Readings for Pentecost 19C, October 20, 2019

• Jeremiah 31:27-34 and Psalm 119:97-104  
• 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5  
• Luke 18:1-8

Keep Protesting, Pastor Fred

​“…pray always, and do not lose heart!”
 
Today, is Day Four, of the teachers strike in Chicago, and residents of Chicago are keeping their eyes on the negotiations, and of course, on our students!  How long can each side, Administration and Teachers, keep up without losing heart?!
 
The stakes are high, as they always are when it comes to this – to putting up picket lines, calling off classes, and protesting unacceptable conditions for teachers and their students.  No one, including the teachers, want to call off school!  So, it takes a breach of justice to come to that decision. 
 
Rhetoric from the Mayor’s office is different than 7 years ago, during the last strike.  Newly elected Mayor Lightfoot seems to understand the needs that the Chicago Teachers Union is asking for, though, after taking office, the mayor decided to retain the former mayor’s less-than-popular lead-negotiator with the teachers. 
 
On the campaign trail, candidate Lightfoot promised that under her Administration, we wouldn’t see a teacher’s strike in Chicago, signaling she’d do things differently, and that she understood that every school needed at least one nurse and librarian, as well as an increased number of Counselors, Social Workers, Case Managers and Psychologists.  The need is great in Chicago, and critical to a basic learning environment.  Suburban schools seem to have no problem meeting these demands.  
 
So, each side is advocating tirelessly, coming time and again to the bargaining table over the past few months, and of course, pleading their separate arguments in the press, as we move, hopefully, toward a quick resolution, and avoid having each side dig-in and prolong the pain.  And before everybody loses heart! 
 
Which is what Jesus’ parable says it’s about today – “our need to pray always and not to lose heart.”  Though the parable – at least on first take – is more about a poor downtrodden widow, who is tireless in going up against a corrupt and heartless machine, represented by a Judge, who as Luke says, ‘has no fear of God and no respect for people!’ 
 
So, does Jesus describe this woman’s persistent quest for justice, as our need to not lose heart in our praying? 
 
In the parable, the widow keeps coming with her persistent plea, “Grant me justice against my opponent.”  And “for a while the judge refused.  But later he said to himself, ‘Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant justice to her, if for no other reason than, she not give me a black eye by continually coming and swinging at me! 
 
So the corrupt judge still doesn’t care about the widow, and whatever her cause is.  But he does care about all the trouble she can cause him, which he decides he’d rather not bother with. 
 
Not unlike the teacher’s strike when they take to the streets, over the objection of the mayor!  But that’s only because the mayor holds all the cards, all the power of the purse, but the only power the teachers have, is organizing their people to stop teaching, and stand up for their demands together – to be persistent, and not lose heart. 
 
And it makes you wonder, doesn’t it, what the demands of the widow were, when she kept coming and asking for the judge to ‘grant her justice against her opponent?’ What justice was she asking for?  Was the price of her medication she needed raised beyond her means, or her hospitalization denied by her health care provider?  Or maybe her brother was detained at the border, trying to enter the country for work that would help provide for his extended family, work which he knew was available in the orchards and fields at this time of the year?  Or perhaps her deceased husband’s lawyer was dragging his heels in settling the estate?  Or, maybe she was out of her mind worrying about her son or daughter who had been thrown in jail, for driving while black or brown? 
 
There are so many forms of injustice, then as now, and no lack of pleading widows, and oppressed people of color and lgbtq, asking. 
 
But still, is this story about prayer, or about justice?  Or, if both, what is the connection?  It’s not the typical parable where the judge would be a metaphor for God – Unless you see God as having no respect for anyone!  And, the widow isn’t going to God to persistently plead for justice, as an example for us that we should pray harder, or that it should make us feel guilty if we don’t get an answer to prayer, and may lose heart.  Neither do we need to force God, to see how unjust people can be; how corrupt our systems can become.  God knows our sins already! 
 
And God will grant justice to God’s followers and ‘chosen ones, day and night’ because that’s what God wants to do!  ‘God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love!’  God does not advocate delaying justice, but wants to give it freely and abundantly. 
 
The obvious winner to emulate in this parable is not the judge, but the widow – the one who was at that time considered to be, a socially stigmatized loser.  In a patriarchal society where women were either the property of their father or their husband, and were dependent on them for their livelihood, unable to obtain paying jobs of their own – not that they didn’t work, unpaid, for their families – but women who were widowed, were penniless, except for the Levitical laws that mandated charity and care for them. 
 
But as Luke so often does, he lifts up this women as an example.  And this widow has extraordinary faith!  Why?  Because she is already stigmatized and not expected to succeed.  Normally, no one would notice her, especially a judge, especially this judge, who is an unfaithful opponent, corrupt as the day is long! 
 
So, the story of the widow is one we are familiar with!  Especially if we’ve already read to the end of the gospel!  This is the story of Jesus, who pleaded his case before his own people, who was stigmatized and scapegoated, and faced his own unjust judge, in Pontius Pilate. 
 
On the road to Jerusalem – which, by this story in chapter 18, is getting quite close now – Jesus is preparing the Disciples for what’s going to happen in Jerusalem. They will be tempted to ‘lose heart’ when Jesus is crucified, and his state-sanctioned murder will be committed by the heartless combination, of the mob, the religious leaders, and a foreign government. 
 
In this parable, Jesus is looking for followers who get it!  He’s challenging his disciples, the men and women followers, to step up and see Jesus for who he is, the long awaited Messiah, and Son of God.  And to have faith – to throw themselves in, body, mind and soul – as the followers that can receive the Holy Spirit, and let it live in them, even after Jesus is Ascended to be at the right hand of God. 
 
Jesus concludes his parable with a question:  “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”  If we don’t lose heart that Jesus has won the victory of justice over the powers of evil, and we keep coming, on behalf of the kingdom and realm of God, no matter how corrupt the system is we’re up against – then Yes! 
 
Jesus – in the greatest irony of all time – wins his case in a higher court, after his loss with Pilate, Herod, and the crowds. 
 
And so the ball is now in our court!  The followers of Jesus do not pray, and walk away.  We, the followers of Jesus, keep coming, we keep protesting, we keep demonstrating for the kingdom and realm of God to come.  We keep following the Master, who showed us the way.  

Readings for the 18th Sunday after Pentecost, Oct. 13, 2019

• Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7 and Psalm 66:1-12  
• 2 Timothy 2:8-15  
• Luke 17:11-19

Living in Liminality, Pastor Fred
“And as they went, they were made clean.”  That’s what Luke tells us about the 10 lepers that came to Jesus.  When Jesus saw them, he told them simply to go and show themselves to the priests.  This was what the Leviticus law prescribed, that if you were lucky enough to be healed from leprosy, you must first present yourself to a priest in the Temple to be certified that you were no longer ‘unclean.’ 
 
Another law was that, those with leprosy must keep their distance from the rest of the population.  Not just live in a special leper’s colony, which they did, but if traveling, you must make sure to keep your distance from others by shouting out, “unclean, unclean,” to warn them, as a kind of courtesy, because of how contagious leprosy was.  Of course, this made for a stigma, that kept those with leprosy separated from the rest of society, like wearing a Scarlet Letter!
 
Luke doesn’t tell us, if that’s what the 10 lepers say when they approach Jesus – if they shout out “unclean.”  But they did call out together, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”  The reputation of Jesus as a healer, preceded him!  They are not supposed to approach him, and Luke is  also careful to say that they kept their distance, but they definitely aren’t going to squander their opportunity, to ask the Master for mercy! 
 
It is the disciples who call Jesus ‘Master’ throughout the gospel of Luke.  But this is the only time in the whole of Luke’s narrative that Jesus is called Master by someone who is not a Disciple!  And perhaps this is what convinces Jesus of their faith!  Their chorus of “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” is proof that they have no doubt Jesus is the Messiah, the anointed one, the long awaited messianic king.  And so before he even declares that they are healed, Jesus simply responds, “go and show yourselves to the priests!”  And, “as they went, they were made clean!” 
 
It’s the sending, by Jesus, that heals them – the recognition of their faith, and the blessing into action – a sending – that is, in effect, the same as healing, and making them whole again. 
 
On the journey, the journey of following Jesus – a journey with Jesus – is where we find wholeness and salvation.  And this is a journey that enters – if we can call it this – the liminal space where Jesus lives.  The liminal, is a threshold, an in between place – a transition from one condition, to a new condition.  Like unclean to clean; like outcast, to welcomed in; like death to life!
 
Jesus himself was on this liminal journey.  Jesus, having finished his ministry in Galilee – the region he grew up in and first gathered his Disciples, where he preached the good news and taught in parables – had set his face to go to Jerusalem, back in Chapter 9.  And Luke reminds us of that, the very first thing, in this reading. 
 
“On the way to Jerusalem,” Luke says of Jesus.  And then he adds, “he was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee.  This is where the journey is now at.  Except that, no one can point to “the region between Samaria and Galilee,” on a map!  There is no geographical region in between!  Galilee was the northern most territory of Israel, and Judea was southernmost, where Jerusalem is.  Samaria was in-between the two.  So, it would have made sense that Jesus was either passing through Samaria on his way from Galilee down to Jerusalem, or, was perhaps skirting its boundary, if he took the main route to the east, following the Jordan River.  But there is no region between Galilee and Samaria – they are right next to each other.  Unless of course, Luke wants to underscore the place of liminality, the threshold space, that Jesus seemed to live in, and a wonderful description of what took place in this healing and bridge building story. 
 
It was also appropriate to say, ‘Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee,’ because of the deep division and distrust between the Samaritans and the Jews which had grown up over the centuries after the Exile to Babylon. 
 
The Samaritans, for the most part, were never made to participate in the exile.  They were more isolated by the hill country they lived in, than the Galileans or Judeans, and so were able to avoid being carted away.  But in the meantime, since the Jerusalem Temple had been destroyed, they developed Mt Gerizim as their center of worship, and to this day, claim it as their holy place – which was unacceptable to those who came home and rebuilt the Jerusalem temple.  And the Samaritans were forever shunned, and the two became, as enemies. 
 
Recall that at the beginning of this journey, Jesus and the Disciples are taking, they sent out scouts, like Secret Service Agents, to find cities for Jesus to visit along the way.  And when a Samaritan village refused to receive Jesus, the Disciples casually asked Jesus if he wanted them to bring down fire on them?!  That’s the level of enmity and division that existed between them.
 
Jesus of course, nixed that idea, in the strongest of terms.  And now, once again, Jesus makes sure to lift up what happens after the ten lepers are healed, and only one of the 10 comes back to worship and thank Jesus.  He points it out in front of all to see, that the only one who came to say thank you and give praise to God, was a foreigner and so-called enemy, a Samaritan. 
 
The enemy-Samaritan, healed of leprosy, is a double outcast.  And because of his social and religious stigmas, he too has lived in the liminal spaces, places that are in between, not quite belonging, but on the threshold of something new, the place where God is calling us – calling us out from what has been holding us down – holding us back from being healed and made whole! 
 
The liminal space is where the kingdom and realm of God breaks in.  Jesus lives there, and invites us follow him.  Yet we are creatures who tend to live more comfortably within defined boundaries, on one side or the other, where we can identify with our family, clan and people, where we feel more complete knowing who the opposition or enemy is.  Because it can be hard, very hard, to live in the in-between region – in the place where there is no clearly defined border – in liminality. 
 
It reminds me of El Paso, where people of more than one ethnic or national identity flow freely from one side of the US/Mexican border to the other, a border that has worked for a long time, that way.  But then there was the mass shooting at a Walmart in August, and the alleged perpetrator left a hate-filled White Nationalist manifesto, replacing liminality with terror, in a matter of a few minutes.  The call to live in the in-between spaces, in liminal living, can be heard as ‘bad news’ to a mind stuck in a world of black and white thinking. 
 
?Is it harder to build a life on a border with no wall, a boundary that is in-between and porous?  Certainly the tension is greater.  But the rules are less rigid, more inclusive, open, and welcoming.  The hard part, is putting God at the center of our lives, and listening for the answers that are yet to be spoken.  To live in that liminal space will not be possible without deep trust, and a certain amount of risk, on our part.  Like the cross, liminality is full of vulnerability.  But also full of reward!  Its power is in our ability to reach out to our neighbor, indeed, even our enemy, in love. 
 
The “Master” knows the way to Jerusalem!  His cross is there, but also his resurrection.  The journey Jesus took was completely open and honest, in a way humanity has rarely seen.  He confronted the corruption of this world under the banner of God’s truth.  And at the same time, he came to heal the whole world and unite us as one, through deep compassion. 
 
And now the journey is ours to take.  We are his followers, walking in the liminality of open borders.  It reminds me of our Psalm today which says, “Our God has kept us among the living, and has not allowed our feet to slip. … we went through fire and water, but you brought us out into a place of refreshment.”  Every step of our journey, through the desert or the hill country, is guided and protected by God. 
 
We are on our way to show ourselves to the priest… “And as we go, as we journey with Jesus, we are made clean,” and whole once again.  

Readings for St Francis of Assisi Day, celebrated October 6, 2019
Jeremiah 22:13-16  Doing justice and righteousness is knowing the LORD
Psalm 148  The splender of the LORD is over earth and heaven
Galatians 6:14-18  A new creation is everything
Matthew 11:25-30  The yoke of discipleship

Franciscan Rule, Pastor Fred Kinsey
The Franciscan Rule originates with St Francis himself.  It was revised over the years, but is a kind of distillation of his thought and practice, and the guiding rules he himself and all Franciscans lived by, which he encouraged others to emulate, as well.  Two points from the Franciscan Rule seem important to lift up today:
 
1) “they[you] should cultivate the Franciscan spirit, of peace, fidelity, and respect for life, striving to make of it a sign of a world already renewed in Christ.”  2) “…they/[you] should respect all creatures, animate and inanimate, which “bear the imprint of the Most High,” and [you] should strive to move from the temptation of exploiting creation to the Franciscan concept of universal kin-ship.” 
 
On Christmas Eve in 1123, 3 years before Francis died, Francis was planning to celebrate Christmas in the little mountain village of Grecio, Italy.  It seems that the parish there, had the same dynamic we do, with the precipitous rise in attendance of the faithful for the Christmas service – because Francis thought the Chapel there was too small for all the worshipers who would attend their Midnight Mass. 
 
So Francis decided to hold the service in the public square, out in the open, in the heart of the village.  There was a carved-out niche in a rock, like a cave there, which was perfect.  This, as Francis knew from visiting the Holy Land, was like the traditional birthplace of Jesus.  Many in the hill country of Bethlehem lived in such caves.  And there were often just two rooms, one for the family, and the other for their animals.  Luke’s nativity account says only that, ‘Mary gave birth to her first born son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger – the animal feeding trough – because there was no room for them in the inn.’  Whether it was the back room of the inn, or a distant relative’s home, we don’t know.  But it certainly sounds like Jesus was born in the room with the animals. 
 
So St. Francis arranged to set up a manger with straw in it, and even made sure there was an ox and a donkey.  His intention was to show the utter poverty that the Savior-King was born into.  And according to St. Boneventure, who wrote about it not long after, it was a solemn and moving experience.  And as Francis preached the midnight mass, he was full of, tears of joy, that Christmas Eve! 
 
Some say this was the beginning of the tradition of the crèche, the Nativity scenes we still use today at Christmas time.  And who amongst us doesn’t have a favorite!  I know Kim and I have one at home, which is a rather eclectic scene we made from a variety of carved wooden characters.  It began with just a simple crèche of olive wood we bought in Bethlehem when we visited in 2005.  It’s just the baby Jesus in a manger with his parents standing over him, pictured in a cave opening, with a native palm tree overhanging the entrance, and a star just above.  And we’ve simply surrounded it with various animals from around the world, we’ve collected from here and there.  An ox and ass of course, but also some sheep, seeing how the Shepherds were the first visitors that holy night, but also a giraffe, an antelope, a spotted-leopard, and a rhinoceros! 
 
Today, of course, we are celebrating all of the animals, and especially all the pets who are worshiping with us, God’s fellow beloved creatures!  Dogs seem to have the clear majority today, but I wouldn’t want to debate with the cat owners, which are more precious in God’s sight! 
 
I don’t think it’s any coincidence that St Francis, who founded the Franciscan order, on the vow of poverty, also developed the doctrine of the animals being our sisters and brothers!  His love for all creatures, and his theology, totally matched up!
 
And the journey that Francis took to get there, was real!  It was formed out of his early life of privilege, growing up in a wealthy family that had some means, was able to travel, and expected things in return for their patronage.  By some accounts, when Francis was younger, he reveled in his privilege.  He was handsome and gallant, he delighted in fine clothes, he became a troubadour, gaining the popularity of many of his peers.  But percolating underneath, Francis was questioning this life.  And one day, when his conscience got the better of him, and he gave a beggar all the money he had, he was chided by his rich friends. 
 
And though he didn’t let that deter him from his calling, it’s notable the lengths Francis had to go to detach himself from this life.  His father, who had invested in his son and wanted him to follow in his footsteps, derided him for wanting to leave.  Once even, he beat and bound Francis, and threw him in the cellar, before his mother was able to rescue him.  Such can be the punishment for challenging the hierarchy of white male privilege, then, or now! 
 
But Francis sought the counsel of the scriptures and traditions of the church, and he formed a vision.  Francis saw in Christ a model for living simply, and being open to the Holy Spirit, our breath of life, which counsels living, not by bread alone, but by the living Word of God. 
 
So Francis, once the heir of the good life, came to live with the poor, forming one of the Church’s most significant movements, in the Franciscan Order.  He healed the sick, fought corruption in the Church, and rejoiced in the wonder and gift of creation.  Francis saw the spirit of life, not only in all people, but in the whole animal kingdom. 
 
Believing in the Creator of the whole universe, the maker of heaven and earth, and that we are called to be in covenant, in relationship, with God, through the example of the humble child born in a lowly manger, ignites in us a burning desire to care for the whole earth and all God’s creatures, our sisters and brothers.  It is no coincidence that followers of Jesus, are lovers of the animals, and friends of the poor.
 
Again, the Franciscan Rule says, “you should respect all creatures, animate and inanimate, which “bear the imprint of the Most High,” and [you] should strive to move from the temptation of exploiting creation, to the Franciscan concept of universal kin-ship.” 
 
Where is this kind of humbleness in our culture, in our church & society, today?  Certainly not in our elected leadership, who at the top, favor the policies of the rich, who have already given-in to the temptation of exploiting our land, water and air. 
 
Let us, today, be the humble servants!  And let us start in the style of the Franciscans – by taking pride in blessing our pets and animals, our sisters and brothers.  Let us, the meek, be the inheritors of the earth, and the lead caretakers of God’s very good creation.  For the power of God is manifest in our Savior who was born in a make-shift manger, amongst the barnyard animals.  The kingdom of God is found in weakness, through the vulnerability of carrying our crosses – a yoke made easy, and our burdens made light, as Jesus says in our Gospel.  And the powerful, will be brought low.
 
For this is what St Paul meant when he said, “a new creation is everything!”  And “for those who will follow this rule,” like the Franciscan Rule, “peace and mercy be upon them.” 
 
Let ‘Peace and mercy be upon us’ as we bless our animals today, our sisters and brothers.  And as we become the ‘new creation,’ Jesus lived and died, and rose again for.  

Readings for Michael and All Angels, September 29, 2019
Daniel 10:10-14; 12:1-3
All who are dead shall arise on the day of the LORD
Psalm 103:1-5, 20-22
Bless the LORD, you angels, all you hosts of God.
Revelation 12:7-12
Michael defeats Satan in a cosmic battle
Luke 10:17-20
Jesus gives his followers authority over the enemy

Combining Forces, by Pastor Fred
I didn’t know if the story was true or not.  A friend of ours, told Kim and I, some years ago.  But turns out – it is, absolutely true!
 
It happened on March 28, 1990, when first team All American, Stacey King was a rookie with the Chicago Bulls.  King was admired as much for his basketball skills, as for his quick wit and good humor in the locker room.  If Michael Jordan was the leader of the team, Stacey King was the comic relief.  On the hugely talented Bulls team, Stacey was more of a role player, a rebounder and shot blocker.  Typically, he was the 2nd man off the bench, that year, and for the Bulls first 3 of 6 NBA championships that followed, before Stacey was traded to Minnesota.  And after his NBA career ended, he returned to Chicago in 2006 to become a voice of Bulls, and color commentator, a beloved role he occupies to this day.
 
So, of the 1990 game, on March 28, the rookie Stacey King is now famous for understated, and humorous quip: “I’ll always remember that game as the one me and Michael combined for 70 points, to win it in overtime!”  It just so happens that Michael scored a career high 69 points that night, while Stacey had 1 free throw! 
 
Today, we celebrate that 4(3) sisters and brothers in Christ will combine forces with some 70, or so, of us here at Unity, to journey with us and become members.  Whether we score 69 points, or 1 point, we’re all in it together.  It’s what we do together, and how we combine our talents and various skills, as followers of Jesus, that matters! 
 
We’re also, all in it together, with (the other) Michael and All Angels!  Angels have most recently been thought of as guardians, helpers in our personal battles, sometimes even, as someone who has died and come back as an angel to bring good karma to us in our lives, or in our grieving.  Though, when I was younger, they were often depicted as your good and bad conscience, one over each shoulder, battling it out, as a metaphor for the decision you were in turmoil of making, usually something worldly, tempting you, like sweets or alcohol. 
 
Back in the several centuries before Christ, in between the Old and New Testaments, many types of supernatural beings, especially from the near eastern religion of Zoroastrianism, had been influencing Judaism.  What developed at that time in Jewish angelology, was the idea that God had four angelic assistants, holding up the throne of God, and each had distinct jobs: one was Gabriel, who was to announce the end of the world; a second was Michael, who was the conqueror of Satan and protector of Israel; thirdly, Raphael, who healed the sick and protected travelers; and lastly Uriel, who punished evildoers.  Christian story-telling retained the first three archangels, but dropped Uriel.  By the middle ages, many artists depicted the archangel Michael as victorious over the monster Satan.  Identified with warfare, Michael was popular in Christian imagination.  Martin Luther, for one, absolutely lived and breathed it all in. (https://members.sundaysandseasons.com/Home/TextsAndResources/2019-9-29/2060#resources)
 
But the Bible is not quite as obsessed with angels!  In the New Testament, Michael is only cited twice, once in the book of Jude, and today, in our 2nd Reading from Revelation.  The whole book of Revelation, of course, is basically the visions of John of Patmos, visions of what is to befall the 7 churches he writes to, warning that, if they are not faithful to the end, even in the face of persecution by Rome, evil would conquer, but in Christ, we are victorious. 
 
Revelation’s vision of the end times, believed that a war would break out in heaven, and Michael and all his angels would fight the dragon, that ancient serpent from the creation story in Genesis, who is called the Devil or Satan – the power of evil.  And the defeated dragon would no longer have a place in the heavens, but by the authority of God’s Messiah, and the blood of the Lamb, he would be cast out.  “Lamb-y,” as Barbara Rossing says, or the risen Christ, is really the conqueror, by the power of cross and resurrection.
 
Being thrown out of the heavenly skies above, of course, meant the dragon would fall to earth, and would, even if for only a short time, cause woe among the believers on earth, by aligning with the 4 Beasts, which mostly represented various forms of Rome or its Emperors. 
 
In our Gospel reading, ‘Jesus sees Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning.’  Luke’s account is apocalyptic, a post-resurrection vision, of the power the followers of Jesus are given, as they go out, like ‘the seventy’ did in this story, to create communities of believers.  Jesus gives us authority to stamp out evil, tread on the snakes and scorpions.  The church is given power over the enemy, the deceiver, and ultimately, ‘nothing will hurt you,’ Jesus says to us! 
 
So for us in these in-between-times, after the resurrection and before the eschaton is fully revealed, the point, says Jesus, is not to get all puffed up about knowing the heavenly battle is ultimately won in Christ, but rejoice that your names are written in the book of life!  That is, as we battle the power of the dragon right now – even when it looks gloomy, and we may not be winning most days – God has entered us in the heavenly register of life already.  Right now! 
 
Some days when we lose two strong and beloved members of our congregation, in a matter of a couple of months, God brings us twice as many new members, and we see Satan fall like lightning! 
 
Some days when our elected leaders seem to be betraying us for the umpteenth time, caving in to corporate raiders and enriching the already rich once again, God sends a brave whistleblower revealing a single, crystalizing truth, which convinces even the most timid ones to rise up and plead our case against corruption and dereliction of duty.
 
Some days when the news of terminal illness, or natural disaster strikes, God sends a message of hope, a newly discovered medicine, or a heroic story of rescue that saved those who seemed lost. 
 
Today, we inscribe 4 new names in our Unity book of life.  Four new travelers to rejoice with on our journey toward Jerusalem’s cross and resurrection.  We will take all the help we can get! – for our battles in this life are real.  We face joblessness and a lack of resources in our city, illnesses and a broken health care system, a climate crisis raining down on us, and there is that invisible power, a dragon, that continues to pit us one against another, polarizing us, and isolating us into individual silo’s.  But we are fervent pray-ers and faithful fighters, even in the face of systems that are rigged against us and seem to make us lose in this world. 
 
And Michael and All Angels are our messengers.  They bring good news of a great joy, that in Christ Jesus, a Savior has been born to us, and by the faith of Christ our names are already written in the book of life.  Together – whether we are stars, or role players, whether we score 69 points or 1, or even no points in the game of life – we are in it together, in the Church of Jesus Christ, and here at Unity – where we are one, and unbeatable! 
 
The battles we are in are ultimately spiritual battles – battles for justice and peace, and for a life that really is life, which can only be won non-violently, together.  The dragon who urges polarization, is a house divided against itself, that will ultimately collapse. 
 
Let us rejoice in the victory that is already won!  We have seen Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning!  Let us rejoice in the heavenly dwellings in the age to come, where our names are already written in the book of life. 

Readings for 15th Sunday after Pentecost, September 29, 2019

• Jeremiah 8:18-9:1 and Psalm 79:1-9  
• 1 Timothy 2:1-7 
• Luke 16:1-13

"Forgive it Now!" Pastor Fred
The Great Recession of 2007 changed the way we live.  Literally, changed what kind of place and where we live.  People in the city and the suburbs lost their homes.  And now we see, there has been a trend away from the long-time goal of becoming a home-owner, and towards renting, becoming an apartment dweller. 
 
And, Millennials are leading the way in this!  Not that I have any experience as a Millennial, but from second-hand knowledge anyway, I’ve learned this!  The biggest boom in rentals, is in the West Loop.  “Three out of four residents of a West Loop ZIP code (60661) are millennials, the highest concentration of millennials in any urban ZIP code in the nation.” (https://www.chicagobusiness.com/residential-real-estate/chicago-zip-code-has-highest-concentration-millennials-us) Though, the largest concentration of Millennials, those born between 1983 and 2000, in Chicago, is in the neighborhood of Lakeview, with over 41,000. 
 
Millennials live in traditional Chicago apartments – and in new developments.  Some of those new developments include co-living apartments, or units that combine private space with shared space, like sharing a large well-equipped Kitchen, and other common spaces, where you might share your favorite Netflix shows on a shared Video screen, or enjoy a micro-brew around a shared fireplace.
 
 
And this makes sense, it seems to me, considering the social trends brought on by the Great Recession.  Millennials – as Melanie Curtin of Inc.com says – “are more transient, they have a lot of [student] debt, people are moving to cities and want to own less… there's a shift in values toward experience over ownership.” 
 
Some Millennials are also ‘couch hopping,’ or sleeping on friend’s couches, because they don’t have a place of their own, due to lots of things, including that high debt, also high rates of job turnover, or maybe being rejected for one’s sexual orientation or gender identity.  
 
In Jesus parable today, he begins talking about a rich man, and ends up talking about our home in the age to come.  It’s about, dirty dealing money managers and owners, and how we are to live in this hard world, by keeping our eye on the prize of the world, and age to come, Jesus revealed to us. 
 
So, this is a difficult parable to digest.  But The Message translation, a modern paraphrase translation by Pastor and scholar, Eugene Peterson, can help, I think.  Peterson entitles this parable, “The Story of the Crooked Manager,”  
Jesus said to his disciples, “There was once a rich man who had a manager. He got reports that the manager had been taking advantage of his position by running up huge personal expenses. So he called him in and said, ‘What’s this I hear about you? You’re fired. And I want a complete audit of your books.’
  “The manager said to himself, ‘What am I going to do? I’ve lost my job as manager. I’m not strong enough for a laboring job, and I’m too proud to beg…. Ah, I’ve got a plan. Here’s what I’ll do… then when I’m turned out into the street, people will take me into their houses.’
  “Then he went at it. One after another, he called in the people who were in debt to his master. He said to the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’
  “He replied, ‘A hundred jugs of oil.’
  “The manager said, ‘Here, take your bill, sit down here – quick now – write fifty.’
  “To the next he said, ‘And you, what do you owe?’
  “He answered, ‘A hundred sacks of wheat.’
  “He said, ‘Take your bill, write in eighty.’
  “Now here’s a surprise: The master praised the crooked manager? And why? Because he knew how to look after himself. Streetwise people are smarter in this regard than law-abiding citizens. They are on constant alert, looking for angles, surviving by their wits. I want you to be smart in the same way – but for what is right – using every adversity to stimulate you to creative survival, to concentrate your attention on the bare essentials, so you’ll live, really live, and not complacently just get by on good behavior.” 
 
And yet another translation, of just the last verse, I really like, is from the New Jerusalem Bible: “And so I tell you this: use money, tainted as it is, to win you friends, and thus make sure that when it fails you, they will welcome you into dwellings [in the age to come].” (for “age to come,” see N.T. Wright, How God Became King, pp. 44-45)
 
Jesus’ parables were meant to shake us up, and to offer a surprise.  To lure us into a common, everyday story, that then flips the script, and leads us into a new understanding of the kingdom and realm of God Jesus was announcing, for the sake of our lives and the world. 
 
The behavior of the Manager, though crooked, is somewhat understandable – isn’t it – in that he’s trying to insure that, even if he loses his job, he’ll have somewhere to land, someone to ‘couch hop’ with.  He does it by leveraging the relationships he has as Manager with those in debt to his Master.  And specifically, by erasing, on the spot, 50% of the debt in one case, and a 20% in another!  We might expect that when the Master finds out about this crooked behavior, even if it is ‘Streetwise,’ he’ll be punished, fired for sure! 
 
And so, as The Message translation makes clear, that’s the surprise!  The Master instead ‘commends’ and ‘praises’ the crooked, unjust Manager, for his streetwise, and shrewd, action. 
 
One way we can make sense of this, is if we see the Manager’s action through the lens of the Lord’s Prayer, which Jesus teaches his Disciples.  Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer is unique when it comes to the petition on forgiveness.  It’s the one that prays: “And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.”  That is, as we forgive monetary debts, that were so very common in Jesus’ time, please forgive us our sins. 
 
And what else did the crooked and shrewd Manager do, if not forgive debts!?  He forgave them!  Maybe it wasn’t for altruistic reasons.  Maybe it was for personal gain, and for getting a couch to sleep on, down the line.  But this, according to Jesus, is what delights the Master!  The Master praises his shrewd ingenuity.  And Jesus concludes that that is what we have to do, “be smart in the same way – but” of course, “for what is right” and just!
 
And so, if the Master in the Parable is God, what is God telling us?  We know how in Luke’s gospel, forgiveness is major theme throughout, and finally, even on the cross, Jesus forgives the criminal who is repentant in his last dying moments, and says, ‘today you will be with me in Paradise!’ 
 
The Master in the Parable recognizes forgiveness in the action of his Manager.  It doesn’t matter why the desperate Manager forgives, only, that he forgives.  Forgiveness is a key to right living between neighbors, and the restoration of our relationship with God.  It doesn’t matter if you forgive for noble reasons, or all the wrong reasons.  Jesus says, forgive it all.  Forgive it now.  Forgive it for any reason you want, or for no reason at all.  God is the font of forgiveness, and the abundance of grace, that begins to pour out, wherever forgiveness happens. 
 
“And so I tell you this,” said Jesus in conclusion of his Crooked Manager Parable, “use money, tainted as it is, to win you friends, and thus make sure that when it fails you, they will welcome you into dwellings [in the age to come].”
 
What’s your living arrangement, here in the present age, and in the age to come?  How much is it costing to you?  Are you a good steward of it? 
 
The Great Recession, with its lost wealth, changed home ownership for the Millennial generation, who shrewdly and creatively are crafting a new way of renting.  The Crooked Manager, faced with his own lost wealth, found redemption in the wild abandon of forgiving – for when we forgive others we are faithful with the riches God entrusts to us. 
 
Let us learn forgiveness, the key to entering a dwelling in the age to come!  ‘Forgive us our sins,’ O LORD, ‘as we forgive those indebted to us – and that we may be welcomed into homes now, and by God’s grace, in the new age to come!

Readings for 14th Sunday after Pentecost, Sept 15, 2019

• Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28 and Psalm 14 
• 1 Timothy 1:12-17  
• Luke 15:1-10

Dinner with Sinners, by Pastor Fred Kinsey
"Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to [Jesus.] 
And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, this fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
 
Jill Levine, in her volume, The Jewish Annotated Notes of the New Testament, says simply of  ‘Jesus eating with the tax collectors and sinners,’ that “it suggests he approves of them.”  He approves of them!  Or as Eugene Peterson says, “he treats them as old friends!” 
 
No wonder they’re coming near to listen to him, and sitting down to have dinner with Jesus.  They were lost, outcast, and now they are found! 
 
Jesus is directing these two parables from our Reading today – not to the tax collectors and sinners – but he’s telling it to the righteous ones who were grumbling about Jesus’ behavior. 
 
‘I know you’d have compassion and go and look for them,’ Jesus tells the righteous ones, ‘if you were to lose even just one out of a hundred sheep.  I know that you’d go search for it diligently until you recovered it!’  Of course, they weren’t Shepherds.  Whether they would, go searching, or not, is hard to tell.  Everyone knew the terrain in Israel for sheep herders was notoriously hilly, full of crags and ravines, trees and bushes.  Lost sheep could easily disappear.  And leaving the 99 behind, might expose all the rest of them to foxes and wolves, and the prospect of losing even more. 
 
But, in this parable, the Shepherd is the allegorical stand-in for God.  And God searches diligently – searches for us, around every bush and ravine, whatever it takes, until we are found.  And ‘when he has found the lost sheep,’ says Luke, ‘the Shepherd lays it on his shoulders and rejoices,’ and gathers all his friends to join in a party of celebration too!  For Jesus, it’s all about the searching God does for us, and then the abandon, and over the top celebrating, for returning what was lost.
 
This image of, laying the sheep on his shoulders, is one of the most frequently found on the walls of the Catacombs that the early Christians drew.  The Icon we use in the Prayer Area is a re-creation of that.  Jesus the Good Shepherd!  Jesus the Shepherd who searches diligently for us until we are found!  Jesus, like the Shepherd-boy Moses, who became the Shepherd who rescued his people Israel, freeing them from slavery in Egypt, and bringing them into the promised land. 
 
God is relentless!  God never wearies of the search for us! 
 
But you know what?!  Sometimes we don’t want to be found!  Sometimes we like where we’re at!  Like the Pharisees and Scribes, who were profiting off the way the system was.  It was working for them.  They were able to define what was righteous, partly just by demonizing who was socially unacceptable and lost.  Which is why they grumbled and weren’t pleased with Jesus ‘turning the tables.’ 
 
So for them, it wasn’t good news really, that “there is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons” like them, “who need no repentance!”  The same was true for the older brother in the story of the Prodigal son, which is the Reading that comes right after these two parables about the lost sheep and the lost coin.  It’s sometimes called the Parable of the Lost Son, the one the ‘gracious father’ throws a party for.  But the other son, the son who stayed home and did the right thing, the older son, is like the Pharisees and the scribes, and maybe like us too – the ones who are not lost, the ones who have found a worshiping community, who have found love and acceptance.  But instead of grumbling, says Jesus of the older son in the parable, we should come into the Banquet and join the celebration for the one who was lost!
 
But of course, that’s only half the truth too!  If we’ve learned anything here, it’s that we are all sinners and fall short of the glory of God.  Or as Martin Luther liked to say, even in our baptism, we are always, saints and sinners at the same time!  We can learn to trust God’s loving grace and forgiveness, but we are not perfect, and are terribly caught up in the structures of sin, like racism and sexism and capitalism, and need to be found, need to be rescued, over and over again!  We need to return to God with all our heart, to turn around and go in a new direction, which is literally what repentance means. 
 
And I think we can even dig a little deeper into our hearts, yet!  So, I’ll speak for myself.  I know I didn’t want to be found for a long time.  I thought ‘I’ had to find myself, that it was all up to me, that I had to do this good-work, when all the while I was really just pushing God away from finding me!  Probably because I wasn’t sure I was ready for what God was calling me to do.  And for me, I wasn’t confident I had the right skills for ordained ministry.  And when my pastor told me I did, it filled me with both gratitude, but also with trepidation!  How could I be worthy?!  ‘I’m just a boy,’ as the prophet Jeremiah said.  I was filled with doubts, and didn’t know how to let myself be found, even though it’s all I could think about! 
 
But God desires to find the lost, and never wearies of the search to bring them into the fold.  No one is worthy on their own.  But in the community of faith, we experience how God makes us worthy.  We’re all sinners and saints together.  We all feel unworthy and not totally up to the job, until we’re supported and accepted in faithfulness, together.  This ambivalence, is actually a healthy feeling, as opposed to a Messiah, or dictator-like, complex! 
 
But this both/and, sinner & saint, can be even more complicated in the real world, as I’m sure you probably know.  This week for example, I glimpsed it in the story of a 16 year old from Sweden.  You may have heard of her, Greta Thunberg, who’s tenaciously pushing us to ‘do something’ about the climate crisis!  She’s been visiting the United States the last couple of weeks.  And some people clearly don’t like her and what she’s been up to.  In fact, Maxime Bernier of the People’s Party of Canada, who knows Greta has autism, never-the-less Tweeted that she’s “clearly mentally unstable, and a pawn of the climate movement.” 
 
After a major backlash on behalf of her supporters, Mr. Bernier has apologized – well, sort of!  But Greta is actually one of the most clear-thinking among us – and no one’s pawn – and her autism, as she says herself, has actually enhanced her tremendous rise to leadership in this movement. 
 
It was at age 15 that she decided to stop doing the one thing all kids are supposed to do to fulfill their righteousness: go to school. Every Friday, she skipped classes to stand outside Sweden’s Parliament with her handmade sign that said simply: “School Strike For the Climate.”
 
She left the ranks of the “righteous,” as Jesus called it, and became a target, an outcast, one of the lost sinners.  But to Thunberg, the question was, “Why should we be studying for a future that soon may be no more, when no one is doing anything whatsoever to save that future?” 
 
Who needs the repenting, the turning around more, I wonder?  Greta, who skipped school?  Or us, who even if we are afraid of climate change and how fast it’s coming, continue on with our lives – maybe even doing good, and responsible, and righteous things – but without acting on our imperiled future? 
 
Karoline Lewis says: “These [2 parables of Jesus] elicit rather interesting adjectives [for] God, perhaps ones we do not use as often as we should – [God is] relentless, stubborn, insistent, tireless. After all, some of us would rather stay hidden, even wish to be lost or left alone, if not forever, at least for the time being, at least longer than a short-term stint.  A kind of ‘lost-ness’ that is even a mode of self-protection. ‘Just leave me alone. Let me be. I’m fine.’”
 
But Jesus, our Good Shepherd, has been bringing the lost into the fold for a long time now.  God does not let us wander alone, un-counted!  God finds us and enlivens us, again and again!  God won’t let our self-doubt and ambivalence undo us! 
 
Jesus the Good Shepherd, lifts us up and carries us on his shoulders – brings us in to the banquet of celebration – where all the ‘lost and found’ are rejoicing together.  Only God can make us righteous.  Let us, once we are found, become searchers too, and bring everyone into the never-ending Banqueting Table of the Lord!

Readings for Pentecost 12C, September 1, 2019

• Jeremiah 2:4-13 and Psalm 112 
• Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16  
• Luke 14:1, 7-14

Spicy Banquet, Pastor Fred
Jesus is an itinerant wandering preacher!  A prophet with nowhere to lay his head!  And always at odds with his nation’s leaders!  So what is Jesus doing, dining at the house of Israel’s upper-class elite leadership?!  But this isn’t the first, nor the last time he sits down to dine with them.  It’s complicated!
 
The Pharisees were actually a diversified sect in Jesus’ day, including many working class folks, as well as a few well-off leaders, like the one who threw the invitation-only Banquet in our Gospel Reading.  But Jesus was a leader with a reputation too.  He may not have had the same wardrobe of fine linens, but the Leaders of the Pharisees were interested, and in dialog with, what learned people like Jesus had to say.  And the skirmishes that Jesus had with them in the Gospel of Luke, shows how they thought about many of the same things.  But it just wasn’t true that all Pharisees, espoused the principles, Jesus was criticizing.  Nicodemus comes to mind!
 
And Jesus, no doubt, had an interest in debating with them too, most obviously, so he could invite them into the kingdom and realm of God, as he envisioned it, knowing that the Spirit of God rested on him, and these debates were not just prosaic exercises, but had consequences.
 
This is now the 3rd time Jesus was invited to a banquet along the way, on this, his momentous and final road to Jerusalem, and he must have caused quite a stir!
 
How about you, have you ever been invited to a banquet of upper-class socialites? 
 
The closest I’ve come, has been, ever since my dad left some money in his Will to the Lutheran Seminary in Hyde Park, and Kim and I have been invited to the donor’s banquet. It usually takes place at the exclusive, ornate Quadrangle Club, of the Univ. of Chicago, just a few blocks away, when the Board of Directors are in town, some of whom are million dollar givers.  But most are more like us, or, somewhere in between. 
 
First there’s the cocktail hour, with fancy hor’s devours coming by on trays every few minutes, delivered by a well-dressed wait staff.  The guests, of course, are dressed in their finest dresses and suits, and theoretically, you can rub shoulders with the elite.  But Kim and I mainly talk with the professors we know, who, coincidentally, or maybe not, happen to inhabit the same financial world we do! 
 
Then comes the dinner!  There are a few tables up front reserved for the honorees, some Board members, and speakers, like the President of the seminary.  But no one, as far as I know, has ever asked them ‘to move down’ and take ‘a lower place!’ 
 
Today, we don’t live in an ‘honor/shame culture’ like Jesus and the disciples did.  To be asked to be lowered from the best, to the worst seat, was pretty much the end of your life and status in ancient Israel – you would be shamed and cast out of your upper social standing, which had major consequences. 
 
That’s not exactly how it works for us.  There are other rules we have.  Being disloyal to your family, or your boss, for example, can bring shades of retribution.  The corporate world can be especially nasty.  The bigger and richer the company, the deeper the control from the top down, that’s possible.  Government, by our democratic rules, works different, or is supposed to, at least.  Hierarchy has mostly been regulated out.  The standard for elected leaders is supposed to be measured against how they serve us, their loyalty is to the voters and to the people.  Which is why, being a successful business man in the corporate world, does not always mean you’ll be a good executive leader in elected office!
 
What’s more notable for us in our gospel, I think, is Jesus’ instructions to the leader, the top dog, who threw the banquet.  It came, just after his admonition, ‘For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.’ 
 
And ‘Jesus said also to the one who had invited him, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid.  But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.  And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”’  Luke insisted that the lowly – like Mary the mother of Jesus, or any number of those he heals – would be lifted up, and the rich sent away empty, a strong and recurrent theme in Luke’s gospel. 
 
In religious circles, we try to put this into practice, in any number, and variety of ways.  We give to Care for Real, for example, while some churches host meals that the poor can freely attend.  We give to Lutheran World Relief and UNICEF, to those victimized by hurricane, earthquake, and flood.  We canvass, and work for better housing for people with low incomes, and assemble hygiene kits for people experiencing homelessness.  We greet refugees at the airport, or immigrants fleeing violence and poverty, and we befriend them and provide them housing, and there are probably hundreds of other ways. 
 
Perhaps it’s the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews that has been our teacher, for 2 millennia now, “Let mutual love continue,” they said.  “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it (Sarah and Abraham).  Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured. ….. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.” 
 
So the kind of church, country, and world we want to live in, is up to us!  We could invite just our friends to our banquets.  We could invite neighbors like us, hoping they might invite us in return – as Jesus said.  Or, we can invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind, immigrants and refugees, those who cannot repay us.  For then we are honored in the kingdom of God! 
 
What kind of a country and world will we have, if we reject those immigrants at our doorstep fleeing violence, who are poor and in need of health care?  Who will we be, if we turn them away?  What kind of country and world are we making by insisting on fencing them out?  Who are we fooling, when people of color are targeted, and then out of ‘the other side of our mouth,’ the rich northern-most European countries are praised?  What kind of people will we be, if, as the Trump White House wants to do, we implement caging families without due process, for as long as we want? 
 
And then, who will they come for next? 
 
The prophet Jeremiah had words for such as these:
7I brought you into a plentiful land (O house of Jacob)
  to eat its fruits and its good things.
 But when you entered you defiled my land,
  and made my heritage an abomination…
12Be appalled, O heavens, at this,
  be shocked, be utterly desolate,
 says the LORD,
 
We too, have lived off the fruits of this rich land, sometimes living in peace and harmony with its inhabitants, sometimes using people as cheap and free labor.  Sometimes we’ve done well, welcoming the ‘tired and poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the homeless and tempest-tost,’ but sometimes we’ve sent boat loads of refuge seekers, back to their executioners. 
 
Who will we be?  Are we able to have an honest conversation together, rich and poor, proud and prophet? 
 
Isn’t this why Jesus accepts the invitation to the banquet of the rich leader?  So he can sit down with them, even though he knows there is yet a truth he must tell, a counter invitation he must offer to the outcast, they may not want to hear?  It’s complicated – but Jesus leads the way through all difficulties.
 
When Jesus arrived at the registration table at the house of the elite leader, on the road to his cross and resurrection, and put on his name-tag, to eat with them on the Sabbath, Luke says ‘they were watching him closely.’  And they knew, their table conversation would be spicy! 
 
The banqueting table of the Lord includes, not just the elite conversation partners of society, who can repay you, but everyone is invited to the Feast of Thanksgiving around God’s Table! 
 
Go and do likewise!  Invite the poor, ‘the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the homeless and tempest-tost,’ and then, the kingdom and realm of God, has already begun to dawn amongst us. 
 
“For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

Readings for 9th Sunday after Pentecost, August 11, 2019

• Isaiah 1:1, 10-20 and Psalm 50:1-8, 22-23  
• Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16  
• Luke 12:32-40

"Tugging Urgency," Pastor Fred
[Jesus said:] “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. 
 
And again, “Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks. 
 
And finally, “You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”
 
One of the things that tugged at me, calling me to become a pastor, was this feeling of urgency in Jesus’ message.  It captured me, and wouldn’t let me go.  A sense that it was so real, and a grasp that just wouldn’t leave me alone.  Do you ever feel that?
 
God wants ‘to give us the kingdom.’  ‘Sell your possessions and give alms… for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.’  Hearing and taking those kinds of passages seriously, my parents barely had to tell me to be good!  I was dressed and ready for action.  My lamp was lit!  If Jesus was coming, I wanted to be ready. 
 
Why would I want to join in throwing water balloons off the bridge at the end of my block, when I was 12 years old – at the urging of my next door neighbor – to hit the cars passing underneath!?  I felt no urge, really, to participate in that.  But, full disclosure, I did stand by and watch him do it!  And when his aim was true, I ran just as fast, when the driver slammed on his brakes and came running up the embankment after us! 
 
In those days, going to church, praying the prayers, talking with my Sunday School teachers, and hearing the sermon, kept me connected to the urgency of the Gospel.  What if it was true?  What if we still need to have our lamps lit in waiting for the Bridegroom to enter and come into the banquet?  Have you felt this feeling? 
 
I had to find out if it was true!  What did it mean that Mary, the mother of Jesus, sang the Magnificat in response to her acceptance of bearing the Son of God?  Crooning that, “God has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich empty away.”  Did that have anything to do with what Jesus says in Luke’s gospel today, addressed to his well off congregation?  “Sell your possessions, and give alms… For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also?”  Did Mary feel the urgency?
 
Isn’t it also like the little parable that comes next, the same kind of reversal of rich and poor, when Jesus says, “Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes” – comes back and enters the wedding banquet – “truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them.”  What? The master will serve the servants?!  That’s a crazy reversal, that wouldn’t have ever happened in Jesus’ time, except that, Jesus himself did it! 
 
But what if it’s true in the kingdom and realm of God?  Is that what Jesus is saying?  What does that mean today?  I couldn’t, and still can’t let go of this urgency, this imperative. 
 
What if the real life we’re supposed to be living is not this one we drudge through every day(?) – going to jobs where people have only feigned respect for us, and who we really are – who are mostly trying to leverage more and more work out of us, so that they too(!) can keep their jobs and impress their bosses.  What if instead of that oppressive, never ending wheel of transactional, transient living, there is ‘a life that really is life,’ a meaning and joy that can fulfill us? 
 
I mean, stop me if this sounds crazy?  Does this sound crazy? 
 
I know too, that being called to be a pastor, and all the studying and seminary training, is not the same level of urgency for everyone.  But the urgency of the gospel message is not aimed at pastors, but at everyone who hears the Word of God.  We all have different gifts to bring, but the same God is urgently calling us. 
 
The disciples who gave up everything to follow Jesus, are never-the-less portrayed in the gospels as being mostly clueless.  And it’s not until Luke’s 2nd Book, The Acts of the Apostles, that the Disciples finally understand the urgency of the kingdom, beginning on the Day of Pentecost.  And Peter preaches, speaking for them all, because they finally all envision the Kingdom, as Jesus implored them.  They “get it,” that God, in raising up Jesus – who is the Anointed one, the Great Shepherd of the sheep, the sacrificial lamb, and Son of God – had indeed turned the tables, and declared that the lowly are lifted up, and the powerful need not lord it over them – and us! 
 
This is what is so urgent, and calls us all.  The Spirit is available to everyone.  And it lives in community wherever Christians gather, and live out the promise. 
 
But the church has too often been tempted to give up on its mission.  Over time, we thought that, either Jesus, or the early church, failed in bringing in the new age of the kingdom.  The urgency we read about in the gospels was thought to mean that it would all happen right away, at least within their lifetimes.  And obviously it didn’t, not fully. 
 
So, more recently, it was reinterpreted to mean, that the urgency of the moment was personal, each of us comes to our individual moment of decision, or insight.  Faith perhaps, is personal, and at the 2nd Coming each of us will be judged on our own merits.  And yet, this individualism of faith, doesn’t track at all with the kingdom and realm of God that Jesus described – which was always communal and for the life of the world. 
 
But a new generation of teachers, led notably by Bishop N. T. Wright, have been teaching a 3rd way, one that actually combines the two.  Jesus, he says, was talking about the sudden and urgent arrival of the kingdom and realm of God, which collectively was being newly born, out of his own ‘death and resurrection,’ as God’s Messiah.  And Jesus’ mission was to inaugurate a new age of peace with justice, a reversal of the ways of this world, that always settle our differences by violence and war, feeding the sin and corruption of the rich few oppressing the poor.  As Jesus told his Disciples when they reached Jerusalem in 19th chapter of Luke, “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace!  But now they are hidden from your eyes.” 
 
The disciples weren’t ready to see and understand just yet – no one was – that the urgency of the about-to-happen “visitation from God,” the reversal of the cross by the victory of Easter morning’s empty tomb, was the true way of life and peace.  It is the ultimate metaphor and parable, grouinded in the historical structures of our created life together. 
 
But 2,000 years later, how often has this pattern repeated itself, of war and oppression, that even the people of God don’t have the eyes to see the ways of the Prince of Peace?!  How many more times before we are able to see and envision the Lord of Life, in a life of sacrifice, justice, and peace? 
 
In the 2nd and final little parable Jesus tells in our reading today, he says, “But know this: if the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into.  You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”
 
So, the final reversal, is that Jesus in the thief!  And we, all of us, are living in the owner’s house in the old kingdom, tied to a life of protecting our possessions and trying to keep the thief – Jesus! – out! 
 
But that’s alright, we also live all these years and centuries later, and the accumulated power of the Spirit continues to work on us.  “You must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”  The urgency is all around.  Our life of faith is the preparation.  Our life together in the Spirit, is our hope and expectation – that Jesus, the crucified and victorious Lamb of God has already conquered the Kingdom of this world, and is coming. 
 
He has already flipped the script, and turned the tables, through his ‘death and resurrection.’  We live in the kingdom and realm of God already!  Let us rejoice, “little flock,” in this comfort and relief!  For our hearts are living there, and here – in the treasure-store of heaven!  

Readings for 8th Sunday after Pentecost, August 4, 2019

• Hosea 11:1-11 and Psalm 107:1-9, 43  
• Colossians 3:1-11  
• Luke 12:13-21

Buying God, Pastor Fred sermon
How much does God cost?  Do you have enough stored up to buy God? 
 
Hopefully, that sounds preposterous to you!  Maybe even blasphemous! 
 
As good Lutherans – and, we most certainly are! – we know, that God’s Grace is a free gift.  Or as Luke says a few verses after our Reading today, “don’t be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom!” 
 
God wants to give us the realm and kingdom of God, for free!  At no cost!  Is there anything else of value, that we get for free?  When so many struggle to put food on the table for their families, how is it that the life of God, ‘the life that is life,’ comes gratis, no strings attached?  When the 3 richest individuals in America have more wealth than the bottom half of all Americans, it’s important to ask how our money is connected with our lives of faith, in our everyday life?  How is it, that the most important thing – our life in Christ – is gifted to us by God, and our life in relationship with the world and our neighbors, can be so costly? 
 
Jesus told the crowds, “Take care!  Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”  What ‘Life’ is, is definitely key here!  Then he told them a parable about a man with many possessions, barns of stuff saved up, that he would never be able to use! 
 
“The land of a rich man produced abundantly,” begins Jesus!  This is the American Dream!  40 acres and a mule! Win the Lottery!  Pull yourself up by your bootstraps!  Except, when has there ever been a boon for one person, that didn’t negatively affect another, to put it nicely?  40 acres and a mule was created from the theft of Native American land.  Just as the commercial and financial success of America was built on the labor of West Africans brought to this country against their will, to become an enslaved unpaid work force, that still affects us as neighbors, today. 
 
And today, the rich are in control more than ever.  Not because they work harder than the rest of us, but mostly by how the system of state and federal laws are crafted to protect and benefit them.  The modern myth of American neoliberalism that has invaded all sides of Washington in the past couple generations, claims that our economy works best, when taxes are slashed, and government is shrunk.  And it has worked gloriously well, for the already privileged and moneyed classes!   
 
I don’t know how many times this past decade I’ve chanted, “banks got bailed out, we got sold out!”  Whatever chant or curse word you’ve been using – this “greed,” as Jesus called it, doesn’t just benefit the rich, but it comes out of our pockets – and not just in dollars, but at a cost in lives.  Those who have, can get more, and build bigger barns.  But it’s always at the expense of those who have less, or the environment – or both.  And the toll is spiritual as well as material.  Greed knows no bounds.  It is the opposite of the ‘life’ that Jesus came to offer us.  The life that Jesus came to offer us, is a life of abundance, not in possessions, but in love and grace, peace and unity.  And for free! 
 
So, a contemporary, more familiar parable, might be about a man, who lived in the biggest city of the land, who owned property at a young age.  Not that he pulled himself up by the bootstraps, which is a myth anyway.  The money he had, was given to him by his (rich) father.  He tore down perfectly good buildings to build bigger ones.  When his deals fell through – because he kept trying to make Glittery Towers and Casino’s, that were monuments to his own name – his father bailed him out with more inheritance money.  When he created a business college, without any teachers(!), and the students demanded their money back, he sued them, until they couldn’t afford their lawyers any longer.
 
And soon, he began to feel like he could do nothing wrong.  And that if you weren’t rich like him, you deserved just what struggling poor or working class station you had.  He dined at the finest restaurants, relaxed and was merry with the most beautiful people – and laughed that he could take whatever he liked.  He listened to know one, and often talked about himself in the 3rd person.  “I said to myself, you have everything a man could want. You’ve done so well.  Take it easy and have the time of your life!
 
Which is just how the rich man in the parable spoke.  According to Jesus, he said, “I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” 
 
The rich have no need of others.  They are their own best consultant’s.  Their decisions are final.  What they do cannot be criticized. 
 
Jesus calls this ‘storing up treasures for yourselves, instead of being rich toward God.’  The rich don’t need God’s treasures, or are perhaps blinded by the pleasures of this world.  They don’t need to seek God’s counsel.  They are their own best confidant.  Jesus paints a picture of their loneliness, vanity, and narcissism. 
 
If I’m sounding like I’m about to get vindictive, please, let me know, I beg your good counsel! 
 
We know what Jesus says – he says, don’t make me a judge over your money decisions.  And, ‘Take care’ to live rich toward God. 
 
And to the rich man in his parable, he says, ‘You fool!’  Because, as he was making his decision to increase his possessions, without any input from his family or friends, without sharing a whit with those in need around him, Jesus tells us, the rich man died that night.  His desire to get richer at the expense of everyone else, was ended.  So Jesus asks the crowds, and us, what about the ‘abundance of possessions’ the rich man had?  Whose will they be?
 
All his possessions did him no good with God!  Maybe he knew that he couldn’t ‘buy God.’  But for some reason, he had no idea of the priceless nature of God’s kingdom and realm either!  “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.” 
 
The rich man, of course, couldn’t ever have enough stored up to buy God, even if he wanted to!  God’s grace is a free gift!
 
Our lives lived ‘towards God,’ do consist of something – not possessions, but this ‘living towards God,’ points to a relationship.  We build our relationship with God on our gifts of faith, hope and love.  And we do this with the tools of worship and prayer, by love of neighbor, and love of justice. 
 
“Whenever you give a cup of water to one of the least of these, you do it to me,” said Jesus.  Our relationships with our neighbors, is the working out, of our relationship with God.  ‘You cannot serve God and money,’ Jesus said elsewhere!  The ‘life that is life,’ the realm of God, is not compatible with a life of greed. 
 
Jesus taught us to pray that the ‘kingdom of heaven’ would come and fill this kingdom on earth where we live right now.
 
We cannot ‘buy God.’  It’s foolish to think we can even, ‘gain our own life.’  We are not our own best counselor – for that’s the job of the Holy Spirit!  Abundant life, the life of the kingdom and realm of God, is a life lived richly toward God, and a life that lifts up our neighbor’s welfare and life, just as much as our own. 
 
We pray, ‘give us this day our daily bread’ – and keep us from the ‘greed’ of building up bigger and bigger barns.  Let us live rich toward God!  

Readings for the 7th Sunday after Pentecost, July 28, 2019

• Hosea 1:2-10 and Psalm 85  
• Colossians 2:6-15, (16-19)  
• Luke 11:1-13

"How Do You Pray, by Pastor Fred
How do you pray?  What God, do you pray to? 
 
My mother told me more than once that she wished I could have met my grandfather, her father, because, she told me, he was such an amazing person.  He started the Boston Human Society for the Cruelty of Animals.  He also taught, and was the Superintendent of the Sunday School, at the same church in Milwaukee I later was Confirmed at.  Unfortunately, he died suddenly, when my mom was in college, years before I was born. 
 
Once when she was telling me this same story about how she wished I could have known my grandfather, she also offered up this.  Every night before bed, he got down on his knees to pray.  It was obviously an image that moved her deeply. 
 
I have read that Alexander Hamilton, and other Founding Fathers and Mothers, also got down on their knees to pray.  Perhaps it was a tradition that lasted many generations.  I don’t know of anyone who still does, but we all know it as a form of piety and faith, that shows respect to God. 
 
In the Gospels, people often fall down at Jesus’ feet, for example, when they ask to be healed, showing a posture of prayerful worship. 
 
How do you pray? 
 
It is testimony to how far we have come, I suppose, that we now allow for prayer to be, in some sense, our own faithful actions that we do out of lovingkindness, and for justice in the world.  Helping the homeless, or protesting the lack of clean water, are often considered enacted prayers, through our doing. 
 
Yet, when the Disciples see Jesus in prayer, ‘in a certain place,’ Luke doesn’t tell us what posture his prayer takes.  They wait nicely until he had finished, before they ask Jesus to teach them to pray.  After all, it dawns on them, John the Baptist taught his disciples!  So, what’s our prayer going to be?!  How and what, will their prayer be, as followers of Jesus?
 
Apparently Jesus is ready, at the drop of this hat, to instruct them.  He doesn’t say to fall down at his feet.  But he does begin by addressing who he wants his Disciples to pray to, that is, to “Abba!”  Or, in our translation, “Father.”  ‘Abba’ is the Aramaic word for father, or perhaps closer to, ‘daddy.’  The Apostle Paul uses ‘Abba’ in his letters to the Galatians, and the Roman churches, both times in the context of prayer, as well.  So it seems to have been a Jesus-tradition, that stuck! 
 
We pray to God, who is like a familiar, and good parent, to us – our motherly father.  But at the same time, we pray to the holy one, the one who is our creator God, the name above all names – “hallowed be your name.” 
 
And finally, we ask for God’s kingdom to come.  In Luke’s version of Jesus’ prayer, it is just that simple – “Abba, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come.”  In this third petition, there is a gap between this kingdom we live in, and God’s kingdom, and so the prayer Jesus teaches us, sets our minds on the peace and justice we all desire, and the mission God calls us to, to enact it.
 
How do we pray?  We pray with both familiarity, and deep reverence, to our God.  Jesus didn’t tell us what posture of prayer to take.  Luke doesn’t presume to either.  When ‘Jesus was praying in a certain place,’ – Was he on his knees? Standing with arms outstretched? Or leading people in a march that God’s kingdom come!? 
 
The main thing is having, the confidence and humility, the courage and the faith, to acknowledge that God is, almighty, and at hand, and God is ruler of the realm and kingdom we pray for. 
 
In the crazy parable that follows, Jesus emphasizes the shameless way the man acts, in assuming his request for bread in the middle of the night, will be answered!  “Imagine what would happen if you went to a friend in the middle of the night and said, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread. An old friend traveling through just showed up, and I don’t have a thing on hand.’ The friend answers from his bed, ‘Don’t bother me. The door’s locked, my children are all down for the night; I cannot get up and give you anything.’ But let me tell you,” says Jesus, “even if he won’t get up because he’s a friend, at least because of his [shamelessness] he will get up and get you whatever you need.” 
 
It takes a courageous faith in God to be asking, like this, and it presumes that God is in a close and familiar relationship with us, the petitioners. 
 
So, if that’s how we pray, what is the God that we pray to? 
 
Can we simply ask anything and we’ll receive it?  Knock on any door we like, and it will be opened to us?  If we pray hard enough, will God make us rich?  Will our cancer magically disappear?  Will our enemies be vanquished by morning?  What about the gift of free will?
 
The 2nd half of the Lord’s Prayer turns from naming God, to naming what our needs are.  Just three things: 1) “Give us each day our daily bread.”  Again, in faith, we boldly ask each day that we have enough to eat.  “We,” not just “me,” shaping the way we value food, knowing that in this world, it is said that we have enough food to feed everyone on the planet – but because of the inequity of distribution, most of the world is malnourished or even starving.  ‘Daily bread’ is a huge, and continuing concern, both practically and spiritually, that we pray for. 
 
Secondly, “forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.”  You can’t have one without the other, Jesus tells us.  It is not transactional, or quid pro quo, but ‘forgiving and being forgiven’ is one, unified, mystical journey we undertake every day, as we seek God’s kingdom to come.   
 
Jesus asks us, to pray for the food that sustains everyone everyday, and for a discipline of forgiveness – because that’s the kind of God, God is.  These are the things that bring the kingdom of God closer – and the spiritual practices, that give us the freedom to be God’s children, in the image of God.  Prayers for our own personal enrichment at the expense of others – sometimes known as The Prayer of Jabez – do not fit into the coming kingdom of God, but instead can only lead us into “the time of trial,” that we pray to be delivered from.
 
This weekend is the 100th Anniversary of the so-called, Chicago “Race-Riots” of 1919, when after a very hot week in July that summer, some white men brutally killed a black teenager while swimming off a Lake Michigan beach, only because he crossed some unwritten line of segregation.  Tensions were high amongst the fearful white communities, and oppressed communities of color, 100 years ago.  And when Police were called in – who didn’t arrest the killers, but instead arrested some from the, understandably outraged African American community – all hell broke loose!   I’m starting to wonder how far we’ve come, since then?!
 
No doubt many of those white folk were raised in Christian homes, and perhaps still identified that way, maybe even went to church.  But, what kind of God did they pray to?!  Was it the God who is our holy other, the God who at the same time is our Abba, our good and benevolent parent?  God does not divide us up against each other, or elevate one people over another! 
 
And so finally, let’s let the words of the great theologian, The Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman, who was both a Mystic, and served as spiritual advisor to Dr. King, and others in the movement, wash over us:
 
“The human spirit has two fundamental demands that must be met relative to God,” wrote Pastor Thurman. “First, [God] must be vast, limitless, transcendent, all-comprehensive, so that there is no thing that is outside the wide reaches of His apprehension. The second demand is that [God] be personal and intimate. [We] must have a sense of being cared for, of not being alone and stranded in the universe...” he said.
 
This, is the God we pray to, in the Lord’s Prayer, which then shapes us into the children of God.  Lord, teach us to pray.  That we may hallow your name, and live our lives for your kingdom, which is coming with love and justice for all.