Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost, C, August 24, 2025

I’m not a math guy. I am grateful that there are people who love math, like the accountant we pay each year to file our taxes in my household with two clergypersons. I say here and now, there is no way I could file my own taxes and not end up in prison. I just don’t have the patience for math. I was one of those kids who used to make Christmas trees and lightning bolts out of the bubbles on the scantron sheets used to score our standardized tests. And I do not have the patience for puzzles either. I didn’t break it. I am NOT about to fix it. I will admit that my impatience is mostly a product of pathology. I have known I have ADHD since I was 8, and I tend to struggle with an intolerance for small time irritation. I do not see problem-solving as an exciting challenge, or a fun activity for a rainy afternoon, rather I experience it as a tedious annoyance, as a confining obligation. I do not possess the capacity to remain focused on tasks that do not provide a nearly instant result. I cannot buckle down and figure out which value goes on which line of which form, and certainly not under threat of federal penalties. And the same goes for sorting through tiny pieces of cardboard to reconstruct an image I can see on the lid of the box! I admire those folks who realize the toaster isn’t working and grab a toolbox, take the whole thing apart, and put it back together again in working order, instead of Doordashing a new one from Target. I admire these folks— and the accountants and puzzle-workers of the world— because I see in them something of the heart of God; the God who makes something out of nothing, who sees value where I see only garbage; the God who sees utility where I see futility. This is what God is always doing, fashioning something from nothing, or as the African American Church reminds us, God makes a way out of no way. In fact, God is existence itself; all things come from God, and all things are returning to God. Apart from God, nothing could exist. All of reality is part of the divine existence, the very life and love of God. And our God is one who enjoys tinkering. Our God is always taking things apart to put them back together. Our reading from Hebrews tells us that this is precisely the experience of that “great cloud of witnesses,” who “won strength out of weakness,” who “received their dead by resurrection,” who were saved by the faithfulness of a prostitute, and yet so many more were “stoned to death, were sawn in two, were killed by the sword; they went about…destitute, persecuted, tormented.” And the world was not worthy of them because God makes worth from worthlessness, meaning from meaninglessness, hope from hopelessness, purpose from purposelessness. When Jesus says he comes to bring division I think he means like halves of the Red Sea, dry ground for those escaping, and quicksand for those pursuing. When Jesus says he comes to bring division I think he means like nuclear fission, the very process that created the universe, and now gives us the power to end life as we know it. When Jesus says he comes to bring division I think he means like boundaries, like the difference between genealogy and kinship, between obligation and service. This division, is a picture of divine judgment. What we feared would be our undoing is only our remaking. Jesus came to bring division and fire, the fire of the Holy Spirit, the fire with which John the Baptist promised we would be baptized. What we feared would be a separation, what we feared would be a conflagration, God has made our salvation. The fire that Jesus brings is the radiance of the life and love of God at the heart of this reality, a life and a love so big that it encompasses this whole reality, with all its joys and woes, pains and promises, faith and fear. A life and love so big it includes both the cross and the resurrection, both sinners and saints. Our God is one who enjoys tinkering. Our God is one who has the patience to take this world apart, cell by cell, molecule by molecule, atom by atom, and put it all back together again in working order, instead of discarding this one and making a new one. Our God is one who can take all the broken pieces of our lives and take delight in placing them back together to recreate the image of God. Our God is a math guy, a lover of fine details, a puzzle worker, a toaster fixer. Our God is a sea-parting, way-making, rescuer, calling slaves to freedom and masters to their reckoning. Our God is the nuclear blast at the heart of an atom that commands worlds from nothing and breathes life into stardust. Our God is the definer of family, freeing us from unhealthy relationships and becoming our Parent, our Sibling, our Community when we must draw hard lines to save our sanity, to save our life. Our God has the patience to tinker with this world until it is fixed, until it returns to its original purpose. The judgement we feared is the salvation we hoped for. So let us trust God to make something from our nothings, our meaninglessness, our hopelessness, our purposelessness, and let us run with perseverance the race that is before us, looking to Jesus, the creation and completion of our faith, who trusted God to make something of the Cross, and calls us to trust God to make something of our suffering too. Amen.

I think most of us have had the dreadful experience of hearing a parent or some authority figure call out our whole name. Not a diminutive, not a pet name, not a nickname, but your proper first and middle name. We knew instantly something was wrong, and our conscience would hit Mach 10 trying to figure out which of the things we knew we had done but weren’t sure they knew we had done that we ought to fess up to to spare our fledgling lives. We use whole names to mark the solemnity of big moments in worship. We baptized infants by first and middle names, not “Mama’s little snuggle bear.” We use our proper names as we make our wedding vows— “I, Ashton, take you Jennifer…” Many a Bobby, Frankie, and Tommy became Robert, Francis, and Thomas when their numbers came up for the Pacific Theatre, Korea, or Vietnam. And when we want to get away with something, we change our names, use an alias, to keep the authorities from having power over us. In the ancient world, to know the name of a spirit, a demon, or a god was to have power over it. When Jesus finds a man possessed, he asks the demon its name, and knowing its name, he casts the demon out. Today, we might call what Jesus did finding a diagnosis, When we have a name for what ails us we can fight it, manage it, maybe even cure it. But in Jesus’ day, this was the divining of spirits, naming the collective personality of institutions, governments, religions, armies, and determining whether they were good or evil. We have done something similar in the way we speak of the economy. It is not governments, corporations, or greedy individuals, then, who control prices and inflation, but the Market, a cold, impersonal force to whom we must cede control of our financial well-being lest we upset the Market and everyone suffers. So, despite the Deism, if not practical atheism, of Enlightenment figures like Adam Smith and John Locke, we have inherited a deity no less fickle and cantankerous than the totality of the Greek or Roman Pantheon, and we must bring sacrifice so as not to anger this Zeus in a three-piece suit. But this lesser god, is nothing more than an appetite, a gnawing, insatiable hunger for more and more. It must accumulate to exist. Like fire, it must be fueled, it must consume or it dies. By contrast, our God comes to Moses burning in a bush, and the bush is not consumed. Our God is being as such, existence itself, complete and needing nothing. God is the opposite of the Market. When God receives our sacrifice, God gives it back. When God creates, God is giving God’s self away, sharing God’s very being, and yet, God remains undiminished. God’s economy is an economy of enough, daily bread today, manna for the moment, not store houses, barns, Swiss bank accounts, or private space programs. Discipleship then is an invitation to participation in the self-giving life and love of God. When we give money away instead of hoarding it or leaving it to future generations we weaken the power of the Market to control us or demand our sacrifice. When we rob the Market of this power over our thinking, our giving, our living, we participate in God’s eternal flow. Like that bush, we will burn with holy fire and we will not be consumed. Naming this evil spirit is only the first step. The second step is casting it out. We know from the scriptures that Jesus’ disciples have not always been successful at casting out demons. In fact, some folks who aren’t even followers of Jesus have done a better job of naming and casting demons out than Jesus’ own followers. So, how do we do this? Where do we start? We start by refusing to believe the demon’s lies. We change our mindset from scarcity to the infinity of God’s very self. This demon only comes out by prayer and fasting. So, we pray for our daily bread, and we work to make sure our neighbors eat. Second, we participate in the self-giving of God. Our giving is about divestment of the power money promises when we hoard wealth. We have to choose to trust God’s provision instead of the alluring promises of a demon. When we pray for God’s kingdom to come and give us our daily bread we are giving lip-service to a lie if we do not also live like citizens of that Kingdom here and now, if we do not make sure our neighbors have daily bread, if we are bowing to anything that demands sacrifice and our allegiance as though it were a god. There is no god but God. The Market only has the power and the resources we give it. Emboldened and empowered by our acquiescence and fealty, by our sacrifice and devotion, it is a growing demon, a swallowing void, an appetite for destruction, of the planet, of our bodies, of our relationships, of our very lives. We can keep this demon in check by paying workers what they need to thrive instead of what the Market will bear. We keep the demon in check when we choose to live on enough and give away God’s abundance, instead of striving for the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. We keep the demon in check when we are rich toward God by being rich toward our neighbors, building longer tables instead of building bigger barns. We keep the demon in check when we spend our lives to save our neighbors. God is the fullness of all in all. The Market only has the power we give it. So, let’s call the demon by name and cast it out. The writer of Colossians tells us to “Put to death, therefore,” anything in us that creates an appetite that can never be satisfied, because this is nothing less than idolatry. Instead, worship the creator of all things, whose image burns in us but never consumes; the God who calls our names in baptism to exercise power though us, to call us into the eternal self-giving flow of God’s very life, to free us from the forces that defy God, the powers that rebel against God, and the sin that draws us from God, to proclaim Christ through word and deed, care for others and the world God made, and work for justice and peace, which is the life everlasting. Amen. 

There once was a man who was quite overwhelmed by the state of the world. His heart broke to see so much poverty, to see such need among his neighbors. So, he began to pray, “Lord, there are so many needy people in the world. If you will let me win the lottery, I can so much good, help so many, make such a difference.” Every night, the man prayed earnestly, ardently, fervently, righteously that God would let him win the lottery, so he could help the poor. Eventually, the man died, broke and angry. He reaches heaven, furious and confused. He searches out God, marches straight up to God in all God’s splendid majesty and says, “How could you?! I prayed for so long; and not for myself, but for others. Why, in your infinite wisdom, didn’t you let me win the lottery?” This benevolent God Who Is Love glowed with a radiant brilliance to outshine the sum of all the stars and embraced the man in a hug that felt like being swallowed up by eternity and as intimate and sweet as a first kiss. God said to the man, as his anger melted into understanding, “My sweet, sweet child. You never bought a ticket.” Our lessons for today need a little set up, or we might miss or misinterpret their central theme. Several weeks ago, our passage from Luke 10 began in verse 1, stopped at verse 11, and restarted at verse 16, ending at verse 20. Those verses between 11 and 16, contained a little nugget we should circle back to now. In Luke 10, just after Jesus addresses the 70 he is sending to share the message of the kingdom Jesus says, “But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.’” Jesus continues in verse 12, “ I tell you, on that day it will be more tolerable for Sodom than for that town.” Jesus explains that the “sin of Sodom,” then, is a lack of hospitality. It has been convenient for centuries to point to the story of Sodom and Gomorrah to stigmatize, demonize, and ostracize the LGBTQIA community as though the sin of Sodom was any deviation from the presumptive normality of heterosexuality. But Jesus himself says otherwise. Abraham’s persistence in our first reading that God’s mercy take precedence over God’s wrath, comes after Abraham himself has shown hospitality to God’s very presence, and this story stands as a counterpoint to the story of the same strangers visiting the towns of Sodom and Gomorrah and receiving no such welcome. And Jesus says these folks will have received a lighter sentence than those who reject those he has sent to proclaim the kingdom come near. This theme of hospitality has carried through the story of the Good Samaritan, of Abraham beneath the oaks of Mamre, of Mary and Martha’s hospitality, and now into this parable of the persistent neighbor. Jesus teaches his disciples to pray. They are to approach God boldly, “Father,” but with reverence, “hallowed be your name.” Prayer should align their will with God’s, “your kingdom come” and to place their trust in God’s provision, “give us each day our daily bread.” They are to be honest and humble, “forgive us our sins,” and to give away the grace and mercy they hope to receive, “for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.” And they are to ask God for guidance and rescue, “Do not bring us to the time of trial.” But Jesus doesn’t stop there. Jesus gives them a parable. Suppose a friend comes to you in the middle of the night, while your kids are asleep, and begs you for bread because he has just received unexpected guests and has nothing to give them. Jesus says that even if you don’t want to help, because of the racket your friend is making you’re likely to help just to shut him up. Jesus teaches his disciples that prayer consists of two things: asking and acting . Before God, Abraham is poor and bold to ask for what is needed even on behalf of others. Before his neighbor, the friend in need is bold to ask. But the neighbor is slow to act, so the friend remains in need, and so do his guests. Jesus instructs his disciples to ask and to act, to know we are poor before God, that even so we will have what we need, and that we participate in meeting needs when we forgive those indebted to us and when we are generous to give away what we need, trusting that we will be partakers of the sacrifice. Prayer, then, is the process of becoming what our neighbor needs. Prayer teaches us what to ask for— a better world filled with enough for everyone to eat— and how to act— we love God and our neighbor not in perfection, but in progress. Love is our faith and our calling. To those who have bread, eggs, and fish, give to those who ask of you, just as God has given to you. To those of you in need of bread, eggs, and fish, be bold to ask and it will be given to you. The late Pope Francis said, “First you pray for the hungry, then you feed them, because that’s how prayer works.” You can pray your whole life to win the lottery, but what do you what God to do if you never buy the ticket? You can pray your whole life for God’s kingdom to come, for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven, and yet, what do you expect to happen if this faith doesn’t change the way you live, doesn’t make you a better, kinder, more generous, more peaceful, more loving person? How much better will God’s kingdom be if it doesn’t transform the people in it? We commit the sin of Sodom every time we close our ears to the cries of our neighbors. We commit the sin of Sodom every time we shut out those who bring the kingdom near. We commit the sin of Sodom every time we pray God’s kingdom comes and brings us our daily bread without living like the kingdom has come near and making sure our neighbors have enough to eat. We are to ask and to act, to hope and to trust, to pray and to practice. May we become disciples who know how to pray— who know what to ask and how to act— that we might all live together in God’s neighborhood on earth sharing our daily bread. It’s not winning the lottery, but it’s just the ticket. Amen.

Our Gospel lesson for today is a fairly familiar passage for me. It was used to describe my grandmother, who was often called “a Martha,” which was a euphemism for a woman who worked as hard as she did. She seemed to always be in the kitchen, always preparing something. Occasionally, I would see her sit down to watch a soap opera, but if she did, there was a bowl in her lap, and a 10lb. bag of potatoes at one hip and a colander at the other. She would peal those potatoes with a paring knife with long winding peals into one bowl, and then cube the naked potatoes into the other. Those potatoes would go into a pressure cooker with chunks of beef, and while that sputtered away, she would change loads of laundry from one machine to the other, balance her checkbook and the church’s, sweep the house, prepare to teach Sunday School, and entertain the grandkids. She served the church as secretary, treasurer, custodian, and youth Sunday School teacher, sometimes in multiple capacities at once. What Luke here calls “a certain village,” we know from the other Gospels was the town of Bethany, and these women are the sisters of Lazarus, whom Jesus will raise from the dead. The town of Bethany and the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus becomes something of a home base for Jesus. He will stop here often on his travels to teach and presumably, to be ministered to by Martha. In the week of his passion and death, he will sleep in Bethany at night and teach in the temple in Jerusalem during the day. My grandmother’s house was also something like our family’s Bethany. We would come weary and beset by the pressures of the world, and we knew we could retreat to Mamaw’s house, to be ministered to by our very own Martha. Maybe it’s because I can see so much of Martha in my grandmother, that Jesus’ words have always seemed a bit harsh. He seems to chide Martha for asking for help, and seems to insinuate that Mary, who has been sitting and listening to Jesus, has done something greater, better, preferable, by neglecting service, by not helping her sister, by not providing for the care of Jesus’ body and those of the disciples. Mary loved Jesus, visited with Jesus, listened to and learned from Jesus, but Mary didn’t serve Jesus, not the way Martha did. My grandmother was also a woman of deep faith. All of that work I described, ran on prayer and a “half a cuppa coffee,” always Maxwell House instant. She and my grandfather were always up early, and just after breakfast, she would read from the scriptures, perhaps a devotional, and he would pray for them. This was virtually every morning of their 62 years of marriage. My grandmother poured over the scriptures like a lawyer over a contract, like a war bride with a letter from the front, clinging to every word, believing every promise, and loving Jesus, because he first loved her. My grandmother chose both parts, she chose love and service. In fact, her service flowed from her love, and love flowed through her service. Jesus is not admonishing Martha to neglect her service because conversation is better. Jesus is inviting Martha to keep her priorities in order. Mary has not chosen the better part, but she has chosen the primary part, the first-things-first part. Jesus is inviting Martha to rest, to relationship, to Sabbath, to work from her rest, rather than rest from her work. And from this relationship, from this place of rested renewal, from the vantage point of ordered priorities, Mary and Martha can rise and work together. In late January/early February, a significant number of people approached me privately and separately to express concern, fear, anger, sadness, hopelessness, despair at the state of the world, the state of our country, the state of their heart. Each one felt helpless, exhausted, not sure how to take charge of their anxiety and not sure how to respond to the rapidly changing political climate. We began to gather on the fourth Sunday of each month to address these concerns. Many wanted to take action, wanted to know exactly what they could do to make a difference in the real world. Many came to his meeting like Martha, working hard to do what had to be done and absolutely exhausted from this sense of duty. They too had begun to wonder, Does Jesus not care? Because of my grandmother, and the work of contemplatives like Richard Rohr, Patrick Boland, Lisa Miller, I knew we would never be able to make a difference, never have the energy to do our duty, never be able to sustain an effective ministry if this ministry was not rooted deep in the solid ground of love. If we were not coming to this ministry from a place of love, a place of relationship, a place of intimacy with God’s very self in Jesus Christ, we would not be a church. We would have the same mission as the Lyons Club or the United Way. We need to experience Jesus, to sit at this feet and meditate on his goodness, on his God-ness. Richard Rohr speaks of a tricycle, where experience is the big wheel out front, the one with the pedals and the steering. Experience drives the tricycle. We need regular encounter, fellowship, intimacy with God in Christ. A practiced spirituality becomes the manner of encounter. Experience and spirituality must be balanced and supported by scripture and tradition, by study and action. Experience without scripture and tradition is a unicycle, a circus trick, a spectacle with little value to the spectator. Scripture and tradition, without the experience is of little value, and the big wheel goes nowhere without the pedals and steering of spirituality, study, and action. This week our kids will begin to learn this mystery. We kick off Communion Camp tomorrow, teaching these children about the sacrament of Holy Communion. Communion is an experience balanced by scripture and tradition, a practiced spirituality supported by study and action. We will alternate each day between learning what we do in here on a Sunday and how it should teach us to act when we are out there every other day. We will learn about the Last Supper, and we will make sandwiches for those in need of food. We will learn how to set the table for communion and how to set the table to feed the unhoused. The sacraments are an invitation to experience Christ, in worship with awe and wonder, and in service with love and devotion. In both our Critical Mass group and in our Communion Camp we will be doing the essential work of integration— of integrating devotion to God and service to neighbor, of integrating the values of our faith and the politics of our lives, of integrating the reverence of Mary and the responsibility of Martha. And the product of our integration is integrity. In the coming months, the council will be defining a process to reevaluate and articulate our values and our vision. We will need to hear from each of you. This meal invites you to an experience and a spirituality, to a regular encounter, to fellowship, to a seat at the feet of Jesus. It is an invitation to rest from your work that you may be able to work from this rest. It is an invitation to love like Mary and to show it like Martha. It is an invitation to consider how we might use our resources to become in this community the oaks of Mamre for strangers in need of care or Bethany to those passing through. Abraham became a host to God, and Mary and Martha ministered to Jesus. The integration of their reverence and responsibility allowed them to love both God and neighbor with integrity. How might such a ministry of integrity change our lives and our faith? How might our encounter of Christ’s own self offered to us in bread and wine invite us to work with what we have to make a difference in the lives of our neighbors? Our task as a congregation, and as individuals, is to choose both parts, to integrate our inner Mary and our inner Martha, to choose to love with integrity. To commit ourselves to spirituality, study, and action; to experience, scripture, and tradition; to devotion to Christ, to discipleship, following the teachings and example of Christ in our daily lives from a place of regular encounter in the sacraments and in the world. We cannot be so consumed with responsibility that we miss the relationship, nor so consumed with our relationship that we neglect responsibility. Service must come from love, a love for God that begets a love for the other. I am the product of such a love; my grandmother’s love for God made her a devoted disciple who loved me with such integrity that when she said that God is Love, I knew exactly and instinctually what that meant, because I had experienced it in her. I knew what it meant to receive it and I knew what it meant to give it away. One part is not “better” than the other in a superlative sense, but each gives integrity to the other. God is calling us to become a Mary and Martha congregation, the sort of place where others will know exactly and instinctively what it means that God is Love because they will have experienced it in us. Will we let that be taken away from them? Amen.

This particular parable of the Good Samaritan is likely one of the most familiar of all the parables. We call a selfless do-gooder a good Samaritan. Many a Christian charity focused on care for the sick, the poor, the hungry, are named for the Good Samaritan. Pastor Crispin Wilondja runs Good Samaritan Ministries, a ministry focused on accompanying refugees who have been resettled in this area. I am sure that you can think of other ministries in other places with the same name. And because this parable is so familiar, I would bet that you could retell the story, at least in broad strokes. But familiarity, as they say, breeds contempt. If not contempt, at least indifference. We suppose we know the story and so, we half listen, assume we understand, and move on. We don’t wonder what a Samaritan is. We don’t question why it should be necessary to classify this Samaritan as ‘good.’ We smirk at the author’s insight about the legal expert wanting to vindicate or justify himself, calling to mind any number of lawyer jokes. And then because we have helped a charity named for the good Samaritan we pat ourselves on the back and thank God that we aren’t like that priest or that Levite. But this isn’t quite how parables work. They are not fixed stories with an obvious moral suggesting we adopt a certain value and practice a certain virtue. Instead, parables have to be exegeted, contemplated, mulled over, unpacked. Parables have to be read and reread in each new context, each new time and place. Parables are not data to be crunched, are not facts to be recorded are not empirical statements demanding our acquiescence, are not imperatives to be obeyed. They are invitations to introspection, to mystery, to ponderance, to conversation, to reflection. When the legal expert asks Jesus a question, Jesus responds with a question. When the expert asks a follow-up question, Jesus responds with a parable. The legal expert wants to know the fine print, he wants the loopholes, the exceptions. He wants a strict constructionist interpretation, an originalist viewpoint. He wants to know what the framers meant when they said “neighbor,” and more importantly, he wants to know exactly what they did not mean when they said “neighbor.” Jesus rejects this strict constructionist view. And it might be important here to point out that Jesus is the framer. Jesus tells the legal expert that he already knows the answer to his own question. Jesus seems to be echoing the tone of our first reading. The legal expert doesn’t need someone to go off and get the answer, doesn’t need someone to pronounce an edict, file an amicus brief, or author a majority opinion. No, Jesus tells a parable to show that the best interpretation is near the legal expert, the answer comes from his own mouth, out of his own heart. Jesus and the legal expert together become re-framers, reinterpreting the law through the lens of mercy. So, what then does this parable mean to us? How are we to read it? As a congregation, we have been asking this question for some time. Who is our neighbor? So, let’s read it again in our context. A man was traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho when he fell into the hands of robbers. In our context, this might sound like, “A refugee was fleeing the violence of his home for asylum in the US when he fell into the hands of coyotes who exploited him, deprived him of food and water, and dropped him off at the border half dead.” Jesus says that by chance a priest was traveling that road from Jerusalem to Jericho, and when he saw this naked, half-dead traveler he passed by on the other side. There are some who think that I should follow this priest’s example and pass by this whole subject. But the vows I made at my ordination and the vows we all reaffirm when we remember our baptism call us to work for justice and peace in all the world. It would be unfaithful for me to avoid topics of justice and peace when they are right in front us everyday. Pastor Crispin is preaching the same message with his very life, working to help and to heal refugees fearful for their lives and abandoned to their own devices here in our community. Jesus says that “likewise a Levite, when he came to the place [in the road] and saw him, passed by on the other side.” Now, the Levites were the tribe of Israel from whom the priest’s came. They were a privileged group, religiously and socially. They were the keepers of the laws and the customs that made the Hebrew people the Hebrew people, that made them God’s people. I imagine that this Levite thinks this banged-up traveler isn’t his problem. He probably also thinks that this is why he usually avoids this part of town. He’s likely worried, “If they beat this guy up, they might get me too. “It’s just not safe to stop and help. “Someone else will take care of this— some agency, some do-gooder. “This is also what that politician has been talking about; undesirables making the streets unsafe for people like me. “I’d better get out of here.” But then, Jesus says a Samaritan comes along. The Samaritans were a divergent religious and ethnic sect. They were outsiders, heretics, everything the legal expert, priests, and Levites were working so hard not to be. This Samaritan then puts the legal expert, the avoidant priest, and the privileged Levite to shame, demonstrating that without vocational obligation, without their religious heritage, without legal expertise, this foreign heretic was a better interpreter of the law than the legal expert. Jesus reframed the question. The question is not Who is my neighbor [and therefore, who isn’t]? The question is, if you have the law and the prophets, if you know the whole of the law and prophets are summed up in loving God and loving your neighbor, then why don’t you become a neighbor by practicing mercy? Neighbor-hood is a relationship of mutuality. You can’t have a neighbor without being a neighbor yourself. In these next few months, we will be trying to reframe this question, “Who is our neighbor?” and “How can we become a neighbor to them?” Our congregation is shrinking, our funds are dwindling, and we have been hoping for easy answers and loopholes. We have encountered opportunities to become what our neighbors need us to be, and we have passed by on the other side. We have clung to a mission statement some 30-plus-years old. We have hoped that someone else would take responsibility for the ministry here. We have been too religious, too frightened, too complacent, too tired, and by our own admission, too old to engage in the ministry in our path. We have hoped that someone else would go up the mountain or across the sea— or down in the ditch— and come and tell us what we want to hear, would bring us throngs of children and young families, would restore our former glory at best, or would absolve us of responsibility for our dissolution at least. But Jesus tells us that the answers to our questions are near us, they will come from our mouths, and from our hearts. I will be working together with the council and the Mutual Ministry team to define a listening process to discover and to voice a new mission statement and a new vision for this congregation. This will take all of us. It will be uncomfortable, it will cost each of us something, but it will make us neighbors, it will make us merciful, it will fulfill the promises of our baptism to work for justice and peace in all the world. We will know who our neighbors are and they will know theirs, too. Amen.

Today is the Day of Pentecost, 50 days after the Passover, the day we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit, the birthday of the Church. This is a day of celebration , a day of joy and feasting. We deck the place and the minister in red, the color of fire, the color of blood, the color of love. Yesterday, when Deacon Sue was ordained, we invoked the Holy Spirit, we laid hands on her, and we put a red stole across her shoulder, a symbol of service derived from the towel Jesus tied around his waist when he washed the disciples’ feet. Red is the color of the Church because it is the color of the Holy Spirit. This Holy Spirit descended on the day of Pentecost, a mighty rushing wind and tongues, or language, that spread through the assembled crowd like a wildfire. This Holy Spirit fell on ethnic Jews and on Gentile foreigners alike, and they all became something new together. But like that one-hit wonder “Closing Time” by Semisonic reminds us “every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” We come to this point in the metanarrative of the Scriptures after the Resurrection of Jesus, his appearances to his followers, and his ascension into heaven with the promise of the Holy Spirit and that he would come again. And then, they waited. The apostles— including Mary Magdalene— Jesus’ mother, the other disciples and followers had at this point already begun to gather on the first day of the week. And so they gathered this Sunday morning, as they had been doing, to wonder and wait together. And when this hot and holy wind blew through like a tornado in a wildfire these waiting wonderers were set ablaze like that burning bush that called to Moses and set God’s people free. They each spoke with tongues on fire, burning with love, illuminating the gospel, and purifying the earth. These Gentile proselytes from across the Roman world heard the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of Moses, the God of David, speaking to them in a language they could understand. Paul called this the spirit of adoption. There is no human being who is not a child of God. God is the father, the parent of us all. But to have a mother and a father is very different than having a mom and a dad. It is one thing to recognize that we all have a relationship to God and it is another to have a relationship with God. When Paul says in Romans 8 “When we cry, "Abba! Father!" it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God,” Abba is an Aramaic term of affection, meaning something like “Daddy.” The Spirit comes to make us know that we already have a relationship to God as parent, creator, sustainer; but we are invited to have a relationship with God that is deep, intimate, enduring There is a principle in counseling were the relationship between any two people or things is actually a third entity. In the relationship between a married couple the marriage is that third entity. That marriage must be nurtured, prioritized, calibrated over time in order to remain healthy. Theologian Walter Wink theorizes that this is what the ancient world meant by talking of spirits and demons. A toxic and harmful relationship is a demonic spirit. A good and healthy relationship is an angelic spirit. I think this is how we should think of the Holy Spirit. The relationship between the Father and the Son, the relationship between Christ and the Church, the relationship between individual believers, that goes beyond a mere relationship to the other and draws us into relationship with the other, this is the Holy Spirit; that third divine entity that makes two into One. At creation, God breathes a hot and holy wind into molded earth and this created thing became a living being precisely because God desired to be more that related to this creation; God wanted a relationship with this creation. So God named this living being, God walked with this living being, God saw Godself in this living being; God and this living being shared a relationship as close as breath. In Hebrew, the language of the book of Genesis, ruach means breath, wind, and spirit. The same ruach that hovered over the waters before creation is the same ruach breathed into this living being. In Greek, the language of the New Testament, pneuma means breath, wind, and spirit. That same mighty rushing pneuma blowing through that crowd on the day of Pentecost is the same pneuma descending like a dove at Jesus’ baptism, and that same pneuma Jesus promises to send to us to make us one with the Father as he and the Father are one. The ancient mystics tell us that this is precisely why the Spirit came as a tongue on Pentecost; because it is the tongue that forms the Word within us, and it is the pneuma within us that brings that Word to life. There is more to this Christian faith than assurance of our relationship to God. By our baptism we are marked with the cross of Christ and sealed with the Holy Spirit, that is, we are made aware of our relationship to God in Christ and we are invited into a deep, intimate relationship with God. And today, as we come forward for communion, I invite you to receive again this anointing oil, marking your forehead with the sign of the cross and the seal of the Holy Spirit, our deep, intimate relationship with God. Let this tongue of fire form the Word within you and the ruach, the pneuma bring it to life. Let this encounter lead you into relationships with your neighbors and let this relationship lead to mutual understanding. Let this hot and holy wind sweep your inner house “clean of its furniture” that you might make room in your heart for the new thing God is doing. Let this ruach, this pneuma be the Holy Spirit, the relationship between the Father and the Son, the relationship between Christ and the Church, the relationship between individual believers, that goes beyond a mere relationship to the other and draws us into relationship with the other. This is the Holy Spirit; that third divine entity that makes us into One. Amen. 

This past Thursday was the day of ascension, a holy day when Christians around the world remember and reflect on Jesus’ ascension into heaven to be seated at the right hand of God. This day is important. In fact, this holy day is right up there with Christmas and Easter. This is a day when, as Jesus promises, we see scripture fulfilled and wisdom given. In Jesus’ final moments with his disciples he once again shares the gospel: Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again. What this means is that beginning with God’s covenant to Israel, extending to the disciples, and to all generations to come, God’s forgiveness and salvation reigns! And not only has God kept these promises, but God makes new promises promises of grace and forgiveness and the gift of the Holy Spirit. Ascension truly is one of the most holy days in the church’s life, full of promise and hope. But then, Jesus leaves. And I find myself mystified and perplexed. You mean to tell me that God’s ultimate work is finally accomplished in and through Jesus Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection and that because of Christ we too have been justified, saved, and have the promise of resurrection and then he just… leaves? Is this the feast of the ascension or the feast of the abandonment? Surely those standing there that day must have felt the words of the psalmist, the words of Jesus from the Cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And if we’re honest, maybe we’ve felt that too. Maybe you’ve looked up to heaven and felt the vastness of space, the breadth to time, and the depths of the world’s pain and wondered if Jesus leaving this whole Church thing in the hands of his followers was such a good idea. Maybe you’ve felt that black hole of grief collapsing in on itself and swallowing worlds and starlight with a never-ending appetite, trying to fill the void created by your loss. Maybe you’ve felt the brokenness of divorce, the fear of your diagnosis, the shame and aching need of your addiction, the disgusted resignation of being unable to change your circumstances, the injustices of the world, or the person you see in the mirror. Or maybe you’ve just read or watched the news. Maybe you’ve feared for the safety of our immigrant neighbors, or our poor neighbors, or our elderly neighbors. And maybe you’ve wondered if Jesus didn’t so much ascend as escape, blow dodge, go AWOL, or give up on the whole salvation project. I think to some degree our sense of abandonment comes from the language we use to describe what happened in the ascension. We say Jesus “ascended,” was caught up to heaven. We say Jesus is seated at the right hand of God. We paint Jesus in baroque opulence, borne on the wings of cherubim and standing on sunbeams, rising from the earth, departing our realm for a distant, invisible, intangible Heaven beyond our mortal reach. And this language, in words and pictures, teaches us to think of the ascension as a separation, a departure, a loss of proximity to our God. And so we have over-spiritualized the word salvation because of it. We have assumed that our salvation is also our escape, departure, separation from our neighbors, from any responsibility for the state of the world and the plight of our neighbors. Which is why when the earthquake in our first reading causes the chains to fall off Paul and Silas and all the prisoners in that Philippian jail, and the doors swing wide open, we might have assumed, as the jailer did, that all the prisoners would have escaped, “r-u-n-n-o-f-t,” like Everett, Delmer, and Pete in O Brother, Where Art Thou? We cannot fathom what it means to be saved, to be, as Luther said, the perfectly free lord of all and the entirely bound servant of all all at the same time. And all this makes us think of the incarnation in the abstract, like an anomaly in the life of God. It makes us think of the incarnation as an impossible thing we are expected to believe as a litmus test for our faith rather than the living reality of the whole life of God. Theologian Wellford Hobbie writes, “The ultimate question is not whether there is someone or something out there in limitless space whom we call God, but whether there is someone who knows something of the dust of the earth, something of the blood-stained face human existence wears and can feel for it.” When Jesus meets the disciples in that locked room that first Easter morning, he comes in the flesh, scarred from the ordeal of the cross. He comes physically, inviting their embrace. He comes hungry, sharing their food. And he comes reminding them of all the promises God had made, and all the promises God had kept. He comes defining the cross and proving in is very body God’s power to redeem. He comes entirely free in the sovereignty of God and in total solidarity with the human condition. He comes to make us one with God through the preaching of the apostles. Here indeed is a God who knows something of the dust of the earth, who knows something of the blood-stained face human existence wears and can feel for it. Can cry its name into the stench of the tomb and rescue it from death. Here indeed is a God who’s own face was stained with blood, who’s own body is but the dust of earth. Here indeed is a God who not only feels for human existence but feels with human existence. The ascension is not the end of the incarnation. The ascension is not the end of God with us, not the end of grief or pain, suffering or death. The ascension is the incarnation exposed, the incarnation universalized before our very eyes. In Jesus we have found the hidden God. And in the ascension, we have found God hidden in our very lives. Christ is incarnate in us. We have not been abandoned by the ascension; we have been appointed, appropriated, called up and sent out, made one with the very heart of God. We are the living, breathing, bleeding and dying body of Christ. If Christ is the image of the invisible God, then the Church is the image of the invisible Christ. When the world wants to know that there is someone who knows something of the dust of the earth, something of the blood-stained face human existence wears and can feel for it, the world is looking to the Church. When the church prays for an end to gun violence, poverty, war, loneliness, disease, tyranny— and then takes no meaningful action, takes no real risk to see them end, our neighbors do not see God answer prayers. When the church takes a moment of silence in response to the grotesque horror of racism, sexism, classism, the world hears the silence of God. When the church remains silent, the world experiences the absence of God. The ascension of Jesus is not God’s abandonment of the world, but the church’s silence, inaction, and insistence on its own rights is God’s absence, failure, and indifference in the experience of our neighbors. Salvation is not freedom from responsibility for the suffering of our neighbors. Beloved, the incarnation continues in us. The Gospel is embodied in us. In us Christ is dying, In us Christ is rising, and in us Christ has come again. Christ has descended into our personal hells to lead us out of all that holds us captive. Christ calls our names into the tomb to free us from all that binds us. Christ is the Word spoken into the formless void of grief and shame and fear and doubt, Let there be life, let there be love, let there be peace, let there be faith. The world wants to know that there is a God out there who knows something of the blood-stained face of human existence, and can offer more than lip-service to it. Martin Luther said, “God doesn’t need our good works, but our neighbor does.” Perhaps in our context, we might hear his words this way, “God doesn’t need our voices, our advocacy, our votes, but our neighbors do.” The incarnation of God in Christ is the revelation of God’s solidarity with the human condition. The ascension is God’s commissioning of the Church to practice the same radical solidarity with a world in need. We have been called to embody the good news of God’s solidarity with the human condition. People of God, turn your eyes and hearts, and voices toward your neighbor that they may know what is the hope to which Christ has called us, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power that they might see Christ in the Church, which is his body. And when we live out this faith, we are embodying the resurrection, proclaiming the Lord’s death until he comes. Amen. 

This is one of those weeks where I feel like the lectionary isn’t doing its readers and hearers any favors. Our gospel lesson begins, “Jesus answered him…” Who’s him? ? And what was the question? So, backing up just a bit, Today’s lesson comes in a section of John’s gospel known as the Farewell Discourse. Jesus speaks to his disciples on the night he will be arrested. Where the other Gospels spend part of one chapter recounting the institution of the Last Supper, The Gospel of John doesn’t even mention it and instead spends chapters 14 through 17 on a long monologue, interrupted a couple of times by questions from the disciples. Just before our passage today, the other Judas, not the one who will betray Jesus, asks Jesus a question, “Lord, how is it that you will reveal yourself to us, and not to the world?” Jesus answer to the other Judas is our reading for today. But then this raises other questions. How is what Jesus says to the other Judas supposed to answer his question? The other Judas asks “How do you reveal yourself to the us, and not to the world?” “Jesus answered him, ‘Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.’” Why don’t you reveal yourself to the world, Jesus? Why don’t you reveal me to the world, Other Judas? seems to be Jesus reply. Jesus seems to say, “It is you, my beloved ones, and those who love me, who will reveal me to the world, when you love me, and when you love one another.” Here as Jesus is leaving He is giving his disciples some final instructions. And they are in fact, the same instructions he’s been giving all along. Love me. Love one another. Then, It’s almost as if Jesus anticipates their next question. Jesus says, “I have said all this while I am still standing here. But when I’m not standing here, the Holy Spirit will be with you in my place, and the Spirit will teach you everything you need to know and will remind you what I said while I was here.” In my last year of Seminary, I was asked by the Bishop of the South Carolina Synod to serve as a Synodically Authorized Minister to a small rural congregation in a tiny town where the next nearest ELCA congregation was some 30 miles away. It was my job to function for them in every capacity an ordained pastor would, including limited permission to consecrate the Eucharist, normally the sole propriety of an ordained pastor. When I first arrived there in early September, there was an enormous amount of anxiety, grief, and frustration about dwindling numbers, about what could or should be done to bring in and keep new members, about how to meet the Synod’s expectations and avoiding closure. It was clear that this congregation knew and loved Jesus. It was clear that this congregation wanted to be out in the community but they felt too worn out and resources felt too scarce to do anything meaningful. It was clear that this congregation felt the other Judas’s question in their bones. “How come you revealed yourself to us, Jesus, but haven’t given us what we need to share that with others?” But it was also clear that this congregation had a fierce love for each other. While they struggled to know how best to meet the needs of the neighborhood, this congregation was a vital part of each other’s lives. They called and checked on each other. They visited each other when they were sick. One couple loaned another their favorite recliner so the husband could sleep while recovering from a fall. They spent their own time and money to make repairs to the church building. A member volunteered to be the organist when the previous one resigned and moved away. When the child of the former administrator lost her mother suddenly in her freshman year of college, they met her in her grief and in her need and gave her a job and the grace she needed. And they embraced this starry-eyed seminary student who was trying to put all his theory into practice, and they wrestled with the scriptures with me, they listened to my ideas and backed me up in trying new things; they came to worship 5 times in one week between Palm Sunday and Easter, they invited me for dinner, they called me to the bedside, they let me be their pastor before I could rightly claim the title, they were effusive with their encouragement, and gentle in their critique. AND when the opportunity presented itself to offer Sunday School at the new assisted living and memory care facility that had just opened across the street, they showed up early, they helped move furniture, they engaged in conversation, they bought flowers, they made space for these children of God to be a part of the life of their congregation. Those residents couldn’t come to church, and they brought church to them. This is what ministry looks like. It is not measured average weekly attendance, or average weekly contributions, or in Church Vitality surveys or viability metrics. Ministry is not measured by rubrics of success and failure. Ministry is measured in presence and faithfulness. This is what Jesus means when he tells the disciples “I do not give to you as the world gives.” The world wants to weigh and measure and quantify and validate by comparison. But where the world gives stress and competition Jesus gives the Spirit and Peace. Ministry is measured in presence and faithfulness. Jesus’ call to discipleship is powered by The Holy Spirit of the Living God and the Peace of Jesus himself. The late theologian Rachel Held Evans gave this advice to a gathering of ELCA Rostered Leaders in 2017: “ You have the Sacraments. You have the call. You have the Holy Spirit. You have one another. You have a God who knows the way out of the grave. You have everything you need. You just need to show up and be faithful.” You just need to show up and be faithful!! That’s it. Saints, our congregation has twice the members and roughly 6 times the annual budget of this small, rural congregation in South Carolina, and we are situated in a suburban county of nearly 1 million people— people who need us to be revelations of the presence and faithfulness of Jesus, who need the sacraments, who need the Holy Spirit, who need the community we have in each other. They need a God who knows the way out of the grave. They need us to show up and be faithful. We have many opportunities to meet our neighbors where they are, to love Jesus, and to love each other. We don’t need more money to show up and be faithful. We don’t need more members to show up and be faithful. We have everything we need to show up and be faithful. And when we do God in Christ by the Holy Spirit, will reveal Jesus to the world through us. Amen. 

We live in an age of polarization. Our politics has divided us into hardline camps of right and left, conservatives and liberals, deplorables and snowflakes, “fascists” and “communists”, “our” side and “the other” side. Politics has always been dialectic, but it seems, in a brief span, we have gone from disagreeing about how best to solve our problems to disagreeing about what the problems even are. We retreat into echo chambers, into carefully curated alternate realities that allow us to avoid “the others” while plotting to impose our version of reality with the force of law. I believe our political divides strike at the heart of a fundamental human need to belong. As older societal distinctions and institutions decline in social capital, we have to find new allegiances, new distinctions, new paradigms and mythologies to help us understand not only who WE are, but who THEY are. In order to belong to something we must be able to define the edges of that thing, we must be able to mark the passage from outside to inside, from not in to in. We have to be able to distinguish what inside-ness looks like, feels like, and in this way we are able to define the edges of our very identity. Then it is from these identities that we engage in the new politics, were we vie for “most victimized” status so we can be most innocent, most pure, best positioned to receive justice instead of practicing justice. Looking at today’s readings, we see a similar dynamic at play. In Acts, Peter is confronted by those who think that Peter, who is Jewish, ought not to eat with Gentiles. Conquered over and over again, the Jewish people had defined and maintained their identity by drawing hard lines between those who were Jewish and those who were not Jewish. Those who were not Jewish, but wanted to worship the God of the Jews were welcome to come to the temple to pray, were welcome to keep the law, and the feasts, but they weren’t really Jewish until they were circumcised. As the infant Church began to realize that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah, and as Gentiles began to join the movement, Jewish Christians began to insist that these Gentile converts must become full-fledged Jews first in order to become full-fledged Christians. So, those who have confronted Peter in Judea are demanding to know how and why Peter is not following the Rules, why he would be sharing the table with those who are obviously not God’s chosen people. Or, perhaps more terrifying, has God chosen new people? Can God’s mind change? Peter recounts for his accusers a vision, in which a voice tells him “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” and an encounter with Cornelius, a Gentile believer who has his own vision of a man called Peter who will give him a message that will save Cornelius and his entire household. The Holy Spirit tells Peter “not to make a distinction between them and us.” How can we know who’s in and who’s out if there’s no distinction between them and us? In our Gospel for today, Jesus has just washed the feet of his disciples, and shared a last meal with them. He seems to do this knowing that Peter will deny him and Judas will betray him, and all of them will desert him. And yet, knowing all of this, and having served them anyway, Jesus says, “Just as I have loved you, love one another. And by this, everyone will know that you are my disciples.” Jesus gives his disciples a new commandment by which to distinguish themselves. Love each other. That’s it. Love each other, and everyone will know that you are my disciples. Jesus draws a line an identifier, a guidepost, a mile marker. Jesus says, those who love each other, those are my disciples. Those who don’t love each other, not my disciples. Finally!! Some criterion, some measure of belonging. Peter’s vision that nothing is profane, Cornelius’ vision that the Gentiles have the Spirit too, John the Revelator’s vision of God making a tabernacle of the whole universe, Jesus making love the hallmark of his disciples; All these things define the edges of the gospel message. The Church, Jesus’ disciples, Christians, whatever the moniker, our belonging is defined by who we include, not by who we exclude. Where we are inclined to build a wall, the church must build a door. Where we mark a boundary, the church must see a threshold. Where we want to distinguish between them and us the church must see only Christ, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. We must come to this table, to the Eucharist, to this bread and wine this Body and Blood, to realize that finally, God makes no distinction between the physical world and the spiritual world. All things come from God, All things are filled with God, and all things will return to God. The divisions and distinctions we create may serve some purpose in this life, may even meet some fundamental human need, but we are moving toward a future in which even the boundary between life and death, the beginning and the end, will pass away. God in Jesus is calling us to make no distinctions between ourselves, to see our boundaries not as the limits of our belonging, but as the unfinished edges of a work in progress. The church must choose advocacy over aversion, intercession over introversion, and repentance over repulsion, finding those with whom we disagree are still our neighbors. The church must amplify cries for justice, even when we are embarrassed by their indictment, even when they challenge our hegemony, even when they require more of us that we think is possible. Beloved, our belonging is not defined or determined by politics and party but by a God of unbounded compassion and measureless grace who fills us with the Spirit and bids us love as we have been loved. We may find disagreement among us, as the early church did. But our divisions do not create a smaller circle, rather like fish and loaves, what we divide, God multiplies. Our divisions and distinctions expose the vastness and inclusivity of a God who calls us to love our enemies because God already does. In Jesus, God in Christ became the other, made all the thems into us-es, calling disciples to make no distinctions between them and us, between sacred and profane, until there is no other, and in the end, there will be nothing but God, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. In the end, there will be nothing but love. Until then, until all distinction has ended, and all things have been made new, let your life and your faith, and your politics, and your identity be defined by love. Amen.