Sermon -- 28 October 2007

PROPER 25 / 22 PENTECOST — 28 October 2007
Trinity, Iowa City — 8:45 am
Joel 2:23-32 Ps 65 2Tim 4:6-8,16-18 Luke 18:9-14

© 2007 William S. J. Moorhead

“God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”

The parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector is, I assume, one of Jesus’ more familiar stories. We have listened to it being read on Sundays every three years for the last thirty years in late October, and before that it was read every Sunday along about mid-August. So we know this story pretty well.

Which may not be the same thing has having really heard it.

I suspect that when we hear this story — at least if “we” are anything like “me” — we identify with the tax collector. (Excursus: the tax collector was a notorious sinner, not because he collected taxes, but because he collected taxes for the Romans, and furthermore did so dishonestly to his own personal profit. End of excursus.) We identify with the prayer of the tax collector: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner! But I thank you, God, that at least I am not like other people like that hypocritical Pharisee bragging about how devout he is.”

Oops.

Christians have often made the simple assumption that the problem with the Pharisees was that they were hypocrites — that is, they were phonies — they said one thing but actually did something else. Well, no doubt some of the Pharisees were hypocrites — on occasion Jesus really put it to them about their hypocrisy, although it was generally about more than just being phonies. But then, Christians can be phonies and hypocrites sometimes too. (This would include you, and me.) But in the case of the Pharisee in this story, there’s no reason to think he’s not telling the truth in his prayer. (Presumably a prayer to God, though it’s not entirely clear just who he’s talking to!) The Pharisee was a very good man. He really did tithe his income. He really did fast twice a week (and that meant no food until supper, not just giving up hamburgers).

Another excursus: In an early Christian writing called the Didache, or the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, dating probably to a generation or so after the New Testament, it says to Christians: “Your fasts must not be identical to those of the hypocrites [i.e., the Jews, who by that time had become the spiritual descendents of the Pharisees]. They fast on Mondays and Thursdays; but you should fast on Wednesdays and Fridays.” Wonderful. Two generations into Christianity, and already the Church has acquired a “Doesn’t Get It” Society. End of second excursus.

The Pharisee thought he was religiously superior to other people. And he was. He was not a thief, or a rogue, or an adulterer (“greedy, unjust, adulterous” the text says). And especially he was not a betrayer of his own people, like the tax collector over in the corner. He really was better than others by all the usual religious standards; he obeyed the Law, he kept all the rules (and then some), and he thought this won him God’s special favor. Moral basket cases like the tax collector earned his contempt. And though he probably didn’t realize it, he was even contemptuous of God, or at least awfully arrogant. He thought God “owed him.”

Arrogant toward God; contemptuous toward his fellow human beings. Very “religious.”

The tax collector? All we know of him is that he cries to God for mercy. Does he then go home and give up his career of collaboration and extortion? We don’t know. We don’t know how or why he got into the tax-farming racket in the first place — and thereby incurring the hatred of his fellow Jews. Greed? Perhaps. Or despair? Maybe. We don’t know. (Why do people become drug dealers?) And what does Jesus say about this tax collector? “He went down to his home justified rather than the other.” He was the one declared righteous, the one in right relationship with God.

I suppose it has always been the case, but it seems to be especially the case these days, that “religious” people so-called, so-claimed, are highly vocal about “others.” This seems to be so among American Christians generally, but also within the Anglican Communion and the Episcopal Church.

Do you suppose there are some aspects of what we consider “religion” that “just don’t get it” as far as what the Kingdom of God is really about? And who God really is, and what God really cares about?

Sermon -- 21 October 2007

Proper 24 / 21 Pentecost — 21 October 2007
St. Michael’s Mount Pleasant — 9:00 am
BCP: Gen 32:3-8,22-30 Ps 121 2Tim 3:14-4:5 Luke 18:1-8a
RCL: Jer 31:27-34 Ps 119:97-104 2Tim 3:14-4:5 Luke 18:1-8

© William Moorhead 2007

Will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night?

As you may recall, about three months ago in the Sunday Gospel reading we heard a strange little story that Jesus told about a man whose neighbor came to him in the middle of the night to borrow some bread to set before a friend who had shown up unexpectedly. And after a bit of whining and moaning, the man gets up and gives his neighbor what he needs. And Jesus ends up by making the point that if we who are evil still will meet the needs of others, how much more will God give the Holy Spirit to those who ask.[1] (If you missed it back at the end of July, you can check it out on my sermon blog, “Have Stole, Will Travel.”[2] Just Google it, or me.)

Today we hear what seems like a very similar story. And like the earlier one, it’s probably not as simple as it may seem. Luke introduces this parable as being about the need of the disciples to pray always and not to lose heart. Well, that’s part of it, but I think there are some other things going on as well.

The first character in the story is a judge “who neither feared God nor had respect for people.” That makes him problematic right from the start. In our society we like to assume that our judges fear God, or at least the law, and also have respect for other human beings, and on the whole I think we are justified in that assumption. In Israelite society the expectations for judges was just as high, if not higher. The task of the judge in Israel was not just the technical interpretation and administration of the law (Israelite law was a good bit less complicated than modern American law, but cases could still be very difficult), but the determination and dispensation of God’s justice and God’s shalom within the covenant community. By these standards the judge in this story is not a very good judge!

The second character in the story is a widow. Being a widow in any society in any age is always difficult for a variety of reasons, but in Israel as in most ancient societies, widows were in a particularly powerless and vulnerable position. They did not normally have any inheritance rights, and so if a woman’s husband died and she had no sons who could take care of her, she could be in a very bad way. A recurring theme both in the Old Testament and in the New is the great importance of providing care and justice for the widows and orphans. To abuse and exploit these powerless ones is to incur God’s wrath.

Apparently someone is taking some advantage of this widow in the story, and she appeals to the judge, who initially does not care. But she doesn’t give up; and the judge finally says, well, even though I don’t care about God and I don’t care about other people, this woman is driving me crazy, so I’ll give her the justice she demands or in the end she’ll come and smack me in the face (that’s the literal meaning of the Greek!), or (perhaps metaphorically) “give me a black eye,” or (even more metaphorically, and a bit wimpily as we usually now translate it) wear me out.

And Jesus goes on: See? Even a bad judge finally gives in to justice! All the more so will God give justice to his chosen people who cry out for vindication. And he concludes: “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

This leads me to think, going back to the first verse, that “the need to pray always and not lose heart” is not primarily about “asking God to give us what we want,” though that may be an included dimension of what he is saying. Because the story Jesus tells is really about justice, and particularly justice for the powerless and oppressed.

During much of Christian history, we have had the notion that what Jesus was primarily about was teaching us a new religion. I’m not so sure about that — it depends on what you mean by “religion.” A lot of what passes for “religion” these days — not only among Christians but even among Episcopalians — doesn’t seem to me to have very much to do with Jesus. What Jesus was about was the Kingdom of God — the proclaiming and implementing and enacting of the Kingdom of God. God’s Kingdom beginning now, God’s Kingdom eternally. But beginning here and now.

And so when we pray always, not losing heart, in the first instance that is not about “give me what I want” but committing myself constantly and with determination to the cause of the Kingdom of God. When Jesus taught us to pray, he told us to begin with “Hallowed be thy Name: Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Only then do we go on to what we need (not just what we want) and then move directly to the grace to seek reconciliation and steadfastly to stand against the power of evil. This is the faith on earth for which the Son of Man seeks when he comes.

A century and a half ago, the English priest and theologian Frederick Denison Maurice noted that we are trying to fill people with “religion” when what they really need is the Living God. Christ did not come to establish a religious sect but God’s kingdom — a kingdom embracing all people, with no class distinctions, no rich and poor, no oppressor or oppressed — a kingdom of love and justice.

For this kingdom we must pray always, not lose heart in striving to serve it, and in our commitment to God’s Kingdom be found faithful by our Lord when he comes.

[1] Proper 12; Luke 11:1-13.
[2] http://havestole.blogspot.com

Sermon -- 16 September 2007

Proper 19 / 16th Pentecost — 16 September 2007
St. Luke’s, Cedar Falls — 8:00 & 10:15
Jer 4:11-12,22-28 Ps 14 1Tim 1:12-17 Luke 15:1-10

Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.

If I were a little more Monty-Pythonesque, I might produce a script in which there are a couple of shepherds standing at the back of the crowd muttering, “Oh, will ye listen to the carpenter now! Never herded a sheep in his life, he hasn’t! You can’t just leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness! You’d come back with your little lost sheep and there would be only eighty-nine sheep, scattered all over South Galilee, and ten fat and happy wolves!”

Well, that shows how not to interpret the parables of Jesus! Jesus isn’t talking about sheep-herding, or about keeping track of your money, he’s talking about God’s joy at finding the lost. “Hey, everybody! I found my sheep! Hey, everybody! I found my coin!” The sheer delight at finding something that had been lost! We’ve all had that experience. Some of us are at the point where we have that experience all the time, because we lose things all the time! But it’s more than just, “Oh, there are my car keys!” Think of something, perhaps some old and precious keepsake that you were trying to find once, and you couldn’t find it, and you were sure it was just gone forever and you’d never see it again, and then one day you ran across it in some utterly unlikely place — “Hey, look what I found! look what I found!” That’s the joy, and that’s the joy God feels about us.

I am inclined to think — Matthew’s parallel version of the parable of the lost sheep gives me some warrant, but in any case I am inclined to think — that the lines about “there is more joy in heaven” and “there is joy in the presence of the angels of God” are editorial addition by St. Luke. I don’t doubt that there is joy among the angels over one sinner who repents, but that’s not really the point, and it seems to me that it piously diffuses Jesus’ point, that God rejoices. Moreover, God does not only rejoice, but bids us as well as the angels to share in the divine joy. We too are to rejoice that the lost is found. And not to be like Jonah outside Nineveh, sitting around grumping: “Yeah, well what would have happened if the wolves had come while he was out looking for that stupid little lost sheep? When is she going to learn to keep track of her money a little better?” (Jesus gets at this a little more pointedly in the next story, the Lost Son, which we actually heard last Lent: “I’ve been working for you all these years but you never even let me have a little party with my friends, but when my bro—when your son comes home…”)

God rejoices. And we are to rejoice with God.

This may seem fairly obvious to us.. I hope so. But I’m not sure it is as obvious as we may think.

There is a religious stance we can take, in which we say, “There is us, and there is them; and God loves us, but God hates them.” Often enough they are people who are not Christians, or not religious at all; or maybe they are purported Christians but are in some other way are not like us, because they worship differently, or are culturally or ethnically different, or interpret the Bible differently, or don’t have the same opinion about various moral or political issues. Lots of folks seem to have taken that stance, and are taking that stance today, and we ourselves have taken that stance often enough in our history, and in own lives; and even today it lies, sanitized and covert, at the heart of the longing —which we all share at least a little, if we will admit it — the craving for self-justification.

Or there is the other stance, that understands that “There is us, and that’s all — there is no them — and God loves us all and yearns to gather us all, the lost, the strayed, the misplaced, you, me, them — God loves us all, all, as Archbishop Tutu reminds us over and over again, not some, but all —God is a God who rejoices to find us, and invites us and expects us to rejoice with God when the lost is found and to share with God in the ministry of seeking the lost.

Here is the heart of Christianity: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him” — not "everyone who assents to certain doctrinal propositions about him" (however important those may be), but everyone who follows in faith and trust into the life of the Reign of God that Jesus proclaims and enacts — “so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

“Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep, I have found the coin, I have found my people who were lost.”

Sermon -- 5 August 2007

Proper 13 / 10 Pentecost — 5 August 2007
St. Luke’s, Cedar Falls — 9:00 am
Hosea 11:1-11 Psalm 107:1-9,43 Colossians 3:1-11 Luke 12:13-21

(c) 2007 William S. J. Moorhead

“Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”

In the Scripture readings today we hear about greed. In some places the Bible calls it “covetousness.” You remember coveting. The Tenth Commandment says, “Thou shalt not do it.” A little boy in Sunday School was learning the Commandments and he asked his teacher, “What does this word ‘covet’ mean”? And the teacher answered, “Well, you know all the nice toys your friends have? You’re not supposed to wish that they were yours instead.” The little boy shook his head: “Boy, they don’t let you have any fun around here!” St. Paul says, “I should not have known what it is to covet if the Law had not said, ‘You shall not covet.’” I didn’t realize it was wrong to do that! Most people understand that murder is wrong: a few of them do it, but they usually understand that it’s wrong. Most people understand that committing adultery is wrong: some people do say, “Well, yes, usually, for most people, but we’re different, we’re special, my spouse doesn’t understand my needs yada yada yada, but they still really understand that it’s wrong. Most people understand that stealing is wrong: some of them do it anyway, but they still understand that it’s wrong. Most people understand that bearing false witness against their neighbor is wrong: a lot of people do it and thoroughly enjoy it, but they still understand that it’s wrong. But coveting in our society is a major growth industry. Not only do people not understand that it’s wrong, they think it’s their patriotic duty. Covetousness is a leading economic indicator. Teaching covetousness it what children’s television does best; just watch the Saturday morning commercials. (Ads for laundry detergent are at least pitching something useful; but why does a child need a model robot that folds up and transforms itself into a toaster?)

In the Gospel today we hear Jesus say, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed: for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” And Jesus goes on to tell a story about a farmer whose land produces abundantly. And some aspects of this story may begin to sound very familiar. We are surrounded, in the Midwest, by people who if they don’t get some bigger bins this year may have to let some of their corn sit in the field and rot. Now, I’ve known a lot of farmers, and on the whole and as a class, farmers are not any more greedy or covetous than anyone else; as a matter of fact, if anything, rather less so. But look at what we have done in American agriculture (and I do mean we — we’re all part of this system): plant plant plant, produce produce produce, expand expand expand, grow grow grow, more ethanol more ethanol more ethanol, borrow borrow borrow. Oh, now you’re overextended? So trapped in debt service that you can’t afford to diversify, or conserve soil, or back off on chemicals or any of the other things you’d really like to do? Join the rat race…

Well, most of us, as far as I’ve noticed, are not flagrantly covetous or acquisitive or greedy sorts of people. Most of us look at the farmer in this parable and we agree, he’s a fool, and we say, “I’m not like that.” At least not too obviously. And we’re not. Not exactly. Most of us are, I think, reasonably content with fairly modest means. We may daydream about winning the lottery, but we don’t really take that kind of thing too seriously. We’re not greedy. We’re not miserly. Certainly not by the standards of the world around us.

But what kind of standards are those? Let’s not deceive ourselves. We are thoroughly programmed into a moderate covetousness, a politely restrained variety of greed, that drives us constantly to want a little bit more, a little bit bigger, a little bit better. Our society spends (and needs to spend) less of its resources on the necessities of life, and those more on “elective,” nonessential “luxuries” than any other society on earth. We brag about it, as if it were the badge of moral superiority. Our standard operating assumption is that one’s life consists precisely in the abundance of possessions! That’s why we call it “standard of living”! It is a wonderful gift and privilege that we are able to produce so far beyond our necessities. But we haven’t understood why that is, or what it entails, or what it’s meant for. We have made our luxuries into our necessities of life. And like two-year-olds, “we don’t share” very well.

It’s not my purpose to get us all off on a fruitless guilt-trip, and I do mean us all, because God knows I want all the same grownup toys and gadgets that you want, and I chafe at what I cannot afford. I, like you, have to face up to the whole question of the place and value of things in my life, and questions of what we can “afford” and “not afford,” and what that really means, and just what it is that all that stuff and clutter of our lives is really about. “”One’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” Do we really believe that? What’s the evidence that we do? St. Paul today bids us to put to death whatever in us is earthly, including greed (which is idolatry). As Jesus elsewhere puts it, “You cannot serve God and mammon.” We can’t have it both ways. We are entrusted with worldly resources by the God who made this world. We can use these resources in the service of God’s kingdom, for the common good of all humankind — examples might include the Millennium Development Goals, or the production and use of energy around the world, or how we care for animals and fish and birds and forests and prairies. Or we can keep our resources for ourselves, “us first.” But if we keep them for ourselves they will turn on us and master us and ultimately destroy us. And if we think that won’t happen, if we think that isn’t happening right now, then perhaps we are not paying very close attention.

Sermon -- 29 July 2007

Proper 12 / 9 Pentecost — 29 July 2007
St. Luke’s, Cedar Falls — 9:00 am
Hosea 1:2-10 Psalm 85 Colossians 2:6-19 Luke 11:1-13

(c) 2007 William S. J. Moorhead

“Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.”

I remember when I was a boy of, oh, about nine, I prayed, “O God, please let me get a new bicycle!” (Yes, bicycles had been invented when I was nine.) Some of you may have prayed that prayer yourselves at the age of nine or thereabouts. I suspect that nearly every child prays that prayer or one like it at one time or another. Such a prayer may seem inconsequential to us grownups, but it is serious business to children. And if the bicycle does not materialize, what then? Is it that prayer really doesn’t work? Does God not care that we get a bicycle? Is there a God at all?

Or a very much more adultly, much more serious instance: an elderly person, sick, feeble, in constant pain, alone, disabled, prays, “O God, let me die!” And yet that person lives on. And on. Why? Does not God hear our prayers? Does God not care? Is God there at all?

Prayer is right at the heart of our faith, of our relationship with God. Most of us take that for granted, most of the time, or at least some of the time. It’s a dimension of our daily lives, or we mean it to be, or we know we ought to mean it to be. And for many people, maybe for us, prayer comes very naturally. And for many people, maybe also for us, prayer is sometimes, maybe even very often, very problematic. We aren’t always sure how to pray; we aren’t always sure what to pray; we’re not always sure just what prayer is really all about. We often hear in the Gospels, or from the Church, or in sermons, things like what Jesus says today, “Ask, and it will be given you.” “Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it.” But what about when we ask, and we don’t receive? Is the promise empty? What about that? Some folks may tell us, “You don’t have enough faith,” and sometimes we may believe it, and often enough it may even be true. But as a response to the question of unanswered prayer, that’s a little too slick for me, too pat, maybe even a little too smug.

I’m wandering off into some pretty deep waters here. I don’t have a nice tidy little answer that will resolve the apparent discrepancy between what we read in the Bible, or think we are reading, and what we sometimes experience in our lives. Prayer — how it works, when it works, why sometimes it seems not to work, whether it even makes any sense to talk about prayer “working” in this sense at all (I suspect that may often be a category mistake) — prayer is a great mystery, that is to say, a reality which we experience but which we cannot fully comprehend of explain.

In the Gospel today the disciples come to Jesus and ask him to teach them to pray. Apparently John the Baptist had taught his disciples how to pray. I think this is the only reference in the Gospels to John teaching his followers how to pray, but it’s certainly reasonable enough to think that he did so — whether in the sense of “what words to say when you pray” or in a deeper sense of “what prayer is all about.” And it’s certainly reasonable that Jesus’ disciples should ask him the same question. Jesus’ first response is the words we call “the Lord’s Prayer.” You’ll note that this teaching from St. Luke is a bit more succinct than the slightly longer version in St. Matthew, which is the version which most Christians have used, both in corporate worship and in private devotion, ever since the first century. (My own suspicion is that this is a teaching that Jesus repeated on numerous occasions, with some variations, and it was initially remembered and passed on in slightly different forms until eventually it was more or less standardized.)

In Luke’s Gospel today Jesus goes on to talk a bit more about prayer. (In Matthew’s Gospel his teaching of the “Lord’s Prayer” is in the context of the Sermon on the Mount in chapter 6, in the section about almsgiving, prayer, and fasting.) And Jesus tells this rather strange little story about the man who goes to his neighbor in the middle of the night to borrow some bread. I think it’s fairly common to interpret this as meaning that if we just nag God enough, God will eventually give in and grant our request. In fact, I think I’ve preached that sermon myself. But I’m not so sure that’s right. Other commentators have pointed out that “persistence” is probably not the right translation; the word in Greek basically means “shamelessness.” What’s not clear is who is portrayed as shameless: the man knocking on the door at midnight, or the man who is being awakened. What would be more immediately obvious in a first-century Galilean village context is the strong sense of hospitality and honor: even though it is inconvenient, it would be shameful for a neighbor not to help his friend meet the unexpected obligations of hospitality. If that is how we are with each other, how much more is God willing to provide our needs.

God gives us good gifts. God will settle for nothing less than the best for us. God gives us God’s very self, God’s own presence, God’s Holy Spirit dwelling in us and filling us with the divine life. And in the end, that’s the gift that really matters. Our days on this earth are not the ultimate reality of our lives, and the circumstances of our days on this earth are not God’s ultimate gift. But in any circumstances and in all, to have life — real life, authentic life, a blaze of life in our hearts and souls, eternal life now and forever: that’s the gift God always gives to those who ask — but we have to accept it. It can always be found by those who search — but we have to claim it. It is always opened to those who knock — but we have to enter through the door.

That doesn’t answer all the questions about prayer and about Jesus’ promises. But maybe it’s a place to begin.

Sermon -- 22 July 2007

Proper 11 / 8th after Pentecost — 22 July 2007
Trinity, Iowa City — 8:45
RCL: Amos 8:1-12 Ps 52 Col 1:15-28 Luke 10:38-42

(c) 2007 William S. J. Moorhead

“You are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”

It was Calvin Coolidge who said, “The business of America is business.” (As distinguished from “bi’ness.”) “Business” is a central part of our daily lives. Whether or not we are, in the strict sense, “in business,” we all have “our business” to which we must tend, the affairs of our life. There is a wide range of activities having to do with being a free and self-determining human being in the world which falls under the category of “taking care of business.”

What is this word “business”? Its origin, of course, is in the notion of “busyness” — the state or quality of being busy. Being busy is, in our society, on the whole a Good Thing. We all want to keep busy. It’s important to us that we be productive, that we be useful. Since my retirement from the University, friends ask me, “So. Are you keeping busy?” (To which my answer is, generally, “Yes.”) Our culture is very activist, and very quantitative in its standards. “What do you do?” we ask each other when we meet for the first time. Usually unsaid, but still intended, is “How much can you do? How “useful” are you” What can you produce that can be quantitatively measured in some way?”

Well, all right. There is a very great deal of value in all that. When God put us in this world, God gave us business to do — to be God’s stewards and co-workers in “building the earth.” Laziness is a sin. Productivity is an important value. But…

Jesus suggests in the Gospel today that there’s a little more to be said about it than that.

I always find it easy to relate to Martha and Mary — for all that they are only mentioned three times in the Gospels — here, and twice in St. John — they are very real people to me, and reading between the lines, I can see that Mary and Martha and their brother Lazarus (whom Jesus later raises from death) were very close and dear friends of Jesus. And who among us has not had occasion to say, like Martha, “Hey! How come I’m the only one who’s doing any work around here? Somebody come and give me a little help!”

“Look,” says Jesus. “There are lots of things to do. Some of them are even important things, and sooner or later they need to get done. But sometimes the thing to do is just to stop, and sit down, and keep still, and watch, and listen. There are things more important than just doing. Doing must be rooted in being, or else ultimately it will rot, wither, and die, a bitter, hollow shell. But being is delicate, sensitive soil, and needs careful tending and cultivation and feeding. So don’t begrudge the time taken just to be — to listen, to be nourished, to see. Do we not say with St. Irenaeus that the consummation of this life is the “Vision of God”? Do we not then need to spend time learning to see? Do we not need to sit down and be attentive, to look for the extraordinary, to suspend doing for a while and just to be? And Mary has chosen that better part, which will not be taken away from her.

Of course there is a sense in which our lives are something we do. We do have to take care of business — that’s part of our God-given responsibility as God’s stewards, exercising in God’s name the management of the earth. But in a deeper sense our lives, our true lives, are Gift — not something we achieve but something we receive. We need to learn to receive, to see, to be contemplative as the underpinnings of all our activity. One of the great tragedies of growing old in our culture is that contemplation, which can be a real specialty as we get older (although certainly not limited to us) — contemplation is not a very highly valued endeavor in our activist, business-oriented, achievement-oriented society. And so we never learn to be contemplative, we don’t consider it “worthwhile” or “productive,” and so when other activities are taken from us for one reason or another, we are left with nothing — unable to immerse ourselves in this special gift God has prepared for us.

But throughout the whole of our lives, at the heart of our lives, Jesus calls us to put our business — our busyness — aside for a bit, and to sit with him, to be with him, to be ourselves with him, to hear him, and to choose the better part which can never be taken away.

Sermon -- 15 July 2007

Proper 10 / 7 Pentecost — 15 July 2007
St. Luke’s, Cedar Falls — 9:00 am
Amos 7:7-17 Psalm 82 Colossians 1:1-14 Luke 10:25-37

(c) 2007 William S. J. Moorhead

“What must I do to inherit eternal life?”

There was a letter to editor in The Living Church magazine a few weeks ago. I won’t name the correspondent, and it’s not my purpose to seem to be beating up on this person, who is clearly very serious and committed. But I think the letter raises an important issue about our Christian life:

“In response to [a previous letter to the editor], the MDGs [Millennium Development Goals] may be good secular goals, but they are not the work of the Church. The Church’s mission is to bring people to Jesus the Christ, for only in him can we find salvation. If some readers have forgotten the mission of the Church, they should read scripture and the writings of the patristic fathers. As the body of Christ, we are not here to fulfill a secular agenda. We may reflect Christ’s great love for us, shown by his death, passion, and resurrection, by doing good works, acting as responsible stewards of the earth, but MDGs should not be construed as our mission.”

Well, I certainly support the admonition to read scripture, though I’m not sure to what extent scripture would actually substantiate this correspondent’s point. Nor am I sure that the patristic fathers would buy this writer’s argument. The distinction between the “religious” and the “secular” that the writer seems to be drawing is very much taken for granted in the post-Enlightenment West, but it was not the assumption of the scriptures, or the Fathers, or most of Christian history, or for that matter of many other faith traditions still today (for example, Islam). The issue of “religion” I think is much more problematic than we recognize, and especially for us as Christians.

In the Gospel today we hear the parable of the Good Samaritan — well known to all of us, and perhaps one of our favorites. An aspect of the story that typically gets bit of our attention is the first part, about the passing-by of the priest and the Levite. Those who like to point out the hypocrisy of much “organized religion” particularly enjoy taking a shot here, of course. And God knows there is plenty to shoot at, both then and now. And sometimes we may feel a little discomfort, even guilt, when we are presented in this story by official religious leaders who encounter obvious human need and “pass by on the other side.” We are ashamed of their indifference or their cowardice, ashamed of our own indifference or cowardice in the face of those who are in need of our help.

But the priest and the Levite are important characters in Jesus’ story. Commentators on this parable have observed that we may rush to judgment too soon upon the priest and the Levite. We must remember that in the Judaism of Jesus’ day, while the Temple in Jerusalem was yet standing, priests and Levites had clearly defined and very important religious functions and duties. They were the leaders and assistants at the official offering of worship to the Lord God of hosts by the chosen People Israel. By law and custom, men of the tribe of Levi, whether of the priestly clans or the lesser ministerial families, were exempt from many of the day-to-day duties and hassles of the rest of the people. They had Religious Commitments. And things they were religiously forbidden to do, like, for instance, touch a dead body (or a body that looked like it might be dead, or like it might soon be dead), because contact with a dead body made you ritually unclean (according to the Law of Moses; it’s in the 19th chapter of Numbers, if you like to look up stuff like that!). The period of purification from this ritual uncleanness was seven days, during which you couldn’t go into the Temple. So for a priest or a Levite, their ability to fulfill their religious commitments was on the line here. As they passed by on the other side they may have been motivated by indifference or by cowardice, but they may also have passed by very regretfully, wishing they could help but mindful of their Sacred Office and their Religious Responsibilities to God and the whole People of Israel.

We so instinctively think of “religion” as something apart from, removed from, the ordinary realities of human existence—art and literature, politics and economics, the simple needs of human beings in trouble. The priest and the Levite had “religious obligations,” and so they passed by on the other side. Too bad about that mugging victim; but they must go and be about God’s business. Jesus is putting it to us: Just what do you think your “religious obligation” is? What is “God’s business”? Religion is not some nice, tidy, antiseptic, lofty, ethereal realm untouched by the blood, sweat, and tears of human life. Genuine religion, or, better put, a life faithful to God, includes everything that has to do with being a human being. Some things are to be affirmed and celebrated; others to be purged and healed; but all human life belongs to God and is therefore, ultimately, “religious.” The Samaritan—the half-pagan heretic Samaritan—understood what his “religious obligation” was, though Jesus doesn’t portray him as thinking of it as a matter of “religious” obligation, simply as human obligation. And Jesus’ point is, there isn’t really any difference! The righteous, orthodox priest and Levite had no idea what “being religious” is really all about. They, and many of us too, have the idea that the purpose of life has to do with “being religious.” On the contrary, from God’s point of view, the purpose of “religion” must be to enable us to have and to share fullness of life.

And so to the Millennium Development Goals, to which the church — the Episcopal Church, and the Diocese of Iowa, and we hope every congregation — is committed. Obviously these are but one set of goals among the immense multitude of human needs around the world, but they are a good and worthy and pressing set of goals to which a wide variety of people and groups and organizations and nations are pledging themselves. They are certainly not the church’s only work, but to think they are not part of the church’s work is to miss the point of this parable, to miss the point of the parable of the sheep and goats in Matthew 25, indeed to miss the point of the gospel of Jesus Christ. For Jesus, and Jesus’ Father, are not really that concerned about “religion” at all.

The lawyer in the Gospel today asked Jesus the right question, but he didn’t even understand what his own question meant. “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Life—full, free, authentic, eternal life—life given, life shared, life affirmed, life enabled—is what God made us for.