There is a map of Palestine at the time of Jesus in the bulletin to give some sort of idea of the geography of the next 10 chapters of Luke. This journey begins in Galilee, (really a little north of Galilee at Caesarea Philippi, the place of Peter’s confession) and passes through Samaria into Judea, through Jericho, and finally to Jerusalem. (That’s about 85 miles as the crow flies—a lot farther if you are walking winding dirt roads.) Now, this line is not exactly the route Jesus took, it just show the distance and general direction. In terms of the Gospel story, the journey begins with Peter’s Confession, which we heard last Sunday, and it continues, really, to the Ascension. For the next five months the context of the Gospel will be this journey. We need to keep that in mind. Remembering this makes what’s going on in the Gospel much clearer.

While he is on this journey, Jesus teaches mainly about two thing: the nature and meaning of the Kingdom of God, and the meaning of discipleship. The section we heard today, and the one you will hear next Sunday, both focus on discipleship. Jesus, by word and action, begins to make clear to those around him what is involved in following him.

I want to look at one little part of this today—that odd encounter with the Samaritan village. Remember, Jews and Samaritans didn’t get along. They were first cousins, with a common religious, cultural, social and political history; but they had been separated for a long time. That alone would virtually insure hostility. Each group looked down on the other as racially and religiously inferior.

So, it was not at all uncommon for Samaritans to refuse hospitality to Jews who, like Jesus, were on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. When Jesus’ disciples tried to make arrangements for Jesus to stay there, the folks in that village just said no.

That did not sit well with James and John, who were called ‘the sons of thunder’ for good reasons. They had not only been rejected—but they had been rejected by their inferiors to boot.

So they started thinking about the old prophet Elijah. There is a famous (if dubious) story in II Kings about how Elijah once got cross-wise with King A-ha-ziah of Judah. The king sent a couple of battalions of soldiers to fetch Elijah. However, instead of coming along quietly, Elijah called fire down from heaven and both disposed of the soldiers and impressed the socks off the king. Since everybody knew that the messiah was supposed to be a bigger and better version of Elijah, James and John offered to handle this little problem with the Samaritans by doing what Elijah did. A little fire from heaven would give everyone a much needed attitude adjustment.

This idea was not a particularly surprising one. The standard way that Israel, and everyone else in the world, dealt with their enemies was call down a curse on them. We know about that, don’t we. Yeah. Also, then, as now, if you really had clout, like Elijah did, you backed up that curse with action. That was, and is, standard operating procedure.

But Jesus wasn’t buying it. And he did more than say "no" to James and John’s suggestion. The text says "Jesus rebuked them," which is very strong language. In fact, the last time Luke records Jesus doing any rebuking it was directed at an unclean spirit. Suddenly Jesus is jumping on the disciples with that sort of energy.

The point is that Jesus was angry, and he saw what was happening as very important. It was important not just because Jesus didn’t want to wipe out that particular village on that particular day. It is important because, in rebuking the disciples, Jesus is making a much bigger point.

He is saying that who he is, who Jesus was, this is not something that could be known or understood by knowing Elijah, or by knowing Moses, or by knowing anyone or anything other than Jesus himself. In Jesus, something new was happening; and what Elijah did, or what John the Baptist did, or what everybody knew the messiah should do, or what the disciples thought best—none of that mattered very much. What mattered was discovering Jesus, and trying to take him seriously.

That’s why, on the mount of Transfiguration, Elijah, like Moses had to disappear, and the disciples were left with Jesus only. To be sure, there is continuity with his past and not everything Jesus said and did was new or different. But Jesus alone is the source of what changes, and what stays the same.

Central to this is Jesus’ new way of loving his enemies and dying for them, and the deeper and richer understanding of God that this new way implied. That is the way for Jesus and his followers, not the way of Elijah, (or of James and John).

For a while there, James and John thought that they were on the road with Jesus so Jesus could help them do what they had always wanted to do, and what everyone knew was the thing to do. Wiping out rude villages was a small but delightful part of that. But Jesus rebuked them. That was not what their journey was about; it is not what ours is about.

After all, most of us have a pretty good idea of what Jesus ought to do in any given situation. We have our priorities, our plans, our hopes and our dreams. We know what the good life is and we figure that the least God can do is give us a pretty fair piece of that good life. Sometimes that knowledge and those preconceptions, are all we look at, all we see. Our prayer becomes one form or another of "God, why aren’t you doing what you are supposed to be doing".

It is a very hard thing to learn that God is not here to do our will, or to meet our expectations; but instead that we are here to learn and to do God’s will. Following Jesus on the road always involves learning this; and learning it over and over again. It always involves waiting and listening far more than it involves deciding and telling.

Of all the things that we are called to leave behind in order to follow Jesus, probably the hardest are our preconceptions, our convictions that this is the way it is.

And Jesus turned and rebuked them. And in doing that he pointed to himself, and to himself alone, as the source of direction, and of strength, and of wisdom. That hasn’t changed.

By the way, James and John could have avoided a well-recorded rebuke if they had stopped for a minute and asked, "Well, Lord, what now?" The answer would have been there, and they would have been richer for it.

That hasn’t changed, either.

Anyway, this expert on the law of comes up to Jesus and asks him, "teacher, what must I do to inherit internal life?"

Now, a key to this is the fact that, in the Mediterranean world, questions are almost never asked or heard as simple requests for information. Questions are almost always viewed with suspicion—because they are usually a challenge to personal honor. The hope is that the person who is asked a question will not know the answer and be shamed by ignorance. That’s why Luke makes sure we get the point by saying that the lawyer’s intent was to "test" Jesus. (By the way, this same sort of dynamic is going on almost every time Jesus is asked a question by someone who is not one of his immediate followers.)

Here and throughout the Gospel, Jesus responds to these sorts of questions in a consistent way. Using both the subtleties and nuances of his culture and his own genius at such things, Jesus always insults his questioner. Every time. This time, Jesus begins by turning the tables; he asks a lawyer, a specialist in the Torah (which is the written word of God): "How do you read?"

The lawyer answers his own question quickly and correctly by quoting Deuteronomy 6 and Leviticus 19; thereby revealing, of course, that he knew the answer all along. So, by turning the question back to him, Jesus shows that the lawyer’s question was not only a rhetorical attack on Jesus, (asked in hopes Jesus would not know the answer), but that it was also a lie. The lawyer pretended to be ignorant though he wasn’t. So, instead of shaming Jesus, the lawyer, by revealing he knew all along, ends up shaming himself. Jesus emerges, once again, the honorable victor in the first round of this little contest.

But it isn’t over yet. The lawyer has one more chance to "save face" (or as our translation puts it, "justify himself"). He asks Jesus a second question: "Who is my neighbor’?" Jesus sees at once that this question is as dishonest as the first one. Remember how the lawyer has just quoted Leviticus 19. Well, that chapter very explicitly says who your neighbor is—it says that your neighbor is "your kin," "your people." It very clearly defines your neighbor as other Israelites, other members of the chosen people.

Jesus knew that the lawyer knew this. He knew that the lawyer is no more trying to learn the identity of his neighbor or the limits of his duty than he was trying to learn which was the greatest commandment. He is certain that he already knows the answer—and he is trying, one last time, to find something that Jesus doesn’t know, to regain some of the status, some of the face he has lost. There is no doubt in his mind or in anyone else’s mind who their neighbor is. None at all.

Jesus’ wonderful parable of the good Samaritan not only presents a new way of looking at this old question about one’s neighbor, it also puts the final nail in the lawyer’s rhetorical coffin.

Have you ever noticed how, in the parable, the Priest and the Levite are really a lot like the lawyer? They both know who their neighbor is, and what their duty is, and they are very careful, and very precise. The Priest and the Levite can’t tell by looking from even a short distance whether the injured man is a Jew or not (and if he is not, they have no duty towards him); nor can they tell whether he is in fact alive or dead—and if he is dead, even touching him to see whether or not he is dead would make them unclean and disqualify them for service in the Temple. So they pass him by, choosing not to do precisely what the Samaritan chooses to do. If pressed about their behavior, they could have both asked, with the lawyer, "And who is my neighbor", knowing full well the answer.

So, anything the lawyer says against the Priest or the Levite, he is saying against himself, and anything that compares the Priest or the Levite unfavorably to a Samaritan, also compares the lawyer unfavorably to a Samaritan—and remember, Samaritans were truly at the very top of the list of the most despised life-forms in all of Palestine. So the lawyer, who began all of this so arrogantly and so confidently, is finding himself deeper and deeper in the hole as the parable unfolds; and as he realizes that his preconceptions, and his conclusions, and his convictions are just not going to hold up under the light of the persistent, heroic compassion of the Samaritan.

So, Jesus ends the encounter with a final jab. Jesus asks the lawyer a significantly different question than the lawyer asked him. Jesus asks, "which of these three was a neighbor", which of the three became a neighbor, to the victim? Jesus is showing the lawyer not only that he doesn’t know the answer to his own question about his neighbor, but that he doesn’t even know the right question to ask about his neighbor.

The right question is not ‘who is my neighbor’. That is, the right question is not about them, about the people out there and how they stand in relationship to us and what category they fit into. And the right question isn’t about the rules, about what they say concerning who counts and who doesn’t. Instead, the real question is about us, about who we become, about how we choose to stand to each other, and about how we live out the realities of the kingdom. The lawyer can’t argue with this, (he’s arrogant, but he’s not stupid; and we all know how compelling, indeed convincing, the parable is); so he walks away both enlightened and defeated.

Now, that’s the other story in this section, the story of Jesus and the lawyer. It makes almost the same point as the parable itself, but with a special spin. The lawyer’s story is to remind us that, no matter how smart we may think we are, and no matter how much we may think we already know or have already figured out, no matter any of that, Jesus still has a thing or two to teach us.

And the next time we think that we know all the right questions, or the answer to all the questions we have, or the limits of our duty, or how far we have to go to love and who we have to pay attention to and who we don’t—next time we think that, remember the story, remember the lawyer. It might just turn out that we don’t know as much as we thought we did—we might not even know how to begin—and we will need to look once more to what Jesus has to say about such matters, and where he might have us go, and who he might have us be.

A surprising amount of information about them can be discovered from these few verses of Luke. Let’s look at Martha first. She is the head of her household. For a Jewish woman of the first century, this is a sign of great tragedy. It means she is either a widow or has never married; it also means that she has virtually no position in society. Her situation was generally seen as a sign of God’s displeasure. Such women were expected to be as invisible as possible, and to cling quietly to what little life their culture offered them.

Then, Jesus’ journey to the cross brought Him to Martha’s village, and Martha, either by rumor of Him or by His appearance, found Jesus compelling. So, Martha did an unthinkable thing: She invited this stranger, this rabbi, this man, into her home. (She probably invited a whole herd of disciples in as well, but that just compounded things.) In receiving Jesus into her home, Martha is, in her own way, selling everything and buying the pearl of great price. It is a bold and reckless action that struck at convention, ignored propriety, and was totally scandalous.

She saw an opportunity of great value, and she reached for that, ignoring all that stood in the way. Her actions are both courageous, and little bizarre. No doubt, people would talk.

So, Jesus enters the home and begins to teach. (The Greek makes it clear that he is not chatting about the weather; He is giving His word, the content of His message.)

Meanwhile, Mary—the other one—has been watching all of this, no doubt with great interest. Imagine Mary, early in Jesus’ visit: she sees Martha busy in the kitchen, and she hears a few words from Jesus. Suddenly it’s Mary’s turn to make a decision—and it’s a big decision. The issue is not housework versus study club. The issue actually pulled at the very fabric of that society. You see, there were only a few things a woman could do that were worse than inviting a strange rabbi into her house. Being taught by such a rabbi was one of them. Here are two contemporary Rabbinic sayings Mary surely knew: The rabbis said: "It is better to burn the Torah than to teach it to a woman," and "It is better to teach a daughter to be a prostitute than to teach her the Torah."

For a woman to listen to someone teach about the Torah was just wrong. However, Mary had been watching her sister; and Mary had discovered in Jesus the same power, the same draw, that Martha had discovered. So, Mary sat down and began to listen, to hear the word of Jesus. For Mary to do this was unthinkable. It is a bold and reckless action that struck at convention, ignored propriety, and was totally scandalous.

She saw an opportunity of great value, and she reached for that, ignoring all that stood in the way. Her actions were both courageous and a little bizarre. No doubt, people would talk.

You see, Martha and Mary are not just symbols, or types of people. They are also real interesting, gutsy women who were very much alike, and who were willing to risk much for an opportunity to be with Jesus. All of this puts a fresh light on the little spat between them.

Jesus has been watching both Martha and Mary. He has seen each of them in turn make her radical choice; and He has supported them. He accepted Martha’s invitation and entered the house. He continued to teach as Mary sat at His feet and listened. (By the way, both of these were very improper actions for any respectable teacher.) Jesus clearly admires them both.

Then, Martha comes to Him with her little complaint; there is work to be done, ordinary, regular work. It is appropriate and right for Mary to help with that, Mary has always helped with that, and Jesus should tell her to help now.

The Lord’s reply is surprisingly kind. His answer to Martha is the most gentle response Jesus ever gives to a hypocrite. One thing is needful, Jesus says to Martha. Martha knows that, Martha went to great lengths and took great risks for that one thing—the presence of Jesus. Now Mary, in her own way, is doing exactly what Martha did—Mary is taking those risks; and Martha is whining because it is inconvenient. The real issue here is not who does the dishes. The real issue is the meaning of Jesus, the consequences of His presence.

The presence of the Lord changes things. Life will be different, and some of the old rules and old patterns will not work, once Jesus has arrived. His presence will bring, among other things, inconvenience and the need to reevaluate and restructure.

That was Martha’s mistake. She assumed that she could invite Jesus into her home, into her life, and then return to business as usual, with nothing else any different. Or at least she wanted to be the one who decided what changed and what didn’t. Jesus was telling Martha, and us, that it doesn’t work that way. Once Jesus is invited in, once He begins to becomes a part of things, then sooner or later all of life will be different, all of life will be changed. To expect and to demand otherwise, as Martha did, is to misunderstand the Lord. Jesus does not fit neatly into a world and a life that is already pretty well constructed. Jesus is not a missing piece in an otherwise well constructed existence.

Instead, Jesus messes things up, and forces everything to be reconsidered and re-evaluated. There is no telling what that re-evaluation is going to look like. In this story, the way the household works is going to be different now; and there were no doubt going to be other changes as well. Both Mary and Martha were different. Jesus had been there.|| Life changes when Jesus is invited in. That’s the real key to this story.

Don’t forget to think about Mary and Martha as people, not just as types. Listen to their story—to their courage and their audacity; to their strengths and their weaknesses—listen and try it on.

Remember, when Jesus is invited in, things change.

In the Lord’s prayer, Jesus wants us to do something like this. He shows us the person we can be, and he gives us a couple of chances to pretend to be that person.

This is easier to see with Luke’s telling of the Lord’s prayer. Matthew’s version is the more familiar one—it’s the one we say always—in fact, we say that prayer every time the Church gathers for worship. Luke’s version, which we just heard, is different, it’s briefer, it’s less polished and it’s more focused. It’s very starkness makes things clearer, and sharper.

In the first petition, Jesus gives us the vision of the person to be—the person we will pretend to be for the rest of the prayer. "Your kingdom come", three words, the very first thing we ask for. Here we pretend to be—we pray like—people who care, first and foremost, not for ourselves, not for what we want, not for what we think best and not for other people, not what we think they want, not what we want for them. With this first petition, we pray that what comes first, what is centrally important, is God, and God’s kingdom, We pray that this be first.

What we do is pretend to be people who care more about God’s kingdom than about anything else; people who put who God is and what God wants at the primary, passionate, cutting edge of our lives, and who let all the rest of life sort itself out in the light of the Kingdom. That’s the sort of person Jesus wants us to be. And, for at least the moments of this prayer, we act like that—we pray that God comes first, God’s kingdom comes first, God’s plans and God’s hopes come first. That’s how we pray, regardless of how we might feel, and regardless of how things might look to us the rest of the time. For this moment, we are people who put God’s kingdom first.

The next two petitions push this even farther. What are the two things that Jesus wants people who put God’s kingdom first pray for? Here they are: Number one: "Give us each day our daily bread." That seems so natural, so normal. But we have to pretend in order to say it. After all, that’s not what we really want. We really want some of the bread we get today for be for later: for next week, or for a rainy day, or for retirement, or to leave behind to our families, or to be extra just in case. We want and expect and plan and work for what we get today to be for the long haul; not just for today. If what we have is just for today, we have no guarantees or security or insurance about tomorrow. To pray for our daily bread only, and for no more, is really a very radical and startling way to pray.

It is possible to pray like this only if we are passionately committed to the kingdom. Only if we trust God totally and care only for his plans, and his ways— or if we pretend we are. Think about it. To pray only and exactly for today’s bread is, first of all, to make a commitment to trust and to simplicity that is profoundly alien to us, and such prayer means that we are living out of a different reality than the one we are used to.

To pray this way is to say that we don’t want any more than we absolutely need for right now; and that we refuse any surplus, any stockpiles, any hedges.

At the same time, to pray like this, to commit to this simplicity and trust, to resolve before God that we will desire and take only our needed share of food, this is also the first gift of the kingdom of God to the hungry of the world, to the poor of all places. To ask this of God is pray for a radical change in how we think and live, and in how the world works. This, Jesus says, is the first thing to pray for when the priorities of the Kingdom are at the forefront. I’m not all that sure how comfortable I am with it, but this is what Jesus says to do.

The second thing, Number two, is a bit more complicated, but just as radical. Our Lord tells us to pray, "Forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us". In this petition, we pretend to be people who forgive first, and who forgive always. We pretend that we are people who go through our lives releasing debts, forgoing resentments, refusing to acquire the burden of carrying around the weight of not forgiving what has been done to us. There are no conditions in this prayer. Here we pray like we forgive regardless of whose fault it is, regardless of what we really have coming to us, regardless of what is fair, regardless or of what they deserve, regardless of how hurt, betrayed, overlooked or neglected we were.

Regardless of all of this, we say in the Lord’s Prayer, we have forgiven them all. So, because we have done this, and only because we have done this, we can then turn to God and say that we are, at last, open to being forgiven, and that we have now begun, barely, to understand the power, and the cost, and the pure gift of forgiveness. Having always forgiven, we are then able to ask of God the unmerited grace of his forgiveness.

Now, none of this is who we are now. We do not want bread just for today, we want more and honestly think that wise and prudent. And we do not forgive like this, we hold too passionately our own hurts and our sense of fairness—and it feels sorta good to cuddle old wounds. In spite of that, this is how we pray, this is what Jesus wants us to pray for when God’s kingdom comes first.

So, we have to pretend. And that’s all right. (And maybe that’s why the last petition in Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer is that we be protected from the time of trial.) After all, God isn’t finished with us yet, and there is really no telling how we will end up.

In the mean time, Jesus want us to pretend. He wants us to pray like the Kingdom is all we care about and is all we hope for. He wants us to listen to what we say, and to notice what’s behind it. There is no telling where that will lead, but it will be good for us, and it will bring us closer to the kingdom of God, and it will bring the kingdom closer to us.

About that rich man in Jesus’ parable: What was he supposed to do with it? He had this abundance of possessions, and he had no place to store it. He was a success. He had all this land, and he doubtless worked hard—and he also had servants or slaves or serfs who probably worked even harder. Then, one year it all come together—one year that whole complex mix of skill and luck and weather and sunshine and good help and so much more that you need for the land really to produce. It all come together and the guy was rolling in it.

It seems to us that this was the idea, the purpose of the whole enterprise. The rich man should have had his picture of the cover of First Century Forbes, or whatever the equivalent was, and been made a local hero. Instead, Jesus makes him the goat of the parable, and seems absolutely delighted to kill him off the day after he brings in the best crop of his life. It hardly seems fair.

Now, the Teacher, the writer of Ecclesiastes, our first lesson, would have jumped in at this point and said, "that’s right, it isn’t fair, and life is like that. It’s all a chasing after wind. The most you can do is make the best of a doomed situation, because sooner or later, everyone is going to end up just as dead as this rich man, and you might as well get used to it, and stop whining about it." The Teacher was sort of a hoot, and he had a perspective you don’t find too often in the Bible. But do notice that while Jesus wants to say more than the Teacher says, Jesus certainly doesn’t want to take away anything he says.

Which brings us back to my first question. There it was, all the rich man’s stuff—abundant grain and goods. He didn’t know he was about to die. What was he supposed to do with it? Stick it in his ear? Feed it to the pigs? Leave it outside to rot? Burn it up? Give it away? Well, yes...that’s sort of the rub in the parable. Jesus is almost certainly saying that the rich man would have been much better off if he had done exactly that. The point is not that if the rich man had given it away he would not have died when he did—God really doesn’t sell that cheap. The point instead is that if he had given it away he would have been a whole lot richer when he died, and after he died, than he was the way things turned out. There are two or three pieces of this I want to look at.

First of all, there is the common, but dreadfully accurate, observation that you are going to die, and you can’t take it with you—so if what you value most is what you are going to lose, then there won’t be very much of you left. That’s how possessions impoverish if they become central. Like I said, it’s a common and familiar point, but, alas, it’s none the less true.

Somewhat more interesting to me is the second part of what Jesus is saying. It’s something the Teacher in Ecclesiastes, and a bunch of Greek philosophers who lived about the same time he did, and the rich man in the parable, and countless others before and since have learned. In philosophy it’s called the hedonistic paradox. We see it all the time. It’s simple, and it says: "the harder you try to be happy, the harder it is to be happy". The more of a goal being happy is, the less likely you are to be happy.

So, if you set out, like the Teacher or the rich man, to be happy, or to live by pleasure, then you’re in trouble—not just because you’re going to die and that’s that (which is the first point)—but even more because it is a foundational truth about human beings that happiness is not an attainable goal—it’s not something you can aim for and achieve. It is only an occasional and fortunate by-product that can sometime happen if you seek other things, things of value, for their own sake. That ’s the second thing Jesus is saying with this parable.

But the third and most interesting thing in this parable goes back to my first question. The rich man had all that stuff, what should he have done with it? What is the purpose of stuff beyond meeting basic needs? Since it can’t really make you happy, and since it can’t really make you secure, then what’s it for? The best answer is that you can use it—not just to meet your needs, and not just to make yourself useful, but more centrally, you can use it to prepare your self for the Kingdom of God; you can use it to help shape yourself for life in the kingdom.

The rich man could have used his stuff to help make himself generous instead of self absorbed; he could have used it to build up the places he lived and the people he lived with; he could have used it to develop and nourish relationships with his community, with his family and with God. And it is these things, these traits of character and these relationships, that make us real people, and that can fulfill us, and sometimes even result in our being happy, and that can prepare us for the life that God has in store for us.

And this fellow really needed to do this. Remember, this guy was so poor he didn’t even have any relationships. He didn’t have anybody to talk to, or to pray to, but himself, and he didn’t have anybody to care for but himself. But he did have this stuff, and he could have use that stuff to make himself real.

Now, there is something essential here that it is vital not to miss. The rich man couldn’t buy any of those things that would make him real, character or real relationships—but he could use the stuff he had to help develop these. It didn’t matter what stuff he had or how much of it; the point is that whatever you have, you can use. Generosity, for example, is not for sale, you can’t go to the character store, get some, and put it on your Visa card. But the way we use our stuff will determine whether we become giving and generous people with lives beyond our selves, or not. And so on for the rest.

And the sort of people we become, the type character we choose develop, the relationships we establish, the way we shape our soul, this will have eternal consequences. These things about us will matter long after our stuff has ceased to be important, and regardless of how much or what kind of stuff we have ever had. These things become a fundamental part of the life that is demanded of us by God, and the decisions we make about them will truly matter.

So there really is good news here. Certainly, our stuff won’t last forever, and we won’t take it with us. And there is no way around the fact that the harder we try to get happy or be secure based on what we have or how we feel, the farther we will get from those goals. That’s all true, and that’s all part of the bad news. But the good news is that what we have, everything we have, we can use to help prepare ourselves for life in the kingdom of God. The way we handle anything and everything can, if we choose and with God’s grace, help us develop the character, and so grow into the person, God wants from us, and God created us to have. Everything, and that includes whatever stuff might be around, can help us to live the best life we can have, now and forever.

A while back I read a novel with a great opening quotation—the thing the author puts on a blank page before the book begins. I don’t remember the title of the book or who was quoted, but I remember the words. They said simply "Any Christian who is not a hero is a pig". "Any Christian who is not a hero is a pig". Yeah.

That fits right in with the lessons today. They’re all full of hard sayings, of demands for faithfulness, and of the promise of judgment. In the first two readings, and in the Psalm, God is basically saying that behavior is important, that God has some very real expectations of us, and that what we do matters. So we hear all that talk of discipline and of Judgment. Then there are Jesus’ words about division, and about fire, about what he must undergo and his impatience to get on with it.

All in all, not our usual Sunday fare. No gentle Jesus, meek and mild, no easy yokes or light burdens, no kind words about love and forgiveness. This is the other side of the Gospel, the other side of the faith. The side that we don’t embrace quite so willingly. None the less, there it is.

And we need to hear it. We simply cannot ignore or overlook the reality that God offers us a vision of what human life can be, and what it should be. We pretty much know what that vision is. It has to do with shaping ourselves as people by living faithfully with God at the absolute center of our lives.

It has to do with telling the truth; and with living not for ourselves alone but for another. It has to do with holiness of life and with a passionate concern for the poor. It has to do with the way we take care of the stuff and the people God gives us.

It has to do with all of those things folks in the lessons today were getting dumped on for not doing. What it all really comes down to is the imitation of Christ—Jesus living again his life in us and through us. God is very serious about this vision of life. God expects us to strive to conform our lives to it.

And when Jesus talks about fire, and about his baptism, and about division and conflict, he is talking about what it looks like and what it feels like to struggle to live this way; to be faithful to the vision.

Remember the Gospel a few weeks back when James and John were mad at a village in Samaria and wanted to wipe it out by calling down fire from heaven? Jesus said "No". Now, the very next time fire is talked about in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus says "Yes". But this time, the fire of God’s presence is not aimed at the bad guys out there, punishing them. Instead, the first one to feel that fire is Jesus himself. That’s the way it works. The fire that Jesus casts upon the earth is the fire that he first embraced.

It is the fire of transformation and faithfulness; the fire that comes, not to destroy, but to refine and purify. And God’s first call is always to his own.

God’s first call for holiness and righteous is not made to an evil world out there—telling it to shape up. God’s first call for holiness and righteous is made to us, to those who claim to follow Jesus. It is after we hear and struggle with this call that we will have something to say, and (much more importantly) something to show, to a world that definitely needs to clean up its act.

Every Christian who is not a hero is a pig. There is enough truth in that to make it disturbing.

Now, it is important that we keep clear about something here. God does not give us this vision of how human being should live so that God can sit up there with a checklist keeping score on how we do and gleefully sending us to hell if we get too many wrong answers. And none of this stuff about behavior and discipline has to do with whether or not God will keep loving us. That is a given, that is never at issue. Instead, there are at least two other reasons why God tells us these thing about how our lives should look.

The first reason is that God loves us, and God wants for us the fullest and the richest and the deepest life we can have. We are created in such a way that life is available to us most fully when we try to live God’s vision of what it means to be a human being. ||It’s a little bit like the old simile which points out that cars are made to run on a certain kind of fuel. There are other things you can put in them that will work for a little while; and that can make for a very interesting ride, for a little while. But then it doesn’t work any more. And it will wreck the car. So with God’s vision for our lives. We just run better, for the long haul, when that is what we are using. We are made that way.

Now, living as we are called to live is not as easy as putting gas into the tank. It is sometimes very hard; and there are a lot of options out there. At the same time, the way we are created to live is not always the way the world around us says we should live. The values are different. And if we choose to hold to the values and the vision of our faith, then we will know very well what Jesus means when he talks about division, and conflict, and fire.

None the less, in that direction lies life, at its fullest, and its most abundant. God loves us, and God wants that life for us, and God has made us for that life. That is one of the reasons God gives us His vision of how human beings should live. For our own sake.

The other reason has to do with our mission, with our calling to be the body of Christ, to carry out the work and the ministry of Jesus Christ in this place, and in our generation. Part of our witness to the world is offering a real option, a different way to live. Jesus did that. The way Jesus lived forced a choice upon everyone who met Him. Remember, Jesus did not grab people by the throat and say "You’re a jerk—and if you don’t get fixed you are in deep trouble". Instead, He offered himself; he spoke of the Father; he told the truth; he lived with absolute integrity. People saw in Jesus something that has caused in them a crisis—and they had to choose.

And for the world to see Jesus today, it must look at us.

It does no good for us, or for the Church, to sit on the sidelines and shout to the world out there that it is "bad, bad, bad". Even, indeed especially, when it really is bad, bad, bad. Nor does it do much good to tell "them", the folks out there, exactly what they should do to clean up their act. Even if, indeed especially, if we know. Instead, we are called, as was Jesus himself, to transform ourselves; and to show and to tell the world what it looks like, and how it is different, to live as we are created to live, by a God who loves us, and wants for us the best that can be.

That is what is behind all of these tough lessons. It is the call to that wholeness and completeness and new life that living as we are created to live can bring. And it is the call to share, not good advice, but new lives, with a world that is dying for the lack of exactly that. It is a challenge, and it is hard. But it is the way of life, and the way of hope.

There are a couple of moments from our trip to Washington DC earlier this month that really leaped out at me. Both happened at places I had been before, but each struck me in a new way this time—and part that was because I was thinking about today, and about the lessons for today, and about what it means to celebrate a place, and to give thanks for the gift of a Church.

The Lessons for today: Genesis 28.10-17; Psalm 84.1-6; I Peter.2.1-5, 9-10; Matthew 21.12-16.
 

A list of Sunday Scripture readings, with links to the Biblical Text:

Season After Pentecost

Advent
 

Archive of St. Mary's Sermons from September 3, 2000
 

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Fr. Jim Liggett
P.O. Box 2949; Big Spring, TX  79721
(432) 267-8201 (phone)

Stmarys@stmarysbst.org 

The page background is courtesy  of  Windy's Page designs.

The recurring theme in today’s readings is the contrast between pride, the single most destructive sin—and humility, which is probably the one virtue that is absolutely necessary, in some degree or another, to Christian life and growth.

This morning I want to share with you a few thoughts about humility that might give some shape to your own reflections on this. After all, it seems a little out of place to try to preach a great sermon on humility; so this is more of a meditation.

And there is no getting around the fact that humility is among the least understood of all Christian virtues. We usually think of it as a form of masochism or pious dishonesty—you know, humble people are the folks who are always putting themselves down, insisting that they are of no value or worth, resisting any compliment—in general, boring the socks off everyone. It seems to follow from this that any sense of accomplishment, any feeling of value or success about who we are or what we have done is somehow not humble, almost irreligious, and so should be avoided, even if true—maybe especially if true.

It can be as funny as it is confusing. Have you ever seen people religiously denying what they know very well to be real—attractive people insisting they are ugly; clever folks trying to pretend they are stupid, and so on? It’s not a pretty sight. Now, if this is humility, it’s really hard to see why it’s supposed to be such an important thing to have.

At the same time, our tradition puts great value on humility. Did you know that it is a uniquely biblical notion? Yeah, most of our virtues have classical and secular parallels (everyone agrees, for example, that honesty or reasonable courage are good things.) But humility has no parallels in other religions or ethical systems—modern or ancient.

No religion that didn’t grow out of the Bible even mentions it. But we sure do—all the time. Jesus, in today’s Gospel, states simply that "every one who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted". Somehow, Jesus says, the key to our relationship with God lies in this difficult notion of humility. St. Augustine carried it even farther and wrote that "the whole of the Christian religion is humility."

Now, neither Jesus nor St. Augustine was stupid and when they were talking about humility, they weren’t talking about that silly, phony, ‘I’m really no good’ nonsense that’s floating around out there. Real humility is very different from that. First, St. Augustine provides a good place to begin. He states "Human, know that you are human. Your whole humility is to know yourself." This puts us on the right track. The key to humility is honesty—a down to earth knowing (and accepting) of who we truly are as human beings, and of where we stand in relationship to God, to each other and to the rest of creation. That’s the key. I want to say three things about this honesty that’s involved with real humility.

First of all, when it comes to being honest about ourselves, don’t forget that the first truth we Christians have about ourselves is that we are created by God, redeemed by Christ, and sustained by the Holy Spirit. We are God’s. (apostrophe s, not little s.)

That is where we begin. Sure, part of an honest look at ourselves involves realizing, as Ecclesiastics loves to remind us, that we are dust and ashes, that today’s King is tomorrow’s corps, and that pride was not created for human beings.

But honesty also means a lot more. It means that we did not create ourselves, and that we are of great value to God. It means that we are dependent on God for who we are, and for what is most important about us. It means that our salvation comes to us a gift, and not from our own efforts or merits. It means that we are created by God, and we are God’s. That’s the first bit of honesty.

The second is like unto it. Humility does not mean that we are no darn good—that we have no abilities, strengths, or accomplishments. It does not mean we never do a job well or accomplish what we set out to do. It does not mean that we are not able, competent, and useful people. What humility insists, and what pride denies, is the reality that all of these qualities about ourselves, and about others, start out as gifts from God. It means that our talents, skills and opportunities are both gifts from God, and things we can work at developing, and make better. So we tell the truth, and that involves remembering that nothing about us is really all and only about us.

C. S. Lewis gave the best description of humility I have ever read, listen to this. He says that humility is: "a state of mind in which a person could design the best cathedral in the world, and know it to be the best, and rejoice in the fact, without being any more (or less) or otherwise glad at having done it [himself] then he would be if it had been done by another." Humility does not hide the truth, but it shifts the focus, so it isn’t so much about us.

That brings me to the third part of the third bit of honesty: The problem that humility addresses—the vice that counters it—is not only, or even primarily, the problem that we think too much of ourselves. Instead, the real problem is that we think of ourselves too much—and of others, and God, too little.

The point in Jesus’ parable (which, by the way, is a parable, and not advice to social climbers) is that God is inviting us all to the Kingdom of God—and that the only way to respond to this invitation is by being honest about it, by realizing that it is a gift, by rejoicing in that gift, and so giving up any personal credit, or status, for the invitation.

It is the realization that it is through God’s grace, and that grace alone, that we are able to enter the Kingdom, (or do much else, for that matter) that allows us to accept God’s offer of new life without the destructive bother of comparing and measuring and deciding who comes out on top all of the time. The humble are blessed by God, not because they have done good works (and humility itself is not a good work deserving merit) but simply because they are free enough of themselves to be open to God.

So we are to seek humility, not by a recitation of half-believed personal inadequacy, but by a thankful, honest, seeking after Him who has made us and given us all that we are.

The prophet Micah still says it best: "The Lord has shown you. O man, what is good; / and what does the Lord require of you / but to do justice, and to love kindness, / And to walk humbly with your God."

"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." Aren’t those wonderful words to hear the day we begin Sunday School, and pay special attention to the care and nurture of those very children, and families, that Jesus commands us to hate. In one fell swoop, he attacks motherhood, the nuclear family, and living well.

The Lessons for today: Deuteronomy.30.15-20; Psalm 1; Philemon 1-20; Luke 14.25-33.
 

A list of Sunday Scripture readings, with links to the Biblical Text:

Season After Pentecost

Advent
 

Archive of St. Mary's Sermons from September 3, 2000
 

Back to St. Mary's Homepage
 

Fr. Jim Liggett
P.O. Box 2949; Big Spring, TX  79721
(432) 267-8201 (phone)

Stmarys@stmarysbst.org 

The page background is courtesy  of  Windy's Page designs.

We have witness the full fruits of evil, terrible and grotesque evil—and make no mistake, it is human evil. (God doesn’t hurl airplanes into office buildings, and, for that matter, neither does the devil. People do that.) We see the awful fruit of the evil that grows from the image of God when that image is twisted and distorted and led down all the paths that take it away from what it is intended by its maker to be.

It is an evil that grows from hatred and vindictiveness run rampant; from love for one’s own—one’s own people, one’s own state, one’s own goals—made absolute; from self-righteous religious intolerance that invokes the name of God for man’s worst moments. It is an evil often not without roots in the experience of real suffering and injustice, but which uses the fact of that suffering to justify any pain, any grief, it may create. It is an evil that proclaims the goals, the hoped for consequences of its actions, to endow those actions, no matter how horrible, with righteousness and with honor. It is an evil so blind that it can see itself as good, that can see itself as holy, that can see itself as heroic.

We are called to another way.

Perhaps the greatest fruit of this sort of evil is suffering. Whether the evil comes from Herod the Great or from Timothy McVay or whomever is at work here. (The story is the same, the evil is the same, the results are always suffering.) But this time it is simply overpowering. We have seen it close up. I suspect all of us have been transfixed with horror at the stunning pictures of destruction, and at the unimaginable suffering that lies behind the smoke and the fire and the wreckage. It defies description, and it overloads the imagination. For most of us this is new; and it opens for all of us a disorienting awareness of how deeply interrelated we are one to another, and of how fragile and vulnerable we are.

There is a feel of such powerlessness and helplessness in the face of such awful suffering—and there are many sorts of suffering, and there are many, many ways to be a victim in such a tragedy. And there isn’t anything we can do to fix it or to change it.

But there are things we can do. First of all, we can, and today we do, join our prayers to the prayers of countless millions around our nation and around the world. (Such prayers are not something to do when there is nothing of real value to do. They are of real value, and of real worth.)

Also, we can reach out in whatever ways are available to us, and we can look with a special sensitivity to those we know who are especially touched by this. We can allow our own capacity for compassion, for caring, and for reaching out to grow, and to deepen. We can reach out to one another, and share our own pain, and our own hurts. In these ways we can renounce the evil we face, we can move away from it—and so we can show the alternative vision of what human life can be.

For we are called to another way.

At the same time, we can seek justice, and we can pray for justice, and we can hope that as a nation and as individuals we will respond to these awful acts in ways that are appropriate, in ways that are deliberate, in ways that help to insure that this does not happen again. We can seek justice and in the seeking renounce the evil we face and move away from it, and do show an alternative vision of what human life can be.

I suspect that the greatest spiritual challenge this horrible time gives to us—and challenge is part of the call to compassion and to justice—is the challenge of making sure that this evil which is around us, and which has so moved and affected us, does not grow in us. We are called to renounce this evil, and to do so at a level of real depth.

To allow the shock and outrage and sympathy that rise up within us turn into vindictiveness and hatred; or to let our compassion lead us into our own forms of intolerance, self-righteous, or racism, or to let a desire for justice turn to a lust for revenge, to do this, even in the smallest of ways, even for the best of purposes, is not to oppose the evil we face, but to embrace it; and make it our own. And so to be defeated by it.

We are called to another way.

So, this evening we hear the story of the holy innocents, of those who died as a result of this evil; and we remember that the Lord calls us to pray for our enemies, not because it is a pleasant or natural thing to do, but because it is part of what it means truly to renounce this great evil; an evil that reached out to Jesus both as a child and as a man—an evil that touches us today.

For we are called to another way.

And, finally, here are the words, again simple words, that Pope John Paul II used today to begin his statement condemning these attacks. John Paul reminded us that "evil and death will not have the last word." They are not the strongest power, and today, as our last word, we remember that, and proclaim that.

May the souls of the departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.