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

'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 was all over.  After about 10 years I gave it up like a lot of fans do – it was just too weird at that point – but even though I don’t watch much, I pay attention to what’s going on, listen to a weekly wrestling podcast, and am still fascinated by it. It may be predetermined or performative, 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 closure to their conflict.

Jacob wrestling with God (artist unknown).

So however crude or rudimentary it may be, pro wrestling is what I first thought about when I read our passages from Genesis and Luke this 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. Essau is out to get Jacob, who we find in our 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. It’s a slober-knocker, as the legendary wrestling announcer Jim Ross would say. 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 the place where the contest took place ‘Peniel’ – the face of God. Wrestlemania’s got nothing on this bout. 

We generally associate the name Israel today with a specific place, the state of Israel that was founded in 1948, but throughout the Scriptures the name is not a reference to a geographic location. The earliest Scriptures of our Old Testament, the Hebrew Tanakh, were put down during the days of the Babylonian Exile, meaning that there was no kingdom or country called Israel during the entire time the Jewish and Christian Scriptures were written. Instead, ‘Israel,’ as it appears in the Bible, is a reference to a group of people, to the descendants of the one who wrestled with God on that mountain. And we see that population of people continue that tradition of wrestling with God, don’t we? We see it generations after Jacob is gone when the Hebrew people are enslaved in Egypt and then wander through the dessert to find their home. We see it in the aforementioned Babylonian Exile and the words of the Prophets and the Psalms written during that tumultuous time. We see it in the anguish experienced by Jesus’ own people in the Gospels as they live under Roman occupation. And certainly, in the years since, through the Inquisitions, pogroms, and Holocausts that have tried to destroy them, this persistent population knows what it means to wrestle with God because it literally is their name. 

That same persistence is what Jesus is articulating in the parable from the Gospel of Luke.  Let’s be honest, this is not an easy parable to understand, is it? If the judge in the story – often called the Unjust Judge – is a stand-in for God, it sure looks like he’s a bit of a jerk. He refuses to grant the widow’s request time and time again; she finally wears him out until he gives in to her demands, weary that she will exhaust him, or as the literal translation reads, ‘Give him a black eye!’ I don’t believe, nor do most biblical scholars, that we should equate the actions of God with those of the judge. Our relationship to God is not one where we pester God to the point that God gives us what we want – that is a pretty immature kind of faith. Yet one thing we can gleam from this parable is that, sometimes, it definitely feels like we are pestering God, that we are wrestling with 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 does, in fact, hear us and will bring closure, even if it is not always the kind that we were seeking. 

The persistent widow and the unjust judge (artist unknown).

The story of Jacob and the parable of the persistent widow both speak to something to which we all can relate, and that is the struggle we sometimes feel with God.  There isn’t a person among us who has not wrestled with God, sometimes all night like Jacob.  There isn’t a person among us who has not felt like they have pestered God again and again again with their request. I’ve been there. We’ve all been there the last two years, sure, but even in the Before Time we all experienced those moments. When a person died suddenly. When we lost a job. When we went through a divorce. When life made little sense.

 I can remember many times sitting in the parish oratory or at a coffee shop and talking to someone who would open up and share their experiences, and they would be 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 exception. Yet this is contrary to what the Bible actually shows us. It’s not just Jacob or the parable of the persistent woman. 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 Job eventually cursed God and cursed the day he was born.  Job, for those who don’t know, is the oldest story in the Bible, 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. 

Job by Leon Bonnat (1880)

That may sound like a downer, but I actually believe it is Good News. Here’s why. When we accept the message that we shouldn’t question God, we minimize our experiences of pain and those of others. But when we wrestle with God and dare to ask questions like “Why did this happen?”  - or even the question Jesus himself asks on the cross, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”- we open ourselves up to an actual two-way conversation with God.  That conversation might not be easy or short – it seldom is either– but in the end, out of that wrestling, out of that struggle comes clarity and understanding, comes the closure that we need, even if it isn’t what we were originally seeking. 

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’re not easy to hear, but they speak to a deep truth, the truth that when we wrestle with God we are not doing anything wrong. We are, in fact, growing deeper in our relationship with God, deeper in our knowledge and love of God, deeper in our understanding for how God is living and moving in our very being. It is similar to a marriage. I’ve probably learned the most about my spouse, myself, and our relationship in the times we’ve wrestled with each other. They’ve actually made our relationship even stronger and more meaningful. I suspect the same is true for y’all’s relationships, with your partners and with God. 

So if you find yourself 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 even with a limp, but one way or another, when the bell sounds, you’ll find the closer you need.

Being Lost

'All the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, "This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them."

So he told them this parable: "Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, `Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.' Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.

"Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, `Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.' Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents."'

--Luke 15: 1-10

I lose things.  Like, a lot. I’ve lost my high school ring – which was miraculously found in another state six months later – my father’s college ring from the Citadel – which was never found, sadly – and a lot of other accessories, besides just rings, whose stories could fill up the rest of this sermon time. While I was serving at a church in South Carolina I lost my sunglasses, and our wonderful parish administrator, who was a devout Roman Catholic taught me a short, simple prayer to Saint Anthony of Padua, the patron saint of lost items:

Dear Saint Anthony, please look around.
Something is lost and cannot be found.

I never found that particular pair of sunglasses, but if and when you do find the thing you’ve lost, you’re supposed to show your gratitude by praying:

Dear Saint Anthony, thanks for coming around.

What I had lost has now been found.

Maybe you called on Saint Anthony when you were little, or maybe you did last week. Assuming you did find the thing you were looking for, do you remember how overjoyed you were to find it? 

Saint Anthony of Padua, patron saint of lost items.

The entire 15th chapter of the Gospel of Luke is made up of three parables about lost things – lost sheep, lost coin, and lost child, which is the parable of the prodigal son that we don’t hear this week because we actually heard it way back on the Fourth Sunday in Lent. Each of these parables follows the same pattern: a sheep is lost from the fold, and the shepherd goes to find it and rejoices when it is returned; a woman turns her house upside down to find a coin that is equivalent to a whole day’s wages, and when she finds it she throws a party to celebrate; and of course, in the parable of the prodigal, a son squanders his inheritance and comes home in shame, only to have his father meet him and have a great celebration with wine and beef and fancy robes. Something is lost, someone searches for the something, and joy abounds when the something is found.

Jesus’ use of parables was common among rabbis of his day, as most of us know. They were meant to teach an important lesson about God and about ourselves, and they invited the hearer to identify who is whom in the story. It’s not too hard to figure out, then, that in these parables God is pretty clearly the shepherd searching for the sheep and the woman searching for the coin.  The sheep and the coin, therefore, are you. They’re me. They’re every person whom God loves. To some that might sound a bit like low-hanging fruit, but it’s true, and it’s important to remember. Our shame often gets in the way and whispers to us in the voice of the Enemy “Maybe everyone else, but not you. Not after what you’ve done, the life you’ve led, and the decisions you’ve made. God couldn’t possibly love you that much, to seek you out, to throw you a party. Anybody but you.” I’ve been guilty of hearing that voice. Maybe you have, too. So it matters, it really matters, that we can hear Jesus tell us today, through these stories, that yes indeed, God loves you and is searching for you, like a shepherd searching for a lost sheep, like a woman searching for that lost coin, and when God finds you, God’s enthusiasm abounds so much that there is a party in heaven, just for you!

Wow! That is some good news, indeed, ain’t it? Yet even when they hear this kind of good news, the religious authorities and elites still grumble. Grumblers gonna grumble, I guess, no matter what good news they hear. The parables, then, are a plea to them to remember that rejoicing is the proper response to God’s abundant love, not grumbling.  

This brings up an interesting point about these parables and this exchange between Jesus and the authorities. The chapter starts by pointing out that the tax collectors and other notorious sinners have come to Jesus, and rather than turning them away, he has welcomed them and shared table fellowship with them. They seem to get it. The sinners understand Jesus and the parables, they get that they have been lost and are now found and their hearts have been strangely warmed in such a way that they can accept God’s grace and Jesus’ love. But the authorities? They don’t see that they are also lost. All they can do is grumble about this unorthodox – we’ve never done that before – behavior from Jesus, and so they grumble. These so-called righteous folks are blinded by what they think they’re supposed to do, how they have been taught to believe and act. Now they’re spiritually lost, and even when Jesus is standing in front of them, they still think they’re the shepherd and the woman in the stories, not the sheep and the coin. 

That’s how we get lost, when we start believing that we’ve got it figured out, that we are the righteous ones. This is when the Gospel ceases to be enough for us, when the grace of God and love of Jesus are just ideas that are nice but not really significant to our lives; we need more. I’d propose, to paraphrase David Lose, the Sr. Pastor of Mt. Olivet Lutheran Church in Minneapolis:  “might the parents who want their children to succeed so much that they wrap their whole lives around sports games and recitals be lost; might the career-minded individual who has made moving up the ladder the only priority be lost; might folks who work jobs they hate just to give their families things be lost; might the earnest Christian who is constantly grumbling about the affairs of their neighbor be lost?"

To truly be lost is to act as if the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the grace and love of God aren’t enough; that we need to make some sort of meaningful contribution to society that others can validate, otherwise we don’t really matter. To be lost is to forget that we are children of a God who passionately searches for us, who is active in history and in the world today, who never gives up on us, even if we give up on ourselves, each other, and God. You are loved, my sisters and brothers, so very much! You are of more value than a sheep or coin or any other object. And God is seeking you out, to love you and remind you of that love everyday, but it is only when we can admit to our own lostness that we can truly be found. It is in acknowledging, not so much to God or others, but to ourselves, that we don’t have it all figured out, that we are frail and vulnerable and in need of love, that we can let God in to welcome us back to the place we’ve always been, where God celebrates the precious possession that is us.  

Counting the Cost of Following Jesus

 'Now large crowds were traveling with Jesus; and he turned and said to them, "Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, saying, `This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.' Or what king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand? If he cannot, then, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace. So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions."'

--Luke 14: 25-33

Do y’all remember when you could pump your gas first and pay afterwards? Nowadays you can’t do that, you have to pre-pay. Well, when I was 16 years old, driving my father’s truck, I stopped for gas, and without thinking about it, pumped $10 or so – remember when that actually got you a decent amount of gas?! – and then proceeded to go pay. The only problem was I didn’t have my wallet. I’d left it at school. Sixteen year old Joe panicked, and I got in the truck and drove away. Now, the next day I came back, wallet in-hand, and paid what I owed, but because I hadn’t thought it through, because I hadn’t counted the cost of pumping the gas, I made what very well could’ve been a pretty serious mistake. Folks like me are why you now have to pay before you pump. You're welcome.

Have you ever done something like that? Ever made a decision without thinking it through or realizing that you have no idea what you got yourself into? That’s why it’s important to count the cost, to discern and think things through before we commit to them.

Have you applied that logic to being a Christian? Have you ever considered the importance of discerning, thinking through, and counting the cost of what it means to make such a commitment? That is the lesson at the heart of Jesus’ teaching in the Gospel this week. We find him surrounded by a large crowd on the road to Jerusalem. They all think he’s on the road to overthrowing Rome and establishing a new empire, but he’s actually on the road to the cross and a shameful death. The motif running throughout Luke’s Gospel is Jesus subverting expectations, and this lesson, which scholars often call The Cost of Discipleship, is no different.

Right out of the gate he comes at us with 'Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children....cannot be my disciple....whoever does not take up their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.' He continues with two parables: Which of you, he asks, intending to build a tower doesn’t first sit down and estimate the cost? Or what king, intending to go to war, doesn’t first sit down and map out a strategy? Nobody would, right? You would be sure to count the cost before you make those kinds of commitments. The same, therefore, is true for being a disciple. There is a cost. And while the Greek word translated as ‘hate’ – which is ‘misei’ – more accurately means ‘disfavor’ or ‘disregard,’ the point is still the same. Following Jesus means showing no preferential treatment toward anyone or anything other than the Kingdom of God. Even if that means being willing to let go and give up everything and everyone that a person holds dear. That is the cost of Christian discipleship. That is the cost of following Jesus, and if you’re gonna do it, he’s saying to the crowd, if you’re gonna go to Jerusalem, you better think about that before you commit. It’s not hard to picture folks, at that point, turning away and going home.

Crowds growing angry with Jesus.

At the time Luke’s Gospel was written, the cost of following Jesus was very high. Often it resulted in the loss of family or the loss of life itself; after all, just look at the apostles, 11 of whom were martyred, and poor John was exiled and died in a cave. It didn’t work out so well for them in the end, but they followed anyway, because they were willing to count the cost. Nowadays, it’s a little different. We don’t have to be afraid to publicly gather for worship or be afraid of being put to death for going in the street and proclaiming that Jesus is Lord. A lot has changed. Being a Christian is easier than it was then, and one could argue it has turned into a convenience, churches into clubs where we gather with our friends whenever it is convenient and hear messages that make us feel good about ourselves. Where is the cost?

The earliest resources we have that describe the rite for baptism point out that when a child or adult was baptized – not a baby, mind you – that they were dunked three times and on the third time their head was held under the water until their breath was about to give out, and at the last moment the deacon released them, and they jumped up out of the water, gasping for air – the first breath of a new life in Christ. Maybe that seems extreme to us today, but the point remains that the earliest Christians understood the cost of discipleship being that they would have to be willing to let old things die – the habits and relationships that had come to define who they were – in order that Christ, and Christ alone, was what defined them and gave their life meaning. Today, we might ask ourselves, in response to this Scripture and in light of the example of our forebears in the faith: What is the cost of our discipleship? Are we willing to let old things die? And are we willing to take a chance on following Jesus, even if it means that we will fail. Because to the world the cross is still a symbol of shame, humiliation, and failure. Are we willing to accept and count such a cost?

William Barclay, in his commentary on Luke's Gospel, tells the story of a professor that he once knew in Scotland. Someone once said to the professor that they had met a young man who was a student of that professor. To which the professor replied, “He may have sat in on my class, but he wasn’t a student of mine.” There’s a difference between sitting in class for a lecture and being a student, there’s a difference between sitting in a pew for a sermon and being a disciple. There is effort involved, there is a cost to be counted before we make such a commitment. There is the risk – and sometimes even the certainty – of disappointment and failure, of families, friends, and neighbors treating us with mockery and shame, just as people in Jesus’ time treated those who were crucified. I have even seen it in people who have come to the faith in our time and have lost loved ones because of it. After all, to turn our backs on the world and proclaim that our worth is measured by our belonging to Jesus Christ, and that to lose everything by following him means that we will gain everything, is just plain nuts. But if we are willing to let the former standards we held and ways we’ve been go, and see in Jesus a new life and a new way of being, if we understand and the count cost, then we can count ourselves among his disciples and can change the world, even if to the world, it looks like we failed.

I’d like to give the last word to Saint Theresa of Calcutta – Mother Teresa. She offered a prayer once that the musician Ben Folds eventually covered in a song called Do It Anyway. Her prayer, I believe, helps encapsulate what the cost of discipleship means for a modern church:

People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered. 

Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. 

Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies. 

Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you. 

Be honest and sincere anyway.

What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight. 

Create anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous. 

Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, will often be forgotten. 

Do good anyway.

Give the best you have, and it will never be enough. 

Give your best anyway.

In the final analysis, it is between you and God. 

It was never between you and them anyway.

Humility & Pride

'The beginning of human pride is to forsake the Lord; the heart has withdrawn from its Maker. For the beginning of pride is sin, and the one who clings to it pours out abominations. Therefore the Lord brings upon them unheard-of calamities, and destroys them completely. The Lord overthrows the thrones of rulers, and enthrones the lowly in their place. The Lord plucks up the roots of the nations, and plants the humble in their place. The Lord lays waste the lands of the nations, and destroys them to the foundations of the earth. He removes some of them and destroys them, and erases the memory of them from the earth. Pride was not created for human beings, or violent anger for those born of women.'

--Sirach 10: 12-18

'Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it. Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured. '

--Hebrews 13: 1-3

'When Jesus noticed how the guests [at a dinner party] chose the places of honor, he told them a parable. "When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, `Give this person your place,' and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, `Friend, move up higher'; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted."

He said also to the one who had invited him, "When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous."

--Luke 14: 7-14

In March of 1946, President Harry Truman was on a train to Fulton, Missouri with former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.  According to Churchill historian Richard M. Langworth in his compilation Churchill By Himself, an exchange between the two leaders came up about the current Prime Minister Clement Attlee. Truman said, “Clement Attlee came to see me the other day; he struck me as a very humble man.” To which Churchill replied, “He has much to be humble about.” I’ll admit, I didn’t really know what this quote meant when I first saw it, but as I did a little more research and learned about the opinion that Mr. Churchill held of Mr. Attlee, the full meaning of the saying became clear: he has much to be humble about because he has nothing to be proud about because he hasn’t actually accomplished anything. Winston Churchill with the Zing of the Day!

Winston Churchill (left) and Clement Attlee in 1941.

I wonder what Mr. Churchill would think, then, of our readings for this week– probably not much, since by his own admission, he was agnostic in his adulthood, despite being baptized and confirmed in the Church of England. His quip at the expense of his successor, though, does speak to a struggle that Christians face on seemingly a daily basis, which is the tug between pride and humility, and each of our readings today can help us address that tug in ourselves.

The very first sentence we read this week from the Apocryphal Book of Sirach is “The beginning of human pride is to forsake the Lord; the heart has withdrawn from its Maker.” Personal pride is what leads to not only an individual’s downfall but also the downfall of entire societies. When we remember that Sirach and other books of the Apocrypha were written not in Hebrew but in Greek at a time when the Jewish people had no physical Kingdom of Israel anymore and had been dispersed throughout lands that were not their own, we can see how the message being conveyed is that personal pride and a lack of humility are what led to outside forces taking over and scattering the Jewish people. Whole nations rise and fall because of pride, which, the writer says in that last verse “was not created for human beings.”

We’ve read a lot from the Letter to the Hebrews lately, and this week marks the last day that we will do so this year. The unknown writer of this letter – or sermon, as some scholars have referred to it – calls the hearer to “let mutual love continue.” Mutual, meaning it is not focused on a single individual, but rather is communal and shared. “Be free from the love of money” and “be content with what you have,” the preacher continues. This is a call to exercise humility and avoid that sin of pride. 

And Jesus, picking up right where he left off last week, admonishes his audience at a dinner party who are concerned with having the best seats of honor. As we have heard time and again, Jesus’ audience was often too proud to admit that they were more concerned with the letter of their law than the spirit and often didn’t realize they were following their society’s standards rather than God’s. Those standards turn the society upside-down, as Jesus paints the picture of a party where folks don’t seek the important positions but instead seek out the humbler ones. For as Jesus puts it, “those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

So, ok, the message is clear: be humble, don’t be proud. But it’s not always that easy. We use that word ‘proud’ all the time. I’m proud to be a priest and to be rector of my parish here in Asheboro, where. I’ve heard folks say everything from "I’m proud of my child for graduating from college!" to "I’m proud to be a Carolina Panthers fan!" (actually, I heard that a lot in 2015, not so much since). Perhaps in those cases pride isn’t being used the same way that the writers of Sirach, Hebrews, and the Gospel of Luke are thinking. 

And on the flip side, there are lots of folks that we see every day who sort of flaunt their humility by making sure that everyone knows that they really don’t care about all their accomplishments, even though they sure all of their friends know about those accomplishments and the fact that they don't care about them. We can all name folks we know like that. So, then, in those cases, humility isn’t entirely a good thing. Once again, binary, black-and-white, good-and-bad thinking doesn’t exactly help us address that daily tug between pride and humility. It's not as simple as one is good and the other is bad.

So what does real humility look like? And what might a healthy kind of pride look like? The answer, I suspect, also lies in our texts for this week and a third theme that is at play: hospitality. 

In my parish everyone is familiar with hospitality; after all, we are good southern folk who like a good southern dinner party. I’ve been to several in their houses, and they are fantastic. In both Hebrews and Luke we get a glimpse of what authentic hospitality looks like. The author-preacher of Hebrews tells the audience to not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing so some have entertained angels without knowing it. This isn't just a pretty piece of prose, but it is a reference to the story in Genesis, when Abraham and Sarah feed the three heavenly strangers. In other words, welcome anyone and everyone to your table, for by doing so you are welcoming God. 

Meanwhile, Jesus, who remember is speaking at a dinner party, tells his host that the next time he has a party, not to invite his friends but to invite the poor, the crippled, the outcast, basically anyone who is ritually unclean – the folks no one would ever willingly invite to a party. Why does he do this? Because while hospitality was an essential part of what it meant to be a person of faith in Jesus' time, he recognized that hospitality as a common practice had become something of a self-serving practice, a quid-pro-quo, if you will – I will invite the important people to my party, so that they will invite me to theirs. The kind of invitation Jesus tells his host to offer the next time he had a party is a form of hospitality that is without reciprocity, without being transactional, without the need for recognition or getting something in return. Biblical scholar Fred Craddock, in his commentary on Luke’s Gospel, put it this way: “Hospitality, then, is not having each other over on Friday evenings, but welcoming those who are in no position to host us in return.” 

That brings us back to here and now. What is the sign of true humility? It sounds like Jesus is telling us that true humility is simply doing something without expecting any sort of recognition, reward, or reciprocity. That’s what the Holy Table, the church altar, represents. It's a place where people come and are fed, no questions asked, no expectations, no payback or favor expected after the fact. The Church, at its best, is such a place, where the only concern is caring for the people of God both inside and outside the walls, expecting nothing from them in return. 

Last week, when I was reading these texts and thinking about what a genuine kind of hospitality looks like, I couldn't help but be reminded of the Newcomers Dinners, which were hosted by an elderly stateswoman in our parish in the Before Time. Those gatherings, which I pray will continue one day soon, looked quite a bit like the Holy Table, and like the table where we find Jesus in the Gospel text this week. There, I got to see strangers become friends, where people were fed by food, yes, but more so by the relationships that were forged through the presence of God.

The most recent Newcomers Dinner at Good Shepherd, back in 2019.

Our Mission Outreach Committee has also been trying to get things back off of the ground in the wake of COVID, and they are exploring ways to not just give financially to partners in our community but be on the ground with them to do the very Gospel-centered work that they and we are called to. I see in them also a group of faithful Christians seeking to live out their baptismal promises to serve others without expecting them to pay it back. 

At the end of the day that’s what matters. Not our accomplishments or accolades, not whether or not a quip gets attributed to us and quoted some eight decades later, but how much we set our own need for approval to the side for the sake of the Kingdom of God, which is not something far off, but is right here, right now, for us to cultivate. 

We don’t have to think of it in terms of “I have to humble, so that I do good, so that God will be pleased.” That’s a false humility that leads to pride, the bad kind of pride, anyway that tells us that all that matters is what we have and what others think of us. But healthy pride is joy, which swells in our hearts and comes when we recognize we part of something bigger than ourselves, a gratitude for what we have become and what we will become. It is, in fact, an outgrowth of true humility, which we nurture through our personal and communal practices of hospitality. If we think of it less as a tug and more as an integration, then what we’ve received this week is definitely Good News!

On Faith

'The word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision, "Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great." But Abram said, "O Lord GOD, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?" And Abram said, "You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir." But the word of the LORD came to him, "This man shall not be your heir; no one but your very own issue shall be your heir." He brought him outside and said, "Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them." Then he said to him, "So shall your descendants be." And he believed the LORD; and the LORD reckoned it to him as righteousness.'

--Genesis 15: 1-6

'Jesus said, "Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks. Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them. If he comes during the middle of the night, or near dawn, and finds them so, blessed are those slaves."'

--Luke 12: 35-38

'Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Indeed, by faith our ancestors received approval. By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible.'

--Hebrews 11: 1-3

Every three years these readings come along with their shared theme of faith. Once more we hear of Abram and his faith in God, who assures him that he will have descendants that outnumber the stars. We hear Jesus illustrate in a parable that faith looks like a group of servants waiting on their master to return, and when he does so their faith is rewarded when he serves them. And in the Letter to the Hebrews we hear what is often called the biblical definition of faith – Hebrews 11: 1 – “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Every three years we are reminded of the importance of faith and I usually end up singing a line from George Michael. I will spare you that last part.

Instead, I want to dig a little bit deeper into that word – faith – or rather what word the Bible actually uses. The Greek word is pistis, which is used 4,102 times in the Bible. It is most often translated as "faith," but it really means something deeper - once again showing the limitations of the English language. It is a firm persuasion, which is based not on sight or knowledge but on trust. It is also inextricably tied to the notion of covenant, of relationship. God has pistis in Abram – "the exalted ancestor" – which is why God makes him Abraham – "the ancestor of a multitude." When Jesus speaks about divorce in the Gospel of Matthew he mentions unfaithfulness as grounds for divorce, and it is a form of pistis that he uses there, showing that being “faithful” is about commitment to and right relationship with an other. 

Knowing this, I can’t help but wonder how the word faith got so misused, especially in the last half century or so. Think about this: what is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the term “faith-based’? I'll wait....

I suspect that the first thing you thought of wasn't  the story of Abram from Genesis or the definition given by Hebrews 11. The term faith-based has certain connotations in our culture today. There are faith-based movie production companies – even a streaming service called Pureflix; I swear I did not make that up – and its movies are terrible (they aren't even free!). There is the Ark Encounter in Kentucky that says it offers a faith-based approach to science and thus shows dinosaurs and humans living together, and some parents and even public officials have pushed for actual school curricula that follows similar faith-based models. And to really bring it on home, the last two years has seen a large number of the people unwilling to receive a vaccine for COVID-19 explain that it was a faith-based decision not to do so – which is funny because a lot of us would say the opposite, that our faith is exactly what compelled us to get the vaccine. So what happened to that word, to faith?

A clarification is in order, I think. Whenever you hear the term “faith-based” remember that it isn’t faith. It’s belief. Those examples I gave are belief-based, and certainly everyone is entitled to their beliefs, but to claim they are based on faith – especially bibilical faith – is inaccurate. These beliefs are based in a very specific kind of Christianity that is quite young and particularly unique to American culture. It is literally self-centered, focused on personal salvation and worldviews that are often rooted in fear, rarely ever taking into account the needs of the other or even the love of God. It is certainly not relational, and therefore, cannot – by the biblical definition – be considered actual faith?

So what is actual faith? That answer is honestly ineffable, it’s too great to be expressed with words. But if we look at the examples from our Scriptures this week, or any of the other 4000+ examples where pistis shows up in the Bible, we find that biblical faith has two characteristics: commitment and trust. 

The biblical narrative illustrates this in the covenant relationships God makes with humanity again and again, the signs of which include: the rainbow in the sky after the Flood, the promise to Abraham, the prophets’ cries that God hadn’t forgotten God’s people during exile, and of course Jesus breaking bread and sharing wine in a meal with his friends. There is a commitment that is made in each of these moments, and there is trust bestowed. There is faith shared between God and humanity. Often humans have broken that trust, but it is never without the hope of being restored. If you’ve been following any of the goings-on at the Lambeth Conference in England the last two weeks, that has been the hope for the faithful conversations happening there.

Perhaps we could say that such a hope is the by-product of actual, biblical faith. Not some pie-in-the-sky high hopes – apologies to Frank Sinatra, but hope that anything and anyone can be restored and redeemed and given meaning. As Rachel Held Evans once put it, hope not that God always WILL, but that God always CAN. Moving from the WILL gets us out of ourselves and grounded in faith that is relational, a communal journey that we go on together with one another and with God. It isn’t just about our personal salvation or views – that leads to a pretty lonely journey – but it is about a commitment and trust that is shared between us and God.

We may rack our brains trying to prove we have enough faith, trying to figure out what faith really looks like to us and how we can better express it. Maybe you have an Episcopal shield sticker on your car or you wear a cross or a collar in public. Those might be appropriate expressions, but faith isn’t something that can be measured by any metric, including church attendance. Sometimes faith just looks like getting up in the morning, and just trying even when all you want to do is disappear. Sometimes it’s remembering that you are held by an inestimable love that won’t let you go, no matter how hard you try. Over the past year, I will tell you, that this is what faith has meant to me.

In the end, faith is not something that we can define or measure, but it is something that we can all relate to. One does not have to be a Christian, or even a so-called "person of faith" in order to have faith. You need only a commitment and a trust in something greater than yourself. Those of us who are part of the three traditions of which Abraham is considered the patriarch - Judaism, Islam, and Christianity - have chosen to place our faith in the God who called a wandering Aramean to find a home, gave him a new name, and fulfilled a promise. May you be strengthened in your faith, whatever it may look like.

What Is Enough?

"Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.

I, the Teacher, when king over Israel in Jerusalem, applied my mind to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven; it is an unhappy business that God has given to human beings to be busy with. I saw all the deeds that are done under the sun; and see, all is vanity and a chasing after wind."

--Ecclesiastes 1: 2, 12-14

"Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry). On account of these the wrath of God is coming on those who are disobedient. These are the ways you also once followed, when you were living that life. But now you must get rid of all such things-- anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator. In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!"

--Colossians 3: 4-11

"Someone in the crowd said to Jesus, "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me." But he said to him, "Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?" And he said to them, "Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions." Then he told them a parable: "The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, `What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?' Then he said, `I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, `Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.' But God said to him, `You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?' So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God."

--Luke 12: 13-21

The late, great Rev. Will Campbell, a Baptist from Tennessee who described himself as an itinerant preacher, once gave a sermon at Riverside Church, a huge, gothic church building that towers over the businesses and apartments on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. On this particular Sunday, this old Southerner claimed into the pulpit of this hoidy, toidy, fancy church full of rich people and gave the Word. He said to the congregation, “Now I know what you’re thinking…how can we love Jesus and keep all this stuff,” and he gestured out toward everything. Folks looked at each other, some nodded, and they waited for the answer. “Well, he said,” ya can’t!” To the best of my knowledge, Brother Will was not asked back to Riverside Church.

The Rev. Will Campbell, at home in Tennessee prior to his death in 2013.

Now, I don’t know what readings were offered on that Sunday that Will Campbell preached on the Upper West Side. Maybe they were the ones that we heard this morning, or maybe – because he was a Baptist – Brother Will just picked whatever readings he wanted. But that story is what I first thought of when I sat down with this week's Scriptures.

Because there is clearly a common theme. Solomon proclaims in Ecclesiastes in that wonderfully theatrical voice, “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity!” The stuff that we’ve got, the successes that we seek, even our very lives themselves, it’s all vanity – it’s all driven by the desire to preserve the self. Paul, writing to the Church in Colossae, tells them to put to death whatever is earthly, and he names in that list greed, which he equates with idolatry. The desire for more and more stuff is the same, for Paul, as breaking the first Commandment, thou shalt have no other God but God. And Jesus in the Gospel from Luke tells the parable of a rich man whose business does so well, and he makes so much money, that he decides to hoard it all, rather than share it, and wouldn’t you know who won the pony, that very night, God takes his life, and all that stuff just goes to waste. Not exactly words of comfort this morning. What, then, are we supposed to do with such Scriptures?

There is much about the world that is different from the time when these Scriptures were first put down; heck, there is much about the world that is different from when most of you reading this blog were my age! In Jesus’ time there was no such thing as a 401K or pension plan – that we know of, anyway. Would Jesus say that investing in those sorts of things and putting our money aside like that is the same as the rich man who just kept hoarding his riches and never using them? Would Paul look at Millennials – my generation – and decry our greed because we don’t give to churches or charitable organizations as much as our elders due to the fact that the cost of education and basic living is so much higher for us? Would Solomon think that all our physical possessions are vanity?

As I see it, that’s a sort of black and white thinking, so to speak; an either-or mentality. There must be a right answer and a wrong answer. The Scriptures, of both the Hebrew Bible and our Christian Testament and Gospels, are a lot more gray, and when we consider that our modern ,Western world is so very different from the ancient, Eastern world that produced these texts, we can better appreciate the gray areas. Because one question that certainly isn’t black and white or either-or, and one that Scriptures like these invite us to consider is: how much stuff is enough?

What was enough for a family to live on in 1962 is not the enough to live on in 2022, for example. In 2007 when the iPhone first came out, having any cell phone was enough, and an iPhone was a luxury because not everyone had to have access to the internet at all hours of the day, but now that simply isn’t the case, and you can’t work in this world without one, meaning that a poor family cannot get by with just a flip phone but needs to constantly stay connected for their work or even to get notifications from their doctor. Perhaps worst of all, is that people today feel an overwhelming urge to judge and vilify folks when they raise legitimate concerns over the cost of housing or health care – "I got by just fine at that age," a person might say, or, and this is my favorite – "If she sold that iPhone maybe she could feed her kids." Vanity of vanities. Is there anything more vain than judging the actions of a brother or sister regarding the things that they do or don’t have or need in order to simply survive?

Richard Rohr, the Franciscan friar and founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation, says that there are three main obstacles to us, as Jesus puts it, inheriting the Kingdom of God; that is, knowing the fullness of God’s Kingdom here on earth. He calls them the 3 Ps – power, prestige, and possessions– which are, curiously, also the three temptations Jesus was faced with in the desert. When we do not understand what, in fact, is actually enough, we move into a scarcity mentality, a fear-based mentality, and that leads to a desire for more and more of those three P’s because, somehow, they make us feel more confident and more secure. This, then, blinds us to what should be our true motivation for wanting or needing anything at all. 

So then we are invited by these Scriptures to search the deepest corners of our souls and ask ourselves: As individuals, have we made money and material possessions into idols, the driving force of our very existence, worthy of the attention and admiration reserved only for God? As a church are we compelled to give of our monetary gifts for the sake of beautifying a building alone, or to support our mission to serve the Church without walls; that is, God’s people in the world, namely the needy in our community and beyond – which is the point Brother Will was trying to make to Riverside Church. As a society, will we ever be able to determine what is enough, or better still, create a kind of society where everyone has enough – instead of our current one dominated by individuals who operate like the rich man in the Gospel, the kind of folks who use their wealth to travel into space instead of helping the poor. What is the deepest motivation of our hearts? Following Jesus? Or wanting more for the sake of wanting more? 

One of the commentaries that I often use to help with preparing my sermons actually said that today’s readings might upset some people who are offended at what the Bible says about material wealth. The writer of the commentary even wondered how safe it was for us preachers to say something about material wealth form the pulpit. But it needs to be said. Our society has, indeed, been swayed by an idolatrous gospel of greed, and we need to refocus, especially now as we are trying to move out of pandemic that did nothing but hurt the poor and benefit the already insanely rich. We cannot follow Jesus and keep all our stuff if our reason for having the stuff in the first place is so misguided. That’s not the Gospel. That’s not Good News. 

But what is Good News is the dream that God has for all of us. It began in the Garden, where we had all we needed and God walked with us in the evening breeze. It continued with the children of Israel, wandering in the wilderness begging to return to being slaves in Egypt while God pushed them forward in order to show them how to be different. It echoed through the prophets like Hosea and Amos, who cried out when the poor and foreigner were being oppressed and prayed for justice to roll down like waters. And it was given flesh and blood in the person of Jesus, who comforted the afflicted and afflicted the comfortable and called for everyone from the poor widows to the powerful elites, to see how much God loves them, and to know that such a love is enough. 

This is shalom, God’s peace, this is the dream. And we Christians are bold enough to proclaim that it doesn’t have to be just a dream, but something that we can all work toward, when we search the motivations of our hearts, realize our security and confidence lie in God’s grace alone, and use what we have to lift up our brothers and sisters above ourselves. And that is anything but vanity.