I Thank Thee.

Luke 19:1-10

Praying and researching this scripture I kept recalling two interviews I did in the library of Queen’s University, Belfast, Northern Ireland.  I was there studying how the University and the students had effected the growth of the city outside the downtown, as my senior thesis in my Bachelor of Arts.  I would interview the students about their life at the University and prior.  One day I was interviewing two, Protestants, Ulstermen, Orange Men, and/or Loyalist (which ever label you prefer) about growing up before university what they thought of the, Catholics, Irish, Nationalists, and/or Republicans (which ever label you prefer).  The answer was I thought they had horns growing out of their head, was their answer.  The next day I got the exact same answer in reverse.  Both of parties went on to explain that their time at Queen’s University had changed that perspective.  Yet I knew the majority still lived at home in their respective enclaves, perhaps only yards from their classmate separated by a wall. 

This illustration comes to mind because the scripture emphasizes not only being humble but defining oneself against someone else’s identity.   Humility is, in part, not defining yourself as what you are not, but to be yourself.  This importance is emphasized in Prophet Jonah’s experience.  We will often read Jonah as he was scared of God, and thus ran.  If you look closely at the scripture one will find that Jonah was not scared of God, but was too invested in defining himself against those of Nineveh.  See Jonah did not run because he was scared of God, but that the merciful God would save them from the doom he believed they were due.  So when Jonah did prophesize Nineveh’s destruction, the people repented.  Jonah was a great prophet to truly have them repent, that God saw and said, he would not bring the calamity upon them.  Then in Chapter 4, Jonah makes it clear, it was not God he was scared of, but having those “others” saved that made him run and even made him angry, despite it being his work that saved them.  It reads: “But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry. He prayed to the Lord and said, ‘O Lord! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. And now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.’ And the Lord said, ‘Is it right for you to be angry?’”  Clearly Jonah could not understand himself, even with a personal relationship with God, without defining himself as other from another.

To truly be humble we must be able to simply say “I thank thee.” And not “I thank thee that I am not…”  In today’s scripture the Pharisee is actually is more like us, in that he is doing all the proper religious things and thus reminds me that I may at times say or at least feel “I thank thee that I am not….”  And the first that comes to mind are those people who say, “I am not religious, but I am spiritual.”  I do believe from having met many people who claim that, most are saying it to change the subject of the conversation, but the small percentage, are actually perusing the divine in their own individualistic way.  It is not, for those that are truly seeking God, unlike this parable in Luke, as the tax collector is repenting without all the tradition the Pharisee does and upholds in his prayer.  The parable was told, according to Luke, to those “…who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt,” and this has been reversed by many that look on us who are religious and say, I am glad I am not like those church goers, yet we must look at ourselves and realize that despite being active in church that we are tempted to do the same.  We must with humility look at those people earnestly seeking God and find what we can learn from them as well as they can learn from us and the great Christian tradition.  Imagine if in the parable the Pharisee went over to offer the tradition of prayer, or better yet went over and learned from the man’s passionate and humble repentance.

We thus thank Thee “period.” We define ourselves with humility only through the Christ.  

Mark your Calendar

Luke 18: 1-8

I should have titled this sermon “Luke Your Calendar,” for we will be exploring prayer as per the Gospel of Luke.  This parable is about our “need to pray always and not to lose heart” (v. 1).  Luke writes about our teacher, Jesus, praying in such manner:  Luke 6:12 “Now during those days he went out to the mountain to pray; and he spent the night in prayer to God;” Luke 22:44 “In his anguish he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat became like great drops of flood falling down on the ground.” This model of prayer is hard to follow, praying all night and so intensely that sweat is like blood.  Jesus models this, but what else does Luke tell us about what Jesus says about prayer? 

Luke 11 Jesus teaches the disciples to pray the Lord’s Prayer.  Jesus says “When you pray, say…”  And the first part is about claiming God as a personal God, “Father hallowed by your name;” Then Jesus tells us to petition for our great goal as recorded in Revelation 21: 1-4 “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.’”  This is exactly what we call for ultimately and in slivers of it currently, when we pray “Your kingdom come.”  Each day we need substance, but not simply bread and we are reminded by Jesus’ words to the devil in Luke 4:4 “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone,’” for we do not simply ask for food for our bodies but also for our souls when we pray, “Give us each day our daily bread.”  Then we are to ask to be forgiven, but with the caveat we must do the same, “And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.”  Then one last petition is taught according to Luke, “And do not bring us to the time of trial.”  These petitions are important for us to learn as the Lord’s Prayer, whatever version and/or language one prays it.  Though it is not simply about saying these words, but knowing that every prayer contains a bit of what Jesus taught us to say.  One may be simply acknowledging God and the relationship, or may be simply asking to be feed physically or spiritually and any infinite combination.

The last petition though seems difficult in light of today’s parable on prayer.  If we are to pray so persistently and follow the model of Jesus, prayer itself seems somewhat like a trial.  Thus let us look back at the scripture.  The key is in verses seven & eight, “And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them?  I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them.” This is the Good News, yet we also know we need to pray persistently as Jesus models and the widow suggest in this parable.  We are taught by Jesus what we must say in our prayers and we realize we must petition persistently.  And we should realize the other half is that we must listen.  Just as Elijah found God in the “…sound of sheer silence..” (1 Kings 19:12) we must Listen.  We will be answered quickly, but if we do not hear and we often don’t because it is not what we want, we must continue to pray until we can hear.  We must pray as Jesus models, because we do not listen as loudly as we petition.  Let us pray constantly with our ears and heart open to God.

On the way...

Luke 17:  11-19

Soda-Pop tastes much better in a glass bottle, and I remember walking an extra mile just to get a Pepsi in a glass bottle after my paper route in town every so often, into the late eighties, but I recall in 1985 finding a machine that sold pop in glass.  It was a great find in rural Maine along with three old fire trucks, both of which were at this local mechanic’s garage.  See we were heading  to Acadia National Park for a family vacation when our sedan began to smoke and we pulled to the side of the road.  This was not unusual and often my dad would get us on the road again, however this time it was clear that the radiator hose needed to be replaced.  After waiting to see if a trooper or someone would stop my pa jumped the fence and headed to the farmhouse to call for a tow.  Well it was stressful for the parents for we had to stay overnight in this small town waiting for this important part, but I recall having a great time climbing over the old fire trucks the mechanic maintained for local parades and enjoying the treat of pop in glass bottles.  This event became part of the story of this vacation which was actually our last vacation before my parents’ divorce.  It was a great vacation as I recall, even remembering a fight during the stay as well.  Yet the event of breaking down on the way help to define the reality that even through all the stresses of life including divorce, my parents were able to stay calm and  find joy for the children. 

Luke writes about Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem often (9:51; 13:31-35; 19:28) and this scripture is quite specific about traveling to Jerusalem.  This is the city “…that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!” (Luke 13:34), this is where Jesus will be crucified and we will be saved.  This is the event that is essential to us as Christians.  And in this scripture Luke tells of two events that occurred “on the way.”  As Jesus traveled between Samaria and Galilee, he was approached by ten lepers, who did keep their distance.  They were following the rules for lepers as per Leviticus, keeping away from others in a group, and begging where travelers would pass.  They asked Jesus to have mercy on them and he did, telling them to go present themselves to their priests, they were healed as they went. All ten received this miraculous healing.  Now one of them we know was a Samaritan, and we assume the other nine were Jewish, we do know the other nine did continue to the priests to share their healing as Jesus had told them to, and as the Hebrew Scriptures would have commanded them so they could be examined and allowed to be part of society again.  Now the Samaritan that was healed was overjoyed and returned to Jesus to thank him.  Jesus does ask about the other nine and then makes it clear that this one that was praising God was a foreigner, a Samaritan.  And Jesus says to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”  Was not this Samaritan already healed with the other nine?  Of course, for that is why he returned to praise Jesus.  The verb, “made well” is usually translated as “to be saved,” which makes sense since the Samaritan was already healed, and thus his faith and belief ensures salvation, “made well.” 

This event on the way helps us to realize aspects of the Cross, the event in Jerusalem.   The Cross is a miraculous healing of everyone available to everyone.  It is not the physical healing as per these recorded events but a grace that is for the entire world and if someone, even someone out of the chosen people, has faith and praising God, salvation is achieved.  Thus the event of the Cross must be understood not simply as an event that could have occurred at anytime, but an accumulation of Jesus’ ministry, as well.  The Cross is where the rubber hits the road, and humanity knows atonement, but we do need Jesus’ entire ministry to understand and respond to this event in history and our lives.  We need not only where the tire meets the road, but also the radiator hose and the whole car, to get where we are going, as the journey helps us to understand our destination.  

Bread of Wholeness

1 Corinthians 11: 17-32

The Corinth Church did not get it.  They came to the Lord’s Table as if it was a party, that would be bad enough, but the party benefited the rich over the poor.  Even though the Gospel should have had them realize there was no longer “slave or free” in the church.  Yet we must be very thankful of the Corinthians’ mistake, for we have Paul’s writing on the celebration of the Lord’s Supper.  The Gospels have the accounts of the Last Supper, but this is the only full account of the church’s ritual of remembrance.  And we can learn a whole lot from this scripture.

Paul states we must examine ourselves and discern the body prior to partaking in this meaningful feast.  Sometimes this idea of discernment and examining of ourselves is taken so that individuals demand perfection prior to sharing the bread.  This is of course an extreme as the only perfect human is Jesus who is inviting us to the table.  Our General Minister and President, Dr. Rev. Sharon Watkins has preached that there are three discernments of the body we need to be at this meal.  I believe that these three discernments are essential to our approach to and beyond the Table.

The first discernment of the body is that of Jesus’ body.  We need to remember what Jesus’ broken body had done for us, historically and personally.  During the early part of the Restoration Movement (in which our denomination stems from) there was a great emphasis on the Lord’s Supper being an act of remembrance over the idea Jesus’ presence at the Table.  However, it was never that simple, and if you listen to the prayers of Elders and Pastors at the table, you will hear prayers such as written in our book of worship, “May your Spirit transform this bread and cup into signs of Christ’s living presence and engrave upon our hearts the life-transforming image of Christ.”  Not only do we remember what happened at that specific time in history that saved each of us, we feel and know the presence of Jesus in each of our own individual lives.  The word that is used in our scripture for “Remember” is the Greek word anamnesis which means more than to simple recall, like what was written on a grocery list, it includes the idea of re-presentation and thus the real here and now.  Such it is when we smell our favorite comfort food; we do not simply remember when it was prepared but are brought back to all the feelings and reality, for at least an instance. This is what is meant when we break bread in remembrance of Jesus’ body, we recall what he did on the cross and what Jesus’ presence has done in our individual lives.  Barnett Blakemore states it well in The Revival of the Churches (1963)  “The role of remembrance is not that it brings the Lord into our presence, but that remembrance opens our eyes to him into whose presence we have already been brought by faith.”

The second discernment of the body is that of the body of Christ.  It is clear in this scripture that Paul is very concerned with the Body of Christ.  He writes about how the Corinth body, the church, was looking at itself with priority for the rich.  This was the problem that caused Paul to write about the ritual of Communion.  Then we read about how the church is to see herself in chapter 12 verse 12 “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.  For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.”  The church is the Body of Christ we must discern as we break bread together.  While we are not at risk of getting drunk at our table with unfermented wine, nor can we eat till we are full with our small pieces of bread, we must understand how important we feel interconnected with the entire church, not simply in the building but beyond the walls and even time.  This is essential to communion as we are called out of society to be Christ’s Body and we need to understand, “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored all rejoice together with it.” (1 Cor. 12:26).  This was truly what Paul meant when he asked the Corinthians to discern the body, for that was the body they were not able to see, but one can see the interdependence of people if they understand what Jesus did for them on the cross and how the presence is known now.

The third discernment of the body is that of the body of Jesus the Christ, truly combining the two above.  We recall the scripture Mathew 25 where the righteous ask when they had served Him, hungry, thirsty, imprisoned, etc, and Jesus responded, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”  Therefore the last discernment takes on our own personal remembrance of Jesus in our lives as our savior, and the interdependence of our church existence and discerning what we take away from the table.  We must continue discerning the breaking the bread away from the table and see Jesus’ body everywhere we go.  This discernment is how we are Christians, how we are Church.  We go out into the fragmented world inviting people to this discernment, to the Table.  We go out searching for this body thus creating wholeness in individuals and society by serving as we have been served, loving as we have been loved, and welcoming all to the Lord’s Table as God has welcomed us.

(Must give credit also to Michael Kinnamon and his reflections on the new identity statement as printed in Disciples World)