Month: October 2013

Come Sunday: “What Would Jesus Drive?” (October 27, 2013)

23rd Sunday of Pentecost
October 27, 2013
Luke 18:9-14

Jesus commented, “This tax man, not the other, went home made right with God. If you walk around with your nose in the air, you’re going to end up flat on your face, but if you’re content to be simply yourself, you will become more than yourself.”
Luke 18:14 (The Message)

suvBeing from Michigan and having two parents who worked in the auto plants, I tend to have a fascination with cars.  I tend like most cars, but for a long time, I didn’t have much interest in SUVs.

Ah, the SUV-Sport Utility Vehicle.  In the late 90s it ruled American suburbs.  It seemed that ever auto maker had to make one, and the kept getting bigger and bigger.  Remember the Hummer?  I remember someone telling me the big Ford Expedition got something like 9 miles to the gallon.  I remember thinking how horrible that was.  I saw SUVs as a scourge, harming the environment and making us lazy.

Around the same time that the SUV was large and in charge, another car was making itself known in the American market.  In 2001, we saw Toyota unveil the Prius, a gas-electric hybrid.  It was the anti-SUV.  People who despised SUVs (and the people who drove them) flocked to the Prius to show how conscious they were. (For the record, I did own a Prius a few years ago.)

The first decade of the new century set up conflict between those that loved the big gas guzzling SUVs and those that loved the fuel sipping hybrids.  For a while there, a campaign made news urging people to use less resource heavy transportation than the SUV.  The campaign came up with these simple words: “What would Jesus Drive?”  The answer was that Jesus wasn’t going to be driving a Hummer anytime soon.

When I think about this week’s gospel lesson, I have to think of it in terms of cars.  (I even did a sermon based on the Prius back in 2007.)  I can see the Pharisee driving a Prius to the temple.  He gets out and starts praying to God, “thanking” God for making all the right choices.  He shops at Whole Foods, recycles and even drives Prius (his second Prius, by the way).  “I thank you God, that I am not like that guy,” he says guestering at the SUV pulling up to the curb.

Another man climbs down from the tall vehicle.  He slams the door and falls down to the ground.  He’s behind on his mortgage, his oldest son and his son’s wife won’t leave to find a place of their own.  His wife was laid off her job the week before and she found out about the affair he was having.  She was tired of dealing with his philandering and his alcoholism to boot.  After 18 years, she is ready for a divorce.

“Have mercy on me, God!  I’ve messed up!”

The reason the Pharisee didn’t go home justified isn’t because he did something wrong.  He did all the right things.  What he missed is relying on God’s mercy; to know that even if he did the right things, he was still in need of God- something that the tax collector understood all too well.

As we head to church this Sunday, I pray that we can not get caught up in doing the right things, but instead realize that we are made righteous not because of what we have done, but because of what God has done.

By the way, I think Jesus would have taken public transportation, but that’s for another time.

 

Come Sunday: Not for the Faint of Heart (October 20, 2013)

widow22nd Sunday of Pentecost
October 20, 2013
Luke 18:1-8

“Do you hear what that judge, corrupt as he is, is saying? So what makes you think God won’t step in and work justice for his chosen people, who continue to cry out for help? Won’t he stick up for them? I assure you, he will. He will not drag his feet.

Luke 18:6-8 (The Message)

Growing old is not for the weak.

This past summer, my partner and I were busy shuttling between Minnesota and Michigan to move my parents from their house of over 40 years to a senior housing apartment complex on the other side.  It was getting difficult for my octogenerian parents to maneuver around the house.  The neighborhood they lived in, on the northside of my hometown of Flint, Michigan had become more and more dicey, especially in the last few years as the auto industry imploded.  Moving my parents allowed me to see how aging is not something for the weak.  The independence that one had in their youth and middle ages is not as present.  Your body just doesn’t work like it used to.  You become more dependent on others.  It’s just not easy to be elderly.

The gospel text for today involves a widow, a woman who was incredibly vulnerable in that society, and a judge that was more than a little shady.  This woman who probably had little pride left, kept pressing the judge to grant her justice against an enemy.  She basically wears down the judge until he does what she asks just to get her off his back.

Now, God isn’t the unjust judge.  The point of this parable is not that you see God as some kind of holy Santa Claus that you pester until you get your way.  I think this parable has more to do with how we live a life of faith.

We are asked to believe and walk in faith.  But the road is not clear.  We never know how the story will end.  Like the widow, we must keep believing and pray persistently; not to get what we want, but because we have faith that God will answer in God’s time.

God’s time.  That kind of sucks.  Jesus talks about how God will listen to his children and grant them justice, but we know that sometimes our prayers aren’t answered- or at least they aren’t answered in our time or in the way we would like.

I think having the kind of persistent faith Jesus talks about is rather hard.  And maybe that’s the point; trusting in God is rather tough business.  Like growing old, it is something that leaves us rather vulnerable.  I think God knows that having faith in God is hard, which is why I think we don’t have to do it alone.  Maybe that’s one of the reasons we have churches- communities where we can bear each other and believe when others just can’t.

There’s an old African American gospel song whose lyrics include this passage: “He may not come when you want to, but he’s right on time.”

The life of faith can be hard.  However, we know that God is faithful and will be with us, even in those days where God seems distant.

Faith is not for the weak.  Thanks be to God that we don’t have to trust alone.

Come Sunday: “Let’s Get Liminal” (October 13, 2013)

liminal

21st Sunday of Pentecost

October 13, 2013

Luke 17:11-19

They went, and while still on their way, became clean. One of them, when he realized that he was healed, turned around and came back, shouting his gratitude, glorifying God. He kneeled at Jesus’ feet, so grateful. He couldn’t thank him enough—and he was a Samaritan.

-Luke 17:14-16

lim·i·nal /ˈlimənl/- 1. of or relating to a transitional or initial stage of a process. 2. occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold.

 

liminalBorders are interesting things.  I grew up in Michigan only an hour in two directions to the US/Canadian border.  When driving accross a border, you stop at a booth where someone from Customs asks why you are coming to their fair nation and what are your intentions.  After looking at our passports, the officer waves us through to a new nation.

Borders, especially land crossings, are interesting because one moment you are here and the next there.  You could walk from here to there quite easily if it weren’t for those customs officers that stand in your way.  Borders are like going through the looking glass into another reality, something that is familiar and yet very different.

In preparing for this sermon, a word kept showing  up in the online commentaries I was reading: liminal.  I’ve heard it being used more and more in religious contexts to describe the times we live in; the in between time, on the edge of something better. I kept wondering what liminal had to do with this passage.  As I think about it, the passage has everything to do with being liminal.  Actually, Jesus is all about the liminal.  Jesus seemed to stand in the middle of things, in the borderlands.  Jesus seems to be all about crossing boundaries.  Here’s Jesus talking to the Samaritan woman at the well.  There’s him healing a woman considered unclean.  In this passage he heals ten lepers.  He decides to cross the boundary that separated him from these lepers.  Because he crossed a boundary, one of the ex-lepers comes back to thank Jesus for healing him and that man happened to be a Samaritan.

As I am writing this, we are finishing up day 10 of the federal government shutdown.  I know people have their views on who is to blame, but what is striking me is how polarized we have become as a society.  Republicans over here, Democrats over there.  We humans are good at creating barriers, walls and fences at our borders to keep the other out.

And yet, Jesus walks in and cross the border with ease.

The Samaritan ex-leper was thankful for being healed.  Maybe we should be thankful for a God that is liminal, that breaks boundaries and heals us.

But there is another understanding of being liminal.  That meaning is basically being at the threshold of something.  Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem where he would suffer and die.  Each stop along the way was part of a process, bringing him closer and closer to a moment where everything would change.

When I thought of this second meaning, a song immediately popped in my head.  It’s a song from the 80s, but it feels at times like it came out yesterday.  It’s the song “Verge of a Miracle” by the late Rich Mullins.  Mullins was a contemporary Christian artist that was popular in the 80s and 90s and this song was one of his early hits.  The chorus goes:

You’re on the verge of a miracle
Standing there – oh –
You’re on the verge of a miracle
Just waiting to be believed in
Open your eyes and see
You’re on the verge of a miracle

I think that our lives as Christians are ones that are perched at the threshold of something, something we don’t always know.  What if we saw our daily walk as one where we are on the verge of a miracle?  What if we saw these miracles as times where we cross borders and become agents of healing?

Go and be church.