Proper 27 C

Have any of you had the experience of talking to a friend or a neighbor or a colleague who quoted something from scripture and was absolutely sure that he or she had a rational explanation why that particular scripture supported the point that he or she was trying to make? In the Gospel passage today Jesus implies that that is not how we are to use scripture. Rather scripture is designed to take us beyond ourselves, to transform us, to help us be fully alive.

Proper 27 C

Luke 20:27-38

Transcribed from a sermon given on

At St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

On November 7, 2010

By Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

(laughter) Anybody every had that experience? I don’t know? Maybe once or twice?

We all know that people use scripture to support what they already believe. We have all had that experience. Maybe you’ve done it once or twice. We certainly find that it happens in the current world. In the big controversies that are going on, whether it be about ordination of gays and lesbians, or about the ordination of women. You might go back a little further and you saw the Bible being used this way during the civil rights movement. You certainly saw the Bible being used this way during the time of Civil War where people on both sides of the issue of slavery could take passages from the Bible and say, “Clearly the Bible supports slavery,” while others could say, “Clearly the Bible supports the abolition of slavery.” The Bible has been used to support the Divine Right of Kings. It was used by all kinds of religious people many years ago to send soldiers off to the Middle East during the Crusades to kill thousands of people to get back Jerusalem. It was used in the early Christian Church for all the theological debates about the nature of Christ. It is nothing new to take snippets from the Bible and then use them to support your point of view. We know it is nothing new because that is what happened in today’s Gospel reading.

There was a division within Judaism in the time of Jesus about whether there was life after death, about whether there was some form of resurrection. Some believed that our death was the end of our unique experience. Others believed that there was some kind of life after death. Jewish people today also fall into those two camps. It is part the Jewish tradition. Some believe in a resurrection some believe that there is none. The Sadducees were a group that did not believe in resurrection. Now Jesus at this point in scripture has been talking a lot about resurrection. So a Sadducee thinks he has it all figure out. He’s got a great argument that he is going to take to this rabbi.

He takes a bit of the law from Moses which says that if there are brothers and one of the brothers dies and the wife has had no children then the other brother should marry that wife. The reason for this is you wanted to continue the lineage. You wanted to continue the name of each male. So if the brother has died it is the other brother’s duty to marry the wife and have children who will carry the brother’s name and carry on that tradition. So this Sadducee takes that law, that is not a very significant law, and then he manipulates it. Now suppose that there were seven brother and they all ended up marrying the same woman as each one died off. It is one of those thought experiments. I’m sure you have encountered people who use those kinds of hypothetical situations in order to support their perspective. So he asked, “Whose wife is she in the resurrection?”

Jesus’ response is that you don’t understand. In the resurrection people don’t get married. We are not concerned in the resurrection with the same kind of issues that we are concerned with when we are living on earth. Marriage isn’t relevant. If you are going to live forever you aren’t concerned about having children. It is not an issue.

It is interesting that in looking at the other books of the Bible, the other synoptic Gospels, both Matthew and Mark have this same story. It is almost identical except they have an additional sentence in which Jesus’ first response to the Sadducee is, “You do not understand scripture nor the power of God.” I don’t know why Luke didn’t include that, but I love that way of describing someone who takes a piece of scripture to support their own viewpoint. Scripture is not supposed to be used that way.

Then Jesus goes on to take another little piece of scripture that doesn’t seem to have anything to do with resurrection and uses it by saying that Moses said that God was the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and if he is God of them, God is the god of the living not of the dead which means there must be resurrection. I always remember when I read that thinking, “That’s really not a very good argument for resurrection.” There had to be better scriptural arguments for it.

But when I though about what I was going to say today, and I contemplated this whole passage, I realized that this whole passage is not about the resurrection, it is about the use of scripture. It is about how are we to be with scripture. So Jesus kind of turns it around on the Sadducee by basically saying, I think you are totally wrong and that is not the way to do scripture. You really don’t understand, but if I were going to use that kind of reasoning I can find some passage in scripture that with the same kind or reasoning would support my point of view. But that is not what scripture is for.

When I was in seminary there was a student who told a story of a professor who said to the class, “Now if you were stuck on a deserted island, what one book would you want to have with you?” And since this was at a seminary, everybody raised their hands and said, “Of course you would want the Bible.” And the professor said, “No, what you would want is a book on boat building.” Because the point is to get off the island. And then the professor reached down and picked up a Bible and he said, “This is a book on boat building and we have turned it into a manual for island life.” A book on boat building we’ve turned into a manual for island life.

Scripture is designed to take us beyond ourselves. Scripture is there to transform us. The word in the New Testament that is usually translated as repentance is metanoia, to know again, to turn around, to be transformed. The purpose of scripture is not to support what we already believe but to encourage us to see the world in a new way. To challenge us.

My new testament professor said that when you are reading scripture as you are reading along if you are going, “Oh, yeah, I like that.” Just keep reading don’t stop. That is not real relevant, but when you reach that passage where you go, “Huh? Jesus couldn’t possibly have said that. No this couldn’t possibly be right,” that’s when you stop and you take time and you pray and you meditate and you study to try and understand that passage, because that is where the spiritual growth is. We don’t grow just reading things we agree with. We grow when we struggle on the edges and we try to understand things in a new way.

Maybe there was a reason that Jesus used that passage about God being the God of the living, because what he offered is not just resurrection after our death, but he also was offering fullness of life right now. Remember the time when he says, “Let the dead bury the dead.” There are a lot of people who are walking around on earth but are not fully alive. God and the resurrection are for those who are fully alive, who are constantly growing, who are constantly reaching out to know God in a new way. And that is what scripture invites us to.

One of the gifts and challenges of being a preacher in a liturgical church that uses a lectionary is that I don’t get to pick what the readings are on Sunday morning. I get up on Monday and look to see what I have this coming Sunday. Sometimes I go “Oh, great, I’d love to preach on that.” And other times I go, “Oh, what am I going to do with that?” And it forces me to wrestle with pieces of scripture that I might just read over in a hurry. And it forces me to look at them in a new way. And then try and figure out what am I going to say to the congregation that might open people there to see things in a new way. Because that is what, I believe, scripture is all about. It is about inviting us through the action of the Holy Spirit to be transformed and to live a life where we are fully alive.

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 23 C

What set the one leper apart? Could it be his Attitude of Gratitude?

Proper 23 C

Transcribed from a sermon given

October 11, 2010

By Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

At St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

Luke 17:11-19

Psalm 69:1-11

Once upon a time there was a rich man who was taking his dog for a walk. It was a Saturday so he was dressed in his jeans and his flannel shirt. As he was walking along he came across a group of beggars who said, “Please sir, give us something, anything, to help us.” So he reached into his pocket where he had a whole stack of envelopes and he gave an envelope to each one of them and said, “Take this to the bank.” Well the first one who got it said, “An enveloped, I don’t know, there is just a piece of paper in here, and he threw it away.” The next one took it out and saw that inside the envelope there was a check that could be cashed at the bank for a thousand dollars. He went, “That guy couldn’t possibly have enough money to be giving us all a thousand dollars, and he threw it away. The next man said, “Wow, a thousand dollars, that man probably doesn’t have much money in the bank so I better hurry up and get there first before everybody else gets there.” Another one said, “Well I can use this thousand dollars.”  And he headed off to the bank thinking, “Well it’s about time. Finally, my luck has changed. My luck has changed! Hey, I’m going to give a call to my bookie because today is my lucky day. I can make it even more lucky.” Another one said, “Oh, I owe some money to my dealer and this will give me some more drugs.” So he went out to share it with the person from whom he bought his drugs. Another said, “Party!” Then he called all his friends together and had a great party. Another went and cashed the check and took it to his family, and they all celebrated and were happy. There was one that when he saw what was handed him turned around and looked for the man who gave it to him. He had to go all over the park to find him, and when he finally found him, thanked him and thanked him. He said, “This is wonderful! This will change my life. With this I can get into a room and take care of my wife and it will give me a new start in life. Thank you!” And the rich man said, “Where are the other ones that I gave the same thing to?” He responded “I don’t know, they all disappeared.” The rich man said, “Well, you know what, I have a couple of positions open in my company and I really need some good people to fill them. Will you work for me? I’ll make sure you get paid enough to live well, and you will always have security because you are just the kind of person that I want to have work for me.”

Now that is what happened with Jesus and the lepers. There were ten people with leprosy. Remember that back then leprosy was a greatly dreaded disease. There was no cure, and if you had true leprosy the nerves died and the circulation died going to your extremities, so they would start to get gangrene, smell bad and look terrible. People were terrified of others with leprosy because it indeed was very contagious. So if you had leprosy you had to stay 50 yards away from others. You couldn’t come close. You also were considered ritually unclean. You couldn’t go to the temple or to any worship services because you were unclean. And if you did heal from the disease, back then they didn’t make a distinction between different kinds of skin disease, you had to go to the priest and show yourself to be certified as no longer having the disease in order to be ritually clean and to be welcomed back into society. That is why when Jesus looks at the ten lepers he says go and show yourselves to the priests. Go and show yourselves that you are clean so you can come back into the society. And they all go off. We don’t know what the other nine were thinking. But one, when he realized that he was cured, turned around and came back praising God and giving thanks. Then Jesus says to him, “Your faith has healed you.” Now it is an odd thing for Jesus to say because all ten were healed and presumable the other nine did not have that kind of faith. So what was going on?

Well there are several different kinds of healing. There is healing of the body, and I have seen prayers that have transformed people and the doctors were amazed. So I do believe that prayer can be physically healing. There is also mental healing, peace of mind, healing of mental disorders, anger, hurt guilt, and that is a powerful kind of healing. And then there is spiritual healing which means reconciliation of the person with God and other people. When we pray for healing it can be any one of those three that are answered. For example, I think we all know people who have major illnesses perhaps a chronic disorder, and yet they are filled with life. There bodies might be falling apart, but their spirits and their minds and their hearts are open. They are full of gratitude to God for what they do have, and love and joy that is shared in a way that transforms people around them. We also know people who are physically what one would consider healthy and yet they are depressed, lonely, and complaining all the time. So there are different kinds of healing.

What happened is that Jesus healed the body of all ten lepers, but there was more for the one who had faith. The Greek word that is translated as faith, is not faith in the sense that you believe a set of precepts. It is not that you ascent to the Nicene Creed. It is not that you believe that Jesus is any particular thing. Faith represents relationship and trust. Faith means that there is harmony in the relationship with God. A wholeness in the spiritual life.

The one that turned around and came back to Jesus with thankfulness had his relationship with God healed; he became spiritually whole. This is because he had what in the twelve step programs they would refer to as an attitude of gratitude. That no matter what is happening there is much to be thankful for. You see that in the psalms. In the psalm we had today there is a wonderful expression of that. When we read it it starts out, “Be joyful in God all you lands; Sing the glory of his Name. “ What we are supposed to be doing is singing and praising God all the time. The psalm goes on to describe how God brought the people across the sea on dry land. But it doesn’t just talk about the wonderful things, the happy things. It also includes, “You tried us just as silver is tried. You brought us into a snare. You laid heavy burdens on our backs.” And yet, and yet, we will praise you because even in those difficulties and in those dark times you were with us, and you helped us to learn from them, to grow from them. That’s gratitude - when we acknowledge God in everything and give thanks to God at all times. Always. When we realize that every breath that we breath is a gift from God. When we say thank you Lord for this beautiful sunny day, and thank you Lord for those cold foggy days. And thank you Lord for my health today and thank you Lord for getting me through whatever I am suffering. Because it is that attitude, that relationship with God, in which we are wholly present with God and we remember to acknowledge God in all things at all times. That is the foundation of true healing and true health.

May you remember to praise God and to sing of his glory.