It's Not That Simple

Luke 10:38-42

July 17, 2016

William G. Carter

Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to what he was saying. But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”

It is a bit of surprise to come across this story when we do. Jesus has just told the great story of The Good Samaritan, with all the energy it took to tell it, and all of the feedback he undoubtedly received for telling it. Immediately Luke tells us about a squabble between two sisters, one of them diligently preparing a meal for Jesus while the other skips the hard work, sits and listens to him.

The story starts here, a domestic squabble between two siblings. If you are not an only child, you know something about this. My dad would lace up his work boots on a Saturday morning and call out, “I need some help out in the yard.” My sister and I reacted in different ways. She would lace up her junior work boots, run outside, and say, “Here I am, what can I do?”

As for me, I was a bit more reflective. I would contemplate the philosophy of doing manual labor. Usually I was sitting down somewhere in the bathroom, with the door locked, as I read through the biography of a famous person like George Washington. I spent a lot of time pondering if famous people ever did yard work. In time, someone would pound at the door and declare in a piercing cry, “You need to come outside and help me and Dad.” I would ignore her, I was busy. She would pound again. Then she would take her dispute to a higher authority.

Isn’t that what’s happening here?

So I feel vindicated when I hear Jesus soothe the hard-working sister, “”Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; Mary has chosen the better part.” It’s not an exact parallel, but it works for me. And it’s a surprise that Luke would tell a story like this, a story of two siblings, one of them annoyed at the other.

Of course, there is that other story he tells, “Once upon a time, there was a man with two sons.” The Good Son stayed home and worked hard in his father's fields, while the other son ran off and squandered his share of the family fortune. In that story, we are invited to sympathize with the Good Son, who watches his wayward brother stumble back to a “Welcome Home” banquet while he had worked hard and done nothing wrong.

Today we have a story of Two Sisters. One is in the kitchen and the other is not. Martha is the diligent one and she is perturbed. She’s working hard and she doesn’t have any help. So she says, "Lord, tell my sister to come and help me." I bet she is cooking up one enormous meal while Mary's just sitting there. Can you blame Martha for being annoyed?

And then we have Mary, who sits at the feet of Jesus. She listens to his voice, sets her agenda aside, receives his instruction, and presumably ponders these things in her heart. This is the Gospel of Luke, after all, and Jesus is always on center stage. He is the one we are to be listening for, and listening to. If Jesus came to your house, wouldn’t you want to sit at his feet?

Now, you know the usual way that this story is used. It’s held up as a mirror, and the question is asked: “Which one are you?”  Are you hard-working Martha, focused on the tasks at hand, doing the necessary preparations behind the scenes, watching the clock, tending to all the necessary details? Or are you devoted Mary, gazing into the face of Christ, free from worry, focused on the deep significance of the moment, and not bogged down with the unnecessary details? Some are drawn to Martha, others attracted to Mary. That’s often how the issue is posed.

But it’s not that simple. The Marthas who love details need their Jesus-time too and they intend to get it, but first the potatoes must be peeled and the meat has to be cooked. The Marys can’t merely float on air, either; there are necessary life tasks that simply must get done.

Parker Palmer, a good Quaker, says you can’t divide life into action and contemplation. For us to be fully alive, we have to hold both together. There’s always work to be done and there is also necessary reflection to find wisdom and meaning in what we do. Palmer says one can’t exist without the other. As he puts it,

When we fail to hold the paradox together, when we abandon the creative tension between the two, then both ends fly apart into madness. That is what often happens to contemplation-and-action in our culture of either/or. Action flies off into frenzy – a frantic and even violent effort to impose one’s will on the world, or at least to survive against the odds. Contemplation flies off into escapism – a flight from the world into a realm of false bliss.[1]

So we need both, doing and being, working and being still. The necessary skill is to hold them together. That’s easier said than done.

The cheaper way is what many people do, to work hard and then go on vacation, to alternate between labor and rest, to put in your time at the office and keep your weekends free. But what I notice is that a lot of people don’t know how to keep their weekends free. Every free moment is jammed full by people who are gasping for air. All Martha, no Mary – and the healthy person is both.

When my daughters were small, they would run around and be busy. When they ran out of things to do, they would come in and declare, “We’re bored.” I learned to respond, “That’s good. It’s good to be bored, because it means that you’re not busy. Pure busyness is evil.” They would look at me strangely. I’m sure they told their friends that they had a really weird father and I’m OK with that.

After they grumped around for a while, declaring how bored they were, I would pour them some lemonade, and say, “Come here and sit under the tree for a bit.” Then I’d give them Speech # 73. It goes like this:

“You can’t sustain an active life without also developing an interior life. Read a book, learn some poetry, walk in the woods, write in a journal, do some art, listen to a big piece of music, sit by a crackling bonfire and think about your day, or best of all: immerse yourself in some silence. Let these things deepen you. Put some pauses in every day. Don’t just do something – stand there.”

That’s Speech # 73. Do you know why I’ve memorized it? So I can recite it to myself.

This is hard work to be like Mary and Martha at the same time, to get the work done and to be still, to stay contemplative while active, active while contemplative. It’s difficult because we live in such a distracted age. People are playing thumbs with their smart phones, always have to be connected, always have to have the TV on, always on the computer, and always have to bounce from one activity to another, always have to keep the calendar crammed full.

So I think what Jesus is saying is a situational corrective. Martha storms out of the kitchen with her dirty apron, demanding that Mary get off her tail and help out. He makes it a teaching moment. He turns to her, and with the gentlest voice possible, he declares to the Marthas in our midst is that there is a time for hard work, but there is never a good time to be distracted by many things, never a good time to be anxious.

Jesus knew how to work hard – he healed one person after another, spoke to enormous crowds, never had a minute’s rest from his own disciples, was always “on” when people were around. And yet, he could say, “Which one of you, by being anxious, could add an inch to the quality of your life? Look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap, but your heavenly Father feeds them. Look at the lilies of the field. The most opulent king in Israel’s history was not dressed as gorgeously as them.”

So Martha, if you’re burning the candle at all three ends, here’s a good time to look at the birds and admire the lilies. That pause, that sacred pause, is the essence of Sabbath. It is God’s gift of time for the restoring of our souls, an invitation to rest in the Lord and to let God run the world for a while. You could take that time today, but you have to do it. You could take that time every day. It’s not always simple, but it really comes down to that.

My friend Debbie is an executive administrator in Alabama. She’s the lady with the clipboard, always on top of the details. She schedules meetings, oversees the payroll, watches the budget, deals with the contractors. You get the idea. I have never known someone so well organized, so capable in so many ways.

She was invited to join the staff of a church training conference, to be led by Presbyterians and Episcopalians. This involved a week of training in Memphis, and each day began with worship. Sometimes the Presbyterian ministers led it, other times the Episcopalian priests.

At the end of the week, she said the final worship service promised to be very long. There were lots of readings, standing and sitting, more standing and sitting, some genuflecting – and then a gentleman stood to share the sermon. He was well up in years, long into retirement. He looked a little disheveled, like an absent-minded professor. He spoke with a southern twang. The man spoke without notes, and seemed to have a hard time gathering his thoughts.

Then he began to tell a story about being raised by his grandparents. They were good, solid country folk. His granddad would go get the Thanksgiving turkey. He stuffed a live turkey into a burlap sack and took the trolley back home.

This was where the story got really good, as seen through the eyes of a nine year old boy. He went out to the back yard as granddad came back. The axe would fall, the turkey’s head was gone, and that turkey would take off running. It would run and run, and stumble and get up, and run some more. It was pretty cool stuff for a nine year old kid: a headless turkey running around the yard!

By this time, Deb said she was totally confused as to where this man was going with this story. Here they sat with a bunch of robed-up clergy in all their high church finery and this guy’s talking about a headless turkey.

But then he paused and said, “Let me give you the moral of this story: activity is not a sure sign of life.” Did you get that? Activity is not a sure sign of life.”[2]

Jesus said, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by all you think you have to do, yet here I am. Come, sit with me.”

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] Parker J. Palmer, The Active Life: Wisdom of Work, Creativity, and Caring (New York: Harper Collins, 1990) 15.

[2] Thanks to Debbie Hamrick and her sermon, “Where Am I Going?”

Will You Say the Neighbor's Name?

Luke 10:25-37

July 10, 2016

Ordinary 15

William G. Carter

Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?”  He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

This is a favorite story. Many of us have heard Jesus tell it a hundred times. It’s a story about taking care of one another, especially taking care of those who are beaten up and left by the side of the road.

That's the usual takeaway lesson: Be merciful to those who are victims of violence. It is the good advice of kindness. Show compassion to one another. Act like the merciful man in our story and you will live. Not only that, others will live because of you. This is the obvious lesson. It can be sanded down for children, and we can tell them, “Be nice.”

So we have Good Samaritan hospitals, Good Samaritan counseling clinics, and Good Sam travel clubs for those who break down on the road. Even President George W. Bush in his first inaugural address, declared to the troubled Middle East, “We aren't going to leave anybody lying by the road.”

These are nice thoughts that can lead to charitable actions. So nice and charitable, that we may not realize how we have softened this parable for the suburbs. As we tell it, it resembles nothing of the original setting.

Before the tale unfolds, we hear about a lawyer who wants to pounce on Jesus. “Just then” he asks a question about the Jewish law – which law? Which commandment?  Jesus is adept at playing the game this shyster wants to play and tosses it back in his lap – how do you read your own Bible?

The lawyer says it’s all about loving God and loving your neighbor. He’s right! It all comes to that. Nobody outruns the two-fold obligation to love.

But this lawyer is pushy, so he pushes some more. He really wants to test Jesus, so he can jump on the first wrong answer. Like every good Jew, Jesus answered his question with a question, so the lawyer comes back with a third question: “So who is my neighbor?” Who, indeed?

On the surface, that’s a stupid question. The neighbor is the one right in front of you, or across the street, or over the hedge. That’s the definition of a neighbor. But do we know these people? And if we know them, can we like them?

When I lived for nine years in Newton Township, my neighbors were the people across the field that lived in the farmhouse. I never did learn their names. They were too private to put more than a number on their mailbox. We rarely saw them come and go. If I had ever passed by them on the road, I wouldn't know who they were.

On the other side of my property, my neighbor was a retired civil servant. I was still unpacking moving boxes when he knocked on the door. “My name is Frank,” he said. Then he added, “You're the minister?” Well, yes, but I hadn't told him that. He seemed to know. Frank said, “We stick to ourselves out here.” He turned to leave, and then he looked over his shoulder to say, “By the way, your septic tank is spilling onto my back lot.”

Who is my neighbor? Apparently we have more neighbors than we realize. Could it be the gruff old man who defined the property line and doesn’t want your sewage fertilizing his field of weeds? Or maybe it's the internet troll who posts something offensive on Facebook and it makes you so mad. He’s your neighbor too. Or perhaps the family member that you don't speak with anymore. Or maybe, just maybe, they are the troubled souls who strike out in violence, maybe because they were victims of violence themselves. Are these people our neighbors?

This week, I think I was able to name the biggest problem that we have in America. We are confused about who our neighbors really are. We will acknowledge them if they are like us in every way. If they are like us, we might even come to love them. But they are not like us, are they still our neighbors? And are we still under any obligation to love them?

Many years ago, sociologist Robert Bellah pulled together some colleagues. They wanted to study American life and describe what was happening to our country. It was around the time that gated communities were getting popular, around the time when private schools were on the rise. They asked what’s going on. They noticed how like-minded people tended to clump together and how they subtly excluded those who were not like them. These sociologists came up with a phrase to describe it: “lifestyle enclave.” It’s an exclusive little community where people can afford to buy in, and those who can’t will know that they don’t belong.

Yet the question lingers: those people on the outside of our fence, are they still our neighbors? Well, what does Jesus say? Oh, he smiles slyly, and he says, “Let me tell you a story.”

He says: you know that road that goes downhill from Jerusalem to Jericho? I'm sure you do. There is only one road. It follows the canyon through the desert, down toward the Dead Sea. It’s about seventeen miles long, and you can walk it in a single day if you must. But you had best be careful.

Why, just imagine a man walking down that road, that isolated, lonely road. The thieves come out of nowhere and attack him. They take his money. They take his mule. They take his clothing. They beat him severely and leave him in the ditch. Anybody who travels that road will know: that could happen to them.

Then it happens that a Jerusalem priest passes by. He doesn't stop. He keeps going for some inexplicable reason. Maybe he figures the robbers are still there, we don't know. Those Bible scholars among who remember the book of Leviticus will know that a good Jewish priest will not go anywhere near a bleeding body, especially if that if that body is no longer alive. It will make him unclean and he won’t be able to do his work.

Ever hear that explanation? Amy-Jill Levine is a Jewish scholar, and she says it's ridiculous. For one thing, he is not going up to Jerusalem to work in the Temple; he is going down from Jerusalem. He’s on his way home, so he doesn’t have to stay pure. Amy-Jill says, certainly the Bible had its rules about staying clean, but it also had commandments to care for those in need.

So don’t let this priest off the hook. He blows off the wounded man, walks right by him, will not get involved. There is nothing religious about it, nothing at all. He is insensitive, inconsiderate, uncharitable, and inhumane.[1] So Jesus gives a little kick to the priest.

Same can be said of the Levite, who also passes by. The Levite is part of the worship team in the Temple. He’s not a priest per se, but he has been born into a professional caste of lay religious leaders. And when he sees the wounded man, he avoids him too. He ignores him, or whistles a happy tune and refuses to look at the victim, for pretty much the same reasons the priest passed by. He is clueless, or thinks himself superior, or too busy, when he is simply lacking in any human sympathy. No religious reason for it. So Jesus gives a little kick to the Levites too.

Now, Dr. Levine says every good Jewish story has three people on the road. As she puts it, “If I said Larry and Moe, you would probably say Curley.” So there should be a priest and a Levite … and an ordinary Jew.  The priest was extra-ordinary, the Levite was very special, and so we need an average schmoe to be the third person in the story.

You have heard the story enough times to know there’s nothing average about him at all. He’s not even a Jew. He’s a Samaritan, and he is the one who stops to help the wounded Jewish traveler.

Now, that’s all wrong. The Jewish lawyer knows that’s all wrong. The Samaritan is not on his map of neighbors. Oh no, not at all. Dr. Levine says, “It’s like saying Larry and Moe and Osama Bin Laden.”

Doesn’t Jesus know this? Oh yes. But doesn’t he remember? Just a few verses before, Jesus had wandered through some Samaritan land. He had decided to go to Jerusalem. Galilee is up here, Jerusalem is down here, and Samaria is in between. You have to go around it, because those people are your enemies. Well, Jesus went through it. The Samaritans made it very clear they wanted nothing to do with him, either. They refused him. He’s a Jew. He wasn't on their map of neighbors.

It was a tense moment. If you recall from the text a couple of weeks ago, James and John (the Galilean fisherman) said, “Lord, let's call down fire from heaven and blast these Samaritans away once and for all.” Jesus turned and told them to shut up. He rebuked them, as if he was an exorcist casting out their evil spirits. He was not interested in blasting anybody away. That was not his way. That is not the way of God’s kingdom. So he looks at his own followers, tells them to knock it off, and they move on.

And now, twenty-five verses later, he names a Samaritan as the hero of his story. The Samaritan is the one who stops. The Samaritan is the one who binds the victim’s wounds, takes him into his own room and cares for him at a nearby inn. When the Samaritan has to leave him behind, he gives the innkeeper a generous sum and says, “Keep taking care of him, and I’ll be back to settle the bill.” The Samaritan does this and he supposed to be the enemy.

Can you imagine that? The hated enemy is the one who helps. The hated enemy shows more humanity that those who are supposed to be your friends. In a world where religious people can be close-minded and cold-hearted, it is the hated outsider who turns out to be the savior of the man who was beaten and left for dead.

That's the story. And Jesus asks, “Which of these three acts like the neighbor?”

Well, duh. Everybody can see the hero of the story. According to the text, the lawyer says, “It's the.... It's the.... You know, it's the Sam...” No, he can't say it. So he says all he can bear to say. Who’s the neighbor? And he says, “It’s the … it's the one who shows compassion.”

Ah, he took the easy way out. He gives the answer, but he cannot say the name.

Do you see what the problem is in America? We have a lot of confusion and conflict about who our neighbors are. Even if they are kind to us, we cannot say their names.

There’s nothing new about this. It is an ancient problem. If this was a story about a story about a Samaritan who fell among thieves, the last thing the Samaritans would expect is for a Jew to reach down, dress his wounds, and nurse him back to health. Same old problem is with us. As somebody notes, imagine you’re the one in the ditch, and as people pass you by, the only one who stopped was a member of ISIS, or the NRA, or the Democratic party, or the PLO. Fill in whomever you most fear and despise. And a lot of people might respond in unison: We’d rather die than be saved by the likes of you.[2]

See, this is the problem. It’s not that we are independent enough that we don’t want help. It’s that we don’t want help from that person. That person is supposed to be my enemy. That person is supposed to stay out of my way. I’m supposed to live in a nicer house and nicer community than that person. I’m supposed to make more money and be more successful than that person. I’m supposed to be superior to that person and everything I’ve ever been told has shaped me to hate people like that.

And Jesus dares to tell a story that says, rather clearly, that the neighborhood is a lot bigger than we think it is, and it’s populated by people who actually act like neighbors to one another.

Can you see why Jesus got killed, after telling stories like this?

Even more, can you see why God raised Jesus from the dead and pushed into our faces to keep telling stories like this?  It’s because God loves the neighborhood, the whole neighborhood, the big neighborhood, and God wants it to be populated with people who show mercy to one another. That’s what love is all about. As the early Christ-followers declared, “You can’t say you love God if you hate your neighbor.”[3] The truth of the Gospel is that God-in-Christ has taken away all the reasons to hate anybody at all.

Imagine that.

• Imagine a world where people who are different from one another actually make the effort to get along, to understand and receive help from one another.
• Imagine a world that is no longer carved up in groups of friends or enemies, where everybody is now named “neighbor.”
• Imagine a world where innocent black people don’t get shot, where innocent police officers don’t get shot either, where people on every side pursue every reason to respect one another.
• Imagine a world where people turn off their television sets, with all the blathering that stirs up animosity and drives up advertising revenue, and instead they walk outside their guarded homes, knock on their neighbor’s doors, and say, “Can we talk until we find some common ground?”

 Imagine that.

• Imagine a world where people aren’t afraid of one another.
• Imagine a world where people who hurt one another are committed to working through the hurt and living into forgiveness. .
• Imagine a world where the dreaded enemy Samaritan draws near to take care of you, a world where you might be the Samaritan to somebody else, yet you take the first step to create some honest peace.

Imagine that.

And if you can imagine it, go and do likewise. Because you know as well as I that love is the only way to life, real life. As the scriptures say, “Whoever does not love abides in death . . . We know we have passed from death to life because we love one another.”[4]

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] Amy-Jill Levine, Short Stories by Jesus (New York: Harper One, 2015) 98-103. Other references found on these pages.

[2] William H. Willimon, Fear of the Other: No Fear in Love (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2016)

[3] 1 John 4:20

[4] 1 John 3:14

Can't Stay Here

Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

Ordinary 14

July 3, 2016

William G. Carter

After this the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. He said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road. Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house!’ And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you. Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the laborer deserves to be paid. Do not move about from house to house. Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; cure the sick who are there, and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.’ 

My good friend Al says something at the end of his concerts that’s guaranteed to bring a chuckle. “You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.” It’s a funny line. People come out to hear Al and his band make some music. After it winds up, the night is still young. “Let’s go explore other dark corners, when it’s time, we’ll go home.”

But I’ve wondered if that might also be a good benediction for the end of a church service. “You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.” We call this room a “sanctuary.” It is a place of prayer, but it is not a hiding place. We gather here for worship, for learning, for Christian community, but then we are dispersed into the world. We can come here, but we can’t stay here. Christ sends us on.

The Gospel text is a sending text. A chapter ago, Jesus sent his twelve disciples ahead of him. Now he sends seventy more – or seventy-two more, if you noticed the footnotes. Why seventy – or seventy-two? Because, depending on what you read, there were either seventy or seventy-two known nations in the world. The Hebrew Bible said seventy, the Greek Old Testament said seventy-two, but no matter. Two by two, there are enough for you to take all the people on the globe.

Even before the miracle of Pentecost, when all the nations are gathered for worship in Jerusalem and the Spirit of the Risen Christ comes down upon them, now the Jewish Jesus says, “Go on your way. Take no money, take no bag, take no sandals – just take a word, a single word: shalom.” The word of peace is all you need. Eat whatever they give you. Stay wherever they put you up. Heal their sick and say ‘God is coming close to you.’” Jesus sends them out.

The seventy, or the seventy-two, do what the twelve disciples were sent to do, which is what Jesus himself has set out to do. He has no home, no regular place to lay his head (9:56). His ministry is transient. He is on the go. And to follow Jesus, in this regard, is to do what he does. If he is on the move, his people must be on the move. The charge is not to sit around in a conference room and rearrange the committee structures. It’s to go into the world on behalf of our Lord.

Here are a few details to notice about his charge. First, it’s not about getting people to come to our church, and it certainly isn’t about making our church as big as it can possibly be. No, it’s about service, specifically, serving people that we don’t even know yet. Jesus sends the seventy (or the seventy-two) with words of peace. This is their ministry: to walk into somebody else’s life and say, “Peace be to this house.”

The entire focus is upon the people to whom we are sent. Who are they? What do they need? How can our blessing for peace be translated into tangible service for them? Not for us, but for them.

How refreshing! If a church stays within its own walls, it can get pretty stale. Habits become institutionalized. The faithful flock can be reduced to a private club. Somebody new walks in, and we say, “That’s my pew, get out.”  Somebody young walks in, and the old-timers say, “Fresh meat! Let’s pounce.” Somebody naïve and willing walks in, and the tired people quote Jesus, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.”

We need the second half of his teaching: “Ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” It’s his harvest, not ours, and his people are sent out. Which is to say, if we’re sitting around waiting for people to show up here, we are not doing our job. Or as a wise, old minister once said to me, “The pastors who can always be found in their offices are not doing their jobs.” Christ sends us out to serve a world full of needs.

The second detail: it’s all about those people, it’s not about us. Please repeat that with me: it’s all about those people, it’s not about us. This is the fundamental rule of good listening; we listen to another person without injecting the conversation with a lt of noise about ourselves. It is the fundamental rule of true compassion: we care to that person, not we might feel good about ourselves, but to provide some sympathy and relief for them. It’s about them.

Jesus says to the seventy, or the seventy-two: go to them. Stay with them. Speak my peace to them. Eat what they give you. Drink what they provide. Don’t hop around from place to place. Stay with these strangers until you can heal whatever distresses them. It could take a while, and it’s going to happen on their timetable, not on yours. For the true servant knows that in the moment of need, these people are more important than me.

Once again, it’s not about building ourselves up. It’s only about those to whom we are sent.

And the third detail of this charge: ministry in the name of Jesus doesn’t need a lot of props. It doesn’t need a lot of technological gadgets, nor flashy sales techniques, nor whiz bang marketing campaigns. Service in the name of Jesus is not a high pressure campaign to win souls and grab more wallets. It’s not a boastful claim of how wonderful we are or how many assets we have stashed away. We go with a word of peace, a word that we inhabit with our own gentleness, our own humility, our own patience. Success does not rise or fall on any of us. We simply go to serve, to be present alongside other people and to serve.

So we can’t stay here. That’s the word of the Lord that I hear today. It’s good to be here. It’s good to sing the praises of God. It’s good to break open the bread of Holy Scripture. It’s good to pass the bread and wine at the Lord’s Table. I need to be here as regularly as I am able, and I wish for you to feel that way too. But we can’t stay here, as if this church is our hiding place. It’s our deployment center.

And that’s why, this fall, we are going to do what a growing number of Christian churches are starting to do. We are stepping into the world from our own doorstep. On September 25, the last Sunday of September, we will gather here for worship at 10:00. We will sing our hymns, listen for Christ to speak in scripture, and we will pray – and then immediately we will leave this building to go do Gospel work for other people. We may know these people, we may not. All of them are our neighbors, and we won’t be able to serve them if we stay in here.

This will be our first-ever Worship through Service Day. There will be something for everybody to do, and we want to put about two hundred people on the streets of this community to take the peace of God beyond these doors. Why are we doing this? Because the text tells us that Jesus Christ sends his people into the world.

You know as well as I that the world needs the healing love of Jesus. Behind the high hedges of this community, there are people who are lonely and disconnected. They come and go, unseen to many of us, but all of them, whether they know it or not, are the precious children of God. They’ve been bruised by broken promises and afflicted by diseased relationships. They are intoxicated by fear, or stuck in self-defeating patterns, or overextended in every possible way. And these are the ones that Jesus loves. 

According to this week’s Scranton Times, people buy houses in this community so they don’t have to send their kids to the Scranton city schools. Or they send their kids to private schools so they don’t have to mingle with the public schools. I will let you ponder if that’s true, while I ponder what so many people in this town are trying to outrun.

You know, there is a dark side to affluence. Families don’t eat at the same table. Everybody is too busy to enjoy the “good life” that they are hustling so hard to attain. Some guy is grumbling because the next door neighbor’s dandelion seeds are blowing into his lawn. And every week, one more suburban kid secretly slips off to heroin rehab, because nobody else is available to help him constructively deal with his pain.

This is our mission field. Jesus does not let his people wring their hands and say, “Let’s put up taller fences and withdraw from a terrible world.” No, he sends them ahead of him. He sends them in the power of his name. He sends them regardless of how they will be regarded. He sends them, because their ministry is really his ministry, and his ministry is done through them.  

I like how William Temple said it when he was the Archbishop of Canterbury: “The church of Jesus Christ is the only group in town that exists for the benefit of its non-members.”

When the service is over this morning, after the body and blood of Christ is given to sustain your spirit, after the final hymn stirs your soul, you don’t have to go home. But you can’t stay here. Jesus is sending you to serve the broken world that he loves.  

(c) William G Carter. All rights reserved.

Calling Down Fire

Luke 9:51-62

Ordinary 13

June 26, 2016

William G. Carter

When the days drew near for him to be taken up, Jesus set his face to go to Jerusalem. And he sent messengers ahead of him. On their way they entered a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him; but they did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem. When his disciples James and John saw it, they said, “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” But he turned and rebuked them. Then they went on to another village.

As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” But Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

Jesus is on the go. He “sets his face like flint” to proclaim the message of God all the way to Jerusalem. It is his journey to cross, resurrection, and ascension as the sovereign Lord, and he is going to enlist disciples along the way. Somebody offers to join up, and Jesus says he has “let goods and kindred go.” He invites somebody else to join him, but the funeral of the man’s father causes him to stall. A third would-be disciple wants to join Jesus, and the Lord’s call is so clear that it comes before that person can even say goodbye to his family.

These are the demands of discipleship. If you are going to follow Jesus, you have to do it now. There will be no delays, no distractions, no holding back. As Jesus has committed himself to do his work, he expects the same dedication from those who are going with him. It takes clarity and commitment to follow Jesus and do his work in the world.

And even if you have that clarity and commitment, you still might get it wrong. James and John from the inner circle get it really wrong. They see how a certain village is full of people who want nothing to do with Jesus. It offends them. It angers them. So they say, “Lord, how about if we call down some fire from heaven to blast them away?” What a terrible thing to say!

Now these are James and John, the two fishermen who have left behind their nets to follow him around the country side. Remember them? According to the Bible, Jesus nicknamed them the "Boanerges," or "the Sons of Thunder." That's what they were - all thunder and no lightning, all mouth and no muscle, always going around half-cocked, ready to shoot themselves in the foot. One translator calls them not only the “Sons of Thunder,” but "the Sons of Commotion." James and John were headstrong and outspoken.

“How about if we call down some fire from heaven to away these Samaritans?” Now, why would anybody ever think that a village of Samaritans would ever welcome a Jew like Jesus? Jews and Samaritans had hated one another for centuries. The purebred Jew had no time for the mixed Samaritan blood. The memory of a Samaritan temple on Mount Gerazim was an affront to the official Jewish temple in Jerusalem. The Samaritan mistranslation of the Jewish scripture was repulsive. It would be risky for Jesus to stop there anyway, which may be why he sent an advance team to check it out.

Apart from the racism that probably infected that situation, the Samaritans have broken the unwritten rule of the Middle Eastern world: they are guilty of bad hospitality. If a stranger stumbles into your midst, what do you do? The virtuous person opens the home, serves a meal, and provides a bed for rest. That's hospitality. In the Middle East, you don't offer hospitality because you like the stranger. You offer it because it is good manners.

But these Samaritans tell Jesus and his entourage to keep moving. They can see his face is set for Jerusalem, so they really don’t want him in their town. He is a Jew, his people are Jewish, and Samaritans don’t have anything to do with Jews. Jesus is now dissed by the Samaritans, and James and John take that as a personal insult. So they say, “Lord, let’s call down some fire from heaven to blast them away.”

So what’s all this stuff about fire from heaven? Well, years ago, the prophet Elijah burned up some Samaritans by calling on God to send down great balls of fire. He was a strong and somewhat ornery prophet, so when the king of Samaria sent an army to give Elijah a hard time, he let them have it, not once but twice (2 Kings 1:1-18).

And as everybody in the Gospel of Luke knows, Jesus is another great and holy prophet. Now the Samaritans are giving him a hard time. Never mind it’s nine hundred years later, James and John want doom and gloom, all in the name of God, you understand. They believe in their hearts that anybody who stands up to the prophet of God should be barbecued to a crackly crunch. It makes you wonder, as an aside, what they think is going to happen when Jesus arrives at Jerusalem.

But Jesus won’t have any of it, not at all. He refused to blast anybody away. It’s not his style. He’s been feeding the hungry, lifting up the poor, healing the sick, and teaching the simple-minded … like these disciples, who don’t seem to get it. It doesn’t matter that they have traveled with him from the beginning, doesn’t matter that they have seen signs and wonders first hand, it doesn’t matter that they saw him on the mountain, glowing like the sun and talking with the prophet Elijah. They are offended at these Samaritans and they want them destroyed. Jesus says no.

No way. He’s not going to blast anybody if they turn him away. That’s not the plan of his kingdom, and I think we can take some comfort in that. You may have noticed the last time you skipped out on church, he didn’t call down a fireball to blast you. Or the last time you played tennis on a Sunday morning when you could have been singing the hymns, he didn’t hide behind a tree and blow the ball back into your face.

In fact, at a time when Jesus is collecting disciples on the way to his cross, here are two of his closest disciples who are righteously indignant at a town of Samaritans. They can say they are offended at the racism, but they have turned a blind eye to their own ongoing racism. And their answer is to call for a horrific act of violence, an act of genocide, all in the name of religion – when it is clear they don’t have a clue about what kind of religion Christ is trying to teach them. And Jesus says no.

If they had been paying attention when he spoke a few chapters before, they would heard him say, “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.” (Luke 6:27-28) But they weren’t listening. And if they were, they probably said Jesus was being foolish and unrealistic. The world says you’re supposed to hate your enemies and blast them back into the sand. But Jesus says no.

If they were listening, these disciples would have heard Jesus tell the truth about God, that God “is kind to the ungrateful and the selfish,” and as a reflection of that grace, he says, “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” (6:35-36). Be merciful, he says. Withhold the retaliation. Restrain the violence. This is the clear Christian teaching from Jesus himself.

At the possibility of violence, he says, “No! Put your weapon away.” (22:51). When he is nailed to the cross and insulted by his own people, he does not call down fire, but says, “Father, forgive them, they are ignorant. They don’t know what they are doing” (23:34).

James and John, don’t you understand? The world is not saved by violence. The world is saved because God doesn’t give it back the violence it deserves. God holds back because God forgives. That’s called salvation. Heaven is restrained, thanks to the mercy of Jesus Christ. That’s why we baptize people: to teach them that this is the way God is.

James and John want fire. They aren’t alone in that, you know. Every day, there’s somebody in the news making a lot of noise about getting rid of this group of people or that group of people. Sometimes they plot in sleeper cells, waiting to strike. Sometimes they run for public office. Sometimes they hide out in churches.

I’ll never forget the dinner party in my first congregation. The clerk of session was barbecuing chicken, started to complain about the world, and then came up with an inventive way to remove all the people in the world whom he didn’t like. “Let’s just line them up in front of a ditch, gun them down, and bring in the bulldozer to push dirt over top.” He said this, as he brushed the chicken with barbecue sauce.

Nobody said anything, but I couldn’t let it go. “You know,” I said, “that method was already tried and it didn’t work.”  He looked up with enthusiasm, “It was? When?” And I said, “Nazi Germany.” He looked at me with fury, told me to leave his house. The following day, he put a letter of resignation in my mailbox and vowed never to return to church. He didn’t, until the Sunday after I moved up here and started to work.  Oh well.

Jesus said, “No.” They wanted fire and he said no.

Luke says it was more than a simple “no.” Jesus turned and rebuked them. That’s a super-charged word in the Gospel of Luke. Every time Jesus "rebukes," he confronts the forces of evil. Rebuking is exorcism talk. It is confrontational language that clearly draws a line between what is holy and what is hellish. In Luke’s book, Jesus rebukes evil spirits that drive people out of their minds. He rebukes fierce forces of nature that threaten human survival. He rebukes diseases of the body that damage and destroy.

Here, on the road to Jerusalem, in a Samaritan town where he is not welcome, Jesus rebukes two of his closest friends. In their wish to call down fire, James and John align themselves with the very evil that Jesus has come to confront. So what does he do? He begins his journey to Jerusalem by performing an exorcism on two of his disciples. As he moves toward the city that will act violently on him, he will not take anybody who wants to react with violence of their own. That is not the way of God, or Christ, or the kingdom of heaven.

"Lord, can we call down some fire from heaven?" No, no, a thousand times no. I know James and John must feel frustrated, angry, and rejected. Walking with Jesus, they are in good company. But by the time they get to Jerusalem, there is the promise of another kind of fire. In Jerusalem, Jesus will die, be raised, and ascend into heaven. And his very last words to James and John are these: "You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria." (Acts 1:8)

The fire will come, but it’s a different kind of fire. It will be the fire of Christ’s own Spirit, the fire that makes us more like him. It’s the fire that pushes us beyond all racial boundaries, so that we would “proclaim repentance and forgiveness to all nations (24:47)." It’s not the fire of destruction, but the fire of mercy. It’s not the fire of disagreement, but the fire of forbearance. It’s not the fire of self-righteousness, but the purging, purifying fire of the Holy Spirit.

If we’re going to ask heaven to send down fire, let’s pray not for the fires of arrogance, but the fire of God’s love. This is the fire that God gives to consume us, and when it does, we will never feel the need to retaliate, judge, or boast. For if we are filled with love, we will truly be Jesus’ disciples. And we will be able to walk in step with him all the way to the cross.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

Get Out of Town, Please!

Luke 8:26-39

Ordinary 12

June 19, 2016

William G. Carter

Then they arrived at the country of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee. As he stepped out on land, a man of the city who had demons met him. For a long time he had worn no clothes, and he did not live in a house but in the tombs. When he saw Jesus, he fell down before him and shouted at the top of his voice, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me”— for Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. (For many times it had seized him; he was kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles, but he would break the bonds and be driven by the demon into the wilds.) Jesus then asked him, “What is your name?” He said, “Legion”; for many demons had entered him. They begged him not to order them to go back into the abyss. Now there on the hillside a large herd of swine was feeding; and the demons begged Jesus to let them enter these. So he gave them permission. Then the demons came out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned. When the swineherds saw what had happened, they ran off and told it in the city and in the country. Then people came out to see what had happened, and when they came to Jesus, they found the man from whom the demons had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind. And they were afraid.Those who had seen it told them how the one who had been possessed by demons had been healed. Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them; for they were seized with great fear. So he got into the boat and returned. The man from whom the demons had gone begged that he might be with him; but Jesus sent him away, saying, “Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.” So he went away, proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him.

This is one of the wildest moments in the Bible.

Jesus gets out of the boat, steps out on the land of Gentiles. For a first century Jew, that’s unclean land. A wild man confronts him, yelling at the top of his lungs and not wearing any clothes. Luke says he is overwhelmed by an unclean spirit. Not only that, the loud, naked, wild man lives in a cemetery. For a Jew, that’s unclean soil. To summarize the scene, Jesus goes to an unclean land, meets a man with an unclean spirit who lives in an unclean place.

And what does he do? He throws the unclean spirit out of the man and into a large herd of unclean pigs, and the pigs dash down the hill, plunge into the water, and destroy themselves.

It’s a wild story, and it’s always been one of my favorites. I have stood on the spot where it happened. My dad and I were on a tour. Because Jesus touched down on Gentile land and healed a man that all the Jews could see was a Gentile (he was naked, after all), it was a sign of the days when all Gentiles would be invited into the word and work of Christ.

Dad and I stood among the ruins of an old Christian church, built there 500 years after the event. The building has been an affirmation that Jesus is stronger than the forces of destruction. It stood there for a hundred years, until the Persian army came along and tore it down. Dad and I wondered out loud what kind of demons had gotten into them.

There is so much destruction. A large herd of pigs is lost. Perhaps it was not much of a loss for the twelve disciples, all of them Jewish, who had nothing to do with unclean pigs. But that herd was the livelihood for the herders who raised them. Now those herders had nothing. All their money was wrapped up in that herd, and it’s gone.

Jesus didn’t have to destroy the herd. He could have ignored the demons’ request and sent them back down to the bottomless pit of hell where they belonged. “Don’t send us back to the abyss,” they howled. He didn’t have to honor what they wanted. These are the evil forces, after all. They got into that poor man and drove him off the edge of sanity.

When this story is told over in the Gospel of Mark, there is a description of how the man had become self-abusive. “He hit himself with stones and howled all night” (Mark 5:5). It terrified the neighbors.

When this story is told over in the Gospel of Matthew, Matthew says, it was “two men,” not one (Matthew 8:28). Well, it might as well have been. Clearly this tortured man was beside himself. Can you hear it? “Beside himself” – that’s the ancient way of describing illnesses like schizophrenia. A person is torn in two.

As Luke tells the story, he says the people in town did what they could. They would sneak up behind him and wrap him with chains, but he was so wild he would break the chains. They would catch him again and keep him under armed guard, but he broke loose and ran away. It scared all the townspeople and they let him lurk around the cemetery. The first-century diagnosis was “he had a demon.”  When the man speaks, he says the Roman Legion had gotten into his head, infected his spirit, and damaged his life.

Call it what you will, but Jesus is stronger. With his words alone, he sends the toxic energy out of him. That is his ministry: he speaks on behalf of God and makes people well. It doesn’t matter that this man is considered “unclean” by the ancient religion, for he is still worthy of well-being. It doesn’t matter that the man lives in a foreign land or hides behind the tombstones, for the Lord wishes him to have the fullness of life.

And as far as those pigs? I can’t say for sure, but let me say it this way. Sometimes there is a great cost involved in getting well. If you’ve had significant surgery, have you seen how expensive it is? Or do you know what thirty days of drug and alcohol treatment can cost? Or if the family has been to spend a lot of time with a therapist, there are major demands on all your emotional resources just to get to the other side. It can take time, money, and a lot of emotional capital to change and to begin feeling healthy again. That’s what I think about those pigs.

We see it in the great stories of good versus evil. There is always some cost for good to win. Harry Potter takes on Voldemort. They cast lightning at one another as the castle crumbles around them. I recently watched the latest installment of Star Wars for the second time. In the climactic battle scene at the end, the good person is dueling with the evil person. Their light sabers cut down a lot of trees, and then the planet blows up. Call it “the high cost of health care.”

But at the end of the story, even when the man is healed, even when he is freshly clothed, in his right mind, and sitting with Jesus, there is a sad and pathetic message from the people of the town. They come to Jesus, they see the wild man now settled, they hear the story of what has happened – and they ask Jesus to get out of town. “Please leave,” they say with a single voice.

It’s really sad. They had come to tolerate a wild man out there, scaring every new group of mourners who went to bury their dead. But now they are really unsettled when that same man is healed and restored.

It’s worth reflecting on this. Why did they want Jesus to go away?

Certainly there was the money lost by the pig farmers. They faced a huge economic loss, to say nothing of a good portion of the food supply for that Gentile town. If Jesus is going to stick around and heal somebody else, what’s he going to destroy next? And considering that the herd of swine was very, very large – in one account, there were two thousand pigs[1] - we can guess those farmers were probably pretty well off. That suggests they had some influence in that region. “Jesus, get out of town. You’re not good for business!”

This comes up in other places. In the book of Acts, some of the first Christian missionaries were making a difference. They were preaching Jesus as the love of God and the life of the world, and people started to listen and believe. The Gospel was especially effective in the enormous city of Ephesus. Paul preached about Jesus for two years and many people came to faith. It so effective that they burned up their books of magic spells and incantations. There was a movement of people believing in Jesus (Acts 19).

Problem is, Ephesus was also a tourist town. They had the temple of Diana, one of the seven wonders of the world. It was surrounded by gift shops that were run by silversmiths, and all of them started losing money because of the Gospel! People started believing in Jesus, and they didn’t need the magic books, the pagan temple, and the silver knick-knacks any more. So what did the silver smiths do? They stirred up a riot against the Christian preachers. Whenever the Gospel confronts idolatry, it shakes up the local economy.

Remember that big herd of pigs? They cost a lot of money! We can’t have any more healings like that. It would hurt us in the pocketbook. Certainly that was part of the conversation.

At the heart of the response, Luke says there was fear. Great fear, or in the Greek phrase, “mega phobia.” The people were afraid. They may have been scared of the wild man, or more specifically, scared of the illness inside of him. But now they are downright terrified of the power of Jesus to make the man well. They want him to leave, because God has come way too close.

When Jesus first meets the wild man, remember what the illness that inhabits has to say? “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?” See, the illness wants to call all the shots, because the illness knows that the Son of the Most High God is stronger, holier, healthier, and kinder than the parasitic hold that it has on its host. The illness calls it “torment,” but for Jesus it is healing and restoration. Christ comes to make people well.

Does he ask permission before he starts to heal? Not in this case. He simply goes to work, for the work of the God of Life is to give abundant life to those who are infected, inflicted, and shackled by something they cannot control. True healing is disruptive. The sick man cannot howl and whine any more. He will have to put on some clothes. He will have to grow up, give up his status as the wild man, and move away from the tombs and back among the “normal” people.

Meanwhile the so-called “normal” people aren’t so sure that they want him healthy and back among them. It might make them look not so normal. One thing’s for sure, they sure don’t want Jesus the Healer to stick around any longer. Get out of town, please.

We read the Bible, but it is the Bible that reads us. We read how Jesus comes to heal and restore in every corner of our lives – today, it’s a healing most likely of a man with a troubled mind and emotions. Christ comes to heal. We read that. But what the Bible reads in us is the stronger aversion to the only One who can heal us and what we would have to change to get well.

If the world really wanted to be healthy, it would have made that decision long ago. Somebody would have gotten rid of potato chips, cigarettes, and other addictive substances. All those things would be sent back into the abyss. And every week or two, we hear about some tormented soul that shoots up a building full of innocent people with a weapon that should only be in the hands of the military. We lock our doors, pray for mercy, and murmur, “I’m thankful it didn’t happen here.”

You know, we really don’t have to live like that. We don’t have to be fearful, held captive, immobilized by a “mega phobia.” We could live with freedom. We could live with grace. We could make decisions every day that create life, that enhance life, that declare that Jesus is more important than pigs, or money, or beating ourselves with stones, or living among the tombstones. We don’t have to push him away or ask him to get out of our town. We could say, “Lord, stay among us, and make the rest of us well one at a time.” Because that is what he wishes to do. It is the will of God to make us well.

That day in the land of the Gerasenes, it was the townspeople’s fear that pushed Jesus back into the boat and back across the sea. But that’s not the end of the story.

Did you hear what he did?  The man who was healed wanted to get in the boat and go with him, but Jesus said, “No, stay here. Tell these people what God has done for you.” Tell them about the change in your health, about the change in your perspective. Stay right in the middle of them. Go right into the center of the community. Tell everybody you meet that it is God’s great desire that we live by health, freedom, and faith.

You know why he did that? Because the one thing they will not be able to dispute is the presence of someone who has come back from the tombs, and lives to tell about it.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] Mark 5:13