Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, Year C, August 31, 2025

Now I know the first day of fall was only Monday, but I’m already thinking about Christmas. Ebenezer Scrooge is a mean-spirited and selfish old man, who hates Christmas. He is very unkind to the people who work for him. One cold Christmas Eve, on his way home, he sees people taking donations for charity and he refuses to give anything. Then, when his nephew invites him to spend Christmas with him and his family, the only people who look past his old, grumpy demeanor, Scrooge still refuses. Eventually, Scrooge makes his way home and gets into bed. In his sleep, he is visited by the ghost of his old business partner Jacob Marley – and then three other ghosts – The first is the ghost of Christmas Past who takes him on a journey through Christmases from his past, through his unhappy childhood, and showing Scrooge himself as young man more in love with money than his own fiancée. Then the ghost of Christmas Present visits and Scrooge is whisked away to observe his clerk’s family. There outside their home, Scrooge can see Tiny Tim, a very ill child, who is still full of love and joy, even in the midst of so much heartache. This ghost also takes him to his nephew’s home to see the Christmas celebration he missed. The final ghost, the ghost of Christmas Future, absolutely terrifies Scrooge with visions of his own death. In today’s gospel there is a rich man who reminds me an awful lot of Scrooge. We don’t know this man’s name, though Church tradition would call him Dives. Jesus describes him living a lavish lifestyle, rich in food and friends. There is a gate around his estate to keep away the riffraff. He has the privilege to ignore anyone who might want to glom onto the lifestyle he lives … people like Lazarus – a beggar, who sits outside the rich man’s gate, who would give anything – anything – for just the scraps off the rich man’s table. Lazarus is covered in sores and adding insult to injury, even the wild dogs’ attempts at mercy, bring him more pain. Through this story, Jesus repeats a theme and gives us the metaphor of an ever-widening chasm, The chasm between those who sit in the seats of honor and those who sit in the lowly places, the chasm between those who can return a favor and those who cannot pay you back, the chasm between those who hoard wealth and those who sell their possessions to give to the poor, the chasm between those who by their dishonesty enslave people to their debts and those who are the victims of this system. And today that chasm grows wider and wider as a rich man ignores the poor man who sits just outside his gate. This chasm is wide, but not so wide that the two sides cannot see one another: See, despite the torment the rich man describes, there are no signs of remorse. He calls across the chasm begging the mercy he never gave, and once again expecting to be served by the very man he ignored at his gate, demanding some cool water. We don’t hear from Lazarus himself. Instead, Father Abraham does the speaking. Perhaps this is because Lazarus is finally at rest. But part of me wonders, would Lazarus have given the compassion he never received? Even so, Father Abraham does not oblige. The rich man has made his choices and is now reaping the consequences: and yet, these consequences inspire him to ask for satiation and intervention – cool water and a message to his family from the dead. Father Abraham ignores the rich man’s begging— pointing out that the rich man’s family has access to the same prophetic teaching that he and Lazarus had, teachings that are centered on caring for the widows and orphans, food for the hungry and clothing to the naked, whose central theology is compassion and mercy, doing justice, loving kindness, living humbly. Faith that is less about philosophy and belief, but embodied in faithful deeds. So many times, I think we get so caught up in what’s happening inside our own gates, that we walk right past those in greatest need. The church is very accustomed to hearing the plight of those who are hungry, naked, addicted, or often ignored by society. The church is used to, and in fact prides itself in, the work of feeding, clothing, and praying for those outside our gates. But then there are others that we overlook because their presence makes us uncomfortable— people right outside the gates we’ve fixed between our convenience and their pain, between our privilege and the injustice we perpetuate, between the systems we profit from and the plight of those exploited by those systems, between birthright citizenship and asylum. People who would give anything to have the scraps from this table, to dip their finger in the baptismal font to remember who and whose they are, to have their stories heard, their hearts mended, to become partners with us in making a better world. And I wonder if our pity, instead of our actions, feels like a dog licking their wounds, and less like the food that fills their stomach and or the community that fills their souls? As Lutherans this may be hard to hear. When someone even hints at works righteousness the inner Martin Luther rises up in protest. But sometimes we need to be reminded that it was Martin Luther also said, “God doesn’t need our good works, but our neighbor does.” After being visited by the ghosts of Christmas, Scrooge changed his life. He became a man full of compassion, not only generous with his wealth, but with his time and all that had been entrusted to him. And while this parable mimics the typical pattern of Luke, with justice for the poor and a strong warning for those who harbor wealth, it is also a parable of good news, because as inheritors of the gospel of Luke we have been given the gift of this story and the gift of time. This story is not a threat of conscious eternal torment for living an unjust life. This story is a promise that Justice is coming. It will bring grief for those who perpetuate and profit from injustice. And it will bring grace for those exploited and excluded by that injustice. Beloved, the good news for us this day is that this gift of time provides us the opportunity for repentance and hope, and the invitation to stand the middle of this chasm, to join Jesus in cruciform living, and by our faithful action. to show the world who God is and how God acts. This looks like living out our baptism by sharing our gifts with the world. It looks like stepping outside our gates and close the chasm now, to meet the poor and needy where they are, to learn their names and meet their needs. This looks like taking the meal from this altar and sharing it with the world through gifts of food for the hungry, hands outstretched to embrace the lonely, and words that remind people of their belovedness. This looks like taking the story of God’s radical love by becoming an advocate, an ally, and accomplice, by asking ourselves and God some hard questions, and living out the hard answers. People of God, we are not only called to hear this gospel story, but we are invited to live differently because of it! And when we join God in this work, through the grace of Jesus Christ, the chasm is filled, becoming a place where the wealthy and the poor, the named and the unnamed, the seen and the unseen, walk on level ground to the glory of God. May it be so. Amen.

There’s a silly game I used to play with my friends when I was younger – and many of you have likely played it too – it’s called: Would You Rather? Let’s play it. Would you rather eat a brownie or a piece of cake? Would you rather eat breakfast or dinner? Then this is the point where the game gets a bit more challenging. Would you rather eat an earthworm or a cockroach? Would you rather chew gum from under the pew or lick the bottom of a friend’s shoe? Now before everyone gets too nauseous we’ll stop because I think you get the idea … When I was younger the questions were silly and disgusting and, of course, as I got older, they sounded more like “Would you rather make out with [this person] or [that one]?” Now as an adult, this game isn’t as fun … Pastor Jennifer and I play all the time. Would you rather have chicken or beef for dinner? Would you rather eat at Cracker Barrel or Culvers? Would you rather grocery shop at Kroger or Publix? Trust me, there are no winners. In our gospel today, a manager plays a version of this game: Would I rather beg or cheat? The answer for the shrewd manager is that he would rather cheat. You see, this manager is in trouble. He has not only been charging interest on behalf of his master, but he has been adding his own fee as well and now he’s has been caught cooking the books. And unless something drastic changes he will soon be out at the gate begging like all the others he has been taking advantage of. So he devises a plan. He decides to cut out some of the interest. This does two things for him: 1. He will once again be in the good graces of his master when the master’s debtors are able to pay back their now smaller debts. 2. Even if he gets fired, he is now also in the good graces of his once defrauded neighbors, who might be more inclined to help him out. He thinks he’s pretty smart, avoiding potential poverty and disgrace. But his seeming generosity is merely the collateral damage of saving his own behind. He is not repentant. He is not ashamed. He’s not reformed. He’s cunning, shrewd, conniving. He’s found a new way to use people to his own advantage. In our first reading from Amos, the prophet relays the word of the Lord. “Hear this, you that trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land, saying, ‘When will the new moon be over so that we may sell grain; and the sabbath, so that we may offer wheat for sale? We will make the ephah small and the shekel great, and practice deceit with false balances, buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, and selling the sweepings of the wheat’ The LORD has sworn by the pride of Jacob: Surely I will never forget any of their deeds.” God is not pleased with those who cheat, extort, and enslave their neighbors. The Apostle Paul give us the contrast: While there is none like our God, who is worthy to be praised from sun up to sundown, this God became a human, became our ransom, became debt cancelation for all. God chooses the side of the beggars, the poor and the needy, the bought and paid for, the broke and extorted, the trafficked and exploited. God is not too proud to stand with beggars to get down in the dust with the poor, to kneel in the ashes with the needy, and to give God’s own self to cancel our debts. Jesus becomes a beggar, choosing solidarity with our poverty to raise up the lowly and to call down the proud, because this is the path of discipleship, the path of transformation. Upon his death, a slip of paper was found in Martin Luther’s cloak. This slip contained his last words; “We are beggars, this is true.” Beloved, the path of discipleship calls us to make this true. We must become beggars. We must choose to stand in solidarity with the poor, with the needy, with the bought and paid for, with the broke and extorted, the trafficked and exploited. We must give up the idea that Church, faith, discipleship, is about saving our own behind, that we come here to be served or saved, rather than learning how to serve and save others. We must not be too proud to stand with beggars, to get down in the dust with the poor, to kneel in the ashes with the needy, and to give our very selves to embody God’s debt-canceling love. We start here in worship, where the sacraments remind us that we are indeed beggars before God. Each time we gather around the font, we dip our fingers in the water, making the sign of the cross on our forehead, asking God to remind us again and again that our debts are canceled. Each time we gather around the table, we put our hands into a beggar’s position and ask God to offer us a piece of Godself. And from this font and table we are raised up and sent out to serve our neighbors, to forgive our debtors as we have been forgiven, to give our money, to give our time, in service to those who find themselves in dust and ashes. So let us make Luther’s last words into a kind of prayer. “Lord, we are already beggars. Help us to live like this is true.” Amen.

How many of you remember where you were when John F. Kennedy was assassinated? If that was before your time, what about Robert F. Kennedy? Or the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.? If that’s still before your time, How about the Challenger explosion? Or the Oklahoma City Bombing? Where were you on September 11, 2001? This week, a popular provocateur and political celebrity was assassinated, in broad daylight, at a public event, while speaking in front of thousands of people on a college campus in Utah. His gruesome murder was filmed, from multiple angles and varying distances, and immediately available to the world across every social media platform. Where once these graphic tragedies were shielded from our view by the censors of network news outlets and the scruples of newspaper editors, the internet has streamed the high-definition horrors directly to our hip pockets without edit for mass consumption. Children the world over have seen this video. My own son included. Gen Z will likely remember where they were, not when they heard the news, but when they saw the video of a high-velocity munition take the life of a public figure. And in our highly divided times, this event has been met with a mix of terror and celebration. Each side has been quick to blame the other. Partisans, ever the opportunists, have sought to exploit the spectacle to further their cause and grab for power. Blame is easy. Blame is a form of self-absolution, an adoption of victimhood to justify vengeance in the name of justice. In all three of our readings for this week, we see that there is a difference between taking the blame, and taking responsibility. Moses didn’t make a golden calf for the Hebrew people to worship, but he defended his people, staying God’s wrath, and sparing their lives. Moses didn’t take the blame, but he did accept responsibility. In 1 Timothy, “Paul” speaks of his ignorance as the cause of his blasphemy, persecution, hatred, and violence. And yet, as the recipient of mercy, he accepts responsibility and changes his life accordingly. In the Gospel of Luke, the Pharisees and scribes were complaining that Jesus had crossed the socio-political divide and was sharing his table with tax-collectors and sinners. Jesus tells two parables in answer. In the first, a sheep wanders off; it’s what sheep do. But the shepherd accepts responsibility and goes to find the sheep, bringing it back and celebrating. Similarly, a woman has lost a coin. Coins don’t just wander off. They can roll away and they can be easily obscured on the dirt floor of an ancient near-eastern home. So, the woman accepts responsibility and sweeps the whole house until she finds the coin. Then she celebrates its return. Most of us in this room aren’t to blame for the rhetoric, rancor, and polarization of this present age. But all of us are responsible. We didn’t create social media platforms and engineer algorithms to exacerbate our divisions, radicalize our thinking, monetize our engagement, and silo us into us-es and thems. But all of us are responsible. We are not to blame for the need of news media outlets to be profitable in order to exist and therefore, tailoring reporting and headlines to the presuppositions of their consumers. But all of us are responsible. Political violence is always wrong. Full. Stop. And it doesn’t matter which side is to blame, because we are all of us responsible for what comes next. Each of us is responsible for the media we consume, both the quantity and the quality. A good rule to follow should be that each day, you will spend no more time reading, watching, or listening to the news than you spend reading your Bible or praying. Further, understanding proper journalistic standards and practices, researching which reporters and outlets are using them, and limiting ourselves to only those reliable resources will protect us from being manipulated by propaganda, advertising, misinformation, and disinformation. Then, you need to build authentic, loving relationships with people with whom you disagree. You don’t have to fight them. You don’t have to best friends. But you don’t have to be enemies, either. Instead, see them as human, as susceptible as you are to bad information, and share your thoughts, feelings, and research with as much kindness and goodwill as possible. And lastly, if it is possible for you, consider a social media fast, if not an exodus. I walked away for Facebook and Instagram over a year ago and I have been a lot happier and clear-headed since. I know that is not possible for everyone, for various reasons— and some of you are receiving this very sermon on Facebook as I speak. But to the degree that you’re able to limit your consumption of social media, treat it like alcohol. Some of us will avoid it all together, and others will be able to consume sparingly and responsibly. If you find that you are not able to consume social media or any facet of the internet with sobriety, reach out to a mental health professional for help. We all have a share of the responsibility for changing the world around us. As Billy Joel sang almost 40 years ago, “We didn’t start the fire, No, we didn’t light it, but we tried to fight it.” The good news is that we do not do this work alone. God’s mercy and patience go with us, both as personal liberation and as the empowerment for our duty. We are not to blame, but by the call of discipleship, we are all responsible. Today, in addition to the 14 th Sunday after Pentecost, is the Feast of the Holy Cross. The Cross is a corrective lens for our perspective on reality, and the shape of discipleship. God in Christ was not to blame for sin, death, and the devil, but Jesus took responsibility on the cross, loving the world as it is, remaking the world as it should be, and calling and empowering us to participate in both the loving and remaking. I want to close by leading us through a time of prayer, focused on this perspective, calling us away from our allegiances to this kingdom of death and calling us to a new citizenship in the Kingdom-come-on-earth-as-it-is-in-heaven….

Some of you may know my story, but for those unfamiliar with my journey out of fundamentalism and evangelicalism, I will recap briefly. I have shared here before that I grew up in a tiny Baptist denomination in Southern Appalachia. At around age 2, I began to spend every Saturday night at my grandmother’s house so that I could go to church with her on Sunday. She became a place of refuge for me over the course of my childhood, and so did the church. I met Jesus and I learned the faith in this church and in my grandmother’s home. By the time I started college, I had developed a deep love for the scriptures and took my faith very seriously, and as a result I began to question some of the things I had been taught. The Jesus I knew and the scriptures I read led me to very different conclusions that those of my church. When I stopped reading the Bible in the King James and started reading a modern translation these differences grew even broader, and eventually, my involvement with Campus Crusade, which they considered a heretical organization, became a breaking point, and the church where I learned the faith forced me to repent of my involvement and affirm that the King James Version as the only rule of faith and practice, or I was “not qualified to be a member” of the church. At the time, that choice seemed easy. Follow the Jesus I had come to know, even if it led me away for this church that had been family to me, or abandon my faith in this Jesus in order to keep a truncated and pernicious version of the faith. So, I resigned my membership, and began a long, meandering spiritual journey to find a tradition that resonated with the Jesus I had always known. Eventually, I landed in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. But I had not counted the cost. Some years later, while visiting my grandmother, who had continued to attend the church I left, we were having a conversation and, I don’t remember what brought it up, but I told her that I had discerned, through prayer, study, and reading the scripture, that I could no longer say the pledge of allegiance without violating my conscience— but that is a matter for another sermon. My grandmother was shocked. I had never seen her so disappointed in me before. This was also the catalyst for a conversation about many other ways that the things I had come to believe were a disappointment to her. I was shocked at how hurt she seemed. I was shocked at how hurt I felt. I had left her church with such hurt and righteous indignation that I had not considered how she had felt about my leaving. My study and conviction, my faith and my love for Jesus were a direct result of her teaching and example. I was still a Christian at all because of her, because of the way she embodied the faith, the way that she had introduced me to Jesus and not just handed me a Bible. My continued faith was an act of defiance against all I had been told I had to believe in order to be allowed to stay in the church, not an act of defiance against her. I couldn’t reconcile the Jesus I knew and this iteration of the faith that to me was taking the Name of Christ in vain. But in leaving, I hadn’t just left the church; I had left my grandmother. Where I had gone, she couldn’t follow. The cost of leaving was high, but the cost of staying was higher. I couldn’t keep Jesus and the only place of safety and comfort I had ever known. I can imagine that she felt like I had come to hate all she had tried to teach me, that in rejecting her church and its ideology, I had rejected something fundamental about her. I could see the heartbreak and confusion on her face, emotions I wasn’t aware of causing before, and certainly, had never intended. When I counted the cost of leaving, I hadn’t accounted for her grief. In the coming months, All Saints will begin to literally count the cost of building new ministries and rebuilding old ones. We will give an accounting of all the time, talent, and treasure we will need to invest to make sure that we are introducing this Jesus to our neighbors and to each other. We will ask, “Who isn’t here?” and we will find ways to invite and include our neighbors in our life of faith. And as we make this accounting, we will have to ask, Can we afford to build a ministry that is more inclusive, that doesn’t demand more of people than they can give in order to be included? Can we afford not to? Can we afford to give up our old ways of doing church, the habits and traditions that have shaped life together and given them meaning? Can we afford not to? Can we let go of outdated models of growth, membership, and engagement and meet people where they are? Can we afford not to? Can we afford to stop thinking of church as a destination at the end of the path toward faith and begin to think of faith itself as a journey and church as the rest areas along that path? Can we afford not to? Can we afford the time, energy, and money it will cost to examine every aspect of our beliefs, our practices, our politics, our preferences, our principles, and measure them by their faithfulness and effectiveness, measure them against Love? Can we afford not to? Moses asked the Israelites to choose life. Paul asked Philemon to choose love. Jesus asks us to choose the cross. There are other choices, but the question is not can we bear the cost of choosing life, love, and the cross. The question is whether we can afford to avoid choosing life, choosing love, choosing the cross. Choosing to grieve and let go of all the things we must leave behind in order to choose life, love, and the cross is the very substance of discipleship. Eventually, my grandmother and I reconciled, and we were able to talk about the scriptures, differences in interpretation, theological insight, and grow in mutual respect. I wouldn’t say I won a convert, but I don’t think she would say she lost a grandson, either. The cost of following this Jesus is often high. There is no discipleship that is not marked by the Cross. It will cost us home, family, security, time, money, even our very lives. But for every cross we bear there is a resurrection. God does not call us to faith to destroy us, any more than God calls us to faith to protect us from every discomfort. God calls us to choose life, and Jesus leads us to the cross. Discipleship, then, is the choice of the life that only comes after the cross, the life that is marked by scars and healing, not safety and health. Discipleship is the path of transformation, the path of life, death, and resurrection, the path that brings babies to a symbolic burial in baptism and celebrates our founder’s last meal, to promise us that death is not final, and discomfort cannot be avoided. The cost will be high, we will have to account for our discomfort, for our grief. But we can also account for the life that only comes after such discomfort and grief. The question is not can we afford to grow and change, to bear the discomfort or to grieve the losses that will come. The question is, Can we afford not to? Amen.

When Zion was little, he was obsessed with lawnmowers. He pointed them out when we drove by someone mowing. He begged to stop at Home Depot so he could sit on one. He had his own toy versions of a push mower, trimmer, blower, and a John Deere riding mower. But there was one lawnmower he LOVED more than any other and it belonged to my father-in-law. This mower was a Kabota zero turn lawnmower And the reason I know the name brand was that every time we went to my in-law’s house – winter or summer, rain or shine, Zion would say, “I want to ride the Kabota.” In fact, he was so obsessed with my this lawnmower that for his 3 rd birthday all he wanted was a lawnmower cake that looked like PawPaw’s Kabota and we had to find a baker who could make it happen. But there was one day every week when no matter how much Zion begged, no matter how many tears fell, my father-in-law refused and that day was Sunday. For my father-in-law, my own grandfather, and many people I knew growing up, Sunday was the sabbath and this meant that any kind of work— or even the perception of work— was forbidden; unless, quoting from Deuteronomy, “your ox was in a ditch.” Sundays were sacred. They were for worship, lunch, naps, and televised sports. A Southern sabbath. But, ya know, despite sharing this experience with many a Southern family, it was always someone’s dad, grandpa, uncle, neighbor— but never someone’s mom, grandma, aunt. Seems this Southern Sabbath was made for men. All those Sunday morning pews crawling with monogrammed smocking and Buster Brown shoes were corralled by women. All those Sunday suppers were made by women. All those crisply ironed Monday morning shirts were starched by women. The sabbath might have been a day for resting from work, but only if you were getting paid for that work. While the fellas listening to this Gospel lesson might have wondered what Luke might mean when he speaks of a woman bent-over with a spirit of weakness, I would be the ladies listening don’t have to strain their imaginations too hard. We don’t know her name or where she comes from, but in our Gospel lesson this morning a woman, weary and bent over with a spirit of weakness, makes her way into the synagogue where Jesus is teaching. What the text hides from us in the mists of translation is that word here for “bent over” is used only one other place in scripture and there it means something closer to humiliation. Further, when the Gospels speak of oppressing spirits and demons, we should read this as a toxic relationship to something or someone. She bears in her body the weight and the weakness of a burden heaved upon her. She is bent not because she wants to avoid eye contact, or miss each morning’s sunrise, or forget what the stars look like, or never raise her face to the evening breeze, but because she has no other choice. While her fellow worshipers have arrived on time, she comes late. Jesus is teaching — most likely surrounded by a crowd – so who knows if she even notices him, bent over as she is? Luke tells us that by the time she encounters Jesus, she’s been crippled for eighteen years – almost two decades. According to the text, the woman doesn’t ask Jesus for help when she appears in the synagogue on this particular Sabbath. But Jesus sees her. And he stops preaching. Worship is put on hold. He calls her over and says the thing Jesus always says when he encounters the sick, the broken, the dying, the dead: “You are set free from your ailment.” Then, the Gospel tells us, Jesus “laid his hands on her, and immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.” “Immediately she stood up straight.” I wonder if we of this place or worship as a place where hunched over, humiliated, exhausted people are invited, encouraged, and empowered to “stand up straight.” Do we think of the Church as a place where people, maybe even ourselves— people who are bent under the weight of shame, judgment, invisibility, loneliness, false piety, condemnation, prejudice, legalism, and harmful theology can be embraced and restored? Do we believe that the Church is a place where Jesus still liberates people, transforms people, so that our full potential is realized? Do we have the courage to shift our focus from the worship we prefer to offer to the work of liberation God desires of us? Are we brave enough to invite others who are bent by the weight of oppression and systemic injustice to come and find healing, wholeness, and community? Will we let the praises of the liberated ones stand as a living sermon, to us and to the world? Or are we upset at the interruption? Unfortunately, the Gospel story itself offers some insight into these questions. As soon as Jesus frees this bent woman, a leader of the synagogue voices his frustration. Essentially, his angry criticism drowns out her joyful praise: “There are six days on which work ought to be done,” he tells the crowds, “come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.” The leader protests because Jesus disrupts the regular Sabbath schedule of the synagogue and messes with the tradition. Worse, Jesus places a socially expendable, physically disabled, spiritually vulnerable woman at the center of the tradition. Jesus allows the woman's need to interrupt his own sermon, and welcomes her praise song even though it upends the synagogue's order of service. Now, to be clear, the leader of the synagogue is not a “bad guy.” This leader cares about right worship. Right belief. Right practice. He cares about honoring the Sabbath, obeying God’s laws, and upholding the faith-filled traditions of his spiritual community. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with any of these goals. His intentions are not evil, and his concerns are not without merit, but his myopia is akin to that of all those Southern men who can enjoy a sabbath rest because of the bent over women in their own lives. What the leader misses is the heart of the Sabbath, the heart of God’s law, the heart of the tradition the heart of liberation. As Walter Brueggeman writes in his book Sabbath as Resistance, “Worship that does not lead to neighborly compassion and justice cannot be faithful worship of YHWH.” This synagogue leader and all those Southern men are missing justice and compassion. The kind of justice and compassion that exceeds legalism every single time. The kind of justice and compassion that doesn’t cling to orthodoxy simply for orthodoxy’s sake. The kind of justice and compassion that consistently sees the broken body, the broken soul, the broken spirit — instead of seeing a broken commandment. This story — like so many Gospel stories — illustrates a fundamental truth about Jesus’ ministry and God’s inbreaking reign: timing, etiquette, propriety, and decorum are not important, but compassion, justice, and liberation are essential! In the same way Jesus embraced and liberated the bent over woman from the oppression she experienced, Jesus embraces and frees the synagogue leader, transforming his understanding of sabbath and God’s work within it. And the challenging but very good news for us this day, is that here in this place, within and around us, through the Spirit, God embraces and liberates each of us, releasing us from shame and oppression, fear and isolation, prejudice and judgment raising us up so that we can see the good news of God’s love, so that we can BE the good news of God’s love. As the Spirit of God liberates each of us we are called and empowered to go and liberate others, by following the Spirit into the places where bodies, spirits, and souls feel broken offering healing and restoration, dignity and transformation. This is what it means to keep the Sabbath holy, this is how we honor the command of God, this is what Isaiah tells us this morning brings delight to the Lord. So beloved, let us go forth and proclaim the wonderful things God has done and continues to do in us! Amen.

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.