Worship and Belonging

This is the second Sunday in a row that the Gospel lesson features a healing, and not just any healing, but a healing done by Jesus on—what else?—the Sabbath day.  Last Sunday we heard of the woman who had, Luke tells us, “a spirit of infirmity” for 18 years; she could not stand straight. Jesus healed her immediately. There were those who objected to this healing on the grounds that it was work, and work ought not to be done on the Sabbath. After all, the law says, “Six days you shall labor, and do all your work; but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your manservant, or your maidservant, or your cattle, or the sojourner who is within your gates.” Healing, they argued, is work; ergo, no healing on the Sabbath. Jesus did not challenge God’s law, but their interpretation of it. He asked them, on the Sabbath do you untie your beasts and lead them to water? Yes of course, and even your beasts of burden enjoy their Sabbath rest, as the law requires. Why then should not this daughter of Abraham be released from Satan’s yoke of affliction on this, the day on which God himself rested? In another place, Jesus said, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath” (Mark 2:27). In other words, God established the law of the Sabbath so that we human beings could set aside our toil one day out of seven, in order to enter the rest of the One in whose image we were created. I know it’s dangerous to “get political” in a sermon, but I do feel I have to say something about this. As our society has abandoned Holy Scripture and the Ten Commandments as a “norming norm,” the sabbath rest has become a luxury for the well-to-do. It’s Labor Day weekend, when government workers at least still get the day off to remember the humane victories of the labor movement, such as, for instance, the 40-hour week, the weekend (a secular Sabbath), and the family wage. Yet those hard-won protections have largely evaporated in today’s world of 24x7 work. Even now, on a Sunday morning, retail and restaurant workers have begun their shifts, and delivery vehicles ply our neighborhood streets. Wouldn’t it be better, more humane, to give them all the day off, or at very least, the morning? That Amazon package could wait a few hours—it really could! I’ve always been personally troubled by that venerable American tradition practiced even in the most religious parts of our nation, the tradition of going out to eat after church. It seems to me to be founded on the presumption that Sunday churchgoing is an activity of the leisured classes, while service workers are expected to be at their posts. Yet why shouldn’t we go out to eat on other days of the week and on Sundays entertain one another in our homes? Or perhaps, even more radically, on Sundays we could seek opportunities to minister to those who ordinarily wait on us. But more on hospitality anon. As the fine old lady said when the minister turned his attention to the sin of gossip, “He’s quit preaching, now he’s meddling!” I won’t apologize for my political opinions, but neither will I offer any excuse for my own hypocrisy in the many times I’ve shopped or dined out on a Sunday. I’m reaching for more of a cultural observation and a challenge, which I think is the real challenge of applying this commandment of Sabbath-keeping in an authentically Christian way: How ought we to use the freedom we have as Christians, not merely to enjoy ourselves, but to help others also enjoy the freedom and rest of Christ’s Kingdom? We often forget that the message Moses brought to Pharaoh was not simply a message of deliverance from slavery, “let my people go”; it was a message about God’s sabbath rest, a rest that is necessary for God’s people to realize their identity. “Let my people go, that they may serve me.” The sabbath is not simply a day for acts of individual piety (for those so inclined). It is, in Jesus’s teaching, a day for social justice, for liberation, for inviting our fellow man and all of creation to share the freedom and the rest promised to God’s people, and by extension, to all of creation. Now the hospital does not close on Sunday, nor do even our volunteer firefighters fail to answer calls on the Lord’s Day. This again is a right application of the principle. The Sabbath is not a day to shirk our obligations to others or to avoid helping those in need. Rather, because we are free in Christ, we may use our Christian freedom, especially on this day, to do good. With that somewhat lengthy preamble, we have the context necessary to understand what is happening in today’s Gospel lesson. Again, it takes place on the Sabbath. This time the location is a dinner to which Jesus and presumably many others, anybody who was anybody in this town or village, was invited. Here Jesus makes himself—how else can we put this?—the “skunk at the garden party,” the disruptive and ultimately unwelcome visitor, embarrassing the other guests and even his host. It reminds me of nothing so much as that tour-de-force essay of Tom Wolfe, “Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny’s” (New York magazine, June 8, 1970) reflecting on the infamous occasion when Leonard Bernstein and his wife hosted Black Panther activists at a soiree: “Lenny is a short, trim man, and yet he always seems tall. It is his head. He has a noble head, with a face that is at once sensitive and rugged, and a full stand of iron-gray hair, with sideburns, all set off nicely by the Chinese yellow of the room. His success radiates from his eyes and his smile with a charm that illustrates Lord Jersey’s adage that ‘contrary to what the Methodists tell us, money and success are good for the soul.’ Lenny may be 51, but he is still the Wunderkind of American music. Everyone says so. . . . How natural that he should stand here in his own home radiating the charm and grace that make him an easy host for leaders of the oppressed. How ironic that the next hour should prove so shattering for this egregio maestro!” I wonder how the Pharisee who invited Jesus to dinner thought the evening would go. Surely he did not expect this frontal assault on his social position and generous hospitality. Like the Panthers, Jesus shamelessly and even tastelessly takes advantage, turning the entire occasion into a living parable, skewering the pretenses of the host and his guests and reducing them to dumbfounded foils and object lessons at their own expense—if, we may hope, also for their own good. The first set piece is of course this healing of the man with dropsy, which we usually today call “edema,” a chronic swelling caused by fluid retention, itself often a symptom of other serious health conditions. It’s a problem that even with modern medicine can be difficult to cure. (I’m not an expert, I just looked it up.) Now, how did this invalid get there? Did he just show up? Was he invited? Was the whole thing an attempt to set Jesus up, to see what he would do? Did the people doubt whether he could heal this man, or were they hoping Jesus would seem to violate the Sabbath by performing the miracle? Nobody says anything. But they’re watching. Before he ever says or does anything, Jesus is under suspicion, under surveillance. Jesus has to clear his throat and identify the elephant in the room himself. The host and others gathered are Pharisees, experts in the law. So Jesus invites them to offer a legal opinion. “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath, or not?” Nobody is willing to commit himself one way or another. No one will answer him yes or no, or even propose a distinction or clarification. Apparently the memo has gone out: do not engage with this man. So Jesus, when he sees that nobody will answer him, according to the scriptures, “he took [the man] and healed him and let him go.” The miracle of healing itself is so ordinary to Luke the Evangelist that it hardly rates a mention. But Jesus isn’t done. After the healed man has left, Jesus poses a second, rhetorical question to the cowardly legal experts, or perhaps to the assembly in general. “Which of you, having a son, or an ox, who has fallen into a well, will not immediately pull him out on the Sabbath day?” Again, no response. How could they respond, except to agree with Jesus that healing on the Sabbath does not necessarily violate the Law and that it is meet and right that God’s anointed, the Messiah, should do such things! The second episode follows immediately on the first. Jesus observes the behavior of the guests, jockeying for the best seats, the seats closest to the head table and thus reflective of status and proximity to wealth and power. He then offer some advice that sounds very much like what we heard in that very short reading in Proverbs. “It is better to be told ‘Come up here,’ than to be put lower in the presence of the prince.” Good standard advice for the ambitious but wise young person. Don’t put yourself forward, let others recognize you, etc. The kind of advice your mom would give you. Or is it? Remember that all of Jesus’s parables have to do with the kingdom of God. Notice the scenario Jesus offers: “a marriage feast.” For those who have ears to hear, he is not speaking of an earthly social occasion, but of the Supper of the Lamb at the end of days, the feast that has even now begun in the heavenly realm, the feast to which, in a few minutes, we will spiritually ascend and participate in as we celebrate of the Holy Eucharist. Well then, if this is a parable of the Kingdom, we should take the host to be Jesus himself, who said that in his kingdom “many who are first will be last, and the last first.” The social order and hierarchies and ranks of the kingdom of God are not like ours. It seems that money and success are not good for the soul after all. Those who are wealthy and powerful on earth had best in fact start practicing humility and self-abasement, because they’re going to need it if they hope to be happy in God’s kingdom. Finally, Jesus tells another parable that seems to be aimed at his host. “When you give a dinner or a banquet”—again, this sounds like it’s going to be more standard, proverbial type of advice. But Jesus quickly veers into the unexpected: “. . . do not invite your friends or your brothers or your kinsmen or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return, and you be repaid.” Oh no! Wouldn’t want to be repaid now, would we? Really, what is he talking about? Of course we want to be in good with our rich friends, of course we want to be repaid, isn’t that what building social capital is all about? But again, this is a parable of the upside-down Kingdom of God. What Jesus is showing us is that we have the opportunity even in this life to begin living as if we are already in his kingdom. The Kingdom of God is not some far-off place and time. The Kingdom is here, the kingdom is now! And what we do here and now does indeed have an impact upon our future standing in the world to come, as Jesus says: “You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.” Here, I think we may return to the theme with which I began this sermon. Jesus says, “When you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you.” I spoke of how God’s sabbath rest cannot be kept to ourselves but must be shared with others. Jesus himself is the exemplar of this way of life. In his earthly ministry, he did not seek the attention of the rich and well-regarded, or the powerful and influential. He addressed himself to those who had none of these advantages, who brought him only their need. And he did for them more than they ever thought he could. This is how we too must approach our Savior. We do not come bearing gifts, hoping to be accepted for our good works, or our excellent character, or our standing in the world. We come to him simply because he offers in abundance all that we need and lack in ourselves: pardon for sinners, healing for the sick, strength for the faint of heart, peace for the dying. We acknowledge ourselves poor, maimed, lame, and blind, yet he is our life and our good portion, now and in the age to come.

“What has straw in common with wheat?” Straw, you know, is the waste product of grain harvesting. Its uses are limited—some animals will chew on it, but it is not a high-quality feed. Mostly it is used to line stalls and as a cheap construction material. Wheat, by contrast, is the goal of the harvest. Its seeds are a staple food, ground into flour for bread. Some wheat from every harvest would also be set aside and sown again in the fields, ensuring future harvests. The metaphor refers to the contrast between the truth of God’s word and the useless falsity of lying prophets telling the things they have dreamed up. We can look at this in terms of two kinds of “vision.” Vision is a word we hear a lot about today. One dictionary describes it as “the act or power of imagination” (Merriam-Webster). Included in this is the meaning which encompasses divine revelation. “Direct mystical awareness of the supernatural, usually in visible form.” However, more widely used is another sense of the term, “unusual discernment or foresight.” Sometimes this word is used as an adjective to describe a person or quality: people may speak of someone such as the late Steve Jobs as a “visionary” whose “unusual discernment or foresight” changed our world (though not necessarily for the better). Those in positions of leadership often try to cultivate a perception of having this kind of “vision,” whether or not they actually possess it. We can think of a “visionary” as one one who helps the community to see things that are real or potentially real, possibilities that could emerge. The visionary may help to alert the community both to unseen dangers and opportunities, and may suggest potential actions. Vision, in this sense, is something much spoken of (if more rarely observed) in our world, and in fact is something human societies require to endure and thrive. Without this we stagnate, we flounder, we find ourselves incapable of making important choices, and instead continue with the kind of short-sighted and self-interested behaviors that do not prepare us for the future or improve our common life. Vision can be dangerous. A faulty or misguided—or worse, a wicked and deceitful vision can lead the people astray and even destroy them. Some reputed visionaries are successful because they tell people what they want to hear, things that make them feel good about themselves. In politics, we call such smooth talkers demagogues. For the Greeks this simply meant one who championed the cause of the common people. However, such men are often deeply cynical, and the word has acquired for us the sense of one who gains power by manipulating popular prejudices. Of course even the best vision must also be heard and acted on by the people if it is to make a difference. An important quality of a leader is the ability to persuade people to believe in a vision and act on it. The Bible word for a visionary is a prophet. God’s consistent complaint against the so-called prophets who peddled their visions to the people, is that they were leading the people astray, away from the truth of his word. These false prophets were popular. They were powerful. They were persuasive. Yet among all these false prophets swapping “dreams” and empty visions, God provided his people with faithful prophets who spoke his true word, whether or not the people would listen. Jeremiah was one of the last prophets in Jerusalem before the Babylonian conquest, which at God’s bidding, he faithfully foretold. It was a thankless task, not a message he enjoyed telling, or that anyone wanted to hear. Jeremiah reflected God’s own sorry over the downfall of his people by his tears. We know him as “the weeping prophet.” And, like his God, Jeremiah remained faithful to his people, even finally going with them on an ill-advised mission to Egypt against his own counsel. (One of the big ideas of the Bible is that going back to Egypt is always a mistake.) So amid false prophets, and leaders who devised clever but foolish schemes for victory and prosperity, Jeremiah told God’s truth. Babylon would win, and the people would be taken into exile. Yet it was not a message of woe without hope. Jeremiah also promises a return from exile, and better things to come. At the beginning of the chapter from which today’s reading is taken, Jeremiah prophesies the return of the exiles and the rise of a true and righteous king, one from David’s family line. We can identify this as a prophecy concerning Christ, God’s anointed; the incarnate Word of God the divine Wisdom; the one who brings to the earth, as he said, God’s cleansing fire; the one who is a stone of stumbling and rock of offense, but also the cornerstone of the new kingdom of God; the fruitful seed sown in the earth and raised up to bring life to all people; the grain that, crushed, becomes for the world the Bread of Life. If we seek a true and enduring vision for our lives, as individuals and in community as the church, we must find it in none other than Jesus, and in the scriptures that bear witness to him. We must test the visions of our leaders, and the imagination of our culture, against the reliable standard of God’s Word, and most of all we must read and study this word until his thoughts become our thoughts, and our own imaginations are shaped and directed by the vision of his own eternal glory.

Sermon for Sunday, August 10, 2025. The sermon refers to the readings given for the day: Genesis 15:1-6; Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16; Luke 12:32-40 Abram is childless, despite God’s promise him that his descendants would inherit the land. Right now his default heir is not even a relative; it is his hereditary steward, Eleazar of Damascus. The fundamental question is this: Can Abram trust God to do what he said? One thing we notice in this story is that Abram does not in any way try to get God off the hook for his apparently impossible promise, like we so often do: “Maybe I should understand this metaphorically instead of literally” (of this, more anon); or even, as indeed Abram later says of his son with Hagar: “O that Ishmael might live before thee.” No—He takes God’s promise literally, and believes what it says. If you have read Genesis, you know how this story turns out. 15–25 years after this conversation, God follows through, not only for Abram, but ultimately for all of Abram’s descendants. What is important in this moment is that, seeing none of this as yet, the writer of Genesis says, “Abram believed the Lord, and he reckoned it to him as righteousness.” This is one of those places where the writer of Genesis puts a definite spin on the ball. We are to understand Abram’s faith in a specific way, as that which makes him righteous before God. This statement is all the more interesting because the immediate context has apparently nothing to do with righteousness, only with the promise of offspring. However, in the broader context, God’s covenant with Abraham and his descendants has everything to do with how a chosen people may live before God in righteousness. Right from the beginning, faith, not the keeping of a law or ethical code, is shown to be the crucial matter. Indeed, Abram’s worst ethical failures are related to his lack of faith, his failure at various times to believe that God is really going to come through for him. The Epistle lesson from Hebrews puts a finer point on the problem. What about all those people who died believing in God’s promises, but did not see them come to pass in their lifetimes? Abram at least got to see the birth of his promised son, Isaac. But he did not see Isaac’s own sons and grandsons, nor did he see the multitude of their descendants inherit the land which God had promised. Nor, indeed, did he see their exile and return, nor the birth of the Son who is both the author and the fulfiller of his promises. The preacher to the Hebrews reminds them that Abram is one of many chosen by God to receive his promises, who do not seem to see them realized. God’s timelines are very long, and our lifetimes are comparatively short. Often the blessings and favor we ourselves receive are fruit of the hard and faithful work of our parents and grandparents of which we now enjoy the benefits. But to be truly happy, Abram must ultimately see these things with his own eyes. This is where the understanding of eternal life and the ultimate resurrection comes in. Those who have, as Hebrews says, “died in faith, not having received what was promised, but having seen it and greeted it from afar” will themselves perfectly enjoy all that was promised, that they received beforehand by faith. Even today, the children of Abraham hope for very specific promises to be fulfilled. These promises involve actual land, geographic territory in the world. Theirs is no abstract utopian ideal. The Zionist movement in the late 19th and early 20th century was a novel political movement, but one based on a very ancient premise which the Jews have carried with them ever since God called Abraham out of Mesopotamia: God promised that they would possess this land and dwell in it. The scripture teaches us that we, too, are children of Abraham. Our claim to this is not based on direct lineage. Ours is the heritage of Abram’s faith, on account of which he was judged righteous before God and worthy of God’s promises. We are not looking for an earthly but a heavenly land and city. But before we dismiss the earthly hopes of the Jews as having nothing to do with us, think about what I just said. Have any of us really renounced all worldly hopes for ourselves and our descendants? I really doubt this. I certainly have not. I wish and hope for a righteous and peaceful world for my children to grow up in. The state of New York doesn’t feel like that kind of a place to me, but ultimately my hope is not in governors or presidents or even in my fellow citizens, but in God, who is sovereign over all of these. It’s not un-Christian to hope for good in this world. Jesus himself taught us to pray “Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.” Christians do not hope only for “pie in the sky by and by” as some deride us. Pie, yes. Sky, not exactly. We believe that in the end Jesus will return to this earth from which he ascended and make all things right and good. Even before that, we believe that we are called to do the work of his kingdom here and now. So while our ultimate homeland is the heavenly Jerusalem which we do not yet see, we are fully invested in the time and place in which we find ourselves now, and especially in that place where the Kingdom of God finds its fullest expression on earth: the Church. For me this points obviously to the place where we are gathered right now: St. Michael’s Church. As we seek to love and follow Jesus as part of this congregation, we are all, I think, confronted by the distressing fact that St. Michael’s is in a serious state of decline, and has been for a really long time. And we have to seriously ask the question of how long we will be able to continue with our work and mission as a parish since our present way of being is not sustainable. Maybe here is where we can connect personally with the story of Abram. At the time of this narrative he was between 75 and 85 years old, and Sarai his wife was only 10 years younger. Too old by any reasonable standard to have a child. And yet Isaac was born 15-25 years later, when Abraham was 100 years old and Sarah 90. For us, in 15—25 years it is reasonable to presume that this present congregation will not exist. It has been said that the Church grows not primarily by natural generation but by adoption. Jesus is both the offspring of Abraham and God’s only begotten Son; we are brothers and sisters adopted in him. As Jesus said, “God is able of these stones to raise up children for Abraham.” So while I may be at risk of spiritualizing the point, our hope as a congregation is not that a multitude of children may be born to us, but that a multitude of persons who are not now part of our congregation may be brought in. This is the work in which we may participate through evangelism. This work should not be limited to but should certainly include our own children and extended family members. I encounter so many people who were raised here and have fond memories of the place, but have not attended church in many years, and have raised their own children functionally outside the faith. Shall we hope for the return of those who have chosen to live as exiles from the faith of their childhood? Yes, we should pray for their return. Those who have left the faith are often more difficult to reach than those who have never heard the gospel. They need, more than another invitation, a work of grace to revive their own faith and love toward God. But what God requires of us in this situation is not (primarily) action. For Abram, as scripture says, “as good as dead,” only faith could bridge the gap between the impossibility of his circumstances and the promises of God. I close with the words of Jesus, who gives us in today’s gospel a program for how we are to live faithfully in the meantime. “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give alms; provide yourselves with purses that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” Some of you, I will say, are doing precisely this, with your generous and faithful support of St. Michael’s church, both with your time and your finances. I can’t but think that you are investing in eternity, because as an investment in the here and now it would make little sense. May you reap in due time the reward of your faith, both in this time and in the age to come. For others, I would encourage you to ask yourself: Do the ways in which I spend my time and my wealth reflect a heart of faith? Or is my treasure bound up in the things of this world which are passing away? And again, the treasures that are most precious to God are his disciples, his “little flock.” It is for their sake, for love of them, that Jesus exhorts them to adopt an attitude of readiness. And it is also for the sake of those who do not yet know him, or who have strayed from his ways, that he tarries, in order that they also may be gathered in to he fold. This is the opportunity we have been given now. Time draws short. Let us prepare.

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