The Reckless Shepherd

The Reckless Shepherd
Luke 15:1-6
Pentecost 12
September 11, 2022
William G. Carter

Now 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.”


Somebody heard this was the scripture text for today. They said, “It’s perfect! All the lost sheep have come home.” I don’t know if they were talking about the end of summer; the vacation is over, school has begun, here you are. I don’t know if they have the growing sense that the pandemic has played out, and it’s time to refill the choir loft and welcome back folks to their favorite pews.

Whatever the case, it is good to see you here. Welcome home. The coffee pot is on. We’re going to have a party.

But let's see if the text fits. You don’t look like sheep. None of you are covered in wool. And if anybody were to call you a sheep, it wouldn’t not a compliment. In the animal kingdom, sheep don’t rate very high on the intelligence scale. They aren’t sly like a fox, wise as an owl, or smugly superior as a cat. No, sheep are pretty stupid.

We had a stained-glass window in my first church. Jesus is standing with a shepherd’s staff. There were a few sheep around him and several rocks. It was time to clean up the window, so we hired a specialist. To our amazement, those weren’t rocks at all. They were the painted heads of sheep, looking about as intelligent as the rocks.

So when the psalmist describes us by saying, “We are the people of God’s pasture, the sheep of his hand” (95:7), that is not necessarily a compliment. We hold it in tension with the diagnosis of the prophet Isaiah, who declared, “All we, like sheep, have gone astray” (53:6). And he did say “all of us.”

Sheep have a way of wandering. Years ago, a good friend bought a few sheep. I don’t know what he was thinking. He lived in the suburbs of Atlanta. Maybe he fashioned himself as a gentleman farmer. In any case, he told me one of them was always escaping. It happened while they are grazing. As my friend put it, “They nibble themselves lost.” One begins to chew, chews some more, keeps chewing, and then loses track of where they are and has no clue of how they got there.

It’s not a bad metaphor for what it means to be human. Our appetites often define us. Look around – some of the flock is missing, Maybe they’re sleeping in. Or they were out late last night. Or there aren’t a lot of weekends left to float on Wallenpaupack. It can become a habit for any of us. Call it “nibbling ourselves out of the pasture.”

Three weeks ago, I was preaching an old sermon in Eagles Mere, about an hour and a half west of here. It was the last day of a two-week vacation. A few days before I went up there, I heard a couple of friends who moved away from here almost twenty years ago. They discovered I would be there. They had plans to be there. “Want to have lunch after the service?” Sure! It was delightful. We talked for almost two hours. And they said they hadn’t been in a church for years.

While we were talking, two of our current church members walked through the restaurant. I called out to them. You should have seen the look on their faces! One said, “Are you checking up on us?” The other said, “You caught us playing hooky.” Hey, let’s be real: I was playing hooky too.

We will sing it in the last verse of the next hymn: “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it; prone to leave the God I love.” Yep, all we like sheep...

In the fifteenth chapter of Luke, there are some religious people who look down on such wandering. They call themselves the Pharisees, which means “the separate ones.” They profess to be different. They desire to be pure. They want so desperately to live in the light of God’s teaching, that they look down on those who have wandered away. Or have been pushed away. Or have felt like God’s teaching makes impossible demands, and they will never live up to them.

The Pharisees hear that Jesus has been spending time with the wanderers. They are offended. Why doesn’t he stay pure – like them?

And Jesus replies, “Have any of you ever had a wandering sheep?”

The Pharisees say, “No!” They would never consider themselves shepherds. Shepherds let their flocks graze on land that doesn’t belong to them. So first-century shepherds were considered thieves. Because of that, they were not welcome in the Jerusalem temple.

So Jesus goes on, “Did you ever hear about the shepherd who lost a little lamb and went after it?”

Ok, that’s admirable – for a shepherd.

And he says, “That shepherd left the rest of his flock alone in the wilderness to go after the lost one.”

Wait – that’s not admirable. That’s reckless. He’s putting the flock at risk to go after the lost one.

And then he says, “When he finds the one lost, he carries it back and throws a party.”

Whoa – a party? That’s wasteful, extravagant, and totally unnecessary. 
The sheep should have known better. The sheep should have come to its senses and come home.

But as the scholar Amy Jill Levine of Vanderbilt points out, sheep are incapable of coming to their senses. A sheep cannot “repent,” because it’s a sheep. It must be found, carried back, and celebrated.

I had always believed this was a parable about repentance, about realizing you’ve wandered, and you need to go home. Thanks to Dr. Levine, I’ve seen something else here. And it’s like the short parable that follows it, of a woman who loses a quarter and searches until she finds it. The quarter cannot repent; it’s a piece of metal. So both parables are not about getting lost and repenting; they are about getting found and being celebrated.

To reframe this whole conversation: let’s not obsess about the sheep that gets lost. That happens all the time. Let’s turn our attention to that shepherd, who risks everything to find what has been lost. Could this be a parable of the Gospel announced by Jesus?

Jesus could have played it safe, you know. He could have stayed up on a cloud and played checkers with his Father. But he leaves what was comfortable to go after those he didn’t want to lose.

He could have come to earth and stayed among the Holy People. Or rather, those who had convinced themselves they were holy. Instead he seeks out those who never thought they’d measure up and chooses to eat with them. Steps over imaginary barriers to be with them. He searches for them in order to stay with them. This is a new definition of holiness, one we will never understand if we hide out in a church. God steps out of the comfortable cloister. God goes looking for us. That’s the good news.

If only we had been paying attention when we read the first couple of pages of the Bible. Adam and Eve, our mythical parents, did something wrong and they knew it. So they hid behind a maple tree. God came strolling through the Garden and didn’t see them. So God called out, “Where are you?” Good question. An old question. It’s the question that never goes away.

Where are you? Oh, there are so many answers. Some are brunching on State Street, others are viewing from home (or say they are). Some may be sick, others disenchanted. Some are nervous about crowds; others are out of the habit of participating. Some might be having fun; others may be annoyed that nobody has found them yet. Who knows?

What I know is that God desires our company. That God desires to gather us in. God believes we are worthy of living in his presence – even to the point of celebrating our return. And it’s not merely a return to these pews or these people – it’s a return to his embrace. It’s the knowledge in heart, soul, and mind that we are loved and wanted – and that God invites us to make a positive difference in his world.

That’s why we are baptizing little Parker today. He is God’s little lamb even before he consciously knows it. Throughout the journey that he undertakes from this day forward, God will be looking for him. Should he ever nibble himself lost, God will go looking for him. Should he wake up and seek for God, that is the proof that God has already found him. His life is held by grace. This is the promise into which he is baptized. Just like the rest of us.

It’s the promise that we hear in one of the Psalms of Israel:

Is there any place I can go to avoid your Spirit? To be out of your sight?
If I climb to the sky, you’re there! If I go to underground, you’re there!
If I flew on morning’s wings to the far western horizon, you’d find me in a minute –
You’re already there waiting. (Psalm 139:7-10, The Message)

One of the privileges of my work is hearing the stories of those lost and found. Someone told me, “I thought I had so much, but didn’t realize how impoverished I was.” That’s a good beginning. Or the person who said, “I had been wandering without purpose, but something clicked and came into focus.” Sometimes it’s the dramatic tale that goes, “My bad habits were causing major wreckage, but one night I woke up.” These days, I listen to for the subtle initiatives, like the person who said, “I don’t how I ever found this church, but here I am.” She didn’t find the church; God found her.

“I was lost but now I’m found” – that’s the plot line of one of God’s favorite stories. And if all of this is about repentance, it’s the kind of repentance that God makes possible. We can run for a while, but we can’t hide. Not really. For we are loved from beginning to end. And the good shepherd will risk everything – even a crucifixion – to make sure we know it.

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

New Songs, Again

Isaiah 42:10-17
2022 Jazz Communion

September 4, 2022

William G. Carter

Sing to the Lord a new song, his praise from the end of the earth!

Let the sea roar and all that fills it, the coastlands and their inhabitants.
Let the desert and its towns lift up their voice, the villages that Kedar inhabits;
let the inhabitants of Sela sing for joy, let them shout from the tops of the mountains.
Let them give glory to the Lord, and declare his praise in the coastlands.
The Lord goes forth like a soldier, like a warrior he stirs up his fury;
he cries out, he shouts aloud, he shows himself mighty against his foes.

For a long time I have held my peace, I have kept still and restrained myself;
now I will cry out like a woman in labor, I will gasp and pant.
I will lay waste mountains and hills, and dry up all their herbage;
I will turn the rivers into islands, and dry up the pools.
I will lead the blind by a road they do not know, by paths they have not known I will guide them.
I will turn the darkness before them into light, the rough places into level ground.
These are the things I will do, and I will not forsake them.
They shall be turned back and utterly put to shame - those who trust in carved images,
who say to cast images, ‘You are our gods.’

 

“Sing to the Lord a new song…” Here we go again! If there’s anything descriptive about jazz, anything demanding about jazz, it is the constant creation of brand-new music. This can be a common complaint, even among jazz fans. They show up at the concert, pay the ticket or cover charge, and then hear something they’ve never heard before. It happens even if they thought they new the music.

I think of the classic Miles Davis Quintet of the early 1960’s. The trumpeter had a stellar group. In the recording studio, they kept producing new music. On the bandstand, they mostly played the same old songs. Well, at least it sounded like them. Someone said, “Was that last tune, ‘My Funny Valentine’? Kind of sounded like it, but then something happened.”

Yep, that’s jazz. As I’ve said often, jazz takes perfectly acceptable songs and messes with them. So much so that they sound new.

It is an act of interpretation. The saxophonist plays a melody by making it her own. The bass player bends the note to infuse it with feeling. Old Miles Davis told his band members this is the way to make music. “Never play anything straight,” he said. Make it your own. Give it your own spin. Freshen it up. Bring it alive. Musically, that approach is as old as Louis Armstrong.

Spiritually, that’s as old as the Bible. One of the remarkable things about the Bible is that it keeps interpreting itself. Nothing is ever stated and then left alone. Moses said, “Love your neighbor,” and Ezra responded, “Does he mean the Gentiles?” The prophets elucidated, “Love the poor, welcome the stranger, befriend the foreigner.” Then the religious expert asked, “But who is my neighbor?” to which Jesus said, “Let me tell you about a generous Samaritan.” Faith is a conversation, a ongoing conversation that moves forward if it is alive.

Did you ever have a conversation that you thought was going one direction, and then it went somewhere else? If not, stop by and have coffee. Who knows where the conversation will go? That’s jazz, that’s Bible, that’s life with a future – it keeps unfolding and we have to make it our own.

Not only does a new song come from interpretation. It bubbles forth from imagination! This is the gift of God who has made us in the divine image. Who is the most creative person in the Bible? It’s the Creator. The One who makes everything. The One who calls on us to sing along with the new song.

Next in the creative line are the prophets of God. They regularly work the metaphors of imagination. Like the prophet Isaiah! In the poem we heard today, God “cries out like a woman in labor.” It’s loud, it’s forceful. It’s frightening. Have you ever been with a woman in the last minutes of giving birth? She might grab your wrist so hard she leaves a five-fingered bruise, and then she will yell at you. Birth is not gentle. It can take a while. yet in the end, you have something new – a new soul, a new hope. Or in our case, a new song.

What’s so astonishing about this newness is that it’s given to people who have been diminished for a good, long time. Isaiah speaks to those who are stuck. Their country is in a shambles, their smart kids have gone away, their treasured institutions have been shaken, and life as they known it has been on lockdown. And to them God shouts, “Sing something new!”

It’s amazing. God doesn’t say, “Sing something old. Sing something comfortable. Sing what you know. Sing ‘Rock of Ages,’ and ‘I Come to the Garden Alone When the Dew is Still on the Roses.’” And even if we did try to turn back the clock, to sing something familiar, it might come out sounding different. The reason is clear:  God is not stuck. God is not sleeping. God is not afraid. God is alive. And God is ready to give birth.

We are in the realm of metaphors here, yet the meaning seems clear. In God, there is vitality. In God, there is abundant life, not constricted decline. That’s what we want. A spark in the air, a flash of light, a sizzle in the song. I realize sometimes we go through the motions to get through the day. And I will be the first to confess that church can be boring; ever notice that anything important can be boring? And yet, at the center of it all, we want that spark, that flash, that sizzle.

I remember the story of Charles Dickens, attending a meeting of church people. It droned on and on. People made long speeches. They repeated the speeches. There was a funeral pall in the air. Finally Dickens stood to say, “May I make a suggestion? Let us dim the lights, drape the windows, light a candle, join hands, and see if we can connect with the Living.” Because there wasn’t any life in that room!

Contrast this to how Isaiah hears the promise of God, “I will lead the blind by a road they do not know, by paths they have not known I will guide them. I will turn the darkness before them into light, the rough places into level ground.” The sea will roar. The desert will rejoice. The inhabitants will sing and shout.

Didn’t we perceive this during the covid-19 pandemic? It hit all of us hard, even those who wanted to deny it. Jobs changed. Families shifted. So many things shut down. Yet what happened? Life happened. Imagination happened. Old things were interpreted in a new way. We learned new skills. We took fresh approaches. We connected with those we were neglecting. It was hard, as difficult as a pregnancy that goes on too long. But here you are, carried through all of it somehow. And you’re now live on the internet. And you’re singing! Who would have thought during the pandemic that we would ever sing? Life happens because God is alive.

And today, I shake my head to realize we’ve been jazzing up Clarks Summit for thirty years. Who would have ever imagined it? Only God, I suppose. The church organist couldn’t find a substitute and gently leaned on me. What could it hurt? It’s the last holiday hurrah of the summer. Yet the sanctuary was full. And everybody said, “Can we do this again next week?” Oh my goodness.

But listen beneath the words. All of us want to be in the presence of something Alive. All of us want to be in the presence of God. All of us who have tasted the deep joy know in our hearts that the Holy Spirit plays jazz trombone.

So thank you for being here today. Thanks to all who have been here before. We don’t do jazz every week, lest it become stale and dull. But we do keep coming for the spark in the air, the flash of light, and the sizzle in the song. And when we do, we affirm God is here. Right here, always inviting us to sing the new song.

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

Enlarging the Guest List

Luke 14:1, 7-14
August 28, 2022
William G. Carter

On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the sabbath, they were watching him closely.

When he noticed how the guests 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.”

A good friend was invited to offer the opening prayer at a banquet. It wasn’t a wedding banquet, but rather the annual chamber of commerce celebration in his city. Two of his friends heard he was going and said, “Why don’t you and your wife sit with us?” Sounded like a good way to spend the evening, so Rob said, “We’d love to sit with you.”

As the event drew near, it occurred to him that he’d better check and see what the seating arrangements were going to be. He preferred to sit with his friends, out in the crowd, but maybe there were other plans that he didn’t know. The safe thing to do was to check with the organizers who were, after all the hosts. 

Not wanting to be presumptuous, he asked his secretary to call the chamber office. She said, rather sweetly, “Dr. Elder wants to know if you plan to seat him at the head table of the banquet.” What followed was a real monkey chase. The planner at the chamber hemmed and hawed, and said, “We will call back and let you know.” The secretary said they sounded as if they were embarrassed, so Rob said, “Just call them back and say, ‘Actually we’d like to sit with our friends; we were only going to sit at the head table if that was the plan.”

Too late, as he found out. The leaders of the chamber of commerce, not wanting to offend him, moved heaven and earth to get him a better seat. They didn’t want to him to “sit too low,” by the standards of Jesus’ parable and the inscrutable standards of chamber of commerce protocol. He didn’t know what they did, whether they added a couple of seats at the end or moved one of the other dignitaries closer to the kitchen.

All he knew is that somebody assumed the Rev. Dr. Pompous and his wife had to sit up front. And sitting at the head table is never what it’s cracked up to be. You’re up there on display, in a straight line at a one-sided table. Spotlights in your eyes as you squint into the dark. You can’t talk to anybody, except for the spouse you talk to every day. You can’t yawn or slouch in your seat if everybody’s watching. And in Rob’s case, the friends he wanted to sit with were clear across the room, all because somebody didn’t want to insult him by seating him “too low.” As he summed it up, “Importance isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

Now, I don’t know if you’ve had an experience like this one. But some of you have told me about the icy stare you’ve received if you dared to sit in a church pew that someone thought belonged to them, not you. And I’m sure that happened in some other church, not this one. We are open minded and completely hospitable, right? Yet we can surmise that seating arrangements suggest something about prestige, prominence, and celebrity.

No doubt, that’s just the sort of thing Jesus is noticing, too.

He’s at the house of wealthy Pharisee. How do we know he’s wealthy? Because the host is a Pharisee, a well-educated religious leader. And he’s a leader of the Pharisees, so he has some community clout. And he’s in a house big enough to seat a lot of guests – which distinguishes him from most of the kinds of people who lived in most of the towns where Jesus lived and worked.

Notice, of course, that Jesus is eating with him. Jesus loved the poor – but he also loved the rich. He did not distinguish. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus eats with everybody. In the next chapter, chapter 15, that’s exactly how and why they will criticize him – he eats with everybody. It’s OK if he eats with them – the well-educated, the affluent, the cream of the crop - but only if he eats exclusively with them. That seems to be the assumption

But he sees something else going on. A striving for the good seats. A choosing of the seats of honor. Let me ask you – where would those seats be in this room?

Look around the room. Would the best seats be in the back row, so you could watch everybody else? Over by the aisles, so you want to make a quick getaway? Up in the choir loft, so you can get out of here without someone passing you an offering plate? Down front, where you can deeply focus on the wisdom pouring from the pulpit? (Hmm, I always wondered why nobody sits up here.)

One day, I was exploring a closet in my first church and discovered they had kept a chart. That’s right – a seating church. Once upon a time, instead of passing the offering plates, the Session collected pew rents. You had to rent a pew. I guess this is how some people got the notion that a pew was theirs – they rented it! I’m not making this up.

I suppose you believe all the pews cost the same. Oh no! There were inexpensive pews, medium-priced pews, high priced pews, and yes, two expensive pews. The cheap seats were off to the sides with an obstructed view (hard to sell, so they were discounted). Medium price was in the middle somewhere. The back two rows of the sanctuary was expensive, the price driven by supply and demand. A couple of prominent pews a respectable distance from the front also had a hefty price tag; the long-term elders sat up there where they could be noticed.

Do you want to guess where the most expensive pew rent was? Third row over here, immediately behind the row reserved (and discounted) for the minister’s wife and children. They put them up front where they could be watched – and commented upon, over Sunday dinner. And the row right behind them was the primary observation perch.

What are we saying when we assign seats, especially if we assign them with a certain value? We are saying some people are more important than others. Or that they think they are. And that’s the lesson in a nutshell.

At a dinner party at a Pharisee’s house, Jesus sees some of them jostling for the best seats. And he says something ridiculous, “When you get invited to a wedding banquet, don’t sit in the places of honor.” No kidding! You leave the places of honor for the people getting married, and then the tables for their families, and then the honored seats for the bridesmaids and ushers.

Sometimes it’s awkward if the bride has two fathers, or if the prodigal daughter surprises everyone by showing up. The fact is – can I just say this? – it’s always awkward; it often is for me. (Where do we put the minister? Let’s put him next to Screwy Uncle Louie. He recently found the Lord, so I’m sure they will have something to talk about. And the minister says, “Oy vey!”)

Where it gets really awkward is when Jesus speaks up and calls out the whole thing as a bad exercise in sorting human beings who are essentially equal in the sight of God. There’s that little parlor game of returning invitations to those who invited us first. You know it, they know it: they invited us to dinner, now we must invite them for dinner. He took me golfing, so I must take him to the club for a lunch that costs just about what my greens fees cost him. And so on and so forth.

“If that’s the pitiful sum of your participation in the human race,” says Jesus, “then you are missing a real blessing.”

Oh, I remember my college classmate Sherry. She got her masters in social work and took a job with an agency in Philadelphia. When she found out that I was studying to be a minister, she found my address and wrote me a letter, “I hope it’s going well for you and will pray for you.”

I wrote back and said, “What are you doing with yourself?” She wrote back, “I’m having the time of my life. Yesterday I took two homeless men to lunch. We sat in the diner and talked all afternoon. They have had such interesting lives!” I looked up from that letter, curious, startled. I never saw any homeless folks in that high-priced town where I studied in New Jersey. Maybe I was missing out on something. Yes, I was.

Where do you sit? Who sits at your table? Such simple questions, and they reveal so much. I would encourage you to look around, see who’s here, and ask who’s not here.

And if I really wanted to mess with you, I’d invite you downstairs for the church picnic, and ask, “Are you merely sitting with the people you know?” Or are you willing to step out of your comfort zone and welcome somebody new?  I know, I know; now I’m meddling. It’s only fair – Jesus meddled with us first, and he never promised to stop.  

For he is the One who says, “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.” Oh, listen to that. “They cannot repay you,” or to translate in a way we all can hear, “they are in your debt.”

“Invites the ones who cannot repay you.” Show them grace regardless of their circumstances. Pass them the same potatoes that you are going to eat. Include them at the abundant table that you first received as a gift. Lift them up, don’t hand them down. Always sit beside them, not ahead of them.

For this is the essence of grace. You can tell it is grace, because the one thing we know about grace is that it always removes disgrace.

And to get in a proper frame of mind and spirit, I remember the wisdom of my friend Rob: “Importance isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

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

Hearts and Treasures

Luke 12:22-34
August 7, 2022
William G. Carter

Jesus said to his disciples, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? If then you are not able to do so small a thing as that, why do you worry about the rest? 

Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you - you of little faith! And do not keep striving for what you are to eat and what you are to drink, and do not keep worrying. For it is the nations of the world that strive after all these things, and your Father knows that you need them. Instead, strive for his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well. 

Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." 

 

67, 45, 57, 36, 13, and 14. Have all those numbers? If so, you would be a billionaire! 

There was plenty of excitement surrounding last week’s Mega Millions lottery. The jackpot had reached 1.28 billion dollars. It’s an extraordinary sum, enough to make your eyes circle in both directions. What would we ever do if we won that kind of money? It’s good question, one discussed at a lot of dinner tables.

Years ago, I would have purchased a reliable car, pay off my college debts, and get fitted for some nice clothes. These days, I would buy reliable cars for my kids, pay off their college debts, tell them to buy their own clothes, and then pre-pay my nursing home. All of that, of course, after visiting our financial planner and asking my attorney how we could stay anonymous.

It’s fun to speculate what we would do with all that money. That’s why a man named Louis Barry bought a hundred tickets in a California liquor store. He’s been hoping he might land on Easy Street. Mr. Barry is 79 years old, so that street isn’t very long. Alas, he didn’t win. The winning ticket was sold in an Illinois gas station to someone who has wisely not revealed their identity.

What would you do if you had enough money that you could do whatever you want? Maybe you should start making a list.

Before you do, harken to those stories of others who have hit it big. Like Bud Post, who hit the Pennsylvania Lottery in 1986. His brother hired a hit man, hoping he would gain the inheritance. His ex-girlfriend successfully sued him for a share of the winnings. Even though he won $16.2 million, he died one million dollars in debt.

Or Evelyn Williams, who won the New Jersey Lottery in 1985. That wasn’t enough, so she tried again in 1986 and improbably, she won again. Total winnings were $5.4 million. But that wasn’t enough. So she went to Atlantic City to keep gambling. She lost everything. Every last cent. What did Jesus say? No thief came near. No moths got in her closet. No, her purse “wore out.”

The lure of riches is strong. And not only for the lottery winners. Fifteen years ago, we encouraged Clarks Summit parents to read a book by a psychologist in San Francisco. The book was titled, The Price of Privilege: How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage Are Creating a Generation of Disconnected and Unhappy Kids. What Dr. Madeline Levine discovered is that if we give our children everything, it can really mess them up. A lot of those kids who park expensive cars in the high school parking lot have “epidemic rates of depression, substance abuse, and anxiety disorders.” She was writing these words fifteen years ago.

Maybe you’ve noticed I’ve sneaked in the back door so we can talk about the teachings of Jesus. Why are you worried about your life? That’s his question. This kind of anxiety fuels so many of our misfires and malfunctions.

And before we work through the text, let me remind us that he was speaking to dirt-poor peasants. Are you worried about food? Look at the ravens – those ugly, worthless, scavenger birds. They don’t have big barns to store their food. (Here that? He’s giving an elbow and a wink to the idiot farmer in last week’s parable.) The ravens don’t produce anything useful. Yet they are God’s creatures, and he provides their food.

Are you worried about clothing? Look to the lilies. Or in my front yard, the blooming gladiolas. They are gorgeous, the handiwork of heaven here on earth. They don’t order their outfits from Talbots. They don’t do anything – but bloom, and God is glorified because they’re blooming. Here today, gone tomorrow, better dressed than King Solomon.

Anxiety does not feed the ravens. Worry does not dress the lilies. Give some credit to God and stop worrying. This is what Jesus said to the peasants who had nothing.

But what would he say to us, who have so much and want more? He would watch who buy the lottery tickets when they already have a roof over their heads. He would overhear the parents who say to their kids, “If you don’t work harder, you’re never going to get into a good school,” and then hand over the keys to the Beemer. Then he would simply ask, “What do you think you’re striving for?” And wait for an honest answer.

Anxiety lies at the heart of most of our striving. Maybe we are comparing our financial situation to somebody else – they have a bigger house, or they have a couple of bigger houses, or their kids seem better adjusted than ours, or whatever, whatever. Or maybe we measure ourselves against some impossible standard, like wanting to make more money than my parents did, or become more prominent than the neighbors, or whatever, whatever.

For what do you think you’re striving? It’s a tough question. Lately, I’ve been chewing on the charcoal of my obsessions. If I only spend another hour at work. If I only press myself to go a little longer or think a little deeper. Why do I find it so hard to relax? Why can’t I enjoy my friendships rather than posture for superiority? Why do I keep pushing? It’s summer, for God’s sake. There are birds in the sky, flowers in the garden, and plenty of fireflies that do nothing but glow.

And then I hear him say afresh, Where your treasure is, there is your heart also.

If the treasure is winning the lottery, it’s not going to save your life. If the treasure is feeding your anxiety, you will become addicted to your own neediness and miss our on the gifts of God. It the treasure is striving toward achievement, padding the resume that nobody will read, obsessing over the tasks you will neither complete nor perfect, what good have you done for God and God’s world.

So it’s time to exhale deeply. Take a breath. Receive and give. Receive – and give. This is the rhythm of restoration. This is the essence of grace.

We hear Jesus say it so clearly. Strive not for yourself; strive for God to rule over you and all things. Invest yourself in the same grace that re-creates the world every day. God is giving us “the kingdom.” We don’t have to work for it because the Kingdom is a gift. We pray, “thy kingdom come,” and God answers with the words, “It’s already on the way.”

We don’t make this Kingdom, but we can receive it and take part in it. We can invest ourselves in the same values that Jesus reveals about the character of God: graciousness, forgiveness, mercy, generosity, restoration. They are such wonderful nouns that we can turn into verbs. And they are completely free of anxiety. If there is any striving in God’s gracious dominion, it has been redirected to spreading the Kingdom.

And the specific advice that Jesus offers is to rethink our riches. Sell your possessions – that is, all the stuff you bought with your money – and contribute it to those with needs. Not to make them dependent on you, not to tempt them with the dark side of winning the lottery, but to release them from indignity, to lift them up, to announce that those who have struggled for so long are the royal children of God’s Kingdom.

And how do we do this? I don’t know. It’s not something we do once to relieve a guilty conscience for having so much when others have so little. Generosity is a habit to develop. Not only does generosity set others free – it sets us free, too. This is the truth of the cryptic phrase, “Make purses that do not wear out.” And this is the essential path to develop what Jesus calls, “an unfailing treasure in heaven.” We create a treasure in heaven by giving away what we have here on earth.

Once again, this is exactly what God does. God gives everything to us for free, with the hope we will give it away, too. The rhythm continues – receiving, giving, receiving, and giving. As we receive, we give, and anxiety goes away.

In a couple of weeks, I’ll spend a vacation Sunday among the Presbyterians of Eagles Mere. For several years, they’ve asked me to preach at a little summer chapel up there, about an hour and a half west in the mountains. If you promise not to tell them, I always take an old sermon, in the hope that if it was worth preaching once, it’s worth preaching again.

This year, they have a volunteer who has been sending out sermon summaries during the following week. Last Sunday, they heard a corker. The preacher talked about the same text we heard, the parable of the rich farmer who had too much stuff. And then, he offered an analogy that better fits our text for today, rather than the text from last week.

There are two seas in the Holy Land, he said: the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea. The Sea of Galilee has a river that flows into it and out of it. The Dead Sea has the same river flowing into it, but with no escape. The Sea of Galilee is alive and healthy. It has fish, vegetation, and abundant life. The Dead Sea is just that. The water is brackish, stagnant, and putrid. Nothing lives there. The water is slowly drying up.

The analogy is simply this: we receive, we give. This is the rhythm that keeps us healthy. That is where true riches can be found. Not in the empty help of a lottery ticket with all the right numbers, but in generous purses that never wear out.

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

How Much More?

Luke 11:1-13
July 24, 2022
William G. Carter

Jesus was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” He said to them, “When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial.” 

And he said to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.’ And he answers from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.’ I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs. 

“So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

 

The twelve disciples see Jesus praying. They wait for him to say Amen, and ask, “Lord, can you teach us to do that? Teach us to pray!”

It’s a striking request, for a couple of reasons. According to the Gospel of Luke, Jesus kept praying. On the day of his baptism, he was praying when the heavens opened, and the dove came down (3:21). Many mornings, he slipped away from the crowds to pray (5:16). The night before he selected the first twelve disciples, he went up on a mountain and spent all night praying (6:12).

One time, in the middle of a prayer, he looked up at the twelve and asked, “Who do people say that I am?” And then he told them how he would suffer, die, and be raised (9:13). Shortly after that, he took three of them up a high mountain where his appearance changed – his clothes were dazzling white, his face was transfigured – and it happened, says Luke, while Jesus was praying (9:29).

He was always praying – and the twelve said, “Teach us to do that.” They wanted something of what he had. They knew he could teach them.

But it’s a striking request because they already had a prayer book. These men were Jews and they had the Psalms. They committed those prayers to memory. They recited them in their liturgies. The Psalms offer prayers for every occasion: when you rise to begin your day, when you lie down to hand over the night to God. If you need help with an enemy, the Psalms have a prayer for that. If you wish to thank God for safe passage through the mountains, or an abundant harvest, or the success of a childbirth, the Jews already had the prayers. They knew the life of faith is filled with prayers, prayers for every possible occasion.

But these twelve still wanted to know how to pray. “Teach us,” they said to the Master. “teach us to pray.”

Fortunately for us, the Gospel of Luke offers three brief lessons on prayer. The first, as we heard, is that Jesus offers a model for our prayer. We know it, we’ve heard it, we’ve prayed it – and we will pray it again in this service. You may have noticed that this is a shortened version of what we call the Lord’s Prayer. Today we have Luke’s version, so let’s walk through it.  

Begin by saying, “Father, Abba, Daddy.” We can address God with affection. Then, “Hallowed be your name.” Hallowed is Holy, apart from us, guarded and distinct. God can be addressed with affection, but God is holy and completely Other. We speak to the God who knows us all too well and we offer respect. 

“Your kingdom come.” That is the heart of the prayer. It’s the request for heaven and earth to be one. We pray that the God who rules over solar systems and goldfinches would come to rule over the situations that we know: the broken hearts, the wounded bones, the fierce injustices. We want the God who rules over everything to rule over us. It’s an enormous request.

Yet prayer is also specific: “Give us each day the bread we need for today.” He is reminding us of the old story of manna in the wilderness. God sends food from heaven for the Israelites who wander in the wilderness. It comes every day, twice on the day before the Sabbath. Yet it cannot be hoarded or else it rots. It is only bread for today. We need it. We don’t have it. We ask God for it.

“And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.” Luke takes the edge off Matthew’s version of the prayer. In Matthew, we ask for forgiveness conditioned by our ability to forgive. Recall: “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” But in Luke, Jesus assumes we are already forgiving others, in the name of a God we ask to forgive us.

“And do not bring us to the time of trial.” That sounds ominous, as if the Father to whom we pray is the One who can also test us. It reminds us of the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. After he is baptized, the Spirit of God hurls him into the wild places where he is tested by the Devil. God sends him to confront evil on its own turf. That is going to be a decisive test! Do we want God to test us? Jesus says, “Pray you are delivered from the test.”

Here is a model for prayer, says Jesus. This is lesson number one. With simple words, with direct speech, focusing on the life and death issues before us every day, always praying for God to come and rule over us and our lives.

This brings us to the second lesson. It’s not enough to memorize the words and mumble them on occasion. We must mean what we say. Infuse them with faith, hope, and love!

Like my great aunt Charlotte, who confronted me outside of a funeral home. I was in preacher school at the time, and we had just endured a cold, sterile memorial service for her mother – my great-grandmother – led by a minister who never knew the deceased. Aunt Charlotte said, “If I ever catch you reading a prayer out of a book, I’m going to wring your neck.” I don't know if she was a violent Methodist, but she made an impression.  Her point: prayer is serious. You must engage. You mean what you say. You don’t phone it in.

Maybe that’s why Jesus tells a quirky little parable. A friend has come to visit and both of you need some food. What if you knocked on a neighbor’s door to ask, “Can I get borrow some food for my guest and my family?” Is he going to say, “Go away, I’m sleeping.” Of course not. He is a Middle Easterner. He lives by generous hospitality. He won’t turn you down – especially if you keep knocking, keep asking.

With this, Jesus leans over the pulpit to wink and say, “Isn’t God much more generous than your sleepy hospitable neighbor?”

Here’s the lesson: prayer is asking. By definition, prayer requests what we do not have. So it’s more than rote words. It’s persistence. It’s persevering in matters of great urgency, not flailing at thin superficialities. Prayer is swimming from the shallow end of our need to the depths of God’s great mysteries. Because we really don’t know how to pray. Even if we have the words.

Remember the apostle Paul - schooled as a rabbi, trained in scripture, experienced in the grace of God. He confesses in one of his letters, “We don’t know how to pray as we ought” (Romans 8:26). He knows he’s in over his head. We ask for bread from a God who directs the comets and plants the sequoia trees. We ask for justice when we are inadvertently perpetuating injustice.

Sometimes prayer gets twisted out of shape when we make it all about us.  “Lord, give me this. Lord, give me that.” Prayer is not about getting what we want – it is asking for what God wishes to give us. This is a very important lesson.

We don’t pray to hit the Mega Millions lottery; that’s begging for magic. Rather, God desires to rule over us, so we pray thy kingdom come! God grants us life and desires that we flourish, so we pray for bread – for ourselves and for others.

We might secretly want an enemy to be punished; it looks like they deserve it. Yet God wants us to stop fighting and live in peace, so we pray forgive us our sins. That includes the sin of being incapable of forgiving others, and the inability of forgiving ourselves. We pray for what God wants to give us. Nothing more, nothing less. Prayer is asking, searching, knocking, all in the present tense. Here ends the second lesson.

There’s one more lesson for today. It sneaks up on us. If we’re going to ask for what God wants to provide, it’s important to know what kind of God we have. So Jesus pushes this to extremity. He says, “What father gives a snake to a son who asks for a fish?” The answer: no father. And then, “What father gives a scorpion to the daughter who asks for an omelet?” Same answer: no parent would ever do that, not if the parent loves the child. Not if the parent gave that child life.

And God is even better than that.

This is where the third lesson sneaks in. When the Gospel of Matthew reports this section of Jesus’ teaching, here’s what he says, “How much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask!” (7:11) But did you hear Luke tell us what those “good things” are that God provides for those who ask? He specifies: “how much more will your Father in heaven give you the Holy Spirit.” 

Wow. You thought you could pray for a new Mercedes and a cruise to Tahiti. What you get instead is the presence of God. The Spirit. The invisible Peace and Love of the Risen Christ.

This is the open secret of prayer. We can ask for this, beg for that, make all our requests – and what does God give us? God gives us himself. God comes to us as we pray. And the invitation is to enter the dominion of God’s love that lies at the center of all things.

I think of the business executive who loved to go deer hunting. It was the alternative to the stress and strain of the kind of job he had. He climbed into his tree stand before dawn, opened his thermos of coffee, sit and watch the forest wake up. A twelve-point buck sauntered by, so he sat there, admiring the rack, and never squeezed the trigger.

What was that all about? Paid for the license, climbed the tree, never took a shot. His answer, “I go for the peace. It helps me. It’s just like a prayer.”

How much more will a loving God  provide when you pray? God will give you the Holy Spirit. God will give his very Breath and Life to you.

Did you ever hear the prayer of Howard Thurman, the Quaker mystic? If Martin Luther King Jr. was the voice of civil rights, Howard Thurman was its soul. One of his prayers goes like this:

Open unto me, light for my darkness.     

Open unto me, courage for my fear

Open unto me, hope for my despair.       

Open unto me, peace for my turmoil

Open unto me, joy for my sorrow.                      

Open unto me, strength for my weakness

Open unto me, wisdom for my confusion.          

Open unto me, forgiveness for my sins

Open unto me, tenderness for my toughness.      

Open unto me, love for my hates

Open unto me, Thy Self for myself.        

Lord, Lord, open unto me.

So we pray. If absolutely necessary, we can use words. It would be enough to sit in stillness, watch the forest wake up at dawn, and welcome the Peace that we did not create. We open our arms to receive what God most deeply wants us to have. And if we ask for it, it’s because God has already offered it.

Prayer is the life-blood of our relationship with God. It circulates through asking and receiving, acting and reflecting, speaking and silencing, all the while filling us with the life of eternity – which is the Presence of God.

Of all the gifts God wishes for us, that is the greatest. And I pray it for you. All of you. All of us. 

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