The Real Economy, a sermon

Luke 14:1, 7-14
The Real Economy

Has Miss Manners has invaded the gospels today? Why is Jesus so interested in seating arrangements anyway? It seems that he is trying to show how life will be lived for those who choose to follow him. And this life will look a little bit, or maybe as today’s reading shows us, a lot different, from the surrounding culture.
It’s a question that has plagued the church from the very beginning: “How then shall we live?” Every generation of Christians from those who originally heard Jesus’ words up to today have asked the same question, “How do we live in this culture, the one I was born into, the one I live in now, yet still respond in an authentic way to the call of Jesus?”
It’s a tough question, with a complex answer. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something. Trust me on this, if the answer to the question of how do we live in response to Jesus? begins with the words, “Well, you just…” Walk away, because you are about to be handed a parcel of goods that are not so good.
This is complex because we have all, before we could talk, were enculturated, conditioned, and otherwise trained to think in the cultural language and economies of our society. And that society is not the one that Jesus is talking about.
Our modern, western society has its own values. We value hard work, perseverance, innovation, wealth, competitiveness, pursuit, and enjoyment. All these things are good, but our system, our economic system, does not have an inherent moral center, nor ought we to expect it to. The Invisible Hand is neutral and we have learned time and again that mutual self-interest for the collective betterment of society is fraught with problems, not the least of which is the crazy assumption that all people are equal in society and have the same access to the resources which build wealth.
More insidious than the obvious injustice of our system is the spiritual crisis that it perpetuates. All of us have a void within us; a void that we try to fill with things that satisfy us. And it just so happens that our economic system is tailor-made for finding more and more to satisfy us. Look, I’m not blaming capitalism. I’m a capitalist. I have a pension, never mind that I am paid by other capitalists who voluntarily give money into a community chest which we redistribute to various staff members, ministries, and outreach opportunities. Economies are complex, all economies. People living within a totalitarian socialistic state also suffer from this human void I am talking about. We have this hole in our lives and we are on a search to fill it, to satisfy this hunger. Economies are created to deal with, and capitalize on, that void.
Economy is an interesting word. It comes from the Greek word oikos, meaning household. When we talk about the economy we are talking about the household of a society, how it is managing its household. This is why budgets are called moral documents. Have you ever heard that: a budget is a moral document? If you want to know what someone thinks is important, look at their budget. This works for nations and people alike.
Today Jesus is teaching us about the economy, the household, of the Kingdom of God. Jesus is showing us how we are to live in this world, but his way. And it’s counter-cultural. Instead of the culture that teaches us to be better, faster, stronger; Jesus is urging us to take a back seat. He is telling us that the humble will be exalted, and also that those who exalt themselves will be humbled. Not only that, but that we should be about the business of giving to those to whom we have no hope of getting paid back! Not getting paid back? That’s just bad business! No wonder Jesus stopped being a carpenter! I imagine Jesus would go bankrupt thinking like that, he probably made furniture and doors for poor folks who couldn’t pay him a dime!
But that’s the teaching, this is what he says, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you.”
It’s interesting, many economic historians assume that economies were initially built on barter systems, and they generally are; but what we are finding out is a little more interesting. It seems that the straight barter doesn’t really work like that. For example, let’s say I have an ox and you have goats. You need the ox, but I don’t need the goats right now. So I give you the ox, and now you are in my debt, for, say, five goats. That debt, right there is the beginning of all economies. That debt gets moved around and re-symbolized and re-symbolized into currency and now into ones and zeros that the banks move around and invest.
But here, in the words of Jesus we learn about another economy, an economy that is almost unimaginable: an economy that is based on the gift with no hope, or expectation, of re-payment. This is the grace economy. This is the economy of the good news of God. Jesus is removing the debt, the debt, the void, the thing that we are all after to satisfy; Jesus is inviting us to leave it alone, don’t try to fill it.
This is the meaning of Christian freedom: whereas the culture endeavors to give us freedom to pursue our desires which we think will satisfy us, but Christ gives us the freedom from our need to always seek satisfaction. The economy of God usurps the normal ordering of our lives. And why shouldn’t it? People at Saint John’s are always asking me, “Why do you always have to talk about being counter-cultural?” My answer is because God is counter-cultural! If he were just like us, we wouldn’t worship him! God is different from you! And he aches in that difference. God says in the prophet Isaiah, “your thoughts are not like my thoughts,” and how he aches for our thoughts to be more and more similar.
My brothers and sisters. You will never be satisfied with getting more and more. There is always something more to be had, something more to be. The world will never ever ever ever say to you, “You’ve done enough. You are enough. Why not just rest awhile and enjoy your family, don’t buy anything you don’t need. Just…be.” The world will never say that, nor should we expect it to. But Jesus is calling us to imagine a gift economy, a grace-living where we stop trying to fill the void, we stop keeping track of debts and keeping score.
Let me close this with a story, [this is from Peter Rollins' Idolatry of God, used with permission]
It seems that there was a successful Texan. (all stories that feature Texans are automatically good, in my opinion) Well, he had done quite well for himself and had a sense that he wanted to find out more about where he came from, so he did some looking around in his family tree. Low and behold the Texan found out that he had a cousin in Ireland.
Well, the Texan flew out there and walked up to the door and met his long lost cousin Seamus. Seamus said, “Well, I suppose you’d like to see the family land.” “Yes I would indeed,” said the Texan. SO Seamus takes his cousin out in the back yard and says, “You see that old chicken coop over there? That’s the southern boundary of my land. You see that fence right there? That’s the eastern boundary of the land. You see that lawn mower? That the western boundary of the land.”
The Texan scoffed. “Well, let me tell you, I could drive all day south and never reach the southern boundary of my land. And I could drive all day east and never reach the eatern boundary of my land, and I could drive all day west and never reach the western boundary!”
“Yeah,” says Seamus, “I used to have a car like that.”
You see, Seamus is so outside the game of being in the seat of honor that he can’t even understand that his Texan cousin is trying to belittle him.
The gift economy!
Take the lower seat, invite those and give to those who cannot pay you back.
Give it a try.

Sermon prep for Sept. 1, 2013

Here's the text I am preaching Luke 14:1,7-14.


I read this book for its amazing insights into desire and economics: The Idolatry of God by Peter Rollins, he can be followed here. Rollins is a unique voice on the Christian landscape, I think some of his thoughts are downright dangerous, which is very attractive to me. Our thinking about Christ ought to be dangerous. Here's a clip of him talking about the book:





This. and this amazing blog post from an amazing blog that everyone should read.


Finally, about sermons: I've heard that someone once asked the famous preacher, Fred Craddock, "Wow, that sermon was great, how long did it take you to write it?" His answer, "Oh that took me 62 years to write." Contrary to what some of my professors advised, all preachers are working out their own stuff in the pulpit, anything less than that is boring, or worse: a lie, woven to protect the hearers from the Gospel.

Spoiler Alert!

This past week, in priestly circles at least, there's been much discussion over a phenomenon called Ashes to Go. Ashes to Go is when a priest imposes ashes on people in the public square: at a college campus, a subway station, an office building, wherever. The debate and discussion is centered around a Christian practice and where it belongs. On one side you have people saying that the liturgy of the imposition of ashes belongs in the context of the church. Others say that the imposition of ashes is a way of doing guerrilla liturgy whereby we surprise people with the Holy Spirit and offer them an opportunity to be reminded of their mortality and besides who knows what the Holy Spirit can do? I am a huge proponent of innovative liturgies but in this case I believe that I fall in line with the traditionalists. And here's why: (Before you read any further, I do want to note that there is a spoiler alert concerning Downton Abbey. if you are not up to speed on the third season read no further.) Imagine for a moment that you know nothing whatsoever about Downton Abbey. Okay? If I walked up to you on the street and said, "Sybil dies." would you care? Does it matter to you that Sybil dies? Not only are you disconnected to the character and disconnected to the entire story that the news that Sybil dies is maybe sad, generally, because it is sad, generally, when people die; but you don't really care, you weren't shocked when I told you. That's what Ashes to Go are for me. They take one small, but devastatingly important, detail out of a much larger context that gives it meaning, and just plops it out there: Remember that you are dust, and to dust your shall return. Sybil dies. Every person, whether Christian or not will die. Full stop. But as it turns out, telling you that is not the main emphasis of the Ash Wednesday liturgy, just as the fact that Sybil dies is the whole of what Downton Abbey is about or is it all that that particular episode had to offer. The imposition of the ashes comes after several readings of lament and powerful prophecy, Jesus' warning about displaying your piety fro all to see( Hello! Ashes to Go! Outside! Displaying your piety!). Then there is a call to a Holy Lent, an entire season of self reflection and study. Then the ashes, a reading of a psalm that asks God to be with us and clean us from all personal and corporate sin. Then comes the litany of penitence which confesses the whole mess we've made, then the absolution of those sins, the assurance that God loves sinners and desires not their deaths. Forgiveness of sin! So that we can enter Lent clean and able to stand before God. Ashes to Go. Sybil dies. It just doesn't tell the whole, or even part of, the story.

Paul study for 1/25/13

Tomorrow is the Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul. Let's begin our look at Paul and the Law. Let these questions serve as a guide to your discussion, as I will not be there due to annual convention.

1.) What are your thoughts of the Law, that is, the Old Testament Laws including the 10 Commandments?

2.) what do you think Paul thought of the Law? Read Phil. 3:4-6.

3.) summarize Paul's thoughts on the Law in these passages: Romans 13:8-10, 5:14, 7:12.

4.) What's he saying here: Romans 6:14 and 7:5-6?

5.) Finally, Romans 3:20, 4:15, and 5:20. Discuss.

We will stay will Paul and the Law for a couple weeks, I look forward to seeing you all next week.

We want those nones!

NPR had a pretty good series last week, found here: http://www.npr.org/series/169065270/losing-our-religion. All week they highlighted the Pew Research Center's findings on the rise of the "nones." Find it here: http://www.pewforum.org/unaffiliated/nones-on-the-rise.aspx .The nones make up a growing demographic in American life; they have no religious affiliation. Many times the nones, are not at all antagonistic about religion, though they are ambivalent. We want these people. But we should try something the church has never really tried before: friendship. Instead of trying to make these nones like us, why don't we listen to them? Instead of making fun of them for being "spiritual but not religious" why don't we trust that the Holy Spirit blows where it wills without us controlling it. Try reading John 3:8 and think about how God might be moving in these nones. Many are discouraged by the rise of the nones, but I see it as a tremendous opportunity for the Church, and I don't think that I am being blindly optimistic. Instead I see the rise of the nones as a important time for Christians to really be authentic, and to be authentic is to be vulnerable. Share your story, share your doubts, share your life with Christ, in all its colors. Invite a none to the funny little celebratory meal that we have on Sundays. Don't explain it all, as if you could. Invite a none, let the party wash over them. And then talk.

The Bible, a Saint, and the Commander in Chief

I really love Cornel West. He might be a modern day prophet who can speak truth in love. WOuld love to discuss this with my parish sometime.

New home for class stuff

Go to our new website to access a new blog there that I will keep: www.saintjohns-charlotte.org/father-joshs-blog/

Paul study for 1/11/13

We are going to look at grace this week. Here are some questions to get you started, I'll post some passages to read tomorrow.

1.) what is your definition of grace?
2.) what sense do you think Paul had of grace before his encounter with Jesus?
3.) what do you know of grace from the Hebrew Scriptures ?

This Sunday's sermon

Featuring:

and:

Sermon for Proper 24B Mark 10:35-45 Today we get the story of an interaction between Jesus and his disciples. On the surface it looks like yet another scene where the disciples get it all so wrong. Here we have James and John approaching Jesus and essentially asking for top billing once the Kingdom of God is established. Jesus questions them about whether they know what they're getting into, and they answer that yes indeed they do. They know that to follow Jesus means to be willing to suffer like he did. Jesus takes the opportunity of the grumbling of the disciples to talk to them about the economy of power in the kingdom, namely that it is the servant who is considered first in the Kingdom of God. This whole chapter in Mark, chapter 10, is punctuated by this one teaching: that to be considered first in the Kingdom of God is to be a servant, just as Jesus was, and is. The problem comes when we notice that the lectionary has done some editing between last week and this week. Last week we had a reading from the same chapter. It ends with the words, "the many who are first will be last, and the last will be first." And then today our gospel begins with James and John, but three verses are cut. Here is what we missed: "they were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them; they were amazed, and those who followed were afraid. He took the twelve aside again and began to tell them what was to happen to him, saying, ‘see, we're going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand them over to the Gentiles; they will mock him, and spit upon him, and flog him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise again.’" It is after this retelling of the plan that Jesus must follow: of his arrest, torture, death, and then his rising; that we get James and John. But here we have Jesus giving out all the information about how things will go for him. Earlier in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus had done the same thing after the Transfiguration and of course you remember that Peter rebuked him because Jesus was not playing by the Messiah rules. But here in today's reading we have James and John. James and John who respond to Jesus speaking of his death and resurrection, they respond to his inauguration of the kingdom of God and they ask to be closest to him. It is my reading of this passage along with the verses that precede it that leads me to the understanding that James and John get. They understand what Jesus’ life and teaching is all about: that Jesus is inaugurating the Kingdom of God, and they want to be part of it. Usually when we read this passage we tend to think of James and John as doing some kind of power grab but I think that when they say, "we are able." they do so solemnly, with clear eyes: “We are able.” In response to Jesus' question, “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the same baptism that I am baptized with?" They get it; they understand that to participate in the Kingdom of God will mean to serve, and to suffer. A very important Christian thinker, Soren Kierkegaard, said, “There is no lack of information in a Christian land; something else is lacking, and this is a something which no one can directly communicate to the other." “There is no lack of information in a Christian land.” As usual Kierkegaard was talking about several things at once but for today this speaks to us, and speaks of James and John. There is no lack of information for James and John Jesus is just, once again, described that he would suffer and die and then be raised. This is all the information that is needed. Jesus died and was raised. Period. Now, the church and the world has of course tried to come to terms with what all that might mean; and what we have are the various traditions of Scripture, theology, sacramental practice, and prayer. But all of these are ancillary to the core of the Christian information: that Jesus died and was raised. Kierkegaard went on to say that something else was lacking, besides information, and this is a something which no one can directly communicate to the other. But it is what James and John do which is that something that Kierkegaard wondered about. It is their ascent to what Jesus was and was about, and their desire to enter deeper into relationship with him that makes the difference. It is a saying yes to Jesus. What Kierkegaard puzzled over in communication is resolved in our relationship with Jesus Christ. We must enter into a relationship, it cannot be merely a study, cannot be any theoretical supposition. We must enter into relationship with Jesus. And that means to question, to be angry with, and yes even to fall in love. James and John have the information and they are able to enter into deeper and deeper relationship with Jesus. Now, in the fevered nonlinear wasteland that is sometimes referred to as my mind: we naturally go from Holy Scripture to Kierkegaard; the next stop is of course Yoko Ono. Apart from her well known project of breaking up the Beatles, Yoko Ono is a modern artist of some renown. In one of her most famous works she set up a white ladder in the middle of the gallery floor and those who attend the exhibit are encouraged to climb the ladder up to the ceiling, and hanging there is a magnifying glass which one can take and read a very very small work written on the ceiling. The word is "Yes.” Back in 1966 when John Lennon participated in this piece of art, he said that he would have been disappointed if the word had been “No.” There is a participation, a relationship, in saying yes. When we say yes to someone or something we are allowing it to become part of our life. Through Jesus we have all the information we need. Jesus Christ, became God incarnate, to live and die as one of us to reconcile all creation to God. Jesus Christ: who brought the day of the Lord that the prophets have always spoken of. And this same Jesus, through his Holy Spirit continues to call us into relationship with him. He gives us all the information, but there is one thing lacking which no one can communicate directly to another. It is relationship, and the quality of that relationship and how we might be in relationship with Jesus. Jesus has always been climbing the ladder of your life. When he gets to where you are now, right now in your seat, in your life, in your mess, in your success. When he gets to you and reads your word, what word will he read? “No? Maybe? Not yet?” It is my prayer for all of us that our word to him will always and ever be “Yes.” Yes lord we know what you have done and are doing and we bring all of our lives to you: our whole lives: the days, the thoughts, the feelings, our bodies, our work, our money, all of it. Yes Lord. Yes.

Here is a sermon that I recently submitted to a nationally known sermon source that I write for, it was rejected, can you find out why?

Mark 9:38-50 "For no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterwards to speak evil of me." At football games it is still fairly common to see people holding signs that read John 3:16. Of course this is a famous reference to Scripture, "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, to the end that whosoever believes in him will not perish but have life everlasting." It is no wonder people like that passage; it's good news indeed. The problem comes up when we think that John 3:16 tells the whole story of what God is up to in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. It turns out that life is actually complex and nuanced; and so is how Jesus thinks about how we ought to relate to him. Today's gospel reading shows a little bit of Jesus’ nuanced view of how people act in his name. In this passage the disciples have just returned from doing some deeds of power: healing and casting out demons. It seems that while they were out in the mission field they came across another person doing similar deeds of power in the name of Jesus. The disciples try to stop him because he is not a part of the same club as they are. This outsider apparently had at one point encountered Jesus in his ministry. This encounter with Jesus clearly had an effect on the man because he at least knew enough to use the name of Jesus for his deeds of power, which was a marker of a follower of Jesus. The disciples don't like this at all, they tell Jesus thinking, I imagine, that Jesus would support their condemnation of this non-disciple. But here Jesus, as usual, does the unexpected. Jesus not only tells the disciples not to stop the outsider, but informed them that, "no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me." This is a curious thing to say, because it reveals an interesting bit of information about this non-disciple who can do deeds of power in Jesus' name. It seems that the outsider may have actually been badmouthing Jesus; he says that even those who do deeds of power and speak evil of him won't be able to do so for a long. There seems to be a relationship in this kind of behavior of doing good acts and claiming Jesus. There is something irresistible about Jesus. One may be able to do good works and badmouth Jesus, but not for long. The irresistible power of Jesus, his power to transform lives, will win over any hard heartedness. This all speaks to the age old argument in the church between faith and works. On one hand there are the voices in the church that say all you must do to be accepted by God is to believe that Jesus is the Son of God and that he died for your sins. Faith alone will save you. The opposite viewpoint is what has traditionally been called works righteousness. This view says that it is not so much what you believe but how you behave that matters. This viewpoint says that a Christian acts a certain way and that their actions represent what they believe and without proper actions than faith is dead. This is been the argument in the church since the days of James and Paul and was the main argument that fueled the Reformation of which our church is an heir. The problem with this kind of polarized thinking between faith and works, belief and actions is that it sets up a dualistic thinking of which Jesus is speaking out against today. Many of the arguments in the church today are over what it means to be a Christian. This has led to some very ugly and very public disagreements within the church where people take sides and take up the Bible and the creed and hit each other over the head with it. Today's gospel reading undoes all those arguments. The work of a great many churches is to take people who believe in Jesus but do no acts of mercy, no great deeds of power such as feeding the homeless, caring for the poor or the sick, or visiting prisoners. The work of those churches is to support their belief in Jesus and then to slowly try to kindle in their hearts a concern for the other. What the church makes very little room for is for those people who do deeds of power: they feed the poor, they feed the sick, and they have true concern for the stranger. The church has very little room for them because of these people do not proclaim Jesus as Lord. In a very real sense these people are like the man in today's reading who do great deeds of power but do not follow Jesus as a disciple. And what is Jesus' answer to this kind of person today? Basically Jesus says, "They will come around.” Jesus is saying, "If they do deeds of power, if they do good works, they will grow into me." The church needs to begin to welcome these beautiful souls who do deeds of power; we need to make a place for them, to support their ministries even if they do not know in whose name they minister. The church would do well to remember Jesus’ injunction about the least of these and how when we served them we serve him, and to also remember that his teaching was not to us only the to the whole world. So that, even when we go to seek Jesus in the faces of the poor we must also have faith that Jesus is being revealed to those who are not even seeking him, yet serve the hungry, the thirsty, the sick, and the prisoner. This is a difficult teaching: that there are those out there who serve Jesus, and their hearts grow closer and closer to him, maybe even without their knowledge. This muddies the waters of discipleship. Today's gospel reading is not quite the same as John 3:16. Now this is a Scripture that would look very good on a sign at a football game: Mark 9:39; “For no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me." Can you imagine? Holding up that sign that says Mark 9:39 and people seeing that on the screen they may actually run to their Bibles and look it up and instead of dividing the world up into those who are in and those who are out, they might look out at the world and see Jesus at work transforming each soul and knowing that God is drawing all of us closer and closer to each other. And for this muddied, beautifully nuanced life with Christ we say thanks be to God. Amen.