Lectionary readings
If you’re like me, you might be of two or more minds about this story that Luke has Jesus tell in our gospel lesson this morning. Or perhaps, maybe it’s not split minds, but split hearts that produce a tension in the response you and I might have to this story. On the one hand, there is this sense that our basic commitment to fairness, to justice, maybe to just desserts, has been accomplished in this story. Perhaps only those inclined to sociopathy actually enjoy seeing people suffer; none of us wants poor Lazarus to be so afflicted with poverty, illness, and alienation, and our hearts are healed to witness him in the lap of the great patriarch Abraham, who caresses him as a mother tends to her baby. Perhaps, if we’re honest with ourselves, you and I might even admit to a bit of schadenfreude, that German word that wonderfully expresses and codes its meaning in English – to derive pleasure from another’s misfortune. A rich man, whom Christian tradition calls Dives (which means “rich man” in Latin), has lived and enjoyed social privilege all his life, ignoring Lazarus lying at his doorstep. There is something in us as Americans, perhaps as human beings, to root for the underdog, to cheer when the spoiled rich get their comeuppance, when the down and out get a shot at wholeness and happiness.
On the other hand, there’s something in our US culture and psyche that makes me grieve a bit at Dives’ final lot: consigned to Hades, eternally in torment, father Abraham seems sorrowful at the fact that this chasm, this gap between Dives and Lazarus, between Hades and Abraham is too great to bridge. The story ends without redemption or transformation for the rich man, or for those of his kind. He doesn’t get to wake up like Ebenezer Scrooge does in Dickens’s novel, transformed, gleeful, ready to give away his wealth to Cratchit and especially Tiny Tim. We steeped in American culture love almost more than the rags-to-riches story the story of someone who learns the hard way that ultimately the accumulation of things doesn’t really hold the secret to life, but rather that what’s important is our attendance to our fellow human beings. We want conversion, we want redemption, we want transformation. But this morning, we’re left with tragedy. Yes, perhaps we have the justice that Mary was talking about at the beginning of Luke, where the lowly are lifted up and where the rich are sent away empty. But this ending still feels hollow. One person’s suffering is alleviated just as another’s is about to begin. If God’s justice is really about feeling delight in this passive kind of revenge, then you and I might wonder: is this the great good news promised to us by our Savior?
The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached on this very passage five days before he was assassinated in 1968. In the following, King focuses on why the rich man finds himself in Hades, “Dives did not go to hell because he was rich; Dives didn't realize that his wealth was his opportunity. It was his opportunity to bridge the gulf that separated him from his brother, Lazarus. Dives went to hell because he passed by Lazarus every day and he never really saw him. He went to hell because he allowed his brother to become invisible. Dives went to hell because he maximized the minimum and minimized the maximum.” If I read King correctly here, then perhaps what this story reveals is not so much a warning to Jesus’ listeners, those in the 1st century, and you and me today, that the rich and wealthy will find themselves in some horrific hellfire of an afterlife. If I read his reading correctly, what King is suggesting is that Dives started creating his own hell the moment that he walked past Lazarus and couldn't see him as a brother, a fellow human being, and one who was clearly a human being in deep need. Dives didn’t go to hell after he died because of what he did or didn’t do on earth – minimizing the maximum and maximizing the minimum—no, Dives was already in hell when he died, a hell that looked, smelled and tasted fine because he had all the money and privilege in the world to make what he was doing look elegant and pretty, but really was building the hell that he wakes up into all too late.
This then is the tragedy that isn’t the end of the story, but rather the tragedy that begins the story that is revealed at the end of his life. The psalmist in Psalm 14 begins by saying “fools say to themselves, ‘there is no God.’” I think that Jesus is echoing the Psalmist by suggesting where God is in this story: fools say to themselves, I have no need for others. Or to put it in a different way: I have no need for those whom I consider the Other, those not like me, those whose lives are so different from mine that I cannot recognize the humanity, the divine spark, in them. What Jesus says through this story is that it is in this Other, this person whom we do not see, whom we do not want to see as God’s beloved, that God comes to us, where God dwells most presently, beckoning us to respond. For Dives, the destitute Lazarus was God coming as the Other; for some, Lazarus is someone with a disability or illness who threatens our fantasy of everlasting health and ablebodiedness. Lazarus is the one consigned to the margins of the social worlds that you and I inhabit and have built up: those pushed to the edges because of their sexuality, their race, their undocumented status, their particular faith or lack of it. Those whom we know dwell amongst us, but for one reason or another we cannot bring ourselves to bring around our table, but rather keep at arm’s length, their difference so great, their suffering so vast that we’d rather bunker up, close the door, so that we can keep up the pretense that the world that we have built just so will remain that way.
You see, God calls you and me to attend to and care for our poorer sisters and brothers, those in our community that have felt the pang of ostracism, not only because it is the just thing to do, not only because in doing so we alleviate individual and collective suffering—make no mistake, these are good things. God calls you and me to work for justice and dignity for all human beings, which means that we fight for shelter, food, healthcare, for those who have the least. But just as important, perhaps more importantly, you and I are called to look at, engage, and attend to the Lazaruses in our lives because when we truly see Lazarus for who he is—however and whoever Lazarus is in your and my life—then we will have emerged from our hells and begun to walk into the field of God. God comes to us as Lazarus, vulnerable, suffering, and in doing so invites us to tend and care, not just to help the less fortunate, but to transform our hearts into the heart of God. We don’t need Lazarus resurrected to prove to us that this is what God’s realm looks like: Abraham tell Dives that his family should look to Moses and the prophets. And if you and I do so, when you and I embrace what the prophets proclaim, then we will have experienced what Dives unfortunately never does: what Lutheran priest and author Nadia Bolz-Weber, riffing off the prophet Jeremiah, calls a “divine heart transplant,” where God takes our hearts of stone, hearts of stone created by the idolatries of wealth, accumulation, the false sense of fear and security, and replaces them with hearts of flesh that beat for God’s people and for God who comes to us as Lazarus.
The late great poet Audre Lorde once addressed a group of feminist activists and concluded her speech with the following: “I urge each one of us here to reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside herself and touch that terror and loathing of any difference that lives there. See whose face it wears.” Jesus invites you and me to meet Lazarus at our doorsteps, the ones under our noses that we have trouble seeing, and beckons us to see in the one in front of us suffering the God who suffers with and as Lazarus. Jesus calls us to come out of the hells of our self-imposed alienation, our gated communities and gated hearts, so that we can beat warm hearts of flesh to help heal God’s beautiful broken world, and to heal our beautiful broken selves. Like Moses and the prophets, Jesus implores us to undergo divine heart transplants so that as we care for all the Lazaruses in our lives, we might all find ourselves in Abraham’s bosom, on earth as it is in heaven.
Abel Lopez’s Installation as Rector of Messiah, Santa Ana, California-A Sermon by the Rev. Ed Bacon, rector of All Saints Church, Pasadena
Good morning everyone!
My sisters and brothers, we have come together this morning for a Love Fest. A Love Fest on many levels. Many of us are here because we love Abel Lopez, finding him one of the greatest priests God has ever ordained to the priesthood. Many of us are here because of our love for The Church of the Messiah, Santa Ana, and its magnificent mission in Orange County. All of us are here because of the love of God – we love God and God’s love for us has taught us that every church is God’s favorite church. God desperately needs every church, every faith community to be as healthy as it possibly can be. It is in the best interests of All Saints Church, Pasadena, for Messiah, Santa Ana to be as healthy as it can be and it is in the best interests of Messiah, Santa Ana, for All Saints Church, Pasadena and all other faith communities to be as healthy as they can be.
It is because of my love of God and my understanding that we are all in this thing together, that I as rector of All Saints, Pasadena, have been able to forgive Messiah, Santa Ana for coming to Pasadena and stealing from us one of the finest priests ever ordained. Love always forgives.
Now, in the vernacular of the Episcopal Church, we are here to “install” Abel Lopez as the 13th rector of this outstanding church. There are skeptical wags both in and outside the church who make fun of our use of the word, “install,” in this circumstance. “What do you all do in the Episcopal Church?” my sarcastic friends ask. “Install priest like they were appliances? Like you install a dishwasher or a stove or a refrigerator? Then you plug them in and expect them to wash, cook, and chill for you?”
But in the wisdom of the Book of Common Prayer, this liturgy is formally called, “The Celebration of a New Ministry.” And the new ministry we are celebrating this morning is not just the ministry of Abel Lopez; it is the ministry of all the people of Messiah, Santa Ana, because there never has been a priest who had a fruit-bearing ministry who tried to do ministry by herself or himself. This is a faith community above everything else. This community is called into ministry. There never was a church which had a fruit-bearing ministry who didn’t have as many people in the church – including the oldest members and the youngest members – on mission and in gear with their vocations.
Now two words about this business of vocation and ministry.
The happiest and most fruitful members of any church are those who are doing what God is calling them to do in life. Vocation comes from the word, vocare, meaning “call.” Your vocation, even if you are a physician is not working in a leper colony if you hate that kind of work. Conversely, your vocation is not writing advertisements for the fuzzy dice you can hang from your rear view mirror because the world’s deep needs do not include fuzzy dice.
No. Your vocation is where your deep joys and the world’s deep needs meet. (This definition comes from the Rev. Frederick Buechner.) I have a dear friend who was practicing real estate law and was sinking deeper and deeper into depression. The world does need real estate attorneys but that was not his deep joy. He, with the help of his wife and family and larger community mustered the courage to leave the practice of law and begin teaching teenagers literature in the public school because that is what his true self always wanted to do and it brings him deep joy – not without challenges that all of us face in life – but deep satisfying joy and Lord knows, one of the world’s deep needs is to have caring people in public school classrooms. That’s enough about the word, vocation, for now.
You have a rector in Abel Lopez who is in gear vocationally. He would be miserable selling cars, although, let me tell you, Abel Lopez knows a great deal about cars. I have always asked him to accompany me in choosing a car. He knows everything about them and there is no one more clever, winsome, and wily as a fox in negotiating with a car salesman than Abel Lopez. But Abel’s vocation is as a priest – you can see it in his celebrating the Eucharist. You can feel it in his exquisite and profound sermons. You can know it in his group work and one-on-one pastoral counseling. He is in vocational gear and can be an inspiration for you to get your life into vocational gear. And, please, all of you who are lay persons, remember, priests are not a cut above all other human beings. The reason God calls people to be priests is because God can’t trust priests to be lay people.
A word about ministry. There are two kinds of ministry in the church – church work and the work of the church. Every church has to have a minimum of church work done. The communion silver has to be polished. The bulletin and liturgies have to be distributed at the door. The finances of the church have to be overseen by the best financial minds Messiah, Santa Ana has to offer. The staff and the outreach of the church have to be paid for. The people must be inspired by other members to give generously from the labor and resources of their lives. The choir needs joyful noise and music-makers. AND. As crucial as all of that is, as important as coming here regularly for transformative worship and education and governance is – it is not the ultimate reason we come to worship.
Abel Lopez is a priest who stands in the tradition of the Jewish prophets – the tradition in which Jesus was grounded. There are a lot of traditions in the Bible – the wisdom tradition, the historic tradition, the purity code tradition, and on and on, but Jesus grounded himself in the prophetic tradition when he preached his inauguration sermon at his hometown synagogue in Nazareth – Isaiah 51 he quoted – the Spirit of the Lord is upon me for the Spirit has anointed me to…. Well listen to the way The Message translates it:
God’s Spirit is on me;
he’s chosen me to preach the Message of good news to the poor,
Sent me to announce pardon to prisoners and
recovery of sight to the blind,
To set the burdened and battered free,
to announce, “This is God’s year to act!” Luke 4:18
The prophetic tradition in which we stand says your worship, your educational offerings, and your governance, your community relationality better be beautiful, healthy, transformative, and nourishing. However, please understand, all the prophets from Jeremiah, Hosea, Amos and Isaiah to Martin Luther King, Jr. and Caesar Chavez, and Dorothy Day, and Cornel West say that that all that is rubbish if you are not making life better for widows and orphans, for poor and oppressed people, if you are not finding ways to rehabilitate and free prisoners instead of warehousing them, if you aren’t finding ways to give dignity and freedom from fear to immigrants, to include Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender persons, and if you are not continuing to dismantle systems of discrimination against women and people of color. That is the work of the church – out there in the world. And the church work you do here on these beautiful grounds aren’t worth a flip if it is not helping the world flip every system of oppression and discrimination.
The church is not being church if it’s not in the business of transformation. Transformation must always be at two levels – personal/internal transformation through spiritual formation and political/systemic transformation through acts of mercy and justice for and with those on the margins of life. The prophetic tradition made sure that the people were so immersed in contemplation, prayer, mysticism, and personal conversion that they were accessing God and God’s love all the time – that’s what St. Paul meant when he wrote “Pray without ceasing.” And that the people were so identified with and in solidarity with those who are suffering and outcast that they knew that everyone is in one boat, one interwoven tapestry, one interconnected uni-verse so that as Dostoevsky said, “if you slap someone of this side of the world, someone on the other side of the world winces.” Or Martin Luther King, Jr. said, that our network of mutuality is such that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. I cannot be who I am supposed to be until you are who you are supposed to be and vice versa. That includes the undocumented immigrant, the person in prison, and the person living homeless on the street.
Now, finally, a word from our Scripture. All the readings appointed for this Celebration of New Ministry are saturated with shepherd imagery and I have had these passages of scripture in my mind as I have composed this sermon.
As a testimony to Abel Lopez’s brilliant and unconventional leadership – leadership rooted in vocation, the work of the church more than church work, the prophetic tradition, solidarity with the oppressed and the poor, -- Abel wrote me and said, “I love all this shepherd stuff – God and Jesus are our Good shepherd and we are called to emulate God and Jesus and, and, and, but where is the call to Justice in all this?
My friends, that is the question, where is Justice in all this? Where is Compassion? Augustine. Don’t leave a passage of scripture until you find what it says about compassion. About justice.
I wrote Abel back and asked that we read the passage from Ezekiel we’ve just read. For it contains the job description of Messiah, of All Saints, and of all faith communities.
The word of the Lord came to me: “Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel; prophesy and say to them: ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Woe to you shepherds of Israel who only take care of yourselves! Should not shepherds take care of the flock? You eat the curds, clothe yourselves with the wool and slaughter the choice animals, but you do not take care of the flock. You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost. You have ruled them harshly and brutally. Ezekiel 34: 1-4
All of us are called to strengthen the weak, heal the sick, bind up the injured, bring home the strays back the strays, and search for the lost. We are never to lead through coercion or fear.
Bishop Diane, our presider today is the only one of us carrying around a Shepherd’s staff this morning. I am of the theological persuasion that she is not ontologically different from the rest of us. Remember, God had her elected bishop because God could no longer trust her to be a priest. She is a symbol person for us – a great one, by the way. She is to remind you and me that all of use are called to be shepherds – good shepherds. Shepherds who are called to feed and nourish all people – and the nourishment we are to give is the nourishment of justice at Ezekiel 34: 16 calls us to.
We are here for a Love Fest, my friends – celebrating Abel’s glorious priestly leadership as rector of Messiah, Santa Ana. May we all remember and commit ourselves to the goal of being emissaries of God our Good Shepherd, who nourishes all with Justice.
Amen.
My sisters and brothers, we have come together this morning for a Love Fest. A Love Fest on many levels. Many of us are here because we love Abel Lopez, finding him one of the greatest priests God has ever ordained to the priesthood. Many of us are here because of our love for The Church of the Messiah, Santa Ana, and its magnificent mission in Orange County. All of us are here because of the love of God – we love God and God’s love for us has taught us that every church is God’s favorite church. God desperately needs every church, every faith community to be as healthy as it possibly can be. It is in the best interests of All Saints Church, Pasadena, for Messiah, Santa Ana to be as healthy as it can be and it is in the best interests of Messiah, Santa Ana, for All Saints Church, Pasadena and all other faith communities to be as healthy as they can be.
It is because of my love of God and my understanding that we are all in this thing together, that I as rector of All Saints, Pasadena, have been able to forgive Messiah, Santa Ana for coming to Pasadena and stealing from us one of the finest priests ever ordained. Love always forgives.
Now, in the vernacular of the Episcopal Church, we are here to “install” Abel Lopez as the 13th rector of this outstanding church. There are skeptical wags both in and outside the church who make fun of our use of the word, “install,” in this circumstance. “What do you all do in the Episcopal Church?” my sarcastic friends ask. “Install priest like they were appliances? Like you install a dishwasher or a stove or a refrigerator? Then you plug them in and expect them to wash, cook, and chill for you?”
But in the wisdom of the Book of Common Prayer, this liturgy is formally called, “The Celebration of a New Ministry.” And the new ministry we are celebrating this morning is not just the ministry of Abel Lopez; it is the ministry of all the people of Messiah, Santa Ana, because there never has been a priest who had a fruit-bearing ministry who tried to do ministry by herself or himself. This is a faith community above everything else. This community is called into ministry. There never was a church which had a fruit-bearing ministry who didn’t have as many people in the church – including the oldest members and the youngest members – on mission and in gear with their vocations.
Now two words about this business of vocation and ministry.
The happiest and most fruitful members of any church are those who are doing what God is calling them to do in life. Vocation comes from the word, vocare, meaning “call.” Your vocation, even if you are a physician is not working in a leper colony if you hate that kind of work. Conversely, your vocation is not writing advertisements for the fuzzy dice you can hang from your rear view mirror because the world’s deep needs do not include fuzzy dice.
No. Your vocation is where your deep joys and the world’s deep needs meet. (This definition comes from the Rev. Frederick Buechner.) I have a dear friend who was practicing real estate law and was sinking deeper and deeper into depression. The world does need real estate attorneys but that was not his deep joy. He, with the help of his wife and family and larger community mustered the courage to leave the practice of law and begin teaching teenagers literature in the public school because that is what his true self always wanted to do and it brings him deep joy – not without challenges that all of us face in life – but deep satisfying joy and Lord knows, one of the world’s deep needs is to have caring people in public school classrooms. That’s enough about the word, vocation, for now.
You have a rector in Abel Lopez who is in gear vocationally. He would be miserable selling cars, although, let me tell you, Abel Lopez knows a great deal about cars. I have always asked him to accompany me in choosing a car. He knows everything about them and there is no one more clever, winsome, and wily as a fox in negotiating with a car salesman than Abel Lopez. But Abel’s vocation is as a priest – you can see it in his celebrating the Eucharist. You can feel it in his exquisite and profound sermons. You can know it in his group work and one-on-one pastoral counseling. He is in vocational gear and can be an inspiration for you to get your life into vocational gear. And, please, all of you who are lay persons, remember, priests are not a cut above all other human beings. The reason God calls people to be priests is because God can’t trust priests to be lay people.
A word about ministry. There are two kinds of ministry in the church – church work and the work of the church. Every church has to have a minimum of church work done. The communion silver has to be polished. The bulletin and liturgies have to be distributed at the door. The finances of the church have to be overseen by the best financial minds Messiah, Santa Ana has to offer. The staff and the outreach of the church have to be paid for. The people must be inspired by other members to give generously from the labor and resources of their lives. The choir needs joyful noise and music-makers. AND. As crucial as all of that is, as important as coming here regularly for transformative worship and education and governance is – it is not the ultimate reason we come to worship.
Abel Lopez is a priest who stands in the tradition of the Jewish prophets – the tradition in which Jesus was grounded. There are a lot of traditions in the Bible – the wisdom tradition, the historic tradition, the purity code tradition, and on and on, but Jesus grounded himself in the prophetic tradition when he preached his inauguration sermon at his hometown synagogue in Nazareth – Isaiah 51 he quoted – the Spirit of the Lord is upon me for the Spirit has anointed me to…. Well listen to the way The Message translates it:
God’s Spirit is on me;
he’s chosen me to preach the Message of good news to the poor,
Sent me to announce pardon to prisoners and
recovery of sight to the blind,
To set the burdened and battered free,
to announce, “This is God’s year to act!” Luke 4:18
The prophetic tradition in which we stand says your worship, your educational offerings, and your governance, your community relationality better be beautiful, healthy, transformative, and nourishing. However, please understand, all the prophets from Jeremiah, Hosea, Amos and Isaiah to Martin Luther King, Jr. and Caesar Chavez, and Dorothy Day, and Cornel West say that that all that is rubbish if you are not making life better for widows and orphans, for poor and oppressed people, if you are not finding ways to rehabilitate and free prisoners instead of warehousing them, if you aren’t finding ways to give dignity and freedom from fear to immigrants, to include Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender persons, and if you are not continuing to dismantle systems of discrimination against women and people of color. That is the work of the church – out there in the world. And the church work you do here on these beautiful grounds aren’t worth a flip if it is not helping the world flip every system of oppression and discrimination.
The church is not being church if it’s not in the business of transformation. Transformation must always be at two levels – personal/internal transformation through spiritual formation and political/systemic transformation through acts of mercy and justice for and with those on the margins of life. The prophetic tradition made sure that the people were so immersed in contemplation, prayer, mysticism, and personal conversion that they were accessing God and God’s love all the time – that’s what St. Paul meant when he wrote “Pray without ceasing.” And that the people were so identified with and in solidarity with those who are suffering and outcast that they knew that everyone is in one boat, one interwoven tapestry, one interconnected uni-verse so that as Dostoevsky said, “if you slap someone of this side of the world, someone on the other side of the world winces.” Or Martin Luther King, Jr. said, that our network of mutuality is such that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. I cannot be who I am supposed to be until you are who you are supposed to be and vice versa. That includes the undocumented immigrant, the person in prison, and the person living homeless on the street.
Now, finally, a word from our Scripture. All the readings appointed for this Celebration of New Ministry are saturated with shepherd imagery and I have had these passages of scripture in my mind as I have composed this sermon.
As a testimony to Abel Lopez’s brilliant and unconventional leadership – leadership rooted in vocation, the work of the church more than church work, the prophetic tradition, solidarity with the oppressed and the poor, -- Abel wrote me and said, “I love all this shepherd stuff – God and Jesus are our Good shepherd and we are called to emulate God and Jesus and, and, and, but where is the call to Justice in all this?
My friends, that is the question, where is Justice in all this? Where is Compassion? Augustine. Don’t leave a passage of scripture until you find what it says about compassion. About justice.
I wrote Abel back and asked that we read the passage from Ezekiel we’ve just read. For it contains the job description of Messiah, of All Saints, and of all faith communities.
The word of the Lord came to me: “Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel; prophesy and say to them: ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Woe to you shepherds of Israel who only take care of yourselves! Should not shepherds take care of the flock? You eat the curds, clothe yourselves with the wool and slaughter the choice animals, but you do not take care of the flock. You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost. You have ruled them harshly and brutally. Ezekiel 34: 1-4
All of us are called to strengthen the weak, heal the sick, bind up the injured, bring home the strays back the strays, and search for the lost. We are never to lead through coercion or fear.
Bishop Diane, our presider today is the only one of us carrying around a Shepherd’s staff this morning. I am of the theological persuasion that she is not ontologically different from the rest of us. Remember, God had her elected bishop because God could no longer trust her to be a priest. She is a symbol person for us – a great one, by the way. She is to remind you and me that all of use are called to be shepherds – good shepherds. Shepherds who are called to feed and nourish all people – and the nourishment we are to give is the nourishment of justice at Ezekiel 34: 16 calls us to.
We are here for a Love Fest, my friends – celebrating Abel’s glorious priestly leadership as rector of Messiah, Santa Ana. May we all remember and commit ourselves to the goal of being emissaries of God our Good Shepherd, who nourishes all with Justice.
Amen.
Sermon by the Rev. Ellen Hill-Proper 19C
The Reverend Ellen Hill
Sunday, September 15, 2013
Lectionary readings
Whenever we have passages like the one in this morning’s Old Testament lesson which feature ancient Biblical characters like Moses and Aaron, it’s really easy for me to dismiss them and to convince myself that they have very little to do with our modern contemporary lives. That was my reaction the first time I read these lessons and began to work on this morning’s sermon. Frankly, my initial intention was to preach on the Gospel. You see, I’d just dismissed this lesson from Exodus which struck me a little bit like a second century B.C. soap opera.
Just look at the plot of this morning’s lesson. The Israelites are fed up! They’ve been wandering around in the wilderness for a long time. Moses has disappeared and hasn’t been seen for some time. He’s supposedly some where up on the mountain. So they approach his brother Aaron, who’s been sort of Moses’ first lieutenant, and they tell him that they’re getting tired of hearing the stories Moses has been telling them about his encounters with God. This unseen, distant intangible entity that Moses keeps insisting is looking out for them telling them to do this and then to do that. They’re sick of this God who doesn’t deliver. They want a god they tell Aaron like the gods of the other people around them. Maybe a god like the Canaanite god who seems much more accessible and accommodating. So they begin to lean on Aaron, pleading with him, “Come on Aaron, find us a god we can relate to. We want a god like other people’s gods. Who knows whether this brother of yours is ever going to show up again.”
And so, not surprisingly, Aaron does what we all do under enough pressure because I think that most of us basically dislike confrontation. We have a need to be liked and admired by the people we’re in a relationship with and I think that’s especially true when we’re in a leadership position. So Aaron begins to bend to the pressure.
The part of the story which isn’t in your lesson goes like this. Aaron says, “Okay. Look if all of you will take the gold earrings from the ears of your wives and your daughters I’ll make you a god like the gods of the people around us. So he takes those earrings, melts them down and makes a statue of a golden calf which the people then begin to worship.
In the mean time, God, who’s been in conference with Moses, looks down sees what the Israelites have talked old Aaron into doing and blows up. God tells Moses, “That’s it!” He’s says he’s through with the Israelites. “They’re stiff necked people” he says and he tells Moses to go away and leave him alone so that God’s wrath may burn hot against the Israelites and consume them! But the story doesn’t end there because Moses comes through and shows himself to be a great and courageous leader who demonstrates the profundity of his faith in God. He doesn’t back away in the face of God’s wrath even though God’s made it clear that he’s not holding Moses responsible for the Israelites disobedience. So Moses really doesn’t have to take God on but he does. He reminds God of God’s long relationship with the Israelites and he reminds God of God’s loving nature.
As a result of Moses’ arguments God relents and agrees to spare the Israelites. It’s a great story and there are a number of things that should make us realize that this is also a story about you and me as well. In the first place the story makes it clear that Israel’s existence is solely due to God’s grace. Nothing the Israelites have done has entitled them to be favored by God and that’s also true for us. Some of their leaders, like Aaron were fallible and couldn’t be counted on in the sense of making sure that they didn’t get themselves involved in activities which would bring disaster upon them. That’s also a reality to which we can certainly relate. And finally God, and God alone, is the one thing that is steady, dependable, faithful and always ready to forgive and to allow us to turn, yet again, one more new page so that we can start over. It’s Moses’ unshakable faith in God, in the face of God’s righteous anger, that enables him to save the Israelites. Moses trusts God and has confidence that God’s love and grace for the whole of the created order is something that one can depend upon.
Martin Luther once said, “If I were God and the world treated me as it has treated him I would kick the wretched thing to pieces!” What makes Moses so great is that he does what Aaron and the people were unable to do. What so often you and I are unable to do. Moses was faithful. He gave his devotion and worship only to God and he didn’t allow himself to be seduced by other gods or other idols. That’s an incredibly tough thing to do. In many ways I think that it’s really the central dilemma of our times.
It’s tough to be faithful to an unseen God. It’s hard to give sacrificially of ourselves and our possessions to that God and to follow the commandments we’ve been given. And the reason it’s hard is because idol making, exactly what Aaron did with that image of the golden calf, is a constant part of human existence. We all have idols. The things that we count on to protect us and save us. The things we know are going to sustain us. I’ve often thought that’s the reason that poor people, third world people, are so very often so much more devout that you and I are. God is all that they have. They don’t have the possessions you and I have. They don’t have the education that you and I have which may seduce us into a kind of secular atheism because we can intellectualize and explain all the things that humble people attribute to God.
Churches get sucked into the same kind of idol making and we do that by making things comfortable and being careful that we don’t challenge or confront any of your idols. The truth is that it’s tough as a priest to try to live into the Moses role when it’s so much more pleasant and so very much easier in the short run to play the Aaron part. And that’s especially true in the fall when most churches approach the stewardship season. It’s not fun to make people uncomfortable which talking about money in church inevitably does. Look how uncomfortable some of you got when Abel began asking us at the offertory to give generously to support our ministries here at Messiah.
It’s hard to get us to refocus and remember our story. That story which reminds us who we are and whose we are. The story that reminds us that God has called each one of us into life and God has also given each one of us a purpose. Again and again in our lives our God has delivered us, provided for us and loved us unconditionally. Our problem is that it’s so easy for us to be seduced by the other gods around us. Those gods in our culture which are infinitely more popular and far more commonly accepted than this old fashioned God of ours. Our faith teaches us that human beings have been created in the divine image and we’ve been bound to our Creator by a covenantal relationship which is blessed by the miracle of God’s grace in the power that is implicit in the possibility of forgiveness and new beginnings.
Here at the Church of the Messiah we are at a new beginning. During these next six weeks as we move through the stewardship season you’ll be confronted by things that are mailed to you describing parishioners stewardship stories and by preachers both lay and clergy who’ll share with you their stewardship witness. If we are honest we’ll admit that we all know that it’s imperative that we grow our pledge base if we are going to move forward under our new rector into another century of exciting ministry here in the city. We all know that we need a full time associate, that we need to care for this building which is such a treasure, and that we need to fund the ministries which enable us to carry on Christ’s work here in the world. We cannot bank on auctions which may or may not deliver large sums of money for our budget because auctions are dependent on whoever attends in a specific year and their willingness to bid on the items which have been donated. Our financial pledge base must be enlarged so that we can support the ministry we’re called to do.
What all of this means is that in the coming weeks you’ll be asked to look at your own life and to assess honestly where God and God’s work, as demonstrated by this parish’s ministries, is in your list of priorities. Do you have other gods you worship? Other gods who consume your time and your financial resources which may in fact be golden calves? Idols which draw you away from God. Talking about money in church always makes people uncomfortable and yet it’s what makes our very existence in the world possible. Nothing that you hear from this pulpit or read in the stories parishioners share regarding their stewardship witness will seek to make you feel guilty or put pressure upon you in any way. The only challenge which faces you is the same challenge which was placed before the Israelites. The challenge to ask yourself whether it’s God your Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer who has first call on your time and your money or is it other gods which surround us in our culture and are infinitely more appealing and popular than that old God of Moses.
As I finished working on this sermon I couldn’t help but think of one of Ted Loder’s prayers which beautifully reminds us of what this lesson and the coming weeks of our stewardship season try to teach us. Let us pray. O God of fire and freedom, deliver us from our bondage to what can be counted and go with us into a new Exodus toward what counts but can only be measured in bread shared, swords becoming plowshares, in bodies healed and minds liberated. In songs sung and justice done. In laughter in the night and joy in the morning. In love through all seasons and great gladness of heart. In all people coming together and a kingdom coming in glory. In your name being praised and in our becoming individual Alleluias through Jesus Christ..our Lord. Amen
Sunday, September 15, 2013
Lectionary readings
Whenever we have passages like the one in this morning’s Old Testament lesson which feature ancient Biblical characters like Moses and Aaron, it’s really easy for me to dismiss them and to convince myself that they have very little to do with our modern contemporary lives. That was my reaction the first time I read these lessons and began to work on this morning’s sermon. Frankly, my initial intention was to preach on the Gospel. You see, I’d just dismissed this lesson from Exodus which struck me a little bit like a second century B.C. soap opera.
Just look at the plot of this morning’s lesson. The Israelites are fed up! They’ve been wandering around in the wilderness for a long time. Moses has disappeared and hasn’t been seen for some time. He’s supposedly some where up on the mountain. So they approach his brother Aaron, who’s been sort of Moses’ first lieutenant, and they tell him that they’re getting tired of hearing the stories Moses has been telling them about his encounters with God. This unseen, distant intangible entity that Moses keeps insisting is looking out for them telling them to do this and then to do that. They’re sick of this God who doesn’t deliver. They want a god they tell Aaron like the gods of the other people around them. Maybe a god like the Canaanite god who seems much more accessible and accommodating. So they begin to lean on Aaron, pleading with him, “Come on Aaron, find us a god we can relate to. We want a god like other people’s gods. Who knows whether this brother of yours is ever going to show up again.”
And so, not surprisingly, Aaron does what we all do under enough pressure because I think that most of us basically dislike confrontation. We have a need to be liked and admired by the people we’re in a relationship with and I think that’s especially true when we’re in a leadership position. So Aaron begins to bend to the pressure.
The part of the story which isn’t in your lesson goes like this. Aaron says, “Okay. Look if all of you will take the gold earrings from the ears of your wives and your daughters I’ll make you a god like the gods of the people around us. So he takes those earrings, melts them down and makes a statue of a golden calf which the people then begin to worship.
In the mean time, God, who’s been in conference with Moses, looks down sees what the Israelites have talked old Aaron into doing and blows up. God tells Moses, “That’s it!” He’s says he’s through with the Israelites. “They’re stiff necked people” he says and he tells Moses to go away and leave him alone so that God’s wrath may burn hot against the Israelites and consume them! But the story doesn’t end there because Moses comes through and shows himself to be a great and courageous leader who demonstrates the profundity of his faith in God. He doesn’t back away in the face of God’s wrath even though God’s made it clear that he’s not holding Moses responsible for the Israelites disobedience. So Moses really doesn’t have to take God on but he does. He reminds God of God’s long relationship with the Israelites and he reminds God of God’s loving nature.
As a result of Moses’ arguments God relents and agrees to spare the Israelites. It’s a great story and there are a number of things that should make us realize that this is also a story about you and me as well. In the first place the story makes it clear that Israel’s existence is solely due to God’s grace. Nothing the Israelites have done has entitled them to be favored by God and that’s also true for us. Some of their leaders, like Aaron were fallible and couldn’t be counted on in the sense of making sure that they didn’t get themselves involved in activities which would bring disaster upon them. That’s also a reality to which we can certainly relate. And finally God, and God alone, is the one thing that is steady, dependable, faithful and always ready to forgive and to allow us to turn, yet again, one more new page so that we can start over. It’s Moses’ unshakable faith in God, in the face of God’s righteous anger, that enables him to save the Israelites. Moses trusts God and has confidence that God’s love and grace for the whole of the created order is something that one can depend upon.
Martin Luther once said, “If I were God and the world treated me as it has treated him I would kick the wretched thing to pieces!” What makes Moses so great is that he does what Aaron and the people were unable to do. What so often you and I are unable to do. Moses was faithful. He gave his devotion and worship only to God and he didn’t allow himself to be seduced by other gods or other idols. That’s an incredibly tough thing to do. In many ways I think that it’s really the central dilemma of our times.
It’s tough to be faithful to an unseen God. It’s hard to give sacrificially of ourselves and our possessions to that God and to follow the commandments we’ve been given. And the reason it’s hard is because idol making, exactly what Aaron did with that image of the golden calf, is a constant part of human existence. We all have idols. The things that we count on to protect us and save us. The things we know are going to sustain us. I’ve often thought that’s the reason that poor people, third world people, are so very often so much more devout that you and I are. God is all that they have. They don’t have the possessions you and I have. They don’t have the education that you and I have which may seduce us into a kind of secular atheism because we can intellectualize and explain all the things that humble people attribute to God.
Churches get sucked into the same kind of idol making and we do that by making things comfortable and being careful that we don’t challenge or confront any of your idols. The truth is that it’s tough as a priest to try to live into the Moses role when it’s so much more pleasant and so very much easier in the short run to play the Aaron part. And that’s especially true in the fall when most churches approach the stewardship season. It’s not fun to make people uncomfortable which talking about money in church inevitably does. Look how uncomfortable some of you got when Abel began asking us at the offertory to give generously to support our ministries here at Messiah.
It’s hard to get us to refocus and remember our story. That story which reminds us who we are and whose we are. The story that reminds us that God has called each one of us into life and God has also given each one of us a purpose. Again and again in our lives our God has delivered us, provided for us and loved us unconditionally. Our problem is that it’s so easy for us to be seduced by the other gods around us. Those gods in our culture which are infinitely more popular and far more commonly accepted than this old fashioned God of ours. Our faith teaches us that human beings have been created in the divine image and we’ve been bound to our Creator by a covenantal relationship which is blessed by the miracle of God’s grace in the power that is implicit in the possibility of forgiveness and new beginnings.
Here at the Church of the Messiah we are at a new beginning. During these next six weeks as we move through the stewardship season you’ll be confronted by things that are mailed to you describing parishioners stewardship stories and by preachers both lay and clergy who’ll share with you their stewardship witness. If we are honest we’ll admit that we all know that it’s imperative that we grow our pledge base if we are going to move forward under our new rector into another century of exciting ministry here in the city. We all know that we need a full time associate, that we need to care for this building which is such a treasure, and that we need to fund the ministries which enable us to carry on Christ’s work here in the world. We cannot bank on auctions which may or may not deliver large sums of money for our budget because auctions are dependent on whoever attends in a specific year and their willingness to bid on the items which have been donated. Our financial pledge base must be enlarged so that we can support the ministry we’re called to do.
What all of this means is that in the coming weeks you’ll be asked to look at your own life and to assess honestly where God and God’s work, as demonstrated by this parish’s ministries, is in your list of priorities. Do you have other gods you worship? Other gods who consume your time and your financial resources which may in fact be golden calves? Idols which draw you away from God. Talking about money in church always makes people uncomfortable and yet it’s what makes our very existence in the world possible. Nothing that you hear from this pulpit or read in the stories parishioners share regarding their stewardship witness will seek to make you feel guilty or put pressure upon you in any way. The only challenge which faces you is the same challenge which was placed before the Israelites. The challenge to ask yourself whether it’s God your Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer who has first call on your time and your money or is it other gods which surround us in our culture and are infinitely more appealing and popular than that old God of Moses.
As I finished working on this sermon I couldn’t help but think of one of Ted Loder’s prayers which beautifully reminds us of what this lesson and the coming weeks of our stewardship season try to teach us. Let us pray. O God of fire and freedom, deliver us from our bondage to what can be counted and go with us into a new Exodus toward what counts but can only be measured in bread shared, swords becoming plowshares, in bodies healed and minds liberated. In songs sung and justice done. In laughter in the night and joy in the morning. In love through all seasons and great gladness of heart. In all people coming together and a kingdom coming in glory. In your name being praised and in our becoming individual Alleluias through Jesus Christ..our Lord. Amen
Homecoming Sunday sermon-Abel Lopez
Homecoming Sermon 2013
Lectionary readings
Happy Homecoming Sunday Everyone! It is very good to see you all and it feels so wonderful to be back.
There is a story about a minister trying to get serious. In doing so she speaks about the imminence of death and its power over her congregation. Her opening sentence was that “in 100 years, every member of her parish would be dead.” And with that, a man in the fourth row began to laugh. Now there is nothing in the world more upsetting and disconcerting to a preacher than to have someone miss the mood and the intent. So she thought the brother had misheard her and she said again,
“I’m here to say that within the next 100 years, every member of this parish will be dead.”
At that, the man laughed again. The minister began to get a little angry and was losing her temper. So she turns to the laughing man and said, “You think that’s funny?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Why do you think it’s funny?”
“Because I don’t belong to this church!”
Although I don’t intend to echo this minister’s shocking opening sentence, you will probably agree with me that in our Gospel story I have a challenging and even more shocking statement to deal with. This morning we encounter very unexpected and troubling words from Jesus, who is often portrayed as the epitome of gentleness and compassion. He shouts that “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.” This is not gentle-Jesus, meek-and-mild. This isn’t the comfort for which we come to church. When we initially hear this we are taken back, because this is the same Jesus who said that we should not hate our enemies but instead love them. It was also Jesus who said the two most important things you could do were to love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength and love your neighbor as yourself. Surely we are not expected to love our neighbor as we love ourselves and at the same time, detest our parents and siblings.
Recall, Jesus frequently spoke in parables and while is not captured in this scripture, I believe, Jesus went on to explain this very important message and I think today his explanation will go something like this:
“My Ministry, my vision is to create God’s Kingdom here on earth. I am asking you to be a citizen A NEW KINGDOM,
· a citizen that does not hate,
· a citizen that takes care of the poor,
· a citizen that sees no value in a class system that doesn’t provide justice for all,
· a citizen that respects the dignity of every human being.”
Yes, maybe Jesus could have used a better word than “hate”, but I think he was asking the crowd to look thoughtfully and squarely at themselves and to consider their values, their priorities and most importantly to see the disconnect between who they were and who Jesus was calling, inviting, pleading for them to be. Jesus mentioned the thoughtful planning of a king going out to wage war and a builder calculating and designing a plan to construct a new tower.
His message to those gathered, as it is to us today, is an invitation, all be it an informed invitation. It is an invitation to be architects and citizens of the Kingdom of God. It is an invitation to find home in God and his Kingdom. Home is when we are with God – not in the conservative Evangelical sense of the afterlife (“now the faithful deceased are with God”) -- no, our true home is much more radical than that. Being at home with God means having God and God’s values as our home base. This of course means that when we are at home in the world, we are embodying God’s values and we are experiencing God’s presence while we are walking around in our daily life and work.
Jesus is our primary example of someone who was at home in the world. That is because he was constantly at home with God in his heart, in his thinking, in his relations, and in all his behavior. Jesus is inviting them, as I believe he is inviting us-- to be dual citizens, Citizens of the Kingdom of God as well as Citizens of the USA, or Mexico, or Canada, or the Nederlands. I would go so far as to say that, as disciples, Jesus expects that our primary Citizenship is with him and the Kingdom.
Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori in Washington DC at her installation ceremony opened her sermon by asking: Where is home for you? How would you define your home? What makes it home? The familiar landscape, a quality of life, or the presence of particular people? She went on to say: The home we ultimately seek is found in relationship with the creator, with the redeemer, and with the spirit. When Augustine says "our hearts are restless, O God, until they find their rest in you," he means that our natural home is in God. Schiori reminded us in her sermon, that "home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in." We all ache for a community that will take us in, with our warts and all, our quirks and our petty meannesses – and yet they still celebrate when they see us coming!
That vision of homegoing and homecoming that underlies our deepest spiritual longing is also the job assignment each one of us gets in baptism – go home, and while you're at it, help to build a home for everyone else on earth. For none of us can truly find our rest in God until all of our brothers and sisters have also been welcomed home like the prodigal.
Today is our first homecoming Sunday together. Things may look a little different than how they have looked in the past. Going forward I want Messiah to mark this Sunday as a day that brings us all home, a day that brings us fully into community.
I want today to be a day where we celebrate our being family and acknowledge the many gifts we have coming home.
· Bob and Karen, welcome home and by the way I promise to restock the freezer
· Mark, Sandra and Andrew, welcome home
· Tom, our Mount Witney hero, welcome home, glad you returned safely and don’t do that again
· Julie/ Jim/Jihae/Sona welcome home
· Carol Harvey, welcome home—
and to all of you that journeyed and all of you that stayed close to keep Messiah shinning as that Beacon of light, welcome home.
Now rested my friends in the coming year I ask you to lift up your voices. Lift them up in such a way that they are heard in our committees, the vestry, stewardship, our peace and justice ministries, our children’s program and the choir. Lift them up in such a way that anyone in Santa Ana and all around Orange County know that there is a place here for them, that Church of the Messiah, this Church!! believes boldly that we are called as Christians to be about creating God’s Kingdom right here, right now in our time.....WELCOME THEM HOME!
Lectionary readings
Happy Homecoming Sunday Everyone! It is very good to see you all and it feels so wonderful to be back.
There is a story about a minister trying to get serious. In doing so she speaks about the imminence of death and its power over her congregation. Her opening sentence was that “in 100 years, every member of her parish would be dead.” And with that, a man in the fourth row began to laugh. Now there is nothing in the world more upsetting and disconcerting to a preacher than to have someone miss the mood and the intent. So she thought the brother had misheard her and she said again,
“I’m here to say that within the next 100 years, every member of this parish will be dead.”
At that, the man laughed again. The minister began to get a little angry and was losing her temper. So she turns to the laughing man and said, “You think that’s funny?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Why do you think it’s funny?”
“Because I don’t belong to this church!”
Although I don’t intend to echo this minister’s shocking opening sentence, you will probably agree with me that in our Gospel story I have a challenging and even more shocking statement to deal with. This morning we encounter very unexpected and troubling words from Jesus, who is often portrayed as the epitome of gentleness and compassion. He shouts that “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.” This is not gentle-Jesus, meek-and-mild. This isn’t the comfort for which we come to church. When we initially hear this we are taken back, because this is the same Jesus who said that we should not hate our enemies but instead love them. It was also Jesus who said the two most important things you could do were to love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength and love your neighbor as yourself. Surely we are not expected to love our neighbor as we love ourselves and at the same time, detest our parents and siblings.
Recall, Jesus frequently spoke in parables and while is not captured in this scripture, I believe, Jesus went on to explain this very important message and I think today his explanation will go something like this:
“My Ministry, my vision is to create God’s Kingdom here on earth. I am asking you to be a citizen A NEW KINGDOM,
· a citizen that does not hate,
· a citizen that takes care of the poor,
· a citizen that sees no value in a class system that doesn’t provide justice for all,
· a citizen that respects the dignity of every human being.”
Yes, maybe Jesus could have used a better word than “hate”, but I think he was asking the crowd to look thoughtfully and squarely at themselves and to consider their values, their priorities and most importantly to see the disconnect between who they were and who Jesus was calling, inviting, pleading for them to be. Jesus mentioned the thoughtful planning of a king going out to wage war and a builder calculating and designing a plan to construct a new tower.
His message to those gathered, as it is to us today, is an invitation, all be it an informed invitation. It is an invitation to be architects and citizens of the Kingdom of God. It is an invitation to find home in God and his Kingdom. Home is when we are with God – not in the conservative Evangelical sense of the afterlife (“now the faithful deceased are with God”) -- no, our true home is much more radical than that. Being at home with God means having God and God’s values as our home base. This of course means that when we are at home in the world, we are embodying God’s values and we are experiencing God’s presence while we are walking around in our daily life and work.
Jesus is our primary example of someone who was at home in the world. That is because he was constantly at home with God in his heart, in his thinking, in his relations, and in all his behavior. Jesus is inviting them, as I believe he is inviting us-- to be dual citizens, Citizens of the Kingdom of God as well as Citizens of the USA, or Mexico, or Canada, or the Nederlands. I would go so far as to say that, as disciples, Jesus expects that our primary Citizenship is with him and the Kingdom.
Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori in Washington DC at her installation ceremony opened her sermon by asking: Where is home for you? How would you define your home? What makes it home? The familiar landscape, a quality of life, or the presence of particular people? She went on to say: The home we ultimately seek is found in relationship with the creator, with the redeemer, and with the spirit. When Augustine says "our hearts are restless, O God, until they find their rest in you," he means that our natural home is in God. Schiori reminded us in her sermon, that "home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in." We all ache for a community that will take us in, with our warts and all, our quirks and our petty meannesses – and yet they still celebrate when they see us coming!
That vision of homegoing and homecoming that underlies our deepest spiritual longing is also the job assignment each one of us gets in baptism – go home, and while you're at it, help to build a home for everyone else on earth. For none of us can truly find our rest in God until all of our brothers and sisters have also been welcomed home like the prodigal.
Today is our first homecoming Sunday together. Things may look a little different than how they have looked in the past. Going forward I want Messiah to mark this Sunday as a day that brings us all home, a day that brings us fully into community.
I want today to be a day where we celebrate our being family and acknowledge the many gifts we have coming home.
· Bob and Karen, welcome home and by the way I promise to restock the freezer
· Mark, Sandra and Andrew, welcome home
· Tom, our Mount Witney hero, welcome home, glad you returned safely and don’t do that again
· Julie/ Jim/Jihae/Sona welcome home
· Carol Harvey, welcome home—
and to all of you that journeyed and all of you that stayed close to keep Messiah shinning as that Beacon of light, welcome home.
Now rested my friends in the coming year I ask you to lift up your voices. Lift them up in such a way that they are heard in our committees, the vestry, stewardship, our peace and justice ministries, our children’s program and the choir. Lift them up in such a way that anyone in Santa Ana and all around Orange County know that there is a place here for them, that Church of the Messiah, this Church!! believes boldly that we are called as Christians to be about creating God’s Kingdom right here, right now in our time.....WELCOME THEM HOME!
The Installation of The Rev. Abel E. Lopez
The Wardens, Vestry and Congregation of Church of the Messiah, Santa Ana
Cordially invite you to attend
The Installation of
The Rev. Abel E. Lopez
as the Thirteenth Rector of Church of the Messiah
by
The Right Rev. Diane Jardine Bruce
Bishop Suffragan of The diocese of Los Angeles
on
Saturday The Twentieth Eight day In September, Two Thousand Thirteen
At 10 o’ clock in the Morning
Clergy: Red Stoles
Lunch following at noon at Hacienda Restaurant
1725 College Blvd. Santa Ana, California. 92706
Map to the Restaurant
Parking information
Sermon Precis - the Rev. Jennifer Hughes
Proper 17C: Wedding Banquet
Précis
Lectionary readings
We know Jesus as the one who turns over tables in Matthew 21 in the so –called “cleansing of the temple”. But here he is again in Luke’s Gospel upending tables—but this time it is in the parable of the wedding banquet where he overturns the social order of class, influence, and power—suggesting that persons of prestige take the lower position.
In this week’s lesson from Luke’s gospel we encounter—laid bare—Jesus law of love and compassion (especially for the afflicted). This is an ethic that upends, disrupts, transcends, and subverts all other religious laws, social norms, codes of conduct, family relationships, and standards of courtesy, civility and class. All of these are wiped aside and reordered into a single ethic of love and compassion. We saw this last week when Jesus, violating the religious, ethical, and social norms of his day, healed the crooked woman on the Sabbath. And we will see it again next week as Jesus calls us to decenter love of family, of mothers, and sisters, and children and brothers for the One Love, of God and Neighbor. This One Law of Love, this is not simply a law of kindness, of charity, of sentimentality. Under this new law, we are taken out of the old social relationships that anchored us in our communities, uprooted and upending, and we are to redefine ourselves in a new social order, a Beloved Community.
Jesus exhorts his audience to “take the lowest place” at the table, rather than the position of honor—to humble oneself and allow others to be lifted up. But he does not stop there, not only has he upending the familial and social relationships, but now he says when we through a party we are not to invite our friends and family and esteemed neighbors—but those who we don’t know: we are to go into the streets and invite the poor, the disabled, the ill, and the afflicted. It will be strange table at which we gather to enjoy a supper of strangers: at this strange table there is no other social relationship—nothing else that binds those gathered together-- other than this law of love and ethic of compassion which replaces all other relationships and allegiances (including familial ones).
The letter to the Hebrews is letter is addressed to the first Christian communities of Palestine, formed by Jews—by race—who had been persecuted and punished and whose possessions had even been confiscated, all of this because they became followers of Christ. They no longer had anything in his world: they had lost their status, their status even (in the case of those who had been temple priests). Their table (their social table) had been overturned and upended. People were vulnerable and had begun to doubt. So this letter, this sermon really, is an exhortation, “Remember those who are in prison, as though you are in prison with them; those who are being torture as you yourselves are being tortured.”
Précis
Lectionary readings
We know Jesus as the one who turns over tables in Matthew 21 in the so –called “cleansing of the temple”. But here he is again in Luke’s Gospel upending tables—but this time it is in the parable of the wedding banquet where he overturns the social order of class, influence, and power—suggesting that persons of prestige take the lower position.
In this week’s lesson from Luke’s gospel we encounter—laid bare—Jesus law of love and compassion (especially for the afflicted). This is an ethic that upends, disrupts, transcends, and subverts all other religious laws, social norms, codes of conduct, family relationships, and standards of courtesy, civility and class. All of these are wiped aside and reordered into a single ethic of love and compassion. We saw this last week when Jesus, violating the religious, ethical, and social norms of his day, healed the crooked woman on the Sabbath. And we will see it again next week as Jesus calls us to decenter love of family, of mothers, and sisters, and children and brothers for the One Love, of God and Neighbor. This One Law of Love, this is not simply a law of kindness, of charity, of sentimentality. Under this new law, we are taken out of the old social relationships that anchored us in our communities, uprooted and upending, and we are to redefine ourselves in a new social order, a Beloved Community.
Jesus exhorts his audience to “take the lowest place” at the table, rather than the position of honor—to humble oneself and allow others to be lifted up. But he does not stop there, not only has he upending the familial and social relationships, but now he says when we through a party we are not to invite our friends and family and esteemed neighbors—but those who we don’t know: we are to go into the streets and invite the poor, the disabled, the ill, and the afflicted. It will be strange table at which we gather to enjoy a supper of strangers: at this strange table there is no other social relationship—nothing else that binds those gathered together-- other than this law of love and ethic of compassion which replaces all other relationships and allegiances (including familial ones).
The letter to the Hebrews is letter is addressed to the first Christian communities of Palestine, formed by Jews—by race—who had been persecuted and punished and whose possessions had even been confiscated, all of this because they became followers of Christ. They no longer had anything in his world: they had lost their status, their status even (in the case of those who had been temple priests). Their table (their social table) had been overturned and upended. People were vulnerable and had begun to doubt. So this letter, this sermon really, is an exhortation, “Remember those who are in prison, as though you are in prison with them; those who are being torture as you yourselves are being tortured.”
Feeding Our Future Selves—A Sermon by Jim Lee (Proper 17C)
Lectionary readings
You may remember my friend SooJin, who visited here last May to witness the baptism of our daughter and her goddaughter Jihae. This past week SooJin walked her five-year old daughter Sxela to kindergarten. There are pictures of them walking to school and of Sxela sitting at her table, of the cubby where she places her backpack. There’s another photo that SooJin took last week, of Sxela in a pretty blue and white dress. It is this dress that my friend SooJin wore when she arrived in the US from Korea, adopted at the age of five after being taken from her mother 31 years ago. As she put it, she is so happy to pass on this dress to her daughter without passing on the trauma that this dress represented through much of her life. SooJin has been able to give to Sxela this beautiful dress without the horrible trauma that she once associated it with and I think it has to do with how tenderly and lovingly she cares for her daughter. Sxela knows that she is loved unconditionally by her mother and father, SooJin’s love for Sxela so palpable at every moment. It is this love that has brought healing to SooJin: as she cares for her daughter, she is caring for the child that she once was, a child who so needed to be loved and cared for in the way that SooJin cares for and loves Sxela. It’s a truism that we parent not only our children but also the vulnerable child that we once were and still are, the inner child.
I think that one of the reasons why we are still so enthralled with Jesus, even after two thousand years of hearing these stories, is that somehow Jesus doesn’t forget these truths, truths that many in his day and in ours tend to forget. Call it an exceptional intuition, or a divine gift: somehow Jesus remembers that all humans are born as extremely vulnerable creatures, that we remain very fragile beings despite all our efforts, and that our lives end in vulnerability and weakness. Jesus remembers what those in his day and you and I in ours try very hard to forget, what you and I work so very hard to avoid. So I imagine Jesus watching this scene at this banquet, of people jockeying for position around the table, of invited guests sizing themselves and each other up to figure out who’s where on the social pecking order, with a bit of bemusement and perhaps some sadness. Over and over he has been trying to get people to live into and live out the gospel, the good news, that God is on the side of the poor, the imprisoned, the blind and battered. Over and over he has shown through his storytelling and his own life that God’s table is one where the marginalized are brought into the center of social life. And why? Jesus is very clear: the good news to the poor and the marginalized is not charity, it is not the haves helping the have-nots, it’s not about the privileged deigning to help paternalistically those less fortunate. No, God’s banquet, where not just all but especially the outcast, the social pariahs, are invited and welcome is one where we learn that in caring for these we are actually caring for, being tender to, ourselves, whom we once were and whom we will certainly become if we aren’t there already.
Mind you, in this gospel lesson there is nothing wrong with what the Pharisee is doing. True, members of his sect have been tussling with Jesus over theological and legal matters in 1st century Judaism, but he has the presence of mind to invite Jesus to a dinner feast with other illustrious, well-respected members of the community. From what we read, he’s been nothing but gracious to Jesus, and the guests at the dinner aren’t really ill-tempered people either. I would venture to guess that most if not all of us would want to be just as well-mannered as those who are at this dinner with Jesus: wear appropriate clothing to the party, hold your wine glass and sip just so, know enough trivia to engage in entertaining small talk, greet hosts and fellow guests with just the proper demeanor. If you and I were hosting this party, you and I might worry about who sits where too, which muckety-muck would get along with which village elder. But there’s something that Jesus notices, something that he remembers, that this Pharisee and his guests, with all their good intentions, have forgotten somewhere along their lives as they worked their way up the social ladder. Somehow, as they gained greater stake in their social world, to become the leaders, the movers and shakers of their community, the responsible ones, the respectable ones, they forgot that they once started their lives in weakness and vulnerability, and that someday they will become once again weak and vulnerable.
“But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.” It’s not, Jesus is saying, that the poor and the disabled are so very different creatures from the well-to do and the able bodied, that the Pharisee has more in common with his rich neighbor than the poor homeless person on the outskirts of town. No, Jesus is telling this host, and reminding you and me, we are never very far from those we consider the down and out, we are all a step away from being poor, crippled, lame and blind. Those of us who are getting on our years know this all the more, much more palpably: as our bodies weaken, as limbs and organs start failing us, as we become less “productive” economically, we seem to lose our social value in a society that rewards ableness, productivity, respectability, power. But health, power, status, wealth, Jesus reminds us, are all temporary way stations to the village that we all are heading toward: the village of the sick, the disabled, the poor, the outcast. That is our fate; this is the reality of our common humanity. And so when Jesus implores us to invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind, he’s reminding us that in feeding those who are already in that village, we feed our future selves, and we invite a new way of relating to each other where we feast together not in our shared respectability, but in our shared weakness and vulnerability.
For you see, sisters and brothers, it is in the weak places, the marginal places, the poor places, where God dwells, not just the geographic places, but those places in our hearts and souls that are weak, that are despised, that are disabled. God dwells there too. Roman Catholic theologian Jean Vanier discerned this reality of God’s dwelling when in 1964, he invited two men to live with him. Troubled by what he saw was the sending away of people with mental and intellectual disability into asylums where they were forgotten by society, Vanier invited Raphael Simi and Philippe Seux to leave this institution and to live with him and a Catholic priest in a small town in France. This communal residence was the founding of L’Arche, or the Ark, a place in which people with disabilities and those who assist them live in community, sharing life together, developing friendships as members attend to their changing needs. At L’Arche, people with disabilities, especially with those who are extremely vulnerable due to old age or multiple disabilities are lifted up and supported, all to “highlight the unique capacity of persons with disabilities to enrich relationships and to build communities where the values of compassion, inclusion and diversity are upheld and lived by each person.” L’Arche, Vanier reminds us, isn’t charity, and it isn’t benevolence, but a community that is a sign of shared humanity: as the disabled are given the same human dignity as the able-bodied, the table is set, not because of shared respectability, or wit, or cool, but in honoring each other’s fragilities, we set a table of tenderness that is really God’s approach to God’s world.
When we invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind, to our tables, we invite our future, fragile selves, and in doing so we begin our journey to the village of vulnerability that is all our futures. But we do more than that. When we invite those already there into the center of our lives, we begin to build in our lives the house of love to replace the house of fear, the house of hospitality to replace the house of respectability. We begin the work of building God’s reign here, now, for God’s people—the poor, the disabled, those whom we will someday become—so that when we find ourselves entering that village, who will be greeting us but our brother Jesus? With table set, food and drink prepared, all of God’s children sitting there, he will say to you and me in his most tender voice, “Come, dinner is ready.”
You may remember my friend SooJin, who visited here last May to witness the baptism of our daughter and her goddaughter Jihae. This past week SooJin walked her five-year old daughter Sxela to kindergarten. There are pictures of them walking to school and of Sxela sitting at her table, of the cubby where she places her backpack. There’s another photo that SooJin took last week, of Sxela in a pretty blue and white dress. It is this dress that my friend SooJin wore when she arrived in the US from Korea, adopted at the age of five after being taken from her mother 31 years ago. As she put it, she is so happy to pass on this dress to her daughter without passing on the trauma that this dress represented through much of her life. SooJin has been able to give to Sxela this beautiful dress without the horrible trauma that she once associated it with and I think it has to do with how tenderly and lovingly she cares for her daughter. Sxela knows that she is loved unconditionally by her mother and father, SooJin’s love for Sxela so palpable at every moment. It is this love that has brought healing to SooJin: as she cares for her daughter, she is caring for the child that she once was, a child who so needed to be loved and cared for in the way that SooJin cares for and loves Sxela. It’s a truism that we parent not only our children but also the vulnerable child that we once were and still are, the inner child.
I think that one of the reasons why we are still so enthralled with Jesus, even after two thousand years of hearing these stories, is that somehow Jesus doesn’t forget these truths, truths that many in his day and in ours tend to forget. Call it an exceptional intuition, or a divine gift: somehow Jesus remembers that all humans are born as extremely vulnerable creatures, that we remain very fragile beings despite all our efforts, and that our lives end in vulnerability and weakness. Jesus remembers what those in his day and you and I in ours try very hard to forget, what you and I work so very hard to avoid. So I imagine Jesus watching this scene at this banquet, of people jockeying for position around the table, of invited guests sizing themselves and each other up to figure out who’s where on the social pecking order, with a bit of bemusement and perhaps some sadness. Over and over he has been trying to get people to live into and live out the gospel, the good news, that God is on the side of the poor, the imprisoned, the blind and battered. Over and over he has shown through his storytelling and his own life that God’s table is one where the marginalized are brought into the center of social life. And why? Jesus is very clear: the good news to the poor and the marginalized is not charity, it is not the haves helping the have-nots, it’s not about the privileged deigning to help paternalistically those less fortunate. No, God’s banquet, where not just all but especially the outcast, the social pariahs, are invited and welcome is one where we learn that in caring for these we are actually caring for, being tender to, ourselves, whom we once were and whom we will certainly become if we aren’t there already.
Mind you, in this gospel lesson there is nothing wrong with what the Pharisee is doing. True, members of his sect have been tussling with Jesus over theological and legal matters in 1st century Judaism, but he has the presence of mind to invite Jesus to a dinner feast with other illustrious, well-respected members of the community. From what we read, he’s been nothing but gracious to Jesus, and the guests at the dinner aren’t really ill-tempered people either. I would venture to guess that most if not all of us would want to be just as well-mannered as those who are at this dinner with Jesus: wear appropriate clothing to the party, hold your wine glass and sip just so, know enough trivia to engage in entertaining small talk, greet hosts and fellow guests with just the proper demeanor. If you and I were hosting this party, you and I might worry about who sits where too, which muckety-muck would get along with which village elder. But there’s something that Jesus notices, something that he remembers, that this Pharisee and his guests, with all their good intentions, have forgotten somewhere along their lives as they worked their way up the social ladder. Somehow, as they gained greater stake in their social world, to become the leaders, the movers and shakers of their community, the responsible ones, the respectable ones, they forgot that they once started their lives in weakness and vulnerability, and that someday they will become once again weak and vulnerable.
“But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.” It’s not, Jesus is saying, that the poor and the disabled are so very different creatures from the well-to do and the able bodied, that the Pharisee has more in common with his rich neighbor than the poor homeless person on the outskirts of town. No, Jesus is telling this host, and reminding you and me, we are never very far from those we consider the down and out, we are all a step away from being poor, crippled, lame and blind. Those of us who are getting on our years know this all the more, much more palpably: as our bodies weaken, as limbs and organs start failing us, as we become less “productive” economically, we seem to lose our social value in a society that rewards ableness, productivity, respectability, power. But health, power, status, wealth, Jesus reminds us, are all temporary way stations to the village that we all are heading toward: the village of the sick, the disabled, the poor, the outcast. That is our fate; this is the reality of our common humanity. And so when Jesus implores us to invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind, he’s reminding us that in feeding those who are already in that village, we feed our future selves, and we invite a new way of relating to each other where we feast together not in our shared respectability, but in our shared weakness and vulnerability.
For you see, sisters and brothers, it is in the weak places, the marginal places, the poor places, where God dwells, not just the geographic places, but those places in our hearts and souls that are weak, that are despised, that are disabled. God dwells there too. Roman Catholic theologian Jean Vanier discerned this reality of God’s dwelling when in 1964, he invited two men to live with him. Troubled by what he saw was the sending away of people with mental and intellectual disability into asylums where they were forgotten by society, Vanier invited Raphael Simi and Philippe Seux to leave this institution and to live with him and a Catholic priest in a small town in France. This communal residence was the founding of L’Arche, or the Ark, a place in which people with disabilities and those who assist them live in community, sharing life together, developing friendships as members attend to their changing needs. At L’Arche, people with disabilities, especially with those who are extremely vulnerable due to old age or multiple disabilities are lifted up and supported, all to “highlight the unique capacity of persons with disabilities to enrich relationships and to build communities where the values of compassion, inclusion and diversity are upheld and lived by each person.” L’Arche, Vanier reminds us, isn’t charity, and it isn’t benevolence, but a community that is a sign of shared humanity: as the disabled are given the same human dignity as the able-bodied, the table is set, not because of shared respectability, or wit, or cool, but in honoring each other’s fragilities, we set a table of tenderness that is really God’s approach to God’s world.
When we invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind, to our tables, we invite our future, fragile selves, and in doing so we begin our journey to the village of vulnerability that is all our futures. But we do more than that. When we invite those already there into the center of our lives, we begin to build in our lives the house of love to replace the house of fear, the house of hospitality to replace the house of respectability. We begin the work of building God’s reign here, now, for God’s people—the poor, the disabled, those whom we will someday become—so that when we find ourselves entering that village, who will be greeting us but our brother Jesus? With table set, food and drink prepared, all of God’s children sitting there, he will say to you and me in his most tender voice, “Come, dinner is ready.”
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