C: Proper 25

Luke 18:9-14

Jeremiah 14:1-10, 19-22

John Donne was a distinguished priest of the Church of England in the seventeenth century. He finished his career as the dean of St Paul’s Cathedral in London. But John Donne is probably best known as one of the greatest poets ever to write in the English language. There is scarcely a high school literature student who has not run across the poem that talks about a church bell tolling to call the townspeople to a funeral, and contains the lines, “No man is an island, entire of itself ... ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” 

No one is an island, independent and self-sufficient. Even a professed hermit depends on other people to keep him supplied with food and water. We all live in a complex web of relationships. Some of our relationships are more important to us than others. These relationships that are important to us are the source of a great deal of anxiety over a lifetime. Will my parents be proud of my report card? Will the one I immediately fell in love with across a crowded room return my feelings?  Will my children still love me in spite of all the mistakes I make as a parent? Will my grandchildren want to visit me?  Will they want to go home? 

Each of us wants to get these crucial relationships right. We always want to know where we stand with the important people in our lives. Most of all, the majority of us, whether or not we would actually name it and express it this way, want to know where we stand with God. We have an innate sense that that’s one relationship it would be a good idea for us to get right.

Getting right with God. 

The New Testament’s word for “getting right with God” is ‘justification.’  We want to be justified, to stand in the right place, in our relationship with God. Now, in everyday talk, we usually use the word “justify” to mean “give a good reason for” or “make an excuse for”.  As the word is used in the Bible, though, a more helpful image is that of a “justified” margin on a type-written page. All the characters line up with one another down one side of the page—they stand in the right place in relation to one another. So, the million dollar question is, How are we justified with God? What determines where we stand in our relationship with God, that most important of all relationships. 

The conventional, off the street, wisdom is that this involves some form of stockpiling good deeds. One way of picturing it is that we have to accumulate a certain number of total “points” on some celestial scoring system. By this standard, the longer you live, the more opportunities you have to score points, so the better your chances are of justifying yourself with God. Pity those who die young!

Another way of looking at it is somewhat more sophisticated: it’s all relative.  As long as your good deeds outweigh your bad deeds, whatever the absolute number of either of them is, then your right standing before God is assured. So if you can just be sure you keep a credit balance, you can sneak in quite a bit of sinning and still not have to worry. Just be sure you have a good accountant! 

The Pharisee in Jesus’ parable is a shining example of this tally-sheet approach to justification.  He was a member of a movement within Judaism that saw itself as an assembly of super-Jews.  They were not only correct, they were excruciatingly correct—in their religious piety, in their social and civic duties, and in their personal discipline. 

Whatever the law of Moses said, the Pharisees did that much and more. So the Pharisee, as Jesus tells the story, came into the temple to pray, much as you or I might come into a church to pray, during the week, when there’s not a public liturgy being celebrated.  He’s careful to couch his prayer in terms of thanksgiving, but the tone of what he says is really self-congratulatory; he’s bragging in God’s presence. He’s upright in his dealings with his fellow human beings—he’s not an adulterer, not an extortionist, he gives everyone what is their just due. He’s also fastidious about his religious discipline—he fasts twice a week, and he tithes! Sounds like the kind of guy we could use more of, doesn’t it? 

There was a made-for-TV movie in the mid-80s that, for a while, appeared in reruns every time you turned on the TV, in which Andy Griffith portrayed the decline and fall of an alcoholic, and everything his family went through during the process. What struck me was how his wife and grown children were all obsessed with pleasing him—whether by becoming like him, a drinking buddy, which is what one son did, or by becoming a hyper-achiever in the business world, which is what his oldest daughter did, or by just cleaning up the messes that he continually left in his wake, which was his wife’s job. They were all trying to “get right” with him, to justify themselves, to make sure where they stood. 

This is where the illustration breaks down, of course, so please don’t think I’m suggesting that God is like an alcoholic!  But in a twisted sort of way, the behavior of that tragically co-dependent family toward their alcoholic, and the behavior of many of us toward God, is curiously similar. It didn’t work for the movie family. Andy Griffith’s character died, and his family would spend the rest of their lives working through the consequences of their behavior. It didn’t work for the Pharisee either. In the end, as Jesus tells the story, his punctiliously correct behavior did not justify him. It did not determine where he stood with God. 

Trying to get right with God through living virtuously has a reverse-image counterpart, like a photographic negative. This approach assumes that where we stand with God is determined by our sinfulness, by our weakness and inadequacy, by the great gulf that separates us from God’s holiness, God’s glory, God’s perfection. “I know I’ll never be good enough to deserve God’s favor; I know I’ll never be worthy of getting into heaven, so just leave me alone and let me at least enjoy my sins while I can!”  This is a sort of pre-emptive strike—it looks like God is going to reject me, so I’ll just reject him first!  It’s an effort to maintain some sense of control over our own destinies.  “You can’t fire me; I quit!” 

But the other character in Jesus’ parable, the tax-collector, reveals the error of such a way. 

Now, we have to understand that a tax collector, in Jesus’ world, was an even more odious figure than an IRS auditor! First, he was a collaborator with a foreign military power that was occupying the country against the wishes of the populace. He was, by definition, a traitor to his homeland. Second, Roman tax collectors worked, as it were, “on commission”. They were responsible for turning over a certain amount of money to the authorities, and whatever they collected in excess of that amount was theirs to keep. So there was a tremendous temptation to resort to fraud, extortion, and plain old gouging in order to maximize their income. Jesus’ audience would have assumed that the tax collector in his story was guilty of all these crimes. He comes into the temple to pray, and dares not even lift his eyes toward heaven. He just strikes his breast and prays, “God, be merciful to me...a sinner.” 

I’ve read that scientists who use animals as part of their research make a special point not to form any emotional bond with their subjects, for understandable reasons. Yet, I’ve also read that, even in the midst of an uncomfortable experiment, a dog, for instance, will affectionately lick the face of a researcher, and wag his tail. From the dog’s perspective, the researcher is guilty of a great crime. Yet, that guilt apparently does not determine where the researcher stands in the dog’s estimation!  Neither did the tax collector’s sins determine where he stood in God’s estimation. Not only is he not summarily condemned by his sins, but, between the two men, it’s the tax collector who leaves the temple justified, right with God, and not the Pharisee. 

How can this be? Our good works do not determine where we stand with God. Neither do our sins. So what does? How are we justified? How do we get right with God? This parable presents us with a conundrum. It turns our expectations upside down. So what’s going on here that we can’t see? 

What’s going on here is grace. Grace—God’s loving inclination and movement toward us and for us. During the time of the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah, the kingdom of Judah, which was the remaining remnant of the nation of Israel, suffered from a prolonged drought. In the passage which we read in today’s liturgy, Jeremiah gives voice to the people’s anguish in their adversity. Yet, in the midst of that anguish, they neither blame God for punishing them unjustly—“Our iniquities testify against us, O Lord ... for our apostasies are many”—nor do they jump to the conclusion that God has abandoned them forever. They’re humble, they confess their offenses, they don’t try to justify themselves with a catalogue of their virtues or good deeds. But in the middle of their contrition, there is a statement of great faith:  “Lord, you are in the midst of us, and we are called by your name; do not forsake us, O Lord our God.”  They—or Jeremiah, at least—never lost faith in God’s grace, in God’s loving inclination and movement toward them and for them. 

In his simple humility, the tax collector in the temple also gave evidence of an underlying faith in God’s grace. As human beings who live in relationship, we want to know where we stand with God. But as sinful human beings, under the power of pride, we want to control where we stand with God, to justify—or choose to not justify—ourselves in God’s sight. Only when we surrender that need to control where we stand, either through our virtues or through our offenses, is where we stand revealed to us. Grace reveals where we stand, grace reveals the basis of our justification, grace gets us right with God. We are ransomed by the blood of Christ, healed by the power of Christ, restored through the intercession of Christ, forgiven, died-for, raised-for, and lived-for, saved not through works, but by grace, through faith.  Amen.

C: Proper 24

II Timothy 3:14-4:5

Let’s talk about the Bible. You know, that’s something we don’t actually do it very much. We read it and study it, and, honestly, those are the best things we can do with it. But, once in a while, it’s a good thing to step back and ask ourselves some fundamental questions about our relationship with that collection of sacred writings that we call Holy Scripture.

In the second reading for the past several Sundays, we’ve been working our way through St Paul’s two letters to his younger protégé Timothy, a man who held the position that we would now call Bishop in the Christian community of the great ancient city of Ephesus. Paul writes to Timothy, “All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”

All scripture is inspired by God.

Some find this sort of affirmation kind of scary, and understandably so. To put it bluntly, St Paul’s words have been abused, abused in many ways. People have tried to make the Bible something it’s not—a textbook on science, or history, or psychology, or economics, or a manual for making moral and ethical decisions. It’s none of those things. To affirm the inspiration of scripture does not relieve us of the responsibility of using the brains God gave us, and the words of scripture are certainly complex and demanding enough that we have plenty of opportunity to engage those brains.

All scripture is inspired by God.

Of course, it’s also possible that we find these words scary because we perceive them as threatening—threatening to some of our habits of thinking and behaving that we have grown very attached to. We instinctively recoil at the idea of anything objective, anything outside ourselves, cramping our style, presuming to sit in judgment over us in some way. But scripture itself, if we pay attention to it, reminds us that we see the world through distorted eyes. Our vision is clouded. We can’t help it. We inherited the condition. We do well not to fully trust our own perceptions, and this is where the witness of scripture—a witness that is “inspired by God”—can be very helpful. Attending to scripture can protect us from a condition that Paul refers to in his letter to Timothy as “itching ears.” “Itching ears” might be described as a compulsive curiosity that can be relieved only by “scratching” with interesting and spicy bits of information, bits of information that simply confirm our prejudices. The sort of weird speculation we’ve seen over the last several months about the President’s birthplace or the President’s religion is an example, I think, of “itching ears.” And in the interest of giving offense in a bipartisan manner, so is the scandal-mongering that’s been going on trying to discredit a certain former governor and vice-presidential candidate. The speculation and the scandal-mongering do little more than confirm us in whatever prejudices we already incline toward. We have made ourselves—our whims, our desires, our perceptions—the sole measure of our experience. The more we scratch our itching ears, the less of the truth we are able to hear.

All scripture is inspired by God.

As I’ve said, this affirmation is subject to distortion. The Bible isn’t a science book or a history book, and needs to be interpreted properly. But it’s nonetheless our foundational document. For the Church, Holy Scripture functions in a way similar to the way the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights and the Gettysburg Address function for our nation. It’s the lens through which we read our past, interpret our present, and anticipate our future. The Bible is not just a source we turn to when questions arise about what we believe or how we should behave, and it’s not the only source, but it is the first such source and the last such source, and the one to which we hold ourselves accountable as an authority. Being judged is never pleasant, but we do, collectively and individually, sit under the judgment of Scripture. It’s not an option that we can take or leave, or a cafeteria from which we can eat what appeals to us and ignore all the rest. It’s the word of God.

All Scripture is inspired by God.

Scripture certainly comforts us in our affliction. This is why St Paul includes "encourage" is his mandate for Timothy's ministry. Few among us have not heard the words of the 23^rd Psalm at a time of grief or loss and taken heart from them in some measure. How many brides and grooms choose to have Paul’s own ode to love from I Corinthians 13 read at their wedding liturgies precisely because it offers them encouragement right when they’re stepping into the abyss known as marriage. And scripture also, and rightly so, afflicts us in our comfort. This is why St Paul says that its good for “reproof” and “correction”, and urges Timothy to “convince, rebuke,” and “exhort,” in his ministry as a bishop, employing scripture as one of the useful tools in that ministry.

All scripture is inspired by God.

Comforting us and afflicting us, I would suggest, are important functions of Scripture, but not its primary one. The primary purpose of Scripture is to enable us to see with God’s eyes, to see what God sees, in effect, and in a scaled-down way, to know what God knows. In the pages of the Bible, we know ourselves as we really are—as created in the image and likeness of God, as infinitely loved by God, and as fallen creatures with distorted perceptions, under the grip of Sin and Death. In the pages of the Bible, we know the world as it really is—the creation of an almighty and majestic God, and something that has been entrusted to human care as stewards, not something to merely exploit and destroy. In the pages of the Bible, we see an alternative to our own mercurial whims and prejudices—an anchor, a rock, an objective reference point.

It is our privilege, in our public worship and in our private study, to bathe ourselves in Scripture, to let its vocabulary and phraseology plant themselves in our hearts and imaginations, to become second nature to us. Doing so enables us to resist the allure of “itching ears,” and gives us the sort of quiet confidence that is not bigoted or pugnacious, but is not timid either, because it is rooted in the magnificent reality of God himself.

All scripture is inspired by God. As our collect four weeks from now will exhort us, let us “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest it,” to our great good and God’s great glory. Amen.

C: Proper 23

Luke 17:11-19

Those of you who have been at St Anne’s during the cycle of liturgies that lead up to, and include, Easter each year know that these are very rich and spiritually rewarding experiences. They are the very essence of what makes us who we are as the people of God, the people of the New Covenant between God and mankind. They are also very intense and demanding, particularly on those who plan and lead and assist with them. For me personally, I can tell you, while I remain excited about and committed to these complex services, they are a lot of work—work that can sometimes begin to feel like a chore, a burden, something to be endured until it’s over with. So every year, as the process of preparation for Holy Week picks up, I have found that it helps keep me focused, it helps keep my enthusiasm fresh, if I think of one person—there’s usually more than one, but one person, at least—who I know will be experiencing the liturgies of Palm Sunday and Maundy Thursday and Good Friday and the Easter Vigil, observed in all their symbolic richness, for the very first time. I discipline myself to look at my experience through the eyes of an “outsider,” and this renews and refreshes the experience for the benefit of my own soul.

But the liturgical observance of Holy Week is a relatively trivial concern when weighed against the fundamental and everyday experiences which are also vulnerable to going stale and flat and becoming more of a chore than a joy. Many of us have been blessed to have found daily work which we consider to be truly a vocation, a calling. Yet, even among those who are so blessed, there are days when our work feels like drudgery, and we’d rather be doing any number of other things. Many of us are or have been a partner in a marriage that was once fantastic, but later became just okay—still on solid ground—or so we hope—but kind of ho-hum, lacking the pizazz that it once had. Many of us are faithful in saying our prayers daily, and may have had profound experiences in the past of God’s presence and involvement in our lives, but lately our prayer life is kind of flat and uninspiring. Many of us are commendably regular in our attendance at public worship, and make an honest effort to participate in the liturgy with heart and mind and soul. Yet, when Sunday morning comes along, we find ourselves drawn in other directions. There was a mother once who knocked on her son’s bedroom door and said, “Son, it’s Sunday. Time to get up and go to church.” The son responded, “But I don’t want to go to church. I want to stay in bed.” The mother responded, “But you have to go to church. So get up and get dressed.” “But, Mom, why? Why do I have to get up and go to church?” “Well, son, I’ll give you two reasons. First, because I’m your mother, and I said so. Second, because you’re the rector and they’re paying you to be there.”

Prayer and worship had evidently become a little flat for that particular priest! But it can happen to any of us, and, as we have seen, in a number of different ways. And we are most vulnerable to this experience of life and work and marriage and prayer and worship feeling stale and dry and confining when we are focused inward, looking only at ourselves. And when this happens, when our gaze is inward, when our perception is limited to our own perspective, our own point of view, then it becomes alarmingly easy for us to stray from our faith and commitments in these areas. This is what lies underneath mid-life career crises and infidelity to marriage vows and the abandonment of worship and prayer.

When this happens to us as individuals, life becomes “all about me”—a syndrome we talked about last week. We descend into a psychology of victimhood, and obsess on how we are being ill-treated by the world. But it also happens to communities—nations, cities, corporations, and, of course, churches. When institutions and communities get stuck looking inward on themselves, seeing themselves and the world only from an “insider” point of view, they indulge in an inordinate focus on the past, and are easily consumed by survival anxiety. Group morale sags because there is very little sense of mission, and it becomes an inexorable downward spiral into oblivion.

What would happen, though, if we began to train ourselves to look at our experience, not through the weary and glazed-over eyes of an insider, but through the fresh and wondering eyes of a stranger, a foreigner? In St Luke’s gospel, we encounter a compelling example of seeing the familiar through the eyes of the unfamiliar. Jesus encountered ten men with the dreaded skin disease of leprosy. Lepers in that culture were complete pariahs, social outcasts. It was a terrible existence. Jesus, in his mercy, healed all ten men of their leprosy. Only one, however, returned to praise God and offer thanks. And this one, it turns out, was a foreigner, an outsider—a Samaritan. And if there was anything worse than just being a leper, it was to have been a Samaritan leper! Yet, this Samaritan, who had every reason to be suspicious of Jesus, a Jew, because of the tremendous ethnic hostility between the two groups—this Samaritan, an outsider, came and fell at Jesus’ feet and poured out gratitude from a heart that was now wonderfully appreciative of all things Jewish.

And what we see in the Samaritan leper, most of us have seen with our own eyes. We have all either known or at least heard about a naturalized American citizen who is more patriotic than most native-born Americans.  Many of us have known people who come to faith in Christ as adults, and whose devotion and enthusiasm puts to shame many who have always known the Lord, who have never been unbelievers. And within the Christian family, when someone discovers a particular expression of the faith that makes him feel like he has found the home he never knew existed—well, there’s no zeal like that of a convert! I encountered the Anglican tradition as a young adult, and that describes my feelings. Now that I’ve been an Episcopalian for 35 years, I feel very much an insider—susceptible to jaded cynicism, so when I encounter someone who is eager to learn about our glorious Anglican inheritance, it lifts my spirits to see my “old” reality through that person’s “new” eyes.

This is a move we all need to make, time and time again. The Samaritan leper stands before us today as an invitation to see our old reality, not through our tired insiders’ eyes, but through his fresh outsiders’ eyes. He invites us to shift our attention outward, to involve ourselves authentically in the lives of those around us, to be consumed by the mission to which God has called us, both as individuals and as a community, to re-connect with our vocation with the same sense of wonder we felt when we first knew ourselves to be called to it, to not settle for an “okay” marriage but to insist on a superior one, to nurture our love affair with the Lord so that prayer is not simply a chore but the very air we breathe, and wild stallions couldn’t prevent us from worshiping at the Lord’s own altar with the Lord’s own people on the Lord’s own day. And in the process, we become more appreciative of the advantages and blessings that are ours. Among Anglicans who have had some sustained experience with the services of Morning and Evening Prayer, the words of the General Thanksgiving come to mind here: “We bless thee for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life, but above all for thine inestimable love in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ, for the means of grace, and for the hope of glory.” As we view our experience through the eyes of the Samaritan leper and the stranger in our midst, our personal holiness is refined through the development of an “attitude of gratitude,” a habitual mindset of thanksgiving, and on that day when all secrets are revealed and the piercing eye of the Holy One looks into every human heart, our hearts will reflect back to him his own image, brought to perfection through His Son and our Savior, Jesus Christ. To him be all praise and glory. Amen.

C: Proper 23

Luke 17:11-19

Those of you who have been at St Anne’s during the cycle of liturgies that lead up to, and include, Easter each year know that these are very rich and spiritually rewarding experiences. They are the very essence of what makes us who we are as the people of God, the people of the New Covenant between God and mankind. They are also very intense and demanding, particularly on those who plan and lead and assist with them. For me personally, I can tell you, while I remain excited about and committed to these complex services, they are a lot of work—work that can sometimes begin to feel like a chore, a burden, something to be endured until it’s over with. So every year, as the process of preparation for Holy Week picks up, I have found that it helps keep me focused, it helps keep my enthusiasm fresh, if I think of one person—there’s usually more than one, but one person, at least—who I know will be experiencing the liturgies of Palm Sunday and Maundy Thursday and Good Friday and the Easter Vigil, observed in all their symbolic richness, for the very first time. I discipline myself to look at my experience through the eyes of an “outsider,” and this renews and refreshes the experience for the benefit of my own soul.

But the liturgical observance of Holy Week is a relatively trivial concern when weighed against the fundamental and everyday experiences which are also vulnerable to going stale and flat and becoming more of a chore than a joy. Many of us have been blessed to have found daily work which we consider to be truly a vocation, a calling. Yet, even among those who are so blessed, there are days when our work feels like drudgery, and we’d rather be doing any number of other things. Many of us are or have been a partner in a marriage that was once fantastic, but later became just okay—still on solid ground—or so we hope—but kind of ho-hum, lacking the pizazz that it once had. Many of us are faithful in saying our prayers daily, and may have had profound experiences in the past of God’s presence and involvement in our lives, but lately our prayer life is kind of flat and uninspiring. Many of us are commendably regular in our attendance at public worship, and make an honest effort to participate in the liturgy with heart and mind and soul. Yet, when Sunday morning comes along, we find ourselves drawn in other directions. There was a mother once who knocked on her son’s bedroom door and said, “Son, it’s Sunday. Time to get up and go to church.” The son responded, “But I don’t want to go to church. I want to stay in bed.” The mother responded, “But you have to go to church. So get up and get dressed.” “But, Mom, why? Why do I have to get up and go to church?” “Well, son, I’ll give you two reasons. First, because I’m your mother, and I said so. Second, because you’re the rector and they’re paying you to be there.”

Prayer and worship had evidently become a little flat for that particular priest! But it can happen to any of us, and, as we have seen, in a number of different ways. And we are most vulnerable to this experience of life and work and marriage and prayer and worship feeling stale and dry and confining when we are focused inward, looking only at ourselves. And when this happens, when our gaze is inward, when our perception is limited to our own perspective, our own point of view, then it becomes alarmingly easy for us to stray from our faith and commitments in these areas. This is what lies underneath mid-life career crises and infidelity to marriage vows and the abandonment of worship and prayer.

When this happens to us as individuals, life becomes “all about me”—a syndrome we talked about last week. We descend into a psychology of victimhood, and obsess on how we are being ill-treated by the world. But it also happens to communities—nations, cities, corporations, and, of course, churches. When institutions and communities get stuck looking inward on themselves, seeing themselves and the world only from an “insider” point of view, they indulge in an inordinate focus on the past, and are easily consumed by survival anxiety. Group morale sags because there is very little sense of mission, and it becomes an inexorable downward spiral into oblivion.

What would happen, though, if we began to train ourselves to look at our experience, not through the weary and glazed-over eyes of an insider, but through the fresh and wondering eyes of a stranger, a foreigner? In St Luke’s gospel, we encounter a compelling example of seeing the familiar through the eyes of the unfamiliar. Jesus encountered ten men with the dreaded skin disease of leprosy. Lepers in that culture were complete pariahs, social outcasts. It was a terrible existence. Jesus, in his mercy, healed all ten men of their leprosy. Only one, however, returned to praise God and offer thanks. And this one, it turns out, was a foreigner, an outsider—a Samaritan. And if there was anything worse than just being a leper, it was to have been a Samaritan leper! Yet, this Samaritan, who had every reason to be suspicious of Jesus, a Jew, because of the tremendous ethnic hostility between the two groups—this Samaritan, an outsider, came and fell at Jesus’ feet and poured out gratitude from a heart that was now wonderfully appreciative of all things Jewish.

And what we see in the Samaritan leper, most of us have seen with our own eyes. We have all either known or at least heard about a naturalized American citizen who is more patriotic than most native-born Americans.  Many of us have known people who come to faith in Christ as adults, and whose devotion and enthusiasm puts to shame many who have always known the Lord, who have never been unbelievers. And within the Christian family, when someone discovers a particular expression of the faith that makes him feel like he has found the home he never knew existed—well, there’s no zeal like that of a convert! I encountered the Anglican tradition as a young adult, and that describes my feelings. Now that I’ve been an Episcopalian for 35 years, I feel very much an insider—susceptible to jaded cynicism, so when I encounter someone who is eager to learn about our glorious Anglican inheritance, it lifts my spirits to see my “old” reality through that person’s “new” eyes.

This is a move we all need to make, time and time again. The Samaritan leper stands before us today as an invitation to see our old reality, not through our tired insiders’ eyes, but through his fresh outsiders’ eyes. He invites us to shift our attention outward, to involve ourselves authentically in the lives of those around us, to be consumed by the mission to which God has called us, both as individuals and as a community, to re-connect with our vocation with the same sense of wonder we felt when we first knew ourselves to be called to it, to not settle for an “okay” marriage but to insist on a superior one, to nurture our love affair with the Lord so that prayer is not simply a chore but the very air we breathe, and wild stallions couldn’t prevent us from worshiping at the Lord’s own altar with the Lord’s own people on the Lord’s own day. And in the process, we become more appreciative of the advantages and blessings that are ours. Among Anglicans who have had some sustained experience with the services of Morning and Evening Prayer, the words of the General Thanksgiving come to mind here: “We bless thee for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life, but above all for thine inestimable love in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ, for the means of grace, and for the hope of glory.” As we view our experience through the eyes of the Samaritan leper and the stranger in our midst, our personal holiness is refined through the development of an “attitude of gratitude,” a habitual mindset of thanksgiving, and on that day when all secrets are revealed and the piercing eye of the Holy One looks into every human heart, our hearts will reflect back to him his own image, brought to perfection through His Son and our Savior, Jesus Christ. To him be all praise and glory. Amen.

C: Proper 22

Habakkuk 1:1-13; 2:1-4

Luke 17:5-10

Psalm 37:3-10

OK, I’ve got to level with you right at the beginning here. This gospel passage is not one of my favorites. I’m talking about the little mini-parable that Jesus tells about the landowner who has a field hand working beside him all day, working just as hard, doing the same stuff, and when quitting time rolls around, the boss puts his feet up and makes the field hand—now turned into a domestic servant—he makes his servant fix dinner and serve it to him, and only then can the servant sit down and have some for himself. The insufferable arrogance of that landowner! The obvious injustice of it all! And we’re supposed to see this guy as a symbol for God, and identify ourselves with the hard-working but exploited servant? Who would want to serve that kind of God, anyway? He certainly isn’t the kind of God that makes you proud to call Him your own!

I suspect that many of you have a reaction similar to my own, and in that—I hate to tell you—we’re being quite typical twenty-first century Americans. For us, the motto that gets us through life is, “It’s all about me.” When we go out to a restaurant, we expect top-notch attentive service, and if we’re working at a restaurant, we expect courteous customers who tip generously. When we buy something at a store, we expect to be able to return it for a full refund with no questions asked. As employees, we expect top pay with full benefits, flex-time, and a generous company contribution toward our retirement plan. As employers, we expect workers who don’t have a personal life, and preferably never have to go to the restroom during working hours.

Well, Jesus’ little illustration encourages us to realize that it’s not all about us. That’s a hard lesson for Americans to learn. Our British cousins perhaps have an easier time of it because, until rather recently, theirs was a rigidly class-oriented society. When the now-retired Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, was appointed to that position in 1990, he was considered a remarkable exception to the rule, because he had been born into a blue-collar working class family, and didn’t have the benefit of a prestigious private school education. The fact the he even was made a priest, let alone appointed bishop and then primate, was seen as evidence that he was one the very few who was able to transcend the class into which he was born. Even during his term as Archbishop, there were those who saw him as a sort of country bumpkin, and explained various things that he said or did with reference to his supposed poor breeding. The majority are taught to be content with their “place.” If you’re nobility, do not aspire to become royalty. If you’re a commoner, do not aspire to become a noble. If you’re a coal miner, learn to accept the fact that you will never have a country estate. This can be a tough lesson to learn, because we are all naturally self-centered, and want to think of ourselves as exceptional, in a good way.

Jesus’ disciples say to him, “Lord, increase our faith.” It’s no surprise, then, given how we’re conditioned, that, when we think of the notion of faith, we associate it with hoping that God will choose to act in accord with our own best interests, according to our own desires—our own desires for safety, for health, for love that is returned in equal or greater measure than we give it, and for material prosperity. There’s a prayer attributed to a certain British noble and wealthy landowner of the nineteenth century that beautifully capsulizes this attitude. It goes something along the lines of, “O God, I beseech thee of thy tender mercy on behalf of the counties of Essex and Lancashire, that is may please thee to spare them excesses of wind and rain, and also on behalf of certain estates in the county of Hertfordshire, that thou mayest establish such civil tranquility as shall issue in the prosperity of the region. In all other diverse parts of the country, thou mayest exercise thy divine providence according to thy holy will.” Well, it doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure out where this guy owns property, does it?!  Seriously, though, the problem with identifying faith with God granting our wishes—aside from the fact that it buys into the “It’s all about me” syndrome—is that, when our wishes are not granted, it becomes a crisis of faith for us. Where is God? Why has He abandoned me? Why am I being punished? What did I do to deserve this? God must not love me. God must love my adversaries more than He loves me. Where is God? After all, it’s all about me, isn’t it? Isn’t it?

This is where it becomes wonderfully good news that grace abounds and that God is an opportunist. In that place of brokenness and self-pity, God comes to us and enables us to transcend our own egos. When that happens, we see faith in a whole new light. There’s a pop song from the early seventies with the repeated refrain, “If you can’t be with the one you love, honey, love the one you’re with.” Now, that can certainly be interpreted in a rather cynical and scandalous way, which I’m sure is what the author of the lyrics intended (!), so let me see if I can redeem it with a paraphrase: If faith doesn’t make what God is doing conform to what you want, then let what you want conform to what God is doing. Faith is not about God doing what we want; faith is about wanting what God does. 

We have a fascinating reading today from the Old Testament prophet Habakkuk. Habakkuk starts out by complaining about how miserable life is, and why doesn’t the Lord do something?

O LORD, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not hear? Or cry to you "Violence!" and you will not save? Why do you make me see wrongs and look upon trouble? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise. So the law is slacked and justice never goes forth. For the wicked surround the righteous, so justice goes forth perverted.

But God replies, in effect, “I am doing something. You just don’t see it yet.”

Look among the nations, and see; wonder and be astounded. For I am doing a work in your days that you would not believe if told.

And not only that, but look at the instrument God has chosen to carry out His plan:

For lo, I am rousing the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation, who march through the breadth of the earth, to seize habitations not their own. Dread and terrible are they; … They all come for violence; terror of them goes before them. They gather captives like sand. At kings they scoff, and of rulers they make sport. They laugh at every fortress, for they heap up earth and take it. Then they sweep by like the wind and go on, guilty men, whose own might is their god!

In other words, these Chaldeans are really nasty guys. And God has chosen them to be the means of accomplishing what He wants to accomplish with His chosen people of Israel. So, let’s see if we have this straight. We complain to God that life is miserable, and ask Him why He isn’t doing something about it. God replies that He is doing something. And we go, “Oh, by using the neighborhood bully, the Bad Boy on the block, our worst enemy? What are we not getting here?” And the answer is, Yup. But wait, there’s more! God is not only doing something we can’t see, and using the Chaldeans to do it, but He’s going to take His own sweet time! God says to Habakkuk:

Write the vision; make it plain upon tablets, so he may run who reads it. For still the vision awaits its time; it hastens to the end—it will not lie. If it seem slow, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay. Behold, he whose soul is not upright in him shall fail, but the righteous shall live by his faith.

There’s that word “faith” again. Faith in a God whose love will never let us go, faith in a God who redeems even the most distorted and twisted set of circumstances for His glory and our good, faith that God can use even our worst enemies to accomplish His purposes, faith in a God to whom one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day, faith in a God whose grace is ubiquitous and permeates every situation we might find ourselves in.  When we place our faith in this God and what He is doing, rather than spinning our wheels waiting for Him to do what we want, we are on the path which leads to peace, to patience, to contentment in life, and to growth in holiness. And the best part is, it’s also the road to increased faith. Amen. 

C: Proper 21

Luke 16:19-31

Amos 6:1-7

I Timothy 6:11-19

Ever since I was a young adult, the concept of self-esteem has been repeatedly talked about and written about by talk-show psychologists and school teachers and even preachers. A healthy sense of self-esteem, we’re told, is grounded in an innate sense of one’s own essential “okay-ness”, in spite of the mistakes, poor choices, and bad luck that are part of everyone’s past by the time we reach adulthood. But human beings do not always look for self-esteem in such a healthy way. Some of us—and I use the first-person plural very loosely here, because I’m not talking about myself!—some of us identify our sense of “okay-ness” with our appearance, a face and body combination that’s guaranteed to turn heads. Others look to their own health and fitness to define their sense of well-being.  Others attach their self-image to their intellectual and educational achievements—just look at the agony high school students go through every year taking tests and writing essays in order to get into a “name-brand” college or university. And many, of course, find that their regard for themselves rises and falls with their bank balance and their net worth. 

The only problem with locating our self-worth in any of these places is:  What happens if we lose them?  What happens when all we do to maintain our looks just can’t keep up with the effects of aging?  What happens when all we’ve done to keep our bodies in shape is laid waste by the onslaught of disease?  What happens when a changing world renders our education obsolete? And what happens when an economy over which we have no control wrecks all the careful plans we’d made for the accumulation and preservation of wealth?  What happens when we lose it all?  Where is our self-esteem then? 

That’s a profoundly important question, because if we really do look for our sense of worth in such things, our attitude toward them is going to be dominated, more than anything else, by fear. Every moment of our lives is going to be ruled by the terrifying prospect of losing whatever it is—looks, money, health, intelligence, social status—whatever it is that has become the perceived source of our self-esteem. 

We’re all familiar with the character Ebenezer Scrooge. The very name “Scrooge” has become a synonym for a sort of miserly nastiness that nobody finds attractive.  Yet, in the story, Scrooge is not really a mean person.  He’s nasty, but not mean. Once Scrooge is actually confronted with the suffering of Tiny Tim and the rest of the Cratchitts—suffering which was well within his power to alleviate—his heart is genuinely moved with compassion, and he does the right thing. The hard part was getting him to that point, getting him to the point where he could look for a moment away from himself and at everything and everyone around him.  This was exceedingly difficult, because Ebenezer Scrooge was consumed with fear.  He was afraid of losing his fortune, and because his self-image was tied up with his fortune, if he lost his fortune, he lost himself.  Scrooge placed his trust in a false hope—the hope of being able to hang onto his fortune.  When our lives are dominated by fear, we become like Scrooge. We accumulate, we horde. We become miserly, reluctant to share what we have. We need to constantly reassure ourselves of our security, so we can’t take the risk of expending any of whatever it is that is precious to us because it tells us who we are, defines our identity, our self-esteem. 

The parable of the rich man and Lazarus is one that most of us heard in Sunday School before we were old enough to read. “There was a rich man,” Jesus says, “who was clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day.”  Now you and I may not be very impressed by the ability to wear purple clothing, but back then purple dye was obtained only from a very rare, and therefore expensive, shellfish.  So this guy was rich. He lived not only comfortably, but ostentatiously.  And just outside the front gate of his home was Lazarus—homeless, unemployed, and sick.  Lazarus would have been grateful to make a meal out of the table scraps, the garbage from the rich man’s home, but the implication is that he didn’t even get that. Two men, one right under the other one’s nose, but unseen.  Like Scrooge, the rich man in Jesus’ parable is consumed by fear, fear of losing that to which he had attached his self-esteem. He placed his trust in a false hope—the hope of finding eternal validation from his wealth.  As long as he had purple and fine linen and feasted sumptuously, he knew who he was. Without those things, he was nobody. So he clung to them, fearfully, tenaciously. 

As the veteran Episcopalians among us realize, as we move into the fall, we’re entering stewardship season, that time of year when, as a parish church, we ask one another to think and pray, and then go on record, confidentially, with what we believe the Lord is calling us to give to this community in the coming calendar year. As a priest, as I confessed last week, stewardship season makes me uncomfortable. To a certain extent, my discomfort is grounded in the knowledge that the whole thing makes some of you uncomfortable. And as the pastor of this congregation, I know that a good part of the discomfort my parishioners feel about stewardship happens only because I bring it up in the first place! 

But my discomfort with this time of year operates on a deeper level as well. It has nothing to do with my being a priest, and everything to do with my being a baptized Christian who is a member of this particular parish community.  The same issues that I and the vestry bring up to the larger congregation, I also bring up to myself.  I wrestle with my own fears and frustrations about money, my own insecurities, my own self-esteem. We’re embarking on an uncomfortable season, because it makes us own up to just where it is that we get nourishment for our self-image, just what it is that, if we lose it, robs us of our personhood. 

Lazarus and the rich man both died, and, in that event, both learned that neither one controlled his own future, his own destiny. The fate of each was in the hands of God. Within the fabric and structure of the way he has created the universe, God has ordained that there are consequences, both temporal and eternal, for our actions. Both Lazarus and the rich man found this out, only in very different ways. Lazarus dies, and is carried by angels to the bosom of Abraham. For a pious Jew, this was as good as it gets. The rich man died, and found himself in rather unpleasant circumstances. Now, the point of this parable is not to supply us with details about life in the hereafter, and it’s a mistake to get distracted in that direction. Rather, this is an invitation to concentrate our attention on the fact that God is vitally interested in where it is we look for our self-esteem. He wants us to find our self-esteem in him, is his love for us. 

This is not an easy move to make. We are deeply conditioned to ground ourselves, to root ourselves, elsewhere than in the love of the one who made us and redeemed us. It’s a move that we can only make with the help of God’s own grace. But if we make the move, if we find our self-esteem in him, we will find ourselves truly free, free of fear, and free of false hope. If my esteem for myself is grounded in nothing other than God’s esteem for me, rather than in my bank balance or my looks or my health or whatever, then I am truly free from fear of loss. This is the kind of freedom from fear that Jesus, by means of this parable, invites us to experience. 

As I reflect on my own life, and the false hopes that have tempted me over the years—a new pair of shoes, a new friend, a new job, a new car, a new house, even a new career—I realize that none of these has brought me anything near true peace and happiness. None of these has been an appropriate source for my self-esteem. Time and again I have returned, if not to the bosom of Abraham, then to Abraham’s God. Freedom from fear and freedom from false hope allows us to take a “liberal” attitude toward the wealth that God has blessed us with, whether that wealth is an abundance of money, an abundance of time, or an abundance of knowledge and skill. And I don’t mean “liberal” in any political or religious sense, but in the sense of an open, free-flowing generosity. Such liberality enables us to let go of potential earned income in order to take the time to spend with children or grandchildren, or to help an illiterate adult learn to read, and to count doing so a joy. Such liberality allows us to let go of having an impeccably clean house or an award-winning yard in order to spend time in a small study/prayer/sharing group of other Christians, thereby building up and strengthening the body of Christ, and to count doing so a joy. Such liberality allows us to give sacrificially of our monetary wealth to the ministry of our local parish and to the mission of the church throughout the world, and to count doing so a joy. Jesus wants to be the only source of self-esteem we’ll ever need, to cast out all our fear, and replace it with joy.  Amen.

C: Proper 20

Luke 16:1-13

There is officially no such liturgical season, but this is “Stewardship-tide”—the time of year when most churches are ramping up the process of making financial plans for the coming calendar year, encouraging their members to make an estimate of how much they intend to give.  I don’t know if this was intentional on the part of those who assembled the lectionary—the table of scripture readings for Sunday services—but, as it turns out, the readings appointed for the early Fall indeed often lend themselves to stewardship sermons. At the very least it’s convenient for the clergy, who must not only responsibly interpret the word of God from the pulpit, but also lead people in making faithful stewardship decisions. In any case, I hope not to be utterly gratuitous in what I say on the subject today, but actually make a valid connection with the gospel reading that we’ve just heard.

If there’s any accurate generalization one could make about any sermon on the subject of money, it’s that it is bound to generate anxiety. For a first-time visitor to the parish, who just happens to show up when the sermon is about money, or to a relative newcomer, the anxiety takes the form of “Uh, oh, is this one of those kinds of churches, that are always harping on money?” [So, if you’re a visitor to St Anne’s today, please don’t form your opinion too quickly! We do talk about lots of other things.]

For the average “parishioner-in-the-pew,” stewardship anxiety is served with a generous garnish of guilt: “I’m giving all I can, but they say I should give 10%, and I’m certainly not doing that! Can’t squeeze blood from a turnip, you know.”

For the Finance Committee, and for members of the Vestry, the anxiety is of a different sort: “The diocesan assessment is going up, insurance costs are skyrocketing, the staff are all going to want cost-of-living raises, at least, and we’re already using our endowment income and dipping into reserves quite a bit for operating expenses. Something’s gotta give.”

And for the clergy—well, we also have our peculiar stewardship anxieties: “Why haven’t more of ‘them’ discovered the joy of tithing, the euphoria that results from faithful stewardship? Why don’t more of ‘them’ love Jesus more, why don’t they ‘get it’ when they say ‘All things come of thee, O Lord, and of thine own have we given thee?’”

Well…there’s a certain cleansing effect from getting our anxieties out in the open, isn’t there? Yet, more basic than the different forms our anxieties about stewardship take, are the differences in our underlying perceptions of what stewardship is.

For starters, it’s certainly difficult to escape the impression that when we talk about financial stewardship, that’s just a euphemism for keeping the institution going—raising enough money, by any legal means, to pay the essential expenses of keeping the church up and running, providing “services” to its “clients.” When you turn in a pledge card, or drop an envelope into the offering plate, you’re just doing your part to ensure that when the time comes for your spouse’s funeral or your daughter’s wedding, or your grandchild’s baptism, St Anne’s and its clergy will be here to serve you on that occasion. There are differences in philosophy within this viewpoint: Some are only interested in giving enough to support a barebones budget that tries to cut corners whenever possible; others have a more generous vision of what the parish’s mission and ministry is. Either way, however, it’s institutional maintenance that we’re talking about.

Now, I have to say, there are important elements of truth in this perception. Among other things, the church is an institution, and being an institution carries with it certain inherent costs. Roofs leak and furnaces break down and carpets need to be cleaned. And if these costs are not met, the institution of the church is compromised, which compromises other aspects of what the church is.

There is also a way of understanding stewardship that comes at it from a distinctly spiritual direction. Stewardship is, quite simply, about pleasing God. When we give to the Church, we are actually giving to God; the church is only a conduit—a conduit, in fact, approved and sanctioned by God for such giving. Our giving has the effect of sustaining the institution, but that’s not the reason we give. Still less do we have any intention of controlling the institution through our giving.

So…seeing stewardship as a matter not of institutional maintenance, but of pleasing God, is surely a step higher up the ladder of spiritual maturity. But there is yet, to borrow a phrase from St Paul, there is yet “a more excellent way.” Christian stewardship, financial stewardship in particular, is one of the tools at God’s disposal by which he fosters our growth in holiness. Stewardship is one of the means at our disposal by which we can practice living in Heaven. Heaven is our destiny, as the community of those who have been redeemed for God by the death and resurrection of Christ. But it is, for us, a foreign tongue and an alien culture. Practicing stewardship helps us learn that language and adopt that culture. In the sixteenth chapter of St Luke’s gospel, Jesus tells his followers

He who is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and he who is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful in that which is another's, who will give you that which is your own?

The invitation to stewardship is an opportunity to practice for the greater responsibilities God wants to give us in His kingdom. God gives us a little, that we may develop the skills to be entrusted with responsibility over much. God entrusts us with what is not actually ours, that we may show ourselves worthy to be entrusted with that which is, in fact, ours.

Many of us have made promises to God about what we would do if we were to win big on the lottery. I know I have! We’ve told God that, if we win the lottery, we’ll give huge amounts to the church and to all sorts of other good causes. Sometimes I wonder whether the fact that I haven’t yet won is a sign of something other than the astronomical odds against anyone doing so. God certainly knows me better than I know myself, and perhaps that’s why I haven’t won the lottery! (Of course, another reason is that I don’t actually buy tickets, but that’s another matter!) God knows that we need to master addition and subtraction before we study calculus. We have to learn to be faithful in little things—like the paycheck we get once a week or twice a month or whenever it is. Like the savings that we’ve accumulated. Like our time, our talents, and our abilities. Like our families and our job. Do we see these as “ours,” as things that we’re free to dispose of as we please? Or do we see them as “on loan” from a God who will one day demand an accounting?

By the way, do you know where the word “steward” comes from? The first syllable is from the word “sty,” as in “pig sty.” The second syllable, then, is “ward,” or “warden.” So, a steward is a “sty-warden,” a “warden of the sty”—the one entrusted with the responsibility of taking care of the pig sty and its inhabitants! Of course, the word has picked up a few more connotations over the centuries, but realizing its humble origins helps put our invitation to stewardship in a proper perspective. When the day comes for all stewards to render an accounting for all that has been entrusted to them, will you and I be found to have been honest and faithful in our stewardship? Will we be ready to live in Heaven? Will we speak the language and know the culture? That is the question of the day. Amen.