Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, Year B, July 28,2024

History is complicated. When I first entered college 25 years ago, I was a history major. I took many fascinating classes, and learned a lot of information about a number of things. The most eye-opening course however, was Historiography. Historiography is the study of how to write history. The study of History itself can take two different tracks; one is the exploration, recovery, and recording of historical events in chronological order, a bare statement of facts and figures, a bit like retroactive journalism. This is the stuff of archeology, anthropology, paleontology, even theoretical physics as it explores the universe to better understand how this universe came to be. It is largely a scientific pursuit. It relies on empiricism, verifiability, evidence, hypotheses and testing hypotheses, until a reliable record of events can be reviewed by one’s academic peers and broadly accepted as the facts about a given subject. Every attempt is made at neutrality, writing as unbiased a record as possible in hopes of leaving future generations as clear a picture as possible of events as they happened. The other track is interpretation of the facts. These historians take the facts and make meaning from the bare record, writing the story of a time, a place, a person or a people, to help us understand not just what happened and how, but why it happened, and what it means for us now, how we might avoid the same mistakes or repeat the same triumphs. These narratives become part of who we are, how we understand ourselves and our place in the world, how we justify or make amends for our actions in the past, how we explain ourselves to others and to ourselves. And this is where history gets complicated. The first type of history can change. As new evidence comes to light, archeological discoveries are made, and new technologies produce more capacity to extract and examine more information, the historical record can change, replacing misunderstanding and misinformation with better understanding and better information. Most Americans know the story of George Washington and the cherry tree, when as a child, George uses his new axe to chop down the prized tree. When confronted by his parents, George fesses up, famously saying, axe in one hand, the other over his heart, “I cannot tell a lie.” Thus, Washington looms large in our hearts as the epitome of the ever elusive “honest politician.” So, it is of little note and almost no consequence that there is zero evidence that this event ever transpired, meaning that though the story is factually false, it still contains some sort of truth we felt we needed. We needed a truth that bare facts could not supply. And we don’t tend to like it when facts get in the way of the meaning we have made. Today, we celebrate All Saints’ Day, a day set aside to remember our history. A day to honor those faithful believers who have gone before us to show us the way of grace and truth. We remember those sainted dead, those holy foremothers and fathers, who lived this life of faith before us and whose stories tell us who we are. We recall grandparents and parents aunts and uncles, siblings, friends, pastors and Sunday School teachers, camp counselors and Bible study leaders, campus ministers and youth group leaders, spouses, colleagues, and acquaintances who loved us into the Kingdom of God and have now shuffled loose this mortal coil, existing just beyond our grasp. And as we recall these fond memories it’s often not the facts that we recall, but the stories, the tales of meaning that have endeared these saints to our memory and knit their lives into our very identity, and our very identities into the life of God. But when we recall the stories without an ear to the facts we often diminish the truth and weaken the story. We have not come to this point in the history of the world or the history of the church “standing on the shoulders of giants” as we like to imagine. Rather, we have come here upon a hill of skulls a mountain of death and sin, and pain, upon the Cross of Christ. There are no saints who were not first sinners. There are no saints who were not first redeemed. There are no saints who have not come through the great ordeal and washed their robes in the blood of the lamb. When we tell the stories without the facts we deceive ourselves into thinking that we might be able to live this life without pain. That we might escape misfortune, suffering, death. That those saints were somehow spiritual superheroes, or that life was less complicated back then. But Jesus tells us otherwise. Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor.” Jesus does not say “Cursed are the poor.” Jesus does not say, “If you really believe in me, you won’t be poor.” Jesus doesn’t say, “It is God’s will that you should be poor.” No, Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor.” Blessed are the hungry; Blessed are those who weep; Blessed are the rejected.” AND “Woe to the rich, woe to those who are satisfied, woe to those laughing now, woe to those with good reputations.” Jesus says that life in this world will bring poverty and wealth, hunger and satisfaction, weeping and laughing, with rejection and good repute. Jesus is laying out the facts, giving us the evidence, giving us an accurate picture of the way of the world. But Jesus, like a good historian, is also giving us a story, making meaning of the facts. Jesus tells us that the bare facts will not define us, nor will the grand sweep of history consume us. Neither poverty nor wealth, hunger nor fullness, weeping nor laughing will last forever. This life is filled with tragedy and celebration, pain and pleasure, loss and leisure, suffering and satisfaction, death and resurrection. And God is making meaning of it all. God is telling a story, a truth that takes the facts seriously and is yet bigger than the sum of its parts, a truth that makes meaning of all the suffering and sorrow, a truth that makes saints out of sinners, a truth that brings life out of death. We are living in a historic moment. Today is day 33 of a government shutdown, leaving federal workers unpaid and relying on food banks to eat. These already strained food banks are now the primary source of food for some 42 million neighbors who rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP— formerly food stamps— to eat and feed their families. Jesus’ advice to his followers in light of the facts of life, the blessings and woes, is that we should treat others the way we want to be treated. As we look back at the saints who brought us here, we must also look in the mirror, at the saints God is calling us to be. The hungry are blessed because Jesus calls us to be a blessing. The late Pope Francis said, “First you pray for the hungry, then you feed them, because that’s how prayer works.” Beloved, we are the saints. We have come through blessing and woe, hunger and fullness, weeping and laughing, to possess this kingdom of God in this very life. This is what made those who went before us saints, and this is what will make those who come after us saints, that by the Love of God, in spite of all the facts, God is making meaning of all life’s blessings and woes, turning us toward each other in Love, in goodness and prayer, in nonviolence and generosity. God is making meaning of the facts of this life by making saints of each of us, so that, with the eyes of our heart enlightened, we may perceive what is the hope to which we have been called, the riches of God’s glorious inheritance among the saints, and the immeasurable greatness of God’s power in Christ for us who trust in the truth according to the working of his great power. So, give to the poor, feed the hungry, comfort the weeping, and let your reputation be that of a redeemed sinner in this life. This is a life with meaning. Amen.

Today, we mark the 508 th anniversary of the events we now call the Reformation. We call ourselves Lutherans, a name chosen for us by our detractors, because we admire and hold as true much of the writing and thinking of Martin Luther, an Augustinian Monk and accidental change agent, who wrote prolifically, polemically, and sometimes transformatively. What Luther intended to be an academic critique of the corruption and heterodoxy of the Roman Church became instead the underpinning of a new Church, proclaiming justification by grace alone through faith alone. While we do not celebrate schism— praying alongside our Catholic siblings for the unity Jesus prayed for on the night of his betrayal and arrest— we commemorate these events as a movement of the Holy Spirit to renew and enliven the Church to proclaim the Gospel of God’s love. This remembering is important. We see in our first reading from Jeremiah the price of forgetting. The weeping prophet extols the people of God to remember when God took them by the hand and led them out of slavery in Egypt; to remember when they abandoned the covenant, to remember their infidelity to God despite their intimate, spousal relationship with God. God promises an unbreakable covenant, a law inscribed on the hearts of God’s people. They won’t have to remind each other, because everyone will already be acutely aware of who they are and Whose they are. In our Gospel lesson, Jesus says, if you continue in my word, you will be my true disciples and you will be free.” But the people of Judea are forgetful, preferring to remember themselves as the promised children of Abraham instead of the rescued slaves of Pharoah. “We’ve never been slaves to anyone,” said these Hebrew people, whose central, generative, defining national story is being lead out of slavery in Egypt… and out of bondage to the Babylonians, and the Assyrians, and the Persians, and the Greeks, and now they are occupied by the Romans. Jesus says that they are still slaves to the sin that has insnared them, and the Greco-Roman culture that has enthralled them, and if they would just remember the truth, they would be free indeed. We, too, are a forgetful people. This is why we commemorate the Reformation. This is why the liturgical calendar is a circle, repeated on a three-year cycle. Because we forget, again and again, and need to be reminded, again and again. We look back at history as a static reality, firm and immovable events that tell us who we are. Thing A happened, therefore Thing B happened, and so we can draw Meaning X as our conclusion. So mark your calendars, and we will commemorate Meaning X every year, just like this, forever and ever, Amen. But I think we have missed the whole point. I think history itself and the meanings we infer, can teach us a much larger story. Instead of focusing on individual events and drawing universal and immutable conclusions, we should see that the whole of history is itself a repeating pattern of order, disorder, and reorder. There is ‘the way things were,’ a change occurs, and this is the way things are now. To use our own story, the pattern is life, death, and resurrection. We are invited less to believe that these things happened, more to recognize our own experience in this story, and to remember that resurrection is always coming, and to trust in that fact. This is faith: God is faithful and invites us to trust this is true. Knowing this truth, experiencing this truth, recognizing this truth, is faith that justifies, because it is this trust that draws us close to the very heart of God. History is not a bare repetition of events, anymore than the Creeds are an invitation to see how many seemingly impossible things we can force ourselves to believe. History is remembering that life and death and resurrection is the pattern of the cosmos, the very nature of reality. The reformation was not a singular event. The reformation is the eternal work of the Holy Spirit, who is always making things new. God is forming, we are breaking, and the Spirit is re-forming, again and again. The call to faith, is better understood as a call to faithfulness, a call to fidelity, to trust that God’s re-forming work in the Spirit will repair all we have broken, and we are free to stop doing all this breaking. If we want to be Jesus’s disciples, we will not have to muster up some deep and abiding belief in the promises of God. If we want to be Jesus’s disciples, we will have to remain in Jesus’ word— that is, we will have to remember all the times we have lived the pattern of life, death, and resurrection; we will have to trust that God is faithful, even when we are not. And if life, death, and resurrection is the pattern of the cosmos, then the path of discipleship is the work of grief, the work of remaining committed to reality as it is, not as we wish it was, not as it used to be, but AS. IT. IS. And the world as it is needs committed disciples of Jesus. The world does not need us to pine for former glories, to hang on tooth and nail to bygone eras of greater influence, overflowing Sunday School rooms, and programming 7 nights a week. The world does not need us to fight our corner of a theological debate, to build a Christian Nation, or mandate school prayer. But the world does need people who know the truth and can set us free. The world needs people who remember who and Whose they are. The world needs disciples committed to grieve, committed to bearing witness to each other’s grief, and committed to letting go of all the things we use to avoid our grief. We need disciples who will make a new path by walking it. We need seers who can feel the sacred energy in rocks and trees and earth, because they found it first in water and bread and wine, and recognizing it here, can teach us that the whole cosmos is the incarnation of God’s very self and must be cared for as a sacred trust. We need folks who can see a neighbor in need and become a neighbor in return. We need the spiritual-but-not-religious ones to teach these religious-but-not-often-spiritual ones how to love the world as it is until we are united in a spiritual community. We need mystics and mothers, we need farmers and poets; we need lovers and fighters, advocates and accomplices. We need to let the world know that God is not mad at any of us, but that God invites us all to both know better and do better. We need folks who know— who remember, who have been around the cycle of life, death, and resurrection a few times and can remind the rest of us to hang on until resurrection comes again. Reformation is not our past, as though it were behind us. Reformation is the nature of reality, the calling of discipleship, the eternal work of the Holy Spirit. We are made right with God because God is love and grace is how love behaves. We are made right with God because God is faithful even when we are not. So, If we would be disciples of Jesus, if we would be children of the Reformation; let us learn to grieve, learn to remember, and become the Love and Grace we seek, because the world needs dying and rising disciples who will speak the truth and set us free. Amen. 

Have you ever had one of those days where you can’t find your glasses, or your phone, or your keys, and despite all your frantic searching, turning purses inside-out, going through the junk drawer twice, and checking all the pockets of all the clothes in the hamper, you’re still empty handed? And then someone, a spouse, a child, a roommate finally seems to notice that you’ve turned the couch upside-down and all the cushions are in a pile and says, “What are you looking for?” before pointing out that your glasses are on your head, or the flashlight your using is your phone, or your keys are in your other hand? Yeah. Who hasn’t been there. My aunt once found her keys in the refrigerator, dropped there when she was putting away groceries. I knew a lady who had driven all over town retracing the steps of her busy day to find her phone, only to be flagged down by a fellow driver who wanted to tell her that her phone was stuck to the roof of her car by the magnetic charging strip. I myself have spent a good amount of time looking for my glasses only to discover that I was wearing them. And such a moment of realization, is a mix of emotions: relief at finding the “lost” object, embarrassment at how obtuse you’d been, exhaustion from the physical act of searching and the re-regulation of cortisol, dopamine serotonin and oxytocin. Often, we end up in this state as a result of some other stress. We are looking for our glasses because we need to focus our attention on something hard to see. We are looking for our phone because we need some information or some connection and conversation. We are searching for our keys because we need to leave to get where we are going on time. Similarly, it is often moments of internal and external stress that drive us to search for God. In moments of anxiety, we search for a God who will prevent negative outcomes. In moments of anger, we search for a God who will punish our enemies and vindicate us. In moments of grief, we want a God who will bargain with us, who will help us find some way to avoid this sense of loss. And in these moments of great stress God proves as hard to find as any pair of glasses, phone, or set of keys. Each of our readings today focus on a hidden God and the struggle to find them. Jacob and his whole household are on the run from his guilty conscience. After defrauding his older brother of their father’s blessing and inheritance, he’s convinced that Esau is out to get him. Sending his family on ahead of him, Jacob wrestles all night with what the reading calls “a man.” It is only it is only 7 verses later that we are able to infer that Jacob has wrestled with God all night long when he names the place something like, “The place I met God face-to-face.” Jacob’s struggle lands him a new name, “wrestles with God,” Or “Israel” in Hebrew, a name later taken by the whole people of God. Jacob had to wrestle, to struggle, to grapple, to refuse to let go of this hidden and unnamed God to find the peace he was looking for. Jacob walked away with a new perspective on God, and limping from the fight. In II Timothy, the author is writing to a community beset by persecution, in need of some kind of guidance, experiencing big changes in the Church, and hoping to hear from God just how they should proceed. The author, who is almost certainly not the Apostle Paul, but borrowing the authority of Paul and his relationship to Timothy to address these concerns with a pastor’s heart and the apostle’s gravitas, hopes to both encourage and instruct the covert community. The author tells them to remember what they learned— the gospel— and from whom they learned it— the Apostle Paul. Then he points them to the Scriptures, which he describes as “inspired”, “in-spirited,” or “God-breathed.” The Greek word used here is a sort of portmanteau, a combination of the word for a “god” and the word that variously means breath, wind, spirit. Other writers of the time use the world to mean “life-giving.” We might see this passage, then, as telling us that God is hidden in the scriptures. Luther taught that the scriptures contain the Word of God like the manger held the infant Christ; it is full of both the Word and so much straw. It takes a bit of sorting to cling to the Word and let go of the straw. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus tells a parable instead of just making his point directly. And in his parable, there is not a character who is easily identifiable as God. He has a persistent widow— on the bottom of the social ladder— and an unjust judge— conversely, having cheated his way to very near the top of that same ladder. The widow persists until this judge grants justice as an acquiescence for his own convenience. Each of these passages is about struggle, wrestling, making a defense, debate, reproof, rebuke, persistence, resilience, endurance. Jacob wrestles with God, The epistle encourages the reader to endure suffering, and the parable commends the widow’s perseverance. If we misunderstand faith to be simply belief, then there is no room for struggle, for wrestling, for grappling. Any disbelief is too much. Reality, rather than revealing God to us, becomes proof that there is no good and loving God. If there is any God, he— always a ‘he’ in this estimation— is like this unjust judge, granting justice only infrequently and only when cajoled or forced into it. But the collective witness of these readings gives us a God who is hidden in the depths of reality, in the wisdom of Scriptures, and in the slant-rhyme of parables that land on our ears as an approximation of deeper truth. Jesus comes to show us a faith beyond belief— a lived experience of the good news of the gospel truth. You don’t need to be persuaded of a truth you have experienced for yourself. The mystery of faith, “Christ has died. Christ is Risen. Christ will come again.” sounds like wishful thinking, a mantra we hope to manifest by our positive affirmation, until you realize that the Truth we are searching for was in our hands the whole time. This mystery of faith should be a reminder that we have all been living inside the cycle of Life, and Death, and Resurrection this whole time. Paula D’Arcy tells us that “God comes to us disguised as our lives.” The God for which we have been searching is showing up all the time. God is showing up in the struggle, in the wrestling, in the sorting of Word and straw, in the persistence, in the waiting, in our dying and rising, in all our hopes and fears, trust and disbelief. The Gospel, the good news, is that God loves us, has saved us, is redeeming the world, even when we can’t see it right in front of us. So, when that is hard to believe, stay in the fight, wrestle, struggle, endure. Keep searching. Remember all the times you have experienced the cycle of life, death, and resurrection, return to the places and people that help you remember, and dare to hope, to trust, that it will happen again. The God we have been searching for has been near us, in the font, on the table and on our lips this whole time. Remaining committed to the struggle, wrestling, enduring, persevering, this is faithfulness— this is faith. Christ has died in you. Christ is risen in you. Christ will come again in you. And when the Son of Man returns, will he find faithfulness in us? Amen.

‘Tis a gift to be simple ‘tis a gift to be free ‘tis a gift to come round where we ought to be and when we find ourselves in the place just right ‘twill be in the valley of love and delight. This well-known hymn comes from the Shaker tradition, a group of Christian ascetics founded in New England just before the Revolutionary War. Ann Lee— or Mother Ann, as the Shakers would call her— was born the daughter of a factory worker in Manchester England, In 1770, Ann had a vision of Jesus that changed her life. A Quaker, Ann told her story and her views to the Society of Friends in Manchester, and she was summarily rejected. Ann and those who adopted her views came to New England in 1774, and founded a community in the midst of the First Great Awakening. Her community practiced ecstatic dances, leading the worshipers to convulse in beatific rapture, and they became known as the Shaking Quakers, and later the Shakers. They were defined by their dancing, by belief in racial and gender equality, by the practice of celibacy, and by their craftsmanship. With her “hands to work and heart to God,” Mother Ann told the community to “Do all your work as if you had a thousand years to live, and as you would if you knew you would die tomorrow.” One writer of the time described the Shakers this way, “[their way of life] was simple, the way the gospel of Christ was simple.” When I read through the lectionary for this week, I couldn’t help but think of the Shakers and this hymn. I’ve hummed it all week. In II Kings, Namaan comes to see the prophet in Israel. He comes with an entourage, in robes and finery, at the invitation of a King. Namaan has leprosy, and he’s desperate for a cure. When he arrives at the gates of the prophet’s home, he isn’t met in kind. Instead of a red carpet and regal pageantry he’s met by a servant with a message. “Go and wash in the Jordan seven times, and you will be clean.” Namaan goes from state visit to a state of shock. Insulted and incredulous, Namaan turns the whole caravan around to head home instead of wading in the muddy Jordan seven times. But one of his servants approaches Namaan to ask why he won’t comply with such a simple request. When true simplicity is gained, to bow and to bend we will not be ashamed. Against his better judgement, Namaan complies, and to his great surprise, he is healed of his disease. Then he turns back again, bringing gifts and his gratitude to the prophet. To turn, turn then will be our delight, ‘til by turning, turning we come round right. We see a similar story in the Gospel. Ten lepers cry out, “Jesus, Master; have mercy on us!” Jesus tells them to go and show themselves to the priest. As they turn, they are healed, and off they go. But one of them, the foreigner, turns back again, making his way to Jesus and giving his thanks. ‘til by turning, turning we come round right. Namaan wanted something a little more flashy, something that looked like it was worth the trip, something to tell folks back home. He couldn’t accept that the healing he sought could be so simple. Or maybe, he couldn’t believe that something that had plagued him so long could be so easily discarded. The ten lepers in our Gospel, didn’t even dare approach Jesus. They yell their prayer over a distance, and Jesus yells his instructions back. Only the Samaritan now-former-leper turns back, covers the distance between them, and bows to show his gratitude. When true simplicity is gained, to bow and to bend we will not be ashamed. Like Namaan, the world we live in, the zeitgeist that haunts our media landscape and our newsfeeds and For You pages, seem too complicated, too urgent and important, too long endured to be washed away in muddy water. Surely our times are too sophisticated, too educated, too curated and wi-fi enabled to find the cure for what ails us in something so simple as the gospel of Jesus Christ. Long before the Shakers, as the Church and the Roman Empire began to merge into a single entity and newly empowered bishops began “wrangling over words” and jockeying for ecclesial power, mystics hoping for a simple way to follow Jesus walked into the deserts on the outskirts of the Empire and devoted themselves to solitude, to silence, and to prayer. Their prayer was derived from this very Gospel text— among many others— “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.” This short prayer, easily memorized and often repeated, became a simple way to follow Jesus in a pre-literate culture, and has remained a primary spiritual devotion of Eastern Christians, both monastics and laity. Writing of this prayer, Swedish theologian Per-Olof Sjögren says, It is a summary of the whole gospel; God sent [the] son to be a redemption for the sins of [humanity]. [God] let him die and rise again so that today he lives and reigns eternally as Lord over the living and the dead. If we go through the Creed attentively and thoughtfully, we find a summary of the whole content of the Bible. Similarly, those who pray the Jesus Prayer thoughtfully find the same: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me. Every word is heavy with meaning. Every word gives the richest associations to those who know their Bible. Besides being a direct prayer to Jesus, it contains also teaching about him about his work of redemption his dignity as king, his deity, and his loving mercy. Mystics and mothers, monks and millworkers, priests and peasants have prayed this simple prayer. The repetition of it is one thing, but focused attention on it is another. Contemplation is the practice of sustained attention on the presence of God. To invoke the Name of Jesus is to acknowledge the presence of Jesus. When our attention wanders away, we are to turn again toward the ever-present Jesus. And when it wanders again, we turn again. ‘til by turning, turning, we come round right. Both the Shakers and the desert mystics knew that if they remained attached to, enthralled by, the overly complicated ways of empires they could not devote themselves to the simple way of Jesus. They did not see the gospel as a calling to change the world. They saw the gospel as a promise that they would be transformed by the simplicity of the way of Jesus. And Jesus would change the world. The reluctant obedience of Namaan transformed him and filled him with gratitude, turning his heart toward the God of Israel. The lepers’ obedience to Jesus’ instructions helped the Samaritan leper recognize mercy when he received it. Similarly, our faithfulness to the simple way of Jesus transforms us in mercy to be merciful in a merciless world. When we find our attention has been stolen by the constant barrage of our overly complicated world, turn again. When the simple way of Jesus seems too simple to be effective, turn to the water anyway. When the healing power of God’s mercy meets you on the road, let it stop you in your tracks and turn you back to Jesus. When others are wrangling over words, remember the whole of the gospel is summed up in this simple prayer— Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me— and let it turn your heart to the heart of God in Christ Jesus. We cannot be responsible for the whole world. But we can turn toward the gospel and turn toward our neighbor. We can turn toward Jesus. And when we find ourselves in the place just right, ‘twill be in the valley of Love and Delight. Amen.

There is a lot of suffering in the world right now. There is still war raging in Ukraine and threatening to spill over into NATO territory triggering WWIII. The Israeli offensive in Gaza has killed tens of thousands, orchestrated food shortages, and has been condemned as genocide the world over. Decades, if not centuries, of social and political turmoil in Central and South America— as well as many other parts of the world— has driven desperate people from their homes to make a dangerous voyage, often on foot, through uninhabitable deserts and tropical forests, pleading safe passage from marauding gangs and larcenous ‘coyotes’ looking to profit from their desperation, all for the mere hope of a better life in the US. And now a government formed in our name has made a scapegoat of these people and is using gestapo tactics to harass and intimidate, to disappear and incarcerate them. Our outreach ministries here have centered around addressing widespread hunger, worsened by the pandemic, and the rising cost of food and housing. It might be easy to share Habakkuk’s frustration. “O LORD, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you ‘Violence!’ and you will not save? Why do you make me see wrong-doing and look at trouble? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise. So the law becomes slack, and justice never prevails. The wicked surround the righteous—therefore judgment comes forth perverted.” And yet, some take a different tack. Some look at all the violence, poverty, destruction, and tragedy, in the world and thank God that they have been spared. #Blessed. Trusting that they have escaped by their innocence, and that in the end, God will deliver believers from the ultimate destruction of all this anyway. Some look at the world and ask, Why do bad things happen to good people? Others look at the same world and their own lives and conclude that bad things don’t happen to good people. These other folks might pray like these apostles in our gospel reading. Give us more faith, make us more righteous, protect us even more from all the evil in the world. Both the stressed and the #Blessed believe that God has the power to transform the world, to end all suffering, to rescue and redeem. One person wonders what’s taking so long, and the other wants an extra helping. But the response that the scriptures give for both requests is the same. In our reading in Habakkuk, there is a mistranslation at the end of verse 4. In the original Hebrew that verse reads more like “the person of integrity will live because of their faithfulness.” The righteous do not live because of their faith but those with integrity live because of their fidelity. Their faithfulness to the law and the prophets creates the world they yearn for. In our Gospel reading Jesus responds to the request for more faith with a pair of parables. Faithfulness the size of a mustard seed has miraculous power, and you won’t get extra credit for obeying a commandment. Jesus’ responds, “Your fidelity is more than enough to impact the world around you; so, get busy.” Both Jesus’ response to these apostles and God’s response to Habakkuk remind me of a quote from Abdu’l-Bahá, the founder of the Baha’i faith. Abdu’l-Bahá said, “Sometimes I want to ask God why he allows poverty, famine, and injustice when he can do something about it, but I’m afraid he just might ask me the same question.” What good is our faith if it doesn’t make us more faithful? What good is our belief if our lives make the gospel unbelievable? What good is our trust if our neighbors can’t trust us? What good is our hope for salvation if it means the world’s destruction? God is standing in solidarity with the poor, with the hungry, with the victims of injustice and asking us, “What is taking you so long?” “How long, O Church, shall I cry out for help and you will not listen? Or cry ‘Violence!” and you will not save?” “Why do you make me see wrong-doing and look at trouble?” “When, O Church, will you live with integrity?” Christ has come to us in the person of the poor, the hungry, the vulnerable to ask us to give him something to eat, knowing that fidelity the size of a mustard seed can perform miracles, and there are no gold stars or merit badges for obeying the commandments. The issue was never our faith, but our faithfulness. We have the power and the invitation to be partners with God in remaking the world around us, in doing something about the poverty, famine, and injustice together. If we are #Blessed it is to be a #Blessing. At Christ’s table, we are all servers, unworthy of special praise because of the measure of our faith, which is itself a gift from God, but called by this faith to increase our faithfulness, our integrity, in grateful response to God’s faithfulness and integrity. Beloved, the good news is that we have the power and the invitation to join God in becoming the answer to our prayers. How long, O Church, will we put up with poverty, famine, and injustice when God has given us the power to do something about it? Amen.

Now I know the first day of fall was only Monday, but I’m already thinking about Christmas. Ebenezer Scrooge is a mean-spirited and selfish old man, who hates Christmas. He is very unkind to the people who work for him. One cold Christmas Eve, on his way home, he sees people taking donations for charity and he refuses to give anything. Then, when his nephew invites him to spend Christmas with him and his family, the only people who look past his old, grumpy demeanor, Scrooge still refuses. Eventually, Scrooge makes his way home and gets into bed. In his sleep, he is visited by the ghost of his old business partner Jacob Marley – and then three other ghosts – The first is the ghost of Christmas Past who takes him on a journey through Christmases from his past, through his unhappy childhood, and showing Scrooge himself as young man more in love with money than his own fiancée. Then the ghost of Christmas Present visits and Scrooge is whisked away to observe his clerk’s family. There outside their home, Scrooge can see Tiny Tim, a very ill child, who is still full of love and joy, even in the midst of so much heartache. This ghost also takes him to his nephew’s home to see the Christmas celebration he missed. The final ghost, the ghost of Christmas Future, absolutely terrifies Scrooge with visions of his own death. In today’s gospel there is a rich man who reminds me an awful lot of Scrooge. We don’t know this man’s name, though Church tradition would call him Dives. Jesus describes him living a lavish lifestyle, rich in food and friends. There is a gate around his estate to keep away the riffraff. He has the privilege to ignore anyone who might want to glom onto the lifestyle he lives … people like Lazarus – a beggar, who sits outside the rich man’s gate, who would give anything – anything – for just the scraps off the rich man’s table. Lazarus is covered in sores and adding insult to injury, even the wild dogs’ attempts at mercy, bring him more pain. Through this story, Jesus repeats a theme and gives us the metaphor of an ever-widening chasm, The chasm between those who sit in the seats of honor and those who sit in the lowly places, the chasm between those who can return a favor and those who cannot pay you back, the chasm between those who hoard wealth and those who sell their possessions to give to the poor, the chasm between those who by their dishonesty enslave people to their debts and those who are the victims of this system. And today that chasm grows wider and wider as a rich man ignores the poor man who sits just outside his gate. This chasm is wide, but not so wide that the two sides cannot see one another: See, despite the torment the rich man describes, there are no signs of remorse. He calls across the chasm begging the mercy he never gave, and once again expecting to be served by the very man he ignored at his gate, demanding some cool water. We don’t hear from Lazarus himself. Instead, Father Abraham does the speaking. Perhaps this is because Lazarus is finally at rest. But part of me wonders, would Lazarus have given the compassion he never received? Even so, Father Abraham does not oblige. The rich man has made his choices and is now reaping the consequences: and yet, these consequences inspire him to ask for satiation and intervention – cool water and a message to his family from the dead. Father Abraham ignores the rich man’s begging— pointing out that the rich man’s family has access to the same prophetic teaching that he and Lazarus had, teachings that are centered on caring for the widows and orphans, food for the hungry and clothing to the naked, whose central theology is compassion and mercy, doing justice, loving kindness, living humbly. Faith that is less about philosophy and belief, but embodied in faithful deeds. So many times, I think we get so caught up in what’s happening inside our own gates, that we walk right past those in greatest need. The church is very accustomed to hearing the plight of those who are hungry, naked, addicted, or often ignored by society. The church is used to, and in fact prides itself in, the work of feeding, clothing, and praying for those outside our gates. But then there are others that we overlook because their presence makes us uncomfortable— people right outside the gates we’ve fixed between our convenience and their pain, between our privilege and the injustice we perpetuate, between the systems we profit from and the plight of those exploited by those systems, between birthright citizenship and asylum. People who would give anything to have the scraps from this table, to dip their finger in the baptismal font to remember who and whose they are, to have their stories heard, their hearts mended, to become partners with us in making a better world. And I wonder if our pity, instead of our actions, feels like a dog licking their wounds, and less like the food that fills their stomach and or the community that fills their souls? As Lutherans this may be hard to hear. When someone even hints at works righteousness the inner Martin Luther rises up in protest. But sometimes we need to be reminded that it was Martin Luther also said, “God doesn’t need our good works, but our neighbor does.” After being visited by the ghosts of Christmas, Scrooge changed his life. He became a man full of compassion, not only generous with his wealth, but with his time and all that had been entrusted to him. And while this parable mimics the typical pattern of Luke, with justice for the poor and a strong warning for those who harbor wealth, it is also a parable of good news, because as inheritors of the gospel of Luke we have been given the gift of this story and the gift of time. This story is not a threat of conscious eternal torment for living an unjust life. This story is a promise that Justice is coming. It will bring grief for those who perpetuate and profit from injustice. And it will bring grace for those exploited and excluded by that injustice. Beloved, the good news for us this day is that this gift of time provides us the opportunity for repentance and hope, and the invitation to stand the middle of this chasm, to join Jesus in cruciform living, and by our faithful action. to show the world who God is and how God acts. This looks like living out our baptism by sharing our gifts with the world. It looks like stepping outside our gates and close the chasm now, to meet the poor and needy where they are, to learn their names and meet their needs. This looks like taking the meal from this altar and sharing it with the world through gifts of food for the hungry, hands outstretched to embrace the lonely, and words that remind people of their belovedness. This looks like taking the story of God’s radical love by becoming an advocate, an ally, and accomplice, by asking ourselves and God some hard questions, and living out the hard answers. People of God, we are not only called to hear this gospel story, but we are invited to live differently because of it! And when we join God in this work, through the grace of Jesus Christ, the chasm is filled, becoming a place where the wealthy and the poor, the named and the unnamed, the seen and the unseen, walk on level ground to the glory of God. May it be so. Amen.

There’s a silly game I used to play with my friends when I was younger – and many of you have likely played it too – it’s called: Would You Rather? Let’s play it. Would you rather eat a brownie or a piece of cake? Would you rather eat breakfast or dinner? Then this is the point where the game gets a bit more challenging. Would you rather eat an earthworm or a cockroach? Would you rather chew gum from under the pew or lick the bottom of a friend’s shoe? Now before everyone gets too nauseous we’ll stop because I think you get the idea … When I was younger the questions were silly and disgusting and, of course, as I got older, they sounded more like “Would you rather make out with [this person] or [that one]?” Now as an adult, this game isn’t as fun … Pastor Jennifer and I play all the time. Would you rather have chicken or beef for dinner? Would you rather eat at Cracker Barrel or Culvers? Would you rather grocery shop at Kroger or Publix? Trust me, there are no winners. In our gospel today, a manager plays a version of this game: Would I rather beg or cheat? The answer for the shrewd manager is that he would rather cheat. You see, this manager is in trouble. He has not only been charging interest on behalf of his master, but he has been adding his own fee as well and now he’s has been caught cooking the books. And unless something drastic changes he will soon be out at the gate begging like all the others he has been taking advantage of. So he devises a plan. He decides to cut out some of the interest. This does two things for him: 1. He will once again be in the good graces of his master when the master’s debtors are able to pay back their now smaller debts. 2. Even if he gets fired, he is now also in the good graces of his once defrauded neighbors, who might be more inclined to help him out. He thinks he’s pretty smart, avoiding potential poverty and disgrace. But his seeming generosity is merely the collateral damage of saving his own behind. He is not repentant. He is not ashamed. He’s not reformed. He’s cunning, shrewd, conniving. He’s found a new way to use people to his own advantage. In our first reading from Amos, the prophet relays the word of the Lord. “Hear this, you that trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land, saying, ‘When will the new moon be over so that we may sell grain; and the sabbath, so that we may offer wheat for sale? We will make the ephah small and the shekel great, and practice deceit with false balances, buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, and selling the sweepings of the wheat’ The LORD has sworn by the pride of Jacob: Surely I will never forget any of their deeds.” God is not pleased with those who cheat, extort, and enslave their neighbors. The Apostle Paul give us the contrast: While there is none like our God, who is worthy to be praised from sun up to sundown, this God became a human, became our ransom, became debt cancelation for all. God chooses the side of the beggars, the poor and the needy, the bought and paid for, the broke and extorted, the trafficked and exploited. God is not too proud to stand with beggars to get down in the dust with the poor, to kneel in the ashes with the needy, and to give God’s own self to cancel our debts. Jesus becomes a beggar, choosing solidarity with our poverty to raise up the lowly and to call down the proud, because this is the path of discipleship, the path of transformation. Upon his death, a slip of paper was found in Martin Luther’s cloak. This slip contained his last words; “We are beggars, this is true.” Beloved, the path of discipleship calls us to make this true. We must become beggars. We must choose to stand in solidarity with the poor, with the needy, with the bought and paid for, with the broke and extorted, the trafficked and exploited. We must give up the idea that Church, faith, discipleship, is about saving our own behind, that we come here to be served or saved, rather than learning how to serve and save others. We must not be too proud to stand with beggars, to get down in the dust with the poor, to kneel in the ashes with the needy, and to give our very selves to embody God’s debt-canceling love. We start here in worship, where the sacraments remind us that we are indeed beggars before God. Each time we gather around the font, we dip our fingers in the water, making the sign of the cross on our forehead, asking God to remind us again and again that our debts are canceled. Each time we gather around the table, we put our hands into a beggar’s position and ask God to offer us a piece of Godself. And from this font and table we are raised up and sent out to serve our neighbors, to forgive our debtors as we have been forgiven, to give our money, to give our time, in service to those who find themselves in dust and ashes. So let us make Luther’s last words into a kind of prayer. “Lord, we are already beggars. Help us to live like this is true.” Amen.

How many of you remember where you were when John F. Kennedy was assassinated? If that was before your time, what about Robert F. Kennedy? Or the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.? If that’s still before your time, How about the Challenger explosion? Or the Oklahoma City Bombing? Where were you on September 11, 2001? This week, a popular provocateur and political celebrity was assassinated, in broad daylight, at a public event, while speaking in front of thousands of people on a college campus in Utah. His gruesome murder was filmed, from multiple angles and varying distances, and immediately available to the world across every social media platform. Where once these graphic tragedies were shielded from our view by the censors of network news outlets and the scruples of newspaper editors, the internet has streamed the high-definition horrors directly to our hip pockets without edit for mass consumption. Children the world over have seen this video. My own son included. Gen Z will likely remember where they were, not when they heard the news, but when they saw the video of a high-velocity munition take the life of a public figure. And in our highly divided times, this event has been met with a mix of terror and celebration. Each side has been quick to blame the other. Partisans, ever the opportunists, have sought to exploit the spectacle to further their cause and grab for power. Blame is easy. Blame is a form of self-absolution, an adoption of victimhood to justify vengeance in the name of justice. In all three of our readings for this week, we see that there is a difference between taking the blame, and taking responsibility. Moses didn’t make a golden calf for the Hebrew people to worship, but he defended his people, staying God’s wrath, and sparing their lives. Moses didn’t take the blame, but he did accept responsibility. In 1 Timothy, “Paul” speaks of his ignorance as the cause of his blasphemy, persecution, hatred, and violence. And yet, as the recipient of mercy, he accepts responsibility and changes his life accordingly. In the Gospel of Luke, the Pharisees and scribes were complaining that Jesus had crossed the socio-political divide and was sharing his table with tax-collectors and sinners. Jesus tells two parables in answer. In the first, a sheep wanders off; it’s what sheep do. But the shepherd accepts responsibility and goes to find the sheep, bringing it back and celebrating. Similarly, a woman has lost a coin. Coins don’t just wander off. They can roll away and they can be easily obscured on the dirt floor of an ancient near-eastern home. So, the woman accepts responsibility and sweeps the whole house until she finds the coin. Then she celebrates its return. Most of us in this room aren’t to blame for the rhetoric, rancor, and polarization of this present age. But all of us are responsible. We didn’t create social media platforms and engineer algorithms to exacerbate our divisions, radicalize our thinking, monetize our engagement, and silo us into us-es and thems. But all of us are responsible. We are not to blame for the need of news media outlets to be profitable in order to exist and therefore, tailoring reporting and headlines to the presuppositions of their consumers. But all of us are responsible. Political violence is always wrong. Full. Stop. And it doesn’t matter which side is to blame, because we are all of us responsible for what comes next. Each of us is responsible for the media we consume, both the quantity and the quality. A good rule to follow should be that each day, you will spend no more time reading, watching, or listening to the news than you spend reading your Bible or praying. Further, understanding proper journalistic standards and practices, researching which reporters and outlets are using them, and limiting ourselves to only those reliable resources will protect us from being manipulated by propaganda, advertising, misinformation, and disinformation. Then, you need to build authentic, loving relationships with people with whom you disagree. You don’t have to fight them. You don’t have to best friends. But you don’t have to be enemies, either. Instead, see them as human, as susceptible as you are to bad information, and share your thoughts, feelings, and research with as much kindness and goodwill as possible. And lastly, if it is possible for you, consider a social media fast, if not an exodus. I walked away for Facebook and Instagram over a year ago and I have been a lot happier and clear-headed since. I know that is not possible for everyone, for various reasons— and some of you are receiving this very sermon on Facebook as I speak. But to the degree that you’re able to limit your consumption of social media, treat it like alcohol. Some of us will avoid it all together, and others will be able to consume sparingly and responsibly. If you find that you are not able to consume social media or any facet of the internet with sobriety, reach out to a mental health professional for help. We all have a share of the responsibility for changing the world around us. As Billy Joel sang almost 40 years ago, “We didn’t start the fire, No, we didn’t light it, but we tried to fight it.” The good news is that we do not do this work alone. God’s mercy and patience go with us, both as personal liberation and as the empowerment for our duty. We are not to blame, but by the call of discipleship, we are all responsible. Today, in addition to the 14 th Sunday after Pentecost, is the Feast of the Holy Cross. The Cross is a corrective lens for our perspective on reality, and the shape of discipleship. God in Christ was not to blame for sin, death, and the devil, but Jesus took responsibility on the cross, loving the world as it is, remaking the world as it should be, and calling and empowering us to participate in both the loving and remaking. I want to close by leading us through a time of prayer, focused on this perspective, calling us away from our allegiances to this kingdom of death and calling us to a new citizenship in the Kingdom-come-on-earth-as-it-is-in-heaven….

Some of you may know my story, but for those unfamiliar with my journey out of fundamentalism and evangelicalism, I will recap briefly. I have shared here before that I grew up in a tiny Baptist denomination in Southern Appalachia. At around age 2, I began to spend every Saturday night at my grandmother’s house so that I could go to church with her on Sunday. She became a place of refuge for me over the course of my childhood, and so did the church. I met Jesus and I learned the faith in this church and in my grandmother’s home. By the time I started college, I had developed a deep love for the scriptures and took my faith very seriously, and as a result I began to question some of the things I had been taught. The Jesus I knew and the scriptures I read led me to very different conclusions that those of my church. When I stopped reading the Bible in the King James and started reading a modern translation these differences grew even broader, and eventually, my involvement with Campus Crusade, which they considered a heretical organization, became a breaking point, and the church where I learned the faith forced me to repent of my involvement and affirm that the King James Version as the only rule of faith and practice, or I was “not qualified to be a member” of the church. At the time, that choice seemed easy. Follow the Jesus I had come to know, even if it led me away for this church that had been family to me, or abandon my faith in this Jesus in order to keep a truncated and pernicious version of the faith. So, I resigned my membership, and began a long, meandering spiritual journey to find a tradition that resonated with the Jesus I had always known. Eventually, I landed in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. But I had not counted the cost. Some years later, while visiting my grandmother, who had continued to attend the church I left, we were having a conversation and, I don’t remember what brought it up, but I told her that I had discerned, through prayer, study, and reading the scripture, that I could no longer say the pledge of allegiance without violating my conscience— but that is a matter for another sermon. My grandmother was shocked. I had never seen her so disappointed in me before. This was also the catalyst for a conversation about many other ways that the things I had come to believe were a disappointment to her. I was shocked at how hurt she seemed. I was shocked at how hurt I felt. I had left her church with such hurt and righteous indignation that I had not considered how she had felt about my leaving. My study and conviction, my faith and my love for Jesus were a direct result of her teaching and example. I was still a Christian at all because of her, because of the way she embodied the faith, the way that she had introduced me to Jesus and not just handed me a Bible. My continued faith was an act of defiance against all I had been told I had to believe in order to be allowed to stay in the church, not an act of defiance against her. I couldn’t reconcile the Jesus I knew and this iteration of the faith that to me was taking the Name of Christ in vain. But in leaving, I hadn’t just left the church; I had left my grandmother. Where I had gone, she couldn’t follow. The cost of leaving was high, but the cost of staying was higher. I couldn’t keep Jesus and the only place of safety and comfort I had ever known. I can imagine that she felt like I had come to hate all she had tried to teach me, that in rejecting her church and its ideology, I had rejected something fundamental about her. I could see the heartbreak and confusion on her face, emotions I wasn’t aware of causing before, and certainly, had never intended. When I counted the cost of leaving, I hadn’t accounted for her grief. In the coming months, All Saints will begin to literally count the cost of building new ministries and rebuilding old ones. We will give an accounting of all the time, talent, and treasure we will need to invest to make sure that we are introducing this Jesus to our neighbors and to each other. We will ask, “Who isn’t here?” and we will find ways to invite and include our neighbors in our life of faith. And as we make this accounting, we will have to ask, Can we afford to build a ministry that is more inclusive, that doesn’t demand more of people than they can give in order to be included? Can we afford not to? Can we afford to give up our old ways of doing church, the habits and traditions that have shaped life together and given them meaning? Can we afford not to? Can we let go of outdated models of growth, membership, and engagement and meet people where they are? Can we afford not to? Can we afford to stop thinking of church as a destination at the end of the path toward faith and begin to think of faith itself as a journey and church as the rest areas along that path? Can we afford not to? Can we afford the time, energy, and money it will cost to examine every aspect of our beliefs, our practices, our politics, our preferences, our principles, and measure them by their faithfulness and effectiveness, measure them against Love? Can we afford not to? Moses asked the Israelites to choose life. Paul asked Philemon to choose love. Jesus asks us to choose the cross. There are other choices, but the question is not can we bear the cost of choosing life, love, and the cross. The question is whether we can afford to avoid choosing life, choosing love, choosing the cross. Choosing to grieve and let go of all the things we must leave behind in order to choose life, love, and the cross is the very substance of discipleship. Eventually, my grandmother and I reconciled, and we were able to talk about the scriptures, differences in interpretation, theological insight, and grow in mutual respect. I wouldn’t say I won a convert, but I don’t think she would say she lost a grandson, either. The cost of following this Jesus is often high. There is no discipleship that is not marked by the Cross. It will cost us home, family, security, time, money, even our very lives. But for every cross we bear there is a resurrection. God does not call us to faith to destroy us, any more than God calls us to faith to protect us from every discomfort. God calls us to choose life, and Jesus leads us to the cross. Discipleship, then, is the choice of the life that only comes after the cross, the life that is marked by scars and healing, not safety and health. Discipleship is the path of transformation, the path of life, death, and resurrection, the path that brings babies to a symbolic burial in baptism and celebrates our founder’s last meal, to promise us that death is not final, and discomfort cannot be avoided. The cost will be high, we will have to account for our discomfort, for our grief. But we can also account for the life that only comes after such discomfort and grief. The question is not can we afford to grow and change, to bear the discomfort or to grieve the losses that will come. The question is, Can we afford not to? Amen.