Tuesday, September 20, 2016

St. Francis

I have no recorded or printed sermons copies I of sermons I have given for the upcoming Sunday, Proper 21 C, so I decided to publish a sermon I gave back in 1995 for the Sunday closest to October 4 when we celebrated the feast day of St. Francis. It not only remembers Francis but contains a good message of stewardship.

Sermon
St. Francis
Sermon given in 1995
By Rev. Valerie Hart at
St. Alban’s Episcopal Church
Luke 17:5-10

When I was a senior in High School my friend Gail Robinson gave me this book, (hold up book) Saint Francis by Kazantazakis, for Christmas. I don’t know why she gave it to me, but she was a very intuitive type of person and I guess just thought I would like it. I read it eagerly, until I reached the part where Francis removes his clothes and hands them to his father. You see Francis, the son of a rich and wealthy merchant, had been feeling more and more drawn to Christ’s service. His experiences in prayer in front of a crucifix had profoundly affected him. He was no longer the happy go lucky son his father had known, and his father was angry. Francis father appealed to the bishop to intercede with Francis, but the bishop appears to have had more understanding of Francis then did his father. The father desired the return of the money that Francis had spent on the church. The bishop said to Francis, “If you desire to serve God, than give his mammon back to your father, which perhaps has been obtained by unjust methods, and therefore should not be used for the benefit of the Church.” At this Francis removed his clothes, and standing naked accept for a rough loin cloth, returned not only the money, but the clothes his father had given him.
            I remember reading that far in the book and being so struck by the total renunciation of Francis, so moved by his willingness to give up all trappings of his former life, that I could read no further. It was as if someone had held a mirror up to my heart and showed me what I was not. I knew that I was unable to give up my comfort to serve God. I knew that I could not make that kind of sacrifice. Francis was willing to give 100%, I gave so very little.
            It was many, many years before I was able to pick up that book again. During that time I had learned to have a little more compassion for myself, to accept that I was unlikely ever to be Sainted, and that was OK. I still continue to be moved every time I read of Francis’ total devotion to our Lord - his absolute and total giving of himself. When I think of Francis I often feel like the disciples who asked Jesus to increase their faith. Next to Francis I see the ways in which my own faith is lacking.
            I have asked myself how is it that Francis was able to do this. How could he give up all comfort, all physical security? The answer is his experience with praying at the crucifix. At one point, in response to fervent prayer for how God wanted him to serve, Francis experienced the crucified Christ speaking to him in his heart. Francis experienced the crucified savior. He would meditate on what the experience of Christ on the cross must have been like. He wept for our crucified Lord. He knew in his deepest being that Christ had, out of love, given 100% of himself. He knew that Christ had died, had given his body to be crucified, for us, - out of love for us. Francis felt such a response of love to this great gift that he wanted, he longed, to give 100% back to Christ. His love for our Lord was so great, his knowledge of our Lord’s suffering so direct, that for Francis there could be no response less than 100%.
            What was this call that Francis heard form the crucifix? What he heard was, “Now go hence, Francis, and build up my house, for it is nearly falling down!” Now Francis was a simple man, and he took things literally. He had been praying in a small church that had been neglected and was falling down, so he assumed that Christ meant he should build up that physical church. Of course we who know the whole story of Francis. We know that he transformed the entire Christian church of his day. We know that the Church in the 13th century was in many ways corrupt, and that the spiritual life had been neglected. Francis through his example transformed and rebuilt the greater Church, but that was much later in the story. When Francis heard Christ speak to him he started with a physical project. He took Christ’s words literally and began to rebuild the broken down little church of San Damiano, brick by brick.
            But where was he to get the materials for this rebuilding. He had given all of his money back to his father. He owned nothing, so he had to go out and beg for the bricks. He went from house to house saying, “He who gives me a brick will have his reward in heaven. He who gives two bricks will have twice the reward.”
            How difficult it must have been for this once proud young man to beg. I know that for me the hardest thing I ever have to do is ask people for money. To literally beg from door to door for the Lord is a moving testament of love and faith.
            But gradually others were drawn to his love and commitment. He found he was no longer building alone, but a group of individuals gathered around Francis who were also committed to service to God. Francis could not imagine how he would rebuild the church, yet his faith, faith as a mustard seed, could do anything.
            I think it is interesting that Francis began his work of rebuilding the church with a concrete project. Similarly, when asked to increase the faith of his disciples, Jesus answers by talking about a servant who rather than being thanked at the end of the day is asked to do more. How do we increase our faith? Jesus seems to be answering, “Serve”. Usually we think about it in just the opposite way, “if I had faith, then I would serve. Then I could do great things for God.” Jesus is telling us to begin to do things for God, and your faith will increase. Francis began with a project. He began by repairing a small church. He didn’t start with trying to change the world, but he did, brick by brick.
            We too are called by Christ. It is no accident that each one of us is here today. We each have followed a different path to be here, to be a part of the Episcopal Church in Brentwood, but here we are. And we are called to action, to build up Christ’s house, Christ’s church, right here. We are called to respond to the 100% love shown by Christ in his crucifixion. We are called to be servants, to do, to act, to serve. None of us are St. Francis. Few beings are able to respond as fully and completely as Francis. 100% is too much for most of us, that’s why the biblical ideal has been the tithe, ten percent, - because we are unable to truly give 100%, to give 100% of our money, to give 100% of our time, to give 100% of our talents. But we can give. We can work to build up Christ’s church. We can be a beacon of light and love. We can show others how much we are loved by God,
We can do what is so beautifully put in the prayer attributed to St. Francis, “Where there is hatred we can sow love, where there is injury Pardon, where there is discord, union, where there is doubt, faith, where there is despair, hope, where there is darkness, light, where there is sadness, joy.”
            How do we increase our faith? Serve.
            Where do we start? Here.
            When do we start? Now
  

Tuesday, September 13, 2016

Proper 20 C

The parable of the unrighteous manager doesn't appear to make sense. How can this thief be commended as shrewd for changing the amount that debtors owe the rich man? Could it have something to do with the Lord's Prayer?

Proper 20 C
Sermon given on
September 19, 2010
By Rev. Valerie Ann Hart
At St. Barnabas Episcopal Church
Luke 16:1-13


Some weeks when early in the week I sit down and I read what the readings are for the coming Sunday I go, “Oh I have an idea of what I might do with that.” Other times I sit down and I read it and I go, “Oh I have several different directions I could go with these readings.” Other times I pick up the readings and I go, “Huh. What is the point of this?” Well it was one of those kind of weeks.
This Gospel reading contains one of the most difficult parables that Jesus told. It doesn’t make sense. So I struggled a bit with it this week, and I think I came to an understanding of it. It is a confusing parable because here we have a rich man, this would be a Bill Gates, and a manager or a steward. A steward back then would be in charge of a person’s whole estate. So it would be like Bill Gates hiring someone and saying, ‘I’m too busy traveling around the world and doing good things. You take care of all my money. You decide where it is spent and you make sure of everything, that my homes are taken care of and my investments are done well. You are in charge of all of it.  I give you complete authority over that.” And then Bill Gates goes off and does his thing.
Meanwhile the manager is saying, “Hum I could put a little away for myself. “So maybe he opened up an account in Switzerland and he’s getting a little of the money going over there. He’s putting a little here, and he’s putting a little there and he is getting a nice house of himself. Well the rich man finds out that the manager is not doing what he is supposed to do and tells him he is in trouble. Now if I were the rich person, I won’t give that person a couple more weeks with any authority. I would have said that you are out of here give me the key, you are gone, I’m calling the police. But that is not what this rich man did. In the parable he tells him you are going to have to give me an accounting of what you have done. I want to see the books. And the manager thinks, I really like the kind of life I am living. I’ve gotten kind of weak so I can’t possibly go out and do manual labor. And I’m much too proud to beg - I’ve got an idea. So he calls in people who owe the rich person money and says, “Look here’s the books, I’ll switch them out. Instead of owing $100,000 you owe $50,000.” And then he calls in somebody else and says “The person I work for, you owe him $200,000 on your mortgage. Well I’ll tell you what, we are going to cut your mortgage down to $100,000. How does that sound? Sound like a good idea? Now remember me I’m your friend. Right?”
So after you hear this what do you expect when the rich man finds out about this, when the rich man finds out that not only did this manager stash away some money for himself but then he gave it away to other people? What do you expect the rich person to do? To be furious right. But instead, Jesus says that the rich man commended the dishonest manager. Commended him as being shrewd. Now shrewd may not be the ideal compliment, but he certainly didn’t condemn him. He said he was shrewd. He was smart. He was doing the right thing. How can that be? It doesn’t make any sense as a parable.
So as I worked with it I noticed that it went on to talk about if you are faithful with a little then you will be able to be faithful with a lot and if are honest with a little you will be honest with a lot. Then it says that if you are faithful with the things of this world, then you will be able to get the things of the eternal world. Ah, the eternal world, that is suggesting something spiritual. So I thought about Jesus’ parables. In so many of the parables the person in charge is represents God, like in the prodigal son the father represents God. So let’s say that this rich person represents God. So who is the manager? Who would the manager be if the rich person is God? It would be each one of us. Each and every one of us is that dishonest manager, because every thing we are and everything we own really belongs to God.
You remember back at the beginning of Genesis, God made human beings and told human beings that they would be responsible for taking care of the earth. We were created, our reason for existence, is to be the managers of creation. Think about it. What is yours, really yours that you didn’t get from God? Maybe you were born rich and you have an inheritance from your parents. Well you can’t really think that that is yours. You don’t deserve it. So okay you have been hard working all your life. You started out with nothing and you’ve gotten up every morning and you’ve been to work by nine and you’ve stayed sometimes till six or seven and you have worked hard every day of your life and you’ve gotten paid. You’ve worked hard, you’ve used your muscles and you worked in construction. Who gave you those muscles? You have talented hands and you can paint and draw and do wonderful talented things with them. Who gave you the gift of those hands? You have a mind that can think and you got one of those jobs where you work at a desk and you use your mind most of the time. Who gave you that mind? Who gave you the energy to get up each morning? Who gave you the drive to go do it? Where did that come from? It’s not ours, it’s God’s. Each day, each day when we wake up that’s a gift from God. So the question is, all this abundance that God has given us, each one of us, what have we done with it? What have we done with it?
If I hire someone to take care of my things, that person is supposed to do what I want them to do. If I hire someone to be the chief executive officer of a profit making company, I want them to go out there and make money. If I hire someone to be the CEO of a non profit organization that serves the community, I want that person to make sure that this organization is serving the people it is supposed to serve. If I have a large financial trust fund and I hire someone to run it, and I want that money to be given away, then that person should be giving the money away.
So what happened with this manager? This manager realized that he was being found out. He wasn’t doing what the owner wanted him to do. And what did he start doing, he started giving it away. He started forgiving debts. Forgiving other people’s debts. Does that sound familiar? Do you remember one of the ways in which the Lord’s Prayer is translated? It is, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” That comes from Luke. I had this sense that maybe there is a tie in here, so I went back and got my Greek New Testament out. Sure enough the word for the people who were in debt to the owner that the manager gave them money to and the word used in the Lord’s prayer (forgive us our debtors) is the same word. There is a tie between this parable and the Lord’s Prayer.
What the manager did when he was found out was he started forgiving other people’s debts. That was shrewd because Jesus said that in the Lord’s prayer we ask, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” So this manager got smart and said “Hey, I may be in it for myself, but have been told that if I give it to others, if I forgive others, then I may get forgiveness myself.” Pretty shrewd, pretty shrewd.
So if we go under the assumption that we are that dishonest manager because every one of us, every one of us, has in some way squandered the gifts that God has given us. Just think of our bodies. The greatest gift we have from God is our bodies. How do we treat our bodies? What kind of odd chemicals have we put into it over the years? Have we smoked? Have we drunk too much? How do we treat it? Do we give it good exercise? Do we eat good food of the right amount? Do we treat our bodies well? If I hired someone to take care of my body and that person treated my body the way I treat my body, I’d fire them.
So even this most precious gift we don’t do a great job with. And all the other gifts that God has given us, in what ways have we gotten lost and started thinking of them as ours? And when we think of it as ours, and when we think of ourselves as being in charge, then it is important that we stash some away because we have to take care of ourselves. But when we remember that it is all God’s anyway then we realize that it is God’s responsibility to take care of us. So we don’t have to be focused on ourselves.
The manager in the parable had a moment when he realized that the owner understood what he was doing and there was going to be an accounting. Each one of us at some point in our lives realizes that God knows what we are doing with the gifts that God has given us, and that there will be an accounting. When we realize that, when we realize that, there can be a certain amount of terror that comes up, but if we remember the Lord’s prayer we can start forgiving others in hopes that we will be forgiven. We can start giving to others because we know that that is what the owner really wants for us to do with the gifts that we have been given.

So, I encourage you to forgive others with the promise that likewise we will be forgiven.

Thursday, September 8, 2016

Proper 19 C

To be lost, found and brought home to God - the greatest gift of love.

Proper 19 C
Transcribed from a sermon given
On September 12, 2010
By Rev. Valerie Ann Hart
At St Barnabas Episcopal Church
Luke 15: 1-10
1 Timothy 1:12-17


Let’s try and get a clear picture of exactly what is going on in this Gospel reading. Jesus has become quite an item, and people are coming to him to listen to what he has to say. In the Gospel it says that there were two groups of people. One group was the scribes and the Pharisees and they represent the “good” people. They are the kind of people you want your child to grow up and be, the doctors and lawyers, the ones who have respect, the ones who are educated, the ones who are appropriate in all that they do.
Then there were all of these tax collectors and sinners. Tax collectors are a particular kind of sinner at that time. Remember at that time Israel was an occupied territory and the tax collectors were collecting the Roman tax. Unlike our taxes where there is a clear definition of how much you are supposed to pay, back then the tax collectors got whatever they could and they kept a part of it. So a tax collector was out for his own wealth and helping the occupiers. Not somebody anybody really likes.  Think about how we feel about the IRS right now and then magnify that by about 100 times. Imagine IRS agents that came to your house and negotiated with you how much you were going to give and then took a cut of it themselves. So tax collectors were considered traitors as well as sinners.
Then there are the sinners. That’s a pretty broad kind of term, but back then it basically meant people who were unclean. People who were outside. People who were marginalized. So among the sinners you would have the people who were too poor to follow all the rules. You would have the people who did jobs that were unclean. You would have the people who for one reason or another had done something in their lives that put them over the edge, away from the “good” people.
So you have these two groups or people who are standing there to hear what Jesus has to stay. Then he tells the story of the lost sheep. He starts by saying, “If you had a hundred sheep.” This means you would be a very rich person, if you had a hundred sheep, so he is speaking to the rich and the wealthy, the scribes and Pharisees type, so their ears pick up. Ah, he’s speaking to me. Jesus continues that if you had a hundred sheep and one became lost you would leave the 99 and go off and seek the one that was lost and bring it home on your shoulder rejoicing. And that kind of joy and rejoicing is what the angels do any time one person who is lost returns to God.
Now how do you think these two groups would respond to that story? Like I said the rich ones are going to say 100 sheep, oh this is about me, but wait a minute he’s saying that heaven rejoices when a sinner returns, more than when someone has been good all their lives. And of course the scribes and the Pharisees see themselves as people who have been good all their lives. So God doesn’t rejoice in me? God rejoices in them? Not too crazy about this story.
But for those tax collectors and sinners imagine how it felt to them. To that group that was not allowed to come close, to that group that was seen as unclean, to that group that wasn’t even suppose to approach the temple and get too close to it. How did it sound to that group who had overheard the scribes and Pharisees making comments to each other about who they were? That group that was never accepted. Imagine you are sitting there and you are one of them. Imagine as you are sitting here today and that you are someone who is not in right relationship with God. Imagine that you are siting here right now and there are other people who are looking at you and are saying that you dress funny, you don’t belong here, there is something wrong with you. And then you heard those words, “There is more joy in heaven over the return of one sinner than over ninety-nine righteous people.”
Imagine standing there and listening to Jesus say this. He is talking right to you and he is saying God is that shepherd. God is out there searching for you. Wanting to take you home. And if you will let God take you home there will be rejoicing in heaven. Imagine what that would feel like. Imagine. Imagine if you today were someone who walked into this church with fear and trepidation because you didn’t know if you would be accepted or not. Imagine that you were feeling lost, that you didn’t know what to do in life. That you didn’t have a relationship with God or your relationship with God was tenuous at the best. You may not even know for sure whether God exists, but you know that there has to be something more in life. And something drew you here today and you hear the words, “God loves you.” And you hear the words that Paul wrote, “Christ came into the world to save sinners.” Christ came for sinners. For you. Christ came for you who are feeling lost in your life right now. That’s why he came. That’s why he came to earth. That’s why he taught. That’s why he let himself be crucified. And that’s why he was resurrected. For you. For you who are lost.
Paul writes about how he was lost. He describes having been the worst of sinners. That he was violent, that he persecuted Christians, that he was hypocritical. You name it, he was it. He feels that he is the worst of sinners, and yet Christ came to him and gave him mercy and forgiveness. Paul knew the wonder of the grace of God. The incredible gift of knowing that he was welcomed home. Of knowing that he had been lost and that Christ had come to him, to grab him and to pick him up and to bring him home. And Paul is eternally grateful for that. So grateful for that that all he can do for the rest of his life is tell others about the amazing wonder of Gods’ grace and God’s mercy.
Perhaps there are some of you here today who had a time in your life when you felt lost, separated from God, caught up in addiction, confused, wondering what was right, not knowing what to believe. living a life that you knew you didn’t want to live any more. Then Christ came to you, and grabbed you and brought you home. How can you be but grateful and give thanks to the wonder of God’s grace?
Perhaps there are some who are gathered here today who have always had a good and wonderful relationship with God, who have never felt alienated, never felt lost, always felt that you were able to follow the rules, always felt that you were able to live a good life, always had a life of integrity and peace and right relationship with God and all the people in your world. That’s an amazing gift of grace to have a life like that. Congratulations. And yet, if you’ve never felt lost you’ve never had the incredible opportunity of the celebration when you came home. If you’ve never been lost you don’t know the incredible mercy and grace of God that welcomes you home. You haven’t heard the angels sing and you don’t really know just how much you are loved.
Children really don’t know how much they are loved by their parents until they test them. If a child is always well behaved and they always get smiles from their parent, they never know for sure that their parent loves them for who they are or for what they do. And so almost all of us at some point in our lives test our parents. Will you still love me if I… (talk back). Will you still love me if I… (don’t get A’s in school). Will you still love me if I do X, Y or Z. And the gift that the child receives from doing this is to learn that the parent’s love is still there. And the parent’s mercy is still there and they realize that even if they try to break their relationship with their parent the parent still loves them.

God loves us. God loves us so much that he sent Christ into the world to save sinners. Many of you here have known what that feels like. Those of us who know what it is like to be lost and to be found again, Paul invites to live a life like his, dedicated to bringing the lost home, to finding the lost sheep and telling them of the mercy of God. It is a wonderful gift that we have all received and one that we cannot help but want to share with others.