Thinking Bigger

Luke 20:27-38
November 10, 2013

So Jesus has been talking about the Kingdom of God and resurrection
and new life and hope quite enough lately.
and the Saducees are trying to trick him
They don’t believe in the resurrection,
so they’re trying to mock Jesus
and show how silly and unworkable the idea is.

They present this woman who couldn’t have children
so by Jewish law if her husband dies, she’s now
his brother’s wife, then if he dies she would
be passed on to the next brother and then next and the next.

They ask Jesus “Who’s wife would she be in this
resurrection you’re talking about, Jesus, they would all be there.
Basically they’re saying, “Who will she keep house for?
She can’t keep the house of seven men.
See how silly Jesus is? this eternal life would be an eternal mess.”

But Jesus doesn’t give into their petty arguments.
When Jesus talks about the resurrection, Jesus is not talking
about spending eternity in a place where all our laws and constraints
and prejudices and shortcomings and status are still in place.
Where one person still keeps house for another.
Jesus is talking about something completely new.
Jesus is talking about new life.
Jesus talking about heaven.

The promise of eternal life with God is central to Jesus message.
Jesus gives us the promise of eternal life.
Salvation, justification, eternal righteousness.
And that promise is a gift to us.
that no matter what happens in this life
we know we will be safe with God.

This gift allows us to face even the worst trials in life with hope.
No matter how bad things get, even if our life ends,
we know there is still hope for our future.
With this gift we are comforted when a loved one dies
we know they are safe with God and out of pain.

It’s not just a duplicate of this world.
For many people that would be no gift at all.

Jesus promises a time where fears and doubts and pain
and sadness will be a thing of the past.
A place where God’s will is always done
Where no one is hungry, where there is no prejudice,
no injustice, no illness, no pain.

And this vision, this future that we hope for and imagine,
we use it today and add bits of it to our present.
The kingdom of God is like that.
It’s like that yeast which the woman folds into the flour
It’s like the mustard seed which grows into
a great bush and takes over the whole field
Our job as Christians is to add bits of Gods kingdom here and now,
We put our anticipated future into our present

And this vision of the future after death doesn’t just belong to Christians
it belongs to most religions in one form or another.
Most of the world holds onto this vision of
a time when everything will be made right.

One of my favorite parables about heaven is actually not from the bible
Some say it’s a Jewish story, some say it’s Chinese
it’s probably from Readers Digest, but I like it anyway.
 
An old man was about to die
and he asked a wise woman what heaven was like
The wise woman led him to a large house with a large table and
an incredible amount of food in the middle,
but the people were all thin and pale and hungry.
All the people at the table
had their arms in casts and they couldn’t bend them.
They couldn’t get the food in their mouths and they were starving
with all the food in front of them.
The old man said, “Okay, I’ve seen hell, now show me heaven.”

They went to the next room and there was the same exact scene.
The same table, the same food, the same people with casts,
but they were full and happy and smiling.
The old man said, I don’t get it.
The wise woman said, “In heaven, they feed each other.”

Jesus has promised a time when all that is wrong with the world will be right again,
where all we will know is care and love and joy.
We get tastes of heaven now, moments of kindness and love and grace
we get stories and promises and images
and we just know in our hearts,
“yes absolutely - that’s what it will be like.”
we resonate with images like that
because heaven is our true home, that is where we belong
eternally at home, eternally alive, with God and feeding one another.

The problem with the Saducees is that they were thinking too small.
God was too small for them. They underestimated God.
Jesus is talking about heaven, eternal life, paradise,
and they are worried about which man’s floor
this poor woman would be sweeping every day.
Jesus tells them, don’t be small -don’t think so small.
God is big. And God’s love for us is strong
and God will not leave us alone.
God is God of the living
and God means to live with us forever.

Blessed are You

Luke 6:20-31
All Saints Day

Jesus was a good public speaker, wasn’t he?
He really knew how to draw people in with his words.

Now some people think that Jesus had everything all thought out
or it was dictated to him from God.
Or maybe because that’s how it looks whenever
we see Jesus in movies, like there’s no spontinaity.

Like he’s Laurence Oliver
standing up and reciting a Shakespeare soliloquy.
“Blessed are the poor. For theirs is the kingdom of God.”
As if he’s moved by hearing his own voice
and dramatics more than anything else.

But I like to think of this sermon of Jesus–
and all of Jesus sermons -- in a different way.
I like to think that Jesus spoke from his heart and
emotions much more than he seems to in movies.
I like to think that what he said
was changed by the people he was talking to.

This Gospel today is called the “sermon on the plain”
or the sermon on the mount in Matthew, or the beatitudes
and it’s one of Jesus most familiar sermons.

Now just previous to giving this sermon,
it says that Jesus chose his twelve apostles and they were with him
and that a huge crowd was gathered around him
wanting Jesus to heal them and get rid of their bad spirits.
It says that Jesus healed all of them that were gathered there that day
and that they could feel the power coming out of him.

After it was over, Jesus must have been exhausted,
his 12 new apostles must have been excited and a
little scared with their new role.
And the people there probably would have been poor,
and desperate and disheveled
but more hopeful than they had been in a long time.
All those faces in need looking up at Jesus
He knows they need to hear something. Something to sum up
this experience, something to help them understand what it meant.

Maybe he planned on giving them some instructions, like
“Go and be kind to your enemies”
which he does eventually get to later.

But right now, he looks at his disciples --
which in Luke means the whole crowd of followers --
he looks at them and he knows that they need something more than instruction.
He looks at them and his heart is filled with love for them.
and he says this instead:
“Blessed are you who are poor.
For yours is the kingdom of God.
Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.
Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.
Blessed are you when people hate you, and exclude you,
and revile you. Blessed are you. You poor and hungry and hated.

And woe to those who can still laugh while you cry,
who can feel rich when you go to bed hungry.
Woe to those who just see you as lazy or stupid
And woe to those who roll up their windows
when they see you standing on the street corner,
Woe to those who don’t look at you in the eye,
because if they did, they would see what I see:
God’s beloved children” 
I like to think of this sermon
as an unplanned, un-rehearsed verbal hug to the
people that were drawn to Jesus and who Jesus was drawn to.
The saints of God.

In the church before the Reformation,
saints were only seen as someone who did something special.
Someone who were stellar examples of the faith,
who performed a certain amount of wonderous tasks
who had spiritual depth.
God’s special class of blessed people.

But Martin Luther helped us see that
people are not blessed by God because they do wonderful things.
People are blessed by God just because
God is wonderful.

And Jesus did not love that crowd of people
because they had some splendid achievements
or they had done some great miracle
or even because they had extraordinary compassion for others.
They were loved by Jesus only because they needed to be.
These poor, unlucky people needed God.
It shone on their faces, in their voices,
in the way they approached Jesus.

Unlike the rich,
they had not figured out other ways to get their needs met,
They didn’t think they could do it all alone,
And they were not above asking Jesus for help.
And Jesus was happy to give it.

So this crowd’s lack, was actually their biggest asset.
They didn’t have their own blessings,
so they had room in their life for God’s.
People, God is waiting. Just waiting for us.
For those times in our lives when we know how hopeless we are.
How we’ve failed, when we feel rejected or overwhelmed.
Not so God can wag the divine finger at us
and tell us where we’ve gone wrong
or give us a sermon about what we should have done.
God is waiting for the moment when we will
stop depending on our own blessings
and make room for God.

So blessed are the poor. Blessed are the hungry.
Blessed are the failures, the rejected,
the heart broken, the insecure, broken and inept.
Blessed is anyone who finds the courage to call out in desperation.
Living or dead --  we are all God’s beloved.
We are all the saints of
God.

If I Pray for Jelly Beans

Luke 18: 1-8
October 20, 2013

Is this parable of Jesus saying is that anything I pray for,
if I pray long enough and hard enough, I’ll get it?
So if I pray to win the lottery
If I pray to find a free parking spot in the Short North,
Or if I pray with Janis Joplin
for the Lord to buy me a Mercedes Benz,
It will happen if I just ask often enough.
Some people think that’s what it’s saying.

But that just doesn’t sound right does it?
That makes God sound like a vending machine.
If we put the right amount a prayers in, God gives out our request.
That does not sound like something that Jesus would say.
And it just doesn’t sound like the truth.
So maybe Jesus means something different.
And Jesus actually tells us what that is: Justice.
Jesus says when we cry out for justice
we can be assured that God will give it.
We know that whenever we pray, God listens to us.
But when we ask for justice, we can live in confidence that
one day, we will see it.
Justice.
We throw the word around a lot,
but what does the word mean?
There are actually several definitions,
But when the bible mentions it,
Justice is a concept of moral rightness or fairness.
The right of all people  to be treated fairly under the law
in this world, without discrimination or preference.

Basically, justice means reforming the world in God’s image
where there is neither male nor female, slave nor free, Greek nor Jew
is making the world more like the kingdom of God
It means giving that widow what she requests,
not because she’s a widow, but because it’s the right thing to do.

Sometimes having the law or government or other systems 
do the right thing for all people seems like a pipe dream now.
But in Jesus time, justice must have seemed absolutely impossible.
It was out of reach for so many of the people that Jesus was talking to.
Most of the world was filled with the poor and starving,
the struggling and the disenfranchised lower class
And a small number of rich and powerful
who controlled things, usually to their own benefit.

Our country at times seems unfair and unbalanced.
our world seems to favor the rich and punish the poor.
But our world is far more fair than it was then.
There was no idealistic system of representation to rely on,
no premise of personal freedom
or individual rights or equality to appeal to.
It all depended on who was in power at the time
and what their whim was and what they decided.
That a regular person would see justice:
that they would be treated fairly without discrimination seemed utterly hopeless.
But still Jesus tells his people not to lose heart.
Not to give up hope.
To keep praying.
And that is what this parable is about,
as Luke so kindly tells us right at the beginning:
Keep praying.
 

The Unjust Judge, Hasse 2007

Imagine being that woman.
She comes to a judge she knows is unjust.
But yet she comes to him repeatedly
asking for the right thing to be done.
Asking for justice.
Knowing that the decks are stacked against her
to begin with, as a woman in that time,
and as a widow without a husband to represent her,
and then to have her case in the hands of an unjust judge.
It would actually be easier to give up.
Easier to just walk away from what is rightfully hers and move on.
But she does not live a life of resignation.
She lives a life of hope and expectation
a belief that the right thing will happen,
that God’s will will be done.
Her whole life is hopeful, ready for God to act.
That is what Jesus is asking of us.
To always be ready for God’s will.
When we pray for God’s will every day, when we pray for justice
for food for the hungry and for oppressed to be set free,
for people to be treated fairly and rightly,
we are readying ourselves and our lives for God to act.

So many of us pray for justice, but we don’t believe it will come.
We ask for it, we want the right thing to be done.
But then we give up on it.
We say, “the world is just a bad place and there’s no hope”
some of us even say,
“well I might as well get whatever I can for me and my family
and not worry about any one else.”
But what if we actually lived the prayers we prayed?
What if we expected it so much that we formed our lives as if it would happen?

Think of it like this, it’s a silly illustration but still.
If I prayed for jelly beans to come from the sky
And I really believed that prayer would be answered.
How would I stand?  Would I stand in my living room,
With my arms folded and my head down? No.
If I really believed that my prayer would be answered,
I would be out in my yard, with my hands out and my eyes looking up.
I might get a box or a paper bag.

If I really believed that my prayer would be answered,
my stance and my life would be different.
So when we pray for justice, when we pray for God’s will to be done
we should actually believe it.
And we should live our lives as if:
as if wrongs will be righted. As if the kingdom were going to happen now.
With our arms open and our faces looking with hope toward what we’ve prayed for.
Jesus wants our lives to be a prayer.

This week we finally had a prayer answered in our congregation.
An injustice was corrected.
Our member and friend, Imma was released
from immigration detention and brought back to his family and life here.
And since we’ve been dealing with that,
I’ve been thinking about all the other people who are still locked up
with no crime other than to want to be in their homes with their families.
How many people just don’t have the money or the
congregation who can help return them home?
And I’ve been thinking how impossible the situation is for so many people.
 
Now, if I say, “what can I do by myself? to right this wrong”,
it does seem impossible
if I say what can we do together,
it seems a little better,  but still not all that hopeful.

But if I ask, what can God do with this situation?
How can God change hearts and inspire people
And how can I live in absolute expectation and hope
that God will find a way,
and how can people of hope like us
change and form our lives around God’s will.
How can we live our lives as a prayer, ready for God’s will.
That doesn’t seem as impossible. I can start praying for that today.

I think that the most hopeful character in this parable is that unjust judge.
He has no love of people, no interest in helping the widow
He has no interest in doing God’s will.
He’s not a man of faith or integrity,
and yet, still, he becomes part of God’s plan.
At the end of the day, even he ends up working for God’s justice too.

God’s vision will be done. Nothing will stop it.
It may take a while. It may take longer than our lifetime.
But we are asked to live our lives
in hope and prayer waiting for that day.
readying our lives for the time when we will see
God’s kingdom fully revealed.
We are asked to make our lives a living prayer of hope

Being Weird and Being Weird

Luke 7: 11-19
October 13, 2013

           Ten Lepers Healed, Brian Kershisnik, 2010

Have you ever felt weird, out of place?
I think all of us have had this experience at one time or another.
The feeling of being different than the rest of the world.
Like an outcast.

Now I think there are two ways of being weird.
There is the kind of weird that is imposed from the outside,
We get this a lot when we’re young.
We don’t fit in with the crowd because
someone doesn’t think we’re good enough,
or attractive enough, or rich enough,
or we’re the wrong color, or the wrong weight,
or just not right in some way.

This kind of weird leaves us feeling bad
like we’re wrong somehow.
It can cause shame: That painful feeling about ourselves,
not just for what we’ve done,
but like we’re bad as a person.

Then there’s the weird that comes about
by making different choices than others.
This kind of weird, I think, leaves us feeling good instead of bad.
It makes us feel unique and special,
maybe even proud that we didn’t go along with the crowd.
That we didn’t do it the way that everyone else did.

Being weird / and being weird.

Now when you’re very sick,
especially when people can see that you’re sick,
there is a feeling that you are weird in the first way
the way that causes shame.

Even though there is no shame in being ill.
It’s difficult to divide yourself from your own body
It’s not something that we did really,
its something that we are, or that we have at least become.
People who are ill feel separated from others,
they feel weird , and not in the good way.
Like those lepers in the gospel story.
They were weird.

Their own body separated them from others,
from what they once were or what they could have been.
They looked strange, they felt strange.
By law they were commanded to stay at least 40 paces from everyone
People feared them because they didn’t want to catch the disease.
People shunned them because they were seen as
having done something wrong to deserve it.

Now, not many of us know
or have first hand experience with leprosy.
But many of us have experience with cancer.
We either have been someone, or know someone
who has suffered the devastating diagnosis,
and then suffered with the cure.

The surgeries, the radiation, the chemotherapy,
the overwhelming exhaustion,
the other strange ways the body reacts to the medication,
cankersores, hair loss, nausea and digestive problems, pain.
All those things separate the ill person from others.
Even though we think we’re much more
sophistcated than those people back in biblical times,
and we know that it’s not contagious
and we know it’s not the patient’s fault or shortcoming,
When someone has cancer, they still often
end up divided from their community.
Even without the laws back in Jesus time
which demanded that they be separated from others.

When we see someone who is obviously suffering with cancer,
many of us will still turn the other way.
Even if we’re sympathetic and not hostile, many of us
are hesitant come into contact,
worried about doing the right thing or saying the right thing.
Some of us don’t want it to ruin our thoughts or our day.
Imagine suffering alone like this with no hope of an end to it or a cure.

Imagine then the 10 lepers,
A group of people who came together
because they were exiled from the rest of their community.
A group of people told that they should have shame over
how their bodies were different.
A group with no hope of a cure separated from loved one.
Imagine them, after calling out to Jesus like they had done
to so many other people who represented God,
the only cure they knew of.
Suddenly being cured.

For a person in the throws of cancer,
that would mean no more radiation, no more chemo therapy,
no more fatigue, no more pain,
no more cankersores, no more nausea, no more fatigue,
no more separation from their family, no more feeling horrible.

The only thing they had to do, in order to get back to their new life
was to go to the priest and have the priest declare them clean
which was what Jesus told them to do.
The only step that they had to take
to be returned to their families, lives, communities.
They could be normal again,
not having this disease cloud their every thought.
Not having to live with a body that was turning against them.
They would no longer be weird.

I can’t blame them for wanting to go on their way
 and get on with their new life.
I can’t blame them for not thinking of taking a second
 to go and thank the one that did this for them.
I can’t blame them for wanting to celebrate
 this new and miraculous chapter in their lives right away.
I can’t blame them for doing exactly what Jesus told them to do.

 
But this one person is different,
he does come back to give thanks to the one who saved him.
The one who gave him this new life and this great opportunity.
Now, on the surface,
this man gets nothing special from his returning to Jesus.
The rest got healed just like he did.
The rest got to go back to their families just like he did.
But he didn’t do what the rest of his friends did.
He decided to turn back.
He is now seperated from the other nine.
He is weird again, but weird because of something he chose to do.
Weird in the second way. Weird in a good way.

And because of that weird choice,
he lives knowing the source from which he received this gift.
He is grounded knowing that he thanked the one
who is responsible for his new life.
This one who came back is not just healed,he is made well.
He is connected to the source of life, he is whole again.

Now we used to live in a world
where most everyone that we knew or worked with
or went to school with would be in church on Sunday.
Giving praise to God.
It was the normal thing that everyone did.
But that choice is not quite as common today.
Many people don’t come back to give thanks to
the one who gave them life.

Now I believe that God’s blessings fall on everyone equally.
The church-going and the non-church going alike.
I believe that we are all loved by God the same.
I believe that each one of us gets the benefits of God’s grace and love.
But some of us make that weird choice to turn back.
To give thanks to God.
And to be part of a community that has made that choice too.
You have made that unique choice today and decided to be here .
Whether you come every week or you go somewhere else,
or you just came for the first time today.

What I want to tell you is that you are weird.
but in that good way of course.
And in that weird choice, we have what this other weird man received:
We know the source from which we receive these gifts we get.
We are grounded knowing that we have thanked the one
who is responsible for our new life.
We aren’t just blessed with miracles,
we aren’t just healed, we are made well.
We are connected to our source of life, we are whole again.

So please keep being weird.
And know that you have thanked the one
who has given us everything.
Connect with that source.
Don’t just receive God’s blessings,
be made whole again.

The Man Who Quit Money

Luke 12:22-31
October 6, 2013
St. Francis of Assisi - Blessing of the Beasts

Most of us know a little bit about St. Francis
He’s the stone statue in the back yard with the birds all over with him.
We know him as the one who had an affinity with animals.
that’s why we celebrate his birthday with
the blessing of the animals like a lot of other churches do.
Some people just think that Francis’ message
is just to love animals and be kind to kittens and puppies.
But there’s more to his life than animals.
Francis was born to wealthy parents and could have
lived a financially comfortable life
but when he became a monk,
he gave it all up for a life of absolute poverty.

Most monks had vows of poverty, but Francis found
that although they gave up their personal possessions,
the monks in monestaries lived without want for anything,
everything was provided for them.
But in Francis order, they gave up everything
They kept no pocket money, no possessions, no home,
they didn’t even keep a collection of food to go back to.
For all their needs they relied on nature, on others
and on the mercy and grace of God.

And Francis lived this way for others
He gave everything away and lived on the streets
so that beggars and lepors, wouldn’t feel ashamed
or feel more lowly when they approached him.
This extended to the animals he loved,
they had nothing too and they found a kindred spirit in him.
Living on God’s mercy.

Francis choice can teach us something
So can these animals that we live with every day.
They have nothing. They rely on us for everything.
What they need right now is enough, their daily bread.
And God provides that through the kindness of others.

Francis took to heart what Jesus meant when he said,
Don’t worry about your life, what you will eat or
what you will wear.  Don’t worry.
It’s a short sentence, but that “don’t worry” is really difficult to do.

Now the 13th Century when Francis lived, is a very long time ago.
We can romanticize things that people did in such a distant past.
We can say that maybe times were simpler,
choosing to give up everything then was easier.
Try doing it now, in America.

But there are a few people who have chosen to do that.
One person who has is named Daniel Suelo.
He lives in a cave in Utah and he “quit money” as he calls it.

Daniel was a regular guy, he graduated from college
he worked in the medical field as a lab technician
he had a bank account and savings.
 
He decided to join the Peace Corps in the 90’s
he was sent to serve a tribe in Ecuador
Daniel’s job was to help with medical issues
and monitor their health on a chart.

Shortly before he got there,
the tribe went from farming for subsistence to farming for profit.
Some missionaries had helped them do it.
And they had been becoming more well off for the last decade.
And as they got more cash for their crops,
Daniel noticed that they started to live a more modern life.
Their houses got bigger, they bought more stuff for their houses,
they ate more sugar, they bought MSG so their food would taste better, they got TV’s and stayed inside mroe and as this happened,
he said, he could see the richer they got, their health declined,
he could see it on his health chart. 

And more importantly, he could see their relationships changed,
their community life changed,
there were more disagreements, police, lawyers.
Daniel said he watched as “money was impoverishing them”

Daniel Suelo, the man who quit money.

He went back home and this experience had effected him.
He decided to change his life. He worked at a homeless shelter
but that wasn’t enough, he decided to change everything in his life.
For the last thirteen years now, Daniel has been
money-free. He lives in a cave in a forest.
He doesn’t use food stamps or government assistance
although he says he doesn’t begrudge anyone who does.
He just lives off what’s available.
He gathers plants, bugs, road kill, whatever other people throw away
and he lives on the kindness of others, friends and strangers.
Sometimes he works on a small farm or at the homeless shelter
for the community with others and for meals.
He’s not a hermit, he loves talking to other people,
he just “quit money”.
If he ever gets it, he gives it away to others.

His decision to do this was a religious decision,
a Christian calling. He calls it living a “grace based life”.
Knowing God’s grace every day.
He consciously lives a life of getting from God and giving away again.
He writes a blog on the internet which he uses at the library.
He writes things that he learns from his experiences.
"When I lived with money, I was always lacking, and wanting more."
"Money represents lack. Money represents things in the past (debt)
and things in the future (credit),
but money never represents what is present."

Daniel says he sees money as an addiction.
Like drugs or alcohol. It’s something that we depend on, can’t do without we use it every day and when we don’t have it it’s all we can think about. Maybe he’s right. 
Maybe we are addicted to money. Depending on it instead of on God.
When a reporter came a second time to his cave to interview him,
Daniel was not there, he looked into his cave and there was
a water bottle, a pot, some blankets, a couple of apples and a note:
CHRIS, FEEL FREE TO USE ANYTHING, EAT ANYTHING (NOTHING HERE IS MINE).

Maybe we don’t want to live like Daniel.
Maybe we don’t want to live without a home and indoor plumbing
or a car, maybe we don’t want to eat plants and bugs.
Maybe we actually shouldn’t be doing that –
maybe our baptism calls us to live out here in the complicated world with everyone else.
But maybe when you hear about Daniel you’re a little envious like
I was. Envious of what he’s learned and where
this opportunity has gotten him the insight he’s gained.
Maybe we can see the freedom he has
freedom from the fear of losing money,
freedom from desire of gaining more.
Maybe his experience can help us to think a little about money-
our addiction to it, our dependence on it.
The way it makes us afraid, the way we chase after it.

St. Francis knew that as Christians,
we are called to be aware of our relationship
with money and possessions.
Not so we can save and have more,
because it changes our relationships with others and with God.

Do not worry, about your life.
Consider the ravens, consider all the animals
they neither sew nor reap, they have neither storehouse or barn
and yet they are fed every day.
Do not worry.

We can learn from people like Daniel, like Francis.
We can learn from these animals who depend on us for everything.

In 1546, Martin Luther when he was dying,
he put his last written words on a slip of paper ,
he wrote “We are all beggars: This is true.”

This is true. In the end, God’s grace is all we have.
Like Daniel says, “nothing here is ours”.

Downward Mobility

Luke 14:1, 7-14
September 1, 2013

If you happen to meet Queen Elizabeth
-you should rise as she enters the room
-Americans are not expected to give a full bow,
but men can bow their heads and women are expected to curtsey.
- If she comes up to you, do not take the queen's hand,
but you wait for her to offer it to you,
- and don't shake to hard, just a touch will do.
- You may refer to her as “Your Majesty.”

If you find yourself next to her at dinner,
- You may speak to the Queen, but let her steer the conversation.
- By no means should you try to imitate her accent.
- And when the Queen finishes her meal,
then everyone's meal is finished.

We might look at these and chalk it up to some old world customs
we might think that we are beyond this kind of thing in our America.
But face it, everyone treats people who are rich or powerful
a little better than we do other people.
We treat wealthy or famous people with a little more respect,
a little more honor, a little more attention.

Maybe we think that their fame will rub off on us,
Or that they will remember us some day.
Or that they will drop little packs of money where ever they go?

I worked for a wine shop in San Francisco
(It was a wine shop when important people called,
but it was really a liquor store.)
The owner was named Tony –
One day, the owner of the San Francisco 49ers called Tony
and asked him which winery he and his wife might go to
for a tasting and some lunch. 

Tony gave him the name of one and right after they hung up,
Tony immediately called up the winery and told the manager –
“when he comes to the winery,
give him the best of anything,
anything he wants and don't charge him.”
And the manager agreed and thanked Tony for letting him know.
The wineries did whatever Tony asked because
they know he would buy their wines if they did.

I was sharing an office with Tony and heard the whole conversation. 
I turned around to Tony, kind of incredulous and said,
“Tony, this guy can afford lunch, he can afford anything,
he could even afford to buy the winery,
why should they give him their stuff for free?”
He said, June, that’s how the world works.
The rich and famous eat for free.

That is how the world works.
I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine,
one hand washes the other.
We treat the rich and famous with honor.
Upward mobility.
And the hope is that maybe some of that will come back to us.
Everyone else has to pay their own way.

In our Gospel today,
Jesus is having dinner at the house
of some upwardly mobile clergy -
one of the leaders of the Pharisees.
These are big and important people
who are have been very adept at upward mobility.
getting to know and impress the right people.
And they would love to move up some more.
So they've invited Jesus over.

They aren't necessarily enemies of Jesus,
they are probably more fascinated with him
Jesus is a kind of celebrity of the day
he's popular with the people,
and they want to see what he’s all about.

They were probably hoping for a pleasant meal,
something they could tell their friends about the next day.
Maybe cull some favor with Jesus ,just in case
anything good comes out of him

But as we know, meals with Jesus and the
Pharisees are not often pleasant.
Jesus is very good at making those dinner parties pretty awkward.

First Jesus starts off with something
that could pass off as etiquitte:
Don’t try and get the most important seat.
Sit in the least important seat.

And instead of telling them how honored he is
to be invited to join them that evening,
Jesus tells them.
“Important church people,
Next time you give an expensive dinner,
why don't you do it right?
Don't invite your friends, or your rich neighbors,
or the queen or the owner of the 49ers,
or the other Pharisees, don't even invite me to the party.

Invite the poor, the crippled the lame and the blind.
You should invite people who can't repay you.
Who have nothing to give.
That would be a party that God would enjoy.”

Jesus gives them this helpful party hints for two reasons.
One:  That is God’s vision for his church in this world.
Jesus wants his church to be a place

where the poor and the lame
and the outcast are not just given charity and patronized and pitied.
But where they are invited into the banquet
where they are present at the table, given authority
Where they are given the places of honor
treated with respect, and welcomed.

As followers of Jesus we are called to
to love for love’s sake and not for what we can get back.
To share the love of God with those with the least
that the world has to give.

And two:
it is to prove to us and remind us over and over again
that the status that the world puts on us is irrelevant.
The money, the fame the power, the poverty, the shortcomings,
the addictions, those don’t count.

Our self-worth doesn’t come from
where we sit at a dinner
or if we’re invited to the party in the first place.
Our worth comes from God.
And we’re all beloved children.

We live in an upwardly mobile world,
but for our own sake and the sake of the world,
Jesus calls us to be part of a downwardly mobile gospel.

Even after two thousand years of living with Jesus,
the church sometimes forgets this call
we play the world’s game of status and power.
we have our own church celebrities,
Members are still treated with deference to their pay and power
we still give honor to those with the most
hoping to get something back.
We still try to get to the head of the table and
we try to invite the right people to our parties.
 
Tony Campolo is a famous Baptist preacher
and he tells this story.
He was traveling to speak in Honolulu.
Because of the time change, he couldn't sleep and so
at about 3am, he wandered down to a doughnut shop where,
it turned out, local prostitutes also came at the end of their night .
He overheard a conversation between two of them.

One, named Agnes, said, "You know what? Tomorrow's my birthday.
I'm gonna be thirty-nine."
Her friend said to her sarcastically,
"So what d'ya want from me? A birthday party?
Agnes said,
“No, I'm just sayin' it's my birthday.
I've never had a birthday party in my whole life.
Why should I have one now?"

When they left, Tony got an idea.
He asked the shop owner if Agnes came in every night,
The owner told him that she did.

So Tony asked if he might consider throwing Agnes
a birthday party the next morning.
The shop owner's wife got involved.
and they decorated the place,
and Tony went out and bought a cake and candles.

The next night when Agnes came in, they shouted,
"Surprise!"-and she couldn't believe her eyes.
The doughnut shop patrons sang, Happy Birthday
and she cried so hard she could hardly
blow out the candles.
She thanked everyone profusely.

When the time came to cut the cake,
she asked if they'd mind if they didn't cut it,
if she could bring it home-
just to keep it for a while and savor the moment.
and she left, carrying her cake like a treasure.

Then Tony led the guests in a prayer for Agnes,
They prayed for her and her protection and care
and that her life would be wonderful.

After the prayer, the shop owner said to Tony,
“I didn’t know you were a minister,
what church do you belong to?”
And Tony said,
"I belong to a church that throws birthday parties
for prostitutes at 3:30 in the morning.”

And this is why Tony Campolo tells this story and why I tell you now:
The shop owner said to Tony,
"No you don't. There isn’t church like that.
If there was, I would join it..."

We are asked by Jesus to be that church.
Not to pick our friends wisely,
but to pick them foolishly.

To be the church that not only gives charity to
the poor, the lame, the lost the addicted, the forgotten.
but embraces those people too.
Who invites them to the banquet.
Sits next to them at the table.
Throws them a party. Remembers their birthday
Gives them the authority and respect they deserve merely
because they are children of God.

This church building, and all it’s people may live in
the upwardly mobile world,
but this table is God's table.
And we all come to it the same.
None of us deserves it, but everyone is welcome.

Rich Fools

Luke 12:13-21
August 4, 2013

There’s a movie called Wall Street came out in 1987
It’s about a young man who will do anything to rise to the top
of the financial world.
Even if you haven’t seen the movie, you’ve probably heard the
monologue by the other main character, Gordon Gekko
played by Michael Douglas. He says:


James B. Janknegt, The Rich Fool

“The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed —
for lack of a better word — is good.
Greed is right.
Greed works.
Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.
Greed, in all of its forms — greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge —
has marked the upward surge of mankind.
And greed — you mark my words — will not only save Teldar Paper,
but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA."

It’s almost inspirational, if it didn’t make my skin crawl.
We can think that he must be dead wrong, or that that was the 80’s
but the fact is he’s right and it’s still right.
Greed does work to a certain extent.
If that extent is that you get more things.
It does work.
And it’s supported, rewarded, encouraged in overt and subtle ways.

A lot of us say that we’re offended by that kind of thinking
and try to center our lives away from that.
But like it or not, we’re all a part of it.

When we had a recession recently, people started tightening their belts,
not spending as much. Possibly being actually responsible with money.
And then we get the hear, consumer spending is down.
Companies are cutting jobs. The message we get is,
that it’s because we’re not spending like we should be.
It’s our responsibility we need to do it.

I’m not getting a new car this year and so
it’s my fault that Detroit is bankrupt.

It’s our responsibility to keep the wheels going in the economy
To buy more, save more, invest more,
to put our money in the stock market
so that those young people on wall street have more to gamble with.

We’re told to save, save, save money for our kids education,
save money for retirement, store it away, work for the future.
I try not to watch those financial segments on the news
because I know I’m just going to be dissapointed in myself.

We spend our time working, so we can get more things,
or take more trips, or get more gifts, so we can save more for the future,
so we can get more things then.
everything requires money.

And when we have nothing, in those lean years,
all we’re doing is working toward  the time when
can get ourselves into back into the system like the others
who are running on the treadmill.

And when we see people who have nothing and are relying on
the generosity of the church or of others,
we almost can’t help but judge them
“They should have made better choices in their lives.
If we help them, we’re just encouraging them”

Even helping others requires money.
If we want to engage and make a change,
If all the good people dropped out of the system some how,
the money would all be left in the hands of the greedy.
Then the poor and oppressed would be even more poor and oppressed.
we have to be involved in the system if we care.
 

When I was thinking about it, this week, it’s like
we’ve got this beast that’s living in the basement
one that we’ve created with our own want and desire and fear and need
whether it be a need for a bigger house, or a new car
or that thing called security, lack of want, or control, or even to do good.
We’ve made it.

It lived in our hearts but then, at some point
it developed a life of it’s own and it moved out of our hearts and  out of our control.
And now it lives out there and it threatens us,
and it’s constantly hungry it demands more and more.
And the only solution we’ve found is:
Feed the beast so it doesn’t get angry.
Feed it, just keep feeding it.
Greed works because we keep feeding it, and we don’t know how to stop.

You fools. What exactly have we done with our lives?

Jesus warned us.
“Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed;
for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”

It’s not actually the money that Jesus warns against.
It’s the persuit of it.  It’s the greed, small and big ways.
The man who was the recipient of the parable today,
just wanted his brother to share their inheritance.
Seems reasonable. He was no Gordon Gekko.

Greed is not about money,
although that’s what we see most often.
Cassian, who was a monk in the 4th and 5th century
he wrote about how monks, who had renounced all their own possessions
would get angry and possessive over a pen or a book.
They renounced their money, but they had not renounced their greed.

Jesus tells us a parable of a man who had enough,
too much for him to use right then. Too much to fill his barns.
And so he spent all his time making bigger barns to hold all his extra stuff.
He said after he was done with that,
then he would relax, eat, drink and be merry

But before he was done, he died.
And God said to him, ”You fool.  Tonight your life is demanded of you.
what’s going to happen with all that stuff you saved.”

This response from God is not so much a threat
as it is a sadness about how this man spent his life.
The man was fooled into thinking that his struggle for
security was a worthy persuit, like it was some kind of life in itself.
That having everything would actually make him secure.
That investing in himself was the best investment.

We are fooled into the same thing.
Investing in ourselves, in our own control, our own power and security.
is tempting, but in the end, as in the end of the parable,
the security is just an illusion. It was no security at all.
We clutch over and over again at our own lives,
rather than opening our hands to God’s free gifts.

As long as we live in this world, we won’t be free of the
beast of greed and the persuit of more and more.
It’s kind of hard-wired into our world.
But we can avoid falling completely into it’s grasp
by listening to what the parable says, we can be rich in God
We can invest in God.

This is the time in the televangelists sermon where
they would pass the offering plates again
and we’d try and get a bonus offering out of you.
I won’t do that to you right now,
But there is something to that.

Invest in the things that God values.
Invest in the community of God, God’s church for one.
Basil the 4th century Greek bishop said,
"If you want storehouses, you have them in stomachs of the poor."
Invest in those who need.
The vulnerable, the lonely, the oppressed.
Those who can’t pay back dividends or money.

Invest in care for others, in relationships,
friends, family, your Christian family, and strangers.
Invest in generosity and people.
Invest where God’s heart is.
That is where the real security it.

Companies have actually found lately that generosity
is a better business model than greed.
Gordon Gekko was wrong in the long run.
It turns out that so many of those companies that
were built on greed have been burning out.
But those companies that treat workers right and invest in their
communities and give back to those in need.
Those are the ones that have longevity
and are succeeding more these days.

Of course then, now they have models of corporate
generosity that those greedy companies can buy into
in order to imitate the ones being generous in order to
get more share the business and more money.
But that’s not how it works.
Generosity, a giving heart, are not for sale.
God’s love, and the care of a community are not for sale.
Ironically, it’s only in our greatest need that
we actually find out how secure those investments are.
That is when we find out about God’s generosity
and the generosity of others.
And the other wonderful thing about investing in God’s things
is that the more we give away, the more we have for ourselves.

We shouldn’t spend our whole lives storing up treasures for ourselves.
There is no need for that.
We have been given access to God’s barn.
And endless supply of love, fulfillment, joy and life.
That is the place we should put our treasures in.