The Lost Coin: Proper 18C

At that time it will be said to this people and to Jerusalem: A hot wind comes from me out of the bare heights in the desert toward my poor people, not to winnow or cleanse-- a wind too strong for that. Now it is I who speak in judgment against them.

 For my people are foolish;

              the do not know me.

they are stupid children,

they have no understanding.

They are skilled in doing evil,

but do not know how to do good."

I looked on the earth, and lo, it was waste and void;

and to the heavens, and they had no light.

I looked on the mountains, and lo, they were quaking,

and all the hills moved to and fro.

I looked, and lo, there was no one at all,

and all the birds of the air had fled.

I looked, and lo, the fruitful land was a desert,

and all its cities were laid in ruins

before the LORD, before his fierce anger.

For thus says the LORD: The whole land shall be a desolation; yet I will not make a full end.

Because of this the earth shall mourn,

and the heavens above grow black;

for I have spoken, I have purposed;

I have not relented nor will I turn back. (Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28)

I find this oracle from Jeremiah strangely comforting today. It is September in North Texas.  While the weather has had a break from the triple digits, it is still 90+.  It is dry and we have had no rain to slake the earth.  Dust is a common problem in Texas but during September it is more so.  We haven't had a bad summer--we have had much worse, but for some reason I am very dry.  It takes more iced tea than normal to get me through the day.  And spiritually I am dry.  I have flitted around to various different churches over the last few months trying to give my home church the freedom to be about calling a new rector without my influence.  But I was somehow unaware of how much community is part and parcel of who I am spiritually.  And while I have had some wonderful experiences in other congregations, I know that my dryness in many ways is self-imposed.

Jeremiah talks about a wind--Texans know about wind--a hot wind that comes to the

People--God's people.  God is speaking though Jeremiah reminding them of their loss of consciousness and failure to be the People God called out of Egypt. They have failed to celebrate the good times of God's presence among them.  They have been unwilling to live in ways that build up their witness of togetherness with others and with the Holy One.  They are lost in the sandstorms of their own making.

It is interesting that many of the movies that portray a post-apocalyptic world show this kind of desert scenery.  The idea of the total obliteration of temperate climates catches our imagination.  And I could very easily take this passage to preach on ecology or the sin of pollution.  But that is not where this passage takes me.  What I see in Jeremiah is a statement of what it means to be human today.   

 The hot wind is the searing wind of nothingness that seems to empty humanity of what it means to have meaning in life.   The hot air of rhetoric, whether it is political, economic or theological seems to empty people of the juices that give us the energy to live life to the fullest.  

In Texas, we don't do much in the summer.  It is like those in the North who don't do much in February but look at seed catalogs.  At least seed catalogs give hope.  Dryness doesn't.   We become befuddled by our dryness and cranky.  I remember how hard it was to start school here with no air conditioning.  The kids were cranky and so was I.  Hope was not on our minds, unless it was for the football team.

It is hard to be hopeful in the desert.  It is hard to see God’s work being done.

Even in Jeremiah’s time the wars that were to engulf the People of God were not going to turn back.  In our own day, the consequences of our bellicosity will not be easy, but we are promised that it isn’t the end:   “For thus says the LORD: The whole land shall be a desolation; yet I will not make a full end.” 

And even in the wars that would come, the Babylonian Captivity would come, the land would lie fallow for seventy-five years, but God would not destroy God’s people because of their failures, because of their evil-doing. 

I tire very quickly at preachers who rant doom and gloom.  I admire preachers who speak of being willing to accept the consequences of our actions, our stupidity, but are still willing to hear the hope of the Gospel.

The Gospel reading from Luke is what makes this reading from Jeremiah something more than a rant:

Luke 15:1-10  All the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, "This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them."

So he told them this parable: "Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, `Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.' Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.

"Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, `Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.' Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents."

Being lost in our fights whether they are between individuals, with political ideologies, theological differences, family members, dries us spiritually.  The hot wind of antagonism desiccates our life with the Holy One.  It takes away the Divine oil that heals our wounds.  It gives us a crustiness that tells us we can make it on our own. And yet it is our individualism is what keeps us from knowing Gods true love for us. 

I have always been leery of the evangelical phrase “taking Jesus as your personal savior.”  It connotes a type of individual relationship with God that can be construed as “Jesus and me and nobody else”.   This is contrary to the message Jesus came to preach. We are not called to be the People of God in isolation.  It has nothing to do with us personally and everything to do with us being the People of God.

The Gospel for today speaks of a God who wants us to be united with the whole.  The shepherd who goes searching for the lost wants the sheep to be returned to the flock.  Or the one who loses a portion of her treasure, rejoicing with others that the coin has been found.  It is the rejoicing that soothes the hot wind.  It is the sense of community that binds us together. 

And while each person is called to know God intimately, it is not that intimacy that fulfills the Gospel.  It is the willingness of the people of God to work together for the betterment of Creation that stands in the face of the heat.  It is the oasis for our deserts.  It is the cool cup of water for the thirsting.

All too often in the midst of church fights, political jousts, family feuds, the hot air of our actions dries us out.  However, the way that we absolve those differences is to remember what we have lost—the sense of community, the sense of wholeness that comes when we rejoice with one another. It is why the confession in our liturgy always comes before the table service. The Eucharist is the center of worship.  When we come to the table together every effort needs to be made for us to know that this is a celebration—not a “bounded duty”.  The passing of the peace is the resolution that Christ’s peace has re-entered our lives following the confession of our failures.  The desert dryness has been slaked in the bread and wine that we have shared.  It is the

Christian’s clearest and most visible form of delight.

I do not worry about reunification with those who were lost to us in schism.  I do not worry about red and blue folk trying to work out their differences. I do not worry about family tiffs.  I do not worry about the burned out grass in my back yard.  The fall rains will come.  God has promised it.  If I persist in my worry, I just prolong  being found by the God who searches for me just as surely as does the shepherd for the sheep or the lady for the coin.  And in that ‘foundedness’ my dryness is quenched.  Sometimes I have to wait for it.  Sometimes I can find a way to make being discovered happen easier.  But I must be willing to harbor the hope of community, the oil of intimacy, the ideal of gratitude in my heart.  It is the only antidote to the heat of the desert of humanity’s inhumanity.  It is the only way that I can remain human in an inhumane world.  

Friday Five: I am not sure...

friday five!

 Rev Karla posted this FF. 

Posted on September 13, 2013 by revkarla

oh my, I have really lost track of time!
but I won’t get into THAT now, because what you really need is an extreme random Friday Five, so here goes it:

1. How are you?  What’s up with you?

I am somewhat grumpy.  I couldn't sleep well last night and woke up early.  But I am having coffee with a clerical fishing buddy in a short while.  We will trade fishing stories and if it isn't too hot we may wet a line at one of the local fishing holes.  I haven't cast a fly rod in some time so I plan not to catch much fish but to spend most of my time hooked to trees, bushes and the seat of my pants.

2.  Last Saturday, I went to the outlet store and stocked up on underwear for the year.  I love a bunch of new fresh underdrawers!  I also love a cabinet full of paper towels.   What silly thing makes you happy?

Our neighbors are putting in a swimming pool.  It wasn't fun

listening to the machines and the 8 hrs of tile cracking outside my window, but it was fun to see the progress that has been made.  They have offered to put in a gate from our yard to theirs.  
 

3.  Give a shout out to someone you love, appreciate, or want to thank!

I want to shout to the Golden West Women's Fly Fishers of San Francisco on the occasion of their 30th anniversary.  A great bunch of women.
 
4. Miss Kansas has the Serenity Prayer tatooed on the side of her body.  I sadly do not have a tatoo, and maybe you do, but if you were going to get a prayer tatooed on the side of your body, what would it be?

The only tattoo I have really considered was Yahweh in Hebrew on the palm of my hand.  But I

am chicken and old.

 

5.  Use some or all or a form of the following words in a sentence:   jello, kittens, mercy, dump-truck, tabuleh, terror, skipping, monkey, Rev. , health, and snoring.

I am rev.ing up to skipping the clergy conference since the kittens have gotten into the tabbouleh and monkeyed with the jello which will not contribute to the mercy of the day, the health of my terrorized colleagues and will promote only snoring while the dump-truck adds to the chaos.  (With thanks to the patron saint of run-on sentences:  St. Paul)

Giving up our possessions: Proper 18c 2013

Luke 14:25-33

Now large crowds were traveling with Jesus; and he turned and said to them, "Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, saying, `This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.' Or what king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand? If he cannot, then, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace. So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions."

This is one of the hard sayings of Jesus.  It is not something that we really want to hear from Jesus.  The Lord of Love shouldn't say things about hating, we think.  Maybe someone got mixed up and inserted it by mistake.  But scholars think that because it is such a hard saying that it is most likely to be the original words of Jesus.  

But what does that mean for the likes of us?  What are we supposed to do if we are to be followers of the Carpenter?   Does that me we have to hate our parents?  Does it mean that we must hate life in order to be a disciple?  And what does the rest of the passage mean about building a tower or going to war?  And must I give everything to the Salvation Army to be a disciple? 

When passages are so difficult to understand, I often look a the collect for the day:

Grant us, O Lord, to trust in you with all our hearts; for, as you always resist the proud who confide in their own strength, so you never forsake those who make their boast of your mercy;

All of these passages talk about trusting in God.  And that is what I think that Jesus came to teach us how to do.  Throughout the history of Israel the people who had received God's mercy and liberation were always wanting more.  They whined about the manna in the desert; they wanted a king like the other nations; they strayed from God's commands when he gave them land.  They would not trust that God was enough.  They wanted more.  They figured ways to manipulate Mosaic law so they would not have to live into mercy that God held out to them.

Jesus preached a radical way of living.  It was not business as usual.  It was a way of living that stood up to the commerce of his day.  It thumbed its nose to Imperialistic economics, the crushing 'Rome first' concepts of that were present in the First Century Middle Eastern societies that had been taken over first by Greek and then Roman dominions.  Jesus taught a way of living that we would today call a minimalist way of effecting the society.  He wanted Jews to understand that Rome did not offer the people of his day anymore than American or western economics are offering people today--an empty way of living within the universe.

I entered the convent in the early 1970 when everything was changing for religious life following

Vatican II.  I entered an old order that had been founded in the early 16th century that was struggling with the Church of Europe following the Lutheran split in northern Europe.  We were being encouraged to 'return to the charisms of our founders' and so I learned much about the spirit that underpinned that community of women who had spread all over the world for the sake of teaching young women of Christ.  It was a heady time in the Roman Catholic Church.  It was an exciting time to be a Christian--a new one at that. But at the same time the post-Vatican II reaction curtailed that excitement.  About 30 years ago they were told to go back to what they were. And yet today--some 40 years later that order of women have found themselves unable to carry on the ministry that that community provided for the larger church because they were unable to meet the needs of a world and a Church that has

become more intensely self-conscious and self-centered.  It was not the fault of those sisters--it was the fault of a hierarchy that could not see far enough into the future to know that you couldn't stuff that energy back into 15th century wine skins.  When I left the community I did not know that the training I had received would serve me so well in the future.  But the training I had received was not in administration, or theology, or pastoral care.  It had been in prayer and I will forever be thankful for those women who gave me the time to know my God in the simplicity of poverty, chastity and obedience.  And even though while I was in the community I had access to  more things as a person who had avowed poverty, I learned that they did not have to dominate my life.

This morning I attended a congregation of my denomination that does not have a building.  Forced by the schism and the legal proceedings that have rent our Church they have been forced to think of what it means to be Church in ways that don't face many congregations.  They know that they are no longer the congregation of refugees that were forced by the schism out of their own congregations.  They are now  a community of people who are making worship, service, and education available to those who are excited by the Gospel.  They are the new wine of this new diocese.  They will soon be looking to find a new digs.  They have outgrown their present place.  They are no longer looking at 'getting back their building' in some legal proceeding.  They are looking at what does it mean to be Church in the 21st century.  It may mean Church in a strip mall, a school gym, rented space where they can live into the divestment that they have had to endure.  It has liberated them to be about the Gospel rather than just hearing it. 

In many ways they have turned away from the buildings that their fore-bearers built.  They are 'hating their parents' not with the emotion of adolescents  but have seen that the old ways of being Church--the stone church image--doesn't make the message of Jesus real in their time and place.  Only the love and reaching out they are doing in the community makes their faith palpable.  In a matter of 5 years they have become a new creation---a group of people who are committed to  letting people know that the love of God is alive and well in their mid-cities community.  A group of their

young people did a mission trip in OK after one of the tornadoes.  Those kids became dubbed the "the Jesus people" by the small community they went to serve.  This parish has been forced to be something new.  I do hope that they do not try to put themselves into old wine skins as my religious order tried to do 40 years ago.  I do hope that this wonderful spirit of putting away the old ways of doing Christianity will endure because it is exciting to be a part of.  

Granted there is something that I miss of the old Church--the quiet and stately liturgies with arcane music that speaks to me of being tied to something old and deep.  But it is not there that people are learning of Christ any longer.  They are coming to know Christ in the joy of doing for others, in the learning about how God is acting in their lives now and in the incredible holiness of learning how to live with the radical call to selflessness that Jesus proposed in Gospel passages like these.  They have 'gotten it' like often the disciples didn't in the Gospels. 

Sometimes we must lose it all in order to trust the providence of God.  We must start over to know the ancient story.  That was what Jesus was trying to teach his people over 2,000 years ago.  It is a message that we are still having to learn today.  I remember visiting a 7th century church in France that had been in constant use since before the time of Charlemagne.  It had some of its ancient mosaic ornamentation of its period.  It was a small place in the countryside of southern France, but there were signs on the bulletin board that told of the youth group, the woman's guild, the food pantry and the outreach of the parish.  It was not a museum that many of the churches in Parish had become.  They were a community of people who served their people in the love of Christ.  

I do not fear the demise of the Church.  The Spirit is alive and well if we allow ourselves to give away all our 'possessions' to see Christ at work in our faith.  The Eucharist is still the center of who we are.

  

Friday Five: Foodies

My first ever Friday Five is dedicated to Nikki, sister RevGal, who was hungering for an opportunity to write about Haggis. With that introduction, today’s FF is all about food!

I am always thrilled to talk about food.  3dogmom is hitting the blog running today. I can ALWAYS talk about food.

1) Is there a food from a foreign land whose reputation led to trepidation when you had a chance to give it a try? Did you find the courage to sample it anyway? If so, were you pleasantly surprised or did you endorse the less than favorable reputation that preceded it?

For our Scottish sisters, I have to admit that Haggis was one of fear and trepidation but while in Scotland I did try it and found it quite interesting and tasty.  I am not inclined to try to make it but it was good.  Ris de veau (calf sweet breads) I found not only tasty but REALLY good and order it when I go to a French restaurant now. Now that Vietnamese cooking is so ubiquitous in my

neighborhood, I have learned that Pho is not only good but it is a great antidote to TX sinus problems.  I learned to eat Sushi back in seminary when my gall bladder was acting up and I needed low-fat dishes.  Now I love it but can't afford it too often.  And I learned to eat lamb when I left TX.  My family still doesn't eat it, but J and I fix it whenever we can.  A butterflied leg of lamb on the grill is awesome!


2) What food from your own country/culture gets a bad rap? 

 Much Southern cooking gets a bad rap for being overcooked.  But I like cooked down collards and greens, beans with ham hock and fried chicken and steak but they don't like me any more.  (Or perhaps they like me too well and stay on my hips!)  But an occasional trip to Cotton Patch or Cracker Barrel seems to alleviate my cravings

3) Of what food are you fond that others find distasteful?

Many of the above.  J. can't stand okra which I love so I have to order when we go out.  

4) Is there a country’s food, not native to you, that you go out of your way to eat?

Mexican food (Tex-Mex) is 'native' to my area so that doesn't count. I do try to ferret out some regional Mexican cooking like from Vera Cruz, Yucatan or Oaxaca when I can. I love most Japanese dishes--especially soba and eel dishes.  When I lived in DC there was an Ethiopian restaurant that we

went to.  Many of their dishes were based on lentils to which I am allergic but I enjoyed their bread which function as the edible table cloth.  It was also quite spicy.  Indian food and Middle Eastern are favorites. I don't think that there is any kind of food that I don't like--I am not fond of elk or caribou so I don't think I would look for an Eskimo restaurant but doubt if I would find it the DFW area anyway.

5) What is your guilty pleasure food?

Perhaps it is the Decaf Venti Mocha that I have most mornings.  All food carries guilt as far as I am concerned.  Unless it is lettuce.

Bonus: What was your most memorable meal (good or bad), either because of the menu, the occasion, the company, or some other circumstance that makes it stand out?

I remember a wonderful dinner at a posh restaurant in  Wakefield, England that was attached to the hotel where we were staying.  I was coming down with a cold but the meal was so delightful that it put the feeling bad on hold for a while. We had lamb with a berry sauce of some local berry that I don't remember.

 Another was in Beaunne, France after a wonderful stay at Taize.  It was during the Beaujolais festival.  We asked for Ris de Veau from the Madam of the posh bistro in our broken French.  She said surprisied:  "Americans no eat ris de veau!"  They treated us to a glass of champagne.  It was everything that a French meal was supposed to be.  

And then there was the lunch we had in Vezalay after walking the labyrinth at the church at the

starting place of the ancient Santiago pilgrimage.  We bought wine from one of the local vineyards, local pate, cheese and crackers and sat in a little park and took in that little town.  Priceless. 

I really have so many 'precious meal stories' because my theology of meal is so intertwined with the sacrament of Eucharist.  When I was still a Roman Catholic there was a group of women that would gather on Maundy Thursday and break our Lenten fast with a lovely French dinner before we went to the Maundy Thursday service.  We were all single and this was often how we claimed our community.  I don't know what we had--each ordered what they wanted--but it was that sense of community that was so important.  I have not been able to re-establish this custom since ordination because of church duties, but it is something that I would like to do again.