Advent 3. December 17. Luke 17.

http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=84970407 (Click the link to continue the story)

Forgive over and over again. 
A little faith does a lot.
We are worthless slaves.
Lord, have mercy on us!
Was none of them found to return, praising and thanking God, except this foreigner?
For in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.
Those who try to make their life secure will lose it, but those who lose their life will keep it.

A series of wisdom sayings are built into the narrative.  A chapter like 17 can feel a bit disruptive, with less narrative consistency and more sort of wisdom teaching.  But Jesus is inviting us into internal work, soul or heart work, mind-changing work.  The book "Breathing Underwater" by Father Richard Rohr applies the 12-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous to the Christian life.  He suggests that we are all in recovery from self delusions and denials about ourselves and God. 
We may ask ourselves, what teaching is speaking to me right now?  Is it a need to forgive someone who has wronged us?  We may hear that forgiveness is not a one-time thing, but that we may need to keep on forgiving again and again.  Sometimes a single past act continues to cause us pain and we need to talk our way into forgiveness.  Sometimes we focus on the scar and fail to see that time has healed us and the pain has dissipated.  Sometimes the pain persists and the offense lingers.  So, keep on forgiving.  Its for you, as much or more than for the one who offended or sinned against you. 
To the disciples, faith is accumulative and the more you have the better things will be.  Don't we even say, that person has a lot of faith or is really faithful?  Jesus says that faith is not like money.  It is like food coloring in water; a little changes everything. A little faith is powerful stuff, because it opens us up to a world beyond ourselves, our limited minds and senses. 
The slave analogy is hard to hear from Jesus' lips.  Namely because he suggests that his followers are like slaves, called to be obedient to their master.  I'm not sure how to deal with this right now.  But we must acknowledge it as troubling and perhaps archaic.  Is it a word we ought to forget now?  Slavery is never right.  The thought is, faithful people are called to obey God's commands. 
People are crying out for mercy.  Where have you heard their cries?  Yesterday, I heard the cries of a father and a mother whose children attend toxic public schools, where asbestos and lead threaten the health of their children.  How does Jesus respond to cries for mercy?  He stops, listens, acts, and sends them on their way to receive healing and rejoin the community.
Gratitude is a bold announcement of faith!  God has shown mercy.  God has provided.  God has protected.  God has rescued.  God has healed.  God has saved.  God has intervened.  God has spoken words of love and forgiveness.  Thanks is the natural response.
God is nearer than we see or think.  We are always looking somewhere else to some other place or time.  The grass is always greener, we say.  Jesus says God is present immediately and completely in the present moment, here and now. 
Surrender.  Let God be God.  Learn to trust.  How hard it is for us to do these things.  We are self-sufficient lovers of security.  We have fooled ourselves into thinking we protect ourselves with our wealth or homes or relationships or jobs or insurance policies or elected leaders.  We have been hurt by being vulnerable and trusting.  Self-protection is human, too.  To trust God is to give up on all the false securities. It is to stay vulnerable. This is not easy.  It is a lifetime of internal work.  We are all in recovery after all. 

   
             
      

POWER, power, and the faith to fight racism

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbVlLri7X2A
(Click the link to view David Mosenkis's video on racial bias in PA public education funding.)

My congregation (Zion Lutheran, Akron, PA) is on this journey toward antiracism and has joined the fight against racial injustices that plague our institutions, governing systems and policies, local economies and housing markets.  We are a 100% white congregation in the whitest denomination in the U.S. Our lack of racial diversity is symptomatic. But my little, aging white congregation has been on a journey toward antiracism for almost two years and we are not alone.  We are part of something that keeps us moving toward becoming allies in the fight for racial justice.     

Primarily we are working with POWER Interfaith, a statewide antiracism organization based in Philly.  To learn more about POWER click here: https://powerinterfaith.org/.  

We are forming an interfaith coalition in partnership with POWER in Lancaster County.  Over twelve congregations are currently participating, many for more than two years now, in the formation of a faith-rooted antiracism organization.  Eventually, we will become Lancaster POWER Interfaith.  In the meantime, we are participating in a statewide education campaign to end education apartheid and the gross funding inequity that exists in PA.  (See the video above.)  We attend rallies, call and write our elected officials, and seek out additional congregations to join us in this work.  We also continue to learn the history of racism, to analyze current events and policies, and become aware of implicit biases and prejudices that prevent us from building a changed community of justice for all the children of God.  

We have realized that the invisible hand of white privilege  has isolated us from the struggles of black and brown neighbors.  We have not acknowledged our silence, our complicity, our acceptance of white privilege that perpetuates a racialized culture and systems that do harm every day.  Four hundred years ago, the seeds of racial division were sown in the Virginia colony.  The U.S. was organized racially as a mechanism to divide and hold power in the hands of wealthy, landowning, white elites.  The U.S. constitution codifies racial segregation in the 3/5 clause.  Even the 13th amendment, abolishing slavery, opens the way to criminalize blackness, setting the stage for Jim Crowe, lynchings, and mass incarcerations.  (At the bottom of this entry, I have named 6 books worth reading in the next 6 months.)     

Advent 3. December 16. Luke 16

https://bible.oremus.org/?passage=Luke+16 (Click here to continue the story)

Wealth and greed and dishonesty seem to be on Jesus' and Luke's mind in this chapter.  Jesus seems to have a problem with all three of these things.  They do something to the soul, turning us inward, making us selfish and dishonest for the sake of our self-interest.  The wealthy struggle to divest of their wealth, even for compassion's sake and for another suffering human. But Jesus believes in a great economic reversal in which equity and justice will be established and the poor will be glad in the kingdom of God. 
Economic inequality is pervasive, systemic, transcendent of time and place, deeply embedded, and immoral--robbing the poor of basic dignity.  These parables highlight the 1st century Palestinian situation under Roman imperial taxation, in which the poor were exploited.  Our present day circumstances, under free market capitalism, exaggerates income inequality and the ever-widening gulf between the rich and the poor.  Jesus' parable of the rich man and poor Lazarus at the gate illustrates how selfish greed and acquisitiveness can overthrow our basic humanity, making it possible to ignore or even reject the person in poverty before us.  We do so at our own peril, says Jesus.  He suggests that our present greed has eternal consequences.  I'm not sure what that means, but I am sure most Americans would be shocked to hear it.  Our fascination with wealth and our desire to obtain it at the expense of the global poor endangers millions of people.  We see the consequences of our blind consumption in the climate crisis we now face or deny. 
It is impossible to escape the judgment leveled against the rich in these texts.  Not the first words of indictment in this gospel; they began with Mary's song in Luke 1.  Luke sees the gospel as a great liberator of the oppressed and poor, the great equalizer of the poor and rich, the maker of a social justice-reoriented world where all have enough and none are invisibly forgotten or neglected.  May it be so.             

Advent 3. December 15. Luke 15.

http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=209021712 (Click the link to continue the story)

Rembrandt, Return of the Prodigal Son

This picture hangs in my office. No Jesus story speaks more to me than this one.  I have written, preached, studied, and appreciated this story for many years.  To me this is the entire gospel in one story. 
This chapter contains the three parables of lost things; lost sheep, lost coin, and lost sons.  I will focus on the latter story.  It is an extended story about a father and two sons, known as the Prodigal son.  The story is told  in the context of a serious accusation that the religious leaders lob at Jesus.  "He eats with tax collectors and sinner."  In other words, the company Jesus keeps damages his reputation, tarnishes his image as a righteous Jew, and erodes any teaching authority he may be exercising in his public life.  Jesus responds with these three stories. His point?  God rejoices over one sinner who repents, more than 99 self-righteous people who need no repentance.
A Father has two sons.  This is a Jewish story. Genesis is full of these stories.  Cain and Abel.  Ishmael and Isaac.  Esau and Jacob. God favors one son over the other.  Often, the favored one is not the one expected to find favor with God.  In any case, God favors forgiveness and acceptance and brotherhood over envy and anger and violent retribution.
A father has two sons.  The father in this story is absurdly kind and generous.  He is almost foolish in his submission to his sons' requests.  He is persistent in his acceptance of them, despite their behavior toward him and one another.  When the younger son asks for his half of the family inheritance, takes it and runs away, he is tells his father that he would rather have the money than the relationships.  He is telling his older brother that he doesn't value their rule as siblings or sons, that he doesn't respect the work, or that he cares about the family's future.  When the elder son confronts his father for welcoming the younger son home, it is clear he doesn't see himself as a son and heir but as a slave.  He sees his father as an employer or a benefactor rather than a loving parent.  And yet, the Father's actions demonstrate his compassion and love for his sons.
Does Jesus tell the story about himself?  Isn't he the prodigal son, leaving his father's house to spend his life with the sinners and the pigs?   Aren't the religious leaders the elder sons, self-righteous, bitter, and envious?  Don't they see themselves as hardworking, loyal, and deserving? 
Aren't we both?  Luther said, We are at once both saints and sinners.  Sometimes I'm envious of the impious and irreverent and immoral.  Sometimes I'm impious and irreverent and immoral. 
Do we know the Father's love? As a parent, I know that there is nothing my children could do to make me love them less.  They are loved.  Period.  And that's the point.   Prodigal or self-righteous snobs---God loves us all and welcomes us home and throws a feast for us.
I love the image of God's kingdom as a banquet or a gathering for a feast in Luke's gospel.  To me that is what heaven will be like.  The story of God, according to Jesus, is a family love story.  Different than mythologies in which all powerful deities exist but do not act in human history, the story of Israel's God is the story of a God who acts, who shows up, who rescues, who intercedes, who feeds, who nurtures, who protects.  It is a love story, in which God is parent and we are children.  This is the Jesus innovation on the story of Israel.

A great book on the parable of the prodigal son is Henri Nouwen, "Return of the Prodigal Son." 

Advent 2. December 14. Luke 14.

http://bible.oremus.org/?passage=Luke+14 (Click the link to continue the story)

Who gets invited to be guests at dinner parties?  When you host, how do you invite?  I have served two congregations that hosted community meals to feed hungry neighbors.  Those experiences have been windows into Jesus' kingdom or the kingdom of God.  Neighbors and strangers eat together; food is prepared and shared generously.  Mostly, people from low income or poor households attend.  Sometimes the servers eat with the guests.  That is when stories are told, tears are shed, prayers are requested and spoken, and people who often invisible in our consumer culture are seen and heard. 
Another place where I have experienced the Jesus table is at dinner church: a gathering of disciples around a meal for worship, prayer, breaking of bread, story, and song.  Dinner church is an emerging expression of church in the U.S.  It is a space of connection and relationship-building, in which we meet our neighbors, tell stories, pray, sing, and eat.  We always sing a spiritual called "The welcome table" that reminds us that all are welcome at the table of grace and that there are some who have been excluded, uninvited, or denied welcome by the Church.  We have heard Jesus' story from Luke 14 and believe that the table is a place of sacred encounter, in which both God and neighbor become present to one another in life-changing ways.
Where there is food and fellowship there is healing and hope.  All we need is a table, some empty seats, open hearts, and the humility to invite those neighbors who do not get invited because they can't pay their way.  We see the table and the food we share as a free gift.  There are no good excuses for rejecting a gift.  Who does that?  Who says "no thanks" to a free gift that everyone needs?  Jesus noticed that there were people who excused and absented themselves from the community.  They were too busy acquiring people, animals, land---consumers acquiring property.  Like his, our culture is acquisitive and consumer-driven.  We likely live in the most acquisitive and consumerist economy ever known  on earth.  How often our things, our possessions, our property become barriers to relationships.
It is at the table and the meal that good relationships are formed, strengthened, and sustained.
Who could you invite to eat with you this week?  What would make that a sacred experience?