22 Proper B

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Episcopal Church
October 7, 2012

22 Proper B

On the final day of Reading Camp at the end of June, after the children had gone home and we had cleaned up after the closing event and party, I went home to put the finishing touches on the meal for the after party. Most of the preparations had been finished earlier in the day, but there were a couple of things left to do.  My hope was that the party could be outside, but there was a storm blowing in, so there was a good chance that we would be in the house.

Just as I was getting ready to put a few last minute things in the oven, the storm most certainly did blow in. The wind blew limbs off trees, patio furniture across the patio, and knocked out the power. I had forty people coming to my house for dinner and no power. I also had no way to let them know we had no power because when the power is out, we have no phone service or Internet. I had never really worried about that before since we all have cell phones and I have a battery back up for mine. But the cell phone service was also out. Not only was I cut off from communication with the outside world, I also could not access any form of media to find out if we were under a tornado warning and needed to take shelter. Don and Caldwell were not home which only added to my sense of isolation. Our phone would ring because we have one land line in the basement that rings but doesn’t work, so I knew people were trying to reach me. The sense of isolation I felt, while temporary and brief, was eye opening. Caldwell finally got home and came down to see if there was power at the church, which there was, but he had to drive home to tell me since there was no other way to communicate. The traffic lights were out and limbs were across the road so the trip that should have taken him a total of 15 minutes, took over 30 which only added to my anxiety. In the end, we communicated the old fashioned way. As people arrived at our house, Don let them know that the party was moved to the church, and those people told other people. The phone here at the church worked, so we were able to connect with everyone who was missing and make sure they were okay. In the end, we all connected, and we knew that everyone was safe. But I also learned how important our connections are and how isolating it feels to be disconnected.

Job is feeling rather disconnected this morning, in a far more significant and long lasting way than I felt during a relatively short storm. In a story that will develop over many more chapters, Job is tested by Satan as he is disconnected from his health, his family and friends, his belongings, and seemingly his future in order to test his faith. In a sense, Job is isolated from everyone and everything around him to test his connection to God. God certainly does not come out looking too good in the verses we hear this morning where God agrees to Satan’s plan to test Job’s faith, and the book raises more questions than it answers. On the other hand, while the intent of the story is to answer the question "Why do bad things happen to good people?" and to refute the idea that everything bad that happens to us is a result of our sin, the story also points to the importance of our connection to other people as one of the ways we experience connection with God.

The Pharisees are really not interested in connections this morning as they arrive to test Jesus. They ask Jesus "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? This is perhaps one of the most difficult and painful gospel lessons we have to deal with in the lectionary. I don’t think any of us came to church this morning to hear Jesus’ words about divorce. However, the Pharisees are far less interested in what Jesus has to say about divorce than they are in trying to trap Jesus . This is not a test to find out whether or not Jesus knows his Scripture. The Pharisees are trying to back Jesus into a loose/loose situation. The Pharisees ask Jesus "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?" If Jesus says "no," he will contradict the teaching of Moses, which allowed a man to write his wife a certificate of dismissal and divorce her. He will also be in trouble with the Romans, since just 4 chapters earlier John the Baptist lost his head, literally, for being critical of Herod Antipas who had divorced his wife to marry his brother’s former wife. If Jesus says "yes," he will raise a whole host of legal and theological questions about marriage. Jesus appears to be trapped.

By this point in the story, Jesus may not be squirming, but we are. Jesus has hard teachings about divorce, ones we would rather not hear, and ones that can cause great pain. Our church takes the issue of divorce and remarriage very seriously, but Jesus’ words this morning are far more strict than church teaching. There are few people whose lives have not been affected by the pain of divorce, either in their own lives or the lives of someone they love. Jesus’ words are uncomfortable at best, and at worst they leave people feeling alienated from their church and condemned. Is that what Jesus intends?

To respond to the Pharisees’ test, Jesus appeals to Scripture as he usually does when being tested. But Jesus does not appeal to the law of Moses, which would give a straight forward answer to the question put to him. Instead Jesus raises the stakes much higher and appeals to the Creation stories which remind us that we are all connected, not just husband and wife. Jesus’ answer to the question about divorce is really a teaching about all those places where hardness of heart has caused separation and division that is contrary to creation as God intended it. The conflicts in the Middle East, division caused by terrorism and war, the rancor of political races, the ever widening division between rich and poor, both among individuals and among the nations of the world, are all examples of places where our connection to each other as humans is broken by hardness of heart.

The Pharisees came to test Jesus with a question about divorce. The answer they anticipated would give separation and division the final word. Instead the Pharisees found themselves tested by Jesus. Instead of reaching into the law of Moses’ to give them an answer about divorce, Jesus reaches all the way back to the creation of humankind to give them an answer that applies to all occasions of human brokenness, and lets none of us off the hook. Then Jesus takes little children into his arms and blesses them. Little children understand that their survival depends on their connection to God and other people. In answer to the Pharisees’ question, Jesus holds before us the deep connections God intended for us in creation and intends for us now. And in the face of human sin and brokenness, on Good Friday and Easter God will give connection the final word.

Amen.

21 Proper B

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Episcopal Church
September 30, 2012

21 Proper B

Several weeks ago, I was looking for a recipe that would tenderize a round steak without cooking it to pieces in a crock-pot. Basically, Don and I wanted to take an inexpensive, tough piece of meat and use the grill to produce something tender and juicy. I looked online and found a recipe that uses salt as a tenderizer. Sprinkle both sides of the meat liberally with kosher salt and let the meat sit for one hour per pound. The salt will pull the juice to the surface of the meat, then the salty juice will sink back into the meat, tenderizing it. Then rinse the meat throughly with running water and grill as usual. I am not a scientist, but the plan sounded reasonable to me. I followed the directions carefully, Don put the meat on the grill, and the result was a tough and very salty piece of meat. Don and Caldwell gamely ate theirs. I gave mine to the dog.

The disciples are having a different sort of failure with saltiness this morning. At the end of the gospel lesson, we hear Jesus chastize the disciples with the words "Salt is good. But if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another." Jesus is not talking about a recipe for beef here. Jesus is talking about a recipe for discipleship. What have the disciples done that causes Jesus to accuse them of having lost their saltiness?

The gospel lesson begins with John saying to Jesus "Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him because he was not following us." Tattle tale! But there is more to the story than John tattling on an outsider who is able to cast out a demon in Jesus’ name. Just a few verses earlier, the disciple are unable to cast a demon out of a young boy. After that experience, Jesus tells the disciples that whoever wants to be first must be last of all and a servant of all. So, in addition to being a tattle tale, and misunderstanding what discipleship is about, John is also probably a bit jealous of the person who is actually able to cast out a demon in Jesus name.

Jesus’ words to John and the disciples are harsh. The "little ones who believe in me" are not cute little children, but people on the margins of society who believe in Jesus and may even be able to do miracles in Jesus’ name. The punishment for putting a stumbling block in front of a little one, like telling that person to stop casting out demons in Jesus’ name simply because the person is not one of the 12 disciples, is so severe that the alternatives Jesus describes would be better. After hearing Jesus’ words about hands, eyes, and fee, Jesus sounds angry as he says "Salt is good but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another."’ If the disciples have lost their saltiness, how can they possible have salt in themselves and be at peace with one another?

King Ahasuerus of Persia is also angry this morning. In short, the King has had his wife, Vashti, banished for disobedience. Esther is the orphaned Jewish niece of Mordecai. Esther becomes the new queen without the King knowing she is Jewish. Mordecai discovers a plot to kill King Ahasuerus, and tells Esther, who tells the King. Haman is the King’s prime minister, and custom requires everyone to bow to the Prime Minister. Because Mordecai is Jewish, he refuses to bow to any person. So Haman plots to kill not only Mordecai, but all the Jews, who are, at this point in history, in exile in Persia. Esther finds out about the plot, so when we hear King Ahasuerus ask Esther this morning for her request, and tell her that he will grant her request, even up to ½ his kingdom, she is ready.

Esther asks the King to spare her people and reminds him of the dangers to himself should the entire Jewish people be killed. When the King hears of the plan, he is outraged and asks who is behind such an evil deed. The answer is Haman, his own Prime Minister! Haman is hanged on the very gallows Haman had prepared for Mordecai, and we are told the anger of the King abated. Then we are told that the Jews keep a feast each year, known as Purim, to celebrate the days on which the Jews gained relief from their enemies and as the month that had been turned for them from sorrow into gladness and from mourning into a holiday.

The book of Esther has suspense and intrigue, and is, in places, quite humorous. But that is true of other stories in the Hebrew Scriptures. The story, like other stories in Scripture, would not receive a "G" rating from the Motion Picture Association of American, which the sermon version has to have. What makes the book of Esther unique in Scripture is that no where in the story is God ever mentioned. No where. There is no mention of prayer, or the Torah, or worship. Nothing. For all we can tell from the story itself, the Jewish people in Persia are spared strictly through the cunning and trickery of Esther. God is no where to be found.

The reading from Esther is paired with Psalm 124 in the lectionary. "If it had not been the Lord who was on our side when our enemies attacked us, then they would have swallowed us up alive..." While Psalm 124 can also refer to the Exodus or any of the other times God prevented God’s people from being swallowed alive, clearly we are to see God’s hand at work in the story of Esther, even if God is not mentioned by name. When we put Esther, Psalm 124, the reading from James, and the gospel reading together, we get a pretty comprehensive picture of the way God works in the world. Certainly God works through the prayer of the faithful. The reading from James tell us that the "prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective." The gospel reading reminds us that God does good works through people who may not be followers of Jesus in the way that the disciples are, or that we are for that matter. And the book of Esther tells us that God is at work even when God is unnamed or perhaps even unknown. The disciples’ problem was that they understood God’s work in the world far too narrowly and thought wrongly that God could only work through them. They thought discipleship meant protecting Jesus. That understanding caused them to be competitive and jealous. Jesus calls us to understand discipleship as seeing Jesus at work in all times, places and people, unbound by any notion we have about how God works in the world. Then, with jealousy and competitiveness aside, we can have salt in ourselves and be at peace with one another.

Amen.

20 Proper B

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Episcopal Church
September 23, 2012

20 Proper B

When I was a child, I loved going to church. We did not go to church as a family-rather my mom dropped the three children off at the little Presbyterian Church close to our house and our parents enjoyed some peace and quiet at home by themselves. And, as I have told you before, Mom always gave each of us 25 cents for the offering plate, because, as she said in 1965, you shouldn’t pay less than a quarter for good babysitting.

What I loved about church was that the playing field was leveled there. Church did not require a person to be athletic, which I was not, smart, which I was not, outgoing, which I was not, or any of the other qualities the world thought a person should have. Church was a place where people were happy to see us just because we were there. We could sing in the choir without tryouts, sit in Sunday School and say nothing, and no one chose teams for games of any sort. There were pictures of Jesus, who seemed to like children and sheep, arts and crafts that required more glue than skill, and some nice grown ups to make sure we all shared at snack time. Church was a place where we felt accepted and valued as children of God.

At Christ Church, we try to give children this same sort of experience. In the words from the baptismal service, we work hard to bring our children up in the Christian life and faith, and to help our children grow into the full stature of Christ. We have wonderfully decorated rooms for Sunday School, nurseries for the babies and younger children, and many adults committed to working with them. We have a Director of Christian Education and college students who work with our middle school and high school youth. On Sunday morning, our youth serve as lectors, ushers, greeters, and acolytes, and even our youngest parishioners are invited to bring the bread and wine to the altar at the offertory. We welcome neighborhood children to Christ Church for Reading Camp in the summer and treat them as the children of God that they are. We offer Safe Church training on a regular basis so that we offer the safest environment possible for our children.

So, when I see Jesus take a little child in his arms and hear him say "Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and who ever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me," I am so much happier than last week when we heard Jesus say "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake and for the sake of the gospel will save it." That sounds hard. Welcoming children is easy. Not only can we do that, we already do.

However, this is not what Jesus is talking about. Jesus is not talking about 21^st century children. Jesus is talking about 1^st century children. In the first century, children were liabilities, not assets. Sixty percent of all children did not make it to their 16^th birthday, so parents had many children in order to have a few survive. Children had no rights; no status. If an adult male needed an heir, he adopted another adult to inherit his wealth, not a child. Children ranked below women and only slightly above slaves. So, for Jesus, an adult male, to bring someone from the very margins of society right into his own arms was outrageous. For Jesus to tell the disciples that whoever welcomed one such child in Jesus’ name, welcomed him, and welcomed the God who sent him was an abomination

The gospel lesson begins with Jesus’ prediction that he will be betrayed into human hands, be killed, and three days after being killed, rise again. We are told that the disciples did not understand what Jesus was saying but were afraid to ask. Their lack of understanding is emphasized when their immediate response to Jesus’ prediction of his suffering and death is to argue among themselves about which one of them is the greatest. Jesus settles their argument by telling them that whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all. Taking the child into his arms is an object lesson of sorts, to emphasize his point about the last being first. But Jesus is doing much more than simply settling an argument among his disciples and teaching them about true greatness. Jesus is teaching them the appropriate response to his teaching that he will be betrayed, killed and rise again. The appropriate response is not to argue over who will get first class tickets and reserved seating. The faithful response to Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection is radical hospitality. The faithful response is to imitate the radical hospitality of God, in which Jesus gives his life for the life of the world, a world that betrayed him, rejected him, and handed him over to death and God’s response is to redeem the world nonetheless.

The reading from Proverbs and the reading from James both speak to this radical hospitality. The reading from Proverbs, when taken by itself, looks like a hopelessly outdated job description for the over worked, and probably exhausted, perfect wife and mother. However, the description given of the capable wife mirrors the description of Wisdom in the second and third chapters of Proverbs, making the description of the capable wife more the personification of wisdom than a description of a living, breathing human being. And what does Wisdom personified do? Wisdom provides hospitality, food and shelter and kindness, to both her family, which are the members of her community, as well as reaching out her hand to offer hospitality to those outside the fold, to the poor and needy. Example is piled upon example in this passage to show the depth of the hospitality Wisdom offers.

The letter from James describes a hospitality that is peaceable, gentle, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. Conflicts and disputes, we are told, come from selfish ambition, or the opposite of radical hospitality. A community that is torn by strife and disagreement is not capable of genuine and radical hospitality. But a community infused with the wisdom from above, which is pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy, is able to welcome everyone from each other to the total stranger, with equal warmth and hospitality.

Jesus calls us to make our response to his suffering, death, and resurrection a radical hospitality, not arguing over who is the greatest, or who is right, or even who is the most hospitable, but welcoming and serving the least likely, the 21^st century equivalent of the 1^st century child, by bringing them into our arms as Jesus took that child into his. Jesus calls us to a life of radical hospitality, because radical hospitality is the faithful response to the gospel.

Amen.

19 Proper B

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Episcopal Church
September 16, 2012

19 Proper B

May a year ago, Don and I decided to try out our favorite vacation spot a little earlier in the summer. Usually, we go on vacation in early August, just before the school and program years start back up in the fall. That year, for some reason, the best time to go on vacation was in mid-May, right after the school year and the program year ended. I made a reservation at our usual hotel and found that, in May, the rates are significantly less expensive than in August, so I booked an extra night. We were looking forward to long walks, eating at our favorite restaurants, and getting a lot of reading done.

Well, let’s just say that we were lucky one of our vacation goals, if vacations have goals, was to get a lot of reading done. The weather on this island in mid-May is cold and rainy. The reason the hotel was so much less expensive is because few restaurants and attractions are open in mid-May. The boats to the other islands, which we enjoy exploring, don’t run until June. Neither the pool, nor, more importantly, the hot tub, were open yet. Good thing I took a lot of books!

In the end, however, we had a great time. We did get some after dinner walks in as the weather started to clear. Since most of our favorite restaurants were closed, we ate where the local folk ate and that gave us a different taste of the island. On the walks we were able to take, we practically had the island to ourselves. And we did get lots of reading done. The week was both enjoyable and relaxing, just not in the way we had planned.

The disciples are on a journey this morning, although their journey is a far cry from a vacation. They are on a journey to Caesarea Philippi and beyond. Along the way, Jesus asks them "Who do people say that I am?" But what Jesus really wants to know is "Who do you say that I am?" Peter’s answer is famous "You are the Messiah." In that one simple sentence, Peter sums up his itinerary for this journey. Jesus is the Messiah, the one the Jewish people have anticipated and expected for hundreds of years. Jesus is the one sent by God, anointed by God, to save the people from the Romans and restore Israel to the glory and power she had when David was King. Jesus is the one who will usher in the Kingdom of God, a kingdom of splendor and might. This is a journey of power and privilege, as the disciples follow Jesus and wait to see what will happen next, and imagine what their roles will be in this new dynasty. Just a few chapters later, this theme is repeated when James and John, two of the disciples, come to Jesus as ask to sit, one at his right hand and one at his left hands when Jesus comes into his glory.

The only problem is that Jesus is on a different journey. Even though Peter gives Jesus the correct title, he gives Jesus the wrong identity. Peter is thinking about power and privilege; Jesus is talking about pouring out his life. Peter is setting his mind on human things, not divine ones. Jesus’ itinerary goes through the cross, not around it, giving his life away rather than holding on ‘till his knuckles turn white, and he calls his followers to do the same. Jesus calls the crowd with the disciples and tells them that if they want to be his disciples, they must stop hanging on to their own itinerary, get rid of the map, quit limiting their possibilities, and live fully by taking up their crosses and actually following Jesus.

In a week when we have marked the 11^th anniversary of 9/11, and watched as violence spread against the United States because of the film "The innocence of Muslims" which was made in this country, in addition to encountering a variety of stumbling blocks in our own lives, we can easily wonder about this journey we are on with Jesus. We did not choose journeys such as these, and, quite frankly, we do not want to be on them. On a bad day, we can easily wonder why, if we are putting ourselves out for Jesus, Jesus does not rise to the occasion and give us, or our loved ones, or our country some divine protection from such challenges to our faith.

When Jesus says "Pick up your cross and follow me," I believe he means even more than asking us to follow him to the cross. Jesus also means follow him as he heals the sick, binds up the broken hearted, and works to show people that the Kingdom of God has come near. Following Jesus means not avoiding the hard questions or challenging situations, but trusting that God is present in them and working to figure out how. Following Jesus is to trust that there is no place we can find ourselves where Jesus has not already been and trusting that Jesus is already there, not necessarily to fix the situation, but to be present with us and guide us on the journey, even when we find ourselves some place we’d rather not be. Following Jesus means that we may not know where we are going or what we will do when we get there, but we trust that Jesus knows and will lead us. Jesus calls us to hand over the map, let go of our own personal itineraries, stop limiting our possibilities, and say to Jesus "You are the Messiah."

Amen.