When I was young, the first few weeks of school were a time of uncertainty.  I worried that I would not fit in, whether I would be welcome in certain circles, if I would have any friends.  I was afraid that I would be alone.  

I remember tentatively approaching the lunch room because I did not know if I would have anyone to sit with or if I would be invited to sit at a table.  The fear of being left out was unbearable; not being accepted was terrifying.

My fears subsided once someone reached out to me, or when I took a chance and reached out to someone else.  I also remember, seeing those who were not popular, those who were not invited to a table.  They sat alone and you felt their sadness.   

I found it difficult to grasp that one human being could discard another to the shadows, to be ostracized because of your appearance, social status, or personality.  I wanted to create a table large enough for everyone.

My son began a new school this year and I drove both he and my wife crazy.  I obsessed on whether he would have someone to eat lunch with. My love is so deep for him, that I did not want my son to eat alone.  

In today’s Gospel, we sense Jesus’ deep concern that no one is left alone.  Jesus spent every waking moment reaching out to everyone he encountered.  Wherever he goes, he pulls people close, he invites them in.  He encourages all those around him to do the same.   To both the included and excluded, he describes a wonderful Kingdom of God where everyone is welcome and no one sits alone.  His words, his life give hope that no one is left behind.

In our Gospel, you sense a bit of exasperation in Jesus’ voice.  He notices that a table is prepared and many are missing.  He asks why?   Why are you only eating with people you know?  If you only spend time with those who act like you, look like you, think like you, go to the same schools, or shop in the same stores, how you will see the face of God.    Invite all these people who will never receive an invitation.  It is up to you.

Now on the surface, it is a wonderful message.  Therein lies the problem with Jesus.  He really messes everything up.  It is easy to pretend to not understand  what he is saying, because we know very well that the moment we understand, we have to act.  Jesus makes radical demands on us.    Jesus did not talk about bringing the kingdom of God in some far off time; he wants us to do it now.  

A few months back, it was stated that – Jesus does not need any more admirers, he needs disciples.  If we are to be disciples of Christ – can we can admire and worship Jesus without doing what he did?  Can we can applaud what he preached and stood for without caring about the same things.  At what point do our beliefs and our lives converge?  

When Jesus enters this banquet, he does not focus on the setting or the food, he comments on those who are missing.  Why?  Because everyone mattered to Jesus, each person he encountered became part of him, and he part of them.  An inherent sense within our being that each individual is for too precious to be excluded, from community, from love.  He wants them included.
 
This is not a foreign feeling, it is part of who we are.  When we see someone hurting or alone, we feel it.   When we see a child lost, or an elderly person struggling, there is a pang that causes us to act.  When we see someone on the outside looking in,–we want to bring them in.  When you feel this inside, you have experienced God, perhaps without knowing it.

I recently read a story of five business people visiting New York.  Their important meetings lasted longer than expected and they were late for dinner at a fancy restaurant.   As they rushed to catch the waiting cab, they knocked over a stand of that contained the products and money of an elderly street vendor.    

They apologized but continued to run toward the waiting cab.  One stopped, turned around and helped the vendor, and found that the vendor was blind.  The blind vendor softly said “thank you Jesus.”  The man smiled and said “Yeah, he always helps me.”  The elderly blind man responded, “No, are you Jesus.”

Our faith is most sacred when we live it, when we reach out to others. Our lives must shout our faith.  When we do this people will know that we are followers of Christ, not by the cross we wear around our necks but by the love we carry within our hearts.  

Throughout the Gospel, we see that Jesus’ heart breaks for those who are left out.   He not only fed people, he stopped and invited them into his life.  Jesus took time to know the poor and his life demonstrates that we must not only help the poor, we must know the poor?   Because when the poor meet the rich, riches will have no meaning. And when the rich meet the poor, poverty will come to an end.

And notice Jesus did not define poverty.  Yes, the poor are those in our community who cannot afford a home, food, medication or clothes.  They are the ones on the margins of society who will never be invited to the table, unless we welcome them to our table.

The poor are those children of God who are starving spiritually, physically and emotionally.  Those not only those unloved by society, but unloved by themselves. The children of God who will never be invited to the table, unless we  invite them into our lives.  

The poor are those nameless faces we pass each day.  Those lost because of illness, fractured relationships, loneliness, desperation.  Those who know deep down, they will never be invited to the table, unless they happen to bump into Jesus, or maybe even a follower of Jesus who stops, reaches out and represents the love of Christ.

In our Gospel, Jesus asked his host, where are the poor? Now he is asking us -  
If you only eat with those who you like, how will you show my love?
If you love only those who love you, how will you share my welcoming embrace
If we only invite to our table the people we know, how will we reflect the face of God?

When we invite someone into our church, into our lives, something holy happens.  We’re making an effort to see beyond the surface appearances that we often judge people by. We’re making an effort to see each individual as God sees them.

When we invite someone in, we begin to see their faces, you will hear their voices.  We acknowledge God in one another.  When we welcome strangers to our table, we are welcoming God.  We will not allow them to eat alone.  

We have a beautiful table at St. Michael, our job is to prepare it, and then build the guest list.  Through our Season of Listening, through our ministries, through our individual lives, let’s invite people in.   Let’s prepare a table that consists of everyone, sinner, saint, citizen, convict, rich, poor, the young couple far from home, the single who eat alone, seniors who do not drive, teens who feel left out.

Let prepare a table for the straight, gay, married and divorced, the sick, the healthy, every color, shape and class imaginable. Let’s invite them in.    When we prepare this big table we may get a taste that heavenly banquet that Jesus often spoke of.  We may glimpse the Kingdom of God.    When we prepare a big welcoming table for all, we know that we will have a place at that table, and the joy of knowing that no one will ever eat alone. 

August 22, 2010
13 Pentecost
The Rev. Brian C. Taylor

Here’s the news flash of the day: if it comes down to a choice between love and law, God will break the law.

In the story we just heard, Jesus did something that a good Jew was not supposed to do.  He worked on the Sabbath. By doing the work of healing- that is, by laying his hands on a woman who had been crippled for 18 years, and by invoking the healing love of God, he, as a rabbi, was, technically speaking, working. And work was forbidden on the Sabbath. Now his disobedience may seem like a small thing to us, but it was a very big deal to the leader of the synagogue. Jesus was considered to be a rabbi, and he publicly broke religious law, in the synagogue, no less. But what is important in this story is that he broke the law in the name of mercy.

This wasn’t the only time this happened in the Bible. According to the Book of Acts, one day God gave the apostle Peter a shocking vision – that he was to eat every kind of unclean food that was forbidden by Jewish dietary law. It was a symbolic vision, leading Peter, an observant Jew, to baptize Gentiles, and not require them to become Jewish first. In the name of mercy, God swept away centuries of biblical tradition.

The supremacy of mercy over religious law is made crystal clear in a stunning passage from the prophet Amos. He speaks for God, saying I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them...Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

For God, religious tradition means absolutely nothing without mercy. And if it comes down to a choice between them, God will sweep aside scripture, tradition and law every time, in the name of mercy.

For this reason, there are those today who are calling for open communion in our church. They ask why should we place an obstacle – namely, baptism – between any seeker and the love of God that is to be found in the Eucharist? Who are we to demand that before they can have access the mercy of God, they must go through a class and assent to various beliefs? Should we break religious tradition and law in the name of love? It’s a question that today’s gospel asks of us.

As I told you in a sermon a few months ago, it was this same question that representatives of the Episcopal Church asked of the rest of the Anglican Communion a few years ago when we were called on the carpet for ordaining and blessing the unions of gay and lesbian people. When asked to explain ourselves in light of scripture and church tradition, we pointed to that story of Peter and his vision. Like Peter, we asked Who are we to stand in the way of God’s love that is, in fact, being manifested through these faithful people, who happen to be gay and lesbian?

This, of course, is what is at the heart of civil disobedience. Our country has a long and proud tradition of those who break the law in the name of mercy. The American Revolution, surely an illegal act, could be seen in this light. The Underground Railway aided runaway slaves - who were somebody’s property, according to the law. In every war when there has been a draft, Conscientious Objectors have refused to serve. People offer aid to undocumented immigrants, even when, in some states, you can get arrested for giving your cleaning lady a ride to the hospital when she’s having a heart attack. Even the very conservative Roman Catholic archbishop of Los Angeles said he wouldn’t obey that law. And remember the illegal sit-ins of the Civil Rights movement, modeled after the civil disobedience of Gandhi.

Some say that laws are meant to be broken. Well, not every law. Just the ones that stand in the way of love. That includes religious and civil law. But it also includes laws and traditions that we hold in our families, even for ourselves.

There are families, perhaps some of yours, where it is a law to not speak the truth about alcoholism or about abuse, whether physical, emotional, or sexual. To break this law can result in real punishment: increased abuse, condemnation, or being exiled from the family forever.

In some families, it is a law to always be nice, never to disagree, and never to be personal with another in a way that might offend or embarrass them. This was a law in my family of origin. Or it might be a law to always speak your mind and emotionally vent, no matter how this may affect others. Or it might be a law to prove your self all the time, to be in competition for who is right or who is smartest.

What sort of family law did you grow up with, or what sort of law do you continue to live under? Could it be possible that by breaking this law, love might flow more freely in your family?

For when the silence is broken around an alcoholic, the love of God’s healing grace might begin to work. When the invisible wall of polite tolerance is shattered by forbidden words of truth, real intimacy might be possible. When you refuse to get into family arguments, you may create a space where real communication can happen. Sometimes the emotional laws of families must be broken, in the name of love. And this is never easy.

But it is even more difficult to learn how to break the laws we hold for ourselves, laws that stand in the way of loving ourselves and others more fully. One of my laws used to be that I would always be disciplined and productive. It was not easy for me to learn how to relax and allow loose ends. But by breaking this law, I have learned mercy towards myself.

What sort of law do you keep for yourself? That you will always get along with others, no matter how unreasonable they may be? That you will work out 6 days a week and meditate every morning, instead of sometimes enjoying a slow morning with your dog, or your loved one? That you can’t possibly risk being hurt again by love, and so you make sure that there is a distance between yourself and everyone else? That you won’t ever make mistakes and thereby incur the disapproval of your internalized parent, or of God?

It is not easy to break these kinds of laws we hold for ourselves. For when we do – when we stop living in the way we always thought we were supposed to – we enter into an unknown territory, a kind of desert landscape where nothing is familiar. In a sense, we don’t know who we are anymore. We don’t know quite how to be, how to relate to others, how to get what we need.

But in this unknown desert there are angels ready to feed us, to guide us, to help us enter a new land, where we become new people. For when we risk for God in the direction of greater love and mercy, we will be helped along the way, I am sure of that. God does not lead us down blind alleys. God is faithful, and we never have to journey through strange places alone.

Yes, there is a cost to be paid when we break the laws of the state, of the church, of the family, and of the self, even when they are broken in the name of love. But consider the alternative. Who really wants to live a life where love is kept under lock and key?

Jesus, our teacher and our window to God, is a rebel with a cause. His cause is love and mercy, and he will break any rule that stands in its way. Are you willing to join him?

St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church  
Albuquerque New Mexico
Sunday August 15, Feast of St. Mary the Virgin
Text: Luke 1: 46-55  Magnificat
Preacher: Christopher McLaren
Theme: Singing Magnificat into our Lives

As a young man growing up in a sectarian Pentecostal church we didn’t go in for St. Mary the Virgin much. She was not a part of our world. That changed when I became an art history major and encountered for the first time in my life the phenomenon of Madonna fatigue.  You too may have had it wandering around the world’s great museums through gallery after gallery of Medieval and Renaissance art crammed with images of Mary and her child Jesus, your legs aching looking for those precious benches, your mind full, your eyes on overload, you heart full of motherly affection. People around you are saying things like, “There are so many pictures of her.”  In fact, you may have to work at it a bit but perhaps you could get your own kind of Madonna fatigue going here at St. Michael’s today as we celebrate The Feast of the Virgin Mary in the warmth and fecundity of summer.

To talk of Mary is to speak of a powerful mystery. Mary is visited by The Angel Gabriel who carries the strange and surprising message of God.  Understandably “Mary was greatly troubled.” Whenever we encounter the Holiness of God or something transcendent and beyond ourselves our immediate response is fear and the peasant girl Mary was no different. Of course the first thing angels always say in the bible is “Don’t be afraid” which is very sneaky way to point out that God is constantly calling us beyond our fears into life.

An honest reading of the biblical stories reveals that much of the bible can be understood in the categories of fear and faith. The opposite of faith in the scriptures seems to be anxiety or fear. As people we are often controlled and absorbed by our fears. We fear so many things. We fear whatever we cannot control. We fear a future we cannot see. We fear a complexity we do not understand. We fear being lonely. We fear changes in our world that are not easy or comfortable or familiar. We fear our own aging and death. Ultimately I suppose we fear God because God is so far beyond us, so totally wild, and so totally beyond our ability to control.  

But there is good news in the midst of all this fear and that Good News is revealed through the surprising person of the peasant girl Mary. The Good News is that God has breached that fear, he has broken through it and come into our life, become one of us in the person of Jesus. In essence the gift of Jesus through Mary is God’s way of saying, “You don’t have to live in fear anymore, listen to what my messenger is saying, “Don’t be afraid.”

This of course is why Mary is so important. She is the model Christian, the prototype, and Go-to-girl of the Christian faith. Why? Because God comes to her, he comes into her life and does something really fantastic by announcing the divine presence within her. As it turns out, Mary is no different than us.  We all have the capacity to discover God at work in us. God comes to each of us announcing the divine presence within us. Mary shows us the way. Mary’s experience is simply a story about everyone’s baptism in the Spirit of God. God is present to us, available to us even before we are aware of the divine presence. This is why the grace at baptism is as real for children as it is for adults, the divine presence is already at work, already initiating relationship. God is already offering God’s self to us even before we have invited God into our lives.

For centuries Mary has been understood as the quintessential contemplative presence in the scriptures. She is not doing anything special when God chooses her. She is simply living a simple ordinary life the best way she knows how. She doesn’t change drastically.  She simply submits to God’s work. She does what any good Galilean girl would have done. She becomes a good mother attentive to her child and the voice of God in her life.  She flees with Joseph and the child when God tells her that her son is in danger. Thus Mary and the Holy Family become and immigrant family, living in a foreign land, fearing for their safety, and hiding from the authorities for some years to protect and care for this child of God.

Mary is the model contemplative in that she simply receives the message of God, ponders it in her heart and embraces what God asks of her. In our world of drivenness where overachiever go-getter climber types are honored, Mary stands apart from the crowd. She listens, is receptive and from that receptivity flows her action that is all at once world repairing, relationship building, good news action. As one theologian put it what we learn from Mary is profoundly counter-cultural it is not “Just do it!” but rather “Don’t just do something, stand there.” One’s Being precedes one’s doing. Both are essential aspects of the spiritual life but one’s action flows out of knowing who you are or to whom you belong.  

Mary is the recipient of a Great Mystery that she could not have understood with her human mind. She had to accept this internal mystery on faith and hope that she could live-into it.  In essence Mary said “I don’t know what it will mean, I don’t know where it will lead, I don’t know what it will require, but I know god is asking it of me, and I say yes, wholeheartedly yes, with no reservations, Yes.”

Of course this receptivity, this surrender to God is what makes Mary’s life and example so compelling to us. We know that we too are called to this surrender to God’s purposes to God’s calling on our life and most of the time we run like hell to avoid hearing God’s voice. But Mary is here in our midst as an example, calling us to our own best selves, calling us to the fullness that is to be found in God and in saying Yes, yes to the Spirit’s leading, yes to the wildness of God, Yes to God’s quirky sense of humor.

In Luke’s gospel the “Yes” of Mary takes the unusually beautiful shape of a hymn we call the Magnificat. When she travels to visit her cousin Elizabeth, a song grows within her just as the child Jesus is growing inside of her. The music that emerges from Mary is a beautiful hymn of divine praise that expresses the very center of the Christian faith. The trouble with this hymn is that it is such a subversive piece of music that several times in its history it has been suppressed. In Latin America, during our lifetime one government actually declared this Song of Mary illegal.  

Music has a way of getting inside of you. Luke is clever and poetic. Luke knows that if he can get the beautiful music of Mary inside of you, that you can be transformed from the inside out by the presence of God at work and the transforming message that comes to us from the lips of this poor Galilean girl.  

The second movement of the song is where the juicy bits are.  What God has done for Mary anticipates what God will do for the poor, the oppressed and the powerless of the world. The Magnificat is a kind of radical prayer that speaks of religious, political, social and economic liberation. It is little wonder that it has become the favorite prayer of struggling people and troubled nations.  People who are fighting for their freedoms and looking for sense of hope love the Magnificat.  For them the song on Mary’s lips makes her the kind of radical Christian that they long to see in action.

His mercy is for those who fear him
from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.

When you read this prayer, you understand why the wealthy and powerful, those with all the control, might not want this song on the lips of the people who are searching for a better life, struggling for freedom, trying to escape grinding poverty, and wanting something better for their children.  It is a song of hope and resistance. One of the most extraordinary aspects of this song is that Mary sings it as if it has already taken place. For Mary to speak of what God has done is to announce what God will do. Mary uses the past tense of the verbs to describe the action of God. So sure is she as the singer that God will do what is promised that it is proclaimed as an accomplished fact.

Mary sings of a God who brings down the powerful and who lifts up the lowly, who fills the stomachs of the hungry and sends the rich empty away. Within this song the powerful theology of God’s preferential concern for the poor and oppressed. There is also a sense of God’s judgment, a final and surprising reversal of fortunes, in this song.  The powerful rich exchange places with the powerless poor.  The Eschatological reversal, the making things right at the end of time, has already begun in the singing of this song and God’s choice of the peasant girl Mary is surely evidence of the kingdom of God breaking in.  Mary’s song invites us into this reality of God, to share God’s vision for repairing the world, healing the wrongs, lifting up the lowly, protecting the vulnerable. The song of Mary invites us to use our wealth our resources to free ourselves for service and for being truly human toward others. To use our talents and gift to create meaningful family and human life around us that pays attention to those who are often overlooked.

Mary’s song tells us that God is bringing about a new kingdom, one in which there is no longer some who have the power and some who are oppressed. What emerges from Mary’s song is a vision of one family of God.  And for many of us it makes sense that these words would come from a woman who understands the relational nature of life, who relates more to meeting real needs than to hierarchy.  Mary sings a song that is in a sense a wonderful circle, the circle of God’s redeeming love lived out in her life, a circle that turns the world’s ways upside-down and opens us to the new way of life she is preparing to birth into the world.  We are all like Mary called to nurture Christ within us and to give birth to a newness that will not allow business as usual but will through the song we sing participate in turning world upside down in Christ’s radical love.

I want to conclude in an odd way with a difficult local story from Albuquerque that illustrates the complexity of an issue that is so fiercely dividing our country I’m not sure what will happen and I imagine neither are you.

A little over two weeks ago a 3rd year architecture student at UNM with a 3.8 GPA was driving his younger sister to register for classes at UNM after some course work at CNM.  On the freeway there they were pulled over by an aviation enforcement officer for a reason that was later described as speeding.  As it turned out the architecture student had been in the United States for 15 years since he was 7 and was an unauthorized immigrant.  As the “traffic stop” progressed with the officer asking to see his proof of status, the young man summoned his parents to the scene. Can you imagine getting that terrifying call for help from your son? Eventually the Albuquerque Police Department arrived as well as ICE the Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In the ensuing action since the young college student could not produce his paperwork his family was told that he would be deported, his father fearing for his son, was voluntarily deported with him as well.  They were dropped on the bridge to Juarez a few hours later. The sudden end of a 15 year academic journey, a family broken apart, and fear now spreading through the immigrant community in this city. Is this to be business as usual in a fearful land?

I wonder what it would mean for us to sing the Magnificat into this story?

I realize that this is a challenging sermon that views a complex issue through our own biblical story in an unusual way. Our Christian story is a powerful path into understanding things in ways that cut across political lines and focus on the heart of God for his people.  I believe that our politics, the way we treat people, needs to be informed by our biblical stories and the values and affections that emerge from within our Christian tradition.  I’m indebted to the family who is living this nightmarish story for the honor of hearing it from them. I also wish to acknowledge the writing on the Gospel of Luke by Richard Rohr from which I drawn for this sermon.

August 8, 2010
The Rev. Brian C. Taylor

In 1943, the psychologist Abraham Maslov published a paper called A Theory of Human Motivation. In this paper he outlined what has become known as a “hierarchy of needs.” Maslov recognized that when our most basic needs are met, such as food, sex, shelter, and health, we are then able to fulfill our higher needs such as intimacy, ethics, creativity, and meaning.

This kind of thinking had already been a foundational assumption of much of Western society for a long time. People have always striven to move from brutishness to culture and civilization.

But we live in a strange time. Since the late 20th century, we’ve been experimenting with a different hierarchy of need, driven by consumerism. With consumerism, we still start with the basics: safety, health, work, and family.

But instead of then moving into the world of ideas, creativity, and the social good, we short-circuit the process. We remain stuck at the lowest level of human need, only seeking better versions of the same basic things: the best food and lots of it, more sophisticated security systems for our homes and our nation, better clothes and a snappy gym for our healthy workouts, and more sexy sex.

Perhaps this is what people mean by the “dumbing down” of modern consumer culture: being stuck at the lowest level of the hierarchy of human need.

What social psychology and consumerism have in common is the assumption that it’s all about fulfilling our needs and desires. It’s about serving ourselves. We may remain stuck at the level of finding the best coffee or we may rise to level of attending the Santa Fe Opera, but both are about the fulfillment of personal needs and desires.

This assumption has found its way into the field of spirituality as well. We go to a church that will meet our needs. We practice meditation to achieve a desired state of mind. We pursue classes and read books that will help us feel more fulfilled.

But religion, at its traditional core, concerns itself with something different. Traditional Judaism, Christianity, and Islam do not teach us how to fulfill our own desire and purpose. They teach us to fulfill God’s desire and purpose.

Once I was attending a conference at a synagogue when the rabbi was asked to distill the essence of Judaism. Faced with this daunting question, he paused for a moment, and then said “it is to seek God’s will and then to do it.”

The very word “Islam” means submission or surrender, and so the believer’s purpose is to submit to God’s will.

And Jesus taught us to pray “Thy will be done, thy kingdom come.” When asked about his family, he said “my brothers and sisters are those who do the will of God.”

All religions, and ours in particular, teach us that the highest point is to leave our need behind and serve God’s need. This is when we are most fulfilled.

Today’s gospel is a good example of this. Jesus begins with talk about using money to fulfill God’s will. He says that by being generous with our money, by not just thinking about what we want and need, we will discover something more valuable than that which money can buy: the kingdom of God. It is God’s good pleasure, Jesus says, to give us the kingdom.

Then he tells a parable that drives the point home. He speaks of servants who are waiting for their master to return from a wedding banquet. Whether it is the middle of the night or just before dawn, they are to be dressed for action, lamps lit, so that when they see their master coming, they are ready to serve him.

But then the story takes an astonishing turn, which I’ve never really paid much attention to; and it’s the heart of the matter. Amazing how that works.

Here’s what happens in the parable: when the master walks in the door and sees that his servants are ready to serve him, he fastens his belt, has the servants sit down to eat, and he serves them. In the middle of the night. What’s going on here?

Jesus is teaching us a wonderful paradox. We run around trying to fulfill our needs, but when we leave ourselves behind and seek to fulfill God’s needs, we find that God serves us. Through self-denial we discover the elusive thing we’ve been chasing all along: self-fulfillment. Serving God, God serves us.

But what is it, really, to serve God? Let’s drop, for a minute, our romantic and guilt-ridden fantasies of how we should all be Mother Teresas of Calcutta, cheerfully washing the wounds of the little leper children, instead of living the way we do.

Instead, let’s consider more mundane experiences, things that we might actually deal with later today or tomorrow.

Serving God might mean that when we pray for those things that weigh on our hearts, we move through the hierarchy of need, like Jesus did in the Garden of Gethsemene, from “Father, let this cup pass from me” – in other words, here’s what I want and think you should do - to “nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.”

Serving God might mean that we ask ourselves at work each day how we might serve God’s purposes of love, kindness, and generosity of spirit.

Serving God might mean that when we are worried and anxious, we stop and breathe, considering the lilies of the field, choosing the better part, like Mary of Bethany, by setting our mind on the one thing that is needful.

Serving God might mean that we examine our monthly budget in a state of prayer, and ask God whether we’re spending our money in ways that God wants us to.

Serving God might mean that we take courage and walk towards the conflict we would prefer to avoid, calling someone we care about to accountability so that they, and we, might be happier, healthier.

The paradox of all this serving is that in doing it, God serves us. When we surrender our desire in prayer, God fills us with his desire for us, which is always good. When we cultivate a spirit of kindness in service to those around us at work, God gives us joy. When we let go of the things that cause us worry, God opens us to much more important things. When we give generously, God gives us a generous consciousness.

God is abundant with us. As Jesus said, “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” God comes to us at an unexpected hour, fastens his belt, has us sit down, and serves us.

But we are only able to receive God’s service to the extent that we are willing to serve God. Then there is an attunement, an alignment of our desire and God’s desire, out of which all abundance comes. And this, it turns out, is what will serve our highest need. 

St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Sunday August 1, 2010  10th after Pentecost, Proper 13
Text: Luke 12: 13-21  The Rich Fool
Preacher: Christopher McLaren
Title: Jesus’ Investment Advice

There is an old story of the two brothers sons of a wealthy bank president.  His two sons were the reverse of the Prodigal Son and his brother.  The older brother was a hard-partying, playboy-type while the younger son was the responsible-straight-arrow-early-to-bed-early-to-rise type who liked to follow the rules.  When their father died, the two brothers found themselves in the funeral parlor with their father’s corpse. The older brother said to the younger, “You know that money meant more to dad than anything else in the world. So I think the most fitting tribute to him would be if each of us placed $1,000 dollars in each of his hands so that he can be buried with money in his fists.”  

The younger dutiful son responded, “Of course, I guess that would be a fitting tribute.”  The younger son then went to the bank and withdrew 10 crisp $100 bills. He returned to funeral home and placed them in his father’s hand.  Later that night the older brother returned to the funeral home when no one else was around, took the $1000, wrote a check for $2,000 and slipped it into his father’s hand.

The point is that if you had and older brother like this you too would be looking for someone like Jesus with enough moral authority to help you settle a family dispute. We are not told much but in ancient family systems the eldest inherited and held the responsibility of dividing the wealth among the siblings.  Typically the courts of those days did not deal with these family disputes and neither, evidently, did Jesus. He chooses not to get sucked into this family conflict delivering a thought provoking line, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”

At first Jesus’ response seems harsh and without compassion but his wisdom saying that follows points to his challenging line of thinking. Jesus is expert at recognizing idolatry. Again and again he exposes the underlying issues behind people’s urgent needs. The truth is that Jesus had more to say about the first commandment of the ten best ways than all the other nine combined.  “I am the Lord your God..; you shall have no other gods before me.” (Exodus 20: 2-3).  Jesus was uncanny is his ability to recognize our human tendency to elevate something that is not God into a godlike status.

Our own country is in the midst of coming to grips with a kind of idolatry that led to the near collapse of our own economic system. The lust for more economic growth, more capital, more wealth led Wall Street elites to gamble with the lives and futures of millions of Americans. Michael Lewis, in his excellent book The Big Short chronicles the financial meltdown and concludes that the financial crisis was the work of people on Wall Street and mortgage brokers who acted in their self-interest without fear of either legal or economic reprisal.  Lewis an economist who once praised the rapidly expanding market for derivatives has reconsidered many things especially the idolatrous impulse of human greed and the will to profit at the expense of others. He notes in his book that the top 25 hedge fund managers made a cool 25.3 billion dollars, yes billion, in the midst of the economic collapse by betting against bad mortgages.  They were not heroes but rather intelligent opportunistic humans looking for profit as their ultimate prize. Interestingly as middle-class and poor Americans struggle to make ends meet the wealthiest 400 families have seen their taxes fall by 50% even as their income has increased 5-fold over the past decade.

Idolatry is quite simply to look for ultimate meaning, satisfaction or reward where ultimacy does not exist. To seek meaning where real meaning cannot be found is the path to idolatry.  Jesus seems to offer this difficult “beware of all kinds of greed for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions” in order to protect the brother from becoming destructively focused on his inheritance.  

Now I’m not trying portray Jesus as overly simplistic about the material realm. Jesus did not condemn possessions nor did he take a vow of poverty. He was fully alive to the world and enjoyed it even to the point of being labeled a wine-bibber and a glutton. Jesus knew how to party but he also understood the deeper needs of the human soul. He understood the need for balance and sanity in life. A balance that came from understanding one’s possessions as gifts from God to be used for God’s purposes in the world. Jesus had a knack for recognizing when someone was expecting too much from given reality, when things were out of balance. In the case of the young brother upset about his inheritance, Jesus reminds him that what a person has does not define what a person is.  Biblical personhood is not about possessions, it is rather about knowing you are loved by God and growing into a person marked by character, love, compassion, and generosity.

As if to illustrate this brief interaction with the young man Jesus tells the parable of the Rich Fool. In this story a prosperous farmer enjoys a fantastic harvest year.  He reflects on his abundance, so abundant was his crop that he did not even have barns big enough to hold it. He decides to tear down his existing barns and build larger ones.  Proud of his plan he congratulates himself saying, “Soul, you have ample good laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” But in answer to his boast, God answers him, “You fool! This very night you life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be? So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

It is hard to admit but this parable is a bit troubling to many of us. And of course that is what parables are meant to do, to pick at us, to irritate and agitate us to the point of teasing us into active thought. Parables always have a twist or an unexpected turn in them. This one of course is troubling because the scenario is one that we would often label success. He’s had a great year. He’s made it. His barns are full and now after all that hard work he can relax kick back and enjoy his wealth and ease.

What is the trouble with that? Why does Jesus call this kind of person a fool?

I’m sure you can think of reasons on your own. One might be that life is uncertain, fragile, and complex. No amount of wealth can insulate you from the pain of human existence.  To be painfully honest, things can only do so much for you. There are human hungers and needs that no amount of wealth can satisfy. One might thing of those well-known theologians the Beatles “Money can’t buy you love, can’t buy you love, love, money can’t buy you love.”

Another reason for seeing this man as a fool could be simply that he missed the genuine delight of being deeply grateful, of realizing how much he had been blessed and how utterly beyond his control it really was.  I was listening to a farmer speak on NPR recently and he pointed out that only about 5% of farming is something that one can control  while the overwhelming majority of farming is a grace and a great mystery called life.  Perhaps what this wealthy farmer needed the most was to understand the simple wonder of the grace that is behind and in and underneath and through all things and then instead of congratulating himself he could have found himself into a place of wonder, awe and worship.

One last and compelling reason to call this man a fool is evident in his absence of generosity.  Generosity is at the very center of life. If we consider our defining story of creation, the biblical narrative suggests that God is so thrilled with creation, so fascinated with life and being that the only appropriate response was something like this, “Wow this is really terrific stuff this life thing has to be shared, I can’t just keep it to myself what would be the fun of that.” Creation is at its very core an act of God’s wild generosity, his sharing of life with others rather than keeping it private. Life itself is God sharing who he is and what he has with others.  This is why the wealthy farmer, so out of touch with the shape of reality, is called a fool.  He looks at his good fortune, his abundance and says the opposite of what God said in the beginning. The rich farmer proposes to keep it all to himself and in so doing misses the point and source of life’s deepest meaning.

There is deep pleasure and delight in discovering the depths of grace, the many gifts and abundances we have done nothing to deserve and did not make ourselves.  However there is a corollary pleasure that pushes beyond gratitude toward others – the deep joy and satisfaction of seeing your own generosity bless and encourage and energize others.  Giving in ways that enhance and bring life to others, discovering how to use what you have been given to truly make life better for others is close to the heart of who we are made to be as children of a generous God.

The Rich Fool is judged a fool by God not out of anger or scorn but out of a deep sadness.  The Rich Fool missed what it means to be a human being.  He lost the opportunity to be generous toward others just as God had been generous to him.  He had mistaken what one has for what one is.

In the end, this parable of Jesus is the best investment advice available. Invest what you have in ways that make treasure in heaven, in ways that help others see God and grow into God’s likeness. Use what you have to reveal the wild presence of the kingdom of God here on earth and in doing so you will discover who you really are meant to be. Jesus challenges the hedge fund managers on Wall Street and you and I to find life through generosity not through greed.  Jesus knows how hard it is at times to be generous especially in a culture that is constantly telling you to grab all you can and ignore the needs of others. In the midst of the clamor and noise of our world “Get yours that’s all the matters.”   Jesus offers this ancient yet contemporary wisdom, “Be generous and you will be rich toward God.”
I wish to acknowledge my debt to Robert Farrar Capon and John Claypool for their excellent exegesis on this parable which helped to shape this sermon. The story of the two brothers was told by The Rev. John Claypool who lives in New Orleans.