Echoes:
A Sermon Preached by the Rev. Susan Allison-Hatch

Have you ever noticed how much goes unsaid in any conversation? Have you ever noticed how people so often complete one another’s sentences, one another’s thoughts?

Let’s try that now. I’ll start a sentence and you complete it.
A watched pot....(never boils)
A penny saved....(a penny earned)
You win some....(you lose some)
What goes around....(comes around)
Six of one....(a half-dozen of the other)
Those who live in glass houses....(shouldn’t throw stones)
The grass is always greener....(on the other side)

You get the idea. Much of what we say to one another is actually not voiced at all. Meaning is made not only in the words but also in the gaps between words. I suspect that was true in Jesus’ day as well.

Wonder with me a bit about what’s left unsaid in the story we just heard.

Jesus is at supper with his friends. There’s a poignancy to it all: Martha is serving; Lazurus—the man Jesus just raised from the dead—is hosting. Laughter is rippling through the room. Those gathered at the table exchange warm looks with one another. They tell stories and they remember the times they have spent with one another. They’re a community of friends gathered around a table.

Suddenly all eyes turn to Jesus and the woman kneeling at his feet. She’s holding an open jar of costly perfume. But that’s not all. She’s unpinning her hair and letting it flow down past her shoulders. She’s dipping her fingers into the jar and then tenderly massaging Jesus’ feet with that most valuable perfume. She’s wiping his feet with her hair.

I can imagine all gathered at that table—with the exception of Jesus—are shocked, appalled. What a thing for a woman to do.

Judas speaks. “Why was this perfume not sold and the money given to the poor?” he asks more to the room than to any one individual. Others likely nod in silent agreement. They’ve heard Jesus’ calls to serve the poor. They’ve heard Jesus castigate those in power for ignoring the cries of the poor. Likely they say to themselves (as I suspect some of us do too), “He has a point. Judas has a point.”

And then they hear Jesus say, “You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”

Those words, “You always have the poor with you....” grate on our ears like fingernails on a chalkboard. “What is he saying?” we wonder to ourselves. “How can he say that?” “What on earth does he mean?”

We listen to those words with 21st century ears. We hear “You always have the poor with you” and never hear the echoes in that phrase for
*We don’t listen with ears attuned to the Torah;
*We don’t listen with ears trained to hear the prophets’ calls for justice;
*We don’t listen with ears schooled in the psalmists’ indictment of those that exploit the poor.

So we don’t hear the commandment buried in Jesus’ words. We don’t hear the echo of Moses’, of Moses’ condemnation of the greedy and compassion for the needy. We don’t hear the echo of the commandment Moses proclaimed to the people of Israel as they stood in the wilderness, as they stood poised to enter the promised land. We don’t hear the echo of Moses in Jesus’ words.

To the people of Israel, to the people gathered in the wilderness Moses says, “Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, ‘Open your hand to the poor and the needy neighbor in your land.’”(Deuteronomy 15:11)

There are those among us—here in our town, in our state, in our country—who hear the words “You shall always have the poor with you” and stop listening for the echoes in those words and thus stop looking for the poor and the needy in our midst.
You and I—we live in the poorest state in the United States. We have the widest gap not only between the poorest and the richest but also between the richest and the next richest. Daily our neighbors are forced to make hard choices between buying the food they need and paying the rent or the health insurance bill or the car payment.

“You shall always have the poor with you....” It’s not an excuse to turn a blind eye or an empty hand to the most vulnerable in our community. It’s a veiled call to address the pressing need before our eyes.

Moses stands with his people—people who will cross into the promised land without him—and issues the commandment to “open your hand to the poor and needy in your land.” Like Moses, Jesus, at table with his friends on the night before his death on a cross, gives a commandment—a new commandment: “Love one another.”
*Love one another with the extravagant lavish love Mary showed as she poured out that fragrant oil on Jesus’ feet;
*Love one another in the barrier-breaking, boundary-bursting way of a woman
who undoes her hair at the feet of a man who is not her husband and in the
company of strangers;
*Love one another by responding to the pressing human need before your eyes.

Now. In this moment. In this city. In this state.

Lord, may the words of my mouth, settle in the hearts of those you love. Amen.

In preparing for today, I found myself examining the story of the prodigal son from a different perspective. I have never really seen myself as a prodigal son. I am one of the only people of my generation, that I know personally, who never left the church. Most of my family and friends did the typical “stray from the church” during college, trying to find themselves or decide for themselves where God fit in their lives. Many came back to church to get married, baptize their children or bury their loved ones. Some stayed, realizing how much they missed their church family and worship. Some left again until the next event.

Some left the church of their youth to join a large evangelical church like Calvary Chapel or Legacy Church. I used to get a kick out of how my mom would always pray for all the fallen-away Catholics, that they would come back to the true church. I know she particularly meant members of my extended family who left for Calvary over the years. Mom, I said, why don’t you pray for all those fallen-away who are not going to church at all, they probably need your prayer even more.

Some left their church after a bad personal experience with a pastor or priest, or a church that shunned them.

You know, you’re only a prodigal until you come back, some find a new church community that is loving and accepting very quickly. Some stay on the prodigal road for years, turning their backs on the Lord. The funny thing is, when you turn your back on someone, that doesn’t mean they’re not there anymore, you just don’t look at them. In any prodigal time in our lives, we turn our backs on Jesus, but He still has our backs. I’ve always kind of chucked at the question, “Have you found Jesus?” Why, I didn’t know He was lost. The prodigal son was lost and is found.

So I think it’s fair to say that each of us has had some type of “prodigal time” in our lives that eventually brought us home to God.

Now how about the other side of the coin? The brother who stayed at home, working for his father…could be like many of us, involved in everything at church from being an acolyte, proclaiming the scriptures, Eucharistic minister, choir, working in the food pantry or as part of the vestry.

I remember that in my family, I always felt like the odd one out. My oldest brother Diego was the firstborn and really smart. Next was Steve who became a dad at 18 and gave us our nephew and the first grandson, Ramon, but who had many struggles as a young man. Then came my sister Theresa who was the middle child, but she was the only girl. Next was me, nothing much to talk about…and last but not least my youngest brother Julian, the baby of the family. Then one day when I was in my 30’s, Steve told me, “You know you’re mom’s favorite right?” Why me? “Because you’re the only one of us who goes to church every Sunday!” That’s when he called me the white sheep of the family.

In the parable, the oldest son, who stayed home with dad working his fingers to the bone, doesn’t like the father’s excessive reacting to the prodigal returning home. Do we as church react to the prodigal’s return in the same way? At my old parish, a very proud church in the Atrisco area in the South Valley, most of the families are Hispanic with deep roots in the community. In the last twenty or so years, the influx of Mexican, Central American and South American immigrants has been huge and it bothers many of the old-timers that the church is just fawning over these new church members, who are only coming back to the church they worshipped at in their homelands. After all, we built this church.

Why did the elder brother have so many issues about the younger son coming back? I think he was being jealous and selfish because, he built this and the younger wasn’t going to get any of my stuff.

I really feel like this community is like the older brother but with the right attitude…welcome home. Like my father, I have been waiting for you too. Sometimes we even have a little celebration after mass for us to share.

One final thought, the father waited every day, looking out at the horizon waiting and hoping for prodigal to return. And whether we’re gone for a long time, or during a time of anger or resentment in our lives, or for the five minutes we are bad mouthing that person in the office or screaming at the jerk that just cut you off on the freeway, God is waiting. And in those times when we have the desire but just don’t have the strength to make it back all the way, God will run to us, take us in His arms and love us, for we were dead and are alive again, we were lost and are found.

The Power of a Wince:
A Sermon Preached by the Rev. Susan Allison-Hatch

I still remember my first day at St. Martin’s Hospitality Center—the day shelter where I spend my days. They put me in a little office towards the back of the shelter. It was really cramped. There was barely enough room for two chairs. I was suffocating. Finally I got up, stepped outside the office door, and just stood there. I don’t know what I expected to happen. I just knew I couldn’t spend one more minute in that office.

Then someone spoke to me. I don’t remember what he said, but I’ll never forget what I said back to him. “I just had to get out of that office. It felt like a cell.” And then I stopped. I began to hear what I was saying. I began to hear with the ears of those around me. I began to hear with the ears of people who had spent time—some of them a long time—in jail.

I learned some powerful lessons that day. I learned that context matters—big time! And I learned the power of a wince.

Jesus had set his face towards Jerusalem. He knew what he had to do. What he had to say. He was already saying it again and again and again. To the crowd gathered before him, Jesus said, “Do you think I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.” Jesus was out to change the world in which he lived—a world in which those who held power exercised it in an arbitrary, capricious and brutal way—a way designed to intimidate folks into submission. A world of bullies with all the power of the Roman Empire standing behind them.

Sometimes, as in the case of those Galileans killed as they were praying at the Temple, that bully power took the form of state-sanctioned violence. And sometimes, as in the case of those hapless victims of the tower of Siloam, bully power took the form of shoddy construction and indifference to the suffering it might produce.

Like the prophets who went before him, Jesus railed against bully power in whatever shape or form it took. Jesus railed against those who abused the people of Israel. Jesus railed against those who bullied the lowly.

And yet here, on the road to Jerusalem, the center of bully power in Israel, Jesus is talking not to the bullies but to the bullied. Twice he says, “...unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.” He’s saying that to the crowd—the crowd of landless peasants and women overlooked and cast aside; the crowd of children left to fend for themselves; the crowd of day laborers and lepers and those considered unclean.

“Repent”—he says it twice. What do those day laborers and lepers, those women and kids have to be sorry about? What’s repentance got to do with things?

I find it hard to hear this Jesus. But then again, I’m listening with 21st Century ears. I’m hearing those words and in the background I’m hearing my mother say, “Are you sorry? Tell your brother you’re sorry.”

I suspect that the folks in the crowd that day found this Jesus hard to hear as well—though I doubt they heard repentance and thought “sorry”. I suspect Jesus’ call to repentance was met with some very puzzled looks that day. No wonder he told that parable. As the folks in the Congregation of St. Martin’s might say, “He needed to bring it home.”

Jesus says to the crowd gathered before him, “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?’ He replied, “Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’” There the story ends leaving us scratching our heads.

Until we remember just where and when this story was first told. To a people who daily witnessed Roman soldiers criss-crossing their land Jesus says, “Unless you repent, you will perish as they did.” To slaves and day-laborers and tenant farmers and gardeners too who found themselves at the mercy of absentee landlords, Jesus tells the story of the gardener who speaks out, the gardener who lovingly digs around the tree and tenderly fills the hole with the nutrients the tree needs to bear fruit. He’s talking about speaking out; he’s talking about providing what’s needed for something to bear fruit.

That call to repentance. I wonder if those in the crowds that followed Jesus heard it with ears tuned to the words of the prophets. I wonder if they heard in Jesus’ call to repentance echoes of Jeremiah’s repeated calls to the people of Israel to return to the law of God—a law that demanded of them that they love their neighbor and welcome the strangers in their midst.

I wonder if in the story of the gardener those within earshot of Jesus heard a call to speak out, a call to care for one another, a call to start building the kingdom of God. There in that moment. There in that place.

I wonder if they heard in that story of the gardener an invitation to repentance.

To this day, I still wince when I remember the words that rolled so easily off my tongue my first day at St. Martin’s. To this day, I wish that I could somehow call them back.
But that’s not possible.

Could a wince be a call to repentance? To the repentance Jesus calls us to? Could a wince be a call to action? I wonder.