Sunday, December 22, 2013

Do the Right Thing

Fourth Sunday of Advent – Year A
December 22, 2013
Matthew 1:18-25

Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins." All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:

"Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
   and they shall name him Emmanuel,"

which means, "God is with us." When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.

When I was growing up, and even now, one of the things I was told to do and tried to do is the right thing.  I think all of us are in the same boat, when we are given a choice, when we have a decision to make, we want to make the right choice, and we want to do the right thing.  When we are hungry, we all know that we should make good decisions about what we are going to eat – something healthy over something that’s not as healthy.  We know that the right thing to do is to try and exercise a little every day, rather than sitting on the couch, or at the table reading the latest posts on our Facebook feed.  We know there are many things we should do, they aren’t necessary to do, but they are the right things to do.

We know that when we find something that isn’t ours, the right thing to do is to try to locate the real owner.  We know that if we see someone stumble and fall, the right thing to do is to help them up, to make sure they are okay.  We know that the right thing to do is help someone in need.  As parents we want to do the right things, to ensure that our children grow up to be good, decent people.  As children we want to do the right thing for our parents, especially as they get older, we want to make sure the right decisions are made.  Each and every day, in situation after situation there are decisions that need to be made; we know the right thing to do is, well, to do the right thing. 

When we are driving down the highway, we know the right thing to do is to stay under the speed limit – it’s the law.  Yet, how often do we not do the right thing?  We know the right thing to do according to most doctors is to eat more vegetables than meat; yet, how often does that really happen?  The right thing to do is brush and floss our teeth after every meal, but really?  The right thing to do is to follow the rules; yet, how often do we try to find ways around the rules?

Doing the right thing can be hard.  Doing the wrong thing – that’s pretty easy.  It’s easy to grab the candy bar at the checkout lane.  It’s easy to just sit and not go for a walk.  It’s easy to not say or do anything when you see someone in need.  It’s easy to look the other way.  It’s easy to sleep in on Sunday morning, skip church.  It’s easy to allow the Christmas season around us cause our focus to shift from God to goods, from peace to possessions.  It’s easy to get turned around and confused, it’s easy to lose sight of the right thing.

Joseph wanted to do the right thing.  He and Mary had been engaged.  Now, in ancient times an engagement was a lot like an engagement today, but there was a major difference.  Then, an engagement was essentially a contract.  Arrangements had been made between the families, there was often an agreement amounting to a contract of the wedding to come.  There were stipulations about how the bride and the groom were both supposed to behave and act in the time before the wedding.  These were contracts that often dealt with issues far beyond just the bride and the groom.  In our day, breaking off an engagement is not an easy thing to do; but in ancient times, breaking an engagement was almost impossible. It was like having to go through a divorce.  And Mary is suddenly pregnant.

Joseph wants to do the right thing, he was after all a righteous man.  Matthew tells us he was a righteous man, and righteous people do the right things.  So, what does a righteous man think when his betrothed shows up pregnant?  Well, we all know where babies come from, and if Joseph hadn’t broken the rules of the engagement, then Mary must have – she had committed adultery.  This would have brought shame on both Joseph and Mary’s families, and it could have easily led to Mary being stoned to death – that was after all the punishment for adultery according to the Old Testament.

So, Joseph being the righteous man he was, seeks to divorce her, to break the engagement, quietly.  He wants to save her the shame and public disgrace, not to mention being killed.  He could have legally exposed her, declared her an adulteress, and she would have been executed.  Yet, he likely still cared for her, he knew the penalties and wanted to protect her.  He was a righteous man.  He wanted to do what was right.  He knew what the law said, what his families and the church expected, but he sought a different path.  He sought to protect her as he left rather than seek punishment.

It wasn’t an easy decision; even divorcing her quietly would bring questions.  And an unmarried woman, giving birth to a child was destined to a life of hardship.  She would become amongst the lowest of the low, and her child would be shunned, but at least she would be alive.  The law was clear.  What else could a righteous man do?

Joseph’s internal battle, his battle as he sought to do what was right was finally answered by the words of the angel, who told him not to fear.  This angel’s message of not fearing though is different than the message of not fearing that Mary received.  Joseph is told not to fear taking Mary as his wife.  His turmoil about what to do, what is the right thing to do, is calmed by the angel.  He is not to fear what may happen, the judgment that could come, the shunning that might result, the questioning from friends and family.  No, his fears are not to keep him from marrying his betrothed.

Joseph did what was right.  He may not have done what was right according to the customs and practices in the first century.  He may not have done what was right according to his family.  He may not have done what was right according to the laws of Judaism.  Yet, he was a righteous man, and he did what was right to fulfil God’s plan, to fulfil God’s desires.

As people of faith we look to our faith to guide us when we seek to determine what is right.  Sometimes, it can be pretty easy to know what is right or wrong, what is God’s desire for us as followers.  The scriptures are clear on issues like idolatry, murder, stealing.  Yet, there are times when the words we turn to in the Bible may not be quite as clear, when we are not able to find a definite answer in black and white.  In those moments, in those times of decision we can look to the model of Joseph for guidance.

How?  Joseph did what was necessary for Jesus to be born in Bethlehem.  Joseph put aside the rules and expectations of his culture and his faith, and did what God asked him in order that Jesus might be.  That is the standard for us as well in moments where clarity may not be found in our Bible, in our church, in our society: what is the action that will make Jesus present, the choice that will allow others to see or experience the holy presence of our Lord and Savior.

The phrase ‘what would Jesus do’ is one that we often hear; yet, let’s be honest lots of the time we don’t really know what Jesus would do, we just do what we think is right and then say that’s what Jesus would do.  Rather than doing that, what if instead we were to ask, “How can I bring Jesus to this situation?”  What is the action, what is the decision, what are the words that will make another person see and know that Jesus is somehow present in that moment?


In just a few days we will celebrate the birth of Jesus.  We will gather around a tree, we will share gifts with one another, we will remember how it was Jesus came to born amongst us, and within us.  As we think about Christmas, as we think about the year that is coming to an end, as we think about the new year that is soon beginning let us think about how it was, when it was, and where it was that Christ was born in our midst.  Let us seek that in the coming year, it is not only on Christmas that we see Jesus being discovered to be amongst us.  Amen.

Monday, December 16, 2013

Waiting and Working

Third Sunday of Advent Year A
December 15, 2013
Luke 1:46-55


And Mary said: "My soul magnifies the Lord,
   my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for God has looked with favor on the lowliness of God's servant.
   Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
   the Mighty One whose name is holy.
God's mercy is for those who fear God
   from generation to generation.
God has shown great strength;
   and has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
God has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
   and lifted up the lowly;
God has filled the hungry with good things,
   and sent the rich away empty.
God has helped God's servant Israel,
   in remembrance of God's mercy,
according to the promise made to our ancestors,
   to Abraham and Sarah and to their descendants forever."

Waiting can be tough.

I remember when I was younger, and I see it now with my own childen, how hard it was to wait those last few weeks before Christmas.  It seems like at least once a day I get asked how many days until Christmas.  It gets harder and harder as each day passed.  Every time you walk out the door, you see something that declares the coming of Christmas.  Each day it gets closer, and the closer it gets the harder it becomes to wait.  The cards and letters begin to appear in the mailbox.  You see a package or two appear, delivered by UPS or the postal carrier.  The Christmas tree appears, begging to have the space beneath its branches filled with gifts.  You find yourself humming the carols and hymns, that may not have been thought of for the last year.  The anticipation builds, and you just want to get to it.

My wife and I were never blessed to feel the anticipation that comes with pregnancy.  We only felt that crazy anticipation of knowing a child was coming, but having no real clue when; and then that call that tells you, “4 weeks!”  I’m not sure which is better or worse, being able to spend 9 months or so in preparation, or only having a month.  Either way, you begin to anticipate.  There are always things to do, trips to the store to buy things you think you need, a crib to repair, a nursery to paint, arrangements to be made at work, double-checking your insurance.  There is always something more, and then there are the thoughts you have about the child.

With a pregnancy comes anticipation.  You wait, and yet you can’t wait.  What will the child be like?  Will it have eyes like its mom or dad?  Whose nose will it have?  When will it allow us to sleep through the night?  Will they inherit my bad habits?  How tall will they grow?  Will we make it as parents?  How badly can you mess up and still succeed?  Will they be healthy?  Sometimes, we might even allow ourselves to wonder even further down the path ahead: what will they be like as an adult?  Will they be someone that inspires others?  Will they be a leader?  Will they be a servant of others?  With the coming of a child comes expectation, there comes endless possibilities, there comes joy.

Today we focus on the song of Mary, the prayer of Mary when she learns of her pregnancy.  These words are her thoughts, her daydreams.  Yet, they are so much more.  Mary sings out her joy, her feelings of being blessed, her feelings of having been chosen by God; and then she gets lost in her song, in her joy.  Her song goes beyond the joy felt in her own self, to the joy felt in creation itself.  She was waiting, yet creation itself was also waiting to be transformed.

These powerful words of Mary have come to be called the Magnificat, from the first words in the Latin translation.  When I hear magnificat my mind immediately goes to an English word that sounds so similar, the word we have in our translation: magnifies.  Mary declares, “my soul magnifies the Lord.”

One of the things I remember about my grandfather was his magnifying glass.  There was always one on his desk.  He used it for all sorts of things, but its primary use was to look at the postage stamps he collected.  He could look through its lens and the details that were in the stamp to see would become more visible.  It didn’t show what wasn’t there; it showed what was there, yet may have been hard to see.  A magnifying glass allows you to really see something, to get into the subject you are looking at.  You aren’t distracted by the stuff on the edges, you aren’t distracted by the stuff that may not matter.  You look closer, you may even see things you had missed before.

So who is the Lord that Mary is magnifying?  What does this God look like?  It’s sometimes said that no one knows someone as well as their mother; so what do we find when we look closer through the eyes of Mary, the mother of Jesus?  This is a God of reversals, of transformation.

God has taken the proud, those who spend their hours focusing on their own abilities, their own successes, and scattered them.  Their focus on self has been dissolved.  God has taken those in power, those who reign over others, those who use their positions to rule over others and taken their positions from them.  In their place, God has lifted up the lowly, the powerless, the oppressed, the over-looked.  Those who are rich, who have plenty, those who have much and have placed their focus on their own plenty have been emptied.  Those who have little or nothing, those who are hungry, those who are in need have been filled.  God has looked upon his servants, upon his children and responded to their cries of need and despair.  That is the God that we see through Mary’s magnification:  a God of love, a God of righteousness, a God of justice, a God of equity.

One of the things I hadn’t noticed when I had looked at this passage in the past was how Mary seems to get lost in her words.  She begins in the present, and then finds herself in the future.  Her spirit rejoices, and she continues to tell what God has done – not what God is doing, or will do.  This is what God has done.  Mary’s hopes and dreams are not just hers, they are the hopes and dreams of the church, they are the hopes and dreams of us.  They are the declaration of what we believe God has done in Jesus our Savior, they are what we look for in the final fulfilment of God’s Kingdom, God’s reign is brought into being.

Mary’s song of joy, her song of motherhood, her song of hopes and dreams, her song of expectation and fulfilment is also our song.  We too may sing with Mary, “my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for God has looked with favor on the lowliness of God's servant….the Mighty One has done great things for me, the Mighty One whose name is holy.”  And we too magnify our God.

In our words, in our actions, in the things we say and do, in the things we place as important in our lives and in the lives of others, we magnify God.  So, the question is, who is the God you are magnifying?  Does the God that you are making easier for others to see, the God that you are defining match up with the one that Mary declares? 

Mary’s song mixes up present and future; that which is and that which will be.  In the season of Advent, we look to the past and to the future at the same time, we remember what has been and is, and what will be.  We think of the promises fulfilled, and the promises yet to be fulfilled in the fullness of time.  Yet, what would the world be like if we, like Mary, could mix up our tenses?  What would it look like if we lived our lives, not looking to the future when the world will be transformed, but lived as though the world was transformed now?

What if instead of praying and waiting for the day when the proud will be brought down and the lowly lifted up, we lived as if that was already the case – lifting up those who we encounter who have been brought down?  What if instead of praying for God to provide for the hungry, we saw that God has already provided for the hungry out of the bounty given to us?  What if instead of praying that the poor and homeless would be cared for, we worked for a world where the differences between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ was not so great?  What if in our very lives, rather than looking through binoculars at a hoped-for time yet to come, we magnified a God and a time, a kingdom and a reign that is amongst us now?

I began this talking about waiting, and how waiting can sometimes be difficult.  One of the things about waiting that I’ve discovered is that when you stop focusing on waiting, and instead focus on doing, the waiting becomes easier.  So let us magnify our God, let us work to bring the kingdom into focus, let us work to raise up the lowly, to provide for those in need.  Let us work that our waiting will be easier.  Let us work, that in our waiting we may rejoice.  Let us work, that we may join with Mary and declare, “My Spirit rejoices in God my Savior, my Soul magnifies my God!”  Amen.


Monday, November 4, 2013

Little Assumptions

Twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost - Proper 26-Year C
November 3, 2013
Luke 19:1-10

He entered Jericho and was passing through it. A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax-collector and was rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way. When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, "Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today." So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him. All who saw it began to grumble and said, "He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner." Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, "Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much." Then Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost."

Just a few days ago we celebrated Halloween.  For some people it’s a holiday that is looked forward to and planned for months.  The picking out of decorations and costumes isn’t something that is done in one trip to the store; it’s something that is planned out long in advance.  Some people literally spend hundreds of dollars each year for their Halloween celebrations.

One of the things I’ve learned not to do, and learned the hard way not to do it, is to guess on some of the costumes that are being worn by the kids that show up at my door.  What I think looks like a princess is in reality a ballet dancer – and when I make the mistake of saying something about what a pretty princess, you can see the look of disappointment on their faces.  There is nothing worse than seeing the face of a child go from happiness to disappointment in an instant.  It can be hard sometimes to figure out exactly what a costume is from time to time, but asking them about their costume can be so much safer than guessing wrong, and breaking someone’s heart.

Imagine how you would feel if you had spent a long time planning your costume, deciding on the right accessories, how you were going to present yourself – all the details of Halloween, and then when you got to the door, the person didn’t recognize you as you.  I remember when I was in college, one of my classmates was challenged when she was student teaching about who she was – she was young looking, and people assumed she was a new student rather than the new student teacher.

We all make assumptions about people.  Sometimes those assumptions are based on what a person looks like.  We see the way they dress, the color and cut of their hair.  We see the people they are hanging out with.  We see the friends they have on Facebook.  Then, based on our minimal observations we decide who they are.  Sometimes we make the same assumptions because of other reasons.  We assume the engineer really likes computers.  We assume the stay-at-home mother loves to cook.  We assume the person driving the old, beat-up car can’t afford any better.  We assume the athlete on the field can’t talk about the beauty of Shakespeare’s sonnets.  We make assumptions based on what we observe from the outside.  Sometimes those assumptions are correct, but sometimes our assumptions can lead us down the wrong path.

There are times in our faith life when we make assumptions as well.  When I was in seminary my Greek teacher told us again and again that the value in learning to use Greek was that the experts who translate the Bible for us sometimes make translational choices for theological reasons, and sometimes those theological reasons may actually hide some of the wonder of the passage.  When we look at it in the Greek, the multiplicity of the translational possibilities become clear; and we may find that some of the assumptions we have held about texts may not be as persuasive as we thought.  Such is the case with these weeks Gospel lesson.

When I was growing up, one of our favorite songs in Sunday School was about Zacchaeus.  There is something about the story of a short person who has a hard time seeing over the shoulders of the adults that is attractive to children.  We sang with gusto how he was a wee little man who climbed up into the sycamore tree because he wanted to see Jesus as he was passing by.  It was an image that attracted us as children greatly.  We knew what it was like to not be able to see.  We knew what it was like to stand on the pews in church in order to see a baptism.  We knew what it was like to ask to get on someone’s shoulders so we could see a parade.  This was a guy like us.

The back story that Zacchaeus was a tax collector wasn’t as important as his height.  The message that the adults got about his life was dramatically changed because of Jesus calling out to him in the tree, went straight over our heads.  For us, it was that Jesus noticed the little guy, that Jesus saw the one who was so easily overlooked.  And this was the guy whose house Jesus went to, totally against the expectations and assumptions of the crowd.

Over and over again in the Gospels Jesus turns the tables on the assumptions of the community or the religious establishments.  Here again in this story we see Jesus turning our expectations on end, but perhaps not in the way we expect.

Perhaps the first thing we need to address is Zacchaeus himself.  For most of us we would miss the importance of the meaning of the name Zacchaeus itself.  His name means ‘clean’, ‘pure’ or ‘innocent’.  Zacchaeus was a tax collector, but not just any tax collector, he was the chief tax collector.  He was the one who was in charge of all the tax collectors under him.  We all know the reputation tax collectors had, and Zacchaeus was their chief.  Someone that I’m sure many people viewed as little more than a mob boss.  What a weird alignment of things – the one who is pure and innocent by name, is the one who is labeled as dirty and guilty by the community.  It’s not really an assumption that needs to be changed, but it is information that may be helpful when we look deeper into the text.

I know when I first came to this text, it was all about the power of Jesus to change people’s lives in extraordinary ways, and sometimes with barely a word being spoken.  Zacchaeus was a cheat, and then because of Jesus’ words and self-invitation he changed his ways – he was now the honest tax collector.  He was going to have perfect books, and if he had cheated anyone in the past, he was going to pay them back four times what he had cheated them of.  Wow!  Jesus’ was powerful, what an incredible testament to how people’s lives can be changed in an instant when Jesus enters their lives.

But, there’s a problem there.  We’ve made an assumption that isn’t there.  And, unfortunately, many of the translators of our Bibles have made the same assumption.  When Zacchaeus makes his statement, his words are not a promise of what he will do.  If they were a promise, they would be in a future tense: I will do this.  Greek is awesome in the way the words change a great deal depending on if they are past, present or future, and whether those actions are one-time events, ongoing or completed.  When we take a closer look at Zacchaeus’ words in the Greek we discover that the word is in the present active imperfect tense.  This is a complicated way of saying that when Zacchaeus makes his statement, a better translation would be: “Behold half of my possessions, Lord, I give to the poor, and if I defrauded anyone of anything, I give back fourfold.”  As in, this is something he was already doing.  He hadn’t suddenly changed his pattern of behavior because of Jesus paying attention to him.  Zacchaeus was already a standup guy.  It was the assumption of the crowd (and ours as well) that declared him as otherwise.

How often have we made similar assumptions?  How often have we allowed what we thought about a person to become what we ‘know’ about them?  How often have we said someone is not a child of Abraham, a fellow believer, a Christian, because of what they look like, what they dress like, who their friends are, what they do for a living?  One of the things that we often do when reading a passage is place ourselves within that passage; so where are you?  Are you Zacchaeus: judged and excluded, forced to defend yourself in the face of the anger and judgment of others?  Are you Jesus: recognizing the good in others when no one else can?  Are you in the crowd: judging and determining the value of others without really knowing who they are and what they do?  I must grudgingly admit that as much as I wish I could be the Jesus figure, far too often, in fact most of the time, I find myself in the crowd making assumptions about people, and then treating them accordingly.

In the story of Zacchaeus we are given the very difficult reminder that we cannot know what is in another person’s heart, only God can know that.  Traditionally, the Sunday following Halloween is All Saints Sunday, a day in the life of the church when we reflect and remember those members of our congregation and families that have joined the heavenly choir in the last year: the saints from among us.  We are thankful for their lives in our midst, and we are joyful for the promise of eternal life in heaven in the presence of God.

In the practice of Holy Communion, we experience the presence of God in a very intimate way, and we have a foretaste of the feast to come when we gather with all the saints (some known by us and some shunned by us) around the heavenly table.  In the breaking of bread together, in the sharing of a meal, we see and experience the boundaries between us coming down.  We eat from the same loaf; we drink of the same wine.  May the meal we are about to eat empower us to see others as God sees them, to treat others as God would have us treat them, to receive them as future saints in God’s kingdom.  Amen. 


Sunday, October 27, 2013

Is This a Joke?

Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost - Proper 25 – Year C
October 27, 2013
Luke 18:9-14

He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: "Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax-collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, 'God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax-collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.' But the tax-collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, 'God, be merciful to me, a sinner!' I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted."

When it comes to jokes, I really have a thing for jokes that are punny.  I love word play, jokes that involve double meaning are a favorite of mine.  Even though most people don’t find it all that funny, my favorite joke of all time is: two guys were walking down the street, one of them walked into a bar, the other one ducked.  There is something simple about that joke that attracts me, the double meaning, the whole visual part of it.  Of course part of it is that it sounds a lot like lots of other jokes.  I think we can all think of joke that begin in a similar way.  Two or more people walk into an establishment, something happens, and then the punch line.  Normally, the people are far from being similar to one another.  A nun, a prostitute, a penguin and a cowboy walk into a bar. The bartender says, "Is this some kinda joke?"

So, when I read this morning’s gospel lesson, I am waiting for the punch line; or at least a better punch line.  Because, let’s be honest, “for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted,” really isn’t that funny.  It might be challenging, it might be uncomfortable, but it’s not really all that funny.

However, I’m sure that when Jesus told it the people listening were also waiting for a one heck of a zinger at the end.  They all knew the Pharisees.  They were the perfect people, or at least the people that liked to present themselves as being perfect.   The Pharisees were the folks that knew the Jewish law best, they were the ones who made the rules, followed the rules they made, and criticized everyone else about how well or poorly they followed the rules.  And tax collectors, well they were just above green slime.  They were representatives of Rome, most people viewed them as being little more than thieves with a license from Rome to steal.  To say they were despised is a huge understatement.  So when, you put the two of them together at the beginning of the story it would be setting people up for one heck of an ending.  As biblical scholar John Dominic Crossan rephrases it, "A pope and a pimp went into St. Peter's to pray."  You just know whatever is coming next is going to be awesome.

And it was, and is.  Just not the way those listening to Jesus were probably expecting it to be, nor perhaps in the way we expect either.  It’s not the Pharisee who was the good one, the perfect one, the one who did what God wanted that is praised and justified.  It’s that other guy.  The one who cheated and stole from people for a living, the one who was probably spat on when he walked down the street, the one who people avoided at all costs – he was the one who was lifted up, the one who was justified at the end of the day.  Maybe this is a joke after all, it sure sounds like it.  The good guy loses and the bad guy wins; I’m sure some of those in the audience when Jesus told this parable looked at each other and muttered, “Is this a joke?”

Nearly 500 years ago, there was a monk in Germany that felt that some of what the Catholic Church was doing was wrong, so he wrote out his complaints and put them up on the doors of the church in Wittenburg.  These were Martin Luther’s 95 theses, and I’m sure the Vatican responded to them in a similar way that the hearers of Jesus’ parable did: “Is this a joke?”  Yet, it was far from a joke, and the movement that Luther gave words to has continued to have ripple effects through this time.  So too, with the ripple effects of this passage.

At the heart of the Protestant Reformation was the idea of grace, of God’s grace.  The thing that really set Luther off was the idea that the Catholic Church, especially the pope, had some extra special power that could be bought for a price.  The church at the time was needing to build St. Peter’s in Rome, and it was costing a ton of money.  So, someone had the great idea of selling these coupons called indulgences.  Basically, they were get out of purgatory early cards.  There was the understanding that after you died, most people were in a status where they weren’t really clean enough to enter heaven, and not bad enough to go to hell, so you hung out in purgatory for as long as it took to get you clean enough that you could enter heaven.   The indulgence was a coupon that you could buy for yourself, or another person, so you could get out of purgatory and into heaven a little quicker.  No, seriously, this isn’t a joke.

Luther didn’t think it was either.  He basically said, if the pope had that kind of power he should forgive everyone’s time in purgatory and let everyone into heaven ASAP.  What happened to grace if you can buy some level of forgiveness?  Was it even grace then?  If entry, or speed of entry, into heaven could be controlled by money or some aspect of our behavior, what then?  How could the church continue if God’s grace was being bought and sold?

It may not seem like it at first, but the question of grace is sitting right alongside that of humility in our parable.  In fact, grace and humility go hand in hand with one another.  Grace is that free gift from God that is done without our having done anything.  It’s God’s act of reaching out to and for us for no reason other than love – nothing we have done or do, made or will make God reach out in love.  That’s grace.  Humility is the recognition that we are not the best, that there are others out there who are far better, far more important than ourselves.  It’s the recognition in religious terms that we are fully dependent on God for all things.  It’s not about us.

In our text the Pharisee may be praising God, but he is doing so because he is not like those other people.  Other people that the Pharisee assumes are not as good as he is, because he is so good.  He might be good, but he is far from humble in his goodness.  Then we have the tax collector, who simply recognizes his sinfulness and cries out for mercy.

When looking at the way these two individuals approach God, something jumps out.  The Pharisee was all about ‘I’.  “I am so thankful I am not like other people…I fast twice a week… I faithfully tithe…I, I, I.”  Whereas, the tax collector is not about ‘I’ at all, he’s about God.  “God have mercy on me, a sinner.”  There is no claim of action, there is no individuality.  He is simply a sinner, like all of us; not the sinner, not the greatest of sinners, the worst of sinners, the least worthy of sinners; just a sinner.  His prayer, his plea, is all about God.  The one who walked away justified was the one who forgot about himself, and threw himself upon God’s mercy and grace.  The Pharisee, though, still had his eyes turned upon his own actions, his own sense of value and validity.  Of course God would hear his prayers, he was worthy because he did what was right and pleasing to God.

The punch line, the point, is that if it’s about grace, if it’s about God’s grace given to us, it’s never about ‘I’.  Yet, even as we accept the reality that it’s never about ‘I’ when it comes to God’s grace, we have to be careful.  This parable has a hidden danger, hidden traps waiting for us to stumble into: the first being that the moment you make the move to be humble, and throw yourself on God’s mercy, it’s hard not to be grateful that you are not like the Pharisee – “at least I know that I have to let God do it all for me.”  And second, becoming aware (like the tax collector) of our sinfulness, and in so doing make it about you in some way; in other words that our being aware of how bad we are is something to be proud about – “at least I know how much of a sinner I am.”  Either way, the trap is easily sprung – it’s not about you, it’s about God.  Anything you do, any way in which you suddenly become a player in it – it becomes about you, and not God.  Notice the ‘I’s.  I’m just glad we have this parable to teach us, to warn us of the dangers.

This past week I ran across an online video clip of Pat Robertson on the 700 Club responding to a question from a mother of a deaf child, who was praying that her child be cured of deafness.  Pat Robertson, responded that she must be doing something wrong, after all he had prayed for people that were deaf and they had been healed.  Why is it that we keep on having to deal with stuff like that?   Why is it that the image of Christianity that is so often seen and heard by the people is about pointing fingers at the sinners and lifting up the saints, all about us’s and thems?   Like “those crazy Christians that seem to be always showing up on television advocating their twisted version of the gospel with words like Jesus hates, condemns! Why is it that they are always the one’s who the press go to when asked about the Christian perspective? Or, how about all those Jesus malls, excuse me mega-churches, popping up all over the country selling Jesus like a consumer commodity and entertaining all those who attend!  Or, how about those prosperity preachers offering a message of hope and healing for a price —preying on the poor, oppressed and hopeless, all yours for just $9.95 plus shipping and handling.
Thank God I’m not like those people."[1]
......Amen??

Monday, October 7, 2013

Getting Even

Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost – Proper 22 – Year C
October 6, 2013
Psalm 137

By the rivers of Babylon—there we sat down
   and we wept when we remembered Zion.

And so we hung up our harps,
   there upon the willows.

For there our captors asked us for songs,
   and our tormentors asked for mirth,
saying, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion!"

How could we sing God's song in a foreign land?
   If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither!

Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth, 
   if I do not remember you,
if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy.

Remember, O God, against the Edomites 
   the day of Jerusalem's fall,
how they said, "Tear it down!
   Tear it down, down to its foundations!"

O city of Babylon, you devastator!
Happy shall they be who pay you back 
   what you have done to us!

Happy shall they be who take your little ones
   and dash them against the rock!


One of the realities of living in the time and place in which we are living is the central cultural importance of competition.  It seems like no matter the career path, the job, the calling, the activity there is competition.  On the playground, we see children competing against one another: who can run faster, who can swing higher, who can throw the ball farther.  In the classroom we see it too: who got all the answers right on the spelling test, who was still in the teachers good book at the end of the day.  In social media we see competition about who has the most Facebook friends, who has the most blog hits, who gets the most comments and responses from what they post.  In work we compete with our competitors for jobs, we compete with our coworkers so we might be noticed by our bosses and managers.  We see it in the home too, with children competing with one another to be noticed by mom and dad.  Whether we like it or not (and even though I am very competitive I hate it) competition is a part of most of our daily lives.

If it just ended there, that would be great.  If we could just compete with one another in order to show our abilities, and just let it end there, it wouldn’t be perfect, but it would be better.  Better than what?  Better than it is now.  Because, we don’t just compete, we make use of any and all options as we compete to show we are the best or the most worthy of being noticed.  We cheat, we lie, we do all sorts of really not very nice things – all to win.  And when someone does those things to us, we get mad, we get angry, we want to make things right.

Last week I was watching the kids playing on the playground before school.  Kids were running everywhere, screaming and laughing.  It was actually a very beautiful thing to watch. Then I noticed a few boys who were going to have a race across the playground.  Now, as someone who has run a few races my eyes were drawn to that activity.  I watched as one who was obviously not as fast as the others intentionally tripped another.  It was blatant.  Up jumped the boy who had been tripped and he flew into the back of the boy who had tripped him; they went down in a tumble of legs and arms.  Luckily, one of the playground supervisors also saw it and stepped in quickly.  The boy who had been tripped was screaming about how the other boy had cheated, how it hadn’t been fair.  It was all about revenge.

Let’s be honest.  All of us have been there.  We have all wanted revenge; we have all wanted to act in vengeance on another person to make it fair.  Over and over again we have seen the human tendency to react violently when another person has wronged us.  It’s the law of an eye for an eye: you wronged me so I’m going to wrong you in the same measure (if not more).  In the wild west, it was vigilante justice; even today that desire for revenge is clear.  We hear it in the voices of those who have been, or whose families have been the victims of violent crimes.  I’m often shocked and saddened when I hear the satisfaction in the voices of those who watched their assailant executed.  Revenge brought peace, or something resembling peace.  Yet, that revenge didn’t really do anything other than calm our own needs.  Think about the Hatfield’s and McCoy’s, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and so many other situations – has acting in revenge ever done anything to really stop the cycle, has seeking to make it fair (on our terms) ever really solved anything in those types of situations?

We know it doesn’t, really; yet it seems we can’t break the habit.  Today we encounter revenge and vengeance in our Psalm.  In my opinion, it’s one of the most disturbing passages in the Bible.  That’s obviously also the opinion of many people.  In many hymnals that print the Psalms, this Psalm is excluded.  When it comes up in the lectionary cycle, we hope that they leave off that last verse.  Or at the very least give us a different reading as an option.  Who wants to think about, much less talk about or reflect on smashing little ones heads against the rocks?  But, if we could pick and choose the parts of scripture that we want to read or meditate on, we would be creating a book in our image.  Scripture isn’t meant to just be warm and fuzzy and make us feel good; scripture is at its best when it challenges us, when it forces us to squirm, when we cannot escape its call to look deeply at ourselves in its mirror.

This Psalm is a cry to God that reflects the situation of the Israelites in captivity in Babylon.  They were essentially slaves, unable to live their lives as they desired.  They had been taken from the Promised Land, they had been marched for days and weeks in chains to a foreign land, where they had been forced to work for the Babylonians.  They missed their Land, they missed the temple where they could worship God.  The Babylonians were cruel taskmasters, making their position as slaves clear to the Israelites.  The Psalm presents the idea that the Israelites were mocked with requests that they sing their songs from home, so they could be the butt of jokes regarding their “music.”  The Israelites refused, or at the very least, the Psalmist refused as the voice of the Israelite people.

The cries of the Israelites were clear, they had been abused, they had been imprisoned, they had been tortured.  They wanted to get even, they wanted vengeance, they wanted revenge.  But the Psalmist recognizes something lse.  Vengeance, revenge was not theirs to give.  The Psalmist recognizes the truth found in Deuteronomy 32, that vengeance belongs to the Lord.  It’s not that the Psalmist, that the Israelites don’t want revenge; they do.  Just look at the words, they are full of the desire for revenge.  Yet, those same words make it clear that they were leaving vengeance to God.

Seeking fairness is part of being human.  It’s the reason why we have an innate sense of justice; give two small children different size treats and see how they react.  We know in our hearts what is fair.  We know what is right, we know when we have been wronged.  Working toward justice and fairness is part of God’s desires for us.  Remember Micah 6:8; what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?  God desires us to seek ways of equality and justice.  And when we see injustice, when we see the mistreatment of people we are to speak out, we are to work to do something about it.  Yet, as we work to follow God’s desires for us, we must be careful.  Our actions must be guided by seeking for justice, not by a desire for seeking revenge.

The cry of the Psalmist, the cry of the Israelites is for justice, for revenge.  But, as they cry they do not themselves declare they will act to bring about that revenge.  Their cry is a prayer to God that God will act, that God will correct the injustice that has occurred.  They will work for justice, yet God will be the active one to bring vengeance upon the workers of injustice.

It is not about not punishing someone for their wrongdoing.  It’s not about just allowing people to act whatever way they want.  This is about ensuring that when we seek to discipline someone for their behaviors we do so without allowing our desire for revenge to control us.  Jesus told his disciples to turn the other cheek.  When we turn the other cheek, it’s not about not being angry, it’s not about saying the other person will never be disciplined.  It’s about stopping ourselves in that moment, removing the emotion of revenge from the moment, and accepting that the one who has done us wrong will have to face God and God’s vengeance because of their actions – and one day, so will we.  Allowing God to be the active one does not take away the pain and hurt, but it can free us to focus on healing rather than on our response, moving forward rather than focusing on the past and how we can make someone “pay” for what they have done.


The words of the Psalm make us uncomfortable, they can make us squirm; because they are so human, and we can relate to them so well.  The reality of our own cries for revenge and vengeance echo alongside the cries of the Psalmist and the Israelites.  May we too learn the lesson of the Psalmist and not focus on how we could respond in vengeance, but on letting go of our need for revenge and allow God to be the active one.  Active both in response and in our healing.  May we find peace in God’s ever comforting presence.  Amen.

Sunday, September 29, 2013

Contentment

Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost – Proper 21 – Year C
September 29, 2013
1 Timothy 6:6-19

Of course, there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment; for we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it; but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these. But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains.

But as for you, man of God, shun all this; pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life, to which you were called and for which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. In the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you to keep the commandment without spot or blame until the manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ, which he will bring about at the right time—he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords. It is he alone who has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see; to him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.

As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty, or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but rather on God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life.


It’s the end of the month, when for many people and businesses budgets tend to get a little tight.  We begin to watch our buying habits much more closely.  At the beginning of the month we tend to be a little more loose; when we want to spend a little bit more at a restaurant, or spend the extra few dollars for a splurge we think a little less about it.  Yet, when it comes to the end of the month, suddenly a dollar here and there seems to add up a lot faster.  We end up watching our bank accounts carefully, hoping and praying that nothing unexpected pops up that we can’t afford.

A few weeks ago, we once again saw the Powerball lottery reach crazy amounts of money.  In some places, lines to purchase tickets went around the block.  It seemed many people had a good idea of what they would do if they were to win the 400 million dollar prize.  Even though the chances of winning were smaller than being hit by lightning more than once in your life, people still shelled out their dollars for their dream.

It’s interesting to note though, how many people who win the lottery end up penniless and miserable just a few years later.  They looked at winning the lottery as a blessing from God that was going to transform their lives, yet it ended up being far from a blessing.  They saw their families torn apart, their marriages shatter, their friends walk away.  There are former lottery winners who now depend on soup kitchens and homeless shelters to survive.  We have all heard the stories, we have all heard the warnings about how life is much harder if you win the lottery, yet we often joke about being willing to give it a try.

For some reason, when it comes to life and happiness, many people have this idea that money will somehow make life better.  The reality is that for many of the things we worry about, a little bit more money could very well reduce our worries.  If we worry about being able to afford our children’s college education – a little more money will definitely help.  When we worry about being able to afford to retire – a little more money will make things far more comfortable.  When we worry about paying our bills – a little more money would help.  When we worry about fixing our car – a little more money will lessen the sting of the repair bill.  In a lot of cases, a little more money will make us worry less – or at least we think it will make us worry less.  With a little bit more money, we think we can finally have ‘the good life.’

The good life.  Living the life.  Living the dream.  Phrases that bring all sorts of things to mind.  When you hear someone say that, “Joe is living the dream!”  what do you think of?  What makes it the stuff of fulfilled dreams?

In our text from Timothy, we hear a bit about money; specifically the love of money and how that love can lead to many problems.  I think we all know that love of money, love of anything to the exclusion of others can lead to problems.  Money by itself is neutral, it’s what you do with it.  I bet you think I’m going to talk about money for the rest of this don’t you?  I could, but there is another word that is part of this passage, a word that we might easily skip over because it’s right at the beginning.  The word is contentment.

We read that, “there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment”.  It sounds to me that godliness (something I‘m sure we are all striving for in our own way) is improved by being lived out together with contentment.  I think we’ve got a decent idea of what godliness is – I mean, we’ve got a great model to follow in Jesus.  So what is contentment?  Merriam-Webster defines it as being, “the state of being happy and satisfied.”[1]  That’s great.  Now if we could just figure out how to be happy and satisfied. 

I’ve done some reading and thinking over the last week about contentment, about things you can do to be happier and more satisfied with life.  Numerous books have been written on the subject, so obviously I can’t share more than a few points with you.   But, I think I’ve found five basic things that can be used as a guide when we seek contentment in our lives.

First: love people, use possessions.  This seems obvious, yet so often we have it reversed.  We love our possessions, and we use people.  We look at the things we have, we take pride in them.  But, then we spend time outside cleaning our car when the kids want to play at the park.  We spend that extra hour or two at work for the overtime instead of spending those hours with a friend we haven’t seen in weeks.  We’ll spend hours and hours researching our next big purchase, yet find ourselves looking at our watch after just a few minutes of visiting someone in the hospital or nursing home.  What it comes down to is that we all too often place a greater value on possessions, and things we do to get those possessions than on the relationships around us.  When we put the emphasis on the people, we find that they are the reward.  They are the things that are priceless and can never be replaced.  Love people, not possessions.

Second: Don’t compare yourself with others.  This is another thing that way too many of us do, I know I do it.  We look at another person, and think about how awesome they are, or the many things they can do or have that we can’t or don’t.  It’s important that we are each the best we can be – no matter what it might be.  Me, I was a music major who could barely play piano.  I beat myself up for my entire time in college, looking at my other classmates who could seemingly play at will.  No matter how many hours I spent in the practice room, I never got beyond the easiest of pieces.  It was only when I accepted the fact that I was never going to be playing Chopin Etudes, that I could only be as good as I was going to be – not as good as my classmates, that I found peace in my inability to master the piano.

Third: This goes along with what I just talked about: Appreciate what you have.  Okay, maybe you aren’t friends with the most popular person, but I bet you have some really awesome people as friends.  Maybe you aren’t driving the newest car, but you have something to drive.  Maybe you aren’t living in the house of your dreams, but you do have a place to call home.  We all tend to focus on the things we don’t have rather than the things we do have.  And that goes not only for possessions, but also for traits and abilities we have.  Don’t let the fact you’ll never win American Idol for your singing ability stop you from raising a joyful noise to God.

Fourth: Choose friends wisely.  When it comes to friends the saying of quality over quantity really rings true.  Surround yourself with people who are positive, people who inspire you, people who bring out the best in you, people that are positive additions to your life.  People whose lives are full of people that bring a smile to their face tend to be happier.  While, if we surround ourselves with negative people, with people that cause us to be unhappy, with people that don’t laugh or smile often; then we will feel unfulfilled, we will feel our life is missing something.

Fifth: Feed your spiritual life.  For many of us this might be among the hardest things to do.  Taking care of and nurturing your spiritual life is not just about coming to church, reading the bible and praying; although all those are important.  Feeding your spiritual life means taking the time to engage in the things and ways in which you feel most strongly connected with God and others.  Perhaps that’s going for a walk, maybe that’s visiting with friends, maybe that’s serving as a volunteer at a hospital, maybe that’s serving food in a shelter.  If you feel closer to God in those moments, it’s an aspect of your spiritual life.  However, it’s also important to spend time together in worship, it’s important to spend time reading and meditating on God’s Word, and it’s terribly important to spend time in conversation with God in prayer – and when we do pray, to spend more time listening than talking.

Mother Theresa was once asked about her prayer life.  The interviewer asked, “When you pray, what do you say to God?”  Mother Teresa replied, “I don’t talk, I simply listen.”  Believing he understood what she had just said, the interviewer next asked, “Ah, then what is it that God says to you when you pray?”  Mother Teresa replied, “He also doesn’t talk. He also simply listens.”

Listening to God is another central thing to contentment.  Not listening to the world, not listening to the hundreds and thousands of clamoring voices each trying to convince us of something.  Not listening to the voice within us that questions if we are good enough, if we have done enough.  Listen to God, turn your eyes toward our Lord and Savior.  Make that your focus and your guide.  If you work toward doing that, and it is work; it’s something that we need to practice doing each and every day.  It’s something that if we don’t think about it, we can easily be distracted from.  Yet, if we do so, we will find contentment, we will seek godliness, we will discover what it is our letter to Timothy is talking about when it says we will take hold of the life that really is life.  May God strengthen us as we seek to walk in those ways.   Amen.

Sunday, September 15, 2013

The Greatest

Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost - Proper 19 – Year C
September 15, 2013
1 Timothy 1:12-17           

I am grateful to Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me, because he judged me faithful and appointed me to his service, even though I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the foremost. But for that very reason I received mercy, so that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display the utmost patience, making me an example to those who would come to believe in him for eternal life. To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen.

I think that all of us tend to be attracted to people with larger than life personalities.  We tend to watch, or at the very least be fascinated with people whose brightness seems to be brighter than other people.  There are people who just seem to somehow always come out smelling like a rose, no matter how bad the situation is.  Things just seem to not matter quite the same.  These are the same people who when they walk into a room, all eyes are drawn to them.  Sure, sometimes it’s because of their physical attributes – they may just be prettier or more handsome than others.  But, sometimes it’s something else:  The person who draws all attention to themselves effortlessly every time they speak.  The person who doesn’t even say a word, yet their very presence seems like a magnet and other people come to them.

Athletes and celebrities tend to be like that.  They walk into a room, and everything stops.  They open their mouths, and the world listens with bated breath for their words (even if it’s just to order a coffee.)  One of the things I’ve noticed is how often athletes especially speak and carry themselves with a greatness that is above others.  Without question it can be annoying, and can all too often lead to disappointments.  In just the last few years we watched as Lance Armstrong went from the greatest bicycle racer of all time to someone who used drugs and blood doping to achieve his success (denying he was doing it the entire time.)  He may be at the bottom of many people’s lists of those they admire, but there was a time when he was lifted up as a hero, as someone who had taken on cancer and beaten it.  He was a hero, he was the greatest.

Then there is the athlete who claimed the title as greatest, Mohammad Ali, and in the prime of his charismatic career, many agreed. The sports world is filled with showmen and great athletes, but perhaps never were they better combined than in the young man who began life as Cassius Clay and became a worldwide phenomenon as Muhammad Ali. The man who bragged about his ability to "float like a butterfly and sting like a bee" went from being a curious oddity in the early 1960s to a national villain (because of his refusal to accept induction into the armed forces on religious grounds, which cost him millions and his heavyweight title) and finally to an international hero. And now, his body limited by Parkinson's disease, he reigns as one of the most beloved men on the planet.[1]   I will probably remember my entire life how we was selected to light the flame during the opening ceremonies of the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.

No, we are without question drawn to larger-than-life individuals, and the church has its own in the Apostle Paul, and people have been drawn to his writings and thoughts for millennia.  His influence on the church is without question.  What we understand as Christianity depends a great deal on the writings of Paul and on his understanding of God and Jesus.  “The fundamental doctrinal tenets of Christianity, namely that Christ is God "born in the flesh," that his sacrificial death atones for the sins of humankind, and that his resurrection from the dead guarantees eternal life to all who believe, can be traced back to Paul -- not to Jesus. Indeed, the spiritual union with Christ through baptism, as well as the "communion" with his body and blood through the sacred meal of bread and wine, also trace back to Paul. “[2]  We as Christians owe a huge amount of what we think and believe to a man who started his career by persecuting a new sect of Judaism, even holding the coats of those who stoned Stephen, the first of the martyrs.

Paul was a grandiose guy.  From his claims of his having every right to boast in the flesh because of his being “circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews;”.  How in regard to the law he was righteous in his devoted adherence to its stipulations.[3]  In the passage we have this morning from his letter to Timothy Paul makes his claim of being the foremost of sinners.  We can definitely see that Paul was not a guy who wanted to disappear in the crowd.  I’m sure when he came into a room, all eyes turned to him.

Paul may have been a bit over the top, but he did it for a reason.  He described himself in extreme ways so that he could in turn so the extreme grace and love of God.  If he had just been a regular guy, would his conversion have been as faith-inspiring?  If he had just been a regular Jew, instead of a devout Pharisee, would his new-found faith be as powerful a testimony?  If he had never acted in opposition to the disciples, would his new role as an apostle have been as shocking?  Yet, it is his very grandiose, over-the-top descriptions of himself that drive home the point that God is greater than anything else we may have done, anything else we might be able to hold up as proof of how good, of how worthy of God’s love we might be.  And it serves to further the gospel.

If Paul, who was so great in his opposition to the early church, in his personal adherence to the pharisaic law so perfect, if he was able to be claimed and changed by God, then how much more so can God use and change us – we who are far from being the greatest or the foremost?

One of the aspects of being human that often gets in the way of faith is our difficulty to truly forgive.  We may say the words, “I forgive you”, but following through is difficult to truly do.  It’s hard.  We remember what has happened.  We remember the things that were said about us in passing.  We remember the ways in which we were treated, how we were teased and excluded by people we thought we friends.  We remember how we were forced out of, or forgotten and ignored at a family event.  We remember how our loved ones were treated by someone.  We remember the pain we felt when our trust was betrayed.  We remember all too clearly the pain that was inflicted upon us by another.  It can be difficult to forgive.  To move on, to treat the one who wronged you in a way that speaks to the forgiveness we may have uttered.

One of the basics of our Christian faith is forgiveness.  We declare that in Christ we have been forgiven.  Yet, how often do we struggle with that?  How often do we wonder if we have done enough to warrant that forgiveness?  How often do we like Martin Luther spend time worrying?  “In the monastery, Luther spent up to six hours a day confessing his sins to a priest. But later, he would always remember sins he had forgotten to confess. Questions nagged at him. If only confessed sins were forgiven, what would happen if he forgot one? What about all the sins he might have committed in ignorance? Luther began to see that his sinful actions were like smallpox pustules — nasty, external manifestations of the internal, systemic disease of sin.
He fasted for days and refused blankets at night, believing that he earned merit with God through self-imposed suffering. One day he would proudly say, “I have done nothing wrong today.” But on reflection, he wondered if he had indeed fasted enough, prayed enough, suffered enough and served enough.”[4]  It wasn’t until Luther discovered the core of Paul’s letters that he found his comfort, and he was no longer worried if he had done enough.  He would never do enough, but it wasn’t about him.  In faith, and in faith alone, he could look to Jesus’ actions on the cross.  Jesus had done enough, enough for him and enough for all people.

In Paul, the foremost, the greatest (according to him) of sinners we see God’s graciousness and forgiveness lived out.  In Paul’s life and words we find the promise of God; that no matter our failings, no matter how often or how badly we may have acted or behaved, still act and behave, nothing can separate us from God’s love shown to us in Jesus the Christ.  It is that love, that grace that brings to life the faith that God has planted in each of us.  It is in faith that we look to the promises of God.  To whom be honor and glory forever.  Amen.