The Price of Good News

I met a man yesterday at church named Frank.  Last week he lost his job at a major New York grocery chain.  Why?  Because he sold a 70¢ roll to a homeless woman for 30¢, which is all she had, and paid the difference himself.

Now, I’m not sure why that is such a terrible offense.  Perhaps it’s because it encouraged the woman to keep coming back.  Maybe it’s because such things offend the full-price customers.  I suppose it could be what you can’t do for all, you shouldn’t do for any.  What baffles me is why he didn’t get a promotion.  I recognize, of course, that compassion is probably not a value of the grocery store chain and thus something it would not reward.  I would have hoped, though, that management might have recognized Frank’s creativity and quick thinking that avoided what surely would have been an ugly scene, and no doubt a wasted 70¢ roll, over 40¢, which the store didn’t pay anyway.

It was such a vivid demonstration of the expectant Song of Mary as we head into the home stretch to Christmas:  “He has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”  (Lk. 1:53)  No one ever said filling the hungry with good things wasn’t going to come at a price to someone. 

The Gospel is not only a story of good news proclaimed to the poor.  It is a story of the cost of proclaiming the good news, the cost of living the good news, the cost of being the good news.  The good news may be grace, but grace is not even cheap, to say nothing of free.

This Christmas when I hear the good news announced again, the same announcement the angels made to the shepherds in their fields keeping watch over their flocks by night, I’m going to be thinking of Frank.  “Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people:  to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.”  (Lk. 2:10-11)  This is what I learned from Frank.  The good news has a cost.  Sometimes it’s 40¢.  Sometimes it’s a job.  Sometimes it’s a lot more.  That’s why the good news begins with a warning not to be afraid. 

Surely that’s why we celebrate this announcement with the giving of gifts.  We do it to remember that love has a cost.  We do it to remember that good news is not free.  We do it to remember that grace is not cheap.  Is that not what the story is all about—the story that begins with a baby born far from home in a stable, the story of an itinerant preacher and healer with no place to lay his head, the story of the cross, love’s ultimate cost.

That’s the reason, I believe, Frank let the homeless woman pay her 30¢ toward the roll.  Even dignity, although it may be a basic right, is not free for anyone.  Or maybe 40¢ is all Frank had.  Either way, both the woman and Frank certainly got their money’s worth of dignity, and much, much more. 

So, my dear friends, that’s my Christmas wish for us this year, that this season bring a reminder of the cost of good news, the cost of grace, the cost of dignity.  And, I hope for all of us the singing of angels all around to give us the courage to pay it.  Like Frank.

Peace,

‘Tis the Season . . .

. . .for repentance. Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la.

It is not the message we typically expect at this time of year.  In fact, the cultural message is quite the opposite.  ‘Tis the season for excess everything.  ‘Tis the season for self-centeredness.  ‘Tis the season for indulgence.  Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la.

And yet the Advent message is something quite different.  “In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’” (Mt. 3:1-2) ‘Tis the season for repentance; now, while the kingdom of heaven is so near.

We prepare to celebrate some of the best news ever announced.  Things are on the verge of dramatic change.  Isaiah puts it this way. 

A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.  The spirit of the LORD shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD.  His delight shall be in the fear of the LORD. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.  The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.  The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.  The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder's den.  They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.  (Isa. 11:1-4,6—9)

God offers peace, justice, and reconciliation.  All we have to do to participate is give up the other things.  I guess it comes down at the end of the day to which we’d rather have.  The kingdom has drawn near.  Nothing stands between us and it but repentance.

Peace,

+Stacy

Thanksgiving is for Giving

I once brought a high school youth group to New York to work at the soup kitchen at Holy Apostles.  They saw a lot of things that opened their privileged, suburban eyes to life as much of the rest of the world knows it.  Before we left, I asked the group to reflect on what they had learned.  One girl, a high school senior who lived in a gated community with a house on the water and a large boat tied to the dock at the end of her back yard answered the question readily.  “I learned to be thankful for how much I have,” she said. 

On Thursday of last week, one week before Thanksgiving, I returned from a pilgrimage introducing bishops and other church leaders to the Episcopal Church’s ministry in Haiti.  They, too, saw a lot of things that were not part of their normal experience.  Now almost four years after the devastation of an earthquake, there are still tens of thousands living in tent cities, admittedly much fewer than before.  Many schools and churches, although there has been remarkable progress, are still in temporary open-air facilities.  Piles of rubble and garbage are largely, though not entirely, gone from the streets.  Cholera remains a problem.  So does hunger.  We witnessed some of the pent up frustration flow over in civil unrest.  I wondered about the question I had asked my youth group and if the church leaders I was with would answer the same way—“I learned to be thankful for how much I have.”

Is that what Thanksgiving has come to mean, being thankful for how much we have?  If that is so, thankfulness has gotten linked with keeping what we gave been given, which makes it antithetical, rather than receptive, to generosity.  If that is so, what have the people of Haiti to be thankful for?  Where are they left when it comes to our Thanksgiving holiday?

If Thanksgiving is about being thankful for how much we have, surely it must be being thankful for how much we have to give and not how much we have to keep.  When thankfulness gets mixed up with who has the right to keep what, that’s a problem.  Thankfulness is more properly linked to participating in the giving and not in being the recipient of the giving. 

Here’s what I learned in Haiti.  I’m thankful for how much I have to give.  I hope that’s what all of us on that trip may have learned, how much we have to give and the spirit to do so.  That’s what makes for Thanksgiving.

Of course, all that might at first glance leave one wondering again about the people of Haiti.  If Thanksgiving is properly linked to how much we have to give, what again have they to be thankful for?  The answer, I think, is what they taught me in the days leading up to Thanksgiving week.  They gave me a great gift indeed, which is to seeing being thankful differently than I may have been inclined to see it before. 

Some of us have material gifts to give.  Some of us have spiritual ones.  I am grateful for the material gifts I have been given to give away.  And I am even more grateful for the spiritual gifts the people of Haiti have been given and shared so generously with me now over many trips there.  Thanksgiving is for giving because giving begets more giving.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Peace,
+Stacy

Persistence

The prophet Isaiah paints a picture of the new world God is creating from the old as stunning today as it was so many years ago. 

No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime; for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth, and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed.  They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.  They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat; for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be, and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.  They shall not labor in vain, or bear children for calamity; for they shall be offspring blessed by the LORD-- and their descendants as well. (65:20-23)

He sums it up:  I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight. (v.18)

As stunning as God’s vision of new heavens and a new earth may be, I cannot believe God doing so would be as easy as the snap of the divine fingers.  After all, the old way is the way it is because it was working for someone.

Isaiah concludes with a beautiful vision. The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox (v. 25).  Surely he knew that the wolf was not going to greet the new order with quite the same enthusiasm as the lamb, nor the lion from quite the same perspective as the ox.  The wolves and lions, I suspect, might be expected to voice a dissenting opinion on the joy God promises.  Perhaps they might even be expected to resist, in the nature of wolves and lions, with teeth bared.

Jesus, for one, knew that the coming of the new did not mean the old would go away quietly.  Nation would rise against nation, the coming of the new would be betrayed by those closest at hand, family and friends, and God’s allies in the new vision would be hated and persecuted.  For us, Jesus said, “by your endurance, you will gain your souls.”  I prefer to think of it as persistence.

God’s new dream for the creation will, in the end, prevail, but we would be naive to think the old was going away without a fight.  For God said, according to Isaiah, “I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.”  (65:17)

Peace,
+Stacy

Grace is Not Limited by Law

The big theological debate of Jesus’ day was about the resurrection.  The Pharisees, along with Jesus, believed in it.  The Sadducees did not.  The answer has to do with the law and its limitations. 

The Sadducees looked to Torah and found nothing there about the resurrection.  Indeed, the law does not speak to the resurrection explicitly.  In fact, Deuteronomy, particularly surrounding the death of Moses, strongly suggests that there is no resurrection. 

The Pharisees believed differently.  Their argument is not directly from Scripture but on the implication of Scripture—from the kind of God Scripture describes, well, there must be a resurrection. 

Jesus makes something of an argument by implication himself in this week’s gospel reading (Lk. 20:27-38).  Based on the description in Genesis that God is the God of the patriarchs, Jesus concludes that God is only the God of the living and not of the dead and it really wouldn’t make much sense if Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were just dead and not raised to new life.  Well, it is something of a logical sleight of hand since the plain sense of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is that God is the God of Abraham in his life and of Isaac in his life and of Jacob in his life, not necessarily then and forever. 

But I don’t think Jesus is pulling a logical trick here.  Jesus is asserting that grace cannot be limited by law.  On the merits of it, I think you have to give the Sadducees that purely on the basis of Scripture, meaning in this case the Torah, you certainly couldn’t require a belief in the resurrection if indeed you can derive one at all.  On the other hand, if grace is not restricted by the letter of the law, there is plenty of reason to hope.  That, I think, is Jesus’ point. 

At least that is the way it is for God, that God’s extravagant grace cannot be limited or controlled by law (which, by the way, is an expression of God’s grace, not its antithesis).  The question is whether we share enough of God’s generosity for it to be that way for us.

Peace,
+Stacy

Blessed are the Poor

The Gospel for All Saints Day begins with a difficult teaching of Jesus.  “Then [Jesus] looked up at his disciples and said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.”  (Lk. 6:20)  For one thing, we do not normally associate being poor with blessedness.  It gets stranger when we realize that the Greek word translated here as blessed literally means happy.  What Jesus is saying is, “Happy are the poor.”  We certainly do not normally associate poor and happy. 

The strangeness of this teaching may have a lot to do with why the church started trying to soften it right from the very beginning.  Matthew has Jesus saying something along the same lines, but with a difference:  “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”  (Mt. 5:3).  Poor in spirit somehow makes it a little easier to take, although being poor in spirit is no more something I would normally associate with blessings and happiness than being just plain poor.  But is this really a softening?  Or is it more of an invitation?

I had the joy of speaking to the Diocese of Kansas this weekend at its convention.  As you have heard me do many times, I spoke about relationships of solidarity with people who are poor as being sacramental in nature, a way Christians experience the real presence of Christ in exactly the same way we do in the Eucharist.  As is almost always the case when I speak on this topic, someone asked me if the priority on Jesus’ concern for the poor in the Gospels was not really a priority on the poor broadly understood to be any type of need and not really about being poor literally.

Well, maybe.  What I’ve come to wonder, though, is if Matthew really understood the change to “poor in spirit” to be a softening of the way Luke put it, in other words, a way of saying the same thing as what has been attributed (incorrectly) to Mae West:  “I’ve been rich and unhappy and I’ve been poor and unhappy.  Rich is better.”  (What she actually said was “I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor.  Rich is better.”)  If so, that would certainly be a big difference between the teaching in Matthew and the teaching in Luke. 

What I’ve come to believe, though, is that Matthew isn’t changing what Luke recorded at all.  He’s making it an invitation to the rich to take on the spirit, which is to say the very life and breath, of the poor.  Luke’s version is more exclusive.  It only extends the blessing to “you who are poor.”  Luke’s version acknowledges there are some who do not receive it because they are wealthy.  But in Matthew, the blessing is opened to all.  The rich, too, have the opportunity to take on the spirit of the poor.  If anything, Matthew makes the teaching more generally applicable by not letting the rich off the hook. 

Blessed indeed are the rich, for they are given the opportunity to become one with the poor.  And in that is the kingdom of heaven.  It’s just an entirely different Gospel if we don’t have to struggle with the blessedness of the poor.

Peace,
+Stacy

Being Thankful

When my children were young, my mother gave them a book.  It was called I Never Say I’m Thankful but I Am.  It was about all the things parents do for their children, especially when they are little, including especially the dirtiest tasks and the ones that try our patience.  It had a picture on the cover of a little boy sitting on the potty.  You get the message. The implicit message was that children never express their gratitude for all the things we do for them, but that they are learning to be grateful human beings nevertheless.

The book, and the concept behind it, relate to the gospel for this week (Lk. 18:9-14).  It is a parable about a Pharisee and a tax collector going to the temple to pray.  It doesn’t really have anything at all to do with saying thank you.  It does have something to do with the need to.  It is the basic issue of Christian life, it seems to me—living thankfully.

The Pharisee prayed, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.  I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.”  The man was only being truthful.  The Pharisees were good people.  The best people.  They were the most religious people.  They did what they were supposed to do.  They followed the law.  They went beyond following the law.  They were the good church going people.  They were, if you’ll pardon me, us.

The tax collector prayed differently, but he, too, prayed truthfully.  “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”  Tax collectors, known for being extortionists among other things, were not the best people.

Here, I think, is the point.  The person who left justified to God was the one with little to be thankful for.  The one who left not justified was the one with the most to be thankful for.  The one who had received the most grace from God was not justified.  The one who did not, was justified.

Here is the most disturbing lesson I’ve learned in nearly 25 years of trying to be a pastor.  The very people who have received the most very often have the hardest time being followers of Jesus, myself included most of all.  The very people who have the most reason to be thankful, rarely are. 

And here is the disturbing reality of how I see this playing out.  The people who have received the most grace from God are very often the ones who have the hardest time showing grace to others.  It is the people with the most who are very often the ones who get what they’ve been given confused with what they’ve earned, what has been entrusted to them with what is owned by them, what is compassion shown to them confused with what they are owed, what is mercy confused with what they deserve, what is a gift to them with what is the result of their own moral superiority, which is precisely what the Pharisee in the parable did.  It is a paradox of how God works that is difficult to understand.  The greater the grace, the danger is that the more it tends to separate from God rather than draw to God. 

We must not let that happen to us.

Peace,
+Stacy

A New Name

Then the man said, “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.”  Gen. 32:28

My son Andrew and his new wife Jessica had barely left on their honeymoon when I received a phone call.  The caller ID startled me.  It was the first time I had seen my new daughter-in-law use her new name.  Who is Jessica Sauls?

Taking a new married name is much more an intentional choice these days than when Ginger and I got married.  It makes my daughter-in-law’s enthusiasm about it more powerful and laden with meaning than if she had done it because of tradition or someone else’s expectations.  Instead, she had made it an expression of herself and what she was making for herself. 

Jacob also took on a new name at a crucial moment in his life.  His had to do with returning to a family left behind years before in betrayal, but as a new person shaped by his experience away.  Jessica’s had to do with her choice to start a new life with my son.  Both represent adventures, and like all adventures, both have an element of striving in them, which is to say having some strife. 

I think my daughter-in-law will find, as did Jacob,  that the blessing is in the striving itself.  Blessing is found in the striving that comes with building a new life.  That’s how God will shape her . . . and us into new creations.  It is how she will answer the question she has taken on for herself:  Who is Jessica Sauls?

Peace,
+Stacy

Manners

I often get Jesus and my mother confused.  It is understandable.  My mother spoke on his behalf with some regularity. One of his lessons according to my mother was this:  “Remember the magic words—please and thank you.”  And that for a long time was how I understood this story about the healing of the ten lepers (Lk. 17:11-19), the fact that only one of them went back to say “thank you.” That’s the one who was the good boy.  But I had missed the details of the story. 

One of those details is that the only one of the ten lepers to come back after being restored to health was a Samaritan.  I have always thought that detail was there because Samaritans were not noted for having good manners. 

I now don’t think that is what this story is about at all.  The thing to note is that there is no reason at all for the Samaritan leper, even though healed, to go show himself to the priests, as Jesus has instructed all of them.  The priests at the Temple in Jerusalem would have had no more use for this Samaritan as a healed leper than they had before.  He was just as much an outcast as he was before he got rid of the leprosy.  He could no more be restored to the life of the community now than before.

And so this one leper, the Samaritan, does what people who could not be accepted anywhere else typically did in those days, and typically do still.  He returned to Jesus.  The place for the outcast, the marginalized, the oppressed, the misfit, the foreigner is in Jesus.  Polite society—the priests and the Pharisees and the decent folks in town—has nothing to do with these people.  Jesus, however, did.  And if we seek Jesus, we will, too.

Peace,
+Stacy

Just Another Rich Man

OK, this one is troubling.  It’s the story of a rich man and Lazarus, the poor man just outside the rich man’s gate.  (Luke 16:19-31)

The rich man “was dressed in purple and fine linen and . . . feasted sumptuously every day.”  On the other hand, there was Lazarus, “covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table.”  It is quite the contrast.

Lazarus died.  The rich man also died and was buried.  Only in his torment in Hades does the rich man realize the chasm between him and God.  He asks Abraham to have Lazarus bring him water.  Abraham refuses.  “Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things.”  Then he asked Abraham to send Lazarus to warn his brothers so that they would not meet a similar fate.  Again, Abraham refuses.  “They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.” 

The rich man’s torment in Hades is not what is meant to catch our attention or even scare us.  What ought to scare us is the detail in the parable that the poor man has a name, Lazarus, and the rich man does not.  Something about the rich man’s life leaves him nameless.

It is not, I think, that the rich man was bad.  We certainly have no reason from the parable to think so.  It is not, I think, that the rich man had great wealth.  I see no reason to think from the parable that the rich man is punished for his wealth.  It is not, I think, that the rich man’s gain was ill gotten.  Again, the parable gives us no reason to think so.

The point is that names are superfluous unless we are in relationship with one another.  I do not need to know the name of someone with whom I have no contact.  I do not need to know the name of someone who does not affect my life.  I do need to know the name of those I love.  And without love, I myself might as well have no name at all.

It seems to me that the rich man’s failure is that he bypassed the opportunity to love Lazarus because there can be no love without sharing.  His failure to share the scraps from his sumptuous table is startling given the picture of the man just outside his gate, covered with sores, starving, and fighting off the dogs.  Sharing is what gives us a name.  It is what makes us who we are.  Otherwise, we’re just another rich man unknown to anyone who cares.

Peace,
+Stacy

I’m Too Old

Charlie Skinner is a character on a TV series called “Newsroom.”  He is played by Sam Waterston, one of my favorite actors.  Skinner is a bit crusty and rather heavy-drinking.  But he also has vision and a heart for adventure, and he knows when he’s getting sabotaged.  He is willing to take risks to pursue that vision, even in the face of resistance, and that’s what I admire most about him.

It is in the face of such resistance that he delivers a line to which I have already referred back many times.  “I’m too old to be governed by fear of dumb people.”

It’s a little bit shocking at first.  One should be careful about dismissing people who see things differently as dumb, of course.

Still, I wonder if Jesus wouldn’t have liked Charlie Skinner.  He himself once told a parable about a rich man and his property manager (Lk. 16:1-8).  It’s a little bit shocking, too.

The rich man was displeased that the manager was squandering his property, and so he called for an accounting.  The manager, realizing he was about to be discovered, quickly called in his employer’s debtors and used his authority while he still had it to reduce their debts to the rich man so that they would owe the manager a favor after he had been dismissed.

The rich man found out about it.  You would think he would have been furious.  Instead, he commended the manager’s ingenuity.  “And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.”  (v. 8)

It turns out smart really is the new rich.  It was the old rich, too.

The church is ambivalent about smart, I think.  Sometimes we find smart people too “in their heads” and not enough “in their hearts.”  The church has a significant anti-intellectual streak from time to time.  Jesus also said, after all, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants.”  (Mt. 11:25)  There are times when smart gets very much in the way of seeing as Jesus might. 

Still, I think Jesus may have had an appreciation for smart people, at least that they had their usefulness.  Maybe he didn’t want them to get too big for their britches, but a little smart in the service of the reign of God isn’t such a bad thing either, because the reign of God is something there is always going to be resisted by “the children of this age.”  And not just by dumb people.   

But here’s where Charlie Skinner certainly has it right.  Life is way too short to be governed by fear of just about anything.  Smart sometimes helps us get beyond it.  In fact, the more fearful we get, smart turns out to be just about the only way out.

Peace,