Proper 25 Year C: Keep Silent, And Do Not Compare Yourself With Others

II Timothy 4:6-8,16-18
Luke 18:9-14

The story from the gospel this morning tells us of the triumph of humility; the humble tax collector acknowledges his many faults, asks God for mercy, and goes home justified, while the cocky Pharisee reminds God and everyone else of his accomplishments, belittles the tax collector, and does not go home justified. The point of the story is that while we should never pull ourselves down into a spiral of despair by constantly dwelling on our faults, we do need to be aware of them, honestly confess them, ask God to heal them, and then work on them (cooperating with and fostering the healing that only God can give to us). Doing all that sets us on the road to freedom and maturity.

On the flip side, the road to bondage and immaturity is shown to us by the Pharisee, because when we brag only of our supposed triumphs, we blind ourselves to the parts of us that need to be healed. Everyone else sees our sins, and God sees them, but we are too busy gloating to notice our open wounds that are getting worse everyday, making life difficult for those around us, and eventually crippling us. We don’t need to hide or deny our good qualities (for that is just as dishonest as hiding our sins), but we do need to realize that everyone has basically the same amount of virtue as well as the same amount of vice. It is merely the particular virtues and vices that differ from one person to another. But the cocky Pharisee didn’t understand this because he was so busy yelling: “Hey everyone, it’s all about me!” that he could not hear the humble tax collector admitting: “It’s not all about me – it’s all about God.”

Humility allows us to be grateful for our virtues as gifts from God that we can foster in order to receive ever more of them, rather than gloating over them as if they were our own accomplishments, and humility allows us to be honest about our vices as problems that God can heal, instead of overwhelming obstacles that must out of necessity lead us to hell. Humility allows us to say with confidence: “I am a beautiful, wonderful child of God, and so is everyone else. I am a sinner saved by the grace of God and the blood of Jesus, and so is everyone else. I have vices that need healing, as well as virtues that need expanding, and so does everyone else. Only God can do those things for me, and only God can do it for everyone else.” Humility allows us to follow the advice of an ancient desert monk in an old story who answered the question of how to be saved with the simple answer: “Keep silent, and do not compare yourself with others.”, rather than following the example of the pharisee in our gospel reading, who opened his mouth solely in order to make himself look better than the tax collector.

Saying all of that is in no way meant to be a defense or excuse for wrongdoing. Since we are children of God, having low expectations for our own or anyone else’s behavior amounts to disrespect and shows misunderstanding of our true potential, We all fail and we all sin, but seeing that as no problem degrades humanity. If we are honest about it, we can all say that ninety-nine percent of the time we know full well when we do something wrong, and yet we go right ahead and do it. That is why we need the humility to say that although we are made in God’s image, we don’t always live up to our calling, and we need help, like the tax collector in the gospel.

We need to be more willing to confess our own faults and less willing to point at others’. We are too apt to change rules, ignore traditions, and interpret some parts of scripture literally while interpreting other parts figuratively or simply ignoring them in order to make our lives easier and soothe our own consciences while at the same time accusing those with whom we do not agree of abandoning the same scriptures and traditions. That happens on all parts of the supposed spectrum that runs from conservative to liberal; humility is needed on the left and on the right. Just because someone is a Pharisee does not mean he is bad (in fact, most of them were good), and just because a person is a tax collector does not mean he is good ( in fact, they were in collaboration with oppressors).

Humility also gives us the freedom to be joyful even in our worries, because all we can do is our best – no more and no less – and once we have done our best, the outcome is up to God. We heard Paul talk about this in our second reading this morning. He suspects that his life is coming to an end, but he is ok with that. He tells Timothy in his letter that he has: “…fought the good fight… finished the race … kept the faith.” He goes on to say: “From now on there is reserved for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give me on that day, and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.” In other words, he knows that righteousness comes only from God, but it takes a lot of work on our part to realize and experience that gift in our lives. He also understands that many more people besides him are given the gift of righteousness, which he calls a crown. Paul talked a lot and wrote a lot and preached a lot, but when it came down to the end, all he could do was what was mentioned earlier about the monk in the desert: “Keep silent, and do not compare yourself with others.”

That is good advice. God will give us exactly what we need to cure our vices and strengthen our virtues, and the grace that we receive will never be exactly the same as anyone else’s gift. That is ok, since we don’t need to be like the Pharisee in the gospel story, worrying about other people’s sin. Instead, we need to be like the tax collector in the story, coming to God alone and defenseless, humbly trusting in God’s love to heal us. God wants to heal us, but won’t force it upon us. God wants us to bring his healing, peace, and joy to the hurting world around us, but won’t force us to do that, either. The gracious gift of eternal life is offered to us every day and every moment, but we must be humble and honest enough to confess that we need it, and that we can’t get it for ourselves. May we freely take the gift of life that comes to us through Jesus. May we freely pass it on to others, and may we freely receive it from them, as they in their turn, bring it to us from our most gracious and merciful God. We are created in the image of God, and our God was humble enough to hang on a cross for us, forgiving others for their ignorance in killing him. May we be humble, as he was. May we have standards and values, but may we also make sure they are the same as those of Jesus, and may we be humble enough to change in order to more closely conform to his image. That’s not easy — we need to admit that we don’t know everything, and that some of our most cherished ideas might need to change, but that’s ok, because it’s not all about us; it’s not all about our country or our race or our political party or our church — it’s all about Jesus. Only Jesus can help us conform to himself. Every time we come to this altar we publicly affirm our acceptance of Jesus as our Lord and Savior as we freely take his body and blood that he freely offers. May we do so seriously and allow Jesus to change us as we take him into our lives. May the meal we are about to share with Jesus and his other disciples around the world and throughout history be part of an ongoing pattern in our lives of coming to Jesus to humbly learn from him as we humbly kneel at his feet. It’s not all about us — it’s all about Jesus. May we humbly accept his humble help. May we be humble, and in so doing may we reach glory.   AMEN

Proper 20 Year C: Small Time Crooks

Amos 8:4-12
I Timothy 2:1-7
Luke 16:1-13

Like so much of the Bible, the story that Jesus told about the dishonest manager is not meant to be an example of how we should run our lives. It is instead an example of something we should avoid. Jesus is trying to make the point of how silly and ultimately dangerous it is to flirt with dishonesty. If the manager had simply been honest in his business dealings in the first place, he wouldn’t have had to go to all the trouble that he did in order to cushion his landing when he was fired. We don’t know a lot about his boss, but it seems that he was also dishonest, or he would not have been so congratulatory to his servant for cooking the books. It all sounds like an episode of “I Love Lucy”. How sad. Unfortunately, it also sounds like episodes from our own lives, because we so often act like the people in the gospel story or “I Love Lucy” –wasting our time with dishonesty to get what we want, instead of simply doing the right thing and trusting God to take care of the outcome.

So many of our problems could be avoided if we simply went about our tasks honestly and were satisfied with the good things that are already in front of us. We heard Paul recommend such a way when he instructs Timothy to pray for everyone, “so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity.” There may have been a hint of worry about persecution in Paul’s instruction, but we can still relate to his desire that we live with dignity. Dignity can not mix with dishonesty, and it has no need for silly schemes. All of us are of infinite worth. Our lives are important, as are our jobs, no matter what they may be. There is no need for us to pretend to be anything other than who we are, or to have more things than we can afford. After all, God chose the life of a carpenter, not the life of a senator. If being middle class and ordinary is good enough for God, it is good enough for the rest of us. If there were no carpenters, the world would be in much worse condition than if there were no senators.

Of course, none of this is meant to say that we should accept any sort of poverty, sickness, or lack of opportunity as being ordained by God. We should work to eradicate those things, but we don’t all have to have the biggest house on the block, or the fastest car, or the most glamorous spouse. Most of us have more than we could ever use or need. Most of us have lives full of people that we could never run out of love for. There is no need to waste time desperately trying to get more, or creating false images of ourselves so that people will be impressed and pretend to like us, because usually the only ways we can figure out how to get more stuff is either by making sure other people don’t get it or by working ourselves to death (which is selfish), and the practice of putting up false images of ourselves to impress people is destructive to our own personalities, and is dishonest. Selfishness and dishonesty can only lead to disaster for ourselves and everyone around us.

The prophet Amos just told us about some of the disasters that selfish dishonesty brings. He addresses those who “trample the needy, and bring ruin to the poor of the land … practic[ing] deceit with false balances, buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, and selling the sweeping of the wheat.” Amos was pointing out the fact that the laws that God had given Moses to insure that everyone got a fair chance at a decent living were being broken, and disaster was looming because of it. If you read the entire book, it becomes apparent that some of those who were breaking these laws and hurting the poor were the very same people who were quite scrupulous about following the proper religious customs of the time. They were careful to treat God with respect, and yet treated the people around them like trash. What they failed to
realize is the fact that one of the ways we encounter God is through other people. Any dishonesty or callousness shown to our neighbors is dishonesty and callousness shown to God. The way we run our businesses and lives is the way we run our relationship with God. As we heard Jesus say: “Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. If you then have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”

Most of us have not been burdened with wealth, and most of us are quite honest in our business dealings. But we still so often go through life comfortable with the petty falsehoods that we pass along to others to make us look more impressive, and we all have times when we commit petty misdemeanors to get things we want (like pretending to understand a conversation when we don’t, or sucking in our guts when a romantic prospect walks by). We don’t do these things because we are evil; we do these things because we forget how truly holy we are. We are perfectly adequate and acceptable and beautiful without the false fronts. So is everyone else. It is our job to realize that fact and leave behind the petty falsehoods that separate us from God, from others, and from ourselves. It is up to us to realize that we have more than enough of everything we will ever need. Then we can let others know that it is ok for them to be themselves; to come out from behind their facades and to stop killing themselves and those around them by constantly grasping for more stuff. They can stop doing those things because they are acceptable to us and we love them, not their possessions or their false images. Pretension is not beautiful, people are. Wealth is not valuable, people are. Image is not real, people are.

We can not love what is not real, and we can not love until we are real. As Paul wrote to Timothy: “This is right and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” May we all come to the knowledge of the truth that God knows the real us, and yet still loves us. God sees us naked and with no possessions, and yet still loves us. There is no need to falsify our accounts, like the dishonest manager in the gospel story. We have God and we have each other, and that is all we will ever need.   AMEN

Proper 16 Year C: Karma Chameleon

Isaiah 58:9b-14
Hebrews 12:18-29
Luke 13:10-17

Isaiah and Jesus are both telling us in our readings this morning to do good things. We would expect that. Isaiah says that if we are good to people and keep religious laws, then good things will happen to us. Jesus says that we should be good to people even if it breaks religious laws – and he says nothing about anything good coming to us as a consequence of our good actions.

They are both right.

In regards to doing good things, we should do good things not merely in order to have good things come our way, but quite often, living a lifetime of kindness does make life easier for everyone around us, including ourselves. That is not always the case, or maybe more accurately we should say that it does not always seem to be the case as far as we can tell. Sometimes good people have horrible things happen to them – but even then, people who are used to doing good seem to take all the horribleness with a much sweeter attitude than those who have been mean to people all their lives. Maybe Aristotle is right: to become a good person, one needs to do many good things. But even so, there are those cases where truly good people have truly bad things happen to them and they are crushed by the circumstances and lose their faith. So Isaiah is mostly right about the consequences of good behavior, and Jesus just leaves the subject alone, but no matter the consequences, we ought to do good things – at least  for the others around us if not for ourselves.

In regards to religious laws, Isaiah and Jesus are also both right. Religious laws and other rules and laws are in place in order to help us and everyone around us have good lives as individuals and as groups. So when we obey rules, good things are more likely to happen to us and to those around us. However, people are always more important than the rules. If a rule hurts instead of helps, then the rule needs to be disregarded (if it is an isolated incident) or changed (if it is an altogether harmful rule). Knowing when to follow rules and when to break them takes a lot of maturity and prayer. Knowing when to change rules or keep them takes even more maturity and prayer.

Maybe our guidelines in the area of breaking or keeping rules in order to do good should be based on both Jesus and Isaiah (with Jesus trumping Isaiah when necessary): do good always, follow rules usually, and don’t do it solely in order to get something good in return. Our actions do have consequences – for ourselves and for others. Let’s do good so that good consequences result. But when we do slip up and do bad things, always remember that grace overrides karma – God does eventually clear up all messes, but it is so much easier to not make the mess in the first place. And of course, we don’t do good things so that we will be saved; we do good things because we are saved.

Isaiah, Aristotle, Jesus – do good, do lots of good, let the rules help you rather than keep you from doing good. And when confused about what to do, pray and do the best you can.   AMEN

Proper 12 Year C: Try And Try Again

Genesis 18:20-32
Colossians 2:6-19
Luke 11:1-14

The story in Luke this morning about bothering your neighbor until he gets up and gives you what you want is often used as a prescription for praying a lot until we have bothered God enough that we get what we want. However, there is no set way to interpret the stories that Jesus tells – he just tells the stories. There are some times when he explains the stories (like the one about sowing seed in different types of soil), but usually, he just tells the stories and lets us figure them out. So – how about interpreting this story in a different way than what is usually done. How about interpreting it as meaning that we should pray a lot so that God bothers us enough that we finally do what he wants us to do. The same can be done for the similar story about the corrupt judge and the cranky old lady – we often think of God as the judge and we as the woman wanting justice, but shouldn’t it really be the other way around? – we are corrupt (judging everything according to our own twisted standards) and God wants us to change and be just. The reality is: we need to pray a lot so that God can finally convince us to do what we ought to do, not so that we can get God to do what we want. We need to pray a lot.

The same technique of turning the usual interpretation around 180 degrees can be used in the story from Genesis this morning. Maybe God is not giving in to Abraham’s pushiness about not condemning a whole group of people because of the actions of some; maybe God is teaching Abraham that it is not right to condemn whole groups of people because of the actions of some or even most of the people in the group. Once again, it is God using our prayer time to finally make us aware of what we ought to do, not we bugging God so much that God finally gives in and gives us what we ask for. But just as Abraham had to make several petitions for that to happen, so we need to pray a lot. Of course, God did eventually wipe out all but four (three if you count Lot’s wife) of the residents of the plain, but that’s the Old Testament for ya! – it wouldn’t be the same without a good smiting here and there.

So, maybe we can also read this part from the letter to Colossae in the same way of turning the interpretation around. Paul says to not let anyone ensnare us with the need to engage in certain religious practices, and there are indeed some dangerous religious practices. But there are a whole lot of religious practices that are simply different than what we prefer or what we are used to. So we should turn the warning about dangerous practices around a little and remind ourselves not to condemn others for engaging in practices that are not dangerous, but merely different. He makes it clear in the reading that it is all about Jesus anyway; Jesus only condemned people’s religious practices when they did not follow them up with love and compassion. People are different, and everyone’s relationship with God is different, so different things will help different people. We should be thankful when we find what we need to help us grow in Christ, and we should be thankful when others find what they need.

We see a lot of people with some strange religious practices come through our doors here at the monastery. Some of them are actually dangerous. Many others are merely bothersome and disruptive in a group setting such as we have here. Other times, they are just different and we can let them bother us if we want to. But the truth of the matter is the fact that we all need to pray a lot. So let’s allow each other to do that, and let’s all do it in ways that help each other – not being pushy or flaunting our different ways. Let’s pray a lot so that God can finally convince us to do what we need to do.   AMEN

Proper 8 Year C: Who’s On First?

1 Kings 19:15-16,19-21
Galatians 5:1,13-25
Luke 9:51-62

At first hearing, our Old Testament story of Elijah calling Elisha to follow him and our Gospel story of Jesus calling disciples to follow him sounds as if they are contradicting each other: Elisha is told it is ok for him to say goodbye to his parents before answering Elijah’s call, while Jesus tells those whom he calls that it is wrong to do anything other than drop what they are doing and immediately follow him. That might be the case; maybe they are contradicting each other, but that is alright if they do. Each story is in a different setting and involves different people, and following God involves doing different things in different situations. Or, they might not be contradicting each other: Jesus does not forbid the people to do the things they request before following him – he merely uses the requests as an opportunity to make some witty points.

We don’t know for sure about the entire situations involved in the two stories, but just for the sake of taking a deeper look at the reading from the letter to the Galatians that we heard in between these two stories, let us assume that the difference between the people making their requests before answering their call to serve God lies in their motives for making the requests. This passage from Paul’s letter talks about two ways of living, or two motivations behind our actions, words, and attitudes. He names the opposing ways the way of the Spirit, and the way of the flesh. Those names might not be the best for us to use, because for many people, they seem to indicate that our bodies are bad. Perhaps some better names might be: the way of love vs the way of fear, or the way of God-centeredness vs the way of self-centeredness, or the way of “it’s not all about me” vs the way of “it’s all about me”. Paul encourages his readers to not fall back into the easy way of slavery to fearful self-centeredness, but to hold onto the freedom of loving God-centeredness that Jesus brings us. He gives a list of actions describing the two different ways, and the two lists are really a reflection of either rising to the glory of full humanity with all our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual desires leading us in ways of peace with ourselves, with God, with our neighbors, and with the world around us, or of the opposite way of sinking into the subhuman pattern of allowing our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual desires to drive us into fear and hatred of ourselves, God, our neighbors, and our world. Another way of denoting the difference is to say that fearful self-centeredness involves disordered appetites, while the way of loving God-centeredness involves well ordered appetites.

The reality of our human condition does not change with the different ways, just the way we choose to live. We still have the same appetites and urges no matter the path we choose. The difference lies in whether we see our human condition as somehow hopeless and therefore live with the attitude of “what about me!” – fearing that we won’t get our fair share of what we want or think we need, or if we see our human condition as holy and therefore live with the attitude of “I’ll be ok, because I’m with God” – trusting God that we will be more fulfilled than we ever could dream of being if we tried to take care only of ourselves. Only on the surface does the way of self-centeredness seem easy – it actually leads to pain and sorrow. The way of following Jesus into the glory of our full humanity is actually easier, because Jesus is the one who pulls us into freedom in God that leads to joy and fulfillment. Jesus proves to us that the human condition is a good thing, not hopeless or sordid, because Jesus shows us that human life is so beautiful, God chose to have one. Jesus lives the life that Paul describes as the fruit of the Spirit, or the way of loving God-centeredness: “…love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control.” He shows us that there is no need to live in fearful self-centeredness, always whining “what about me!”, or as Paul describes it: “fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing…”.

With Jesus as proof that life is precious and we need have no fear, since God is always with us, we can look at our own motives and work to get rid of the self-centered attitudes, while fostering a more God-centered way of life. We can turn from letting the basis of our actions be “it’s all about me, so I had better step on everyone else in order to get what I want” and instead start living on the foundation of “it’s not all about me – I am in God’s heart along with everyone else, and we will all get more than we ever thought we needed or wanted”. We can look at our motives for following Jesus, and stop doing so merely because we are afraid of hell, so that we can follow him solely because we love ourselves, our neighbors, and our God. Then when we answer Jesus’s call, we can go back to take care of our business as good stewards, thankfully letting God have control, instead of going back to our business so that we can be in charge because we fear that God won’t be able to handle it the way we want. Of course God won’t take care of things the way we want, because what we want is rarely what is best. Only by trusting in God can our eyes be open to the fact that our former desires were so petty compared to what God has to offer.

So the two ways lie before us: the way of fear, self-centeredness, ‘What about me!”, or the way of love, Godcenteredness, “I’ll be ok, because I am with God”. Rarely do we stay solely on one path; we tend to waver from one to another. Jesus is calling us, and will help us as we learn to follow him on the path of true fulfillment of our glorious humanity, because he created that path. And Jesus is not the only one calling us; God sends messengers to us, just as Elijah was sent to Elisha. Those messengers are around us everyday – they are the people who live and work with us and whom we see in the news. They are calling us to live together with them in the heart of God, growing in love, peace, and joy. They waver between the two paths, just as we do, so may we all help each other on the way as we follow the call of Jesus. We must not fall into slavery to fear, as Paul reminds us. We are called to freedom. Only by trusting God can we be free. Only then can we live in love, joy, and peace. Only then can we help each other on the path to true life.   AMEN

Proper 4 Year C: Old Time Religion

I Kings 8:22-23,41-43
Galatians 1:1-12
Luke 7:1-10

We just heard Solomon pray that people far away from the temple might hear about how great God is and will themselves start praying to the God who is worshiped at the temple. Presumably those foreigners will be attracted to God because of the good examples of the Israelites who already worship at the temple. Then we heard about the Roman centurion who has heard that Jesus heals people – the people introducing him to Jesus say that the centurion can be trusted because he knows about God and is good to God’s worshiper. Presumably, he sees the good things that God’s worshiper do, and that is what attracts him to them and to Jesus.

God is attractive. Jesus is attractive. We are given the job of living lives that attract people to Jesus. Unfortunately, we don’t always do such a good job at giving people any reason to worship God or ask Jesus for healing. That is not usually because any of us live wicked, hateful lives (although there are some hate-filled people who use Jesus as an excuse for their fear and hatred). Most of us live good, loving lives almost all the time. The problem comes when we unwittingly put a barrier between Jesus and others by trying to overexplain him rather than just saying “come and be healed.” The church as a large institution does this more than individual Christians, and it is not intentional, but it does happen. We get so engrossed in Jesus, so we tend to overthink him and come up with theological formulas and definitions of orthodoxy that are fine in themselves, but are not the same as a healing relationship with him. We do that because we love him so much that he is always on our minds, but nonetheless they can still be barriers put in front of people trying to get to Jesus to be healed.

Theology is not bad, it is good and useful. In fact, we even have an early attempt at Christology in our gospel reading this morning when the centurion compares Jesus to a military officer ordering things to be done from afar. His theological musings were a motivated him come to Jesus for help. Other people have been brought to a healing relationship with Jesus through their theological musings. We just need to make sure that our definitions and formulas bring people closer to Jesus, rather than pushing them away.

Maybe Paul is talking about something similar in our second reading this morning. He is upset that the church in Galatia is turning to a different gospel that the one originally taught to them. Hopefully they are not turning away from Jesus and toward another god. Maybe they are just becoming more in love with ideas about Jesus than with Jesus himself. There was a need for solid theology at the time, because people were using Jesus as a basis for mystery religions and gnostic societies. Those types of religion really did portray Jesus as a harsh demanding semi-god rather than the healing presence of God among us, so there was good reason for solid theological and christological definitions. But we must never forget that the savior of the universe is a person, not an idea. The gospel is Jesus, because he is good news. We must base our lives on the person of Jesus, not on some ideas about him, no matter how helpful those ideas might be. We must not be like the church in Galatia, turning away from the gospel of Jesus and turning toward anything else.

Our lives can be an example of the creative power of God and the healing power of Jesus, and the love that is the basis of all of that. Orthodoxy and theological exercises can certainly help us live such lives, but we need to make sure that we are not substituting theological minutiae for Jesus himself. And we must make sure that our theological pronouncements help people come to Jesus, rather than blocking them from him. All of that can be difficult, but we have Solomon, Paul, and the Roman centurion praying for us. All of those guys have some theology attributed to them, and they all did not live good, attractive lives all of the time. That takes some of the pressure off of us, knowing that we can and will mess up at times, and we will overthink God sometimes, and yet still be channels for the Holy Spirit of God, bring life, health, joy, and peace to the world around us.   AMEN

Baptism Of Our Lord Year C: Rights Or Gifts?

Isaiah 43:1-7
Acts 8:14-17
Luke 3:15-17,21-22

Things move slowly in a monastery, and there is good and bad in that, just as there is in any other type of human organization. Things move so slowly in a monastery that even though Christmas has been over and forgotten by most people, it is still lingering on here, and will do so until the celebration of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple on February 2nd. Christmas also has its good and bad side – it is way too busy in the office processing donations and sending out calendars; it is way too busy in the kitchen making special meals for all the holidays; it is way too busy in the church flipping back and forth between books. Those things are part of the bad side of Christmas (and really they aren’t too bad at all). However, the good side of Christmas far outweighs the bad side – Christmas is all about gifts (our gifts to others, others gifts to us, but most importantly God’s gift to all of us). That gift God gives to us at Christmas and throughout the year is simply himself.

In fact, everything we have is a gift. We speak of human rights, and it is good to work for the expansion of human rights throughout the world. But in the biggest picture, standing before God, we have no rights; life owes us nothing – everything is a gift. Rights are granted to people who are merely tolerated; gifts are given to people who are loved. And we are loved – deeply, madly, unconditionally. This existential freedom from rights is (unlike in the human political sphere) a great freedom, because instead of demanding and expecting to have certain things, we are instead able to take everything that comes to us and be grateful while we have it and then gratefully let it go when it is gone. Demanding and expecting brings worry; while humbly accepting and receiving produces gratitude. When we expect to have our rights fulfilled or to be given our due, we are prone to bitterness and disappointment, because almost everything will not meet our expectations. But when we receive everything as a gift, everything exceeds our expectations, and so we are joyful. That works not only with things and situations, but also with people. Expecting people to meet our demands won’t ever work, because people are not created to meet our demands. Instead, seeing other people as gifts in our lives whom we love, and joyfully desiring their happiness relieves us of the burden of expectation and self centeredness.

It also relieves us of the burden of godhood. When we expect things and people to be and do what we want, we have taken God out of the center of our universe and replaced him with ourselves. We become the gods of our own pitiful little hells. No one wants to be around us, and people cringe when they see us coming. We become picky, pushy, easily offended and high-maintenance, and we think we know better than others. We set standards for other people and become angry when they do not meet them, but we are really angry at ourselves for not meeting even lower standards. We become whiners, and as Maya Angelou said: “Don’t ever whine – whining makes you ugly and lets a bully know there is a victim around” Why do we choose to be ugly? Why do we choose to be victims? It is so much better to choose to let God be God and allow ourselves to be our true selves: God’s beautiful children, living in heaven and bringing heaven to the world around us. When we demand our self appointed  rights or expect our desires to be met, we are never satisfied and the little things annoy us and drive us crazy. When instead we joyfully accept gifts, the little things delight us.

But we know it is hard to see everything as a gift. We so easily fall into demanding and expecting – Benedict calls it “murmuring” in his Rule. That is where the discipline of constancy comes to our help. Constancy can help us because it does away with the need for patience. Patience so often implies that we are simply waiting for things to get better, and that brings disappointment. It means enslavement to our emotions and surroundings. On the other hand, constancy means that we choose to do our tasks and live our lives in a way that is helpful no matter if things ever get better, no matter our feelings, and no matter what is going on around us, and that brings joy. We can patiently wait until our rights and expectations are met, growing more bitter by the day. Or we can receive and give gifts with constancy and joy. It is our choice. Why not choose joy?

There are three events coming up that call us to choose either the paths of impatiently demanding things or joyfully receiving things. First, we have an abbatial election this week. Of course, this is not a perfect monastery full of perfect people. That is good, because usually a perfect setting full of perfect people is the opening scene for a creepy horror movie. Instead, we are real people, not pod people, and so anything we touch, including this monastery, will be imperfect. But on the whole, the problems we do have here are amazingly small, compared to any other monastery I have ever heard of or visited, and compared to the wonderful things that happen here. We touch people’s lives around the world, and it is humbling to know all we have to do is gather together to pray – everything else is merely to support that. So, we can choose to dwell on the tiny amount of problems we have and inflate them out of proportion (demanding that things change to suit us), or we can truthfully acknowledge them and get on with the good things of the monastery. This monastery is an incredible gift to us monks, giving us a place to be monks. And it is an incredible gift to those who know us and count on our prayers. The second thing confronting us is our celebration of  the baptism of Jesus, which is also a celebration our own baptism. We can choose to be angry with the way God rules the world and the church, or we can choose to accept the gift of baptism as a means of grace giving us strength to change the world and church for the better, working with constancy. And lastly, we are about to come to this table to receive God’s gift of himself. We can choose to dwell on the imperfections of the other people who gather up here and the imperfections of our celebration. Or we can choose to joyfully receive God into ourselves and be grateful to know that others are doing the same.

Let us choose joy. Let us choose to receive. No one else makes the choice for us. Let us choose to be good to ourselves and put off our bondage to self. Let us choose to let God be God so we can be God’s beautiful children.   AMEN

Proper 26 Year C: Poke And Prod

Isaiah 1:10-18
II Thessalonians 1:1-4,11-12
Luke19:1-10

Our scripture readings this morning include a wide spectrum of motivational tools, from threats at one end to pleas and rewards in the middle, to modeling of behavior at the other end. The middle reading from Paul’s letter to Thessalonica is threatening, both to the righteous and the unrighteous. We only get the beginning and the end of the threats this morning, but what lies in the middle goes like this: the righteous are told they are in the midst of persecution in order to make them worthy of the kingdom of God. The persecution was seen as an opportunity to build character, and so what at first looks like a threat is actually a means of reward. The real threat in this reading comes from Paul’s words about those persons who were the persecutors – they are going to get into all kinds of trouble when Jesus comes back with his angels. Maybe Paul was hoping the threat of eternal destruction might turn some of the persecutors from their ways, or maybe he thought they had already gone beyond the point of repentance and redemption.

The first reading from Isaiah is also full of threats, as well as pleas. In this instance, the ones who are being threatened and pleaded with have not gone beyond the point of no return, and God is desperately trying to get them to turn around to come back to him. God is telling them that he is tired of their hypocrisy; doing all the right religious things while the rest of their actions were cruel and merciless. God says he won’t even look at them or listen to their prayers – two serious threats. But he also begs them to change, and even offers to discuss the situation with them. He pleads for them to seek justice and in so doing prosper, instead of continuing on their wicked course which leads to death.

The gospel story from Luke is basically a story of modeling correct behavior: Jesus comes to town, Zacchaeus  the crook sees him and is so drawn to him that he changes his ways. It would seem that we would all strive to need only the modeling form of motivation. We should all have our attention so fixed on Jesus that we automatically base all our actions on his life.

But that is not how we really live. Our actions and attitudes don’t reach the goal of selfless love all the time. So even though it sounds barbaric and makes God seem mean, maybe threats are actually an act of kindness. Maybe even though the pleas and rewards make God sound like a frustrated parent, they merely reflect the reality that we act like spoiled children. The ultimate reality is that we have been taken into God’s eternal life, but the immediate reality is that we are not there yet. So no matter how true the ultimate reality is, we must deal with daily life as it is now. We all sometimes need the threats, pleas, and rewards, as well as the model of Jesus – who took on our human nature so that we might take on his divine nature.

Hopefully, as we grow in Christ, we will need less of the other forms of motivation as we more readily model our life on him. But as we grow, we will occasionally fall and  need some of the threats and pleas and rewards. One might wonder if we will ever get to the point of complete trust in God so that we don’t need the lower forms of motivation to help us grow more into him. Our life in God is eternal, so who knows – maybe we do eventually come to complete union with his will, or maybe we just keep getting closer and closer for eternity, like an asymptote in math class. The one sure thing is that all of our growth in Christ comes solely from him. We can only take the growth he gives us and put it to work. Of course, we also have the option of throwing that growth away.

Tomorrow we celebrate all those who have gone before us in their growth in Christ. Maybe some of them are completely there, maybe they are just always getting closer, but it is good to know that there are others on the way to God with us. And of course, we are all surrounded by each other, on the way to God. So may we gather with each other, as well as all those who have gone before us and come to the table up here to be guests as God feed us with everything we need, because all we really need is God. We might need threats later on in the day, or a plea or promise of reward tomorrow, but right now what we are offered is God giving himself to us and for us. May we imitate the model and give ourselves to God and to those around us.   AMEN

Proper 19 Year C: Run Away

Exodus 32:1,7-14
I Timothy 1:12-17
Luke 15:1-10

Our scripture readings today are about God’s acceptance of people who run away from him, or turn away from him, or reject him, or however else it might be described. The stories, of course, are about us – we don’t trust God, so we make other gods out of our own supposed abilities and possessions (like the Hebrews in the first reading from Exodus); we think others who are different from us are sinners repugnant in the eyes of God, so we persecute them in our own petty ways, doing so in God’s name, thereby smearing his name and reputation (like Paul’s remembrance of his past in our second reading from his letter to Timothy); we wander away from God because wee don’t trust his judgement about the best place for us, or we separate ourselves from everyone else because we think we are either too good or not good enough to be counted among them, like the sheep and the coin in our gospel reading from Luke.

But even though we so often reject God’s efforts to bring us to fulfillment, God doesn’t give up. God still leads us through dangerous places to our promised land flowing with milk and honey, like the Hebrews in the first story. God shows us our mistakes and puts us on the right path, like Paul in the second reading. God finds us wherever we try to hide, like the shepherd and the woman in the gospel story. If we look at our lives, we can see how often this happens, and besides making us grateful, it might cause us to stop and wonder if God ever finally lets us have our way and follow our own delusions as we take ourselves to the hell we have created.
Some very holy people have said yes: God respects our decision to do that, if that is what we choose. Some other very holy people have said no: God realizes that when we choose to turn away from him and follow our own dangerous path, we are doing so only out of ignorance, and so God will save us from our mistake.

Who knows the answer? God knows – only God knows what is best for us, so the best thing for us is to admit that, and stop wandering off to rely on the false gods that we make – whether they are of money, or personal abilities, or religious denominations, or political parties. All those things are good, but they are not God, and when we rely on them instead of God, they can’t substitute. Everything we do must be built upon the foundation of God, and the other things are merely decorative or functional depending on their foundation on God. Everything we build upon anything other than God will eventually collapse on top of us and everyone around us. How much easier it is to trust God in the first place, rather than always be waiting for him to dig us out of the rubble. How much easier and safer it is to stay in God’s care than to run away or separate ourselves from the others in his care, shivering in the dark and cold as God once again picks us up and brings us back to his heart full of joy at our return. How much easier it is to take care of our own relationship with God, than becoming so obsessed about others relationships with God that we neglect ours and it falls apart.

Life is short. It is too short to waste so much time bringing misery upon ourselves and those around us by rejecting the fulfillment that God has in store for us and instead trying to create and control a fake world of our own. But we do just that over and over, and God rescues us over and over. Maybe the goal for us  is to do it do it a little less each time – tho trust God a little more each time we are rescued and to spend a little more time in God’s care between each successive episode of going astray. One way to learn to trust in God is to do what we are doing right here, right now: praying for guidance for ourselves and others, listening to Bible stories of others like us whom God repeatedly rescued from their dangerous paths, and joining together for a meal in which God feeds us with his own self. In addition to the time spent here together, we also have opportunities to spend time alone listening to God as we pray and read scripture by ourselves, and by simply enjoying the world God has made by finding joy in our work and leisure activities. All those things can be tools to keep us from wandering away from the abundance of God, and they all work together, but they must be honestly done with good intention in order to be of any use.

True life is in God, not away from God, like the sheep and the coin in the gospel story. True life comes from trusting God, not in making false gods of our gold, like Aaron and the Hebrews in the Exodus story. True life comes from working on our own relationship with God, rather than trying to destroy others’ relationships with God, like Paul in the letter to Timothy. True life is offered to us over and over, even after we repeatedly reject it. May we accept it, hold on to it, and offer it to others. Life is short, but if lived in God, it is eternal, it is good, and it is real.   AMEN

Proper 15 Year C: Holy, Holy, Holy

Jeremiah 23:23-29
Hebrews 11:29-12:2
Luke 12:49-56

The Bible readings we heard today are about holiness. The prophet Jeremiah, whom we heard first, reminds us of the holiness of all creation when he reports God saying: “Am I a God near by, says the Lord, and not a God far off…Do I not fill heaven and earth?” God’s presence makes the entire universe a holy temple. We all know people who say they never go to church because God is everywhere and they can worship God anywhere, such as the great outdoors or a neighborhood bar. They are right. We also know people who go to church all the time, yet treat the rest of the world around them like a trash heap. I would much rather be around the first kind of person than the second kind. Of course, since God is everywhere, it is perfectly acceptable to worship God in church as well as in the surrounding countryside or neighborhood bar. In fact, the two concepts can and should reinforce each other. As Jeremiah tells us: “Who can hide in secret places so that I can not see them? Says the Lord.” The care with which we treat the holy things in church should be matched by the way we treat every other good gift of God. We need to be careful not to defile the temple of God, which includes everything that ever was or will be.
The Letter to the Hebrews (our second reading) reminds us of the holiness of the people around us. We are told that we are surrounded by a “great cloud of witnesses”. The author is talking about all the holy people of former times, but we don’t have to think of saints as people in the past.

After all, the same Holy Spirit who was in Moses and Mother Teresa is in each of us, as well as every person sitting around us. One way we can become more saintly is to treat the people around us as the saints they are. We know we do not do that, and that is why the Letter to the Hebrews goes on to stress the importance of discipline in our lives. Discipline helps us grow. If we really take seriously our status as Children of God, then we will do what it takes to grow and become more Godlike. There are various disciplines that can help us in our growth, and no two people are going to need or benefit from the exact same set of disciplines. The important thing is that we don’t lie to ourselves and pretend that we don’t need to grow or don’t need discipline in order to grow. Every time we pass judgment on someone else, every time we allow anger to simmer in us, every time we whine about something is a reminder that we still have a lot of growing to do. We must grow until we see the holiness of the universe around us and the holiness of the people around us, and we need to remember they are growing too, so we should give them as much slack as we give ourselves.

Finally, our gospel story reminds us of the holiness of time. Jesus rebukes his listeners for being so adept at interpreting the signs of future weather, while never bothering to interpret the present time. He might as well have been rebuking me, because I am not sure what he means by the phrase: “interpret the present time.” Maybe what he means is that we worry so much about the future or either yearn for or regret the past so much that we never really live in and enjoy the present. His listeners were worrying about the weather that is not here yet, just as we worry about the future that is not here yet. Of course it is not wrong to plan for things and have a vision for the future, but to have the future consuming our present with worry is not right. It is also good to remember, honor, and learn from the past, but to hold on to the past so strongly that we do not live in the present does no one any good. After all, we heard Jesus himself  say that he is bringing fire and division to the world, so the one thing we know is that the future will be just as unstable and insecure as the past and present. With that in mind, one might as well enjoy the present moment that God has given us. Since it comes from God, it is infinite, eternal, holy, and completely full of love.

The present time is all we have, and we can use what it offers to help us grow in love, or we can be afraid of what it offers and shrink in upon ourselves with worry, greed, and pettiness. We can look upon the fire that Jesus brings as something that will destroy us, or something that will purify us. We can look upon the division that Jesus brings as something that makes us bitter and angry at those on the other side from us, or as something that can make us sweet and open us up to those on the other side. That’s where the discipline that the Letter to the Hebrews talks about comes into play. The time to grow is now. We can’t wait for the weather to change, as Jesus tells his listeners. Instead, we must interpret the present as the time to act. The entirety of creation is filled with God. Everyone around us is an instrument of the Holy Spirit. Every moment is an eternity of love streaming from the heart of God. We are surrounded by holiness. It is up to us to constantly grow in order to be able to see the holiness surrounding us. It is up to us to use the present in order to redeem the past and plant seeds for the future. God gives as all we need in order for us  to do this, because God gives us God’s self. May we give ourselves to God. AMEN