Chasing After the Wind (Proper 13C)

Chasing After the Wind
Homily delivered the Tenth Sunday of Pentecost (Proper 13; Year C RCL)
1 August 2010; 10:00 a.m. Said Eucharist
Congregation of the Good Shepherd  Beijing, China
Readings:  Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-23; Psalm 49:1-11; Colossians 3:1-11; Luke 12:13-21

God, take away our hearts of stone
 and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

In the musical play, The Fiddler on the Roof, the poor milkman Tevye sings “if I were a rich man,” expressing how much easier his life would be if he only had sufficient money.  When reminded that in the wisdom of his people, money is the world’s curse, he replies, “May the Lord smite me with it, and may I never recover.” 

Today’s Gospel reading should bother us.  If it doesn’t bother us, it means one of two things:  either we are irresponsible people oblivious to our obligations and careless about our futures, or we haven’t understood this parable at all.   The parable of the rich fool is introduced with a warning against greed and ends with a morale against those who “pile up treasures for themselves.”   All right, then, we shouldn’t be greedy; we shouldn’t be overly ostentatious.  But the Greek word used for greed here, pleonexia, means “desire for more.”  The parable seems to criticize anyone who desires a little financial security. It’s bothersome, especially read with today’s Old Testament lesson from the book of Qohelet or Ecclestiastes.  There a jaded old man condemns practically all human endeavor, whether frivolous and sinful or even serious and responsible, as “vanity of vanities.”  (I think the best translation is “totally pointless.”)  All such activities are “chasing after the wind.”

Is all human desiring wrong?

A supplicant comes to Jesus asking him as a respected rabbi to settle a dispute on inheritance.  The practice was that brothers divided up estates equally with the elder brother getting a double portion (Deut. 21:15-17; cf. m. Baba Batra 8.1-9.10).  Families expected brothers if possible to live nearby or together and keep family-held real property as a unit.  But if not, each brother had a right to his portion and the estate should be divided.  The man asks Jesus to tell his brother his obligation under religious law to share the inheritance with him. 

Jesus says, “Sir, who set me up as a judge or arbiter?”   Just as in the story of Mary and Martha we heard three weeks ago, Jesus declines to take sides in an argument brought to him.  Note to all who want to quote Jesus to make a point:  Jesus does not like to be used as a stick with which to beat opponents in arguments.

Instead, Jesus counsels against greed, against desiring more than we already have.   He sees the man’s fractiousness as a problem, even though the supplicant is probably only standing on his rights.  The man’s heart is wrong, and that is what Jesus addresses.  

Unlike the Buddha, Jesus doesn’t counsel against any desire, any attachment.  He condemns a desire for more.  He simply says that we should be thankful for what God in his mercy has given us.  He counsels acceptance, not detachment.

Rembrandt, The Rich Fool

He gives the parable to illustrate.  A wealthy farmer facing a bumper crop realizes he cannot possibly store all the produce about to be harvested.  So he makes elaborate plans to tear down the old barns and replace them with larger ones before the harvest.  He describes to himself how good things will be when he’s completed his plan: “Friend, you have many good things stored up for years to come.  So take it easy; eat, drink, and enjoy yourself.”  But God says to him, “You idiot!  This very night—before you can do any of this—your life will be required of you!  Now who’s going to get all that you have prepared?”  Luke, the narrator, adds,  “That is how it will be for anyone who piles up treasures for himself and is not rich with God.” 

Jesus has taken the commonplace of the fool versus God from a long tradition in Jewish wisdom literature, like Psalm 14:1:  “The fool says in his heart, there is no God.”    By calling the rich man in the parable a fool, God says that he is an atheist in practice—he has thought, felt, and acted for all intents and purposes as if he believed there were no God. 

To understand this, let’s put it in context of some other things Jesus said and did. 

In Matthew’s Gospel, he says, “Do not store up for yourself treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up treasures in heaven.  … For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also,  … Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear.  Is not life more than food? And the body more than clothing?” He points to birds and wildflowers as an example of how well God feeds and clothes his creatures, says that there is thus no need for striving for food and clothing, and then adds, “Your Heavenly Father knows all that you need” and he is good.  Thus, “work first for God’s kingdom and right way, and God will make sure you get what you need” (Matt. 6:19-33). 

Elsewhere, he describes what he means by “God’s kingdom”: we cannot enter it unless we become helpless like little children.  Poor people may get there before the rich; sinners, drunks, and traitors may get there before the pious religious.  In the kingdom, first will last and last will be first and you have to lose your life in order to find it.    God’s kingdom is not coming with observable signs, but is already at work on its own without us noticing it, like a seed that quietly sprouts in the night and grows we know not how.  God’s kingdom is already among us. 

He suggests in many, many places that the true way is not the path of a spiritual superman. God’s banquet is set for all people, not just for a few chosen ones.   “Being rich for God” or “storing up treasures in heaven” for Jesus is not another struggle, not a way of forcing ourselves to conform to God’s rules, not a way showing how good we are as compared to other people. 

He says, “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”  Other religious people of the day criticized him regularly for being too lax in his expectations of his followers.  And he regularly told his followers to rejoice, and had lots of parties with them.

He also says that the door into the kingdom is narrow and the way to life is tight fit.  “Go in at the narrow door; for the door is wide and the path is easy to leads to losing your soul.  Many people go in there and do not come out.  The door is narrow and the path is tight that leads to life.  At any given time, there are only few who can manage it.” (Matt. 713-14, paraphrased).  Jesus’ point is that there is no room there to take extra baggage.  If our hearts are set on other things, we simply will not be able to squeeze through.   

Make no mistake—this parable is an indictment of all who pursue material goods to the neglect of others.  It should make us uncomfortable if our heart of hearts tells us that what we want above all else—or even above many other things—is wealth. 

But when Jesus tells this parable about greed, he is not telling a story that applies only to the rich.  He is talking about any kind of desire that gets in the way of rooting our relationship with God in trust, thanksgiving, and acceptance.  He is talking about any orientation of the heart that imposes our own will between us and our creator.   He is talking about acting as if God were not taking care of us, were not a good and loving Parent, as if we thought that God did not exist.    Acting that way, pursuing anything with those assumptions, make life—well, in the words of Ecclesiastes—“totally pointless.”  It makes you a practical atheist.  It is very foolish. 

Our heart must be set on God.  The way to life, being rich with God, the narrow and tight path—all these describe a right relationship with God, and with it, a right relationship with ourselves and others.  In this right relationship, there is no room for illusion or fantasy.  There is no room for our imposing our wills. Acceptance and thanksgiving and an openness to more of the good that God gives is the right posture of any soul that would enter this path.  A desire for more, greed--whether it is of money, or security, or power, or beauty, perfect domesticity, or even of encores of spiritual high points—greed is baggage that simply cannot fit through the door. 

It’s all in the context.  At one point, Jesus asks the rich young man to sell his goods and give to the poor.  At another, when Judas criticizes a sinful woman’s extravagant gesture of anointing Jesus with precious ointment because she could have sold it and given the proceeds to the poor, Jesus defends her because she has done a beautiful thing.  He abandons his family and tells several of his followers to do likewise, but then on the cross gives the care of his aging mother to the disciple John.

Jesus here is not telling us here specifically to forgo any thought of modest retirement accounts or prudent savings.  Elsewhere he does tell us to be harmless as doves but smart as snakes.  He expects street smarts.  But he is blasting greed.  That’s what the listing of all the detailed planning for larger and larger barns, and his retirement plan of “relax, eat, drink, and be merry” is all about.  Jesus is not damning desire per se, but questioning desire for more.

Flannery O'Conner

In Flannery O’Conner’s troubling story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” a serial murderer called the Misfit abducts a family in a rural area of the southern United States.  The grandmother tries to talk him out of killing her by repeating tired banalities about prayer, the Church, and Jesus.  The Misfit answers:

“Jesus… thrown everything off balance.  If He did what he said, then it’s nothing for you to do but throw away everything and follow Him, and if He didn’t, then it’s nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him.  No pleasure but meanness.”

This Misift takes the cynicism of Ecclesiastes to a very sick logical conclusion.  O’Conner once wrote that “The story is a duel of sorts between the grandmother and her superficial beliefs and the Misfit’s more profoundly felt involvement with Christ’s action, which set the world off balance for him.”  O’Conner’s point is that there’s no use in saying you believe in Jesus or God unless that changes your life and affects your view of everything. “Redemption is meaningless unless there is a cause for it in the actual life we live. . . . I see from the standpoint of classical Christian orthodoxy.  This means that for me the meaning of life is centered in our redemption by Christ and what I see in the world I see in its relation to that.” 

Practical atheism is not an option.  We mustn’t tart up our greed and our desires to do things on our own and be in control as mere prudence or wise stewardship.  Our trust in God must show fruits in our life, in how we make our decisions, in how we use or time and resources.  Jesus does not call us all to be ascetics, but he does call us all to trust and love God, to be honest with ourselves and with God, and let this help us make all the many decisions we need to make in this life so that it not be totally pointless. 

May we answer the call. 

In the name of God,  Amen. 

God Already Knows (Proper 12C)

 

God Already Knows
Homily delivered the Ninth Sunday of Pentecost (Proper 12; Year C RCL)
25 July 2010; 10:00 a.m. Morning Prayer
Congregation of the Good Shepherd  Beijing, China
Readings: Genesis 18:20-32  Psalm 138; Colossians 2:6-15; Luke 10:25-37

God, take away our hearts of stone
 and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

When I was ten years old, I had my first schoolteacher who was a man.  I was in fifth grade.   Mr. Franklin, an athletic and handsome 20-something, always wore a short-sleeved white dress shirt and tie when he taught.  He had just finished teacher’s college.  He had a sharp wit, demanded a lot of us.  He wore dark sunglasses when he took his turn as playground monitor. My friend Jeff’s mom—in my small conservative town she was the rare Democrat—said that Mr. Franklin was part of the new direction of the whole country, with our young new president John Kennedy and his wife Jackie.  But Mr. Franklin was still unmarried.  Most girls in the class got crushes on him; we boys saw him as the kind of big brother we wish we had, manly but smart and not ashamed of either.  He was a new kind of teacher, one we were just then learning to call “cool.”

One day in November, the principal came into the classroom mid-morning and asked to have a word with him outside.  He returned, pale and visibly shaken.  He asked us to put our books away.  He said, “I have just been told that the President has been shot in Texas.  They have taken him to a hospital, but the radio isn’t saying how badly he is injured.  I think it would be a very good time for us to have a few minutes of silence for him, his family, and our country.”

The minutes that followed were surreal.  All of us students had known each other pretty much from kindergarten, but we knew each other only as roles:  as class brains or dummies, teacher’s pets or bad cases sent to the principal’s office, as playground and cafeteria pals or rivals.  We who went to the same churches together knew each other only in those same roles in a different setting. 

I had learned in Sunday School to pray free form—address God, say what you’re thankful for, and then say what you want God to do.   Remember to use “thee” and “thou” instead of “you” to show reverence.  Close “in the name of Jesus Christ” and say “amen.” 

I silently asked God to keep John F. Kennedy alive and then give him full recovery.  I opened my eyes and looked around me at the strangely silent classroom.

A couple kids looked bored and puzzled.  Some looked stunned.  But most were praying.  One girl fervently held her hands in a little church, looked up with wide eyes at the ceiling as if into heaven itself, and muttered something obviously memorized.  She crossed herself and prayed again.    Mr. Franklin sat at the head of the class, with one hand covering his face, as if to force his eyes shut with fingers and block out the whole evil world.  His lips moved silently.  

After an hour or so, Mr. Franklin left the classroom briefly and came back with word that the President was dead.  That evening, my father said that the President had been killed instantly when shot. 

I had always been taught that God heard and answered prayers.  From Sunday School and home, I thought that if we just had enough faith when we asked for something in prayer, God would give it to us.  

But not only had God not given us what we had prayed for so fervently, all those prayers seemed kind of silly because the President was already dead at the time we offered them.  

I went away from that experience with a very different, if less confident, view of prayer.  I also went away from it with a very changed view of my classmates and my teacher.  In those few minutes I had glimpsed them as people, in all their rich complexity and depth, much more complicated than the various roles they each played.

Today’s Old Testament reading has Abraham praying that the cities of the Dead Sea plain be spared a horrible fate.  He is trying to save his nephew Lot and his family, who live in Sodom.  He bargains with God:  “If I can find 50 good people there you won’t destroy the cities, right?” “So how about 20?”  “How about 10?”  He is a shameless haggler, and repeated uses Asian honorifics to flatter the ego the deity before him ("now don't be angry with this, but ...," "don't think your humble servant here is being presumptuous to say...," etc.)    In the end, not even 10 decent people can be found, but because of Abraham's haggling, God warns Lot and his family to flee before the sulfur and fire starts falling.  In a similar story in the Book of Exodus, Moses engages bargains with God to save the children of Israel from destruction (Exod. 32). 

In both stories, it sounds like God is an angry, petulant deity who needs to be argued with, to be reminded to do the right thing, to be merciful and true to his promises.  But this is a misreading. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, says this:

“… [T]he Bible puts before us … not a record of a God who is always triumphantly getting his way by doing miracles . . . , but [of] a God who gets his way by patiently struggling to make himself clear to human beings, to make his love real to them, especially when they seem not to want to know or to want to avoid him and retreat into their own fantasies about him. And typically, the Bible sometimes does this by a very bold method—by telling a certain kind of story from the human point of view, as if God needed to be persuaded to be faithful to his people. Someone like Abraham or Moses, someone who has good reason to know something about what God is really like, is faced with a crisis. Things are going badly; surely God is going to give up and blast people into oblivion. So Abraham and Moses argue with God until they have persuaded him to be merciful. These writers knew exactly what they were doing. They didn’t believe in a bad-tempered, capricious God who needed to be calmed down by sensible human beings. They knew that the most vivid way of expressing what they understood about God was to show Abraham and Moses appealing to the deepest and most true thing about God as they pray to him.” (Tokens of Trust: An Introduction to Christianity, p. 17)

The parable of the persistent friend at midnight in today’s Gospel reading provokes a similar misunderstanding about the nature of prayer amd of God.  Jesus uses the image of a bothersome friend who just won’t take no for an answer as an encouragement for us to persist in prayer (Luke 11:5-8).   Some think the parable likens God to the householder, and says that God cannot be bothered with us and our concerns.  But here, as in so many other places, we must remember that a parable usually tries to make one point of comparison, and is usually distorted when we try to turn it into an allegory with many points of comparison.   “Go ahead—bother God and keep bothering him,” says Jesus, not because God is like the sleepy householder annoyed at the disturbance, but because we need to persist in prayer, no matter how disappointed we might be with what we see as its “results.” 

Jesus adds another parable as if to correct any misunderstanding we might have from that first one: “If any of you have a child who asks him for a fish, will you give him a snake?  Or if he asks for an egg, you give him a scorpion?  If you, who aren’t all that perfect, know how to give your children what they need, how much more will your Heavenly Father know how to treat you?” (Luke 11:11-13)  God is love, and good, and not like the householder at midnight. 

When prayer doesn’t seem to deliver what we think it’s supposed to, we get disillusioned and maybe stop praying, or only go through the motions of prayer out of a sense of duty, but without any hope or faith that it matters.   But Jesus says persist like that friend at midnight.  And this is because God is good and loving, not grumpy and selfish.

 

There are many scriptures that say that if we ask God in faith, he will give us what we ask.  But this is a metaphor, a way of saying that God is on our side and will give us what we need, not that we will always get what we want..  Let’s remember:  Jesus’ own prayer in Gethsemane, “Let this cup of suffering pass from me,” was not granted.  The point here is that is that we persist in prayer, regardless of how things “turn out.” In the process we are changed and our will becomes closer to God’s.  We are able to say, with Jesus, “thy will, not mine, be done.”    Through prayer we gain acceptance of what we can’t change and strength for the truly intolerable things that we may happen to face. 

When Paul says “make your desires known to God,” he is consciously using an imperfect metaphor.  Paul understands perfectly well that God already knows whatever we might tell him in prayer.  When we pray, we aren’t “letting God know” anything that he doesn’t already know. 

Taking literally the image of asking God things we want in order to convince him to give them to us is really a kind of sick magical thinking.  The Almighty in this view begins to look somewhat like a wacky great uncle who, if we just call long distance at the right time and tell him what’s up, will send us that check we need in the mail.  Prayers in this view are almost like taskings put onto the desk of some overworked divine bureaucrat.  We need to flag them the right way so that our request goes to the top of the pile. 

As St. Augustine points out, God created space and time.  God in some ways is outside of space and time, in other ways inside and behind it all.  So it isn’t like we are going to convince God to behave in a way that he wasn’t going to anyway.  God simply is.  God simply acts.  Past, present, and future are all one from the viewpoint of God.   What appears to us as a cause, effect sequence of events to timeless God is seen all at once.

Changing God or God’s will is not what prayer to the Almighty is about.  The point is not that we let God know something he doesn’t know so this will affect him in the way we want.   The point is that we are the ones doing it, because of how this affects us. 

No matter whether a prayer of petition, of thanksgiving, of adoration, or as intercession for others, our prayers are not about changing God.  They are about changing us.   Our prayers are a way we voluntarily reveal ourselves to God, and participate in a relationship by telling him things he already knows but that we may not yet have realized.  We sometimes find that if we are honest about telling God our desires, that some of them can only be put before him as confessions of sin. 

Persistence in prayer is not just about asking. As we pray, we learn that we need not just prayers of petition, but also ones of thanksgiving, adoration, and intercession for others.

After the death of his wife Joy Davidman, C.S. Lewis was asked whether it was worth it—had any of the prayers offered on her behalf during her cancer changed anything.  He replied, “They changed me.”   I knew as a boy that those prayers that day were not silly, even though the way I understood prayer at the time made them look so.  I sensed, and still believe, that they were exactly what God wanted us to do. 

Discipline and persistence in prayer is key, but not because they work a fix with God.  It is because prayer changes us.  

I was raised in a tradition that used almost exclusively free-form prayers, and looked down on set or written prayers.  I found that if I tried to persist in prayer over time, I ended up using repeated phrases of my own, and these often were not particularly uplifting or insightful.  In the long haul, I have found that I need both free-form prayers from the heart, but also a good percentage of written prayers handed down us from those who have gone before, the “Our Father” foremost among them.  The Psalter and the other poetic passages of the Bible we know as the Canticles form a major part of my prayer life. 

I try to recite the liturgy of Morning and Evening Prayer every day, and have found that this creates a rhythm in my life that helps me grow closer to God and better serve those around me.   It makes me part of a great dialogue of prayer of the Christian Church that has been going on centuries.  But it takes time, at least 20 minutes in the morning and 10 in the evening.  In prayer, as in so many other human endeavors, you get what you put into it. 

I challenge all of us this week to pray daily, and to put some effort and thought into it.  All of us can revitalize our prayer life in some way, by following our own tradition or by learning from other Christians.  The important thing is to set the time aside, and go ahead and bother God, just like that annoying guy in the middle of the night bothered his friend.  Let us persist in prayer. 

In the name of God,  Amen. 

---

At the request of a parishioner after this homliy was delivered, I am here including  Daily Devotions for Individuals and Families from the U.S. 1979 Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church.  It  provides a shortened form of liturgical prayer for private devotions.   They follow the basic structure of the Daily Office of the Church (the Liturgy of the Hours, or Evening and Morning Prayer.)  --Fr. T.

In the Morning

From Psalm 51

Open my lips, O Lord, *
    and my mouth shall proclaim your praise.
Create in me a clean heart, O God, *
    and renew a right spirit within me.
Cast me not away from your presence *
    and take not your holy Spirit from me.
Give me the joy of your saving help again *
    and sustain me with your bountiful Spirit.
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit: *
    as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be for ever. Amen.
 
A Reading

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!
By his great mercy we have been born anew to a living hope
through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
1 Peter 1:3

A period of silence my follow.

A hymn or canticle may be used; the Apostles' Creed may be said.

Prayers may be offered for ourselves and others.

The Lord's Prayer

The Collect
Lord God, almighty and everlasting Father, you have brought
us in safety to this new day:  Preserve us with your mighty
power, that we may not fall into sin, nor be overcome by
adversity; and in all we do, direct us to the fulfilling of your
purpose; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.
 

At Noon

From Psalm 113

Give praise, you servants of the LORD; *
    praise the Name of the LORD.
Let the Name of the LORD be blessed, *
    from this time forth for evermore.
From the rising of the sun to its going down *
    let the Name of the LORD be praised.
The LORD is high above all nations, *
    and his glory above the heavens.

A Reading

O God, you will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are
fixed on you; for in returning and rest we shall be saved; in
quietness and trust shall be our strength.  Isaiah 26:3; 30:15

Prayers may be offered for ourselves and others.

The Lord's Prayer

The Collect
Blessed Savior, at this hour you hung upon the cross,
stretching out your loving arms:  Grant that all the peoples of
the earth may look to you and be saved; for your mercies'
sake.  Amen.

or this

Lord Jesus Christ, you said to your apostles, "Peace I give to
you; my own peace I leave with you:"  Regard not our sins,
but the faith of your Church, and give to us the peace and
unity of that heavenly City, where with the Father and the
Holy Spirit you live and reign, now and for ever.  Amen.
 
In the Early Evening

This devotion my be used before or after the evening meal.

O gracious light,
pure brightness of the everliving Father in heaven,
O Jesus Christ, holy and blessed!

Now as we come to the setting of the sun,
and our eyes behold the vesper light,
we sing your praised, O God:  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

You are worthy at all times to be praised by happy voices,
O Son of God, O Giver of Life,
and to be glorified through all the worlds.

A Reading
It is not ourselves that we proclaim; we proclaim Christ
Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your servants, for Jesus' sake.
For the same God who said, "Out of darkness let light
shine," has caused his light to shine within us, to give the
light of revelation -- the revelation of the glory of God in the
face of Jesus Christ.  2 Corinthians 4:5-6

Prayers may be offered for ourselves and others.

The Lord's Prayer

The Collect
Lord Jesus, stay with us, for evening is at hand and the day is
past; be our companion in the way, kindle our hearts, and
awaken hope, that we may know you as you are revealed in
Scripture and the breaking of bread.  Grant this for the sake
of your love.  Amen.

Neither Domestic not Dragon-tamer (Proper 11 C)

Neither Domestic nor Dragon-tamer
Homily delivered Eighth Sunday of Pentecost (Proper 11C)
18 July 2010; 10:00 a.m. Said Eucharist
Congregation of the Good Shepherd
Beijing, China
Readings: Genesis 18:1-10a; Psalm 15
Colossians 1:15-28;  Luke 10:38-42

God, take away our hearts of stone
 and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

As Jesus and his disciples went on their way, Jesus entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to what he was saying. But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me." But the Lord answered her, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her." (Luke 10:38-42)

I have a very vivid memory of what it was that first attracted me to the woman who was to become my wife.  We met in college taking a full-time survey of world literature class.  As you know, she is petite, attractive, very well spoken and well read, and has a great sense of humor.  We share many interests and ways of thinking, and quickly became good friends.  But it was not any of these that caught my attention in a way that made me start thinking about dating and possibly marrying her.  I was really struck by how much joy she brought to her hard-working, quiet competence.  I heard her say in a class discussion that she really actually sympathized with Martha rather than Mary in today’s Gospel.  At that moment, my heart was hers, though it took a while for me to realize it. 

Luke’s story about Mary and Martha touches raw nerves.  I can’t think of any other single passage of the Gospels that over the years I have heard so many complaints about, almost all from women.  “Why is Jesus tolerating that lazy sister Mary?”  “Why does he come down so hard on Martha, the only responsible adult in the whole story?”

The early and medieval Church took the story to contrast the ministry of action and service, seen in Martha, with the ministry of contemplation and study, seen in Mary.  An early legend says that later in her life, Martha went to the south of France, where she confronted a dragon that had been ravaging the country.  Unlike St. George, the patron saint of soldiers and England, Martha does not slay the dragon with a sword.  She charms it with her hospitality and the word of God so that it can be chained and controlled.  That is why in medieval representations of St. Martha, she holds a cross and stands over a dragon. 

Modern sociological and feminist approaches to this story base their approach in the social customs behind the story.  Martha is fulfilling a very traditional role endorsed by the religion and culture of the time.  Mary, on the other hand, appears to abandon what was a woman’s work and role by opting for religious study and discussion, seen as the domain of men.  Martha honors her duty and behaves decently; Mary somewhat shamelessly crosses a gender barrier.    

Some commentators say that Jesus here endorses the sister engaged in inappropriate activity—the one crossing gender boundaries—and chastens the conventional sister who is behaving decently.  He thus favors liberation and rejects conventional roles.   Others are less sanguine:  they say Jesus, though indeed endorsing broader roles for women, values only the actions, roles, and perspectives that were traditionally seen as male and thus devalues traditional female ones.  He thus implicitly buys into the oppression of women and rejects autonomous womanhood. 

I disagree. 

It is clear that in this story, Jesus legitimates a woman taking on the role of a man in the ordering of the early Christian community.  He does so, however, not because he thinks man’s roles and perspectives are better.  It is because, as seen in so many other passages of the Gospels, he believes that God’s kingdom is breaking into our lives, and as a result, there is no place for oppression, no place for bondage.  Roles based on boundaries are thus suspect.  Roles that oppress are part of the evil world the kingdom of God will replace. 

Again and again we see in the New Testament Jesus lives out what Saint Paul later puts into words and doctrine.  Here the theme in part seems to be, “There is no longer Jew or Gentile, neither free or slave, or male or female, for all are one in Christ Jesus (Gal. 3:28).  

But today’s story is not just about that.  It addresses the theological reason that these divisions don’t matter.  God didn't create us so that we could fill a role. God made us for love -- to be loved by God, to love God, and then to love one another and show this love in service. 

The contrast Luke sets up in this story between Martha and Mary is not about the roles each plays, but rather about how each reacts to them. 

Martha is the home-owner and mistress, with no apparent husband around.  (Her name in Aramaic, in fact, means mistress of the house, Mar’etha.)  So Mary is not the only woman stepping out of traditional roles. 

The contrast is also not between the active and the contemplative life.  Mary her sister sits at Jesus’ feet, totally lost in his words.  This is the language of discipleship.  This describes a focused student of the master’s words.  Buddhists would say that she is “in the moment,” or “fully present.” 

Martha, however, is “worried, distracted by her many tasks” in being hospitable to Jesus.  The point here is not her service, but rather the distraction it has caused her. 

Martha’s complaint is perfectly reasonable.  Mary as family also has an obligation of hospitality to Jesus.  If anything, Martha is a little too gentle.  She doesn’t confront her sister and say bluntly “Sis, hate to break in on this, but you are not carrying your weight here, so get with the program, and get to work.  Let’s talk with Jesus while we set the table.” Martha realizes that Mary is totally absorbed listening to Jesus. 

So she asks Jesus to intervene.  She is pretty confident that he is a fair-minded fellow who will remedy the situation with no hurt feelings or loss of face to anyone.
  
Jesus’ answer, while totally unexpected from Martha’s viewpoint, is similarly kind-hearted.  The double use of the name, “Martha, Martha,” is a clear sign of gentle chiding, not harsh criticism. 

“You are busy with many things,” he says.  He is sensitive to Martha’s plight—she has planned just too grand a dinner, in the great Middle Eastern tradition of mezze, and forgotten how complicated it was to do so many dishes. 

But then he surprises her.  “You only really need one thing.”  Jesus seems to be telling the hostess how to do her business.  “Stressed from trying to serve too many dishes?   Well then simplify and only serve me one.”   

“Simplicity.” You see, Jesus anticipated Martha Stewart by 2,000 years!

But that’s not the kind of simplification Jesus is really talking about, as becomes clear in his next phrase.  “Mary has chosen the best bit. I won’t take that away from her.”  It’s not the number of mezze dishes at issue here. 

The point is not that Martha chose the bad part, or even the less good part.  The point is that being lost in hearing God’s word is what we were made for, and what gives our service and love direction and meaning. 

Jesus knows that such moments of hearing God have come and will come for Martha.  But he is not going to break the moment of communion with God that Mary is experiencing for the sake of a few more dishes on the table, especially when they are for him to eat. 

Seen in this light, Martha’s complaint brings to mind two of Jesus’ parables.   In one, an older brother gets angry at the mercy shown by his father to a wayward younger brother and bitterly complains (Luke 15:12-38).  In another, a group of laborers who have worked a hard, long day almost riot when latecomers are paid the same wage (Matthew (20:1-16).  

The two parables make the point that we shouldn’t begrudge the grace given to others.  And so it is here.  Martha’s desire for simply fair division of labor has stepped onto holy ground.   Jesus won’t criticize her complaint, but he won’t grant her request, either, and ruin the moment for Mary. 

There are many, many ways of begrudging the grace given to others.  We can belittle the grace, and say it isn’t God at work, despite the clear good we see before our eyes.  We can point out differences between it and how we received grace, as if to say that God can work with others only in the way he worked with us.  We can point out that the recipient is unworthy, as if grace were something that comes from deserving.  Especially if we feel that we have been unfairly treated in the process, there are many, many ways of begrudging the grace given to others. 

One gets the sense from Jesus’ reply to Martha that of the two, Martha was the stronger and less “needy.”

Martha and Mary also show up in the Gospel of John.  There too Martha is seen as a take-charge kind of woman who speaks her mind.  When Lazarus dies, Mary stays inside mourning quietly, while it is Martha who goes out to confront Jesus about his delay in coming, that in her mind caused her brother’s death.  “You can still do something,” she says.  Jesus replies Lazarus will come forth from the dead.  Martha replies, in effect, “Yeah, yeah, we’ll all be raised from the dead one day.  That’s not very satisfying right now, is it?”  It is at this moment that Jesus tells her, “I am the resurrection and the life,” and then proceeds to bring Lazarus back from the dead.  In that story of glorious mystery, Martha affirms her faith in Jesus, well before the miracle (John 11:17-44).
 
It is clear that Martha and Jesus had the kind of relationship where she felt she could tell him exactly what she was thinking and feeling, and not be afraid.  Jesus clearly felt the same way.  Oh that we could all have such a relationship with Jesus, and freely tell him what is really on our hearts and minds!

In closing, God did not create us for roles.  In creating Martha, God did not intend her to be a mere domestic, nor a dragon-tamer.  He intended a loved and a loving child, at peace with herself and others. It is clear from Luke’s portrayal that Martha loved Jesus, loved others, and served, and served, and served.   It is clear from that story in John that Martha herself at times had moments like the one of Mary that, because of distraction, she wanted Jesus to interrupt.  

Those moments, where we sit at Jesus’ feet, listen hard, and truly hear are rare enough that we need to treasure them, and value when they happen to others.  Let us not begrudge the grace that others experience, even when it seems unfair, or appears to put us at a disadvantage.   Grace is unwarranted, unbidden love.  And love, after all, is what ties all of us, and all things, together.

In the name of Christ, Amen. 

A Loathsome Stranger's Mercy (Proper 10C; Good Samaritan)

Rembrandt, The Good Samaritan

  A  Loathsome Stranger’s Mercy
Homily delivered Seventh Sunday of Pentecost (Proper 10; Year C RCL)
11 July 2010; 10:00 a.m. Morning Prayer Said
Congregation of the Good Shepherd
Beijing, China
Readings: Amos 7:7-17 and Psalm 82 or Deuteronomy 30:9-14 and Psalm 25:1-9; Colossians 1:1-14; Luke 10:25-37

God, take away our hearts of stone
 and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

Finding a dead body lying out in the open is a very disturbing experience.  When my wife and I lived in West Africa several years ago, one Sunday morning we were running of the beach.  She got ahead of me, as she usually does when we’re running.  I heard her start screaming in terror and hurried to catch up with her.  There beside us, in sand at the high tide mark, was what used to be a human being, now bloated in the heat and already a meal for the crabs.   We ran to get the port authorities, who recovered the body, identified it as a fisherman who had fallen from his boat a week earlier about 25 miles up the coast, and returned it properly covered to his grieving family.  It was not the only corpse I saw in Africa.  Once, on a trip into Lagos Nigeria, I spotted a body lying along side the road.  My driver refused to stop to try to get help, since the area was notoriously known as the haunt of criminal gangs who often would rob anyone who has the misfortune of having to stop their car. 

Today’s Gospel reading is a parable that describes such a disturbing scene. 

A lawyer asks Jesus a question of Jewish Law: “Master, of all the 615 commandments in the Torah, 365 'Thou shalt not's' and 248 'Thou shalt's,” what is the essential that I need to do to please God? “ 

Luke says the lawyer is asking Jesus the question trying to test him (10:25).  Jesus is cautious, and asks the lawyer what he thinks the Law establishes as its core (10:26). 

The Lawyer replies in these words: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart” (Deut. 6:4) and then “Love your neighbor as yourself (Lev. 19:18). 

This epitome of the Law is probably Jesus’ own.  Matthew and Mark place it on the lips of Jesus himself as he replies to a lawyer or a scribe (Matt. 22:37-40; Mark 12:29-31).  The first of these commandments is part of the Shema, the basic creed of Judaism that every practicing Jewish male recites during morning prayer (Deut. 6:4); the second is a commandment found in Leviticus 19:18, part of dozens of rules enumerated in the  Leviticus Holiness Code (Lev. 17-26).

“Love God, then love your neighbor.”  Jesus agrees:  “That’s exactly right.  If you do that, you won’t have any problem pleasing God.” 

Then the story gets complicated.  The lawyer follows up with another question of law, seeking, as lawyers are wont to do, clear definitions of terms of law and the scope of their applicability.  “And who, rabbi, exactly is my neighbor?” 

Luke tells us that the lawyer asked the question in order to justify himself.  The point is clear.  The lawyer wants to know the exact scope of his obligation to love others so that he can have a clear idea of who it is that he is not obligated to love.  

Clearly other people had asked the same question about the Holiness Code’s commandment to love our neighbors.  The Holiness Code prescribes rules for God’s people living in God’s land, including special ones for God’s priests and their assistants in the Temple (Lev. 21-22).  It also gives rules regarding aliens living in the midst of God’s people, both how to treat them and what is expected of them.   It seems to distinguish between “Israelites" or “your people” from “aliens living in your midst” as well as “your neighbors.”  It is not completely obvious from the text whether “neighbors” includes only fellow Israelites, all resident aliens also, or only aliens who keep the rules.  One text, however, clearly also says “The alien who reside with you shall be to you as the citizens among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.” (Lev. 19:34).  

So the legal question “who is my neighbor” was a point of discussion, and different people gave different answers to it. In the inter-testamental Book of Sirach, we read, “give to the devout, but do not help the sinner” (Sir. 12:1-7).   Here the distinction between your fellow countryman and a neighbor is whether one keeps the Law or has the reputation of being religious.  In the Manual of Discipline in the Dead Sea Scrolls, we read, “… seek God with all your heart and all your soul, . . . love all the sons of light, and hate all the sons of darkness” (1QS 1.1-3, 9-10).  Here, even fellow Jews, if they do not accept the legal interpretations of the Dead Sea Scroll sect, are considered beyond the pale of being “neighbors.”   On the other hand, the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria two centuries before the common era wrote, “God asks ... [us] to love him . . . and serve him with . . .[our] whole soul” (Spec. Leg. 1.299-300) and says that this is a “duty to God as shown by piety and holiness, and a duty to men as shown by humanity and justice” (Spec. Leg. 2.63).   Neighbors here appear to be all fellow human beings. 

Jesus’ reply to the question is a story that turns many expectations of that time and place totally on their head.

 Dundee Parish Church (St. Mary's, Church of Scotland) 

Parable of the Good Samaritan

A man goes down the dangerous road from Jerusalem to Jericho.  Remember Jerusalem is 2700 feet above sea level while Jericho is 800 feet below it.  With only 17 miles between, it means there is a 200 foot drop every mile.  There are lots of switchbacks in the steep road where many nooks and crannies can easily hide crooks and baddies. 

He meets up with robbers, is beaten unconscious, stripped of all his clothing, and left for dead. 

But then by chance someone comes by.  It is a Priest, commuting between his home in Jericho and his intermittent work in the Temple in Jerusalem.  Surely a priest—a religious person and an example of doing the right thing—will help a fellow countryman who is almost dead, right?   But when he sees the man, he hurries to the other side of the road, and walks on. 

Then another religious leader, a temple assistant called a Levite, also comes along.   He too avoids what appears to be the naked corpse on the side of the road.  

Now we mustn’t think too ill of the Priest or the Levite.  The Law of Moses stipulated that Priests and Levites had to be ritually pure for their service in the Temple, and also clearly stated that any contact with a corpse contaminated and brought with it ritual impurity.  

It is probably just about at this point in the story that Jesus’ listeners realized that the fact that the man looked dead might in reality cause his actual death through lack of care, and all because of religious people scrupulously trying to follow the commandments of God. 

To be sure, the Law did provide over-ride clauses where saving someone’s life or even helping them save their ox from the mire took precedence over purity requirements.  But even here, such acts of mercy and human sympathy did not get rid of the pollution thus incurred. 

Like good storytellers in any culture, Jesus here follows the rule of three.  We often hear jokes about an Englishman, an Irishman, and a Scot, or other ones about a Rabbi, a Catholic Priest, and a Baptist Preacher.  Here is it a Priest, a Levite, and a…

Jesus’ audience knows it will be a normal resident of that part of the country, a Judean.  He won’t be constrained by the heavier purity concerns and he’ll save our poor victim, right? 

No.  The third traveler on his way is not a Judean.  It is a Samaritan.

Now to Jesus’ Jewish audience, having a Priest, a Levite, and a Samaritan being the three is like someone today telling story and having the three be the Pope, the Dalai Lama, and Usama bin Laden, or maybe Billy Graham, Mother Teresa, and the head of the Mafia.   

Samaritans were seen as contemptible half-breeds, heretics and blasphemers, allies with the foreign occupiers, and immoral.  They themselves were considered by Jews to be ritually unclean and contaminating.   The poor Jewish man who is about to die himself will be ritually polluted by accepting anything from the Samaritan.  But at this point, he isn’t particular about who he can accept help from.  Better unclean and alive and than unclean because you’re dead. 

When this Samaritan sees the wounded man, he stops, is moved to mercy, takes good care of him, and even provides for him as if he were a family member.  

Note that the Samaritans also had their own version of the Torah, and the same basic rules about corpses were found there.  But this Samaritan risks contamination by his own lights and helps the half-dead person on the side of the road. 

Jesus closes his story answering the Lawyer’s question “who is my neighbor?” by saying, “Who do you think acted like a neighbor to that unfortunate man?”

The lawyer can’t even bring himself to say, “The Samaritan.”  He replies abashedly, “the one who showed him compassion.” 

“Go and do likewise.  Be like that Samaritan,” is Jesus’ reply. 

This answer by Jesus places him squarely on one side of a major division within the Biblical tradition. 

Walther Bruggemann, in his magisterial Theology of the Old Testament, points out that throughout the Hebrew scriptures, one finds two great thematic threads. On the one side, there is the striving for purity and ritual holiness, for being special and set aside for God’s service.  “You shall be holy for I am holy,” we read in Leviticus, and there follows hundreds of detailed rules setting boundaries and defining categories to help achieve holiness.  On the other side there is striving for justice, for treating people, especially the marginalized, decently and fairly. 

The two themes often seem in opposition.  The priests and the Law tend to talk a lot about purity and holiness.  The prophets tend to talk about dealing with others justly, especially those most in need.  For Samuel, Amos, Isaiah, Micah and others God says things like:  “I expect obedience, not sacrifice.” “I hate your sacrifices because you mistreat the widow and the orphan.”    “All I really ask of you is to treat the poor fairly, and to walk humbly with me.”  For the priests and teachers of halachic law, however, God say things like, “You will be Holy for I am Holy, says the Lord.”  “You shall not pollute the land with impurity, or I will destroy you.”  “You shall drive out pollution from among your midst and separate yourself from uncleanness.” 

Bruggemann says that the two traditions are both important and mutually corrective. The boundaries established by the Law are what define and preserve the People of God, and allow ethical monotheism to flourish.  But if holiness is not tempered with the call for social justice, it becomes empty ritual, a mode of oppression, and dies.  On the other hand, calls for social justice in the absence of an authentic call to holiness rapidly degenerate into the most obvious self-serving form of interest-group politics.  That’s why it’s love God first, and then love one’s neighbor.  

It is very important to note that in the Gospels, whenever social justice is placed in conflict with ritual purity and Jesus is asked to decide between them, in every single case he opts for social justice.  For him, justice trumps purity and holiness in this sense every time.  

It has to do with his understanding of God as the God of everyone, not just of the Jewish nation, or righteous people.  “God makes the sun shine and the rain fall on both the righteous and the wicked,” he says (Matt. 5:45).  “You have heard it said, ‘You shall love your neighbors and hate your enemies, but I say, love your enemies’,” he says (Matt. 5:43). Thus his answer about “who is my neighbor?”  

Jesus sees that the Lawyer’s question has framed the world wrong.  The commandments to love God and to love neighbor are, above all else, commandments to love. When the lawyer tries to interpret them by asking in essence “and who exactly is it that I don’t have to love,” Jesus throws a parable at him.  The intent is to shake his world view.  Like a Zen koan, the parable is meant to shock the lawyer into a new way of feeling and perceiving. 

Professor Klyne Snodgrass in his recently published master work on the parables Stories with Intent says this:  “This parable is evidence of what is obvious elsewhere:  Jesus will not allow boundaries to be set so that people may feel they have completed their obligation to God.  Love does not have a boundary where we can say we have loved enough, nor does it permit us to choose those we will love, those who are ‘our kind.’ With this parable, Jesus in effect says, ‘You should know already from Lev. 19:34 that the love commandment extends to the stranger (or traveler) in your midst.’’” 

Love knows no boundaries, and, in the words of St. Paul, “love never ends.” 

All of us have our ways, like the lawyer, of seeking to justify ourselves and say to the God who calls us to love, “Enough, already!”  We all too often use boundaries as a means to do this, whether national, ethnic, political, gender, or even what we consider to be moral boundaries. 

We do this because it is easy.  It is, in fact, too easy, since we know that we as creatures live and die by boundaries.  We need definitions and limits, or our lives are chaotic and unordered.  Boundaries are generally good, and something we all need.   And this is the case whether we are talking moral boundaries, legal boundaries, or personal space and autonomy boundaries.  We need them because without them we are messes. 

But we must never let boundaries become a strait-jacket that makes us unable to reach out our arms in love to those in need.  

Good fences may indeed help make good neighbors, but not if we do not chat across the fences, and as needed reach over them. 

I challenge each of us this week to look at ourselves.  Take 10 or 15 minutes during your prayer time or meditation time, or even exercise time, and ask these questions:  1) Where am I transgressing boundaries with resulting harm to myself or others? 2) Where am I using boundaries as an excuse to not do the right thing?

Once you have some answers, then look again at this story. 

Remember that lawyer and his self-justifying question.  And then really think about the story of that loathsome stranger doing kindness to a fellow human being, no matter how different, no matter how alien.

And go and do likewise. 

In the name of God,  Amen.