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.

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.

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