Sermons – Page 2

Proper 25C 2019: Wisdom v. Reaction

October 27, 2019 by Cam Miller

From: Documentary Portraits of Mississippi: The Thirties, Selected and Edited by Patti Carr Black

I am going to zero in on something
I almost never talk about.
See if you can figure out what it is before I get there.

When I read that poem, “Hitchhiker”
a dozen contradictory voices
immediately echoed in my brain.
Don’t pick up the hitchhiker!
Okay, but don’t stop feeling badly about not picking up the hitchhiker.
Okay, but don’t live your life based upon feelings.

And the same thing happened
when I thought about Jesus’ parable
pitting the Pharisee against the Tax Collector.

Even though he is the foil in the story,
I think most of us would prefer
to FEEL like the Pharisee, who after all,
was quite pleased and at peace with himself –
even grateful for his well-being.
Isn’t that what we seek on some basic level:
to feel right with the world
and grateful for our blessings?

And yet, we need a good, loud tax collector inside
to rend us from within
and beg for mercy
because we also know
that our lives have tipped the scales of justice
against us,
and in ways we do not even recognize.

We want to feel like the Pharisee
but we need the agitation of the tax collector.
There are all these competing voices
inside our heads
and rummaging around in our poor little hearts,
and there are also plenty of live voices
filling the air around us
with ideas, accusations, admonitions, and cautions.

For many of us,
the hard part is not hearing voices,
rather, the hardest part
is not reactingto the voices.

Each voice wants us to react,
to respond and conform
to whatever he or she is espousing.

And yet, the wisest response
is not to react
to any voice.
…So many voices.

We hear the mom and dad voices
that live on in echoes
decades after mom and dad are dead and gone.

We hear the various voices of authority
that have steered us wrong in the past,
and we know it,
but still our knee-jerk reaction
is to follow them, at least at first.

We hear the voices of our professional training
that tell us the way the world is
and ought to be,
and we follow those voices
like a horse led with blinders
and so miss all kinds of other ways of seeing.
We get fitted with that professional training
and even long after we stopped doing that work,
we first and foremost we are
the banker
the accountant
the doctor
the lawyer
the professor or teacher
the musician
the therapist
the Ironworker
the social worker
the cop…and that is the way
we are trained to see the world.

We hear political voices,
religious voices,
ethnic and racial identity voices,
gender and sexuality voices –
all kinds of voices.
And often, perhaps most of the time,
we react to those voices
and our reactions lead our action
instead of our wisdom leading the way.

Having quick and precise reaction-time
is a good thing
when we are driving along
and another car runs a stop sign.
Quick reflexes
and automatic response
is a good thing
in an emergency
when immediate action save lives.

But in the everyday,
standing amid the myriad voices,
being reactionary will kill us –
maybe not immediately but slowly, over time
it will take us down
and fragment us.
At the very least, being reactionary
to all those voices
will repress our wisdom
and quite literally, depress us.

From where is wisdom to come?

What is the wisdom
that is the more trusted guide
than reaction
to the voices?

While I am just another voice to you,
the voice that I want to guide me
is God’s best dream for us.
Surrounded by the swirl of many voices,
each with its own neediness
and each with its own great ideas,
we need a filter:
one through which we can empty all those voices,
and in the end hear the voice
in which we recognize
God’s best dream for us.

It is in that voice we can be led by wisdom
instead of reaction.
At least, that’s been my experience.
When I am fortunate enough to be on top of my game
and the voices are coming at me fast and furious
and my reactions to them
swirling with chaos within me
and causing great turbulence,

I somehow find a way to step back
with a kind of gentle detachment
and allow wisdom
to filter all those voices.
Then – when I am at the top of my game –
I can let go of all my internal reactions
and be led by wisdom.

So, that is how I describe prayer.
And that, by the way,
is what this sermon is about – prayer.

In the last two weeks the Gospel of Luke
has supplied us with three models of prayer.
Last week was the feisty,
persistent,
even aggressive pray-er
who grabs hold of God
and won’t let go.

This week there is the supremely self-confident
Pharisee who approaches God
with the mindset of a well-trained professional
who believes that spiritual wellness
is an equation:
break it down into the right parts
and the sum of the whole will follow.

In contrast to the Pharisee,
there is the Tax-collector.
His strategy is to throw himself
on the mercy of the court –
believing and hoping
that even more than justice
God loves mercy.

Each of these is of course a caricature,
a kind of cartoon exaggeration
of different personalities
and what we are like when standing on the cliff
of our common brokenness
and looking down.

Personally, I do not look at prayer
as some pristine form into which we can slip
and suddenly all become of one nature –
a perfect little Jesus
or Buddha
or Catherine of Sienna.
We come as we are
and pray as we are.

We drag our rumpled old personality
with us into prayer,
and that shapes our praying –
and that is as it should be.

What is most important
is not how we pray
but that we do pray.

Prayer is what distills the voices
so that we can follow our wisdom
instead of our reactions.
Prayer is the process of discernment
in which we listen
for God’s best dream for us.

We think that prayer is about telling God
what we want
and what we think
and what we wish.

There is nothing wrong with telling God what to do,
but petitionary prayer
represents our reactionary self.
Our petitions are frequently our reactions
to things that are happening all around us.
There is nothing wrong with sending them up
like helium balloons
in hopes that God will hear them –
and do something about them.

But then…it is time to listen.

The kind of prayer I’m urging here,
is the process of listening
and eventually,
if we listen well enough,
hearing the wisdom that can lead us
through our reactionary-ness.
If we listen well enough
we will discern God’s best dream for us
for this time,
and in this place,
and for this particular circumstance.
Wisdom is never for-ever and all time;
like manna,
it doesn’t store or keep.
It is renewed in each new dawn.

So whether we are the tough and belligerent widow
from last week’s story,
or the Pharisee
or the Tax Collector –
and in truth we are all three –
the act of prayer
allows us to distill those voices
and be led by wisdom
instead of reaction.

Having a sense or inkling about
God’s best dream for us,
means that we don’t have to be led
by what the person sitting across from us
happens to like or not like,
or by what some other voice
thinks are good or bad.

Rather, we will have a sense
of God’s best dream for us
in that particular situation or concern
and we can be led by that instead.

Prayer it is not about the voices,
of our desires,
or our reaction to all the voices,
whether within or among us.

Prayer is the act of listening
and figuring out God’s best dream for us
here
and now
and in this place.

It is how we become led by wisdom
instead of reaction.

If that sounds good to you,
then you may want to know how to pray like that?
I really don’t know.

There is no gimmick.

There is no how-to.
There is no one-size fits all formula.
Walking,
sitting,
laying down,
slow yoga
fast running,
hands folded,
eyes open
eyes closed,
music,
no music,
deep breathing
big sigh.
The form is not the prayer, the process is.
THE FORM IS NOT THE PRAYER.
It is a listening process
and whatever helps us to listen
is the best form.
And the prayer is not completed
until we hear
or imagine
or somehow apprehend
a sense, or even an inkling,
of God’s best dream for us.
That means our prayer
may last hours, days, months
or even years.
Whatever sustains our ability to listen
is the best form for us,
and then doing it.
Just doing it.

So next time those voices are raging inside,
or coming at you fast
from all around,
it is time to pray.
That may mean getting quiet
and still – if
that is how you listen best –
it may mean going and getting a milkshake.
Hey, there are weirder things.

But whatever, doing what helps you listen
and then listening
is what prayer is.
I commend it to you.

19 Pentecost: Get Ready to Rumble…with God!

October 20, 2019 by Cam Miller

Today, once again, the gospel reveals
the uncomfortable dinner table argument
between a radical first century Palestinian peasant
and the well-educated
upper class Westernized Christianity
that uses the Church
as a sheath for preserving its artistic achievements.

It is a conflict
between the perspective of ancient wisdom embedded with common people, and centuries of ruling classes.
One is rooted in the experience of life
at the harsh margins of powerlessness
and subject to violence wielded by empires.
The other perspective is from that small cadre
of the powerful in imperial Rome,
within later European colonialism,
and still later American imperialism –
all of which ruled over the social equivalent
of Jesus and his friends in later times.

It is a conflict
between zealous first century Jews
suspicious of granting authority and power to anyone,
and zealous patriots
of 21^stCentury American Civil Religion
too eager to grant religious significance
to their own righteousness.

The language of worship and theology
practiced in popular Christianity –
whether conservative Evangelical,
traditional Roman Catholic, or Mainline Protestant –
is a domesticatedreligion.
It stands in contrast to a rough,
earthy,
non-institutional,
subversive to coercive authority religion
that comes to us from the margins.

But this is nothing new –
either in Christianity or other religions.
In every civilization,
from imperial China
to the Ottoman empire
to contemporary nationalistic Hindus and Buddhists –
religion gets domesticated
by the principalities and powers.
In order to incorporate and support
the interests and idols of culture for nationalistic purposes,
kings, presidents, prime ministers, generals,
legislatures, and corporations,
must cool religion down.

Whatever the hot burning coal
that formed a religion at its beginning,
it must be formed into a cold iron statue
in order to serve the institutions of social control.

That is because the origins of religion,
its prophets and sages,
are subversive to the principalities and powers.

Biblical Christianity is subversive of imperial culture
regardless of who the emperor is.
Where we seek refinement
the Bible is rough around the edges;
where we appreciate gentleness and couth
the Bible is militant;
where we insist upon reason
the Bible is outrageous and miraculous;
where we craft high-toned language, art, and music,
the Bible speaks in vernacular.

Today’s gospel offers a spectacular example.

That reading from Luke
is proceeded by a verse attributed to Jesus
that I bet few, if any of us, would recognize.
In fact, I can’t remember it ever coming up
in the lectionary.
In the verse just before the story we heard today,
someone asks Jesus,
“Hey Jesus, where will the reign of God arrive?”

That in itself is not an unusual question.
People always wanted to know
when and where to expect the big transformation.
Jesus answers,
“Where the corpse is, the vultures will gather.”

I am not making that up,
go look in your Bible at the end of chapter 17
and you will see it for yourself:
“Where the corpse is, the vultures will gather”?
I can’t remember a single Victorian hymn,
or contemporary praise song
with those words from Jesus:
“Where the corpse is, the vultures will gather.”

The Biblical Jesus was combative,
subversive, undermining of authority,
and dismissive of formality.
But not just to the religious and Roman authorities,
he was that way with God!
Jesus, like the sages and prophets before him,
argued with God,
and wrestled with God,
and in the process
sometimes changed God’s mind.

Our Enlightenment ancestors who formed
the Christianity we have more or less inherited,
were captivated by what they called pure reason,
and so they could not imagine a God
who changed anything –
especially God’s mind.
They lusted for a universe
that operated with order and predictability.

So our images of Jesus
are crafted upon the high arts of literature,
music and architecture,
and they transform Jesus
from peasant to King.
Yet we hardly notice the painful tension.

We have all seen it:
Jesus with his arms spread straight out on the cross,
not hung there and suffering,
but his own body forming the stiff shape of the cross
and wearing the royal crown of a European king.
Usually in such Christ-the-King images,
Jesus is also wearing an embroidered chasuble,
that poncho-like vestment of priestly gear,
and so morphing him
from reformer to company man.

That is an iconic example of what I mean
about the Bible and Jesus being domesticated.
Think of the Bible stories you learned as a child
and how rarely we talk about them now.
If we did not allow our children to watch
“Silence of the Lambs” and “Halloween XXVII,”
they would be terrified by the Biblical God in those stories.

We have domesticated the Bible
and the Biblical characters
because they are subversive partisans
that engage in combat with Pharaoh and Caesar.
And that means they are subversive to us
and to our way of life
because we are endlessly entangled
with the self-interests of Pharaoh and Caesar.
But they also engage in combat with God
and that is useful information for you and me, too.
God expects a fight from us
not a polite prayer
with impeccable syntax
that whimpers our neediness.

God requires a fight from us,
and where there is resistance
we need to push back.

The fact is, our little issues do not amount
to so much as a pimple on the back side of the universe,
so if we want some attention from God
we better be prepared to kick up some dust.

Now please, don’t just discount what I am saying
as some aggressive spiritual testosterone
from a cranky old male priest.
The Judeo, Christian, and Islamic traditions
are rife with women mystics and saints
every bit as passionate and tough
as what I am describing about biblical spirituality.
Just so you do not think I am exaggerating,
let me take us by the hand
and drag us back to today’s text.

In our polite,
well-educated
and culturally filtered
New Revised Standard Version of the Luke’s story,
the judge says:
“I will grant her justice,
so that she may not wear me out
by her continual coming.”

But listen to a translation
that is more interested in capturing
the original sentiment in the Greek text
than being literate:
“I will grant her justice,
so that she will not pummel my eye.”
In other words,
so she will not give me a black eye!

That is a huge difference!

If we are translating Luke’s story
from a position of privilege and power,
in which we respect the arbitrators of justice
because they are our kind of folk,
then we want this parable to suggest
that the old widow
gets what she is asking for
because she is a nag.

If our position in society is at the top or the middle,
rather than the bottom or the margin,
then we want to imagine that the judge
is tired after a long day’s work
and does the right thing by giving into the old gal
even though she is clearly a disagreeable sort.

But this story was told by an illiterate peasant
with a very different experience of people in authority,
especially the police and judges.

Jesus’ experience of authority
is from the bottom up,
not sharing a Church pew with them.
So in Luke’s story, the judge gives up
because the widow is scrappy
and likely to give him a black eye
if he keeps denying her justice.
Again, I am not making this stuff up!

You know as well as I do
that when we change the perspective on something –
see it from the top down instead of from the bottom up
or vis versa – it will look and sound differently.

The Bible is like that,
and our job is to hear it
from the bottom up now and again.

When we do,
one of the first things we bump into
is a rough and tumble relationship with God
rather than a passive, enjoyment
of a beautiful sunset or symphonic choir.

“The days are surely coming,” Jeremiah promises on behalf of God, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt– a covenant that they broke…(instead) I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. “

But, you know what?
That day isn’t here yet. Clearly.
So until it is,
we need to be like that persistent widow
and be ready to rumble with God.
And if we are to take Jesus seriously,
God ain’t the only one
we need to be ready to rumble with.

16 Pentecost: Hope

September 29, 2019 by Cam Miller

This is about hope.

It is about hope in hard times
when hope is hard work
even for people who are by nature optimistic.

It begins with a man
and a story
we might imagine
has absolutely nothing to do with us.
It was, after all,
nearly two-thousand seven-hundred year ago.

It is a story we have the chance to touch on
only every three years
when it comes around in the Sunday Lectionary.
But because many preachers do not focus
on the readings in the Hebrew text,
it is a story that may never get told
in some congregations.

It is the story of Jeremiah,
a prophet in Jerusalem.
He was not a wild-eyed fringe character
like Jesus.
He was not a poor marginalized migrant
like Amos.
Jeremiah was an insider.
He was from one of the ‘good’ families.
He was, as some might say today, “old money.”

According to the story,
God used Jeremiah
to speak to the power-elite of Jerusalem.
It was a time of dangerous international intrigue,
when it was not clear who the king’s real allies were,
or with whom the king’s loyalties were invested.
The Egyptian Pharaoh
was sweet-talking the king of Judah
and coaxing him and Jerusalem
into an alliance with the once powerful,
now faded Egypt.

Pharaoh told the king they had to stick together;
that Egypt and all the surrounding
small nations like Judah had to hold strong
in order to defend against
the big newcomer on the block: Babylon.
Support Egypt,
Pharaoh promised the Judean king,
and together they would defeat Babylon.
That appealed to Zedekiah, the king of Judah,
because he figured
he had a better chance
of holding onto his power
with Pharaoh ruling the region
than if the Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar
took over his part of the world.

So, thinking of himself more than his country,
Zedekiah risked the lives
of all the inhabitants of Jerusalem
and the surrounding area of Judea,
in order to keep his throne
for himself and his sons.

Jeremiah watched and listened
to all that was going on in the upper echelons
of his society,
and then told King Zedekiah
it was a bad idea to dance with Pharaoh
against Nebuchadnezzar.
But Jeremiah didn’t just say it was a bad idea,
he said that “God” said it was a bad idea.
And he didn’t just say
that God said it was a bad idea,
he went around told everyone
that God said it was a bad idea.
Jeremiah had a big mouth and knew everyone
who was anyone in Judah.

Well, like all the kings of Judah,
Zedekiah had a stable of yes-men
clergy & prophets who argued against Jeremiah
and promised the king
that God would rescue Jerusalem,
and that God would use Pharaoh to do it.
But against all those voices,
Jeremiah kept telling anyone who would listen
that Zedekiah was making a big mistake
and his foolish clergy and prophets
were just telling the idiot-king
what he wanted to hear.
Then, when the Babylonian army arrived
and support from Pharaoh did not arrive,
people started listening to Jeremiah.
But it became even harder to listen to Jeremiah
because he was now predicting
the demise of Jerusalem
and the death of Zedekiah.
Even though no one really wanted to hear that,
the citizens of Jerusalem began to disappearing
like deserters from the Alamo.
People were sneaking out at night
to surrender to the Babylonian army
that was now surrounding the city.
The siege of Jerusalem
would last for 18 months and 27 days.
That is a long time to sweat.

So with the Babylonian army surrounding them
and Pharaoh’s army nowhere to be seen,
King Zedekiah could nor stand to listen any more to Jeremiah’s rants.
The king blamed the steady stream of
escaping citizens on Jeremiah.
So, someone conveniently accused Jeremiah
of trying to escape, which allowed the king
to arrest the prophet.

Still, it was complicated for King Zedekiah.
He couldn’t just imprison Jeremiah
because he was from one of the ‘good’ families,
and he was recognized as prophet after all.
So instead of prison,
Jeremiah was removed
to the courtyard of the guard,
and shackled – one step up
from a prison cell.

But Jeremiah, if not pleasant
was persistent.
He just kept declaring his message
even while shackled:
“Don’t believe government’s lies;
don’t listen to self-serving fantasies
from religious preachers;
don’t be fooled by the guise of patriotism;
trust what you see and hear;
get out now because the Babylonians will win
and everything and everyone left behind
will be destroyed.”

An unknown, low class prophet
from out of town,
someone like Amos for example,
could be managed by removal or execution.
But an annoying prophet
from one of the old-line families
who won’t shut up?
That is a headache Advil won’t fix.

Eventually,
and it is not clear whether by order of the king
or an exasperated captain of the guard
who couldn’t stand to listen anymore,
Jeremiah was thrown into an empty well.
He was left in a deep hole in the ground
from which no one could hear him,
and where he would eventually be forgotten
and starve to death.
They couldn’t execute Jeremiah
but they could allow him to die.

But alas, I have gotten well ahead of myself.

In Chapter 32 of Jeremiah,
the point in the story that we heard this morning,
Jeremiah is still shackled in the courtyard
ranting and raving about the doom of Jerusalem.
That is where his cousin finds him,
and the piece of the story we heard today.

Under ancient Israelite law,
spelled out in the Book of Leviticus,
there is a statute called, “the right of go-el.”
My Hebrew is even worse than my English,
so I don’t know if I am pronouncing it correctly.

Go-el, as a legal statute,
stipulates that if someone is forced to sell
a piece of property
that has been in the family,
then the first right of refusal must go
to the next of kin.
As it turned out, Jeremiah’s cousin
wanted to sell some property.
Of course he did.

Think about the housing bubble in Jerusalem:
With the Babylonian Empire camped at your door
waiting for you to weaken from a lack
of food and water,
there would be a glut in the real estate market.

So Jeremiah’s cousin can’t sell his property
until he offers it first to Jeremiah –
who, remember, is shackled in the courtyard.
To the cousin’s utter amazement,
Jeremiah agrees to buy it.
“Sure,” Jeremiah says,
“not only do I want to purchase the land
but I knew before you even asked,
that you would offer it to me.

So as the story unfolds,
Jeremiah’s cousin gathers a host of witnesses,
Jeremiah signs the deed,
and gives it to his chief disciple, Baruch.
In front of everyone,
Jeremiah charges Baruch
with protecting the deed
by hiding it in an earthen jar
to be uncovered in the future.
Talk about a bullish act of hope –
it was pugnacious, even aggressive hope.
Surrounded by certain doom,
the very prophet of doom
declares the future is worth investing in.

Jeremiah was investing in the future
with a dramatic, physical,
concrete and highly personal
act of trust.
It was trust in God,
trust in the future,
and trust in the inevitability
of justice and mercy.

Everything around them spoke of destruction.
Everything seemed futile.
It not only looked bad, it was bad.
In the face of sure and certain doom
Jeremiah embodied hope
by investing in the future.

And now, the rest of the story.
For about eighteen months
the Babylonians laid siege to Jerusalem,
weakening the will of the walled city
before a devastating onslaught.
Eventually the Babylonians
broke down the walls and invaded.
They sacked the city,
stole everything they could carry away –
including the giant bronze pillars of temple.
The temple itself they reduced to rubble.
They killed every officer and leader of the guard.
They mercilessly killed
all three of King Zedekiah’s sons
right in front of the king’s eyes.
And then, they cut out the king’s eyes out
so that the deaths of his sons
would be the last thing he saw.

Jeremiah survived the devastation
because the Babylonians mistakenly thought
his prophecies meant he was on their side.
But Jeremiah was not in favor
of the Babylonians;
he was in favor of trusting God
to have the last word.

Legend has it, that Jeremiah died in Egypt.
But we do not know for certain.

We do know, and this is an important part
of the story,
that an Ethiopian slave,
likely one of the eunuchs that guarded
the royal harem,
saved Jeremiah’s life.
He got Jeremiah released from the well
before the city fell to the invaders.
The slave somehow convinced King Zedekiah
to allow Jeremiah’s freedom.

So there is the great irony
we should be used to by now,
and always looking for, in a Biblical story:
The foreigner in their midst,
and their slave,
could recognize God spoke through Jeremiah
even when those who knew him best could not.

This strange and ancient story
is pregnant with great insights about us,
and about our moment in history,
and about what you and I could be doing
in the midst of our families and friends
who do not yet recognize what time it is.

Jeremiah, the prophet of doom,
committed a devastatingly bold act of hope
by investing in land
at the very moment he knew
it would be ravaged and occupied
in the short run.
He trusted God for the long run
and embodied hope in the short run.

That is the punch line.
Our days, yours and mine, are numbered.
We know that.
But what happens to us,
is the not the final word
or the last act of the story.

So if we are capable of seeing
beyond the little universe in our own head,
then we can see that our own heartbeat
is only the short-term.
If we can see that,
it opens us to seeing that the long-term
may be influenced by us
even if it is not about us.
“The long-term can be influenced by us
even if it is not about us.”

So if the future is not about us,
we can start looking past our own particular
fears and anxieties to see the unexpected.
In this present moment, the one you and I live in,
hope is hard to come by – even for those of us who are optimistic.

I have had so many conversations with folks
about our fears and anger, and the
the seemingly overwhelming nature
of our problems.
I hear from people,
and from within my own heart,
about how difficult it is
to muster hope for the future
because we are surrounded by
deep and pervasive crisis
in the environment,
among nations,
and within our own nation.
There seems to be a pervasive crisis
in every institution of society
whether education, medicine,
law, the economy, or religion.

We are like Judah and Jerusalem
under the reign of Zedekiah,
when tomorrow seems to end in shadows.
We cannot see beyond the darkness
and what we imagine beyond
what we can see
is too disconcerting to entertain.

As in Jeremiah’s day, false prophets surround us.
They smile and promise a gospel of prosperity
for anyone who believes
their theological propaganda.
They promise that faith
and the love of God
will solve all the problems of the world
and act as a talisman
against danger.

Our royalty –
the political, corporate, and religious elite –
would have us be quiet,
and stop naming the grotesque imbalances
within our economy.
They want to hush us
and claim that we only know counterfeit truths –
they castigate the eloquent voices of our youth
who are now irrepressible
and out of their control.

Our royalty and their prophets,
who are broadcast loudly
by their media corporations,
eat away at the foundations of our future
like termites beneath the floor.

To the efforts of our royalty to shut us up
we can be silenced
or we can engage in acts of hope.
We may not have loud voices,
but our lives speak loudly.

For us, the question we must ask
is what are the acts of hope
available to us in our particular moment?
As individuals,
as households,
as a spiritual community –
what acts of hope
can we engage in now,
today, tomorrow
and the next day?
What would it mean
for us to act like Jeremiah
who bought property
even at the darkest moment in his city?

Not surprisingly,
I don’t have an immediate answer for us
and I can’t answer for you anyway.
But given the choice,
why wouldn’t we engage in acts of hope
and refuse to be silenced?

15 Pentecost C, 2019: Risky Business

September 22, 2019 by Cam Miller

That story from the Gospel of Luke
seems very confusing.

The problem is that Luke
has added a bunch of independent sayings
to Jesus’ original parable,
and in the editing and interpretive process,
whatever the point was,
the punch line got muddled.
Honestly, we do not really know
what the original parable or punch line was.

Here is my own take on the “Dishonest Manager.”

Jesus turns to his friends and says,
“Learn from the shrewd
and dishonest people around you:
they know how to hold onto what they value most.
Watch them:
What they value most
are lots of nice things,
a comfortable life,
and a sense of personal security.

They probably have what they want
but at the same time,
they probably lost what YOU value most.”
In other words, Jesus is saying:
“Learn to handle your money
and possessions
in such a way that you do not gain them
at the expense of what you cherish.”

If we took all the sayings, parables,
and proverbs attributed to Jesus,
and put them in a pile,
the number one subject –
the thing he talks most about –
is not love,
or faith,
or heaven.
It is money.
Jesus has more to say about money
than all those nice cuddly things
we associate with him.

His message about money is simple:
Wealth, power, and money
are not bad, but they are risky.
Jesus does not say
that having lots and lots of money
is wrong, but he does warn it is risky.
To be owners of capital,
share-holders of power, and to live in comfort
is nice if you can get it.
But when we do,
we are dangling from a string.

Now, just to be clear,
we should not be thinking that the only subjects
of this conversation are people like
Donald Trump or Les Wexner.
In relationship to Jesus and his social context,
almost all of us
would be wildly rich.

Those in the 1% are of course
beyond our imagination,
but any of us with moderate income and above
in the United States,
live at a level of comfort and security
unimagined by even the most powerful
in the first century.
King Herod did not live as well as we do.

So even those of us
with the most modest incomes
need to recognize the hazard
Jesus is talking about.

If we use our wealth and power
and all of its associated advantages
to insulateourselves from exposure to suffering, especially the suffering
of those who are marginalized,
then we will experience a gradual, subtle, enveloping drought.
Had we read the next few lines in Amos,
we would have heard about the drought
that awaits us when we live segregated lives –
insulated from those in need
while also contributing to their misery.

Amos says that when we live unto ourselves
and keep our distance
from those pushed to the edges
by economic, political, and social forces,
we will seek God but come up empty.
There will be a famine, Amos warns,
a famine of God awareness –
a deafness to hearing God’s whisper,
a silence of God’s word,
a desert of nothingness
when it comes to knowing God’s presence.

But here is what Jesus makes explicit
and that Christians have so often
misunderstood about the underlying wisdom
of prophetic poetry.

Amos’ words are not a threat of punishment,
but rather, a mere description of fact –
data to consider.
To put it in simple terms,
there is a law of spiritual physics –
a kind of cause-and-effect
that prophets like Amos warn us about it.
As I read it, Jesus’ parable
is an affirmation of Amos.

Jesus tells us that when possessions,
achievements,
success,
comfort,
security,
and power,
become ends in themselves–
rather than resources in the service of God’s love –
then we will begin to experience
a spiritual drought or famine.

Slowly,
subtly yet surely and terribly,
it will make itself known.
It will not happen all at once like acute hunger,
and instead be more like a slow, dry thirst.
God doesn’t disappear from our midst
but our vision fails,
and our hearing lessens,
and we enter into a kind of sensory deprivation
as far as the sacred is concerned.
But along with that warning of drought,
Jesus tell us that we have many opportunities
to re-order our lives
and shift our priorities,
and so restore our senses.

Those opportunities
are every-day experiences
that can evoke our compassion.
Exposure to the needs and suffering of others,
and the exposure of our own vulnerabilities,
provide us the way out of a spiritual drought.

Insulation and segregation
keep us at arm’s length from death,
deprivation,
vulnerability,
and ordinary hazards
to which most people live in proximity.

We get lulled to rest
by a lack of personal exposure
that naturally comes with wealth and power.
We get insulated and segregated
from the suffering and needs
of those who live at the margins,
and so we are also blinded to how we benefit
from the marginalization of others.

Our very insulation from those in need
becomes the mechanism triggering
spiritual drought and famine.

Think about this in our own lives.

Why is there such a strong relationship
between personal crisisand
spiritual reawakening?
Or conversely, complacency
and spiritual numbness?
Or likewise, denial of crisis
and spiritual shallowness?

For Jesus and the other prophets of Israel,
it is a profoundly eloquent
and yet simple fact of nature:

If we have power and wealth
we need to be careful to use them
on behalf of those who do not.

We need to be careful about avoiding
too much insulation
so that we don’t get amnesia
about what our power and wealth
are to be usefor.
We need to be careful
lest we find ourselves drying out spiritually
because we have allowed good fortune
to insulate us
from those who dangle underneath
our own prosperity.

I am certain there a lot of people
that would get a good laugh
out of what I am saying right now.
Privilege has a strong, fibrous lining
protecting it with cynicism.

But I think you and I might even wince
at the idea that the source of our own healing
is in fact, the woundedness of others
in proximity to our own needs.

Whether socio-economic wounds,
the wounds of injustice and violence,
physical and emotional ailments –
whatever the source – our woundedness
finds its healing
when we enter the wounds of others.
It is that law of spiritual physics I mentioned.
I don’t know why it is true, and
I am not altogether sure I like it,
but like you, I know from experience it istrue.

And this relationship between
the woundedness of others
and our own healing,
is also precisely why
wealth and power are so risky.
It is because they so easily, even unintentionally,
insulate us from an acute sense
of suffering and struggle close at hand.

Wealth and power
increase our ability to deny
and cosmetically hide
our own woundedness,
and that is deadly.

And so, at least according to Jesus
and the ancient prophets,
it is all connected:
Awareness of God’s presence
and the proximity of our own woundedness
with that of others.
It is truly just the opposite of our inclination
to feel no pain,
see no evil,
want no vulnerability.

That dang gospel.

12 Pentecost C, 2019: Peace be with you

September 1, 2019 by Cam Miller

I went to a laboratory school.
It was kindergarten-through-high school
in the same building, and,
while a public school,
it was also operated by the teacher’s college
of the local university.
I mention it, because we did not have letter grades
until high school.
All through the first nine years of classes,
we had written evaluation that emphasized “the positive”
while allowing for comments
that identified “problematic areas.”
So, the end of the first semester of ninth grade
was a time of reckoning
when, for the first time,
there was a single letter staring up from the page.

That individual letter was very loud,
and somehow it seemed to say more
than the longest evaluation ever written
by one of our previous elementary
or middle school teachers.

I can’t swear to how many A’s I had,
but I think I had all A’s, one B, and a C.
That C was in Algebra and an absolute success story.
The B was in Spanish,
and considering my goof-off and Smart Alec behavior,
it was probably a gift.

My mom looked at my report card,
said nothing about the A’s I had received,
and told me in no uncertain terms
that the B and the C were unacceptable.
At the end of the second semester,
I had all A’s a D and an F.

That says as much about my psychology at the time
as it does hers, and was just a hint
of the problems to come.

Any of us who had a hyper-critical parent
know and recognize the problems and behaviors
planted within the garden of such relationships.
One of them is the voice of that critical parent
traveling with us over time and space,
no matter how we grow and change and flourish.
Struggling to keep that critical parent inside our head
as a small voice instead of a dominant one,
can sometimes be exhausting.
Which is also why, I sometimes read the gospel story
appointed for a given Sunday,
and say, “Ugh.”

I love Jesus,
and with all honesty,
the wisdom of Jesus is my life’s blood.
Some would be surprised to hear me say that
because I do not talk about Jesus or quote Jesus
like some Christian bobble-head.
But Jesus, along with his prophetic pals –
Isaiah, Jeremiah, Micah, and Amos –
is my chosen primary lens
through which I decipher the world.

That said, sometimes I just sigh
because the negativity gets to be too much.
Or more accurately, when I am struggling
with that critical parent inside,
the hard medicine of Jesus
feels like too much.
That is the case today
with this reading from Luke.
I could easily go on and on about the prophetic witness
Jesus lets loose with this story from Luke –
or that Luke lets loose with this story of Jesus.
But not today.
You see, when I read the gospels
I understand that you and I
are the bad guys in the story.
I think there is a lot of Christianity around
that inserts Christians as the good guys,
which makes for a very different story.

But that is so strange to me, when we know
the good guys in these gospel stories,
especially in Luke,
are “the poor, the crippled, the lame,
and the Blind.”

That is Luke’s motto for “the good guys.”
The good guys are the marginalized
not the fat cats like us.

The poorest among us here
would be judged hugely wealthy in that society.
So, in these stories,
we should know that at best,
we are the Pharisee with the lavish banquet
that invited the wrong guests.
But at worst, and more likely,
we are the imperial citizens or senators back in Rome
whose agents are forcing peasants into bankruptcy
in order to amass wealth at the edges of the empire,
or worse, crucifying them.
It is a view of ourselves that is difficult to gaze at
for extended periods of time
if we take it seriously and want to know more.

Yet, like I said,
there is a majority of Christianity in this country,
that reads these scriptures very differently.

They see themselves,
even if middle class and quite wealthy,
as the marginalized and pure at heart
amongst a threatening horde of “secular atheists”
or the fearsome and alien “Muslims,”
or the strange and perplexing godless Buddhists
and polytheistic Hindus.
They domestic Jesus
in order to bring him into their polite company.

While it often doesn’t feel good,
I prefer to keep Jesus as the zealous
social and theological prophet that he was.
Even so, sometimes, like today, it is just too much.

Without going into it in detail today,
I would also say that part of our challenge
as Christians in the 21^stcentury,
is that the context of Jesus and his society
is radically different than us and our society.

That change in context
creates change in the wisdom,
and when we do not seek to understand those changes
and hear his wisdom in OUR context –
or when we over-simplify that wisdom for our context –
then we are not doing any better
than the Christians who think that they are the good guys.

That is just a little tease for the weeks ahead this fall,
when the sermons will seek to examine
the wisdom of Jesus
and how it changes from his context to ours.
But today, I have a few words
about that critical parent inside.

It is important to note
that I am talking about the critical parent “inside”
and not the actual parent in our life,
whether living or dead.
You and I know that at some point
we cross a line
after which our parents are no longer the issue.
Rather, it is how we internalized our parents
and we have some control and responsibility with that.
I know it is no longer my mom talking to me
when I beat myself up inside
for failing at something,
or when I am getting a C
and unwilling to recognize that in this case, a C is success.
Whether it is a critical parent
or critical boss
or teacher, friend, or grandparent,
their voice fades over time
and it becomes our own.

It is then the voice of OUR perfectionism
or OUR negativity
or OUR overly-critical judgments.
And we know all too well,
that if that voice becomes the dominant, lecturing voice
inside of us, it will ooze and bleed outside
and get all over those we care about and love.

So what would Jesus have to say
to a slave-driving,
perfectionistic,
haranguing voice of criticism
whose hot breath is on our neck
and leaning over our lives?
I think what Jesus would say is, “Peace.”
“Peace be with you,” he might coo into our ear.

While I doubt that Jesus
would have cared about us Romans and Pharisees
as much as he cared about “the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind,”

I do believe he cared about us.
If he is the personification of the love of God,
then no matter how many C’s and D’s and F’s we have
on the scorecard of life,
then we are cared for and loved.
I think the theory goes,
that if we ever finally come to realize we ARE loved,
then we will start doing better on the scorecard
when we are able.

But I do not think that Jesus
can take away the presence of that niggling voice of negativity
once it has gotten inside us.
I do not even think WE can exorcise it.
We can, however, moderate it.
We can quiet it
and make it just one of the many voices
we hear every day inside our busy heads.
“Peace” is how we do it.

That is why Jesus kept saying that
to his disciples, especially
when they were anxious and afraid.
“Peace be with you,” he would say.

Truly, when the dominating and the ugly
are loud in our hearts
and taking up too much room in our minds,
we need to stop and breathe in peace,
and to stop and exhale peace,
because it is the only thing I know that truly does the job.

When my own voice saying “peace” is not powerful enough
to quiet the big voices or sometimes the army of voices,
I can recruit Jesus in my imagination
to come along and add some strength.
I can recruit the memory of affirming elders
and I can recruit the wisdom of teachers.

There are a whole bunch of people you and I have known
that want nothing more
than to be the source of peace in our lives.
We need to let them.
We need to activate them.
We need to give them voice in our hearts and minds.

Peace be with you.

Proper 25C 2019: Wisdom v. Reaction

19 Pentecost: Get Ready to Rumble…with God!

16 Pentecost: Hope

15 Pentecost C, 2019: Risky Business

12 Pentecost C, 2019: Peace be with you

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