Proper 12 C

"Teach us how to pray." One of the disciples wanted to know how to pray and in response we have the Lord's Prayer which outlines what to pray for and gives us guidance of what is important to Christ.

Proper 12 C

Transcribed from a sermon given on

July 25, 2010

At St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

By the Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

Jesus had been praying and one of his disciples asks him, “Teach us how to pray.” Teach us how to pray. I have an example of someone who knew how to pray. It is the founder of the organization that we are doing a fund raiser for on August 20^th. People describe her as being very saintly and running this organization on a shoe string. This is how she described how she prayed. Every morning she would get up and spend a half an hour on her knees telling God what she wanted. Then she spent the rest of the day making do with what God gave her. That is one way to pray.

Jesus responded to his disciples request with what we call the Lord’s Prayer. What we have here in Luke is a version that is a little bit shorter than the one most of us have memorized from our childhood and that we hear over and over again in church. St. Augustine describes the Lord’s prayer as being the perfect prayer because it tells us what we can pray for and the order of their priority. What it is we can ask of God and the priority of how important each one is.

The prayer begins with Father, Abba, parent, about as close and intimate a relationship as one could have. It describes a relationship with God that is close, immanent and real. And then it says hallowed be thy name, great is your name. So great was the name of God that the Jewish people didn’t even say it out loud. Your name is so magnificent, so hallowed, so sacred we don’t even speak it. There we have the transcendent God, the God that is so beyond human beings that we can’t even say the name. A God that is the source of all our being - the creator of the universe - beyond our imaginings, beyond the universe. So right at the beginning of the prayer we have this duel nature of God. God is intimate, close, close as a parent and yet so transcendent and so beyond that we can’t even say God’s name. You’ll find that most prayers begin with a description of God - Gracious God, loving God, God who created the universe. When you look at the prayers in the prayer book, when you listen to prayers that are said during the service, you will notice that they almost always start with some kind of description of God. So does the Lord’s prayer. That is the format. Father, immanent, present, transcendent one, hallowed be your name.

Then there are the requests. The first one, the first and most important request, is your kingdom come - your reign come. The first prayer for all of us should be God let your will be done one earth. Let your will be done in my life. Let your will be done in my heart. Be the king. Be in charge, have a world that goes by your will. That is the most important prayer we can have. Not my will, but your will. Your kingdom come.

The next thing is to ask for what we need. Give us today our daily bread. Give us what we need to survive, today. That request harkens back to the people of Israel while they were traveling with Moses in the wilderness. You may remember that they were there for forty years and when they were hungry and God provided manna. They would get up in the morning and there would be this crust on the ground that they could eat that tasted a little like honey. They would gather it for the day. But they were only to gather one day’s worth because if it was kept for another day it went bad. They had to trust that God would provide it the next day. So Jesus is saying we can pray for what we need for today. We can pray give us enough to eat today, but we are not supposed to be asking for an annuity fund that will provide us enough food for the rest of our lives. We are supposed to realize that if God can take care of today God can take care of tomorrow and the next day. That our security is not in our retirement funds, our security is knowing that God will be with us each day. So we are to ask, “Give us what we need today.” Enough food, enough shelter. Bread is also often interpreted as referring to spiritual food. Give me what I need. We know that God knows what we need. So that is the second thing we ask for.

The third thing we ask for, the third most important thing to ask for, is forgive us our sins. It is that important. Asking God’s forgiveness for our sins is that important. It is right up there with asking God to give us what we need to survive today. It is that important.

Now this particular version is a little intimidating because it says, “forgive us our sins as we have already forgive those who sin against us.” So if you haven’t already forgiven the ones who have sinned against you it is a little intimidating. It is a challenge. But the forgiveness is important. It’s central. It is the essence and central aspect of Christianity. It wouldn’t be Christianity without it.

Sometimes we find people who have put together different beliefs. I was talking to someone last week who is a confirmed Episcopalian - confirmed in their adulthood. She was talking about her spiritual journey and her journey had taken lots of twists and turns. She was raised in a Christian church and then she studied various eastern traditions and went to the Unity Church for a while as well as various different sort of New Age kind of things. Then she found herself in the Episcopal church and really liked it and became an Episcopalian. She wanted to know what my view of death was so I told her of my trust in God and that it was good and so forth. And she said to me, “Well I’ve been thinking a lot about it, and I’ve decided there must be reincarnation.” I said, “Oh really, why?” She said because people have to pay for the tings they have done. If they’ve sinned and hurt people they have to pay for that and so they can pay for that by being reborn again.” And I said that that’s not the Christian message. The Christian message is we don’t have to pay for it. Thank God. The Christian message is that it is not fair. Thank God it is not fair. Because if it was fair we’d all have a lot of suffering to do to make up for the suffering that we have caused others, either intentionally or unintentionally. The whole point of Christ’s message is that God loves us and God forgives us so we don’t have to pay in hell, we don’t have to pay by being reborn, because we are forgiven. And her response was basically, “I can understand forgiving the small things people do, but what about people who do major things, who kill people?” It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter. The whole point of Christ was to tell us that we don’t have to pay for everything we have done. That God loves us and forgives us. And that is what Paul is saying in the second reading today. It is kind of a long complex reading so it is hard to pick out exactly what he is trying to get at but he is telling people that what you have been taught in Christianity is that you are loved and forgiven and you don’t have to follow a lot of rules. It is not about following rules. And don’t let somebody deceive you with lots of intellectual ideas, but know about grace and mercy and forgiveness.

I know what the idea of reincarnation can do to people. When I had my brain surgery years ago I was at that time involved in a Yoga community. After my brain surgery I was caring for three small children, and I was having seizures. It was horrible. Everything was horrible in my life. And my Yoga friends came to me and said, “You must have done something in a past lifetime to have brought this on.” That was not helpful. If you ever have a friend going through a really horrible time, don’t say to them “You must have done something in a past lifetime.” It is not helpful. What was helpful was remembering what I learned as a child, that Christ walks with us through the hard times. It wasn’t my fault that that happened to me. It wasn’t because I had done something in a past life or in this life. I must say that if I had to suffer for every time I have caused another person to suffer there would be a lot of reasons for me to be in pain. Thank God that is not what Christ taught. The Christian teaching is that God loves each one of us and if we will let him, if we will open our hearts and let God in, God will forgive us, wipe the slate clean and start all over. And that is important. It is so important for us to do it that Jesus has it right in the prayer that we are to say every day. Because every day we need to ask for forgiveness. I don’t get through a day being perfect. Maybe some of you do, but I don’t get through a day being perfect. I have to ask to be forgiven. And that is why it is right up there. That’s why it is such an important part of the Lord’s prayer. And like I said it is a little intimidating in this version that it says forgive us as we have forgiven those who have hurt us. Sometimes what I am asking forgiveness for is the fact that I haven’t forgiven somebody else. And then I also ask “help me learn to forgive that person.” But it’s right there. Central to our faith.

And the the forth thing we can ask for is keep us from the time of trial. Nobody is quite sure exactly what that means because there are lots of different interpretations for it. It has to do with keep us from having trails in our lives that are so severe that we can’t handle them, or give us the strength that we can handle whatever trials come along. That is the forth focus of prayer.

Then Jesus goes on to say that we can ask for anything. We can ask for anything, but it is within the context of the reign of God. If it is within the context of God’s will, then we will be like that person who started that organization who said, “I ask God for what I want and I make do with what God gives me.” And the greatest of those is that God gives us love and forgiveness.

Proper 11 C Mary and Martha

Jesus told Martha that there is need of only one thing. What could that "one thing" be?

Proper 11 C

Transcribed from a sermon given on

July 18, 2010

At St Barnabas Episcopal Church by

Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

Luke 10:38-42

Let’s imagine what this story of the relationship of two sisters might have sounded like if it happened today. Let’s imagine that Jesus and his disciples and the women who were traveling with him were all in an old tour bus. They had gotten it from a tour company that was going out of business. They are on there way to Jerusalem, driving up from Jericho to Jerusalem. It is a very steep hill, and it is hot and their old bus has come almost to the top when it starts bellowing brown black smoke coming out of it. And it starts making this horrible thumping sound. James, who is driving it, is getting very upset and of course Jesus is asleep in the back of the bus totally ignoring all of this. They wake him up and Jesus says, “Don’t worry, why don’t you turn off and go into that town named Bethany. So with loud noises coming out of the old bus and not knowing when it is going to just stop working they get into Bethany. It makes one final loud horrible sound. The engine is dead and they manage to coast over to a nice parking place by the side of the road. Jesus gets out of the bus and knocks on the door of the house they happen to stop by and out comes Martha smiling and saying, “Oh, it is so good to see you again.” And all the disciples and women are so excited to see their old friend Martha that they all come bounding out of the bus. There is a wonderful celebration for everybody to see each other. They all go inside chattering and laughing and having a wonderful time. It didn’t take long for them to settle down in the courtyard. Jesus begins talking and everybody is listening to what Jesus has to say. It is a wonderful, peaceful time, and then all of a sudden in comes James, angry! “Where is that brother of mine?” he shouts. Everybody looks and James’ hands that are covered with engine oil and his clothes are all dirty and soiled from soot. “Where is that brother of mine? He should be helping me fix that bus,” he repeats. Jesus looks at him and asks, “James, why are you so upset?” “Well somebody’s got to fix that bus or we are never going to get to Jerusalem,” he responds, not knowing that Jesus has a donkey in the back yard. But that is another story.

Jesus says, “Don’t worry, it’s okay.” James responds, “Well my brother should be helping me with that blanking bus!” Just then, laughing and talking, John and Martha and Lazarus come out of the kitchen. They have all been working to get something to eat for everybody and they bring out large trays of food. They have had a wonderful time working together in the kitchen.

Now this is a switch of time and place and gender of the the people involved, but there is a similarity in that there is one person who is all upset and worried and who has an expectation for the behavior of another person. When you read commentary, even the ancient commentary, on this little piece of scripture about Mary and Martha they almost all conclude that Jesus values both the doer and the one who is the contemplative and they are both of equal value. But if you actually read the scripture you don’t find Jesus saying anything positive about Martha. So where did Martha miss the mark? What is wrong with Martha? Back then, and even now, in the Middle East one of the most important values is hospitality. It is your duty to take care of a person who comes to your home. It is your duty to give them coffee or food or whatever it is you have. So could Jesus be being critical of hospitality? Martha was doing the right thing. Also, in that time period, women were not supposed to be listening to rabbis. They were not supposed to be studying theology. Even today in extreme orthodox traditions there are different prayers for women then there are for men and that.

Now it might be because I grew up in a household where I had two older brothers, but I started to resent it when after dinner my father would look at me and say, “Go help your mother in the kitchen,” while my two brothers got to watch the game on TV or sit and talk or play games or whatever it was they were doing. It was always me that had to go help in the kitchen! Right? Some other women are nodding there. Or maybe there are some guys in here that had sisters and your dad always said to you, “Go out and mow the grass.” But he never asked the sisters to mow the grass. Any of those who ran into that?

I think there are two problems for Martha. Two ways in which Martha has missed the mark. First of all, she has expectations for her sister. She thinks her sister “ought” to be doing something. It is not based on what the sister’s gifts are or what the sister wants to be doing or what Jesus has told her sister should be doing. She has an image in her mind of what her sister ought to do, and it is based largely on the fact that herself she is feeling overwhelmed. There is a real danger when we have expectations for another person’s behavior. And the danger is that we will probably be let down. Whatever it is we expect from someone else they probably will not live up to it. Whether it is your sister or your son or your daughter or your spouse. When you have clear expectations of what they ought to be doing odds are they are going to let you down because that is not what they are doing. So I think that is the first problem with Martha is that sense of expectation.

But the second problem which is most clearly presented in the Gospels, is related to what Jesus says, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things.” Martha’s problem is that she is worried and distracted. She was the original multi-tasker who was trying to do too much. We all know what that is like. You are having people over for Thanksgiving dinner and your mind for weeks is worried about who is going to sit where? and do you have enough food? and how are we going to cook the turkey? and, and, and. By the time the dinner comes you can be so totally bent out of shape that you don’t even enjoy your guests. Maybe it is like that for the guys when they are having a Superbowl party and they are worried about getting it ready, I don’t know. But there is that sense of trying to do too much and worrying about it. Jesus says to Martha, “There is only one thing necessary.” Martha’s mind is going in a million different directions. She is probably thinking about straightening up the bedrooms, and worried about clean up and worried about whether there will be enough food left over for tomorrow. Her mind is just going in all different directions and Jesus says, “There is one thing, one thing necessary.” What is that one thing?

Now it is probably not about sitting at Jesus’s feet as the one thing. Because right before this story in the Gospel we read about the Good Samaritan. Here is someone who was going outside of role. The Good Samaritan was showing mercy and love. He was doing and caring. So it is not so much about what it is you are doing. The one thing, that one thing, is to not be distracted. To be listening. To listen to Jesus. To listen to what God is calling us to. To listen to the Holy Spirit. To listen for what is the one thing that I should be doing at this moment. Not what should I be doing later. Not what did I do before. Not what should someone else be doing, but what should I be doing right now. The Good Samaritan was walking down the road, and unlike the scribe and the Pharisee and the priest who were thinking about where they were going and what they had to do, the Samaritan was right there. He saw someone in need and he listened to the voice inside him and it said, “That’s what you need to do now. Put aside wherever you were planning to go and be with that person.” Mary heard the voice inside that said, “I need to sit and listen. Jesus is here at our house and I have this precious time to listen to him.” And she responded to that.

But we have to get quiet inside to be able to hear what the one thing is for us at any moment. If Martha had been quiet inside and not worried and distracted she may have heard God calling her to get some light refreshments for people, but she would have done it out of love, not out of a sense of “duty.” It is when we start doing things out of a sense of duty that we start wanting other people to have as much of a sense of duty as we do. But out of a sense of love. And she could have been joyous in the kitchen. Or she might have gotten the sense that “I need to listen to Jesus right now and I know he can take care of the food if that is an issue.” He fed 500 people, he certainly can feed twenty people here. She wasn’t listening to what was true for her at that moment. Because when we do that things always work well.

Some of you may have had a time in your life, perhaps you were at a party, and you just get this sense inside that that person sitting over in the corner needs someone to talk to. And you go over and you discovered they needed somebody to listen. Or you may be at a party and you are so distracted worrying about whether your hair looks right, and worried about whether the food has been put out, and so distracted in doing that your mind is too noisy to hear that whisper of the Holy Spirit to be attentive to someone else.

What is the one thing? There is one thing that is right for us at every moment, but in order to know what that one thing is we have to practice quieting our minds, not worrying so much, and being fully present right now so we can hear what God is calling us to.

Proper 10 C

Human beings evolved as tribal animals, and we see that tribalism asserting itself in politics and extremism in many parts of the world.  When a lawyer asked, "Who is my neighbor?"  Jesus spoke clearly and profoundly against chauvinism with the story we call the parable of the Good Samaritan.

Proper 10 C

Transcribed from a sermon given

On July 11, 2010

At St. Barnabas Episcopal Church, Arroyo Grande CA

By the Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

Luke 10:25-37

If Jesus were living in the Middle East today he might have told that parable this way, “There was a Palestinian living on the West Bank who was driving up to Jerusalem. His car broke down going up the step hill, and when he got out to take care of his car some robbers grabbed him, jumped him, and left him lying by the side of the road. An Imam from one of the mosques nearby was driving by and ignored him and just went on his way. An American who worked for a non-governmental organization, doing good works over in that area, also was in a hurry and drove by. Then an orthodox Jew that was a settler saw the man at the side of the road, stopped his car, got out with his first aid kit, cleaned his wounds himself, helped the man into his car, took him to the hospital and because as a Palestinian he had no health insurance he paid the hospital whatever it was going to cost to take care of him.”

If you were going to tell that story in the United States you might say that there was a rancher who was driving on the road to Phoenix Arizona, and as he was driving along his truck collapsed and didn’t work. It was hot, 110 degrees, and he was thirsty. He was stuck out in the desert and no one would stop to give him water. A politician drove by in his air conditioned car and just ignored him. One of the people who was guarding the international boarder drove by, but didn’t even notice him. Then came a rickety old truck packed, filled with illegal immigrants, and they got out and they shared what water they had with him and took him to the nearest town.

The thing that is shocking about the story, the parable that Jesus told is not what the person did, not what the Samaritan did, but who he did it for. You see human beings are tribal animals. Cows and deer are herd animals. Wolves are pack animals. Human beings are tribal. In order for human beings to survive when they were evolving they needed to come together in groups. A tribe is a little larger than a family, but it has a lot of people who have the same or similar genetic code. A tribe survived by hunting together. An individual human being cannot survive. You need to have others around to help with the hunt, to protect from predators, to protect from other human beings. So human beings have tribes. It is right in our genetics because the human beings that survived were the ones who took care of their tribe and excluded others. The ones who are open to everybody, were less likely to survive.

It is true even for us who think that we are way past tribal mentality. Why do you think it is that Survivor has so many people watching it? If you have ever watched survivor, I did with my daughter once, you know it starts out with two tribes that are competing with each other. Or think about high school. I have never heard of any high school anywhere in the country in which there were no tribes. They might have been called gangs, they might have been called clicks,  but there are always the ins and the outs. There is my group and that group. And then of course we get to sports. Each town has a totem animal. This is part of tribal imagery where each tribe has an animal that represents it. We have eagles and sharks and tigers and all kinds of animals who represent our tribes, our teams. And when our sports teams compete we cheer for our tribe, from our city - and the people from that other city, who are talking about and supporting the other team, they are not as good as we are. We are the best. We’re number one. That’s tribal mentality. That’s the idea that somehow my tribe is better than other tribes. And of course the next step in this thinking is that my tribe is better than other tribes so my tribe has a right to survive and other tribes, eh, not so important. We take care of our own. It is in us. It is part of who we are.

It is very clear in the Old Testament there is a lot of tribal mentality. We read in the Old Testament that there are twelve tribes, each one descended from a supposed son of Abraham, that have become a confederation. And there is also a sense that the children of Abraham are somehow better than anybody else. They are considered to have a special relationship with God. God wants for them to own the land. Therefore, it is okay to go into the land and slaughter people and push them out because our tribe is special. Our tribe has a special relationship with God. During the settling of much of our country there was this sense that we have a special relationship with God and therefore it is okay for us to take the land. We are not immune to it in our history.

You read a lot of that in the Old Testament, but you also read in the Old Testament calls for justice, like the psalm we read today. The prophets said that it is important to take care of the weak, to take care of the widow, the orphan. So the Old Testament is not totally one sided.

But Jesus came and totally split apart that whole idea of a tribal mentality. In fact, it didn’t start Jesus, John the Baptist set the stage. When people came to him, he looked at them and he said, “You think that just because you are a descendant of Abraham you have a right relationship with God. God can make the stones into descendants of Abraham.” Just because you are part of a tribe doesn’t necessarily make you special in God’s eyes.

So the scene is set for this lawyer to come to Jesus and say, “What do I need to do to have eternal life?” What is important? What does God want?

And Jesus looks at him and says, “You’re a lawyer. You know the Law. What does it say?” And this guys says the basic premise, the basic prayer of Judaism, “We are to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and all your strength and to love your neighbors as yourself.” Jesus responds, that’s right, you got it, good. And then the lawyer asks another question. And the question is “Who is my neighbor?” Now that may not have been an irrelevant question. That’s the sort of thing that the lawyers of that time would have discussed. What is our responsibility? Where is the edge of our responsibility? For example, if I told you a story that a man was walking down the street and he saw his son bleeding on the side of the road and stopped and helped him, you’d go, “Why of course.” And if you said a man was walking down the street and his brother was on the side of the road bleeding you’d say, “Well of course he would help.” If he was walking down the street and his cousin was bleeding, well he would probably stop for that. If you said that he saw a car of somebody from his church was in trouble and he stopped to help you’d think, “Well that was nice.” It’s not the stopping to help, it’s the reaching beyond the borders. Who do I care about? Who matters?

You will notice if you read the local paper if there has been an automobile accident and a local person has died, a big banner headline reads, “One person died!” If somebody died within California you’d probably have to have five or six people die to have a banner headline. “Five people die in major accident.” Somewhere else in the United States you might need to have twenty people die, “Twenty people die in flooding!” One person dying in flooding wouldn’t make a headline. If it happens in another part of the world, you have to have a couple of hundred people die to even notice, and it still might be in the back of the newspaper. Where is the boundary of our compassion? And that is what the lawyer was asking. It is a legitimate thing to ask. I can’t take care of everybody, who do I have a responsibility to take care of? It is the sort of thing lawyers back then talked about.

And then Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan. Eugene Peterson describes parables as “time bombs.” Parables are things that may make sense and appear to be simple on the first hearing, but if you sit with them and you think about it over time, all of a sudden at some point it explodes and you realize a new insight that changes your understanding of who you are. Parables work like that.

Who is my neighbor? In Greek the word neighbor comes from the same word as close. Something that is physically close. A neighbor is a person who is close. The Samaritan was close to the person who was hurt. The neighbor is the person right there who needs help. No tribal issue at all. It doesn’t matter. Everybody is a child of God.

We are told that the law says that we are to love, but love can’t be demanded. Love is something that emerges as a response. A response that comes when we know that we are loved by God and we also know that we are no better than anyone else, that we have sinned, that we have made mistakes, that we have hurt other people, that we have fumbled along. That just because we come to church or we were baptized, or that we happen to be of whatever ethnic background or family background or tribal background that that does not make us special. When we realize that in God’s eyes we don’t deserve anything and everything we have is a gift of God’s grace. When we understand that we are loved for who we are, not what we are a part of, but that we are loved as is every other human being - passionately loved by God. When we know that Christ was willing to die for us and we feel that love how can we do anything but respond with love. And when we realize that we are loved in that way and we are all children of God then all the barriers come down because the tribe is every human being that is loved by God. And when we see from God’s eyes we see that the person on the other side of the world, we see that the person who is our enemy, we see the person who is different from us, is loved by God the same way we are. And then there are no strangers. We are all members, and we can’t help but respond with compassion and mercy.

And as you sit with this parable, and you think about who is your neighbor, perhaps consider another way to look at this parable. Perhaps, just perhaps we are the person who has been beaten up and are lying on the side of the road, and Jesus is the Samaritan.