Proper 25 C

The parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector provides an opportunity for us to explore the nature of justice and mercy.

Proper 25 C

Transcribed from a sermon given

At St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

October 2013

By Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

Luke 18:9-14 C

I’d like you to imagine two neighbors coming home from work. The one man walks in and says to his wife, “It is so wonderful that I have such a great job so I can come home and be with you, and I can buy a new car for you, and I can buy you jewels, and I can be the perfect husband; not like that neighbor of ours, the one who is out so late every evening and drives around in that junky car that must be so embarrassing for his wife.” The neighbor comes home a few hours later, and he is tired. He says to his wife, “Oh, Honey, I am so sorry that I am not able to be here with you in the evening. I’m not able to have a job that will pay enough, so I need to do two jobs. And I would love to be able to buy you a new car and jewels but all we have is enough to get by. I’m doing the best I can. Maybe some day I’ll be able to get a better job.”

So I ask you, which wife feels more loved? Personally I would much rather have my husband come home a little bit apologetic rather than telling me what a great husband he is, because if my husband were to be telling me what a great husband he is, there is no room for me to appreciate who he is, because he is busy doing that for himself. This is the point of the parable in today’s Gospel.

Jesus speaks of two men. The first, the Pharisee, is probably a really good man. He does fast and tithe and do his best to follow all the commandments, but to go the temple to tell God what a great person you are? I’m sure God doesn’t need to be told what a great person this guy is.

The other one, the tax collector, just by being a tax collector means that he was disliked by the other people. You think tax collectors now a days are disliked? Back then they weren’t collecting taxes for Israel, they were collecting taxes for Rome, the occupying power. They were seen not only as money grabbing but they were seen as traitors. Most tax collectors got their pay by taking a cut. And most tax collectors took more of a cut then they really deserved. So tax collector was about the worst thing you could say about somebody. And the tax collectors knows that he is not living the life that he would like to be living. That he is not in the right relationship with God and he is willing to acknowledge that.

Jesus says that he comes away justified. Justified is an interesting word so I looked up the Greek and the translation is justified. Justified in English has two meanings. One is a printing concept. Justified means that things are all lined up. You know how how on your computer you get to choose whether things are left justified or right justified or even on both sides. So one sense of justified is that things are lined up correctly.

But most of the time justified is used in terms of justice. It is a derivative of the word “justice.” So the question becomes what is justice? There have been lots of different theories of what justice is - what a just world looks like. And the one that I liked in thinking about what Jesus said in the parable comes from Plato where he talks about justice as being the right relationship. So a just world is one in which the people are in right relationship with each other and with the government. That it is a just right relationship.

That brings us to the questions what is the right relationship with God? What is justice? Usually when we talk about justice we talk about the justice system which is more the punishment system in our country. What do we do when things are out of whack, when there is a break in a relationship, when an injustice has been done? What do we do when someone has been stolen from? Or killed? Or injured? How do we handle that? How do we move it back to a right relationship?. How do make justice from that? Our society focus mostly on punishment, that there has to be a balance. You’ve done something wrong and therefore you need to be punished to balance that out. And that is one way of trying to achieve justice. But it doesn’t always lead to a right relationship again. Sometimes people, if someone has been hurt or killed they will say, “We want justice.” What does that mean? They want that person to be punished so they can feel better. But that is just one form of understanding justice.

There is a whole group of people now in our society concerned about restorative justice, where they take this concept of justice, of right relationship, and say it is not enough just to punish someone. They ask how do we help that person when they are finished with their legal consequences of their action to reestablish a relationship again? So they often work with both the victims and  the perpetrators to restore a relationship. The relationship and the restoration is always based on the perpetrator taking responsibility for what has been done. What we would call an apology, an acknowledgement. Because then the victim can stop being a victim and have mercy, can have a relationship again. Of course it is much more complicated than that but it is important.

The whole idea is how do we get back into the right relationship again, and what is our right relationship with God? Now obviously we are talking about this tax collector as feeling out of relationship while somehow this Pharisee that has been following all the rules isn’t in right relationship. So what does it mean to have the right relationship with God and how do we get back to that?

There are certain things that are obstacles to the right relationship with God. Right relationship with God is a relationship of love and communion. If we close ourselves off to God we are not in right relationship, and that is really what sin is. It is missing the mark. It is breaking the tie. It is not living in the way that God intended for human beings to live. It is not being loving. It is not loving God and loving our neighbor, and loving ourselves. When we are  not loving we are cutting ourselves off. For example, if we lie, whether we lie to someone else or we lie to ourselves, we cut ourselves off from the truth. The truth is of God. If you have ever had a friendship where someone has told a lie, either you or the other person, you know that from that moment on the intimacy is limited because you have to keep a part of yourself separate or they are keeping a part of themselves separate. So when we sin, when we miss the mark with God, we put up an obstacle for that relationship. So our relationship, this openness, this intimacy with God gets disturbed by what we call sin, or missing the mark.

The problem in the relationship between God and human beings is that none of us are perfect. None of us use the free will that God gave us in a loving way all of the time. All of us get selfish. All of us get fearful. All of us hurt others. All of us hurt ourselves. All of us deny God, deny the creation. We all do it. Not a single one of us. Not even that Pharisee who was standing there saying I followed all the law is capable of being perfect in the sense of Christ’s perfection of loving one another as God loves us. And so we all mess up. We all mess up in our relationships with other human beings too.

This is nothing new. The question is what do we do when we mess up? First, we acknowledge it. We go to our friend and say “I messed up.” And if it is a real friend they’ll forgive us. So what do we do when we mess up with God? We say “God have mercy on us.” “God have mercy on me a sinner,” are the words that come out of the tax collectors mouth. He knows the truth about who he is. He is asking for God’s mercy. You see for the other side of this relationship with God in which we inevitable let God down is that God has this incredible, enormous unconditional love for us and will always be ready to say, “You are forgiven.” God is always yearning for this relationship to mend itself and is just waiting for us to take down those barriers that keep ourselves separate.

There is an interesting balance in this relationship with God. We will mess up and if we ask for forgiveness God will forgive. So we are living in this wonderful dynamic, and if we can acknowledge and accept God’s enormous mercy and love we can also be honest about who we are, and we can keep become whom God longs for us to be.

Fourth Sunday in Lent

It's just not fair!!!

4 Lent C - 2010

Transcribed from a sermon given by

Rev. Valerie Hart

At St. Barnabas Episcopal Church, Arroyo Grande, CA

Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

2 Corinthians 5:16-21

It’s not fair!! It’s just not fair!!

You giggle? How dare you laugh at me when I say it is not fair?

Sounds like you’ve heard that before, or perhaps you can remember times in which you have said that.

We as children have all had moments where we said “It’s not fair” “I’m the eldest that has to do all the work around here and my younger brothers don’t have to do anything.” Or “It’s not fair, I’m the youngest and I have to go to bed earlier then everyone else does.” Or “It’s not fair, I’m an only child and I don’t have any brothers or sisters to play with.” It doesn’t really matter what the situation was, when I was growing up there was always some way in which it wasn’t “fair.” And of course if you are a parent or a grandparent or a teacher you have heard children say this to you.

One of the darker days as a parent is when the children learn to say “It’s not fair.” Because it’s always not fair, one kid says that the other got a larger slice of cake. Another says you spent more time with one child than the other. .

It’s not fair. We know what it feels like to have that feeling inside that it’s not fair. And even as adults, even though we don’t say it out loud, we think it, “It’s just not fair.”

When we look at this Gospel reading it’s all about fairness. It begins with the Pharisees critiquing Jesus because he is speaking with and eating with prostitutes, tax collectors, and sinners of all types. And that’s not fair! Because while they’ve been out having a good time the Pharisees have been following all these rules and laws. And it’s not fair that they get all the attention. They should be being punished in some way and the ones who have been following all the laws should be getting some goodies for it, some acknowledgement for how hard they have worked.

So Jesus responds to them by telling this wonderful story of the father with two sons. And if we didn’t have anything else from the gospels except that story it would teach us about the nature of God.

Now you can understand the older son’s perspective. The younger son has said basically to his father “I’m going to treat you like you are dead, give me my inheritance.” And back in those days inheritance was not split 50/50, the eldest got a large chunk and the younger ones didn’t get as much. So, for a younger brother to be asking for his share before the father even is dead is an incredible insult to his father. And then he goes off, leaves his father, basically abandoning him. You can imagine how angry the older brother was right from the beginning that his younger brother would do this and leave him having to take care of the farm. We can all kind of understand why the older brother was so angry when “that son of yours” returns.

(I love the little nuances in this story, they are so great. The older brother refers to his brother as “that son of yours.” He has pushed him out of the family. “I have no relationship with that one any more.” And the father responds “Your brother.”)

He represents the Pharisees. They were talking about fairness and justice, while what Jesus was talking about was mercy and love. If you have been a parent or a teacher or in other ways work with children you know that you love them all. They are each unique and your relationship is unique with each one, but you love them all. When you pick up a little baby and you feel that overwhelming sense of love you don’t love that baby because it is being so good. That baby is screaming and throwing up and going in its diaper. It’s being a baby. But you love it because that is it’s nature and your nature is to love. And that is the way God is. God doesn’t love us because we’re so good.

Most of us spend much of our lives trying to make ourselves loveable. You know. if I get one more degree, if I work a little harder, if I lose some weight, if I go to church ever Sunday. Something that we do that we think will make us more loveable. That’s not the way love works. Love is.

It is just like the father in the story who loves both of his sons. There was nothing that the younger son could do that would destroy his father’s love and there was nothing that the elder son could do, being good, that would make the father love him any more. The love was complete. Unconditional, and that’s the love we have from God that Christ is trying to tell us about, to show us, to demonstrate. Not about fairness, but about mercy. That we are all loved by God, and that God wants to be in relationship with each of us. It’s called reconciliation, healing of the relationship. God wants each one of his children to come home. And God will run outside to meet us when we decide to come home. And it makes all the difference

This wonderful little passage from 2 Corinthians is just beautiful because it says we regard no one from a human point of view. Think about a family. How the brothers and sisters perceive each other and how the parent perceives them. The parent perceives them with love. The brothers and sisters are in competition. What if we were to see everybody else the way God sees them. With the sense of mercy and love and acceptance that God has for them. If we could see the person that’s hurt us and instead of seeing them as an enemy we could see them as a child of God, loved by God, regardless of what they have done. That would change things, wouldn’t it? If we could see one another the way God sees us. That’s what Paul says here, “We regard no one from a human point of view.” Not seeing what’s fair, but seeing with the eyes of love. He goes on to say “So if anyone is in Christ there is a new creation, everything old has passed away. See everything has become new.” This new creation comes when we realize that we are dependent upon the mercy and love of God and when we are reconciled to God. When we know that love, that totally underserved love of God that fills us and heals us, we become a new person. We see things in a new way. It becomes much harder to hold on to our resentments of other people when we know how much we have been forgiven by God.

Paul goes on to say, “All this is from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation.” Has given us the ministry of reconciliation. Once we are reconciled to God, God empowers us to be instruments of God’s love in the world - the ministry of reconciliation. Our jobs once we know that we are forgiven and loved is to help others to know that they are forgiven and loved by God. To help others to be reconciled to God. And to help others to be reconciled to each other. And it all begins with us. It all begins with us acknowledging the fact that we have not lived a perfect life. We do not deserve God’s love, no one deserves love, love is given as a gift. And when we acknowledge that and accept God’s mercy and forgiveness and we then do the hard work of acknowledging how we have hurt other people, working to forgive others and be forgiven. Those who have gone through the 12 steps know that process very well. We become a new creation - instruments of reconciliation. That’s our job, or ministry. Our job is not to make the world fair, our job is to bring people together and to bring people to God through Christ.

Paul continues and says, “so we are ambassadors for Christ because God is making his appeal through us, we entreat you, on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.” First step, to be reconciled to God, and that is why in almost all of our services we have a confession, we have a way in which we acknowledge we need to be healed and reconciled to God. Then that is the foundation upon which we are sent out to be ambassadors for Christ and to bring reconciliation, love and mercy to the world.

Amen

3 Epiphany C sermon

What does it mean for the Church to be the Body of Christ?

3 Epiphany C

Sermon given on January 22, 1995

At St. Alban’s Episcopal Church

By Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

1 Corinthians 13:1-13

Luke 4:21-30

            We are the body of Christ. Could there be a better reading for the Sunday of our annual meeting? Could anything better express what it means to be a part of a church, part of The Church?

            We are the Body of Christ - each a different, unique, necessary, honored, glorified, valued, and loved part of One Body. We are all needed to fulfill the purpose of Christ - to be Christ in the world, to be Christ’s feet and hands and eyes and ears. What a wondrous, awesome thought - to be the body of Christ.

            What does it mean to be the body of Christ, or better, how are we to live as the body of Christ?

            Today’s Gospel gives us the answer. Jesus reads “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” This is the quote from Isaiah that Christ chooses to use to introduce his ministry.  Through this quote he in essence says:

                        - This is who I am.

                        - This is why I am here.

                        - This is my role, my responsibility, my calling from God.

And we - as the Body of Christ - are here to continue that mission, to complete that call. We, as baptized Christians, as part of the one Body, are anointed to bring good news to the poor. We are to bring hope to those who are both materially poor and to those in spiritual poverty. We are to bring the good news of God’s love and forgiveness, the good news of our unity with God through Christ.

We are also sent to proclaim release to the captives - to proclaim that we are each and every one of us free beings, not captives of sin or fear, or even death - but free through Christ’s Love. And we are to proclaim recovery of sight to the blind, that those who are spiritually blind might see once again. We are to proclaim, to encourage, a new vision. We are to see all things in their new and glorious form. In the words of the hymn Amazing Grace, “I once was blind, but now I see.”

We are to let the oppressed go free. We must fight injustice and oppression wherever we find it, whether people are oppressed because of politics, or bigotry, or poverty, or racism, or sexism.  We must fight injustice whether the oppressor is government, business, religion, unions or ignorance.

And finally we are to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. We are to proclaim the Good News that God Loves Us. We are to tell the world of this love as shown by Jesus Christ.

            That is what this is all about. That is who we are. That is our purpose, our calling as the Body of Christ.

            Each one of us has a unique and necessary role, whether as an ear to hear the cries of the poor, an eye to see injustice, a brain to plan and reason, a mouth to speak out, a foot to carry the message of Christ to the world.

            Paul says that the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable. Indispensable! The apparently weak, the young, the old, the ill, the poor, the disadvantaged are INDISPENSIBLE!

            This is who we, the people of St. Alban’s, are. This is our mission. All that we do, all the decisions we make, our vision, is in response to this call, for we are the body of Christ. The Book of Common Prayer, in its catechism, puts it another way. It states that the mission of the Church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ. That is what we, the body of Christ, are all about, to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ. The catechism goes on to say that the Church pursues its mission as it prays, worships, proclaims the Gospel, and promotes justice, peace and love.

            This is who we are, or at least what we should strive to become, for we are the Body of Christ.

            But we are not the whole body - we don’t do it alone. We are part of a greater body. We are part of the diocese of CA which supports us and whom we represent in the far East of Contra Costa County. And the diocese is part of the entire Episcopal church. and the Episcopal church is part of the world wide Anglican Communion, and the Anglican Communion is just one part of the whole Christian community. The Body of Christ is made up of all Christians. Even though we disagree and sometimes fight bitterly among ourselves, we all make up the body of Christ. The CHURCH with a capital C is the body of Christ

            Paul says that God’s desire is that there may be no dissension within the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.

            This is who we are called to become, this is our call from Christ, for “we are the body of Christ and individually members of it.”