Prayers - Answered and Unanswered (J. Barry Vaughn, Oct. 20, 2013)

An assistant manager of a large department store saw a boy standing at the bottom of the escalator one day.  The assistant became suspicious.  He watched the boy for a while.  The boy had his eyes glued to the moving hand rail.  Finally, the assistant went over to the boy and questioned him.  “Is something wrong, young man?” he asked.  “No sir”, replied the boy, not taking his eyes off the handrail, “I’m just waiting for my bubble gum to come back.”

 

Have you ever watched and waited as eagerly for something as that little boy watched and waited for his bubble gum to come back?

 

When we were children we longed for Christmas to come and would ask our parents, “How many more days till Christmas?”  And when Christmas had come, then we would start to long for summer vacation.  And I’m sure that you can remember, as I can, riding in the car to the beach or the amusement park or some other delightful destination and wearing our parents out by asking, “Are we there yet?”

 

Jesus told a parable about a woman who longed for justice as a child longs for Christmas or summer vacation or a trip to the beach.  She had been wronged and the only person who could right the wrong was an unjust judge.  Imagine that you have been the victim of a hoax or have been cheated out of thousands of dollars in a business deal.  Imagine that the judge who will hear your case is corrupt, a person who takes bribes and sells justice to the highest bidder.  That’s the situation the woman in Jesus’ parable found herself in.

 

But she was not easily discouraged.  Jesus tells us that she “kept coming to him and saying, ‘Grant me justice against my opponent’”.  Finally, the judge heard her case and granted her request, not because he had had a change of heart, but simply because he was worn out with her constant requests.

 

That is how persistent we are to be with God.  “Will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night?” Jesus asked.

 

What an odd parable!  Jesus compares God to a wicked, corrupt, and unjust judge. 

 

Jesus was employing a type of argument common in first century Judaism. It was called “from the lesser to the greater”.  Do you remember the parables of the lost sheep and lost coin?  If a shepherd will search for one lost lamb out of ninety-nine, how much more will God search for a lost soul?  If a woman will search for one lost coin out of ten, how much more will God search for you when you are lost and hurt and alone?  If a corrupt and unjust judge will eventually hear and render judgment for a woman who beseeches him constantly, how much more will God hear and grant your prayers?  From the lesser to the greater, a trivial illustration can be made to serve a great truth.

 

But this parable raises powerful, disturbing questions for us.  Luke introduces the parable by saying that “Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart”.  The point of the parable seems to be that if we pray long enough and sincerely enough, God will hear and grant our petitions.  But you know and I know many persons who have prayed for healing, or employment, or money for their rent or food for their children and whose prayers have not been answered.

 

I have no easy answers about why God does not hear and grant all the prayers we pray, but I have a few thoughts to share with you. 

 

One obvious reason that God does not answer our prayers is that we can sometimes ask for trivial, foolish, or even harmful things.  I guess the words that come out of our mouths when someone cuts in front of us on the freeway could be called prayers of a sort, but I hope we don’t really want God to answer THOSE prayers.  I had a cartoon on my refrigerator for years in which a kneeling minister prayed, “Lord, smite my worst enemy with a plague of locusts”, and in the next frame the minister himself was covered with locusts. 

 

It’s not difficult to see why God does not answer trivial, foolish, or vindictive prayers, but what about prayers for healing?  I know of no stronger case AGAINST the Christian faith than the problem of suffering.  The problem is not just why do the innocent suffer and the wicked prosper, but why is there suffering at all if this world was created by and is sustained by a good, just, loving, and almighty Creator?

 

I have no good answer.  In his book The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis says that pain is sometimes God’s megaphone to awaken a sleeping world.  Sometimes that’s true.  Sometimes a case of the flu or even a broken limb can slow us down and open up time and space in our lives in which we can hear what God has to say to us.   But I could never go to someone with terminal cancer or AIDS and tell that person that their suffering was God’s way of trying to get their attention.  That would be the worst kind of pastoral misconduct. 

 

So, I do not know why our prayers for healing are not answered.  But I do know this:  sometimes our prayers for healing are answered even when the person for whom we pray dies.  There can be a deep kind of healing that can take place only in death.  And I believe that sometimes there are things we can learn only when we grapple with suffering over a long period of time.

 

I want to tell you about my own experience of pleading with an “unjust judge”.  At the beginning of my next-to-last semester at divinity school in the fall of 1981, the bishop of Alabama informed me that he would not ordain me.  He gave no reason then and has never given any reason.  It was devastating to me to learn that something I had worked for for three years and had prayed for was not going to take place.  I was angry and depressed.  I was outraged not only at the bishop but also at God.  So, unable to be ordained, I worked for a couple of years, then I received a small fellowship to study at Scotland’s University of St. Andrews and began work on my Ph.D.  I lived in Great Britain for almost three and a half years, and when I finished my Ph.D. I returned to the States and taught for a few years.  Finally, the bishop who had turned his back on me retired, and the Diocese of Alabama elected a new bishop.  Suddenly, all the doors that had been closed to me swung wide open; I was accepted into the ordination process and was ordained first deacon and then priest.  But in the years between finishing my Master of Divinity and being ordained, I not only acquired a doctorate and the invaluable experience of teaching in a university, I became a very different person.  I became much less rigid and dogmatic.  I learned to accept the fact that there are things we cannot understand and cannot change, however painful and puzzling they are.  I think I became warmer and more accessible.  And I know that I became much more sympathetic and empathetic to others who struggle with suffering and pain in their lives. 

 

In God’s infinite, mysterious, and often frustrating wisdom I believe that God knew that I needed to struggle, pray, and come up against closed and locked doors for ten years before being ordained.  I am a better priest for having had to wait ten years, and God knew that.  What I went through I would not wish on anyone, but it was something I needed to go through.  So, as today’s gospel says, we “need to pray always and not to lose heart”.

 

Christ Church has been through a difficult season, a season of conflict. But I believe that someone, probably many of you have been praying and not losing heart. They have been praying constantly and fervently for this parish. 

 

I hope that you are praying daily for Christ Church to grow.  That’s not a selfish prayer.  There are thousands of spiritually hungry people in this community and Christ Church can offer them spiritual nourishment.  That’s no more selfish than for someone who maintains a shelter for the homeless to pray that persons without a home would find a way to his shelter. 

 

I hope that you are praying daily that Christ Church  will develop and expand its ministry to the community.  Of course, to pray that prayer implies a commitment to support those ministries with your time and money.

 

And I hope that you are praying for our stewardship campaign and praying about your own pledge to Christ Church.

 

Does God hear and answer prayer?  Of course, but God answers our prayers in God’s time and on God’s schedule, not ours.  Phillips Brooks once remarked that we “think [our] prayer unanswered when really God not merely is answering it, but has been answering it for years, before ever it knew enough of itself to be prayed.”  (Philips Brooks, "The Silence of Christ", p. 131, in The Light of the World (1904).)

 

And the kind of prayer that we pray makes a difference.  Perhaps the most important thing that you can notice about the parable of the unjust judge is the precise nature of the petition that the woman brought to the unjust judge.  Her plea was this, “Grant me justice.”  And Jesus concluded the parable by saying, “Will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night?… I tell you, God will quickly grant justice to them.” 

 

God promises us justice.  In other words, God promises to give us what we need, not what we want.

 

 

 

There is still a vision (J. Barry Vaughn, Oct. 6, 2013)

Habakkuk had a problem. No, I don't mean a name recognition problem, although he certainly had that. Not many Christians of any denomination would be able to identify the name Habakkuk, and even Old Testament scholars are uncertain about the meaning of his name.

 

What we do know is this: Habakkuk lived in Judah, the southern kingdom in the 6th century before Christ and was a contemporary of Jehoiakim, the last king of Judah before the Babylonian invasion.

 

We know this because of the way the book of Habakkuk begins.

 

God gave the prophet Habakkuk, a disturbing vision.  "Habakkuk", God said, "I am rousing the Chaldeans, a fierce and impetuous nation, who march through the breadth of the earth to seize dwellings not their own.... They all come for violence... they gather captives like sand.  At kings they scoff... they laugh at every fortress... they sweep by like the wind... their own might is their god!" (Hab. 1.6-11)

 

It is not a coincidence that the Chaldeans occupied the same territory occupied today by Iraq.  There seems to be something violent and warlike in the character of the people of that region.

 

God's vision threw Habakkuk into confusion:  "Why are you silent when the wicked swallow those more righteous than they?" (Hab. 1.13)  And we might add, "Why are you silent, God, while terrorists kill dozens of innocent people in a mall in Kenya? When  the elderly languish in poorly staffed assisted living facilities? When the working poor can't afford child care and health insurance? When diseases defy the best efforts of doctors and nurses?

 

But the answer God gives us is the same answer that God gave to Habakkuk:  "Write the vision; make it plain... For there is still a vision for the appointed time... it does not lie.  If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay... the righteous will live by faith". (Hab. 2.2-5)

 

When Habakkuk's world fell apart, God said to him, "The righteous will live by faith".  I don't know about you, but it seems to be an exceptionally feeble answer.  If someone comes to us seeking food or shelter, it will not do for us to tell them what God told Habakkuk, "Live by faith!"  It is not enough for us to say "Live by faith!" to the victims of natural disaster or disease.  So why did God forecast doom and destruction and then tell Habakkuk to live by faith?

 

The Greek philosopher Archimedes said that if he had a firm place on which to stand and a lever long enough he could move the world.  Jesus said that his followers could do the same thing with faith.  Faith is the thread that binds together the readings from Habakkuk, First Timothy, and Luke.  "If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and planted in the sea,' and it would obey you".

 

Luke was paraphrasing a saying of Jesus from Mark. And with apologies to St. Luke, I have to say that it is a bad paraphrase. What Jesus said in Mark was "Truly I tell you, if you say to this mountain.  'Be taken up and thrown into the sea,' and if you do not doubt in your heart, but believe that what you say will come to pass, it will be done for you."  I'm inclined to believe that Mark's words are closer to what Jesus actually said.  But it offended the sensibilities of the author of Luke's gospel.  "A mountain!?  Who could believe that faith can move mountains?  A mulberry tree, maybe.  Yeah, that's it... a mulberry tree!"

 

These words of Jesus have given offense to Christians and non-Christians alike for two thousand years.  They are the words of a wild-eyed visionary.  Impossible, we say.  Faith is not magic.  Bulldozers move mountains, not faith.

 

Yet, I want to suggest to you this morning that Jesus' words are neither impossible nor even improbable.  They are among the truest and most practical words in the gospel.

 

Americans are a practical, can-do people.  We love Horatio Alger stories of men and women who go from rags-to-riches.  "Give us the tools, and we'll do the job".  That is one of America's great strengths, and it's one of the things that I like best about America and its people.

 

However, today's Old Testament and Gospel readings remind us that before one can accomplish anything, it is essential that we have what George Bush called, in one of his more unfortunate phrases, "the vision thing" or what Jesus called "faith".

 

The man or woman with faith or vision attracts people to him or her.  But faith can be a dangerous thing.

 

Marx and Lenin and Mao articulated a faith which for seventy years enslaved half the world's people.  Rootless and economically depressed Germans put their faith in Hitler and came close to world domination.

 

I have taught both history and religious studies at several universities. For several years I taught hundreds of students subjects that they would rather not have been studying.  At a private Baptist-related college in Alabama I taught introduction to the Old and New Testament to undergrads who resented the fact that they had to take these courses about ancient documents in which they did not believe. And when I taught the history of western civilization to students at another university, many of my students did not understand why that had to take six hours of this subject. 

 

These days students believe that their time would be better spent in learning how to do something, learning skills that would be valuable commodities in the so-called "real world".

 

What those students did not realize is that they were in college to get an education, not to get a job.  Idealistic?  Maybe, maybe not.  Maybe I'm the practical one and the teachers of accounting, marketing, management, and computer sciences are the impractical ones.

 

What I tried to tell my students was that the most important thing they could acquire as a part of their university education was a vision, a sense of life's meaning, purpose, and direction -- in other words a kind of faith.  You can acquire job skills at any time of your life, but what you should try to acquire in your youth is a vision that will sustain your life, a vision that will make sense of whatever work you choose to do with your skills, some faith that will give purpose and meaning to whatever you do with your life.

 

However, it is not enough to say that we all need a vision or a sustaining faith.  That suggests that all faiths are equal -- that we can shop for faith much as we would shop for clothes or a new car.  A vision may be the murderous vision of a Stalin or a Hitler.  The only vision that truly sustains is the vision of faith in the God who was manifest in Jesus Christ, in the Love that embraced death on a cross, in the Life that rose in triumph from the tomb.

 

I promised to show that Jesus' promise that faith can move mountains was not moonshine but practical advice.  During World War II, Stalin sarcastically asked, "How many legions has the Pope?"  But now the joke is on Stalin, for Stalin lies dead and in all the places over which he formerly held sway, the Christian faith is once again free.

 

Faith is not magic.  It is not wishful thinking or positive thinking or any other faddish movement, but faith changes everything.  Scottish theologian William Barclay said, "I have never seen water turned into wine, but I have seen beer turned into furniture".  When our lives are possessed by faith, even the mountains of addictions that cover our lives with deep gloom can be moved and cast into the sea.

 

I am sometimes asked what are my goals for Christ Church. More than anything else, my goal for Christ Church is to give this parish a vision of the future, a vision that will inspire and sustain us. For several months now, I've been talking about making Christ Church a "Great Commission" church. Do you remember the four parts of the Great Commission? MAKE DISCIPLES of ALL NATIONS, BAPTIZING THEM in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and TEACHING THEM to observe everything I have commanded you. I firmly believe that that is a vision that can sustain us.

 

In the next two or three months we will be engaged in a long term planning process that will add details to this vision of being a Great Commission church. I want you to pray that God would guide us as we move forward in this process.

 

Jesus' promise of mountain-moving faith was not just a wild flight of fancy, and God's promise to Habakkuk that faith would sustain the righteous was not just a pious cliche.  Indeed, it is only faith that sustains.  When the sadness of life shatters your heart -- and it will -- the one thing needful for putting the pieces back together is faith.  "There is still a vision for the appointed time... it does not lie.  If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay..."

Turning barriers into bridges (J. Barry Vaughn, Sept. 29, 2013)

"There was a rich man..." Where have you heard those five words before? They are exactly the same five words that began the parable we heard in last week's gospel reading, the so-called, "Parable of the dishonest steward." "There was a rich man..."

 

There are numerous references to riches in Luke's gospel and they are almost all negative. Near the beginning of Luke's gospel we have Mary's song, the Magnificat: "God has filled the hungry with good things, but the rich he has sent empty away." And then there is Luke's version of the beatitudes, which contains a series of "woes" along with the blessings: "But woe to you who are rich for you have already received your comfort." And the parables are just as bad. There is the so-called "parable of the rich fool," last week's parable of the dishonest steward, and today we have perhaps Jesus' strongest indictment of the corrupting power of wealth - the parable of the rich man and Lazarus.

 

The rest of the Bible is just about as hard on wealth. Consider the words of the prophet Amos in today's first reading:

 

Alas for those who lie on beds of ivory,

and lounge on their couches,

and eat lambs from the flock,

and calves from the stall;

who sing idle songs to the sound of the harp,

and like David improvise on instruments of music;

who drink wine from bowls,

and anoint themselves with the finest oils,

but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph!

 

Today we might paraphrase Amos in this way:

 

Alas for those who decorate their homes from Pottery Barn

and adorn their dwellings with items from Restoration Hardware;

who eat sushi with chopsticks

and dine on endangered Chilean sea bass;

who buy Bose stereos

and have to download the latest mp3s;

who drink champagne imported from France

and the best beers that the microbreweries have to offer.

 

And finally we have Paul's advice to his young friend, Timothy: "...the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil..." That is often is misquoted as "MONEY is the root of all evil" but Paul is not saying that money itself is evil. That is impossible. Money is neither good nor evil; it is simply a tool with which we can do good things or bad things.

 

This might be a good moment for me to remind you that our fall stewardship campaign is just around the corner!

 

But what's going on? Why is the Bible so hard on the wealthy? This is a little difficult for us to understand, because the Bible was written in a pre-capitalist age. In the world of the Bible, economics was a zero sum game. If I have more, then you must have less. This wasn't universally true, but generally speaking, in the world of the Bible, wealth was regarded as a kind of theft.

 

When you hear the words "rich" or "wealthy"? What comes to mind? Bill Gates? Warren Buffett? Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II?

 

The fact is that you and I are infinitely wealthier than the wealthiest person in the Bible.

 

The story of the rich man and Lazarus is one of Jesus' most intriguing stories. Listen to the way it begins: " There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man's table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores."

 

At the very beginning, Jesus sets up a contrast between the rich man and Lazarus.  The two could not be more different. First, they are separated by economics: one is rich and the other is poor. Second, they are separated by what they wear: The body of the rich man is covered by "purple and fine linen" but Lazarus is covered by sores. Third, they are separated by what they eat: The rich man feasts "sumptuously every day" but Lazarus eats only the food that that rich man throws away. Finally, they are even separate in death. Jesus says, "the poor man died" but "the rich man died AND WAS BURIED." In other words, the rich man is given a proper burial, he has a tomb, more than likely there were professional mourners, or perhaps he really was mourned. We have no reason to think that he was not a valued and even loved and respected member of the community. But Jesus simply says, "the poor man died." No tomb, no mourners, no service, nothing. He disappears as though he had never existed as have the poor in every place from time immemorial.

 

The rich man and Lazarus were different in every way except one: They both died. Death makes us all equal.

 

Then, suddenly, there is a great reversal. The rich man who had routinely visited the vineyards in Sonoma and had eaten only gourmet cuisine prepared by Wolfgang Puck, who had worn Gucci and Tommy Hilfiger, who had been buried from the cathedral and whose service had been presided over by the bishop himself, now finds that he is in a place of fiery torment. But Lazarus who had had to wait for hours to get treated in the emergency room, who had lined up day after day to get food from Christ Church, and whose body had been thrown into a common burial pit, now finds himself at the very side of Abraham.

 

Do you wonder what has happened? Well, I will tell you what has happened: The rich man has gotten his wish. Go back to the beginning of the story and note two little words: "There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus..." The two little words I want you to notice are "his gate." Poor Lazarus, covered in sores, lay every day not at the town gate but at the rich man's gate.

 

Gates have two functions. They allow some to enter but they keep others out. Lazarus lay at a gate the rich had been built. It allowed him to enter his elegant home, but it also excluded people like Lazarus.

 

In other words, the rich man was not only separated from Lazarus by his wealth, his food, his clothes, and the manner of his burial; he was also separated from Lazarus by a gate he had built for that very purpose.

 

The rich man discovers that the gate that had separated him from Lazarus in life, in death has become a great abyss, a chasm, separating him from Lazarus and Lazarus from him. The chasm is so vast, Father Abraham says, that "those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us."

 

It reminds me of that marvelous moment in Charles Dickens' Christmas Carol, when the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come shows Scrooge his own grave, and Scrooge cries out, "These are the chains I forged in life!"

 

But unlike Scrooge, the rich man in Jesus' story doesn't have a moment of enlightenment even in death. He thinks he's still in charge. He thinks he can still order Lazarus around: "...send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue..." And even when Father Abraham tells him that the distance between them is so vast that Lazarus can't cross it, the rich man persists in trying to order Lazarus to do his bidding: "...send him to my father's house-- for I have five brothers-- that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment."

 

What really interests me about the story of the rich man and Lazarus is that it nowhere tells us that the rich man lived an immoral life or that Lazarus lived a particularly virtuous life. According to Jesus, the rich man's only misdeed was that he was interested only in his pleasures and ignored the plight of poor Lazarus lying at his front door.

 

An exercise I like to use when I prepare my sermons is to ask myself, "What is the Bible NOT saying here?" Let's try it: What does the story of the rich man and Lazarus NOT say?

 

It does NOT say that the rich man did anything dishonest to gain his wealth. It does not say that he was cruel or unkind to anyone. It may be that the rich man was a member of the synagogue. He might have been an exemplary husband and father. He might have been a leading member of the Rotary Club.

 

It also does not tell us that Lazarus was especially virtuous. It may be that Lazarus was poor because of his own bad choices. Lazarus might have struggled with alcohol or drug addiction. He might have been chronically unemployed. We don't know.

 

But what Jesus does say is this: In this world, there was a huge gap between the rich man and Lazarus, a gap mostly created by the rich man. The rich man was isolated from Lazarus by the clothes he wore, by the food he ate, and even by the way he was buried.

 

It would be the height of hypocrisy for me to say that  riches are evil or that it is wrong to be rich. I am far richer than anyone who lived in the age in which the Bible was written. I am responsible for leading this church, an institution that depends upon the generous contributions of persons who have made a great deal of money.

 

In 1965, in the days following the Watts' riots in Los Angeles, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., preached on this parable at Montreat, the Presbyterian retreat center in North Carolina. He said, "There is nothing in that parable," King says, "that says the rich man went to hell because he was rich. Jesus never made a universal indictment against all wealth. He went to hell not because he was rich, but because he passed by Lazarus every day and never really saw him... he allowed Lazarus to become invisible... he failed to use his wealth to bridge the gulf that separated him from his brother Lazarus." (Cited by the Rev. Chris Tuttle in his sermon "Blindness and a Vision for Community.")

 

Precisely. The man's riches became a barrier, not a bridge. In this world, his riches insulated him so effectively from the poverty of Lazarus, that he did not even see Lazarus. And in death his riches became not just a wall but a cosmic abyss.

 

Much is being said these days about the growing polarization of the rich and the poor. A recent article asserts that the "upper 1 percent of Americans are now taking in nearly a quarter of the nation’s income every year." Furthermore, the top 1 percent control 40 percent" of the nation's wealth... Twenty-five years ago, the corresponding figures were 12 percent and 33 percent." (Joseph Stiglitz, "Of the 1%, by the 1%, and for the 1%" in Vanity Fair, May 2011.) But I am neither an economist nor a politician and will not venture an opinion. Nevertheless, I am troubled.

 

The question that Jesus asks us this: Will we let our wealth, our cars, our houses, our food, our clothing, our entertainment insulate us from the lives of those who stand at the intersections of Las Vegas holding signs that say hungry, homeless, and unemployed? Or will we use the wealth God has given us to reach out to others?

 

Will we use our wealth to build bridges between ourselves and those who are less fortunate, or will we build a barrier to shield us from others in this life that in the life to come may become a vast abyss across which no one can pass?

Off to see the Wizard (J. Barry Vaughn, Sept. 15, 2013)

"If I only had a brain, a heart, courage, a way to get home..." Those were the things that Dorothy and her friends - the Scarecrow, the Tinman, and the Cowardly Lion were seeking when they set off down the yellow brick road to find the Wizard of Oz.

 

Steve and Margie Wilkinson gave me their tickets to see The Wizard of Oz at the Smith Center last week, but what they did not know was that they were also inspiring today's sermon!

 

Someone once said that there are really only two stories - there is the story of leaving home and the story of going home. I think that must be more or less true. Two of the oldest stories in the Western canon of literature are the Iliad and the Odyssey. The Iliad is the story of going off to fight the Trojan War, in other words, it is the story of leaving home, and the Odyssey is the story of Ulysses' return journey. In other words, it is the story of going home.

 

The Wizard of Oz is also a story of going home, of discovering that our real home is not a geographical place, not a physical house, but it is a spiritual location, a community of friends, a group of people who are bound together by a common mission, who cannot achieve that mission unless they help each other. It is the story of discovering that all those things that we left home to find - meaning, purpose, adventure, a heart, a brain, courage - were right there in the place where we started out.

 

The Wizard of Oz is the story of four people who believe that they have lost something or are missing something that they can only find by going on a difficult and dangerous journey, a quest in other words.

 

That is not a bad description of the human condition. Every one of us knows that feeling. Every one of us has woken up at 3 o'clock in the morning feeling that something is wrong, that we are lost or that we have lost something. We may not be able to say exactly what is wrong or what we have lost. We just know that something is wrong.

 

If that feeling goes on long enough and gets strong enough, we may say that we are depressed or that we are struggling with anxiety. Religion gives that feeling a variety of names. We may call it guilt, the sense of sinfulness, the need for repentance and forgiveness. There is a lot of truth in all these descriptions.

 

The danger is that we may try to fill up that empty place in our hearts with something that will not only make us feel even emptier but might even kill us both spiritually and physically - drugs, alcohol, promiscuity, and so on.

 

In today's gospel reading we hear two stories that Jesus told about people who had lost something - a shepherd who lost a lamb and a woman who lost a coin.

 

Both stories are odd. One lamb wanders away, but the shepherd still has 99 perfectly good sheep left. Nevertheless, he puts on his coat and hat, grabs his flashlight and shepherd's staff (and maybe even his rifle, too) and goes out into the cold, rainy night, walks up one side of the rocky mountain and down the other just to find one lamb who is not smart enough to come inside out of the rain and wind and cold.

 

A woman has ten coins. Jesus says that they were drachmas, pennies, a single day's wage. In other words, they were not worth very much at all. She loses one but still has nine other perfectly good coins. But she looks high and low. She picks up every knick knack on her shelves; she takes her candle and looks into every dusty corner; she moves the big comfy chair and sweeps behind it. Finally, she locates the coin and puts it in a safe place with the other nine coins.

 

Jesus tells us that these stories are about the joy that God feels when God finds something that he has lost.

 

"I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents."

 

But how can that be? How can God lose something? I don't know the answer to that, but I believe it's true. From beginning to end, the Bible is the story of the divine shepherd's quest for the lost lamb. It is the story of the how the divine housekeeper sweeps her house and looks in every corner for the lost coin.

 

I don't understand how it happened but I believe that it did. The book of Genesis tells us that we started out safely in God's fold and wandered away. Why did we do it? Why did God let it happen? I don't know the answer to it, but I believe it happened. And I believe that deep down in our hearts, we all know that it is true. We all know that we are lost, that something is missing, but that there is a home for us somewhere over the rainbow, that if we look hard enough we will find that missing piece of our heart.

 

And my job is tell you where to find that missing piece. My job is to tell you that God is looking for you. My job is to tell you that you are in the right place.

 

Today is Kick Off Sunday. If you have taken the summer off (and that is perfectly OK, although I wish you wouldn't!), then today gives you the opportunity to re-connect with Christ Church and with all your friends here.

 

After the service, I encourage you to go out in the court yard and look at all the tables that are set up, to find out about the many opportunities Christ Church offers for learning, worship, prayer, and service.

 

And if you take the opportunity to get connected or re-connected to this church, you might just find that missing piece of your heart. Like Dorothy, you might find that you were at home all the time and did not know it.

 

Not long after I came here I proposed that we become a Great Commission church. Do you remember the four parts of the Great Commission? Make disciples, of all nations, baptize, and teach.

 

One way of understanding the Great Commission is to see it as a way of putting all the missing pieces back together. God is out there looking for the lost sheep. God is sweeping her house looking for the lost coin. And God wants to enlist us in that quest.

 

Today you have the opportunity to find new ways of engaging in that quest. Like Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tinman, and the Cowardly Lion, we are all on a quest together.

 

Consider getting involved in Epicenter and helping us feed the hungry. Think about joining  Daughters of the King being part of their ministry of prayer and service. We have a new and exciting Sunday school program. I hope you'll take the opportunity to find out about that and get involved in it.

 

When Dorothy and her friends came to the Emerald City, they discovered that the wizard was nothing but humbug, smoke, and mirrors. "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!" the wizard told them.

 

But when the shepherd found the lost lamb and when the woman found her lost coin, they threw parties. And Jesus tells us that when we wandered out into the night, when we dropped down into the cracks in the floor, that God put on his boots and coat and came out into the night looking for us or that God took her broom and swept the house until she found the lost coin. Jesus tells us that God gathers us up into the divine hands and bears us home, sometimes gently, sometimes a little roughly.

 

Listen! Do you hear that? I do. It's the sound of the angels singing and shouting and dancing in the streets of heaven.

Sermon by the Rev. Rick O'Brien (Sept. 1, 2013)

Jen and I were the first of our group of friends to get engaged, shortly after we graduated from college.  This meant that we were the first to actually plan a wedding, and had no one else’s experience to use as a guide.  Our friends got to watch and learn from our mistakes, but like Lewis and Clark, we had to blaze our own trail.  Or so I thought.  What I had not counted on were the parents, friends, co-workers, and even total strangers who felt completely justified in offering their advice and opinions, in most cases completely unbidden.  It soon felt to me that we were becoming merely spectators in the planning process.

As a man, I had not really given much thought to the wedding itself.  But I learned very quickly that this is not true of women, who usually begin planning their wedding sometime around age 7.  What I had thought would be a relatively small affair soon turned into something resembling the D-day invasion in terms of planning and logistics.  I learned that there are myriad decisions that need to be made from where you get married, what the date will be, what dress the bride will wear, who will be in the wedding party.  These made sense to me and I happily participated in the decisions. 

It was the rest of the decisions that started to get to me.  Would we have a band or a DJ at the reception?  What china pattern would we select?  What type of gravy boat did we want?  By the time we came to the heated discussion about flowers, I was seriously thinking of faking a stomach problem figuring that 6 hours in the ER had to be better than this conversation.  My future wife by the way saw right through this and made me stay.

But as I was soon to find out, all of these decisions, large, medium and small, soon paled in insignificance against the biggest decision of all.  I refer of course to the seating chart at the reception.  I had never stopped to consider this as an issue, but I was to learn that this is the most important part of the entire event.  My mother, God rest her soul, approached this task as if it were a blood sport; and I found to my dismay that I no longer needed to fake a stomach problem.

I learned that where people sit entails far more than simply filling in names on a page.  There is serious calculus that goes into developing the correct alignment of people.  There are a number of factors to consider.  Are they family, friends, or acquaintances?  If they are family, are they close family?  Do we like them or are we fighting with them at the moment?  Where will they expect to be seated and will they be offended if they are seated somewhere else?  Do we care if they are offended? Do they get along with the people you plan to put at the table?  You can’t put the non-drinkers near the bar, but you also can’t put Cousin Billy too close to the bar or he will never leave.  And of course the most important of all, where did WE get seated at their last family wedding?  If we found ourselves at a table with the priest, the photographer and the DJ, well, retribution time is now at hand!  It is enough to boggle the mind.

Today’s lessons of course brought all of this to mind.  Proverbs tells us “Do not put yourself forward in the king's presence or stand in the place of the great; for it is better to be told, "Come up here," than to be put lower in the presence of a noble.”  In the same vein, Jesus tells us "When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, `Give this person your place,' and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, `Friend, move up higher'; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted."

Those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.  That is the challenge isn’t it?  For we all want to be exalted.  We all want to be the guest of honor.  We are all egocentric enough to want it to be about US.   Does that ring true to anyone else here, or is it just me?

Now before you beat yourself up too badly about this, take some solace in the fact that you are not alone.  It is hard wired in us to want to be praised; in fact I am sure it is coded somewhere in our DNA.  Even the disciples were not immune. Luke tells us that right after the Transfiguration, where Peter and James and John witnessed the glory of the Lord and realized beyond any doubt that Jesus was in fact the Messiah, they began to argue among themselves about which of them was the greatest.  They now know that they are in the presence of God himself, and still they think first about their own position in the world.  And when Jesus asks what they were talking about, they don’t respond because they are ashamed of themselves.  But he of course already knows and tells them “whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”  Or put another way, all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted."  Jesus was nothing if not consistent.

But he is consistent because this message needs to be repeated.  We have a hard time grasping it.  Intellectually we can understand what Jesus is telling us, but practicing it is another matter entirely.  For we all want to be the star of the show.  We want it to be about us.  But Jesus is telling us that that is not the way it will be.  When asked to name the great commandments Jesus tells us to Love God with all your heart and soul and love your neighbor as yourself.  I assure you, he knew exactly what he was saying when he chose those words.  For loving your neighbor is not the hard part.  But loving them as much as you love yourself; well that is MUCH harder to do.  We find it very hard to love others as much as we do ourselves because in our entrenched narcissism, we want it all to be about us.

But that is not God’s way.  God became one of us, lived and loved and cried as one of us; was arrested, tortured and killed as one of us.  In His time as one of us, Jesus showed us what it meant to love our neighbor as ourselves. Jesus washed the feet of the disciples, healed the lepers, and ate with the prostitutes and tax collectors.   He cared for the poor, the sick, the prisoners, and served them before himself. 

St. Teresa of Avila said, “Christ has no body on earth but yours, no hands, no feet on earth but yours.  Yours are the eyes with which he looks Compassion on the world.”  For compassion is the opposite of narcissism.  And by humbling himself to take the lowest place, Jesus taught us that compassion is the ultimate expression of love.  That is how we love our neighbor as ourselves.  Jesus did NOT assume the place of honor at table, even though he alone had the right to it.  If Jesus could humble himself and love others as much as himself, who are we to do less?