Many Stories, One Voice

Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

            As we read the gospel this morning, you voiced the parts of the two brothers – the younger son, who went away for a time and then returned to the homestead, perhaps only seeking survival, but receiving grace far beyond his imagining;  and the elder son had stuck around and unfailingly persisted in trying to do the right thing, consistently receiving all that he needed all along, but never really appreciating that fact.

I wonder how reading both parts felt to you? Which voice felt most authentic to you – most like your own experience, most like the character you can relate to?

Most of us have probably heard this parable many times. Therefore, the word, “prodigal,” has become part of our lexicon, and it has come to mean something rather specific to us. So, when we hear someone referred to as a prodigal, or even refer to themselves as such, what do we think of? What assumptions do we make about a person who is a “prodigal”?

Very often, the prodigal is one who has turned away from and rejected familial relationships. The prodigal is one who seems to have moved the family system to a place of irrevocable brokenness. (You know the saying, “A mother is only as happy as her least happy child? It goes for the entire system.) We’ve each probably known someone like that at some time in our lives. Perhaps we’ve been that person.

The story of the Prodigal Son may strike some of us uncomfortably close to home, because there is some aspect of the story that we are living out today.  Someone is lost; someone is missing; someone, while still living, is as good as dead.

Sadly, for some who are locked into situations like this, hurts suffered have never healed and now feel beyond healing – a life has ended, and with it opportunity for reconciliation may be passed. Instead, a scar resides deep within.

Prodigals are created  when someone has “fallen from grace” through decisions made, alternative alliances forged, (like falling in with the wrong people), suffering failures of our own making, or abandoning the relationships and norms that surround them.

If you have ever been a part of a prodigal story, regardless of which character you have been, know that it is with sincere empathy for each of the characters here, that we approach this story today.

While it may be easy to place ourselves somewhere in the story, this parable does not stand alone, but is part of a larger narrative in which Jesus responds to those challenging him by telling three stories that center on the experiences of loss and grace.

The situation is this: the Pharisees and scribes were Kvetching about the social activities of Jesus. He has been spending time with, and even eating with tax collectors and sinners. (Imagine that!) He has been hanging out with outcasts and undesirables. (Oh, my!)

It might be really satisfying for us right now if Jesus just set the record straight and put them in their places.

Instead, (this being Jesus) he tells these three parables – stories in which it is unquestionably clear that God loves and behaves differently than we do, and that God values sinners more than we could ever imagine, (which is good news for all of us!).

As Jesus moves from parable to parable, story to story, he barely takes a breath. He begins with a woman who finds a lost coin – just one coin among many she may own – because of its importance to her, and when she finds it celebrates with great joy and wild abandon.

Then he tells about a celebration that goes on when one measly sheep out of an entire flock is found after wandering away and becoming lost.

And finally, he tells about this huge bash given in honor of the most unlikely of recipients: a kid that was not simply lost, hadn’t just wandered away, but has behaved in the most egregious and outrageous manner, demanding an early pay-out on his inheritance, and then abandoning his father and all that connects him to this place.

What makes this story so interesting and how over-the-top all of the characters behave.

• The father, rather than setting his son straight to begin with, gives in to his demands, and hands over the goods.
• The son then squanders everything and finds himself not just in a bad situation, but destitute – literally in a life-threatening condition.
• The place where he now resides goes through a famine and not one person will offer him assistance.
• He finally takes a thoroughly demeaning job but even then isn’t even given so much as the carob pods which he has to feed to the pigs to eat himself. No one there cares anything about him or his welfare.
• Finally he decides to return to his father and appeal to his compassion and hope for at least the same as the very least of his father’s hired hands would receive, which is more than he has now.
• Then, the most ridiculous thing of all happens: before he can even say a word, while he still just a speck on the horizon, his father runs to him, overjoyed, with arms outstretched.

It’s all quite scandalous, really, but only the elder son in the story seems to know that. Of course, he has his own gripe, because not only has the father behaved shamefully weak and gullible, in his overzealous rush to welcome home his boy, the elder son has felt totally disrespected.

Here this brother of his so cruelly and uncaringly cut himself out of the family, yet is given the hero’s welcome, while here he stands, the polar opposite – faithful, dutiful, hard-working, loyal son – the son who has slaved and tried so hard to always do the right thing. He is flabbergasted to see his brother receive what it is he himself has always wanted – recognition, favor, the party!

This, my friends, is a story of extremes. The father’s over-the-top forgiveness and love for his sons is book-ended by their outrageous behavior.

The thing is, in our reading of this story, while the words and actions of one son may have resonated more than the words and actions of the other son today, many of us may have found ourselves in the shoes of both sons at one time or another in our lives.

The point that this parable makes is poignant for whatever your story might be. There is genius in that, because the truth is that God’s grace is every bit as scandalous and ridiculous as the picture we get of the father in our story. And it doesn’t matter which brother’s actions reflect our own, God’s love is big enough and God’s grace sufficient enough for us all.

The story speaks as much to our lives as it did to the lives of both Gentile and Jew, Pharisee and outcast, sinner and rule-follower, prodigal and elder-brother of Jesus’ day. And the point Jesus makes is just as timely for us today as it was for those for whom these stories were originally written.

It boils down to this: in God’s economy, there is plenty of grace to go around, and God spreads it over each of us as we have need. It is God’s desire that none of the sheep who go astray be lost forever; that the coin that found its way into a corner somewhere is just as precious and necessary to God’s kingdom as any other coin in the purse; and that the gospel is for everybody – rule follower and prodigal alike.

That is indeed good news for all of us. For those of us who seemingly hit rock bottom before we realized that we were invited to the great feast, and sometimes still feel like we’re dangerously close to the bottom of the pit, God especially reaches out to you in love and forgiveness. God wants you to know that you are welcome and cherished, and you are, through the mercy of Jesus Christ, forgiven.

For those of us who have been around here for years, and for those who just started attending church or coming to the table yesterday, God’s grace embraces you equally; you belong here and are equally members of the Body of Christ. For those of us who struggle to get through each day and for those who really have ourselves all pulled together, God love and grace are poured out on you in sufficient quantities to for exactly the need you have. For those who can quote scripture chapter and verse and those who have difficulty distinguishing the Old Testament from the New, God knows your hearts in equal measure and has already surrounded you with God’s compassionate love. You belong to him.  

The good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that it is for everyone. All are invited to the table and in God’s perfect grace it is large enough for us all.

God’s love does not discriminate, it transforms. It doesn’t matter where you have come from or where you are today – in Jesus Christ, God’s grace covers you. The good news of God’s scandalous, ridiculous grace is for those who have always been the straight arrows and for those who have followed the crooked path. And since God’s love enfolds every cherished person, how can our welcome do any less?

God rejoices in the person God has created you to be. It doesn’t matter the color of your skin, the language you speak, or the country from which you or your ancestors derived, your gender, your age, or your sexuality. God’s love enfolds you.

As we read this parable, we acknowledge that we need to die daily to sin and rise to new life in Christ, which is the gift of our baptism. But, only when we are able to let go of our resentment, judgment of the other, bitterness and hatred may we learn what new life and new creation truly mean; it is the radical, scandalous, and ridiculous love of God and God’s eternal and unending grace that we receive through Jesus that will finally, when all is said and done, free us from our own lost paths and need for justification.  

My brothers and sisters in Christ, prodigals all are we. May we live in gratitude that even in his final act from the cross, when he forgave another prodigal, the criminal beside him, Jesus showed us how unfathomably scandalous and huge is the grace of God. Praise be to God! Amen.

Scorpions, Hens and Chicks: the Cosmic Hesed of God

Luke 13:31-35

There is a story of an old man who used to meditate early in the morning under a big tree on the bank of the Ganges River. One morning, after he had finished his meditation, the old man opened his eyes and saw a scorpion floating helplessly in the water.

As the scorpion was washed closer to the tree, the old man quickly stretched himself out on one of the long roots that branched out into the river and reached out to rescue the drowning creature. As soon as he touched it, the scorpion stung him. Instinctively the man withdrew his hand. A minute later, after he had regained his balance, he stretched himself out again on the roots to save the scorpion. This time the scorpion stung him so badly with its poisonous tail that his hand became swollen and bloody and his face contorted with pain.

At that moment, a passerby saw the old man stretched out on the roots struggling with the scorpion and shouted: “Hey, stupid old man, what’s wrong with you? Only a fool would risk his life for the sake of an ugly, evil creature. Don’t you know you could kill yourself trying to save that ungrateful scorpion?”

The old man turned his head. Looking into the stranger’s eyes he said calmly, “My friend, just because it is the scorpion’s nature to sting, that does not change my nature to save.”

Just because it is his nature to sting, that doesn’t change my nature to save. Doesn't that sound to you a lot like Jesus?

The lament of Jesus in our gospel today sounds an awful lot to me like the lament within the old man’s statement. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem,” he cried out, and we can hear the sadness in his words, “….How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you did not want me!” (a literal translation of the Greek).

And yet, Jesus perseveres. From his birth to the cross, Jesus reaches out to the people of Jerusalem. Indeed, he gets stung again and again and again. Yet, even as he makes his final march toward that city, the Pharisees come to him to warn him away. Were they really looking out for Jesus or was their motive more sinister?

Jesus' response, of course, foreshadows what we know of as the Great Three Days of our salvation. Despite humanity’s nature to sin, despite the institutional rejection of Jesus by the Jewish leadership, despite his upcoming persecution, passion, and death at the hands of the Romans, Jesus perseveres in his walk of love, mercy and compassion. On the third day, through his resurrection, Jesus will indeed finish his salvific work on behalf of the stinging creature, humankind.  

How many times has God set out to establish equanimity with humankind, to show his love, to show us a better way of being at one with God and with our neighbor, and we would not follow, would not listen, would not obey God. No matter our nature to turn our backs on God, God’s nature to save continues.

As I met with other clergy in a text study on Wednesday, one of my colleagues remarked about how through the various readings we have before us this week, we really do get a vision of God that is one of cosmic nurturer. Isn’t that a beautiful way to picture God? As the one who nurtures the universe and all that is within it; as the one determined to save, regardless of the cost.

Abram and Sarai, his wife, have reached a point of hopelessness over ever being able to conceive a child of their own union. Yet, God promises and delivers not just a child but countless offspring through vast generations to come. As God so often does, God does not just meet the need but fills the desire with overflowing generosity.

See the heavens stretching out before you? [God asks Abram] Can you number the stars? They are more than you can count, aren’t they? And God promises to fill the cosmos with descendants in numbers as vast as the stars in the sky. And God keeps God’s promises.

A couple of months ago, Patti invited all of us to write our names on stars that she then hung from the ceiling in the hallway leading to the education wing.[If you didn't get a chance to put your name on one, we have them laid out again on the table with the nametags in the narthex).

Every time I pass through that hallway, I look up. All those stars suspended in the air overhead is heavenly. You can read some of the names…Mel, Pat, Ruth, Bob, Julia, London, Nazie, and so many more names; even my name is up there, somewhere. God’s generous answer to Abram’s need is a vast abundance that includes you and me.

While all Abram wanted was a single heir, God’s vision was so much bigger. It extends thousands of years and all around the globe. 
Today there are three major religions of the world,, known as the Abrahamic religions whose adherents worship this God who is so generous, so creative, and so masterful. We each have our own ways of understanding the nature of God and how God relates to us, but we all believe in the same God, one God, and the content of our stories and our scriptures overlap.

In Islam, God is rendered “Allah” in Arabic, literally “the God”. God is the absolute one, all powerful and all knowing ruler of the universe, and the creator of everything in existence. Islam emphasizes that God is strictly singular and unique, inherently One,  all-merciful and omnipotent.  Muslims consider God neither a material nor a spiritual being. According to the Quran and teachings of Islam, "No vision can grasp him, but His grasp is over all vision: He is above all comprehension, yet is acquainted with all things."

In Judaism, God has been conceived in a variety of ways. Primarily, Jews hold that Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the national god of the Israelites, delivered the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, and gave them the Law of Moses at Mount Sinai as described in the Torah, their holy book.

God is understood as the absolute one, indivisible, and incomparable supreme being who is the ultimate cause of all existence. Traditional interpretations of Judaism emphasize that God is personal yet also transcendent, while some modern interpretations of Judaism emphasize that God is a force or ideal.

The names of God used most often in the Hebrew Bible are the Tetragrammaton (YHWH Hebrew: יהוה) and Elohim, also, El Shaddai and Shekinah. Whatever name is used, there is but one God .

For Christians, God is one God in three persons – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. These three persons are indivisible – not three gods, but one God. As we state in our creed, we believe that God is the creator, all knowing and all powerful, who took on flesh and became human in the person of Jesus Christ.

Jesus is the savior, the incarnation of a god who is so in love with humanity that he will do anything to save us from our sinful, warring madness, even join us in our own suffering and die for us, to ensure our eternal life with him through the resurrection.

God continues to bless, sanctify and endow fill our spiritual needs through God’s Holy Spirit, who contains all the aspects of God within herself.

The heart of Christian belief is that indeed, God did not keep Jesus from receiving the final sting of death, but allowed it, that all might be brought to eternal life through the power of the resurrection.

It’s a lot of heady stuff, all pointing to one thing – that despite our differences, these three major world religions basically share the same main beliefs about God: that God is one, that God is the creator who engages with humanity in ways that are unique and mysterious and merciful. And this immensely interconnected, generous and creative God exists for us all, binding us together in one humanity.

That’s an important truth for us to grasp, especially today.

Human conventions have created ideologies around each of these religions, resulting in misunderstanding, creating factions of extremism within each, and producing conflict, war, and struggles for power.

We see the result of this in our world today. Sadly, we even saw such division used this week as one inspiration and justification for a horrible act of terrorism and hatred directed toward a religious community.

Mercifully, however, we have also seen an international and interreligious response of support for the Muslim community and condemnation for the cowardly and hate-filled act taken against them.

We are right to pray for and support our Muslim brothers and sisters in New Zealand and anywhere in the world where they face injustice, prejudice and hatred. Adherents of true Islam are indeed our friends, created in the image of God as are we, and deserving of our love and support. As worshipers of one true God, Christians, Jews and Muslims alike speak out against injustice and promote peaceful coexistence, and in so doing, have become easy marks for power-hungry, extremist, and hate-filled groups in the world, and we see attacks against all three groups with increasing regularity.

We all seek comfort and consolation from the brutality of the world from the same loving, merciful God. The image of God as a hen who desires to gather her brood under her wings, is the picture of an incredibly nurturing God.

The lament of Jesus and his true sorrow is that despite God’s nurturing nature, despite covenants offered and needs addressed, rejection of God’s love and mercy abound. And now, as the incarnation of God’s hesed – God’s abundant, steadfast love and mercy embodied in Jesus Christ, the scorpion stings – but the true nature of God persists.

Lamentation is Jesus’ response to the sting; the cross is God’s response to the rejection. Even now, Jesus is calling us all into loving relationship with him. Even now, God is providing for our salvation through the cross. Even now, God reigns supreme, regardless of the worldly reality of sin, hatred, violence and denial.

The thing is, it is the nature of God to continue nurturing the cosmos. For the same God who sent Jesus as love for love’s sake is with us still, washes us in the waters of baptism, feeds us through the holy sacraments, blesses and empowers us through the work of the Spirit.

Thanks be to God, mothering, fathering, blessing, loving, merciful creator and redeemer. Amen.

  

Smartphones, Temptation and Blessing

Luke 4:1-13

I own a smartphone; the brand and model don’t matter. My phone does an okay job most of the time. It keeps me connected – sometimes overly connected to people and news and weather reports; it allows me the ability to look up information on almost any topic under the sun with just a couple of taps and swipes.

My phone is not perfect by any means – last week it did a software update and ever since then, Paula’s text messages come up as though from a person named Brenda. But most days, it does the job it’s intended to do.

And yet, I have people telling me that it isn’t good enough – that there this or that model of smartphone – the newest, the most up-to-date – which is a faster, better, and smarter phone than the one I currently own. These messages come not just from technology companies advertising the newest gizmo they want to sell me, but friends and family members, advising me it might be time to trade in and upgrade my phone.

I received no less than 6 new offers of credit cards in the mail, and several more through email this week. That’s pretty typical of most weeks – though the offers double just before the Christmas shopping season. Like most of you, I have a couple of credit cards and I use them for convenience. I don’t need any more credit cards, and I don’t need to replace the ones I have with a different type. But that doesn’t stop the deluge of offers, telling me that I’m not getting enough points, or rewards, or other benefits with what I have.

Through all forms of communication these days, I get advice on everything from weight-reduction and exercise programs to memory-improving programs (which you know I could use!) to books and internet helps for my sermons, to advise me what kind of mattress I need to improve the quality of my sleep, to what kind of fertilizer I should use on my lawn because, let’s face it, it’s just not green enough.

Are you catching the trend here?

So much of what we are told on a daily basis colors our lives with the cultural judgment that we, what we have, and what we do, is “not enough.”

This reality creates in us certainty in our own inadequacy; it’s supposed to. It makes us more susceptible to the implicit promises that the senders of those messages can fix us, and fix our lives. “Trust me,” these voices say. “We (or I) will save you from yourself.”

And it’s not just advertisers of products and programs that give us this message. We also hear it from candidates for public office regardless of the brand or party, as well as from watch-dog groups, and the media who all seek to create in us insecurity and fear.

Terrorism, immigrants, corporations, joblessness, low wages, high taxes, crime statistics, rank inequality, global warming, the wealthy, the poor, rising insurance costs, sky-high medical costs, decreasing birthrates – depending on who you are listening to, the target shifts, but the message is still the same – you should be afraid because on your own you can do nothing to mitigate or erase any of these dangers. All you have to do is elect me and I’ll keep you safe. I will save you from danger.

As our Gospel lesson began today, Jesus returned from the Jordan River, where he had just been Baptized. There, as he came up from the water, the Holy Spirit fell on him and God’s voice affirmed him, saying, You are my Chosen One, My Son, whom I dearly love.” The Holy Spirit filled Jesus. God’s Spirit was in him and around him and through him.

And now Jesus, so filled, is led by that very same Spirit into the wilderness - a place of both divine encounter and demonic danger. We don’t know what happened during the forty days, what other kind of temptations the devil threw his way, only that Jesus was tempted the whole time.

And finally, having come through that time without succumbing to the devil’s wiles, Jesus nearly reaches the end of his time in the wilderness. He can see the finish line!

He is starving. He is tired. He is, remember, fully human as well as fully divine – so after forty days of fasting, he is at his most vulnerable. So of course, Satan uses that fact and strikes again, confident that surely now, when Jesus is this close to exhausting his resistance and strength, he will give in to temptation.

Ary Scheffer, “The Temptation of Christ” (1854)

He gives Jesus three ways to go the easier, softer way. To this man-god who will feed 5,000 with just five loaves and two fish, and heal people of their blindness and lameness and diseases, and himself die and rise again to save humanity from the cost of its sin, the devil says, just turn stone into bread and appease your hunger.

The devil pretends that he has the power to give and to take away ultimate authority over the world, and will do so, if Jesus will just worship him.

And finally, the devil guides Jesus to the highest of heights and tests his confidence in his God-given identity. “If you are really the Son of God, prove it – throw yourself down from here, and let’s see God send those angels come to save you,” he sneers, essentially suggesting that Jesus could use the angels as his own personal security force if he really is the Son of God.

Bread, power, safety.

Funny, those are essentially the same things with which the media, advertisers, and voices seeking power in our world today, attempt to entice us to give our allegiance and our trust to them, today.

While the devil tempts Jesus, perhaps the larger picture for us as we begin our Lenten journey, is to notice that through his response to the devil, Jesus in fact shows us a better way. Jesus illustrates that trusting in God and embracing in the identity we have received as God’s beloved through our own Baptism, we can resist the temptations and trials of life, and we cling to the truth of God’s unending love.

We are daily tempted in countless ways to lose our confidence in God and faith in the power through which we are claimed in, through and by the blood of Jesus.

But each time we gather together as we do today we are reminded of and strengthened in our God-given identity as God’s beloved children. We are reminded through font, Word and meal that we are God’s children and we are loved just as we are. It is enough and more than we can ever imagine to be so loved by the creator God and saved by God’s grace in and through Jesus.

God’s abundant life comes to us in the midst of death, as Jesus’ blood was poured out upon the cross.

The devil and his minions are ceaseless in their insistence that the cross is nothing but foolishness and powerlessness. And yet it is the wisdom of God to send Jesus to win our salvation upon that cross to give us new life. To give us eternal life. We don’t have to understand it. We just have to believe it.

The devil and his minions would like nothing better than to have us believe that we are not good enough, that God’s love is not strong enough, and that Jesus’ sacrifice is not powerful enough to save us from the powers of the world and our own sinfulness.

In Baptism and from the Cross, God’s Holy Spirit promises us just the opposite – that in Jesus and through the power of our Baptism, God will never let us go.  

The encounter between Jesus and the devil in the wilderness speaks to the nature of temptation itself. It, temptation, is that which seeks to lure us away from trusting relationship with God; it seeks to draw us away from confidence in God and his holy hold on us.

Through the abundant life that we have in Jesus, God’s claim on us is ironclad, and the devil has no claim at all.

            During Lent we are often focused on self-denial, sacrifice, and resisting temptation, and that, in and of itself is good. But those practices alone are incomplete. Rather, let our practices of Lent serve to draw us closer to God, re-direct our attention from the worldly message that we are not good enough, and toward lives of trust and confidence in the love and grace of God poured out on the cross.

            May our repentance take us away from dependence on worldly approval and judgements of worth to the only judgement that matters, God’s judgement of love and desire for relationship with you.

            The thing is, all other messages aside, the only one we need to hear and believe is that God loves us and will keep loving us no matter what, and for this reason alone we are enough, because God made it so.

            To confirm this truth, I’d like to ask you to turn to a person next to you or, if you are sitting alone and cannot easily move to near to another person. Each of you, please trace the sign of the cross on the other’s forehead and say, “Remember your baptism, for you are God’s beloved child.” Or, to yourself, make the sign of the cross and say to yourself, “I am God’s beloved child”.

            As you journey through Lent, may you remember that you are enough. May you know that God’s love is enough, and that it is for you, forever. Amen.