Pray always. Do not lose heart.

Proper 24/C October 17, 2010
Jeremiah 31:27-34
Ps. 119: 97-104
2 Timothy 3:14-4:5
Luke 18:1-8

We’ve been with Jeremiah a long time, now, hearing him tell us how God is plucking, up, breaking down, overthrowing, destroying – and even bringing evil (how can God bring evil?. The people of Israel have been in a tough place with God, and even the moments where Jeremiah have brought them a word of hope have been difficult. Last week we heard about how God wanted them to put down roots in Babylon, and to care for even that place of their hated captivity. By the waters of Babylon, where we sat down and wept?

We who know something about dislocation can appreciate Jeremiah: we who have lived in houses that have been foreclosed, forced to move when we didn’t want to – we who left our families and loved ones far behind and far away – we who long to be home, where home is someplace other than here?

In times like this, what does Jesus tell us? To pray always, and not to lose heart.

For a few years I was a Chaplain in a nursing home. A lay pastoral care giver worked with me, and she was a fervent, evangelical, pentecostal and born-again pray-er. She believed that if she laid hands on someone, the Holy Spirit would heal them. Like the persistent widow, she believed that if she asked God for something -- in her case, to heal someone -- God would act as instructed.

That did not always work so well at Castle Rest. Those disturbed by Alzheimer's continued to roam the halls, restless and inappropriate. Those succumbing to cancer continued to decline. People continued to be angry that they had to live there, or were poor, or that the staff did not attend to their needs on time. And every week our recreation therapist gave us a list of residents who had not survived the week. I think my friend prayed always, but I think she did lose heart, sometimes.

Prayer as a list of things God is supposed to do for us does make me uncomfortable. We know all too well – and reading Jeremiah these past weeks confirms it – that God’s plans for us don’t always coincide with our idea of a happy life. Yet I do think prayer has something to do with our passionate desire to return that which we perceive as out of whack to a state of blessed equilibrium. I may make light of my friend's fervent prayers, but she knew that those suffering from pain or confusion were not living the lives God
created them to live. She knew God heard their -- and her -- daily and nightly cries, and that surely God felt their pain, too. "Will God delay long in helping them?" When Jesus said that, he was filled with confidence; when we say that, we are more likely filled with anxiety and uncertainty.

Prayer, Jesus says in this parable, is about justice. God will quickly grant justice to those deserving it. "... yet," to quote an old hymn, "saints their watch are keeping, their cry goes up, 'How long?'" What is taking God so long?

To get a different reading here, let us turn this parable around. Picture the widow not as the downtrodden of humanity, but -- as God. We are the unjust judges, to whom God, as the ceaselessly begging widow, asks for her own just deserts. If we will act justly for no other reason, perhaps we will act justly just to get God off our backs.

This reading is not so different from the way the prophet Jeremiah has been portraying God. For example, in today's reading, he speaks of the old covenant with Moses, made when God brought the people out of Egypt. God's love was like that of a husband for a wife, Jeremiah says, and yet the faithless people broke the covenant anyway. God doesn't want any more rules like that, Jeremiah says. God wants us to love God and our neighbors from our hearts, from the deepest essence of who we are, from that place in ourselves where we most clearly reflect the image of God.

God, like the faithful husband, or the really annoying widow, never gives up. God wants justice, and God wants us to act justly, on behalf of "his chosen ones who cry to him day and night." That is prayer: persistence and patience, in the cause of justice.

And with whom does God stand in the cause of justice? This is the cast of characters in every story in the gospel: God stands with the least, the last, the lost, and the littlest. God stands with us when we are at our weakest. For it is in the welfare of the least among us, in the shalom of the people we least expect, in the justice for those who are strangers to us, that we will find the answer to all our prayers.

Jesus said, Pray always, and do not lose heart. For what do you pray today?

For what justice in your life, or in the world, do you need to hear Jesus say again to you, do not lose heart?

Taking our mustard seeds with us

Proper 22 C October 3, 2010

Lamentations 1:1-6; Psalm 137
2 Timothy 1:1-14 ; Luke 17:5-10

We all know some smug Christians. You know, those, “I have faith – and it’s a heck of a lot bigger than a mustard seed!” They imply to us, “What’s wrong with you?” They love passages like this one from the Gospel of Luke, this extolling of a muscular and over-the-top discipleship.

Doesn’t it just wear you out sometimes? Especially at those times when things are not going as you hoped, or expected? Is the opposite of faith, as these folks define it, really doubt, or weakness? Or is the opposite of faith certainty? Think of using this line, when you meet someone who seems to have it spiritually all together:Certainty is the belief that I’m smarter today than I will be tomorrow.

Oh, is it really? Are you really so sure that nothing new will come your way, that you will learn nothing, be in no way tested by the course of events, find no new and startling joy or unexpected delight that will turn your world upside down? Is there really nothing left to learn?

The people of Israel, dragged into a hated exile in Babylon certainly did not feel certainty – unless it was certainty that they were miserable. Sitting by those strange waters in a place that looked nothing like home, they started to look inward. Shaken to the core, they would rage at their enemies – even to the point of wanting to kill their enemies’ children, because, after all, where was this God who said would always be with them? This God who led them to the Promised Land – only to take them out of it again? Sitting by those strange waters, the people of Israel began to re-think what it meant to be the people of God, began to see that it had less to do with that place Jerusalem – that external, objective reality – and that it had more to do with that place in their hearts. The people of God began to realize they were not defined by something out there, some set of buildings or a set of religious rituals; the people of God began to realize that being the people of God started here, in the heart of each person. God’s promises of compassion and mercy were not somewhere out there, but here, in the heart of each of us. And because they were here, in the heart of each of us, they were no longer exclusive to “our kind of people” or “our place” or even “our temple.” Thrown into exile, the people of Israel began to think about themselves, and to pray to God, in a new way.

Paul must have written this letter when his friend, Timothy, was experiencing some kind of despair. Paul seems to be needing to encourage him, prop him up. Listen to this again:

Recalling your tears, I long to see you so that I may be filled with joy. I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you.

For this reason I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands; for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.

As we start to think about what it will mean to worship God in another building, perhaps with another community of faith, let’s think about who in this community play the role of Lois or Eunice in our lives. Who are the leaders who instilled in us a sense of God, a sense of community, a sense of hope? Who do we think of, when we need to be reminded of the great continuity of our mothers and fathers in the faith? Whose faith, which we first encountered here, in this place, now lives in us?

And as we do that, keep in mind that what appears to be as small as a mustard seed to some, is, to those of us who have eyes to see, as big and powerful and long-lasting as the mightiest of trees.

God invests in us

Proper 21-C September 26, 2010

Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15; Psalm 91:1-6, 14-16;

1 Timothy 6:6-19 ; Luke 16:19-31

Today’s lessons would, on the surface, to seem to have nothing to do with us.

The prophet Jeremiah, whom we have been reading for some weeks – Jeremiah, the prophet who is speaking for God, telling the people of Israel why they are about to be invaded, their temple destroyed and their families moved into exile – Jeremiah now is talking about buying land – in Jerusalem! As the invaders approach! As the Temple is destroyed! In the face of the end of life as they knew it, Jeremiah buys property. Jeremiah invests in the future – in a land that will not belong to the people of Israel for a very long time. Jeremiah buys a stake in the future – a very far off future, to be sure, but a stake nonetheless. Jeremiah buys a stake in God’s future: the people of Israel will be restored to their home. Not now, perhaps, but some day.

The reading from Timothy, and the gospel parable from Luke, are admonitions against the rich: the merciless, wealthy man is sent to Hades, to suffer torment, because he did not share his abundance with the poor man, Lazarus, who after death rests with the blessed Abraham in heaven. In the words of a parable, “a great chasm has been fixed” between the poor and the wealthy, and it is clear what side of that chasm God wants us to be on. Timothy, too, hammers the point home: if we are trapped by our desire for riches, riches and more riches there will be no room in our lives for God. What does Timothy tell us to do?

… to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, thus storing up for [our]selves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that [we] may take hold of the life that really is life.

Why do these lessons seem to have little to do with us? We have just heard the news that our church will close – because we aren’t wealthy enough to keep it going. So, we know the opposite side of these lessons first hand: we are about to go into exile ourselves, like the people of Israel; and we know all too well the life of Lazarus. We know of that “great chasm” between the wealthy and the poor, and we know what side of that chasm we are on.

There are plenty of religious groups who base their faith on optimism. Everything is getting better and better all the time. For some of these people, life is always Easter. You get richer? It’s a sign of God’s blessings. You get poorer? Well, you’d just better work harder and see what God can do for you. I wonder, sometimes, when the tsunami of life hits people in those churches, what they would do? If God is always about sunshine, can they see God in the shadows? If God is always about growth and increase and building, can they see God when things are falling down around them?

Like Jeremiah, I KNOW that God is in a place like St. Paul’s Church. I KNOW that God stands with a family whose house is being foreclosed and taken away from them. I KNOW that God eats lunch at the Table. Like Jeremiah, I KNOW that God invests in the future and that God is with us, here and wherever we go, for the long haul.

St. Paul’s has been a church of remarkable generosity. St. Paul’s has been a church of sincere good works. St. Paul’s has been a church always ready to share.

Like Jeremiah buying that plot of land, God has invested in you. You are the deed that will last a long time, and in your very selves you embody the promise that God will always be here.

Picture Jeremiah, standing in a field which is surrounded by land no longer owned by the people of Israel. He has staked out this little plot in a world now taken over by strangers. In the midst of something that should seem desolate, Jeremiah – and God – have grabbed hold. They have faith, so why shouldn’t we, that even when so much changes here, when other people are in charge, that this very ground on which we stand belongs now and always to God.

We have been entrusted with this plot of land for some time, and now it may pass to someone else. We have been entrusted with a piece of God’s mission for some time, as well, and have faithfully fulfilled that mission with grace, generosity and compassion. We have welcomed the stranger and fed the hungry. God has invested in us, and we, who have been shaped by the work of this place will carry that mission with us wherever we go.

Is there no balm in Gilead?

Proper 20 C September 19, 2010

Jeremiah 8:18-9:1; Psalm 79:1-9

1 Timothy 2:1-7; Luke 16:1-13

In the Broadway musical, “Fiddler on the Roof,” the people of the little Jewish village in Russia pray, “God bless and keep the Czar … far away from us!”That very same sentiment is found in our second reading, from Timothy: pray for those kings, rulers, magistrates, police officers, immigration agents, and even bishops (!) – “all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life” – far away from us!

As much as we might want that, especially in church, especially in a place we hold sacred, and on Sunday morning – a time we hold sacred – as much as we might yearn for that quiet and peaceable life, the Word of God is not the thing that will bring it to us. More often than not, the Word of God de-stabilizes us, upsets us, dismantles our expectations, forces us to change our course, give up the things we thought we so important. Let us hope there is some balm in Gilead – a far-off place – because there is nothing here, Jeremiah says. No comfort left in Jerusalem, where the people have gotten so focused on their worship in the temple, that they have not noticed that God is no longer there.

This passage from Jeremiah is a tough one to hear, because it just seems so hopeless. Isn’t God supposed to help us? To give us pleasant words to comfort and uphold us, especially on Sunday mornings?

A little context about the passage: the people of Israel center their worship of God in the Temple in Jerusalem. They say prayers and perform liturgies that have been passed down to them for generations. They expect that when they pray, “God help us,” God will show up. After all, they use the right words, wear the right clothes, make the right sacrifices. On top of that, they are used to God’s good graces showing up on schedule; it’s the end of summer – where’s the harvest? The sure sign of God’s blessings?

But things are not going so well for the people of Israel. Their temple is about to be destroyed, taken over by foreigners, and they are to be sent away, into exile, in some far-off place. They cannot imagine why this is happening to them. That is where Jeremiah comes in.

Jeremiah speaks for God. He speaks words of anger, grief, love, longing – Jeremiah speaks the great pathos of God. More than anything else, God wants these people he has created to be in relationship with him. And God’s heart is just broken when they continue to turn away. God wants them. God doesn’t want them just to go into the temple and perform rituals. God wants faithfulness. God wants that old relationship he set up with the people at the beginning. God wants the world to be a loving place. God wants the poor to be taken care of, the strangers welcomed, the neighborhoods safe. God knows there is enough of everything to go around – it IS God’s creation after all, so share it! God doesn’t really care that much about the temple, and all its fancy stuff. It just gets in the way. God wants them. The people. His people. God wants us.

God is heartsick that the people aren’t getting it, and he is heart-sick that they are suffering. There is no help for their dis-ease there in Jerusalem, in the temple, in the establishment. Maybe in Gilead, maybe far away. But not here.

That is what that passage is about. We’re reading these bits from Jeremiah this fall, and eventually we’ll get to the end, eventually we’ll get to see how Jeremiah helps the people of Israel put their lives and their faith back together after they have been shattered and destroyed and told they have to leave their home. Eventually, but not today.

Yesterday was Yom Kippur, the most sacred day in the Jewish religion. It is the Day of Atonement, coming some days after the celebration of the New Year. During those days between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, Jews think and pray and remember how they have not been right with God, or right with their neighbors. On Yom Kippur they read the difficult biblical stories of judgment, like the story of Jonah, who had to sit in the belly of a whale before he could begin to understand what God wanted him to do.

On Yom Kippur, Jews also remember the exile, that defining event that Jeremiah wrote about. That experience of always being far from home, of yearning for comfort and security, of depending on the kindness of strangers, of not being able to walk on one’s own streets or to plant one’s own garden – that experience of exile and displacement is part of how the Jews understand who they are. But even in exile – and this is the core message of Jeremiah – God was with them. A modern writer put it this way:

It is said that when the Jews went into exile, the Shekinah, the divine presence, went into exile, too – hovering over us, around us wherever we were, waiting for us to invite the sacred into our lives.[i]

There is nothing more that God wants than that. God wants us. God wants this world that God has created to shine once again with God’s glory and abundance. The temple in Jersualem did it for a while, but then it didn’t. It stopped being the place where God met the people. It actually started to get in the way between God and the people. It was great for a while, but then its purpose came to an end. It had to go, and the people had to move away. They left their shell of a building behind, and maybe they didn’t understand this at the time, God went with them, too, and waited there, ever patient, ever welcoming, with arms stretched wide.

[i] Sam Kestenbaum. “Yom Kippur at Sea” (New York Times, September 18, 2010, p. A19)

Jeremiah to us: God is calling, and wants you back.

Proper 18 C Sept. 5, 2010
Jeremiah 18:1-11; Psalm 139: 1-5, 12-17
Philemon 1-21; Luke 14:25-33

“I am the potter; you are the clay.”

Like a lot of the religious clichés we hear, that can be heard in a kind of “happy-clappy” way. We are nothing; we give up all autonomy to God’s all-powerful hand.

Well, God IS all-powerful, and compared to God, we ARE but clay in the potter’s hand, but if we look more closely at two of our texts today – the one from Jeremiah and the one from the Gospel of Luke – I think we will also see that God does not want us just to give up and be nothing but some wet mud. God expects us to act and to live a certain way.

In our first reading, the prophet Jeremiah is struggling with how to interpret current events to the people of Israel. Their “current events” are quite gloomy – they have been invaded by the Babylonians, their temple destroyed, and they and their leaders carried off into exile. Everything they had built – all their glorious past and their plans for an even more glorious future – have been wrecked. They indeed are nothing more than clay smashed by the potter – they are an inadequate and imperfect first attempt at something the potter does not even want to keep on the discard shelf.

This potter has expectations of the clay: if it starts to repent and act in the way God wants, well there is a chance for it. If it chooses life, then it has a chance; if it chooses evil, then it will be smashed.

And in the Gospel – well, once again we read of a harsh and serious Jesus. This is Jesus the construction engineer, Jesus the military strategist. Jesus has great expectations of those of us who call ourselves disciples. We must cast aside everything in our lives that does not concern this task of building. We must be careful planners, and if our foundation is not secure, well, then we must be ruthless destroyers. We must take our clue from Jeremiah’s potter: smash the imperfect clay vessel if it cannot stand up to the expectations of the potter. We must wage only the war that we can win; if not, negotiate the best peace terms we can get.

What kind of good news is this, either from Jeremiah or Jesus? These are tough lessons. But if we look behind them, behind the high expectations that God seems to be laying out here, we find God who reaches out to us in love, and yearns for us to reach back. We find the God of creation, who has shown us mercy and compassion, the God who took us by the hand and loved us as a parent loves a child. This God yearns for us to act like that, too, to love God back but also to love our neighbors with that same compassion and mercy. If we were the clay, that is the shape the potter wishes us to take: a vessel large enough to hold all the bits of this broken and hurting world.

The prophet Jeremiah can talk a lot about destruction, about what we are not – about how we do not measure up to God’s expectations for us. But Jeremiah also talks about building and planting – even as the old established order is being smashed, he is beginning to imagine the new thing that God wants to bring into being. But Jeremiah is a prophet, not a predictor. Neither he, nor we, know what will replace the things around us that are coming to an end. We can only know that we are in God’s good and gracious hands.

What a contrast our psalm today poses to both Jeremiah and the gospel. The psalm tells of God the potter of the human form, the human form God loves and has created in the image of God’s own self. Having been shown such love and care in our creation, can we not understand how much God wants from us, to show this very same love and care to all around us as well?

Proper 17 C August 29, 2010 St. Paul’s Jeremiah 2:4-13
Psalm 81:1, 10-16 Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16 Luke 14:1, 7-14

When the people of Israel trudged out of Egypt all those many thousands of years ago, God expected something of them. Yes, God was generous, yes, God was gracious, yes, God provided, yes, God led them with a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, but really, this was not a free ride. God expected something of them.

The prophet Jeremiah is trying to explain to the people of Israel, now happily ensconced in privilege and luxury in the Promised Land, that God expected something from them when God led them out of Egypt and brought them to this place that they now call home. Jeremiah is trying to explain to them that God is not so happy with them now. Jeremiah is God’s mouthpiece, calling these people back to their first principles, to the events that shaped and formed them as the people of God.

This call to repentance and return would be fairly easy if the people of God were a collection of individuals. Stories of individuals who repent and return to the Lord are very popular – always have been. There was a tv show in recent years called My Name is Earl. Earl, kind of a ne’er-do-well, finds he has a winning lottery ticket, but at the same time he finds the ticket, he gets hit by a car, and has the revelation that this is a sign – that he should now spend his time doing good things, that his life was spared for this purpose. He turns his life around. Now, this is a comedy, not an inspirational show, so all of Earl’s attempts to do good things are played for laughs. But the theme of an individual who can turn his life around, can return to his origins as a good and generous person, does strike a powerful chord in our hearts.

Think also of the beloved holiday tale, A Christmas Carol, where miserly Scrooge – himself the very definition of greed and selfishness – gets hit over the head with the consequences of his miserliness. He wakes from nightmares on Christmas morning, a new person, determined to be generous to the people he knows who are in need.

The problem with these wonderful tales of individual repentance and change in direction are just that: they are individual. And of course, I suppose, we must all start somewhere, and the place we start is right here. I bet the people of Israel, whom Jeremiah is very busy scolding, -- I bet each individual among the people of Israel thought they were being good people, living good lives. They had really gotten into their good and prosperous life. Jeremiah accuses them of Ba’al worship – not worshipping God alone – which might be kind of like the search for good karma that Earl embarks on – kind of, I’ll do some good things, and some more good things will come my way.

But I don’t think that is quite what God had in mind. God called the WHOLE people of Israel out of Egypt – and as God called them, they BECAME a people. God wants a relationship with those people, not with a collection of individuals, but with all those people. If God was generous to them, God wants them – all of them, as a PEOPLE – to be generous with others. Thousands of years later, Jesus is preaching the same message: Friends, set the table and invite everyone in, and let least among you get the best seats. When Jesus delivered that little sermon on hospitality to his friends, in the back of their minds was the story of the deliverance from Egypt. “When I took you by the hand and brought you out of the land of Egypt,” they hear God say, in the back of their minds. One of the first obligations of this deliverance is to show generosity and hospitality to others – to show it to others as God showed it to them.

Today we baptize Aaliyah Naila. We make her a member of the household of God. She becomes one of God’s people – an inheritor of the deliverance from Egypt – and of the obligation to give to others the generosity and hospitality God showed to all God’s people.

And so baptisms are not private, individual things – they are public, group events. We are people-making here. We are adding to our collective. We are enlarging what it means to be the people of God.

And so to you, her family and friends, we join in this process of welcoming this little girl into something much bigger than a collection of individuals. I said this at the baptism we had a few weeks ago, and I will say it again. It takes a village to raise a child. It takes more than a mom and a dad, thinking they have to go it alone. It takes family and friends and neighbors and teachers and doctors and nurses and a faith community – it takes not just individuals, but the whole people of God to show generosity and hospitality and love to this little person, so she can grow up to be the kind of person who can show generosity and hospitality and love to others.