In God We Trust?

 

10^th Sunday after Pentecost, August 1, 2010 (Luke 12:13-21)

There once was a very wealthy man. For years he had been attempting to secure a promise from his wife. The promise that he so ardently wanted was this: if he were to die first that she would put 1 million dollars in his casket. And no, he wasn't to be cremated. Well lo and behold, he contracted a serious illness and died long before his wife. Her closest friends and family were curious as to whether or not she would keep her promise. After the funeral and grave-side service, the wife and a few of her closest family members and friends lingered at the graveside. They watched as she reached into her purse, withdrew her cheque-book and wrote a check to her deceased husband for $1,000,000. She then placed the cheque in the casket just before it was lowered into the grave. In many ways that story has always brought a smile to my face.

 

But then comes Jesus' story: "The land of a rich man produced abundantly". As we listen to this story, as it wills to work its way into our hearts and minds, we can try to escape its hold upon us by picking at the details. Why would the rich man tear down his barns and build bigger ones? Couldn't he just build some new ones in addition to the old ones? But make no mistake. At the heart of Jesus' parable is a word for us. 

 

The very foundation of the parable is a question. What does our life consist of? Is the essence of our life, even the measure of our life, the stuff we acquire – a house, cars, a particular stock or bond portfolio, our business, or even what we financially leave to others. If so, Bill Gate's, the founder of Micro soft, is living a life that is more important, of more value than almost anyone else's.

 

But many of us might say, especially while we are in church that our lives aren't really about stuff. That's not what ultimately matters. But the truth is that most of us are or have spent incredible amounts of energy, time and more than a little bit of anxiety trying to procure enough stuff. Do we have enough? How much is enough? What if such and such happens? If only I had some more!  How 'bout that Lotto Max – 50 million last week? Just imagine!

 

Now don't get me wrong.  I am not saying that we shouldn't work. I am not saying hat we shouldn't do some serious planning around the future, both for ourselves and tentatively for others. I have a will. I have life insurance. I am blessed to have a pension plan. But it is important that we do all such planning with a certain amount of humility and a large dose of reality. Who is at the center of our plans?  Are we thinking only for ourselves and those few we love the most? What would God have us do? And, whom are we ultimately trusting in all of this? Do we really think that we can procure our own "security"? 

 

As we are continually blessed many of us grow older. Who knows the day may come when we need to go to a senior's residence, to inhabit a much smaller living place. And all of our "stuff", some of which we have cherished so much, worked so hard for, whose will it be? If we have children or friends, they may or may not even want that stuff. Or they may squander it. So, why are we living?  

 

The Bible shows us that God calls us into relationship. The primary relationship that God wills for us is with God! Yes, you heard me correctly. Our primary relationship, the one before any of the others is to be WITH GOD! 

 

It is God who chooses to love us into being.  By God's grace we are each gifted with life! How much would we have to pay to buy such a gift – a mind, a heart, our imagination, our musical, athletic, and creative unique abilities? Would even Bill Gates have enough capital to purchase one such gift from God? I think not! The gift of life is absolutely beyond price. Ask anyone who sits, stands or kneels beside the bed of one they love who is being born or dying.

 

Eventually the relationships that we are most aware of, the relationship with our parent, our sister or brother, a special friend, or even a pet or different elements of the creation begin to assume special places in our lives. Such relationships are very important! But all of these flow from the heart of God.  

 

So, are we to seek to dominate or manipulate, such people, other creatures, the creation for some perceived benefit to ourselves? As we do, what will the result be of making such choices?    

 

We need to trust that Jesus loves us. And so it is that sometimes He warns us.  One of his warnings comes clearly today: "Beware of all kinds of greed!" Instead of looking for meaning or affirmation in "stuff" Jesus encourages those early disciples and us to, "be rich towards God!" This is his command. We are to nurture our relationship with God. Be open to the wow factors of life. Pray and mean our own prayers. As we pray, "Give us this day our daily bread", realize that it is God who is and has provided us with what we need. As we employ the gifts God has entrusted us with to work give up worrying. Be generous with all that we have and are. God will use us and that for good.

 

You see, God is the liberator. Not only of the Hebrew people from slavery in Egypt but of ourselves. By God's grace we can be freed from looking at what others have and wishing, "gee it would be great to have that." We can have our eyes opened to see the many blessings we have, to live with and celebrate and yes, and gladly give them away, with and for others.

 

I mu0st confess that I struggle with this parable. Part of my struggle is living in this place and time. So many of us in North America have SO MUCH. We are among the richest 1 % of people in the world. Yet as I travel around Steveston, I sometimes am deluded into thinking that I am "poor" because I see that some "others" who have more stuff than I do. I sometimes catch myself thinking and  feeling that my life would somehow be better if I just had  "more". 

 

Is that true? Does life get any better than God loving me, loving us, accepting us, promising to walk with us and this world through everything, to never let us go or abandon us? Could it get any better than God forgiving me and giving me a new beginning with God, with others and with creation each day?

 

Our truth is that we are so blessed by God!   

 

How can we stay focused on God? How can we experience and share the gifts that God in Christ wants us to have including a peace that passes understanding?

 

Scripture has directions for us - but these directions need to be practiced individually and collectively. We can find a place and make a time to pray each day. In our prayer and reading we can ask God to help us to see our many blessings. We can ask God to help us to live thankfully each day. By the grace of God we can look around asking God to show us what God would have us do or not do that day. and be that day? 

 

Our battle against greed is real. Greed doesn't give up easily on us or on anyone. Our society is often controlled by greed. We are told over and over again that the very meaning of life has to do with getting more and more and more, that we can never have enough! This message is a lie. This message and its resulting life style contradicts the very grace and love of God. If we capitulate to greed it will consume us and others, spilling over (literally) into creation. That's why Jesus warns us.

 

But Jesus doesn't just leave us with only a warning. Jesus also comes to us through His Spirit demonstrating that we are not alone. The very Creator God who gifts everyone with life is with us. In Jesus we are encountered by the very love of God as pure gift for us and for the world.

 

We can trust God! We must not put our ultimate trust, our purpose in things or possessions or anything less than God.

 

Whom are we trusting? May God through Jesus Christ help us to trust God – the one who is God, the One who loves us so much that He gives His all for us – who does not give up on us – even though we have too often given up, forgotten or neglected God.  By God's grace we can count on God and live from God. May it be so! Amen.

Daily Bread Among Enemies & Friends

Pentecost 7 cc, July 11, 2010 – Luke 10:25-37  

I want you in your mind's eye to identify two of your needs. Be careful now – these are to be needs, something/someone you cannot, could not live without. I also want you to list one thing, one person that is your enemy. (take time to do that)

            

I want to tell you a story…. You are living your life. It's going reasonably well. But then, suddenly, something happens. You lose your job. Or, you become critically ill. You develop cancer or multiple sclerosis or some form of hepatitis. At one point some time ago, you received tainted blood. As your illness progresses or your job search bears no fruit – those things that you were convinced you needed, some of which you actually did need – you lose. You lose your own home. You lose your hair, your ability to walk, your energy to do things. And the people who used to include you, people whom you thought were your friends, who would never abandon you, one by one they begin to disappear. And so it goes – on and on and on – until you are literally a solitary figure, alone. By this time you may be frequenting the food bank. If you have a computer or have access to some playing cards, the game of your choice is solitaire. You have never felt so alone in your entire life. You are miserable.

 

But then one afternoon, someone whom you didn't know before, sees you. Not only do they see you, but they notice you. This person is the last person you would have ever expected to help you. I mean others that you thought were your friends, whom you had hoped would understand and care, don't or won't. But this person – one whom you thought before this was so different from you or so unlike you, or whom you just didn't like – they are the one that cares about you. That man, that woman, that guy that gal is the one who faithfully comes weekly, each month, day after day to be with you, to be for you. It is that person who is your friend. 

 

To begin with they listen to you. They are honest with you. They don't always tell you want you want to hear, but they do dare to tell you what you need to hear as they listen to you.  That man, that woman, that guy, that girl, reaches out not just to give you things but to share themselves. As they do so you begin to get to know each other. Together the two of you begin to trust each other. They introduce you to others. These others are also people who care about you. These others have suffered through and with some of the things that you are wrestling with.

 

 And somehow, that one's presence serves as a vehicle of healing for your living. For a long, long while you couldn't see or feel any sunlight. But now the sun is peeking through. Once despair, hopelessness was a dominant experience. But now rays of hope break through crushing realities. You think to yourself, maybe there is light at the end of the tunnel.

 

It's a story – but it is also, it can be profoundly true.

 

We do have needs. Our needs include food and clothing and shelter to be sure. But we also have needs beyond what we know. We have needs to be loved unconditionally and forgiven. Sometimes we aren't even aware of our need to be forgiven. When we are doing "well" (at least in our eyes) we may think and at some level even feel that everything is OK. The problems in the world have to do with others – those others that we somehow identify as fundamentally different than us. We are not aware of the hatred, the pride, the prejudice, the fear that thrives in our hearts. We do not see our own lack of desire to make time to focus on God – to dialogue with God, to receive from God daily a love and compassion that transforms our hearts and minds.

 

But thanks be to God, we are not left in this state. Things happen to shake the foundations of our world. And as our foundations are shaken we begin to see in a new light our own needs. Amazingly when we ourselves are needy is when we are most open to others and to God who sends help.

 

Jesus comes to a needy world that often doesn't realize her need of Him. Jesus comes to us – bringing unconditional love and forgiveness. He seeks to show us that there are no "thems" in this world, only brothers and sisters, who in so many ways are just like us. They too are in need of love, forgiveness. They too want and need to have purpose.

 

So, think carefully about your needs, our needs. Reflect honestly upon our "enemies". Dare to ask God to show us the truth – about ourselves, about others, and most importantly about the grace and love of God in Christ.

 

Jesus is the good Samaritan who recognizes our need. The risen Christ through the Holy Spirit can help us to see our needs in order that we might be healed our selves and be able to assist others who also are in need.

 

May this be our living even as we pray "Give us this day our daily bread".  Amen

From Mud to New Life

 

What's your name? It seems like a strange question for me to ask you. I mean you know your name. And I know most of your names. You may even know what your name means or how and why you received your name. So my question seems silly. But I am not sure that it is silly. You see, my name is Tim, which is actually a shortened form for Timothy. Timothy means one who honors God.

 

But as I think about this I think that sometimes my name should have been Naaman. How about you? Naaman thought he knew who he was. Naaman was also convinced that he knew who god or the gods were. Naaman knew firsthand the definitive boundaries in life. They never changed. There was Aram and Israel. There is Russia, China, Canada and the US. There were the gods of Aram and the god of Israel. There are many religions. Naaman also knew that bigger was better. The one with the most soldiers and most advanced weapons won the war. That's the way life was. That's the way life is, isn't it?  Naaman was the commanding general of an amazing army. Consequently, Naaman's king honored him. The King would do almost anything for Naaman. If Naaman were alive today he would have tanks and missiles, many men and women under his command. Naaman would have been extremely wealthy today. Such was his life. Naaman knew about power. He exercised it.

 

But then Naaman becomes ill. And everything begins to change. Now he discovers that not everyone is at his beck and call. Not everyone functions as he always had thought they did. Now Naaman himself becomes desperate - desperate to be well. Now through the agency of seemingly common ordinary people, people that a few days before Naaman thought of little or no consequence, he is led beyond his cause and effect world. Now his life is beginning to change. He is being moved his beyond skepticism and manipulation, beyond you do for me and I'll do for you. Naaman is being shoved to TRUST. 

 

Because of his vulnerability and new found need to and ability to trust Naaman begins to discover that God is not some sort of magic to be purchased or manipulated. Instead Naaman begins to experience that God cares about him even as God works in mysterious ways. Naaman retains his name. But he is no longer the same person. As he goes down into the muddy waters of the river Jordan – he comes up clean and different/new.

 

So let me ask you a second question. Whom/what are you following? I suspect that sometimes we think or feel that we are simply following our own hearts, our own minds, our own desires. But listen to your own initial response, the first response that pops into your mind or heart when you are asked:  what or whom are you following or pursuing?

 

As you listen also dare to look around. Note how you spend your time. See the priorities that your spending habits point to. It is in such expenditures that we learn about whom or what we are serving. Granted, we declare certain things. We assume that because of our declaration or assertion that these things then are true.  At times we have wonderful signs or banners up in our homes in our church. All are welcome – welcome friends. But are these declarations being lived out?  Are we actually willing to welcome everyone:  people whom we see as somehow being different than us: physically with handicaps or with emotional or mental scars? Are we welcoming people who dress differently than we do? Are people wearing  yarmulkes turbans or head scarves, people who understand or experience God somewhat differently than we do welcome in our homes, our church building? Would we are we welcoming and inviting people who don't have homes or who don't want to have homes to be in our midst? Finally will we, are we welcoming people who understand family and or marriage different than we do?

 

When our gut feelings are to distance ourselves from these people or to try to in some ways "protect" ourselves from such people, does that say anything about whom we are serving or following?

 

In writing to the Galatian Christians Paul is engaged in a struggle about this very thing in a particular way: what does it mean to follow Jesus?  Some in that community are saying that to follow Jesus one must engage and observe certain rules. The rules that they had received from God are of the utmost importance in following Jesus. Although inwardly we may sneer at such thinking we need to proceed with caution. What do we see, understand as basic to following Jesus? Cleanliness is next to godliness? A certain understanding of how God works and that God in Jesus will work only in that way – not with certain other religious groups until they see the light or change their ways?

 

Paul says it so clearly in today's second lesson: it's not circumcision or uncircumcision that matters most – it's a new creation – an ongoing transformation of one's mind and heart that really constitutes following Jesus. And such transformation, Paul argues, is a miracle – a GIFT  FROM GOD. Such ongoing transformation is never something that we can earn or desire or just do on our own. Certainly, sometimes we can respond to this gift – but that's a joyful response!  And a response is not something that initiates with us.

 

Can we let go of the hardening of our boundaries - our human propensity to decide in our mind's eye who's in or who's out? Can we move such thinking, such "being" to actually following Jesus, this One who gives His all so that we and the world might be new, now and forever. Will we in following Jesus work at sharing life and love instead of spreading hatred and enmity, jealousy and pride, self righteousness and blame resulting in the sacrifice of so many and so much? May God birth us to such a new creation!

 

This hope ushers us into one last question. Do we, do you, do I, have a mission? What's our purpose for living?" This is an important question to regularly ask one's self. It's important because in living we do give ourselves to something or someone. Although our motives initially are often worthwhile, we can so easily become sidetracked. We can become busy, so frenetically active in "making a living" that there is little or no time left to actually live – to breathe and relax, to think and question ourselves, to love and forgive, to run and play, to invest ourselves with those whom we most cherish, to listen for, to commune with God.

 

Yes, sometimes we can become so engrossed in trying to do what's right, that we forget why it is that we wanted to do what was right in the first place.

But, if we don't have a purpose for life, why are we actually living? Now there's a question that's both daunting and exciting!

 

According to Luke, Jesus' mission was clear. Jesus spelled this out early in his ministry as he travels home to the synagogue where he grew up. Once there, He takes the scroll, turns to this place and reads, " The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." Although Jesus is quoting the prophet Isaiah he doesn't hesitate to tell those in the synagogue that day and any who will hear that "today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing".

 

And then in the Gospel for today Jesus sends out 70 of his followers 2 X 2 to go ahead of him. Did you notice what Jesus calls them to do, what he identifies as their mission?  They are to bring his peace to the houses they visit. If people are open to His peace, the sent out ones are to stay with them – to eat with them, to grow in relationship. If the people they are sent to do not welcome them then they are to move on. Whatever the case, God is near. People can be open to God! The ones Jesus sends out are to be agents of healing – to help the sick, to let them know in their very presence that God can bring newness and wholeness into their lives. This is part of God's reign, God's rule, what Luke identifies through Jesus as the kingdom of God.

 

How about us? What is our mission, our purpose for living? Jesus draws near to us. He comes in Word and Sacrament. He comes sometimes right through boundaries that we may have considered impregnable. Sometimes he speaks to us through our enemies, through our own shortcomings and sin, through our own illnesses, even through those who oppose us, even through that which may threaten to destroy us. The risen Jesus comes in simple things: sometimes things like muddy water, or the voices of those we once thought to be insignificant or of no consequence. He comes in bread and wine telling us not only that He is here, but that He has also given His all so that we can have new beginnings, new hearts and minds and relationships with each other and with God. And as that occurs bit by bit, piece by piece or sometimes even in sudden flashes of lightning we too are granted new life. 

 

To be sure there are forces within and without that resist Him. We know the devil within: the need to be "right", the desire to save face, the pretense that all is well while anger, pride, jealousy and hopelessness may be welling up within, threatening to devour us, and hurt others. But look up. Look around. Listen! See! Even now the kingdom of God draws near. Jesus loves us. He asks, He invites us to trust Him. Our resistance, all of the boundaries in our lives are but lines, marks on a map that can be changed by God.

 

So, I invite you to pray with me the first line of a prayer that so many of us can mumble in our sleep without even thinking. Pray this knowing that thanks be to God, God will not be limited even by our expectations or lack thereof. So pray with me trusting God -  Come Lord Jesus and be our guest. Help us to follow you! Amen and Amen.