Sermon, Year C, Proper 14, "To know we are loved, then to risk something great"

 

C Proper 14 19 Ord Pilg 2022

Luke 12:32-40

August 7, 2022 

           As I shared two weeks ago, it is the oft-repeated phrase in Luke from God to humankind.  “Do not be afraid.”  Luke’s gospel begins with the angel telling an unmarried, soon-to-be-pregnant teenager, soon-to-be migrant and then a refugee, a peasant (meaning a farmer without land), “Do not be afraid.”  An angel appears to shepherds, those who did not own the fields they slept in, who did not own the sheep, stinking to high heaven, “Do not be afraid.”  Again, it is this assumption that the status quo for the poor and destitute, life is so hard, that they would be terrified God might visit them, might be a part of their lives.  For certainly, didn’t the life they were living, the violence that was a part of their everyday lives, indicate God was against them?  Angels must remind people like Mary, the shepherds, and this week, the disciples, not to be afraid of God or what God has in store for them.

           Jesus begins the Scripture reading today with, “Do not fear, little flock, for it is the loving Creator’s good wish to give you the kingdom.”  If you are hearing these stories told of this Jesus fella’, you hear “do not be afraid” repeated over and over again.  It sets the tone.  It reminds you, that as you step out into the world, you can risk boldly when God is ready to act in the world. 

           Two weeks ago I tried to say that the Lord’s prayer and Jesus’s teaching bracketing that prayer taught that God is good.  “Come out, Eunice!  Apparently God does not wish to smite us!”  No, “what person of you would give their child a snake when they asked for an egg, or a scorpion when they asked for bread?”

           Fundamentally, Jesus had to teach the disciples a message that was counter to the world they saw around them, a counter-cultural message, a message that was opposite the one Rome intended for them, “No,” Jesus is saying, “God wants to give you the keys to the kingdom.  God is good.”

           For people living in poverty, death, and violence, they had to wonder.   Was life some cruel joke?  If God ordained the status quo, what kind of arbitrary and punishing god was this that we, and our people, the Jews, and particularly the most faithful among us, live these short and harsh lives?  Who would want to follow such a God, be the disciple of someone who regularly encouraged us to be their followers?  The Roman gods love to be in charge in their quest for power over us.  But what kind of God is this?  Jesus has to go about reminding the disciples that their God is the God of the slaves and not the taskmasters.  Remember?

           That seems to be a part of our human condition, right?  Many of us have been taught that faith is not to question and to know that God is in heaven and all may not be right with the world . . . but it’s just because you dummies haven’t got it figured it out yet.  Cancer visits . . . multiple times.   We lose a child early in life.  We see addiction destroying our life.  Or the life of someone we love.  Mental illness makes our life anxious.  Or a living hell.  If I trusted in a God who cared about being almighty and worked by having power over, just one of these tragedies in my life would have me storming the halls of heaven with serious questions.  Maybe regardless of how we picture God, those questions should be front and center. 

           I know there are times when I find myself raging at God through an addiction I cannot shake.  “Where are you??  Is this what you intended for my life?  I have asked and asked . . . and you, you are nowhere to be found!  Who do I feel like I walk through this all alone?  How can you be called ‘almighty’ when I see you have no power over me?”

           Sometimes, only sometimes, the silence after my raging gives way to a far deeper wisdom which reminds me that Christ crucified is not about a God who cares about being almighty or winning or showing off power.  Rather, what we have, is a God, who through Christ’s life and ministry, reminds us the power of what it means to walk with hurting folk, who finds true treasure and value in making sure our neighbor makes it through another day, a God we touch and feel in the brown earth as we garden or smell a wildflower, a God who wants us to piece together systems and structures in ways that are not about hoarding and fear—but about love and compassion.  What if we were to risk that?  Tell others we’re just repeating the small fractals, rhythms and practices, God is doing in our hearts?

           Jesus seems to know, he seems to know, that taking such risks only happens when we know that God is good, the fear dissipates, and MMMmmm . . .MMMM, we know we are loved.  Again, our Scripture verse begins today with Jesus saying, “Don’t be afraid, little flock, because your loving Creator delights in giving you the empire, the kingdom.  All of it is yours.  God wants you to have it.  God wants to give it to you.”  Become a murmuration, little flock, a murmuration of God’s love. 

           Before the Scripture lesson for today are verses left out of the lectionary which are my favorite.  I have chosen them for my installation.  And you will hear me repeat them over and over again as evidence of God’s love.

 

Therefore, I say to you, don’t worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear.  There is more to life than food and more to the body than clothing.  Consider the ravens:  they neither plant nor harvest, they have no silo or barn, yet God feeds them.  You are worth so much more than birds!  Who among you by worrying can add a single moment to your life?  If you can’t do such a small thing, why worry about the rest?  Notice how the wildflowers grow.  They don’t wear themselves out with work, and they don’t spin cloth.  But I say to you that even Solomon, the wealthiest and most powerful person in our nation’s history, he could not adorn himself or make himself more beautiful than one of these wildflowers.  You beauties, you!  If God dresses grass in the field so beautifully, even though it’s alive today and gone in a season, how much more will God do for you? . . . You beauties!

 

Do we hear what those verses are saying over and over again to Jews living in poverty, violence, and death?  Can we let them sing into the marrow of our boens and melt into our bloodstream.  I try to tell you every week of God’s love in worship so it gets deep into you.  Because I know it can be hard to trust. 

           You are loved.  You are cherished.  And in being loved and cherished, you are now free to risk dreaming the dream and living the life God invites you to follow.  Little flock, God loves you and wants you to have the keys to the kingdom.  Jesus makes it clear that it looks nothing like the kingdom Rome has constructed—concerned about who is no. 1, who is the winner, who has the most power. 

           How ironic that this same Jesus seems to be worshipped by so many who wish to make him no. 1, proclaim him as the ultimate warrior and winner, have an ever greater bloodlust for more and more power, declaring who is in and who is out.  Our culture has so transfigured what it means to lean an authentic life. 

           I know I am pulled that direction all the time.  With 35 years in ordained ministry, I see colleagues praised and celebrated in the wider church.  And I wonder what happened to me?  What ladder do I need to climb?  What book do I need to write?  What great thing do I need to do that will have the Michigan Conference and the wider United Church of Christ shouting, “Yea, verily, he hath done well.  Let us accord him all pomp and circumstance that he so rightly deserves.”  I have the princess wave thoroughly practiced for when they throw me my parade.

           Charles Dickens lived at a time when the Industrial Revolution had begun to take its toll on the populace and those who led out the French Revolution saw a light for something more egalitarian and fraternal, for a different tomorrow because today was full of suffering.  The story begins and ends with the iconic words, “It was the best of times.  It was the worst of times.”  And indeed it was.  Even though the revolutionaries sought a different day, the time was one of unspeakable horror and violence—the guillotine used as a tool for punishing a violent, autocratic rule which offered little solace for the poor and suffering.  While legend has it that Marie-Antionette offered, “Let them eat cake,” in response to the poor asking for bread, the revolutionaries countered with their own Reign of Terror in which heads, literally, rolled.  Violence upon violence.

           It was a time of crisis—a time when the hands on the clock of human history stood still as the world teetered on the horns of the old and violent and the new and violent.  In the midst of this crisis, this turning point, Dickens drops this tale.  As in many good stories, Dickens tells a personal story on the horns of old and new within the wider, sweeping story.

           A young couple is married.  The bride, Lucie, literally meaning “light,” brightens every corner she is on.  She is loved by all those who come into contact with her for the love and compassion she shares.  Living out her Christian faith, Lucie’s goodness and mercy transform every situation.

           But she is heartsick.  Her husband, Darnay, has somehow become entangled in the French Revolution.  The revolutionary Jacobins have thrown Darnay into the Bastille, the legendary prison, awaiting his later execution by the guillotine. 

           Enter the cynical, alcoholic attorney, Sydney Carton, who has long embodied all the stereotypes of what it means to be an attorney—thinking himself intellectually superior and compassionately detached.  Though we learn Carton bears a striking physical resemblance to Darnay, he bears no ethical resemblance.  Carton cares only for himself.  He has led his life without concern for circumstance or injustice only to dazzle others with his brilliance in the courtroom. 

           But there is a deeper wisdom that Carton recognizes in the Christian woman, Lucie.  Even though Sydney is hated and beyond the pale by many, Lucie offers him kindness, and warmth, and love.  It goes beyond just doing things.  It has so much more to do with who she is—inviting and loving and true.  Carton is brilliant . . . but there is something deeper she seems to understand about life.  When Carton sees Lucie hurting and sobbing over her soon-to-be-executed husband, Sydney Carton recognizes that a love he has known through her now calls him to great risk. 

           Using his skills as an orator, Carton negotiates himself into the prison cell of Darnay and tricks him into changing clothes with him.  After changing clothes, he drugs Darnay so that the young man will not argue or protest.  Thus, Darnay leaves the prison free to be with his life, the light of so many lives, Lucie.  Sydney Carton leaves with the rest of the prisoners to the guillotine.  In that moment, Dickens gives him the immortal words at the end of A Tale of Two Cities, words that transcend the violence found all around them, “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”

           Once we are loved, we are free to risk great things:  to not find our wealth in our material things but to sell possessions and give alms to the poor, that our purse or wallet may concern itself with the things of God, to act outside the violence of a violent world.  For if I know that God cares about the dwindling hairs on my head, that now seem to be found growing out my ears . . . if we know that God cares for our daily needs even as God cares for the daily feeding of ravens, hopefully chocolate is involved; and if God looks at the wildflowers and sees such beauty, how much, even more so, God will look at us and say, “You beauties!” 

           Would that still our anxious voices just enough to risk something great for God, our neighbor, and this good earth.  You . . . are loved.  God cares for your daily needs.  And God finds you insanely, naturally, spectacularly beautiful.  Risk accordingly.  Amen. 

Sermon, Proper 6, "To Be Land Defenders"

C Proper 6 11 Ord Paul 2025

I Kings 21:1-24

August 3, 2025

           One of the most profound wisdom-givers of our age has been Kentucky farmer, Wendell Berry.  I remember reading the book, The Unsettling of America:  Culture and Agriculture, about 10 years ago and I remember being just blown away by how he saw rightly what was coming for all of us—what needed changing and transforming, what we were losing in our choices and our mindset about the land.  Berry wrote that great book over 40 years ago. But his predictions were like he was living in 20 to 30 years into the future.  Berry once wrote, “The great obstacle to [collective action] is simply this:  the conviction that we cannot change because we are dependent on what is wrong.  But that is the addicts excuse, and we know that it will not do.”[1]

           The land is one of the primary themes of all of Hebrew Scripture.  The central covenant promise God extends to the sojourning Abraham and Sarah and their descendants is land.  Abraham and Sarah leave their ancestral homeland for the promise of descendants and land.  Salvation in Hebrew Scripture, as defined by the HarperCollins Bible Dictionary, is a broadening or a widening of a space for community life and conduct.  Salvation for the Jewish people becomes a space, a land, where they might be able to practice their faith.  “Cultivating affection for place is a major theme of the Hebrew Scripture.”[2]  In Jewish thinking, “not to have one’s place is to cease to be.”[3]

           The western Apache frequently speak of the land as “stalking people” or “going to work on them” playing tricks on them so as to reconnect the people to their roots in the land.  For the western Apache, the land and the teaching stories of the land had a way of “shooting them with arrows,” calling them back to an identity and responsibility for the land.[4]

           Hebrew Scripture scholar, probably the most famous in the United Church of Christ, Walter Brueggemann, saw land as such a central Biblical topic that he wrote a whole book, a full 256 pages, titled simply, you guessed it, The Land.

           How we are to be in relation to the land, how the land defines our faith and our relationship to God, and how the land is in relationship to our larger community are all central questions for people of faith.  Scripture teaches again and again that the land is a central actor, a bellwether, for knowing ourselves to be just and righteous.  When we are just and righteous, the land is bountiful in life, brings forth food and color and goodness, a representation of when we are right with God.  But when we are not in right relationship, when we are violent and oppress the poor, the land dries up, cracks and trembles, and becomes desert and wasteland.  The land and the food become poison and toxic.[5]  If we should defile the land, Scripture says, the land will vomit us out.[6]

           Israel was not the owner of their place.  They lived in relation to their place.  And cultivating affection for the place is a major theme in Jewish tradition.  Again, how things went for the land was a signpost of either righteousness or sin.

           The Creator of the Universe wants to make it clear.  The land is not a dead, inanimate object.  The land is an actor, living in relationship, relating to us that our values are good or right or square.  Or, conversely, telling us when our values are misguided, askew, seeking after the things that are not in line with God’s heart.[7] 

           Sometimes I am not sure that is about God’s judgment but about the reality that how we are in relationships has consequences.  We reap, what we sow.  I have marveled at the number of Christians who deny climate change by somehow suggesting that the land and water do not matter in the grand scheme of things.  Or that God has made the expanse of the universe far larger so as not to expect what we do to land and water does not then have consequences. 

Again, Hebrew Scripture makes it clear that land and water are living, sentient parts of God’s good earth.  We are related to them and tied to them.  Like any real relationship then, how we are with them has real consequences for how life shall goes for us.

           All of that is the context for our Scripture verse for today.  And we should know, God establishes that relationship with the land for it not to be known as a commodity but as an ancestral heritage.  For the Jews, the land represented God’s covenant promise, God’s faithfulness remembering when life was difficult in slavery and when they were a wandering, nomadic people.  The land was not to be “owned” or bought and sold.  Because a particular piece of land or place represented your family’s ability to carve out a livelihood.  As I shared last week, within the covenantal tradition and law and practice, land was to revert back to a family so that your ancestors were not without resource in perpetuity. 

           King Ahab, ruler of Israel, looks upon the land as a way to expand his wealth, to manifest more profit.  How opportune that Naboth’s vineyard abuts the royal property.  As something that can be bought and sold, Ahab offers Naboth a property that is commensurate with his.  Seems fair.  Seems just, right?

           But that is counter to the Jewish ethic that understands the land as an actor, the three-way street of covenant between Naboth, the land, and God.  Walt Brueggemann writes that “the vineyard could not be without Naboth belonging to it.  Naboth could not be without this land.”[8]

Not every place is the same.  Even if it might be financially better, Naboth and the land have a relationship which will provide for his family and all the generations to come.  It is Naboth’s place—the touch of it, the smell of it, the goodness of it.  So he tells the king, “No, there are deeper things at play.  He uses the language used by God to tell the Jews of the covenant God makes between them and the land.   According to Numbers 33:54 and Joshua 13-19, the land of promise had been divided among the children of Israel and each family’s division was to be kept in perpetuity.[9]

           Naboth says no.  Naboth speaks with a strong voice.  He knows that if you are going to stand for something, you have to stand somewhere.[10]  Where he stands is that vineyard that abuts the palace.  The land is given by God to the Jewish people as an ancestral heritage, a particular place and space, that acts upon them for their salvation and deliverance.  In saying no, Naboth not only remembers that the land is fastened to his family and tribe, but also supports the infrastructure of his community and wider society.

And, it is said, that King Ahab withdraws, bummed that Naboth cannot understand the way of the world.  Ahab goes to his room and pouts.  As in many stories told by men, it is Queen Jezebel who reminds King Ahab he has many more options.  He is the king, after all.  He can take and take and take whatever it is he wants.  With the wealth and power afforded to the palace, Jezebel hatches a plan in which she is able to find two witnesses who will vouch for the fact (*cough, cough, “payoff” cough, cough*) that Naboth cursed God and King.  Jezebel, with executive, royal privilege, corrupts the judicial system that leads to the execution and death of Naboth.

Ironic that Naboth is accused of the very thing he did in faithfulness by telling Ahab no—he does not curse but honors God.  Naboth faithfully lived in relationship with God and the land. Naboth is found guilty of the crime and taken outside the city, out of sight so injustice can be done, so his blood does not defile or pollute the city.

           The report is sent back.  “Naboth has been stoned.  He is dead.”

No longer brooding in his bedroom, King Ahab goes and does what kings do with land that rightfully belongs to the community.  King Ahab takes.

Always a thorn in King Ahab’s side, God sends the prophet Elijah to the palace.  In echoing the Exodus story, when the original covenant was established, God tells Elijah to “God down!”  Go down as Moses  did to Egypt where he confronted the Pharaoh.

Every children’s sermon I ask the children to speak with a strong voice so that they might emulate someone like Elijah.  This is one of those moments, sisters and brothers, siblings and cousins I want you to take into your hearts and make part of your bloodstream.  African-American writer Ralph Ellison stated:  “I was never more hated than when I tried to be honest. Or when, even as just now I've tried to articulate exactly what I felt to be the truth. No one was satisfied.”[11]

Now Elijah was go speak hard but truthful words to the Ruler of Israel spoken by the Ruler of the Universe.  So often passed over when read as a Scripture passage, this is when the music swells, Elijah musters what is in his heart and comes to speak with the voice of God. 

It takes courage to walk into a place that just murdered the righteous and say, “God has seen you.  And you shall reap what you sow.”  Elijah is much more graphic.  “Where the dogs licked up the blood of Naboth, so they shall lick up your blood.”  Violence begets violence.  And the Scripture goes on to say that the root of all of Ahab’s injustice is his idol worship, how he did not consider the values of God primary.  Elijah speaks with a strong voice knowing that Ahab and Jezebel could easily do to him what they have done to Naboth.  Elijah speaks with the voice of God.

What do we imagine the voice of God sounds like in our day? 

As you know, I look at the wealth in land so many United Church of Christ churches have in greater southwest Michigan, imagine how God might want us to be faithful, and hope once again that we will know our church buildings and land as God’s own, the land as an actor waiting for us . . . the land hoping we hear the call to relationship so that our children and our children’s children might have an ancestral heritage. 

The land cries out hoping that we are listening.  And God gives so much grace and abundance for us to get it right, to dream how we might partner with God to make our land and our building part of the wider Bainbridge and Watervliet community.

You may have heard the story of what happened recently out in the Western United States along the Klamath River. The history of water in the West has been shaped by conflict, greed, and scarcity.  The King Ahabs in the world had created a dam system in the Klamath River to maximize profit and greed. 

The headwaters of the Klamath River originate in Oregon, flowing through the Cascade Mountain Range, into Northern California, and emptying into the Pacific Ocean. Running 263 miles (423km), the river was once the third-largest salmon-producing river on the West Coast. 

But the dams blocked fish migration, leading to mass fish die-offs and degraded water quality. Fall chinook salmon numbers plummeted by more than 90% compared to their pre-dam numbers and spring chinook by 98%. Steelhead trout, coho salmon and Pacific lamprey numbers also saw drastic declines, and the Klamath tribes in the upper basin have been without their salmon fishery for a century . . . .[12]

In August 2024, through persistent campaigning of Native communities, to see the land and water as actors, subjects themselves, with their own wisdom and goodness, the last of the four dams were demolished.  This was the largest dam removal project in U.S. history, dams usually used for the very wealthy to direct waters to land and agricultural systems owned by them. 

            Yurok tribal member, Barry McCovey said, “The river is healing itself.”[13] 

In January 2025, those monitoring the return of the salmon reported that more than 6,000 Chinook salmon returned to their original spawning grounds.[14]  Places where salmon had not been seen for over a century were now replete with salmon.  Far faster and far greater than anyone ever imagined, the goodness, the abundance returned to a place where Naboth’s vineyard had been sold off to the highest bidder.  Now the land, as an ancestral heritage to so many peoples, was returned to them.  And the Creator of the Universe brought forth abundance and goodness, food for so many people who had depended on this ecosystem for centuries. 

Let us once again faithfully cultivate affection for our place.

The music swells as God speaks to faith communities in great southwest Michigan about how their land shall become part of the faithful story.  The land waits, hoping that we, in our righteousness and justice, will choose abundance remember how the land is fastened to us in relationship.  We reap what we sow.  Let us sow for the generations to follow us that we remember the covenant promises God has made between us and the land.  Amen.

---

[1] Matthew Humphrey, “A Pipeline Runs through Naboth’s Vineyard,” Watershed Discipleship, ed. by Ched Myers, (Eugene, OR:  Cascade Books, 2016), p. 123.

[2] Ibid, 127.

[3] Belden C. Lane, Landscapes of the Sacred:  Geography and Narrative in American Spirituality.  Expanded Second Edition (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), p. 244.

[4] Ibid, p. 264.

[5] Deuteronomy 29:23; Deuteronomy 32:32; Jeremiah 2:21.

[6] Leviticus 18:25.

[7] e.g., Leviticus 26:3-5.

[8] Walter Brueggemann, “The Prophet as a Destabilizing Presence,” in A Social Reading of the Old Testament:  Prophetic Approaches to Israel’s Communal Life, ed. Patrick D. Miller (Minneapolis:  Fortress, 1994), p. 239.

[9] Nancy deClaisse’-Walford, “Commentary on 1 Kings 21:1-10 [11-14] 15-21a,” Working Preacher, June 13, 2010, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-11-3/commentary-on-1-kings-211-1011-1415-21a.

[10] Ched Myers in Humphrey, “A Pipeline,” p. 125.

[11] Ralph Ellison, The Invisible Man.

[12] Lucy Sheriff, “After 100 years, salmon have returned to the Klamath River – following a historic dam removal project in California,” BBC, November 25, 2024, https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20241122-salmon-return-to-californias-klamath-river-after-dam-removal.

[13] Ibid.

[14] “More Than 6,000 Salmon Return to Spawning Grounds on Klamath River Following Dam Removal,” ActiveNorCal, January 5, 2025, https://www.activenorcal.com/more-than-6000-salmon-return-to-spawning-grounds-on-klamath-river-following-dam-removal/. 

[12] Lucy Sheriff, “After 100 years, salmon have returned to the Klamath River – following a historic dam removal project in California,” BBC, November 25, 2024, https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20241122-salmon-return-to-californias-klamath-river-after-dam-removal.

[13] Ibid.

[14] “More Than 6,000 Salmon Return to Spawning Grounds on Klamath River Following Dam Removal,” ActiveNorCal, January 5, 2025, https://www.activenorcal.com/more-than-6000-salmon-return-to-spawning-grounds-on-klamath-river-following-dam-removal/.

Sermon, Proper 12, "God's will for daily bread"

C Proper 12 17 Ord Paul 2025

Luke 11:1-13

July 27, 2025

           I have related how my life with faith during my teenage years was fraught with anxiety.  Particularly around prayer, I didn’t know how to pray, and I thought of God as some cosmic genie.  Yes, I could pray to make the junior high basketball team.  But what if God, in some trick, made me manager of the basketball team.  So technically, I made it, right?  But that’s not really what I prayed for. 

Like the guy who makes one of this three wishes, ten thousand more wishes, I could ask God for things in prayer.  But what if God took me to literally, or tricked me, or somehow made my life more miserable when I got exactly what I wanted?  Was God good?

Some things are so familiar to us within the Christian tradition that we almost have to “unlearn” them to really hear what they say.  “The Lord’s Prayer” is still one of those parts of the tradition that churches rarely write out in their bulletin because we expect everyone to know it by rote.  We say it so many times that we sometimes forget to really consider the words to know what they mean. 

           In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus is teaching the disciples the attitude and the direction of prayer—how to pray and what to pray for. 

My favorite historical mystic, Julian of Norwich, believed that prayer was a “onening ourselves to God,” a way of transforming our lives so that what matters to God becomes what matters and is important to us.  Our heart becomes God’s heart.  Julian believed that the goal of prayer was to become a friend of God, a form of deep intimacy.

           In the Gospel of Luke reading today, Jesus conveys that intimacy by opening the Lord’s Prayer by addressing the Creator of the Universe as Father.  God is not some far-off despot or king, some divine being outside of the good earth, but one who cares for the economic maintenance and well-being of the whole household.  God is immersed in us, and, in particular our lives together.

And then the author of Luke uses a number of allusions to major stories in Hebrew Scripture as a way of showing Jesus in the center of the Jewish tradition.

“May your name be revered as holy.”  That is an allusion all the way back to Moses on the mountain, in Exodus chapter 3.  Moses asks for the name of God.  In the ancient world, naming was a way of having power over something.  And God draws a hard boundary, to say, “I am what I am, Moses.  I’m un-nameable.  You can’t domesticate me.”  God remains wild and free.

           “May your kingdom come” is the next line, a reference all the way back to I Samuel 8 when the people demanded that the prophet Samuel appoint them a king.  God bristled and reminded the Jewish people that a king and his children would do nothing but take and take and take from the community till and the nation’s resources.  I Samuel 8 was a warning which reminded the Jewish people that loyalty and allegiance to any king or sovereign other than God went against God’s desired will for them.  God had established them as a tribal confederacy.  That is what they were to remain serving each other as neighbors.  If not, if God relented and they appointed a king, they, as a people, would eventually lose the community wealth that came from loving and sharing with their neighbor.

           That warning foreshadows exactly what happened.  A king is appointed.  And soon all the wealth and resource in the world are funneled directly to the king.  To protest, Israel splits off into two nations, decrying how Solomon has led the people back into slavery.

I almost cannot read the next line of the Lord’s Prayer, wondering what these words might mean prayed by a Palestinian child.  “Give us this day our daily bread,” was a return to life in the wilderness in Exodus 16 and how the Jewish people were know God as a generous provider, how they were to be in receiving God’s gifts. Not as people who should hoard or accumulate the manna God provided but to collect this divine gift respecting the community and gathering for what provided for them each day.  God promises to provide, to be enough for their daily needs.

Further in Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer, “sins” and “debts” become one in the same.  Making sin and debt one remind the people that large amounts of debt across a society reflected estrangement from the community God wished or willed for a people.   Large debt pushed people into slavery and drove the people off the land, land as a promise.  And land established covenant with God to live vital and fruitful lives.

Within Jewish traditions were safeguard after safeguard to do away with debt and the return of land that culminated in what was called the Year of Jubilee when total debt was wiped clean, people were released, and the land was returned to the original owners.  These practices made sure their families would not spend year after year, generation after generation without the ability to live vital and fruitful lives.   Jubilee was about knowing that families can end up in ruts with no grace, no space for life and vitality.  All of that is detailed in Leviticus 25 and Deuteronomy 15. 

So I mean to tell you,  be careful in praying the Lord’s Prayer, you just may be assenting to the whole re-structuring of society so that the most poor and vulnerable are loved as your neighbors. 

And, finally, in Luke, the prayer ends with “do not bring us to the time of testing.”  This once again returns to the story of God providing food for the people in Exodus 16:4, the manna in just the right amount, praying that they will not test the goodness of God by taking more than their share, hoarding the manna on a given day thinking that God would not provide.  Please, O God, do not let us doubt your goodness and test it.   Almost as a double reminder of God’s goodness, the people were supposed to collect double before the Sabbath so that they could rest, play, and celebrate on the Sabbath.  You are free!  Acknowledge God’s goodness and stop acting like slaves.[1]

The Lord’s Prayer is a reminder to the Jewish people of God’s strong stand against those things that might rob them of their thriving and well-being.  The prayer returns to strong Jewish roots in Hebrew Scripture that also remind anyone who says the prayer that God seeks the thriving and well-being of the whole community. 

Now that may seem foreign to us as people who have led pretty comfortable lives compared to the rest of the world.  But remember who Jesus is teaching how to pray.  These are First-Century Jews who are occupied by the Roman Empire, heavily persecuted and oppressed—peasants (farmers who have lost their land and end up in trade jobs like carpentry), fisherfolk who don’t even own their own nets or boats, the sick and the diseased and deformed--probably as a result of the extreme poverty, tax collectors and prostitutes considered outcasts as collaborators and people without resource.  Why would any of them think that God is good?  They look all around them and think that life is pretty bleak.

For these people the prayer is revolutionary because the prayer indicates not only that God is good and wants their thriving,  but also,  God is not happy with the way the world is. 

To return to the start of the Lord’s Prayer, Caesar is on the throne, the one declared king, who rules the Fatherland with an iron fist and takes and takes and takes and declares himself Divine.  Caesar Augustus, right in the name, says that he is the one to be worshipped.  His name is to be hallowed.  Right away, Jesus is reminding these Jewish sisters and brothers, siblings and cousins that the prayer is seeking transformation.

Biblical scholar Ched Myers says that the prayer and the Scripture following define prayer as “the fierce persistence for justice.”[2]  For example, the prayer understands that God’s great want and wish is that all might have daily bread.  If that is not happening, the world must change. 

The Scripture passages that follow make it clear that among neighbors in the village, they must make it so.  A friend arrives at a neighbor’s house in the middle of the night, indicating how serious this request is.  In ancient times, it was often considered too dangerous to travel at night.  That the friend would come knocking at night tells us this is dire need. 

But it is also the most inconvenient for someone who is in bed with his children, just having gotten those darn children asleep!  And now the neighbor is threatening to wake them if he has to get up.  Jesus makes it clear that the neighbor does not get up to fetch bread for the friend out of their friendship.  The neighbor gets up to retrieve bread because the friend is shamelessly persistent. The friend is shamelessly persistent.

And there is a wider ethic at place.  The reason the friend is asking for bread in the first place is because they have had a friend visit them.  What the village requires, in providing daily bread, is hospitality first.  In hospitality, the friend is at his neighbor’s door . . . knocking and not going away.  In shameless persistence, the friend seeks a mutuality and reciprocity from their neighbor.  That was part of the covenantal behavior, even in the dead of night, you were to extend to your neighbor.

Jesus makes it clear.  Again, this does not happen because of friendship.  This happens because of shameless persistence.  Jesus is reminding all those hearing that their covenantal responsibility as Jews is to make sure through hospitality, mutuality, reciprocity, and shameless persistence that everyone has their daily bread. 

In praying the Lord’s prayer, we pray not only to a good God but we are seeking to institute a village, a community that shares in mutuality, reciprocity, and hospitality with one another.  Jesus is using primary themes from Hebrew Scripture, or the Old Testament, to remind his listeners of God’s goodness and their call as a people to be good to each other.  Pretty dangerous, right?

Sheez, Mike, now you’ve ruined the Lord’s prayer for me!  Now I’ll never be able to pray it without knowing that God would want that all people have daily bread.

To reinforce, Jesus helps his listeners to remember that God’s door is never closed.  Jesus encourages the shameless persistence of people in prayer. 

Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. ¹⁰ For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. ¹¹ Is there anyone among you who, if your child asked for a fish, would give a snake instead of a fish? ¹² Or if the child asked for an egg, would give a scorpion?

God is not some genie in a lamp trying to trick you when you ask for your needs to be met.  You know, you wish for world peace and the genie carves up a chunk of your yard or takes a rock and gives it to you.  Now you have world p…i…e…c…e.

           Jesus wants us to know.  God is good.  And the Lord’s Prayer is a reminder of that.  But in saying the Lord’s Prayer today, we will have to ask ourselves if we want to be that good as communicated to our neighbor, our village, our community, and our good earth. 

           When we begin, we ask for an overthrow of every king and plutocrat, those who would forever take from the community till.  We commit ourselves to liberate the hungry in remembering a God who wants that all have their daily bread.  We commit ourselves to creating a world where debt does not rob people of their livelihood.  And we are active in seeking to wipe out that debt so that all might live long on the land. 

           We do not put God to the test by hoarding the resources for our solely our own livelihood, just for our own household.  Rather, we take what is enough, doubly so in preparation for the Sabbath when God would want our rest, play, and celebration.

           The Lord’s Prayer tells us not only who God is as good but also who God wants us to be in shameless persistence.  So this Sunday consider the words, consider that by praying them, you are asking for a re-structuring of the world as presently ordered, that daily bread is God’s will and intent for all.  God’s door is forever open.  Ask.  Seek.  Knock.  In shameless persistence, on behalf of you and your friend, neighbor, visitor, on behalf of others.  And in doing so, what you are saying is that God is good.  God is good . . . all the time.  God is good all the time.  Praise God!  Amen.

---

[1] Much of this is taken from Ched Myers, “The Prayer as Manifesto and Covenant (Lk 11:1-13),” Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries, https://bcmonline.org/2025/07/25/the-prayer-as-manifesto-and-covenant-lk-111-13/ and his new book, Healing Affluenza and Resisting Plutocracy: Luke's Jesus and Sabbath Economics (Minneapolis:  Fortress Press, 2025).

 

[2] Ibid. 

Sermon, Proper 12, "God is good . . . all the time?"

 

C Proper 12 17 Pilg 2022

July 24, 2022

Luke 11:1-13

           Maybe you were like me.  You grew up believing that most of the Bible was just too complicated to understand.  Or just too spiritual.  Maybe when I got more spiritual, prayed more, developed some kind of special knowledge, I would understand the Bible.  But until then, the book seemed to be filled with the miraculous, amazing, and other-worldly that really had me second-guessing whether this “faith thing” would ever be something I would be spiritually mature enough to understand.  Other people seemed certain and got it.  I was always wondering what that “special sauce” was that would help me to get it.

           Some of that changed when I realized that many of the Biblical authors wrote with images meant to paint vivid pictures for the people reading or listening—like graphic novels.  These authors weren’t trying to be literal.  They were trying to help people of their own time understand that time. 

And I wasn’t a part of that time so everything would, naturally, appear to be “off” for me.  The Biblical writers weren’t writing for me.  What did those images, those vivid pictures, mean for people in their time?  That helped. 

           But there was a second part I probably didn’t really get until I reflected back on some of my missionary work in southern Mexico.  I spent a year in southern Mexico partnering with the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Cristobal de Las Casas to work with the displaced in southern Mexico and Guatemalan refugees.  Many of these refugees, indigenous Maya, had fled their homeland to find refuge and sanctuary in different parts of the world, some of them in the Chiapan highlands.  The people I got to know best, the small community of Zacaleu Zacualtipan,  was making a life in the rain forest.. 

At one of our recent Wednesday night services, I reflected back on some of my personal life as I agreed to return to southern Mexico to accompany Guatemalan refugees who had fled to southern Mexico back into Guatemala to struggle on behalf of their people and their homeland.    

           A few days before the small community of Zacaleu Zacualtipan led all of the Guatemalan refugees in this United Nations caravan to the southern most city in Mexico, I was blessed to  speak with Diego, a man who had been targeted for assassination in Guatemala.  When he and his wife, Natalia, found out, they bundled up their new-born and fled over the border into southern Mexico.  Diego and Miguel, Diego’s brother, were leaders of this small camp.

 I’ll never forget the day of the first return.  Diego joyfully played his guitar as people placed all of their life’s belongings on this United Nations bus.  His wife, further up on the bus, sat stoically looking forward, bawling her eyes out.  They were returning with another new-born.  Natalia knew that her husband would probably be assassinated when they returned.  That life perspective, that reality that you and your people are the hunted and the pursued and the persecuted, just for being indigenous and seeking a life, made even the most joyous moments bittersweet. 

           But the day before the caravan, there I was as Diego opened up the gospel to me, helped me to understand.  He told me of a grand banquet Christ had set before the world.  He knew his station in the world.  He said he was one of the lost and forgotten, a person who had to work hard every day just to survive as a farmer.  Indeed, I had seen how this small Mayan community had created community life in the rain forest--set up gardens, learned how to secure potable water, and even had begun to breed rabbits to provide regular protein for the people of Zacaleu Zacualtipan.  Diego told me how he would be invited to that banquet but that he had fears for people who were not poor, rich businessmen, who would be invited to the banquet, where we might all share in community and joy.   No, those people who had no dirt underneath their fingernails would turn away the invitation because they were busy hoarding all of their wealth in another kingdom.  It was Diego’s fondest wish that they might join him at the table.  “Pero, ay, Miguel,” he said, “no lo tengo mucho esperanza.”  I don’t have much hope for it.  Until then, we labor for that banquet. 

           At a time when I thought I was helping him, a Guatemalan peasant, a farmer who has lost his land, had laid before me a passage of Scripture, a teaching of Jesus, translated it, in a way that finally made total sense to me.  Must have been how people heard it the first time Jesus shared this revelation of God’s goodness.

           For that is why the proclamation that “God is good,” is so central to many communities.  If people like Diego, Natalia, and Miguel looked at the status quo, they would wonder if God had it in for them.  Why did God intend so much evil for them?  It is why the message of angels has to begin so often with “Fear not!” because for Jewish peasants, they must wonder if God has it in for them.  If your child asked for a fish, would you give them a snake?  If your child asked for an egg, would you give them a scorpion?  If you are persistent in asking your neighbor with a request,  a need, and they finally get up to help you out, how much more so God? 

Jesus is speaking to people who aren’t so sure God is good.  They see no evidence of that in their world.  And at the same time, Jesus is teaching them how they should be with one another.  Be good and kind to one another, as I can assure you, God wants goodness and kindness for you. 

           What I imagine, with Diego teaching me, as that Scripture opened up before me with his eyes, that Jesus is not only teaching hope to the people in front of him but Jesus is also giving them permission to be good and kind to each other.  There is a reciprocity there, a mutuality.  We welcome others as a way of saying this is how we would want to be welcomed.  We do not turn others away as a wish that we would not be turned away ourselves.

As you are good and kind to each other, know that God is good and kind to you.  As God is good and kind to you, be good and kind to each other.  For those who have been bludgeoned, wounded by the world and the status quo, the goodness of God is a revelation.  It is a reminder that even though the wider world may have treated you with cruelty, name-calling, and violence, this is not what God wants for you, desires for you, seeks in reciprocity for you. 

           My experience with Diego, who was a teacher of Christ and Scriptural story for me, has been one of the reasons I have worked on immigration issues almost my entire ordained life.  Whenever I preach, Natalia, Diego, and the newborn they carted across the border who was now a young, enthusiastic boy, Francisco, sit up in one of the front pews . . . because we know that nobody in church is going to take those front pews.  And that family wants to know every Sunday, are you going to preach in a way that remembers us?  Are you going to remember us?  So when I am punching away characters on my laptop and I come to that point in the sermon where I have to decide whether I am going to offend my congregation or offend them, that photo I still have of Francisco carrying one of the aluminum corrugated sheets from his makeshift roof to the bus, the strap around his forehead, with a huge smile on his face, that photo appears saying, “God is good!”

Let’s go back to the start of the Scripture verse.  Jesus is teaching the disciples the character of God in what we have come to know as the Lord’s Prayer.  We begin with the version from Matthew, “Our Father,” not my father, or your father, but a notice that this prayer is about who we are collectively, in mutuality and reciprocity.  The prayer recognizes we do not accept the world as it is.  Please, O God, your kingdom come.  Impose your rule, one of reciprocity and mutuality.  The second part of the prayer asks for our daily needs, not the frills and the fluff, but the basics.  And these are commands of God, expecting the character of God to be good and the expectation that God wants us to have our daily needs met.   Because we know it is God’s will that our daily needs be met, it is not by the will of God that these needs go unmet.  The will of humanity makes meeting our daily needs conditional.  God’s will does not have us foregoing the means of life.

In the next part of the prayer, Jesus relates to his disciples the character by which they are to come to God in prayer.  We ask God to forgive us with the very way we extend God’s forgiveness, release, and grace to the rest of the world.  In other words, if we are to demand of God forgiveness, release, and grace, we should have the integrity to have lived out that very same forgiveness, release, and grace in the world.  Do not come to God demanding or asking for things that you are unwilling to give yourself! 

That mutuality and reciprocity suggests that the Lord’s Prayer is not some individual encounter with God.  The prayer recognizes that as we come to God, we are also remembering our neighbor.  Within the Lord’s Prayer is a sense that we are all in this together.

This past week I was part of a national call involving leaders from Jewish, Christian, and Muslim faiths.  All of those historic faiths have as a hallmark of their deep traditions practices of asylum and sanctuary.  And they came together this past week to warn us that state legislatures around our country are targeting immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers, to make state law that would not allow us to practice asylum and sanctuary—two legal realities that have been baked into governing to assure our humanity and grace and forgiveness.  Two asylum seekers shared gut-wrenching stories of how they had fled the violence of their own country to go through the long and arduous process of applying for asylum in the United States. 

We were reminded that the anger, frustration, and pain many Americans are experiencing is being re-directed toward immigrants and asylum seekers as easy scapegoats.  Don’t let that happen, they pleaded.  Heal and do not harm, they asked.

The last person to speak was Rev. Dr. Ann Helmke, the Executive Director of Compassionate San Antonio.  She spoke about how the whole city of San Antonio had worked hard to develop and live out an ethic of reciprocity.  Then . . . tragedy.  Fifty-three lives were lost when a trailer full of immigrants was left in the baking sun.  I remember thinking how two of the kids, from Guatemala,  killed in that tragedy, looked like Francisco.  Rev. Dr. Helmke said that less than 12-hours after the semi-trailer was discovered, a vigil was organized at the site so that people could acknowledge the violence and reclaim the place as a sacred site.  The following day advocates organized a rally and called San Antonio to look at the systems which created this tragedy and urged transformation.  The following night after that there was a memorial mass where the Roman Catholic Archbishop made a gentle yet strong call for all of San Antonio to be engaged civically.  Be engaged civically as you would want others to be engaged on your behalf, he said. 

Rev. Dr. Helmke then closed with a blessing and a prayer that shared the ethic of reciprocity—a blessing and a prayer that broke me open.  I close with that now.

May we remember the stories, the images, the truth, the lives that we have heard today, as we hope and pray our lives will be remembered as well

May we recognize our complicities in the system as we sometimes so easily recognize in others

May we acknowledge that the U.S. asylum system often treats migrants inhumanely as we hope and pray others acknowledge and stand for us.

May we acknowledge that the migration policies are often discriminatory remembering that we don’t want to be discriminated against

May we have the strength to call out Title 42, as we would wish somebody would do for us

May we care for migrants across the community as we would wish to be cared for.

May we honor and memorialize all lives that are lost due to unjust policies as we would hope someone would honor and memorialize our lives as well

May we pray for those who serve in ministry, in government and are directly impacted as we would wish to be prayed for ourselves

May we welcome others.  May we stand together as we would wish to be welcomed and we would wish that others would stand for us

May we take action today

May we choose just one thing today that will make a difference

As we would wish that someone else would take action and choose one step for us.

And may we begin the work of healing through welcoming through hearts in compassion

That our elected officials center dignity and rights and the ethic of reciprocity in their decision-making

And may we fully engage in the needs of our new neighbors among us as we would hope and pray someone would do for us as well.  Amen. 

 

God is good . . . all the time.  God is good . . . all the time.  What person, when their child asked for a fish, would give them a stone?  Or when their child asked for an egg, would give them a scorpion?  Or would not get up and get their neighbor something when they persisted?  God is good . . . all the time.  In full reciprocity, may we also be good . . . and remember . . . as we would like to be remembered.  Amen.