18 Sunday after Pentecost Yr C Proper 20 Sept 18 2016

18 Sunday after Pentecost Yr C Proper 20 Sept 18 2016 Audio

Most parables begin with either the words, the Kingdom of Heaven is like...
or those words are inferred. But then we have this from Luke. What does the preacher do? A parable has multiple interpretations, a parable has layers of meaning, a parable allows the listener to access it from many entry points. So this preacher finds these verses terribly vexing, even confusing. Probably much like a joke, we all should be laughing, like we did reading about the lost sheep, he's gotta be kidding.

But there is one thing I know about the gospel of Luke, and that is besides being the gospel of hospitality, one of the other prominent themes in Luke is the proper use of wealth. So we'll go with that as a theme today. Except that it’s not just the use of wealth; it’s more like Luke is concerned with our relationship to wealth and how that affects our relationships with others. With this in mind, I'm still not sure we have a clear way forward with this text, but Jesus has something to say, and Luke has something to say, so let's try to listen.

Wealth itself is not assigned a moral position, like good or bad, wealth itself is neutral, although there are better and worse ways to use money. Jesus tells us about this dishonest manager, or shrewd manager, it's hard to know which it really is. I think I can hear Jesus say, are you kidding me? You don't get it? It's about what you do with money and wealth, and maybe even more importantly, what money and wealth do with you. And Luke seems to be concerned with relationship and how wealth affects that. So, lets talk about wealth and money and stewardship and consumerism today, and see where it gets us. Most likely, talk about wealth and money put us right on that slippery slope ethicists and theologians and politicians talk so much about.

So today I want to talk about my theology of stewardship and generosity. Wealth is a word, in scripture, that is much broader than money. Wealth describes everything God has given, and we, God's creations are commanded to be stewards of all of that. We are commanded to build relationships that are enriching. And yet, like the characters in our story today, that is not clear or easy, and the slippery slope may get us anyway.

So here's a little picture of my life, and the household I lived in, and the household Rick and I lived in for some time. Before Rick and I moved away from Minneapolis, we lived, with our two sons, and my mom and dad, in the house in which I grew up. My dad died about 5 years into that arrangement, and so we continued to live in the house with my mom, which was mutually beneficial. We moved away some time after that, and my mom continued to live there with my sister with her husband and children who then purchased the house and committed to caring for our mother there as long as possible. My mother died two years ago now. But the story is a good one. My sister has an overly generous heart, and had taken in a little homeless family that they know, who lived in the basement, for a few years, all while mom was still alive. During some of that time, our son Willie lived there as well. The house was a bit crowded and uncomfortable. But her kind heart could not say no. And then there is her sister, that would be me, who took in a homeless family who lived in the basement at St. Andrew's for a time.

Sometimes a theology of generosity is the beginning of that slippery slope,
but to err on the side of generosity is the error I choose to make. The little family that lived in my sister's basement, my mom's basement, have been able to buy their own home, the homeless family who lived in the basement at St. Andrew's, has held together and made a good life for themselves as well. Here at Trinity, we share our home with those who are homeless as well. So part of my theology of stewardship is generosity in all things.

And part of it is about consuming less. We live in this society where we consume so much. In the last couple of years of tightened budgets I have noticed news programs doing little spot stories about how to spend less.
I tend to talk to the television when I watch, and I say to it, "so which rock have you been living under all these years, those are practices that have been a part of my life, forever, and now they're trendy." Once again, it is practicality that gives birth to great ideas, but consuming less whether it is a result of less income or whether it is a result of a commitment to stewardship, is a good thing.

Years ago, as a spiritual practice, I made a commitment to myself, as much as possible, to consume less, to buy clothes and household goods that had already been used. They call that up cycle now. The king of reuse is my husband Rick, I've never met anyone who can see an object and imagine that object's next use better than him, ahh, the slippery slope.

But I tell you these stories because I think sometimes we believe that stewardship and giving are up to someone else, and that other people are so very generous, and yet each of us is already doing this very important spiritual work. We also need to continue and renew our commitment to greet the world with a spirit of abundance and generosity. Each one of you has so much to give, each one of you is so very talented. I saw that clearly recently with our Trinity Country Fair. And the good news is that we are not all talented in the same way. Sometimes I lament my complete and utter lack of art skills, I can't draw to save my soul, but I can replace the zipper in a jacket so that the jacket can be worn again and again.

Wealth is both a blessing and a responsibility. We are blessed to be a blessing, no matter what we have or what we don't have. Perhaps the shrewdness of the manager comes through his recognition that he has put amassing wealth in front of developing relationships. Maybe, finding himself between a rock and a hard place, he cuts the amount others owe by the amount of his surcharge, avoiding further accusation that he is defrauding his master, but strengthening, maybe even establishing, relationships that will sustain him in a time of need.

Here in the church we see stewardship as more than simply contributing money to the church; it’s also about contributing time and talents, and volunteering for ministry and mission. It’s about reaching out to build relationships from a perspective of abundance instead of scarcity. It's about showing the world that Love wins. Maybe we are place on this earth to love and care for each other, not to separate ourselves from each other with wealth, status or privilege. It's been said, that St. Augustine asserted that God gave us people to love, and things to use, and original sin manifests itself in our tendency to confuse those two, loving things and using people. And God seems to show up in the places and people we least expect to that we are not tempted to place our faith in the wrong place.

So let's take seriously that God gives us people to love, that we are given all of our resources to care for others, and that none of us know how much time we may have to do that. One way to do that is to think about the person with whom you would like to improve or deepen a relationship, and then, do that, work on that relationship.

As we go forth today, let's see those around us as God's true gifts to us, the "honest wealth" and true riches of life in community. Let us go into the world with a spirit of abundance and generosity, and bless the world, as God has so abundantly blessed us.

18 Sunday after Pentecost, Yr C, Proper 20, Sept 22 2013

I have said over and over that most parables begin with either the words, or the inferred words, the Kingdom of Heaven is like.... and then we have this from Luke. What does the preacher do? A parable has multiple interpretations, a parable has layers of meaning, a parable allows the listener to access it from many entry points. So this preacher finds these verses terribly vexing, but there is one thing I know about the gospel of Luke, and that is besides being the gospel of hospitality, one of the other prominent themes in Luke is the proper use of wealth. Except that it’s not just the use of wealth; it’s more like Luke is concerned with our relationship to wealth and how that affects our relationships with others. With this in mind, we sense a profound change in the rather interesting, if not terribly admirable, character of the dishonest manager. For while he once acted in a dishonest way to enrich himself, he now acts to enrich others and thereby establish a relationship of mutual benefit. 

Wealth itself is not assigned a moral position, like good or bad, wealth itself is neutral, although there are better and worse ways to use money. Luke seems to be concerned with relationship and how wealth affects that. So, lets talk about wealth and money and stewardship and consumerism today, and see where it gets us. Most likely, talk about wealth and money put us right on that slippery slope ethicists and theologians and politicians talk so much about.

But today I want to talk about my theology of stewardship and generosity. Wealth is a word, in scripture, that is much broader than money. Wealth describes everything God has given, and we, God's creations are commanded to be stewards of all of that. We are commanded to build relationships that enriching. And yet, like the characters in our story today, that is not clear or easy, and the slippery slope may get us anyway.

Some of you have asked about my family and my mom in Minneapolis, and I have responded with a little story about the household in which they live. My mom continues to live in the house in which we all grew up, and my sister with her husband and children have purchased the house and are committed to caring for our mother there as long as possible. This is where I smile, and continue, my sister has an overly generous heart, and has taken in a little homeless family that they know, who are now living in the basement, and oh yeh, our son Willie is living there as well. The house is a bit crowded and uncomfortable right now. And some of you will nod and remember, not unlike her sister who took in a homeless family who lived in the basement here at St. Andrew's for a time. Sometimes a theology of generosity is the beginning of that slippery slope, but to err on the side of generosity is the error I choose to make.  Thankfully Willie has a place to go, actually Rick's brother and sister-in-law are having him live with them for awhile. We continue to work to find a place for the little family in my sister's basement. 

So part of stewardship is generosity in all things, and part of it is about consuming less. In the last couple of years of tightened budgets I have noticed news programs doing little spot stories about how to spend less. I tend to talk to the television when I watch, and I say to it, "so which rock have you been living under all these years, those are practices that have been a part of my life, forever, and now they're trendy." Once again, it is practicality that gives birth to great ideas, but consuming less whether it is a result of less income or whether it is a result of a commitment to stewardship, is a good thing. Years ago, as a spiritual practice, I made a commitment to myself, as much as possible, to buy clothes and household goods that had already been used. And that is entirely related to my commitment to the St. Andrew's Rummage Sale as a spiritual practice. Collecting the stuff that we no longer use, and getting it to people who will use it again, and getting to know one another better in doing the work, is important and spiritual work. The king of reuse is my husband Rick, I've never met anyone who can see an object and imagine that object's next use better than him, ahh, the slippery slope.

I tell you these stories because I think sometimes we believe that stewardship and giving are up to someone else, and that other people are so very generous, and yet each of us is already doing this very important spiritual work. But we also need to continue to make our commitment to greet the world with a spirit of abundance and generosity. Each one of you has so much to give, each one of you is so very talented. And the good news is that we are not all talented in the same way. Sometimes I lament my complete and utter lack of art skills, I can't draw to save my soul, but I can replace the zipper in a jacket so that the jacket can be worn again and again. 

Here at St. Andrew's we see stewardship as more than simply contributing money to the church; it’s also about contributing time and talents, and volunteering for ministry and mission. It’s about reaching out to build relationships from a perspective of abundance instead of scarcity. So today, as we begin our new Sunday school year, and as we begin Bible study, and Education for Ministry, and Adult education, and youth group and everything else, we will commission each of you in your chosen ministry of generosity. And, I ask you to imagine something new for yourself. How can you be generous in a new and different way, how can you give of the gifts God has given you?

Thanks be to God. 

17 Pentecost Yr C

The parables from the Gospel of Luke we have before us today are down right hard. I have read them over and over, and continue to be unsure of what they mean. I have read about them, spoken to colleagues about them, and continue to be unsure of what the message in this is. But then that is the way with parables. The nature of a parable is to ask more questions than to give clear and certain answers. You have to wonder at the wisdom of Jesus, and at the wisdom of those who eventually told these stories, and the wisdom of those who eventually recorded them. I think if I was the editor, I’d try to clear up the meaning, and aren’t we thankful I’m not the editor,because my certainty surely would not be everyone else’s certainty.

And all that is in addition to the entire collection of readings we have today, or for that matter, recently in these last weeks. I wonder how this is sacred scripture, how any of this is really Good News. We have been reading from the prophet Jeremiah, and it seems like the Israelites’ circumstances are getting worse, not better, but I assure you, there is hope, we just need to see them through these very dire circumstances. The Psalmist laments the place the community finds itself, they are feeling taken advantage of, they are feeling embarrassed, and they are feeling that God is angry at them, and yet they continue to look for forgiveness, and for help. The epistle from Timothy actually seems to have some Good News. The writer asks for prayers for kings and all who are in high positions, which is really to ask for good government. Good government brings about good order; good order gives good faith, quiet and peace, so that our savior, Jesus Christ can be at work, which is what seems like the only Good News today.

The parables that we have heard for these last few weeks are parables that call us to faith, and demand that we put our faith life in good order, and that order puts our relationship with God as the priority. Let’s take a closer look at the parables in Luke. I think these parables, although there are some difficulties, continue that theme of priority. This does not set up a duality, it does not say that God is good and wealth is bad. What it does say, is that God’s relationship with humans is the more important priority, and is our top priority. Everything else falls into place, everything else is ordered after that, including wealth.

I think what Jesus is doing in these parables is show us that faith forms, informs and shapes every aspect of our lives. The practice of faith prioritizes everything, first and foremost, wealth. That priority is what we have come to call stewardship. Stewardship is the reality that everything we have, is gift. It is ours only to care for while we walk this earth.

So what does that mean in our lives? When we leave this place, you and I have competing claims on our time, attention, and resources. Time, attention, and resources actually make up our wealth, wealth is not limited to money, wealth is so much more than money. It is education, privilege, genetics, nature and nurture. Wealth is all we bring to bear on our choices and opportunities. These parables tell us that faith in God has everything to do with wealth, and faith in God has everything to do with how we use our wealth. So these parables are about how we use our wealth, how we can be good stewards, in the midst of these competing claims.

What kind of completing claims am talking about? American’s have for about 200 years lived a Gospel of Wealth. That gospel has preached that God’s plan for humanity could be realized in the United States, and Americans could get rich while helping God realize God’s plan. Much of our politics has been built on this dream of self-development and personal growth and privilege. The economic circumstances of our common life in these last couple of years may be teaching us that priorities have been skewed and must be reassessed, in fact, the Kingdom of God involves moving down, not up.

As I was thinking about this I remembered a conversation I had with my brother who owns a construction company, he builds Hom stores, they are large furniture stores. I asked him one day about the furniture business, I see and hear ads encouraging us to buy a whole room full of furniture and that we can finance it and not pay any interest for years. I’ve never been able to understand how that works. I learned from him that the money is made not on the furniture, but on the sale of the note to the bank. The bank charges the interest and collects the principle, and the furniture dealership makes money on that sale, and then is out of the picture and doesn’t have to get their hands dirty in the interest mess. I, personally, question the efficacy of that sort of business, it seems to me that it is really a practice that puts the accumulation of money over and against what people actually need.

There is the claim that accumulation and surplus rather than sufficiency becomes the goal, and the goal comes to justify exploitative means, we have seen and experienced this in mortgage problems. There is the claim to power, and the danger inherent in the worldly power that money brings with it; the power to get one’s own way, to seek to buy people as well as things, to stamp one’s feet and demand immediate gratification. Such power leads to hubris, pride; believing that one is more important, owed more privilege than others; thinking that one is above the law and the ordinary standards of decency and citizenship do not apply, we see this often in the people our culture holds up as celebrity.

There is the claim to relationships, but riches can distort human relationships; the equality and mutuality of love and friendship are replaced with elements of calculation as people almost unconsciously modify their behavior, seeing some self-interest in so doing.

And underlying all of these, as Jesus so acutely points out, is the moral desensitization that occurs; the inability to discern what is actually enough in a world in which there is enough for everyone’s need but not for everyone’s greed; the ethical obscenity of conspicuous over-consumption when so many suffer such poverty; the spiritual alienation from a human community in which if one part suffers, all the other parts suffer with it, and the consequent loss of belonging to a human community in which if one part rejoices all the other parts can rejoice with it.

So in the end, our true life consists not in our wealth, but in what we value, and in how we attend to what we value, how we practice the priority of God in response to the reality that God values us, that God loves us amazingly and abundantly.

Thanks be to God. Amen

15 Pentecost Yr C

Hate is such a strong word. It’s a word we hate to use, unless we thrust it in anger, as a weapon to injure. I hate you is used to rip and tear at the one who struck first; it is used by the child to make a deep impression on the parent. Hate is a word that is banned in some households, and yet here it is, right in our bible, read loudly and clearly by (Virginia) (Marty). Whoever does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sister, yes-even life itself, cannot be my disciple. We may as well get up and leave now, because how many of us are willing to be disciples if this is what we must do? What in the world is Jesus saying?

At the very least Jesus is saying that being a disciple is not easy work. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple, Jesus says. What Jesus is saying is that sometimes you really do have to choose. You can’t have it both ways; you can’t be a disciple and expect the easy path. It’s about embracing a life that constantly and consistently chooses mercy and compassion. Jesus presents in this passage, similar to what we heard a few weeks back, the idea that the kingdom of God is about redefining relationships, it is a radical realignment of family and kinship, of possessions, power, and priority, and it is ultimately about stewardship.

This gospel is a challenge; it is about where God is calling us to, not where we’ve been on our own. It is about the present and future kingdom, the kingdom in which we are citizens, disciples, and what that needs to look like. Discipleship is about changing the way we see the world, and being changed by that radical realignment.

This gospel demands that we change our understanding of ownership and our attachment to things. It demands that we change our understanding of kinship, and it demands that we re-prioritize. The difficulty, the hard part of discipleship, is making this radically counter cultural choice, and turning from the cultural message of possession, of ownership, of prosperity, and of greed; to an understanding of stewardship. Stewardship is a biblical priority. Stewardship is who we are as Christian disciples; it is a way of being. Stewardship does not define any one dimension of the Christian life; it describes the whole of being Christian. It is based on Jesus presented in the New Testament not in the role of owner, but as the authentic and preeminent steward, the Great Steward. And we, who are incorporated into the life and work of the Great Steward have been given much, and our failure to give much in return is especially serious. Stewardship is a function of our relationship with God. Stewardship has to do with the ordering of our lives, it impacts how we set our priorities and how we spend our time.

These verses are so difficult, and others like it as well, because this radical realignment away from possessing and toward stewardship is so not valued in our culture. This is not about getting rid of everything we have; it is about putting what we have in its proper place. This is not about getting rid of our parents, our spouse, our siblings or our children, it is about priority. There are cultures today as there have been cultures throughout history that consider wives and children possessions. The 1st century Mediterranean culture in which the gospels arose was that way. You may chuckle at that today, but we have not moved very far away from that reality. We are not far beyond the language in marriage that asks who gives this woman to be married to this man? This is not a question of sentimentality; it is a question of possession. A woman is transferred from the possession of her father to the possession of her husband. And we often hear reference to our children belonging to us.

The false illusion of our culture lies even more clearly in our relationship with our things and our money. This is the relationship for us that needs to be radically realigned. This is the relationship that needs to have proper priority in our lives. All that we are and all that we have is gift. Taking that reality seriously causes us to realign our priorities. We begin to make our choices and decisions through mercy and compassion, instead of greed and prosperity.

But most importantly, the radical realignment of relationship and priority has everything to do with how the Good News of God in Jesus Christ, the Good News of the cross and resurrection, shapes every aspect of our lives and relationships. It has everything to do with our work and our school and our play. What you do with your work and your life is your discipleship, it is your ministry. How you let the reality of this relationship shape your labor is stewardship. Voters and volunteers, website managers and temp workers, bus drivers and barbers, students and secretaries, parents and payroll officers, ranchers and farmers, teachers and musicians, all of what you do, when you offer your time, talent, and labor to God, is bearing your cross by allowing the whole of your lives to be shaped by your commitment to Christ. That is amazing. What you do, how you arrange your priorities matters to God and makes a difference in the world.

I am imagining all of you our there, in this community, treating the people you work with, you go to school with, you play with, with mercy and compassion, with respect and dignity. I am imagining all of you out there in this community making a difference in your piece of the kingdom.

Amen