Superhero or Savior?

When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. Then Jesus said, "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing." And they cast lots to divide his clothing. The people stood by, watching Jesus on the cross; but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, "He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!" The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine, and saying, "If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!" There was also an inscription over him, "This is the King of the Jews."

One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, "Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!" But the other rebuked him, saying, "Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong." Then he said, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." He replied, "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise."

--Luke 23: 33-43

One of my favorite philosophers is Homer…Simpson. He is so wise. One of my favorite of Homer’s teachings occurred during a time when he inexplicably found himself floating down a river in a cherry picker as his daughter Lisa looked on helplessly from the shore. Homer clasped his hands in his hour of need and looked up to heaven and said, “I’m not normally a praying man, but if you’re up there, please save me, Superman!”

Homer praying.

Homer wanted a hero to swoop down and save the day; and who could blame him? Superheroes are the ideal versions of ourselves, the ones who are always there to rescue us from the muck that we get ourselves into. In the early fall my parish held a class called Supergods, where we talked about how characters like Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, are modern-day mythological heroes, divine-like beings who do the kind of saving that, frankly, we might sometimes wish God would do. How often have we, like Homer, clasped our hands and prayed for someone to save us from our time of trial, maybe even swooping down from the sky with a cape flapping in the wind? Is this our image of the Divine?

It should come as no surprise to us even now that folks in Jesus’ own time thought of him as something like this kind of hero, one who would rescue everybody and fix their problems. Plenty of people still do. Jesus, after all, was the promised Messiah, the King of Israel, the one who would overthrow the tyranny of Rome and replace it with a new version of the old Kingdom that his ancestor David had reigned over; and like King David, he would be a conquering hero, super even. That was the hope, anyway.

They wanted a king. Some still do. This past Sunday was the Feast of Christ the King, a day that was created in 1925 to remind faithful followers of Jesus, during the rise of European fascism, that Jesus alone must reign in their hearts and minds, and not the State or its would-be kings and dictators. Pope Pius XI, who established Christ the King Sunday, called it a day of joy, which is why I wore white vestments. So where do we find Jesus our sovereign on this joyful, feast of the Church? At the place called the Skull.

Icon of Jesus being crucified among the criminals.

It's here that the King of Glory reigns. Instead of a throne, there is a cross. Instead of crown of jewels we have one of thorns. Instead of subjects praising and adoring Jesus we have soldiers and religious leaders and passers-by mocking and deriding him. This isn’t an image of kingship, of majesty, and power. It’s a joke, a mockery of the very concept, and the only one who seems in on it, who even begins to understand, is a criminal who is hanging there with Jesus.

This exchange between Jesus and the other two men being crucified only appears in Luke’s version of the story, and it’s quite telling. The original Greek word used to describe the criminals is kakourgos, literally meaning, ‘workers of evil.’  These were not robbers or thugs, these were seditionists, insurrectionists, militants who had carried out plots against the tyranny of the empire. Not exactly a royal court for Christ the King.   Still, in this moment we see the qualities that mark his kingdom.  He pleads to God, “Father, forgive them!” on behalf of those mocking him and putting him to death.  The first criminal joins in the derision, hearing Jesus’ words of forgiveness and paying them no mind, as he is only interested in what Jesus can do for him now.  The second, however, hears Jesus’ words, and he seeks a place in such a kingdom, where the defining characteristic is pardon, not punishment, where even condemned criminals can be redeemed:  “Jesus,” he begs, “remember me.”  And Jesus’ offers grace in his reply to this man, whom the Church will remember by the name of Dismas, telling him that he will be with Jesus in Paradise. Forgiveness for his executioners and grace for criminal – the qualities of Christ’s kingdom.

Saint Dismas.

This is a complete flipping of every idea that the world has ever had about kingship, sovereignty, and power. But that’s the point. Of the Jesus story and of this feast day. Throughout Luke’s Gospel, which we’ve been reading all year, Jesus has been telling us, in his own words spoken through parables what his kingdom –  what he called the Kingdom of Heaven – looks like: a wasteful, prodigal child returning to a father’s loving arms; a hated outsider, a foreigner, serving as the model of neighborly behavior; a shepherd foolishly going off to find one lost sheep; a rich man’s feast open to the poor and marginalized. A day called Christ the King may seem to invite a Gospel reading like Matthew, chapter 24, with images of Jesus coming with the angels, riding on the clouds and shining like the sun at the trumpet call, but instead we get Jesus being crucified, labeled among the enemies of the state, because the kingship of Jesus is summed up right here at the cross: that if Jesus is king, no one else, not even Caesar, can be.

In his excellent book, The Cross and the Lynching Tree, Dr. James Cone writes that the Gospel of Jesus is not a rational concept to be explained in a theory of salvation, but a story about God’s presence in Jesus’ solidarity with the oppressed, which led to his death on the cross. What is redemptive is the faith that God snatches victory out of defeat, life out of death, and hope out of despair. The Christian Gospel, he goes on to say, is an immanent reality, a powerful liberating presence among the poor right now in their midst. The Gospel is found wherever poor people struggle. This is the lesson of the cross. It’s not a superhero saving the day; it’s a Savior who suffers in solidarity.

Jesus reigns from the cross, from that place of suffering. Jesus reigns in hospice houses, homeless shelters, and prison cells. Lately, Jesus has been reigning in the Home Depot parking lots around the Triangle of North Carolina, and at the detention center in Alamance County that’s been used to house those illegally detained. Border Patrol and ICE agents rolled into North Carolina like thuggish Roman soldiers, hellbent on intimidating people into submission. In the same way that they crucified the Prince of Peace in a public space so that onlookers could see “This is what happens when you defy the emperor!” they arrest innocent men, women, and children in an attempt to bully our immigrant neighbors – namely those who are people of color, let’s be honest – into giving up and going “back where they came from.” Stay here and defy our would-be emperor, and you’ll get the same treatment, they say. 

ICE agents in Durham.

Many were met with good old fashioned North Carolina resistance and have fled like the cowards they are. Others remain in cities all over the country, but what they don’t know is that they have already lot. Because the one we follow, the one so many of our immigrant neighbors follow, the one we love, the one we call our king, our sovereign, our Lord, our Savior, and our friend, is not a superhuman hero that will come fix all of our problems if we say the right prayer to him; he reigns from the cross. He who knows suffering is found in the very places where his people suffer, and in that solidarity he will transform their despair into hope, just as he transformed that ugly Friday afternoon into a gloriously beautiful Sunday morning. 

If we want to see our king reigning in his glory here and now, all we need to do is go to the cross, go to the places where suffering is so real, so present, and just be there, in solidarity with the suffering poor, especially our immigrant neighbors right now, and we will see his kingdom in real time, a kingdom, that we affirm in our Nicene Creed, will have no end. As the Greek scholar Preston Epps once wrote:  the kingdom of humanity says assert yourself, the kingdom of Christ says humble yourself; the kingdom of humanity says retaliate, the kingdom of Christ says forgive; the kingdom of humanity says get and accumulate, the kingdom of Christ says give and share.  So which kingdom will we claim? 

Resurrection Eyes

'Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus and asked him a question, "Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. Now there were seven brothers; the first married, and died childless; then the second and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her."

Jesus said to them, "Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive."'

--Luke 20: 27-38

Every week I find a spot somewhere to sit – usually a coffee shop, or maybe a place to eat lunch- and I have a little sign that reads “Free prayers and conversations.” You wouldn’t believe some of the folks who stop by and talk with me and some of the things that they have to say. Some are prayer requests – even from folks who say they don’t believe, but they ask me to pray for folks who do – or one time when a random stranger handed me 20 bucks and said in a Northeastern accent: “Here, Fadda, this is for the church!” Sometimes, though, I get a little tripped up; someone will have a deep theological question that I can’t easily answer, one in which it feels like I’m caught in a kind of trap. One such question I’ve been asked on more than one occasion is  If the resurrection is real, what’s it like?

Weekly setup.

I’ve tried, in those moments, to remember how Jesus answered a question like that. We find him this morning during the final week of his life, teaching in the Temple.  After confrontations with scribes, chief priests, and Pharisees, now it’s the Sadducees’ turn to go toe-to-toe with Jesus, the only time they ever do so.  We talk a lot about the Pharisees, but who were the Sadducees?  The Jewish historian Josephus described the Sadducees as wealthy, urban, conservative aristocrats.  Where the Pharisees cared little about politics—anyone could be in power as long as the Pharisees got to exercise their faith—the Sadducees were the high priestly class, part of the collaboration system with the Roman Empire, and hell-bent on maintaining their wealth and status.  They followed only Torah—the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures—and ignored the prophets, the Psalms, or any other wisdom literature.  They did not believe in a day of resurrection; after all, if you’re rich and powerful, who needs an afterlife?  Nor did they believe in a coming Messiah. Both events would cause a disturbance to their carefully ordered lives.  So when they approach Jesus with a question about resurrection, they are not at all being sincere, but rather they just want to trip him up with a question designed to humiliate him and his ridiculous belief.  This moment is “gotcha journalism” at its finest, to borrow a line from a colleague.  

Their question goes something like this:  OK, Jesus, if there really is a resurrection, suppose a woman’s husband dies and they have no children, prompting the man’s brother to marry her in accordance with the Law, but he dies childless, and the pattern continues until the woman has married all seven brothers without bearing a child. So whose wife will she be at the resurrection?

You can hear the smugness come through, can’t you?  We got him, they’re saying to themselves, maybe even with a dude-bro fist bump or two.  Then Jesus responds, and his response is so profound that Luke says in the very next sentence following the end of our reading today, that nobody dared question him from this point forward.  

Jesus confronts the Sadducees. 

So how about that response? The Sadducees think that if there is a resurrected life, then it must follow the same pattern and rules as this one, and this life is governed by Torah, the Law.  In the Law there is the prescription for a man to marry his dead brother’s widow if no children are born.  The reason that this Law exists is to maintain justice for the widows, to be sure that they are not forced to live as beggars after their husbands’ deaths.  It is a well-meaning law, but it fails in one crucial way:  it treats women as property.  “Whose wife will she be?” they ask, implying a sense of ownership.  

Immediately, Jesus rejects this.  His rejection is not of marriage but of possession.  He acknowledge that in this age people are “given” in marriage, but it is not so in the age to come; that is, in the resurrected life with God.  It’s important to remember that in Jesus’ day marriage was not an institution oriented around romantic love and affection between two people, but a rather it was an economic institution, whereby families’ allegiances were maintained in the giving of a daughter away in exchange for a dowry. But, as Jesus points out, in the resurrected life with God, no one is “given” in marriage because that great sacrament from God that makes two become one is not about possession or property but about belonging; the couple’s belonging to each other, which reflects all of humanity’s belonging to God.  As our own marriage rite says, it is a reflection of Christ’s love for us, a reminder of that belonging.  To imply that a woman would remain the property of a man in the age to come is to infer that God’s future is merely an extension of our own present, but Jesus makes clear that resurrection entails transformation into something new, or in this case into that original vision of how God intended for people to be in relationship with one another.

The original vision of God, as we have said before, is justice for all of God’s children.  This is an important piece to remember, because, as collaborators with Rome, the Sadducees had a stake in maintaining unjust systems.  Of course, they will deny a resurrection, or some life to come with God, because if there is no resurrection then this life right now is all there is and the only opportunity for God’s justice to be realized, and that is bad news for a population under Roman occupation.  It’s bad news for anyone who has known and still knows the sting of injustice, the endless cries that fall on deaf ears.  But the reality of resurrection gives hope to the oppressed, a promise that there will come a day when God will break through, and justice will roll down like waters for all of creation.  Such a promise was terrifying for the Sadducees.  

What is the one thing that people in power are most afraid of? Losing their power. Resurrection takes the power that humanity has tried to claim, over one another, and over life itself, and gives it back to God. Resurrection reminds us, reassures us, that, to quote the prophet, “My ways are not your ways,” says the Lord. In our time we see this with the fast rise of artificial intelligence and the attempts by the billionaire tech-bros – something of a modern-day Sadduceess – to overcome that pesky little problem of death, so that their power and influence will live on forever. But only one thing lives forever, and that is love. The love of the God who is love, the love Jesus embodies in feeding the multitudes, healing the sick, and letting the state kill him, only to mock death to its face three days later and show the world that even the grave can’t hold down love. The rules on this side of the kingdom, a side that is permeable and broken, no longer apply. Our addictions to possessions, prestige, and power, have no place in a resurrected life. 

How fitting, then, that we read this passage one week after All Saints Day? We were reminded then that those we love but see no longer are alive in the resurrected life that will be ours one day; a life that is beyond the injustices of our own time because God is God, not of the dead, but of the living – for God there is no distinction between the two; “life is changed, not ended,” our burial rite says. This is the life that is to come beyond death, yes, but it is also the life that is to come here, on earth as in heaven. It is a promise for which we all hope; truly, good news for the poor. Resurrection is simply the nature of who God is, and cannot ever be understood with minds that cannot imagine a reality beyond their own experiences, as the Sadducees had. We can keep scratching the perpetual itch of uncertainty, waiting for more proof to be given so that we have a better answer and understanding, or we can start seeing life, the life right now, as well as the life to come, through resurrection eyes. The proof will be in the living. 

I Mean to Be One Too

I wanna tell you a story about a saint. You won’t find any schools or hospitals named for this person. No icons. His name was Sam Dotson, and he was a saint on earth if ever there was one. Sam was born up a holler in Pound VA in 1946. He was a quadriplegic and lived with cerebral palsy. Given up by his mother, he was raised by his paternal grandmother, but once she died he entered a nursing home, where he would live for the rest of his life. I first met Sam when I was about seven or eight years old; a group of folks from my home church of All Saints in Norton, who had attended Cursillo, which is a Christian renewal weekend, decided to start up a little worship service at the nursing home where Sam lived. He had this big motorized wheelchair and spoke with the help of a computer that he typed with his index finger. I’d sit with him and sing along with the songs – his favorite was always I’ll Fly Away, he shared that with my mother. 

With Sam Dotson, circa 1995.

Sam loved basketball, and as it turned out, my dad was the coach at the local college right across the street, so many nights my mom and I would wheel him over, and he’d sit there at the end of the bench with me, watching intently and always reacting to every play. The team thought so much of him that they dedicated the seat directly across from Sam’s spot in his honor. 

What I remember most about Sam is his grace and attentiveness. My mom was going through some hard times in those days, and she would often go and just sit and talk with Sam because she knew he’d listen and that he cared. One time, being the dumb little kid that I was, I asked Sam if he blamed God for what happened to him. Who wouldn’t, I thought. He immediately shook his head over and over again and typed out his response on that little computer. He said he never blamed God or got mad at God because he was grateful for every single moment that God gave him. I’ve never seen someone who understood the meaning of gratitude quite like him. I can still see him, can still feel his hugs, and hear him say, in his own voice, as we’d leave his room, “Be good.” Always. Be good.

Sam died in 1997 at the age of 51. By all accounts he lived a much longer life than doctors originally expected, but it still didn’t feel at all like enough time. My family were actually the last folks to see him there in Norton Community Hospital. I think of Sam every All Saints; in fact, one year in college the church I was attending invited folks to write down the names of people who’ve been saints in their lives and told us to hang on to them. I still have mine. 

I share the story of Sam Dotson because every saint has a story, and every one of them deserves to be told. I’m sure that you all have such stories; stories of family members, mentors, teachers, maybe even priests, who have gone on to glory, whose examples still resonate with you. Hold them close during this Fall Triduum of All Hallows Eve, All Saints, and All Souls, because they are very much with us right now. 

I get asked sometimes how someone becomes a saint in the Episcopal Church. What qualifies someone? Do they have to be Episcopalian? No. Do they have to have some miracles attributed to them? No. Our definition of saints is more in line with how the earliest Christians thought about them. These were not perfect individuals, but merely faithful ones. They were the folks whose lives spoke out loud the grace, mercy, and love of God. Many were killed for their faith, yes, but that certainly was never a requirement. And while we do have a process for approving folks onto our official calendar of saints, it’s not as convoluted or lengthy as some others. We Episcopalians believe that while everyone might not be a saint, everyone does have the capacity to be one, because everyone is made in the image of our loving, liberating, and life-giving God. On Sunday morning, the cantors of our parish opened our All Saints Eucharist with a litany of saints, and the chapel was decorated with the pictures of all those folks we love but see no longer. Those named folks, and those known by only a few in those pictures, all have stories, and they all deserve to be told.

On Sunday I invited our folks to look around at the saints who surrounded us that day in ancient icons and modern photography. They are our legacy, not merely the legacy of the Advocate, but the legacy of our everyday lives. They are the ones who have inspired us, loved us, brought us back from the brink, and helped us discover our truest, deepest selves. That legacy is the reason why folks that day were invited to bring their pledge cards to the altar during our offertory, so that they may be blessed for next year, yes, but more than that; so that they may help ensure the legacy of the Advocate, for generations to come. Maybe one day, when we’ve all joined that great cloud of witnesses, our pictures, too, will hang in that chapel on All Saints, and our children and children’s children will point and say, “She’s the reason I’m here. They inspired me with their faithfulness. He always told me to be good.”

I've thought a lot about legacy and wondered too what some of those saints would think about the world today. Would St. Martin still give the coat on his back to the beggar? Would St. Alban give safe lodging to a Muslim imam fleeing angry authorities and die in his place, as he once did for a Christian priest? Would St. Moses the Black and St. Mary of Egypt find anyone to join them in repenting their sins and going into the wilderness to meet God? Where are the saints today? Who will speak truth to power? Who will speak up against the sin of xenophobia and demand, in the name of Jesus, that the stranger be welcomed? Who will denounce the powers and principalities that would willingly take away, especially from children, SNAP benefits and the basic human right to food and sustenance – give us today our daily bread! Who will carry on the legacy of the saints who gave everything – including their lives – for the Gospel of love proclaimed by the Prince of Peace? The saints of God are just folks like me….and I mean to be one too….right? What we do in life, someone once said, echoes in eternity. The saints remind us of that.

St. Moses the Black, who repented of a life of crime and moved into the wilderness to meet God.

Several of the saints that surrounded us on Sunday were depicted in icons, but there is a saying amongst our Orthodox siblings that one’s life is meant to be a living icon. Wherever you go, folks are meant to see Jesus, to know his love, his forgiveness, his hope in something much greater than the powers and principalities of this world. The waters of baptism, with which we were splashed once again, unite us to Jesus, to one another, and to the saints in heaven and on earth. The bread and wine are food and drink for our journey into a world that is often scary, but because we eat the Body of Christ, we can go and BE the Body of Christ. The saints were and are the people who give us the courage to face the challenges of our own times, just as they did, and thanks to the legacy they have left us, we know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that love always wins, and that nothing, not even death itself, can ever separate us from the love of God that we have in Christ Jesus our Lord. 

I don’t know much; I’m just a small town bird lawyer (if you know, you know!). But as I say in most of my funeral homilies, I do know that heaven is real, it has to be because I’ve staked my life on that claim. And I know that whatever it looks like, it is not only the place where the saints feast forever in the presence of Jesus, but it’s something that Jesus himself said has come near. Thanks be to God for Sam Dotson and all the saints in this and every generation who inspire us to make Jesus’ words fully known in our day until the day we are united with them again on a far greater shore. May all the saints, who from their labors rest, pray for us.

That Kind of Love

'Jesus said to his disciples, “I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.

“If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you. If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own. Because you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world-- therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, ‘Servants are not greater than their master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you; if they kept my word, they will keep yours also. But they will do all these things to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me. If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin. Whoever hates me hates my Father also. If I had not done among them the works that no one else did, they would not have sin. But now they have seen and hated both me and my Father. It was to fulfill the word that is written in their law, ‘They hated me without a cause.’

“When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, she will testify on my behalf. You also are to testify because you have been with me from the beginning.”'

--John 15: 17-27

When my friend Marshall Jolly, the beloved new(ish) rector of St. Thaddeus Episcopal Church in Aiken, SC, a man with whom I share a long history and a deep appreciation and admiration, asked me to preach that church's patronal feast day, there was one important question to consider: floor or pulpit? Because the fact is that over the two years I was blessed to serve as the Director of Youth at St. Thad’s and gym teacher (yes, gym teacher!) at Mead Hall School, and over the several times I’ve been able to go back to that church, I never stood in the pulpit. I blame Jospeh Whitehurst, their longtime churate/associate rector, who had a greater impact on my early days in church work than he will ever know. Thus, I gave this message/homily/sermon from a very familiar spot: the floor of the nave of St. Thaddeus. 

St. Thaddeus Episcopal Church, Aiken, SC

I’ve carried St. Thaddeus Episcopal Church and Mead Hall School with me everywhere I have gone. Even what I wore while preaching. My cassock (the black robe) and surplice (the white…thing) were a gift from St. Thaddeus. And my red stole, even though it didn't match Marshall’s dress or the other hangings, was really special because it belonged to Mother Mellie Hickey, the first woman ordained a priest in the state of South Carolina, who, along with her husband, Fr. Howard Hickey, ministered in this place until she was over 100 years old. Your previous rector gave me this stole on the occasion of her death, and I’ve worn it at both my ordinations and only break it out on special occasions. I think this feast day qualified.

With apologies to Simon the Zealot, but as far as the folks in Aiken are concerned, this day is about his companion , Jude Thaddeus. The name is pretty redundant – and repetitive – given that Jude and Thaddeus are both variations on the name Judas. Considering that folks probably didn’t want him confused with…..the other guy, Judas – not Isacariot – is more often referred to as either Jude or Thaddeus. I suspect most of us are more familiar with Jude – what with St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital and all – but since about 2007 or so, he’s always been Thaddeus to me. But what’s in a name, right?

Church tradition says that Thaddeus was one of the original 12 apostles, along with Simon the Zealot. He was present at Pentecost and received the Holy Spirit that day, which is why he’s often showed with a flame above his head. And they say he traveled all over Mesopotamia in the days afterwards, mostly with Bartholomew; in fact, when the St. Thaddeus youth group joined with the one from St. Bartholemew’s in North Augusta for our first ski trip in 2008, their youth minister, the now Rev John Bethell, told the kids that our trip wasn’t the first time Bart and Thad had traveled together. Despite the two both being claimed by the Armenian Church as their founders, Thaddeus shares his feast day with Simon the Zealot, with whom he was martyred around the year 65 or 66 in Armenia; Thaddeus is often depicted holding an axe or a club to indicate how he died. You can use your imagination. 

St. Thaddeus and St. Simon, who share a feast day.

 Jesus told Thaddeus and Simon and the others: I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another. This was part of Jesus’ last great teaching to them before his arrest and crucifixion; we call it the Farewell Discourse. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another. What commands? A short while earlier Jesus had told them to not let their hearts be troubled, to believe in God and believe in him. They were going to face trials and hardships, Jesus didn’t have to be a psychic to understand that. Yes, Thaddeus, Simon, and the others would face those hardships, but consider that these words were written down almost a whole century after Jesus would’ve said them, to a community of folks who were scared, anxious, and altogether unsure of what the future held. For the folks who first heard this Gospel read in their midst, they had experienced the loss of their Temple and a resounding defeat in a war with the Romans. Questions abounded about what their faith could even look like in the aftermath of such trauma. It’s not hard to see how the words of Jesus would’ve hit them. Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God. Believe in me. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another. I can’t help but think that Thaddeus and Simon held on to those words, held on to each other, and held on to Jesus as they faced their deaths. I’d like to hope we could do the same. What wondrous love is this, O my soul?

But what’s love got to do with it…got to do with it? English is such a fickle language because we only have one word for love. I love my wife. I love the Cleveland Guardian. I love...lamp. There are eight Greek words used in the New Testament, which are translated into English as ‘love,’ but the word Jesus uses, agape is not used in any other contemporary Greek texts outside of the Bible. Think about that for a second. What kind of love must this be? There is no direct English equivalent, but the best we can come up with is Christian love. The love of God as expressed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Pierce Pettis, one of my favorite singer-songwriters has song called That Kind of Love, I played it one time at a youth group function where we shared songs that made us think about God. His is the best definition of agape I’ve found: “love triumphant, love on fire; love that humbles and inspires; love that does not hesitate, with no conditions, no restraints; that kind of love.” Former Presiding Bishop Michael Curry used to say that if it ain’t about love it ain’t about God. That kind of love. The kind of love that sets captives free, even as they are led to their deaths, as Simon and Thaddeus were. Love that comes in the hospital room at 4 am to clean you up when you’ve had a terrible accident, as an angel named Linda did for me after I received a liver transplant four years ago. Love that gives kids a chance when others might not, as Mead Hall teachers have done. Love that welcomes all, strangers and friends, as the clergy and people of St. Thaddeus have done for more than 180 years. I know this love is real, and I’ve staked my life on it. I know Jesus’ words were not just for Simon and Thaddeus, or the community of the Fourth Gospel that wrote them down, but they are for us. Now more than ever. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another. 

Pierce Pettis: That Kind of Love

There’s an old saying among our Orthodox siblings that Jesus welcomes everyone to follow him but doesn’t expect anyone to remain the same when they do so. If you are really about that kind of love, be warned, it will change you. It will take you down paths that you could never have imagined. It will make you see God in the ordinary stuff of life, as we meet Jesus in the bread and wine of the Eucharist, the water of baptism, and the oil of healing. It will tug at your heartstrings and make you root for the underdog. It will give you eyes to see that your life and the life of your neighbor – every single neighbor – is intricately linked, as Simon and Thaddeus’ lives were linked, even unto death. And it will call you away from the world’s temptations of power, prestige, and possessions – the same temptations Jesus himself faced in the wilderness with Satan - and it’ll lead you to kenosis, the emptying of oneself, that Paul uses to describe Jesus’ love on the cross, and to metanoia, the turning around of oneself that we also call repentance.  

It's not a pie-in-the sky, high hopes, Precious Moments, kind of love. It’s a love that gets down in the trenches with one another, and it’s a love I learned how to cultivate because I saw it at St. Thaddeus Church. You showed me that. Ella Breckenridge and Clarke Saunders of blessed memory showed me that. The patrons of the soup kitchen showed me that. Far too many people for me to name right now because I am sure to leave someone out, all showed me that. Now, as I told St. Thaddeus, go and show the world that kind of love! 

Wrestling With God

'The same night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had. Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob's hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, "Let me go, for the day is breaking." But Jacob said, "I will not let you go, unless you bless me." So he said to him, "What is your name?" And he said, "Jacob." Then the man said, "You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed." Then Jacob asked him, "Please tell me your name." But he said, "Why is it that you ask my name?" And there he blessed him. So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, "For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved." The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip.'

--Genesis 32: 22-31

'In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I solemnly urge you: proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable; convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching. For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths. As for you, always be sober, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, carry out your ministry fully.'

--II Timothy 4: 1-5

'Jesus told his disciples a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. He said, "In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, `Grant me justice against my opponent.' For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, `Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.'" And the Lord said, "Listen to what the unjust judge says. 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. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?"'

--Luke 18: 1-8

I have a confession to make.  I am closet fan of professional wrestling. I got hooked when I was in high school, thanks to Kenny Mullins, the senior in my 8th grade algebra class who said to me one week, “Just watch it!” I did and it’s been all downhill ever since.  I gave up religiously watching several years ago, but I’m still fascinated by it. It may be predetermined, but at its core it represents something fundamental about the human condition: the struggle between the babyface good guy and the heel bad guy, and in the end there is always a resolution.

Cody Rhodes (babyface) v. Roman Reigns (heel) at Wrestlemania.

However you may now think of me, pro wrestling is what I first thought about when I read our Scriptures for this past week. In Genesis we find Jacob running for his life, and to be honest, he’s kind of the heel in this story. He has cheated his brother Essau of his birthright, stolen a blessing from their father Isaac that was reserved for Essau, and altogether cheated and lied to get what he wants. Classic heel. Essau is out to get Jacob, who we find in today’s reading on a mountain where he wrestles all night with a stranger. It is widely accepted that this stranger is some kind of earthly form for God. All night long they struggle, grappling with one another. God knocks out Jacob’s hip, but Jacob is relentless and won’t quit until he receives a blessing. When morning comes the blessing is granted, God gives to Jacob a new name, Israel – literally, one who wrestles with God. Jacob even names that Peniel – the face of God. Wrestlemania’s got nothing on this bout. 

Jacob wrestles with God.

Our epistle from II Timothy paints the picture of an early Christian community that is struggling, wrestling both with their leadership, and probably with one another, as some are jumping ship. This letter, written to the community’s leader, is less of a chastisement of struggle and more of encouragement to persist and persevere through those kinds of struggles;  to wrestle with one another in ways that lead to healing and shared mission within the community.

That same persistence is what Jesus is articulating in the parable from the Gospel of Luke.  Let’s be honest, this isn’t the easiest parable in Jesus’ bag. If the judge in the story – often called the Unjust Judge – is a stand-in for God, he’s no babyface. He refuses to grant the widow’s request time and time again; she finally wears him out, wrestles with him, until he gives in to her demands, weary that she will exhaust him, or as the literal translation of the Greek reads: ‘Give him a black eye!’ I don’t believe, nor do any biblical scholars I could find believe, that we are meant to view the judge as a stand-in for God. Our relationship to God is not one where we have to pester God to the point that our request is granted – that is a pretty immature kind of faith; God isn’t some sort of cosmic vending machine that will eventually give us what we want. Yet sometimes, it can definitely feel like we are wrestling with, or even pestering God. The moral of the parable, then, is that our faith should be persistent and relentless, not so that we get what we want, but so that we always remember that God is not like the Unjust Judge, and does, in fact, hear us and bring about a resolution, even if it is not always the kind that we’re seeking. 

The Parable of the Unjust Judge by Nicola Saric

The story of Jacob, the commentary on the community of II Timothy, and the parable of the Persistent Widow speak to something to which we all can relate, and that is the struggle we sometimes feel with God, and maybe even with one another.  There isn’t a person out there who has not wrestled with God, sometimes all night like Jacob.  There isn’t a person out there who has not felt like they have pestered God again and again with their request. I’ve been there. We’ve all been there, maybe in the last year, certainly in the last five years, and even in the Before-Covid Times, we found ourselves in those knock-down, drag-out struggles. When change came suddenly and without warning. When we lost a job, or a loved one died. When everything we thought we knew to be true about ourselves was challenged. We’ve all been there, and some are there now.

I’ve had a lot of conversations with people over the years who have been really going through it and are scared because they had been taught that you don’t wrestle with God or question God. You just accept everything that comes your way, without complaint. Yet this is contrary to what the Bible actually shows us. It’s not just in these Scriptures for this week. Maybe the best example, of course, is Job. We don’t read nearly enough from Job, but that story is one that often gets misinterpreted. We celebrate his patience or the fact that Job coined the phrase, ‘The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away,’ but we sometimes forget that even Job eventually cursed God and cursed the day he was born.  Job is old, one of the oldest stories we have, whose roots can be traced back to an era long before Judaism existed, and its lesson is older than our Scriptures themselves, the lesson that part of what it means to be human is to wrestle with the Divine.

Eastern Orthodox icon of Job on the dung heap.

 

I actually believe that that is Good News. Here’s why. It’s the lesson of the cross, the lesson of struggle, the kind of realization that comes from wrestling with God in such a way that, like Jesus in that moment, we exclaim, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” To accept a message that says we should not wrestle with God, or that struggle with God and one another should never happen, minimizes our experiences of pain, and we no longer ground ourselves in reality, the reality that the writer of II Timothy knew, which is that living in community is hard, whether that community is a family, a church, or even just our one-on-one relationship with God. The wrestling matches we get into may not be easy or shot – they are seldom either- but in the end, out of those struggles, comes clarity and. an understanding of who we really are, like Jacob getting a new name, and a new path forward, like the empty tomb in place of the cross.

We may often come to the Scriptures looking for the message that makes us feel good, only to be hit with stories like these. They remind us that when we wrestle with God we are not doing anything wrong. We are, in fact, growing deeper in our knowledge and love of God, becoming more mature in our faith. It is similar to a marriage. I’ve probably learned the most about my wife, myself, and our relationship in the times we’ve wrestled with each other. They’ve actually made our relationship even stronger, more mature and meaningful. Cynthia Bourgeault, who is an Episcopal priest and contributor with Richard Rohr’s Center for Action and Contemplation, says in her book The Meaning of Mary Magdalene, that the hallmark of a healthy relationship is not so much how well you get along but how well you fight, how you move through those wrestling matches, and come back to each other; the resilience that is at the heart of the relationship that tells you never to quit on each other. God doesn’t quit on us. Why should we quit on God or each other?

So if you find yourself today questioning God, wrestling with God, know that it’s ok. If you feel like you’re pestering God, that’s fine because God can take it. And in the end, you might come away changed, maybe with a limp or a new name, but one way or another, when the bell sounds, you’ll discover who you really are. 

Do Not Fret

1 Do not fret yourself because of evildoers; * do not be jealous of those who do wrong. 

2 For they shall soon wither like the grass, * and like the green grass fade away.

3 Put your trust in God and do good; * dwell in the land and feed on its riches.

4 Take delight in God, * who shall give you your heart’s desire.

5 Commit your way to God and put your trust in God, * who will bring it to pass.

6 God will make your righteousness as clear as the light * and your just dealing as the noonday.

7 Be still before God; * for God wait patiently.

8 Do not fret yourself over the one who prospers, * the one who succeeds in evil schemes.

9 Refrain from anger, leave rage alone; * do not fret yourself; it leads only to evil.

10 For evildoers shall be cut off, * but those who wait upon God shall possess the land.

--Psalm 37 (St. Helena Psalter Edition)

'The apostles said to the Lord, "Increase our faith!" The Lord replied, "If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, `Be uprooted and planted in the sea,' and it would obey you. "Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, `Come here at once and take your place at the table'? Would you not rather say to him, `Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink'? Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, `We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!'"

--Luke 17: 5-10

I love the Psalms! Whether we read them together, or antiphonally; whether it’s in our corporate worship on Sundays, or during the Divine Offices like Morning Prayer or Compline, the Psalms carry so much meaning; they are incredibly rich because they speak to the human condition. They’ve got it all.  From joy to anger, from sadness to confusion, the whole spectrum of emotion is covered in the Psalms. They are usually my go-to book of the Bible when I’m in need of some guidance or when folks ask me for some.

This is true for Psalm 37, which was the appointed Psalm for this past Sunday (if you were using Track 2, that is!).  It’s a Psalm that deals with emotions that I suspect many of us have wrestled with in these latter days; emotions like fear and worry.  Children starving in Gaza. American troops deployed to American cities in the name of, allegedly, keeping the peace. Every day feeling more and more like we are moving closer to some horrific combination of The Handmaid’s Tale and Terminator.  What can we do with such fear, worry, and fret about the present, yes, but especially the future? Blessedly, we have the Psalms, many of which are attributed to King David, himself someone who faced real existential fears, and more often than not, the poetry he and others composed speak a good word, even to where we are now.

David composing the Psalms from the Paris Psalter, an illustrated Byzantine manuscript.

It's right there in Psalm 37, in the first half of the first verse.  “Do not fret yourself because of evil doers.”  Do not fret yourself.  Did you notice that those words occur 3 times in the 10 verses that we read.  This is the prophetic voice of the Psalmist; we can imagine God speaking, both to the Psalmist and to us. Do not fret yourself.  It reminds me of the very first words said by the angels whenever they come to earth in the stories of Scripture.  Remember what those words are:  “Be not afraid.”  To know God is to know the peace that is beyond understanding, to know perfect love; which, of course, casts out fear.  Do not be afraid of the things that evil folks are doing.  When you look at the world and cannot understand why it is the way it is, take heart because God will, in God’s time and God’s way, bring all things to perfection, including the judgement of the wicked. Do not fret yourself.

That might be easier said than done. How can we possibly let go of our fretting in a time when it seems perfectly understandable?  The Psalmist says to “put your trust in God and do good.”  Take care of the things that we can take care of, focus on the good that we can do and trust God’s power to work in us and through us, even when we’re fretting. I come from a long line of worriers, so I get why this is tough.  And I’m sure that the Psalmist was going through some stuff when they wrote this. If it was, in fact, David, maybe he was running for his life when Saul wanted him killed, or maybe he was feeling the weight of his own sinfulness. Whatever the case, the Psalm’s instruction is to put one’s trust in God, focus on doing good, and God will deal with the rest. 

But how, then, do we really put our trust in God?  One way—and this is my favorite part of the Psalm —is “be still before God; for God wait patiently.”  To be still and wait patiently means just that, to remember that God’s timing is not our own, that we, blessedly, don’t have to have everything figured out, and that cultivating God’s brand of patience is, as someone once said, a virtue. To be still often means to stop for a minute and just breathe.  Breathe in God’s mercy, breathe out God’s love.  In my parish on Sunday we stopped in the middle of the sermon time and just breathed. Some closed their eyes, some had a soft, downward gaze. We were still. We noticed our breath, which made the very sound of God's own name: YA-WEH. We breathed in that stillness, releasing cares and concerns. We breathed out that patience, resleasing fear. Exercises like these can be a helpful and holy tool for centering ourselves and focusing on God's very presence within us, and it might be something you could try in in those moments of fretting. 

We begin to let go of the fretting, and we begin to put our trust in God when we stop, when we’re still, and when we realize that God, as the old song says, has got the whole world in God’s mighty hands, including us. I think of the image Julian of Norwich saw when she heard the voice of Jesus tell her that all manner of things would be well. She saw God holding something as tiny as a hazelnut, which God said was all that has ever been or ever will be, all of it made for love. Those breaths we take remind us of that love, that God is already in us – some folks call this the Cosmic Christ, the Jesus that is present within all living things. We begin to put our trust in God when we relinquish our trust in our egos, in our own wants and desires, understanding that when we come before God, are enough. That, too,  is something that can utterly cripple us when we consider the “evil schemes” of others, as the Psalm says. The thought that we aren’t enough, aren’t doing enough to overcome such evil, don’t have enough faith in God. 

Julian of Norwich and the hands of God

Jesus knew something about this. I imagine him taking a moment to pause, maybe even taking a breath himself, before he responded to the apostles asking him to increase their faith. I wonder if they were surprised when Jesus said that they didn’t need more faith, that even the tiniest seed is enough. What matters is to put whatever faith we have into practice when we can, to do what is ours to do and leave the rest to God. Think about the beginning and ending statements in our Gospel this week: “Increase our faith….We have done what we ought to have done.”

Much happens between all our beginnings and endings. Life builds us up and then wears us down. Love happens. Loss happens. Illusions of happily-ever-after move out and conflicted feelings move in. Hope for the journey gives way to despair, and we stumble and rise up and stumble again. Not unlike Jesus himself. And we pray once more for an increase of faith, to be freed of fretting.

Jesus reminds us that we are not the masters of God’s purposes in the world, merely the servants. We have enough faith to do what is ours to do, to serve what matters. We have, on our very breath, the name of God. We seek more faith, yes; but we also remember that even in the most troubling of times, we have not only Jesus’ example before us, but we have him within us. We have his very self on which we feast, bread and drink for our journey through the changes and chances of this life. And we have each other, companions on that journey. 

When the world feels crazier than it usually is, when you feel like you don’t have enough, that you aren’t enough, maybe you will pause, breathe in God’s mercy, breathe out God’s love. Know that you are enough. Know that you have enough. Be still, and do not fret. God’s got you. God’s got us. And all manner of things will be well. 

Later in our liturgy, we prayed one of my favorite prayers from our Book of Common Prayer, A Prayer for Quiet Confidence, and I close this blog entry with those same words, as a prayer for all of us during these troublesome times:

O God of peace, who has taught us that in returning and rest we shall be saved, in quietness and confidence shall be our strength: By the might of your Spirit lift us, we pray you, to your presence, where we may be still and know that you are God; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Greed Is (Not) Good!

'Jesus said to the disciples, "There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. So he summoned him and said to him, `What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.' Then the manager said to himself, `What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.' So, summoning his master's debtors one by one, he asked the first, `How much do you owe my master?' He answered, `A hundred jugs of olive oil.' He said to him, `Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.' Then he asked another, `And how much do you owe?' He replied, `A hundred containers of wheat.' He said to him, `Take your bill and make it eighty.' And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light. And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.

"Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth."'

--Luke 16: 1-13

In 1987 Gordon Gekko quipped, “Greed is good,” a quote so iconic that some think Gordon Gekko is one of those people talking finances on a cable news network, not, in reality, Michael Douglas’ character in the film Wall Street. That line came to personify the Affluent Eighties, a decade marked by more, well, everything.  We’ve seen where such a focus on excess has gotten us—a greater disparity between rich and poor, haves and have nots, than any of us has ever seen.  

Gordon Gekko, played by Michael Douglas, on a fictitious cover of Fortune Magazine.

We might think that Gordon Gekko was just a product of his time and modern capitalism, but we hear again and again stories from the Bible in which the chief sin committed by the people, especially those in power, was the exploitation of the poor. The Torah outlawed interest on loans and other debts and required every person to leave their leftover goods and money for the poorest among them, yet again and again we hear the prophets, including Amos, my favorite prophet, call the people out for their behavior. By the time we get to Jesus, he’s leaning into his rabbinic heritage to use parables, metaphors, and rhetorical questions to subvert the systems of oppression in his own day. There’s something happening here in these parables....what it is ain’t exactly clear.

At first glance this Parable of the Dishonest Manager is really confusing. Is Jesus commending dishonesty, the kind of shrewd business acumen of a Gordon Gekko? The scholar William Barclay calls this "a story about as choice a set of rascals as one could meet anywhere." How are we to figure out which rascal in this story we are supposed to resonate with? Or which rascal who is a stand-in for God? What if the point of this parable is not to figure out which character represents us and God, but for Jesus to say something about the system of oppression in his own time, and in so doing, give us also a good word for living and moving and having our being in our time and place? Writer and preacher Brian McLaren says that understanding this parable is really easy, if we understand the economic ethics of 1st century Palestine! 

Rome occupied and exploited every facet of people’s lives, including their natural resources and their labor. They achieved their goals principally by way of collaboration between the religious elites and Roman officials. Those elites and other rich folks lived in Judea, while poor folks lived up north in Galilee. Rome needed produce from the poor Galilean farmers, namely wheat, wine, and olive oil, and so they taxed the beejesus out of them. The poor farmers couldn’t afford those taxes, so rich folks in Judea would come up to the north and say to the poor farmers, “We will pay those taxes of yours in exchange for the deed to your property; but don’t worry, you can still live and work as tenant farmers for the low cost of giving us a percentage of your wheat, wine, and oil.” The rich folks would then sell that tribute to the Romans, a textbook case of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. To top it all off, the rich folks very often wouldn’t go north themselves to obtain the tribute – after all, they were pretty hated – so they would send a manager, or steward, in their place. That’s the backdrop for this parable. Now you know who the rich person is, who the manager is, and who the debtors are.

The Parable of the Shrewd Manager by Marinus van Reymerswaele

So a rich land owner sees that his manager is not squeezing those poor farmers hard enough, he’s squandering the rich man’s property, which, remember, originally belonged to his debtors, those tenants. The manager is fixing to be fired, and he has to turn over the books to his boss. The manager isn’t a bad guy, he’s basically part of a middle class, stuck having to make a life for himself by doing the will of the rich guy by taking advantage of the poor. He says to himself, “I’ve worked for this guy all these years, now he’s ready to throw me out, and I’ve got no security.” When he realizes how expendable he is in this economic pyramid, he switches sides. He arranges things so that he cuts the debts of those tenant farmers – “How much do you owe? We’ll half it.” He gets some return for his rich boss, but he does it in a way that’s subversive, that gives a break to the poor, with whom he has now found solidarity. He recognizes the economic injustice being done and switches sides, using the very tactics of the oppressors to lift up the poor. For this he is actually commended as acting, in the words of our translation, “shrewdly,” but the original Greek word phronimos is better translated to “wisely.” Simply put, the dishonest manager is smart, and the rich boss sees and respects it. Game recognize game.

This parable immediately follows the three parables in chapter 15 about the lost sheep, coin, and child. It’s part of Jesus’ teaching against the religious elites, the very ones who have benefited from this collaboration system – in fact, Luke explicitly says in the very next verse that these folks are, in Greek, philargarus, which literally means “lovers of money.” You need to learn, Jesus is telling them, that it’s better to use your money in service of relationship than to use relationship in service of money. Or, as Jesus puts it in the final verse of this story, “You cannot serve God and wealth.”

That’s an interesting translation isn’t it? Some of you may know the original word here, which is mammon. It doesn’t have a direct English translation, which is why some Bibles, like the King James Version, don’t even bother translating it. Mammon is a Greek transliteration of a Semitic word that most closely means “that in which one trusts.’ Perhaps our Bible translators figured that “that in which one trusts” most often has meant money or wealth – Greed is good! Sure, we could preach this sermon outside the doors of congressional representatives who are so often bought by deep-pocketed lobbyists. Of course, we can point to this Gospel as we denounce modern day heretics like Joel Osteen and Creflo Dollar, who espouse the so-called Prosperity Gospel and have the audacity to think God actually needs them to have jumbo jets to spread the good news. We could do that, and we have. We can turn to this Gospel as we preach in both word and action, calling for a most just economic system, one in which the rich are in solidarity with the poor – as Torah intended – not continuing to rob them for pocket change. It’s pretty obvious who the folks are that need to hear that message. But there’s something about noticing the speck in our neighbor’s eye and ignoring the log in our own, right? So what is the message for us? 

False prophets.

This past Sunday was the 22nd anniversary of the first service conducted by my current congregation, the Church of the Advocate. This church was founded without land of its own and emphasized social justice and thoughtful liturgy that reflected the core pieces of their theology. The folks here have sought for the past 22 years to live into their missional values of compassion, justice, and transformation in many ways. One of those is the Advocate Tithe, an act of solidarity with poor and disenfranchised neighbors illustrated by the parish taking the very first 10% of their pledged contributions and designating them to help others. These folks know, perhaps better than most, that money is meant to be used in the service of relationship and not the other way around. But remember how mammon means much more than just money? It means that in which we put our trust. And boy, oh boy, I wonder what that could mean. What is it, brothers and sisters, in which you so strongly put your trust? What is your mammon?

If I’m examining my own life, I wonder how much trust I’m putting in things, as compared to my trust in God. How much trust am I putting in my toy collection, for example? Do I really need another one? How much trust am I putting in technology that is eroding away at my critical thinking skills, stealing the research and creativity of other people, and killing the planet, all the while telling me that it’s making my life easier? How much trust am I putting in efforts to save my own life, to preserve the safety and security of me and mine? What’s my mammon, the non-God-shaped matter that I, that we all, have relied upon? Writer and bootleg preacher Will Campbell, one of my theological heroes, once was asked to preach at Riverside Church in New York City, a very wealthy congregation. In his homily he asked, rhetorically, “What can I do to love Jesus and keep all my stuff?” He paused and said directly, “Nothing.” They didn’t ask him back.

The Rev. Will Campbell in the pulpit of Riverside Church in New York City.

Mammon might be the strongest weapon of temptation that the Enemy has. The lure of wealth, yes, but also the lure of comfort and security. Characters like the land owner and manager might seem strange and foreign to us, but this parable really does hit home in time and place of exploitation not that much different from Jesus when we really think about it. And it’s not great. But we can’t run away from it. We can’t all go and join monasteries – though, I’ve been tempted. We can’t be children of light, as Jesus says. What’s interesting here is the term “children of light”in this parable is actually a reference to the Essenes, to John the Baptist’s community and the folks who fled the cities and shunned the material world because of how evil they said it was. Jesus, by choosing to actually live in the world, rejects this principle. The children of this generation, he says to his crowd, are smarter than that, more shrewd than that. They have to live in such a world. We have to live in such a world. We cannot escape the reality in which we live. So what can we do?

The same adverb that Jesus uses to describe the actions of the dishonest manager – phronimos, or shrewdly – is used in Luke, chapter 10, verse 3, when Jesus tells his followers to be “wise as serpents, and innocent as doves.” Be wise, be shrewd, my brothers and sisters. We may have to live in a culture that is not that much different from the occupational state Jesus lived in, but we can find our way in it and through it. We do so by calling out the injustices of our own time – particularly economic exploitation, which is a tale as old as time – and by asking ourselves how we too have both benefited from and been enslaved to such a system. We do that inner work on ourselves so that we can do the outer work of using the resources we have in service of relationship, not the other way around, and rather than ignoring the growing issues of our time – a position only the privileged are able to do – we engage; we use the tools at our disposal to do what needs to be done, and we meet those challenges head-on, together. This, I believe, is the lesson of the Parable of the Dishonest Manager, and quite frankly, I think it’s a lesson at the heart of the foundation of the Church of the Advocate, making this a perfect Gospel reading for their 22nd anniversary. 

As one of the parish's old t-shirts put it: be the noun – advocate – and do the verb – advocate. If that is our mission, then surely the teaching of this parable is not far from us. Let us then use the circumstances given to us – like that manager – to create churches and communities that center Jesus above all and put mammon in its place, that we may be a people who are ever marching in the light of God.