A Purse-Full*

7th Sunday after Epiphany/Ordinary Time

Genesis 45: 3-11, 41-42

Luke 6:27-38

(homily preached at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, New Harmony, Indiana)

Last week…

We heard the beginning of Luke’s sermon on the Plain.

…who is blessed…the poor, the hungry, the mourning

…who is in trouble…the rich, the satisfied, the laughing

Matthew’s version of the Beatitudes doesn’t jump to the woes so quickly

It is still tough but a bit easier to contend with

This Lucan version

its more difficult…more challenging

Both to interpret and to follow

Last Sunday I was sitting next to Ken at Coffee Hour…

I don’t remember the conversation but in response to something Rose said

He answered “well I’m already doomed…I’m not hungry and I can pay my bills…”

Something to that effect;)

It sounds so crazy impossible that…well

We don’t know what to do with it

Best to just move on to the next passage…

But no such luck

We are just picking up where we left off

The crazy impossible continues

Loving your enemies? 

…what happened to common sense?

Sounds like a good way to get smacked ONE MORE TIME

Doing good to those who hate you?

Any good therapist would name that CODEPENDENCY 

…or maybe even masochism!

Giving to every outstretched hand?

If you keep that up you’ll become a beggar!

…and when you are one you’ll find out that most people don’t give to every outstretched hand!

And finally, why not help the robber out…just hand over your shirt after he steals your coat?

-----

One night…this week…after supper 

I asked for Rob’s help

I read this Gospel out loud

When I was done

I looked at him

And all he had to offer me was two words…

and I quote:

Eazy. Peazy.

So for, Rob and Ken

And I’m guessing most all of us

this teaching of Jesus is 

well…either too much or completely lost in translation

what are we to do with it?

We have to do something

its Luke’s Sermon on the Plain

It’s central to the Lukan story

And to Jesus’ vision of the Kingdom of God 

-----

Typically the first reading is chosen to support the Gospel

…To echo a theme

Today we heard the end of the Joseph story from Genesis

And it was chosen because it is a powerfully dramatic scene of MERCY

The Joseph story is a long saga

And we only get a minor recap

BUT these brothers did worse than just sell him into slavery

There was a grand cover-up with the false evidence of the bloody coat

And Egypt was no picnic…

Years spent in prison

These brothers had a long rap sheet

This is just a GRAND story of MERCY

And it is MERCY 

precisely because 

they SOOOO DON’T DESERVE IT!!!

No.  They deserve punishment!  Retribution!

MERCY is mercy because it is purely gift…purely grace

MERCY doesn’t live in the world of ‘deserving’ 

-----

One of my favorite scenes of Mercy

Comes from the book/play/movie, Les Miserables

Jean Valjean

Who stole a loaf of bread as a teenager

Spends years in prison

And when he is released he is starved and half dead

He finds himself at the home of a Bishop

Who invites him in

Feeds him

Sets him before a warm fire

And offers him a safe place for the night 

Valjean awakes in the middle of the night

Grabs a sack and runs off with the silver

He gets caught by the local police and 

surprise---they don’t believe him when he says that the Bishop gave him the silver

Handcuffed, they bring him to the Bishop

And here’s the important part

The camera goes from Valjean to the Bishop and back

And back again

There is this long pause

A holy pause

What will the Bishop do?

And finally: “My son, I am so glad to see you. You forgot to take the candlesticks---I told you they will fetch a very good price.  God bless you, son.”

(not an exact quote)

Unless you know the story

The viewer almost always expects retaliation

The voice inside my head says “now you’ve got him…!”

-----

Between stimulus and response there is a place for pause

In that pause we are free to choose our response.

And our accumulated responses become who we are

I think the gospel is calling us to reflect on those potentially holy pauses

We may be hard-wired to respond with retribution

It is sneaky and seductive

It even feels at times that returning evil for evil is just plain necessary

A matter of survival even

But we are free to choose

-----

I don’t live as a denigrated minority 

In Roman occupied first century Palestine

And experiencing real hunger and daily scarcity of food

Is not an experience I am familiar with

But I know…

Even in the safety of my quiet southern Indiana life

I know ---a little--- of this mechanism.  

Every time I want to take back something I have said

Something hateful or spiteful

Or when I want to take back something I’ve done to hurt or punish

How many times have I said “If only…if only I hadn’t …

If only I hadn’t pressed SEND!

If only I had just paused  

If only I had slept on it

-----

Loving those who love me back

Lending to those who pay me back

Helping those who will later come and cut that tree limb off my roof…

It is a picture of life as one long tally 

A kind of running balance sheet

The first half of today’s Gospel 

Is an invitation

To take a HOLY PAUSE

So that we have a better chance to choose Kingdom Living

-----

The second half of the reading:  

Don’t judge and you will not be judged

Don’t condemn and you will not be condemned

Forgive and you will be forgiven

Give and it will be given to you

At first glance

doesn’t this sound like accounting too…tit for tat???

But these aren’t IF/THEN statements

No.  These are statements of truth.

The truth here is that our decisions

Our personal actions

Create the world in which we live

Our community actions

Create the community we live in

What we think is harmful to others

Is in fact 

Harmful to us

Our choices 

To not condemn and not judge

to give and forgive

these choices move us toward our potential of being images of our life-giving God

From the beginning 

The very beginning 

We hear the we are made in the image and likeness of God

…well we have 100% potentiality anyway

Our model to imitate is Jesus

He’s a tough model

But there you have it.

A 5 sentence story:

Jesus was walking down the road with his disciples.

Some people threw stones at him and cursed him.

Jesus blessed them.

The disciples asked him,

“Master, why do you bless those who curse you?”

Jesus replied,

“I can only give what I have in my purse.”*

I love that visual

What do I have in my purse

My briefcase

My glovebox

Or my cargo pockets?

This is where we come 

to clean out our purses

to get rid of a few recently accumulated stones

and to replace them with blessing

...with the grace on offer here

WHY?

So that

when complaining, and finger-pointing, 

and all forms of nastiness

Begin to swirl

I remember to take a holy pause

I remember to look further than those always convenient stones

I remember to dig deep into my purse

            To find there
            blessing to share

---

*John Shea, The Relentless Widow, The Spiritual Wisdom of the Gospels for Christian Preachers and Teachers, 47-51.

Epiphany - Joann Was Right*

Feast of the Epiphany - January 6, 2018

Isaiah 60:1-6

Psalm 72

Ephesians 3:1-12

Matthew 2:1-12

(homily given at St Stephen's New Harmony Indiana)

It seems like I have always loved this Feast Day

Epiphany

But the truth is

I started loving it when I met my friend Joann

Epiphany was Joann’s favorite day

For the last 20 plus years

My quirky friend Joann

(who went to her heavenly reward this past Summer)

My quirky friend Joann would come by our house bearing gifts

She would come by…never calling ahead…

And at odd times…sometimes when the whole household was in bed

She expectantly rang the door bell

For Joann this was just more

Epiphany SURPRISE

She came

Bearing gifts

Odd times and odd gifts

Picked carefully from her stash of collected close-out sale items 

Whimsical treasures she called them

And always the gifts were accompanied by squiggly notes

bits of Joann poetry

Love messages in thanksgiving for friendship

And so

with the wise men and their gifts 

and with Joann and her gifts

I found myself…on this feast day…reflecting on

Gift

Giftedness

God's gifts

And then

This week…preparing to preach today

I realized that everything I ever thought I knew about Epiphany was wrong!

…okay…slight exaggeration…

-----

In my Nativity scene at home

I have these three Kings 

They are very elegant and wise looking

…holding their respective gifts prominently

One is riding a horse

…another an elephant

…and the third on a camel

And they are all turned in such a way that they must be placed on the right side of the scene…facing WEST

When the kids were young I used to put the three kings/wise men/Magi half-way across the room

And as Advent and Christmas unfolded they would slowly make their way 

Across the miles to the stable

…finally arriving, 

...right in sync with Joann 

…on January 6^th

…bearing gifts

BUT

What I do NOT have in my Nativity scene is a figure of HEROD 

In my study this week I found that Herod 

Who I have never given much CHRISTMAS thought to

gets even more print in the story than the wise men do!

Especially if you take the whole story…

including the next few lines where Herod

…Not taking any chances…

Slaughters every male child in the area age 2 and under!

I love where our Collect Prayer takes us today

We will ask:

O GOD

LEAD US
LEAD US TO YOUR PRESENCE

WHERE WE MAY SEE YOUR GLORY

Herod and the Wise Men share center stage on this feast of Epiphany

Which means to me 

That there is something about the two

When placed side by side

There is something illuminating

Something that sheds light

…That exposes or reveals…TRUTH

Which is the meaning of EPIPHANY 

And Truth…Truth makes a very good LEAD

Side by Side

The Magi are the example

And Herod is the warning

So

Who is Herod?

And

Who are these Magi?

Herod is the name of a Jewish family dynasty

with deep ties to the Roman government

They ruled over Palestine for over 100 years

The Herod Matthew refers to is 

Herod the Great…the ONLY Herod with the title: KING…King of the Jews

A title bestowed on him by the Roman Senate in 40 bc

Not surprisingly 

his rule was characterized by strong loyalty to Rome

And a necessary ZERO-tolerance policy toward opposition

Brutality was the price to pay

Now for the Magi
Most of my sources suggest that Wise Men and Kings

Are way too generous translations of the Greek word, MAGI

(the root for our words Magic and Magician)

These sources suggest that we might rather imagine: 

horoscope fanatics, readers of tea leaves or tarot cards

The bottom line is that they would represent 

To Matthew’s first readers

the epitome of gentile idolatry

-----

From a literary perspective 

the first chapters of Luke and Matthew…

The chapters that deal with the birth and infancy of Jesus

Are often referred to… …

as “the Gospel in miniature”

which means that the important themes 

that will unfold with the telling of the Gospel 

are all hidden in the beginning

Matthew ends his Gospel with what is known as the great commission:

Go…Go therefore and make disciples of all nations! This is a great theme of Matthews Gospel…the universality of the Good News of Jesus Christ.

Make disciples…even of tarot card reading astrologers who have never heard of the prophet Isaiah, or Moses, or the Temple!

But I think there is something even more surprising

In this theme set in our reading today

These MAGI

Were LED

Not by an Apostle and his witness and preaching

But by a star

Led by that which was within their realm of experience

God is so surprising!

The MAGI are…our… example because

They were open to being led

They work together from their collective humility

They are curious

They ask for directions 

They get help along the way

The opposite of the MAGIS’ openness to being LED

Is Herod

Who demands to be on the leading end

Who plots the course

I AM THE KING OF THE JEWS…the Romans said so;)

AND I WILL STAY THE KING OF THE JEWS

Herod and humility haven’t met

HIS MOTTO:  Kill the competition!

Collateral damage be damned!

For sure these are extreme portraits

But placed side by side

The Gospel reveals to us 

That we are…perhaps…a little of both

Allowing ourselves to be led 

And believing that Love is stronger than violence

…is plain NOT EASY

But somehow

By camel or golf cart or Subaru

Each of us was led here

Led by our believing

And our experience

That love is stronger than violence

And like the MAGI

Each time we return home

We go by an ever so slightly different route

So the Epiphany message 

shines a light on our 

Herod-likeness

as well as our

Magi-likeness

But it LEADS

It LEADS us in the Magi’s direction

A direction that helps us see

Epiphany…all around

And SURPRISE!

I am back where I started 

Because…

Being led to see Epiphany all around…

That …is a huge gift!

Joann was right!

Happy Epiphany!

Home

Feast of the Holy Family

from today's Office of Readings:

An address given at Nazareth by Blessed Pope Paul VI

The example of Nazareth

The home of Nazareth is the school where we begin to understand the life of Jesus – the school of the Gospel.

The first lesson we learn here is to look, to listen, to meditate and penetrate the meaning – at once so deep and so mysterious – of this very simple, very humble and very beautiful manifestation of the Son of God. Perhaps we learn, even imperceptibly, the lesson of imitation.

Here we learn the method which will permit us to understand who Christ is. Here above all is made clear the importance of taking into account the general picture of his life among us, with its varied background of place, of time, of customs, of language, of religious practices – in fact, everything Jesus made use of to reveal himself to the world. Here everything is eloquent, all has a meaning.

Here, in this school, one learns why it is necessary to have a spiritual rule of life, if one wishes to follow the teaching of the Gospel and become a disciple of Christ.

How gladly would I become a child again, and go to school once more in this humble and sublime school of Nazareth: close to Mary, I wish I could make a fresh start at learning the true science of life and the higher wisdom of divine truths.

But I am only a passing pilgrim. I must renounce this desire to pursue in this home my still incomplete education in the understanding of the Gospel. I will not go on my way however without having gathered – hurriedly, it is true, and as if wanting to escape notice – some brief lessons from Nazareth.

First, then, a lesson of silence. May esteem for silence, that admirable and indispensable condition of mind, revive in us, besieged as we are by so many uplifted voices, the general noise and uproar, in our seething and over-sensitized modern life.

May the silence of Nazareth teach us recollection, inwardness, the disposition to listen to good inspirations and the teachings of true masters. May it teach us the need for and the value of preparation, of study, of meditation, of personal inner life, of the prayer which God alone sees in secret.

Next, there is a lesson on family life. May Nazareth teach us what family life is, its communion of love, its austere and simple beauty, and its sacred and inviolable character. Let us learn from Nazareth that the formation received at home is gentle and irreplaceable. Let us learn the prime importance of the role of the family in the social order.

Finally, there is a lesson of work. Nazareth, home of the ‘Carpenter’s Son’, in you I would choose to understand and proclaim the severe and redeeming law of human work; here I would restore the awareness of the nobility of work; and reaffirm that work cannot be an end in itself, but that its freedom and its excellence derive, over and above its economic worth, from the value of those for whose sake it is undertaken. And here at Nazareth, to conclude, I want to greet all the workers of the world, holding up to them their great pattern, their brother who is God. He is the prophet of all their just causes, Christ our Lord.