responsibility for those who follow them. If someone stumbles and falls short because of the words, actions, and deeds of a disciple, it would be better for that disciple to have a millstone hung around their neck and thrown into the sea. Don’t cause a little one, a person young in faith, to mess up. And if one of you sins against another of you, you must call out the offender. But if that person repents, then you must forgive. And if the other sins and repents seven times a day; you must forgive seven times a day.

Once again Jesus is telling the disciples that none of this will be easy; that being a disciple, being faithful, is the hardest task they will ever undertake. And they respond, “Increase our faith!” Give us more faith, Jesus, so we can do this. Give us an extra dose of faith, so we have a chance of making this work.  

Instead Jesus says, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea and it would obey you.’”

The Greek word used for if implies not just a possibility but a reality. So, it’s more like Jesus is saying, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, and by the way you do, you already have this faith, you could say to the mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea …”” Just as Dorothy already had the power to get home, Jesus is telling the disciples that their faith is already sufficient to do what seems both absurd and impossible.

Had Jesus ended here, this would have still been a challenging passage, but its challenge might have felt more manageable. But verse six is not the end. Jesus then speaks about the relationship of a master and a slave. The use of the word “slave” grates on my 21^st century ears  and stings my conscience because of the brutal history of chattel slavery in our country. Rightly so. It would be wrong to interpret these words as Jesus justifying slavery, but it also must be acknowledged that the master/slave relationship was common in that time and place. The disciples would have recognized and understood it. So, Jesus tells them that when the slave does what’s expected of him, he doesn’t get praise or thanks. The slave is just doing what he’s supposed to do. The slave is just doing what’s required of him; the slave is merely doing his duty.

Jesus gives this an interesting twist because he implies that the disciples are the slaves of God. This makes God the slave master, which adds greatly to my discomfort. But even if we translated the word doulos as servant instead of slave, I would still be uncomfortable. Because at the end of the day, I don’t want to think about God being stingy with rewards. And I’m also honest, I would like some thanks and praise for serving. I suspect the disciples would too, especially because this serving is hard work. It’s scary work. It is imposing work. And if they are going to do it, they need as much faith as possible, and how about a “thank you” thrown in for good measure. It’s not like Jesus doesn’t speak of their greater reward at other points in the gospels. Why change that now?

But I wonder if Jesus is trying to get the disciples to understand that faith is not about quantity. Faith is not something that can be measured in amounts. You can’t just fill up your faith like you can gas in your car. When the disciples cry, “Increase our faith,” maybe they’re not just simply asking for more, but asking for it to be simpler, easier. Give us an extra jolt of faith, Lord, so this won’t be so hard for us. Give us an extra measure of faith, Jesus, so this won’t be so challenging, so intimidating, so frightening. Increase our faith, so this won’t demand quite so much of us.

But Jesus tells them, you have enough faith. You have plenty of faith already. You have the enough faith to tell a tree with the deepest of roots to pull itself up and jump into the sea. You have enough faith to do what is impossible right now. But faith is not measurable in a way that is quantifiable. Faith does not increase because you get a refill or an extra dose or a larger amount. Faith grows by the doing. Faith is not something you get, faith is something you do. Faith is serving. Faith is acting. Faith is doing. You serve God and you serve others because that is what grows faith. Faith is not something you get. Faith is something you do. You already have enough faith. You already have what you need. You just have to do it. Faith is not what you get. Faith is what you do.

Like the disciples, though, I would rather have it the other way around. I would rather have my faith topped up by some supernatural increase than do the hard work of faith. Because to do the work of faith requires more of me than I think or want to give Doing the work of faith requires me to love people who I don’t want to love and to forgive people I don’t want to forgive. Doing the work of faith requires me to resist “othering” people, to resist trying to categorize people under various labels, so they will be the others I don’t have to deal with. And that is hard work indeed, and everything in our culture suggests that I should do the opposite. A supercharge of faith would surely help me do all of this wouldn’t it? It would make it so much easier if my faith could just be increased. But faith is not something we get. Faith is something we do. If we want to increase our faith, we must do the work of faith. And we do it not for reward or praise or thanks, but just because.

In a few minutes we will come to the table and celebrate the Lord’s Supper. On this World Communion Sunday, we do this with Christians of every denomination, of every creed, of every color, of every gender around the globe. At this table we will be fed and nourished and strengthened. But sharing the bread and drinking the cup will not magically increase our faith. It is the act of coming to the table that will increase our faith. It is the act of breaking the bread and drinking the cup that increases our faith. This table is not about refueling but about gathering and doing and loving and sending. Faith is not something we get, faith is something we do. May we increase our by the daily work of faith, even when that work is hard or seems impossible. May we increase our faith by the daily work of faith, and daily may we share the mercy and grace and love of God with all God’s people. Thanks be to God.

Let all of God’s children say, “Alleluia.”

Amen.

 

 

Faithful In a Little

Luke 16:1-13

September 21, 2025

 

            In the months leading up to my discernment of a call to go to seminary, I was out of work and desperately trying to find a full-time job. I was doing everything I could to keep the proverbial body and soul together. I worked temp jobs. I worked as a part-time nanny. I moved out of my apartment and lived with good friends from church so I could save money on rent. I would have walked dogs, answered telephones, run errands, and just about anything else I could to make ends meet. One Sunday at church, I was talking to a friend of mine, and I told him that I had applied for a job with the new state lottery association. They were looking for someone with publicity experience. I had that, so I applied. He looked at me and said, “Oh Amy, would you really want to work for the lottery? Think about the ethical implications.”

            At the time my response was “Right now, I need to think about the implications of not being able to pay my bills. I need a job.”

            I didn’t get the job, but I understood my friend’s concerns about the possibility of me working for the state lottery. The lottery seems like a good idea. The money from the lottery is designated as a help to schools and infrastructure, and it brings in tons of money for those needs. We’re not big lottery players at our house, but we’re not against it. I get intimidated buying a lottery ticket, but one of the things we do at Christmas now is buy scratch-off tickets as stocking stuffers for the entire family, and it’s always fun to watch everyone scratching their tickets to see if they won anything. Yet with that said, I also know that there are people who use their hard-earned money to buy lottery tickets with dreams of winning it big, when they would be better served just saving that money. They’d have more money from saving it than they would ever see buying lottery tickets. But winning the lottery is an enticing fantasy, which is why it is such a successful business. Folks buy into it, literally and figuratively. My friend worried that it exploited people for those reasons.

            I didn’t get the job so I didn’t have to wrestle too much with the ethical conundrums that might have arisen if I had, but I do think about what he said. I think he was asking the fundamental question of do the ends justify the means? Being unemployed and constantly worried about money made me realize that short of doing something completely illegal, I was prepared to see a steady paycheck as an end that justified whatever means required to earn it. But if we are looking for a passage of scripture to give us a definitive answer to the moral question of ends and means, then this passage from Luke’s gospel will not help. Not even a little bit.

            Jesus begins his parable in what would seem to be a straightforward way. There was a rich man. The rich man employed a manager to handle his business for him, and charges against the manager were brought to the rich man’s attention. We don’t know who brought these charges – a business associate, or a tenant, or another person who worked for the rich man, but what we do know is that the manager is accused of squandering the rich man’s property.

            The rich man summons his manager and tells him what he’s heard.

            “Give me an accounting of your management, because you cannot be my manger any longer.”

            The manager, knowing the jig was up and realizing that he wasn't strong enough to dig ditches and contrary to the classic song by The Temptations, knew he was too proud to beg, decides to make friends so that when he was dismissed he would secure a place where he would be welcomed. He goes to the people who owe debts to the master and reduces them.  How much do you owe to my master? 100 jugs of olive oil? Okay, cut that in half. Now you owe 50. You owe 100 containers of wheat? Well, now you owe 80.

            You would think that this would make the rich man even angrier, but here’s where this parable takes a bewildering twist. Instead of condemning the manager, the rich man commends him. The manager has acted shrewdly, and that’s a good thing. And if you weren’t already surprised and confused enough, Jesus then says some of his most confusing words ever,

"And I tell you, make friends for yourself by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes." 

I’m sorry, what? Is Jesus also commending the dishonest manager? I’m confused. I bet you are too. And sadly for all of us, I don’t really have a way out of the confusion. This parable has baffled scholars and theologians for years, centuries even. Every commentator I read said the same. This is a parable that leaves most of us scratching our heads and saying, “What?”

The response to the manager’s actions by the master and certainly Jesus' response to them seems counter-intuitive to everything we think about discipleship. Dishonesty, even though it is used to do something good, is still dishonesty. But in this passage the dishonesty and quick thinking of the manager is praised. Even though the text gives us no reason to believe that the manager was acting out of anything but self-interest, the way he deals with the situation helps other people in debt, so he finds himself not condemned but praised. Jesus lifts him up as an example of shrewdness, of someone who can think on his feet. What?

In the last verses Luke's Jesus seems to be explaining why he thinks this dishonest manager's actions are praiseworthy. But quite frankly, the explanations leave me more confused than ever. If you're faithful in a little, you're faithful in much. If you're dishonest in a little, you are dishonest in much. If you cannot be trusted to do the right thing with someone else's wealth, how can you be entrusted to do the right thing with what you have been given? It culminates with these words. A slave cannot serve two masters. You will love one master and hate the other. You cannot serve both God and wealth.

            The dishonest manger is praised for being shrewd. Another way to translate the word that is used for "shrewdly" is "worldly." The dishonest manager was worldly in how he dealt with his situation. Again, this seems counter-intuitive. Aren't we as believers supposed to be in this world but not of this world? Aren't we supposed to stay outside of all that is "worldly," because we have been taught to believe that "worldly" is wrong or bad or tainted? But here's the thing, we are in this world. And in small ways and large, the world is in us. We live in a world where money matters. Maybe it's wrong that money matters, but it does. Will any of us upon leaving here today repudiate what wealth we have? Will we sell all that we have and trust that we'll be taken care of? Anybody? No, we won’t do that. Because even if we don't have firsthand experience with poverty, poverty and the terrible hardships that come with it are all around us. Poverty is not glamorous. It is not a spiritual win. Poverty is hard, and it is dangerous. Suffering is suffering. I doubt that any of us would gladly surrender all our wealth. I know that I would rather not. But perhaps the point that Jesus was trying to get across was not that being dishonest was okay, but that when it comes to wealth we have to be realistic, not idealistic. The dishonest manager was praised for his shrewdness, his worldliness. What does it mean, then, for us to be worldly when it comes to wealth? 

            Maybe it means that we must recognize that we are going to be thrust into situation after situation where we must make hard decisions. Are we going to serve wealth? Or are we going to use whatever wealth we have to serve God? In the end the manager acted shrewdly by using wealth to build relationships. Are we enslaved to wealth or do we find a way to use our wealth to build up the kingdom?  Do we use our wealth to further relationship, with others and with God? It becomes a question of stewardship. How do we use our wealth to serve God?

            I’m not convinced that I’ve gotten any of my interpretation is correct. I suspect not. I know that I am leaving this passage as confused as I was when I went into it but I also know that the parables Jesus told were never about giving easy answers to complex questions. Jesus told parables to shock, to challenge, and to push those who heard them to wrestle with their meaning and their implications, and money and faith provides an ongoing wrestling match. This is true for us as individuals and this is true for us as a congregation. What does our budget reveal about our faith, our priorities? How are we called to be shrewd and worldly when it comes to our money and our discipleship? Those are questions that we wrestle with and will continue to wrestle with at least until the kingdom of God comes in its fullness.

            But here is one thing that the commentator Amy Frykholm wrote about this passage. We may not understand it. We may never understand it. But in every aspect of it there is grace to be found. There is grace in what the manager does for the people who owed the master. Reducing their debts was gracious. There is grace in the response of the rich man to the manager; praising him rather than condemning. And even though it may not be overt, there is grace in Jesus’ words to the people. You cannot serve two masters, but when you try to do it anyway, there is grace. And when you mess up in this call to discipleship, there is grace. When you stumble and fall, there is grace. When you try to walk away, I will call you back because of grace.

            We are given grace upon grace upon grace, so may we show grace to others and to ourselves. We are given grace upon grace upon grace. Thanks be to God.

            Let all of God’s children say, “Alleluia.” Amen.  

Words Matter

 

            Words matter.

24 years – the same age as my son. I will always remember the number of years that pass since September 11, 2001, because I watched it unfold live on television while holding my two-month-old son and trying to distract my two-year-old daughter from what was being displayed on the screen in our living room.  

            24 years. 24 years ago, we watched the horrific consequences of violent rhetoric live and in color. Yes, they were consequences of violent rhetoric. It began with words – words of hatred and venom and destruction. Words that came from a mindset that some should live while others die. And I’ll go so far as to say that those violent words were inspired by violence that began with violent words that were used against those who planned 9/11.

            Violent rhetoric begets violent action which begets more violent words. Where does it end? With violence upon violence upon violence. It is, literally, a vicious cycle. And it begins with violent rhetoric.

            Words matter. Words harm and hurt and abuse and violence in words can lead to violence in action. A man was killed yesterday. Students were shot yesterday. Children were bombed and attacked and starved yesterday. And the day before that and the day before that and the day before that. Words matter, and when our words are violent and unchecked, how can we believe that those words won’t be taken literally and used to justify violence in more words as well as in deeds. It is a terrible irony that the man who was killed yesterday stated that some gun deaths were necessary in order to maintain our 2^nd Amendment rights. He probably never thought that he would be a gun death as well. He did not deserve it, no one does, but surely his words contributed to the possibility that it could happen.

            Words matter. But we can’t seem to learn this lesson. The tragedy and heartbreak of this day 24 years ago should have caused us all to carefully consider our words. But violent rhetoric has only increased, and it should surprise none of us that violent action has escalated as well. And innocents are always caught in its wake. Because the trauma of yesterday’s violence, and the trauma of the violence on each day before, causes not only physical harm but spiritual harm, emotional harm, and psychological harm to everyone who bears witness. If we don’t address this harm, if we don’t address the pain that we inflict, if we don’t change our words and demand that our leaders do the same, this cycle will never be broken. Violence will catch us all, one way or another. It will be embodied in large ways and in small. Every violent, tragic, unnecessary death wounds our souls. Every vitriolic utterance causes us damage. Words matter, and words open the door for action. We have a choice to make – words of violence or words of compassion; words that revile or words that forgive. I want to choose the latter. I want to choose words and actions that reflect love of God and love of neighbor. I want to speak words that are tender and words that heal. I must choose the latter because I know how easy it is to do otherwise.

So may my words be words of love. May my words be words of justice. May my words be words of peace. It is easy, far too easy, to speak words of hate. May my words speak love and may my actions do the same.

            Words matter.

What Is the Cost?

Luke 14:25-33

September 7, 2025

 

            Several years ago a commercial aired that became extremely controversial. It infuriated some people, while other folks applauded and defended it. There was backlash against the makers of the product. People on the other side of the controversy made sure that they voiced their support of the brand. Nasty things on both sides of the divide were stated on social media. The firestorm over this commercial revealed, once again, some of the great divisions in our society. What was the product that caused such a hullabaloo, that provoked such outrage? Cheerios. Yes, you heard me correctly. Cheerios. Cheerios the cereal. Cheerios the cereal with the name that sounds like a happy British farewell, as in Cheery-O! Cheerios, my kids’ first finger foods. Cheerios.

            Several years ago now, Cheerios ran an ad that featured a little girl, box of Cheerios in hand, coming to her mom with a question. Is Cheerios good for your heart?  Her mom looked at the box and told her that some of the ingredients were helpful in lowering cholesterol which is heart healthy. The little girl thanks her mom, takes the box, and runs off. The next scene is the father waking up from a nap on the couch, and as he sits up, a whole bunch of Cheerios positioned over his heart, falls off his shirt. The commercial ends with him calling his wife’s name, obviously wondering what the heck was going on.

            So what’s the controversy? The commercial featured an interracial couple. The wife/mother was white. The husband/father was black, and the little girl was biracial. That representation made some people really, really angry, while others thought it was great. But on both sides of the debate the words “family values” were used. What constitutes family values? What weakens family values? What are family values? Was this commercial a building up of family values or a breaking down of them?

            However we may define family values, I would hazard a guess that all of us agree that they are important. Valuing families, caring for them, supporting them is the lynchpin of our society and probably most societies. While family values may be a buzzword from the last century and in our present one, the ideas behind family values are not new. Families, however they may look, whatever the makeup, are essential now and they have been essential. Families were just as essential, maybe even more so, in Jesus’ context as they are now.

            In the culture in which Jesus lived, families were more than just what we define as a nuclear family – mother, father, children. Families included the extended family of grandparents. cousins, aunts, uncles, etc. Family meant protection. Family meant security. To be alone, to be without family, was to be vulnerable. Scripture, in both testaments, repeatedly speaks to the need to care for widows and orphans. Why? Because they were often without family, which meant they were some of the most vulnerable in that society. They had no family. The book of Ruth tells the story of two widows, who lose family and rely on each other for protection and go to seek extended family who will help them.

            Yet in the opening verses of our passage from Luke’s gospel, Jesus says something that seems to violate everything that his culture and ours would consider family values.

            “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.”

            I read a commentator this week who wrote about one of his pastors. Whenever this pastor would preach on a particularly difficult text of scripture, he would say something like, “I know I can’t get an amen, but can I get an ouch?”

            Can I get an ouch?

            We must hate our families to follow Jesus?! We must hate mother and father and brother and sister to be his disciple?! Isn’t Jesus the one who spoke about loving God and neighbor and ourselves? Isn’t Jesus the one who welcomed little children when everyone else wanted to shoo them away? Isn’t Jesus the one who hung out with the marginalized and forgotten and overlooked and judged? Isn’t this the Jesus who in the passage just before this preached about the openness and wideness of God’s table in the kingdom? But in seemingly the same breath, he then says that we must hate those closest to us in order to follow him. We must hate the ones who gave us life if we want to be his disciple? We must hate our families. Can I get an ouch?

            This seems contrary to everything Jesus has said before, but is it? Is it really? Jesus often used hyperbolic speech to make an impact and an emphatic point, and this certainly could be a technique that he was employing in this moment. It’s also possible that he wasn’t calling those who would follow to hate their families as in have hostility or show aggression toward them, but that no matter how much wannabe followers may love their families, they must love God and their call to follow more. They must prioritize their lives so that what is most important is discipleship. You may love your family, but you must be willing to let them go if you really want to follow me.

            But in saying this, I don’t want to soften or dilute Jesus’ words. They are hard and they are shocking. They would have shocked his original listeners just as they shock us today. If Jesus was trying to evangelize or grow the numbers following him even more, this was not the way to do it. Clearly, Jesus was not using a Dale Carnegie technique in how to win friends and influence people. Luke tells us that Jesus was being followed by crowds of people. Why would he deliberately try to thin those crowds out?

            Yet, here’s the thing, Jesus was not just randomly walking around the countryside. He was on his way to Jerusalem. He’s been on his way to Jerusalem for a while now, and that means that he is making his way to the cross. His cross. His death. And he doesn’t have time to waste, and he is not pulling any punches. If you want to follow me, then you are going to have be willing to walk away from the people you love the most, to separate from them. If you want to follow me, then you must carry your own cross. You must be willing to lose everything, including your life. This is not a volunteer position that you can do when you feel like it, and when your schedule allows. This is a commitment that could cost you everything, so you better count the cost before you make it. What is the cost you are willing to pay? What are you willing to sacrifice? What are you willing to give or give up? If you can’t leave behind family and friends and possessions, then you shouldn’t follow me, because my way is a narrow way and following in my footsteps will never be easy. Have you counted the cost?

            Can I get an ouch?

            What is the cost we are willing to pay? I dread these words of Jesus because I know how torn I am between the people I love and the possessions I own and discipleship. I know how much courage I lack, how much struggle I wish to avoid, how much sacrifice I am afraid to make. Jesus’ words cut me to the quick, because I know that I do not follow him as I should. I want to but I am afraid of the cost. Can I get an ouch?

            Yet I also know that I have had to hate and let go and walk away from a lot just to stand in this pulpit. I didn’t hate my grandfather, but I had to hate his conviction that women should not be ordained. I didn’t hate my grandmother, but I had to hate what she implied when she called my early sermons “my little talks” rather than the sermons they were. To make it to this pulpit required me to let go of and walk away from a lot of people that claimed and claim I have no business being here.

            What have you had to hate? What have you had to let go of? What have you been forced to walk away from to be here, to follow Jesus? Maybe it doesn’t feel like much or maybe it feels like everything. Maybe you carry a heavier cross than any of us can imagine, and maybe your heaviest cross is still to come. Carrying our crosses was never meant to be easy, but we were also never meant to carry them alone.

            There is no clean or comfortable wrap up to Jesus’ words today. They should make us say, “Ouch.” They should convict us and make us struggle and wrestle and wonder. But just because they carry a sting does not mean that they are not good news. We know that even those closest to Jesus messed up. They couldn’t carry their own crosses, at least not at first. They ran away in fear. They didn’t know how to let go of what they possessed and what possessed them. But still there was grace and still there was mercy and still there was forgiveness. That grace, mercy, and forgiveness are ours as well. We are called to carry our crosses and follow, but we are not called to follow alone. We are not alone. Even when we stumble and think we can’t go on, we are not alone. We are not alone. Thanks be to God.

            Can I get an ouch? Can I get an alleluia?

            Amen. 

You Are Set Free

Luke 13:10-17

August 24, 2025

 

In the last years of my mom’s life, she walked bent over. She had very little strength left in her upper body, and she could not hold herself up straight when she walked. There were a multitude of reasons for this. She had osteoporosis. She had a complex and difficult back surgery in the early 2000’s that never seemed to help, and the recovery from that was so awful that she gave up on trying to get her full strength back. There were many reasons as to why she was so bent over, but I remember watching her and thinking, “I don’t want that to be me.”

I am my mother in many ways, and that makes me happy most of the time because she was funny and smart and a great mom. But if I’m lucky enough to live another 30 years, I don’t want to be bent over and stooped like she was. I want to avoid that if possible. So, I exercise. I’ve started swimming again. I take my vitamins, and I try to be conscious of my posture – although that’s going to take a lot more effort on my part. I’m trying to avoid becoming my mother in that way because I know that she was in a lot of pain in the last years of her life. Her back hurt. Her knees hurt. She just hurt. And I wish she would not have had to live with that.

My mom was probably really stooped for maybe five years – although my memory may be off – and that caused her ongoing pain. If five years of this was bad, I cannot imagine 18 years. I cannot imagine 18 years of pain, never being able to straighten up, never being able to look up and around. I cannot imagine 18 years of having only one view – your feet and the ground below you.

18 years. That is how long the woman in this passage from Luke’s gospel was bent over, unable to stand up straight. To be fair, the scripture does not tell us specifically that the woman was in pain, but having watched my mother, I can well imagine she was. Being so dramatically bent over, in a constant stooped position, unable to straighten even a little bit, must have been painful. You can’t be bent over that severely for almost two decades and not have some pain as a consequence.

The passage notes that she was bent over due to a spirit that crippled her, which may have been a spinal disease or another physical ailment that was not understood. Yet this crippling condition did not prevent the woman from coming to the synagogue on the Sabbath. She came to worship and to honor the Sabbath as she had probably been doing all her life. There’s nothing in the text to indicate that she came for any reason other than that. But on this sabbath day, everything changed. Everything changed because Jesus was there

Jesus was in the synagogue teaching, and he saw this woman. Verse 11 reads,

“And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years.”

As I understand it, women were not allowed to be where the men were. Women did not approach rabbis. And as I’ve already said, there is no indication from the text that this woman came looking to be healed. There were no family or friends advocating for her. There was no one trying to get Jesus’ attention, and she was not trying to get his attention. She appeared, which sounds almost magical, but I don’t believe it is a reference to magic. She appeared because Jesus saw her. Maybe he was the first person to truly see her in 18 long years. Maybe he was the first person to really see her in her whole life. If it seemed that she just appeared there, it may be because when Jesus saw her, others finally saw her too.

When Jesus saw this bent over, crooked, stooped woman, he called her over, and said to her,

“Woman, you are set free from your ailment.”

Then he laid his hands on her, and she immediately stood up straight! Her spine released, her back unfurled, her shoulders squared, and she stood straight. And the straightening of her spine freed her not only from pain but freed her to praise God with a joyful voice. She stood straight and began to praise God.

This should be where the story ends. This should be where we insert our “Amens” and “Alleluias” and move on giving thanks ourselves. But her praise was interrupted by the leader of the synagogue. In the wake of this healing, his response was not joy but outrage. He is indignant that Jesus healed this woman on the Sabbath. The Law is clear – healing on the Sabbath could only happen in critical, emergency situations. Yet what was critical about this woman’s circumstance? She was bent over for 18 years! One more day would not have made a difference. The leader was furious with Jesus, but he did not confront Jesus directly. Instead, he vents his ire on the woman and the crowd gathered.

“There are six other days of the week. Come to be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath.”

In other words, don’t mess with the Sabbath. There were specific rules as to what could happen on the Sabbath and what could not. A non-urgent healing that could have happened any other day did not qualify as a legitimate Sabbath healing. The leader knew this. The crowds knew this. The woman knew this. Jesus knew this. But it was on this day, this Sabbath day, that Jesus saw her. He saw this woman when clearly others had not. Her condition most likely made her invisible to the larger society, just as can happen today. But she was not invisible to Jesus. He saw her. And when he saw her, he saw her need, and he healed her. He chose to help, Sabbath or no Sabbath.

Jesus’ response to the leader and the crowds was immediate as well.

“You hypocrites! Does not each of your on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham who Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the Sabbath day?”

Commentators note that Jesus’ argument is based on the Hebrew qal v-homer model, which is “from the lighter to the greater.” If you feed and care for your donkeys and oxen on the Sabbath, then you should be free to care for someone in need on the Sabbath as well. Even if that need is a chronic condition. If not now, when?

This is not the first time that Jesus butted heads with the religious professionals over what should and should not be allowable on the Sabbath. He has healed others on the Sabbath. His disciples gathered food on the Sabbath. Was it that Jesus did not care about the Law or did he not care about the Sabbath?

It seems to me that Jesus cared a great deal about both the Law and the Sabbath, but he understood what others did not. He understood the intent of the Law. He grasped the deeper reason for the Sabbath. The Law was not given as a means of binding the people, restricting them. It was given as a gift. It was given to free them, to free them from what keeps them from being in relationship with God and with others. The Sabbath was not meant for restrictions but for rest. What better time to be healed than on the Sabbath? What better time to be freed than on the day when everyone came together to worship and give thanks to God? What better day was there to be set free?

What would it mean to us to hear these words today? What would it mean to leave this place, this sacred time, this holy hour, and be freed from what ails us? To be freed from the burdens that weigh us down and stoop our shoulders and bend us toward the ground? What would it mean to be told, “You are free.”?

Think again about the woman’s perspective for those 18 years. She was so bent over that she could really only see her feet and the ground below her. She could not make eye contact with anyone. I imagine that she became quieter and quieter as a result, silencing her voice because who would listen? She lost the ability to see the sun and the sky. She lost the ability to see anyone around her. She was invisible. So, consider what you carry this day. What is keeping you bent over? What is preventing you from using your voice? What is isolating you from others? What burdens you and keeps you from standing straight and praising God?

I am a religious professional, and I know how easily I can slip into the mindset of the synagogue leader. I want things done in a certain way and in a certain order. There are some things that should happen in worship and some that should not. When Jesus freed the woman, maybe he also wanted to free the leader too. Maybe he also wanted to free the crowds. There is no better day to be set free than today. There is no better time to be set free than this time.

So, here is the good news. You are set free. You are set free from what binds you. You are set free from what stoops your shoulders and bends your spine. You are set free from what makes you invisible. You are set free from what keeps you from praising God, from using your voice. You are set free. I am set free. We are set free. The good news of the gospel sets us free to live and love as God calls us to live and love. The good news of the gospel sets us free to be the people God created us to be, to be fully and truly human, just as Jesus was fully and truly human. We are set free to be compassionate, to heal, to hope, to share, to care, to live, to love. We are set free. Thanks be to God. Go and tell others this good news. Go and set others free too.

Let all of God’s children say, “Alleluia.”

Amen.

 

Wait, What?

Luke 12:49-56

August 17, 2025

 

            There is an article in this month’s Christian Century magazine written in tribute of Walter Brueggemann, now of blessed memory. Brueggemann was a renowned biblical scholar of Old Testament, particularly in hearing and interpreting the prophets. He was a prolific writer, and his book The Prophetic Imagination was required reading when I was in seminary, and I believe that it is still required in many seminaries today. The author of this article, Jason Edwards, wrote that “Brueggemann was not interested in easy answers or sanitized interpretations. … He did not ask the biblical text to be safe; he asked it to speak. And when it did, he stayed.” [i]

            He did not ask the biblical text to be safe; he asked it to speak. The text from the gospel of Luke that is before us this morning is one that I am asking to speak, even though our initial response may be wait, what? What did it say? What did Jesus say? Wait, what?

            Last week, we heard Jesus tell those around him not to worry, not to be afraid. We heard that it was God’s good pleasure to give us the kingdom. We heard that when the master comes home, he will have the servants sit at the table and he will serve them. And this week, as we move to these last closing verses in chapter 12, we read that Jesus now declares that he “came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!”

            Jesus states that he has a baptism with which to be baptized and that he is under great stress until it is completed. Then he declares that the people think he has come to bring peace on earth. But he has not come to bring peace. He has come to bring division. Households will be divided. Families will be divided. Fathers against sons. Mothers against daughters. Mothers-in-law against daughters-in-law. He has come not to bring peace on earth but division. Wait? What?

            So this is what Jesus, and the text are speaking. But what does it mean? Jesus says that he has a baptism with which to be baptized and that he is under great stress until that baptism is accomplished. We know that he has already been baptized in the Jordan by John. That is not the baptism that he referring to. The larger context of these verses is that Jesus is on the way to Jerusalem. He has set his face toward that city, which means that he is moving toward the cross. There is no turning back. This die has been cast. So, the baptism that Jesus is referring to is not one of immersion but crucifixion. The baptism for which he in great stress is waiting is his own death into new life. I imagine he was under stress. Terrible stress.

The Greek word translated as “stress” in my version of the Bible means a “squeezing.” It is a pressing in. Jesus is being squeezed and pressed. Pretty accurate way of describing stress isn’t it? When I am under an enormous amount of stress I feel as though I am being squeezed and pushed and pressed from all sides. Jesus is feeling this. He has been trying all along to show the people that the kingdom of God is already in their midst. Now he tells them that it’s obvious.  They can look at a rain cloud and realize it is going to rain. They can feel the south wind blowing and know that the heat will be upon them. But what’s right in front of their eyes, they can’t see!  Why can’t they just get it? 

            So Jesus has not come to bring peace. He brings division. These words may disturb and perturb us, but hasn’t this has been true all along? Jesus was run out of his hometown. His own mother and brothers think he has gone off the deep end. He’s ticked off just about every religious leader he’s encountered. He has confused and scared people. He heals one person only to anger another person with that same healing. Jesus assures the people who surround him of God’s love, but he also tells them that God is more than just words on scrolls or rules to be adhered to. God is in their midst. God is working among them. The power of God’s Holy Spirit is blowing new life into what was dead. Everything is shaken, stirred, changed. Because when God comes, things happen, life changes. Who said that would be easy or painless? Who said that the peace of God would be a warm fuzzy? Who said that the coming of the kingdom would make everybody feel just great? Not Jesus. The coming of the kingdom brings abundant life. But that life comes out of death, it comes out of change. And change can and does bring division.

            When I used to read these words, it seemed like Jesus wanted to bring division. That was his sole purpose and plan. And that just seemed counter intuitive and just plain counter to all the Good Shepherd images of Jesus that I have been clinging to since childhood. But as scholar and writer Debie Thomas wrote, and I paraphrase, too often we interpret these words of Jesus as being prescriptive. That he is telling people that this is what he does, and we read into it that this is what they should do as well. But Jesus is not prescribing. He is describing. These are the consequences of his coming into the world. These are the consequences of his preaching and teaching. These are the consequences of people accepting his word – or not. Division may not be his intent, but division is what happens.

            Yet even as I understand that Jesus was being descriptive instead of prescriptive that doesn’t make these words of division any easier for me to hear or to take to heart. When I hear these words speaking from scripture, I don’t want to stay as Brueggemann did. I don’t want to stay because they seem to fly in the face of the idea of unity that I have been taught all my life. We are to be one, unified, together, no matter what. No matter what our external differences may be, we are one. But Jesus was not talking about unity in these verses, was he? He was saying that the consequence of his coming, of his teaching and preaching, of him just existing, was not unity but division. The crowds around him were not joining hands and singing Kum Ba Yah. But that’s what I thought we were supposed to do! Right?! We are all just supposed to get along.

            But following Jesus, following the gospel can divide you from people that you love. It provokes a crisis in those who take it seriously. By crisis, I mean that point when you cannot unsee what you have seen. You cannot go back to where you were before. Following Jesus and taking the gospel seriously evokes cognitive dissonance – that tension between what is and what should be. The gospel makes me question what I know and see and understand because I get a glimpse of the difference and the distance between what is and what God wants. And sometimes in that crisis, in that cognitive dissonance, unity is not possible – not if it means unifying around what is contrary to the gospel. When I let the scripture speak, when I remember that Jesus’ words, these stories, these difficult, challenging texts are more than just words on a page, but a living gospel, I am disturbed and disrupted and definitely not at peace with myself. I am definitely not safe, and nothing about following Jesus feels easy or light. Maybe you feel the same.

I suspect that if we’ve been paying attention, we should already know this about our faith, about our call. We should already know the division that Jesus speaks of. We know that following Jesus doesn’t always win us friends. Speaking the truth in love doesn’t prevent rejection of that truth. Loving others as Jesus loved us does not make them love us back. Following Jesus means risk. Trusting that the message of the gospel is not just about ten easy steps to get to heaven but is instead a message of radical reversal. Following Jesus, letting the gospel speak is risky and challenging and scary. The gospel isn’t nice, and it isn’t easy, and it is not safe.

            But the gospel changes how we understand love, success, power and greatness, and preaching that gospel message might not bring people rushing to the pews on a Sunday morning.  But if we take Jesus’ words seriously, we do it anyway. We love anyway. We give anyway. We follow anyway; we risk anyway because being a disciple isn’t just about being nice. It’s rarely nice. It means change and pain and division and stress.  Jesus was stressed.  He was being squeezed and pressed and pushed and pulled. But he never wavered from the path to the cross. So as hard as it is to hear these difficult and challenging words, because they aren’t what we expect or want, we must hear them. We must take them seriously. Even if they make us pause and say, wait? What? Even though it causes great stress, we, in the words of the author of Hebrews, keep running the race before us. None of it is easy, but it was never meant to be easy. None of it is safe, but it was never meant to be safe. But we are called to keep running, to keep persevering, to keep following Jesus because following Jesus has never mattered more than it does right now. Following Jesus, letting the scripture speak, is what could make all the difference. And if there is a word of comfort in these difficult passages it comes from Hebrews. We are not the only ones who faced these challenges, who lived in this tension, who felt this squeezing stress. We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, by all the faithful who persevered, never knowing where the race would take them. But they raced anyway. That is the good news. That is the gospel. Thanks be to God.

            Let all of God’s children say, “Alleluia.”

            Amen.

           

 

 

 

---

[i] Jason Edwards, The Christian Century, August 2025

Where Is Your Heart?

Luke 12:22-40

August 10, 2025

 

            I was a huge fan of the show Downtown Abbey. And when I say, “huge”, I mean HUGE! But my love of British period dramas did not begin with this show. When I was a kid, I used to watch Masterpiece Theatre with my parents and the show that they loved was Upstairs, Downstairs. Both Downtown Abbey and Upstairs, Downstairs told the intricate stories of all the occupants of grand houses. Both series told the stories of the family who lived upstairs; families who often had more titles and land than money. And the series told the stories of the servants who were the heart of the house, who kept the grand house running and functioning.

            One thing that the servants downstairs knew instinctively was that they had to be ready at a moment’s notice to take care of the needs of the family. These houses had routines, certainly, and the meals and other aspects of daily life were well-structured, but even with that structure and routine, the servants had to be ready at a moment’s notice for any surprises that might pop up, for any change in schedule that might occur. The undercurrent of their jobs was to be prepared and ready for whatever may come.

            This sounds a little like what we read in verses 35 through 38 of our passage from Luke’s gospel this morning. Jesus exhorts those who are listening to

“Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks.”

Every biblical commentator that I have read in preparation to preach this passage has said the same thing about the phrase, “Be dressed for action.” While this sounds like the servants, the slaves who are waiting for their master should be in their daily uniforms – like the servants, the butler, the housekeeper, the housemaids and footmen, were always dressed in specific uniforms that spoke to their rank and type of service – what it really means, what it more literally means is “gird your loins.” In other words suit up and step up. You have to be ready. None of this is going to be easy. And if you’re prepared and ready, good. That’s what you are supposed to be. But Jesus goes on to finish these verses by saying,

“But know that if the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”

When I read these words in preparation for today, I thought, “Oh great Apocalyptic imagery. Another reminder that God will come like a thief in the night and if we’re not ready, if we’re not hyper vigilant and toeing the line than we’ll be crushed like a bug under a boot.”

And I must admit that a tremor of dread ran through me, not just because I would have to find some way to preach these words, but because they make me afraid. Fear is my first response because these sound like scary, frightening words to me. They heighten the dread, that foreboding that many of us have about the coming of God into our lives. It’s not so much good news as it is that guy on the corner wearing a sandwich board shouting,

“Beware! The world is coming to an end.”

Zach used to try and get me to play his video games with him. These games were the kind where the characters were in a constant state of battle – generally battles that involved shooting zombies – trying to outwit the creatures of the dead walking toward them and stay alive. I am lousy at these kinds of games, one because I cannot figure out how to make my character walk straight much less shoot straight. I’m usually the guy that’s stuck either looking up at the sky or down at the ground, or I’m hitting the button that makes my character jump, so I’m just jumping randomly while looking at the sky or the ground. I am also terrible at these games because when I do face a zombie, I get panicked and I can’t think fast enough. The zombies get me before I even know what’s happening.

Whenever I read passages of scripture that are apocalyptic, even in a small way, I feel that same sort of panic rise in me. I’m not prepared. I’ll never be prepared. And if the Son of Man is supposed to come like a thief in the night, that must mean bad things. That must mean that God is the great punisher, the great destroyer, so I should be afraid. Because I know that I have not lived a perfect or blameless life. I know that I make mistakes all the time. I know that my heart is not where it should be. I put too much stock in earthly things and earthly comforts and earthly safety, which really isn’t safety at all, and it seems like a terrible irony that this passage begins with Jesus’ words about not worrying, not being afraid, because that is exactly what I’m doing. I’m worrying and I’m afraid and AAAAAAHHH!!!

It seems incongruous that Jesus words about not worrying are spoken in the same breath with these words about the coming of the Master, the coming of the Son of Man like a thief in the night. But maybe it isn’t so strange and dissonant as we might think on first reading.

If you go back to the beginning of this chapter, Jesus is speaking to crowds of thousands of people. And these thousands of people are probably not in the upper echelons of that society. These are most likely the people on the bottom rung of society’s ladder. They are the peasants and the laborers and those who struggle everyday just to get by. And from the beginning Jesus tells them not to be afraid, not to be afraid of the terrors of this world, not to be afraid of those who would seek to harm them, but to trust him. Jesus is speaking about the kingdom of God versus the kingdoms of this world. And really since Pentecost, that is what the lectionary is having us consider as well. What does it mean to be the church? What does it mean to live in the kingdoms of this world and yet trust that God’s kingdom is also in our midst? And so last Sunday, we read about the rich fool, who thought that as long as he had enough security in his life, who believed that if he had enough storehouses and enough put by that he would be well, that he would have plenty of time to eat, drink, and be merry. But death came for him that very night. What good did his storehouses and worldly security do then?

And then Jesus tells those who were still listening to not worry. Look at the lilies of the field and the ravens. The flowers are clothed more gloriously than even Solomon and the ravens are always fed even though they have no storehouses or barns. Don’t worry, Jesus tells them, about striving for these things because that is what the kingdoms of the world do. That is what the nations do. They strive after the worldly goods. But strive instead for the kingdom of God. Do not fear, little flock, because it is God’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom, the real kingdom, the true kingdom. So sell what you own and help others. Don’t make purses for treasure that can be stolen or destroyed. Seek the treasure that goes beyond anything humans can make. Focus your heart on what God gives, what the kingdom of God creates. Focus on that treasure, because whatever treasure you focus on, that is where your heart will be also.

And then just when I start to breathe again, and feel some comfort in these words, Jesus speaks the words that we began with this morning. Be ready for action. Gird your loins. Be prepared for when the master comes.

But before I have another panic attack, let’s look at what Jesus says about the master coming one more time. Does he say that when the master comes he will punish those who are not waiting, who are not ready? Not in these verses. What he does say is that when the master comes, he will invite the servants, the slaves, the lowly ones, the least ones, to sit at the table. The master will fasten his belt and have those who serve him sit at the table and eat. And he will serve them. He. Will. Serve. Them.

Those are extraordinary words. That is a complete and utter reversal of what we expect to happen. The servants are not called to be prepared so they can serve the master as soon as he walks through the door. They are to be prepared so the master can serve them, so they can sit at the table and be fed. That would not have happened in Downtown Abbey or Upstairs, Downstairs. But that is what will happen in the kingdom of God. That is what the church is called to emulate, to do, to be – a place where the least of these are as welcome at the table as those who rank higher in the kingdoms of this world. So, the question to us is, where are our hearts? Are they focused on the treasures that we create and build and hold fast? Or are our hearts focused on the treasures of God’s kingdom? The treasures of love and justice and peace?

I think the crux of this passage, the crux of this chapter, and really the heart of the entire gospel is that we are called to trust God more than we fear the world. We are called to trust in God’s promises more than we trust in what we can provide and build and store up. We are called to trust in the love and grace and peace of God embodied in Jesus more than we trust in even the best and wisest of leaders. We are called to trust God more than we fear. So maybe God coming like a thief in the night is not a reason for us to be afraid, but a reason for us to be hopeful, a reason for us to be glad.

I read a poem this week that I believe speaks to this expectant hope. This is Thief by Andrew King.

 

 

 

Break in, O holy thief.

Break into our guarded home.
Defeat the locks we fasten
against your love.

We brick the gates against justice.
We slam the doors to loving.
Our window drapes are heavy and pulled
to block the light of your peace.

O thief, break into our fortress.
Come while we doze in complacency.
Come while we sleep in our negligence.
Come while our eyes are closed to the world
that so needs us to change behaviour.

Break in.
Break in, and bring the poor in with you.
Break in, and bring the stranger.
Break in, and bring the challenges we fear,
the ones we would rather ignore.

Break in, O thief, break open these hearts
that should have invited you
long ago.

 

For where our treasure is, there our hearts will be also. Where are our hearts? Let all of God’s children say, “Alleluia.”

Amen.