Posted by Pr. Seth for Pentecost 10, Year C
​Texts: Gen 18.20-32; Col 2.6-19; Lk 11.1-13

At its simplest, praying is just talking to God. There are many different ways to pray: through study and reading scripture, individually or together, with joy or sorrow, even silently. When we pray together in worship, often the language we use is very poetic and flowery, filled with large words and complexly structured in intricate sentences; but prayer can be as simple as a single sentence or word or even a sigh. It’s hard to do it wrong. And this is precisely why I find it interesting that today’s gospel lesson begins with Jesus’ disciples asking him to teach them how to pray.

Rabbis like John the Baptist and Jesus would have taught their students different rote prayers that they would be expected to memorize and use, much like we teach our community the Lord’s Prayer or “Come, Lord Jesus” or “Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep.” The disciples’ question may simply have been a request for Jesus to teach them a prayer that they could memorize and use, but as I read our texts for today, this question takes on new meaning for me. It takes on a sort of urgency and maybe even an edge of fear, because what we learn today is that prayer is powerful.

Our story from Genesis picks up where last week’s story left off: three strangers have come to visit Abraham and Sarah while Abraham and the males of his household are still healing from being circumcised. These strangers—who the narrator tells us are God—announce that elderly Sarah will become pregnant. After this, the strangers begin to leave. The introduction to the story we did not get in the lectionary says:

“Then the men set out from there, and they looked toward Sodom; and Abraham went with them to set them on their way. The LORD said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, seeing that Abraham shall become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? No, for I have chosen him, that he may charge his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing righteousness and justice; so that the LORD may bring about for Abraham what he has promised him.”

God is about to judge Sodom and Gomorrah for their evil deeds, and is unsure whether to tell Abraham about what God is about to do; but in the end, God decides to share this information with Abraham because of their covenant relationship—a relationship, remember, that God initiated by coming to Abraham. Abraham is not inserting himself into God’s affairs here, God is the one getting Abraham involved. The fact that the LORD remains behind specifically to talk with Abraham about this indicates that the LORD actually wants Abraham’s opinion.

God has chosen Abraham and his descendants to “do righteousness and justice;” and so God gives him the opportunity to do just that in the case of the People v. Sodom and Gomorrah. And because God wants his opinion, Abraham can trust that God will listen to it. This is not the story of a God who already knows what God will do but who tests Abraham to see whether he will measure up; this is a story of God taking advice from a friend, somebody whose opinion God values.

In the exchange that follows, Abraham actually changes God’s mind about what God intends to do. God has sought Abraham’s advice, and God then decides to follow it. But this is not the whole story. The true power of prayer is not just that it can change God but that it can also change us. Whether he was thinking of his relative Lot or simply the plight of the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham lobbies God for mercy. He sees injustice in “sweeping away the righteous with the wicked,” and he says so. Throughout the conversation, Abraham shows how he himself is committed to the justice and righteousness with which God has charged him. Not only is he moving God towards mercy, he is himself learning what it is to act with justice while also being merciful. Justice must be done, the outcries that have come to God must be answered, but how, and at what cost? God and Abraham work this out together, and when they have finished consulting, God goes and does according to what they have agreed.

Jesus seems to give us the same impression. Through his parables, he illustrates how the persistence of prayer can be as important as the content. The best prayer, prayed once, does little or nothing; but the weakest and smallest prayer prayed over and over becomes a part of us until it drives us to become a part of its own answer. Through persistent prayer, we enter into conversation with God again and again and learn together with God how our prayers might be affected.

Prayer has great power and potential to change both God and ourselves; and with this great power comes great responsibility. Prayer that is made selfishly or in opposition to God’s will has the same power to shape and form us; but to what end? These prayers might reinforce in us prejudice or hatred, they may incite us to division and violence. We see this in the religious zealot and extremists that carry out terrible deeds in the name of their faiths. We even see it within our own Christian Church.

When Pastor Mark Burns gave the benediction at the Republican National Convention last week, he prayed for unity. Unity is good, we need unity more now than ever in our country and our world. However, in the same breath as he prayed for unity, he prayed using words of division, words that were meant to tear apart rather than unite. He prayed using words that cast other patriotic, deeply devoted Americans—people like himself—as the enemy. Prayer can be dangerous because if we pray to our opinions or ideologies or whatever idols we might have, we can pray ourselves away from the reign of God.

​This is what is on my mind as I hear Jesus’ disciples asking him to teach them—and us—how to pray: how can we be confident that when we pray we are faithfully using the power that prayer has to shape us and even influence God? To answer the disciples’ question, Jesus gives us this model for how to pray:

We pray to our Father, reminding us that all people are one family under God, and that God loves and cares for us as a parent. We pray that God’s name might be hallowed, that all who profess to follow that name might keep it holy above all the things that can distract or divide us. We pray for God to rule on earth and God’s will to be done among us as it is done among the angels. We pray that God will provide for us and help us to share what we have so that all may be fed, that God will forgive us and so teach us to forgive each other. We pray that God protect us from the evil at work in the world, in others and in ourselves and that God will see us through the trials of faith.

We pray for many other things—for healing, for wholeness, for justice and peace, and for mercy—but no matter what our prayer, Jesus’ model focuses us on the way of the LORD—the way of righteousness and justice—and reminds us to whom we are praying.

At its simplest, prayer is just talking to God; but in its fullest expression, prayer is talking with God. This is where it gets its power; we not only talk to God, we also listen as God talks to us. God listens to us, and God also responds. We pray rightly when our prayer brings us into conversation with the God we have come to know in the words of scripture, in the breaking of the bread, in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, in the love of our community. If prayer becomes an echo chamber where we hear only our own opinions reflected back to us or a forum for us to speak to others, then perhaps we are doing it wrong.

Prayer does have great power. It has the potential to change us, and it even has the potential to change God. God gives us the gift of prayer not so that we might wield it like a weapon or with the danger that we might destroy ourselves with it, but because God wants us to be a part of what God is doing in this world of ours. We do need not to fear the power of prayer, but neither should we dismiss it.

In the end, prayer is conversation; whether we do it well or poorly, God is still God, and God’s will is still done. Martin Luther writes: “God’s good and gracious will is indeed done without our prayer, but we ask in this prayer that it may also come about in and through us.”

C Pentecost 9, Pastor Stephanie McCarthy
Genesis 18.1-10a; Psalm 15; Colossians 1.15-28; Luke 10.38-42

​This communion table is central to what we do on Sunday and who we are as Christians.  This table is God’s, not ours.  We think and reflect often on what it means to be fed at God’s table.  But what about when God eats at our table?  Today we have two stories about God eating with people.  And as it turns out, doesn’t matter if we are at God’s table or God is at ours – at both meals God delivers words of grace.
 
First we hear of Abraham’s profound hospitality toward three strangers (one God) who come to visit.  Abraham’s hospitality is expected – gracious hospitality was an incredibly important value to the culture in that place and time.  Abraham and his male relatives had just been circumcised, and it was the heat of the middle of the day, so reclining beneath a tree seems a most natural place for him to be.  And in the midst of the hazy heat and recovery from a…rather unpleasant medical procedure…Viola!  Three incredibly unexpected travelers appear.  Even in that situation, Abraham’s hospitality is immediate and abounding.  Little did he know he was hosting God.
 
Once the travelers being speaking, we start to get the clues: they know who Sarah is even though she’s not right there, the language switches from plural to singular, and low and behold the promise of descendants is proclaimed once again by God to Abraham.  Sarah will have a son, even though it was so hard to believe.  Now, by this point, it had been years since this old couple had heard this promise from God.  Hard to believe the first time, we can understand Sarah’s laughter – perhaps desperate laughter, bitter laughter, disbelieving laughter.
 
We know this sound – uncomfortable and frustrated.  These past few weeks, when it seems the news can’t get any more horrific or sad, our broken hearts are crushed again with news of another shooting, another terrorist attack, another, another, another.  And yet to Abraham and Sarah, and to us, we hear God’s question – is anything too wonderful for the Lord?  Is anything too extraordinary for the Lord?  Is there anything the Lord cannot do?
 
From a story of abounding hospitality, we turn to one that at first glance, seems to be saying that hospitality, in fact doesn’t matter.  This story has long gotten under my skin – how about you?  Feeding people is how I show them I love them – is Jesus telling me that I shouldn’t?  My struggle with this text is a result of interpretations that have twisted this beautiful story of discipleship into a story about Mary versus Martha.  Interpretations that pit one sister against another and then ranks their choices do a dis-service to the story.  This interpretation calls out our sin of comparison, which we so often fall into.  Comparison, competition, who is better – focusing on these things rarely ends with acceptance.  And so the story becomes about who wins at the expense of another.  But really, this story isn’t about comparison but completion.  Not about who is better, but WHEN is better.
 
You see, this story was never meant to stand on its own, but it MUST be read alongside the story of the Good Samaritan, which we heard last week and comes immediately before this one.  The setup for these two stories is the lawyer who tested Jesus by asking him what he must do to inherit eternal life.  Jesus askes the lawyer ‘what is written in the law’ and the lawyer responds with “You shall love the Lord your God with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.”  When the lawyer then asks ‘who is my neighbor’, Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan, which is immediately followed by the story of Martha and Mary.  Back in chapter 8 of Luke, Jesus talks of his family, his disciples, as the ones who hear the word of God and do it.
 
If we censure Martha too harshly, she may abandon serving altogether, and if we commend Mary too profusely, she may sit there forever.  There is a time to go and do; there is a time to listen and reflect.  Knowing which and when is a matter of spiritual discernment.  Perhaps if we asked Jesus which example applied to us, the Samaritan or Mary, his answer would be ‘yes.’
 
Mary and the Samaritan exemplify the great commandment, and the choice of these characters is deeply meaningful.  A despised outsider like a Samaritan would be the last person someone would expect Jesus to teach about as a merciful follower of the commandments.  Mary is doing what a man does – sitting at the feet of a teacher was absolutely NOT the place of a woman.  These characters are scandalous, shocking, and the fact that Jesus is using THEM as examples says something incredibly important about who disciples can be.
 
Of course we have not forgotten Martha.  Jesus’ “Martha, Martha” is not one of chastisement, but of deep affection.  The issue at hand for Martha is not about the fact that she is serving, but the fact that she is incredibly ‘distracted.’  The Greek word translated as ‘distracted’ here means being pulled, being dragged away, being overburdened.  Serving and hospitality done out of anxiety and distraction is not what we are called to as disciples.  Serving and hospitality done out of love and discipleship is another thing entirely.
 
As much as I want to stand with Martha every time I hear this story, I wonder what Mary has to teach us in our current context.  The violence, hatred and rhetoric of our world right now seems to have us all ready to scream STOP.  Mary has me thinking that perhaps what we need to do is STOP and LISTEN.  Really listen.  To each other.  To people who are different from us both in their experiences and opinions.  This is not a time to simply wait for our turn to speak, this is a time to listen as Mary did.  To pay rapt attention to those who will broaden our horizons and open our minds. 
 
What happens if we as individuals and communities stop, take a breath, truly listen to each other?  Perhaps then we will discern best how to act, not react.  Perhaps then, we will notice that God has joined our table and proclaimed promise.  Is anything too extraordinary for the Lord?  Seminary professor Sam Giere writes “Against the soundscape of Abraham’s silence and Sarah’s incredulous laughter, the Lord’s extraordinary promise rings through.  This promise did not usher in a utopia.  Far from it.  It does however, confirm yet again that in the midst of humanity’s capacity for messing things up, God remains faithful.”
 
God remains faithful to Mary AND Martha, to the lawyers AND the Good Samaritans.  God’s faithfulness is representative of God’s kingdom – where the rule (the commandment) is simply to love God and one’s neighbor.  This rule is so radically different from those of society that by following this greatest commandment, we will find ourselves breaking the rules.  Most importantly, I think it will drive us to break the rule that you can only be on one side: Martha OR Mary, Israel OR Palestine, Black Lives Matter OR Blue Lives Matter.  God’s truth is in the and – Mary AND Martha, Israel AND Palestine, Black AND Blue Lives Matter. 
 
By refusing to choose only one side but still honor the unique experiences and situations of different groups of people, we will find that we can be like Mary, not in that we only listen and never work, but in that we are willing to go where we are not expected.  We will find that enemies can be merciful.  We will find that in getting to know actual people, our expectations, biases and stereotypes will be shattered.  We will find ourselves gathered for a meal, and realize that God has come to join the table, and brought a profound word of grace.
 

It’s been another rough week. The news from Baton Rouge and St. Paul and Dallas has me once again wrestling with what to say right now. I don’t think I have to convince anyone that what has happened in these cities this week is a tragedy of the worst kind, lives woefully ended as the result of fear and anger and hate. I don’t think I have to explain to you that this cycle of violence and fear that is spiraling in on itself is fueled by racism, both conscious and subconscious, and that it is becoming more and more apparent with each passing death that we still have a problem with race in our country. I don’t think I have to impress upon you how important it is that something change here.

But I do think that I have to stand up here and say something about it, something that will help us move in a positive direction, something that begins to express how hurt we all are over the extrajudicial murders of two more black men by officers of the law and over the senseless violence against both police and civilians during a peaceful protest. I do think that as a preacher and as a Christian, I cannot be silent. Unfortunately, I do not know what to say.

We have this lovely and familiar parable this week, and so I think I’ll just start with that. One way we make sense of parables is to find ourselves in them, to see with which of the characters we identify. This week, I find myself not so much in the Samaritan or the man who fell among robbers, not so much in the priest or the Levite (though it sure does seem like I am always crossing by on the other side of the road when these things happen); today I am identifying most with the lawyer, the one asking Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”

Because of the promises of scripture and because of my own personal experience with God, I believe in eternal life. I believe that it’s not something that is reserved for life after death, but that it is something that God offers us now, life that is deeper and richer and brighter and fuller, that it is life lived with God. I have seen glimpses this eternal life thanks to the work of the Holy Spirit through the Church. I also believe that eternal life isn’t just for you or me individually, but for all creation; that God is working to fulfill and perfect the whole world so that everything that has breath will one day experience this eternal life together.

But this week, just as with every story in the news of a terrorist bombing or a person dying for being arrested while black or a police officer being killed for the sins of his or her colleagues, I am left hurting, hoping, wondering where is this eternal life? How long, O Lord, shall we cry for help and you will not listen? What can I do to help stop this madness?

I’d venture a guess that I’m not the only one who feels this way, that maybe some of you feel like this, too. For those of us wondering how our world might finally come to possess this eternal life, I offer this parable as one place to begin.

One obvious lesson from this parable is one about who is our neighbor. Samaritans were despised and mistrusted by Jews; they were considered heretics. The lawyer in the story is so shocked by Jesus’ parable that when Jesus asks him for his interpretation, he can’t even bring himself to say the word “Samaritan,” saying instead, “the one who showed mercy.”

Throughout the gospels, and indeed throughout the whole Bible, God intentionally seeks out and identifies with the vulnerable, the poor, and the outsiders. It should be obvious to us that, if Jesus were to tell the story for us now, that the he might challenge us to see as our neighbors those who are most vulnerable, poor and on the outside of society now; for example, the kind of people who might fear being killed by police at a run-of-the-mill traffic stop.

This is the same sentiment that is at the heart of the Black Lives Matter movement: not that police are bad or that other lives don’t matter, but that there are people—our neighbors—who are being feared and discriminated against and oppressed and even killed by the very agencies who are sworn to serve and protect us, and that we should all be concerned about this precisely because we are neighbors. To recognize our interconnectedness in spite of the small things that divide us is to begin to experience eternal life.

This parable also points us to eternal life by showing us what it means to be a neighbor. The Samaritan on the road becomes a neighbor to the man in need because he “is moved with pity” for him. The verb in Greek comes from the word for "vicera," "bowels," "guts;" it literally means to experience gut-wrenching emotion, to be moved in one’s deepest being. We would call such an experience “compassion.”

The Samaritan experiences compassion for his wounded neighbor, and that compassion compels him to respond with kindness. He picks the man up, puts him on his own animal, and takes him to an inn where he pays the innkeeper to care for him, promising to cover any other expenses the innkeeper may incur. This is what separates compassion from pity: pity might make us feel sad or sorry for someone, but compassion compels us to act, even when it costs us, even if it means we must also suffer. In fact, the word compassion literally means “to suffer alongside” someone. This suffering with our neighbor, Jesus says, is how we inherit eternal life.

It seems backwards, doesn’t it, that suffering with the people we may not even recognize as our neighbors is the way to experience eternal life; but if anyone would know, it is Jesus, the Son of God who left heaven to be born as a human being and experience all of our pains and sorrows as well as our joys, to live and teach and walk among us knowing that we would eventually kill him for it. Through his Passion—his suffering alongside us as a human—Jesus makes eternal life available to us; so in some way it makes sense that our compassion—our suffering alongside each other—might help us experience it.

This is what gives me hope, because in the midst of the bloodshed and the fear, the violence and the anger, I see God at work in the compassion that draws us together. I see Jesus crucified again by our fear and hate alongside Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, lying dead beside Brent Thompson and Patrick Zamarripa, Michael Krohl and Lorne Ahrends and Michael Smith, but I also see God at work churning our guts and breaking our hearts with compassion for those who have died and caring for those who are left.

I have hope because the evil acts of humanity that crucified Christ did not have the final word in his story, and the evil acts that killed these people and so many others does not have the final word in this one. God answers death with eternal life, life that pains us and moves us in our core to act with compassion for our neighbors who live in fear of the law and our neighbors who put their lives in danger to protect.

In a statement earlier this week, our presiding bishop, Elizabeth Eaton said, “Until we in the white community feel that the death of a person of color is our death, too, nothing is going to change.” To be neighbors to our sisters and brothers of color is to realize that in the events of Baton Rouge and St. Paul and Dallas, we are killing ourselves. It is the privilege of every white person to be able to separate ourselves from these horrible deaths, to remain untouched by them because these murders happened somewhere else to somebody else. It is our privilege not to live among police who fear us. But it is our compassion that makes us suffer with our black and brown neighbors and feel their pain as our own, and it is that pain that will drive us to bring change.

​I don’t know exactly where we go from here, but I know we need to go somewhere. Bishop Eaton encourages the Church: “We need to show up. We need to stand with and listen to our colleagues and sisters and brothers of color. Even if they don’t want us to be there, or if they do, we need to show up. These people can no longer be invisible. We need our eyes opened… and then we need to find a way to reach out and build actual connections with people who are real and visible and not just some sort of stereotype.”

We have hope in eternal life that is stronger than death because Jesus showed up, because he suffered alongside us and showed us what that life looks like. This is our call as followers of Jesus: to show up, to see our neighbors and give our lives in service to them, as Jesus did. At this table we him, his body broken for us, his blood poured out for us; and as we eat and drink he shares this broken, poured out life with us, so that we, too may be broken and poured out for others, that through us, his eternal life may continue to spread.

In the midst of death, where do we find eternal life? Perhaps it is not just in healing, but in hurting together. Perhaps the eternal life of God is the ability to share the rawest pain and anguish with our neighbors so deeply in our guts that we are compelled to share our lives with them, just as Christ does with us.

C Pentecost 7, Pastor Stephanie McCarthy
Isaiah 66.10-14; Psalm 66.1-9; Galatians 6.7-16; Luke 10.1-11, 16-20

​The Bible is filled with the promises of God.  Those promises are quite often linked to pain.  The promise represented by a rainbow came after vast destruction.  The promise of a large family came to a couple whose lives were painfully devoid of children. The promise of the resurrection came in the midst of a walk down death row.  As pastors and preachers, Pastor Seth and I experience again and again how powerful the life-giving promises of God are in the midst of a funeral - there is perhaps no better place and time for the Easter story than in the midst of our darkest hours.
 
Today’s reading from Isaiah comes as a word of promise to a people in a world of pain.  The Israelites had been exiled from the promised land, from their home, for about 40 years, which then was easily two generations.  They had returned, expecting a joyful reunion with their city Jerusalem, with their home, with the temple where God lived.  Instead they found no temple and a city destroyed.  There was famine, contentiousness and conflict with the people who had remained and amongst themselves, and struggles between those who had much and those who had little.  
 
The book of Isaiah in general is filled with condemnation and lament as the Israelites struggled to re-make their home in this familiar but different place.  And into that profound pain, the last two chapters of Isaiah come with a word of promise.  A word that is God’s response to all the lament and judgement.  God’s response is a promise.  
 
There is talk of prosperity, but what may be more important is how that wealth and prosperity is used.  In today’s reading, we meet a comforting mother, caring for ALL her children, working so that the entire community might flourish.  There is abundant food and lots of play (did you catch that part about dandling on her knee?).  The promise is care, comfort, and joy.  God may be bound to God’s people through promise, but God is also energized by a parental delight in Jerusalem.
 
We have met another energized character these last few weeks as we’ve read most of Paul’s letter to the Galatians.  His letter to them is much more stern than most of his others.  The Galatians are being led astray by other missionaries who are preaching that new Gentile/non-Jewish converts to Christianity need to be circumcised and to be following all of the Jewish laws.
 
So in Galatians we encounter the pain of a community in conflict.  We also encounter the pain and frustration of Paul himself.  It’s pretty obvious here at the last part of his letter, which he writes in his own hand.  It was typical of letters in that time and place for the author to have someone else transcribing the letter, but ‘sign off’ at the end in his own hand.  Often Paul would sign off with a word of peace to the community - not here!  He emphasizes again how upset he is that the people were getting distracted from God’s grace and instead focusing on earthly, cultural things that didn’t matter in the long run or bigger picture.
 
The promise that Paul is emphasizing here is NEW CREATION.  Most translations find a way to smooth it out, but in verse 15,  the part that reads in the NRSV “but a new creation is everything” is really just Paul blurting out NEW CREATION at the end of that sentence.  It isn’t grammatically smooth like the translations deal with it.  He is so excited, so passionate about this promise of new creation from God, he can’t hold it in, the rules of grammar no longer apply.
 
And this new creation is not about what happens to an individual person, it is a universal truth.  It’s not “you are a new creation”, but instead “there is a new creation.”  It’s not about renewing our lives or transforming ourselves, it is about God doing something completely different for all of creation.  And how God accomplishes this is exactly why Paul is so worked up - the new creation is not a dream or vision, but instead is lived out in reality within community.  A community’s life together testifies to the reconciling power of the gospel.  Paul is desperate for the Galatians to be living out that reality, rather than getting mired in the petty arguments about things that could never affect the outpouring of God’s love for us.
 
So what do these stories mean for us today?  While we may not be returning from exile, while we may not be fighting about circumcision, pain and conflict are still a part of everyone’s life.  On every level of our lives we can find it - from our daily lives to huge world issues.  From our relationships with our significant others to the state of our country’s politics.  Just as the Israelites, the Galatians, and Paul needed them, we too need the promises of God in the midst of our pain and conflict.
 
God’s promise of comfort is a relief to our weary souls.  God’s promise of new creation reminds us that God is bigger than the chaos that swirls around us.  Bigger than Trump vs. Clinton, or Brexit.  Bigger than violence, terrorism and hate crimes.  Bigger than divorce, cancer, bankruptcy. 
 
God’s promise of comfort is real every time people reach out in love, kindness and gentleness.  God’s promise of new creation is real every time we as human communities work for good and walk the hard journey of reconciliation together.  New creation as lived out in community should profoundly change our lives, especially in the way that we talk about and treat others.
 
Since the news of Elie Wiesel’s death this weekend, I’ve been thinking about his live and looking at his words.  He sums it up well when he says “Look, if I were alone in the world, I would have the right to choose despair, solitude and self-fulfillment. But I am not alone.”
 
We are not alone.  God’s new creation being a community also means that we never go alone.  Just as Jesus sent out the disciples in pairs, we too can have a partner in the Gospel at our side, Jesus’s word at our back, and reminders of God’s promises every time we see a rainbow, a new baby, or an empty cross.