10th Sunday after Pentecost --- 28 July 2013

He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, "Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples."

• Although there is no record of John teaching his disciples how to pray, the idea makes sense. Just about every faith leader has disciples who which to imitate him or her in how they live and in how they pray. The odd thing here is that there is no note of when or where this happened with Jesus. It's simply remembered as a “certain place.” Nor is this described as unusual, which makes us think that this was typical.
• Since we have such a wonderful explanation of the Lord's Prayer in the Small Catechism, I'm not going to try to reinvent the wheel and talk about that. I'm going to refer you all to your own copies of the Small Catechism to see what was said there.
• Jesus' own lesson on prayer to his disciples begins with “He said to them, "When you pray, say...”, but it might be a way to pray rather than a magic formula for prayer. As you can see, our recited version bears only a passing resemblance to the original versions in the Gospels, and the three Gospels all differ in the wording.
• When we pray together out loud, we use the same words for the sake of “good order.” It is more orderly, and we could still use any language or translation... if we were willing to tolerate a little chaos in our service. When we pray in private, the Lord's prayer serves as a model of how to pray. Even if we are alone, the prayer is always plural and quite intimate. It's always Our Father... Vater Unser... Pater Noster... Padre nuestro... Otce nas. To call God “Father” or in Jesus' own language “Abba” is extremely familiar and intimate, and that is how we are to call on our God! Take a look at the example shown us in the reading from Genesis. Abraham relates to God in a way many of us might find quite brave and perhaps a bit too intimate for some.
• The short parables and examples that follow in Luke's Gospel tell us more about this intimacy and trust. The story of the persistent man asking his neighbour for three loaves of bread and the neighbour finally... grudgingly... with great annoyance... gives his friend the bread if only to shut him up, carries the lesson of “This is how you are, but not how your Father is!”
• To go further, Jesus uses examples from the lives of all his listeners to illustrate the goodness of God. “Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion?” We all know the difference between a snake and a fish. The contrast is made even more out of the ordinary when we consider that scorpions in that part of the world are black and eggs are just as light coloured as there are here.
• Then Jesus says “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!"
• This is where we have to think this through. Surely we all pray for our needs and the needs of those we love. But do we consider our need for the Holy Spirit? How would the Spirit be involved in all this?
• The Holy Spirit is always involved in our prayers, even to the point of praying within us when we don't know how to pray, as the apostle Paul writes in his letter to the Romans.
• This reference to the Holy Spirit takes us beyond prayers of petition, that is, prayers that ask, to the true nature of prayer, which is relationship with our Father. Saying God will give what is good because of his loving-Fatherly relationship with us is an example of God's desire to be in a close relationship with us.
• The ultimate expression of this is in nothing less than the life of Jesus on this earth. Ask yourself this: Would God have sent God's Son to live among us and then sent God's Spirit to remain with us every day if God wanted to keep us at arm's length?
• No, Jesus came to earth to free us from the tyranny of sin and came among us as one of us to redeem us and to be in a close relationship with us. As the Word-made-flesh, he remains one of us even as he is united to his Father. In this, his Father is our Father as well.
• Prayer is as simple as any words and as deep as the Divine. It is the love of God that makes it both simple and deep. It is the love of God that not only permits to call God “Father” but actually prefers that.
  
  
  
  
  {At this point, I told the congregation that since I was going on holiday for three weeks, I wanted to hear what they had to say about the Lord's Prayer. A few people spoke up with tremendous insights and wonderful stories about prayer and praying. We all ended by saying the Lord's Prayer together... in whatever language each person wished.}

He said to them, "When you pray, say:

Our Father, who art in heaven,

hallowed be thy name,

thy kingdom come, thy will be done,

on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread;

and forgive us our trespasses,

as we forgive those who trespass

against us;

and lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from evil.

For thine is the kingdom, and the power,

and the glory, forever and ever. Amen

9th Sunday after Pentecost ---- 21 July 2013

there is need of only one thing.

• What would you do if you answered your front door and found Jesus Christ on your doorstep? Would you spend the next hour or two preparing a wonderful meal while he waited in the living room? Or would you listen to him and enjoy being in his presence?
• With this in mind, let's take a fresh look at the Gospel story of Martha and Mary. The two sisters have invited Jesus to their home. I know we all assume it's for dinner, yet the text doesn't say that. But since food is part of hospitality, let's assume the visit includes a meal.
• Mary sits at Jesus' feet, listening – the proper place and the proper attitude of a disciple. Martha on the other hand, is busy with what she considers the duties of hospitality. Eventually Martha gets to the end of her rope. She cuts loose and asks Jesus to tell Mary to help her. Jesus tells her Mary will not be deprived of “the better part” and that she is “worried and distracted.” “Distracted” is the key word here. Martha has lost sight of what is truly important. She even goes so far as to attempt to recruit Jesus into her squabble with her sister. This is a very common and very human thing to do. It's called “triangulation” and it describes a process by which one of the parties in an argument drags a third person in to support their position. Mary goes beyond that and even accuses Jesus of not caring! ("Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself?”)
• Now Martha is a good and conscientious homemaker who has busied herself with the doings of hospitality. She has forgotten that the first rule of hospitality is this: pay attention to your guest. Martha has been too busy cleaning, cooking, even complaining about her sister, and has not been listening to Jesus. Mary -who looks like a lazy lump to some people- has been attentive to Jesus, despite Martha's complaining. Mary's attention was on Jesus; Martha's was on the chores. Yes, the chores need to be done, but while the guest is there, true hospitality is to pay attention to them.
• This verse has been used to compare prayer and action, often by people who want the church to stick to “spiritual things” rather than get involved in issues of social action. There have been times when the story was used to try to prove the superiority of monastic life over the normal life people lead. In truth, neither of these points are being made.
• The point being made has more to do with discipleship than how to make a person welcome in your home. Discipleship leads to imitation, so discipleship begins with listening and watching. Mary is the example of discipleship in this story. She has taken attention to Jesus as her priority. Martha is distracted. The original language of Luke's Gospel uses a word that implies being pulled or dragged in different directions. So Jesus gently chides her for her distraction.

• Note that Jesus does not criticize Martha for doing what she does. He never says she has done something wrong, just that she is not doing the one thing necessary.
• We all know that there are things that need to be done each day and things that need to be done whenever the church gathers. We all know that our congregations could not get along without the “Marthas” among us. I hope we are sufficiently grateful for these people and for all they do. If there are Marthas, are there Marys? I don't think any congregation could get along without the Marys among them either.
• The same goes for our personal lives and our relationship with God. We can get too busy, even doing mission, to sit and listen. Believe it or not, sitting and listening can be a harder thing than being busy. Discipleship with its sitting and listening requires different values and priorities. We can no longer measure our worth simply by what we do. (If there is a signature sin of North American society, this is it.) When we listen and really hear what Jesus is saying to us, the Word will motivate us to action some way or another. The one thing needed then is not being busy about many, many things; that can be a way of covering up emptiness. The one thing needed is to listen to the One who speaks to our hearts. That will lead to action and mission, like dawn leads to day.
• If Jesus comes to our front door, we'd need to ask ourselves why he's there. If he's come to try our butter tarts or apple crisp, by all means, roll out the best ones. If he's come to spend time with us, we might first offer tea or coffee, and then sit down and really listen.

8th Sunday after Pentecost -- 14 July, 2013

(After about a week at the Lutheran-Anglican Joint Assembly, it was my turn to preach again.)

But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?"

• Now we all know this story – inside and out. Since the story is so well-known, it can be hard to preach on. On the other hand, since it is so well-known, the necessity of preaching on it is that much greater. Well-known stories are often reduced to silence since “everybody knows them” and everybody knows what they mean. On the other hand, they are so often repeated and so well known because they are just so important.
• So it is with the story of the so-called Good Samaritan, the hated outsider who goes out of his way to take care of a person who might have crossed the street to avoid meeting him under other circumstances.
• If this were a simple morality fable, it would be the priest or the Levite or the traveller who stops to help a beat-up Samaritan. So “Go and do likewise”, right? One good reading of this parable proves that this is NOT the case. If we try to moralize this tale, we are doing violence to the story and minimizing it's effect on ourselves.
• The lawyer in the story is an expert in the Law of Moses, not a barrister or attorney. He may have been trying to trap Jesus in asking what he must do to get right with God, to earn eternal life. The man said “inherit” but the meaning is the same: What exactly do I have to do to be in the front of the line when the vouchers for eternal life are given out? Jesus answers and in a sense, turns the question on it's head. “You're a student of the Law and you don't know? You tell me!” When he does, Jesus approves of his answer.
• That should've settled it, but wait! There's more!But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" No bumpkin preacher from backwater Galilee is going to put one over on him. So he asks the further question. The answer comes in the form of a parable which is often misinterpreted and misunderstood.
• Here's the problem: we tend to think like this “lawyer.” We often think we need to scan the society around us to see who will count as our neighbour. The parable of the so-called Good Samaritan confronts this. It is not a morality tale or simply an example fable; it is a parable of the Kingdom of God, and one that turns all our usual thinking on it's ear. The Samaritan is not only the unexpected one; he is the unwanted one, the one by whom the parable's hearers would not want to be loved. Notice that the lawyer cannot even acknowledge the presence of the Samaritan in the parable, even though he admits that the Samaritan - "The one who showed him mercy." - was neighbour to the victimized man. The parable of the “Good Samaritan” makes more Gospel sense if we understand that Samaritans were never considered “good' by most of Jesus' listeners.
• In his parable, Jesus says that figuring out just who is 'neighbour' is less important than making sure that we ourselves act as a neighbour to everyone we meet. By matching his story to his hearers, he is also saying that they (and we) are to become “Samaritans.” Not turning into people from Samaria, but possibly becoming what we have once despised. So much is turned inside-out and upside-down. The old boundaries cannot hold. We cannot decide who our neighbour will be based on religion, nationality, age, mutual interest, or any other category because we can rarely choose our neighbour!
• This can be painful and upsetting. It may involve dealing with people we think are unworthy of our attention because they're the wrong sort of people. That's how it is with grace. The old categories no longer hold, especially in light of the Kingdom of God and of grace.
• Following the Great Commandments still has to be our way of life as disciples of Jesus Christ. They are linked, coupled, and as disciples we really cannot do one without the other. Being “right” with God is not about what we think in our heads about God or the knowledge we have of all the intricacies of theological conversation. Being right with God is loving God with all we’ve got and loving our neighbour as ourselves.
• So this delightful parable – the basis of so many good deeds – is really quite challenging and, in a way, very subversive. Just like all the rest of the words of the Kingdom.

Sixth Sunday after Pentecost 30 June 2013

Jesus said to him, "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head."

• Luke's Gospel outlines three small glimpses of Jesus' attitude about those who would be his disciples. These are among the “hard sayings” in the Gospels, those sayings that are hard to understand and even hard to hear.
• Sayings like "Let the dead bury their own dead” and "No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God." are really hard to hear. Often they make us think, question ourselves, and even wonder if they are the Good News. We can dismiss them or refuse to see them, but we cannot deny that they are there and that we are often confronted with them. Reinterpreting them to get us “off the hook” does them a disservice as well.
• They are examples of what is referred to as the cost of discipleship. That would be a good place to start. I'd like to tell you a few stories regarding discipleship, to teach and maybe make you laugh and think a bit since it is a holiday weekend.
• The first story develops around my wife's old boss. This fellow owned the travel agency Beth worked for and in conversation one day, he told Beth how easy Christians had it. He was Jewish and fairly strict in his observance... except when it came to bacon-lettuce-and-tomato sandwiches. He said something like “You Christians have your salvation handed to you free. We Jews have to work for ours.” I might argue with him on some of his theology, but I can't argue with his view of grace.
• The second story is longer, so I'll cut it down somewhat. I've told you a little of what life was for me in my monastic days. I've talked about the farm work, but that was only a part of one year. Depending on our duties, we rose between 5:30 and 6:00 in the morning, had morning prayer in common most days, ate breakfast, and were at work or on class by 8:00. Many places had mid-day prayer or worship at noon, but some had Holy Communion late in the afternoon. Dinner and evening prayer followed. Meals were usually simple and sometimes we'd cook for ourselves, but not always. We shared three or four cars among 20-25 men. We didn't always have much money; In seminary, I received the princely sum of $23.50 a month for things besides health care and clothing. Of course, we were celibate and that can get quite lonely.
• In another case, a friend of mine retired from the Lutheran ministry and became an Orthodox priest. He voluntarily keeps the “Black Fast” over half the year, which means no meat, no fish, no eggs, no dairy or oil.
• Enough ancient history. As you can see, there are quite a few ways to practise discipleship. “Discipleship” is always linked to “discipline”; in fact, the words have the same root. That leads us to the question: how do we as Lutherans in this day and age practise discipleship?
• Do we let the dead bury the dead? Do we have no place to lay our heads? Do we never look back on we put hand to plow? Is there something distinctive about how we are called to follow Jesus?
• There is, and it is something we share with all other Christians. The genius of the Lutheran understanding of the Christian faith is the emphasis on grace and -believe it or not- flexibility. Add to that the idea that we find our holiness and our holy calling in our daily lives. This doesn't downplay the importance of sacrifice or of callings to particular service like the pastorate or other ministries. Nor does it deny that God can work in particular ways in each of our lives. It just upholds the value and holiness of the ordinary. Since we are saved by grace through faith, our role in the world becomes that of rejoicing in what God has given and proclaiming that salvation in our words and our actions.
• We are disciples and we know the cost in living our lives as they are. We cannot escape the cost, and in fact, we embrace it. What we've been given is worth the cost. We know the cost in following the one who has said to us “Follow me.” That following has led us right back to where were are and everything ordinary has a new meaning and value in the new, clear light of salvation.
• We're still getting used to this idea of salvation. We fail and are forgiven. We remain disciples, learning the discipline of the kingdom of God, whether we are worthy of it or not. The sayings from today's Gospel reading remind us that following Jesus is not always easy and discipleship is not all sweetness and light. There are demands; there is a cost and it is collected daily.
• The cost is only our whole lives. And considering what we've received and what we are called to, it's worth it. What we're called to is nothing less that to reflect and share the life we've been given in Christ, sharing in word and action. With that in mind, I'll close with this short quote from Meredith Gould I found recently about our discipleship in an age of instant communication:

Christ has no online presence but yours,

No blog, no Facebook page but yours,

Yours are the tweets

through which love touches this world,

Yours are the posts

through which the Gospel is shared,

Yours are the updates

through which hope is revealed.

Christ has no online presence but yours,

No blog, no Facebook presence but yours.

(Meredith Gould, the Social Media Gospel)

Fifth Sunday after Pentecost 23 June 2013

(Late, I know.)

The man from whom the demons had gone begged that he might be with him; but Jesus sent him away, saying, “Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you."

• I think we'd all admit that this is a strange story. Possession by demons is not something we encounter everyday and I think we're all happy of that.
• The closest I've come to a story like that was my time in social work before I returned to the ministry. I had at least one case that might remind anyone of the Gerasene man possessed by demons. In that case, a young boy attacked his mother and his siblings with a hammer and later, with a hatchet. In self-defence, his mother locked him in the basement and when we arrived, he was beating his way through the door with the hammer. I had to disarm him and we waited for the police to arrive to restrain him. The outcome of the case involved police intervention, handcuffs, hospitalization, and serious medication. Read Luke's account again and you'll see that some of these things were tried by the man's neighbours.
• This was a case of mental illness, not demonic possession, although to be honest, from the Biblical point of view, it would be hard to tell the difference. That young boy was filled with rage and had other problems as well. Years ago, he might have been thrown out of the town or had some sort of religious ritual done to chase his demons. These days, he'd be doped to the gills so he could function appropriately and if nothing else worked, warehoused in an institution.
• All the characters involved here are filled with something. The boy was filled with rage. The man in the Gospel passage was filled with demons. (“Legion” is a name, a description, and a number. The name “Legion” implies many and a Roman Legion was about 5000 to 6000 soldiers.) Jesus was filled with compassion as he has been in the past few week's readings. They're all filled.
• But filled with what? Did the possessed man say “Golly, thanks, Jesus! No I can go back to my old life!” No, the formerly possessed man wanted to follow Jesus on his mission trip. He was no longer filled with demons, but was filled with gratitude and with a desire to follow Jesus. But Jesus sent him home, healed and whole and itching to tell everyone about what had happened.
• The people of the region asked Jesus to leave them. The Gerasenes were frightened by what they saw. Maybe it was the power that Jesus showed. Maybe it was the fact that their scapegoat was no longer their scapegoat. Maybe they were afraid of what Jesus' presence might mean to them. Maybe they were upset about the loss of a herd of swine. They were filled with fear and preferred the fear to whatever it was Jesus could bring. It is possible that they were filled with themselves. The man living in the tombs could keep the demons out of their homes, like a chunk of watermelon thrown aside at a picnic to keep the bees happy and “over there.” They might be able to keep God at arm's length... until God was needed. Could it be that they were satisfied just as they were? It is one possibility.
• So what are we filled with? There's no one here screaming or living in the graveyard. At least, not that I can see. On the other hand, there's no one here preparing a mission trip to follow Jesus into the wild places of the world to preach the Gospel. There a good chance that all of us here – including your preacher – are where we wish to be, in a nice place and fairly comfortable. People in that situation sometimes only call on God when something is wrong or needed. They might prefer to be left alone, untroubled by pain or passion from either Heaven or Hell.
• Well, sisters and brothers, that's not how Jesus works. The Good News here is that Jesus is compassionate to all who suffer. In this portion of Luke, Jesus even shows compassion for the demons he casts out of the man, sending them into the swine. (To Jewish people, pigs are the epitome of unclean animals. No great loss to them then.) The Good News is also found in the mission of the freed man. He is to spread the word of the goodness of God in his own district; discipleship can take place anywhere! The local folk might not have accepted Jesus, but he left a messenger of the Good News to keep reminding them and to keep proclaiming the Gospel.
• Where there's Good News, there's always a challenge as well. Our challenge here is to realize that we are NOT sufficient to ourselves, that we are powerless to free ourselves from what holds us in bondage, whether it is sin, sinful attitudes, unredeemed values, whatever. We are also challenged to accept the changes Jesus' presence in our lives confronts us with. With Jesus around, there is no more “business-as-usual” and that can be a good thing. Lastly, we are challenged be empty of our demons, our lethargy, our indifference our selves, and be filled with grace to do as Jesus asks: "Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.”
• Many of you here have seen the face of the devil in many, many ways. We've all experienced trouble that we needed help with. The final bit of the Good News for us today is this: despite all we've been through, Jesus remains with us and Jesus only empties us in order to full us.