Trentons and Princetons

9-29-19

Grace to you and peace from God our creator and from our lord and Savior Jesus the Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, amen.

As we all know, fall doesn’t just bring us Decorative Gourds and Pumpkin spice lattes. Fall also brings us… road construction.

While I was an associate pastor in New Jersey, my commute to my church almost doubled because of a particular bridge that needed to be updated and fixed…. This process took at least three months. Thanks NJ DOT! I eventually found a slightly shorter detour, one that took me passed an area of Windsor Township that I don’t normally go. The houses were large and fancy, and the yards were manicured within an inch of their lives. One house, though, stood out among the McMansions. THIS house had a heavy-duty fence around its stylish grounds and had not one but TWO impressive wrought iron gates, flanked by stylized concrete walls.

I even stopped one Sunday morning on my way to church to snap a picture when my colleague Jim was preaching on this very text – trying to do it in a hurry without looking suspicious about it! I could see the headlines – Pastor Caught Skulking around Rich Person’s House, Claims She Only Wanted A Sermon Illustration on Jesus’s Parable of “the Rich Man and Lazarus.”

That house was located less than 10 miles from where I lived in Trenton at the time. Both Trenton and Windsor were in the same county, but they might as well be on different planets. Within the span of time it takes to cook a pizza, you could drive from the poorest areas in New Jersey – Trenton – to some of the richest – Princeton, and it’s suburbs like Windsor, where this particular gate was located. Everyday, when I drove to my congregation, I passed both homeless people outside of abandoned houses, and million-dollar home with kids on the soccer fields with gleaming new Nikes. Sometime it felt like cultural whiplash. All in the span of less than 10 miles. 

For the rich man, he did not have to travel 10 miles to experience his own cultural whiplash. He merely had to walk 10 steps outside of his very door to find sitting at his own fine gate a man named Lazarus. While the rich man feasted, Lazarus longed for the scraps and half-eaten bits left in the garbage. Even the dogs pitied Lazarus.

Pastor and Songwriter Bryan Odeen wrote a song about this story called “Across the chasm.” Pastor Odeen describes these two men like this - “One man feels the comfort, the other feels the rain. One with the means change things, the other with the scars.” In other words, two men who could not be more opposite.

In this instance, as in the case between Trenton and Princeton, ten steps might as well be ten miles, and ten miles might as well be ten light years. The Gate between them becomes an uncrossable chasm, one that the rich man cannot – or will not – cross.

As Jesus’s parable goes, both men died right around the same time. One could imagine that they most likely died of different things – Lazarus from complications due to lack of medical care, poverty, and starvation, the Rich man perhaps from gout or heart disease or diabetes. After they died, however, both men found an interesting reversal in their fortunes. 

Before death, the theme of Rich man’s life was Hakuna Matata – no worries for the rest of your days… a problem free philosophy, because really DID have nothing to worry about.  Everything was handed to him, every need anticipated.  After death – well, it was a different story. In the parable, the rich man found himself to be suddenly lacking, while his closest neighbor Lazarus is seated at the place of honor by Abraham's side.

But here is the thing - even in death the rich man still doesn't see Lazarus as a person, but only as a means to an end - a way to gain relief from HIS OWN suffering, or a way to protect his brothers from future torment… with no regard for what it might cost Lazarus.

And perhaps the most shocking thing of all here is that we learn that the rich man knew Lazarus’ name ALL ALONG. He knew his name…. and did nothing to help Lazarus while they were alive. While the rich man might not have caused Lazarus’s poverty, his hunger, or his sores… he still stood by and did nothing.

People from Princeton, New Jersey were not driving into Trenton in the middle of the night and stealing from people there in order to make them poor. People from Princeton were not damaging buildings or taking away people’s homes to make them homeless. But people from Princeton WERE benefiting from a system that privileged things like home ownership, high property taxes, the color of their skin, and access to an abundance of resources. And people from the surrounding area did and do stand by and watch Trenton crumble under the weight of poverty, lack of resources, the sores of homelessness, and the general attitude of “don’t go there, that’s a bad place.” Route One became the inaccessible gate and the uncrossable chasm between the Haves and the Have nots, the Rich and the Lazaruses.

But this is not the only place in this country where this is happening. It happens everywhere, including in our own neighborhoods.  The fifth commandment is being broken everywhere. That’s the one that says, you shall not kill. Which, on the surface seems like one of the “easy” no brainer ones. But nothing could be further from the truth, in the case of Princeton and Trenton, the rich man and Lazarus, you, me, and the parts of our cities we separate from.

Martin Luther brought being a follower of God to the next level in his explanation of the fifth commandment “Thou Shalt not Kill,” … by saying “We are to fear and love God, so that we neither endanger nor harm the lives of our neighbors, but instead help and support them in all life’s needs.”

We might not actively harm the people at our very own gates…. But we benefit from systems that privilege some kind of people above others. It’s not just enough to NOT murder our neighbor. We break the fifth commandment when we aren’t active in helping them as well.

As we sometimes say in our time of Confession that we “We have sinned…  in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done AND by what we have left undone. We have not loved… our neighbors has ourselves.” We use others as a means to an end, and do not see or acknowledge the full humanity of the Lazarusus in our own lives. We have become too familiar with the brokenness and have chosen the comfort of no longer seeing it. We are in bondage to sin, and cannot free ourselves.

The refrain that Pastor Bryan Odeen sings in his song repeat these words: “Across the chasm we see the other side…. the broken and divine. Both of them beloved, both are sore and tried. If only in their life, they crossed the great divide.”

In this life, the gate can be unbolted, and the chasm between us is crossable. There is someone who shows us the way across this chasm, who bridges the gap himself, and he is the one telling this story. We hear that this particular parable has an uncertain ending, but we can be certain of how Gospel of Luke ends. Yes, Luke ends with “people crucifying Jesus because they could not abide a God who…” bridges the chasm and “joins us in our humanness and promises to stay.” The Gospel of Luke ends with Jesus rising from the dead… despite when we, like the brothers of the rich man, might refuse to see it. Even when we refuse to see people who are ten miles … or ten steps away. Even when we allow sin to get in the way of our seeing the humanity of others.

The cross is God’s defeat of everything that separates us from God, and on another. There is no more gate separating us. There is no more chasm to cross. As Pastor Dan Erlander writes, “Our death and our life are no part of Christ’s own dying and rising. We are no longer alone.”

We – together - are called to be part of a new kind of community, a community is the kingdom of God, where we all find welcome, where we all are made whole. This community defies time and space, spans political parties and world views, resists racial and economic divides, and crosses the chasms that separate us from one another, chasms caused by fear and hate and bondage to sin. A community that doesn’t just refrain from doing harm, but instead intentionally acts for the good of our neighbors, whether they are ten feet or ten miles or ten hours away. Because I don’t think the chasm is as big as we think – at least, not anymore. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Dishonest Servant's Playbook

Grace and peace to you from God our creator and from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

How many of you have played “The Game of Life”? If it’s been a while, you may remember that you start out with a car, a pink or blue peg, and ten thousand dollars in the bank - just like real life, right? As your little car travels along the game board, you go to college, start a career, get married, have kids, buy a house… The goal is to drive your little car with your little family and live your little life until you retire, the winner being the one who retires with the most money – like real life!

Once you understand all the rules, playing “The Game of Life” is pretty straightforward. Living the game of “Real Life,” however, is not quite so easy. Not everyone starts off in life with such a head start of a car and money in the bank, perhaps in the form of generational wealth. Real life is messy and confusing and complicated and strange… and very much like the parable that Jesus tells to his disciples that we heard just a few moments ago!

Now, when it comes to what readings we hear in church every Sunday, there is a pre-set order of game play. We always read from the Old Testament, the New Testament, a Psalm, and one of the Gospels, based on traditions that go back centuries, and span denominations. They are not chosen at random or based on what the Pastor feels like saying on a Sunday. Certain texts come up during certain parts of the church year, following a three-year cycle called the lectionary.  Like a game, there is counting and rules to follow. 

Today this text, though, feels more like landing on a “skip a turn” space, or as if we rolled a one when we needed anything but. Though, there is something sort of refreshing about the honesty and creativity of this steward that I can’t help liking despite myself. I find myself rooting for this guy. Like any good anti – hero like Deadpool or that guy on House of Cards, the steward boldly breaks the fourth wall and lets us in on how he intends to scheme himself out of this jam, his brilliant plan being to us his access to swindle his boss out of EVEN MORE MONEY…. But this time not the benefit of himself only.

After everything that the steward pulls, the rich master was actually impressed, perhaps because this is the same way that the rich man likely made his wealth. Just like now, there are only a few ways to get above the poverty line, and most of them involve an unfair advantage, or downright dishonestly. As it was then, it still is now – in THIS world, money talks, it is money who is king, demands our devotion, and makes the rules that govern our daily lives. 

Rules like: Whoever holds the money holds the power. That your worth is based on what and how much you can buy, how big your house is or what school you can afford to send your children too. To spend rather than saving or giving.  Money rules: it dictates our time, consumes our thoughts, and demands our loyalty.

And so, when we slip into this kind of bondage, and follow this script money lays out for us, what is our reward? How do we know if we’ve “won” at the game? Like in the game of life, the one with the most money at the end wins.

But perhaps even more amazing of all – JESUS applauds the steward too! Really, Jesus? Should we really this guy as our model? Yes! As Jesus also points out, when life is over and it’s time to enter into our eternal, rather than retirement, homes, and where is the money? Well, it’s gone, because “you can’t take it with you”! So how are we going to use it while we are still “In the Game”?

Both God and money demand your life. But which master would you rather serve? The truth is, we can’t play the game by both sets of rules. We cannot serve both. We cannot belong to both… and keep our sanity and integrity.

We are not doomed to follow these rules of the Money, that, in the end, cheat us out of life and in fact give us nothing. There is another king to follow, another set of rules for us to live by. This Jesus came to tell us that God’s Kingdom rules are the alternative.

D

We are citizens of the Kingdom of God who are living in the Kingdom of Money at the moment. Which makes life confusing and complicated. All the playing pieces look the same. But we are called to play by different rules and to have a different strategy, because our goal is not the same. Our goal is not to win. Our goal is to follow Jesus. Which will probably lead us to run afoul of the rules of money’s game.

My personal theory is that Jesus liked the roguish steward because he was the type of guy that Jesus tended to hang out with. Jesus was often accused of eating with sinners, scandalous women, and shady characters – and this steward fits right in. He knew how to cleverly and creatively play by the rules of his world. According to The Message translation Luke 16 reads “streetwise people… are on constant alert, looking for angles… using adversity to stimulate… creative survival…. You cannot serve God and the Bank.”

And so, that’s why I think that Jesus wants us to take a page out of the steward’s playbook of creative survival: when things get tough, DON’T give up. Find the alternative endings. Find those angles and exploit them for the good of the kingdom. Be alert to new opportunities. Create your own way when the world gives you no way.

And WHEN – not IF – we fail, we can get right back up, dust ourselves off, remind ourselves that we are baptized and beloved children of God, and every day is a new day. This is how we live, because we know that life is not really a game we manipulate, and we cannot simply strategize our way into the kingdom of God. There are no “winners” and “losers,” because we are both… and neither.

You can and will lose to money and the bank, but you can never lose the love of God. Jesus won a place for us in the kingdom already, by not playing by the world’s rules. In fact, you could say he cheated. He “won” the game by losing – losing any opportunity to gain worldly possessions, power, or status… even losing his very life, and ultimately, cheating death. All to prove that we cannot win our way to God.  The game has already been won, because there is no game. Not anymore.

Though we no longer have to play by money’s rules, we what we do with our money still very much matters. And so too, along the way, we ask ourselves, how can we as people of God flip the scrip, “cheat” at the game, and make our money SERVE US as WE continue to be called to SERVE GOD?

How can we counter-scam establishments that rip-off the environment and vulnerable people? By shopping small, local, and …. Or not at all. By chucking expensive coffee systems and business that hurt the environment, and spend that money on fair trade coffee or local establishments that foster community. By investing in relationships rather than fancy gimmicks and flashy facades.

How do we cheat institutions that get away with perpetuating injustice in the form of discrimination? By taking a page out of the steward’s book, and using his own resources, access, and privilege to help other people who were being unfairly treated by the rules of the game.

Be faithful even in the little things. Be good stewards of and take care of what has been given to you by God… that is, everything, including our lives. Be a slave to God and serve one another, rather than serving the demands of the bank.

We are still on the game board, far from the finish line. The game of life has already been won for us, true, but in the meantime, we still make choices and roll the dice – with both good and bad rolls. Along the way, Jesus challenges us to turn to the Dishonest Steward’s playbook, finding angles, keeping alert, keeping our wits about us, creatively surviving, until we reach the finish. Game on. Amen.

Saints and Sinners, Lost and Found

9-15-19 Kick Off Sunday

Grace to you and peace from God our creator and from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

A few months ago, I went to 5 Below North Wales to find some glowsticks for our campfire, when two women approached me, asked if I “believed in the female images of God.” I bet you could imagine how that went. After about 5 minutes I could tell they were tired hearing me go on and on, so I gave them my card … and big surprise, I haven’t heard from them yet!

We know in our hearts that God is neither male or female (or black or white), but let’s admit it – our language still tends to skew to the male pronoun when we talk about God, and out of habit, even I slip up sometimes. We speak and we imagine from the perspective we are familiar with. While the Bible was inspired by God and written by men of faith (mostly because women weren’t educated at the time), they were still bound by their own experiences. Even Jesus was sometimes! … as you may have noticed last week, when the stories he told were from the perspective of kings, armies, business owners, and construction workers.

But every once in a while, language describing God from female perspectives peaks through, to remind us that if we have been created in God’s image – male AND female – God has attributes of both. God is a nurturing mother who gives birth (Deut. 32:18) and nurses us, her children (Isaiah 49:15), God is a seamstress (Gen. 3:21) also a knitter (Psalm 139) and a baker (Matthew). During this year of Luke, we hear that God looks for us like a woman looking for a lost coin (15:8-10) as we heard today, and Jesus describes himself as a hen who wants to gather us like chicks (13:34).

The Gospel of Luke is also full of these descriptions, and is also populated with bold women who are faithful follows of Jesus – Mary his mother, Mary Magdalene, the women at the empty tomb, just to name a few. We are blessed to be part of a denomination where the gifts of women are recognized, where they can serve at the highest levels, including our presiding bishop. But as I said at the banquet at the ELCA churchwide assembly, the night we celebrated the ordination of women no matter what race or who they love, we have not “arrived” yet. We still have a long way to go.

If we had truly arrived, these 50 years after the first white heterosexual woman was ordained in one of the predecessors to the ELCA, then THIS book would never have needed to be written.  I read this book earlier this year when it was fresh from the publisher. It comes from the perspective of someone called to ministry who is from one of the “lost” groups,” and by its title “One CoinFound” you can probably tell that it draws heavily from the “lost” stories we hear today.

Author and pastor Emmy Kegler grew up Episcopalian, is now a Lutheran pastor. This book is her story about how she as a queer woman pastor grew to fall in love with the very same scriptures that many Christians have used against her throughout her life. Perhaps not surprisingly, Kegler was always deeply drawn to the story of all the “Losts” in Luke, - lost sheep, coin, culminating in the Lost/ Prodigal son.

She reflects on the nature of sheep and of coins, saying that sheep tend to wander, but usually for good reason … hunger, thirst, exhaustion, fear (of predators). But what is the coin’s excuse? Kegler writes, “the funny thing about coins is that they can’t get lost by themselves” … “Coins get lost because their owners aren’t careful….” And when coins get lost, they tend to their shine (and their perceived value), which makes them even more difficult to locate.

But is God the one who loses us? With every story Jesus tells, and with every image we use to talk about the kingdom of God, there is a “yes” and there is a “no.” God is LIKE a knitter, but God does not actually take up knitting needles to make a scarf. Our limited human language can only tell so much of infinite truth of who God is, and we often reach out to more tangible things to anchor us, for better or worse. Emmy reminds us that “We experience God through our experience of others…” but is also careful to clearly say, “God has never been careless with us, but those who claim to speak for God have.” Church leaders, not God, cause some of the most vulnerable sheet to be lost - to be disregarded and left to get dusty like the coin or starved for love like the sheep.

Pastor Kegler experienced this so painfully in her own life, as growing up she struggled to reconcile the revelation that she both gay and a Christian, and how the people of deep faith around her, who she though loved her, could reject her because of it.

In the fall of Pastor Kegler’s senior year of high school, 2 years after starting to attend “Watermark” (a non-denominational youth centric church in Minneapolis), a preacher in training came from a nearby seminary to rail against same sex relationships. Traumatized and triggered by his hateful words, she left the sanctuary to collect herself. Her “friends” followed her, pressuring her to “repent” of the way God had created her. That night, the people Kegler though were her friends turned on her, and she saw their true colors. She never went back to that church or those people.

Years later, on a Sunday morning during worship in the chapel of a Lutheran college, Pastor Kegler was unwillingly pressed into service to help distribute communion. When someone handed her a plate with the bread, she panicked. She tried to hand it back to one of the campus pastors, telling him, “I can’t serve, I’m not trained.” He asked her if she knew what to say, she responded without thinking, “the body of Christ, given for you.” He handed the plate back to her and said, “there you go, you’ve been trained.” In that moment, and in every moment of love shown to her since, Kegler was truly found. Now, she is happily married, a pastor in the heart of Lutheran country – St. Paul MN, a published author, and sough-after speaker and preacher.

I think we can all see why, when Kegler describes God hitching up her skirts to get down and dirty on the floor to search for lost coins like her. “God has taken up a broom and cleared each corner, untucked and re-tucked each sheet and quilt, turned over pitcher after pitcher to see where we have landed.”

Our own found stories probably look a little bit different form Emmy Kegler’s, and may not seem worthy of publishing as a memoir, or at least not as “interesting.” But I think all of us have experience what it means to be hungry for something – for empathy, for acceptance, for someone to see our worth, for someone to love us for all of our flaws and brokenness, and the disappointment we feel when our deepest needs are not met by the people we thought cared about us. Most of us, I believe, HAVE  felt the sting of rejection when those who seem to have everything – power, influence, comfort, privilege – sneer at you and judge you when you leave the “correct path” they have laid out for you, using some misguided  interpretation of God’s words.

Listen closely here to the words of Jesus, then. How then can we stand in the way of Jesus, when he very clearly stands in for the shepherd who abandoned the ninety-nine sheep to find the lost one, and the woman who stayed up late into the night to find her coin that had gone missing? The body of Christ is not complete until all of us are found in God and loved with dignity by those of us who call ourselves Christian. And yes, that might not just include feeding them…. But eating WITH them, at the same table, side by side, elbow to elbow, with Jesus.

Perhaps we don’t have a lot of tax-collectors floating around anymore, but we all encounter people that we grumble at we deem “undeserving,” and want to begrudge a seat at the table. The good news is that Jesus eats with sinners…. And its good news BECAUSE WE are sinners. The repercussions of some sins might be more obvious than others.  But all are given a spot next to Jesus. All of us are, in the words of the commendation at the end of our funeral service, we are “sheep if [God's] own fold, [lambs] of [God's] own flock, [sinners] of [God's] own redeeming.”

One of the last things that Rachel Held Evans wrote before she died this spring, was write the introduction to this book, One Coin Found. Evans words ring achingly true in light of her sudden death, when exhorts us readers to remember that “you …  are immeasurably beloved by God, …with the help of the great communion of saints, …. you… will always and ever be found.”

Nothing can separate us form the love of God. In life, and in death, we are loved, and we are known, and we are found. Because God will stop at nothing to gather those who are lost. Now it’s our turn, to tuck up our own skirts, find the broom, and join in the search with that great communion of saints… and sinners. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Jesus Wants Everything

9-8-19

Grace to you and peace from God our creator and from our Risen Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, amen. 

The signs are everywhere – kids going back to school, fall programming kicking off, pumpkin spice everything appearing… and Jesus talking about the Cost of Discipleship. Yup, must be fall!

If Jesus had been a student in the 21^st century, he might have added to the crowd following him to Jerusalem that day, “For which of you, about to start your first week of school, do not fill your brand new backpack” – which will be blessed right here next week – “with pens, fresh pencils, blank notebook, sharp crayons and colored pencils, binders, protractors, calculators, and erasers?”

It reminds me of one of my favorite Netflix shows, the Great British Baking Show. In nearly every episode, SOMEONE has a great catastrophe – whether from too much of on ingredient or not enough of another, a silly mistake, or simply doing too much in too short of time. Then they face a choice: how do the spend the rest of their few remaining minutes – start over? Or make a new plan?

Just because you make in on the Great British Baking show doesn’t mean that great baking catastrophes won’t ever happen. And in our lives of faith following Jesus, we are never promised an easy or happy life. but Jesus DID promise to be with us and in us. The God we worship created us GOOD.  The God I worship IS about the business of death and resurrection, helping me to daily die to my old self and rise up into new life, over and over again, as many times as it takes until I die by giving up my last breath. I have not "arrived;" no one has. This Christian life that we're called to is not a passive pumpkin surgery, but instead it is a journey of discipleship.

As German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer once wrote: “When Christ calls [a person], he bids [them] come and die.” He wrote this in a book called “The Cost of Discipleship,” just a few short years before he made a gamble, to risk his own life in an attempt to bring World War II to an earlier end. Pastor Bonhoeffer and his friends failed, and suffered the consequences – imprisonment and a death sentence at the hand of the Nazis. Bonhoeffer counted the cost of his discipleship and risked his freedom – and life - to try to save others from suffering further… and paid the price for it.

When the Apostle Paul wrote his letter to Philemon, he too was in prison for spreading the freedom through his gospel work. While he was in prison, Paul encountered a slave named Onesimus, who became a great help to him. But at some point, Paul realized a problem. Onesimus had run away from his master and was technically breaking the law. To complicate matters, Onesimus’s master was Philemon, who himself had sponsored a thriving church community out of his own home.

Paul was faced with a dilemma – Should he submit to a law that keeps one person unfairly imprisoned in order to keep the peace? Or should he defy a harmful institution but anger a fellow Christian?

If we read between the lines, Paul forges a third way… a way that both seeks the freedom of an enslaved human being and the opportunity of Philemon to make things right…. Paul basically butters Philemon up first, but he gives Philemon the choice, while making it clear that his “good deed might be voluntary….” To treat Onesimus as he ought to be treated, as “a beloved” brother, and fellow child of God, not as property.  Paul used his privilege as a free, Roman citizen (though in prison) to help a slave received justice.

One of the resources that the ELCA has recently published – and gave all the delegates to the Chuchwide assembly in Milwaukee last month – is a prayer prison prayer book called, HereMy Voice. One prayer states,  “….some of [Jesus’] own disciples, like Peter and John and Paul and many other followers since then” -  here we could easily insert Dietrich Bonhoeffer – “and even [Jesus], have been held in prison and not known what was happening outside, how long the doors would be locked, or if they would ever be opened. But even trapped in prison, theses who trusted [Jesus] found a way to live with hope and freedom.” (106)

We don’t know what choice Philemon ultimately made, but I hope it was the right one the one that Paul hoped for – to trust his faith in Jesus and allow Onesimus the freedom that Paul himself could not enjoy. Whatever the case, one thing is clear from Paul’s letter – that the way of discipleship is not “business as usual,” and involves a real cost. Freeing Onesimus would have cost something to Philemon – socially and economically. But NOT freeing Onesimus would have cost him something even more. The choice was his. Death, or life?

It’s obvious which one God would have us choose – life, of course. As Moses exhorted the people in Deuteronomy – a book that is one big speech that Moses give to the people as they are poised to enter the Promised land after 40 long years in the wilderness – choose life, not death. Remembering the very real deliverance from Egypt, the people would not choose to go back there, back to comfortable idolatry and captivity. The trick is, what look like life to most of us, actually brings us death. And what looks like death – say, a cross – is actually the means by which we are given life.

Human beings are hard-wired for self-preservation. If anything, we are really, really good at avoiding death at all costs. Death, even if it is not a physical death, is frightening, disrupting, and upsetting. It causes fear and pain. And that is exactly where Jesus is headed, on the road to Jerusalem, on the road to the cross, and to death. And that is exactly where Jesus calls us to follow him.

And Jesus gets that is a hard thing to ask when he calls us to follow him. He knows that it is a hard thing to follow him every single day of our lives, not just for one hour on Sunday mornings. He knows that it is a hard thing to give up the stuff we cling to, though we know they will just get in the way. He knows that it is a hard thing for us to follow Jesus on HIS terms, not our own.

When we follow Jesus’ call, our selfishness and greed are put to death. Our brokenness and separations are put to death. Our fear of the unknown is put to death. The darkness in our hearts is put to death. Even our death is put to death when Jesus calls us sinners to follow him.

As my former seminary professor writes, ‘Christian discipleship is not something that can be done … after all the other commitments have been met. Jesus isn’t asking for our leftovers. Jesus wants us—our love, our time, our resources, our work, our commitment—in order to live out what we pray: “Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”.’ Remember that bit in the Lord’s Prayer, which we say every week?

Take a look around you – see your mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, sons and daughters in this community of faith. These are your companions in Christ, here to persevere by your side, shoulder your burdens with you, and to do the impossible when we all respond to God’s call, no matter what the cost. Because, together, we got this. Thanks be to God. Amen.

God's Seating Chart

9-1-19

Grace and peace to you from God our creator and from our Lord and savior Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Think about the last time you were a visitor in a new space (maybe that day is today, welcome to our neighbors Trinity Episcopal who are worshiping with us today!). You walk in and stand awkwardly in the doorway, wondering where it’s “safe” to sit, who it is acceptable to sit with, and whether or not anyone wants you to sit with them. So, you chose a spot and pray that someone will actually talk to you, or at least not notice you if you decide to sit in a corner all by yourself. Or you pray that someone doesn’t come by and tell you that YOU are in THEIR SEAT.

It’s the dreaded “first day of school” in the high school cafeteria, all over again. All these years later, we can be taken right back there – is everyone staring at me? Is what I’m wearing ok? What if no one talks to me?

And after graduation, we slowly realize that it still matters what we wear and where we live, who we’re friends with and what we watch. There will always be someone with better grades than us, with a bigger house or cooler spouse or nicer vacations or smarter kids or newer gadgets. We may think that we leave prom court and popularity contests behind us the minute that diploma hits our hands, but we never leave the the mindset that is, “high school” behind us. Even after we graduate, there are still jocks, nerds, drama geeks, popular kids, winners, and losers, and the “last ones picked” for the sports teams, and those who sit alone in the cafeteria.

This is true now, and it was true thousands of years ago, as we hear in many of our readings for today. You may be wondering why Jesus was over at the house of a Pharisee in the first place. Weren’t they enemies? Well, not exactly. True, they often went toe-to-toe. But the Pharisees were the ones who were keeping the Jewish traditions alive in a very uncertain and violent world. They were not the “bad guys.” But they sometimes got too carried away with keeping all the rules.

Somehow Jesus was invited into the home of this leader of the Pharisees. And of course, one of Jesus’s friends shows up at the party. In the verses we didn’t hear from today, Jesus heals a man suffering from unsightly swelling caused by excessive water retention. This healing happens on the Sabbath, AGAIN, so Jesus again is in hot water. So, they watch Jesus closely, to see what other trouble he decides to stir up.

And in perfect Jesus style, Jesus flips the script and is also watching THEM. He sees these men – because after all only men were invited to dine - and observes them jockey for position at the table, desperate to NOT be the “last one picked.” Imagine a cafeteria room full of middle schoolers scrambling to sit in the limited number of seats at the “cool kids” table…. All the while looking pretty “not-cool” while doing it.

Jesus is addressing how we are to act when we are both GUESTS and when we are HOSTS. But he is not simply being “Miss Manners.” He is actually proposing a way that is a complete reversal of the way we are used to things.

So often throughout history, the kingdom of God has been described as a wedding banquet. But not the over-budget, Pintrest-obsessed, too-planned affair, like so many we’ve all been to. Jesus is saying: don’t seat mom and dad at the front of the church – leave that place open for the church janitor who will have to clean up all the confetti and change the toilet paper later. At the reception, don’t seat the bridesmaids and groomsmen at the head table, instead, put Great Uncle Gary, who can’t hear well, and spits when he talks, next to the bride and groom.   

Don’t sit in the places of honor. Instead, take the lowest place for yourself. And when you give a party, invite those people who would never get an invitation, whose who could never invite you back, like the “last ones picked” by the world. Because that’s who God invites to the table…. And it’s God’s table, not ours. We are GUESTS at God’s banquet, not the hosts. We are NOT in charge of the seating arrangement or the guest list. But we still try our darndest to keep some people out of the banquet, when they have clearly been invited and picked by Jesus.

In seminary, I spent 2 January weeks in Chicago taking an immersive cross-cultural class to experience the diverse contexts and great ministries. The host family I stayed with were friends of friends, and they told me about a homeless ministry that their church supported – one night a week (Saturday), they would host people in their building and provide a hot meal. So, Saturday night, I helped serve the meal and heard the stories of a few of the people staying there that night.

The next morning – Sunday - when I went BACK to this same church for worship, in walking through that same gym to get to the sanctuary, only the smell of bleach revealed that just a few hours before a dozen people had spent the night there. Not a single person who spent the night stayed for worship. I later learned at as a term of being part of this ministry, the council has stipulated that ALL SIGNS of the previous night MUST BE long gone by morning worship. Let that sink in. Every evidence was erased that they ever had been in that space.

Of COURSE, “these homeless people” were “welcome” to stay for worship…. But not surprisingly NO ONE ever came.

This congregation forgot that these people are Jesus’ beloved friends. People like them not only get to tag along when we invite Jesus into our lives, but they are also given seats of honor at God’s table.

WE are Jesus’s friends too. We have a seat at the table, too. Because at some point in our lives we have been made to feel like the “last one picked” by the rest of the world too.

Imagine that the Lord’s Table is the exact opposite of a table in your high school cafeteria.

 The Lord’s Table is where, instead of being “the last one picked,” you have been specifically invited by Jesus. A table where, instead of wondering where it’s safe to sit, you find you have a place next to Jesus… though you may be surprised who ELSE gets to sit next to Jesus. But if you think about it though… you might not be as surprised after all.

As shame researcher Brene Brown has written, we all “hustle for our worthiness” by putting on a stellar PR campaign about ourselves, including only the good or “acceptable” parts, the parts that would get us good seats in the High School cafeteria. The parts that makes our lives look happy and successful and beautiful on social media. Slap on a smile, crop the picture, cover with a filter, and look, everything is fine. But I think many of us long for a place where we can be loved and accepted: flaws, rough edges, and all.  

Jesus loves all of those parts of us – the parts we wouldn’t dare to tell our co-workers or kids or admit on Facebook or Instagram. Jesus loves the parts of us that are not fine. Because none of us ARE fine. That’s why we need Jesus. Some of us can “pass” as fine more so than others; for some of us, our broken bits and rough edges can’t be easily hidden. But the point is, we don’t have to hide them to be loved and to sit at God’s table.

We don’t have to earn our place there, or try to hustle and social climb our way in. The invitation is already ours - along with all of Jesus’s ‘friends’ who get come along - the homeless along with suburbanites, minorities along with the privileged, those who are gay and transgender next to those who are straight, single moms and dad next to nuclear families, the “losers” and “last picks” of the world next to “first picks” and “winners.” All gathered together at the big beautiful party that God is hosting.

Everyone is invited to God’s party. We are not in charge of the invitations to the party – though we as the church all too often takes on that role. We are merely the postal service, making sure that each invitation gets delivered, rather than withheld, or “lost in the mail.” Only this invitation doesn’t need an RSVP card indicating if you’re coming or not, or what your choice of dinner is between the chicken, steak, or mushroom. Your invitation is “Come, taste and see that the Lord is Good.” And with Jesus, you’re already “in.” 

Welcome, there is a place for you here. Thanks be to God. Amen.