After Thoughts: Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Luke 14:1, 7-14

This week’s Gospel lesson reminds me of James Carville’s famous directive to the Clinton team in 1992. The economy, stupid.

Economy. What does that mean and what does this story have to do with it? Doing the etymology search, I found that economy comes from the Greek for “home management.” It’s about how we use what we have, whether in a home, a village, a nation, or a world. How we share our resources. How we decide who gets what and when and why. There are all kinds of economies. Supply and demand economies. Command-based economies. Green economies.

These first-century folks had economy all figured out. They had rules not just for the distribution of tangible resources, but even things like generosity, honor, and hospitality. There was a transactional, quid pro quo quality to everything they did, including where people sat at meals and who was invited to the table. An invitation to a meal typically came with the understanding that the guest was now obligated to the host to provide an equal or better dining experience in the future. So who would invite those who could not repay in kind?

And then comes Jesus. He turns everything upside down. Would we expect less from him? He says: When you come in, don’t grab the seat of honor. When you make out your invitation list, go for the poor, lame, crippled, and blind.

Say what? It seems crazy at first. But reflecting on these verses on this Wednesday morning, I breathe a deep sigh of relief and give thanks for God’s economy. Thanks that I arrive at church every Sunday, take my seat which, on my own merit can only be and always will be so far removed from God’s feast. But then Jesus invites me – ME – to a place of honor. “Come. Up here. To the table. Taste, and see.” Jesus reminds me that I am the poor, the lame, the crippled, and blind. I can’t repay, and yet I’m invited anyway. It’s a great big, gorgeous, amazing gift. Here is this feast, prepared for me, prepared for you, and it’s all free. No strings attached.

In God’s economy, there are unlimited resources. We can give without running out - love, joy, peace, forgiveness, mercy – because we receive freely and without limits. There are no statistics and measurements and tracking in this Divine Economy. Just GDP – God’s Daily Providence.

After Thoughts: Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Luke 13:10-17

In the book Community by Peter Block, he writes that for community to happen “…we must be willing to trade their [the communities’] problems for their possibilities.” Oh, but how much easier is it to keep one another in our places? It can be much more comfortable that way. Like in this reading from Luke. A woman crippled for 18 years. We know what to do with her, all of those less fortunate than us. Have pity on her, give her some of our abundance, a tiny portion, and then pat ourselves on the back for our charity. Why do we care how long she’s locked up in her distress, because, as long as she is, we know what to do with her. But what happens if she is healed? What happens if she is no longer dependent on us? What happens if she is able to stand up straight, look us in the eyes, bring all of her gifts to the world? No longer an object of pity, but a human being to be encountered in relationship. Yikes!! That can get really scary.

That is exactly what happened when Jesus healed this woman on the Sabbath. He triggered several hot buttons. So what was going on? Let’s unpack this a bit:

v1: Now Jesus was teaching…and just then a woman appeared…when Jesus saw her. Now, just then, when. There’s a time element to this lesson. No waiting around. When we see something, or someone, that needs us, help now. But “nowness” can be threatening because it is so uncontrollable. Earthly power and authority prefer to have a committee meeting or get a legal opinion first because action changes things. And change can be frightening, intimidating, threatening.

v13: Jesus laid his hands on her. It’s not like he over-exerted himself to heal this woman. He simply touched her. And yet the leader was so upset by this as to deem it “work” and insist that Jesus was violating the Sabbath. Funny, how in the midst of great joy – a woman who had been around them for the past 18 years, bent and crippled, now standing upright – that all he could see was the violation of the law – a law that had been given to create community was turned upside down to empower exclusion.

v14: The leader continues to carry on, insisting that people can come any of those other six days, but not the Sabbath. So what do you imagine he thought the Sabbath was for? He’s saying that healing can happen on any day but the Sabbath? That people can be helped, but not on the Sabbath? Jesus gave it to us plain and simple: love God, love each other. When we over-emphasize the first part and omit the second part, our worship becomes idolatry. We got locked into the traditions, rules, and requirements – all human-made – that can actually separate us from God. When we over-emphasize the second part, we run the danger of becoming social activists with an over-reliance on our ability to save the world.

v15: Jesus does it again. Uses the “h” word. Here they are saying one thing, and yet doing another. Jesus has to point out that they care enough for their animals to untie and water them on the Sabbath. How can they possibly turn away a fellow human, a sister, a daughter of Abraham who needs to be set free and given Living Water? Well, maybe because the animals are their material goods, their source of wealth. Of course, they will look after their assets and best interests, even on the Sabbath. But what about caring for one another? It can be easy to use the rules to justify our actions, our lack of involvement, our complacency, even to be exclusive and shut others out. But Jesus will not let us get by with that.

So, to recap, lessons learned as I re-read this today:

Now is the time.

It doesn’t take that much for healing to occur, just reach out and connect with a fellow human being. God will do the rest.

Don’t use the system, tradition, rules, whatever we want to call it, to exclude others from receiving God’s grace. The table is ready. All are welcome.

After Thoughts: Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Luke 12:49-56

Luke 12 begins with Jesus talking about the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and ends with Jesus calling the crowd ‘hypocrites.’ The word comes from the Greek ‘hypokrite’ which referred to an actor, someone who played a role on a stage for the benefit of an audience and for their own acclaim. It was a person who took on a mask, a costume, a persona, to play whatever part was required in a story written by someone else.

Just before calling them hypocrites, Jesus told the crowd how he has come to bring division, not peace. He goes on to say that this division will be father against son, son against father, mother against daughter, daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law, daughter-in-law against mother-in-law. This is disruptive theology. Where’s the Jesus of peace and love? Who is this guy bringing on conflict?

Let’s dig a bit deeper, especially about those family roles that Jesus names. Rules about relationship within families and within society were quite specific in ancient Rome, just as they had been in ancient Israel. Earthly relationships – things like birth order and gender – dictated matters of economics, discipline, and power. People were confined to live out a ‘role’ imposed upon them from the outside. This is what the Pharisees were trying to do – Jesus says they load the people with burdens hard to bear, and do not lift a finger to help ease them. The ‘laws’ gave the Pharisees justification for discrimination, injustice, prejudice, and misogyny.

Earlier in Luke, we read about the younger brother who appealed to Jesus to make his brother circumvent the law so that he could inherit the family fortune. But Jesus didn’t come to enforce the law. He came to fulfill the law and to “be the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.” (Romans 10) So it wasn’t just the leaders who were not getting it. Even the crowd, the ordinary folk, who were able to read the signs of nature, so important in their agrarian society, failed to comprehend the message that Jesus was bringing.

What was this message? Well, I’m not able to comprehend that, let alone put it into words, but I think there is a clue is in verse 31. Strive first for God’s kingdom…then everything else will fall into place. That is, take off the mask. Refuse to play the role. Seek to be who and what God created you to be. That begins with acknowledging Christ (v. 8). From that starting point, we are free to be who we are, children of God, the people of God, joint heirs with Christ.

This is when the pretense can fall away. As humans in relationship, it is easy to have expectations of one another if we keep each other in those roles. Parents have expectations of children. Husbands and wives have expectations of each other. Friends, colleagues, in-laws – all of these human roles come loaded with what we want and need from the other person, what we expect them to do for us, how we expect them to treat us. But Jesus makes it clear – there will be division, conflict, arguing, disappointment – in those human roles. Because they are earthly constructs.

Bonhoeffer explains this so well so let’s defer to him. “The call of Jesus teaches us that our relation to the world has been built on an illusion...Now we learn that in the most intimate relationships of life, in our kinship with father and mother, brothers and sisters, in married love, and in our duty to the community, direct relationships are impossible. Since the coming of Christ, his followers have no more immediate realities of their own, not in their family relationships nor in the ties with their nation nor in the relationships formed in the process of living. Between father and son, husband and wife, the individual and the nation, stands Christ the Mediator, whether they are able to recognize him or not. We cannot establish direct contact outside ourselves except through him, through his word, and through our following of him. To think otherwise is to deceive ourselves…We are separated from one another by an unbridgeable gulf of otherness and strangeness which resists all our attempts to overcome by means of natural association or emotional or spiritual union. There is no other way from one person to another…Christ stands between us and we can only get in touch with our neighbors through him.”

Wow! Read that again. Is that profound or what? I cannot do it. You cannot do it. Only Christ can do it. Just as he brought the division by opening our eyes to the illusion we are living, he also brings the means to re-union – through him – by giving up on earthly constructs, by dying to self, and by arising anew to live through Christ.

Although not included in the lectionary reading, the closing verses of Chapter 12 are interesting. Jesus recommends that we try to find a way other than rules, regulations, and laws to settle things. In Jesus fashion, he poses a question. “And why do you not judge for yourselves what is right?” When we do that, when we remember who we are, when we stop playing our roles, and start looking to Christ, it can get tough. We have to stop pretending to be someone we aren’t and, at the same time, and perhaps even harder, we have to let go of putting others into neat little boxes of well-defined roles and responsibilities.

Back to Bonhoeffer who sums it up beautifully. To be a follower of Christ “…in one way or the other we shall have to leave the immediacy of the world and become individuals, whether secretly or openly. But the same Mediator who makes us individuals is also the founder of a new fellowship. He stands in the center between a neighbor and myself. He divides, but he also unites…Though we all have to enter upon discipleship alone, we do not remain alone.”

Listen deep to hear God’s call. Pray constantly to do His work. Seek fervently for His kingdom. Give thanks that God created You. Yes, YOU. Everything about you is His handiwork. Embrace that. All of it, the parts you like and the parts you try to keep hidden in the dark. God already knows all about that. So just be you. And make space and grace for others to be who they are created to be.

May we live worthy of our calling, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. (Ephesians 4)