Three Parables

There is a series of three parables in the fifteenth chapter of Luke.  They come together because they are meant to be read together.  Most unfortunately, our lectionary separates the third from the first two.  The first two are the reading for this week (Lk. 15:1-10).

The first two involve a shepherd who leaves 99 sheep behind to go in search of one that is lost and a woman who searches diligently for one of ten silver coins that has been lost and then throws a party to celebrate.  In both cases, Jesus asks a question:  Who would not do likewise?

The correct answer is no one.  I know we like to assume it is everyone, but I don’t think anyone who actually heard Jesus tell these stories would have made that mistake.

A shepherd with 100 sheep leaves 99 to go in search of one.  It’s a sweet picture, but it would be insane.  No one in their right mind would put 99 sheep at risk, leaving all of them at the mercy of the wolves, to go in search of one.  For one thing, it makes no economic sense at all, and sheep in Jesus’ world were not pets; they were commodities.  But even if you want to project compassion onto the shepherd’s motives, it is not compassionate to put one sheep in harm’s way, to say nothing of 99, in order to rescue another.

And the woman with the coin is certainly just a matter of economics.  She loses one coin and searches diligently for it.  Perhaps anyone would do that.  It makes perfect sense.   But what does not make sense is to throw a big party to celebrate finding the coin when the party probably cost more than the coin that was lost.  The woman would have been better off financially to just leave the coin lost. 

And that’s where the third parable comes in, the one that is saved for the next week’s readings.  We know it as the Parable of the Prodigal Son.

Now a son or daughter, everyone would indeed agree, is of much more value than a sheep or a coin.  And the lost son in the story clearly did break his father’s heart.  But unlike the shepherd or the woman, the father does not go looking for him.  That, I suspect, was as difficult for Jesus’ hearers to understand as it would have been for them to fathom the shepherd leaving the flock or the woman’s response to finding the coin.  At least it is difficult for me to understand.  If Jesus had pointed out that the father did not go after the boy and again asked those around him who would not do likewise, I suspect they once again would have exclaimed, “No one.” 

Nevertheless, I think Jesus knew what he was talking about.  At least when it comes to lost sons or daughters, they rarely come home by pursuing them.  Pursuing them, in fact, quite often has the opposite effect.  Keeping a distance, and maybe even increasing it, works better.

It’s much harder to do.  But, God knows, it’s probably the only way.  One can only hope it works as to us.

Peace,
+Stacy

The Parable of the Potter

Jeremiah learned something about God by observing a potter working at his wheel.  (Jer. 18:1-11)  What he learned is worth looking at.  The message is not what it may appear at first.

This is what Jeremiah observed.  “The vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter's hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as seemed good to him.”  (v. 4)  The overall message has to do with God’s ability to punish the disobedient and save the repentant.  We rightly see God in the potter, but perhaps not so rightly see the nation of Judah, and by extension, humanity, in the vessel.

The human part of the analogy is not the vessel. It’s the clay.  God destroys the vessel, but God keeps the clay.  The clay is reworked and neither destroyed or even replaced.

One should not read into this that God is pleased with the human side in the parable of the potter.  There is a message of judgment to be sure.  But there is something much more important, much more surprising, and much more hopeful.  The really stunning thing about this story in the Bible is not that God judges the vessel.  It is that God and the clay are responsive to each other.

The clay is shaped at the potter’s hand.  When it is spoiled, it is reshaped.  God is not content with the vessel that is less than God intends.  So God reworks it.  God responds to the clay.  The vessel may start out badly but be righted into a vessel that pleases God.  The clay responds to God.

The creation is in God’s, the potter’s, hands.  But the result takes the potter and the clay together.  God is the potter.  We are the clay.  Fulfilling God’s design takes both, each responding to the other.  Creation is on-going.  We do not work alone.  Neither does God.

Peace,
+Stacy

He Never Worked a Day in His Life

Jesus was teaching in a synagogue on the sabbath (Lk. 13:10-17).  He encountered there a woman described as crippled by a spirit for 18 years such that she was “quite unable to stand up straight.”  As Jesus was known to do, he laid his hands on her and healed her from her illness.  “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.”  This did not please the leader of the synagogue who complained that Jesus had violated the Sabbath.  “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.” 

It wasn’t that the leader of the synagouge was either hard-hearted or legalistic.  It is that he knew the importance of sabbath, of disconnecting from work just long enough to be reminded of our humanity; just long enough to be reminded that we are creatures who live in the immensity of God’s love quite regardless of merit and not the creator who is the ground of all being; just long enough to be reminded of who we truly are, children of God, nothing less and nothing more.  This is not easy for us to do, which is why it requires vigilance and discipline.  The synagogue leader had a justifiable concern for that. 

And so work is to be avoided on the sabbath.  For one day a week, that’s all, work is to be put aside to reclaim the place we hold in God’s love for the creation.  Jesus did not disagree.

What Jesus did do was have different perspective on what work was.  Instead of seeing healing as work as might a physician available for hire, Jesus sees the cure of the woman’s ailment as a liberation from an oppressive spirit.  He compares what he has done for the woman to what anyone would do for an animal, an ox or a donkey tied up so that it could not reach life-giving water.  This is not work; it is release from what binds, which in a sabbath sense, is the opposite of work.  This is not a forgetting of who we really are; it is a reminder of our true identity as free human beings, which is God’s beloved.  This is not a matter of discipline guarding us from what diminishes our humanity; it is a matter of liberation setting us free to live our humanity fully. 

So what sets us free is not work at all, even if we sometimes make the synagogue leader’s mistake and think of it as such.  Indeed, setting us free is the whole intent of the sabbath.  The life to which we aspire is to be ever more set free until all our lives are lived as children of God, perfectly free human beings, loving and beloved, always liberating and never working at all.  It is for every single day because sabbath is not intended as a once-a-week suspension of the normal rules, but as the way life has been intended to be lived from the very beginning. 

What human beings ought to aspire to, it seems to me, is that when they die, what all will say about them is not a list of their accomplishments but that they never worked a day in their lives.  I’m pretty sure Jesus didn’t.

Peace,
+Stacy

Being Rich Toward God

Both the Old Testament lesson and Gospel for this Sunday point toward a basic problem of the human condition, endless toil for the accumulation of that which does not last.  In its most benign form it is “saving for a rainy day”; in its worst, unadulterated greed.  They are two forms of the phenomenon of hoarding. 

And that, Ecclesiastes characterizes as nothing more than vanity.  “[S]ometimes one who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave all to be enjoyed by another who did not toil for it. This also is vanity and a great evil.  What do mortals get from all the toil and strain with which they toil under the sun?  For all their days are full of pain, and their work is a vexation; even at night their minds do not rest. This also is vanity.” (2:21-23)

Jesus was aware of the same basic human problem.  He told a parable in the 12th chapter of Luke about a man who had a great abundance and hoarded it.  The rich man pulled down his barns to build bigger ones to store all his excess and rejoiced, saying to himself, “You have ample good laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, and be merry.”  (v.19)

God, however, had other plans and said to him, “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?”  (v.20)  It was, in the word of Ecclesiastes, nothing but vanity.

Both Ecclesiastes and Jesus deal with a basic human concern, the quest to have enough by making sure we have more than enough.  Hoarding is our method.  I know no one who is exempt from it.  But Ecclesiastes and Jesus have two different approaches.  Ecclesiastes is despairing of the basic human condition.  “Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.”  (1:2)  In other words, all is worthless.  All is lost.  We spend our days toiling for that which will not get us what we long for and that which will not last.  And there is no way out. 

Jesus, however, offers an alternative way to live.  We are not bound by the basic human condition after all.  There is an antidote to hoarding. 

Perhaps it is a bitter pill to swallow, but all need not be lost.  Referring to the futility (vanity) of the rich man’s hoarding, which he did not live to enjoy, Jesus said, “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.” (v. 21)  He refers to one who was rich in possessions but not rich toward God.  The implication has to be that it is possible to reap an abundance and still be rich toward God.  And here’s how.

In the context of the parable, what stood between the rich man and God was not the abundance itself.  Abundance, after all, comes from God.  It was the larger barns necessary to keep the abundance for himself.  The only solution to hoarding is to give the abundance away.  It is admittedly not an easy thing.  Still, it is the only way. 

Hoarding has to do with surviving, and as the parable illustrates, even that it cannot guarantee.  Giving has to do with living.  And living for all its worth is what it means to be rich toward God.  Anything else is but vanity.

Peace,
+Stacy

What Are We Going to Do About It?

This is a complement to last week's reflection, "Have We Learned Anything At All?"

The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s accomplished a dramatic change in our culture through the strategic use of law. 

It started in 1948 when President Truman issued an Executive Order to end segregation in the military.  The Supreme Court dealt a death blow to segregation in the public schools in  Brown v. Board of Education  in 1954 in a strategy led by NAACP counsel Thurgood Marshall.  Other legally-sanctioned segregation began to crumble when Rosa Parks was arrested for failing to move to the back of the bus in Montgomery on December 1, 1955, which led to legal desegregation of public transportation in that city a year later.  The Little Rock public schools were forcibly integrated in 1957 when President Eisenhower called in the National Guard in support of the courage of the Little Rock Nine.  President Kennedy established the Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity in 1961, and sent federal troops to enforce a court order for the admission of James Meredith to the University of Mississippi in 1962.  The Civil Rights Act of 1964 followed.  President Johnson strengthened affirmative action by Executive Order in 1965.  The Supreme Court ruled that state laws prohibiting interracial marriage were unconstitutional in 1967.  Segregated housing laws were addressed in the Civil Rights Act of 1967.  The Supreme Court made busing part of the remedy to historic patters in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education (1971).  Congress overrode President Regan’s veto to pass the Civil Rights Restoration Act in 1988.  The Civil Rights Act of 1991 was passed despite presidential opposition. 

There have been legal setbacks, too.  Most recently, the Supreme Court in June eroded the Voting Rights Act.  There are legal victories for Civil Rights still in need of protection and others yet to be won.  These are the sorts of things and the sorts of needs that inspired me to want to be a lawyer.

Still, one of the things I believe is true in light of the death of Trayvon Martin and the acquittal of George Zimmerman is that law has about brought us about as far as it is able.  This is the reality that inspired me to want to be a priest. 

It isn’t that I think law has no place in this battle.  We cannot afford to take it for granted.  It also is not that I think law has nothing to do with the contents of the human heart.  I think what one thinks often follows how one behaves and that the practice of ethical behavior can, over time, yield a moral character. 

But I think there are limits, and I think we have now run into the limits like a brick wall.  Democratic government, because it necessarily reflects the existing will of the people, is not much set up to be a leader of moral change.  It is, though, inherently responsive to change that begins with the people.  Indeed, the legal steps that led to progress in Civil Rights over the last 65 years were in the main forced on the government by the political pressure exerted by a moral movement. 

The main thing for us to remember now, I believe, is that it was a moral movement led by the Church.  It was not universally embraced by the Church, especially the white Church, but it was a movement of the Church nonetheless.  When Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke of the arc of the moral universe, he was speaking of the prophecy of the Old Testament and the new creation promised in Christ in the New. 

The tragedy of Trayvon Martin’s death has made plain to me what, in truth, was there to be seen for many years.  What is needed is another moral movement in our society, and I believe it is a moral movement, though not the exclusive possession of the Church, that can only be effectively led by the Church. 

This time the work is harder.  The venue is not Oval Office, the legislature, or the courts, which are relatively easily known with established rules and where our predecessors have walked before us.  Now the venue is the human heart, an almost inscrutable mystery, but the particular concern of the Church.  It is what we do.  It is slower, harder work, but it is also surer. 

Only when it is accomplished can we be secure that progress is not endangered by judicial review of the Voting Rights Act.  Only when it is accomplished will affirmative action be unnecessary.  Only when it is accomplished will black teenage boys be able to walk the streets at night in equal safety to their white teenage neighbors.  This is hard work, but there is no one else to do it.  And there is no one better at it than we.  Indeed, it is God’s gift to us, God’s grace. 

So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation:  everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!  All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of  reconciliation to us.  So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.  (2 Cor. 5:17-20)

Law has taken us as far as we can go.  Now conversion is up to us.  And conversion is a matter of grace.  The Church is to be its instrument. 

It is up to us to recommit ourselves to building what King spoke of as the Beloved Community.  The conversion of the world must begin with our own.  And the first step in that, I am convinced, is some hard conversation using all the tools at our disposal.  I am convinced of it because conversation and conversion are, at their roots, the same word.  And I am convinced of it because conversation and conversion, if the Civil Rights Movement taught us anything, is where moral movements must begin.  The only difference this time is that we have now moved from the realm of the law to the real of the Spirit.

Peace,
+Stacy

Have We Learned Anything at All?

A Florida jury has now rendered its verdict on the question of whether George Zimmerman is legally guilty for killing Trayvon Marin.  I cannot answer the question of whether or not theirs was the right decision.  I cannot answer the question of what happened on the night of February 26, 2012.  I have no reason to question the good faith of the members of the jury who listened to the evidence day in and day out beyond the fact that I am left as deeply disturbed after it as I was before it, maybe more so.  What I believe, though, is that these are the wrong questions to ask.  My hope is that now that the trial is over we can turn our attention to asking the right questions.  The others are more distractions. 

The second right question (I’m going to come back to the first):  Why is it that an African American teenage boy in America who goes out to buy Skittles and a drink is more likely not to return home than a white teenage boy?  This one ought to cause more than a few sleepless nights of soul searching.

The third right question:  Does this whole sordid affair lay bare the reality that our society values white lives more than it values black lives? 

The fourth right question:  Why is it that reasonable doubt is so much more likely to benefit a white defendant than a black one?   

The fifth right question:  What possible purpose do “stand your ground” laws, such as the one Florida has and that came into play in this case, serve beyond encouraging avoidable violence, especially by the privileged?

The sixth right question:  Why do we tolerate vigilantes, for is that not what neighborhood watch programs are, in affluent neighborhoods well served by the police?

The seventh right question:  Given the sixth question, why is it that we have no tolerance for the same thing in poor neighborhoods poorly served by the police?

The eighth right question:  Why on earth would we allow anyone the opportunity to act from the most ambiguous places of their hearts and the most reactive parts of their brains with handguns? 

The ninth right question:  Why is it some of our leaders would use this American tragedy to try and keep us from thinking clearly and dispassionately precisely when we most need to?

The tenth right question:  How do we confront the national denial and failure of self-reflection that mythologically relegates racism to being a southern phenomenon by which the rest of the country is somehow untainted?

And now I come to what I think is the first right question.  It is this.  Have we learned anything at all?  And this one has a corollary.  What are we going to do about it?

Peace,
+Stacy

Why join the Episcopal Church?

It is my pleasure to share today a Facebook posting by my good friend and colleague, the Rev. LaRae Rutenbar, a priest of the Diocese of Western Michigan, and the former Dean in the Interim of Christ Church Cathedral, Lexington, where her ministry at a crucial time is something for which I’m forever grateful.

At one time the Episcopal Church was rich in financial, political and cultural status. But long about the late 70's we did some deep soul searching as a Church and began a major change that has threatened our status. Several faithful and deeply committed people believed that a Christian church that was like an exclusive country club was antithetical to the gospel of Christ. Provoked by the Holy Spirit the Episcopal Church risked her very existence for those on the fringes of society. Civil rights, including women in all different ministries, the homeless, homosexual, the divorced, the unwed and the abused. We not only welcomed them but embraced them as brother and sister. What happened is that the wealthy fled for fear their money would go to causes instead of brick and mortar. Those who believed they were being morally corrupted by the inclusion of the "invasion" of others less pure and obviously unaware of the moral guidelines fled our ranks and took with them their money, influence and numbers. The once grand and magnificent church was left with aging buildings, lower (or non existing budgets) and a membership that looked a lot more like the kingdom of God rather than the country club of former years. We have risked much because we believed God had called us all to the feast. And many of those who came were poor, spiritually and financially.

So now we are a smaller, leaner and more inclusive church than before. Do we accept everyone? No, but we accept more than most. There is still the mysterious and holy liturgy in which we are all transported to the gates of the kingdom. Musicians still choose our space to offer their gifts of creativity and artists give their talent to a church that once paid them handsomely for their craft.

The Episcopal Church has never been very big in terms of major denominations. Yet, we are one of the churches dedicated to the teachings of Jesus as he really taught them! Do not join us if you want to look good at the office, the country club or amongst your social group. We often get comments like: 'you're that church with all the homosexuals, right?' To which I say, 'no, we are the church with all the children of God.' Only join the Episcopal Church if you’re willing to ask this question: Where might God be leading us and we might be unwilling to go? We have little money, aging buildings, no status in society-- we are a rag tag group of people who have been willing to risk it all for the sake of the Gospel to which we are called. Some will say that we actually began to read the gospels rather than carry the book around.

We are smaller but we are closer to the people that God has called from the highways and byways to the feast of the lamb.

Every once in a while, when I have the church budget in front of me and the needs of the broken pressing at my door, I remember fondly the church of my youth. Full churches, interesting programs and grand choirs. But, I am one of those for which the church was willing to pay the cost. I am a woman in ordained ministry -- and I thank God every day for a smaller but more faithful church.

It is my pleasure to share today a Facebook posting by my good friend and colleague, the Rev. LaRae Rutenbar, a priest of the Diocese of Western Michigan, and the former Dean in the Interim of Christ Church Cathedral, Lexington, where her ministry at a crucial time is something for which I’m forever grateful.

Peace,
+Stacy