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The Gospel: Luke 14:1, 7-14
On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the sabbath, they were watching him closely. When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable. "When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, `Give this person your place,' and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, `Friend, move up higher'; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted." He said also to the one who had invited him, "When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous." Prayer: Lord, you have promised that when two or three gather in your name you will be present with them. We depend on that promise today and pray that you will move among us. Lord, we pray that have you inspired Mike's preparation, that you will enliven his presentation and that you will empower our application. Amen The Message: Welcome once again this morning to the Gospel of Luke. This morning it would be easy to think that we have stepped into a chapter from one of the books that were popular when I was a teenager. I am sure my mother wasn't the only mother at the time trying desperately to get me to understand my role in life as a gentleman. I am sure she would have loved to have me read the book that is our second image for this morning. The commentators I read and listened to as I prepared for this morning pointed out that it could be easy to think that somehow Jesus is giving a lesson in social graces in the reading for this morning. They wanted to be sure everyone understood that is not what this reading is about. At the heart of this morning's reading in Luke, there is the concept that is central to all of Jesus' teaching. He is drawing our attention to the essence of true greatness which he lived out and taught. Central to Jesus' life and teachings is his belief in and conviction about humility. Luke shows us this in the story that he chooses to tell through this particular parable. Jesus takes the opportunity to highlight humility in this short parable. Humility is a mark of Jesus' life and all of his teaching. It infuses his relationships and it shapes his conversations. Jesus chooses the path of humility in his dealings with those he meets throughout his ministry. Eventually, it shaped how he chose to die. As it says in Philippians 2:5-8 "Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, assuming human likeness. And being found in appearance as a human, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death - even death on a cross." Now, most of us sitting here this morning will not be called upon to give our lives for the sake of Christ or for the sake of the Gospel. But we should be living our lives for the sake of Christ or for the sake of the Gospel. So what might that look like? Well, when Jesus was asked by his followers what that might look like he summarized the situation in what we have come to know as the love commandment. Matthew 22: 37 - 40 "He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” Now, we all know people have been trying to figure out exactly what that means and how we are to do it ever since Jesus said it. This morning I want to spend some time looking at how we might "love God and love our neighbor" by looking at the word mark. I used it earlier when I said humility was a mark of Jesus' life. Another way I could have said that would have been to say Jesus' life was marked by humility. So, just what do we mean when we talk about that word mark or marked? When someone's life is marked then there is a significance, or there is a pattern, or there is some symbolism that is played out in that person's life. Perhaps I can illustrate what I mean by talking about the very little I know about Australian Aboriginal culture. Some Aboriginal tribes in Australia, have a rite of passage ceremony for young men when they are considered to have reached maturity. When they move from being considered boys in the tribe to becoming men they have a corroboree, a ritual of song and dancing, and as part of the celebration, the chest of the young men are cut in a ceremonial pattern. Those cuts are then filled with the hot ashes from the fire. These wounds are seared closed and then heal with the ashes still present in them. They form small ridges in the chest of the young man and mark him as an adult. These are the marks of his adulthood. Another example I learned from watching cowboy movies when I was growing up. How valid this one is I am not sure, but when an Indian and a cowboy decided that they wanted to proclaim their loyalty to one another they would declare that they were "blood brothers." They would cut the palm of their hands and then clasp their hands together. It signified that their blood was commingled. Each of them would have a scar on his palm indicating that they had participated in this ritual. These marks symbolized the decision that had been made and then signified to them and anyone else that a loyalty transaction had taken place. Many of us do similar things when we join clubs or groups in our modern society. Membership in these clubs or groups is identified by marks such as lapel pins, caps, sashes, etc. Sometimes there is a ritual of membership that has to be completed so that a person joining and everyone else recognizes the significance of what they are doing. We as Christians have our own significant rituals that we follow for membership. We also have our own marks of participation in our faith walk with Christ. One of the most significant marks of our Christian life is what we term fruit bearing. We understand that we have been grafted into the community of Christ. Like any plant or tree that has experienced the grafting of a new limb, we are expected to show the results of that new life and to bear fruit. Our Collect for this morning points that out clearly: "Lord of all power and might, the author and giver of all good things: Graft in our hearts the love of your Name; increase in us true religion; nourish us with all goodness; and bring forth in us the fruit of good works; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever. Amen." So what marks our lives as people who gather here each Sunday as a community devoted to Jesus Christ? Of course, that question has both a corporate and individual answer, or possibly answers, doesn't it? To be able to answer that question we need to ask what do we do as a church? Then we need to ask ourselves what do I do because I ampart of thischurch? How is the life of this community marked by what we do? Then we need to ask how is my life marked by what I do! One guide or help in answering these questions for me lately has been to read and study the Christ Church Mission Statement and the Christ Church Vision Statement. What is it that we are striving for? Then as I seek to understand the role of our community in the broader world I have found the Five Marks of Mission helpful. The Five Marks of Mission were developed by the Anglican Consultative Council and were then adopted by the Episcopal General Convention in 2009. They are:
Do you think that the life we live together here is marked by the Five Marks of Mission? Is there more that we could be doing? As we seek to be the body of Christ here in Huron how do you think we are doing with achieving the goals of our Mission Statement and our Vision Statement? As we think about the Collect for this morning are we seeking the participation of Jesus in all that we do and say? "Lord of all power and might, the author and giver of all good things: Graft in our hearts the love of your Name; increase in us true religion; nourish us with all goodness; and bring forth in us the fruit of good works; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever. Amen." The Gospel: Luke 13:10-17
Now Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, "Woman, you are set free from your ailment." When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, "There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day." But the Lord answered him and said, "You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?" When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing. Prayer: Lord, you have promised that when two or three gather in your name you will be present with them. We depend on that promise today and pray that you will move among us. Lord, we pray that have you inspired Mike's preparation, that you will enliven his presentation and that you will empower our application. Amen The Message: Our Gospel reading this morning is full of possibilities for preaching several different great messages. But I am going to leave those possibilities for a few minutes and we are going to look at our Old Testament reading from Jeremiah. Here we have Jeremiah's call, his anointing by the Lord and his being appointed a prophet. Woven into this is the record is Jeremiah's doubts and his struggle to see how or why the Lord would want to call him. Jeremiah's response to his call is similar to several other calls to ministry that are recorded throughout the Old Testament. In fact, there is a clear pattern from those who are called by the Lord to serve him. You might call it the "who me?" "why me?" "Can't you see how imperfect I am for what you are calling me to do?" response. Moses, Gideon, Jeremiah, and several others of "the great leaders and prophets" in the Old Testament responded in basically the same way. They couldn't understand why God was choosing them and they had all kinds of reasons why someone else would be better at the job than them. I preached a sermon once on Moses' call to ministry which I titled: "Here I am Lord, send my brother." Moses spent so much of his time in that initial conversation with the Lord trying to convince God to send his brother Aaron. In the story of Jeremiah, which we read this morning, we see that God speaks to the inadequacy that Jeremiah feels and assures him that the Lord can and will work with him and through him to accomplish the task God is calling him to. One of the things I believe we need to consider as we hear these stories is that we usually understand the people we read about as the complete person we know at the end of their story. We tend to skip over the initial call dialogue. We brush aside their protestations and their lack of confidence and assurance. We want to get to the part where we can see all that they accomplished. It is true that in the end most of them have accomplished something of what God was hoping for. They seem more assured and confident of who they are and what they have achieved. We need to remind ourselves that they got to be that complete person after many experiences. They have been through a series of successes, but also through failures and struggles. All of this has taken time. They have had to wait and allow time for the Lord's work in their lives. They have been shaped and their character has been developed by the situations and the people that they have had to deal with. We need to recognize how the Lord has influenced and recreated these people. Who they have become is sometimes radically different from who they are when we first meet them. We have to allow for the time that has passed in these people's lives. In the contemplative branch of spirituality in the church, this is known as "the slow work of God." We all know folks who find their faith best expressed in a contemplative approach to faith right? They enjoy silence, they don't mind being alone, and they are willing to set aside time to just sit with an idea or a thought and allow the Holy Spirit to lead them in plumbing the depths of a concept. I have to admit I admire people like that, but I also have to acknowledge that I am not one of them. I would think that after me being a part of this community for almost seven years most of you would recognize that about me as well. If you want to know more about it you could have a chat with Steve Terry or Sue Cameron, or the ladies who work in the front office here at Christ Church. Now there are times when I can reign myself in and I can discipline myself to take time and engage in prayer about decisions and directions. But, usually, I tend to move a little more quickly than that. I think a better Scriptural example of my type of spirituality is the Centurian in Luke 7. The one who sends people to ask Jesus to heal his servant. Jesus sets out to visit his house the Centurian sends messengers to say that Jesus doesn't need to come he just has to give the word. You all know that section of Scripture right: "I am a man under authority, I tell some to go and he goes, I tell someone to come and comes." But I digress. The "slow work of God" is something that I believe we could all benefit from spending more time getting to know about and understanding better. We live in a world where we are very caught up in getting what we want when we want it! And more often than not we want it now! How often are we willing, even when it comes to spiritual things, to invest time in prayer? How often do we recognize a need, shoot up a quick prayer to God to meet the need, and then when nothing seems to be happening step up and work out our own solution? I have to say that I am challenged by this thought today. Today we read in Luke's Gospel the story of the woman who Jesus finds in a synagogue. She has carried this ailment for 18 years. 18 years! It appears that Jesus provides an immediate solution to her problem. He simply declares that she has been made well and he lays his hands on her. She immediately stands up straight and begins praising God. Let's think about this for a moment, Jesus encounters this woman - who has been waiting for 18 years - and he doesn't ask her anything, he just heals her. What does that tell us about this woman's character? Why hasn't she given up expecting to be healed? What does it tell us about her faith? Why has she kept coming back to the synagogue day after day, year after year? For 18 years she has come and then suddenly, miraculously, immediately she is healed. There are a number of other stories in the Gospels about healings that take place and I was struck as I prepared for this message this morning that many of them contain references to how long the person has suffered from their aliment. It seems like an instantaneous healing, but actually, they have waited years for the Lord to provide their healing. What can we learn from these stories and how can we apply what we have discovered in our own spiritual lives? What do we really understand about "the slow work of God" in our own lives as we live right here and right now in Huron? Sometimes I believe we want to look more closely into questions like the one I just raised and we don't know where to start. I want to assure you you don't need to start from scratch, you don't have to reinvent the wheel. I would like to offer a suggestion this morning, if you want to learn more about "the slow work of God" perhaps you could research and look into Ignatian Spirituality. Ignatian spirituality, also known as Jesuit spirituality, is a spirituality founded on the experiences of the 16th-century Spanish saint Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuit order. A short description of this approach is outlined in "Finding God in All Things" Ignatian spirituality challenges us to encounter God in all things, witnessing to the joy of the Gospel. We go forth into the world as contemplatives in action, discerning God’s desire for our lives here, now, and acting on God’s invitation. We are women and men for and with others, hearing both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor—and responding. And we do all for the greater glory of God. One of the most well-known Jesuits is Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. He wrote this poem about "the slow work of God." Patient Trust “Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability – and that it may take a very long time. And so I think it is with you; your ideas mature gradually—let them grow, let them shape themselves, without undue haste. Don’t try to force them on, as though you could be today what time (that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will) will make of you tomorrow. Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be. Give Our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you, and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.” Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ excerpted from Hearts on Fire |
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