C Pentecost 15, Pastor Stephanie McCarthy
​Proverbs 25.6-7; Psalm 112; Hebrews 13.1-8, 15-16; Luke 14.1, 7-14

​Recently, a little factoid has been floating around social media claiming that JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, was the first billionaire to drop off the Forbes billionaires list because she gave so much money to charity.  A bit of digging shows that yes, she fell of the list in 2012 due to large charitable contributions and the high tax rate in the UK.  However she wasn’t the first, and she likely won’t be the last.
 
This little sliver of news and the traction it got says quite a bit about the world we live in.  The fact that we keep lists of the billionaires and rank them by how much money they have says something.  The fact that ‘falling off’ that list because of your charitable contributions is news says something as well.
 
We live in a world where bigger is better, where a person’s value to society is measured by their income, title and pile of stuff.  We rank.  We count.  We judge.  We make lists of tallest buildings, and largest cities.  We award gold medals, shiny statues, and strive to get on the ‘best of’ lists.  And we are surprised when someone is willing to give any part of that up.
 
Really, our world today isn’t much different that the world Jesus lived in.  They also counted, ranked and judged.  One of the ways this was visible in society was in invitations to banquets and a persons’ place at the table once they got there.  You received an invitation if you had a certain amount of prestige, wealth and standing.  And once you attended, the expectation was that you reciprocated.  You would return the honor of the hosts’ invitation with an invitation of your own.
 
Jesus offers another way.  Jesus invites us to stop ranking, counting and judging.  Jesus invites us to sit with those the world says we shouldn’t.  Because that is what the kingdom of God will look like, and we are invited to start participating in that kingdom right now.
 
Sometimes, though, we misunderstand Jesus’ invitation.  So instead of leaving behind the ranking, counting and judging, we use it on the other end of the spectrum.  We take the humility we are called to and turn it into passivity and self-degredation.  Instead of focusing on the top of the lists, we focus on the bottom.  We think of ‘the first shall be last and the last shall be first’ and become stuck in our thinking it’s still about the lists and the ranks.
 
It’s then when we’ve missed the point, the good news - that the ranking, counting and judging can be left behind completely.  When our counting comes from fear that there isn’t enough, it becomes pointless with a God whose love is boundless.
 
A major theme of the entire gospel of Luke is that God’s measure of membership in the kingdom has everything to do with how God sees us and not how we see ourselves or how the world sees us.  And though we at times may identify with the poor, crippled and lame and at others we identify with the wealthy - all God sees is beloved children.  We are ALL invited to God’s table, knowing that wealthy OR poor we can never return the invitation.  We are freed from the world’s system of comparison and competition knowing God would never do that to us.
 
Knowing this freedom, we are then freed for service – for living out God’s kingdom.  We, like Jesus, can invite the least expected.  It won’t make our lives easier, but it will make them better.  Living out God’s kingdom NOW means not letting our lives be driven by the fears that drive us to count and rank and compete.  If instead of fears of scarcity, we live in a sense of abundance and blessing, we are living out God’s kingdom.
 
Once we stop wasting our time calculating social prestige and stop worrying about what others are thinking, we can give and bless freely, we can simply be kind to everyone around us and invite others in from the margins of our society - at work, at school, wherever we are.  And like in many other gospel stories, particularly in the Gospel of Luke, the poor, crippled, and lame are particularly named.  As Christians globally, we’re pretty good at taking that part literally.  But what if those named in this story - the ‘poor, crippled, and lame’ are understood as what they symbolize - those on the outside, those who are treated without dignity, those seen as less than human. 
 
Victoria, the writer of the blog Lutheran Moxies writes:
The poor might be the politicians too poor in compassion to engage in compromise.  The lame might be those hobbled by their love of power.  The crippled might be the warmongers who are too crippled by hatred to reach for peace.  The blind might be those who can’t see God’s vision for justice.  For me, those are the people that are really, really difficult to invite to the table…But they can show us what the kingdom of heaven looks like.  Because theirs are the faces gathered around the heavenly banquet - those people we’ve avoided and insulted and hated - not because we’re bad people, but because they are. Christ came for them.
 
I don’t know the reasons that JK Rowling gives incredible amounts of her wealth to charity.  But no matter what she’s motivated by, she’s living out God’s kingdom.  But what is also true is that no matter how much she gives, she’ll never buy God’s honor and exaltation.  All she has to do, all we have to do to receive that is simply be.
 
In the end, a place of honor can’t be seized, it must be given.  The good news today - God gives us a place at the table, honor, love, acceptance, no matter where the world would have us sit.  The challenge today - we will be sitting with those we really would rather not.  The hope - that we learn to honor and love them as God does.

Posted by Pr. Seth for Pentecost 14, Year C
Texts: Isaiah 58:[1-8], 9-14; Hebrews 12:18-29; Luke 13:10-17

​I don’t dance well. Unlike Stephanie, who has an innate sense of rhythm and was in the marching band, I have a hard time keeping tempo, which is pretty important for dancing. However, I do enjoy it. Stephanie and I took a ballroom dancing class together in Iowa before we got married, which was a lot of fun. It was also kind of frustrating, since we weren’t dancing to the same beat, but it was fun.

It was while we were taking this class that we decided that at the wedding reception, since everybody was going to be watching us dance anyway, we might as well do something that would be fun to watch. So, we decided to foxtrot to “The Best is Yet to Come,” but with my timing problem, we had to really rehearse to get it to work out. Over several weeks of dance lessons and even some private sessions with our instructors, we slowly got better and better at the foxtrot, and we got more and more accustomed to the song, knowing when the music would swell and fade, and how to time our steps.

Rehearsal is important for lots of things. We practice sports, musical instruments, dance steps. We rehearse for presentations and performances because, as the old saying goes, practice makes perfect. Even doctors, lawyers and accountants—highly trained professionals—refer to their regular work as “practice.”

In a sense, this is what Jewish and Christian worship is: rehearsal. When we worship, we gather together as a community, we listen to God’s word and seek to understand it, we pray for the needs of the world around us, and we pool our gifts together to do God’s work: all things that help us prepare for life in the coming reign of God. For this reason, what we do in worship is important; and yet how we do it is open to a great deal of interpretation. These two aspects of our worship—its importance and its flexibility—mean that for a long time, we have been debating how best to worship.

Our gospel text today is one example of this debate. The synagogue leader represents one side. He may appear cruel or overly strict or even ignorant, but he is simply trying to be obedient to God’s own law as best he can. “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy,” scripture says, “Six days shall work be done; but the seventh day is a sabbath of complete rest, a holy convocation; you shall do no work: it is a sabbath to the LORD throughout your settlements.” (Lev. 23.3) He sees what Jesus doing work on a day commanded by God to be a day of rest.

Jesus, however, sees things differently. Scripture also says, “Six days you shall do your work, but on the seventh day you shall rest, so that your ox and your donkey may have relief, and your homeborn slave and the resident alien may be refreshed.” (Ex. 23.12) He sees his healing of the woman as a way of letting her, too, experience the rest the LORD commands for the sabbath. His words to the synagogue leader might seem harsh, but his rebuke helps us to see both how obvious Jesus’ interpretation seems to be as well as its importance.

This story helps underscore for us just what it is our worship is helping us rehearse. To the synagogue leader, worship is about rehearsing total obedience to God. This is important, but Jesus intentionally pushes the boundaries here to help us see a deeper truth: worship is about rehearsing total obedience to God by practicing justice.

The 58th chapter of Isaiah digs into this truth. The people of Israel are keeping the sabbath, but they are missing the point. While they piously fast, they also mistreat their workers and ignore the oppressed. They wonder why God does not seem to respond to their right religious conduct, and God responds by saying, “is this not the fast I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?” (Isa 58.6)

We hear in our reading that when God’s people refrain from trampling the sabbath by “pursuing their own interests on my holy day,” that is by keeping the religious traditions while still acting unjustly to benefit themselves, then—and only then—will they finally “take delight in the LORD.” The nuance here is subtle: fearing and loving God is not about keeping the letter of the law, but the spirit of it.

This is what the synagogue leader is missing—what we sometimes miss—and what Jesus is so eager to explain to both him and us. God gives us laws and establishes traditions for us to follow, but the end purpose of these things is not to test our blind obedience, but to prepare us in body, mind and soul for the reign of God.

Immediately after this story of healing, Jesus begins teaching the crowd in the synagogue about “What is the kingdom of God like?” comparing it to a mustard seed, a woman baking bread, a narrow door. One thing we know about what God’s reign is like, it is that it will be just; there will be no more oppression of the weak by the strong, no more exploitation of the poor by the rich, no longer will the many be silenced by the few.

Jesus shows us this today by healing this woman. She is bent over—a posture of submission and humiliation—when Jesus releases her from her bondage (which he calls satanic), he allows her to stand up straight, to regain her honor and dignity as a daughter of Abraham. No longer will people pity her or (literally) look down on her, but will look her squarely in the eye when they speak to her and treat her as they would any other Jewish woman. This is not just a story of Jesus healing a woman; it is a story of Jesus bringing justice to someone who has been oppressed, whether by spiritual forces or cultural ones.

The fact that all this takes place in a synagogue on the sabbath day means that it is related to how we worship. The synagogue is a place of teaching: Jesus is teaching us how to worship God. Both Luke and Isaiah are reminding us with their words that worship of the LORD is meant to prepare us for the just and righteous reign of God, a reign under which the yoke of oppression will be removed from all people.

In order to truly be worship, our sabbath observance must point us to this reality. People worship in many different ways: we may sing old hymns or modern songs, we may worship with charismatic energy and waving hands or with reverent solemnity or even silence. Some even worship by not worshiping: there are many who find God’s presence in nature, in the joy of family, in the beauty of art, or in many other places. Any of these things can be worship--as long as they help prepare us for the impending reality of God’s coming reign of justice and peace.

This is why we worship the way we do here, because we, like centuries of Christians before us, have found that the liturgy we follow does just that. We worship by gathering in community: we cannot come together without building relationship with and empathy for the people with whom we gather, even when we are embroiled in personal conflicts. We worship by hearing the word of God and plumbing that word for wisdom and understanding to guide our daily life. We worship by praying for one another and the world, which at once makes us mindful of the needs around us and also moves us to try to meet those needs. We worship by bringing our gifts of time and resources and of bread and wine together, so that God might use those gifts to serve both us and the community around us.

One of the most dramatic ways we rehearse for God’s kingdom is through the Eucharist. In the meal, we see Christ’s body broken for us, knowing that this gathered community is also the Body of Christ. As we see Christ’s body shared among us to nourish us, we are seeing how we ourselves are to be broken and shared to nourish the world in Christ’s name when we are sent from worship with the words “Go in peace, share the good news.”

This may seem like a daunting task, to go out and bring the good news of God’s justice to the oppressed; but this is why we worship. We have been preparing for this every week as we gather here. Each time we worship, we are rehearsing the justice of God’s kingdom: removing the pointing of the finger, giving food to the hungry, satisfying the needs of the afflicted. God is rehearsing us for the kingdom to come during this worship.

Even though I’m not a great dancer, rehearsing with Stephanie prepared me for our first dance at our wedding reception. It wasn’t perfect; we made some mistakes and my timing was a little off at parts, but we made it through and, what’s more, we had fun doing it. That’s why we put this work in now, why we rehearse for God’s reign in anticipation of its arrival: so that when it is here, even if we aren’t perfect, we will continue to practice God’s justice and have fun doing it.

C Pentecost 12, Pastor Stephanie McCarthy
Genesis 15.1-6; Hebrews 11.1-3, 8-16; Luke 12.32-40

​We live in a world that likes to tell us that ‘faith’ is simply what we choose to believe.  ‘Faith’ is something that we as people confess.  It’s an on/off switch.  We either have it or we don’t.
 
I don’t think that’s true.  I think that Scripture, our Lutheran and Christian heritage, and our daily experiences point us to understanding that faith not only comes from outside of us, but is also far more complex that the world would have us boil it down to.
 
Whenever we talk about faith, it’s important to center ourselves in Ephesians 2.8. “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.”  Grace and faith are gifts from God.  Our salvation is not something we could ever earn for ourselves.  Our reading from Luke today reminds us that it is the good pleasure of God that motivates God’s promises, God’s giving of gifts.
 
Faith is many things.  It is connected to hope, trust, belief, but it is not as simple as any of those things.  Our understanding of what exactly faith is changes and grows and develops as we walk on our spiritual journey through life.  Today we will not leave here with a complete or final definition of faith, but our readings today point us to ways we can more deeply understand this gift of faith and ways we can respond to it well.
 
Imagine a parent and young child at a swimming pool.  The child is standing at the edge of the pool, and the parent is in the water, arms outstretched, assuring the child that yes, they will catch them no matter what.  It is safe to jump.  They will be glad they did.
 
When Paul writes about faith in Ephesians, and here in Hebrews when faith is framed as assurance, we find that faith is about the promise of the parent, not about whether or not the child jumps.  The promise of that parent to catch the child will not go away if the child is scared, if the child doesn’t jump, if the child doesn’t believe the parent.  That promise of safe arms to jump into will never end.  In fact, in the face of a scared or hesitant child, perhaps the parent moves closer, repeats the promise again and again, perhaps shows the fulfilled promise by catching one of their siblings.  Faith is steadfast because the source of faith is not from within ourselves.  Faith is steadfast because the source of our faith is the Holy Spirit – it comes to us through God’s good pleasure.
 
And just as the response of that child on the deck of the pool differs from child to child or day to day, our responses to the gift of faith are very different.  Abraham is often lifted up as a supreme example of how to respond to the gift of faith.  In the part of Abraham’s story we heard today, God’s specific word of promise makes Abraham’s response possible.  God’s promise of a child and ancestors gives Abraham his faith.  Through that faith, he is then empowered to leave home to a new land, become the father of many, and even trust a promise he will never see the end of.
 
All of our faith journeys are different, but there are some lessons to be learned from the story of Abraham.  Abraham does not let his obedience turn into blind faith. He often asks questions of God - today we hear him ask questions when he laments his lack of children.  To Abraham’s questions come a specific response.  God’s promise we heard at the beginning of today’s passage, “I am your shield, your reward will be very great.”, while nice, is vague.  Once Abraham engages God, lifts up his worries and concerns, God gets more specific, God addresses his concerns directly.  So as we respond to God’s gift of faith, let us embrace the questions and listen for God’s replies.
 
Like a child jumping into their parent’s arms in a swimming pool, Abraham is willing to take risks.  In the entirety of Abraham’s story he does some pretty monumental things at the behest of God.  He uproots his entire family and moves to a new place.  He even takes his son to the altar of sacrifice.  But he makes some mistakes along the way, he takes some risks that God may not have wanted him to take.  Abraham also has his share of doubts and struggles.  And yet God takes all of that and works it for good.  Through it all, God’s promises to Abraham are repeated again and again, and they stand true.  So as we respond to God’s gift of faith, I pray that we can take risks, knowing that God’s promise will not go away, even if we fail.
 
Abraham’s response to the gift of faith is also incredibly forward looking.  God promises many descendants - Abraham only ever meets one - his son Isaac.  God promises a new home, a permanent place, but we find Abraham living in tents the rest of his life, as a traveler or nomad would.  The same was true for his son Isaac and his son Jacob.  But Abraham trusted the promises of God so much, he passed them on to the generations that came after him, even though he wouldn’t see them fulfilled.  So as we respond to God’s gift of faith, I pray that we have vision beyond our lifetimes, that we can see that the fulfillment of God’s promises often take time, more than we would ever expect.
 
Yes, Abraham is to be commended for his response to God’s gift of faith.  While he is an example to follow, it is important to remember that our gift of faith is the same as his.  In the end, what makes Abraham’s story one of hope is not that Abraham does brilliantly faithful things, it is that throughout the whole story, the whole journey, God’s hands remain stretched out.  God never stops saying “Go ahead, jump, I promise I’ll catch you.”  What makes this story one of hope is that it shows us that God’s promises never fail.  They may not be kept in ways we understand or even see in our lifetime, but God remains true. 
 
Why?  Because God wants to - the author of Luke reminds us that it is God’s good pleasure to give us the kingdom.  We are told to have no fear.  In a world that is using fear again and again to motivate us, let us instead jump into the arms of our loving God, who will repeat again and again the promises of peace, mercy and hope.  And with the assurance of God’s promises we will be empowered to live out the gift of faith - changing fear to love, anger to peace, and despair to hope.